Prisoners | Untold Stories

Solomon, a notorious receiver of stolen goods, is now identified as an inspiration for the character Fagin in Dickens’ Oliver Twist. He was living in Lower Queen Street (now Queensbury Street), Canonbury, at the time of his arrest in New North Road in 1827, when police found a large trunk of articles worth the equivalent of £30,000 today. He was given a 14-year transportation sentence.

Joseph was born to a prosperous family in Bermondsey. Like her brother, Solomon Joseph Solomon, she was an artist. Her involvement in the women’s suffrage movement is what connects her to Islington. The night in 1912 when she was meant to be at a private view of her work she was in Holloway Prison after her arrest during a window-smashing campaign in the West End.

Rosenberg was born in Clift Street, off New North Road in Hoxton, to parents who had migrated from Germany. As a young man he lived at 8 Ockendon Road, Canonbury, and entered journalism, initially writing for the Jewish Chronicle. He later became publisher of a gossip sheet called Town Talk, which led to him being jailed for libel after a trial at the Old Bailey.