Dorset Street was situated at the heart of the
SpitalfieldsSpitalfields is an area in the borough of Tower Hamlets, in the East End of London, near to Liverpool Street station and Brick Lane. The area straddles Commercial Street and is home to many markets, including the historic Old Spitalfields Market, founded in the 17th century, Sunday UpMarket, and...
rookeryA rookery was the colloquial British English name historically given to a city slum or ghetto frequented by poor people, criminals and prostitutes...
in the East End of
London[]London is the capital of England and the United Kingdom. It has been a major settlement for two millennia, and the history of London goes back to its founding by the Romans, when it was named Londinium. London's core, the ancient City of London, the 'square mile', retains its medieval boundaries...
,
EnglandEngland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west and the North Sea to the east, with the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
. Locally, it was sometimes known as "Dosset Street" or "Dossen Street" either because of the large number of doss-houses it contained or because immigrants to the area found it hard to pronounce the original name. No. 13, Miller's Court in Dorset Street was the scene of the murder of
Mary Jane KellyMary Jane Kelly , also known as Marie Jeanette Kelly, Fair Emma, Ginger and Black Mary, is widely believed to be the fifth and final victim of the notorious unidentified serial killer Jack the Ripper, who killed and mutilated prostitutes in the Whitechapel area of London from late August to early...
by
Jack the RipperJack the Ripper was a pseudonym given to an unidentified serial killer active in the largely impoverished districts in and around Whitechapel, London, in late 1888. The name originated in a letter by someone claiming to be the murderer that was sent to the London Central News Agency and...
on November 9, 1888. John McCarthy, Kelly's landlord, had a
chandler's shopBeginning as early as the 14th century, a grocer was a dealer in comestible dry goods such as spices, pepper, sugar, and cocoa, tea and coffee...
opposite the arched entrance to Miller's Court at 26–27, Dorset Street.
History
Laid out in the 1670s and originally known as 'Datchett Street' (probably from William Wheler of Datchett, who owned land in the area,) it was given the name Dorset Street on 22 November, 1867. It was a short and narrow street, which, by the 1880s, was almost entirely taken up with lodging and doss houses. Only two legitimate businesses were listed in the Post Office Street Directory for 1888, that of Barnett Price, who had a grocery store at No 7, and the Blue Coat Boy
public houseA public house, informally known as a pub, is a drinking establishment licensed to serve alcoholic drinks for consumption on the premises in countries and regions of British influence. Although the terms often have different connotations, there is little definitive difference between pubs, bars,...
, which was run by William James Turner at No 32. It was estimated that on any one night there were no fewer than 1200 men sleeping in Dorset Street's crowded lodging houses.
Dorset Street ran parallel with Brushfield Street and White’s Row and could be entered from either Crispin Street, Little Paternoster Row or
Commercial StreetCommercial Street is a road in Tower Hamlets, East London that runs north to south from Shoreditch to Aldgate through the East End district of Spitalfields. The road is on the London Inner Ring Road and as such forms part of the boundary of the London congestion charge zone.As the name implies,...
. On one of its corners with Commercial Street stood The Britannia public house. Known as the ‘Ringers’, after the landlord’s surname: a frequent customer was Mary Jane Kelly. Situated opposite Miller’s Court, at No. 15, was Crossingham’s
common lodging-houseA Common lodging-house is Victorian term for a form of cheap accommodation in which inhabitants are lodged together in one or more rooms in common with the rest of the inmates, who are not members of one family, whether for eating or sleeping. The slang term flophouse is roughly the equivalent of...
, with another at the corner of Little Paternoster Row, at 35, Dorset Street. It was from this common lodging house that Ripper victim
Annie ChapmanAnnie Chapman , born Ann Eliza Smith, was a victim of the notorious unidentified serial killer Jack the Ripper, who killed and mutilated several women in the Whitechapel area of London from late August to early November 1888....
was last seen walking up Little Paternoster Row, before turning right into Brushfield Street and heading towards Christ Church, Spitalfields.
In 1901, the
Daily MailThe Daily Mail is a British daily tabloid newspaper. First published in 1896 by Lord Northcliffe, it is the United Kingdom's second biggest-selling daily newspaper after The Sun. Its sister paper, The Mail on Sunday was launched in 1982. Scottish and Irish editions of the paper were launched in...
said of Dorset Street:
"[It]… has recently sprung into undesired notoriety. Here we have a place which boasts of an attempt at murder on an average once a month, of a murder in every house, and one house at least, a murder in every room. Policemen go down it as rule in pairs. Hunger walks prowling in its alleyways, and the criminals of to-morrow are being bred there to-day… The lodging-houses of Dorset Street and of the district around are the head centres of the shifting criminal population of London. Of course, the aristocrats of crime — the forger, the counterfeiter, and the like do not come here. In Dorset Street we find more largely the common thief, the pickpocket, the area meak, the man who robs with violence, and the unconvicted murderer. The police have a theory, it seems, that it is better to let these people congregate together in one mass where they can be easily be found than to scatter them abroad. And Dorset Street certainly serves the purpose of a police trap. "
Dorset Street remained a notorious slum following the murder of Mary Jane Kelly. As well as the 1960 shootings of a Soho club manager and a former middleweight boxer, there had been other murders there. In 1901, Mary Ann Austin was murdered with ten wounds to her abdomen at Annie Chapman's former home, Crossingham's Lodging House, at 35, Dorset Street. Later, in 1909 there was a Jack-the-Ripper-like killing in No. 20, Miller's Court, the room directly above no. 13 (which had been occupied by Elizabeth Prater in 1888), when a young woman named Kitty Ronan was found with her throat cut. It was believed that Ronan was a prostitute, and, as in the killing of Mary Jane Kelly, her murderer was never found. As in 1888, the landlord of Miller's Court in 1909 was still John McCarthy.
A vivid description of crime and vice in Dorset street is given in Ralph Finn's 1963 memoir of a Jewish boyhood in the East End:
"It was a street of whores. There is, I always feel a subtle difference between an whore and a prostitute. At least we used to think so. Prozzies were younger, and more attractive. Whores were debauched old bags. It teemed with nasty characters - desperate, wicked, lecherous, razor-slashing hoodlums. No Jews lived there. Only a few bold Choots had the temerity even to walk through it. There were pubs every few yards. Bawdy houses every few feet. It was peopled by roaring drunken fighting-mad killers"
Dorset Street was renamed 'Duval Street' on 28 June, 1904. In 1920, the
Corporation of LondonThe City of London Corporation is the municipal governing body of the City of London. It exercises control only over the City , and not over Greater London...
purchased
Spitalfields MarketOld Spitalfields Market is a covered market in Spitalfields, just outside the City of London. There has been a market on the site since 1638 when Charles I of England gave a licence for flesh, fowl and roots to be sold in what was then known as Spittle Fields. The existing buildings were built in...
, and began major rebuilding, which included the demolition of the whole of the north side of Duval Street, including Miller's Court. The new fruit market opened in 1928. Another new market development in the 1960s resulted in Duval Street becoming a lorry park for the market. The buildings on the south side of Dorset Street were redeveloped as a multi-storey car park in the 1960s. The north side is bounded by the London Fruit and Wool Exchange building, which is now used primarily as office space for small businesses, as well as housing a fitness centre and a storage warehouse for an import-export company.
Cultural references
The history of Dorset Street is chronicled in Fiona Rule's
The Worst Street in London.
External references