It is difficult to place The Five Dials as the area was completely redeveloped following the building of the Charing Cross Road and Shaftsbury Avenue (authorised in 1877, completed in the late 1880s, and known as the ‘Western Improvements’). One of the particular quarters that Maud Stanley (1833-1915) worked in was called Princes’ Row and lay just off the original Rose Street (which Garrick Street now runs across in part). She describes the Row as ‘the poorest, the dirtiest, and the lowest houses that this part of London can boast of’ (Stanley 1878) . The Improvements displaced around 5,500 people in this immediate area - which gives some idea of the overcrowding (Steman Jones 1984: 171).
Stanley, who was the third daughter of the 2nd Baron Stanley of Alderley, had been involved in district visiting in St Annes, Soho (the fore runner of the casework element of social work). She lived in Smith Square (No. 32) close by the Houses of Parliament. A co-worker with Octavia Hill (Steman Jones 1984: 204), she argued that more people should be involved in the sort of work and visiting undertaken by the Charity Organisation Society. In the Five Dials area she was again involved in home visiting - and could bring an ‘exact and critical knowledge of the existing agencies for the relief of poverty and suffering Eager 1953: 66).
A lively account of her work is given in Work About the Five Dials (1878) and it included setting up a refuge, developing Sunday Schools, night classes and a ‘club’. She set out to involve local people as teachers and helpers; and made contact with young men and women on the streets an in the courtyards - as they talked and played cards and gambled. [More about Maud Stanley under ‘The Soho Club’].
References
Eagar, W. M. (1953) Making Men. The history of Boys' Clubs and related movements in Great Britain, London: University of London Press.
Stanley, M. (1878) Work About the Five Dials, London: Macmillan and Co
Steman Jones, G. (1984) Outcast London. A study in relationships between classes in Victorian society. 2e, London: Penguin.
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© Mark K. Smith. First published August 7,
1997. Last update:
April 11, 2008
