Type Public Company Headquarters London | Industry Housing Founder Samuel Barnett | |
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Founded Whitechapel, London, United Kingdom (1882 (1882)) Area served London Borough of Tower Hamlets Key people Samuel Barnett, Beatrice Potter (estate manager), Ella Pycroft (estate manager), Maurice Eden Paul | ||
The East End Dwellings Company was a Victorian philanthropic model dwellings company, operating in the East End of London in the latter part of the nineteenth century. The company was founded in principle in 1882 by, among others, Samuel Augustus Barnett, vicar of St Jude's Church, Whitechapel; it was finally incorporated in 1884.
Its aim was to "house the very poor while realizing some profit", "their particular purpose being to erect blocks of dwellings, to be let by the room, so that the poorest class of labourers could be accommodated". Unlike many of the model dwellings companies, the EEDC offered accommodation to the casual poor and day labourers.
The company's first venture was Katharine Buildings in Aldgate, followed by a number of schemes in Bethnal Green, London. They went on to build around the East End. Along the principles of Octavia Hill's schemes, the company used female rent-collectors, including Beatrice Potter (later Webb), one of the founders of the London School of Economics & Political Science and Ella Pycroft, who ran the Buildings alongside Maurice Eden Paul.