Author: Alex Gjaja

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The Lonely Londoners and the Power Dynamics of ‘Colonization in Reverse’

Post-colonialist literature, exemplified by Sam Selvon’s The Lonely Londoners, challenges ideas of race, class and migration within an imperialist context. Kenneth Usongo’s claim that “the movement of the West Indians to England constituted a process of colonization in reverse in that the periphery was moving to the centre” resonates with Selvon’s novel; in many ways, the group of West Indian migrants that Selvon depicts in his text are precisely those unseen voices moving into the forefront (Usongo 182). In the wake of World War Two, West Indians were granted British citizenship as members of the British colonial empire, and began to migrate to London in droves. Although this ‘reverse colonization’ allowed the formerly colonized West Indians to inhabit the same social, political, and economic realms as their former colonizers, Selvon’s novel offers a more complex perspective on the particularly difficult position of West Indian migrants in London. On the one hand, Selvon’s choice to write the novel in dialect subverts British imperial power by allowing the West Indian migrant community to narrate and control their own stories. However, in his depiction of this colonization in reverse, Selvon also acknowledges the continued power white British citizens wield over the formerly colonized West Indian community — particularly via racialized attacks. Throughout the novel, Selvon demonstrates how white Londoners attempt to move the West Indian minority communities back into the periphery of society by employing colonial stereotypes to fetishize Black bodies, ignore Black individuality, or even outright deny the migrants access to skilled labor jobs. The apparent contradiction between Selvon’s subversive use of dialect and his portrayal of these damaging colonial stereotypes reveals the author’s keen awareness of how the particular power structures of ‘reverse colonization’ shaped the unique migration experience of the West Indian community at the heart of his novel.

When examining the style and form of The Lonely Londoners, one of the first things that scholars mention is Selvon’s choice to write the novel completely in dialect. As Kenneth Ramchand notes, the language of the novel is “a careful fabrication, a modified dialect which contains and expresses the sensibility of a whole society” (Ramchand 97). By inflecting his English prose with West Indian dialectical phrasing and terminology, Selvon offers readers a uniquely West Indian lens by which to interpret the migration stories of West Indians. Thus, he grants these migrants ownership over their own narratives and challenges former colonial accounts in which colonizers would rob indigenous populations of agency by writing about them in languages only the colonizers could understand. Additionally, by using dialect to craft his novel, Selvon uses a dual approach of “abrogation” and “appropriation.” Nick Bentley explains that, for a white British reader, the text serves as an “abrogation of the cultural centre” — in other words, the rejection of Standard English exemplifies a rejection of the assumed superiority of white British cultural practices. Meanwhile, for a reader who is a member of the Black migrant community in London, the use of dialect fuels an appropriation process that serves as “an empowering strategy by establishing a specific subcultural identity, and by…subverting the colonial language” (Bentley 76-77). Through this interpretive framework, Selvon’s use of dialect throughout the novel almost becomes a language of resistance as the formerly colonized Black communities take ownership over the language their former colonizers imposed upon them and, in so doing, challenge the authority white Londoners wield over them in cultural spaces. By using this subversive language to narrate a story of West Indian migration, Selvon invites the reader to consider that perhaps migration itself can similarly upend imperialist power dynamics.

But while Selvon’s use of dialect may suggest that West Indian migration subverts  British colonial power, he also presents several scenes throughout his novel that demonstrate how white Londoners wield racist stereotypes in order to assert their continued power over the Black West Indian migrants. During his extended prose poem that describes summer in the city, Selvon writes:

 “people wouldn’t believe you when you tell them the things that happen in the city but the cruder you are the more the girls like you you can’t put on any English accent for them or play ladeda or tell them you studying medicine in Oxford or try to be polite or civilise they don’t want that sort of thing at all they want to see you live up to the films and stories they hear about black people living primitive in the jungles of the world…” (Selvon 108).

This quote illuminates one of the central problems encountered by the Black West Indian migrants of Selvon’s novel. Despite their migration into the city atmosphere of their former colonizers and their newfound ability to mingle with white women, London is not a fully free sexual space for the migrants. The process of colonization in reverse may allow these peripheral groups to move into the geographical center, but these men are subjected to racist tropes of the ‘native’ or of “black people living primitive” and pushed back into a subjugated role within the dating sphere. They are not viewed as worthy and complex individuals but rather as exotic others who offer only a specific type of crude fantasy for the white women who have sex with them. This discrimination is perhaps most clearly illustrated by Selvon in a separate scene, when an unnamed Jamaican man goes home with a white woman and “the number not interested in passing on any knowledge [about art] she only interested in one thing and in the heat of emotion she call the Jamaican a black bastard” (Selvon 109).  In the London that Selvon depicts, Black men are hypersexualized and treated as brutes — racist stereotypes that deny them the opportunity to express their personhood.

Beyond using racialized colonial stereotypes to hypersexualize the West Indian men and fetishize their bodies, the white Londoners of Selvon’s novel also employ colonial tropes in fear mongering efforts against the migrants. Moses notes, “Whatever the newspaper and the radio say in the country, that is the people Bible. Like one time when the newspapers say that the West Indians think that the streets of London paved with gold a Jamaican fellar went to the income tax office to find out something and the first thing the clerk tell him is, ‘You people think the streets of London are paved with gold?’ ” (Selvon 24). The clerk’s use of the phrase “you people” suggests that, to him, the Jamaican man is just one of a nameless, faceless horde of Black West Indians that are streaming into the city in search of work. Additionally, Moses echoes the phrase “streets paved with gold” when he is warning Galahad about what to expect from the white British public in his hunt for a job. “To them you will be just another one of them black Jamaicans who coming to London thinking that the streets paved with gold,” Moses tells Galahad (Selvon 41). The concept of “streets paved with gold” is highly reminiscent of the insatiable lust for gold revealed in the language white colonizers used to describe their hopes for what they might find in new lands like the West Indies. When those hopes were largely dashed, the white colonizers were still able to take control of the new lands, subjugate the indigenous communities, and win acclaim from their home nation. Yet for the West Indians moving to London, the same colonial phrasing is used derisively and employed mostly to suggest the migrants’ incredible ignorance about the city. Rather than arriving into the new cityscape and becoming the conquerors, the West Indian migrants are treated as an uncultured, uneducated mass of “you people.”

But the Black West Indian migrants in Selvon’s novel don’t just face discrimination in the words white Londoners wield against them. Because they are Black, the migrants are also forced into certain jobs due to a filing system used by the government. Moses informs Galahad about a mark that he will see on the records of all of the Black migrants: “J—A, Col.” He elaborates on the meaning of this mark, saying, “That mean you from Jamaica and you black” (Selvon 46). According to Moses, this is helpful because it allows the people who work at the employment office to first find out if a specific firm will hire Black people before they send the West Indian migrants to fill any vacant positions — saving “time and bother” (Selvon 46). Just what kind of jobs West Indian migrants might be deemed acceptable for is further defined by Moses when he expresses his frustration at the lack of employment opportunity to Cap. He says, “They send you for storekeeper work and they want to put you in that yard to lift heavy iron. They think that is all we good for, and this time they keeping all the soft clerical jobs for them white fellars” (Selvon 52). Once again, West Indian migrants are kept in a quasi-colonial, subjugated state even as they move into white spaces within London. Rather than being afforded the opportunity to progress economically, Black West Indians are forced into lower-paid, unskilled jobs that require physical labor of them — work that is not dissimilar to that which would have been required of them during Britain’s former days as an imperial power. Stephen Wolfe identifies the discussion between Galahad and Moses about the practices of the employment office as one that “forces Galahad to negotiate his colonial otherness” (Wolfe 131). Like any other British citizen, Galahad has been welcomed to apply for employment; however, unlike white British citizens, the racial identification on Galahad’s file limits the job opportunities he has access to.

By depicting the ways in which Black West Indian migrants are broadly discriminated against by white Londoners, Selvon appears to suggest that the traditional power structures of British imperialism were maintained in London — seemingly contradicting the subversion of such power structures implied in his choice to write the novel in West Indian dialect. With this in mind, it is worth returning to Selvon’s decision to use dialect to see if he may be employing the technique to create more than just a language of resistance or of empowerment.  Bill Ashcroft presents a useful interpretive framework in his discussion of a “metonymic gap,” which are the phrases and references that a writer might insert into their novel that may be unknown to a reader of the colonizer culture. According to Ashcroft: 

“The local writer is thus able to represent his or her world to the colonizer (and others) in the metropolitan language, and at the same time, to signal and emphasize a difference from it. In effect, the writer is saying, ‘I am using your language so that you will understand my world, but you will also know by the differences in the way I use it that you cannot share my experience.” (Ashcroft 74-75)

In some ways, writing his novel in a modified version of Standard English does allow Selvon to present West Indian migration to London in a way that challenges the previously unquestioned presumption of British cultural supremacy over colonized cultures. However, Ashcroft astutely notes that modifying Standard English with dialect implies both a kinship and an impossible distance between the cultures of the former colonizer and the formerly colonized — the latter of whom has an experience that can never be fully articulated to or understood by the former. As Galahad’s date, Daisy, says, albeit more crudely, “You know it will take me some time to understand everything you say. The way you West Indians speak!” (Selvon 93). 

As much as Selvon’s use of dialect adds power to the West Indian cultural experience in London, it also reminds his readers that West Indian migrants had a unique expectation when they arrived in London. Because the West Indians grew up in British colonies and were granted British citizenship, they “had arrived in Britain considering themselves to be British and expecting to be treated as such, yet they found the rudiments of respectability—a job, a wife, a home, independence —being withheld by a host society which betrayed their expectations” (Collins 417). Unlike the Polish restaurateur — who Moses identifies as a foreigner yet still someone who wouldn’t deign to serve the Black West Indian migrants — these men were “British subjects” and “[bled] to make [Britain] prosperous” (Selvon 40). The language of the West Indian migrant community is English, even if a modified version of its standard form. Sam Selvon very intentionally places the migration depicted in this novel against the concept of ‘colonization in the reverse’ to explore the ways in which their status as formerly colonized people impacts the particular migration story of West Indians in London. While there is a subversion of British power when the West Indians move into British geographical space and begin to socialize with London natives, there remains a sense of British colonial authority over the West Indians in London that presents itself in racially-charged colonial tropes and forced unskilled labor. By probing this continued colonialism vs. subverted colonialism dichotomy, Selvon ultimately advances a compelling argument for why West Indian migration into London was a particularly painful process compared to the experiences of other migrant groups. When they gained rights as British citizens and subsequently moved to the center of the former empire, Black West Indians had every reason to expect a warm welcome from their British family. Instead, racist stereotypes deeply rooted in colonialism allowed white Londoners to assert power over Black West Indians and shove them back out into the societal periphery.

Works Cited

Ashcroft, Bill. Post-Colonial Transformation. London, Routledge, 2001.

Bentley, Nick. “Form and language in Sam Selvon’s The Lonely Londoners.” ARIEL, vol. 36, no. 3-4, 2005, p. 67+. Gale Literature Resource Center, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A160750019/LitRC?u=prin77918&sid=LitRC&xid=4cb6d0a8. Accessed 7 May 2021.

Collins, Marcus. “Pride and Prejudice: West Indian Men in Mid-Twentieth-Century Britain.” Journal of British Studies, vol. 40, no. 3, 2001, p. 391-418. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/3070729. Accessed 7 May 2021.

Herald, Patrick. “‘The Black’, space, and sexuality: Examining resistance in Selvon’s The Lonely Londoners.” The Journal of Commonwealth Literature, vol. 52, no. 2, 2017, p. 350-364, DOI: 10.1177/0021989415608906

Ramchand, Kenneth. The West Indian Novel and its Background. Jamaica, Ian Randle Publishers, 2004. 

Selvon, Sam. The Lonely Londoners. New York, Longman Publishing Group, 1998.

Usongo, Kenneth. “The politics of migration and empire in Sam Selvon’s The Lonely Londoners,” Journal of the African Literature Association, vol. 12, no. 2, 2018, p. 180-200, DOI: 10.1080/21674736.2018.1515567

Wolfe, Stephen F. “A Happy English Colonial Family in 1950s London?: Immigration, Containment and Transgression in The Lonely Londoners,” Culture, Theory and Critique, vol. 57, no. 1, 2016, p. 121-136, DOI: 10.1080/14735784.2015.1111157

I pledge my honor that this paper represents my own work in accordance with University guidelines. — Alexandra Gjaja

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Samuel Selvon: A Life in Pictures

Pauline Henriques and Samuel Selvon reading a story on the BBC in 1952, during the weekly Caribbean Voices segment.
A 2016 photo of Naparima College, San Fernando, Trinidad and Tobago. After completing his primary education, Samuel Selvon attended school here from 1937-1938. He left in 1938, without having completed his school certificate examination.
A photo of Susamachar Presbyterian Church, taken in 2016. In 1947, Samuel Selvon married his first wife, Draupadi Persaud, at this San Fernando church.
A 2013 photo of India House, the building where the High Commission of India in London is located. The building was completed in 1930. When Samuel Selvon first moved to London in 1950, he worked as a clerk in this building.
The cover of A Brighter Sun, Samuel Selvon’s first novel. The novel was published in 1952.
The 1956 cover of The Lonely Londoners. Popularly considered Samuel Selvon’s best novel, this book follows a group of West Indian immigrants as they navigate an often hostile London environment. This novel was also made famous by Selvon’s choice to use dialect in both the dialogue and the narration of the novel.
A 1979 aerial photo of the University of Victoria campus. After Samuel Selvon moved to Canada in 1978 with his second wife, Althea Daroux, and his family, he took up a position teaching creative writing as a visiting professor at this university.
Samuel Selvon in his office at the University of Calgary. Before becoming a writer-in-residence at the University of Calgary, Samuel Selvon worked for months as a janitor at the university.
This 1974 photo of Samuel Selvon, John La Rose, and Andrew Salkey is entited “The Lime.” La Rose and Salkey were founding members of the Caribbean Artists Movement (CAM), which was organized in London and was active from 1966-1972. The Trinidad-born photographer, Horace Ové, is known as one of the leading Black independent filmmakers in post-war Britain. He was the first Black British filmmaker to direct a feature-length film, Pressure (1975).
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Samuel Selvon: A Brief Biography of a Trinidadian Expatriate

Samuel Selvon

Samuel Selvon was born on May 20, 1923 in Trinidad, the sixth of seven children born to Bertwyn Selvon, an Indian cocoa merchant, and Daisy Dickson, a biracial Anglo-Indian. Selvon grew up in a middle-class home; after he completed his primary education in 1937, he attended Naparima College. However, Selvon left the college in 1938, without taking the school certificate examination. He enlisted in the Trinidad Royal Navy Reserve in 1939 and became a wireless operator. Thereafter, he moved to the Port of Spain where he worked for the Trinidad Guardian. He also wrote stories and columns under several pseudonyms, including Ack-Ack, Michael Wentworth, and Esses. In 1947, Selvon married Draupadi Persaud, with whom he had one child, born after the couple relocated to London in 1950. In London, Selvon worked as a clerk for the Indian Embassy, and wrote in his spare time. His first novel, A Brighter Sun, was published in 1952. This debut novel was followed by the publication of several more novels (including The Lonely Londoners in 1956), a collection of short stories entitled Ways of Sunlight (1958), and a collection of plays named Highway in the Sun (1991). In 1962, Selvon and Persaud divorced, and in 1963, Selvon married Althea Daroux, with whom he had three children. From 1975-1977, Selvon held a fellowship in creative writing at Dundee University. In 1978, Selvon moved to Canada, where Daroux had relatives. He took up writer-in-residence appointments at the universities of Victoria, Winnipeg, Alberta, and Calgary (where he worked for a few months as a janitor when he first arrived in Canada). A lifelong smoker, Selvon died of respiratory failure due to chronic lung disease on April 16, 1994.

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The Geographical and Historical Context of Mrs. Dalloway’s Walk

The geographical and historical context of the passage serve as particularly helpful means to introduce themes of class difference in relation to post-war legacy.  As Clarissa walks, she passes Devonshire House, Bath House and “the house with the china cockatoo.” This refers to a set of homes owned by wealthy socialites who threw extravagant parties, which Clarissa and her friends would attend. “The house with the china cockatoo” was the home of Baroness Burdett-Coutts, who used to hang a white china cockatoo to be visible in a window and indicate that she was in residence, a nod to the Royal Standard (Diana Orton, Made of Gold: a biography of Angela Burdett Coutts). But, already these homes either have faded or are in the process of doing so in the post-war era: Burdett-Coutts died in 1906 so the grandeur of her parties would have been just a figment of this 1923-era Clarissa’s memories of youth, and the famous Devonshire House was demolished in 1924, shortly after the time of Clarissa’s walk. Unlike when these homes were “all lit up at once,” many of the wealthy fled the city during the war, leaving behind their homes as grim reminders of how utterly different post-war London was from the past revelry. Just as this passage invites us to ponder individual legacy, the reader must also grapple with post-war legacy as it reflects onto the very buildings Clarissa passes. Perhaps we are meant to view these formerly great houses as models of post-war decay, showing just how much the elite were impacted by the War as well as lower classes, that this truly was the war that spared no one. Alternatively, the empty houses show the reader just how removed the social elites were from wartime horrors — abandoning their city mansions but not their country estates, sacrificing their parties but not their limbs. Although the upper-class Clarissa ponders a sense of universal human connection or a collective “well of tears,” the historical context of the passage suggests that this theory may be too naive; that, rather than bond, the true legacy of WWI may be to further divide the different social classes of London.

An image of Devonshire House from the road in 1896.
A portrait of Baroness Burdett-Coutts, circa 1840.
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Clarissa’s Walk in the Park: Human Connection, Death and Legacy in Mrs. Dalloway

“Her only gift was knowing people almost by instinct, she thought, walking on. If you put her in a room with some one, up went her back like a cat’s; or she purred. Devonshire House, Bath House, the house with the china cockatoo, she had seen them all lit up once; and remembered Sylvia, Fred, Sally Seton—such hosts of people; and dancing all night; and the waggons plodding past to market; and driving home across the Park. She remembered once throwing a shilling into the Serpentine. But every one remembered; what she loved was this, here, now, in front of her; the fat lady in the cab. Did it matter then, she asked herself, walking towards Bond Street, did it matter that she must inevitably cease completely; all this must go on without her; did she resent it; or did it not become consoling to believe that death ended absolutely? but that somehow in the streets of London, on the ebb and flow of things, here, there, she survived, Peter survived, lived in each other, she being part, she was positive, of the trees at home; of the house there, ugly, rambling all to bits and pieces as it was; part of people she had never met; being laid out like a mist between the people she knew best, who lifted her on their branches as she had seen the trees lift the mist, but it spread ever so far, her life, herself. But what was she dreaming as she looked into Hatchards’ shop window? What was she trying to recover? What image of white dawn in the country, as she read in the book spread open:

Fear no more the heat o’ the sun

Nor the furious winter’s rages

This late age of the world’s experience had bred in them all, all men and women, a well of tears” (Woolf 9).

The titular character of Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway, Clarissa, begins this passage by naming her “only gift”: a near-instinctive sense of others’ characters. She describes these instincts through a metaphor, comparing them to how a cat — an animal popularly regarded as a uniquely insightful judge of character — might respond to an unfamiliar person. For a character frequently described as the consummate hostess by family and friends, this metaphor seems to offer the reader an explanation for Clarissa’s social success. However, Woolf complicates this metaphor through her use of a semicolon, writing that, with a new person, “up went [Clarissa’s] back like a cat’s; or she purred.” Here, Clarissa’s concern about a new person is presented as her first response; her comfortable, friendly “purring” only occurs after a break in the sentence. Clarissa is fundamentally interested in people but she is also wary of them, leading the reader to wonder whether Clarissa sits entirely comfortably with human connection, even as she spends the rest of this passage considering its power.

Clarissa soon extends this idea of connecting with and impacting others into an exploration concerning legacy after death. Woolf employs anaphora to show how Clarissa interrogates herself on the question of death. “Did it matter then…did it matter that she must inevitably cease completely…did she resent it; or did it not become consoling….” The repetition of the word “did” suggests a sense of active urgency driving towards answering the question. Even more striking, once Clarissa reaches a sort of conclusion with the repetition of “did,” the sentence itself does not conclude. Clarissa rhetorically asks, “Did it not become consoling to believe that death ended absolutely? but that somehow in the streets of London, on the ebb and flow of things, here, there, she survived…” Here, the sentence structure mirrors the point that Clarissa makes about legacy. Even though the natural stop of the sentence is the question mark that follows the idea that death ends absolutely, Woolf chooses to not capitalize the “but” that would have begun the next sentence. Thus, rather than two separate sentences, the sentences merge into one and continue on: a representation of the unbroken life force flowing into legacy-after-death that Clarissa ponders. 

The notion that one can live on after death in the people and places one encountered in life is a huge part of Clarissa’s sense of the world, and very similar to what Peter describes as Clarissa’s “theory” later in the novel (153). In this passage, Clarissa imagines herself after death as a mist laid out “between the people she knew best, who lifted her on their branches.” Beyond the obvious connotation of being lifted towards Heaven and physically supported by the loved ones left behind after death, this imagery of mist is powerful when trying to understand Clarissa’s ideas about death and legacy. On the one hand, mist acts as a blanket covering the trees here, evoking a sense of comfort or of peace for loved ones. However, there is also a strong thread running through this image that Clarissa’s legacy might not be the comfort she imagines — rather, it comes “between the people she knew best,” acting as an obscuring agent more than as a peaceful one. Just as Peter struggles to interpret Clarissa throughout the novel, here too there is a suggestion that Clarissa’s legacy after death might be in forcing the “people she knew best” into futile efforts to comprehend her (after all, they are not called the ‘people who knew her best’). As with the cat metaphor that begins this passage, here too human connection serves as a stressor as well as a boon.

All of this musing about death and legacy brings the reader to the conclusion of the passage, in which Clarissa’s eye is drawn to a quote from a book in the window of Hatchards. It reads, “Fear no more the heat o’ the sun / Nor the furious winter’s rages,” pulled from Shakespeare’s Cymbeline. It is an excerpt of a song that Guiderius sings to two dead bodies at his feet, Cloten and Imogen (disguised as the page Fidele). The song looks at death through a lens of hope, and uses apostrophe to tell the dead to rejoice because they have escaped the many fears life presents, like the heat of the sun or the raging winter. Once again, Clarissa is drawn towards death as a welcome escape from life’s challenges. The allusion to Cymbeline also serves another purpose, though this interpretation is admittedly more of a stretch. In Cymbeline, both Cloten and Imogen lie dead, but Cloten is genuinely dead while Imogen merely appears dead, but is actually only temporarily weakened by the effects of poison (Act IV, Scene 2). These characters can be read as doubles of Septimus and Clarissa. Despite how Septimus and Clarissa are linked as two liminal figures, existing between life and death, only Septimus actually dies in the book. Crucially, even at this early stage in the novel (before the reader has been officially introduced to Septimus), he still casts a subtle shadow over Clarissa’s meditation on what death may actually offer to a sufferer.

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Journeying to Red Lion Street: An Errand-Boy’s Holborn Adventure

“More laudanum and some opium, quick!” were the last words you heard before you were hustled outside, handed your cap and tossed some coins. You barely register the click of the door closing behind you as you survey the bustling Gray’s Inn Road and hurry your way up the street toward Theobalds Road. Although you were initially glad to be rid of the stench and filth of the Royal Free Hospital’s dysentery quarters, your nose is soon overwhelmed by the foul smell of the horse dung and urine you slosh through on the streets. As you come across a gaggle of boys your age trying in vain to dodge the oncoming carriages and scoop up horse droppings, you feel a new wave of appreciation for your position with Dr. Marsden and pick up your pace.

A left on Theobalds Road and you suddenly have an unobstructed view of Gray’s Inn Fields, and your favorite gardens and walkways in the area. Briefly tempted to dally with the strolling masses enjoying the day, you trudge on and soon turn onto Red Lion Street. You immediately get caught up in the huddled mass of people outside your destination: L.W ROE, Chemist. Shouting, “Urgent order, Royal Free Hospital!” you shove your way through children in line for the new shipment of Ayer’s Cherry Pectoral as well as a few coughing old women, desperate for chlorodyne. Once you get to the counter, you are immediately serviced by the chemist’s apprentice, long-familiar with your face as the Hospital errand boy. He wraps your laudanum and opium (the cheap, varnish-coated kind) in brown parchment and you head back outside.

A view from the street of the chemist and the tailor (both far left) and the surrounding buildings on Red Lion Street.

Finished with your errand sooner than expected, you contemplate whether you have time to check out Furnival’s Inn on High Holborn (you heard Charles Dickens might be back in residence) but quickly think better of it. Instead, you opt to venture further down Red Lion Street. A few buildings down you marvel at the shining looking glasses in a shop window. Pressing your nose to the window and peering inside, you can see a beautiful young woman admiring a delicate handheld mirror and chatting with the shop owner while her maid waits patiently. You watch her until the shop owner spies you and lets out an angry exclamation as he storms towards the door. Time to go, you think, and walk briskly back the way you came.

A map of the route (in blue) taken by the errand boy from the Royal Free Hospital to Red Lion Street (drawings done on Edward Stanford’s map of central London). The pink “X” represents the location of the Royal Free Hospital while the orange “X” represents the block of stores (the chemist, the looking glass store and the tailor) on Red Lion Street.

Before you turn back onto Theobalds Road, you pause at the tailor’s storefront. Looking down at your coat, torn at the cuffs and stained with the soot that permeates the air, you long for one of the stylish coats with glossy buttons featured prominently in the window. A crack of a driver’s whip brings you out of your daydream — you stood mesmerized in front of the tailor’s for far too long! Tucking your package of medicine into your chest, you race back to the Hospital, praying you return fast enough to not get your ears boxed. 

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Sluggish Growth and Rapid Decline: The Population of Holborn from 1801-1890

Over the course of the 1800s, Holborn District experienced a period of steady population growth followed by a period of population decline, resulting in a net loss of a little over 5,000 people from 1801-1890. The district did not experience any real periods of rapid growth compared to other metropolitan districts. Although the population in the area grew steadily from 1801-1850, the decade of greatest growth only entailed a 9.13% increase in population from 1811-1820 (from 48,828 to 53,288 people). Other decades of growth varied between around 5% growth to as low as 1.69% growth from 1821-1830.

By 1850 the period of population growth was done and, unlike its steady growth intervals, the district began to experience a relatively steep decline in population. What started as a 4.96% decrease from 1851-1860 (59,567 to 56,612 people) became a 10.48% decrease in population from 1861-1871 and, even more dramatically, an 18.56% decrease in population from 1871-1881 (a loss of over 9,000 people). A relatively small district, Holborn started the century in the highest category for population density and, by 1890, slipped to the second-highest category for population density.

There are a couple factors to consider when looking at these fascinating population trends in Holborn. Compared to some of its neighboring districts, Holborn did not experience a period of incredibly rapid population growth. One possible reason for this might have been the Mendicity Society, an institution mentioned in my previous post and which entered the district early in the century. The Society would give out tickets to beggars, who could then travel to the Society building and use the tickets to apply for food, work or other aid. One important condition often attached to this charity was that the beggar then leave the Holborn district. While it seems unlikely that this kind of system could entirely account for why Holborn’s population growth was relatively sluggish, a steady flow of beggars out of the district due to the Mendicity Society’s efforts might have played a role in offsetting the population growth generated by migrants moving into the area.

A more important factor at play in the population change of Holborn District was the construction of Farringdon Street Station, the terminus of the world’s first underground railway (the Metropolitan Railway). This train line was crucial in facilitating the move of London’s metropolitan poor to the suburbs in search of better housing, and it appears that the residents of Holborn were among the most eager to make the suburban flight. The Railway opened in 1863, almost exactly coinciding with the beginning of Holborn’s rapid decline in population. Additionally, the creation of the Metropolitan Railway led to the destruction of thousands of homes along its route. The construction of Farringdon Street Station may have been similarly disruptive to the part of Holborn District that surrounded it as inhabitants either had to grow accustomed to a suddenly busy neighborhood with hordes of train passengers or relocate entirely.

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From the Workhouse to Bed Rest: The Rise of Free, Specialized Hospitals in Holborn District

Compared to the other metropolitan work districts of London, Holborn District had scant resources to support the urban poor early in the 1800s. From 1801-1810, the only institution in the district was the Grays Inn Road Workhouse which — alongside providing shelter and work to the poor — was an institution especially ripe for exploitation of the poor, who often were forced to live (and work) in underfunded, cramped conditions with limited food. From 1811-1820, the institutional support for the Holborn poor was barely improved with the addition of the Mendicity Society, which provided the general public with tickets to give to beggars, who could then bring the tickets to the Society building and apply for relief, food or work. Like a workhouse, this institution provided imperfect aid to beggars, who would have to travel to the Society headquarters and apply only for the chance to receive aid. Sometimes the beggars would only receive aid if they agreed to leave Holborn District.

A view of Furnival’s Inn, located on the busy Holborn thoroughfare and close to Holborn’s Field Lane Refuge prior to the unisex refuge’s move to Saffron Hill in 1866.

But, although it began the century as a district that largely lacked adequate institutions to serve the poor, Holborn soon featured some new institutions with better aid mechanisms. From 1821-1830, the Royal Free Hospital became a fixture in the district and provided free medical services to anyone. Soon a women’s refuge that housed destitute girls and assisted them with finding work emerged and, by 1850, Holborn also contained the London Homeopathic Hospital, a unisex refuge, and a religious mission to aid the deaf and dumb. The shift towards charitable organizations that were more clearly built to unconditionally serve the urban poor was noticeable. 

The most interesting change in the latter half of the century for the district was the increase in specialized hospitals in the area. By 1860 the National Hospital for the Paralysed and Epileptic as well as the London Infirmary for Diseases of the Legs were present in the district and, by 1890, these medical institutions were also joined by the Alexandra Institution for the Blind, St. Paul’s Hospital (which primarily treated venereal disease), the Italian Hospital and Alexandra Hospital for Children with Hip Disease. 

The rise of these specialty hospitals raises some interesting demographic questions. For example, although the Italian Hospital served all patients, it prioritized Italian patients, leading one to wonder whether it was located near an area that Italian migrants flocked to. These hospitals also give insight into the unique medical needs of the London population. While a whole hospital wouldn’t be dedicated to children with hip disease today, hip disease was common with the tuberculosis that ravaged Victorian London. Wealthy families could afford to bring a doctor to their houses, but poorer families needed a hospital for their children’s diseases. It is striking that a district which started the 1800s with only a workhouse to serve the poor would end the century with a multitude of hospitals that catered to poor, sick Holborn residents and — rather than force them to work — actually allowed them a sponsor-funded bed and some rest.

Posted on Alex Gjaja

Rijeka, Croatia

When most people think of Croatia, they think of Game of Thrones and of Dubrovnik’s — King’s Landing in the popular television series — famous white stucco houses with red-tiled roofs. For me, the small, coastal country of Croatia is even more special. It is the country my grandmother is from, the country most of my extended relatives still live in, and the country I visit most in my travels. 

In my opinion, Croatia’s best feature is not the well-known Dubrovnik, which is both plagued by and reliant on high levels of tourism and cruise ships. Instead, the lesser-known Rijeka, home to my great-uncle and the rest of my family, is the city that most feels like home in a country that is alternately familiar and utterly foreign to me. Wandering the streets eating ćevapčići, shopping in the neighboring town of Opatija, spending days on my great-uncle’s small sailboat — in my mind, Rijeka will always be a sunny city of delicious fried fish, barely plausible family folklore and constant laughter. Although I am currently trapped inside and listening to snow pelt the window of my dorm room, I still can’t help but smile when I think about Rijeka (and begin counting down the days until I feel that sun again!).