Little Italy, London
Its bell, weighing three and a half tonnes, was the largest in any Catholic church in Britain; and the organ was considered the finest in the whole country.
[3] The church also hosts the procession in honour of Our Lady of Mount Carmel which is central to the community and is thought to be the first outdoor Roman Catholic religious event held in England since the Reformation in the 1500s.
Pre-1960s the entire community would have a festa and on the day and would hang flowers and lights over the street and play music late into the night.
[5] Joseph Grimaldi born in 1778 to earlier Italian immigrant parents in the area, would become a greatly important figure in the entertainment industry, primally in clowning.
[8] During the early 1800s a small wave of Northern Italians emigrated to the UK due to the Napoleonic wars and settled in the area because at the time it was a centre of craftsmanship.
The school was later taken over by St Peter's Italian Church and at its peak in around 1900 reached around 3,000 pupils due to the large number of Catholic Irish immigrants in other parts of Clerkenwell.
By this point the occupation of about half of the men in Little Italy was Ice Cream vendor and Italian immigration is generally credited to introducing Ice cream into the U.K.[11] In 1863 St Peter's Italian Catholic Church would open giving the community a place to observe their faith in their original language and in 1878 the community opened the oldest delicatessen in the U.K. (L. Terroni & Sons).
This was a huge event for the local Italians who would hang flowers and flags across the streets and play music and dance late into the night.
Due to racism, politics and inconveniently placed borough boundaries, the area was unpoliced meaning Darby Sabini, a local gangster, assumed the role of protector and enforced his own laws with his ethnically Italian gang of 300 people.
[20] Between the 1970s-1990s multiple government inspections in the area saw a great amount of slum clearance, and gentrification therefore pushing out the remaining Italians.
With Italian immigration having stopped around the 1970s, 2nd and 3rd generation British-Italians started integrating into British society and moving into the suburbs of London.
[21] In the modern day many Italian businesses are either scattered throughout the area, with Casa Italiana San Vincenzo Pallotti (social club) and St Peter's Church continuing to serve the community.
[26] The area is notable for being home to mobsters such as Charles "Darby" Sabini, the Cortesi brothers and later Bert "Battles" Rossi and Albert Dimes.
Due to a lack policing and serious corruption in law enforcement, the group led by Sabini would dominate the race courses and extortion rackets of the west end clubs while protecting Italians around England.
Due to his position of influence within the community he would enforce his own laws such as raising the drinking age to 21 as he was a strict Roman Catholic.
Later, after Italy declared war on the UK, Sabini and the top members of his gang would be interned and their assets confiscated which led to his downfall.
