Rookery (slum)

A rookery (also sometimes described as a stew) was the colloquial British English name historically given to a city slum or ghetto frequented by poor people, criminals and prostitutes. Such areas were often overcrowded, with poor quality housing and little or no sanitation; poorly constructed dwellings were often crammed into any area of open ground, creating densely-populated areas of gloomy narrow streets and alleyways.

The term may be linked with the slang expression "to rook", to cheat or steal, a verb well established in the 16th century and associated with the supposedly thieving nature of the rook bird. The term was first used in print by the poet George Galloway in 1792 to describe "a cluster of mean tenements densely populated by people of the lowest class". [ [http://www.worldwidewords.org/topicalwords/tw-roo1.htm Worldwide Words] ]

London rookeries

Famous rookeries include the St Giles' area of central London from the 17th century through early Victorian times, an area described by Henry Mayhew in about 1860 in "A Visit to the Rookery of St Giles and its Neighbourhood" [ [http://learning.north.londonmet.ac.uk/history/Mayhew.pdf "A Visit to the Rookery of St Giles and its Neighbourhood"] ] . This, Bermondsey's Jacob's Island and the Old Nichol Street Rookery in the East End of London were demolished as part of London slum clearance and urban redevelopment projects in the late 19th century.

The Rookery of St. Giles is where the hero of A Study in Emerald, a short story by Neil Gaiman, and his sidekick reputedly take shelter after committing their justifiable crime.

English novelist Charles Dickens' "Oliver Twist" (1838) features the rookery at Jacob's Island:

:"... crazy wooden galleries common to the backs of half a dozen houses, with holes from which to look upon the slime beneath; windows, broken and patched, with poles thrust out, on which to dry the linen that is never there; rooms so small, so filthy, so confined, that the air would seem to be too tainted even for the dirt and squalor which they shelter; wooden chambers thrusting themselves out above the mud and threatening to fall into it - as some have done; dirt-besmeared walls and decaying foundations, every repulsive lineament of poverty, every loathsome indication of filth, rot, and garbage: all these ornament the banks of Jacob's Island."

In "Sketches by Boz" (1839), Dickens again described a rookery:

:"Wretched houses with broken windows patched with rags and paper: every room let out to a different family, and in many instances to two or even three ... filth everywhere — a gutter before the houses and a drain behind — clothes drying and slops emptying, from the windows; girls of fourteen or fifteen, with matted hair, walking about barefoot, and in white great-coats, almost their only covering; boys of all ages, in coats of all sizes and no coats at all; men and women, in every variety of scanty and dirty apparel, lounging, scolding, drinking, smoking, squabbling, fighting, and swearing."

Thomas Beame's "The Rookeries of London" (1850) also described one:

:"The Rookery... was like an honeycomb, perforated by a number of courts and blind alleys, cul de sac, without any outlet other than the entrance. Here were the lowest lodging houses in London, inhabited by the various classes of thieves common to large cities… were banded together… Because all are taken in who can pay their footing, the thief and the prostitute are harboured among those who only crime is poverty, and there is thus always a comparatively secure retreat for him who has outraged his country's laws. Sums here are paid, a tithe of which, if well laid out, would provide at once a decent and an ample lodging for the deserving poor; and that surplus,which might add to the comfort and better the condition of the industrious, finds its way into the pocket of the middleman…"

Other rookeries

The King Street Rookery in Southampton was also notorious during the early 19th century. [ [http://www.plimsoll.org/Resources/SCCArchivesServices/2304.asp Southampton City Council Archive Services] ; accessed 8 February 2007]

The term has also been used in other parts of the English-speaking world, including the US [see, for example: "Tenements" in Time magazine, April 2, 1934 [http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,747330,00.html] ; accessed 8 February 2007] and Australia. [see, for example: [http://www.cityofsydney.nsw.gov.au/history/sydneystreets/Lost_Streets/Laneways/default.html Sydney's Lost Streets] ; accessed 8 February 2007]

References