page_title: Boundary Estate
section_title: Demand for change
hierarchical_section_title: Boundary Estate / History / Demand for change
caption_attribution_description: English: Photo of Boundary Street, London, taken in 1890, part of the Old Nichol slum.
context_page_description: The Boundary Estate is a housing development in Shoreditch, formally opened in 1900, in the East End and in East London, England. It is situated in the London Borough of Tower Hamlets.
  The estate, constructed from 1890, was one of the earliest social housing schemes built by a local government authority. It was built on the site of the demolished Friars Mount rookery in the Old Nichol, with works begun by the Metropolitan Board of Works in 1893 and completed by the recently formed London County Council.
  Soil from the foundations was used to construct a mound in the middle of Arnold Circus at the centre of the development, surmounted by a still-extant bandstand. The estate consists of multi-story brick tenements radiating from the central circus, each of which bears the name of a location along the River Thames.
context_section_description: The clearance of the slum houses of the Old Nichol Street rookery was the result of an energetic campaign by the local incumbent, Reverend Osborne Jay of Holy Trinity, who arrived in the parish in December 1886. Charles Booth had already noted the extreme poverty in the area in his study of London poverty. Nearly 6,000 individuals were crammed into the packed streets. The death rate was twice that of the rest of Bethnal Green, and four times that of London. One child in four died before his or her first birthday.
  Redevelopment had been resisted by members of the Bethnal Green vestry, who owned much of the rookery, and were responsible for electing members of the Metropolitan Board of Works. The powers the vestries and board were limited to the Torrens Act and the Artisans' and Labourers' Dwellings Improvement Act 1875 which the Bethnal Green vestry refused to use.
  Jay persuaded Arthur Morrison to visit the area, and the result was the influential A Child of the Jago, a barely fictionalised account of the life of a child in the slum, re-christened by Morrison as The Jago: "What was too vile for Kate Street, Seven Dials, and Ratcliffe Highway in its worst day, what was too useless, incapable and corrupt — all that teemed on the Old Jago". Demolition actually began before the publication of the book.
  London County Council was created by the Local Government (England and Wales) Act 1888, some 53 years after other major cities had been municipalised. It took responsibility for the housing of the working classes from the Metropolitan Board of Works. In the first election, the progressives obtained a large majority. The Housing Committee secured from Parliament the Housing of the Working Classes Act 1890, which gave it powers to implement the Torrens and Cross acts, and gave legal basis for it to manage housing estates. LCC chose Boundary Street as their flagship scheme. Initially they attempted to get the private sector involved but failed. In 1893, on the back of the 1892 Blackwall Tunnel Act they gained permission from the Home Secretary, to rebuild a small section of the scheme. The principle had been established.
caption: Boundary Street 1890, three years later, the London County Council began slum clearance
exif: {}