London was a city of refuge as well as a city where gold was to be picked up in the streets. Many exiles have sought and found protection within its walls.
The most important of these arrivals was that of the French Huguenots after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes. An immense number came over; in one year 15,500 were relieved by the collection of a fund amounting to £63,713. A large colony of 13,500 of them settled in London, most of them in Spitalfields, at that time still a place of fields. Here they introduced the industry of silk-weaving, very much to the profit of the country and city of their adoption.
The next invasion of aliens was that of the unfortunate Palatines, in the year 1709. The Palatinate had been devastated by the French; it was a vast battle-field plundered during every incursion of the enemy; in despair, the people abandoned their country; they flocked over to England in companies and troops; the immigration continued for three years, during which time thirteen thousand thrust themselves upon the mercy of the City. A collection was made for them amounting to £22,038. These people, who seem to have been agricultural rather than industrial, contributed little to the population of London; three thousand of them were sent to Ireland; to each of the provinces of North and South Carolina six hundred were sent; to New York nearly four thousand, but seventeen hundred died on the voyage, no doubt enfeebled by their sufferings and privations before embarking; they seem not to have met with favor in New York; many of them emigrated to Pennsylvania, where, it is said, their descendants still preserve the memory of their origin. Those who settled in London got their names Anglicized, so that they were entirely absorbed and lost in the general population.
At the beginning of the French Revolution, when the madness of the revolutionaries fell upon the priests and nobles, there was an immense flight of the persecuted classes into England. They did not however, as a rule, come to settle; as soon as circumstances permitted they returned to France; some, however, remained; it is not uncommon to find families descended from the émigrés of 1792–93 who preserve the memory of their former nobility, though they have long since abandoned all intention of claiming a title which carries with it neither privilege nor property nor honor.
The émigrés formed during their stay small colonies in and about London. One of them was at St. Pancras, in whose churchyard many of them are buried; another was a little further out, five or six miles out of the City, at Hampstead—the Roman Catholic chapel built for them still remains; there were other small settlements, and many of them remained in Westminster and in Soho. The hospitality offered them, the pity shown to them, the maintenance granted to them by our government, the cordial friendship extended to them by our people, were worthy of all praise. Yet it was remarked, with some bitterness, that when these refugees were enabled to return to their own country they ignored every obligation of gratitude, or even courtesy, and actually refused to admit their old friends of the English gentry to their salons in Paris. Partly, I believe, this apparent ingratitude was due to their poverty, of which they were ashamed.
Another political invasion of refugees was that of the Poles after their abortive rising in the thirties; they, too were received by our government with a generosity unparalleled. There were many thousands of them. They were granted barracks to live in and a small pension to live upon; both were continued as long as they lived; they must now all be dead; some of them no doubt married here, and their children must now be part of the general population. A few of the most foolhardy ventured back again, to lead one more forlorn hope in another mad attempt at rebellion, and to die unprofitable patriots by the Russian bayonet.
In our own time there has been—it is still going on—a considerable influx of Russian, Polish and German Jews flying from the Judenhetze of the continent. I will speak of them immediately.
Whitechapel Shops.
Every year there is an immigration as from a barren and an unfertile soil to a land of promise. The immense strides made by industrial Germany during the last few years will probably check this immigration. Hamburg, Berlin, not to speak of Antwerp and Rotterdam, also rapidly growing centers of trade, will attract some of those who have been accustomed to look toward London as the land of promise. At present there appear to be about ten thousand new immigrants every year, without counting those who purpose going on to America. They consist of Russians, Poles, Germans, Dutch, Norwegians, Swedes, Danes, Belgians, French, Austrians, Hungarians, Italians, Swiss—but we have gone through the whole of Europe. I find no mention of Spain or Portugal or Turkey; nor are there, so far as I have heard, any aliens hailing from the smaller peoples—the Croats, Celts, Servians, or Bulgarians. What becomes of this array? What has become of the hundred thousand who have come over during the last ten years? Go up and down the streets of East London—over the shop-fronts you will see everywhere German and Jewish names, which seem to answer this question in part. Walk along the Whitechapel Road on a Sunday morning; there you will see most of the hundred thousand, there you will see the peaceful invaders who have occupied a large part of East London and have achieved for themselves, by dint of unconquerable patience and untiring work, a far better livelihood, with a far higher level of comfort, than could have been possible for them in their native lands. As for their children, you may look for them in the Board-schools; they have become English—both boys and girls: except for their names, they are English through and through; they accept our institutions, laws, and customs; they rejoice with our successes, they grieve with our misfortunes; never yet has it been known that the second generation of the alien has failed to become English through and through. I believe that our power of absorbing alien immigrants is even greater than that of the United States.