Jacob's Island is an area in Bermondsey, in the modern borough of Southwark (London, England), on the south bank of the Thames. It was historically a slum and was represented in 19th-century texts including the Mysteries of the Court of London (1848-56) by George W. M. Reynolds (1814-1879), Alton Locke (1850) by Charles Kingsley (1819-1875), and most famously Oliver Twist (1838) by Charles Dickens (1812-1870), in which Jacob's Island is the site of the death of the villain Bill Sykes.

In London Labour and the London Poor edition: 

Phase 1

A Visit to the Cholera Districts of Bermondsey (Morning Chronicle): "Here stands, as it were, the very capital of cholera, the Jessore of London - JACOB'S ISLAND, a patch of ground insulated by the common sewer. Spared by the fire of London, the houses and comforts of the people in this loathsome place have scarcely known any improvement since that time. The place is a century behind even the low and squalid districts that surround it."

A Balloon View of London (Great World of London): "We had seen the Great Metropolis under almost every aspect. We had dived into the holes and corners hidden from the honest and well-to-do portion of the London community. We had visited Jacob's island (the plague-spot of the British Capital) in the height of the cholera, when to inhale the very air of the place was to imbibe the breath of death."