East London

by Walter Besant

The “hamlet” of Shadwell is only a continuation of St. George’s or Ratcliffe Highway; its churchyard is converted into a lovely garden, one of the many gardens which were once burial grounds; the people sit about in the shade or in the sun; along the south wall is a terrace commanding a cheerful view of the London docks, with their shipping. There is a fish-market here, the only public institution of Shadwell; there are old houses, which we may look at and perhaps represent, but there is little about its people that distinguishes them from the folk on either hand.

Off Shadwell.

In the year 1671 the church was built; Shadwell was already a place with a large population, and the church was built in order to minister to their spiritual wants. What could be better? But you shall learn from one example how the best intentions were frustrated and how the riverside folk were suffered to go from bad to worse, despite the creation of the parish and the erection of the church. The first rector was a nephew of that great divine and philosopher, Bishop Butler. He was so much delighted with the prospect of living and working among this rude and ignorant folk, he was so filled and penetrated with the spirit of humanity and the principles of his religion, that his first sermon was on the text, “Woe is me that I sojourn in Mesech, that I dwell in the tents of Kedar!” This good man, however, received permission from the bishop to live in Norfolk Street, Strand, about three miles from his church. And so, with a non-resident clergy, with no schools, with no restraints of example or precept, with little interference from the law, what wonder if the people reeled blindly down the slopes that lead to death and destruction?

The name of Ratcliffe or Redcliff marks a spot where the low cliff which formerly rose up from the marsh curved southward for a space and then receded. It is a “hamlet” which at first offers little to interest or to instruct. It consists of mean and dingy streets—there is not a single street which is not mean and dirty; none of the houses are old; none are picturesque in the least; they are rickety, dirty, shabby, without one redeeming feature; there is a church, but it is not stately like St. George’s-in-the-East, nor venerable like that of Stepney; it is unlovely; there are “stairs” to the river and they are rickety; there are warehouses which contain nothing and are tumbling down; there are public houses which do not pretend to be bright and attractive—low-browed, dirty dens, which reek of bad beer and bad gin. Yet the place, when you linger in it and talk about it to the clergy and the ladies who work for it, is full of interest. For it is a quarter entirely occupied by the hand-to-mouth laborer; the people live in tenements; it is thought luxury to have two rooms; there are eight thousand of them, three quarters being Irish; in the whole parish there is not a single person of what we call respectability, except two or three clergymen and half a dozen ladies; there are no good shops, there are no doctors or lawyers, there is not even a newsvender, for nobody in Ratcliffe reads a newspaper. But the place swarms with humanity; the children play by thousands in the gutters: and on the door-steps the wives and mothers sit all day long and in all weathers, carrying on a perpetual parliament of grievance. Here once—I know not when—stood Ratcliffe Cross, and the site of the cross—removed, I know not when—was one of the spots where, in 1837, Queen Victoria was proclaimed. Why the young Queen should have been proclaimed at Ratcliffe Cross I have never been able to discover. I have asked the question of many persons and many books, but I can find no answer. The oldest inhabitant knows nothing about it; none of the books can tell me if the accession of the Queen’s predecessors was also proclaimed by ancient custom at Ratcliffe Cross. Unfortunately, it is now extremely difficult to find persons who remember the accession of the Queen, not to speak of that of William IV.

Ratcliffe has other historical memories. Here stood the hall of the Shipwrights’ Company. This was a very ancient body; it existed as the fraternity of St. Simon and St. Jude from time immemorial; the Shipwrights’ Company formerly had docks and building yards on the south of the Thames; then they moved their hall to this place on the north bank, and seem to have given up their building yards.

Here was a school, founded and maintained by the Coopers’ Company, where Lancelot Andrewes, the learned bishop, was educated.

Ratcliffe-Cross Stairs.

There is another historical note concerning Ratcliffe. It belongs to the year 1553. It was in that year that Admiral Sir Hugh Willoughby embarked on that voyage of discovery from which he was destined never to return. He was sent out on a roving commission to “discover regions, dominions, islands, and places unknown,” and he began by an attempt to discover the northeast passage. Remember that geographers knew nothing in those days of the extent of Siberia. Willoughby had three ships; their tonnage was, respectively, 160 tons, 120, and 90. His crews consisted of 50, 35, and 27 men, respectively. With such tiny craft they put forth boldly to brave unknown Arctic seas. It was from Ratcliffe Stairs that Willoughby went on board on May 10, 1553. Half a mile down the river the flotilla passed Greenwich Palace, where the young King, Edward VI, was residing. It was within a few weeks of his death; consumption had laid him low. When the ships passed the palace they “dressed” with flags and streamers, they fired cannons of salute, they blew their trumpets. The young King was brought out to see them pass. It was his last appearance in public; on July 6th he was dead. As for Willoughby, he parted with one of his ships, and after being tossed about off the coast of Lapland he resolved to winter at the mouth of the river Argina. Here, in the following spring, he was found with his companions, all dead and frozen. A strange story of English enterprise to be connected with these forlorn and ramshackle stairs.