Carrier Street, St Giles in the Fields,

[Peter Driver 05]

The 1841 Census transcription details for Carrier street, St. Giles in the Fields ,Finsbury gives 33 persons living at the address of all ages, mainly from Irland or Middlesex , two of whome are in my family tree. I cannot find any maps or reference to such a street or place. Was it a workhouse, Boarding house .

If anyone can shed any light on this please let me know.

Peter

[Pamelawagster]

Carrier St is numbered from 1 - 14 each address has a lot of residents,cannot see any description of the premises.

[Coromandel]

Carrier Street was part of the 'Rookery' in St Giles in the Fields. Henry Mayhew's 'London Labour and the London Poor' (1851 edition) includes a description, in a section called 'The Sneaks, or Common Thieves':

'The ground covered by the Rookery was enclosed by Great Russell Street, Charlotte Street, Broad Street, and High Street, all within the parish of St. Giles-in-the-Fields. Within this space were George Street (once Dyott Street), Carrier Street, Maynard Street, and Church Street, which ran from north to south, and were intersected by Church Lane, Ivy Lane, Buckeridge Street, Bainbridge Street, and New Street. These, with an almost endless intricacy of courts and yards crossing each other, rendered the place like a rabbit-warren.'

This description was apparently provided by an inspector of lodging houses in the area, 'before a number of these disreputable streets were removed to make way for New Oxford Street.'

(I found a digitised version of this fascinating book on the Tufts Digital Library site, by doing a Google search for "Carrier Street" and "St Giles in the Fields".)

[David Benson]

You might find this interesting - taken from https://www.alphabetthreat.co.uk/past...bloomsbury.rtf

New Oxford St: Around here was the St Giles Rookery, a notorious slum till the 1840s, a harbour for rebels & criminals. The area contained a large poor Irish population.
It was largely contained between Great Russell St, Bloomsbury St (then Charlotte St) Broad St and St Giles High St. A warren of cheap lodging houses, accomodation for twopence a night… “set apart for the reception of idle persons and vagabonds.” The most notorious streets were Jones Court, Bainbridge Street, according to Mayhew: “some of the most intricate and dangerous places in this low locality.”, a haunt of coiners and thieves. A bull terrier was said to stand here, trained to bark if a stranger approached; it was later taken away by the cops and destroyed. Bastards. Jones Court, Bainbridge St, Buckeridge St, all joined together by cellars, roofs yards and sewers, made it easy for crims to escape the authorities; and filled with booby traps: hidden cess pools etc. Carrier Street (ran north to south in rookery): Mother Dowling’s lodging house & provision shop stood here, frequented by vagrants of every sort.
In 1780, a large group of Gordon Rioters were nicked here with loot.
‘The St Giles Blackbirds’, the black ex-slave population of the area, were a force to be reckoned with by 1731…
St Giles in the Fields was also the last stop on the road from Newgate to Tyburn, for those condemned to be hanged… here they could have their last drink to keep up their courage… It became therefore a site of great symbolism…
New Oxford St was built 1844-47 partly to break up the rookery by demolishing it. 1000s of the poor were made homeless by this early gentrification; while the Duke of Bedford, owner of 104 of the demolished houses, received £114,000 in compensation (a huge sum then.)

[Coromandel]

I think it is in the area at the very bottom right-hand corner of section c4 of Greenwood's 1827 map of London: see https://users.bathspa.ac.uk/greenwood/map_c4u.html: the 'Great' you can see on that map is the beginning of Great Russell Street, and the Rookery was just to the south of that.

[malcolm99]

I think it is in the area at the very bottom right-hand corner of section c4 of Greenwood's 1827 map of London: see https://users.bathspa.ac.uk/greenwood/map_c4u.html: the 'Great' you can see on that map is the beginning of Great Russell Street, and the Rookery was just to the south of that.

I had the same idea as Coromandel of looking for a map but I'm much slower!

I came up with this: Carrier Street is clearly shown in the bottom right hand corner of this section of Horwood’s Map made in the 1790s: oldlondonmaps.com/horwoodpages/horwood11101.html (just put https:// in front, not www).
Although it’s not marked on Cary’s 1837 map, the area is clearly shown just to the south of Great Russell Street (near the top of the map): archivemaps.com/mapco/cary1837/cary27.htm (just put https:// in front, not www). You can zoom in on this map by clicking on it.
malcolm99