Housing and homelessness were among the subjects debated during the recent general election, as talk of welfare cuts, rental costs and the mansion tax abounded.
Approaching the Geffrye Museum in east London to see Homes of the Homeless: Seeking Shelter in Victorian London, it is impossible not to wonder what the Victorian solutions were, and ask whether we are doing any better.
The exhibition is a collaboration between Geffrye Museum curators and academics Jane Hamlett, Lesley Hoskins and Rebecca Preston from Royal Holloway.
It draws from their research, which was funded by the Economic and Social Research Council and entitled At Home in the Institution? Asylum, School and Lodging House Interiors in London and South-East England 1845-1914.
Their two-year project examined the effects of the design, decoration and furnishing of 19th-century residential institutional spaces on their inmates. The partnership appears fitting, given the Geffrye’s remit as the “museum of the home” and is a good example of how academic research can have a wider impact serving the needs of the Research Excellence Framework (REF) and building curatorial capacity within organisations.
The project has also resulted in the online exhibition, Living Away from Home, developed with the Surrey History Centre, and a series of podcasts and lectures.
Homes of the Homeless is arranged thematically by the sleeping options and types of institution available to dispossessed Victorians: the streets, shelters, workhouses, common lodging houses, furnished rooms and model lodging houses. There is also a section that considers homelessness from the perspective of Victorian children.
Institutional life
The exhibition immerses visitors in two-dimensional visualisations of the homeless and each of these types of accommodation using enlarged photographs and illustrations from publications such as The Illustrated Lodon News (contemporary to the time) together with maps and arresting paintings such as Augustus Edwin Mulready’s A Recess on London Bridge (1879).
Large-scale digital printing is exploited to the full; destitute figures stare out at you from Deptford’s Mill Street, notorious for cheap lodgings. The scale gives the imagery greater impact than a small original might, contrasting strikingly with the Victorian domestic ideal as represented in the Geffrye’s permanent gallery.
A relatively small number of objects directly related to institutions such as workhouses and Salvation Army shelters survive, so the imagery has to work hard. But luckily, the temptation to display objects that are of the period but not directly associated is resisted. Those items that are presented make a greater impression because they do not have to compete with fill-ins.
A printed cotton neckerchief issued to women living in a workhouse in Toxteth, Liverpool, conveys a powerful sense of the loss of identity that comes with being institutionalised and unable to choose one’s own clothes.
And the wire goggles, worn by the homeless who were required to break stones in exchange for charity, suggest a paradoxical sense of caring for their safety while requiring them to undertake back-breaking work.
Rope picking and box beds
The interpretation represents a range of voices through listening posts in each section of the exhibition. These bring to life the words of writers such as Jack London who sought to draw attention to the plight of London’s destitute and homeless through testimony collected by William Booth, Henry Mayhew and others. Their words are also presented as enlarged graphic quotes – “I didn’t mind the bath.
I needed it, and my clothes must have been in a bad state through sleeping out. But I did object to the plank bed...” – that intersect the graphic panels and imagery.
Two interactives provide evocative physical experiences. Visitors can pick apart rope – a task given to people on the casual wards and described by some as “make work”. Or they can try climbing into a recreation of a boxed-in bed – a Salvation Army “penny sit-up” with a thin straw mattress designed for dormitory sleeping.
Throughout the exhibition, the interpretation looks to represent the agency that the homeless had in some cases – that they were not always subjugated, but might use the system to find accommodation when they needed it.
While we might look at a coffin-like bed in horror, conversely it could be seen to offer the security of an individual sleeping space within the social environment of a shelter.
Contemporary parallels
The iPad-based interactives are less engaging, offering the opportunity to scroll through a small number of reproductions of period visual material.
With so many images on show, these do not provide a deeper or different experience.
There is much to be applauded about the collaboration that gave rise to this exhibition. There are strong spatial evocations of the environments the Victorian homeless inhabited and the exhibition incorporates many different voices.
But I would have liked to have seen more about the work of the different authorities, charities and individual philanthropists who provided the housing options within the politics of the day, and the bigger events that caused or curtailed homelessness at different times during the 70-year history under consideration.
This omission can perhaps be related back to the scope of the original research, which was necessarily defined for an academic project. The homeless of today are acknowledged through a parallel display, Home and Hope, in an area outside the exhibition.
This presents a visualisation of workshops undertaken with young people from the New Horizon Youth Centre in King’s Cross in response to the exhibition themes and imagery.
The centre works with young people who are vulnerable, homeless or at risk of becoming homeless. But the separation of the contemporary element of the exhibition does make it feel as if the politics of today are also detached.
Is it sufficient to imagine that visitors will make the political links themselves? In a historical context this will depend on their level of residual knowledge of the period.
In a contemporary sense it is possibly more realistic, but it does feel as if an opportunity to introduce debate and further engagement in very real issues has been missed.
Cost: £61,000
Exhibition design: AFSB Associates
Exhibition graphics: Sally McIntosh
Curators: Jane Hamlett; Lesley Hoskins; Rebecca Preston (and Geffrye Museum staff) Exhibition ends 12 July
Charlotte Dew is a freelance curator and consultant
Approaching the Geffrye Museum in east London to see Homes of the Homeless: Seeking Shelter in Victorian London, it is impossible not to wonder what the Victorian solutions were, and ask whether we are doing any better.
The exhibition is a collaboration between Geffrye Museum curators and academics Jane Hamlett, Lesley Hoskins and Rebecca Preston from Royal Holloway.
It draws from their research, which was funded by the Economic and Social Research Council and entitled At Home in the Institution? Asylum, School and Lodging House Interiors in London and South-East England 1845-1914.
Their two-year project examined the effects of the design, decoration and furnishing of 19th-century residential institutional spaces on their inmates. The partnership appears fitting, given the Geffrye’s remit as the “museum of the home” and is a good example of how academic research can have a wider impact serving the needs of the Research Excellence Framework (REF) and building curatorial capacity within organisations.
The project has also resulted in the online exhibition, Living Away from Home, developed with the Surrey History Centre, and a series of podcasts and lectures.
Homes of the Homeless is arranged thematically by the sleeping options and types of institution available to dispossessed Victorians: the streets, shelters, workhouses, common lodging houses, furnished rooms and model lodging houses. There is also a section that considers homelessness from the perspective of Victorian children.
Institutional life
The exhibition immerses visitors in two-dimensional visualisations of the homeless and each of these types of accommodation using enlarged photographs and illustrations from publications such as The Illustrated Lodon News (contemporary to the time) together with maps and arresting paintings such as Augustus Edwin Mulready’s A Recess on London Bridge (1879).
Large-scale digital printing is exploited to the full; destitute figures stare out at you from Deptford’s Mill Street, notorious for cheap lodgings. The scale gives the imagery greater impact than a small original might, contrasting strikingly with the Victorian domestic ideal as represented in the Geffrye’s permanent gallery.
A relatively small number of objects directly related to institutions such as workhouses and Salvation Army shelters survive, so the imagery has to work hard. But luckily, the temptation to display objects that are of the period but not directly associated is resisted. Those items that are presented make a greater impression because they do not have to compete with fill-ins.
A printed cotton neckerchief issued to women living in a workhouse in Toxteth, Liverpool, conveys a powerful sense of the loss of identity that comes with being institutionalised and unable to choose one’s own clothes.
And the wire goggles, worn by the homeless who were required to break stones in exchange for charity, suggest a paradoxical sense of caring for their safety while requiring them to undertake back-breaking work.
Rope picking and box beds
The interpretation represents a range of voices through listening posts in each section of the exhibition. These bring to life the words of writers such as Jack London who sought to draw attention to the plight of London’s destitute and homeless through testimony collected by William Booth, Henry Mayhew and others. Their words are also presented as enlarged graphic quotes – “I didn’t mind the bath.
I needed it, and my clothes must have been in a bad state through sleeping out. But I did object to the plank bed...” – that intersect the graphic panels and imagery.
Two interactives provide evocative physical experiences. Visitors can pick apart rope – a task given to people on the casual wards and described by some as “make work”. Or they can try climbing into a recreation of a boxed-in bed – a Salvation Army “penny sit-up” with a thin straw mattress designed for dormitory sleeping.
Throughout the exhibition, the interpretation looks to represent the agency that the homeless had in some cases – that they were not always subjugated, but might use the system to find accommodation when they needed it.
While we might look at a coffin-like bed in horror, conversely it could be seen to offer the security of an individual sleeping space within the social environment of a shelter.
Contemporary parallels
The iPad-based interactives are less engaging, offering the opportunity to scroll through a small number of reproductions of period visual material.
With so many images on show, these do not provide a deeper or different experience.
There is much to be applauded about the collaboration that gave rise to this exhibition. There are strong spatial evocations of the environments the Victorian homeless inhabited and the exhibition incorporates many different voices.
But I would have liked to have seen more about the work of the different authorities, charities and individual philanthropists who provided the housing options within the politics of the day, and the bigger events that caused or curtailed homelessness at different times during the 70-year history under consideration.
This omission can perhaps be related back to the scope of the original research, which was necessarily defined for an academic project. The homeless of today are acknowledged through a parallel display, Home and Hope, in an area outside the exhibition.
This presents a visualisation of workshops undertaken with young people from the New Horizon Youth Centre in King’s Cross in response to the exhibition themes and imagery.
The centre works with young people who are vulnerable, homeless or at risk of becoming homeless. But the separation of the contemporary element of the exhibition does make it feel as if the politics of today are also detached.
Is it sufficient to imagine that visitors will make the political links themselves? In a historical context this will depend on their level of residual knowledge of the period.
In a contemporary sense it is possibly more realistic, but it does feel as if an opportunity to introduce debate and further engagement in very real issues has been missed.
Project data
Cost: £61,000
Exhibition design: AFSB Associates
Exhibition graphics: Sally McIntosh
Curators: Jane Hamlett; Lesley Hoskins; Rebecca Preston (and Geffrye Museum staff) Exhibition ends 12 July
Charlotte Dew is a freelance curator and consultant
