CHAPTER XIV
IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY
If we look at a map of South London compiled at any time during the eighteenth century it is surprising to observe how little the place had grown since the fifteenth. There runs, as of old, the Causeway at right angles to the Embankment. On either side of the Causeway or High Street or St. Margaret's Hill, run off right and left a few narrow streets: the continuity of houses is broken by St. George's Church, south of which, although there are, here and there, detached houses and even rows of houses or terraces, there are open fields, streams, ponds and gardens. St. George's Fields, crossed by paths, are broad and open fields stretching out westward till they join Lambeth Marsh. St. Margaret's Church has long since vanished: he who knows the old maps can still put his finger on the site, but its burial ground has wholly disappeared. There are four old churches in Southwark proper: St. George's, St. Saviour's, St. Thomas's, and St. Olave's. On the east are the churches of Bermondsey and Rotherhithe, not to speak of Deptford: on the west is Lambeth Church: on the south are the churches of Newington and Kennington. As for other institutions, there are the two great hospitals St. Thomas's and Guy's almost side by side: and there are the prisons, that of the King's Bench, the Marshalsea and the White Lyon. They were all on the east side of the street until 1756, when the King's Bench Prison was removed across the road nearly opposite to St. George's. Some time after the Marshalsea was moved further south on the site of the old White Lyon and including that ancient Clink. The old Clink on Bankside had vanished. But the Borough Compter was still flourishing—a grimy, filthy, fever-stricken place.
OLD HOUSE, STONEY STREET, SOUTHWARK
At the back of the houses and narrow streets to east and west, the fields began with open ditches or sewers and sluggish streams. 'Snow's' Fields on the east were as well known as St. George's in the West. 'Long Lane' ran from St. George's to Bermondsey Church: it contained a few houses: Bermondsey Lane, commonly called Barmsie, ran from the old cross to the same church: it was already a street of houses. The most crowded part of Southwark proper was the street called Tooley or St. Olave's, the most ancient street in the Borough, originally built upon the Embankment, the Thames Street of South London. Here, in the eighteenth century, there were no vestiges left of the former palaces: everything had gone except a crypt or a vault: at every step one came upon the entrance to a court, narrow, mean and squalid: these courts remain, also narrow, mean and squalid, to the present day. There were no places in London, unless in the neighbourhood of Hermitage Street, Wapping, where human creatures had to pig together in such horrible conditions. There was no water supply to these courts: there was no lighting: there was no paving, not even with the round cobbles which they still called paving.
ST. THOMAS'S HOSPITAL
(From an old Print)