page_title: Limehouse Cut
section_title: St Anne's Street Rookery
hierarchical_section_title: Limehouse Cut / Social and industrial history / Rookeries / St Anne's Street Rookery
caption_attribution_description: English: The St Anne's Rookery, Limehouse was a notorious criminal slum. This newspaper article is self-explanatory.
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: Across Burdett Road was St Anne's Rookery, "a vile quarter lying between Limehouse Church and Limehouse-cut".  Marked black on Charles Booth's poverty maps — the colour coding denoted "Lowest class.  Vicious, semi-criminal" — it was one of the few slums alongside the Cut; usually, the land was too valuable for housing.
  This notorious enclave, into which a policeman might be dragged by a mob, continually featured in newspaper reports.  It included St Anne Street, where a man starved his wife in "peculiarly horrible" circumstances (1872); and Merchant's Row, where a labourer kicked his mother to death (1897).  Law enforcement could be dangerous.
caption: In St Anne's Rookery. Lloyds Weekly Newspaper, 5 October 1872.
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