Areas of London where our branch of Cavaliers lived.

Whitechapel, Mile End, Stepney, Poplar, St. Georges in the East.

Whitechapel
From: "The Copartnership Herald", Vol. III, no. 34 (December 1933)
The present parish of Whitechapel was constituted for civil purposes in 1895 by an Order, confirmed by the Local Government Board, whereby it was provided, among other adjustments of boundaries, that the parish of Holy Trinity, Minories, should be united to it. Otherwise the parish represents what was once known as the Upper Hamlet of Whitechapel, the Lower Hamlet having been included in the parish of St. John Wapping when it was created by an Act of Parliament in 1694.
The parish of St. Mary of Matfellon was formed out of the large ecclesiastical district of Stepney in the beginning of the fourteenth century. The name, which has baffled so many attempts to arrive at a satisfactory explanation of its meaning and derivation, was that of the little chapel whose white exterior made it a land mark on the way out of the City beyond the parish of St. Botolph Without Aldgate, which extended to Hog Lane, afterwards called Petticoat Lane, and now renamed Middlesex Street. Here, too, is the boundary of the City of London, one furlong east of Aldgate - the situation of the gate itself. Two furlongs further eastwards stood the little edifice that subsequently gave to the locality, at least from 1840, its name of Whitechapel. The creation of the parish could not have been on account of the needs of a numerous population, for in so early a period few persons, if any, would have chosen to live outside the protection of the City, and as feudal conditions still prevailed those who were obliged to do so were bound by service to the manor. The arrangement made between the Rector of Stepney and the Bishop of London, who was also Lord of the Manor, could only have been for the allocation of the tithes of a defined district, especially one, too, which comprised corn-yielding land. In a document drawn up in 1323 reference is made to twelve acres of arable land in the parish of St. Mary Matfallon.
There is some reason to suppose that the original parish did not extend eastwards of the church, and that more than two centuries had passed before it brought within it the ribbon strips on both sides of the highway so far as Mile End. Until wheeled transport made some sort of a road necessary, the way out of London was nothing but a rough track. Perhaps Nicholas Dereman had bad recollections concerning it when in 1335 he bequeathed "to mend the way where most needful from the Church of St. Mary de Matfolone toward Myle End 100 shillings and his olden white horse on which he was wont to ride."
The rural features of Whitechapel underwent little change until Elizabethan times. For the first time, then, the citizens began to extend the bounds of their habitations, to build and live outside the city. Among the several mansions that were built there was one on the west side of Petticoat Lane (as it had become to be called) in which Count Gondomar, the Spanish Ambassador, afterwards lived in the reign of James I. On the south side of "the great street" butchers had already established themselves, but opposite were houses with orchards and gardens. "Over towards Shoreditch open country with rows of elm trees, and easy stiles to pass over the pleasant fields, for citizens therein to walk, shoot and otherwise recreate and refresh their dull spirits in the sweet and wholesome air" (Strype).
When he lodged at St. Helen's, Bishopsgate, Shakespeare may have walked across these fields from the Curtain Theatre to the Tower, to linger there as a country-bred man would, or to the busy quay at St. Katherine's, there to observe the little trading vessels and note the manners of the sailors. Ben Jonson was certainly well acquainted with the neighbourhood. He says:-
"We will survey the suburbs, and make forth sallies
Down Petticoat Lane and up the Smock-Alleys
To Shoreditch, Whitechapel, and so to St. Katherine's to drink with the Dutch there."
At the close of the century a great change began to take place. John Stow, the tailor's son who devoted his life to enrich our knowledge and was reduced to begging as a reward, tells us that "...without the bars (the City boundary) both sides of the street be pestered with cottages and alleys even up to Whitechapel Church and almost half a mile beyond it, into the common field (Mile End Green); all of which ought to be open and free to all men. But this common field, I say, being sometime the beauty of this city on that part, is so encroached upon by building of filthy cottages that in some places it scarce remaineth a sufficient highway for the meeting of carriages and droves of cattle. Much less is there any fair, pleasant, or wholesome way for people to walk on foot, which is no small blemish to so famous a city to have so unsavoury and unseemly an entrance to it."
South of the highway is a district which for many years retained its old name of Goodman's Fields. Before the dissolution of the monasteries it adjoined the property belonging to the nuns of the Order of St. Clare who were called Minoresses, a name which is perpetuated in the street Minories. Stow, who was born in 1525 in the parish of St. Michael's, Cornhill, and writing in 1599, gives the following pleasing pastoral and economic reference.
"Near adjoining to this abbey, on the south side thereof, was sometime a farm belonging to the said nunnery; at the which farm I myself in my youth have fetched many a halfpenny worth of milk, and never had less than three ale pints for a halfpenny in the summer, nor less than one ale quart for a halfpenny in the winter, always hot from the kine, as the same was milked and strained. One Trolop, and afterwards Goodman, were farmers there, and had thirty or forty kine to the pail. Goodman's son being heir to his father's purchase, let out the ground first for the grazing of horses, and then for garden-plots, and lived like a gentleman thereby."
The introduction of coaches and the general hire of them by the public had its effect in the seventeenth century in the inns of Whitechapel and on the highway itself. Rich visitors who came to London employed them, and owing to the rough-paved and narrow streets left them in the yards outside Aldgate. The luxury of coach riding appealed to the pride of all classes - much in the same way as motor cars do to-day. Taylor, the Water Poet, in his World Runs on Wheels tells of "two leash of oyster-wives" who "hired a coach to carry them to the green-goose fair at Stratford-the-Bow; and as they hurried betwixt Aldgate and Mile-end, they were so be-madam'd and be-mistress'd and ladyfied by the beggars that the foolish women began to swell with a proud supposition of imaginary greatness, and gave all their money to the mendicanting canters." With the drovers of cattle, market folk, and the populace generally coaches were "hell-carts." It is affirmed that in 1636 the coaches "in London, the suburbs, and within four miles compass without are reckoned to the number of six thousand odd."

When the Civil war broke out, among the City fortifications raised by Common Council and Parliament was one that was erected in 1642 - near the windmill that stood in Whitechapel. This mill was a short distance eastwards of the church close to the beginning of the fieldpath then leading to Stepney church that is now Fieldgate Street.
In 1673 the old church which had been built since 1362, after a former one had been destroyed by a tempest, was pulled down excepting for the tower on account of it being in a dilapidated state. A new edifice was erected through the generosity of William Meggs, who also built and endowed almshouses at the "Town's End" for twelve poor inhabitants of the Upper Hamlet. The almshouses were situated on the south side of Whitechapel Road, and subsequently enlarged. The site and buildings thereon were purchased in 1883 by the East London Railway Company, and where they stood may be indicated by the position of St. Mary's Railway Station. The rector was the Rev. Ralph Davenant, who died in 1680 and bequeathed a legacy for the education of forty boys and thirty girls of the parish in "reading, writing and the casting of accounts," which has grown into the present Davenant Schools.
It was probably at this period that the parish boundaries were revised and were extended along the Essex highway nearly as far as Mile-end. A few yards short of that spot a stone bridge crossed a sewer which went from Spitalfields and entered the Thames at Penny Fields in Poplar, and marked the actual "Town's End." North of the road was Whitechapel Green, with a ducking-pond - a watering-place for the cure of scolds, shrewish wives, drunkards, and other obnoxious persons.
For many years there was in this vicinity a rectangular piece of ground which, although territorially appearing to be in Whitechapel, is shown on certain maps as being in Stepney, but detached therefrom. It marks the place where once stood a Court of Record to which was attached a prison for debtors in respect of sums of fuve pounds and under in the manor of Stepney. A melancholy tale of this prison could be told, of how often paltry debts would by costs become so magnified that the debtors could only secure their release by the intervention of some unprincipled persons who would go bail for them, thus securing a hold over them. These extortioners would then employ their victims in the skilled trades to which they belonged at a barest subsistence wage, under the threat of withdrawing their protection. To swear a debt against a person and so get him or her into the place was almost a substitute for murder. In 1630 there were eighteen debtors' gaols in or within a mile of London. A poet, speaking of two of these says:-
"Lord Wentworths Jayle within White Chapell stands,
And Finsbury: God bless me from their hands."
The Praise and Virtue of a Jayle and Jaylers, 1630
by Sydney Maddocks

Mile End
From: "The Copartnership Herald", Vol. III, no. 33 (November 1933)
According to the direction in which one might be going, the first milestone eastwards out of London or the last before arriving there, stood until recent times a little to the west of the Black Boy Inn. It reminded passers-by, of the turnpike road, the rattling four-horse coach, the chaise with its postillion, the steady moving team with lumbering wain, and all those things which made up the variety of road transport in the early nineteenth century. Here travellers 'on the outset of their journey or in coming near to their destination saw Mile End, and thereabouts the houses of the well-to-do, which for the greater part were to the south of the highway towards Stepney Church.
The mile was measured from Whitechapel. In an earlier - much earlier - period, however, another had been taken, that from Aldgate, the gate itself, which terminated where Cambridge Road now is and where many years afterwards the toll-house was erected. A writer in the time of Queen Elizabeth thought that Mile-end Green was so-named because of it being of that extent, but Mile End considered as a place-name appears to have come into existence independently of that fact, and had been given to a locality beyond the stated distance from the city, and without it being precisely applied to a defined spot. When, in the course of time, the adjoining hamlet of Ratcliff made its boundary and certain parishes were separated from the mother church, a large area, most of which consisted of fields, was left over, and recognised as being in the care and keeping of the hamlet of Mile End Old Town. It was distinct from the New Town which arose and became attached to Whitechapel and Spitalfields. [The] remarkable outline of the hamlet, that in its greatest length measures a mile and three-quarters, should not be passed unnoticed as the little-known fact will be made clear that Mile End Old Town penetrates close up to Whitechapel Church in the form of a wedge, representing the old common land known as Mile End Green
Writing in 1578, the chronicler Holinshed said: "This common land was sometimes, yea, in the memorie of men yet living, a large mile long (from Whitechappell to Stepenheth church) and therefore called Mile-end green; but now at the present, by greedie (and seemeth to me, unlawful) enclosures, and the building of houses, nowwithstanding hir maiesties proclamation to the contrarie, it remaineth scarse a halfe a mile in length."
Perhaps once upon a time many an ancient man in his latter years recalled, like Mr. Justice Shallow, the days of his youth, when archers held their meetings on the Green. King Henry the Eighth, who encouraged this noble exercise, gave his patronage to a company of bowmen who practised here. Coming one day to see their performance, he was so pleased with the display of skill that he instituted the " Famous Order of Knights of Prince Arthur's Round Table or Society." Every good marksman who was admitted a member became identified with the name of one of the legendary knights. In the spring-time pageants known as Arthur's Show took place in which appeared competitors from Shoreditch, Shacklewell and Finsbury. The scene was gay with pavilions and tents adorned with banners and pennons, and the spectacle attracted many onlookers from far and near. The entertainment concluded with a feast for which a buck of the season had been presented to him who was Prince Arthur to regale him and his companions after their exertions of the day. Shakespeare refers to this on the occasion of Falstaff's visit to old Justice Shallow [1], when the latter prated of the wildness of his youth when he was a student in the Inns of Court. "I remember at Mile-end Green, when I lay at Clement's-Inn, - I was then Sir Dagonet in Arthur's show...." It was not the recollection of his having acted the part of a fool in a play but of his pride in having been one of a merry company, and according to his own account a mad fellow in those times.
When England was threatened by Spain in 1588, it was on this Green that the men of the City assembled to exercise themselves in martial array. Allusions to these musters were made by Elizabethan writers often in a jocular manner. The following quotation [2] from a delightful old play refers to a sham fight:-
MICHAEL: Is not all the world Mile End, mother?

MISTRESS MERRYTHOUGHT: No, Michael, not all the world, boy; but I can assure thee, Michael, Mile End is a goodly matter; there has been a pitch-field, my child, between the naughty Spaniels and the Englishmen; and the Spaniels ran away, Michael, and the Englishmen followed: my neighbour Coxstone was there, boy, and killed them all with a birding piece.
Two hundred years before, in 1381, Mile-end Green had been the place of riot and tumult, for on it gathered the men of Kent and Essex who had taken part in what is called Wat Tyler's rebellion. On the 14th June the insurgents from the two counties joined forces there. The young King, Richard II, who was only sixteen years of age, rode out of the Tower and listened to their tale of grievances (which were, indeed, bitter wrongs), and promised all they asked. The promises, however, were never realised. The following day they assembled in Smithfield, and the death of Wat Tyler there by the dagger of Sir William Walworth, and the action of the King who placed himself at the head of the insurgents, brought to a sudden and dramatic close the only spontaneous popular rising on a grand scale presented in our history. Among those who took part in the final scene was Sir John Philpot, an eminent citizen of London, a man who did great service to the realm in its defence against foreign enemies. He is referred to on account of his possessing then an estate at Mile-end which was called "Hull Amilesend," a curious designation in which the name of the locality is to be observed.
All that is left of the old Common is the small remnant that survives as Stepney Green. It would be wrong to suppose that this spot should be identified with the exact position of the occurrence of events belonging to a period before the eighteenth century. As an instance, the house of Henry le Waleys or Le Galeys is described as being on Stepney Green, which may be taken to mean anywhere in its modern vicinity. At this house Edward I, in 1292, held a Council, often improperly referred to as a Parliament, to deal with the dispute between the citizens of London and the merchants of Gascony concerning the importation of wine.
That portion of the hamlet lying near to St. Dunstan's Church, as it was in the similar case of Ratcliff, was, and is still, apart from any allusion to the borough itself [i.e. the Metropolitan Borough of Stepney], referred to as Stepney. Indeed, here was the old village whose description and precise situation is not understood by those unacquainted with the boundaries of the two hamlets at this place.
Those who lived in houses in this neighbourhood were considered as residents of Stepney, although for the purpose and conduct of local affairs by the vestry, they may have been of either hamlet. Some of these men were notable in their day, and should provide sufficient interest to our readers for an account to be given of them on a future occasion.

Curious Gate at Stepney," A house, by Tradition, called, King John's Gate, from what authority is not known, but will serve as a specimen of Variegated Brick work is reputed to be the oldest house in Stepney." The gateway stood on the modern Stepney Green, nearly opposite the Rectory, on the site of King John Street, and formed part of a large mansion belonging to the first Marquis of Worcester who in 1597 resided there. In 1663 it was occupied by the Rev. Matthew Mead, an eminent dissenting divine. Here his son Richard, the celebrated physician, was born; and here, as it is recorded in his life, he first commenced the practice of his profession.
It was not until the nineteenth century had well advanced that the neighbourhood was developed for building upon, at first but very slowly. From the earlier of the two maps, that showing the hamlet two hundred years ago, some idea can be obtained why so large an extent of territory should have become a unit for local administration. It was in consequence of the population being confined to a very small part of the entire area. It will be observed that at that time the name of the Old Town was given to that part of the main road into Essex immediately east of Dog Row, now known as Cambridge Road. Here was a favourite place for the erection of almshouses known as hospitals for poor and decayed folk. There were those of the Skinners and the Vintners Companies, Trinity House, and Judge Fuller. Along the north side of the road were large houses as far as where the People's Palace now stands, after which the thoroughfare became the road to Bow. The Globe Road of to-day then bore the ominous name of Theeving Lane, and Coborn Road is designated Bare Binder Lane.
by Sydney Maddocks




St. George's-in-the-East
From: "The Copartnership Herald", Vol. II, no. 24 (February 1933)
Some acquaintance with the early history of this neighbourhood, which is not particularly attractive in these days to the chance visitor, will, it is hoped, at least remove the impression which may exist in his mind that its past is interesting only on account of part of the notorious thoroughfare, Ratcliff Highway, now St. jGeorges'  Street, which passes through it. The unsavoury reputation arose in the middle of the nineteenth century, when foreign sailors from every country, Greeks, Malays, Lascars, Dutch, Scandinavians, Portuguese, Spanish and French could be met everywhere, and many taverns, dancing saloons and so-called boarding-houses harboured the lowest types of humanity of almost every nation. Of the tales that have been told of the life of those times, some are undoubtedly true and some are exaggerated, if not altogether fictitious, but by their repetition they have been multiplied many times. Thus, the name of Ratcliff Highway became a byword not only for poverty and misery, but for the coarse, the brutal, and the vicious. It is not surprising, when the state of the Metropolis at that time is considered, that the respectable inhabitants, the business men and the workpeople accepted the social conditions as being incidental and commonplace occurrences. But there was another phase of life to be found there. The Rev. Harry Jones, who had been rector of St. George's since 1873, writing an introduction to a small volume published in 1880, said that he could "but heartily hope that this little book will join yet closer together with the tie of honest home and municipal interests those of whose life and surroundings it speaks, and will tend to deepen an impression that the East of London is not a region so barren of righteous influences and healthy life as some have occasionally fancied it to be."
Speaking of misrepresentations, the compiler of An East-end Chronicle says: "But we East-enders owe many a grudge to the journalists and novelists and conversationalists who have written and talked about us without really knowing us. However, things are mending... and in years to come, when many illusions have been dispelled, those who know us now only by hearsay, or as the result of some hasty visit, will admit that we are not many of us thieves or most of us heathens, but after all, men and women very like the men and women elsewhere, good, bad and indifferent, a few of us heroes and a few of us villains, and nearly all of us toilers and moilers, doing our work and taking our play, trying to do our duty, and hoping to get our reward."
On 14 May 1729, in the second year of the reign of George II, the Royal Assent was given to "An Act for making the Hamlet of Wapping Stepney in the Parish of St. Dunstan Stebonheath, a Distinct Parish, and for providing a Maintenance for the Minister of the New Church there."
The church was dedicated to St. George as a delicate compliment to the King, and the new parish thereby became designated that of St. George, Middlesex. To distinguish it from other places of the same name in the Metropolis, it was soon called St. George's-in-the-East. The boundaries of the contiguous parishes of Whitechapel, Wapping, and Shadwell and the hamlets of Ratcliff and Mile End Old Town having been already established, the area consisting of about 224 acres surrounded by those districts was included in St. George's  parish.
The hamlet, properly speaking, of Wapping Stepney was originally close to the river, and after the formation of the parishes of Wapping and Shadwell it became possessed of a frontage to the Thames of some fifty-three feet, represented to-day by Foundry Wharf, which forms part of the Commercial Gas Company's Works at Wapping. This frontage was occasioned by the outflow there of an ancient watercourse, the responsibility for which, with the upkeep of its banks, either of the two neighbouring parishes were wary to avoid. On the other hand, the manor of Stepney was perhaps desirous to preserve in its keeping the means of draining the marsh that lay inland almost as far as the Highway.
At the time of its formation, the parish was largely unbuilt upon, especially on the north, where fields lay stretched away to the winding White Horse Lane, which nearly a century later formed approximately the line of Commercial Road. This explains the apparently irregular boundary on this side, where it borders that of the hamlet of Mile End Old Town. It crosses the Commercial Road, includes the George Tavern, and then abruptly recrosses, and, after passing through the church of SS. Mary and Michael, continues south of the Road until it comes into contact, in Harding Street, with the hamlet of Ratcliff.
The conduct of parochial affairs was by the Act of Parliament entrusted to a Vestry consisting of such parishioners as paid two shillings a month or upwards to the poor, and it may be found interesting, perhaps amusing, to refer to a few of the duties which were first performed. Mr. Crowcher and Mr. Tatlocks having been elected churchwardens, a committee was formed to allot the seats in the church. Accommodation was assigned to 144 heads of families, eleven of these being captains of merchant vessels, and subsequently a further 151 families were seated. For the office of Parish Clerk the number of applicants was reduced to three: a schoolmaster, a barber and periwig maker, and a tobacco-cutter. After the question had been put whether it was the pleasure of the Vestry that the successful candidate should be obliged to abandon his normal occupation, room for the factotum was made by the decision that the barber and periwig maker, one Sam Bright, should be Parish Clerk and nothing else.
To Mr. Sam Bright we are indebted for the information relative to the parish contained in a book published soon after his entry into office. In furnishing particulars relative to the parish he mentions, among others:
"Remarkable Places and Things are half of Wellclose-square, and one moiety of the Danish Church therein: Princes Square and therein the Swedes Church, an Anabaptist Meeting the Corner of Penitent Street in Virginia Street and another in Meeting-house-yard, in Broad Street near Old Gravel Lane."
This does not appear to be very exciting, but it affords a glimpse of there being a number of Danish and Swedish, people who had settled in the neighbourhood. These were principally engaged in the timber trade, but another thriving business was that of the importation of hemp and tar - the crude distillation of pine-wood - shipped from ports of Northern Europe for the manufacture of rope. This industry became the principal one in St. George's  in the second half of the eighteenth century, but rope walks were common throughout all the riverside districts.
Ten years before the parish came into being, Mr. Henry Raine,brewer, built at his expense in the old hamlet a charity school for fifty boys and fifty girls, and gave forty guineas a year towards the support of it. The children were clothed and the boys were taught to read, write and cast accounts; the girls were taught to read, sew and mark. From 1719 to 1736 Mr. Raine, who had personally superintended the school, by his will made in the latter year, endowed it. In the same year he erected another school, called the Asylum - a name which did not then have unpleasant associations. In this building provision was made for forty girls, "chosing out of the most deserving of those brought up in the old school, and who have continued therein two years." They were to be maintained, clothed and educated. After four years training, the girls were to go into domestic service, and at the age of twenty-two were to be entitled, subject to certain qualifications, to become candidates for the marriage portion  for which six of them might draw lots on every 1st May and 28th December, The unsuccessful candidates, if they continued unmarried, might draw again from time to time, till they obtained a prize.
Mr. Raine left most of his property to his two nephews, exhorting them to purchase  Stock to make a permanent provision for these marriage portions. "I doubt not," he says, "but my nephews will cheerfully purchase the stock if they had seen, as I have, six poor innocent maidens come trembling to draw the prize, and for the fortunate maid that got it burst into tears with excess of joy." It has been pointed out that one's  feelings and sympathies may be quite as deeply stirred by the sight of the five "poor innocent maidens" who are unfortunate enough to draw blanks. To which remark may be added the observation that instances of envy, hatred and malice are more likely to arise from gifts bestowed by capricious fortune than from those that are the reward of merit.
By an Act of Parliament in 1780 the trustees of the endowments were incorporated by the name of "The Governors and Trustees of the Raine's  Charities." Forty years previously the Court of Chancery decreed that the money for the provision of marriage portions should be set apart, but in course of years it came to be disregarded and no particular fund was kept for this purpose. The management of this branch of the Charity does not appear to have been successful. Marriage portions continued to be given, but the number applying for them was not large, and instead of six candidates at each half-yearly drawing of the lots, only on one occasion in the twenty-three years prior to 1875 had there been more than three candidates and frequently, if not generally, only one. All the endowments of the benevolent founder are now applied to the fine school built in Arbour Square which bears the name of the Henry Raine Foundation.
Mr. Raine lived, and carried on business in premises afterwards known as the Star Brewery, which were acquired nearly a century ago by the East London Gas Company and afterwards transferred to the Ratcliff Company. They were the nucleus of the Wapping Gas Works.
Our friend the Parish Clerk computed the number of houses in the newly formed parish "as upwards of 2,000," but probably his pride of place led him to err, for twenty-three years later, in 1756, there appear to have been only 1,946 houses, but in a few years the marshland south of Pennington Street was wholly built over.
A contemporary writer, referring to the houses that were here erected, said, "Those and others are almost without exception mere hovels, when compared to the habitations within the city of London," but he admitted that "exceedingly useful, opulent and worthy members of society are scattered through the streets and lanes" of the parish.
In 1800 the work of constructing the London Dock was begun. In Wapping eleven acres of land were taken and 120 houses pulled down, and in St. George's  the whole, or part of twenty-four streets, thirty-three courts, yards, alleys and lanes were demolished. Most of these houses were of a mean and wretched description, and the loss of them was a distinct gain to the neighbourhood.
North of the Highway the development of the land for building purposes more than made good the number of houses demolished. Huge sugar refineries arose of which the parish ultimately contained more than any other in the Tower Hamlets until the collapse of the industry in 1880.
About the year 1820 St. Georges'-in-the-East was at the height of its prosperity, and wealthy merchants and traders resided in the parish. On Sunday mornings a line of carriages was drawn up outside the church gates waiting to take the owners home. Wellclose Square was the most fashionable quarter, and there the Danish Ambassador resided. The annual church rate would yield over £700, and funds were so plentiful that the Vestry could spend £400 improving and extending the churchyard and beautifying the church and repairing the organ. The times were changing. The prospect of work at the London Docks caused a large influx of unskilled labour, and the intermittent employment of the dock labourer and the low rate of pay - 5d. per hour - brought poverty. The population grew dense and misery spread with the outbreaks of cholera in 1849, 1855, and in 1866. On the latter occasion this parish suffered more than any other part of the East of London.
In the meantime, the prosperous merchants and tradesmen, who had formerly been compelled through the lack of travelling facilities to reside on or near their business premises, had with the coining of railways moved into the suburbs and attended daily, and the houses that they once occupied were let out in tenements.
Over the parish in our days hangs an atmosphere of depression that things should be as they are, which is broken only for some rare moments, such as when the mean streets have a certain wistfulness in the softening grey haze of a late autumnal afternoon. Then the lofty tower of St. George's Church, which has seen two centuries of life's vicissitudes, hushes red in the kindly glow of the sun in the west, telling worker and the workless of the departure of another day.