Beyond the Tower: A History of East London by Dr. John Marriott

Author:Dr. John Marriott [Marriott, Dr. John]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History, Nonfiction, England/Great Britain
ISBN: 9780300148800
Publisher: Yale University Press
Published: 2011-01-01T05:00:00+00:00

The human costs were severe. In a worsening climate, 27,000 shipbuilding workers were unemployed at the end of November 1866; by January it was estimated that in Poplar alone 30,000 of them were receiving relief. Other industries fared no better. Building and railway construction, which had enjoyed a period of unprecedented expansion, came to a sudden halt, throwing out of work the large workforces which had been taken on.5

Silk weaving and the docks may not have been affected directly by the financial crisis but here too were staple industries of East London which had origins traceable to a pre-industrial era and were undergoing protracted decline. Mid-century, the contraction of silk weaving had greatly reduced the number of local weavers, but then any hope of a revival was dashed by the 1860 Cobden Treaty, which effectively opened up the market to foreign – in particular, French – competition. Whereas previously French rivalry was feared because of the finer workmanship of their weavers, now it seemed that the English were equally, if not more, skilled but refused to accept the low wages for which the French were prepared to work. By the late 1880s the number of weavers had fallen to 1,260. They remained a ‘capable and industrious people’ with the ‘natural good taste characteristic of the French Huguenot’, but this was an ageing population working on borrowed time.6

From the moment when the dock companies lost the privileges of monopoly control over the movement of foreign trade their fortunes deteriorated (Chapter 4). The companies found to their cost that despite increased trade the competition for lucrative income from dutiable goods requiring bonded accommodation was subject to intense competition; put simply, there were too many warehouses chasing too few goods, particularly after completion of the technologically advanced Victoria Dock in 1855 and the Mill wall Dock in 1868. After 1870 further losses to trade led to significant falls in profits. A direct route was opened to the continent, thereby strengthening foreign competition. Goods destined for Europe which had formerly been unloaded into dockside warehouses were now transferred straight from ocean-going vessels into continental boats. And the construction of the Albert Dock in 1880 and Tilbury Dock in 1886 further depleted the tonnage of cargoes landed upriver. In the decade 1877–87 tonnages unloaded in all the London docks fell from 2,171,732 to 1,598,146; of the individual docks, only St Katharine’s experienced an increase.7 In order to maintain dividends, the companies imposed economies by taking on fewer labourers for more irregular hours.8 Beatrice Potter estimated that in Tower Hamlets only 10,000 casual labourers were employed, principally in the docks, and 1,000 permanent labourers who, with steady income, chose to live at some distance from the docks in the outlying districts of Hackney and West Ham.9 Industries dependent upon the London docks were necessarily affected not only by this decline but also by cheaper technology. Sack making and cooperage, she observed, were virtually obsolete; sugar was now handled in bags rather than casks, and sacks were provided by the massive jute mills of Dundee.

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