Jacob's Island

Jacob's Island was a notorious rookery in Bermondsey, on the south bank of the River Thames in London. It was separated from Shad Thames to the west by St Saviour's Dock, the point where the subterranean River Neckinger enters the Thames, and on the other two sides by tidal ditches, one just west of George Row and the other just north of London Street (now named Wolseley Street).

The extent of the historic Jacob's Island is approximately delineated by Mill Street, Bermondsey Wall West, George Row and Wolseley Street.

Jacob's Island was once notoriously squalid and described as "The very capital of cholera" and "The Venice of drains" by the Morning Chronicle of 1849. In the 1840s it also became 'a site of radical activity', and, after attention from novelists Charles Dickens and Charles Kingsley, joined other London areas of 'literary-criminal notoriety' which emerged 'as symbols of a developing urban counterculture'.

19th century social researcher Henry Mayhew described Jacob's Island as a "pest island" with "literally the smell of a graveyard" and "crazy and rotten bridges" crossing the tidal ditches, with drains from houses discharging directly into them, and the water harbouring masses of rotting weed, animal carcasses and dead fish. He describes the water being "as red as blood" in some parts, as a result of pollutant tanning agents from the leather dressers in the area.

The ditches were filled in the early 1850s, and the area later redeveloped as warehouses. In 1865, Richard King, writing in A Handbook for Travellers in Surrey, Hampshire, and the Isle of Wight, observed that 'Many of the buildings have been pulled down since Oliver Twist was written, but the island is still entitled to its bad pre-eminence'. A decade later, a missionary for the London City Mission provided a more positive report:

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