Little Italy

A small number of Italians settled in London in the early 19^th century. They were mostly skilled craftsmen from the Lombardy and Piedmont areas of north and north-west Italy who left their homeland due to political and economic instability in those regions. They settled around Clerkenwell, an area where craftsmen were already established, close to, but outside, the City of London. There they were able to find large houses that could be used for both accommodation and as workshops.

Specialities of these immigrants included the manufacture of precision instruments such as thermometers, picture frames, looking glasses, and barrel-organs, as well as glass-blowing. The Negretti & Zambra company of Hatton Garden were suppliers to Queen Victoria, the Admiralty, and the Royal Observatory. O.Comitti & Sons traces its history back to a workshop at Mount Pleasant at Clerkenwell and is still a maker of luxury timepieces.

The early craftsmen were later followed by much larger numbers of poor, unskilled compatriots, driven abroad by the lack of work at home. Many walked to London on foot. They came from the same regions of Lombardy and Piedmont as the early settlers, but were then followed by others from central Italy, and then more from southern Italy. At first these impoverished Italians were exclusively men who came for short periods to make some money before returning home. Some settled more permanently around Clerkenwell, however, and there they were joined by wives and daughters, soon forming a large community of Italians. Many were illiterate and were not able to easily learn English.

The Saffron Hill area of Clerkenwell, with its population of poor Italians, became one of London’s rookeries, the capital’s worst slum districts. In the second half of the 19^th century the area became overcrowded, with as many as 50 people living in each house, in insanitary conditions. It had a reputation as a place of criminality, where Dickens set his den of thieves in Oliver Twist. It was a maze of small streets, alleyways and courtyards, but also including Clerkenwell Road, Saffron Hill, Leather Lane and Hatton Garden. It became known to Londoners as ‘Little Italy’. At its centre was Back Hill, and therefore Italians knew the area as simply ‘the Hill’. Although the largest concentration of Italians was in Little Italy, by the beginning of the 20^th century others resided around various areas of London.

The Italians of Little Italy established their own shops, cafes, dancing saloons, clubs, and a hospital. One Italian shop that still survives is L. Terroni on Clerkenwell Road, established in 1890 by Luigi Terroni from Pontremoli in Tuscany, and owned until 1983 by the Terroni family.

Almost next door to Terroni’s shop is St. Peter’s church on Clerkenwell Road, built in Roman Basilica style by Pallottine Catholics, the first Italian church outside of Italy. It was consecrated in 1863 by Cardinal Wiseman, Cardinal Archbishop of Westminster, attended by eleven bishops and over 50 priests. It still remains as a centre of worship for Italians in London.

A major event for Italians in London was, and remains, the annual Festa della Madonna del Carmine religious procession through the streets in honour of the Madonna of Mount Carmel. The first procession took place in 1883 and was perhaps the first public Catholic event in England since the Reformation of the 16^th century. The procession starts at St. Peter’s church and snakes around the streets of what was Little Italy. By the start of the 20^th century its long length and slow speed ensured it took about two hours to pass any point along the route.

In the past, triumphal arches were erected for the festival at road entrances, garlands of flowers spanned the streets, and coloured lights were lit. Statues of the Madonna were placed on street corners. The local people, dressed in their best clothes, and there was plentiful food and wine for the occasion.

The first school in Little Italy was the Free School for Workers, for the children of Italian workers and destitute children. It was opened in 1841 at Hatton Garden by the political exile Giuseppe Mazzini. One of the school’s benefactors was Charles Dickens. It continued until the 1860s.

Instruction at Mazzini’s school was both liberal and anti-religious so was not popular with all Italians. A year after it was established a Catholic school opened at Saffron Hill, which in 1900 had 3,000 pupils, by when it had moved to Herbal Hill. It finally closed in the early 1980s.

Mazzini became one of the founders of the modern Italian state. Another was Giuseppe Garibaldi. In 1864 the two founded a working men’s club at Farringdon Road, initially known as the Society for the Progress of the Italian Working Classes and later as the Mazzini Garibaldi Club. It continued until 2008, while moving to several different locations in the area.

With so many Italians living around Clerkenwell and Holborn, many of whom struggled to speak English, there was a need for a hospital with Italian-speaking staff. It was opened in 1884 at Queen’s Square, to the north of Holborn, funded by Giovanni Ortelli, a wealthy cheese importer. He also paid for it to be rebuilt in 1898. The Italian Hospital closed in 1990 but the handsome building remains today as part of Great Ormand Street Hospital.

For a time, by far the greatest occupation of the Italian residents of Little Italy was as street musicians, mostly playing barrel-organs, but also harps, fiddles and hurdy-gurdies. Some of the ‘organ-grinders’ had monkeys, trained to beg for money and to signal for thanks. Within Little Italy these musicians tended to cluster together according to the region from where they came. The summer was the best time for them to earn money, so some returned home to Italy during the winter. They were not entirely popular, many Londoners considering their music to be an unwanted noise.  There was even a law passed in 1864 by the Metropolitan Police to – unsuccessfully – curb street music.

Italian street music lasted into the 20^th century but by late Victorian times the number of musicians had declined, and the most prominent occupation was as ice cream sellers.

In 1847 Carlo Gatti arrived in London. He had grown up in one of the impoverished and sparsely populated valleys of southern Switzerland, home to Italian speakers. The sides of the narrow valleys were steep and provided little farmland. The mountains were high and it was easier to travel down the valley into northern Italy than to pass into the adjacent valleys within Switzerland.

Seeking employment, Gatti travelled to Milan and from there walked to Paris where he was able to witness the grand Parisian cafes. He made his way to the Clerkenwell area where some relatives were living. Initially Gatti sold waffles, sprinkled with sugar and chestnuts, from a stall. He then went into partnership with a fellow Swiss-Italian, opening the Bolla and Gatti cafe. An attraction was their chocolate-making machine, which was unusual for the time.

In the 19^th century, in times before mechanical refrigeration, ice was brought from Norway to London. It was trans-shipped onto barges and brought along the Regent’s Canal, which had several large wells in the Hackney, King’s Cross and Camden areas. Gatti and his partner made an agreement with the Regent’s Canal Company to purchase ice and were then able to produce ice cream to serve at their café.

The process of making sorbets was known in Italy by the early 16^th century and spread from there to France, Spain and beyond. An iced dish was known to have been served at a banquet for King Charles II at Windsor Castle in 1671 but for the next few centuries remained an exotic delicacy for the wealthy in England. In France the process of producing it evolved during the 18^th century, creating a creamier dessert than sorbet, which Gatti would probably have witnessed as he passed through Paris.

Bolla and Gatti were possibly the first to sell ice cream to the public in London. Gatti then opened a stall at Hungerford Market and his ‘Penny Ices’, sold in small shells, soon became popular.

Hungerford Market, and Bolla and Gatti’s café, was destroyed by fire in 1854 but Gatti used the insurance money to expand the business, opening a music hall. When the South Eastern Railway Company decided to create their new Charing Cross Station on the site of his business they generously compensated him, and he used the money to go into the ice trade. In 1857 Gatti created a large ice well beside Battlebridge Basin on the Regent’s Canal at King’s Cross. Several years later he expanded with a second ice well on the site. A fleet of horse-drawn wagons delivered ice around London. (The ice wells still exist as part of the London Canal Museum). The Gatti family also opened new music halls in London. Carlo became a very wealthy man and retired to his native area of Switzerland, where he died in 1878.

From the 1850s men of the Italian community, particularly those who had emigrated from Calabria in the south of Italy, began selling Penny Ices from carts they could push around London’s streets. By the end of the 19^th century the most common work of the men of London’s Italian community was selling ice cream, replacing barrel organs as their main occupation, with around 900 ice cream sellers. Early each morning they mixed their ice cream before departing with their carts from Little Italy. Many of the carts were richly decorated with paintings of flowers or Italian royalty. The ice cream sellers announced their arrival in the streets by shouting “ecco un poco” or “o che poco” and they became known by an anglicised version as ‘hokey-pokey men’. They served the ice cream in small glasses that could then be used by the next customer, often referred to as ‘penny licks’. Selling ice cream around London could be relatively lucrative for the hokey-pokey men, in some cases providing enough to buy a cottage and land in Italy to where they could retire in old age.

As well as ice cream there were Italian chestnut-sellers on London’s streets, who imported their produce from the mountain valleys of Italy. Others sold hot potatoes from mobile stoves. The manufacture of plaster statuettes was a major occupation for those who came from Lucca in central Italy. A form of work for men from north-east Italy was as travelling knife-grinders. Men from Friuli in the north-east made mosaics and terrazzo flooring. The Diespeker terrazzo company was founded by Italians in 1881 and the business continues from their building beside the Regent’s Canal in Islington. Other Italians took on dirty work that was shunned by Englishmen, such as the laying of asphalt for roads.

Meanwhile, the women of Little Italy took on a variety of jobs, including domestic work, lace or pasta-making, and laundry, the latter often for Italian waiters of Soho. They could earn good money by performing the Tarentella dance, accompanied by castanets and a tambourine.

Children of Little Italy were also employed, such as street musicians or collecting money for organ-grinders. Some were brought from Italy, perhaps kidnapped, to work for masters known as ‘padroni’. The exploitation of children decreased after the Children Protection Act of 1889.

One of the residents of Little Italy who made a lasting impression was the actor and comedian Joseph Grimaldi, the originator of the modern circus clown. He was born in 1778 into a showbusiness family. Grimaldi’s father was an early Italian immigrant who performed in pantomime under David Garrick at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane and then as ballet master at the theatre. Joseph’s English mother, a dancer, was one of several mistresses of Grimaldi senior. Performing at Sadler’s Wells and the Theatre Royal Drury Lane, Joseph Grimaldi became the most famous clown of his time, elevating what had previously been a minor comic role into one of the star attractions of any performance. He died in 1837 while living in Islington, by which time he had become an alcoholic. Grimaldi was buried in the churchyard of St. James, Pentonville. The chapel went out of use in the 1980s but the churchyard was turned into the public Joseph Grimaldi Park. Joseph’s biography was written by Charles Dickens, who had witnessed Grimaldi perform. Grimaldi’s grave at Pentonville has become a site of pilgrimage for modern clowns, who, since the 1940s, have also held an annual service in his memory at Holy Trinity church at Hackney.

Two of London’s criminal gangs of the 1920s and ‘30s were the Sabini gang, known as the ‘Italian Mob’, and the Cortesi Brothers. From around 1910 the Cortesis were involved in protection racketeering of bookmakers and gamblers in the West End.

The Sabrini gang were led by Charles ‘Darby’ Sabrini from Little Italy. They specialised in protection rackets at London racecourses, extortion, theft, and the hire of hitmen. At its peak the Sabrini gang had 100 members, many from Sicily. It had close connections to police, politicians and judges.

The Sabrini and Cortesi gangs worked together but eventually fell out over the share of proceeds. Matters came to a head in November 1922 when a fight broke out between the two sides at the Fratellanza Club in Little Italy’s Great Bath Street. ‘Harryboy’ Sabrini was shot and injured and Darby Sabrini hit with a bottle. Gus and Frenchi Cortesi were tried and jailed for the incident. After war with Italy was declared in 1940 Darby Sabrini was interned on the Isle of Man and later imprisoned. He eventually retired to Brighton.

Many Italian men were interned during the Second World War, and Italian properties such as the Italian Hospital and Mazzini Garibaldi Club requisitioned by the government. Seven hundred of those Italian internees (as well as 400 Germans) were sent to Canada, together with German prisoners of war, but drowned when the ship carrying them was torpedoed by a German submarine.

Little Italy was partly destroyed by German bombing. Many of the buildings not destroyed during the war were demolished in the 1950s as part of slum clearance. Some of the inhabitants moved to Soho and others dispersed elsewhere. There are now only a small number of surviving clues around Clerkenwell that the vibrant and overcrowded Little Italy had once existed.