News

Building archives: The clearance of London’s worst slum, 1843 - 1846

By 2023-02-17T13:45:00

St Giles google

Source: Google

Letters and news items chart the construction of a new road through the centre of the notorious St Giles slum, the “haunt of the drunkard and the debauchee”

St Giles in the 21st century is a polished commercial district in London’s West End, but in the 18th and 19th centuries it was one of the capital’s worst slums. The densely populated district was known as a notorious “rookery”, a word borrowed from the term for bird nests to describe the area’s chaotic maze of narrow alleys and overhanging buildings.

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