An Anatomy of a ‘Disorderly’ Neighbourhood: Rosemary Lane and Rag Fair c. 1690-1765. Janice Turner Submitted to the University of Hertfordshire in partial fulfilment of the requirements of the degree of PhD 23 June 2014 Abstract This thesis focuses on the experiences of the ‘disorderly’ neighbourhood of Rosemary Lane and Rag Fair in the eastern suburbs of London in c.1690 to 1765. Rosemary Lane and Rag Fair possessed one of the most powerfully articulated reputations for disorder of any London street. In the imagination of both novelists and social investigators it was thought to be squalid, dangerous, dirty - the stereotypical ‘den of iniquity’. Using a wide range of material including parish records, Middlesex session papers, eighteenth century newspapers, and digital sources such as the Old Bailey On-Line and London Lives this thesis will explore the streets and alleyways of Rag Fair. It will go beyond the simple perception of a disorderly neighbourhood, to describe the individual communities and forces which created that disorder. It will show that the poor of Rosemary Lane, generally, did not see themselves as a problem waiting to be solved, they were resourceful and they had their own way of surviving - they were active players in a changing City that was shaking off its medieval roots and embracing the modern. By looking in detail at this community; at its structures and divisions, and at its power relations, its self-identity will be revealed. i Abbreviations BL British Library BM British Museum ECCO Eighteenth Century Collection On-Line LL London Lives LMA London Metropolitan Archives OBP Old Bailey Proceedings Online Place of publication is London unless otherwise stated. The term ‘City’ is taken to mean the City of London, the geographical area under the authority of the Corporation of London. Spellings, capitalization and punctuation have been left as they were in the original documents. ii Contents Pages Abstract i Abbreviations ii Contents iii Illustrations v Tables vi Acknowledgments vii 1. Introduction 1 Rosemary Lane 9 Local Government 20 The Rag Fair 28 Thief-takers 34 Rag Fair Women 36 2. Local Government: Administration of a Disorderly 40 Neighbourhood, 1690-1765 Boundaries 49 Structure of Local Government 50 The Work of Parish and Ward Officers 65 The Watch 74 When Governance fails 81 3. The Social Geography of an east London Community 90 Population Growth 96 Taxes 102 Precincts 105 The Neighbourhood 135 Women Householders 138 iii 4. Rag Fair: Clothes, Pawn Shops, Complaints and Crime 143 Complaints 148 Shopping on Rosemary Lane 154 Buying and Selling Stolen Goods 160 Pawnbrokers 164 Crime on Rosemary Lane 180 5. The Thief-Takers of Rosemary Lane 199 Early Private Law Enforcement 205 Rewards 207 Local Judiciary 211 Nathaniel Harris and the Thief-takers 222 Decline and Fall 236 6. ‘Ill Favoured Sluts’: The Women of Rosemary Lane 250 Women at the Margins 255 Rosemary Lane Women in Literature 264 Reformation of Manners 267 Prostitution and Crime 278 Rag Fair Women and the thief-takers 281 7. Conclusion 299 Bibliography 311 iv List of Illustrations PAGE Figure 1.1 Chapter 1: Map of east London showing Rosemary Lane 1 Figure 2.1: Chapter 2: Map showing Portsoken ward and surrounding 40 parishes. Figure 2.2: Map of the Tower Liberties 43 Figure 2.3: Disbursements to the poor of St Botolph Aldgate 69 Figure 2.4: St Botolph Aldgate Pauper Settlement 71 Figure 3.1: Chapter 3: Map showing St Botolph Aldgate Precincts 90 Figure 3.2: John Strype’s Map of Portsoken ward 106 Figure 3.3: Plan of Houses in Houndsditch 108 Figure 3.4: Map showing Tower Hill Precinct 113 Figure 3.5: View of St Botolph Church from the Minories 115 Figure 3.6 Chapter 3: Map of east London showing Rosemary Lane 119 Figure 3.7: Sharp’s Buildings Rosemary Lane 120 Figure 3.8 Map showing Well Close Square 123 Figure 3.9: Drawing of Well Close Square 124 Figure 3.10 East Smithfield and St Katherine’s by the Tower 127 Figure 3.11: Receipt from Joshua Harle’s shop 132 Figure 4.1 Chapter 4: Map of East London showing Rosemary Lane 143 Figure 4.2 Map showing the location of Rag Fair on Rosemary Lane 146 Figure 4.3 Petition from Thomas Wilkes, St Mary Whitechapel Vestry 149 Figure 4.4 Drawing of High Change, Rag Fair, 1782 159 Figure 4.5 Map showing location of Pawnbrokers and Goldsmiths 168 Figure 5.1 Chapter 5: Map of east London showing Rosemary Lane 199 Figure 5.2 Map showing location of prominent Thief-takers and JPs 211 Figure 5.3 Drawing Stephen MacDaniel by Charles Leigh 1756. 246 Figure 6.1 Chapter 6: Map of east London showing Rosemary Lane. 250 Figure 6.2 Thomas Rowlandson’s Miseries of London. 264 Figure 6.3 Map showing location of Women Receivers, Thief-takers and JPs. 282 v List of Tables PAGE Table 2.1 Rates collected from St Botolph Aldgate and St Mary Whitechapel in 1727 67 Table 3.1 Households in St Botolph Aldgate 1693-1801 100 Table 3.2 Property Rental Values in St Botolph Aldgate Precincts 111 Table 3.3 A Selection of Tower Hill Rate Payers 116 Table 3.4 A Comparison of Neighbourhood Property Rental Values 136 Table 3.5 Women Householders 1692- 1694 139 Table 3.6 Women Householders 1744-1745 140 Table 4.1 A Comparison of thefts recorded in the Old Bailey Proceedings 185 1674-1760 vi Acknowledgments Colossal thanks to my supervision team – firstly to Tim Hitchcock for his patience, inspiration and motivation, forcing me to think harder and hopefully write better prose. Huge thanks also to John Styles for his thoughts, suggestions and calm guidance and to Anne Murphy for her sound recommendations and her close reading of this thesis. Heartfelt thanks to Pete and Britt, to all of my very understanding and long suffering family and friends. Thanks also to the School of Humanities and Academic Services at UH for all their support, to all in the History department, colleagues in Humanities Admin and to all my fellow historians at the Long Eighteenth Century seminar at the IHR. This thesis is dedicated to my wonderful daughter Britt Turner. vii Chapter 1 Introduction An Anatomy of a ‘Disorderly’ Neighbourhood: Rosemary Lane and Rag Fair c.1690-1765. Fig. 1.1: Map showing Rosemary Lane. A Plan of the Cities of London and Westminster and Borough of Southwark; with the Contiguous Buildings; From an actual Survey taken by John Rocque Land-Surveyor, and Engraved by John Pine, Bluemantle Pursuivant at Arms and Chief Engraver of Seals, &c. to His Majesty. This section of the map showing east London and Rosemary Lane. Courtesy of © Motco Enterprises Limited, Ref: www.motco.com Key: Pink dotted line identifying Rosemary Lane as it proceeds east towards Cable Street. 1 Rosemary Lane, Seven Stars Alehouse ‘Near to the Place where Frippery-Women stand with Stays, Coats, Suits, and Breeches second hand, Where rags of every sort and size are sold and Thieves their daily correspondence hold, There stands a House, Wherein if fame not lies The Stars at Noon-day to Men’s sight arise,’ 1 Ned Ward’s A vade mecum for malt-worms: or, A guide to good fellows, a tome describing some of London’s alehouses in the early eighteenth century provides a fitting short description of the street that will form the subject of this dissertation. Rosemary Lane was the home of Rag Fair, of Frippery-Women and the thieves and thief-takers who haunted the street on a daily basis. In the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries Rosemary Lane, a street just east of the City wall and the Tower of London had an impressive reputation for being a ‘disorderly’ neighbourhood. However, we know little about it or the people who lived there. Furthermore, while many historical accounts have been written regarding east London in the nineteenth century - dark tales of life in slums of Whitechapel abound; the eighteenth century remains a terra incognita.2 In consequence, we know little about the infrastructure of this neighbourhood. How did it appear to early modern eyes - was it a slum, a rookery full of thieves or just an early-modern London neighbourhood with 1 Place of publication is London unless otherwise noted; Edward Ward, A vade mecum for malt-worms: or, A guide to good fellows, (1715), Rosemary Lane, Seven Stars Alehouse, p.16. 2 H. J. Dyos, ‘The slums of Victorian London’, Victorian Studies, 11, (1967), pp. 5-40; H. J. Dyos ‘Urban transformation: a note on the objects of street improvement in Regency and early Victorian London’, International Review of Social History, 2, (1957), pp. 259-265; David R. Green, From Artisans To Paupers, ( 1995); Seth Koven, Slumming - Sexual And Social Politics In Victorian London, (Princeton, 2004); Judith R. Walkowitz, City of Dreadful Delight: Narratives of Sexual Danger in Late-Victorian London, (Chicago, 1992); Charles Dickens, Sketches of Boz, (1836); Charles Dickens, Oliver Twist, (1837-1839); Henry Mayhew, London Labour and the London Poor, Vol. 2, (1851); Thomas Pennant, Some Account of London, (The Fifth Edition, with Considerable Additions, 1813). 2 good and bad housing and good and bad people? This thesis will hopefully dispel the gloomy nineteenth century image of the ‘East End’ and reveal how some of London’s citizens lived and worked in London’s eastern suburb. This introduction will define the chapters that will make up the body of this study. In the process, however, it also seeks to relate the history of the Lane to a bigger picture of the metropolis itself.