Toynbee Hall, Whitechapel

'In the autumn of 1888, the attention of the "classes" as well as the "masses" was riveted on a series of brutal murders of prostitutes residing in lodging houses in the Whitchapel area of East London.58 Public response to the murders was widespread and diverse, but the people who mobilized over the murders were almost exclusively male. An army of west End men, fascinated by the murders and bent on hunting the Ripper, invaded the East End.59 Meanswhile, a half-dozen male vigilance committees were set up in Whitechapel-by Toynbee Hall, by the Jewish community, by the radical and socialist workingmen’s clubs.60 These male patrols were organized to protect women, but they also constituted surveillance of the unrespectable poor, and if low-life women in particular. They were explicitly modeled on existing purity organizations already active in the area that had helped to close down two hundred brothels in the East End in the year before the Ripper murders.61 As we have seen, the message of social purity to men was mixed: it demanded that men control heir own sexuality, but it gave them power to control women’s sexuality as well, since it called don them to respect their women and to repress brothels and streetwalker.These generalizations are borne out by the Ripper episode, when men ostensibly out to hunt the Ripper often harassed women on the streets; husbands threatened wives with "ripping" them up in their homes; and little boys in working-class Poplar and suburban Tunbridge Wells itimidated and tormented girls by playing at Jack the Ripper. 62 Female vulnerability extended well beyond the "danger zone" of Whitechapel: throughout London respectable women, afraid to venture out along at night, were effectively placed under "house arrest" and made dependent on male protection. Despite the public outcry against the "male monster" who "stalks the streets of London"63 in search of fallen women, public attention inevitably reverted to the degraded conditions of the Whitechapel victims themselves. "The degraded and depraved lives of the women," observed Canon Barnett of Toynbee Hall in the Times, were more "appalling then the actual murders." 64 Men like Barnett finally manipulated public opinion and consolidated it behind closing down lodging houses where the murdered victims once lived and replacing them with artisan dwellings. Through the surveillance of vigilance committees the murders helped to intensify repressive activities committees the murders helped to intensify repressive activities already underway in the whitehapel area and to hasten the reorganization of prostitution in the East End.65During the Ripper manhunt, feminists were unable to mobilize any counteroffensive against widespread male intimidation of women. Josephine Butler and others did express concern that the uproar over the murders would lead to the repression of brothels and to subsequent homelessness of women; but these were isolated interventions in an overwhelmingly male-dominated debate.'

Casebook: Jack the Ripper - Message Boards: Toynbee Hall, Whitechapel

Desire
THE POLITICS OF SEXUALITY


Edited by:
Ann Snitow, Christine Stansell, and Sharon Thompson
Preface to the British Edition Rosalind Coward
Published by :
VIRAGO Press Limited 1984
41 William IV Street, London WC 2N 4 DB'

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Highly suspicious folk.

Highly suspicious folk.

'Others saw no need to wait for the revolution and inspired by Morris set about reorganising existing society. The Guild of Handicraft which opened its doors in Whitechapel in 1888 was the brainchild of a young architect Charles Robert Ashbee. Whilst a trainee at the office of architect G.F.Bodley, and living at Toynbee Hall, Ashbee was influenced not only by the ideas of Morris & Ruskin, but also met Edward Carpenter, philosopher of the simple life and proponent of `homogenic love'. The Guild grew out of lectures Ashbee gave on Ruskin to the 'BWM', his shorthand for the British Working Man. Frustrated by the well-intentioned philanthropy of Toynbee Hall "neither a college, convent nor a club" he conceived of a more practical experiment, a craft 'co-operative' modelled on English Medieval Guilds, where skilled craftsmen working by the principles of Ruskin & Morris would not only produce hand-crafted goods, but also run a school for young apprentices. The idea was greeted with great enthusiasm by almost everyone except Morris himself, who was by now deeply involved in promoting revolutionary socialism. In an attempt to win his support Ashbee declared, "look I am going to forge a weapon for you;- and thus I too work for you in the overthrow of society", to which Morris replied, " The weapon is too small to be of any Value."Ashbee, like Morris before him was a rich boy turned revolutionary. His mother came from a wealthy Jewish family in Hamburg and his father was a senior partner in a London law firm. Despite Morris's discouragement Ashbee pushed on with both the Guild & School of Handicrafts opening in rooms at Toynbee Hall on June 23rd 1888. The venture was a surprise success and shortly moved to larger premises on the top floor of a nearby warehouse and then onto a rather grand Georgian house in Mile End Road and open a shop in the West End to sell the Guild's goods. At Essex House the Guild carried out carpentry, carving, cabinet making and decorative painting . A smithy was built in the garden and metalwork, silverwork & jewellery were added to the Guild trades. Ashbee's success in Whitechapel was based partly on his own developing architecture practice, with the guild providing the furniture, fixtures and fittings for a growing number of commissions. Other factors contributing to the success were no doubt the contact with the wealthy patrons of Toynbee Hall and the success of other young Arts & Crafts architects, supplied by the Guild. A lively social life was established at the Guild with programmes of lectures, and Guild suppers, where the men sang songs and acted in masques. An Essex House cricket X1 was formed and a number of country cottages were acquired to which the guildsmen would cycle for weekend breaks and short holidays.In many ways the comradeship of the Guild with its genial company of young men enjoying themselves together came close to achieving Carpenter's ideal of 'homogenic' love between men, which was based on Ashbee's own barely-concealed homosexuality, which both he and his wife Janet came to terms with remarkably well, given that these were the years after the Oscar Wilde trial.

Casebook: Jack the Ripper - Message Boards: Toynbee Hall, Whitechapel

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The Proletarian Other: Charles Booth and the Politics of Representation

'For philanthropically inclined males who wanted to go among the poor, the 1880s saw the rise of settlement houses, people's palaces and philanthropic working men's clubs. Toynbee House in Whitechapel, started by Samuel Barnett, Oxford House, started under the aegis of Octavia Hill, and Walter Besant's People's Palace on the Mile End Road (which now houses Queen Mary College) were all institutions intended to bring culture and education to the benighted people of the East End. Toynbee Hall and Oxford House were "settlement houses"; university-educated young men lived in them and were supposed to form bonds with the working men of the slums that would civilize the latter. Male settlement workers, like Hill's female rent collectors, entered the formerly closed spaces of the working class. As with Hill's young ladies, settlement men were in the forefront of the development of “new liberal” and socialist political economy and urban sociology. Three of Booth's assistants were Toynbee residents.'Taken from:The Proletarian Other: Charles Booth and the Politics of Representation Ben Gidley Isbn: 0 902986 61 9 Price:£2.50 (p&p free) First published in Great Britain 2000 by Goldsmiths College, University of London, New Cross, London SE14 6NW.

Casebook: Jack the Ripper - Message Boards: Toynbee Hall, Whitechapel

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toynbee hall

The bold mission statement of Whitechapel’s Toynbee Hall proclaims it’s all about ‘Learning from the Past; inspiration for the Future’. Now the charity, founded in the ‘two nations’ London of the late 18th century, has the opportunity to use that past to inspire future East Enders. A £50,000 grant from the Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF), will provide access for local residents and the public to its important historical archives.It’s an extraordinarily rich archive, with Toynbee Hall at the centre of more than a century of social change. The archive includes documents from William Beveridge, whose Report set out the structure of the welfare state, and Clement Attlee, the Prime Minister who implemented it.Kate Bradley, librarian at Toynbee Hall, described the funding as providing ‘a fantastic opportunity to bring our collection to the attention of the local community and anyone interested in the history of social policy’.The seeds of mid-nineteenth century, where the polarisation of wealth and poverty was shocking to many, especially visitors from abroad, but was largely ignored by the ‘haves’ of the capital. One man who saw the schism was future prime minister Benjamin Disraeli (left). In his 1845 novel Sybil, a character speaks of ‘two nations: between whom there is no intercourse and no sympathy; who are as ignorant of each other's habits, thoughts, and feelings, as if they were dwellers in different zones, or inhabitants of different planets.’Among the growing band of clerics who were determined that England should become one planet were Church of England curate, Samuel Barnett, and his wife, Henrietta. In 1873, the pair rejected the easy option of a parish in an affluent area and came to St Jude’s in the East End of London. Barnett’s Bishop had warned that ‘St Jude’s was the worst parish ... inhabited mainly by a criminal population.’As with Disraeli, the Barnetts saw the answer not arising from proletarian action, far less revolution, but from the efforts of the upper classes. Tory Disraeli had argued that a revitalised aristocracy were still England’s natural rulers; they could and should reunite the country. The Barnetts took it further – inviting the upper classes into the East End, to bring their skills and energy to improving the lot of the East Enders. But it wasn’t to be a purely didactic exercise. The young Oxford students who came to live in the poorest part of London would ‘learn as much as teach; to receive as much to give’.It was an extraordinarily imaginative social experiment - through educating the future leaders and opinion formers the Barnetts hoped to change society for the better and forever. Oxbridge was where the future leaders of society were to be found, and the Barnetts received a welcome response first at Balliol College, Oxford and then Wadham College. Toynbee Hall opened its doors to residents in 1884 – the young students had to pay for the privilege of staying there. It took its name from Arnold Toynbee, a young academic and earlier associate of the Barnetts who died (probably of overwork) serving the poor.The early success of Toynbee Hall can be seen in some of the characters that emerged. Visitors included Clement Attlee, who first came to Toynbee as a young man and maintained contact when he became Prime Minister in 1945. William Beveridge, came to Toynbee in 1903: he was to draw the blueprint for a new, fairer Britain after World War 2, and he maintained a lifelong connection. Many ideas were fomented at Toynbee too. In 1898 free legal advice started there; the Workers Educational Association was started there 1903; one of the first Citizens’ Advice Bureaux was set up at Toynbee in 1949; the Community Service Volunteers sprung up in the late sixties, the Child Poverty Action Group in 1965 and the Toy Libraries Association in the 1970s ... the list goes on. And with Toynbee at the heart of both Jewish and Irish communities in the East End, Toynbee residents found themselves at the heart of the fight against fascism in the thirties and racism every since.Toynbee Hall was at the epicentre of an extraordinary variety of cultural, social and political activity. Marconi demonstrated his wireless for the first time in the UK at Toynbee. East End artist and craftsman CR Ashbee is credited with designing the Toynbee ‘tree of life’ logo. And the meeting which brokered the end of the 1926 General Strike is widely regarded as happening at the Hall. Meanwhile, the tireless Barnetts founded Whitechapel Art Gallery in 1901 believing that the poor of the East End should have access to the arts. And Henrietta, very much in the spirit of the Arts and Crafts Movement, founded Hampstead Garden Suburb as a ‘village’ where working people could experience a high quality of life.Today, Toynbee lives on as a voluntary organisation providing advice and services to the local communities of Tower Hamlets. The buildings provide residence for 30 young volunteers, sheltered accommodation for elderly people and office space for local not-for-profit organisations. As to the future, who knows? But there is more than a century of enticing local history which will now have much wider access.Toynbee Hall is at 28 Commercial Street, E1, www.toynbeehall.org.uk, info@toynbeehall.org.uk, 020 7247 6943. More about the work of the Heritage Lottery Fund can be found at www.hlf.org.uk.

toynbee hall

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George Yard goes by the name of Gunthorpe Street

George Yard goes by the name of Gunthorpe Street

February 28th

Jack the Ripper alley

Today, George Yard goes by the name of Gunthorpe Street. A long narrow lane, it runs all the way from Whitechapel High Street up to Wentworth Street, and stands between Commercial Street and Osborn Street, which leads to Brick Lane. So today it is in the heart of one of the most bustling areas of the East End, especially at night. And yet, itself, it is still an isolated and slightly desolate looking location.

Along the left hand side on this picture, which is looking North towards the Wentworth Street end, is Toynbee Hall, the headquarters of a charity formed in 1884, four years before the Ripper murders, by the Reverend Samuel Barnett. Barnett was a campaigner for social justice and a close associate of Thomas Barnardo. He was the canon of St Jude's church in Commercial Street. Barnett would involve himself in the Ripper murders in a series of letters to the newspapers, writing that the crimes were merely symptomatic of the neglect with which the slum areas of the East End had been treated.

The intent of the charity was to aid the inhabitants of impoverished communities, and it was named after Arnold Toynbee, a fellow campaigner in the area who had worked towards greater access to adult learning opportunities for the poorest members of society, and who had died at the tragically early age of 30.

Until his own death last week, former Secretary of State for War John Profumo was the President of the charity.

Writing in 1998, reknowned Ripper expert Stewart Evans described his first visit to George Yard in 1967. "I located the arched entrance to Gunthorpe Street (George Yard) with the White Hart public house on the west corner at the junction with Whitechapel High Street. Entering the narrow street with its cobbled road surface and gloomy Victorian buildings on both sides stretching northwards in front of me, there was an immediate feeling of atmosphere and a gloomy oppressiveness. At this point the true idea of the Victorian London of 1888 could be obtained. Even today this bottom end of Gunthorpe Street is remarkably little changed."

Toynbee Hall was not the only charitable institution here in 1888. On the top left hand corner stood a Salvation Army mission. On the right hand side of the alley stood the George Yard Mission School. It was up this gloomy little alleyway that Martha Tabram was last seen, arm in arm with her soldier client, as Bank Holiday Monday of August 6th slipped into the early hours of the 7th.

New Gates ...

 

Sir William Beveridge

In Sir William’s shadow

Mar 26th 1998
From The Economist print edition

FRANK FIELD, an amiable and thoughtful minister at the Department of Social Security, is not the sort of man you would expect to become a popular hero. Nor is his job—to “think the unthinkable” about the future of the welfare state—an obvious launchpad to immortality. His first thoughts were published this week in a consultative paper. But is it possible that the only thing that stands between Mr Field and heroism is a want of ambition? After all, Sir William Beveridge, the welfare state’s famous inventor, was hardly hero material either.

Beveridge was a high Victorian toff, a Liberal, the son of a judge and the product of Charterhouse and Balliol, where he started to read mathematics but found it difficult and switched to classics. His friends included Sidney and Beatrice Webb, and Keynes. He was, in other words, the sort of Englishman whose beliefs and social position are easy to place. His personality, on the other hand, seems to have been altogether unfathomable. Friends and biographers have described him variously as “baffling”, the “kindest man who ever walked the earth”, and “vain, humourless and tactless”. Harold Wilson, who was unlucky enough to be his research assistant, was appalled by his habit of rising at six and beginning the day in an icy bath.

One of Beveridge’s multiple personalities was that of an egotistical, opinionated autocrat (he wrote leaders for the Daily Telegraph) who thought on a grand and occasionally Teutonic scale. He was director of the London School of Economics and ruled it with an iron hand. Later, as vice-chancellor of London University, he presided over the building of its Senate House. Intended to embody “the lightheartedness and solemnity of youth”, this turned instead into a monstrous edifice that Hitler is said to have eyed for his London headquarters after the conquest of Britain.

However, Beveridge also took an early interest in social reform. Like Clement Attlee, he worked after university at Toynbee Hall, a university foundation in London’s East End, where he was able to see the wretchedness of the poor at first hand and to be shocked by it. This was a lasting influence. His academic career was interspersed with public service: as director of labour exchanges from 1909 and permanent secretary of the Ministry of Food from 1919. But he was a difficult colleague. His reputation for arrogance in these and later jobs made it hard for him to find work in the government at the beginning of the second world war, when he was already in his 60s. He was so disappointed by the job he eventually landed—co-ordinating social insurance—that news of the appointment brought tears to his eyes. And yet, on December 1st 1942, he produced the report that was eventually to change the face of Britain.

The report went under the bland title “Social Insurance and Allied Services”. But parts of it glowed with fire. Famously, Beveridge declared war on the five giant (capitalised) evils of Want, Disease, Ignorance, Squalor and Idleness before mapping out a scheme for children’s allowances, a comprehensive health service and “the maintenance of employment”. The document’s official title was quickly forgotten as “the Beveridge report” received rave reviews and became an instant, improbable, best-seller. In all, some 800,000 copies were bought. Beveridge’s own estimation of the report’s significance was characteristic. “From now on,” he said modestly to Harold Wilson, “Beveridge is not the name of a man; it is the name of a way of life, and not only for Britain but for the whole civilised world.”

That is precisely what some members of Churchill’s cabinet feared. Kingsley Wood, the chancellor, begged Churchill to delay publication, on the ground that Beveridge’s scheme involved an “impracticable financial commitment”. But delay was not feasible. A spin doctor before his time, Beveridge had already leaked enough morsels to make a wartime public hungry for the New Jerusalem. After publication, the cabinet hoped to downplay the report, but was no match for its self-publicising author. Beveridge barked so loud, said Correlli Barnett, a historian, that he made himself the unstoppable “Field Marshal Montgomery of social welfare”.

So a field marshal’s baton lurks in Mr Field’s knapsack? No. As Nicholas Timmins says in his excellent “biography” of the welfare state (“The Five Giants”, Fontana, 1996), Beveridge’s success must be understood in the context of his times. Britain had in recent memory passed through two wars—the Boer war and the Great War—that had shown that swathes of its population were, literally, unfit to fight. Beveridge’s report was produced in the backwash of the searing mass unemployment of the 1930s; in the middle of another war, when all the talk was of reconstruction; when the British people felt growing admiration for the stand of the Russian communists against Hitler; and when war service was radicalising millions of soldiers. All these things conspired to give the Beveridge report its unstoppable moral force and political momentum. As the New Jerusalem hove into view, it was simply impossible for Churchill’s government to take proper account of what Correlli Barnett with heavy irony later called the little matter of “sordid accountancy”—the question, that is, of how affordable the welfare state would be.

Britain is nowadays much changed, and much richer. But the Beveridge legacy has also now turned into something sacred and universal, just as Beveridge predicted it would. He said in his report’s introduction that “a revolutionary moment in the world’s history is a time for revolutions, not for patching.” That time has gone. Despite New Labour’s revolutionary talk, these days the work is all sordid accountancy, and patching. Mr Field is welcome to his thankless job.

New guide to help social housing tenants manage their finances

Department for Work and Pensions' Financial Inclusion Minister James Plaskitt Toynbee Hall,  Financial Services Authority

Social Housing
New guide to help social housing tenants manage their finances

The National Housing Federation is aiming to create a network of 'financial inclusion champions' in the social housing sector, with the launch of a new guide to help housing workers to address the needs of tenants who have difficulty managing their finances...A Guide to Financial Capability was launched at the Federation's annual financial inclusion conference in London on 20 February, by the Department for Work and Pensions' Financial Inclusion Minister James Plaskitt.

This free guide has been developed by the Federation and Toynbee Hall, with support from the Financial Services Authority as part of its National Strategy for Financial Capability. It is designed for use by frontline staff in housing associations, local authority housing departments and arms-length management organisations.It highlights the excellent work already being done by many social landlords to empower tenants to be confident in managing their money and in choosing the right financial products. This ranges from advice on accessing benefits to the provision of low interest loans and basic banking services.The guide calls on every social housing provider to have its own financial inclusion champion, so that the best practice becomes widespread throughout the sector.At the launch, Mr Plaskitt will say: "Many people on low incomes don't know where to get free money advice or affordable credit and can get into serious financial problems. They can often feel there is no option but to use high cost doorstep lenders or even worse, loan sharks, to make ends meet, ending up deeper in debt. "I believe that housing associations have a valuable role to play in getting the message across that there is help available as they come into daily contact with the people we are trying to reach.

 "The National Housing Federation are working closely with our 'now let's talk money' campaign and their continued support will make a real difference to people's lives." Federation chief executive David Orr will add: "We have seen some real innovation on financial inclusion in the housing sector. Throughout the country, housing providers are offering financial services and impartial advice to their tenants. And through partnership working and investment, they are also providing much-needed support to community financial institutions such as credit unions - helping tenants to access low interest loans. "Often, these services have come about because one member of staff is passionate about helping tenants to manage their finances. I want to see this approach shared by the entire social housing sector." The guide is available to download here.

New guide to help social housing tenants manage their finances

Stalin stayed here

 

Bicycles

 

Letters | Society | The Guardian

As Phil Hope says, small is beautiful. But if rhetoric is to become reality, government and many third-sector organisations will need to make changes.The government must address the unintended consequences of its efficiency drive. The reality is that commissioners of services are being driven towards fewer, bigger service contracts. If services are to be competitively tendered, we have to find ways to assess service providers based on real long-term outcomes - for users and the wider community.The London borough of Camden awarded a mental health service contract using a sustainable commissioning model that does just that. A shared bank of indicators demonstrating outcomes could go some way to enabling the third sector to provide positive change by making the process simpler, easier and cheaper.Toynbee Hall, a charity based in east London, is piloting the approach. But the burden can't rest with the third sector alone; funders and infrastructural bodies need to work together to create this kind of common resource. Ultimately, government must ensure that its zeal for the third sector, when mixed with its obsession with efficiency and competition, doesn't inadvertently destroy what makes the sector unique.Lisa Sanfilippo and Josh Ryan-CollinsNew Economics Foundation

Letters | Society | The Guardian

oh

 

JSTOR: The Journal of Political Economy: Vol. 25, No. 2 (Feb., 1917)

JSTOR: The Journal of Political Economy: Vol. 25, No. 2 (Feb., 1917), pp. 195-200

 

Jane Addams



* jane addams
* hull-house
* settlement house movement
* progressive era
* chicago history

History Ads
Jane Addams Life History British History Women in History Women's Groups
Dates: September 6, 1860 - May 21, 1935
Occupation: settlement house reformer, pacifist, women's rights advocate
Known for: founding of Hull-House; her work was a foundational to the social work profession
Also known as: Laura Jane Addams
About Jane Addams:

Jane Addams was born in Cedarville, Illinois. Her mother died when she was two, and she was raised by her father and, later, a stepmother. She graduated from Rockford Female Seminary in 1881, among the first students to take a course of study equivalent to that of men at other institutions. Her father, whom she admired tremendously, died that same year, 1881.

Jane Addams attended Woman's Medical College in Pennsylvania, but she left the college, probably due to her ill health and her chronic back pain. Jane Addams toured Europe 1883-5 and then lived in Baltimore 1885-7, but did not figure out what she wanted to do with her education and her skills.

In 1888, on a visit to England with her Rockford classmate Ellen Gates Starr, Jane Addams visited Toynbee Settlement Hall and London's East End. Jane Addams and Ellen Starr planned to start an American equivalent of that settlement house. After their return they chose Hull mansion, a building which had, though originally built at the edge of the city, become surrounded by an immigrant neighborhood and had been used as a warehouse.

Using an experimental model of reform -- trying solutions to see what would work -- and committed to full- and part-time residents to keep in touch with the neighborhood's real needs, Jane Addams built Hull-House into an institution known worldwide. Addams wrote articles, lectured widely and did most of the fund-raising personally and served on many social work, social welfare and settlement house boards and commissions.

Jane Addams also became involved in wider efforts for social reform, including housing and sanitation issues, factory inspection, rights of immigrants, women and children, pacifism and the 8-hour day. She served as a Vice President of the National Woman Suffrage Association from 1911-1914.

In 1912, Jane Addams campaigned for the Progressive Party and its presidential candidate, Teddy Roosevelt. She worked with the Peace Party, helped found and served as president (1919-1935) of the Women's International League for Peace and Freedom and was a founding member of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU).

In 1931 Jane Addams was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, shared with Nicholas Murray Butler, but her health was too fragile to attend the European ceremonies to accept the prize. Jane Addams died in 1935.

Books by Jane Addams, many of which were edited compilations of earlier essays and magazine articles, include Twenty Years at Hull-House and Democracy and Social Ethics.

In 1963, most of the buildings which had come to be called Hull-House were torn down to make room for the University of Illinois, Chicago campus (then called Circle campus). All that is left today is the original mansion and one more building. These are now used as a museum and educational site.
More About Jane Addams

Places: Cedarville, Illinois; Chicago, Illinois.

Organizations: Hull-House, settlement house movement, National Woman Suffrage Association, Anti-Imperialist League, Women's International League for Peace and Freedom, American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU)

Religion: Jane Addams was raised as a Quaker, joined a Presbyterian church in Chicago and maintained her membership there. On most Sundays in Chicago she attended Unitarian church services or the Ethical Culture Society, where she served as "interim lecturer" (then the title for a position equivalent to clergy in Ethical Culture) for a brief time.

Demolition in Whitechapel High Street #3, Jan 2008

2008 lONDON 12-02-2008 09-44-31

2008 lONDON 12-02-2008 09-44-31
Originally uploaded by caledonianpark

College

 

Lunchtime in the Garden

 

Historical, innit

 

Newham Recorder - Shop a shark campaign takes off

Newham Recorder - Shop a shark campaign takes off

http://www.newhamrecorder.co.uk/content/newham/recorder/news/story.aspx?brand=RECOnline&category=newsTowerHam&tBrand=northlondon24&tCategory=newsnewham&itemid=WeED01%20Feb%202008%2015%3A12%3A05%3A057

Shop a shark campaign takes off
03 February 2008
PEOPLE across Tower Hamlets were called on to report loan sharks at the launch of a high-profile public campaign designed to tackle illegal money lenders.

Under-Secretary of State for Trade and Consumer Affairs Gareth Thomas, launched the London-wide Illegal Money Lending Team, at Toynbee Hall, Whitechapel.

The team is part of the London Trading Standards Association, which will target its initial efforts on Tower Hamlets, Newham and Hackney.

The trading standards team in Tower Hamlets was instrumental in getting Government cash to set up this initiative, said a council spokeswoman.

Cllr Abdal Ullah said: "In the current environment where credit is increasingly hard to access, this scheme will clamp down on loan sharks who are looking to exploit the situation.

"I'm pleased that the council was able to play such an important role is securing the funding for this and I really urge anyone who has been the victim of a loan shark to come forward with information and seek advice."

The council's trading standards workers will provide support to the Illegal Money Lending officers through specialist investigations and technical support to track down loan sharks and charge them as appropriate.

Victims will also be given specialist help from the advisers at Toynbee Hall. They can call (020) 7364 6886, email sharkbait@lotsa.org.uk or text Shark Bait (plus message) and send to 60003. For more information, visit www.lotsa.org.uk

BBC - London - Your London - Restoration - Wilton's Music Hall

BBC - London - Your London - Restoration - Wilton's Music Hall


A music hall historian says Wilton's is "one of a population of one". It has remained practically untouched since its life back in the 1800s.

Broomhill opera now looks after the building and holds a temporary performance licence for the venue. But, because only about 40% of the building is currently in use and it is in need of some restoration, it cannot be opened all-year round.

At its peak, this east end institution could seat up to 2,000 revellers. Wilton’s is the only surviving giant music hall from this period, making it a unique and valuable historical asset.