The inhabitants of Whitechapel Flashcards

All 7 cards in this deck

What was a Whitechapel lodging house?

Cheap temporary accommodation costing a few pence a night; they were overcrowded and unhygienic.

True or false? In some Whitechapel lodging houses two or three men could be charged for the same bed in one day.

True. Men slept in 8-hour shifts in a bed so owners could maximise profits.

What kind of work was available to most people in Whitechapel?

Casual, irregular and low-paid work, such as 'sweated' trades like tailoring and shoemaking, dock work and street selling.

Why did Jewish migration into Whitechapel increase during the 1880s?

Jewish people were fleeing persecution and pogroms in Russia and Eastern Europe.

What work did most Irish migrants in Whitechapel do?

Heavy labouring: many were navvies building roads and railways, or worked at the docks.

Why did lodging houses give Whitechapel a 'fluctuating population'?

Lodgers paid by the night and moved on often, so many residents had no lasting ties to their neighbours or the area, weakening the sense of community.

Where did Jewish migrants tend to live in Whitechapel by the late 1880s?

Close together in the cheapest streets, so that some parts of Whitechapel became almost entirely Jewish.