Soho London

Coordinates: 51°30′47″N 0°08′06″W  /  51.513°N 0.135°W  / 51.513; -0.135

Soho is an area in the centre of the West End of London, England, in the City of Westminster. It is an entertainment district which for much of the later part of the 20th century had a reputation for its sex shops as well as its night life and film industry. Since the early 1980s the area has undergone considerable transformation and is now a fashionable district of upmarket restaurants and media offices with only a small remnant of "sex industry" venues in the west of the area.

History

The area which is now Soho was grazing farmland until 1536, when it was taken by Henry VIII as a royal park for the Palace of Whitehall. The name "Soho" first appears in the 17th century. Most authorities believe that the name derives from a former hunting cry. The Duke of Monmouth used “soho” as a rallying call for his men at the Battle of Sedgemoor, half a century after the name was first used for this area of London.

In the 1660s the Crown granted Soho Fields to Henry Jermyn, 1st Earl of St Albans. He leased 19 of its 22 acres (89,000 m ² ) to Joseph Girle, who as soon as he had gained permission to build there, promptly passed his lease and licence to bricklayer Richard Frith in 1677, who began its development. In 1698 William III granted the Crown freehold of most of this area to William, Earl of Portland. Meanwhile the southern part of what became the parish of St Anne Soho was sold by the Crown in parcels in the 16th and 17th century, with part going to Robert Sidney, Earl of Leicester.

In fiction, Robert Louis Stevenson had Dr. Henry Jekyll set up a home for Edward Hyde in Soho in his novella, Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde.

Despite the best intentions of landowners such as the Earls of Leicester and Portland to develop the land on the grand scale of neighbouring Bloomsbury, Marylebone and Mayfair, it never became a fashionable area for the rich, and immigrants settled in the area: the French church in Soho Square is witness to its position as a centre for French Huguenots in the 17th and 18th centuries. By the mid 1700s the aristocrats who had been living in Soho Square or Gerrard Street had moved away. Soho’s character stems partly from the ensuing neglect by rich and fashionable London, and its lack of development and redevelopment that characterizes its neighbouring areas.

By the mid 1800s all respectable families had moved away and prostitutes, music halls and small theatres had moved in. In the early 1900s foreign nationals opened cheap eating-houses and it became a fashionable place to eat for intellectuals, writers and artists. From the 1930s to the early 1960s, Soho folklore states that the pubs of Soho were packed every night with drunken writers, poets and artists, many of whom never stayed sober long enough to become successful; and it was also during this period that the Soho pub landlords established themselves.

A detailed mural depicting a variety of Soho characters including writer Dylan Thomas and jazz musician George Melly is in Broadwick Street, at the junction with Carnaby Street.

The Soho name has been imitated by other entertainment and restaurant districts such as Soho, Hong Kong, SoHo, New York, and Palermo Soho, Buenos Aires.

Broad Street pump

Main article: John Snow (physician)

A significant event in the history of epidemiology and public health was the study of an 1854 outbreak of cholera in Soho by Dr. John Snow. He identified the cause of the outbreak as the public water pump located at the junction of Broad Street (now Broadwick Street) and Cambridge Street (now Lexington Street), close to the rear wall of what is today the John Snow public house.

John Snow mapped the addresses of the sick, and noted that they were mostly people whose nearest access to water was the Broad Street pump. He persuaded the authorities to remove the handle of the pump, thus preventing any more of the infected water being collected. The spring below the pump was later found to be contaminated with sewage. This is an early example of epidemiology, public health medicine and the application of science—the germ theory of disease — in real time.

The 2006 appearance of the places related to the Broad Street Pump outbreak of cholera is described here:

A replica of the pump, with a memorial plaque, now stands near the location of the original pump.

Music scene

The music scene in Soho can be traced back to 1948 and Club Eleven which is generally revered as the fountainhead of modern jazz in the UK. It was located at 41 Great Windmill Street. The Harmony Inn was an unsavoury cafe and hang-out for musicians on Archer Street operating during the 1940s and 1950s. It stayed open very late attracting jazz fans from the nearby Cy Laurie Jazz Club.

Soho was the setting for Brecht's famous song Mack The Knife:

The Ken Colyer Band's 51 Club ( Great Newport Street ) opened in the early fifties. Blues guitarist and harmonica player Cyril Davies and guitarist Bob Watson launched the London Skiffle Centre, London’s first skiffle club, on the first floor of the Roundhouse pub on Wardour Street in 1952.

In the early 1950s, Soho became the center of the Beatnik culture in London. Coffee Bars like Le Macabre (Wardour Street) which had coffin shaped tables, fostered beat poetry, jive dance and political debate. The Goings On located in Archer Street was and Sunday afternoon club, organised by Liverpool beat poets Pete Brown, Johnny Byrne and Spike Hawkins, that opened in January 1966. For the rest of the week it operated as an illegal gambling den. Other “beat” coffee bars in Soho included the French, Le Grande, Stockpot, Melbray, Universal, La Roca, Freight Train (Skiffle star Chas McDevitt’s place), El Toro, Picasso, Las Vegas, and the Moka Bar.

The 2 i’s Coffee Bar ( live acts performed in the tiny basement ) was probably the first rock club in Europe, opened in 1956 ( 59 Old Compton Street ) and soon Soho was the centre of the fledgling rock scene in London. Clubs included the Flamingo Club ( which started in 1952 as Jazz at the Mapleton ), La Discothèque, Whiskey a Go Go, Ronan O'Rahilly's ( of pirate radio station, Radio Caroline fame ) The Scene in 1962 (first mod club - near the Windmill Theatre in Ham Yard - formally The Piccadilly Club ) and jazz clubs like Ronnie Scott's ( opened in 1959 at 39 Gerrard Street and moved to 47 Frith Street in 1965 ) and the 100 Club.

Soho's Wardour Street was the home of the legendary Marquee Club ( 90 Wardour Street ) which opened in 1958 and where the Rolling Stones first performed in July 1962. Eric Clapton and Brian Jones both lived for a time in Soho sharing a flat with future rock publicist, Tony Brainsby. Later, the Sex Pistols lived above number 6 Denmark Sreet, and recorded their first demos there.

Geography

Soho has an area of approximately one square mile and may be thought of as bounded by Oxford Street to the north, Regent Street to the west, Leicester Square to the south and Charing Cross Road to the east. However apart from Oxford Street, all of these roads are nineteenth century metropolitan improvements, so they are not Soho's original boundaries, and it has never been an administrative unit, with formally defined boundaries. The area to the west is known as Mayfair, to the north Fitzrovia, to the east St Giles's and Covent Garden, and to the south St James's. According to the Soho Society, Chinatown, the area between Leicester Square to the south and Shaftesbury Avenue to the north, is part of Soho, although some consider it a separate area.

Location in context

Soho today

Soho is a small, multicultural area of central London; a home to industry, commerce, culture and entertainment, as well as a residential area for both rich and poor.

It has clubs, including the former Chinawhite nightclub, public houses, bars, restaurants, a few sex shops scattered amongst them, and late-night coffee shops that give the streets an "open all night" feel at the weekends. Many Soho weekends are busy enough to warrant closing off of some of the streets to vehicles; Westminster Council pedestrianised parts of Soho in the mid-1990s, but later removed much of it, apparently after complaints of loss of trade from local businesses.

Record shops cluster in the area around Berwick Street, with shops such as Blackmarket Records and Vinyl Junkies. Soho is also the home of London's main gay village, around Old Compton Street, where there are dozens of businesses thriving on the pink pound. On 30 April 1999, the Admiral Duncan pub on Old Compton Street, which serves the gay community, was damaged by a nail bomb planted by neo-Nazi David Copeland. It left three dead (two of whom were heterosexual) and 30 injured.

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