Source skills for Spitalfields and Empire

Why Source Skills Matter for Spitalfields

The historic environment examination at OCR asks you to use specific types of evidence about Spitalfields. You must be able to explain what different sources reveal about migration patterns, evaluate their usefulness, and compare two sources effectively. This lesson drills the five main evidence types: physical fabric (buildings and streets), parish and civil registers, contemporary visual evidence, written contemporary accounts, and oral history.

A key principle: every piece of evidence tells you something, but also conceals something. A parish register from Christ Church Spitalfields shows who was baptised, married or buried there, and can indicate the ethnic or national origin of parishioners through the spelling of names. But it only records those who used the Anglican church — Jewish, Nonconformist and later Muslim residents would not appear. Knowing both what a source shows and what it omits is essential for the highest marks.

Physical Fabric as Evidence

The built environment of Spitalfields is itself a primary source. The surviving Georgian terraces on Fournier Street date from the early eighteenth century and reflect the prosperity of Huguenot weavers who could afford substantial brick-built homes with large windows for their looms. The architectural quality of these houses — compare them with the much more modest buildings in adjacent courts — tells us about the relative wealth of the Huguenot community.

The Brick Lane Jamme Masjid building is the single most evidence-rich site in Spitalfields. Built as a Huguenot chapel in 1743, it became a Methodist chapel, then a synagogue (c.1897), then a mosque (1976). Its physical adaptations — changes to the interior, the addition of a minaret, the presence of Hebrew inscriptions still visible inside — provide direct evidence of the succession of communities. Students should know that multiple layers of evidence within a single building is itself historically significant.

Documentary Sources: Registers and Surveys

Charles Booth’s poverty maps (1889 onwards) provide an invaluable visual record of social conditions in Spitalfields at the height of Jewish migration. Booth colour-coded streets from black (lowest class, semi-criminal) to yellow (wealthy). Streets in Spitalfields showed mixed conditions, with the poorest workers concentrated in courts off Brick Lane. The maps are quantified evidence of poverty levels but reflect Booth’s own assumptions — his descriptions of Jewish immigrants show both admiration for their industry and Victorian prejudices about class.

Henry Mayhew’s journalism from the 1840s–1860s captured the street life of Spitalfields before the Jewish migration, describing Irish costermongers (street sellers) and the conditions of casual labourers. His accounts give voice to individuals who left no other written record, but are shaped by Mayhew’s middle-class perspective and journalistic purposes.