History

London witnessed unprecedented population growth during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. By the 1890s, the population of the city was four million. London’s slums initially arose out of a need for affordable housing but became infamous for their squalid living conditions, overcrowding, and lack of sanitation. Many slums were in the East End of London, in areas such as Whitechapel and Mile End, but there were some more centrally, including the so-called “Devil’s Acre” near Westminster Abbey. Charles Dickens made this neighbourhood infamous when he described it as “the blackest tide of moral turpitude” in the very first volume of his weekly magazine Household Words in 1850. For more on Victorian London’s slums, see Slums and Slumming in Late-Victorian London (victorianweb.org).