Goodman's Fields and the Magdalen Hospital

Goodman's Fields ~ Theatres ~ Prescot Street ~ The Magdalen Hospital

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The area was originally a farm, belonging to the Minoresses of St Clare (whence the street name Minories) and farmed by Trolop and later Goodman. John Stow, whose Survey of London was published in 1598, recalled how from this farm I myself in my youth have fetched many a halfe pennce worth of milke, and never had less than three ale pints for a half pennie in the summer, nor less than one ale quart for a half pennie in the winter, always hote from the kine as the same was milked and strained.

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When Goodman bought the land (giving his name to Goodman's Field, Goodman's Yard and Goodman's Stile) he kept 30 or 40 milking cows there; his son let land for grazing horses and for gardens. Boggy land was drained for tenter grounds, with frames (tenters) for drying washed woven cloth: hence Tenter Street, and the expression 'to be on tenterhooks'. [Pictured is South Tenter Street after bomb damage in 1940.]

There was a meat market between Red Lion Street and Minories, and a thrice-weekly hay and straw market.

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Dick Turpin
By the 18th century the area was getting built up, and acquiring a reputation for wild behaviour. John Walsh's collection of dance tunes, published in the 1730s, includes a 'Goodman's Fields Hornpipe'. In 1737 there was a shoot-out in Goodman's Fields involving the highwaymen Dick Turpin and 'Captain' Tom King. Turpin had recklessly stolen a Mr Major's horse in Epping, renaming him 'Black Bess', and hiding him in stables at the Red Lion inn in Whitechapel. Constables tracked down the horse, and when King came to collect it, with Turpin in wait nearby, a gun battle ensued. In the confusion Turpin shot King, who as he lay dying revealed the location of their hideout. Turpin escaped, but was hanged two years later in York for sheep-stealing. Legends about him abounded - see Harrison Ainsworth's romance Rookwood (1834).

Theatres
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Beazley, in his 1703 Historical Account of the London Theatres, mentions a New Wells Theatre in the passage betwixt Prescot Street & Chambers Street - but there are no references to plays there in the papers of the period.

The first Goodman's Field Theatre - and the first theatre outside the West End, and beyond the jurisdiction of the Lord Mayor and Aldermen of London - was opened by Thomas Odell under Letters Patent (which gave a certain authority), in a converted shop in Ayliffe [now Alie] Street in 1727. The opening play was George Farquhar’s Restoration comedy The Recruiting Officer, and in 1730 Henry Fielding's The Temple Beau was premiered.

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But there were protests. A 'general meeting' in 1729 in the Hoop and Grapes, Minories, alleged that being so near several publick Offices, and the Thames, where so much Business is negotiated, and carried on for the support of Trade and Navigation, will draw away Tradesmen's servants and others from their lawful Calling, and corrupt their Manners, and also occasion great numbers of loose, idle and disorderly Persons, as Street-Robbers and Common Night-Walkers, so to infest the streets, that it will be very dangerous for His Majesty's subjects to pass the same. Arthur Bedford, chaplain of Hoxton Hospital and Sunday afternoon preacher at St Botolph Aldgate, inveighed against the project from the pulpit. He cited a line from the play Gibraltar: 'Whores are dog-cheap here in London. For a man may slip into the play-house Passage, and pick up half-a-dozen for half-a-crown'. Odell was forced out, and handed over management to the audacious Henry Giffard.

Sir John Hawkins commented, around this time, What was apprehended from the advertisement of plays to be exhibited in that quarter of the town, soon followed: the adjacent houses became taverns in name, but in truth were houses of lewd resort; and the former occupiers of them, useful manufacturers and industrious artificers, were driven to seek elsewhere for residence.

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A new theatre of the same name (Goodman's Field) was built in Leman Street - which, according to the Universal Spectator (12 April 1732) was formerly inhabited by Silk-Throwsters, Riband-weavers, etc, who employed the industrious poor; immediately upon setting up this Playhouse, the rents were raised, and there is nowe a Bunch of Grapes hanging at almost every door, besides an adjacent banjio or two. It was funded by subscribers, and designed by Edward Shepherd (who also designed the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden). It opened on 2 October 1732 with a performance of Henry IV Part I. Four years later they put on the political satire A Vision of the Golden Rump (possibly also by Fielding), critical of Robert Walpole and the Whig government. This triggered the Licensing Act of 1737, which notoriously established censorship of public performances, banning any play that criticised the government or the Crown. The theatre was forced to close. Giffard rented Lincoln's Inn Fields Theatre for a time but managed, through skilful political machinations, to reopen Goodman's Fields in 1740. The Winter's Tale was produced there in 1741 for the first time in over a century.

The same year the actor-manager David Garrick made his successful début as Richard III. As Benjamin Victor wrote, Coaches and chariots with coronets soon surrounded that remote playhouse (History of the Theatres of London and Dublin 1761). The final production, The Beggar's Opera, was in 1742. Four years later it was pulled down; a further building on the site briefly showed other forms of entertainment, but was converted into a warehouse and burned down in 1809.

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[see Frederick T. Wood, 'Goodman’s Fields Theatre' in The Modern Language Review, Vol. 25, No. 4 (Oct. 1930), pp. 443-456, and Watson Nicholson, The Struggle for a Free Stage in London (1966) chapter 2].
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In 1831 another theatre was built in Leman Street, named the Garrick Theatre, or Garrick's Subscription. It burned down in 1846 and was rebuilt five years later as The Albert and Garrick Royal Amphitheatre, but closed around 1881.

Leman Street Police Station [pictured, left] was built on the site in 1891 - associated with the Ripper murders and the Cable Street riots, but no longer a local station - it is used for special operations. Many of the police drank at the nearby Brown Bear [right].

There were other theatres in the area in the 19th century: the ROYALTY THEATRE in Well Street, and WILTON'S MUSIC HALL in Grace's Alley. See HERE for details of the creation of the parish of St Mark Whitechapel.

Jewish influences

John Strype, whose 1720 Survey of London updated Stow, describes the area as chiefly inhabited by thriving Jews. From 1748 there was a Portuguese Jews hospital in Leman Street - it moved to Mile End Old Town in 1792.

According to tradition (the details are challenged) the celebrated tenor John Braham - who gave his name to Braham Street - was born in the 1770s in Leman Street, as Johan Abraham, son of a German maker of hair-rollers. Orphaned as a child, he was taken up by Leoni, and before his voice broke sang as Cupid at the Royalty Theatre, Wellclose Square. His career lasted over sixty years; his Jewishness, and also a marital scandal, loom large in contemporary accounts.

Joseph Nightingale's London and Middlesex (1815) shows that the Jewish (mainly Sephardi) influx had continued:
A little to the east of the Minories are Goodman's Fields, consisting of several handsome broad streets, the houses being large and convenient, with garden ground behind. Mansel, Prescot, Leman, and other considerable streets here, are mostly inhahited by rich Jews.

75 years later, according to The Palace Journal (24 April 1889), they were still Jewish streets, but now poorer:

.....We make a small excursion into Mansell Street, which is quiet. All about here, and in Great Ailie [sic] Street, Tenter Street, and their vicinities, the houses are old, large, of the very shabbiest-genteel aspect, and with a great appearance of being snobbishly ashamed of the odd trades to which many of their rooms are devoted. Shirt-making in buried basements, packing-case, or, perhaps, cardboard box-making, on the ground-floor; and glimpses of very dirty bald heads, bending over cobbling, or the sorting of "old clo'," through the cracked and rag-stuffed upper windows. Jewish names - Isaacs, Levy, Israel, Jacobs, Rubinsky, Moses, Aaron - wherever names appear, and frequent inscriptions in the homologous letters of Hebrew. Many of these inscriptions are on the windows of eating-houses, whose interior mysteries are hidden by muslin curtains; and we occasionally find a shop full of Hebrew books, and showing in its window remarkable little nick-nacks appertaining to synagogue worship, amid plaited tapers of various colours.

Prescot Street

The north side of Prescot Street has recently been the site of an archaeological project - see here for details, including video diaries and meterial about the significance of the site. In 1678 numerous Roman funeral urns and lachrymatories, with bars and silver money were found here, showing it to have been a Roman burial ground. It may have been linked with the sixth legion of the Roman army, for in 1787 a stone 15" x 12" x3" was found with the inscription

D M
FL AGICoLA. MIL.
LEG. VI. VICT. V. AN.
XLII. VI. D. X. ALBIA.
FAUSTINA. CoNIVGi
INCoNPARABILI
F C

Originally Great Prescott Street (after its builder), this was one of the earliest London streets to have numbered buildings (1708).

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No 21 (now the Abbey Bank Building) was the site of the London Infirmary for ‘sick and diseased manufacturers, seamen in the merchant service and their wives and families’ from 1741, moving in that year from Featherstone Street in Moorfields. The house was rented from Sir William Leman at 24 guineas a year; it expanded to five houses, and included a mortuary, a herb garret (for drying and storing medicinal herbs) and a cold bath (since its first physician was a devotee of therapeutic bathing). In 1747 it moved to its present site at Mount Field, Whitechapel Road as the London Hospital. The excellent Barts and The London website provides much more detail about this and other hospital sites. There is an fascinating museum at the former St Philip's Church, Newark Street behind the main hospital buildings.

The Prescot Street site was then let to the Magdalen Hospital (see below); when this in turn moved, it was used for various purposes, including the offices of the National Cigar Makers & Tobacco Workers Union. Damaged in the Blitz, the buildings stood derelict until the 1970s, when they were demolished to make way for the present structure.

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Nos 1 & 9 were developed in Art Deco style in the 1930-33 by the Co-operative Wholesale Society's architect L.G. Ekins, and used by the Co-op Bank; they are Grade 2 listed buildings. J.C. Blair's carving over the doorway of No 1 symbolises CWS principles - two individuals shaking hands beneath a hive of bees where the bees gain benefits from mutual co-operation. In 1999 No 1 was converted into 150 luxury flats (winning awards). In July 2008 some corporate directorates of Barts and the London moved into no 9 - bringing them full circle (see above).

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No 16 [left] was Whitechapel County Court - a 4-storey Italianate building of 1857-8 by Charles Reeves. It is now the Cafe Spice Namaste, with a noted Parsi chef from Goa.

English Martyrs Church [doorway below] was built in 1876 to designs by Pugin, with mosaics by Arthur Fleichmann. Here are pictures of parish events from the 1930s to the present day.

On the right is Prescot Street in 1935, looking eastwards.

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For a short period in the latter 19th century there was a SYNAGOGUE in the street.

Magdalen Hospital for the Reception of Penitent Prostitutes
'to provide for women and girls on the streets a safe, desirable, and happy retreat from their wretched and distressful circumstances

Many 'Magdalens' - homes for reformed prostitutes - were established in France and other Catholic countries throughout the middle ages. The name came from the identification (now known to be false and misleading) of the 'sinner' of Luke 7.37, who extravagently washed and anointed Jesus' feet, with Mary Magdalene.

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The first English, non-Catholic, version was established in Prescot Street in 1758, with a 7-year lease on the 'commodious house' vacated by the London Hospital, which provided 'space, aire and privacy at a modest expence'. Today, the narrow Magdalen Passage [pictured] runs through the site. Six penitents were admitted on the first day; by 1769, 1,500 had passed through its doors (most having stayed for three years) - it was judged a success, and had little difficulty in raising funds. (Typical collections from chapel visitors were well over £1,000, whereas even the Foundling Hospital could only raise £160.)

Why was it set up, and why did it flourish? The motives were, frankly, somewhat mixed, and some strike us as open to question.

it was the age of practical philanthropy, targeted at specific social problems
the optimistic 'moral sense' philosophy of the first half of the century believed that the inbuilt moral sense of those who have 'fallen' through weakness could be restored and refined by a programme of training. This was the view of the Societies for the Reformation of Manners (for whom the first Rector of St George-in-the-East preached - his sermon can be read HERE). Mary Peace argues that the Magdalen marked the high point of this 'whiggish sentimentality', successfully reassuring the public that even the most destructive of commercial appetites were really only the result of misunderstanding and miseducation, but that by the end of the century more negative attitudes to human nature held sway
growing awareness of the pressures of 'urbanisation', and horror at the fact that young teenagers were involved (one in seven residents were under 15, several were younger, and a third had been betrayed before that age) - the youth of the girls made an impact
European influence: Jonas Hanway (the first chairman, and incidentally the first person to carry a 'hanway', later known as an umbrella, in the streets of London, for which he was mocked - pictured right) and the brother of Robert Dingley (the first Treasurer), and other backers, were merchants of the influential Russia Company who had worked all over Europe
anxiety that genteel women were also liable to 'depravity' - class boundaries were being blurred, and some women who visited the Magdalen reacted emotionally, perhaps aware that 'there but for the grace of God go I'
ambivalent views about the 'weaker sex', who were idealised yet viewed as the source of temptation
a prurient desire to be shocked and titillated.

This mix of motives can be seen in Robert Dingley's opening speech in 1758:

Humanity in its utmost efforts pleads their cause more powerfully than anything I can offer on the subject; and I appeal to every mind, from its own experience, if there can be greater Objects of Compassion, than poor, young, thoughtless Females, plunged into ruin by those temptations to which their very youth and personal advantages exposes them, no less than those passions implanted by nature.... and by those endowed with superior faculties, and all the advantages of Education and fotune, what virtue can be proof against such formidable Seducers, who offer too commonly, and too profusely promise to transport the thoughtless Girls from Want, Confinement and Restraint of Passions, to Luxury, Liberty, Gaiety, Joy.

It can also be seen in the emotional sermons preached by William Dodd, the first chaplain [see below] - using the inmates, who were behind a lattice but in view of the visitors, as 'instruments of the rhetoric of pathos':

Lost to Virtue, you were lost to yourselves....Whither could you have fled from anguish, and from woe unutterable, cut off in the very blossom of your sins? early sacrifices, young and unpitied offerings to the remorseless Grave?.... 'Tis too affecting the review: I urge no more: only let your conversation be as becometh this great redemption: only labour to shew yourselves sensible of the exquisite blessings vouchsafed you....Here, saved from the threatening storm, you may look back and contemplate your danger, the more to inspire you with gratitude and praise.

The result was that visiting the Magdalen Hospital became a popular spectator sport, with elements of theatre: the inmates were 'showed as a sight', and the East End setting enhanced the thrill. As Walpole wrote to a friend, describing a visit at which Prince Edward was also present:

This new convent is beyond Goodman's Fields, and I assure you would content any Catholic alive. The chapel is small and low, but neat, hung with Gothic paper and tablets of benefactions. At the west end were inclosed the sisterhood, above an hundred and thirty, all in greyish brown stuffs, broad handkerchiefs, and flat straw hats with a ribband pulled quite over their faces. As soon as we entered the chapel, the organ played, and the Magdalens sang a hymn in parts; you cannot imagine how well. The chapel was dressed with orange and myrtle, and there wanted nothing but a little incense, to drive away the devil - or to invite him. Prayers then began, psalms, and a sermon; the latter by a young clergyman, one Dodd; who contributed to the Popish idea one had imbibed by haranging entirely in the French style, and very eloquently and touchingly. He apostrophised the lost sheep, who sobbed and cried from their souls - so did my Lady Hertford and Fanny Pelham, till I believe the City dames took them both for Jane Shores [an interesting example of rhyming slang!]

Although deliberately called a 'hospital' because of the conviction that its regime was therapeutic, there were certainly some ambiguous overtones of the nunnery, in the way every detail was organised: anonymous and drab clothing, strict rules about demeanour, conversation and surveillance ('tell your story to no one'), diet, daily work and worship. Wooden blinds covered the windows to stop prying eyes. Much of this anticipated 19th century prison design and routine. Pictured is the frontispiece from Jonas Hanway's Thoughts on the Plan for a Magdalen House (1758) showing his ideals: note the rules on the wall, the spinning wheel, the open bible....

During its time in Prescot Street, ideas for a larger venue were clarified, which was built in 1769 (opening in 1772) at St George's Fields, Southwark - made accessible by the building of Blackfriars Bridge, though in the long run the move reduced its popular appeal and ability to raise funds. It remained there until 1866, when it moved to Streatham (with the main income now coming from laundry work). In 1934 it became an approved school (and four years later 'for the reception of Penitent Prostitutes' was dropped from title) and in 1944 the Classifying School for assessing girls from across the south of England referred by juvenile courts; closed in 1966, the site was developed for housing by Lambeth Council. An ongoing Trust was set up in 1973 for the welfare of girls and boys up to the age of 25.

When Fr JOE WILLIAMSON set up Church House, Wellclose Square in the late 1950s for work with prostitutes, did he realise that just a few hundred yards away had been an 18th century expression of his 'rescue work'?

The Magdalen Hospital has been extensively written about, because of its significance for 18th century views of women. The standard histories are H.F.B. Compston The Magdalen Hospital (SPCK 1917) and S.B.P. Pearce (the institution's chaplain) An Ideal in the Working (1958); see also James Stephen Taylor Penitent Prostitutes, Ann Jessie van Sant Eighteenth-century Sensibility and the Novel (2004), Miles Ogbourn Spaces of Modernity (1998) and Elizabeth Eger Women, Writing and the Public Sphere, 1700-1830 (2001). Dan Cruickshank's Secret History of Georgian London (Random House 2009) includes a section on the Magdalen Hospital (pages 276-299).

Hanway was also the motive force in founding the short-lived Misericordia Hospital, for treating venereal diseases, in 1774. It was either in Great Alie Street, or possibly in the buildings vacated by the Magdalen, and was run on similar lines, as a 'total intitution' combining the moral and the medical. Dr William Grant was its physician; he published treatises on the London fevers - and died of an infection caught from a patient.

The Mac(c)aroni Parson
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The Revd William Dodd preached the inaugural sermon at the opening of the Magdalen Hospital, and was retained as its chaplain at £100 a year - money he needed, for he had developed a lavish lifestyle: in his own rather ridiculous words, he was a zealous votary of the god of Dancing. He was a popular and emotional society preacher, both at the Magdalen and elsewhere. However, he does appear to have had a genuine and lasting concern for the welfare of the residents, and certainly enabled the institution to raise funds.

Macaroni was an 18th century term for an extravagantly fashionable, foppish young man, from the Italian maccerone (a boorish fool) - hence the line in Yankee Doodle Dandy: he stuck a feather in his hat and called it macaroni.

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His debts became so great that, foolishly, he forged a bond. This was a capital offence, and he was tried and sentenced to hang in 1777. Samuel Johnson was among the many who pleaded for clemency - and it was in relation to Dodd that he made his famous remark Depend upon it Sir, when a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully. But to no avail.

Dodd published several works, including a novel The Sisters (1754) and a long poem in blank verse Thoughts in Prison, written in Newgate before his execution. See Gerald Howson The Macaroni Parson: A Life of the Unfortunate Dr. Dodd (1973).

An aerial view of Goodman's Fields today

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