Jacob’s Island

During a recent walk around Bermondsey I found myself in Jacob Street, named after what had been in Victorian times one of London’s most appalling slums (or ‘rookeries’ as they were then called). On researching ‘Jacob’s Island, as it was known, I was inevitably struck by the stark contrast between the place then – what Dickens called ‘the filthiest, the strangest, the most extraordinary of the many localities that are hidden in London -, and the trendy loft apartments of Shad Thames which have now replaced it.

By the mid-19th century, with the arrival of industrialisation, docks and immigrant housing, parts of

Jacob's Island 1830

Bermondsey, especially along the riverside, had become notorious slums. The area around St. Saviour's Dock, known as Jacob’s Island (occupying an area roughly within present-day Mill Street, Bermondsey Wall West, George Row and Wolseley Street), was one of the worst in London. It was immortalised in Dickens’ Oliver Twist as the place where his villain Bill Sykes meets his end - in the mud of 'Folly Ditch' which surrounded it.

Originally the location of the medieval St Saviour’s Mill, owned by the Cluniac monks of Bermondsey Abbey, Jacob’s Island during the 17th and 18th centuries was a good place to live. Trade flourished, with most employment based around the timber and boat-building industries. But things started to change from about 1830 with the arrival of various noxious industries. These were to radically change the character of this corner of south London. By 1849 there was a population of 7,286, many of whom were blighted by sickness. An article in the Morning Chronicle says it all: “[The] air is thickly charged with deadly gas. The inhabitants themselves show in their faces the poisonous influence of the mephitic air they breathe. Either their skins are white, like parchment, telling of the impaired digestion, the languid circulation, and the coldness of the skin peculiar persons suffering from chronic poisoning, or else their cheeks are flushed hectically, and their eyes are glassy, showing the wasting fever and general decline of the bodily functions”.

Booth's 'Poverty Map' of Bermondsey

By the latter part of the century, when Charles Booth was carrying out his famous social survey of London life ‘Life and Labour of the People in London’, in which he drew a series of maps coloured street-by-street to indicate the levels of poverty, this part of Bermondsey had a concentration of ‘very poor’ households in chronic want (shown in dark blue) and ‘poor’ households – i.e. those existing on between 18 and 21 shillings (lighter blue).

London had many ‘rookeries’ in Victorian times (most famously St Giles and Saffron Hill) but Jacob’s Island was in a class of its own! Indeed, the best description of what the place was like in those days is provided by Dickens himself:

“Crazy wooden galleries common to the backs of half a dozen houses, with holes from which to look

Folly Ditch at Mill Lane c.1840

 upon the slime beneath; windows, broken and patched, with poles thrust out, on which to dry the linen that is never there; rooms so small, so filthy, so confined, that the air would seem to be too tainted even for the dirt and squalor which they shelter; wooden chambers thrusting themselves out above the mud and threatening to fall into it—as some have done; dirt-besmeared walls and decaying foundations, every repulsive lineament of poverty, every loathsome indication of filth, rot, and garbage: all these ornament the banks of Folly Ditch.”

19th c. engraving of Folly Ditch

Other commentators of the age held a similar view of the place. The 19th century social researcher Henry Mayhew described Jacob's Island as a "pest island" with "literally the smell of a graveyard". He describes the water being in parts "as red as blood" as a result of pollutant tanning agents from the leather dressers in the area.

And this proved to be the biggest problem for the residents of Jacob’s Island - the poor state of the water supply. The writer Thomas Beames noted that the reservoirs remained stagnant until they were moved by the tide – something that only happened two or three times a week. With drains from houses discharging directly into the ditches, and the water also harbouring masses of rotting weed, animal carcasses and dead fish, Beames’ description of the ditches comes as no surprise: “[They are] the common sewer of the neighbourhood”, “the only source from which the wretched inhabitants can get the water which they drink – with which they wash - and with which they cook their victuals.” In the summer children were even seen bathing in the dirty water.

Jacob Street today

Once the origins of cholera were understood (there had been two major outbreaks on the island in 1849 and 1854, leading to this area being nicknamed the ‘Capital of Cholera’ and ‘Venice of Drains’!) the Jacob’s Island ditches were filled in during the 1850s. A decade later, many of its fetid buildings were destroyed in a huge fire that raged for 2 weeks in 1861.

1839 etching of Bill Sikes by G. Cruikshank

Any remaining properties were pulled down during the course of the 1860s, with New Concordia Wharf – now swish apartments - a rare survivor (the film Oliver! was filmed there in 1968).

New Concordia Wharf

Following extensive slum clearance, the area that had once been Jacob’s Island was eventually replaced by mills and new warehouses. Much of this industrial architecture was destroyed in the Blitz, with riverside Bermondsey being a prime target for Luftwaffe bombers. What remained after the war has either since disappeared or been converted for new uses, such as luxury apartments or upmarket offices, leaving hardly any visible evidence of the squalid world of Jacob’s Island that Dickens knew.

References:

Lost London: an A-Z of forgotten landmarks and traditions Richard Guard (2012)

Website: https://www.archaeology.co.uk/articles/news/digging-jacobs-island.htm

Website: https://stephenliddell.co.uk/2017/11/20/shad-thames-and-jacobs-island-the-venice-of-drains/