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St Giles is an area in the West End 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 ...
in the
London Borough of Camden The London Borough of Camden () is a London borough in Inner London. Camden Town Hall, on Euston Road, lies north of Charing Cross. The borough was established on 1 April 1965 from the area of the former boroughs of Hampstead, Holborn, and St ...
. It gets its name from the parish church of
St Giles in the Fields St Giles in the Fields is the Anglican parish church of the St Giles district of London. It stands within the London Borough of Camden and belongs to the Diocese of London. The church, named for St Giles the Hermit, began as a monastery and ...
. The combined parishes of St Giles in the Fields and St George Bloomsbury (which was carved out of the former) were administered jointly for many centuries; leading to the conflation of the two, with much or all of St Giles usually taken to be a part of Bloomsbury. Points of interest include the church of
St Giles in the Fields St Giles in the Fields is the Anglican parish church of the St Giles district of London. It stands within the London Borough of Camden and belongs to the Diocese of London. The church, named for St Giles the Hermit, began as a monastery and ...
, Seven Dials, the
Phoenix Garden The Phoenix Garden is a local community garden in central London, England, established in 1984. Located in St Giles behind the Phoenix Theatre, within the London Borough of Camden, the Phoenix Garden is nestled between the busy Soho and Covent G ...
and
St Giles Circus St Giles Circus is a road junction in the St Giles district of the West End of London at the eastern end of Oxford Street, where it connects with New Oxford Street, Charing Cross Road and Tottenham Court Road, which it is more often referred to ...
.


History

There has been a church at St Giles since Saxon times, located beside a major highway.''London: A Biography'' (2000) Ackroyd, Peter Chatto and Windus p131-140 The hospital of St Giles, recorded c. 1120 as ''Hospitali Sancti Egidii extra Londonium'' was founded, together with a monastery and a chapel, by Queen Matilda, wife of
Henry I Henry I may refer to: 876–1366 * Henry I the Fowler, King of Germany (876–936) * Henry I, Duke of Bavaria (died 955) * Henry I of Austria, Margrave of Austria (died 1018) * Henry I of France (1008–1060) * Henry I the Long, Margrave of the No ...
.
St Giles Saint Giles (, la, Aegidius, french: Gilles), also known as Giles the Hermit, was a hermit or monk active in the lower Rhône most likely in the 6th century. Revered as a saint, his cult became widely diffused but his hagiography is mostly lege ...
(c. 650 – c. 710) was the patron saint of lepers and the hospital was home to a leper colony, the site chosen for its surrounding fields and marshes separating contagion from nearby London.
Peter Ackroyd Peter Ackroyd (born 5 October 1949) is an English biographer, novelist and critic with a specialist interest in the history and culture of London. For his novels about English history and culture and his biographies of, among others, William ...
argues that the character of vagrancy has never left the area. A village accreted to cater to the brethren and patients. The crossroads which is now
St Giles Circus St Giles Circus is a road junction in the St Giles district of the West End of London at the eastern end of Oxford Street, where it connects with New Oxford Street, Charing Cross Road and Tottenham Court Road, which it is more often referred to ...
, where Oxford Street, Charing Cross Road, Tottenham Court Road and New Oxford St meet, was the site of a gallows until the fifteenth century. The
Lollard Lollardy, also known as Lollardism or the Lollard movement, was a proto-Protestant Christian religious movement that existed from the mid-14th century until the 16th-century English Reformation. It was initially led by John Wycliffe, a Catholic ...
leader
Sir John Oldcastle ''Sir John Oldcastle'' is an Elizabethan play about John Oldcastle, a controversial 14th-/15th-century rebel and Lollard who was seen by some of Shakespeare's contemporaries as a proto-Protestant martyr. Publication The play was originally p ...
was hanged, and he and his gallows were burnt there. Grape Street, in the heart of the St Giles district, runs beside the site of the hospital's vineyard. The monastery was dissolved during the
Reformation The Reformation (alternatively named the Protestant Reformation or the European Reformation) was a major movement within Western Christianity in 16th-century Europe that posed a religious and political challenge to the Catholic Church and in ...
and a parish church created from the chapel. The hospital continued to care for lepers until the mid-sixteenth century, when the disease abated and the hospital instead began to care for indigents.St Giles in the Fields: History
/ref>British History Online
'Religious Houses: Hospitals', A History of the County of Middlesex: Volume 1: Physique, Archaeology, Domesday, Ecclesiastical Organization, The Jews, Religious Houses, Education of Working Classes to 1870, Private Education from Sixteenth Century (1969), pp. 204–212. URL: http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.aspx?compid=22122. Date accessed: 3 January 2008.
The parish was known as St Giles in the Fields and it is recorded in 1563 as ''Seynt Gyles in the Field''. The first post-Catholic parish church was built in 1631 and from the mid-seventeenth century church wardens note "a great influx of poor people into this parish". The cellars in particular were already recorded as horrific places in which whole families resided, "damp and unwholesome" as the village was built on marshland. The Parliamentary Act of 1606 had condemned the area as "deepe foul and dangerous" . Vagrants expelled from the city settled in the St Giles district known for the generous charitable relief of the parish. Irish and French refugees were drawn to the area as well as "St Giles blackbirds", black servants reduced to begging. The 1665
Great Plague The Black Death (also known as the Pestilence, the Great Mortality or the Plague) was a bubonic plague pandemic occurring in Western Eurasia and North Africa from 1346 to 1353. It is the most fatal pandemic recorded in human history, causi ...
started in St Giles and the first victims were buried in the St Giles churchyard. By September 1665, 8,000 people were dying a week in London. By the end of the plague year there were 3,216 listed plague deaths in St Giles parish, which had fewer than 2,000 households. After the
Restoration Restoration is the act of restoring something to its original state and may refer to: * Conservation and restoration of cultural heritage ** Audio restoration ** Film restoration ** Image restoration ** Textile restoration * Restoration ecology ...
, the area was populated by
Huguenot The Huguenots ( , also , ) were a religious group of French Protestants who held to the Reformed, or Calvinist, tradition of Protestantism. The term, which may be derived from the name of a Swiss political leader, the Genevan burgomaster Be ...
refugees who had fled persecution and established themselves as tradesmen and artisans, particularly in weaving and the silk trade. Thornbury, Walter (1878) "Old and New London: Volume 3" pp. 197–218.
" XXVI. St Giles in the Fields"
The southern area of the parish, around present day Shaftesbury Avenue, was a wasteland named Cock and Pye Fields. Houses were not built there until 1666, after the Great Fire, and not fully developed until 1693, becoming known as Seven Dials.
Thomas Neale Thomas Neale (1641–1699) was an English project-manager and politician who was also the first person to hold a position equivalent to postmaster-general of the North American colonies. Neale was a Member of Parliament for thirty years, Maste ...
built much of the area, giving his name to
Neal Street Covent Garden is a district in London, on the eastern fringes of the West End, between St Martin's Lane and Drury Lane. It is associated with the former fruit-and-vegetable market in the central square, now a popular shopping and tourist site ...
and
Neal's Yard Neal's Yard is a small alley in London's Covent Garden between Shorts Gardens and Monmouth Street which opens into a courtyard. It is named after the 17th century developer, Thomas Neale. In 1976, alternative activist and entrepreneur Nichol ...
. St Giles and Seven Dials became known for their astrologers and alchemists, an association which lasts to this day. The village of St Giles stood on the main road from
Holborn Holborn ( or ) is a district in central London, which covers the south-eastern part of the London Borough of Camden and a part ( St Andrew Holborn Below the Bars) of the Ward of Farringdon Without in the City of London. The area has its roots ...
to
Tyburn Tyburn was a manor (estate) in the county of Middlesex, one of two which were served by the parish of Marylebone. The parish, probably therefore also the manor, was bounded by Roman roads to the west (modern Edgware Road) and south (modern Ox ...
, a place of local execution. Convicted criminals were often allowed, in tradition, to stop at St Giles en route to Tyburn for a final drink - a "St Giles Bowl" - before hanging.


The rookery

The
rookery A rookery is a colony of breeding animals, generally gregarious birds. Coming from the nesting habits of rooks, the term is used for corvids and the breeding grounds of colony-forming seabirds, marine mammals (true seals and sea lions), and ev ...
originally stood on a five-acre plot in the north west of the parish, bounded by
Great Russell Street Great Russell Street is a street in Bloomsbury, London, best known for being the location of the British Museum. It runs between Tottenham Court Road (part of the A400 route) in the west, and Southampton Row (part of the A4200 route) in the east ...
in the north,
Tottenham Court Road Tottenham Court Road (occasionally abbreviated as TCR) is a major road in Central London, almost entirely within the London Borough of Camden. The road runs from Euston Road in the north to St Giles Circus in the south; Tottenham Court Road tub ...
in the west,
St Giles High Street St Giles is an area in the West End of London in the London Borough of Camden. It gets its name from the parish church of St Giles in the Fields. The combined parishes of St Giles in the Fields and St George Bloomsbury (which was carved out of ...
in the south, and
Dyott Street Dyott is a surname. Notable people with the surname include: * Anthony Dyott, English lawyer and politician who sat in the House of Commons between 1601 and 1614 * George Dyott, British pioneer aviator and explorer of the Amazon * Richard Dyott (di ...
in the east. The Centrepoint homeless charity''Guardian article "London parish's descent from glamour to grime charted in exhibition" 16 May 2011
/ref> and
Google Google LLC () is an American multinational technology company focusing on search engine technology, online advertising, cloud computing, computer software, quantum computing, e-commerce, artificial intelligence, and consumer electronics. ...
now have their offices on the site. Originally, it was a plot of land originally owned by the Bainbridge family who installed roads and leased plots to individual developers in the late 17th century, many of whom put up high density lodging houses. The area had fallen into disrepair by the 18th century, made worse by debts held by the landowner at the time, and by long leases held by developers who had no incentive to improve the houses they had built decades earlier. It was regarded as one of the worst slums within Britain, often described as a site of overcrowding and squalor, a semi-derelict warren. It was known for having a large Irish Catholic population, and took on a number of nicknames including "Little Ireland" and "The Holy Land". As London grew in the 18th and 19th centuries, so did the parish's population, rising to 30,000 by 1831. Irish migrants escaping the
Great Famine (Ireland) The Great Famine ( ga, an Gorta Mór ), also known within Ireland as the Great Hunger or simply the Famine and outside Ireland as the Irish Potato Famine, was a period of starvation and disease in Ireland from 1845 to 1852 that constituted a h ...
during 1845 and 1849 were a significant source of new inhabitants in the parish. The expression "a St Giles cellar" passed into common parlance, describing the worst conditions of poverty. Open sewers often ran through rooms and
cesspit A cesspit (or cesspool or soak pit in some contexts) is a term with various meanings: it is used to describe either an underground holding tank (sealed at the bottom) or a soak pit (not sealed at the bottom). It can be used for the temporary co ...
s were left untended. Residents complained to the ''Times'' in 1849: "We live in muck and filth. We aint got no priviz, no dust bins, no drains, no water-splies, and no drain or suer in the hole place."''Letter to The Times
complaining of their living conditions, written by residents of St Giles" 17 May 2011">The Times">''Letter to The Times
complaining of their living conditions, written by residents of St Giles" 17 May 2011/ref> The rookery was a maze of gin shops, prostitutes' hovels and secret alleyways that police had little hope of navigating. William Hogarth, Thomas Rowlandson, and Gustave Doré, among others, drew the area, as did novelists Henry Fielding and Charles Dickens. Romance novelists Elizabeth Hoyt and Erica Monroe wrote about it extensively in their Maiden Lane and Rookery Rogues series, respectively.
Peter Ackroyd Peter Ackroyd (born 5 October 1949) is an English biographer, novelist and critic with a specialist interest in the history and culture of London. For his novels about English history and culture and his biographies of, among others, William ...
writes "The Rookeries embodied the worst living conditions in all of London's history; this was the lowest point which human beings could reach". Reformer
Henry Mayhew Henry Mayhew (25 November 1812 – 25 July 1887) was an English journalist, playwright, and advocate of reform. He was one of the co-founders of the satirical magazine ''Punch'' in 1841, and was the magazine's joint editor, with Mark Lemon, in ...
described the slum in 1860 in ''A Visit to the Rookery of St Giles and its Neighbourhood'': Due to the high mortality rate, especially from
cholera Cholera is an infection of the small intestine by some strains of the bacterium ''Vibrio cholerae''. Symptoms may range from none, to mild, to severe. The classic symptom is large amounts of watery diarrhea that lasts a few days. Vomiting and ...
and
tuberculosis Tuberculosis (TB) is an infectious disease usually caused by '' Mycobacterium tuberculosis'' (MTB) bacteria. Tuberculosis generally affects the lungs, but it can also affect other parts of the body. Most infections show no symptoms, in ...
, the graveyard ran out of space. During the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, many were buried in the cemeteries surrounding St Pancras. From the 1830s to the 1870s plans were developed to demolish the slum as part of London wide clearances for improved transport routes, sanitation and the expansion of the railways.
New Oxford Street Oxford Street is a major road in the City of Westminster in the West End of London, running from Tottenham Court Road to Marble Arch via Oxford Circus. It is Europe's busiest shopping street, with around half a million daily visitors, and as o ...
was driven through the slum to join the areas of Oxford Street and Holborn. This had the effect of pushing the slum further south, into the Seven Dials, which fell into further decline. The unchanging character of the area, failing investment schemes and inability to sell new properties ensured that plans for wholesale clearance were stymied until the end of the century.


Local governance

The area appears to have been a part of the parish of
Holborn Holborn ( or ) is a district in central London, which covers the south-eastern part of the London Borough of Camden and a part ( St Andrew Holborn Below the Bars) of the Ward of Farringdon Without in the City of London. The area has its roots ...
when St Giles hospital was established in the early 1100s. The date when the
Ancient Parish In England, a civil parish is a type of administrative parish used for local government. It is a territorial designation which is the lowest tier of local government below districts and counties, or their combined form, the unitary authority. ...
of St Giles was formed is not clear. Some sources indicate that the parish was in place before 1222 while others suggest 1547. From 1597 onwards, English parishes were obliged to take on a civil as well as ecclesiastical role, starting with the relief of the poor. The parish formed part of the
Ossulstone Ossulstone is an obsolete subdivision (hundred) covering 26.4% of – and the most metropolitan part – of the historic county of Middlesex, England.British History Online Hundreds of Middlesex/ref> It surrounded but did not include the ...
hundred of
Middlesex Middlesex (; abbreviation: Middx) is a Historic counties of England, historic county in South East England, southeast England. Its area is almost entirely within the wider urbanised area of London and mostly within the Ceremonial counties of ...
. The parish of St George Bloomsbury was split off in 1731, but the parishes were combined for civil purposes in 1774 and used for the administration of the
Poor Law In English and British history, poor relief refers to government and ecclesiastical action to relieve poverty. Over the centuries, various authorities have needed to decide whose poverty deserves relief and also who should bear the cost of hel ...
after the
Poor Law Amendment Act 1834 The ''Poor Law Amendment Act 1834'' (PLAA) known widely as the New Poor Law, was an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom passed by the Whig government of Earl Grey. It completely replaced earlier legislation based on the ''Poor Relief ...
.
George Buchanan George Buchanan ( gd, Seòras Bochanan; February 1506 – 28 September 1582) was a Scottish historian and humanist scholar. According to historian Keith Brown, Buchanan was "the most profound intellectual sixteenth century Scotland produced." ...
was appointed Health Officer for the parish around 1856. Upon the creation of the
Metropolitan Board of Works The Metropolitan Board of Works (MBW) was the principal instrument of local government in a wide area of Middlesex, Surrey, and Kent, defined by the Metropolis Management Act 1855, from December 1855 until the establishment of the London County ...
in 1855 the combined parishes became the St Giles District and were transferred to the
County of London The County of London was a county of England from 1889 to 1965, corresponding to the area known today as Inner London. It was created as part of the general introduction of elected county government in England, by way of the Local Government A ...
in 1889. The St Giles parish was an elongated "L" shape, stretching from Torrington Place in the north to Shelton Street in the south and then east to include
Lincoln's Inn Fields Lincoln's Inn Fields is the largest public square in London. It was laid out in the 1630s under the initiative of the speculative builder and contractor William Newton, "the first in a long series of entrepreneurs who took a hand in develo ...
. For
registration Register or registration may refer to: Arts entertainment, and media Music * Register (music), the relative "height" or range of a note, melody, part, instrument, etc. * ''Register'', a 2017 album by Travis Miller * Registration (organ), the ...
, and therefore census reporting, the civil parish was divided in North and South districts, with
Monmouth Street Monmouth Street is a street in the Seven Dials district of Covent Garden, London, England. Monmouth Street runs north to south from Shaftesbury Avenue to a crossroads with Tower Street and Shelton Street, where it becomes St Martin's Lane. A ...
broadly forming the division. The length of St Giles High Street is identical to the width of the parish at that point. The parish of St George Bloomsbury was located to the northeast. In 1881 the population of St Giles North was 13,837 and St Giles South was 14,864. The local government of London was reorganised in 1900 and St Giles became part of the
Metropolitan Borough of Holborn The Metropolitan Borough of Holborn was a metropolitan borough in the County of London between 1900 and 1965, when it was amalgamated with the Metropolitan Borough of St Pancras and the Metropolitan Borough of Hampstead to form the London Boroug ...
. Since 1965 it has been part of the
London Borough of Camden The London Borough of Camden () is a London borough in Inner London. Camden Town Hall, on Euston Road, lies north of Charing Cross. The borough was established on 1 April 1965 from the area of the former boroughs of Hampstead, Holborn, and St ...
.


Street name etymologies

St Giles has no formally defined boundaries – those utilised here form a rough triangle: New Oxford Street to the north, Shaftesbury Avenue to the south-east and Charing Cross Road to the west. * Brook Mews * Bucknall Street – after either Arabella Bucknall (or Bucknell), mother of
John Hanmer, 1st Baron Hanmer John Hanmer, 1st Baron Hanmer (22 December 1809 – 8 March 1881), known as Sir John Hanmer, Bt, between 1828 and 1872, was a British politician. Background and education Hanmer was the son of Thomas Hanmer, eldest son of Sir Thomas Hanmer, 2nd ...
who owned this land in the 19th century, or Ralph Bucknall, local 17th - 18th century vestryman * Cambridge Circus – after Prince George, 2nd Duke of Cambridge, who formally opened the new development of Charing Cross Road in 1887 *
Charing Cross Road Charing Cross Road is a street in central London running immediately north of St Martin-in-the-Fields to St Giles Circus (the intersection with Oxford Street) and then becomes Tottenham Court Road. It leads from the north in the direction of ...
– built 1887, and named as it led to the cross at Charing, from the Old English word "cierring", referring to a bend in the
River Thames The River Thames ( ), known alternatively in parts as the The Isis, River Isis, is a river that flows through southern England including London. At , it is the longest river entirely in England and the Longest rivers of the United Kingdom, se ...
* Denmark Place and
Denmark Street Denmark Street is a street on the edge of London's West End running from Charing Cross Road to St Giles High Street. It is near St Giles in the Fields Church and Tottenham Court Road station. The street was developed in the late 17th centu ...
– after
Prince George of Denmark Prince George of Denmark ( da, Jørgen; 2 April 165328 October 1708) was the husband of Anne, Queen of Great Britain. He was the consort of the British monarch from Anne's accession on 8 March 1702 until his death in 1708. The marriage of Georg ...
, husband of Queen Anne * Dyott Street – after either Simon Dyott, local resident in the 17th century, or Jane Dyott, daughter of local landowner Henry Bainbridge * Earnshaw Street – after
Thomas Earnshaw Thomas Earnshaw (4 February 1749 in Ashton-under-Lyne – 1 March 1829 in London) was an English watchmaker who, following John Arnold's earlier work, further simplified the process of marine chronometer production, making them available to the ...
, noted watchmaker of the 18th-19th century, who worked near here * Flitcroft Street – after
Henry Flitcroft Henry Flitcroft (30 August 1697 – 25 February 1769) was a major English architect in the second generation of Palladianism. He came from a simple background: his father was a labourer in the gardens at Hampton Court and he began as a joiner by t ...
, architect of
St Giles in the Fields St Giles in the Fields is the Anglican parish church of the St Giles district of London. It stands within the London Borough of Camden and belongs to the Diocese of London. The church, named for St Giles the Hermit, began as a monastery and ...
church *
New Compton Street New Compton Street is a street in the London Borough of Camden that runs from Stacey Street in the south to St Giles High Street in the north. It is crossed only by St Giles Passage. At its southern end, on the western side, is the Phoenix Gar ...
– as with
Old Compton Street Old Compton Street is a road that runs east–west through Soho in the West End of London. History The street was named after Henry Compton who raised funds for a local parish church, eventually dedicated as St Anne's Church in 1686. Th ...
which extends to the west, it is believed to be named after Henry Compton, Bishop of London in the 1670s *
New Oxford Street Oxford Street is a major road in the City of Westminster in the West End of London, running from Tottenham Court Road to Marble Arch via Oxford Circus. It is Europe's busiest shopping street, with around half a million daily visitors, and as o ...
– built as an extension of
Oxford Street Oxford Street is a major road in the City of Westminster in the West End of London, running from Tottenham Court Road to Marble Arch via Oxford Circus. It is Europe's busiest shopping street, with around half a million daily visitors, and as ...
in 1845-47 * Phoenix Street – named after an inn that formerly stood near here * Princes Circus *
St Giles Circus St Giles Circus is a road junction in the St Giles district of the West End of London at the eastern end of Oxford Street, where it connects with New Oxford Street, Charing Cross Road and Tottenham Court Road, which it is more often referred to ...
, St Giles High Street and St Giles Passage – after St Giles Hospital, a leper hospital founded by
Matilda of Scotland Matilda of Scotland (originally christened Edith, 1080 – 1 May 1118), also known as Good Queen Maud, or Matilda of Blessed Memory, was Queen of England and Duchess of Normandy as the first wife of King Henry I. She acted as regent of England ...
, wife of
Henry I Henry I may refer to: 876–1366 * Henry I the Fowler, King of Germany (876–936) * Henry I, Duke of Bavaria (died 955) * Henry I of Austria, Margrave of Austria (died 1018) * Henry I of France (1008–1060) * Henry I the Long, Margrave of the No ...
in 1117. St Giles was an 8th-century hermit in
Provence Provence (, , , , ; oc, Provença or ''Prouvènço'' , ) is a geographical region and historical province of southeastern France, which extends from the left bank of the lower Rhône to the west to the Italian border to the east; it is bor ...
who was crippled in a hunting accident and later became patron saint of cripples and lepers. Circus is a British term for a road junction, with several roads meeting and a central reservation or 'roundabout, the traffic passing in a one way system around the roundabout or 'circus' *
Shaftesbury Avenue Shaftesbury Avenue is a major road in the West End of London, named after The 7th Earl of Shaftesbury. It runs north-easterly from Piccadilly Circus to New Oxford Street, crossing Charing Cross Road at Cambridge Circus. From Piccadilly Cir ...
– after
Anthony Ashley Cooper, 7th Earl of Shaftesbury Anthony Ashley Cooper, 7th Earl of Shaftesbury (28 April 1801 – 1 October 1885), styled Lord Ashley from 1811 to 1851, was a British Tory politician, philanthropist, and social reformer. He was the eldest son of The 6th Earl of Shaftesbury ...
, Victorian politician and philanthropist * Stacey Street – after John Stacey, local landowner in the 16th century


Hogarth depictions of St Giles


''Four Times of the Day''

The etching "Noon" from ''
Four Times of the Day ''Four Times of the Day'' is a series of four oil paintings by English artist William Hogarth. They were completed in 1736 and in 1738 were reproduced and published as a series of four engravings. They are humorous depictions of life in the s ...
'' by Hogarth takes place in Hog Lane, with the church of
St Giles in the Fields St Giles in the Fields is the Anglican parish church of the St Giles district of London. It stands within the London Borough of Camden and belongs to the Diocese of London. The church, named for St Giles the Hermit, began as a monastery and ...
in the background. Hogarth would feature St Giles again as the background of ''
Gin Lane ''Beer Street'' and ''Gin Lane'' are two prints issued in 1751 by English artist William Hogarth in support of what would become the Gin Act. Designed to be viewed alongside each other, they depict the evils of the consumption of gin as a cont ...
'' and '' First Stage of Cruelty''. The picture shows the Huguenot refugees who arrived in the 1680s and established themselves in the silk trade; Hogarth contrasts their fussiness and high fashion with the slovenliness of the group on the other side of the road; the rotting corpse of a cat that has been stoned to death lying in the gutter that divides the street is the only thing the two sides have in common. The older members of the congregation wear traditional dress, while the younger members wear the fashions of the day. The children are dressed up as adults: the boy in the foreground struts around in his finery while the boy with his back to the viewer has his hair in a net, bagged up in the "French" style.Cooke and Davenport. Vol. 1 ''Noon'' (1821). ''The Works of William Hogarth''. London: J.Sharpe. At the far right, a black man, probably a freed slave, fondles the breasts of a woman, distracting her from her work, her pie-dish "tottering like her virtue". In front of the couple, a boy has set down his pie to rest, but the plate has broken, spilling the pie onto the ground where it is being rapidly consumed by an urchin.


"Gin Lane"

Set in St Giles, "
Gin Lane ''Beer Street'' and ''Gin Lane'' are two prints issued in 1751 by English artist William Hogarth in support of what would become the Gin Act. Designed to be viewed alongside each other, they depict the evils of the consumption of gin as a cont ...
" depicts the squalor and despair of a community raised on gin. The only businesses that flourish are those which serve the gin industry: gin sellers; distillers; the
pawnbroker A pawnbroker is an individual or business (pawnshop or pawn shop) that offers secured loans to people, with items of personal property used as collateral. The items having been ''pawned'' to the broker are themselves called ''pledges'' or ...
where the avaricious Mr. Gripe greedily takes the vital possessions (the carpenter offers his saw and the housewife her cooking utensils) of the alcoholic residents of the street in return for a few pennies to feed their habit; and the undertaker, for whom Hogarth implies at least a handful of new customers from this scene alone. Most shockingly, the focus of the picture is a woman in the foreground, who, addled by gin and driven to prostitution by her habit —as evidenced by the syphilitic sores on her legs— lets her baby slip unheeded from her arms and plunge to its death in the stairwell of the gin cellar below. Half-naked, she has no concern for anything other than a pinch of snuff. This mother was not such an exaggeration as she might appear: in 1734, Judith Dufour reclaimed her two-year-old child from the
workhouse In Britain, a workhouse () was an institution where those unable to support themselves financially were offered accommodation and employment. (In Scotland, they were usually known as poorhouses.) The earliest known use of the term ''workhouse'' ...
where it had been given a new set of clothes; she then strangled it and left the infant's body in a ditch so that she could sell the clothes (for 1s. 4d.) to buy gin. In another case, an elderly woman, Mary Estwick, let a toddler burn to death while she slept in a gin-induced stupor.Warner, Jessica (2002). Craze: Gin and Debauchery in an Age of Reason. Thunder's Mouth Press. . p. 69 Other images of despair and madness fill the scene: a lunatic cavorts in the street beating himself over the head with a pair of bellows while holding a baby impaled on a spike—the dead child's frantic mother rushes from the house screaming in horror; a barber has taken his own life in the dilapidated attic of his barber-shop, ruined because nobody can afford a haircut or shave; on the steps, below the woman who has let her baby fall, a skeletal pamphlet-seller rests, perhaps dead of starvation, as the unsold moralising pamphlet on the evils of gin-drinking, ''The Downfall of Mrs Gin'', slips from his basket.Clerk, Thomas (1812). The Works of William Hogarth. 2. London: Scholey.p29


"First stage of cruelty"

Set in St Giles, the
etching Etching is traditionally the process of using strong acid or mordant to cut into the unprotected parts of a metal surface to create a design in intaglio (incised) in the metal. In modern manufacturing, other chemicals may be used on other types ...
shows a boy, Nero, is being assisted by other boys torturing a dog by inserting an arrow into its
rectum The rectum is the final straight portion of the large intestine in humans and some other mammals, and the Gastrointestinal tract, gut in others. The adult human rectum is about long, and begins at the rectosigmoid junction (the end of the s ...
. An initialled badge on the shoulder of his light-hued and ragged coat shows him to be a pupil of the
charity school Charity schools, sometimes called blue coat schools, or simply the Blue School, were significant in the history of education in England. They were built and maintained in various parishes by the voluntary contributions of the inhabitants to ...
of the parish of St Giles. A more tender-hearted boy, perhaps the dog's owner, pleads with Nero to stop tormenting the frightened animal, even offering food in an attempt to appease him.


Modern governance

St Giles is split between the electoral wards of
Bloomsbury Bloomsbury is a district in the West End of London. It is considered a fashionable residential area, and is the location of numerous cultural, intellectual, and educational institutions. Bloomsbury is home of the British Museum, the largest mus ...
and
Holborn and Covent Garden Holborn and Covent Garden is a ward of the London borough of Camden, in the United Kingdom. As the name suggests, it covers the parts of Holborn and Covent Garden that lie in Camden; the eastern part of Holborn lies in the City of London and the ...
in the London Borough of Camden. With some sections of
Holborn Holborn ( or ) is a district in central London, which covers the south-eastern part of the London Borough of Camden and a part ( St Andrew Holborn Below the Bars) of the Ward of Farringdon Without in the City of London. The area has its roots ...
and
Bloomsbury Bloomsbury is a district in the West End of London. It is considered a fashionable residential area, and is the location of numerous cultural, intellectual, and educational institutions. Bloomsbury is home of the British Museum, the largest mus ...
it forms part of the Midtown business improvement district. It is within the
Holborn and St Pancras Holborn and St Pancras () is a parliamentary constituency in Greater London that was created in 1983. It has been represented in the House of Commons of the Parliament of the United Kingdom since 2015 by Sir Keir Starmer, the current Leade ...
Parliament constituency and the Barnet and Camden London Assembly constituency.


Tottenham Court Road tube station

The
Central London Railway The Central London Railway (CLR), also known as the Twopenny Tube, was a deep-level, underground "tube" railwayA "tube" railway is an underground railway constructed in a cylindrical tunnel by the use of a tunnelling shield, usually deep below gr ...
(CLR) opened Tottenham Court Tube Station, between the Church of St Giles in the Fields and St Giles Circus on 30 July 1900.Clive's Underground Line Guides - Central Line, Dates
/ref> Tottenham Court Road underwent improvements in the early 1930s to replace lifts with escalators. The station had four entrances to the sub-surface ticket hall from the north-east, south-west and north-west corners of St Giles Circus and from a subway beneath the Centrepoint building which starts on Andrew Borde Street. The entrances were frequently congested leading to occasions during peak periods of the day when they were briefly closed to prevent overcrowding in the station. In 2009, Transport for London began a major reconstruction of large parts of the station. Much of the St Giles area alongside St Giles High Street has been cleared to make way for the new development including
Crossrail Crossrail is a railway construction project mainly in central London. Its aim is to provide a high-frequency hybrid commuter rail and rapid transit system crossing the capital from suburbs on the west to east, by connecting two major railway ...
expansion.Crossrail - Proposal for eastern ticket hall
The Astoria theatre on Charing Cross Road has been demolished and the original Central line entrances will also go.


Business

With Bloomsbury and
Holborn Holborn ( or ) is a district in central London, which covers the south-eastern part of the London Borough of Camden and a part ( St Andrew Holborn Below the Bars) of the Ward of Farringdon Without in the City of London. The area has its roots ...
, it is part of the " Midtown" business improvement district.


See also

* Church of St Giles in the Fields *
St Giles Circus St Giles Circus is a road junction in the St Giles district of the West End of London at the eastern end of Oxford Street, where it connects with New Oxford Street, Charing Cross Road and Tottenham Court Road, which it is more often referred to ...
*
St Giles District (Metropolis) St Giles District was a local government district in the metropolitan area of London, England from 1855 to 1900. The district was created by the Metropolis Management Act 1855, and comprised the civil parish of St Giles in the Fields and St Georg ...
* Central Saint Giles *
The Phoenix Garden The Phoenix Garden is a local community garden in central London, England, established in 1984. Located in St Giles, London, St Giles behind the Phoenix Theatre (London), Phoenix Theatre, within the London Borough of Camden, the Phoenix Garden is ...


References


External links

{{DEFAULTSORT:Saint Giles, London Areas of London Districts of the London Borough of Camden Former slums of London Former civil parishes in London Bills of mortality parishes ur:سینٹ گائیلز، لندن