The Boxers of Whitechapel

• Tasks
• Background
• Teachers' notes
• External links
• Connections to Curriculum

Whitechapel in the late 1800s was an area of overpopulation, industry and crime. With such wide systemic issues it can be easy to lose sight of the experiences of the individuals who lived in the area. This lesson explores the historic environment through the interconnected lives of four individuals who lived in the area during the 1880s. What can the stories of two West Indian boxers, the daughter of an Irish carpet maker and a child born in Whitechapel itself reveal about the challenges and benefits of living around Commercial Street in the Victorian era?

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Tasks

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Background

Whitechapel in London during the Victorian era was an area of industry and mixed opportunity. For several hundred years it had been home to tanneries, foundries and breweries. These are the types of industry that are necessary for the creation of goods for a city but unpleasant to keep close by with smells and sounds that would disturb the upper classes. As the industrial revolution took hold, Whitechapel and the other Tower Hamlets became a hub of immigration with thousands arriving looking for work from England, Ireland and further afield. With docklands to the south and new rail connections to the rest of the country, 1800s Whitechapel became the ideal home for manufacturers and merchants looking to make and sell their wares to the people of London and beyond. However, industry led to overcrowding and jobseekers soon outnumbered available work.

In 1839 the average life expectancy of a labourer in the area of Brick Lane was only 16 years and for tradesmen was 26. Sanitation was poor, pubs and gin palaces were widespread and crime and poverty rates were sky high. By the late 1800s reformers and philanthropists like Charles Booth and George Peabody were taking note of the terrible conditions and creating schemes to address the needs of the poor. Booth’s survey of London went street to street, observing the population and their circumstances and creating a map of London which showed the most poverty stricken areas. Peabody established a model dwellings company and a charitable trust to create affordable housing for those in need. The first such building opened on 29 February 1864 on Commercial Street, Spitalfields and saw 57 dwellings with shared bathing and laundry facilities and nine shops to be run by the inhabitants on the ground floor.

It is the area around Commercial Street, to the immediate east and west, that this resource focuses on by looking at the interconnected lives of four inhabitants. The documents explore the lives of these figures, their employment and living situations, their community and prospects. It is easy to make summarising statements about the situation in Whitechapel using the large scale facts and statistics and forget that the thousands of people living in these areas had full lives beyond the small glimpses in the record. This resource aims to put the facts and statistics into the context of lives on the ground and provide a fuller picture of life in 1880s Whitechapel.

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Teachers' notes

This series of lesson activities uses four case studies of real people who lived around Commercial Street in Spitalfields in the late 1800s. The case studies are based on the lives of Hezekiah Moscow, Mary Maddin, Eliza Moscow and Alexander Munroe. Each case study contains 4-6 documents and all share the following themes:

• Housing and overcrowding
• Poverty and employment
• Immigration and community
• Crime and policing

Students should be encouraged to consider these themes when exploring each case study. They should go on to interpret this evidence, pick up any inferences or see what they can discover about everyday life in the area. A timeline has been provided within our downloadable lesson pack which can be used either for individual case studies or to consolidate the class’s research as a feedback activity. It could be used as a starter or sorting activity, and helps to make sense of the chronology of the documents and the events they portray. A worksheet to consolidate all four case studies is provided. Individual case study fact file worksheets are also provided at the start of each case study within the pack alongside a list of questions to guide students through the documents in relation to each specific individual.

Some general guidance questions on how to evaluate and understand documents are included here, to help students to draw their own conclusions and inferences from the documents. (Teachers may wish to print these out, and discuss them with the students before they look at the sources). All documents are provided with transcripts.

• Find the date on each document
• What type of document is it? (e.g. census entry, witness statement or newspaper).
• Why was the document written?
• What is the document saying?
• Check the meaning of any words you are unsure about.
• Does the document show the writer’s opinions/values?
• Does it have any limitations?

Teachers may want to break their class up into four groups and explore one case study each, or create a series of lessons to piece together the story. Groups should feed back on the different individuals to ensure all students find out about all four figures. The maps and notebooks can be used as an introduction to the area and work as a whole class investigation before the individual case studies. Students could be encouraged to use the map as reference with the documents of their case studies for geographical context within the Whitechapel area.

Teachers could also look at our Victorian Industrial Towns themed collection to explore additional documents which give context on living conditions, health and overcrowding.

Please note, some documents used in this resource contain ideas and language which reflect historical viewpoints and attitudes. Some may be considered offensive. However, we think it important to show them here as accurate representations of the record to help us understand the past.

Sources

Activity One:

• Extract of the Booth Map – Maps Descriptive of London Poverty. LSE – BOOTH/E/1/5
• OS London 1:1,056 – Sheet VII.57, Publication date: 1896 – Reproduced with the permission of the National Library of Scotland
• George H. Duckworth’s Notebook: Police and Publican District 7. 1898. LSE BOOTH/B/351

Hezekiah Moscow:

• East London Aquarium Poster © The British Library Board Evan.421
• Shoreditch Observer – 16th February 1884 © The British Library Board, British Newspaper Archive (BNA)
• COPY1/392 Ching Hook, boxer 1888, Ching Hook in private clothes
• Sporting Life Magazine – 6th January 1888 © The British Library Board, BNA

Mary Moscow nee. Maddin:

• 1881 Census – RG 11/1382
• 1891 Census – RG12/275
• The Sporting Life, July 13 1892 © The British Library Board, BNA
• Workhouse Admission and Discharge Records, Tower Hamlets, 1908. London Metropolitan Archives; London, England; Reference Number: STBG/WH/123/044

Eliza Moscow:

• George Yard School. London Metropolitan Archives; London, England; School Admission and Discharge Registers; Reference: LCC/EO/DIV05/GEY/AD/001
• St Josephs School Tower Hamlets London. London Metropolitan Archives; London, England; School Admission and Discharge Registers; Reference: LCC/EO/DIV05/STJOS/AD/002
• 1911 Census RG14 /1463
• 1939 Register RG 101/1698E

Alec Munro:

• 1881 Census, Rochester – RG11/885
• Lloyd’s Weekly Newspaper – 13 September 1885 © The British Library Board, BNA
• Central Criminal Court Depositions CRIM 1/23/2
• Illustrated Police News – 10 October 1885 © The British Library Board, BNA
• Sporting Life – 9 September 1885 © The British Library Board, BNA
• Tavistock Gazette – 18 September 1885 © The British Library Board, BNA

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External links

Charles Booth’s London (LSE) – digitised copies of Charles Booth’s map and notebooks – https://booth.lse.ac.uk/

Grappling with history blog – examining boxers and wrestlers in 1880-90s London –  https://grapplingwithhistory.com/

Black Boxers and the colour bar – our blog post exploring attitudes towards Black boxers in the 1900s – https://blog.nationalarchives.gov.uk/black-boxers-and-the-colour-bar/ 

Connections to Curriculum

EDEXCEL GCSE History:

• Whitechapel, c1870-c1900: crime, policing and the inner city
• Migrants in Britain, c800–present
• Crime and punishment in Britain, c1000–present

AQA GCSE History:

• AC Britain: Migration, empires and the people: c790 to the present day

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