Thread by @fleetstreetfox

500 years ago, the slum which sprawled on the eastern side of the City of London steamed with sewage, disease, and illiterate, destitute people who couldn't afford to be anywhere else. 1/a few

They huddled in stink beside the River Fleet, a massive waterway which rose on Hampstead Heath, had witnessed Boudicca's battle with the Romans, and which by the time it reached the Thames was basically an open sewer. 2/

Entrepreneurs set up shop here, along with tanners, stonecutters, people who weren't welcome anywhere else because of the nature of their work. And in about 1500, one of them was a chap called Wynkyn de Worde. 3/

He was an apprentice of printer John Caxton, who'd been producing bibles in Westminster. De Worde set up on his own in Shoe Lane, printing books, poetry, and household guides which he sold in St Paul's churchyard. 4/

By 1612 Ben Jonson wrote this poem about a trip down the River Fleet. It is considered one of the most "insistently disgusting" things ever written in English. sewerhistory.org/miscellaneous/… 5/

After the Great Fire, the authorities tried to tart the area up. But it was just too disgusting, so in the end the Fleet was just bricked over. Today the Holborn viaduct is a bridge that still crosses a buried river. 6/

In 1702 Elizabeth Mallet, who had previously printed copies of scaffold speeches by the condemned executed at Tyburn, published the world's first daily newspaper: the Daily Courant. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Daily… 7/

It sold for about the same price as a loaf of bread, and had an editor's letter to publish news impartially to let people make up their own minds.

Today's newspapers also cost about the same as a loaf, and Clause 1 of the Editors' Code of Conduct says much the same thing 8/

The easiest place to sell this stuff was at the door, to the slum-dwellers and tradespeople. The authorities were horrified; but royal censorship had collapsed by this point, and the hoi polloi began to experience the benefits of mass communication. 9/

Literacy rates soared in sync with newspaper sales. Over-reaching governments suddenly became subject to public pressure, quicker and stronger than before. The working classes had the info to improve their lives, and campaign against injustice. 10/

Today Fleet Street is the longest road in the world. It has 3.5bn print newspaper readers worldwide, and many more online. Journalists as undervalued today as we always have been, but our trade changed the world - it delivered democracy, disseminated knowledge, toppled govts. 11/

If you go down Fleet Street today you'd struggle to see a single thing that recognises its place in human history and our social evolution. Blue plaques are 20ft up, the hack's pubs are closed or repurposed, and in our absence it's become unloved. 12/

Last night I was asked to speak at an even launching a rejuvenation scheme - @fleetstquarter which is hoping to use existing new building schemes and local investment to uplift and update a part of the world that has been undervalued for too long 13/

I met lots of fascinating people fascinated in their turn by a hack's view of what this place did. And I reckon they've got the drive - if not yet the power - to make Fleet Street what it oughta be. 14/

And I bent all their ears about the need for a Fleet Street museum - complete with printing presses, pub, education facilities, and proper commemoration of what the street of ink did for all of humanity. And do you know, I think they listened! 15/

So any hacks that are out there - give @fleetstquarter a follow, and any support you can. They're doing a good thing, and if it works out our trade might get some of the recognition it deserves. Let's hope so, eh? /ends

Oh and check out: fleetstreetquarter.co.uk