Dorset Street

Dorset Street was situated at the heart of the Spitalfields rookery in the East End of London, England. Locally, it was sometimes known as "Dosset Street" or "Dossen Street" either because of the large number of doss-houses it contained or because immigrants to the area found it hard to pronounce the original name. No. 13, Miller's Court in Dorset Street was the scene of the murder of Mary Jane Kelly by Jack the Ripper on November 9, 1888. John McCarthy, Kelly's landlord, had a chandler's shop opposite the arched entrance to Miller's Court at 26–27, Dorset Street.

The former Dorset Street in 2006. Miller's Court was located on the left side of this photograph.

History

Dorset Street photographed in 1902 for Jack London's book The People of the Abyss

The location of Miller's Court in Dorset Street

Laid out in the 1670s and originally known as 'Datchett Street' (probably from William Wheler of Datchett, who owned land in the area,) it was given the name Dorset Street on 22 November, 1867. It was a short and narrow street, which, by the 1880s, was almost entirely taken up with lodging and doss houses. Only two legitimate businesses were listed in the Post Office Street Directory for 1888, that of Barnett Price, who had a grocery store at No 7, and the Blue Coat Boy public house, which was run by William James Turner at No 32. It was estimated that on any one night there were no fewer than 1200 men sleeping in Dorset Street's crowded lodging houses.

Dorset Street ran parallel with Brushfield Street and White’s Row and could be entered from either Crispin Street, Little Paternoster Row or Commercial Street. On one of its corners with Commercial Street stood The Britannia public house. Known as the ‘Ringers’, after the landlord’s surname: a frequent customer was Mary Jane Kelly. Situated opposite Miller’s Court, at No. 15, was Crossingham’s common lodging-house, with another at the corner of Little Paternoster Row, at 35, Dorset Street. It was from this common lodging house that Ripper victim Annie Chapman was last seen walking up Little Paternoster Row, before turning right into Brushfield Street and heading towards Christ Church, Spitalfields.

In 1901, the Daily Mail said of Dorset Street:

"[It]… has recently sprung into undesired notoriety. Here we have a place which boasts of an attempt at murder on an average once a month, of a murder in every house, and one house at least, a murder in every room. Policemen go down it as rule in pairs. Hunger walks prowling in its alleyways, and the criminals of to-morrow are being bred there to-day… The lodging-houses of Dorset Street and of the district around are the head centres of the shifting criminal population of London. Of course, the aristocrats of crime — the forger, the counterfeiter, and the like do not come here. In Dorset Street we find more largely the common thief, the pickpocket, the area meak, the man who robs with violence, and the unconvicted murderer. The police have a theory, it seems, that it is better to let these people congregate together in one mass where they can be easily be found than to scatter them abroad. And Dorset Street certainly serves the purpose of a police trap. "

Dorset Street remained a notorious slum following the murder of Mary Jane Kelly. As well as the 1960 shootings of a Soho club manager and a former middleweight boxer, there had been other murders there. In 1901, Mary Ann Austin was murdered with ten wounds to her abdomen at Annie Chapman's former home, Crossingham's Lodging House, at 35, Dorset Street. Later, in 1909 there was a Jack-the-Ripper-like killing in No. 20, Miller's Court, the room directly above no. 13 (which had been occupied by Elizabeth Prater in 1888), when a young woman named Kitty Ronan was found with her throat cut. It was believed that Ronan was a prostitute, and, as in the killing of Mary Jane Kelly, her murderer was never found. As in 1888, the landlord of Miller's Court in 1909 was still John McCarthy.

A vivid description of crime and vice in Dorset street is given in Ralph Finn's 1963 memoir of a Jewish boyhood in the East End:

"It was a street of whores. There is, I always feel a subtle difference between an whore and a prostitute. At least we used to think so. Prozzies were younger, and more attractive. Whores were debauched old bags. It teemed with nasty characters - desperate, wicked, lecherous, razor-slashing hoodlums. No Jews lived there. Only a few bold Choots had the temerity even to walk through it. There were pubs every few yards. Bawdy houses every few feet. It was peopled by roaring drunken fighting-mad killers"

Dorset Street was renamed 'Duval Street' on 28 June, 1904. In 1920, the Corporation of London purchased Spitalfields Market, and began major rebuilding, which included the demolition of the whole of the north side of Duval Street, including Miller's Court. The new fruit market opened in 1928. Another new market development in the 1960s resulted in Duval Street becoming a lorry park for the market. The buildings on the south side of Dorset Street were redeveloped as a multi-storey car park in the 1960s. The north side is bounded by the London Fruit and Wool Exchange building, which is now used primarily as office space for small businesses, as well as housing a fitness centre and a storage warehouse for an import-export company.

Cultural references

The history of Dorset Street is chronicled in Fiona Rule's The Worst Street in London.

External references

• Dorset Street on the Whitechapel Society website
• Dorset Street on the Casebook:Jack the Ripper website
• Murder of Mary Ann Austin, The National Archives