Dickensian Hull

I was recently looking at Victorian photographs of places that featured in Dickens' novels - ancient inns, poor homes crowded around dark alleyways, scenes of the riverside, tumbledown town houses of another era. Dickens vividly portrayed the other, darker side of a prospering city.

In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries Hull was also a city on the up but these pictures portrays the life of its less fortunate inhabitants and a world that Dickens could easily have set one of this novels in.

Chaffers Alley at the turn of the 19th century

Brown's Entry in the Old Town.

By the mid 19th century the merchants had moved out of their riverside houses in the over-crowded Old Town to smart new houses in newly developed areas like Anlaby Road and Coltman Street. Every narrow street in the Old Town had numerous alleyways and yards leading off it where ancient dwellings were packed so close together that some never received direct sunlight.

 There were a number of 'hospitals' around the old town which were really almshouses for the elderly and infirm, enabling some to avoid the Hull Union workhouse off Anlaby Road. This is Crowle's Hospital on Sewer Lane, founded by merchant George Crowle in 1661. Some, such as Gregg's Hospital, were of much older date - founded in the 1400s.

High Street

Although many mediaeval buildings had been pulled down in the eighteenth century to make way for the fine Georgian town houses which now characterise the Old Town, there were still many with their jettied stories that projected over the narrow streets.

 Several 17th century merchant houses still stood on the High Street, mostly in a dilapidated state, amongst fine buildings of a later date like Maister House which now belongs to the National Trust. Of these, only Wilberforce House survives to the present day - victims of changing tastes and the bombardment of the Old Town in two world wars. This is Crowle House, High Street - built 1664. Most people in the town would depend directly or indirectly on this European trade for their living and the merchants were the most powerful men in the town. They were the councillors,  aldermen and MPs in a town once notorious for political corruption. They were on boards of schools, the hospital and the workhouse and of the tram company, docks company and railway.  They governed the police and if you were up before the beak there was more than a passing chance the magistrate would be a merchant too.

The Town Docks and the Old Harbour were still the hub of the city, crammed full of tall ships, steamers and barges. Sailors from Hamburg, Antwerp, Rotterdam, Dunkirk, the Baltic and  would go ashore into the many taverns on the riverside along with the local sailors. The taverns of High Street and Trippett were a frequent target of the press gangs.