My London History blog

Chinatown

My only acquaintance with Chinese culture being the stories of Triad gangs in my brother’s Sexton Blake comics (!) and the occasional visit to Chinatown to eat, I decided it was high time I found out more about London’s Chinese population – their fascinating history and the part they have played in the life of our capital city.

Britain first began trading with China in the 17^th century, but it wasn’t until the late 1700s that the first Chinese seamen began to appear in London. Hired by the East India Company to navigate its ships home to Britain (the Napoleonic Wars had left a gap in native manpower) these sailors were then unable, or reluctant, to return home and so formed a community near the docks in Limehouse, settling mainly around Pennyfields and Limehouse Causeway.

These men lived impoverished lives. By the 1820s there were so many destitute Chinese on the streets that the government passed a law compelling the East India Company to provide lodgings for Chinese sailors waiting to sign on with a vessel. The situation was slow to improve, so in 1857 the government was forced to intervene again and opened up the “Strangers’ Home for Asiatics, Africans and South Sea Islanders” on West India Dock Road, with 220 beds.

Cargo of tea unloaded by Chinese sailors, 1877

By the 1880s, a fully-fledged Chinatown had grown up. Chinese grocery stores were established, selling exotic goods such as lychees, dried seaweed and sam-shu, an alcoholic drink made from boiled rice. Gambling dens, lodging-houses and Chinese laundries were set up. They also opened premises where guests could smoke opium – the notorious ‘dens’ frequented by local Chinese people and members of London’s smart set. One or two of the dens around Limehouse Causeway later came to double as venues for the Hung League secret society, popularly known as the Triads.

It wasn’t long before the Chinese acquired a reputation for nefarious activity, and this only added to the antagonism that already existed as a result of the popular assumption that their numbers were greater than they actually were. This notion was perpetuated by writers such as Thomas Burke (who wrote the sensationalist “Limehouse Nights”) and Sax Rohmer (creator of the villain Fu

Limehouse opium den

Manchu) who depicted a London overrun by the sinister “Yellow Peril”. The actual number of Chinese settlers in the dockland hamlets of late 19^th century London is, in fact, more likely to have been less than a hundred. And even at their peak just after the First World War, there are known to have been, at most, around 300.

In fact, by this time Chinatown’s demise was just around the corner. In 1916, the National Sailors’ and Firemen’s Union organised strikes to protest at the use of Chinese workers on British ships. It eventually became illegal to sign on a Chinese crew in a British port. In addition, the Defence of the Realm Act of 1914 made it illegal to possess or smoke opium, resulting in the forced closure of lucrative dens. The Chinatown of Limehouse and Poplar was gradually dismantled by the local council during the 1920s and 30s. A sweeping slum clearance took place, the decision having been made to ‘clean up’ the area and bring it back under English, rather than Asiatic, law. Limehouse Causeway – always the hub of the Chinese community- was demolished in 1934. The whole area then suffered extensive bomb damage in WW2 and this proved to be the final nail in the coffin of the East End’s Chinese community.

'New' Chinatown

During the 1950s, the Chinese moved west to Soho, opening restaurants and food shops in and around Gerrard Street, off Shaftesbury Avenue. And so a new ‘Chinatown’ was born. Today the area remains a hub of Chinese culture, and a mecca for tourists.