In The News
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In The Newswww.DavidASpencer.com/rainesfoundation/inthenews.html |
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The sound of the suburbs East End Life, Issue 435, p. 13, 25 November-1 December, 2002 http://www.towerhamlets.gov.uk/templates/news/detail.cfm?newsid=1121
In 1763, James Boswell, the biographer and sidekick of Dr Samuel Johnson, journeyed out of London into the Middlesex countryside. Half a mile beyond the Whitechapel Turnpike he was pleased with the neat houses along the road,. As the day was cold, he and his friends stopped at a little tavern, drinking warm wine with aromatic spices, pepper and cinnamon,. The tavern would have had a bowling green, and inside there would have been games of cards and backgammon. Perhaps he spoke with local people, but who were they, where did they live, where did they come from, what did they do and how did they educate their children? Mile End Old Town, 1740-1780 is Derek Morris's attempt to answer these questions and many more. In superb detail, his book draws on the huge wealth of surviving tax records, insurance policies, wills, title deeds, letters, newspapers and diaries to paint a detailed picture of the folk who lived in one of London's first suburbs. The word suburb, might come as a surprise to earlier historians, who bought the idea of the entire East End as all of a type built as a slum and then heading downhill. Mile End Old Town was occupied by poor folk from the outset, close ill-built [with] very little worthy [of] observation. But by the 1960s, the East London History Society had begun to uncover evidence of a very different Old Town. In the early 17th century it had a higher percentage of middle class people than Ratcliff, Shadwell and St George-in-the-East. There were wealthy merchants, scholars and gentry. Crucially, unlike the inward-looking parishes of Whitechapel with its concentration of sugar-makers, Spitalfields with its weavers, or Bethnal Green with its agricultural workers, the Old Town was cosmopolitan. World travellers Many of its people had travelled and worked worldwide, following the spread of the trade routes from London and back again. The people of Morris's book are the ropemakers, brokers, brewers, porcelain makers, tax collectors and landowners of the 1700s. They weren't as famous as visitors such as Defoe, Boswell or Johnson, and most of them kept no diaries. But they did leave their tracks in their tax payments. The writer starts with Richard Morris, his own great-great-great-great-grandfather, a cordwainer who, in 1746 began to pay the land tax on a small house in Mile End Old Town. The book then follows John Bond, carpenter and part-time taxman, as he starts his collecting round on 25 March 1768 Lady's Day, and the first day of the legal and financial year. And in succeeding chapters, Morris looks at these 18th century cockneys at prayer most were Protestants, with a healthy tradition of dissent from the established church, with a smattering of Jews and Catholics. He views them at study too. Belying the idea of an ill-educated population is the fact that of 400 wills, only 12 bear the signatories mark, as opposed to their signature; and by the late 18th century, there were a number of good schools in the area: Coopers, Davenant's, Raine's and Parmiter's among them. And he sees them at political argument and play, in the taverns, coffee houses, bowling greens, pleasure gardens and the Assembly Rooms. He concludes that the Mile End Old Town of the 1700s was far from the slum painted. Although comprising just a few hundred homes, the hamlet had an extraordinary number of functions. Being handy for both City and Thames it became a centre for shipping merchants and overseas traders, for insurance and financial men. Garden hub It serviced the passing traffic down the Great Essex Road between London and East Anglia. It was a centre for ropemaking, brewing and cereals. It was a hub for the East End's famous market gardens and nurseries. The Old Town became a home for religious dissenters, for schools, almshouses, workhouses and livery companies. And last? It was a pleasant retirement spot in the Middlesex countryside. Mile End Old Town was not just one of the first suburbs, but the most cosmopolitan. *Mile End Old Town, 1740-1780, A Social History of an Early-Modern London Suburb by Derek Morris; published by the East London History Society; ISBN 0950625833; £9.60. Copyright © 2002 EastEnd Life |
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Further information about Raine's Foundation School today can be found at: www.rainesfoundation.org.uk
Further information about The Old Raineians' Association can be found at: www.oldraineians.com
Further information about individual Old Raineians, including their memories of the school and their teachers, a message board, a list of famous pupils and some school photographs, can be found at: www.friendsreunited.co.uk
