The Lace Market

[Stan 386]

Not sure if the Lace Market just comes into Sneinton,but thought this recent research from Nottingham University was quite interesting!

Later this month, Mrs Seaton, 42, from Hucknall, is to present some of her studies in a two-hour seminar at the university, which will be open to the public.

The local historian is one of the few people to have studied the lodging houses that used to stand in Cliff Road, Narrowmarsh, before the slum clearances of the last century.

The area is now known as the Lace Market.

The houses developed in the 1850s as cheap accommodation for rural workers coming into the city to work in the lace factories, which sprung up in the industrial revolution.

While they initially accommodated families as well as singletons, life in the overcrowded guest houses descended into what commentators described at the time as "moral depravity".

Mrs Seaton said: "I have done family history for over 20 years and my husband's great great grandfather was a lodging house keeper in Narrowmarsh. I found there was not a lot of detail on this and nothing dedicated to family lodging houses."

What she found in census returns, police records and other documents was a squalid underworld at the heart of Nottingham.

One evening in the 1860s a spotcheck on a lodging-house in Narrowmarsh found 33 people - half of them drunk - in a premises with just 15 beds.

For 4d a night a visitor would get a share of a bed but sheets were rarely washed, men and women cohabited, and lodgers would cook and wash where they slept. At that time in Nottingham there were 53 lodging houses.

Many premises became brothels and during the First World War they were highlighted by the city's medics as a hot bed of venereal disease.

But Mrs Seaton uncovered more than just the nature of the trade. She is also identified some of the characters of those times.

One of them, Ellen Phillips, was well known as a lodger in Red Lion Street and played the accordion for a living.

Early on the morning of April 11, 1915, she came to the attention of the police.

According to the police report, Ms Phillips was running down the road at 2am pursued by a black man, who was evidently intent on doing her harm.

A police officer intervened. A Sergeant Wild wrote in the report: "I stopped them and asked what was the matter. Phillips said "he is going to murder me". The man said "I have married her today and we have been to bed and I can't find anywhere to put it".

It turns out Ellen Phillips was a cross-dresser and was actually a man.

Other people who emerge from the records are prostitute Elizabeth Smart who worked out of Riley's lodging house in Narrowmarsh in the early 1900s. She was arrested in March 1908.

There was also 'black Sam' who was a muscle man and another chap who dressed as an Amazonian India with a "flat topped wide brimmed hat and a cape adorned with rosaries, beads and medals".

Gradually, laws were passed to regulate the lodging houses because of their threat to health and they were eventually pulled down in the 1920s

[plantfit 7,592]

Ayup Stan,

I remember cycling from Sneinton to Clifton each night from work along canal street and just before the old Broad Marsh area there was a building just before the railway bridge and wrote on the side you could make out the words "Beds for the night 6d"

Would this be in the area you were talking about?

Rog

[mick2me 3,033]

Any details of this talk Rog?

[plantfit 7,592]

Ayup Mick,

Perhaps the use of the word TALK was wrong, what I meant was "is this the area you meant in your post" sorry for the misunderstanding

Rog

[mick2me 3,033]

Mrs Seaton, 42, from Hucknall, is to present some of her studies in a two-hour seminar at the university, which will be open to the public.

I picked up on this?