Whitechapels heart is Whitechapel Road itself named for a small chapel of ease dedicated to St Mary: its earliest known rector was Hugh de Fulbourne in 1329.Whitechapel Road is now part of the A11 road though anciently it was the initial part of the Roman road between the City of London and Colchester exiting the city at Aldgate.
By the late 16th century the suburb of Whitechapel and the surrounding area had started becoming 'the other half' of London.Located east of Aldgate outside the City Walls and beyond official controls it attracted the more fragrant activities of the city particularly tanneries breweries foundries and slaughterhouses.
Population shifts from rural areas to London from the 17th century to the mid 19th century resulted in great numbers of more or less destitute people taking up residence amidst the industries and mercantile interests that had attracted them.By the 1840s Whitechapel along with the enclaves of Wapping Aldgate Bethnal Green Mile End Limehouse Bow Bromley-by-Bow Poplar Shadwell and Stepney had evolved or devolved into classic "Dickensian" London with problems of poverty and overcrowding.Whitechapel Rd. itself was not particularly squalid through most of this period—it was the warrens of small dark streets branching from it that contained the greatest suffering filth and danger such as Dorset St.(now a private alley but once known as "the worst street in London") Thrawl St. Berners St. (renamed Henriques St.) Wentworth St.and others.
In the Victorian era the basal population of poor English country stock was swelled by immigrants from all over particularly Irish and Jewish.Writing of the period 1883–1884 Yiddish theatre actor Jacob Adler wrote "The further we penetrated into this Whitechapel the more our hearts sank.Was this London?Never in Russia never later in the worst slums of New York were we to see such poverty as in the London of the 1880s.".This endemic poverty drove many women to prostitution.In October 1888 the Metropolitan police estimated that there were twelve hundred prostitutes "of very low class" resident in Whitechapel and about sixty-two brothels.Such prostitutes were the victims of Jack the Ripper (also called "The Whitechapel Murderer" at the time) who terrorised this part of London in the autumn of 1888.
The "Elephant Man" Joseph Carey Merrick (1862-1890) became well-known in Whitechapel - he was exhibited in a shop on the Whitechapel Road before being helped by Dr Frederick Treves (1853-1923) at the Royal London Hospital opposite the actual shop.There is a museum in the hospital about his life.
Whitechapel remained poor (and colourful) through the first half of the 20th century though somewhat less desperately so.It suffered great damage in the Blitz and the V1/V2 German "flying bomb" attacks of World War II.Since then Whitechapel has lost most of its notoriety though it is still thoroughly working class.The Bangladeshis are the most visible migrant group there today and it is home to many aspiring artists and shoestring entrepreneurs.

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Very nice pics, some of the architecture there is wonderful!

Beautiful, love london.
I've always been interested in that part of the city and all the mistery with jack the ripper.
Awesome city

I've always been interested in that part of the city and all the mistery with jack the ripper.


I think you should check out this site then :

http://www.casebook.org/

Very nice pics, some of the architecture there is wonderful!

The whole East End is wonderful!I will do more threads of it in the future.

Very nice!

Isn't this part of London very unsafe? It looks quite nice in the images though.

Great pics. You've captured the atmosphere of the area very well.

Isn't this part of London very unsafe? It looks quite nice in the images though.

Hahahaha. If Whitechapel's unsafe, then that makes Hackney Baghdad-upon-Thames :nuts:

I was on on a bus going through Bethnal Green the other day, heading Eastbound just as it was getting dark, and a very polite and well-mannered American tourist of middle-class appearance was at the front asking the driver if she was going in the right direction for Holborn. The driver politely explained "no luv, you're going the wrong way, this is East London". The look of terror on her face as soon as she heard the words "East London"... Really quite amusing. She immediately blurted out "OH MY GOD, IS IT SAFE TO BE HERE?!!", and everyone on the bus seemed to collectively roll their eyes.

She was o.k. in the end though, I managed to guide her safely to the nearest underground station without picking up any gunshot or stab wounds. :lol:

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Well ... West End is a whole world away from East London, that's for sure. :)

Your pictures are very nice and interesting.

Just a question... why are you only showing the "brown" face of London?
I would be glad to see also the elegant parts of London... an idea for your next photo-thread? ;)

Isn't this part of London very unsafe?

Its just like any other inner city area.

Thanks.

Your pictures are very nice and interesting.

Just a question... why are you only showing the "brown" face of London?
I would be glad to see also the elegant parts of London... an idea for your next photo-thread? ;)

Thanks.
I love East End its such an interesting place.I love it and thats why I always photograph it but yeah Ill get some shots of nicer parts of London.Promise. ;)

:cheers:

Your pictures are very nice and interesting.

Just a question... why are you only showing the "brown" face of London?
I would be glad to see also the elegant parts of London... an idea for your next photo-thread? ;)

What is the "brown" face of London? Do you mean the parts of London that have large South Asian populations, an example being Whitechapel?

Cool pics though :)

He meant gritty.

So this is Whitechapel. Cool stuff.

Whitechapel despite all the gentrification is still one of the grittiest areas of London today though nothing like it was in 1888.

Its amazing to think that even during times of Empire, this place of squalor and poverty was not far from the 'city' itself.

Even as late as the 1960's much of Whitechapel was a slum, check out this film about one of the ripper sites. As the man says in the video, the streets were exactly the same in 1960 as in 1888

EjIUQqrkJdU

Gorgeous pics! Thx for sharing them.

Nice thread, epecially with the description, and not the London we usually see.

@MajorTom
brown face... I wanted to say the dark face of London but also the industrial parts of London whith its heritage made of brown stone.

Good old whitechapel....although Im sure some of those aren't really Whitechapel, aren't some more Wapping/Limehouse area?

^ First six pics - Stepney and last 8 - Wapping.

Thanks.