Free The Worst Street in London: Foreword by Peter Ackroyd by Fiona Rule Page A

the new, rock-bottom prices were destined to become Dorset Street’s most influential residents. In 1848, Daniel McCarthy and his pregnant wife Margaret, boarded a ship sailing from Cork harbour and left their homeland behind them. After a brief stay in Dieppe (where it is likely Daniel sought work in the Docks), the McCarthys, who by now had a baby son named John, arrived in England.
    Daniel had previously been used to agricultural work so the family initially made for Hertfordshire, where it was hoped that permanent farm work could be secured. However, this was not to be and for the next five or so years, the family travelled across London and the home counties, picking up menial jobs wherever they could. However, like so many of their countrymen before them, they were eventually forced into the metropolis permanently, where work, however demeaning and badly paid, was in greater supply.
    The McCarthys settled in Red Cross Court, in Southwark. This mean yard was a typical London address for impoverished Irishfolk fleeing the famine in their homeland. It had originally been the back yard of the Red Cross Inn – a hostelry on Borough High Street. However, as the population of The Borough exploded in the early 19th century, the yard was built over. Two-storey cottages lined its perimeter and a row of dilapidated stables ran down the centre. By the 1860s, the occupants of Red Cross Court were far too poor to keep horses so the stables served as stockrooms for oranges that were bought at Borough Market and sold cheaply on the streets by the Court’s inhabitants.
    By the time Daniel and Margaret McCarthy arrived in Red Cross Court, their family had increased significantly. Joining John were four brothers: Denis, Jeremiah, Timothy and Daniel. In 1865, a daughter named Annie was born. During the following years, Red Cross Court became something of a Mecca for members of the McCarthy clan. By 1881, there were McCarthys living at numbers 1, 4, 9, 10 and 12 plus two more McCarthy families living at number 2 and 24 May Pole Alley, which was situated next door. By this time Daniel and Margaret had moved across the river to Whitechapel where they lived out the rest of their lives in quiet obscurity. However, their eldest son John harboured grand ideas about his future and set about laying plans to escape the grinding poverty of London’s slums – plans that were to be more successful than probably even he would have imagined.
    Like the Borough across the river, Spitalfields – and roads such as Dorset Street in particular – became an attractive destination for impoverished Irish immigrants because it offered insalubrious but cheap accommodation and was close to the potential workplaces of the City, the Docks and, of course, the market. Many of the working-class Irish immigrants found work as costermongers, buying fruit and vegetables from the market and taking them round the streets on a barrow to sell to the residents. During his investigation into how London’s poor lived and worked, Henry Mayhew studied the Irish costermongers in depth. At the time, it was officially estimated that there were 10,000 Irish street-sellers in London. However, Mayhew reckoned the figure to be higher. He noted, ‘of this large body, three-fourths sell only fruit, and more specifically nuts and oranges; indeed the orange season is called the “Irishman’s Harvest.” The others deal in fish, fruit and vegetables... some of the most wretched of the street Irish deal in such trifles as Lucifer-matches, water-cresses, etc.’
    In addition to street-selling, many Irish immigrants who had previously been employed on farms took to labouring in the building trade. Some took casual labouring work at the docks, while others took on the back-breaking work of excavating and wood chopping. When work was thin on the ground (as it often was), both men and women would take to the streets and beg.
    This hand-to-mouth existence meant that accommodation was hard to