ABSTRACT
The wharves of the old riverside districts - Lambeth, Southwark, Bermondsey downstream to Rotherhithe - had been sustained by trade and shipping for centuries, generating dense neighbourhoods of warehouses, narrow streets and courts housing dock labourers, bargemen and carters. The South London urban setting where Emma Cons and Henry Morriss settled down for their life's work may have been less notorious than its East London counterparts across the river, but for social workers and reform-minded commentators it demanded its own ameliorative effort. The Bermondsey classes were not all popular spectacle and practical skills, however. Language classes were well supported by enrolments, with over 100 students studying advanced and introductory French, but there was lower demand for History, Latin, Shakespeare and Church History. Thus the formal classes of the settlement, held at Farncombe Street or at the Bermondsey Town Hall for the more popular lectures, aimed to supply something more than plain educational instruction.
