User:Jbuec2/Rookery (slum)

Rookery Inhabitants
The people of the rookery were often immigrants, criminals, or working class English. Notable groups of immigrants who inhabited rookeries were Jewish and Irish. The jobs available to rookery occupants were undesirable jobs such as rag-picking, street sweeping, or waste removal.

Creation of a Rookery
Often times, a street started towards rookery when criminals would inhabit dead-end streets for their strategic use in isolation. In other cases, industry that produced noise or odors would drive away inhabitants that would not settle for such an environment. These types of industry could be "some foul factory, a gas-works, the debris of a street market, or an open sewer," which often employed those who lived within the rookery. Another factor which created rookeries were the lack of building regulations, or rather the ignorance of such by construction workers. Middle class houses were too large for just one working-class family, so they were often divided to accommodate multiple families - a factor that ran these homes into noise and ruin faster than the new houses built without regulations.

Top of Article (Rookery)
A rookery is a colloquial English term given in the 18th and 19th centuries to a city slum occupied by poor people and frequently also by criminals and prostitutes. Such areas were overcrowded, with low-quality housing and little or no sanitation. Local industry such as coal plants and gasholders polluted the rookery air. Poorly constructed dwellings, built with multiple stories and often crammed into any area of open ground, created densely-populated areas of gloomy, narrow streets and alleyways. By many, these parts of the city were sometimes deemed "uninhabitable."