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The Eccentric District of Soho

By Barry Morgan


London's city centre is always booming. With countless tourist attractions, historical monuments and natural parks, it is a great place to both explore and reside.

Businessmen flock to the capital and as a result properties within the famous districts of Fitzrovia, Bloomsbury, Soho and Covent Garden are strived for. All these local districts offer easy commuting to the workplace along with their own charms.

A particularly famous district of the capital is Soho. Soho is a popular place for actors to try and find fame and is known for being packed with bars, music venues and illusive sex shops.

Soho in the seventeenth century was a very different picture. Originally it was farmland, with the majority being owned by the rich. The first building on the famous Leicester Square, was erected in 1666 shortly after the Great Fire of London. Soho became one of the most fashionable areas for people to reside and hosted some of the best parties of the era, with playwrights and royals always on the guest list. The remainder of the untouched ground was used for hunting, and Soho's name was derived from a common hunting cry of the seventeenth century.

By the end of the 1600's, Soho was crammed with residents, and keen developers constructed countless properties to house Soho's inhabitants. Frith Street was named after one of the biggest developers of Soho, namely Richard Frith. One of Soho's well known attractions, the Soho Square, was also built during this period.

Despite landowners and developers efforts, the rich preferred the neighbouring district of Mayfair. As a result, aspiring artists and writers then moved to Soho, followed by a population of immigrants from the Greek and Italian borders. In addition, the majority of the French Huguenots settled there. Soho became known as the French quarter, as 40% of the population were French speakers. With the new residents, a magnitude of new trades entered into Soho, to include silversmithing and tailoring. New theatres, music venues and pubs opened to entertain the locals and in 1717, the famous West End was officially created. Soho became known, as the entertainment district, stealing its title from Bankside, whose streets were once crammed with brothels.

Fun-lovers often visited the entertainment district and often succumbed to the cheap gin on offer. Crime rates within Soho began to rise with opportunists taking advantage of many people at their most vulnerable. Although some parts of the West End were developing, others were not. St Giles housed some of the poorest slums within the city and the death rate within the capital was high.

The John Snow Pub is one of the most famous pubs within Soho. Named after the doctor, who discovered the cause of the Cholera epidemic of Broad Street in 1854, it is one of the many tourist attractions found within the area. Approximately 100 people lost their lives in the cholera epidemic and many people fled thinking the illness was airborne. However Dr Snow established this was not the case.




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