Descriptive Gazetteer Entry for MILE-END-OLD-TOWN

MILE-END-OLD-TOWN, a quondam hamlet, three chapelries, parts of two other chapelries, and two subdistricts, in Stepney district, Middlesex. The quondam hamlet now forms a suburban portion of the metropolis; lies on the Eastern Counties railway and on the Regents canal, 2¼ miles ENE of St. Pauls; was once a part of the ancient parish of Stepney, but is now a separate parish for the relief of the poor; contains Mile-End r. station; and has post offices ‡ and postal pillar-boxes under London E and London NE. Acres, 681. Real property, £242,691; of which £1,300 are on the railway, and £31,000 in gas-works. Pop. in 1851,56,602; in 1861,73,064. Houses, 10,758. The ancient hamlet had a lazar house; adjoined the place of Jack Cade's encampment; made a popular demonstration, in 1642, against the royalists; and was held, in 1645, by the Parliamentarian general Essex. The present suburb includes some open or semi-rural ground, and some thoroughfares not entirely paved or lighted; and presents, in many parts, a disagreeable or inferior appearance; yet contains several handsome ranges of houses, many well built streets, and Henry, Sidney, Arbour, Trafalgar, and Tredegar squares. It is a polling-place for Middlesex; it has extensive breweries, a large distillery, floor-cloth manufactories, a tobacco pipe manufactory, and rope-walks; it shares in the traffic of the Regents canal, and has docks, timber wharfs, and corn wharfs, for conducting it; and it contains public offices, the court-house of the K. police, Beaumount's philosophical institution, the Commercial gas-works, the West Ham waterworks reservoir, one of the three Stepney workhouses, part of the City of London workhouse, an industrial school, the German Jews' hospital, the Portuguese Jews' hospital, the East London lying-in institution, Fisher's Trinity alms houses, Judge Fuller's almshouses, the Skinners', the Vintners', the Sailmakers', and the Drapers' alms houses, Cooke's seamen's alms houses, the Stepney Meeting charity school, another charity school, the East London cemetery, part of Tower Hamlet's cemetery, and three Jewish burial-grounds. The philosophical institution was built in 1841, by J. Beaumount, Esq., at a cost of £6,000; and has an endowed income of about £600 a year. The City of London workhouse stands on a plot of 4½ acres; was built in 1849, after designs by R. Tress; is an H-shaped brick edifice, in the Italian style; and has a chapel, and a campanile tower 90 feet high. The Drapers' alms houses are called also Bancroft's alms houses, include a chapel and a school, and have an endowed income of £4,078. Judge Fuller's alms houses have £50; the two charity schools have £188 and £144; and there are other charities £354.-The three chapelries are St. Philip-the-Apostle, St. Peter-Globe-road, and Holy Trinity, constituted in respectively 1836,1839, and 1841; and the two parts of chapelries are St. Thomas-Arbour-square and St. Paul-Bow-Common, constituted in 1839 and 1858. Pop. of St. Philip, 14,805; of St-Peter, 12,139; of Holy Trinity, 10,478; of the part of St. Thomas, 12,783: of the part of St. Paul, 11. The livings are all p. curacies in the diocese of London. Valne of St. Philip, £300; of St. Peter, £350;* of Holy Trinity and of St. Thomas, each £300;* of St. Paul, £150.* Patron, of the first four, the Bishop of London. There are seven dissenting chapels, and a Jews' synagogue. Two of the dissenting chapels are Independent; one of them old and large, the other built in 1866.-The two sub-districts are M. E.O. T. Western and M. E. O. T. Eastern; they jointly constitute a parochial poor law union, under the poorlaw amendment act; and they are divided by an imaginary line drawn from Old Stepney church westward, along Stepney-Green and Redman's Row, to the Mile End turnpike. Acres, of the Western sub-d., 191. Pop. in 1851,29,582; in 1861,33,747. Houses, 4,829. Acres, of the Eastern sub-d., 490. Pop. in 1851,27,020. in 1861,39,317. Houses, 5,929. The Mile-End workhouse and the part of the City of London workhouse are in the latter sub-district; and, at the census of 1861, had respectively 404 and 369 inmates. Poor rates of the union in 1863, £26,353. Marriages in 1863,802; births, 3,033,-of which 97 were illegitimate; deaths, 1,761,- of which 820 were at ages under 5 years, and 28 at ages above 85.


(John Marius Wilson, Imperial Gazetteer of England and Wales (1870-72))

Linked entities:
Feature Description: "a quondam hamlet"   (ADL Feature Type: "populated places")
Administrative units: Stepney RegD/PLU       Middlesex AncC
Place: Mile End

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