Nests of Vice - Common Criminals
Extract from Tough Times and Grisly Crimes
North Shields quayside has changed massively in recent years. The area is now overlooked by up-market flats and is popular with families frequenting the restaurants and cafes.
But in Victorian times, as well as a thriving fishing industry, the port was plagued by prostitutes and petty thieves. And the ghosts of these characters live on with a collection of incredible police photographs from the late 19th Century. The whole quayside was full of rough and ready folk but the worst area was an alleyway running from Clive Street up to Yeoman Street. It was known as the Dark Stairs.
In 1855, The Shields Daily News echoed the views of the respectable residents when it called for the slum dwellings to be demolished, referring to them as the “refuge of the lowest dregs of society”. The newspaper asked: “Who can estimate the amount of immoral conversation that passes, the unlawful schemes plotted, or the low, filthy literature read in common lodging houses and the intemperance that prevails in these nests of vice?”
