Katharine Buildings were

model dwellings Model dwellings companies (MDCs) were a group of private companies in Queen Victoria, Victorian United Kingdom, Britain that sought to improve the housing conditions of the working classes by building new homes for them, at the same time receiving ...

in Cartwright Street,

Aldgate Aldgate () was a gate in the former defensive wall around the City of London. It gives its name to Aldgate High Street, the first stretch of the A11 road, which included the site of the former gate. The area of Aldgate, the most common use of ...

London London is the capital and largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary down to the North Sea, and has been a majo ...

, the first project of the philanthropically-motivated

East End Dwellings Company The East End Dwellings Company was a Victorian architecture, Victorian philanthropic model dwellings company, operating in the East End of London in the latter part of the nineteenth century. The company was founded in principle in 1882 by, among ...

. The block was built during 1884, and opened in 1885 as

model A model is an informative representation of an object, person or system. The term originally denoted the plans of a building in late 16th-century English, and derived via French and Italian ultimately from Latin ''modulus'', a measure. Models c ...

apartments for the working class. There were 628 single rooms with shared cooking and sanitary facilities, plus a top floor for the very poorest families.website of St George in the East
/ref> The buildings were named after the philanthropist

Catherine Courtney Catherine Courtney, Baroness Courtney of Penwith ( Potter; 4 April 1847 – 26 February 1929), known as Kate Courtney, was a British social worker and internationalist. Active in charitable organisations in her early life, she later campaigned w ...

. A key feature of the Buildings was the rent collection system. Whereas most

Model Dwellings Companies Model dwellings companies (MDCs) were a group of private companies in Victorian Britain that sought to improve the housing conditions of the working classes by building new homes for them, at the same time receiving a competitive rate of return o ...

employed a strict regimen of prompt rent payment, the EEDC employed female collectors following the successful schemes demonstrated by

Octavia Hill Octavia Hill (3 December 1838 – 13 August 1912) was an English Reform movement, social reformer, whose main concern was the welfare of the inhabitants of cities, especially London, in the second half of the nineteenth century. Born into a fa ...

Beatrice Potter Martha Beatrice Webb, Baroness Passfield, (née Potter; 22 January 1858 – 30 April 1943) was an English sociologist, economist, socialist, labour historian and social reformer. It was Webb who coined the term ''collective bargaining''. She ...

was employed as a principal visitor alongside Ella Pycroft,Morris, S. ''LSE Seminars: Social Policy: From the Victorians to the Present Day session 3
/ref> living in the Buildings, and the scheme was assisted by Charles Booth, Samuel Barnett,

Maurice Eden Paul Maurice Eden Paul (27 September 1865, Sturminster Marshall – 1 December 1944) was a British socialist activist, physician, writer and translator.'Paul, Maurice Eden' in ''Who Was Who'' Early life Paul was the younger son of the publisher Charl ...

, the

Charity Organisation Society The Charity Organisation Societies were founded in England in 1869 following the ' Goschen Minute' that sought to severely restrict outdoor relief distributed by the Poor Law Guardians. In the early 1870s a handful of local societies were formed w ...

and Osborne Jay. The Buildings were demolished in the 1970s and replaced with

council housing Public housing in the United Kingdom, also known as council estates, council housing, or social housing, provided the majority of rented accommodation until 2011 when the number of households in private rental housing surpassed the number in so ...

References

{{Model dwellings companies Housing in London Model dwellings

Further reading

References