|
|
Peel away the layers of stone and the ages stand revealed,
Roman, Viking, Norman. In the 14th century York’s population of over 10,000
(perhaps as many as 15,000) was second only to London’s. By 1801 the
population had risen to only 16,846. In desperation to revive the fortunes of
the city, unsuccessful attempts were made in 1825 to set up a university. With
the development of the railways the population increased to 51,105 by 1891.
By 1832 the growth in poor relief was becoming a drain on the city’s
resources. There was almost no manufacturing and only small craft industries,
while Goole had taken away much of the shipping trade. The fact that York did
not degenerate into a small market by-way is largely due to George Hudson,
appointed chairman of the new York & North Midland Railway in 1835. This
line was to go from York to Normanton, there to link up with lines to Leeds and
to the South. Meanwhile the Great North of England Railway (GNER) were planning
a line from Gateshead to the South, intending to head for Tadcaster and not
York. It took all the persuasion of Hudson to get the GNER to build their line
to York, and thus to form the basis for the great junction we know today.
Today we have grown accustomed to love and admire the streets, with their rich
tapestry of buildings, yet during the 19th century many had descended to the
status of slums. The problem was compounded when about 2000 Irish came to York
in 1846-7 to escape the Famine. They had no alternative but to settle in grossly
inadequate and overcrowded housing. They kept closely together in streets like
Bedern, Long Close Lane, Britannia Place, and in the courts off Walmgate.
Sanitation in these streets was bad or worse. In Back Bedern there were five
privies to 300 people, while in the Shambles the condition was made worse by the
slaughterhouses and piggeries. With awful inevitability typhus and cholera
epidemics broke out in the Irish communities. The worst that could be said of
the immigrants was that “On summer evenings it is a common sight to see the
women in the Irish quarter sitting on the kerbstones outside their cottages
smoking clay pipes”.
Sympathy from the middle classes was in short supply, and moves to clear the
slums were usually met by cries about the expense. In 1859 when there were plans
to build new poor law offices in Museum Street, there were immediate protests
that the offices would be close to the theatre and the Dr Grey Rooms. The poor,
they said, live elsewhere.