{"id":14351,"date":"2022-05-18T12:35:46","date_gmt":"2022-05-18T10:35:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.historyextra.com\/?p=208407"},"modified":"2022-05-18T12:53:12","modified_gmt":"2022-05-18T10:53:12","slug":"what-was-it-like-renting-in-georgian-london","status":"publish","type":"rss_feed","link":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/bbchistory\/rss_feed\/what-was-it-like-renting-in-georgian-london\/","title":{"rendered":"What was it like renting in Georgian London?"},"content":{"rendered":"

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By Kev Lochun\n \t\t<\/p>

Published: Wednesday, 18 May 2022 at 12:00 am<\/p>

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June 1785 in London was uncomfortably hot, relieved on the evening of Thursday 16th by a light breeze. Where Compton and Greek Streets met in Soho, shopkeepers were closing for the day, with residents propping open their windows and making ready for the night.<\/p>\n

In the second-floor front room at Mrs Hannah Barker\u2019s house, milliner Mary Gay had tucked her son into bed and was tidying up. She opened the closet door. Suddenly the room filled with flames and smoke. A fire had burned through the wall separating the Barker residence from the neighbour: Mr Glossop, a successful candle-maker.<\/p>\n

Panicking, Mary grabbed her child and raised the alarm. Two more women appeared on the landing: unemployed servant Mary Harivin and a clergyman\u2019s daughter. Without time to gather belongings, they raced downstairs, alerting Gilbert Dring, the tailor on the first floor. Mrs Barker unbolted the front door. With her three stepchildren, sister and housemaid, they all ran into the street joining other residents who were fleeing flames fanned by the wind and sucked into open windows.<\/p>\n

There followed a night-long battle to save people, homes and possessions. Surgeon Andrew Nihell had the narrowest escape, dragged with ropes from the rubble of a collapsed house. Dawn brought a sorry sight: 15 houses had been destroyed, and more damaged by smoke. The charitable response was immediate, raising \u00a31,281 4s (more than \u00a3200,000 today). By 1 July, the first payments were being made to victims.<\/p>\n

Outnumbered by lodgers<\/h3>\n

These payments reveal something about Compton and Greek Streets that we might not anticipate but which would have been expected at the time. These ordinary terraced houses \u2013 three storeys with two rooms to a floor, a basement and garret, in a respectable part of town \u2013 were not just family homes and businesses. They accommodated scores of lodgers renting rooms in someone else\u2019s house, for cash, usually paid weekly.<\/p>\n

Of 85 claimants in the aftermath of the blaze, 16 were householders (the main occupants of the properties with leases from the freeholder, the Portland Estate). Twenty-nine were their personal or business servants. However, householders and servants were outnumbered by 40 lodger claimants, representing at least 65 individuals across 22 affected houses. They included Mary Gay and her son; Mary Harivin; the clergyman\u2019s daughter; Gilbert Dring; and Andrew Nihell, his wife and child.<\/p>\n

This 1785 snapshot demonstrates how sizeable was the proportion of lodgers in London. Late 17th-century statistician Gregory King estimated that there were 42,500, which equated to eight per cent of the capital\u2019s residents \u2013 more than the population of Norwich, then England\u2019s second-largest city. Some districts housed many lodgers: the City business area around the Royal Exchange; and Westminster\u2019s \u201ccentrical\u201d area of Fleet Street, the Strand, Covent Garden and Soho. These areas appeared often in newspaper advertisements from would-be lodgers and landlords\/ladies:<\/p>\n

BOARD AND LODGING WANTED <\/em><\/p>\n

For a gentleman and his wife, Board and Lodging in a reputable private regular family, in any airy street within <\/em>the city (the nearer the Royal Exchange will be preferred).<\/em><\/p>\n

or:<\/p>\n

LODGINGS FOR A SINGLE GENTLEMAN<\/em><\/p>\n

Most desirable FIRST FLOOR, genteelly furnished in a small private Family, the Drawing Room fronts the River Thames, very contiguous to the Temple and Somerset Building.<\/em><\/p>\n

As London expanded onto green fields, lodging spread into its new suburbs: Fitzrovia, Marylebone, Kensington and Islington. The only addresses where lodgers were unlikely to be found were the aristocratic squares of the West End.\nThe most common ways of finding lodgings were through personal recommendation and \u201cthe tramp\u201d \u2013 walking the streets looking for cards in the window, then knocking at the door to view. It often didn\u2019t take long to find lodgings: the market was busy. All the homeless Compton Street fire lodgers had new accommodation nearby by early July. One pamphleteer thought lodgers moved on average twice a year.<\/p>\n

\"""\"<\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/source><\/picture><\/div>
A couple are thrown out of their lodgings after their landlady discovers they are not married, in this 1824 print. Many Georgian lodgers chose to move frequently for more positive reasons, lured by more spacious rooms or cheaper prices (Creative Commons)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/div>\n

Some moved far more frequently. With many rooms to choose from, lodgers could readily feel dissatisfied and fantasise about something better, or better value. In November 1763 young Scot James Boswell, the future biographer of Samuel Johnson, took three rooms in Downing Street with Mr and Mrs Terrie, for 40 guineas a year. Almost immediately he decided that the cost was excessive. He found cheaper rooms two streets away in Crown Street for \u00a322 a year but, rather than move, used the threat of leaving to haggle the Terries down to \u00a330 a year.<\/p>\n