A Tale of Three Victorian Cities: Exploring Local Case Studies

Abstract

This chapter introduces the local case studies, which are taken from areas of London, Glasgow and Melbourne, which were the largest cities in the British Empire towards the end of the nineteenth century. Small, insignificant streets are chosen that few readers will recognise, but they are still able to demonstrate important ideas, which are explored on a larger spatial scale in subsequent chapters. The case studies demonstrate the importance of geology and topography to the initial establishment of the neighbourhoods, how the social structure of the streets exhibit a high degree of persistence over long periods of time, but how the streets are subject to irregular large innovations that change their structure. The innovations arise from wars, government policy, migration, and changes in technology. In some cases, processes of change were gradual, but in others change occurred quickly in response to chance events.

Richard, Duke of Gloucester: My Lord of Ely, when I was last in Holborn,

I saw good strawberries in your garden there:

I do beseech you send for some of them.

Bishop of Ely: Marry, and will, my Lord, with all my heart.

(Richard the Third, Act 3 Scene 3, William Shakespeare c1592, describing events c1485)

… it was nearly eleven o’clock when they reached the turnpike at Islington. They crossed from the Angel into St. John’s Road; struck down the small street which terminates at Saddler’s Wells Theatre; through Exmouth Street and Coppice Row; down the little court by the side of the workhouse; across the classic ground which once bore the name Hockley-in-the Hole; thence into Little Saffron Hill; and so into Saffron Hill the Great… a dirtier or more wretched place he had never seen. The street was very narrow and muddy, and the air was impregnated with filthy odours.

(Oliver Twist, Chapter VIII, Charles Dickens 1837)

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2.1 Introduction

In 1963, Asa Briggs published his classic study of Victorian cities, covering London, Melbourne, Manchester, Leeds, Birmingham and Middlesbrough. The rapid expansion in these cities took place at similar periods, but they had major distinguishing features; it was not the case that each was an identical product of the Industrial Revolution. Perhaps, the distinctions were most evident between London and Melbourne, which, with Glasgow, are the focus of attention in this chapter. London was already well developed by the nineteenth century. Melbourne, by contrast, with much easier access to cheaper land and natural resources, began with a blank canvas in terms of European settlement in the 1830s; its history is, then, well-documented from this period. Melbourne experienced major shocks, notably in the 1850s and 1880s (a gold rush in the former and a speculative boom in the latter—the period known as ‘Marvellous Melbourne’), which led, in 1891, to Melbourne having the second highest rateable value (after London) of any city in the British Empire and just ahead of Glasgow (Briggs 1963, p. 278). Following the credit-fuelled speculative boom, property prices peaked in 1891, but were then hit by a banking crisis with values falling to a trough in 1903, when prices were only 63 % of the peak. Prices did not return to the previous peak until 1917 (see Stapledon 2007, quoted in Merrett 2013).¹ Glasgow was also hit by a major banking crisis in this period, with the collapse of the City of Glasgow bank in 1878. London was a city where the majority of residents were born and bred, whereas growth in Melbourne arose from migrants; Glasgow also had a high percentage of migrants, particularly from Ireland. Inequality levels were high in 1880s London, but relatively low in Melbourne (Davison 2004); Glasgow had much higher death rates than the other two cities, reflecting the level of poverty.

This chapter starts from two observations; first, an empirical study of neighbourhood housing dynamics needs neighbourhood-level data. In practice, such data sets are limited and many local housing studies employ proxies, based on administrative boundaries, most frequently local authority districts in England, but also postcodes and Census Output Areas. None of these is satisfactory and Meen (2009) shows how the larger administrative areas are typically averages across both ‘good’ and ‘bad’ locations. An important feature of cities is that neighbourhoods of differing qualities can be physically located close together. Fuller analysis requires individual or household data in which neighbourhoods can be constructed on the basis of area/housing/individual characteristics. This becomes particularly important if the objective is to study dynamic features of cities such as possible self-organisation, where neighbourhoods have to reach a critical mass before phase transitions take place (Meen and Meen 2003). Second, because of the persistence of the physical structure, neighbourhoods undergo fundamental change infrequently. Therefore, consistent data sets over long periods of time are required, ideally from the Victorian era until today, if evidence of change is to be found. However, data sets which are consistently available over approaching 200 years at fine spatial or individual levels rarely, if ever, exist for any country.

An exception arises with local case studies, where data can be constructed over long time periods from a combination of sources, such as, censuses, electoral rolls and rate books. Descriptions of the development of small areas of cities have often been the preserve of local historians, but have increasingly attracted the attention of popular writers, urban historians, the media and, to some extent, economists. For example, Lichtenstein (2007, 2012) describes Brick Lane and Hatton Garden, whereas Tindall (2007) examines Bankside on the Thames; all these are in London. A recent BBC series The Secret History of Our Streets follows the development of six London roads in addition to streets in Glasgow, Edinburgh and Aberdeen. For academic research, such studies are primarily of interest if they give rise to messages that can be generalised to wider communities; this chapter is primarily about what can be learnt from such case studies as a way of analysing spatial change and shows how data sets can be constructed, to which more formal empirical analysis is applied in later chapters. The chapter is, therefore, concerned with what is achievable. Perhaps the closest research to our own is the study of one street block in New York since the seventeenth century by Easterly et al. (2015). Although our results are provided for a limited number of neighbourhoods, the methods are applicable to other areas and can be generalised to larger spatial scales (and this is carried out in later chapters). The only constraint is the required resources, which are considerable.

2.2 Case Study 1: Saffron Hill in London

The thread uniting the literary quotations at the beginning of this chapter, from two of the greatest writers in the English language, is that they are describing the same location, Saffron Hill, but in periods approximately 350 years apart, although they appear to be very different places. In the late fifteenth century, Holborn (which includes Saffron Hill) was capable of growing strawberries. Saffron Hill in the mid-nineteenth century was the fictional site of Fagin’s den; in reality, it was an area of high crime, disease, overcrowding and slums. Saffron Hill is now an unexceptional, small, north/south-running street in the district of Camden (see Fig. 1.1). It looks little different from thousands of others—indeed it has few distinguishing features. Its history is related to the development of the Fleet River and its valley; Saffron Hill lies on the west side of the river and, although now heavily built up, the slope of Saffron Hill and the surrounding streets down to the river is still clearly visible.

Its history can be traced back to Roman times; excavations indicate that the predominant form of land use in the Holborn area was as a cemetery (it lies just outside the original city walls). However, settlement appears to have disappeared after the Roman period, as Anglo-Saxon developments moved approximately a mile westward, establishing the settlement of Lundenwic by the seventh century. The mouth of the Fleet River may have been used as a trading base, but a trial trench dug in Saffron Hill by the Inner London Archaeological Unit in 1978 found no evidence of early medieval settlement in the Fleet Valley at this point. However, later settlement in Holborn may first have grown up at the point where a bridge crossed the Fleet River. A ribbon development then extended westwards along the main road.

More importantly, major ecclesiastical orders were established to the east of the river from the late eleventh century, notably the priory of St John of Jerusalem and the nunnery of St Mary; the river was central to their development, providing high-quality water supplies with wells and water mills along its banks and also providing fertile alluvial soils for horticulture. The Fleet River is now covered by Farringdon Road, built in the 1860s and had been little more than a contaminated sewer for well over a century, following industrialisation and population growth, but this was not the case for most of its history and provided a stimulus for the initial establishment of the communities and subsequent growth. English Heritage (2008) provides detailed commentary on this area, which covers modern Clerkenwell.

Ecclesiastical development of the west bank took place 200 years later. In 1200, Saffron Hill was known as Golde Lane, but, in 1272, John Kirkby, Treasurer of the Realm, acquired land in the area and founded an estate which eventually included a great hall, chapel, gardens and a vineyard. The hall lay in what is now Ely Place, close to Holborn Circus. He was made Bishop of Ely by Edward I in 1286 and, on his death, he bequeathed the estate to the diocese of Ely as a London palace. At the time, it was the duty of bishops to be at the call of the King and Parliament and, so, they required a London home. The current church, St Etheldreda’s, was built about 1290 and is one of only two surviving London buildings from the period of Edward I. St Etheldreda (or Aethelthryth) was a seventh century Anglo-Saxon princess from the East Anglian royal family and founded an abbey on the island of Ely, of which she became the first abbess (MacCulloch 2009, p. 358).

The fertile lands of the Fleet Valley allowed the development of luxurious gardens, for which the estate became famous, growing fruits and possibly saffron. The lands and possessions belonging to the priory and nunnery to the east of the river were broken up during the Dissolution; a similar fate was avoided on the Ely estate, but, in 1575, Elizabeth 1 forced Bishop Cox to lease the gardens to her favourite and Chancellor, Sir Christopher Hatton. The following bishop was required to grant the freehold to Hatton. Legal disputes over the ownership of the estate continued after Hatton’s death in 1591, but Lichtenstein finds that the courts, in 1654, ruled in favour of Hatton’s heirs, although by this stage the buildings and estate were decaying. During the civil war the buildings had been used as a prison. The third Baron Hatton leased the estate to a developer, Robert Smith, who sub-let it to Robert Johnson (Lichtenstein 2012, p. 101). Johnson proposed to construct a purpose-built estate for upper middle-class residents; despite delays, by 1665, all the estate’s buildings had been demolished with the exception of St Etheldreda’s and rebuilding had begun. By 1676, Hatton Garden and associated neighbouring streets had been constructed, including the development of Saffron Hill. Whereas Hatton Garden, which lies on relatively high ground, was spacious and was aimed at the gentry, Saffron Hill, in the valley, was more down-market. Figure 2.1 shows a watercolour by the Victorian artist, James Lawson Stewart, of buildings in Field Lane (the southern end of Saffron Hill at the time) and illustrates Field Lane backing on to the Fleet River. It was painted circa 1890, but since the Fleet River had been covered over, it cannot be an accurate representation of that period. The Museum of London holds a collection of Stewart’s watercolours and finds that he was employed to copy earlier prints of London and, therefore, the painting may represent an earlier date.

Fig. 2.1

Field Lane (Source: Copyright, Museum of London)

By the mid-seventeenth century, the Saffron Hill area had become notorious; in the eighteenth century, nearby Chick Lane on the east bank, which led into Saffron Hill, was considered one of the most dangerous streets in London. In 1772, an Act of Parliament allowed the bishop to sell the estate to the Crown, which, in turn, sold the freehold to developer and architect, Charles Cole, who built the high-quality Georgian residences of Ely Place.

By the first half of the nineteenth century, this street of ‘filthy odours’ had become the site of Fagin’s den and, at the time Dickens was writing, Saffron Hill was a haunt of pickpockets and thieves. Field Lane was described as a steep, narrow, undrained way, comprising rotting Jacobean, Stuart and early Georgian tenements. The Fleet River had declined in quality in line with the area as a whole and was a potential source of disease. Field Lane traded mainly in second-hand clothes, but, arguably, Saffron Hill was improving by this date because of social reform. Charles Barry’s Church, St Peter’s Saffron Hill, opened in 1832 and a Catholic mission opened in the 1840s. Dickens was a supporter of the Field Lane Ragged School,² which opened in 1841 and, by 1860, was teaching over 500 children in one large classroom. The Ragged School developed into the Field Lane Christian social care charity, which still exists today.

Much of the Saffron Hill area was torn down as part of major improvement schemes in Clerkenwell; English Heritage (2008, illustration 508) shows the destruction of the area with the Field Lane Ragged School in the background. The Farringdon Road scheme was started in 1841 (as an extension of earlier city improvements to Farringdon Street). The scheme was not completed until the 1860s and the development was closely tied up with the construction of the Metropolitan Line—London’s first underground railway with Farringdon as its terminus—which opened in 1863. The line ran below and alongside the new road and the railway and new road transformed the character of the area. Much of the Saffron Hill area was swept away: contemporary reports suggested that 1600 dwellings were demolished, displacing a population of approximately 16,000. Since few of the residents moved far, the scheme added to the overcrowding in neighbouring streets.

The second improvement scheme—the construction of the Clerkenwell Road between 1874 and 1878—removed much of what was left. This east-west project linked Shoreditch to Oxford Street; much of its course followed existing streets and the only major new stretch cut through the slums between Holborn and Farringdon Road and between Little and Great Saffron Hill. The new stretch was lined with factories and warehouses and several large firms specialising in precision engineering moved to the area. In general, slums were cleared away to be replaced with warehouses and commercial developments.

The Clerkenwell improvement schemes, however, did little to alleviate poverty. Writing in the 1850s and 1860s, Henry Mayhew refers to Saffron Hill as a street of costermongers, containing Irish settlements; Mayhew also highlights Greater Saffron Hill as an area of low lodging houses. In an era of rapid railway expansion, transport innovations were ultimately responsible for a significant reduction in population densities, but, between 1841 and 1871, the demolitions associated with clearance schemes for new rail operations had the initial effect of increasing overcrowding at the centre.

The 1881 Census provides more direct evidence of the status of Great Saffron Hill. At that time, there were 59 occupied dwellings (and numerous workshops and warehouses), housing 805 individuals—an average of 13.6 persons per dwelling. Few of the dwellings were occupied by single households, a notable outlier being Number 81, where William Rendell and his wife Harriet lived, a shop fitter employing 10 men and boys. Number 2 housed the Central Shoeblack Society, where 46 poor, young men lived. The Society was formed by John MacGregor and Lord Shaftesbury in 1851 and provided uniforms, equipment, shoe-cleaning pitches and moral instruction, whilst encouraging church attendance. Each brigade had its own coloured uniform and the Central brigade was known as ‘the Reds’; this was the oldest and largest branch and continued until around the First World War.

By 1881 the Irish-born population was declining, but the Saffron Hill parish was still internationally orientated. The parish (rather than the street) contained 3972 residents in total at the time, of whom 123 were Irish-born and 255 came from Italy. Parts of Saffron Hill were known as Little Italy, and the eminent Victorian photographer John Thomson (1994) described the conditions facing children in the area. Although often associated with the ice cream trade, in the census, only six recorded their occupations as ice cream sellers or makers. Some residents, but by no means all, were earning sufficient to winter back in Italy. Those who could not afford to over-winter in Italy generally found local employment, notably as asphalters (25 were recorded in the census). The dominant occupation, according to the census, was as musicians (mainly itinerant) and related occupations (114). Most of these were relatively low paid, although precision instrument makers also existed, such as, optician, jeweller and barometer maker. Little Italy also included its own school for the children of poor Italian immigrants. The Italian community in the area persisted until well after the Second World War.

In the late nineteenth century, Charles Booth describes the Saffron Hill area in his diaries as a combination of residential dwellings and small manufacturing workshops, factories and warehouses.³ As noted above, immigrant populations were important to the area; in addition to the resident Italian and Irish communities, Jewish immigrants were working in gold and jewellery manufacturing in Hatton Garden, which was London’s centre for the trade (although many lived in the East End and commuted and, so, do not appear in census records for the area). One of the attractions for skilled craftsmen was the fact that the area lay outside the city walls and, so, industry was not subject to the restrictions of the guilds. Booth portrays neighbouring Cross Street as ‘a street humming, scraping, puffing’, but, according to Booth’s classification, the residents of Great Saffron Hill were, by no means, the poorest in the immediate area. By this stage, the population of the parish was declining; the population reached its peak around 1830, but by the end of the century, the population was under half of that a hundred years earlier. Figure 2.2 shows conditions at the turn of the century in Little Saffron Hill (mentioned in the quotation at the start of the chapter and now known as Herbal Hill). The narrowness of the street is evident.

Fig. 2.2

Little Saffron Hill, circa 1903 (Source: Copyright, Camden Local Studies and Archives Centre)

A glimpse into the life of Saffron Hill in the 1920s can be seen in the films of Harry B. Parkinson and Frank Miller. Their series of short documentaries looking into the working lives of often unfashionable parts of London preceded the main films at cinemas and have recently been re-released by the British Film Institute (2012). But today, Saffron Hill shows little evidence of its heritage (Fig. 2.3). During the Second World War, Saffron Hill lay in the Metropolitan Borough of Holborn, which was very heavily hit during the Blitz in 1940–1941. Of the 28 boroughs, Holborn had the highest weight of bombs (56 kilos per hectare), the fourth highest rate of residential destruction (197 houses demolished and seriously damaged) and the fifth highest casualty rate (25 causalities per 1000 population), as shown in Table 4 of London Topographical Society (2005). Detailed coloured maps in this publication show that large parts of Saffron Hill were almost completely destroyed or damaged beyond repair in the Blitz. It was also hit by a V1 attack in the last year of the war; Lichtenstein (2012, p. 178) provides a photograph of the street’s destruction.⁴ Therefore, although the street remains narrow, it is unsurprising that few of the original buildings still exist. Only the eighteenth century public house described by Dickens still exists in recognisable form—its true name is the One Tun, but is caricatured as the Three Cripples in the book. The bottom of the hill where Fagin’s den was located has undergone the most marked transformation, now consisting of new, prime office space (Fig. 2.3b). In the 2001 Census, the Census Output Area that includes Saffron Hill had only 240 residents⁵ (1.6 per dwelling). It was not one of the most desirable locations in London in 2010, but the Lower Layer Super Output Area (LSOA) in which Saffron Hill lies⁶ is only the 10,337th most deprived out of 32,482 in England as a whole. Therefore, over very long periods of time, Saffron Hill’s status and environment have clearly changed—from sweet-smelling fields in the fourteenth century, through filth and crime in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, to a central business area today. But anachronisms remain—Ely Place is a privately-owned gated road, governed by its own commissioners and beadles, reflecting its original medieval status and ownership by the Bishop of Ely.

Fig. 2.3

(a) Saffron Hill looking north. (b) Saffron Hill looking south (Source: Authors’ photographs)

In this extended description, Saffron Hill is just a case study, but, given sufficient resources, similar descriptions and data sets could be compiled for local areas of most UK cities. In the case of Saffron Hill, over the centuries, evidence of the effects of wars, geology, government policy, migration, and changes in technology are all evident, which still have effects on the current structure of the area. In some cases, outcomes were due to natural advantages or disadvantages; other changes arose from chance events, such as where a bomb fell. Some processes of change were gradual, whereas others occurred quickly.

2.3 Case Study 2: North Melbourne

The Fleet River was important to the status of Saffron Hill; similarly, the modern structure of Melbourne still reflects its physical geography, notably, the distribution of soil types and rivers. Original development took place just upstream from the Yarra Falls (Melbourne’s main river), which provided a natural divide between the tidal brackish water downstream and the upstream freshwater. Until the destruction of the falls in the 1880s, the lower level provided a basin for shipping; trade expanded rapidly, particularly after the discovery of the Victorian goldfields in the 1850s. Excise duties provided an important revenue source for the colony and the (third) Customs House on the banks of the pool, which still stands as a museum, was completed in 1876 and remains one of Melbourne’s most elegant buildings, reflecting its importance. By contrast, the original development around the Maribyrnong River (the second river) was primarily working class and industrial, since it consisted of salt water and early graziers favoured the upper reaches with freshwater tributaries. Higher status residential areas were primarily established on fertile alluvial flats and mudstones/sandstones, which now form the Central Business District (CBD) and parts of the Eastern suburbs, despite soil fertility now being less of an advantage to the dominant service industry base. By contrast, lower value areas and industrial development originally took place on basalt rock. Along the western bank of the Yarra River, the originally working class districts of Fitzroy, Collingwood and Richmond are all based on basalt and this bank provided a social divide; the wealthy districts of Hawthorn and Kew on the eastern bank lie on mudstone/sandstone and also have a higher elevation. More generally, higher elevations attracted the wealthy.

Geology, and particularly elevation, are important for explaining the social structure of the second case study, Harris Street in North Melbourne, a (now gentrified) suburb, which developed outside Hoddle’s original grid pattern for the CBD. North Melbourne was originally created as the Municipality of Hotham in 1859; in 1862, Hotham as a whole had a population of 7057, with 1740 houses (351 stone or brick; 1277 wood; 112 iron) (Mattingley 1917). Hotham’s name was changed to North Melbourne in 1887 as it expanded and was incorporated back into the City of Melbourne in 1905. Harris Street is not chosen randomly, but is designed to meet a set of criteria: (1) it has a local history society in the Hotham History Project, see Roberts (2002), Murphy (2004), Siska and Ashley (2004); (2) the street is small and manageable in terms of data; (3) the street was working class for most of its life; (4) there is a contrasting physical geography to nearby areas, lying at the bottom of a hill; (5) it was developed by the start of the twentieth century; (6) it is a residential district located close to the CBD (less than a 10 minute tram ride).

The history of this small road began in the early 1850s in response to the call for a new township to accommodate the gold-rush population influx. In 1852 alone, approximately 100,000 people arrived in Melbourne and no available accommodation remained (Mattingley 1916). The first land subdivision in North Melbourne consisted of quarter acre lots and took place south of Arden Street. A second subdivision to the north of Arden Street took place in 1855, but lots were not sold until 1865 and succeeding dates. The area of this second subdivision is our primary concern and is set out in Fig. 2.4 with Arden Street at the southern boundary; a stream ran through the area from Royal Park in the north to the West Melbourne swamp and is clearly visible on the figure, running between O’Shannassy and Haines Streets, which still exist. Note that, at the time of these initial plans, all the dwellings are spacious and of approximately equal lot sizes, despite the fact that Chapman Street, to the north, lies at the top of the hill, whereas O’Shannassy and Haines Streets lie at the bottom of the valley and were prone to regular flooding. At these initial stages, the area surrounding the stream was designated as a reserve for public gardens and plantations. The original intention, therefore, was the construction of a high-quality neighbourhood; furthermore, there is no sign of Harris Street. Mattingley (1916) states, ‘The site of the future town was an ideal one, consisting of undulating land richly carpeted with grass and studded with noble redgum trees, which gave it a beautiful park-like appearance.’

Fig. 2.4

North Melbourne, 1858 (Source: Victoria Public Lands Office, accessed from State Library of Victoria)

In practice, these plans were never implemented. The need for revenue from land sales by the colonial government led to fuller development and further subdivision of the lots (Roberts 2002). Figure 2.5 indicates the position in 1875; this now shows the stream to have been diverted through a blue-stone storm drain. Although not mentioned, this is the location of Harris Street and is named on the plans for sale of freehold properties in 1881. All indications of parkland have been replaced by dense housing on small plots. According to Roberts (2002), plot sizes at the top of the hill were approximately 2.6 times larger than in the valley, but, even on the hill, there were gradations in social status, with Chapman Street typically containing better quality dwellings than Molesworth Street (see Fig. 2.6a for an example of the former). Building in Harris Street had begun by 1880 and, as an indication of status, all 17 houses built that year were timber and even by 1890 only 13 % were brick (Roberts 2002). The areas between the south side of Molesworth and Haines Streets were designated for slum reclamation in 1940, although, in practice, little work was undertaken until the 1960s. Furthermore, the valley area had been seen as an area of special need since 1911, consisting of small, flood-prone cottages. Nevertheless, its proximity to the CBD made it a candidate for gentrification. Whereas many of the good-quality original nineteenth century properties on the higher ground remain in place, most of the lower ground properties have been replaced by apartments and social housing. The valley was still experiencing flooding in 2010. Figure 2.6b shows one of the few remaining gentrified original cottages in Harris Street, with a modern apartment block in the background. Earlier photographs of pre-gentrified cottages in Harris Street, prior to demolition, can be found in Siska and Ashley (2004). Today, large parts of Harris Street have disappeared and the current version (the original eastern end) is only approximately 120 m in length. The western end is now a private road, with the centre subsumed by apartments.

Fig. 2.5

North Melbourne, 1875 (Source: Department of Lands and Survey, accessed from State Library of Victoria)

Fig. 2.6

(a) Chapman Street. (b) Harris Street (Source: Authors’ photographs)

The electoral rolls over the period 1903–1980 provide valuable information on the changing social status of Harris Street; similar analyses can be carried out for any street in Melbourne (and indeed nationally). The Commonwealth Franchise Act of 1902 established a uniform franchise law for federal elections where all British subjects over the age of 21—both male and female—living in Australia for more than six months were entitled to vote in federal elections. Consequently, the 1903 electoral roll was the first with fairly comprehensive coverage. Nevertheless, the indigenous population was disqualified and did not obtain full voting rights until the 1960s. The voting age for all was reduced to 18 in 1973 and women were not granted voting rights in Victorian state elections until 1908.

The value of the historical electoral roll lies in its ability to trace the changing social status of streets, because, in contrast to England, the register recorded the occupations of all residents until 1983. Furthermore, since the individual records are available, it is possible to construct a panel of individuals to trace mobility over most of the twentieth century. Table 2.1 shows the total number of adult residents living in Harris Street in a sample of nine years. In 1903, 171 residents were present at the time of the roll, numbers which remained fairly stable until 1954, after which date they declined dramatically; change was certainly not gradual. By 1913, 82 properties had been constructed and remained in place until the early 1960s, when clearance programmes reduced the total. All the remaining dwellings lie at the eastern end, which has a slightly higher elevation. Until the 1950s, average adult occupancy was approximately 2.3, but began to decline subsequently.

Table 2.1 Dwellings, population and mobility: Harris Street

Given the magnitude of the Great War, it might be expected that social change would be evident, although Melbourne never faced bombing in either World War in the manner that devastated Saffron Hill. However, Table 2.1 shows little change in the total numbers living in Harris Street between 1913 and 1922. The direct population effects can also be measured from First World War records, notably the Roll of Honour compiled for the Australian War Memorial, which gives the details of all Australians dying in conflict. The raw data for the Roll are taken from circulars sent to the next of kin, seeking further information. As an example, Thomas McKinley lived at Number 64 in 1913 with his wife and son Thomas (junior); he was killed in action at Ypres on 11th September 1916, aged 34. The electoral roll for 1913 records his occupation as a labourer, although the circular also notes his ‘other training’ as footballer. His son, Thomas junior, was still living at number 64 in 1922, although his wife had moved by that stage. In total five residents of Harris Street can be identified as having definitely died in the conflict; in addition to Thomas McKinley, Samuel Andrew (number 62, killed at Passchendaele October 1917), Phillip Kirkpatrick (number 56—where he was also born—killed in France March 1918), Frederick McCaughey (number 70, died 5th Australian General Hospital, Melbourne), Edward Moran (number 25, killed in France, May 1917).

Table 2.2 sets out the occupations of the residents and distinguishes all those recorded more than three times, except for the later years when the total population had fallen and so more detail is noted. By far the most frequent occupation was ‘home duties’. Despite the fact that North Melbourne was a low income area for most of its history, very few married women were in paid employment until the latest years. Almost all the male residents were in manual occupations with ‘labourer’ the most common classification; drivers, machinists and railway employees are also well represented. Numbers are low, but the beginnings of gentrification are revealed in 1980; almost all residents were then in white-collar occupations.

Table 2.2 Occupational distribution of Harris Street, 1903–1980 (nos.)

Table 2.1 also shows turnover rates; these are calculated as the proportion of individuals who remained in the same dwelling between two dates. Note that the sample years are not equally interspersed and this is reflected in the rates. Nevertheless, it is evident that a significant percentage of individuals were immobile over five to ten year periods. In the post-Second World War era, approximately 60 % of residents remained in place between 1949 and 1954. Amongst the most immobile of residents in Harris Street was Thomas Egan (boot maker) who lived at number 15 from 1903 until 1934 and members of his family continued to live in the dwelling through to 1954. But the longest-serving resident was Annie Mitchell (home duties), who lived at number 7 from 1913 to 1972. Further long-residing families included the Keenans (number 19, 1903–1934), the Keaneys (number 71, 1903–1954) and the Laffys (number 18, 1913–1954). These three cases indicate that, although individuals may leave or die, residences were passed on to other family members. For families as a whole, immobility rates were noticeably higher than those shown in Table 2.1. Also, using information from the Melbourne rate books, these individuals or families were owners in 1949, whereas approximately 75 % were renters in Harris Street as a whole. As in modern data, renters were typically more mobile than owners. In addition to those who remained in place, the electoral rolls allow the movements of the residents to be traced over time. Discussion of these moves is reserved until Chap. 8 when mobility and residential sorting for larger samples of Melbourne residents are discussed. However, anticipating the findings, most moves were over fairly short distances.

The occupational distributions can be compared with the more up-market Chapman Street, in this case, over the post-Second World War period (Table 2.3). The advantage of the comparison is that the two streets are close together, are on the same transport network and, at least initially, differed only in terms of their elevation. Nevertheless, this is sufficient to reveal significant differences between the streets. First, the major reduction, by 1980, in the proportion of women undertaking home duties in Chapman Street is evident. Second, the rise in the number of students in 1980 reflects the lowering of the voting age. Third, the large number of retirees in 1980 arises from the establishment of the St Vincent de Paul home for the elderly. Fourth, although not evident from Table 2.3, higher proportions of residents were living in apartments by the last year. Finally, it is clear that the social status of the street rose over time (and was of higher status than Harris Street even in 1954). Clerks were the most numerous in 1954, although there were also a significant number of labourers and other manual occupations, but white collar workers, notably clerks and teachers dominated by 1980.

Table 2.3 Occupational distribution of Chapman Street, 1954–1980 (nos.)

2.4 Case Study 3: Anderston in Glasgow

Anderston sits on the north side of Glasgow’s main river, the Clyde, due west of the city centre into which it merges. Those new to Glasgow would not know that, prior to the comprehensive redevelopment of the district, Anderston, which is approximately one square mile in size, was within walking distance of Kelvingrove Park in the west and reached as far as Glasgow central train station. The district was brutally cut in two by the M8 motorway and Kingston Bridge, which, infamously, were constructed through the city centre in the late 1960s. Further road-based damage was inflicted by the Clydeside expressway—a dual carriageway that runs from the Clyde tunnel to the city centre—and again effectively dissected Anderston, running west to east several hundred yards north of the river.

Anderston’s housing and streetscape were also radically redesigned by comprehensive redevelopment; tenements were removed and post-war social housing, consisting of non-traditional flats and multi-storey blocks, took their place. A large part of the neighbourhood remained mixed land use industrial and warehousing property and one warehouse in Cheapside Street, a whisky bonding plant, blew up in the early 1960s during a fire, killing 19 firemen. Arguably, this tragedy sped up the redevelopment of Anderston (Cooper 2004, p. 71). Much later, in the 2000s, a stock transfer ballot led to much of the 1960s and 1970s redevelopment housing being taken over by a housing association which, with the consent of its new tenants, agreed to transform the area, demolishing and rebuilding at more human levels in excess of 400 homes. The work, by Sanctuary Scotland Housing Association continues to reintroduce the original streetscape.⁷

However, these post-Second World War developments hide the history of Anderston, which dates to the eighteenth century. According to Cooper (2004),

It is approaching three hundred years since the village of Anderston was first proposed and feuing-off land for cottages was begun in 1725. By the mid-nineteenth century the village had emerged from a small weaving and farming community into a highly industrialised part of Glasgow. In many respects, Anderston was the cradle of industrial enterprise and innovation during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. (Cooper 2004, foreword)

Cooper (2004) reports that the population of Anderston grew from 4000 in 1790 to more than 12,000 in 1820, chiefly as a result of economic growth, steam power and attendant jobs bringing people into the district to work and live. In addition to weaving and textiles, new jobs were emerging in iron foundries, shipbuilding and marine engineering. A concentration on the key industries that brought Glasgow’s rapid growth and industrial domination in the nineteenth century helped fuel the growth of Anderston as a classic mixed area of industry and residential housing; most of Anderston’s tenements were built between the 1850s and 1880s and replaced weavers’ cottages and limited model housing from earlier periods. However, these same industries produced highly volatile local economies, which saw rapid growth, immigration and inflating costs of living followed by joblessness, out-migration and destitution in the bad times. In the long term, it also left Glasgow heavily exposed to the risks of shifting international terms of trade, especially in shipbuilding, engineering and associated industries.

Anderston was, in many ways, representative of the high density, overcrowded and unhealthy nineteenth century Glasgow (Worsdall 1989; Maver 2000). Anderston and its contiguous, more affluent western districts of Kelvinhaugh and Sandyford represented vastly diverging levels of social stress during this period. Andy Gibb (1983, Table 5, reprinted in Chap. 6), found that, in 1881, Kelvinhaugh and Sandyford had low population density rates per acre compared to Anderston (43 against 229), death rates per 1000 were, respectively, 17.2 and 28.4; infant mortality rates were nearly double in Anderston (54 against 101 per 1000 for children under-five). The table also suggests that, while only 7.5 % of properties in Kelvinhaugh were one apartment flats, fully 33 % were in Anderston.

Arguably, the best single account of the long-term vulnerability experienced by Glasgow and districts such as Anderston is The Upas Tree by Checkland (1976). This tree, native to Java, entered legend (according to the book’s preface) because its poisonous roots could spread for miles and kill everything in its radius; this was a metaphor for the decline of Glasgow and the Clydeside region as a result of its dependence on shipbuilding and associated trades and the undiversified nature of the economy, leaving it excessively vulnerable to later deindustrialisation. This, however, was compounded by serial policy errors in response to the cumulative problems facing Glasgow from, at least, 1945 to the mid- to late-1980s.

Checkland argues that the city grew too big and too fast on a narrow economic base, which was particularly prone to boom and bust. It then declined rapidly and successive generations saw further negative patterns of employment loss, dereliction, unemployment and the attendant problems that led to Scotland’s highest levels of multiple deprivation, exemplified by what is now often called the Glasgow Effect—the difficult to explain poor morbidity and mortality records of Glaswegians compared to other post-industrial cities in the UK. Glasgow contracted rapidly and lost population on an unprecedented scale (but in a way similar to several rust belt cities in North America). National and regional policies, both for the built environment and for economic development, failed to counter these big trends until quite different policies started to emerge in the 1990s, eventually reversing population decline and ushering in a period of jobs growth until the downturn after 2008.

2.5 To Conclude

This chapter is concerned with exploring what is achievable from historical micro data sources, which are non-standard for most economists. There is nothing unique about the chosen case studies—although small streets and areas are sometimes more interesting than larger thoroughfares and have rich histories—and the exercise could be repeated for most streets in the three cities. In fact, the adopted procedures lie behind the construction of long-run longitudinal data sets for wider areas, which form the basis of empirical modelling work in later chapters. The fine spatial level reveals important features of the physical environment, such as elevation or liability to flooding, which affect population distributions and the social statuses of areas; these are often overlooked, but still have implications for modern policies. As Chap. 4 will demonstrate, current house price distributions are still influenced by geology. Furthermore, the long-run perspective allows the impact of infrequent major events and path dependence to be explored. The case study for Glasgow illustrates the importance of industrial structure for local volatility, an issue explored further in Chap. 6.