Liverpool Road revisited

In Islington’s new era of coffee shops, designer boutiques and organic markets, it is easy to imagine that the borough has always been the stamping ground of a wealthy elite. But a Victorian pen and ink drawing unearthed in a Sussex farmhouse has helped to uncover a story of poverty and deprivation lurking behind Islington’s smart streets. Cordelia O’Neill takes a look at the hidden history of Liverpool Road.


Standing outside a plush block of Victorian flats on Liverpool Road, it is hard to picture anyone living there apart from rich city boys or retired merchant bankers, let alone a destitute crowd.

It is still harder to imagine one of the biggest bands of the day playing to Islington’s poorest residents in one of the building’s lavish ground floor sitting rooms.

But in 1867, inmates of Islington’s newly built workhouse put on their Sunday best and squeezed inside a tiny, dirty hall to hear the Mohawk Minstrels band, the late Victorian equivalents of a blacked-up Busted, banging out their latest hits. The only surviving evidence of the concert will now be handed over to the British Museum.

The Mohawk Minstrels shot to fame when brothers William and James Francis quit their day jobs at Chappells music publishers and put on their first performance at Berners Hall on Liverpool Road. In 1874, they were joined by Harry Hunter from rivals the Manhattan Minstrels, who penned their hit, “Johnny, will you come home now” to mark the occasion.

The band eventually cashed in on their success and abandoned Islington for the bright lights of Piccadilly and West End superstardom, but not before playing to the borough’s most deprived residents.

Islington’s much documented housing and social problems are nothing new. In 1867, the borough was designated a Poor Law Parish by the Poor Law Act and the Islington workhouse was built to stem the swelling population of beggars, abandoned children and lunatics on Islington’s streets. It was followed two years later by a second workhouse on St John’s Road in Upper Holloway.

“I just found it tremendously sad,” said Tom O’Neill, who is donating the drawing to the British Library.

“It’s a wonderful drawing, but I looked at all those children’s sad faces and wondered what happened to them all. I’d like it to be in London, where it belongs.”