The Streets Of London – Part Sixty One
Prescot Street, E1
This street runs parallel to Alie Street, although it is nearer to the river, and links Mansell Street to the west and Leman Street to the east. It formed the southern perimeter of the erstwhile Goodman’s Fields. It is now a rather boring, run-of-the-mill sort of street in that nether land that is the border of the City of London and Tower Hamlets.
We take it for granted now that all buildings have some form of identification in the form of a number. If you stop and think about it, you realise that the practice must have started somewhere and that somewhere was Prescot Street. Hatton’s New View of London, published in 1708, noted that “In Prescott Street, Goodman’s Fields, instead of signs the houses are distinguished by numbers, as the staircases in the Inns of Court and Chancery.” It was only later in the 18th century that the numbering of houses had become a well-established practice and it was not until the passing of the Metropolitan Management Act in 1855 that it became mandatory.
The area around Prescot Street in Roman times formed part of what was the Eastern Cemetery, one of four in the city. During its heyday thousands of Roman Londoners made the place their last resting place. There is evidence that after the Romans had left, the site was still used for burial practices but in what we term the Dark Ages and the early mediaeval time, the site reverted to open land and was used as a rubbish dump as well as farm land for pigs and sheep.
It was not until the late 17th century that Prescot Street was developed into a recognisable thoroughfare, part of what seems to have been a piece of large-scale property speculation. The houses were of a very high standard of construction, with large gardens, forming a square with a communal garden in the middle. Despite this attempt at gentrification, by the mid to late Georgian period the area had a bad rep, with numerous brothels and disorderly pubs.
In May 1741 the London Infirmary moved to Prescot Street from Moorfields. Its aim was to treat “sick and diseased manufacturers, seamen in the merchant service and their wives and families “, although it was not somewhere to enter lightly. It was dirty and unhygienic – pest controllers would delouse the wards regularly and as there was little in the way of sanitation, human excrement, dirty dressings and amputated limbs were dumped outside at night. As it was too expensive to have the cesspool emptied regularly, the hospital committee elected to let effluent overflow via a neighbour’s garden into a common cesspool. The first physician, Dr John Andree, was an advocate of cold bathing and so a cold water bath was built in the Prescot Street gardens for the benefit of the patients.
Next door to the Infirmary was a place known as the Lock which treated patients suffering from sexually transmitted diseases. The unfortunates had to pay for their cure but over time it reverted to offering free treatment and for all sorts of ailments. In 1757 the Infirmary moved again, this time to its present site on the south side of Whitechapel Road.
The increase in London’s population and the pressure for living space meant that the gardens and squares of the original Prescot Street were built over and what was an early example of gentrification in the east of London developed a rather hum-drum character which it retains today.
Filed under: Culture, History Tagged: first street in London to have house numbers, Goodman's Fields, Hatton's New View of London, London Infirmary, Prescot Street E1, Roman Eastern Cemetery
