Homes of the London Poor and the Bitter Cry of Outcast London
Homes of the London Poor and the Bitter Cry of Outcast London

Author: Octavia Hill

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2015-12-14

Total Pages: 158

ISBN-13: 1317275691

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Originally published together in 1970, this study collects two essays on the housing situation of London in the nineteenth century. Homes of the London Poor was first published in 1875 and written by Octavia Hill, the granddaughter of the pioneer of sanitary reformation, Dr. T. Southwood Smith. Influenced by his work and by Christian socialism, she aims to outline the housing problems in London present in her lifetime and how reformation could help those in need of affordable and sanitary housing. The second text comes from a pamphlet written by Andrew Mearns in 1883 which highlights the overcrowded and unsanitary housing conditions that were still a major issue eight years after Hill’s work was published. Both works together present a clear picture of the appalling conditions the poor and homeless were forced into in Victorian London. This title will be of interest to students of history and social work.

London's Shadows
London's Shadows

Author: Drew D. Gray

Publisher: A&C Black

Published: 2010-09-02

Total Pages: 290

ISBN-13: 1847252427

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In 1888 London was the capital of the greatest empire the world had ever known. In the West End the glittering lamps illuminated the homes of the rich and the emporiums that displayed the countless luxuries that they enjoyed. This was a city that reflected the wealth of the Victorian age, but there was also a dark side to Victorian London: vice and crime, degradation, poverty and despair. When an unknown killer began murdering prostitutes in Whitechapel the horrors of the East End were brought out of the shadows. In 1888 London was the capital of the most powerful empire the world had ever known and the largest city in Europe. In the West End a new city was growing, populated by the middle classes, the epitome of 'Victorian values'. Across the city the situation was very different. The East End of London had long been considered a nether world, a dark and dangerous place, and it embodied many of the fears of respectable Victorians. Using the Whitechapel murders of Jack the Ripper as a focal point, London's Shadows explores prostitution and poverty, revolutionary politics and Irish terrorism, immigration, the criminal underclass and the developing role of the Metropolitan Police. It also considers how the sensationalist New Journalism took the news of the Ripper murders to the furthest corners of the Empire. This is a new and fresh portrait of London at the height of Victoria's reign, revealing the dark underbelly of the city's history.

A New Vision for Housing
A New Vision for Housing

Author: Christopher Holmes

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2006-03-20

Total Pages: 162

ISBN-13: 1134236360

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In 1945 the Labour Government set out to enable everyone to have a decent home, where people from all walks of life could live together. This dream was destroyed by a succession of avoidable mistakes and almost everyone now seems to believe that it is impossible to rediscover that vision. This book challenges that fatalism, tracing the policy mistakes that have given rise to this inequitable state from the folly of mass housing to the unfair tax privileges of many home owners. Holmes describes and advocates a new vision for the new millennium, finding solutions variously in development, planning, economic structures, social reform, and political reassessment to narrow the gap between rich and poor and enable people in all housing tenures to finally have a choice.

The Eternal Slum
The Eternal Slum

Author: Anthony Wohl

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2017-07-28

Total Pages: 429

ISBN-13: 1351304038

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The problem of how, where, and on what terms to house the urban masses in an industrial society remains unresolved to this day. In nineteenth-century Victorian England, overcrowding was the most obvious characteristic of urban housing and, despite constant agitation, it remained widespread and persistent in London and other great cities such as Manchester, Glasgow, and Liverpool well into the twentieth century. The Eternal Slum is the first full-length examination of working-class housing issues in a British town. The city investigated not only provided the context for the development of a national policy but also, in scale and variety of response, stood in the vanguard of housing reform. The failure of traditional methods of social amelioration in mid-century, the mounting storm of public protest, the efforts of individual philanthropists, and then the gradual formulation and application of new remedies, constituted a major theme: the need for municipal enterprise and state intervention. Meanwhile, the concept of overcrowding, never precisely defined in law but based on middle-class notions of decency and privacy, slowly gave way to the positive idea of adequate living space, with comfort, as much as health or morals, the criterion.Not just dwellings but people were at issue. There is little evidence in this period of the attitude of the worker himself to his housing. Wohl has extensively researched local archives and, in particular, drawn on the vestry reports which have been relatively neglected. Profusely illustrated with contemporary photographs and drawings, this book is the definitive study of the housing reform movement in Victorian and Edwardian London and suggests what it was really like to live under such appalling conditions. This important study will be of interest to social historians, British historians, urban planners, and those interested in how social policies developed in previous eras.

The Radical and Socialist Tradition in British Planning
The Radical and Socialist Tradition in British Planning

Author: Duncan Bowie

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2018-03-12

Total Pages: 425

ISBN-13: 1317018338

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Focusing on the key period between the late 18th century and 1914, this book provides the first comprehensive narrative account of radical and socialist texts and organised movements for reform to land planning and housing policies in Britain. Beginning with the early colonial settlements in the puritan and enlightenment eras, it also covers Benthamite utilitarian planning, Owenite and utopian communitarianism, the Chartists, late Chartists and the First International, Christian socialists and positivists, working class and radical land reform campaigns in the late 19th century, Garden City pioneers and the institutionalisation of the planning profession. The book, in effect, presents a prehistory of land, planning and housing reform in the UK in contrast with most historiography which focuses on the immediate pre-World War I period. Providing an analysis of different intellectual traditions and contrasting middle class-led reform initiatives with those based on working class organisations, the book seeks to relate historical debates to contemporary themes, including utopianism and pragmatism, the role of the state, the balance between local initiatives and centrally driven reforms and the interdependence of land, housing and planning.

Critical Essays on Arthur Morrison and the East End
Critical Essays on Arthur Morrison and the East End

Author: Diana Maltz

Publisher: Taylor & Francis

Published: 2022-07-26

Total Pages: 250

ISBN-13: 1000594386

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In 1896, author Arthur Morrison gained notoriety for his bleak and violent A Child of the Jago, a slum novel that captured the desperate struggle to survive among London’s poorest. When a reviewer accused Morrison of exaggerating the depravity of the neighborhood on which the Jago was based, he incited the era’s most contentious public debate about the purpose of realism and the responsibilities of the novelist. In his self-defense and in his wider body of work, Morrison demonstrated not only his investments as a formal artist, but also his awareness of social questions. As the first critical essay collection on Arthur Morrison and the East End, this book assesses Morrison’s contributions to late-Victorian culture, especially discourses around English working-class life. Chapters evaluate Morrison in the context of Victorian criminality, child welfare, disability, housing, professionalism, and slum photography. Morrison’s works are also reexamined in the light of writings by Sir Walter Besant, Clementina Black, Charles Booth, Charles Dickens, George Gissing, and Margaret Harkness. This volume features an introduction and 11 chapters by preeminent and emerging scholars of the East End. They employ a variety of critical methodologies, drawing on their respective expertise in literature, history, art history, sociology, and geography. Critical Essays on Arthur Morrison and the East End throws fresh new light on this innovative novelist of poverty and urban life.