Jacob's Island Bermondsey

Jacob's Island Bermondsey. Watercolour by J.L.Stewart (1887) London Museum, from 1870. London 1808-1870, The Infernal Wen, Francis Sheppard (1971

This was the place which Dickens called 'the filthiest, the strangest, the most extraordinary of the many localities that are hidden in London'. He spoke of the 'maze of close, narrow, and muddy streets, thronged by the roughest and poorest of waterside people. Coal-whippers, brazen women, ragged children, and the very raff and refuse of the river'. Oliver Twist.