East End Controlled Assessment

Controlled assessment part: A

How useful and reliable are these sources in explaining how difficult life was for the inhabitants of the East end?

In this essay, I am going to talk about the living conditions, working conditions and the crime during 1880s to the 19th century.
East end was a notorious are in the late Victorian times, it was a playground for criminals. Many have described the living conditions of the East end to the point of being almost unbearable. It was extremely over-crowded which made the cost of housing very expensive. It also had poor housing regulation which meant that it was easy to build cheap housing that was unsafe and with poor sanitation. In this essay will explore how far these living conditions affected
the people who were present at the time in the East end through the critical evaluation through primary and secondary evidence.
Source 10 also briefly discusses the problems in Whitechapel.
There was high unemployment due to the massive influx of refugees from Eastern Europe. The prostitution was rife and alcoholism fuelled by cheap gin was common. Despite these and many other problems Whitechapel and the East End in general were also home to a large number of honest, hard-working residents, many of whom worked to ease the conditions many poor families lived in crammed in single-room accommodations without sanitation. It also prompted people to spend as much of their time as possible away from home; although many joined social, religious, or philanthropic clubs, a larger number spent much of their spare time in the local public houses. Drunkenness led to disease, the loss of jobs, and, often, violence."Poor sanitation, another problem intimately linked with overcrowding, caused a high rate of child mortality. There were also over 200 common lodging houses which provided shelter for 8000 homeless and destitute people per night. Whitechapel, with a population of 76,000, had 39.2 percent of its citizens on or below the poverty line. Many workers could only find intermittent employment, and those who had regular employment often did not fare better. The sweating system, exemplified by overcrowded, unsanitary workshops, long hours, and low wages, was widely utilized. Many were forced to toil for fifteen to eighteen hours a day in the numerous tailoring, boot-making, and cabinet- making shops of the East
End. East end was a notorious are for its bad healthcare and housing as it said “3 lived directly above cess-pits” ‘this quote indicates that it is useful because it tell us about the housing problems and provides support for the question, the source is quite reliable because it was written by the BBC is a worldwide company so they don’t want their name as well as the historian was just interpreting the life of this period at the time but he also used solid facts such as statistics in the source so it makes it trustworthy because it can be backed up by the statistics. One of the most important Source, source 1 for the situation on the ground time is Charles Booth’s descriptive map that was published in 1889 and shows the actual poverty situation of the East End of London, was the result of a house-to- house survey conducted by Charles Booth himself which covers only the East End of London. Source 1 backs up this source fairly well by providing a map that covers the extent of built-up London. The map drawn out to presented the social conditions of the people of London according to seven classes. The seven classes were: fairly comfortable, middle class, upper middle, upper classes, very wealthy, lower class and also the mixed. The importance of Booths map is the graphic power in showing to the public and to the politicians at the time the true nature and extent of poverty in London.

Source 1 is useful in introducing the interpretation of a map showing East End. It also shows the social inequality and the social divisions- poorer people living in the back streets and wealthy people live on the main roads. Even the briefest of looks at Booth’s map, the first of which coincides almost perfectly with the year of the ripper murders, shows a distribution of prosperity to poverty in a pattern that closely follows the sequence of square and avenue to thoroughfare, street, road, yard, alley, court, to dead ends, slum and rookery. Source 1 also shows the life in the nineteenth century London was very corrupt due to the extreme social inequality. There is no doubt that life in east London was difficult for many of its 900,000 inhabitants. The poorer lived on one side while the wealthy on the other. This was a struggle for the poor people as they were living in tiny streets with hardly any shops of what sort. Many of the overcrowded tenement building housed up to thirty families. A statistic shows that 55% of children died before they reached the age of five. Women who could not get respectable jobs had to lead them to themselves to a money making job which was prostitution. Charles booth was an English philanthropist and social researcher who wanted to help others around him that needed help because of their money problems; he was a generous man and donated money to good causes. While Booth's attitudes towards poverty made him seem fairly left-wing. However Booth was critical of the way in which the Liberal Government appeared to support Trade Unions .This source is extremely reliable because he was alive at the time when the East End was a treachery and he was interested in helping and improving the living styles of people and families. He was keen and satisfied with distributing his money to others around him and had great respect for the poorer people. Charles Booth raised awareness poverty and made it become an important issue he discovered that the causes were casual labour, low pay, unemployment, large families, illness and old age – not laziness, drunkenness and gambling. These reports raised awareness of the extent of poverty in Britain and the problems it caused.

Whitechapel was the venue of murders committed in the late 1880s on several women by the anonymous serial killed, called Jack the Ripper who terrorized London.
He chose his victims but were all mostly older, decrepit, drink-ridden prostitutes from the East End district of Whitechapel. The name "Jack the Ripper" appeared on a number of letters mailed to the police and to various news agencies. The publication of several of these letters, in the hope that someone would recognize the handwriting, vastly increased the killer's fame.

Source 4 tells us that the streets of Whitechapel were so bad that those living in the East End campaigned for improvement. The streets are were deserted after nightfall Turning down this side-street, but tuck out of view of jewellery. The street is oppressively dark though some shops are lit. Men are lounging in doorways smoking evil-smelling pipes, women are strolling about in twos and threes, or are seated gossiping on the steps leading into even darker passages. Round the corner is the notorious Wentworth Street, where it is said the police will only go on in pairs. It is late at night but gutters, doorways, passages and staircases seem to be teeming with children This is from an article that was written about Whitechapel in The Daily News, a newspaper that was campaigning for social improvement in November 1888. It’s a reliable source as it’s written at the time and by a huge
campaign.
Another aspect which tells us about the life that was difficult for the inhabitants of the famous East End is in the several sources describing the lack of safety that was trailing the streets. Source 4, as well as describing the bad living conditions that was in counted, also described Whitechapel as dangerous, highlighting the fact that even the police would not walk the streets alone at night, they would go in pairs. This tells us that the main source of security and protection were petrified of the environment that they were in. As I previously mentioned this source is very useful to us, but is only reliable to a certain extent, but this source is controverted by source 10 which describes a histrionic improvement after the Jack the Ripper crime occurred. Also source 10 is also written at the time and gives a balanced opinion but does not state who wrote the article or where it was published; only making it more reliable than source 4.
In conclusion, the life in Whitechapel and East End, the living conditions were to the point of being almost unbearable. It was extremely over-crowded which made the cost of housing very expensive. Plumbing was virtually nonexistent. Sickness and disease were the rule not the exception. Malnutrition was rampant, and most infants never had a first birthday. Of those that did, many from that group would not see a fifth birthday. And as is common with overcrowding and poverty, crime was commonplace. And not surprisingly, alcoholism was how many of these poor people delt with their lives. It was in these conditions, in these mean streets that Jack the Ripper stalking and killed. In fact the first couple of victims barely raised an eyebrow, the residents and police were so used to murdered people being turning up on a regular basis. The sources that I’ve used are reliable and useful to explain how difficult life was for people of the East end.