Barbican Living
Bedlam and the 18th century
Beyond the Barbican was the swamp into which the City sewers flowed, called Moor Fields, or “the Great Fen”. Little by little it was drained in the Middle Ages. Moor Gate was created in the city wall to allow traffic beyond the traditional City boundaries into Moor Fields.
By the 17th century Moor Fields had been successfully drained and it became a pleasure ground where people could wander and enjoy entertainments such as wrestling and boxing matches, cudgel fights, jugglers, ballad singers, Punch shows, and the public whipping of thieves. Samuel Pepys records making visits there. One of the main attractions were the lunatics, displayed in cages in The Bethlehem Hospital For Lunatics (or Bedlam, for short) at Moorgate.
In the 18th century the railings round Bedlam became the centre for small businesses. Second-hand bookstalls lined the perimeter of the hospital. Broadsheets were displayed on the railings. Ballads were hung up on lines strung between trees.
For the whole of the 18th century, much of the Barbican remained a slum area. William Hogarth owned a business as an engraver in Long Lane. He portrayed the teeming area in “Gin Lane”. There were numerous doss-houses full of Irish vagrants who paid a penny a night to sleep on bails of straw, bitten by rats.
In the second half of the century, businesses began to move into the area. In 1750, Samuel Whitbread bought the King’s Head brewery in Chiswell Street, which is still there today. His main product was porter, a dark ale recently invented, which took its name from the Smithfield porters with whom it was particularly popular. George III and Queen Charlotte toured the premises in 1787. George Seddon, moved into London House in Aldersgate Street, and set up a furniture business there which soon became the largest furniture-making firm in London, employing 400 apprentices.
There were some civic improvements. There were no street lights. An attempt had been made to provide these in 1684 but the fat used was derived from animals' intestines which didn’t work well. In 1734 some permanent lighting was introduced which made the area slightly safer at night.
Each house was required by law to light the street in front from dusk till curfew on dark nights (from the second night after the full moon to the seventh night after the new moon) which they did by candles in a lamp. But in the 1740s the City began providing street lighting. This consisted of oil lamps about thirty five yards apart.
Poverty bred unrest. In 1780 the anti-Catholic “Gordon Riots” irrupted into seven days of violence. The homes of Catholics were looted, priests were beaten, and in Golden Lane a tavern and a pawnbroker’s shop were destroyed. The dead bodies were flung into the Fleet Ditch.
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