How the west end was won: The struggle to remove street barriers in Victorian London

Journal of Historical Geography

Volumn 19, Issue 3, 1993, Pages 265-277

  Atkins, P J ^a  

^a DURHAM UNIVERSITY   (United Kingdom)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

ELITE DOMINANCE; HISTORICAL GEOGRAPHY; NINETEENTH CENTURY; PUBLIC PROTEST; RESIDENTIAL DISTRICT; SOCIAL SPACE; STREET BARRIER;

UK, ENGLAND, LONDON, WEST END;

EID: 0027725769     PISSN: 03057488     EISSN: 10958614     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1006/jhge.1993.1017     Document Type: Article

References (72)

1. Camden Estate, St Pancras Circa 1823. Quoted in Return of all gates, bars, rails and posts, situate on private property in the metropolis, which obstruct the free passage of vehicles in the streets, with the authority under which they claim their right, and the regulations which govern them, British Parliamentary Papers (hereafter BPP) 1882 (369) lxi. 355
2. P. J. Atkins, The spatial configuration of class solidarity in London’s West End 1792-1939 Urban History Yearbook 17 (1990) 36-65
3. H. Lefebvre, The production of space (Oxford 1991)
4. H. Lefebvre, The production of space (Oxford 1991), 85, 109
5. H. Lefebvre, The production of space (Oxford 1991), 143
6. M. J. Daunton, House and home in the Victorian city: working class housing 1850-1914 (London 1983) 15
7. D. J. Olsen, Town planning in London: the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries (New Haven 1964)
8. D. J. Olsen, The growth of Victorian London (London 1976)
9. For other studies of contests for the appropriation of space, see D. Harvey, Consciousness and the urban experience: studies in the history and theory of capitalist urbanization (Baltimore 1985)
10. M. Harrison, Symbolism, ritualism and the location of the crowds in early nineteenth century English towns, in D. Cosgrove and S. Daniels (Eds), The iconography of landscape (Cambridge 1988) 194-213
11. P. Jackson, Street life: the politics of Carnival Society and Space 6 (1988) 213-27
12. P. Jackson, The politics of the streets: a geography of Caribana Political Geography 11 (1992) 130-51
13. P. G. Goheen, Parading: a lively tradition in early Victorian Toronto, in A. R. H. Baker and G. Biger (Eds), Ideology and landscape in historical perspective (Cambridge 1992) 330-51
14. P. G. Goheen, The ritual of the streets in mid-nineteenth-century Toronto Society and Space 11 (forthcoming 1993)
15. Paving Commission Minutes 4, 324 (1822), quoted in Olsen, Town planning in London, 147
16. Daily Telegraph 7 August 1874, p. 3
17. A summons was taken out against the driver at Bow Street Court, but he died before the hearing. His co-defendants were bound over to keep the peace for three months in a £10 surety. Report of inquest on George Rumsey, held on 8 August 1874 in Paddington. Transcript in Bedford Estate Archives, Woburn Abbey
18. For instance one letter, dated 10 April 1888, complaining that entry was refused to a hearse picking up a body from Taviton Street. Bedford Estate Archives, box marked “bars and gates”
19. M. Draper, Bloomsbury gates and bars: the maintenance of tranquillity on the Bedford estates Camden History Review 12 (1984) 2-5
20. M. Searle, Turnpikes and toll-bars vol. 2 (London 1930) 636
21. Select Committee on toll bridges (River Thames), BPP 1876 (244) xiv. 435-554
22. Select Committee on the toll bridges (River Thames) bill, BPP 1876 (328) xiv. 555-70
23. Select Committee on the metropolitan toll bridges bill, BPP 1877 (156) xiv. 1-36
24. Metropolis Toll Bridges Act (1877) 40 & 41 Vic., cap. 99. Southwark Bridge had been freed in 1865, Kingston 1870, Kew and Henley 1873, Hampton Court 1876
25. Searle, 40 & 41 Vic., cap. 99. Southwark Bridge had been freed in 1865, Kingston 1870, Kew and Henley 1873, Hampton Court 1876, passim
26. Greater London History Library: Metropolitan Board of Works, Minutes of Proceedings (hereafter MBWMOP) 11 April 1856, 106- The Times 14 April 1856, 11
27. P. J. Atkins, Forbidden ground: the gates and bars of Victorian London (forthcoming 1993)
28. P. J. Atkins, Freeing the streets of Victorian London History Today 43 (March 1993) 5-8
29. Hansard’s Parliamentary Debates 192 (14/5/1868) 243
30. & 31 Vic., cap. 134, sect. 7. No cattle were to be driven in the street 10 am-7 pm without police permission
31. Sources: MBWMOP, passim; London County Council Minutes of Proceedings (hereafter LCCMOP), passim; St Pancras Vestry Minutes (hereafter SPVM), passim
32. Greater London History Library: Works and General Purposes Committee, MBW, Reports of the Solicitor and Superintending Architect, in reference to the existing bars and street obstructions in the metropolis (1867); Return of all gates, op. cit.; Greater London Record Office, LCC/MIN/9107: Return of the existing obstructions to traffic in the London thoroughfares, submitted by Highways Committee 19 July 1892, Papers of the LCC Parliamentary Committee; LCCMOP 29 June 1897, 727
33. MBWMOP 25 October 1878
34. MBWMOP 25 April 1884, 695; 2 May 1884. It is interesting to note that not all cabmen were in favour of abolition. The Amalgamated Cab Drivers, Cab Proprietors and Tradesmen’s Society lobbied in favour of retention in order to keep their wealthy clients in central London
35. The Times 11 October 1879, 10
36. University College London, Manuscripts Room, College Correspondence, 29 July 1879
37. The Times 11 October 1879, 10 and 18 October, 11; MBWMOP 17 October 1879, 458-60; University College London, Record Office, Council Minutes, 1 November 1879; SPVM 17 December 1879. This bar eventually disappeared in 1893. SPVM passim; University College London, Record Office, Council Minutes, passim; The Times 27 April 1893, 6
38. W. R. Merrington, University College Hospital and its medical school: a history (London 1976) 15
39. SPVM 19 November and 3 December 1884; The North-Western District Advertiser, The Camden and Kentish Towns, Hampstead, Highgate, Holloway and St Pancras Gazette (22/11/1884)4
40. SPVM 8 April 1885
41. H. Hobhouse, Thomas Cubitt: master builder (London 1971) 74, 124-6
42. MBWMOP 18 October 1860, 36
43. BPP 1882 (369) Ixi. 365-66. One can only assume that the Marquis felt able to make this statement because there was no immediate threat to property values on his West End estates. He was forced into a form of retraction when he later informed the Vestry that, “as they had declined to avail themselves of his consent, he should hold himself entitled to give or withhold consent on any future occasion”. The Times 10 February 1868, 11
44. A copy of these minutes is in the Bedford Estate Archives
45. MBWMOP 5 May 1871, 628; 19 May 1871, 699; 16 June 1871, 810
46. The Times 9 May 1885, 12
47. The Times 9 May 1885, 12
48. MBW MOP 6 March 1885, 420-1
49. Hansard’s Parliamentary Debates 4th series, 2 (1893) c. 1525
50. Letter dated 9 November 1875. The regulations for the Gordon Street gate were changed in January 1876, to allow access to empty cabs. Bedford Estate Archives and Walter Scadding in evidence. House of Lords Record Office: House of Commons Select Committee on Private Bills (Group A), London Streets (Removal of Gates) Bill, House of Commons Books of Evidence (Private Bills) vol. 41 (1890) (hereafter HCSC 1890)
51. Oakley Square was 0-5 km north of the Euston Road, embattled by deteriorating property on the neighbouring Somers and Southampton estates
52. Letters preserved in the Bedford Estate Archives
53. SPVM 4 July 1888; LCCMOP 5 March 1889, 44-5
54. LCCMOP 9 April 1889, 153; 21 May, 331; 23 July, 625-6
55. House of Lords Record Office: HCSC 1890; Minutes of Proceedings before the Select Committee of the House of Lords on the London Streets (Removal of Gates) Bill, House of Lords Books of Evidence, vol. 13 (1890)
56. London Streets (Removal of Gates) Act, 53 & 54 Vic., cap. ccxlvii
57. House of Lords Record Office: House of Commons Select Committee on Private Bills (Group A), London Streets (Removal of Gates etc.) Bill, House of Commons Books of Evidence (Private Bills) vol. 17 (1893)
58. Minutes of Proceedings before the Select Committee of the House of Lords on the London Streets (Removal of Gates etc.) Bill, House of Lords Books of Evidence (1893)
59. London Streets (Removal of Gates, Bars, &c) Act, 1893, 56 & 57 Vic., cap. Ixvi
60. I am grateful to an anonymous referee for reminding me of the contemporary significance of the compensation issue
61. & 58 Vic., cap. 213, sect. 199
62. Westacott was acting with an overwhelming mandate from his Vestry. He estimated that only ten of the 120 vestrymen favoured retention of the gates and bars. HCSC 1890.
63. F. Sheppard, St Pancras, in D. Owen, The government of Victorian London 1855-1889 (Cambridge, Mass. 1982) 284
64. F. Sheppard, St Pancras, in D. Owen, The government of Victorian London 1855-1889 (Cambridge, Mass. 1982), 293
65. J. Davis, Reforming London: the London government problem, 1855-1900 (Oxford 1988) chapter 2
66. M. Castells, The city and the grassroots (London 1983)
67. Sheppard, The city and the grassroots (London 1983), 287
68. Owen, The city and the grassroots (London 1983), 217
69. J. L. Cohen and A. Araio, Civil society and political theory (Cambridge, Mass. 1992)
70. The Daily Telegraph 28 July 1882, 5
71. Atkins, The spatial configuration of class solidarity
72. E. W. Soja, Postmodern geographies: the reassertion of space in critical social theory (London 1989) 129