Karl
Marx, 28 Dean Street, W1. Karl Marx (1818 - 1883) arrived in England in 1849
and lived in a number of guest houses and rooms before moving here in early
1851. For a short time Marx, his wife Jenny, their maid Lenchen and their five
children shared some rooms with Heinrich Bauer at 64 Dean Street. They had
little money. Marx earnt some money by writing for the New York Tribune.
He was also sent some cash by Engels. Poverty left its mark. One of their
children (Foxchën) died of pneumonia while at No. 64, another (Franziska) in
April 1852, and another died in the great cholera epidemic in the summer of
1854. (Over 6000 inhabitants of Soho lost their lives as a result of an infected
water pump on the corner of Broad Street and Cambridge Street.) Relationships
were hardly made easier when Marx embarked on an affair with Lenchen and she
became pregnant. (To Jenny, he tried to blame this on Engels).
The rooms at 28 Dean Street were rented by Marx at £22 a year. He described it as a ‘hovel’. A Prussian agent who visited them there reported that they lived:
in one of the worst, and hence the cheapest quarters of London. He has two rooms, the one with the view of the street being the drawing-room, behind it the bedroom. There is not one piece of good, solid furniture in the entire flat. Everything is broken, tattered and torn, finger-thick dust everywhere, and everything in the greatest disorder; a large, old fashioned table, covered with waxcloth, stands in the middle of the drawing-room, on it lie manuscripts, books, newspapers, then the children’s toys, bits and pieces of the woman’s sewing things, next to it a few teacups with broken rims, dirty spoons, knives, forks, candlesticks, inkpot, glasses, dutch clay pipes, tobacco-ash, in a word all kinds of trash, and everything on one table; a junk-dealer would be ashamed of it. When you enter the Marx flat your sight is dimmed by tobacco and coal smoke so that you grope around at first as if you were in a cave, until your eyes get used to these fumes and, as in a fog, you gradually notice a few objects. Everything is dirty, everything covered with dust; it is dangerous to sit down. Here is a chair with only three legs, there the children play kitchen on another chair that happens to be whole; true — it is offered to the visitor, but the children’s kitchen is not removed; if you sit on it you risk a pair of trousers. But nothing of this embarrasses Marx or his wife in the least; you are received in the friendliest manner, are cordially offered a pipe, tobacco, and whatever else there is; a spirited conversation makes up for the domestic defects and in the end you become reconciled because of the company, find it interesting, even original. This is the faithful portrait of the family life of the communist leader Marx. (quoted by Summers 1991: 120 - 121)
While living in Dean Street, Marx gave lectures in a room above the Red Lion pub on Great Windmill Street. However, his time in London will be best remembered for his association with the British Library Reading Room. There he began the research that led to his great works of political and economic analysis: Grundrisse der Kritik der politischen Ökonomie (1857-58) Zur Kritik der politischen Ökonomie (1859) and Das Kapital (Volume 1 1867 - two further volumes were added in 1884 and 1894).
Later in 1855 Jenny received two small inheritances - and they were able to move to a small terraced house near Primrose Hill.
For an assessment of Marx’s contribution to education see Barry Burke’s piece: Karl Marx and informal education.
© Mark K. Smith. First published September 27, 1999.
