Rookery (slum)

"Rookery" was a colloquial term given in the 18th and 19th centuries to a city slum occupied by poor people and frequently also by criminals and prostitutes. Such areas were overcrowded, with low-quality housing and little or no sanitation. Poorly constructed dwellings, built with multiple storeys and often crammed into any area of open ground, created densely-populated areas of gloomy, narrow streets and alleyways.

The nickname rookery originated because of the perceived similarities between a city slum and the nesting habits of the rook, a bird in the crow family. Rooks nest in large, noisy colonies consisting of multiple nests, often untidily crammed into a close group of treetops called a rookery. The word might also be linked to the slang expression to rook (meaning to cheat or steal), a verb well established in the 16th century and associated with the supposedly thieving nature of the rook bird. The term was first used in print by the poet George Galloway in 1792 to describe "a cluster of mean tenements densely populated by people of the lowest class".

Famous rookeries include the St Giles area of central London, which existed from the 17th century and into Victorian times, an area described by Henry Mayhew in about 1860 in A Visit to the Rookery of St Giles and its Neighbourhood. This, Bermondsey's Jacob's Island and the Old Nichol Street Rookery in the East End of London were demolished as part of London slum clearance and urban redevelopment projects in the late 19th century. The Rookery of St Giles appears in Neil Gaiman's short story A Study in Emerald as the place where the antagonist (Rache) and his sidekick (the limping doctor) reputedly take shelter after committing their (justifiable in their view) crime.

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