page_title: Jacob's Island
section_title: Slum
hierarchical_section_title: Jacob's Island / History / Slum
caption_attribution_description: A drawing and map of Jacob's Island, a notorious slum from Victorian England, today a part of Bermondsey, London
context_page_description: Jacob's Island was a notorious slum in Bermondsey, London, in the 19th century. It was located on the south bank of the River Thames, approximately delineated by the modern streets of Mill Street, Bermondsey Wall West, George Row and Wolseley Street. Jacob's Island developed a reputation as one of the worst slums in London, and was popularised by the Charles Dickens novel Oliver Twist, published shortly before the area was cleared in the 1860s.
context_section_description: Bermondsey was historically a rural parish on the outskirts of London until the 17th century when the area began to be developed as a wealthy suburb following the Great Fire of London. By the 19th century, the once affluent parts of Bermondsey had experienced a serious decline, and became the site of notorious slums with the arrival of industrialisation, docks and migrant housing, especially along the riverside. 
  The most notorious of the slums was known as Jacob's Island, with the boundary approximately the confluence of the Thames and subterranean River Neckinger, at St Saviour's Dock across from Shad Thames, to the west, a tidal ditch just west of George Row to the east, and another tidal ditch just north of London Street (now Wolseley Street) to the south. It was a particularly squalid rookery, and described as "The very capital of cholera" and "The Venice of drains" by The Morning Chronicle in 1849.
  In the 1840s it became "a site of radical activity", and, after attention from novelists Charles Dickens and Charles Kingsley, joined other London areas of "literary-criminal notoriety" which emerged "as symbols of a developing urban counterculture". The 19th century social researcher Henry Mayhew described Jacob's Island as a "pest island" with "literally the smell of a graveyard" and "crazy and rotten bridges" crossing the tidal ditches, with drains from houses discharging directly into them, and the water harbouring masses of rotting weed, animal carcasses and dead fish. He describes the water being "as red as blood" in some parts, as a result of pollutant tanning agents from the leather dressers in the area.
caption: An 1813 map of Jacob's Island
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