Family Ties in London's East End

Whitechapel High Street 1905

Family lore ties part of my East End ancestry to a pub that no longer stands. My grandmother wasn't born in the East End and first came to the Dock Street location in 1911, when she and her husband, Henry Booth, took over the running of the pub, The Hearts of Oak. Henry died in 1913, leaving her with the pub to run and four living children ranging in age from 5 to 16.

In 1915 she remarried. Her new husband, Charles Cavanagh, was a bachelor and clerk who lived close by. Was the Hearts of Oak his usual watering spot? Still, even with a going business, it would take a special man to take on a ready-made family.

My grandmother may not have been born in the East End, but her new husband had been. In fact, the Cavanagh family had deep roots in that part of London. And, although I never met my grandfather, what I have been told about him leads me to believe that he had a strong sense of family, a quality ingrained in many of the inhabitants of this, the poorer area of London.

I wonder if a strong sense of family was something that the Irish brought with them to London, or if they learned it when they morphed into poor Londoners? Hopefully they brought it with them. Maybe widening my research to include family networks will give me some clues as to where in Ireland this Cavanagh family hailed from. 

Sources:

Young, Michael and Peter Willmott, Family and Kinship in East London. Penguin Books, London, 1962. 

Image:

Whitechapel High Street 1905 Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=3847601 

 

  

A search for physical traces on London streets

1825 map showing the streets to be demolished to make way for the St Katherine Docks*

One of the best ways to gain an understanding of the people who have gone before us is to walk a mile in their shoes. Just getting the lie of the land can help to piece their story together. If the places where they lived are still standing, so much the better. The outsides of the buildings show what they came home to and there may even be a chance to look inside if the current residents agree.

I went on such a quest in the early 2000s. My hopes were high that the pub my grandparents had once run and raised their family in was still standing. But it was too late. The pub was gone, pulled down and another building erected in its place. But that is the problem with many cities including London, land is precious and progress often demands that it be repurposed. 

My visit did help to get a better idea of the East End street where the pub used to be and the proximity to the dock yard which probably provided the majority of their clientele although that dock yard no longer serves the great cargo ships as it once did. That day I couldn't get a closer look at what remained of St Katherine Docks because the London Marathon was running along Upper East Smithfield which was at the end of the street where the pub had once been. Maybe next time I should check an event calendar as well. 

Although a search for physical traces didn't yield much useful information for my ancestor search, I ended up with a better idea of the area. That will be of help when I try to reconstruct their lives and times through the written sources. 

 Dock Street, the Cable & Wireless building is where the pub used to stand

Image:

By St. Katharine Dock Company - Unknown, Public Domain,

https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=7203365