In Ripperology, “The Nichol” slum is associated with the “Old Nichol Gang,” believed by some to be responsible for the attack on Emma Smith on April 3, 1888, who subsequently died of her injuries.
Contemporary Descriptions of “the Nichol”
With few exceptions, each room contains a separate family; some consisting of mother, father, and eight children. The first two adjoining houses that we looked into, of six rooms each, contained forty-eight persons. To supply these with water, a stream runs for ten or twelve minutes each day, except Sunday, from a small tap at the back of one of the houses… The houses are, of course, ill-ventilated. The front room in the basement, wholly below the ground, dark and damp, is occupied, at a cost of 2s. a week for rent.
The Builder (1863).
This district of Friars-mount, which is nominally represented by Nichols-street, Old Nichols-street, and Half Nichols-street, including, perhaps most obviously, the greater part of the vice and debauchery of the district, and the limits of a single article would be insufficient to give any detailed description of even a day’s visit. There is nothing picturesque in such misery; it is but one painful and monotonous round of vice, filth, and poverty, huddled in dark cellars, ruined garrets, bare and blackened rooms, teeming with disease and death, and without the means, even if there were the inclination, for the most ordinary observations of decency or cleanliness.
“Dwellings of the Poor in Bethnal-Green,” The Illustrated London News (24 October 1863).
The Jago
Arthur Morrison’s 1896 novel A Child of the Jago is set in “The Nichol,” which he called “The Jago.” Morrison spent 18 months living in the slums of the East End as background research for his book. The streets he refers to as “The Jago” can be easily equated with the real “Nichol”:
The Jago’s Edge Lane is Boundary Street; Old Jago Street is Old Nichol Street is ; and Half Jago Street is Half Nichol Street.
[…] off Shoreditch High Street, a narrow passage, set across with posts, gave menacing entrance on one end of Old Jago Street, to where the other end lost itself in the black beyond Jago Row ; from where Jago Row began south at Meakin Street, to where it ended north at Honey Lane; there the Jago, for one hundred years the blackest pit in London, lay and festered; and half way along Old Jago Street a narrow archway gave upon Jago Court, the blackest hole in all that pit.
A square of two hundred and fifty yards or less — that was all there was of the Jago. But in that square the human population swarmed in thousands. Old Jago Street, New Jago Street, Half Jago street lay parallel, east and west ; Jago Row at one end and Edge Lane at the other lay parallel also, stretching north and south : foul ways all. What was too vile for Kate Street, Seven Dials, and RatclifF Highway in its worst day, what was too useless, incapable and corrupt — all that teemed in the Old Jago.
Arthur Morrison, A Child of the Jago (1896)
Later Accounts of “The Nichol”
Author Raphael Samuel described “the Nichol” in his book In East End Underworld: Chapters in the life of Arthur Harding (1981):
In the last quarter of the nineteenth century there were some 6,000 people — men women and children — who lived in the Nichol. The district was bounded by High Street Shoreditch and Hackney Road on the north and Spitalfields to the south. It was made up of many alleys and courts. The principal streets were Boundary Street, the main playing street, Old Nichol Street, New Nichol Street, Half Nichol Street, The Mount — where the old clothes dealers were — and the only street with shops – Church Street. Arthur Morrison in his novel called it ‘The Jago.’
The Nichol was something like a ghetto. A stranger wouldn’t chance his arm there, but to anyone brought up in it every alley was familiar. The Nichol was a place on its own, you didn’t go into other territory…And so the result was that it was a close-knit community and everybody knew everybody.
The whole district bore an evil reputation and was regarded by the working-class people of Bethnal Green as so disreputable that they avoided contact with the people who lived in the Nichol. Some people would have liked to build a wall right round it, so that we wouldn’t have to come out. They put everything that was needed inside. (p. 1)
Raphael Samuel, In the East End Underworld: Chapters in the Life of Arthur Harding (1981).
Further Reading
- L.T. Meade, A Princess of the Gutter (1896).
- Sarah Wise, The Blackest Streets: The Life and Death of a Victorian Slum.