MoLAS working at Spitalfields

This post by Nigel Jeffries on the Museum of London blog made me come over all faint. It's not technical or detailed--it's not meant to be; it's a public "what we do" sort of post. But there's enough there that I really want to get hold of the reports when they are done. Why? Let me tell you. The Museum of London Archaeological Service has been working in Spitalfields, and they have deposits from silk weaver households from the 1820 to the 1850s. Even a US historical archaeologist will probably encounter something about the Spitalfields silk weavers at least once in their life; usually in the form of a graduate school encounter with E.P.Thompson. They are sort of a labor history icon.

Reading this sent me digging around for my Making of the English Working Class to refresh my what's left of my memory, then digging around for other source, because Making is too big and the index was not helpful. To sum, Spitalfields became an major silk-weaving centre after the arrival of Huguenot refugees in the late 17th century, with Irish and Jewish weavers following on. The weavers were sufficiently militant to get the Spitalfields Act passed in 1765, which made silk-weaving a protected industry and allowed magistrates to regulate wages (Goodway 1982:185-189).

This act was repealed in 1824...with drastic consequences for the weavers. .

Many historians, especially since EPT, see the immiseration of the Spitalfield silk weavers, the decline of Spitalfields from relative prosperity into a dangerous "slum," and the struggles of the weavers to organize as part of well...the making of the English working class. One reason the archaeological work is exciting is that much of the historical debate about the weavers involves the decline in the material conditions and standards of living. Even at the time, the period when the Spitalfields Act was in force (and when there were no mechanized looms) was seen as a type of "Golden Age"--a memory to which the weavers could appeal. The features MoLAS have apparently date to right after the 1824 repeal, when the weavers and Spitalfields by most accounts went into freefall. Material conditions, standards of living--that's the sort of stuff archaeologists can do.

Silk weavers aside, I'd just like to find out more about English and European working class sites to compare to US sites. What were conditions like compared to the US? The US working class was largely recent immigrants, and there is mythologizing tied up with that. "Immigrants came to America seeking a better life"--sure we can say that...and we do. Do we ever. But did immigrants find a "better life"? That, I am not so sure.

Anon. Silk, Watches and Money. Communities - Huguenot and French London - Central Criminal Court. http://www.oldbaileyonline.org/static/Huguenot.jsp#silkwatches.

Goodway, David. 1982. London Chartism, 1838-1848. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

Jeffries, Nigel. Linking 19th-century archaeological finds with 19th-century lives: A genealogical approach for Spitalfields. The working life of the Museum of London . http://mymuseumoflondon.org.uk/blogs/blog/linking-19th-century-finds-with-19th-century-lives-a-geneological-approach-for-spitalfields/.

Thompson, E.P. 1963. The Making of the English Working Class. New York: Vintage Books.