St. George Street

Ratcliff highway, near Upper Shadwell.

Ratcliffe-Highway, the E. continuation of Parsons-st. and Upper East-Smithfield, commencing near the S. E. corner of Wellclose-sq. where the numbers begin and end, viz. 1 and 198, it extends to Shadwell High-st. about ⅓ of a mile in length.

Ratcliffe Highway, is the continuation eastward of Parson's-street and Upper East Smithfield, as far as Shadwell High-street.

Ratcliffe Highway runs from East Smithfield to Shadwell, High Street, and was so called from the manor of Ratcliffe, in the parish of Stepney, towards which it led. Its name has been changed to St. George Street. From end to end the street has a maritime savour. In some way or other every shop and place of business or resort seems to be dependent on ships or sailors. The very churches and institutions—Seamen's Mission Hall, Seamen's Chapel, Seamen's Free Reading-Room, Bethel Station; and, unfortunately, flaring drinking, dancing, and music rooms, and haunts of a far worse order. Here, among other "dens," are the Chinese opium-smokers' sties. William Hogarth engraved a shop bill, in the manner of Callot, for "William Hardy, goldsmith and jeweller, in Ratcliff Highway, near Sun Tavern Fields," of which only one impression is known. 455 houses and 36 warehouses were burnt down on July 23, 1794. The murders of Marr and Williamson in Ratcliffe Highway are among the most notorious atrocities of the present century. Marr kept a lace and pelisse warehouse at 29 Ratcliffe Highway, and about twelve at night, on Saturday December 7, 1811, had sent his female servant to purchase oysters for supper, whilst he was shutting up the shop windows. On her return, in about a quarter of an hour, she rang the bell repeatedly without any person coming. The house was then broken open, and Mr. and Mrs. Marr, the shop-boy, and a child in the cradle (the only human beings in the house) were found murdered. The murders of the Marr family were followed, twelve days later, and about twelve at night, by the murders of Williamson, landlord of the King's Arms public-house, in Old Gravel Lane, Ratcliffe Highway, his wife, and female servant. A man named Williams, the only person suspected, hanged himself in prison, and was carried on a platform, placed on a high cart, past the houses of Marr and Williamson, and afterwards thrown, with a stake through his breast, into a hole dug for the purpose where the New Road crosses and Cannon Street Road begins. Sir Thomas Lawrence made a drawing of this miscreant immediately after he was cut down.² These murders form the subject of De Quincey's remarkable essay entitled Murder considered as a Fine Art.

.

Many of our readers can remember the state of London just after the murders of Marr and Williamson—the terror which was on every face—the careful barring of doors—the providing of blunderbusses and watchmen's rattles. We know of a shopkeeper who on that occasion sold three hundred rattles in about ten hours.—Macaulay's Essays (Mackintosh's Hist. of the Revolution}.

At Nos. 179 and 180 Ratcliffe Highway (or St. George Street) is the remarkable establishment of Mr. "Charles Jamrach, naturalist"—the largest dealer in wild animals in Europe, where you may at any time purchase anything in that line from an elephant, giraffe, or rattlesnake to a dormouse or Java sparrow. Here and in his stores in Old Gravel Lane, close by, "you may be supplied with hyaenas by the dozen, lions in neat little lots of twenty to five and twenty each; parcels of giraffes, snakes, or boa-constrictors; and samples of tigers, buffaloes, eagles, monkeys, bears and kangaroos." In one room, the late rector of St. George's tells us, 2000 paroquets "may sometimes be seen flying loosely about."¹

In Princes Square, Ratcliffe Highway, is the Swedish Protestant Church, in which Emanuel Swedenborg (d. 1772), whose followers form the New Jerusalem Church (Swedenborgians), was buried, by the side of Dr. Solander, the companion round the world of Sir Joseph Banks. In this church, on Sunday, September 18, 1748, an order was read prohibiting all natives of Sweden and their servants from wearing gold or silver in any shape about their dress.²

---

² Sale Catalogue, second day, No. 267.

¹ Parkinson's Places and People; Rev. H. Jones, East and West London.
² Gent, Mag., September 1748, p. 425.