The Devil’S Highway

Between 1850 and 1900, Ratcliffe Highway - branded the 'devil's highway' - was the pulse of maritime London. Sailors from every corner of the globe found solace, and sometimes trouble, within its bustling bars, brothels, lodging houses and streets. For social investigators, it was perceived as a place of fascination and fear, as it harboured 'exotic' and 'heathen' communities. This book goes beyond conceptualising London's sailortown as a global economic hub that entangled sailors into vice and exploitation. It examines how, by the mid-nineteenth century, anxieties relating to urban modernity encouraged Victorians to re-imagine Ratcliffe Highway as a chaotic and dangerous urban abyss.
The sailortown population was varied, and engaged in numerous working-class trades connected with the marine and leisure industries, such as dockers, stevedores, sailmakers, sex workers and, international seafarers. Sailortowns were contact zones of heightened interaction where multi-ethnic subaltern cultures met, sometimes negotiated and at other times clashed with one another. However, the volume argues that despite these challenges, sailortown was a distinctive and functional working-class community that was self-regulating and self-moderating.
The book uncovers a robust sailortown community in which an urban-maritime culture shaped a sense of themselves and the traditions and conventions that governed subaltern behaviour in the district. It advances understanding of waterfront communities by examining their place in the Victorian popular imagination.