Nothing is new, yet everything is changing.

The London Corporation of the Poor was first established in 1647 under An Act for the better Relief of the Poor of this Kingdom. It was founded upon a simple belief that civil society holds shares today: that I am my brothers’ keeper, and that the City of London will do what it can, when it can, to help those less fortunate, so that they may help themselves. Today, London Citizens pays its respects to this noble tradition and is looking to revitalise it through a new, innovative and dynamic housing proposal which will see the Mayor of London, the City and the historic outpost of Tower Hamlets come together to provide perpetual, affordable home ownership for some of London’s lowest paid working families.

St. Clement’s Hospital, Mile End
The City of London union formally came into being on 30th March 1837 for just this purpose. Its operation was overseen by an elected Board of Guardians, 101 in number, representing its 98 constituent parishes, some of which are now still in existence and dues paying members within the London Citizens community alliance in East London today.

This issues of overcrowding and overpriced housing in this part of London is nothing new. Looking at the problem at the end of the nineteenth century, The City of London saw the multitude of health problems and the results, such as family breakdown and lasting unemployment, that poor housing created. The union initally tried to persuade vagrants to go elsewhere, offering them bread and money instead of shelter. However, as members of the local community, with families and friends, ‘the poor’ refused to be shifted from their homes, even though they were overcrowded, unpleasant and costly. Eventually, after a long battle with the Poor Law Commissioners, the union gave way and agreed to build a workhouse of its own, to provide shelter and work for the East End’s poor.

The new workhouse catered for up to 800 residents and was built on the south side of Bow Road in 1848-9, opening in the December of 1849. The palatial design by Richard Tress cost over £55,000 to construct and boasted central heating, a dining-hall measuring 100 feet by 50 feet, Siberian marble pillars, and a chapel with stained glass windows and a new organ. At the time, it was simply known as the Bow Road Workhouse.

In 1869, the City of London Union, the East London Union, and the West London Union were amalgamated to form an enlarged City of London Union. The new union took over the former East London Union workhouse at Homerton, and the former West London Union workhouse on Cornwallis Road in Upper Holloway. The Bow Road site became the union's infirmary, caring for the sick and mentally ill.

In 1909, the Bow Road was vacated by the City of London Union who had decided to concentrate their work at Homerton, in the former East London Union workhouse, which had just been substantially enlarged. After a short period of standing empty, the Bow Road building was re-opened on 1st March 1912 as the Bow Institution. Although still managed by the City of London Board of Guardians, it now provided medical and nursing care for workhouse inmates from other unions. By October 1912, nearly 300 paupers from the Poplar Union were in residence, including many who had previously been in Poplar's Forest Gate branch workhouse. The Bow Institution was later renamed the City of London Institution.

By May 1936, the site had stood as a pillar of the local community, catering for the local poor, for 99 years. The option arose at this time to close the institute – selling it off for monetary gain and into private hands. But the decision was made to keep the land in public ownership: paid for and constructed through forethought and benevolence, and an icon in the local area, it was thought unfit to lose such a noble history of social investment and so very necessary support. The site was thus transformed into a hospital, an exclusively psychiatric unit, careding for the locally infirm and renamed St. Clement's.

The site survived major bomb damage in 1944 during the war, but went on to become part of the NHS and London Hospital in 1968. On the introduction of the National Health Service, the Hospital was taken over by the Bow Hospital Management Committee, which was replaced in 1963 by the Thames Group Hospital Management Committee. Management then passed to the Governors of the London Hospital in 1968, and in 1974 it was to become part of the Tower Hamlets Health District. 
Then, following a move of services to a new purpose-built complex at the Mile End Hospital in Bancroft Road in October 2005, the glorious red gates on the front of Bow Road closed once more.

They have been shut ever since.

In September 2009, the Homes and Communities Agency (HCA – a government body, influence by the Mayor) will put the site out to a process of competitive tender. The site could be sold off for private developments, compromising small rooms, as many flats as is profitable for a private developer and a long, sad end to century’s of social investment and providing support to the local community. But London Citizens is also putting in a bid – to create London’s first, large-scale, family-sized residential Community Land Trust complex. Perpetually affordable, community-orientated, local homes for local people – protecting all the years that the City and the East End has worked together to help hardworking local people help themselves.