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I Development I Development Some say that phantoms haunt those shadowy streets, And mingle freely there with sparse mankind; And tell of ancient woes and black defeats, And murmur mysteries in the grave enshrined: But others think them visions of illusion, Or even men gone far in self-confusion; No man there being wholly sane in mind. - James Thomson (“B.V.”) (1914: 18) The Growth of the Easterly Pyle It seems that there was a time when the spaces to the east of London were regarded as areas to escape to when the great city began to overwhelm you. This was certainly the view held by Sir Thomas More in the early-sixteenth century, when he suggested that “if the discom- modities of the city offend you, yet may the country about your parish of Stepney afford you the like delights to those […] wherein you now keep” (J. Cox 1994: 7). In the antiquarian John Stow’s huge Survey of London, published in 1598, east London was depicted as a varied patchwork of apparently undesirable properties and relaxed, peaceful, agrarian spaces (Collinson 2001: 27-51). The lack of any significant urban development to the east of the city before the end of the six- teenth century is also made evident in Braun and Hogenberg’s map, Civitates Orbis Terrarum (1572), which shows fields still existing to the north and east of the Tower and the Roman wall, and a few minor buildings dotted along the old Roman road to the east which would later become Whitechapel High Street (Harding 2001: 117-143). But Stow was clearly concerned about the possibility of the further expan- sion of London towards the east. He recorded the encroachment of “filthy cottages” (1908: I: 72) into green fields and was worried about the seemingly rapid development of the road between St Katherine’s and Wapping. He wrote that there “was neuer a house standing within 38 The Cultural Construction of London’s East End these 40 yeares”, but “a continuall streete, of filthy straight passage […] almost to Radcliff, a good mile from the Tower” (1908: I: 70-1). By Elizabethan times, London was a city of upwards of 200,000 in- habitants (Inwood 2000: 158), but no more than 21,000 people lived in the area to the north and east of the Tower (Merritt 2001: 1-24). At that historical moment, then, many toponyms now firmly established as powerful signifiers of the East End still only existed as small ham- lets and villages. But this broadly agrarian space still managed to cap- ture the imagination of a number of writers. Ben Jonson, imprisoned for writing Isle of Dogs, a satire (now lost) which apparently contained “very seditious and slanderous mat- ter” (Drabble 2000: 540), wrote the play The Devil is an Ass (1616), in which the Vice Iniquity takes Satan on a journey to the parts of town in which he will feel most at home. It is significant that in Act I, scene 1 Jonson offers a Devil’s-eye view of east of the city (Happé 1994: 11): We will survey the suburbs, and make forth our sallies. Down Petti- coat Lane, and up the Smock Alleys. To Shoreditch, Whitechapel and so to Saint Katherine’s. To drink with the Dutch there, and take forth their patterns. (1994: 61) Jonson’s text demonstrates the ways in which east London had clearly grown, and notices the area’s broad ethnicity, even in those early days.1 The eastern side of the city, then, can be seen here to be already taking on a distinct imaginative identity. But significantly, Jonson imagined the whole of London (not just the eastern side) as the site of an intense moral struggle (Happé 1994: 12). In his diary of 1665, Samuel Pepys offers a varied view of the eastern reaches of the city. He suggests that a number of these areas were not pleasing. Indeed, after a trying journey home from Deptford on 31 July 1665, the diarist writes: “So we were fain to stay there, in the unlucky Isle of Doggs – in a chill place, the morning cool and wind fresh, above two or three hours to our great discontent.” (1972: 175) Pepys’s language here clearly marks the low, marshy Isle of Dogs as a place best avoided. But capturing the events of the Great 1 For more on the similarities and differences between the developments taking place in the eastern and western sides of London during this period see Power (1978: 167-185). .
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