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The History of Soho

Soho is in the City of Westminster and bounded by Oxford Street (north), Charing Cross Road (east), Coventry Street and Piccadilly Circus (south), and Regent Street (west). Chinatown (centred around Gerrard Street) is a mixture of several Asian cultures and forms a genuine community with restaurants, cultural centres, herbal medicinists and community centres.

The word Soho is an old hunting call used to call in the hounds. The district was christened with this name as Soho was a hunting ground attached to Westminster Palace. Soho was an area of farmlands in the Middle Ages and was acquired by the crown in the 1530s. Until the Great Fire of London in 1666, Soho was mainly composed of fields with a small number of cottages in the Wardour Street area. In the 1670's and 80's, the Soho of today was created, largely by 17th-century urban developer Gregory King, to alleviate the over-crowding in the centre of London.

During this period, a wave of settlers moved into the area. These were refugees fleeing from persecution in Europe, including Greek Christians fleeing Ottoman persecution and French Protestants, Huguenots (their church, St Patrick's, can be seen on Soho Square) fleeing Louis XIV's reign as well as Italians, Russians, Poles and Germans. Many were craftspeople, including furniture makers, tailors, painters and silversmiths, and went on to open shops in the area.

This period established Soho as the most cosmopolitan neighbourhood of London, with a creative energy and tolerant, hedonistic atmosphere that still characterises the area. The sex industry was established as early as the late 18th century when Hooper's Hotel on Soho Square offered rooms for pleasure and streetwalkers plied their trade. In 1959 the Government decided that a crackdown would be necessary.

A ban on street prostitution was enforced but as a consequence, prostitution left the street and moved to first floor apartments, with neon signs, explicit advertising cards and doorbells. Soho is still one of London's prostitution districts; and street markets, advertising agencies, clothing firms, and music-publishing houses are interspersed among its less salubrious locales and activities.

The gay scene, centred around Old Compton Street with its gay cafés, late-night bars, night clubs, and fetish boutiques, has been flourishing since the late 1970's.

A vile attack on the gay community occurred on Friday April 30 1999, when a pipe bomb containing 1,500 nails exploded at the crowded Admiral Duncan pub in Old Compton Street. Three people died in the blast and over 70 where injured.

In the 1950's and 60's, Soho was the main artists' quarter in the capital. The Colony Room Coterie of artists, which included Francis Bacon and Lucian Freud, spent their nights dancing and drinking heavily at the Colony Room in no 41 Dean Street. Jazz came to England via Soho in the 1950's. The most famous jazz club in Soho was, and still is, Ronnie Scott's on Frith Street. The Marquee in Wardour Street was well known for rock music with musical luminaries such as the Rolling Stones, The Kinks, The Who and David Bowie playing regular gigs in the 1960's and 1970's.

Many famous people have made Soho their home over the centuries. These include: John Constable, one of England's greatest landscape painters, who lived on Frith Street in the early 19th century. William Hazlitt, essayist and critic, lived at 6 Frith Street, a site now occupied by Hazlitt's Hotel. Karl Marx, the German philosopher, social scientist and revolutionary lived with his family at no 28 Dean Street (above the restaurant Quo Vadis). Casanova, 'the world's greatest lover', lived on Greek Street. The Italian painter Canaletto lived in Soho in the mid 18th century until he returned to Venice in 1756.

Wheelers restaurant on Crompton Street was founded by one of Napoleon's chefs. John Dryden, essayist and author of the neoclassical criticism of Shakespeare, "An Essay of Dramatic Poesy" (1668), lived in the rooms above what is now the New Loon Fung Supermarket on Gerrard Street in Chinatown. William Blake - poet, engraver and painter - was born on Broadwick Street. He lived in Soho later after his brother Robert had died and wrote his more revolutionary work here.