London's Rookeries: Where 100,000 Lived in Darkness & Squalor | Victorian Slums Dark History

Beneath Victorian London's grand streets lay plague pits holding 200,000 bodies. But above ground, 100,000 Londoners lived in rookeries—slums so overcrowded, so diseased, so profitable to landlords, that they persisted for over a century despite everyone knowing they were death traps.

Tonight we explore six of London's most notorious rookeries: St. Giles, where 30,000 people occupied 50 acres and 90% of children died before age five. Jacob's Island, the "Venice of Drains," where houses were built over tidal sewage creeks and residents drank contaminated water because no alternative existed. Whitechapel's lodging houses, where Mary Ann Nichols and Annie Chapman paid fourpence for beds on the nights Jack the Ripper murdered them.

This is not the romantic poverty of Dickensian fiction. This is documented social history preserved in Henry Mayhew's 1,000-page investigations, Charles Booth's poverty maps, Parliamentary Blue Books containing thousands of pages of testimony, census returns showing 20-30 people per room, medical officers' reports documenting death rates double the London average.

📚 PRIMARY SOURCES USED:

Henry Mayhew's "London Labour and the London Poor" (1851) - Available at British Library
Charles Booth's Poverty Maps (1886-1903) - Digital archive at booth.lse.ac.uk
Parliamentary Blue Books - National Archives Kew
Census Returns 1841-1891 - Findmypast/Ancestry
London Metropolitan Archives - Burial registers, property records

🗺️ VISIT THESE LOCATIONS TODAY:

New Oxford Street - Built through St. Giles rookery 1845-47
St. Saviour's Dock, Bermondsey - Former Jacob's Island site
Spitalfields Market - Dorset Street ran behind it
Hanbury Street - Where Annie Chapman died
Charles Booth Online Archive - Interactive poverty maps

CHAPTERS:

00:00 - Introduction: The City Above the Underground
09:06 - Chapter 1: St. Giles - "The Holy Land"
24:20 - Chapter 2: Jacob's Island - "Venice of Drains"
38:15 - Chapter 3: The Lodging House System
53:37 - Chapter 4: Rookery Economics - Profitable Poverty
01:09:55 - Chapter 5: Demolition and Displacement
01:24:00 - Chapter 6: What Remains - Walking London's Ghost Slums


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