Ellen Wren
19th Century Southampton as was the case of the expanding towns and ports throughout the country over crowded with the poor living in slum conditions. Many of the laundry and washer women often having to support families took on the role of prostitutes at night.Ellen Wren lies in an unmarked pauper's grave at Southampton Old Cemetery in the company of many other paupers. A housing association's help centre has recently taken the name Ellen Wren House but few in Southampton are familiar with her name and the impact that her death had on our social history.
Ellen Wren lived in a one room attic in Simnel Street and drifted around the nearby streets plying her trade. In her dark dank room, full of cheap gin, she fell into a drunken slumber and apparently choked on her vomit. Such were the normality of blocked drains, discarded vegetable and animal waste in the vicinity that the odours associated with a decomposing body went unnoticed until her landlord anxious to collect the overdue rent entered the room more than a week later.
The Liberal supporting Southampton Times began a campaign. How could society have such conditions for its poor? How could a destitute woman live in such conditions? Were we expecting the poor to raise families in such conditions? Questions were even raised in Parliament about the Ellen Wren incident. No doubt similar incidents were or had been occurring in similar slum areas elsewhere but Ellen Wren's story pulled the conscience of middle class England. An act introduced a few years before had given town councils the power to build housing for the poor and lowly paid workmen. Councils had resisted the call as a heavy increase in rates on the businesses was a political difficulty yet to be faced. But as the circumstances of Ellen Wren spread to other newspapers and councils in many parts of the country began to consider slum clearance and the building of new homes.
Some of the properties in Castle Lane, Bugle Street and the courts and lanes leading off St Michael's Square were owned by well to do businessmen, the church and even the town's own sanitary authority. At first there was great resistance to change but a report of 1893 highlighted the dreadful conditions and the clearances started.
Urged on by the Liberal press in Southampton, the council began to clear and build social housing. Some early examples of council housing are in Bugle Street near the Endeavour public house. The houses are noticeable as they are built over arches which housed the cellars and kitchens. A small plaque marking their significance is on the metal railings.