A Slow Start: The Years to 1919
The Early Years
From about 1842, when Edwin Chadwick's influential
Report on an Inquiry into the Sanitary Condition of the
Labouring Population of Great Britain was published,
there was increasing concern about the living conditions
of many working-class families, especially in London. By
the end of the decade the acutely poor housing and high
rents experienced by dock labourers 'very much occupied
the public attention' and, as a result, in 1849 the East
and West India Dock Company sent a deputation, including H. D. Martin, the Company Engineer, to see the
lodging— and family-houses erected by the newly formed
Society for Improving the Condition of the Labouring
Classes. Following this, Dock Cottages, 70 dwellings
in terraced and back-to-back, two-storey blocks, were
designed for the Dock Company by Martin and his
colleague, John S. Adams, and were built in 1849–50 on
the south side of Poplar High Street, to the west of
Dolphin Lane (see fig. 11, page 56). Regulations for the
estate were taken from the Society, which thought that
Dock Cottages presented 'altogether a most comfortable
appearance'. The 46 four-room dwellings were designated
as 'first-class' and the 24 two-room ones as 'second-class'.
While the first-class houses were initially over-subscribed,
the second-class ones proved difficult to let and 'galleries
in the nature of balconies' had to be provided for the
upper tenements. (ref. 2) The latter were paired, with a recessed
centre, suggesting similarity to Henry Roberts's model
cottages of 1851. The cottages eventually passed to the
Midland Railway Company and were pulled down in the
1930s by the LCC, ironically as part of a slum clearance
scheme (see page 93).
The dock company's motives for building the cottages
concerned security as much as philanthropy; labourers'
cottages within the dock estate would be an advantage in
the event of disturbances or mob attacks. More positively,
it was thought that 'the opportunity should not be
neglected of combining with this measure of protection,
a provision of convenience and comfort for the Laborers'.
By keeping rents low (4s a week for first-class dwellings,
2s 3d for ground-floor second-class, and 1s 9d for firstfloor second-class) (ref. 3) the company was able to use the
houses to reward good conduct. The first lettings went
to foremen and the 'best' labourers, particularly those
who had evening jobs or whose wives worked. (ref. 4) Apart
from these cottages, the dock companies made little
effort, beyond a few charitable donations, to take any
responsibility for the immense housing problems generated by the docks.
More surprisingly, none of the philanthropic housing
societies built or acquired properties in Poplar in the
nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The Parish
Trustees approached Lord Stanley in 1862, even before
the Peabody Trust had been legally established, and his
lordship 'hinted' that Poplar 'was essentially a district
intended to be benefited by the Gift'. (ref. 5) In 1870 they made
further representations, since 'several eligible sites for the
erection of Peabody Buildings can be found in the parish
and their use as such would clear away many very
dilapidated dwellings now totally unfitted for human
habitations'. (ref. 6) Nothing came of their approaches, because
the Trust and the other societies were dedicated to the
principle of 'five-per-cent philanthropy' — that is, they
aimed to demonstrate by example that decent workingclass dwellings could be erected and a five-per-cent profit
made. It was hoped that this would convince builders of
the profitability of constructing further speculative blocks
to an equally satisfactory standard. Interestingly enough,
the dock company had managed to obtain a return of six
per cent on Dock Cottages, but this was helped by the
fact that it already owned the land on which they were
built. There was also no specific contribution to the rates
included in the rents because the company negotiated an
overall sum for the whole of its estate. Another factor
was the low cost of construction owing to the very poor
building work (which meant that expensive repairs were
soon required). (ref. 7)
As far as the philanthropic societies were concerned,
rents had to be sufficiently low to attract working-class
tenants, but high enough to ensure the five-per-cent
return. In such a finely balanced equation, Poplar had
two serious drawbacks. One was that the price of land
there was relatively high. (ref. 8) Thus, in 1899 the directors of
the East End Dwellings Company hoped to lease land in
the Docks on which to build workmen's dwellings. The
Millwall Dock Company initially offered the land at £200
per acre and eventually decided to accept £150, but the
Dwellings Company refused to pay more than £100 per
acre. (ref. 9)
Yet more discouraging to the philanthropic societies
were the notoriously high rates in Poplar, which would
inevitably have been reflected in higher rents. Between
1901 and 1914, for example, Poplar had the highest
general rate of any Metropolitan Borough. (ref. 10) Even the
LCC, when constructing some of its early tenement
blocks in Cotton Street in the 1890s, had difficulties in
producing an economically viable scheme because of the
high rates, amongst other things. (ref. 11) Similarly, in 1900 a
member of the LCC complained that in Bromley and
Poplar land was 'lying idle because the rates are so high —
8s. or 9s. in the £ — that people are afraid to build'. (ref. 12)
Poplar's First Council Housing
The Housing of the Working Classes Act of 1890, passed
largely because of pressure from the LCC, effectively
allowed local authorities in London to build their own
housing. It rationalized the existing housing and slum
clearance legislation, making it much easier for local
authorities to carry out clearance schemes, and, under
certain circumstances, build dwellings with the dual
purpose of rehousing and to increase the supply of
working-class housing. Nevertheless, there were no state
housing subsidies and local authority housing was not
supposed to put a charge on the rates. (This latter point
was another of the LCC's difficulties with the Cotton
Street scheme.)
Following the 1890 Act, the LCC almost immediately
began to build new tenement blocks in London to rehouse
families displaced by clearance or improvement schemes.
Those in Poplar parish were erected as a result of the
construction of the Blackwall Tunnel, which necessitated
both the rehousing of many people and the purchase
of a considerable area of land for the tunnel, much of
which was subsequently available for housing development (see page 632). Council Buildings, Yabsley Street
(1893–4), Toronto and Montreal Buildings, Cotton Street
(1899–1901), and Baffin, Hudson, Ontario, Ottawa,
Quebec, and Winnipeg Buildings, Preston's Road (1902–
4), were all five-storey tenement blocks, only marginally
less barrack-like in appearance than those built by
the philanthropic societies, or even private speculators
(Plate 123a, 123b). The accommodation was more generous,
however, and the flats were self-contained, better equipped and had improved sanitary arrangements.
The standards demanded by the LCC made it reluctant
to allow other agencies to carry out its rehousing obligations. For example, in 1896 the East End Dwellings
Company agreed to purchase from the LCC the Ann
Street site in Poplar (just outside the parish) and to
submit plans for blocks to accommodate 180 people. The
LCC would only approve them if the company gave an
undertaking that the proposed single-room dwellings
would be occupied solely by childless married couples,
two girls, or two elderly people of the same sex. The
company refused, withdrew its offer to purchase, and the
LCC itself built on the site. (ref. 13) Similarly, also in 1896,
James Hartnoll, who had built the nearby Grosvenor
Buildings as a speculative venture, offered to buy the
Cotton Street site and erect suitable dwellings for 250
people. Negotiations dragged on for two years, chiefly
because one faction in the Council was eager to take up
his offer, while another, which eventually prevailed, was
determined to reject it. The opposition to Hartnoll was
based on the (probably correct) assumption that he would
put up buildings with accommodation as unsatisfactory
as that in Grosvenor Buildings (see page 192). (ref. 14)
Also included in the LCC's Preston's Road scheme
were St Lawrence Cottages (1903–4), a terrace of 14 twostorey dwellings (see page 634) (Plate 123c). These were
a portent of the County Council's housing policy in the
immediate future, in response to a general reaction against
tenement blocks, whoever might erect them. As James
Ellis, the minister of the Cotton Street Baptist Chapel,
wrote in about 1902, what was needed in Poplar was 'not
more huge barrack-like piles of hideous red bricks devoid
of lifts, but smaller buildings'. (ref. 15) In fact, the LCC was
equally opposed to further block-dwellings and did not
build any more at all from 1907 until after the end of
the First World War. (ref. 16)
The LCC's solution was to build suburban cottage
estates in the outer areas, where land was cheap and
plentiful, and so it built no housing whatsoever in Poplar
between 1904 and 1926. As a general policy, suburban
estates may have offered the best answer to London's
housing problem, but it was not particularly appropriate
to an area like Poplar, and it caused at least one dispute
between the County Council and Poplar Borough
Council. In 1913 the LCC argued that a replacement
housing scheme would not be necessary for houses to be
demolished for extensions to two schools in the borough. (ref. 17)
It did not want to build high tenement blocks and neither
did it support further housing development in already
congested areas like Poplar. In response, the Borough
Council argued that additional housing was needed
urgently within the borough because many of the local
riverside workers and railwaymen had to live near their
work and the houses provided by the LCC on suburban
estates were not accessible from Poplar. The Local
Government Board finally ruled that a housing scheme
for 750 persons had to be provided in the neighbourhood
of the East and West India Docks, but the LCC still
refused to build in Poplar and, despite the Borough
Council's protests, procured agreement for a rehousing
scheme south of the river at Tunnel Avenue, East Greenwich. (ref. 18)
Poplar Borough Council was initially eager to build
council dwellings, and in January 1901 decided to set up
a Housing of the Working Classes Committee. (ref. 19) For
nearly three years the Committee tried to devise a housing
scheme for a site owned by the Council at the corner of
Cottage Street and Poplar High Street. Finally, it had to
admit defeat and abandon the project, having learnt, as
it sadly acknowledged, that the provision of housing was
'a very difficult question'. (ref. 20) In 1904 the Committee was
abolished, (ref. 21) and it was not until after the First World
War that the Borough Council again considered the
possibility of building its own houses. In the meantime
it focused on the public health aspects of housing, such
as the prevention of overcrowding and the closure or
demolition of premises considered unfit for human habitation. (ref. 22) Thus, no public housing was erected in Poplar
between 1904 and 1919.