LONDON’S EAST END IN 1902
Dear Emily,
I arrived to the East End of London in September of 1902. I went with a chap named Jack London and as we wanted to see what life was like in the poor urban area of London. We asked the cabby to take us to the East End of London and he almost refused! He kept saying that we needed an address and finally Jack said “Just take us there.”
As the cabbie took us down London’s East End, there were “miles of bricks and squalor, and from each cross street and alley flashed long vistas of bricks and misery,” (London 2). We passed by a market, and “old men and women were searching in the garbage thrown in mud for rotten potatoes, beans, and vegetables,” (London 2). The people were poor as could be and they were fighting in the streets at every corner. This was the first day I had arrived to London’s East End with Jack and it was a day I would never forget.
After trudging through the bumpy streets we made our way to a man named Johnny Upright. He lived in the most respected area of the East End, a “veritable oasis in the desert of East End,” (London 6). A young and vile generation roamed the streets here but on this street there were not as many people as the rest. Each house on this street is “shoulder to shoulder with its neighbor,” (London 6). We knocked on the door and a woman answered. She was not his wife, more of a servant, but she said that Johnny was not home and that there was no work available. Jack, being as stingy as he is, kept asking questions and kept the door open. Finally another woman appeared (it was Mrs. Upright).
“Are you looking for work?” (London 7), she said. No Jack and I were not looking for work but Mr. London had a proposition for him. Something where he could make money. It seemed like they were very guarded in their answering of the door, making it seem as though the people looking for work made them “worry to death,” (London 8). They sure did, and they let us know it. However, Jack’s manner was so elevated above the rest that they let us in at once and told us that Mr. Johnny Upright would be home in an “Hour or so,” (London 7). We obliged and walked inside.
They led us to the kitchen and the fantastic house had a kitchen and dining room on the same floor, four feet below the ground. It was so dark that Mr. London and I “had to wait a space for my eyes to adjust themselves to gloom,” (London 8). After a while, his two daughters came home and then he quickly followed. He beckoned Mr. London upstairs to talk to him and Mr. London gave him his proposition. He agreed and then the “humble” (London 9) Uprights let us join them for dinner. A humble and hearty bunch, they drink, ate, and laughed all together at the fact that they thought it an insult that “I should be mistaken for a beggar” (London 9). It was then that we should find some lodging.
After a while we had grown tired and hungry living on the streets of East End and we needed to look “First for breakfast, and next for the work,” (London 51). It was then we made our way to “The Peg”. We had made our way there by walking up and down the streets, as the homeless do, because the police do not allow the homeless to sleep. They keep them moving up and down along the street not letting them stop to rest. The “Peg” as they put it is where a free meal can be obtained for the forgotten.
Here it was, crammed with a “motley crowd of woebegone wretches who had spent the night in the rain,” (London 51). The people waiting were poor, and they were tired and hungry. Amassed in rags that looked like Swiss cheese and dirty from head to toe. Policemen came by and swat us away like “flies around a honey jar,” (London 51). Back and forth was the dance between police swatting us away and us waiting for breakfast. Finally, a Salvation Army soldier reared his head from the door and called forth those who had tickets. He told us that the people without tickets “cawn’t come hin till nine,” (London 51). Another hour and a half of waiting! For Breakfast! “Those with tickets were greatly envied,” (London 51). They handed out the tickets the night before so that people could come in the next day and get a wash and wait for breakfast.
The people waiting for breakfast, it seemed were people waiting for a ship. They were American soldiers throughout the madness. “Their wages are low, their food is bad, and their treatment is worse,” (London 52). Seemed like a sad story for this group of people who had to sign up for a voyage and not receive wages until they were back in their homeport of England. We were all “Fellow countrymen and strangers in a strange land,” (London 52). Trying to get breakfast was a crazy ordeal and one that no one should have to go through if they are decent people. Standing in line for hours, and being packed like sardines into the courtyard hoping you get scraps for breakfast.
We went on to one the “Municipal Dwellings” (London 66) and it was a shamble. It was not a room and never should be called a room. “Seven feet by eight were its dimensions, and the ceiling was so low as not to give the cubic air space required by British soldier in a barracks,” (London 66). It was a lair, a hole in the wall, and by all means not a great place to live. The walls were littered with blood marks and remnants of insects. Creepy crawlers danced all night in the rooms, “a plague that no person could cope, single-handed,” (London 66). This is where we met Dan Cullen.
Dan Cullen who was a Docker was a man who was dying in the hospital. He was a self-educated man, as many books on philosophy, history, sociology, and economics were spread across his room (that we were in). A letter was on his desk from his neighbor who demanded that he return his corkscrew and jug, albeit in anticipation of his death. These items were staples in the disarray of London’s East End.
A docker is a casual laborer but Dan Cullen was another type of man. He could “write a letter like a lawyer,” (London 67) and became the leader of the fruit laborers. His downfall came when he took a leading part in the “Great Dock Strike” because he would not “cringe to other men, even though they were his economic masters, and controlled the means by which he lived.” (London 67). From that day on of the Great Dock Strike, he was blacklisted. He would get called for work, and have to work for 2 or 3 days more than other people which starved him. It broke his heart and as jack pointed out “Broken-hearted men cannot live,” (London 67). No one came to see Dan, because he had no friends and he was left to rot in his Municipal Dwelling.
I feel sad for that man and for all the people here. I do not know how they manage to survive but they do, even when their feet are drenched, their clothes torn apart, and their souls eaten away. I would not wish anyone to have to go to London’s East End, as it is an escapable abyss of poverty and struggle. Anyone here who makes it out has the will to live anywhere.
Sources
London, Jack. The People of the Abyss. London: Thomas Nelson & Sons, u.å, n.d.. Print.
