The Worst Street in London: Foreword by Peter Ackroyd (27 page)

Finally, after much deliberation, the Corporation of London began work on a western extension of the market in 1926. For Jack McCarthy, the writing was on the wall and it was only a matter of time before he would have to vacate the mean, vicious little street in which he had made his fortune, brought up his family and become a truly powerful influence. Despite its dreadful reputation, Duval Street was Jack McCarthy’s home and it held as many good memories as bad. In addition to this, McCarthy was now an old man and it was with a heavy heart that, in 1927, he locked the doors of his properties, loaded his belongings into a van and headed for a new home near his son in Clapham, South London.

Since his encounter with mustard gas, Steve McCarthy had experienced chronic problems with his health. His marriage to Marie Kendall had been destroyed through a combination of Steve’s liking for members of the fairer sex and several violent assaults on his wife; on more than one occasion, he had threatened to kill her. Consequently, the couple had lived apart on a semi-permanent basis since around 1910. Jack McCarthy’s arrival in Clapham meant that father and son could care for one another, which is precisely what they did until Jack’s death in 1934.

Virtually as soon as Jack McCarthy had left Duval Street, the demolition crew moved in and the north side of the little street that had gone through so such a long decline finally felt its death throes. The once-proud eighteenth-century silk weavers’ houses had their hearts torn out as workmen ripped away the ornate fire surrounds, flagstone floors and slate roofs. The fine oak panelling that lined their rooms was dismantled and carted away. The elegant front doors were removed and the sash windows, some of which contained the original glass were taken out. The bloodstained walls of Mary Kelly’s old room were reduced to rubble as were the walls within which poor Kitty Ronan’s body was discovered.

As the demolition crew worked their way through they destroyed the last remaining evidence of generations – the hard-working, optimistic Huguenot silk weavers’ homes; the grounds of Thomas Wedgwood’s china showroom; the shop belonging to Miller the butcher, who had built the fated court; The Blue Coat Boy Pub, which had provided refreshment and warmth for over 100 years; William Crossingham’s huge lodging house at number 35 from which Annie Chapman had made her last fatal journey and Mary Ann Austin met her fate. All were razed to the ground. So much history and so many memories reduced to rubble.

Although only one side of Duval Street was actually demolished, the Corporation of London saw to it that the entire street was changed. Out of the rubble on the north side rose a huge structure housing auction rooms, offices and fruit stores. On the south side, the ancient furnished rooms and many of the remaining lodging houses were closed down and cold stores, offices, warehouses and factories took their place. Duval Street had come full circle. It had started life as a place of industry, had slowly declined into a resort of loafers and now resembled its industrious past as market and office workers walked in and out of the street that, just a few years previously, policemen had been scared to visit.

The demolition of the north side of Duval Street also marked the end of an era for the underworld that inhabited its dilapidated buildings. As half the street disappeared to make way for new business and property, so many of the landlords that had controlled life on Spitalfields’ streets over the previous fifty years retired from active service, thus clearing the way for more organised individuals to take over. After World War 1, the entire social landscape of Duval Street and Spitalfields began to change. Large numbers of Eastern European Jews continued to settle in the area throughout the first years of the twentieth century and by the 1920s, evidence of the Ashkenazi culture could be seen on virtually every street.

In November 1928, a journalist from
The Times
ventured into the neighbourhood and noted that ‘There are foreign names over three shops out of five... here and there a poster, across which run those strangely picturesque Hebrew characters which one instinctively associates with astrologers, magicians and other mysterious people.’ The reporter was also fascinated with the unfamiliar languages he heard while exploring the area. ‘Stand at [Aldgate East] station entrance and watch and listen. You may hear Russian or Polish spoken. You may hear that strange language of the Jewish proletariat of Eastern Europe, a corruption of the German of Frankfurt, half drawled, half chanted mingled with Hebrew words and written in Hebrew characters, which some call “Jargon” and others “Yiddish”.’

By the 1920s, the local street markets were run almost exclusively by Jews, their Irish and English predecessors having either moved out of the area or switched to alternative employment. The costermongers and hawkers who once made up a huge proportion of Duval Street residents had also disappeared, much to the regret of the markets that once supplied them. An article in
The Times
in 1930 mourned the loss of street selling in East London with a salesman at Billingsgate lamenting ‘before the War the hawkers came with their barrows about 9 o’clock in the morning, when the main business of the day at Billingsgate was finished, and bought up surplus consignments at prices that enabled them to sell cheaply in a street and house-to-house trade. Today the hawkers have been reduced to a small number and the wholesale salesmen are often at a loss to dispose of the occasional gluts which keep them standing at their stalls.’

The demand for fruit and vegetables by hawkers had not diminished quite as much as fish, although the once flourishing weekend trade had all but disappeared by 1930.
The Times
reporter noted ‘in the case of fruit and vegetables... there was the casual hawker, who took out his barrow only on Saturdays and Sunday mornings... They no longer present themselves at Spitalfields [Market] to look around for cheap lines.’

The main reason behind the sharp decline in hawking in the first quarter of the twentieth century was almost certainly the establishment of unemployment benefit in 1911. Prior to its introduction, the out-of-work poor were largely left to fend for themselves. Consequently, hawking became a popular temporary means of income until more steady employment could be found. Setting up as a hawker was cheap and easy. The only piece of equipment needed was a barrow and set-up costs comprised just a small amount of cash to buy stock. In many ways, hawking benefited everyone. The wholesale markets got rid of unwanted goods, the poor got the opportunity to purchase food at knockdown prices and the hawkers earned themselves a living.

Indeed, the salesmen at Billingsgate wished for a return to the old days. ‘Billingsgate would like to see the hawker come back with his barrow... a resumption of street sales would benefit the fisherman, the poorer class of consumers, and the hawker himself.’ Regrettably, this was not to be. The concept of ‘signing on’ to receive state money gradually increased in both popularity and social acceptability. The economic downturn that resulted from expenditure during World War 1 pushed more workers onto the benefit system and by 1921, over two million people in Britain were receiving ‘dole’.

It wasn’t just the hawkers who were disappearing from the streets of Spitalfields. Casual labour and home-working schemes were beginning to be abandoned in favour of steadier work in the manufacturing, construction and service sectors. In 1928, the London Advisory Council for Juvenile Employment analysed the employment pattern of young people living in the capital. One in three of the female working population were employed in either hotels, restaurants or as domestic servants while the largest proportion of men were employed in either the manufacturing or construction industries.

For the men of Spitalfields, the biggest local employers were the furriers in Stepney, the furniture factories in Bethnal Green and the new electric cable, wire and lamp manufacturers slightly further north in once rural districts such as Leytonstone. The communication industry was also making its mark; Spitalfields got its own automatic telephone exchange with capacity for 5,000 lines in 1928.

For Jack McCarthy, things were never quite the same again. While the council had destroyed half of Duval Street, a combination of the war and the increasing prevalence of Eastern European Jews in the area effectively destroyed his trade in lodgings for the destitute. Many young men who may have used his rooms were now lying dead on the battlefields of France. In their place came the Jews who, being enthusiastic proponents of the extended family, saw little need for the isolation and loneliness of a single bed in a common lodging house. Jack McCarthy’s reign as one of the most influential and powerful men in Spitalfields was over.

Jack McCarthy died on 16 June 1934, having suffered for some years with heart problems. He was 83 years old. He was buried alongside his wife Elizabeth, in St Patrick’s Cemetery, Leytonstone, a few yards away from the grave of his most tragic and notorious tenant – Mary Kelly. Prior to his death, he had asked that his funeral cortege pass down Duval Street one last time. His funeral was well attended by family, friends and the few colleagues that survived him. The
East London Observer
published a lengthy obituary, giving much emphasis to the deceased’s charitable donations and ignoring the less salubrious aspects of his life. Thus, Jack McCarthy – a child of the ghetto, slum property magnate and landlord to the most infamous murder victim of all time – departed this life for the hereafter taking his secrets, stories and memories of a truly extraordinary life to his grave.

But what a legacy he left behind. Following Jack McCarthy’s death, his two eldest daughters and their husbands continued to run lodging houses, overseen by Steve (who was by now in failing health) and his son, John. Steve’s other son took up a career on the stage, forming an act with his younger sister Patricia. While performing, he met a dancer named Gladys Drewery and the couple wed in 1923. Soon after, a son (Terry) was born, followed by a daughter (Patricia Kim) in 1925. Two years later, Terry and Gladys McCarthy’s third and final child was born. The baby was a girl and the couple decided to name her Justine (in reference to Terry’s real name of Justin) Kay. Justine developed the family flair for entertaining and in her adult life found massive fame under the stage name of Kay Kendall, starring in several Hollywood films and marrying the actor Rex Harrison before succumbing to cancer at the tragically young age of just 32.

Jack McCarthy’s son Steve died in 1944 of pneumonia. His now ex-wife, Marie Kendall (they were divorced in the 1920s) continued to work until well past retirement age, and is one of the few music hall stars to be recorded on film. After Steve’s death, her eldest son John invited her to take one of the family properties overlooking Clapham Common and it was here that she died in 1964, a few days before her ninety-first birthday.

Back in Duval Street, the once thriving lodging-house business was finally winding down but the criminal underworld of Spitalfields showed little sign of disappearing. Instead, it evolved into something more organised and potentially dangerous than ever before.

Ever since Jimmy Smith had set up his illicit rackets in the late nineteenth century, illegal gambling had been a popular pastime in the courts and alleyways of Spitalfields. Even the intervention of World War 1 failed to bring activities to a halt and as the new century progressed, police found themselves dealing with ever more sophisticated operations. On 18 September 1917, Robert Kenny from White’s Row appeared at Old Street Police Court charged with ‘being concerned in the management of a gaming house’ in Old Montague Street.

Police had raided the house, which had previously been used as a tailor’s workshop, the previous Saturday and had been surprised to find that the once commercial interior had been completely refitted as a gaming saloon, complete with ‘incandescent’ lighting over the tables and refreshment facilities. It appears that the police took the gamblers completely by surprise and consequently they fled, leaving their cards and money strewn across the tables. On searching members of the management, an astonishing £371 was found on the men – at the time, almost enough money to buy a house on Duval Street. On further investigation, it was discovered that the gaming house was owned by Edward Emanuel from Bethnal Green, a known proprietor of illegal gambling dens, who was duly fined £300; a paltry sum when it had already been established that he could take over that in one night.

As Spitalfields became riddled with gambling dens, the police struggled to keep the new crime wave in check. Unsurprisingly, some were only too happy to turn a blind eye if a bribe was offered. However, little did they know that their lackadaisical attitude to illegal gambling and more importantly, towards the men who ran the establishments, would contribute to the evolution of underworld characters whose exploits would make the activities of their nineteenth century predecessors look like playground antics.

As we have already discovered, 1920s Spitalfields was largely divided into two distinct groups of residents – the newly arrived Eastern Europeans and the English/Irish. The Eastern Europeans had been forced to leave their homeland and came to a country that was foreign in both culture and language. Having very little money at their disposal, they had no option but to live in the poorest areas of London in often squalid and overcrowded conditions. The existing population felt threatened by the new immigrants whose language and practices were different to their own. Consequently, divisions appeared and with those divisions came animosity, contempt and violence. The young of both factions went about in groups and learnt at a young age that there was safety in numbers. Unfortunately, these groups quickly evolved into gangs and began to create disturbing new problems for the area.

Gangs causing trouble in Spitalfields was certainly not a new phenomenon. There had been serious problems with group violence since the silk weavers’ insurrections in the eighteenth century. However, the twentieth century gangs were the first to realise that intimidation and the threat of violence would not only cultivate fear and a certain twisted prestige. It could also earn them a living.