ABSTRACT
In 1902, the Reverend H.G.D. Latham eavesdropped in a London working men's club (for The Cornhill Magazine) and recorded the following conversation, occasioned by the memory of ‘toffs’ who had been routinely attacked in a court nearby the club's premises:
‘and half an hour after he'd come out half-naked and robbed of every penny-piece! You don't see that now.’ ‘No, the County Council's changed all that’ — ‘The County Council? Bah!’ retorts somebody else, and in a moment the fat is in the fire. One side maintains with zeal that the council is the working man's best friend, a model employer, and the best representative of progress in London. Trams, model dwellings, the Works Department, and several quite inaccurate statistics are fleeing at other speakers' heads. John Burns is prominently to the front … then the other side gets a word in edgeways. ‘The County Council? Look what they've done down Clare Market way! Pulled down half the houses, turned the people out of the other half as insanitary, and then let tenants into 'em and sent all the respectable people to go and crowd into Holborn as best they can. When they get up their new buildings will they let 'em to you or me? Not much. Look what they charge down in Shoreditch. They'll let us go to Tottenham, that's what they'll do.’ 2
