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Abstract
This paper examines London’s street markets as overlooked sites of consumer modernity, ‘complex interiors’ that were contested and contradictory spaces within the city. It asks whether the street markets can be seen as ‘architecture’, arguing that, despite their outdoor locations, shifting form, and lack of built infrastructure, the street markets achieved a sense of enclosure and interiority through the particular qualities of their lights, sounds and their crowded occupation of space. The street markets produced complexity as a result of their informality, as a-legal and organic outbreaks of micro-entrepreneurship. The paper covers the 1850–1939 period and examines the specific example of Chrisp Street market in Poplar. In the post-war period, this was formalised as Lansbury Market and relocated into a planned market square. It thus usefully casts light back on the earlier period, as an example of what happened when street markets moved from informal to planned status.
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank Penny Sparke for inviting me to contribute to this special issue and for her work as editor, and the anonymous London Journal peer reviewers who made such perceptive and engaged comments in response to the paper.
Notes on contributor
Victoria Kelley is professor of the history of design and material culture at the University for the Creative Arts. Her most recent research is a monograph published by Manchester University Press, Cheap Street: London’s street markets and the cultures of informality, 1850–1939 (2019).
Notes
1 S. Webb, The Scandal of London’s Markets, Fabian Tract no.36 (London: Fabian Society, 1891), unpaginated.
2 See for instance G. Doré and B. Jerrold, London: A Pilgrimage (London: Grant & Co., 1872), 189; London County Council Public Control Department, London Markets, Special Report of the Public Control Committee Relative to Existing Markets and Market Rights and as to the Expediency of Establishing New Markets in or Near the Administrative County of London (London: London County Council, 1893) (hereafter LCC London Markets 1893), 26.
3 See P. Sparke, ‘Introduction’, ‘Complex Interiors’ special issue, London Journal 45:x (2020) (forthcoming).
4 ‘Penny capitalist’ is John Benson’s term, from his short exploratory volume that is one of the few historical works to touch on economic informality (J. Benson, The Penny Capitalists: A Study of Nineteenth-century Working-class Entrepreneurs (Dublin: Gill and Macmillan, 1983)).
5 H. Mayhew, London Labour and the London Poor, Volume I (London: Griffin, Bohn and Company, London, 1861 (first published 1851)), 3.
6 Mayhew, London Labour, 9.
7 LCC London Markets 1893.
8 LCC London Markets 1893, Appendix C.
9 LCC London Markets 1893, 25.
10 London School of Economics, New Survey of London Life and Labour, Volume III (London: P.S. King, 1932), 290–92.
11 LSE, New Survey, 295.
12 T. Burke, The London Spy: A Book of Town Travels (London: Thornton Butterworth, 1922), 147.
13 Burke, London Spy, 149, 151.
14 V. Kelley, Cheap Street: London’s Street Markets and Culture of Informality (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2019).
15 Medieval market rights usually came with such a monopoly (Royal Commission on Market Rights and Tolls, 1888–1891, Final Report of the Commissioners (London: Her Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1891), 7).
16 LCC London Markets 1893, 7–23.
17 H. Jones, ‘On the New Metropolitan Markets’, Royal Institute of British Architects Sessional Papers 1877–78 (London Metropolitan Archives CLA/009/01/083), 116–19.
18 C. Booth, Life and Labour of the People in London, Series 2, Volume 3 (London: Macmillan, 1903), 260.
19 Kelley, Cheap Street, 35; Royal Commission on Market Rights and Tolls, 1888–1891, Volume II, minutes 3686–96.
20 LCC London Markets 1893, 24.
21 For an account of market reform outside London, see J. Schmiechen and K. Carls, The British Market Hall: A Social and Architectural History (London: Yale University Press, 1999). Space does not allow detailed analysis of the implications of complex London local government rivalries: see Kelley, Cheap Street, Chapter 1.
22 Metropolitan Streets Act 1867, www.legislation.gov.uk; J. Winter, London’s Teeming Streets, 1830–1914 (London: Routledge, 1993), 109.
23 Metropolitan Streets (Amendment) Act 1867, www.legislation.gov.uk.
24 For a summary of legal opinion and relevant cases, see J.G. Pease and H. Chitty, Law of Markets and Fairs (first edition) (London: Knight and Co., 1899), 4, 36.
25 The LCC General Powers Act 1927 empowered borough councils to pass bye-laws on street markets (see draft standard bye-laws, 30 July 1927, London Metropolitan Archives, London County Council General Purposes Committee Departmental Committee on Street Trading, LCC/CL/GP/01/210). Minute books of London’s Borough Councils record in detail applications for licences in their volumes for 1927 and 1928.
26 J. W. Sullivan, Markets for the People: The Consumer's Part (New York: Macmillan, 1913), 210–11, 228.
27 K. Hart, ‘Informal Income Opportunities and Urban Employment in Ghana’, Journal of Modern African Studies, 11:1 (1973), 61–89.
28 In addition to Hart, useful starting points on contemporary informality include M. Leonard, ‘Coping Strategies in Developed and Developing Societies: The Workings of the Informal Economy’, Journal of International Development, 12:8 (2000), 1069–85; S. Sassen, ‘The Informal Economy: Between New Developments and Old Regulations’, Yale Law Journal, 103:8 (1994), 2289–304; A. Ledeneva (ed.), Global Encyclopaedia of Informality (London: University College London Press, 2018).
29 A. Godley, Jewish Immigrant Entrepreneurship in London and New York, 1880–1914 (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2001).
30 J. Turner, ‘“Ill-Favoured Sluts”?: The Disorderly Women of Rosemary Lane and Rag Fair’, London Journal, 38:2 (2013), 95–109.
31 K. Seale, Markets, Places, Cities (London: Routledge, 2016); Sara González, Contested Markets, Contested Cities: Gentrification and Urban Justice in Retail Spaces (London: Routledge, 2017).
32 T. Buchner and P.R. Hoffmann-Rehnitz (eds), Shadow Economies and Irregular Work in Urban Europe, Sixteenth to Early Twentieth Centuries (Wien and Münster: Lit Verlag, 2011); D. van den Heuvel, ‘Selling in the Shadows: Peddlers and Hawkers in Early Modern Europe’, in M.M. van der Linden and L. Lucassen (eds), Studies in Global Social History, Volume 9: Working on Labour: Essays in Honour of Jan Lucassen (Leiden: Brill, 2012).
33 Peter Jones’s excellent paper, ‘Redressing Reform Narratives: Victorian London’s Street Markets and the Informal Supply Lines of Urban Modernity’, London Journal, 41:1 (2016), 60–81, focuses largely on a single London street market, Whitecross Street, in the later nineteenth century.
34 H. Jones, ‘New Metropolitan Markets’.
35 The only exception was Whitechapel Hay Market, which operated from a street site.
36 I. MacLachlan, ‘A Bloody Offal Nuisance: The Persistence of Private Slaughter-houses in Nineteenth-Century London’, Urban History, 34 (2007), 227–54.
37 Jones, ‘New Metropolitan Markets’, 116–19.
38 Sullivan, Markets for the People, 235–36.
39 Jones, ‘New Metropolitan Markets’, 113.
40 A. Madanipour, Cities in Time: Temporary Urbanism and the Future of the City (London: Bloomsbury, 2017); R. Kronenburg, Architecture in Motion: The History and Development of Portable Building (London: Routledge, 2014); T. Aglieri Rinella and R. García Rubio, ‘Pop-Up, Liquid Architecture for a Liquid World’, Arts, 14:6 (2017); J. Pallasmaa, ‘Hapticity and Time: Notes on Fragile Architecture’, Architectural Review, 207 (2000), 78–84; G. Böhme, Atmospheric Architectures: The Aesthetics of Felt Spaces (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2017).
41 M. de Certeau, L. Giard and P. Mayol, The Practice of Everyday Life, Volume 2, trans. T. J. Tomasik (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1998); H. Lefebvre, Rhythmanalysis: Space, Time and Everyday Life, trans. S. Elden (London: Bloomsbury, 2013).
42 P. Mörtenböck and H. Mooshammer, ‘Spaces of Encounter: Informal Markets in Europe’, Arq, 12:3/4 (2008), 347–57; P. Mörtenböck and H. Mooshammer, ‘Trade Flow: Architectures of Informal Markets’, in A. Ballantyne and C.L. Smith (eds), Architecture in the Space of Flows (London: Routledge, 2012).
43 Mörtenböck and Mooshammer, ‘Trade Flow’, 119.
44 E. Tierney, ‘“Dirty Rotten Sheds”: Exploring the Ephemeral City in Early Modern London’, Eighteenth-Century Studies, 50:2 (2017), 231–52.
45 Mörtenböck and Mooshammer, ‘Trade Flow’, 118; Tierney, ‘Dirty Rotten Sheds’.
46 A. Hartog, Born to Sing: Memoirs of an East End Mantle Presser (London: Brick Lane Books, 1979), 18.
47 W. Schivelbusch, Disenchanted Night: The Industrialisation of Light in the Nineteenth Century (Oxford: Berg, 1988 (1983)), 146.
48 I. Armstrong, Victorian Glassworlds: Glass, Culture and the Imagination 1830–1860 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), 121–22. See also Schivelbusch, Disenchanted Night, 147–48.
49 Schivelbusch, Disenchanted Night, 148–49.
50 Encyclopaedia Britannica, Eleventh Edition (1910–11), 652; R. Meldola, Coal and What We Get from It (London: SPCK, 1891), 71; M. Luckiesh, Artificial Light: Its Influence Upon Civilization (New York: Century, 1920), 56.
51 Booth, Life and Labour, Series I Volume I, 68; Mrs Bernard Bosanquet (Helen Bosanquet, née Dendy), Rich and Poor (London: Macmillan, 1896), 127.
52 C. Cameron, Rustle of Spring: An Edwardian Childhood in London’s East End (London: Skilton and Shaw, 1979 (1927)), 38; B. Magee, Clouds of Glory: A Hoxton Childhood (London: Pimlico, 2004), 274.
53 T. Edensor, ‘Light Design and Atmosphere’, Visual Communication, 14:3 (2015), 331–50; Schivelbusch makes a similar point (Disenchanted Night, 149).
54 Böhme, Atmospheric Architectures, 144.
55 Burke, London Spy, 165; E. Mannin, Confessions and Impressions (London: Hutchinson, 1936 (1930)), 19.
56 Mayhew, London Labour Volume I, 9.
57 Bosanquet, Rich and Poor, 128.
58 E. Flint, Hot Bread and Chips (London: Museum Press, 1963), 42.
59 Böhme, Atmospheric Architectures, 76; A. Corbin, Village Bells: Sound and Meaning in the Nineteenth-century French Countryside, trans M. Thom (New York: Columbia University Press, 1998), 95–96.
60 Almost all London’s informal markets occupied such street sites, in roads of varying width, but all imposing a linear format. Rare exceptions were the markets on Kingsland Plain and Whitechapel Waste (LCC London Markets 1893, Appendix C).
61 Mörtenböck and Mooshammer, ‘Spaces of Encounter’, 350–51.
62 Mayhew, London Labour Volume I, 9.
63 Flint, Hot Bread, 35, 42.
64 Cameron, Rustle of Spring, 40.
65 LCC London Markets 1893, Appendix B.
66 Mayhew, London Labour Volume 1 (throughout); J. Thomson and A. Smith, Street Life in London (London: Sampson Low, Marston, Searle & Rivington, 1877), see for instance 30–32, 90–92; Bosanquet, Rich and Poor, 57; Booth, Life and Labour Series 1 Volume 1, 57–58.
67 Mörtenböck and Mooshammer, ‘Trade Flow’, 124.
68 Stephen Jankiewicz, ‘A Dangerous Class: The Street Sellers of Nineteenth-Century London’, Journal of Social History, 46:2 (2012), 391–415.
69 For detailed analysis of this subject, see Kelley, Cheap Street.
70 ‘The opening of Columbia Market’, Illustrated London News (8 May 1869), front page.
71 ‘Miss Coutts’s New Market at Bethnal-Green’, The Times (29 April 1869), 5; W.M. Stern, ‘The Baroness’s Market: The History of a Noble Failure’, Guildhall Miscellany, 3:8 (1966), 353–66.
72 LCC London Markets 1893, 18; ‘The Bye-laws of Columbia Square Market’, printed poster, Tower Hamlets Local History Library and Archives, Press Cuttings Box 652.3–652.34, 1869.
73 Tierney, ‘Dirty Rotten Sheds’, 242.
74 LCC London Markets 1893, 26.
75 LCC London Markets 1893, unpaginated architectural plans.
76 LCC London Markets 1893, 7, 24.
77 London County Council Public Control Department, Street Markets: Report of the Chief Officer of the Public Control Department as to the Street Markets in the County of London (London: London County Council, 1901).
78 LSE, New Survey, 300.
79 J.H. Forshaw and P. Abercrombie, County of London Plan (London: Macmillan, 1943), 1; C. Hui Lan Manley, Frederick Gibberd (London: Historic England, 2017), 22–24.
80 Forshaw and Abercrombie, County of London Plan, Plate XXV & 72.
81 H. Atkinson, The Festival of Britain: A Land and its People (London: I.B. Tauris, 2012), 178–87; ‘The Lansbury Estate’, Survey of London volumes 43–44 (originally published 1994) <https://www.british-history.ac.uk/survey-london/vols43-4/pp212-223>.
82 Manley, Frederick Gibberd, 27.
83 F. Gibberd, Town Design (London: Architecture Press, 1970 (1953)), 127; Forshaw and Abercrombie, County of London Plan, iii.
84 Forshaw and Abercrombie, County of London Plan, 3; C. Williams-Ellis, England and the Octopus (Geoffrey Bles: London, 1928); D. Matless, ‘Appropriate Geography: Patrick Abercrombie and the Energy of the World’, Journal of Design History, 6:3 (1993), 167–78.
85 Gibberd, Town Design, 130.
86 W. Burns, New Towns for Old: The Technique of Urban Renewal (London: Leonard Hill, 1963), 51.
87 M. Brooke, ‘Whatever happened to Chrisp Street?’, East London Express, April 3rd 1970.
88 Gibberd, Town Design, 129.
89 D. Scannell, Mother Knew Best: An East-End Childhood (London: Pan, 1975), 34 & 41.
90 Mörtenböck and Mooshammer, ‘Spaces of Encounter’, 349.