A rookery is a colloquial English term given in the 18th and 19th centuries to a city slum occupied by poor people and frequently also by

criminal In ordinary language, a crime is an unlawful act punishable by a state or other authority. The term ''crime'' does not, in modern criminal law, have any simple and universally accepted definition,Farmer, Lindsay: "Crime, definitions of", in Ca ...

s and prostitutes. Such areas were overcrowded, with low-quality housing and little or no sanitation. Local industry such as coal plants and gasholders polluted the rookery air. Poorly constructed dwellings, built with multiple stories and often crammed into any area of open ground, created densely-populated areas of gloomy, narrow streets and alleyways. By many, these parts of the city were sometimes deemed "uninhabitable".

Etymology

The term rookery originated because of the perceived similarities between a city slum and the nesting habits of the rook, a bird in the

crow A crow is a bird of the genus '' Corvus'', or more broadly a synonym for all of ''Corvus''. Crows are generally black in colour. The word "crow" is used as part of the common name of many species. The related term "raven" is not pinned scientific ...

family. Rooks nest in large, noisy colonies consisting of multiple nests, often untidily crammed into a close group of treetops called a rookery. The word might also be linked to the slang expression ''to rook'' (meaning 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 ''rookery'' 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".

Creation of a rookery

An area might become a rookery when criminals would inhabit dead-end streets for their strategic use in isolation. In other cases, industry that produced noise or odours would drive away inhabitants that would not settle for such an environment. These types of industry could be "some foul factory, a gas-works, the debris of a street market, or an open sewer," which often employed those who lived within the rookery. Another factor which created rookeries was the lack of building regulations, or rather the ignorance of such by construction workers. Middle class houses were too large for single working-class families, so they were often sub-divided to accommodate multiple households - a factor that ran these homes into noise and ruin faster than the new houses built without regulations.

Rookery inhabitants

The people in a rookery were often immigrants, criminals, or working class. Notable groups of immigrants who inhabited rookeries were Jewish and Irish. The jobs available to rookery occupants were undesirable jobs such as rag-picking, street sweeping, or waste removal.

London rookeries

Famous rookeries include the St Giles area of central London, which existed from the 17th century and into Victorian times, an area described by Henry Mayhew in about 1860 in ''A Visit to the Rookery of St Giles and its Neighbourhood''. The St Giles' slum,

Bermondsey Bermondsey () is a district in southeast London, part of the London Borough of Southwark, England, southeast of Charing Cross. To the west of Bermondsey lies Southwark, to the east Rotherhithe and Deptford, to the south Walworth and Peckham, ...

's Jacob's Island, and the Old Nichol Street Rookery in the

East End of London The East End of London, often referred to within the London area simply as the East End, is the historic core of wider East London, east of the Roman and medieval walls of the City of London and north of the River Thames. It does not have univ ...

were demolished as part of London

slum clearance Slum clearance, slum eviction or slum removal is an urban renewal strategy used to transform low income settlements with poor reputation into another type of development or housing. This has long been a strategy for redeveloping urban communities; ...

and

urban redevelopment Urban renewal (also called urban regeneration in the United Kingdom and urban redevelopment in the United States) is a program of land redevelopment often used to address urban decay in cities. Urban renewal involves the clearing out of blighte ...

projects in the late 19th century. In 1850, the English novelist

Charles Dickens Charles John Huffam Dickens (; 7 February 1812 – 9 June 1870) was an English writer and social critic. He created some of the world's best-known fictional characters and is regarded by many as the greatest novelist of the Victorian er ...

was given a guided tour of several dangerous rookeries by " Inspector Field, the formidable chief detective of Scotland Yard". A party of six—Dickens, Field, an assistant commissioner, and three lower ranks (probably armed)—made their way into the Rat's Castle, backed by a squad of local police within whistling distance. The excursion started in the evening and lasted until dawn. They went through St Giles and even worse slums, in the Old Mint, along the

Ratcliffe Highway The Highway, part of which was formerly known as the Ratcliffe Highway, is a road in the London Borough of Tower Hamlets, in the East End of London. The route dates back to Roman times. In the 19th century it had a reputation for vice and crim ...

and

Petticoat Lane Petticoat Lane Market is a fashion and clothing market in Spitalfields, London. It consists of two adjacent street markets. Wentworth Street Market is open six days a week and Middlesex Street Market is open on Sunday only. The modern market ...

. The results of this and other investigations came out in novels, short stories, and straight journalism, of which Dickens wrote a great deal. '' Oliver Twist'' (1838) features the rookery at Jacob's Island: In ''

Sketches by Boz ''Sketches by "Boz," Illustrative of Every-day Life and Every-day People'' (commonly known as ''Sketches by Boz'') is a collection of short pieces Charles Dickens originally published in various newspapers and other periodicals between 1833 and ...

'' (1839 ed.), Dickens described a rookery: In ''The Rookeries of London'' (1850) Thomas Beames also described one:

Kellow Chesney Kellow Chesney (3 March 1914 – July 2004) was a journalist, publisher's reader, editor and writer. His most notable book was ''The Victorian Underworld'', first published in 1970. The writer William Gibson has stated that his depiction of t ...

gives a whole chapter to the rookeries of London. At their zenith, they were a problem that seemed impossible to solve, yet eventually they did decline. Changes in the law, the growing effectiveness of the police, slum clearances, and perhaps the growing prosperity of the economy gradually had their effect.

Other rookeries

The King Street Rookery in Southampton was also notorious during the early 19th century. The term has also been used in other parts of the English-speaking world, including the United States and Australia.see, for example
Sydney's Lost Streets
accessed 8 February 2007

References

Sources

* {{Housing in the United Kingdom Slang Housing in London Penology Social history of London