The Strangers' Home, Stepney
The Strangers' Home, Stepney
Record No
35113
Title
The Strangers' Home, Stepney
Description
Lithograph depicting ‘The Strangers’ Home for Asiatics, Africans and South Sea Islanders’. In the 17th century sailors from South Asia were hired by the East India Company to carry out a range of (often menial) jobs on ships. They were commonly labelled with the term ‘lascars’ and were poorly paid and sometimes harshly treated, spending weeks and months in London without work while waiting for a return ship to India. By the mid-1800s ‘lascar’ had become a generic term for almost all non-European sailors, and Christian missionary societies became concerned about their plight. This led to the establishment of the Strangers’ Home. The 1881 census recorded that of the 22 people who lived there, eleven were from China, six India or Sri Lanka, two from the Arabian Peninsula, two from Singapore and one person from West Africa.

African, Caribbean, Chinese, Arab and South Asian sailors had kept the merchant navy running in this area during the First World War but as peacetime began and competition for jobs increased, workers from Britain’s colonies living in port cities across Britain became the targets of racist attacks by gangs of white seamen. A lack of funds and the reduced numbers of sailors in need of help led to the closure of the home in 1937. The Stranger’s Home was demolished and West India House was built on the site, the first post-War block of council flats to be built in what was then the Borough of Stepney. The area is now called Limehouse in the borough of Tower Hamlets.
Date of execution
c1857
Section
London Metropolitan Archives
Collection
Main Print Collection
Publisher
Day & Son
Medium
lithograph
Support
paper
Longest dimension
28cms
Shortest dimension
21cms
Catalogue No
p7491521
London picture map location
Approximate
Subjects
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