page_title: Limehouse Cut
section_title: The Fenian Barracks
hierarchical_section_title: Limehouse Cut / Social and industrial history / Rookeries / The Fenian Barracks
caption_attribution_description: English: The slum district called the Fenian Barracks by police (marked black) was perhaps the most dangerous rookery in late Victorian London. The red arrow shows the fat refinery alongside Limehouse Cut that attracted the even more terrifying rats.
context_page_description: The Limehouse Cut is a largely straight, broad canal in the East End of London, England, which linked the lower reaches of the Lee Navigation to the River Thames. Opening on 17 September 1770, and widened for two-way traffic by 1777, it is the oldest canal in the London area. Although short, it has a diverse social and industrial history. It now connects to Limehouse Basin as a result of changes made in 1968.
  The Cut turns in a broad curve from Bow Locks, where the Lee Navigation meets Bow Creek; it then proceeds directly south-west for 1.5 miles through the London Borough of Tower Hamlets to Limehouse Basin.
context_section_description: Even more dangerous to police was the district near Stinkhouse Bridge bounded by Limehouse Cut to the south and centred on Furze Street.  Charles Booth's police informants called it the Fenian Barracks, which "sent more police to hospital than any other block in London and in which only Irish were tolerated to settle".
  George H. Duckworth, one of Booth's researchers, wrote that the Barracks was about the worst district in London — "three policemen wounded there last week".  According to his informant Inspector Carter, if they attempted an arrest "a rescue is always organized.  They fling brick bats, iron, any thing they can lay their hands on."  As was typical for rookeries, adjoining houses had internal passages designed for eluding police pursuit.  Summarised Duckworth:
  Men travel from house to house from within if chased.  A cry of police brings help from every house.  The inhabitants hustle the police, they organize rescues; not the least bit of good [using] anything less than 6 constables ... if there is any prospect of having to haul off anyone to the police station.
    In contrast, rent collectors went about the district in broad daylight wearing top hats and black coats and carrying umbrellas.
  A fat refinery alongside the canal attracted visitors who, said Inspector Carter, were more terrifying than the human inhabitants: 
  You should come down here on an early summer morning; if possible after a shower of rain; Rats, not in twos or threes or in 10s or twentys,  but in thousands and tens of thousands: the street will be covered with them, so will be the yard of the factory: rats, not small rats but big & fat, the size of cats : you knock a flagstone with your boot and away they go with a rush and a hissing sound from their feet upon the pavements that will make your blood run cold.
  The East End was surveyed again in 1929 by researchers from the London School of Economics who found that, though the level of destitution in East London was now only about one-third as high as in Charles Booth’s time, the Fenian Barracks area was still an ugly pocket of chronic poverty.
caption: The Fenian Barracks (black): the most dangerous rookery in London. The fat refinery (arrow) attracted the even more terrifying canalside rat hordes.[173]
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