VicLondon-Holborn
Holborn, the City
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On the north side of Holborn Street is the eponymous district. Crossing into Holborn from New Oxford Street or High Holborn, the character of the place does not change drastically from that of Covent Garden. The rst few small streets are primarily commercial in nature, but as one moves north from the boundary with Covent Garden and St. Giles, more residences are in evidence. Many of the homes here have been broken up into ats, and many of the small shops have apartments above the businesses. Despite the middle-class character of Holborn, sections of the district are extremely dangerous at night. The rookery of St. Giles lurks south of New Oxford Street and much of the police coverage disappears at night, leaving the area near the British Museum the heaviest patrolled portion of Holborn after dark. Conveniently, this is also close to the fancy neighbourhoods of Bedford, Bloomsbury, and Russell Squares.
Holborn is a miniature of the city, in many ways. It is dominated by middle-class families that work in the City, but toward St. Pancras, the houses and businesses become more respectable and expensive. Going east toward Farringdon Station, the opposite occurs; many of the buildings are new, but of middling quality, and often older, poorer structures are crammed between them. The place is a patchwork; one street can be well-to-do, with middle-class families living in the ats and houses along the road, while the next street can see dilapidated slums, some still around from before the Great Fire n 1666. Many of these buildings have been deemed hazardous by the various Parliamentary studies that have been chartered to review poverty, but only a few have been removed at the beginning of 1880.
By the end of the century, most of these old buildings have been torn down to make way for government sponsored housing, or the Improved Industrial Dwellings Company. Otherwise known as ‘Associated Dwellings,’ these tenements were the rst experiments in housing the poor in clean and healthy conditions. The buildings are apartment-styled, with shared sculleries and lavatories. The poor, of course, could not afford the buildings, so much of the tenantry are skilled labourers and their families (but it makes for a very successful-looking effort, and hence the IIDC is still throwing up these buildings). Holborn is also home to a wealth of small factories, covering practically every kind of industry known.
Holborn was the area that saw the most social experimentation in the middle of the century, and many of these programs are still in effect. Some have been very successful, like the Associated Dwellings, others...not so much. There is a glut of hospitals in the region, including the Alexandria Hospital (named for the Princess of Wales), the Homeopathic, and the Children’s Hospital, all crowding the blocks along Guilford Street. The massive Foundling Hospital tends to the children that are often left on the stoops of churches around London. There is a Working Man’s College on Great Ormond Street where poor men are taught skilled labour at the expense of contributing businesses in the metropolitan area. If one is lucky enough, and is humble, eager, and has a good character, the college can give a man a second chance. The Holborn Union is a workhouse on Gray’s Inn Road. One of the largest workhouses, it provides a place and a meal for its residents, in exchange for hard labour and harsh discipline. Compared to the Working Man’s College, it is supremely unsuccessful and many would rather risk starvation that stay in the workhouse.
At the top of Gray’s Inn Road is Kings Cross Station. It is in the nal phases of construction in the 1880s, but by the 1890s is the main terminus of the Great Northern Railroad. Kings Cross is also just next to St. Pancras Station, another heavily traf cked rail station, and they are linked to the rest of the city by an underground station at Kings Cross and tramways that fan out across the main roads leading from the rail termini. By the 1890s, there is an effort to bring electric lighting the rail station area.
