Vol 1. Chapter 1 - Devil's Acre

Chapter 1

Devil’s Acre

“Skinny Granny” was the name that my mother always called her maternal grandmother. It took me many years to discover her real name. She was, in fact, born Alice Dudman.

Alice was born in 1873 to James and Eliza Dudman. Her older siblings were Eliza (b 1867) and Henry (b 1871). Her father, James died some time between 1873 and 1881. Eliza was left a widow with three young children to support.

They lived at 6 Lewisham Street, Westminster. Now an affluent part of London situated behind Methodist Central Hall in sight of Big Ben and the Houses of Parliament. Back then it was a notorious slum area. In 1850 Charles Dickens called the area, “The Devil's Acre”.

Cardinal Wiseman wrote of it, “Close under the Abbey of Westminster there lie concealed labyrinths of lanes and courts, and alleys and slums, nests of ignorance, vice, depravity, and crime, as well as of squalor, wretchedness, and disease; whose atmosphere is typhus, whose ventilation is cholera; in which swarms of huge and almost countless population, nominally at least, Catholic; haunts of filth, which no sewage committee can reach – dark corners, which no lighting board can brighten.

Population density in the Devil's Acre was not measured in terms of persons per acre, but persons per room.”

10 to 12 people frequently lived in one room.  Lewisham Street contained only 15 houses, but over 250 people lived there. Alice’s home, at 6 Lewisham Street, seemed particularly overcrowded: 5 families, 25 people crammed into one house.

Overcrowding made the area vulnerable to infections and there was a high rate of mortality from diseases such as typhoid, cholera and consumption. Perhaps one of these was the cause of death for Alice’s father and her two older siblings. Henry and Eliza Jnr were both dead by 1883.

In, Ragged London, published in 1861, John Hollingshead described the area:

“Enter a narrow street called St. Anne's Lane, glance up at a fearful side-court called St. Anne's Place, and wonder whether such filth and squalor can ever be exceeded. I went up the last-mentioned court, which had every feature of a sewer, and found a long puddle of sewage soaking in the hollow centre. The passages of the low black huts on either side were like old sooty chimneys, and the inhabitants were buried out of sight in the gloom.

Hollingshead went on to describe one street in the Devil's Acre:

I crossed over the road, and entered the openly acknowledged high street of thieves and prostitutes. It is called Pye Street, and has no mock modesty about it—no desire to conceal its real character. Threepenny "homes for travellers" abound on both sides: yellow, sickly, unwholesome places, many of them far below the level of the road, and entered by a kind of pit. Many of the houses have no flooring on their passages; and there is nothing for the barefooted children to stand upon but the black, damp, uneven earth. A child, dirty and nearly naked, was hanging out of one of the old-fashioned casement windows; and in the summer time it is no unusual thing to see about fifty coarse women exhibiting themselves in the same manner. The yards at the back of the houses contain little mountains of ashes and vegetable refuse; and a dust contractor's yard, in the centre of the street, seems to have burst its bounds, and to have nearly poured out its oyster-shells, cabbage-stalks, and broken china into the open thoroughfare. Shorthaired young men, with showy handkerchiefs round their neck, and tight corduroy trousers, were standing at most of the doors, looking pretty sharply about them from under the peaks of their caps. A fiddler was playing a dancing tune to a mixed assembly of thieves and prostitutes, and a morning ball was being arranged on both sides of the pavement. Many of the side streets and courts about here are shored up with black beams to keep the houses from falling, which adds to their wretched appearance

The Rev Frederic William Farrar also described the area:

I think it would have been difficult to have found a spot more full of crime ... The whole street drank hard while such plunder lasted ... an instance of the low life under the shadows of the Abbey. I received a message one day to administer Holy Communion to a dying girl. She was in the last stages of consumption, and her story was to the effect that her husband lived on her wages, which he forced her to obtain by a life of sin ... She summed up her repentance in one sentence: "I have worked very hard, and I am very tired.”

Lewisham Street, itself, is described as:

Lewisham Street, “The worst part of any so far, and nothing worse in the sub-division. A narrow way; open doors the rule; bare passages; bare stairs; dirty children; dirt women; larriking; dark blue as map. Three houses down on the North side, at west end of colour; probably telling of coming demolition. On the other side a common lodging house. Crime here, but only sporadic, and not enough to bar.

Although a slum area, the 250+ residents of Lewisham street pursued many and varied careers: farrier, charwoman, dressmaker, footman, harness maker, crossing sweeper, hawker, musician, fruit dealer, porter, printer, washer, cloth sorter, mangler, cab mender, stableman, errand boy, French polisher, brass finisher, lodging house keeper, shoemaker, commercial traveller, bottle dealer, butcher, cab driver, bricklayer, shirt maker, carpenter, shoe black, billiard maker, costermonger, wood cutter, groom, messenger, harpist, basket maker, traveller, milk carrier and an Irish barrister of law. Not to mention Alice’s own mother’s profession as an “Army worker”.

The Devil's Acre with the Houses of Parliament in  background. A 1872 illustration by Gustave Doré.

  

The hardship, the poverty and the unhealthy conditions no doubt contributed to the utter destitution that was about to befall them and force Alice and Eliza to leave Lewisham Street for good.

Lewisham Street today. Still dark and narrow