Dorset Street photographed in 1902 and used in Jack London's book The People of the Abyss. The camera is at the western end of the road, pointing east: Miller's Court was on the left hand side at the far end.
The site of Dorset Street in 2006, again looking west to east. Miller's Court was located on the left side of this photograph.
Dorset Street, originally known as Datchet Street, was a street in Spitalfields, East London, once situated at the heart of the area's rookery. By repute it was "the worst street in London",[1] and it was the scene of the brutal murder of Mary Jane Kelly by Jack the Ripper on 9 November 1888. The murder was committed at Kelly's lodgings which were situated at No. 13, Miller's Court, entered from a passageway between 26 and 27, Dorset Street.
The road was renamed Duval Street in 1904, before having its north side demolished in 1928 during the rebuilding of Old Spitalfields Market, and the buildings on the south side replaced by a car park in the 1960s. The site was built over during redevelopment of the Fruit and Wool Exchange in the 2010s.
History
Laid out in 1674 and originally known as "Datchet Street" (probably from William Wheler of Datchet, who owned land in the area),[2] it was given the name Dorset Street soon after.[3][4] Locally, it was sometimes known as "Dosset Street" or "Dossen Street" either because of the large number of doss-houses it contained or because immigrants to the area found it hard to pronounce the original name.[5][6] It was a short and narrow street, 400 feet long and 24 feet wide,[3] running parallel with Brushfield Street, to the north, and White's Row, to the south, and connecting Crispin Street, to the west, with Commercial Street to the east. An alley called Little Paternoster Row connected Dorset Street with Brushfield Street. In the mid-nineteenth century a man called John Miller built some cottages in the back gardens of his properties at 26 and 27, on the north side of Dorset Street. This small area, entered by a passageway between 26 and 27, became known as Miller's Court.[7] No 13 Miller's Court, where Mary Jane Kelly resided and was murdered, was originally the back part of 26 Dorset Street, renumbered and let as a separate residence by her landlord Jack McCarthy and now looking out onto the cottage buildings in the Court rather than the original garden.[8]
By the 1880s, Dorset Street was almost entirely taken up with common lodging-houses and other sub-standard rented accommodation, mostly let and controlled by two men, Jack McCarthy and William Crossingham. McCarthy and Crossingham were major slum landlords in this area and suspected to be involved in various illegal rackets, such as controlling prostitutes, fencing stolen goods, and arranging prize fights.[9] Reportedly, the "lowest of all prostitutes" worked on Dorset Street, and some common lodging-houses were actually brothels.[10]
Only two legitimate businesses were listed in the Post Office Street Directory for 1888: that of Barnett Price, who had a grocery store at No 7, and the Blue Coat Boy public house, which was run by William James Turner at No 32. It was estimated that on any one night there were no fewer than 1,200 men sleeping in Dorset Street's crowded lodging houses.[11]
No.13 Miller's Court in 1888
On the corner of Dorset and Commercial Street stood The Britannia public house. Known as the "Ringers", after the landlord's surname: a frequent customer was Mary Jane Kelly. Situated opposite Miller's Court, at No. 15, was Crossingham's common lodging-house, with another, also owned by Crossingham, at the corner of Little Paternoster Row, at 35, Dorset Street. It was from this common lodging house that Ripper victim Annie Chapman was last seen walking up Little Paternoster Row, before turning right into Brushfield Street and heading towards Christ Church, Spitalfields.
[It] has recently sprung into undesired notoriety. Here we have a place which boasts of an attempt at murder on an average once a month, of a murder in every house, and one house at least, a murder in every room. Policemen go down it as a rule in pairs. Hunger walks prowling in its alleyways, and the criminals of to-morrow are being bred there to-day… The lodging-houses of Dorset Street and of the district around are the head centres of the shifting criminal population of London. Of course, the aristocrats of crime – the forger, the counterfeiter, and the like do not come here. In Dorset Street we find more largely the common thief, the pickpocket, the area meak, the man who robs with violence, and the unconvicted murderer. The police have a theory, it seems, that it is better to let these people congregate together in one mass where they can easily be found than to scatter them abroad. And Dorset Street certainly serves the purpose of a police trap.[12][13]
Dorset Street remained a notorious slum following the murder of Mary Jane Kelly. In 1901, Mary Ann Austin was murdered with ten wounds to her abdomen at Annie Chapman's former home, Crossingham's Lodging House, at 35, Dorset Street.[14] Later, in 1909 there was a Jack the Ripper-like killing in No. 20, Miller's Court, the room directly above no. 13 (which had been occupied by Elizabeth Prater in 1888), when a young woman named Kitty Ronan was found with her throat cut.[15] It was believed that Ronan was a prostitute, and, as in the killing of Mary Jane Kelly, her murderer was never found. As in 1888, the landlord of Miller's Court in 1909 was still John McCarthy. The last murder in Dorset Street was the gangland killing of a Soho club manager and a former middleweight boxer called Selwyn Cooney in February 1960. Cooney was shot in the head at a drinking club on the street, after which he staggered down the stairs into the road and died.[16][17]
A vivid description of crime and vice in Dorset Street is given in Ralph L. Finn's 1963 memoir of a Jewish boyhood in the East End:
It was a street of whores. There is, I always feel, a subtle difference between an whore and a prostitute. At least we used to think so. Prozzies were younger, and more attractive. Whores were debauched old bags. It teemed with nasty characters – desperate, wicked, lecherous, razor-slashing hoodlums. No Jews lived there. Only a few bold Choots had the temerity even to walk through it. There were pubs every few yards. Bawdy houses every few feet. It was peopled by roaring drunken fighting-mad killers.[6]
"Worst street in London"
George Duckworth, investigating London poverty on behalf of Charles Booth in 1898, described Dorset Street as "the worst street I have seen so far, thieves, prostitutes, bullies, all common lodging houses".[18] McKenzie's 1901 article in the Daily Mail was titled "The Worst Street in London";[12] and the phrase reappeared in Jack London's book, The People of the Abyss, in 1903.[19] Fiona Rule subsequently adopted it as the title of her 2008 book on the history of the street.[20]
Later history and redevelopment
The former location of Miller's Court in Dorset Street (now redeveloped)
As Finn indicates, by the early years of the twentieth century Dorset Street constituted a small non-Jewish ghetto in what was now largely a Jewish area.[21] Dorset Street was renamed "Duval Street" on 28 June 1904. In 1920, the Corporation of London purchased Spitalfields Market, and began major rebuilding, which included the demolition of the whole of the north side of Duval Street, including Miller's Court. The new fruit market opened in 1928. Another new market development in the 1960s resulted in Duval Street becoming a lorry park for the market. The buildings on the south side of Dorset Street were redeveloped as a multi-storey car park in 1969–1971.[22] The north side was bounded by the London Fruit and Wool Exchange building, which in later years was used primarily as office space for small businesses and a storage warehouse for an import-export company.
Redevelopment of the Fruit and Wool Exchange in the 2010s saw the Dorset Street site built over.[23] As part of the redevelopment, archaeological excavations were carried out in 2015–2016. These revealed the truncated remains of numbers 7–12 and 15 Dorset Street (all on the south side of the street), several cesspits and soakaways (brick-lined and horncore-lined), and significant assemblages of ceramic, glass, metal and other fragments dating from the late 17th to mid-19th centuries.[24] The finds included, in one of the cesspits, a group of up to 29 decorative ceramic figurines, tentatively associated with the pottery and glass retail outlet of Thomas Wedgwood (1800–1864; nephew of Josiah Wedgwood), which was based at 40 Dorset Street from c.1826 to c.1850.[25] Also found were 21 human burials from the extramural northern cemetery of Roman Londinium.[26]
Commercial Street is an arterial road in the boroughs of Tower Hamlets and Hackney that runs north to south from Shoreditch High Street to Whitechapel High Street through Spitalfields. The road is a section of the A1202 London Inner Ring Road and as such forms part of the boundary of the London congestion charge zone.
Spitalfields is an area in London, England and is located in the London Borough of Tower Hamlets. It is in East London and situated in the East End. Spitalfields is formed around Commercial Street and Brick Lane. It has several markets, including Spitalfields Market, the historic Old Spitalfields Market, Brick Lane Market and Petticoat Lane Market. The area has a long attracted migrants from overseas, including many Jews, whose presence gained the area the 19th century nickname of Little Jerusalem.
Annie Chapman was the second canonical victim of the notorious unidentified serial killer Jack the Ripper, who killed and mutilated a minimum of five women in the Whitechapel and Spitalfields districts of London from late August to early November 1888.
Mary Ann Nichols, known as Polly Nichols, was the first canonical victim of the unidentified serial killer known as Jack the Ripper, who is believed to have murdered and mutilated at least five women in and around the Whitechapel district of London from late August to early November 1888.
Emma Elizabeth Smith was a murder victim of mysterious origins in late-19th century London. Her killing was the first of the Whitechapel murders, and it is possible she was a victim of the serial killer known as Jack the Ripper, though this is considered unlikely by most modern authors.
Frederick George Abberline was a British chief inspector for the London Metropolitan Police. He is best known for being a prominent police figure in the investigation into the Jack the Ripper serial killer murders of 1888.
Mary Jane Kelly, also known as Marie Jeanette Kelly, Fair Emma, Ginger, Dark Mary and Black Mary, is widely believed by scholars to have been the final victim of the notorious unidentified serial killer Jack the Ripper, who murdered at least five women in the Whitechapel and Spitalfields districts of London from late August to early November 1888. At the time of Kelly's death, she was approximately 25 years old, working as a prostitute and living in relative poverty.
Elizabeth "Long Liz" Stride is believed to have been the third victim of the unidentified serial killer known as Jack the Ripper, who killed and mutilated at least five women in the Whitechapel and Spitalfields districts of London from late August to early November 1888.
Catherine Eddowes was the fourth of the canonical five victims of the notorious unidentified serial killer known as Jack the Ripper, who is believed to have killed and mutilated a minimum of five women in the Whitechapel and Spitalfields districts of London from late August to early November 1888.
Martha Tabram was an English woman killed in a spate of violent murders in and around the Whitechapel district of East London between 1888 and 1891. She may have been the first victim of the unidentified serial killer Jack the Ripper.
Aaron Kosminski was a Polish barber, hairdresser, and suspect in the Jack the Ripper case.
Montague John Druitt was an English barrister and educator who is known for being a suspect in the Jack the Ripper murders of 1888.
Jack the Ripper was an unidentified serial killer active in and around the impoverished Whitechapel district of London, England, in 1888. In both criminal case files and the contemporaneous journalistic accounts, the killer was also called the Whitechapel Murderer and Leather Apron.
Edward Badham was an English police sergeant involved in the investigation into the Jack the Ripper's murders, particularly those of Annie Chapman and Mary Jane Kelly.
The Whitechapel murders were committed in or near the impoverished Whitechapel district in the East End of London between 3 April 1888 and 13 February 1891. At various points some or all of these eleven unsolved murders of women have been ascribed to the notorious unidentified serial killer known as Jack the Ripper.
Flower and Dean Street was a road at the heart of the Spitalfields rookery in the East End of London. It was one of the most notorious slums of the Victorian era, being described in 1883 as "perhaps the foulest and most dangerous street in the whole metropolis", and was closely associated with the victims of Jack the Ripper.
The Ten Bells is a public house at the corner of Commercial Street and Fournier Street in Spitalfields in the East End of London. It is sometimes noted for its supposed association with at least two victims of Jack the Ripper: Annie Chapman and Mary Jane Kelly.
Henry Richard Farquharson was an English landowner and Conservative politician.
Joseph Barnett, also known by his nicknames Danny Barnett and Joe, was a fish porter who worked at Billingsgate Market in the 19th century, located in the East End of London, and later became known for being the roommate of Mary Jane Kelly. It was not suspected that he had murdered her and, even less, that he was Jack the Ripper, until the 1970s, when he was added to the growing list of more than 100 people that someone has speculated could be Jack the Ripper.
George Hutchinson was an English worker who made a formal statement to police after the murder of Mary Jane Kelly on 9 November 1888. Kelly had been the last of the "Canonical Five" connected to the Whitechapel Murders in London. The statement survives in its entirety and in it, he provided an exhaustive description of a man who could have been Kelly's killer, known as Jack the Ripper. Modern crime writers have since questioned the veracity of Hutchinson's testimony, which has been characterised as antisemitic and suspiciously detailed, especially when considering that the scene supposedly took place in an unlit street at night. Hutchinson has been variously deemed an inaccurate or even false witness, with some true crime authors regarding him as a possible Jack the Ripper suspect.
↑ Ogilby and Morgan's 1676 map of London; reprinted as Hyde, Ralph, ed. (1992). The A to Z of Restoration London. Lympne Castle: Harry Margary. p.19. ISBN0-903541-46-7.
↑ "A Life of Crime". Wanganui Herald. Vol.35, no.10468. 12 October 1901. p.1. Retrieved 13 November 2010– via Papers Past. ... street described by Mr. McKenzie in an article which appeared in the Daily Mail a few weeks back as the 'worst street in London, being the resort of thieves, murderers, and burglars, where the criminals of to-morrow are trained to-day, where children (six and eight years of age) gamble in the gutters, and where babes in arms learn to sip gin at their mothers' breasts.'
↑ Knox, Elizabeth L.; Miles, Adrian; Richardson, Beth (2020). "Roman burials from the London Fruit and Wool Exchange redevelopment, Spitalfields, London E1". Transactions of the London and Middlesex Archaeological Society. 71: 1–21.
Sources
Begg, Paul; Fido, Martin; Skinner, Keith (1996). The Jack the Ripper A–Z (3rded.). London: Headline. ISBN0747255229.
Finn, Ralph L. (1963). No Tears in Aldgate. London: Robert Hale.
Jeffries, Nigel (2020). "Looking beyond the Ripper: reconstructing Dorset Street and White's Row, Spitalfields, London E1, an archaeological history of two East End streets, 1673–1927". Transactions of the London and Middlesex Archaeological Society. 71: 267–349.
Rule, Fiona (2008). The Worst Street in London. Hersham: Ian Allan. ISBN978-0-7110-3345-0.
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