User:SlimVirgin/Jennings' Buildings

The Jennings' Buildings were a set of slum tenements that stood until 1873 on Kensington High Street, London, directly opposite the police station. Located behind Kensington High Street on the east side of Kensington Square, they consisted of five courtyards containing 81 two-story wooden houses and 49 privies. The tenements had been built to accommodate 200 people, but in fact housed 1,500. Between 1851 and 1871 three-quarters of the residents were Irish immigrants and their children, the men mostly working in the construction industry and the women as washerwomen.

The Buildings were notable for their location in an otherwise opulent area. The West London Observer described the inhabitants in 1858 as "the lower order of Irish" and the "terror of the neighbourhood." They were "continually creating disturbances, assaulting the police, and by their violent and disgraceful habits the inhabitants of Kensington are continually kept in fear of some outrage." There were regular confrontations with local law enforcement, with crowds of tenants gathering to throw stones at police officers. According to Davis, the Buildings effectively became a no-go area, with the police willing to enter them only if they had to, and always in groups.

Owner and management
Most of Jennings' Buildings were owned by Stephen Bird, a local builder, from 1841, and were managed on his behalf by middlemen. The main middleman in the Jennings' Buildings was John "Falstaff" Simpson, a violent man with a long criminal record. Davis writes that these middlemen ran shops inside the Buildings, selling groceries and beer; they also collected rent, lent money, acted as agents for local employers, and generally kept the tenants dependent on them. The police used the middlemen as informants; the latter reported any criminal activity that might spill over into the general neighbourhood, and in return the police ignored their violations of licensing laws, or threats of violence against tenants or other middlemen.

Health and hygiene
Jennifer Davis writes that for most of their existence the Buildings contained no source of drinking water, and the mortality rate of residents was over twice that of their neighbours. In 1851 The Spectator wrote of the state of the houses that "[t]o give the detail in so many words, could not be done without creating nausea." Typhus and cholera were regular occurrences; there were 15–20 cases of cholera in 1849 and 20 cases of typhus in the space of two months in 1851. The privies – 49 of them to serve 1,500 people – were in a particularly parlous state. An inspector, R.D. Grainger, wrote a report for the Board of Health in 1851:

"It is impossible, by any description, to convey an idea of the horrible condition of the few privies that are provided for the large population. Many of the houses are altogether unprovided. ... Owing to gross neglect, [the public privy] is in a most disgraceful state, the whole area being, at the time of my visit, covered deeply with excrement, and emitting so foul a stench as nearly to induce vomiting. To this place there is no outer door, and, in this horrible state, men, women, and children are compelled to resort to it in common."