Whitechapel Mount

The newly built London Hospital in 1753, showing part of Whitechapel Mount to the west with trees and a house

Whitechapel Mount was on the south side of the Whitechapel Road, on the ancient route from the City of London to Mile End, Stratford, Colchester and Harwich. In the 18th century and later the surroundings were mostly fields: grazing for cows or market gardens.[2]

Leaving London, a traveller would pass the church of St Mary Matfelon (origin of the name "white chapel") on the right, then a windmill, before arriving at the Mount. Across the Whitechapel Road was a burying ground and the Ducking Pond. Further east, at the turnpike, the name changed to Mile End Road, with Dog Row (today Cambridge Heath Road) branching off to Bethnal Green.

According to John Strype (1720) the neighbourhood was a busy one, with good inns for travellers in Whitechapel[3] and good houses for sea captains in Mile End.[4] Even so, said Strype, the Whitechapel Road was "pestered" by illegally built, poor quality dwellings.[5]

Another source said it was infested by highwaymen, footpads and riff-raff of all kinds who preyed on travellers to and from London.[6] News and court reports speak of murders and robberies. In two Old Bailey cases stolen property was buried in, and recovered from, Whitechapel Mount.[7][8] It was a place of resort for pugilists and dog-fighters.[9]

From the summit of Whitechapel Mount an extensive view of the hamlets of Limehouse, Shadwell, and Ratcliff could be obtained.[10]

1673 Christopher Wren

1703 Joel Gascoyne

1720 John Strype

1746 John Rocque

1755 Richard Blome

1795 John Cary

Whitechapel Mount's position is first depicted in a 1673 building plan by Sir Christopher Wren, where he refers to it as "the mud wall called the Fort".[11] In Joel Gascoyne's survey of the parish of Stepney (1703) it is called The Dunghill: it is at least 400 yards long, and is crossed not only by a path, but a road.

In John Rocque's map of London (1746) it has been horizontally truncated, but is shown with substantial elevation, with at least one dwelling-house – if not a terrace of houses – on its western end. In Richard Blome's map of 1755 it has a large dwelling-house with front drive and appears alongside the newly built London Hospital. In John Cary's 1795 map its western portion has been truncated by the newly built New Road, but appears to have a substantial building in its northwest corner.

London fortified. Fort No.2 (top right) is said to be the origin of the Mount.

In 1643 London was hastily fortified against the Royalist armies, for "there is terrible news that [Prince] Rupert will sack it and so a complete and sufficient dike and earthern wall and bulwarks must be made".[12]

Twenty-three or 24 earthen forts were built at intervals around the city and its main suburbs; neighbouring forts were in sight of one another. These forts were manned by volunteers e.g. men too old to be in the regular militia; local innkeepers were ordered to provide them with food.[13]

The forts were interconnected by an earth bank and trench, dug by "great numbers of men, women and young children".[14] All social classes[15] joined in the labour:

The completed ring was 18 miles in circumference. A visiting Scotsman walked it; it took him 12 hours.[17]

Fort No.2, officially a hornwork with two flanks, commanded the Whitechapel Road.[18] The Scottish traveller, who inspected it, said it was a "nine angled fort only pallosaded and single ditched and planted with seven pieces of brazen ordnance [brass cannon], and a court du guard [guardhouse] composed of timber and thatched with tyle stone as all the rest are".[19] There was a trench around its base.[20]

Daniel Lysons said the earthwork at Whitechapel was[21] 329 foot long, 182 foot broad and more than 25 foot above ground level.[22]

After the civil war these fortifications were swiftly removed because they spoiled productive agricultural land. However traces remained and one of these was Whitechapel Mount.[23] Wrote Lysons (1811): "The east end was till of late years very perfect; on the west side some houses had been built. The surface on the top, except where it had been dug away, was perfectly level.[22] Mount Street, Mayfair, is another relict name of one of these civil war forts.[24]

The Great Pit in Aldgate by George Cruikshank ( 1792-1878)

In the bubonic epidemic of 1665 an estimated 70,000-100,000 Londoners died of the plague. Aldgate, Whitechapel and Stepney were badly affected. This placed a strain on the burial facilities and some were buried in mass graves.[25]

Official mass graves were made by opening a deep pit and leaving it open for as long as it took to fill with cadavers, which was done downwind. The number of lost plague pits in London is commonly exaggerated — most mass graves were actually in pre-existing churchyards . However there were some gaps in the records and "undoubtedly some temporary and irregular plague burial sites".[26] Those willing to man the dead carts (and dispose of the corpses) were not fastidious; a contemporary said they were ‘very idle base liveing men and very rude", drawing attention to their task by swearing and cursing.[27]

No contemporaneous record confirms corpses were officially buried in Whitechapel Mount. It is known that there were several burial grounds or plague pits in the vicinity[28] e.g. across the road.[29][30] Whether the mound was used as a burial ground has been disputed.[10] According to popular tradition, it was. In one version, Whitechapel Mount's origin was that rubble from the Fire of London was thrown over a plague pit to cover it up.[31][10] These rumours were denied by the authorities when they proposed to remove Whitechapel Mount; they had it "pierced" in an effort to refute them. [32][33] 

The clearest reputable source is the author Joseph Moser, who wrote

In the course of last summer [1802], when part of the rubbish of [Whitechapel Mount] had just been removed, I had the curiosity to inspect the place, and observed in the different strata a great number of human bones, together with those, apparently, of different animals, oxen, or cows, and sheep’s horns, bricks, tiles, &c. The bones and other exuvia of animals were in many places, especially towards the bottom, bedded in a stiff, viscid earth, of the blueish colour and consistence of potter's clay, which was unquestionably the original ground, thrown into different directions, as different interments operated upon its surface.[31]

A complication is that the London Hospital itself may have used the Mount for burials: a hospital history says that by 1764 "The Mount Burying Ground was full".[34]

The Great Fire of London (Anglo-Dutch school, c.1666), Museum of London

The Great Fire of London occurred the year after the plague. The nearest burnt environment was a mile away. Even so, respectable sources asserted that Whitechapel Mount was formed or augmented from rubble from the Fire of London,[35] including Dr Markham the rector of Whitechapel Church, who took pains to investigate the subject.[36] This origin theory was widely believed,[20][10][37][38] though some denied it.[39][20] When the Mount was dismantled in the 19th century the belief attracted flocks of antique hunters; see below.

The above theories about the origin of Whitechapel Mount, by themselves, may not account for its sheer size as shown in the maps and illustrations cited.

A laystall was an open rubbish tip; towns relied on them for disposing of garbage, and did so until the sanitary landfills of the 20th century. By legislation of October 1671 seven laystalls were appointed for the City of London. All street sweepings and household rubbish was to be collected in carts and had to be tipped in one of these, and nowhere else. One of them was Whitechapel Mount: it was to receive the rubbish from the wards of Portsoken, Tower, Duke's Place and Lime Street.[40]

A laystall, King's Cross, painted 1837. Notice the similarity to the title image

However, a laystall was more than a passive tip: it was a business. Its proprietor employed gangs of men, women and boys to sort the rubbish and recycle it.[41][42] Without him, nothing prevented indiscriminate fly-tipping and random lateral spread onto adjoining properties. William Guy who investigated the laystalls of mid-19th century London reported

In most of the laystalls or dustmen's yards, every species of refuse matter is collected and deposited:– nightsoil, the decomposing refuse of markets, the sweepings of narrow streets and courts, the sour-smelling grains from breweries, the surface soil of the leading thoroughfares, and the ashes from the houses. The proportion in which these several matters are collected, vary... In all these establishments the bulk of the deposits consists of dust from the houses, which is sifted on the spot by women and boys seated on the dust-heaps, assisted by men who are engaged in filling the sieves, sorting the heterogeneous materials, or removing and carting them away.[43]

The Black Eagle Brewery, like other parts of the East End built environment, incorporated bricks made from Whitechapel Mount

While the legislation speaks of "dung, soil, filth and dirt", most domestic refuse (by volume) comprised household dust[44] typically coal ash – hence the expression "dustman" – and this could be used for making bricks.[45] At the close of the 18th century there was a tremendous demand for bricks to build the rapidly expanding London; "At night, a 'ring of fire' and pungent smoke encircled the City"; there were numerous local brickfields e.g. at Mile End.[46] An Old Bailey case of 1809 records that bricks were being delivered from the diminishing Whitechapel Mount.[47]

Irony: A letter pokes fun at amateur antiquarians, 1805

Believing it to contain detritus from the Fire of London, flocks of cockney enthusiasts examined the Mount's soil.[50] Various antiques were found in it – or alleged to be found in it, since it gave them provenance[38] – including a silver tankard[37] and a Roman coin.[51]

The most spectacular find was a carved boar's head with silver tusks; it was, said reputable antiquarians, an authentic memento of the Boar's Head Inn, Eastcheap: a setting for Shakespeare plays, Falstaff, Mistress Quickly and so forth, and genuinely burnt down in the Fire of London.[52][9]