Grub Street
Grub Street was a street located in the Cripplegate Without suburb, immediately north of London's defensive wall. The street ran from Fore Street east of St Giles-without-Cripplegate, north to Chiswell Street.
The street was later renamed Milton Street, which was heavily damaged by World War II bombing and then partly swallowed up by the Barbican Estate development, but still survives in part. The name Grub Street has survived as a pejorative term for impoverished hack writers and writings of low literary value.
Grub Street was pierced along its length with narrow entrances to alleys and courts, many of which retained the names of early signboards. Its bohemian society was set amidst the impoverished neighbourhood's low-rent dosshouses, brothels and coffeehouses.
Famous for its concentration of impoverished "hack writers", aspiring poets, and low-end publishers and booksellers, Grub Street existed on the margins of London's journalistic and literary scene.
According to Samuel Johnson's Dictionary, the term was "originally the name of a street... much inhabited by writers of small histories, dictionaries, and temporary poems, whence any mean production is called grubstreet". Johnson himself is said to have lived and worked on Grub Street early in his career, but this is doubtful. The contemporary image of Grub Street was popularised by Alexander Pope in his Dunciad.
Toponymy
Grub Street appears to have taken its name from a refuse ditch that ran alongside, and variations on the name include Grobstrat, Grobbestrate, Grubbestrate, Grubbestrete, Grubbelane, Grubstrete, and Crobbestrate. Grub is also a derogatory noun applied to "a person of mean abilities, a literary hack; in recent use, a person of slovenly attire and unpleasant manners".According to the Oxford English Dictionary the verb grub means "To dig superficially; to break up the surface of ; to clear of roots and stumps." The earliest use of the word is in 1300, "Theif hus brecand, or gruband grund", and in 1572 "Ze suld your ground grube with simplicitie".
History
Early history
Grub Street was in Cripplegate ward, in the parish of St Giles-without-Cripplegate. Much of the area was originally extensive marshlands from the Fleet Ditch, to Bishopsgate, contiguous with Moorfields to the east.The St Alphage Churchwardens' Accounts of 1267 mention a stream running from the nearby marsh, through Grub Street, and under the city walls into the Walbrook river, which may have provided the local population with drinking water; however, the marshes were drained in 1527.
One of Grub Street's early residents was the notable recluse Henry Welby, the owner of the estate of Goxhill in Lincolnshire. In 1592 his half-brother attempted to shoot him with a pistol. Shocked, he took a house on Grub Street and remained there, in near-total seclusion, for the rest of his life. He died in 1636 and was buried at St Giles in Cripplegate. The virginalist Giles Farnaby also lived in Grub Street from 1634 until his death in 1640.
File:Grub street map.jpg|left|thumb|alt=A hand-drawn colourless map shows a narrow network of streets and alleys. Each is named. The Church of St Giles is visible, as are parts of Moorfields to the east.|Grub Street, as recorded in John Rocque's 1746 map of London. At the time, its path was partly within Cripplegate Ward, but outside the city walls of the City of London. The surviving Milton Street is now entirely within the City of London.
An early use of the land surrounding Grub Street was archery. In Records of St. Giles' Cripplegate, the author describes an order made by Henry VII to convert Finsbury Fields from gardens, to fields for archery practice; however, in Elizabethan times archery became unfashionable, and Grub Street is described as largely deserted, "except for low gambling houses and bowling-alleys—or, as we should call them, skittle-grounds." John Stow also referred to Grubstreete in A Survey of London Volume II as "It was convenient for bowyers, since it lay near the Archery-butts in Finsbury Fields", and in 1651 the poet Thomas Randolph wrote "Her eyes are Cupid's Grub-Street: the blind archer, Makes his love-arrows there."
The little London directory of 1677 lists six merchants living in 'Grubſreet', and Costermongers also plied their trade—a Mr Horton, who died in September 1773, earned a fortune of £2,000 by hiring wheelbarrows out. Land was cheap and occupied mostly by the poor, and the area was renowned for the presence of Ague and the Black Death; in the 1660s the Great Plague of London killed nearly eight thousand of the parish's inhabitants.
The population of St Giles in 1801 has been estimated at about 25,000 people, but by the end of the 19th century this was dropping steadily. In the 18th century Cripplegate was well known as an area haunted by insalubrious folk, and by the mid-19th century crime was rife. Methods of dealing with criminals were severe—thieves and murderers were "left dangling in their chains on Moorfields."
Four so-called 'cages' were maintained by the parish, shelters used as lying-in hospitals, housing the poor, and 'idle imposters'. Conditions in the cages were poor, and some people brought in there from the street died of hunger. One such cage was situated amidst the poor-quality housing stock of Grub Street; destitution was viewed as a crime against society, and was punishable by whipping, and also by having a hole cut in the gristle of the right ear. Well before the influx of writers in the 18th century, Grub Street was therefore in an economically deprived area. John Garfield's Wandring Whore issue V lists several 'Crafty Bawds' operating from the Three Sugar-Loaves, and also mentions a Mrs Wroth as a 'common whore'.
Early literature
The earliest literary reference to Grub Street appears in 1630 by the English poet John Taylor. "When strait I might descry, The Quintescence of Grubstreet, well distild Through Cripplegate in a contagious Map". The local population was known for its nonconformist views; its Presbyterian preacher Samuel Annesley had been replaced in 1662 by an Anglican. Famous 16th-century Puritans included John Foxe, who may have authored his Book of Martyrs in the area, the historian John Speed, and the Protestant printer and poet Robert Crowley. The Protestant John Milton also lived near Grub Street.Press freedom
In 1403 the City of London Corporation approved the formation of a guild of stationers. Stationers were either booksellers, illuminators, or bookbinders. Printing gradually displaced manuscript production, and by the time that the guild received a royal charter of incorporation on 4 May 1557, becoming the Stationers' Company, it was in effect a printers' guild. In 1559, it became the 47th livery company.The Stationers' Company had considerable powers of search and seizure, backed by the state. This monopoly continued until 1641 when, inflamed by the treatment of religious dissenters such as John Lilburne and William Prynne, the Long Parliament abolished the Star Chamber with the Habeas Corpus Act 1640. This led to the de facto cessation of state censorship of the press. Although in 1641 token punishments were given to those responsible for unlicensed and hostile pamphlets published around London—including Grub Street—Puritan and radical pamphlets continued to be distributed by an informal network of street hawkers, and dissenters from within the Stationers' Company.
Tabloid journalism became rife; the unstable political climate resulted in the publication from Grub Street of anti-Caroline literature, along with blatant lies and anti-Catholic stories regarding the Irish Rebellion of 1641; stories that were advantageous to the parliamentary leadership. Following the King's failed attempt to arrest several members of the Commons, Grub Street printer Bernard Alsop became personally involved in the publication of false pamphlets, including a fake letter from the Queen that resulted in John Bond being pilloried. Alsop and colleague Thomas Fawcett were sent to Fleet Prison for several months.
Throughout the English Civil War therefore, publishers and writers remained answerable to the law. State control of the press was tightened in the Licensing Order of 1643, but although the new regime was arguably as restrictive as the monopoly that the Stationers' Company once enjoyed, parliament was unable to control the number of renegade presses that flourished during the Interregnum. The freedoms ensured by the Bill of Rights 1689 led indirectly to the refusal in 1695 of the Parliament of England to renew the Licensing of the Press Act 1662, a law which required all printing presses to be licensed by Parliament. This lapse led to a freer press, and a rise in the volume of printed matter. Jonathan Swift wrote to a friend in New York, "I could send you a great deal of news from the Republica Grubstreetaria, which was never in greater altitude."
Hacks
Publishing houses proliferated in Grub Street, and this, combined with the number of local garrets, meant that the area was an ideal home for hack writers. In The Preface, when describing the harsh conditions a writer suffered, Tom Brown's self-parody referred to being "Block'd up in a Garret". Such contemporary views of the writer, in his inexpensive Ivory Tower high above the noise of the city, were immortalised by William Hogarth in his 1736 illustration The Distrest Poet. The street name became a synonym for a hack writer; in a literary context, 'hack' is derived from Hackney—a person whose services may be for hire, especially a literary drudge. In this framework, hack was popularised by authors such as Andrew Marvell, Oliver Goldsmith, John Wolcot, and Anthony Trollope. Ned Ward's late 17th-century description reinforces a common view of Grub Street authors, as little more than prostitutes:One such author was Samuel Boyse. Contemporary accounts picture him as a dishonest and disreputable rogue, paid for each individual line of prose as a Jack of all trades, master of none. He apparently lived in squalor, often drunk, and on one occasion after pawning his shirt, he fashioned a replacement out of paper. To be a called a 'Grub Street author' was therefore often viewed as an insult, however Grub Street hack James Ralph—who later turned historian—offered one of the period’s most explicit defences of paid authorship in his anonymous pamphlet The Case of Authors by Profession or Trade, Stated: