2. Heyday

During the nineteenth century, Irish and Ashkenazi Jewish immigrants largely replaced the Huguenot population of Spitalfields. The survival of French surnames among the market traders indicates that a few still descended from the Huguenots. Yet the weaving industry remained, as did the bird market, under new management. By the 1850s, the bird market had expanded onto Club Row's neighbouring streets, such as Hare (later Cheshire) Street, Swan (later Cygnet) Street, Bacon Street, Sclater Street, and the now famous Brick Lane.

As the market at Club Row expanded, so did the range of animals for sale. While birds remained the main attraction, they were now joined by smaller animals such as dogs and rabbits. Indeed, from time to time rumours circulated that more exotic animals could be obtained at the market. In his 1911 book Bethnal Green, the journalist and social explorer George R. Sims remarked:

Here are the animals of the forest and the jungle -- the lion, the leopard, and the tiger -- and here on any Sunday of the year you may be invited to “step inside” and suit yourself with anything in the menagerie line that you may fancy -- from a humming-bird to an elephant. You press your way in and find that the shops are mostly packed with linnets, canaries, love-birds, Japanese nightingales, parrots, bird-cages and fittings, and all the necessaries and luxuries of pet-land.

Sims noted that despite the increase in the market’s fame and the influx of Jewish immigrants to the area, few Jews visited the market. Although Sims did not offer a reason, it suggests that the market’s appeal was culturally differentiated. Sims may not have been entirely correct, however, since Helen McKie, writing in The Graphic in 1920, claimed that "you can easily hear half a dozen languages [at Club Row Market] -- Russian, German, Yiddish among them" ("Going to the Dogs in the East End," The Graphic, 1920).

From a twenty-first-century perspective, it might seem logical to expect Club Row Market to have attracted families and children and to have had an atmosphere of entertainment and spectacle. In fact, visitors remarked on its no-nonsense character. "There is a strange, dreamy, shuffling, slouching aspect amongst the people here," noted a journalist for the Casual Observer, and Sims explained that the trade in animals was “strictly business.” None of the market’s stalls catered for amusement or frivolity. Prior to the second or third decade of the twentieth century, the clientele was relatively narrow, with both traders and buyers being mostly working-class men from the area.

The East End in which Club Row found itself had by now become a notorious slum. The market was only a few streets away from Dorset Street (now demolished) in the heart of the East End. In 1888, its rookeries became infamous as the site where Jack the Ripper murdered his first victim, Mary Jane Kelly. Charles Booth’s monumental map of poverty in London, Inquiry into Life and Labour in London (1886-1903) vividly reveals Spitalfields as one of the capital’s most impoverished districts. In his colour-coded map, the entire area is highlighted in dark blue representing “Very poor . . . Chronic want,” interspersed with areas in black representing “Vicious and semi-criminal.”

During these years, Club Row market was no stranger to the violence that followed on poverty and the market regularly endured the disruption caused by fights between local gangs. The most infamous brawl, the 1923 Market Stampede, was even documented in foreign newspapers. These frequent scuffles were most often the result of gambling in local pubs or rivalries between gangs that became blown out of proportion. On such occasions, the animal market descended into chaos as birds were trampled underfoot and panicked shoppers fled in terror. Club Row also had its fair share of local pickpockets. In 1904, the Hackney and Kingsland Gazette reported that a Club Row thief had managed to steal the pocket watch of a magistrate of Northampton before being arrested.

Customers who purchased an animal at Club Row market were free to do with it as they pleased. Most took it home to be cared for as a new member of their family, but a more grisly fate awaited animals who were bought by members of local clubs that forced animals to fight. Cockfighting was a popular local pastime and some Club Row cocks even wound up competing in the Royal Cock-pit in St James’s Park. Fortunately, not all competitions between animals involved violence. Throughout the market’s existence, its birds were entered into the competitions held by London pubs for the sweetest birdsong.