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Whitechapel
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Whitechapel is a place in the London Borough of Tower Hamlets, England. It is a built-up inner city district located 3.4 miles (5.5 km) east of Charing Cross and roughly bounded by the Bishopsgate thoroughfare on the west, Hanbury Street on the north, Brady Street and Cavell Street on the east and Commercial Road on the south.
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Whitechapel's 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.[1]
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 (including the Whitechapel Bell Foundry which later cast Philadelphia's Liberty Bell and London's Big Ben) and slaughterhouses.
In 1680, the Rector of Whitechapel, the Rev. Ralph Davenant, of the parish of St. Mary Matfellon, bequeathed a legacy for the education of forty boys and thirty girls of the parish - the Davenant Centre is still in existence although the Davenant Foundation School moved from Whitechapel to Loughton in 1966.
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 (collectively known today as "the East End"), 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" [2]), Thrawl St., Berners St. (renamed Henriques St.), Wentworth St. and others.
William Booth began his Christian Revival Society, preaching the gospel in a tent, erected in the Friends Burial Ground, Thomas Street, Whitechapel, in 1865. Others joined his Christian Mission, and on August 7, 1878 the Salvation Army was formed at a meeting held at 272 Whitechapel Road.[3] A statue commemorates both his mission and his work in helping the poor.
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."[4] 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.[5] 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.
In 1902, American author Jack London, looking to write a counterpart to Jacob Riis's seminal book How the Other Half Lives, donned ragged clothes and boarded in Whitechapel, detailing his experiences in The People of the Abyss. Riis had recently documented the astoundingly bad conditions in large swaths of the leading city of the United States. London, a socialist, thought it worthwhile to explore conditions in the leading city of the nation that had invented modern capitalism. He concluded that English poverty was far rougher than the American variety. The juxtaposition of the poverty, homelessness, exploitive work conditions, prostitution, and infant mortality of Whitechapel and other East End locales with some of the greatest personal wealth the world has ever seen made it a focal point for leftist reformers and revolutionaries of all kinds, from George Bernard Shaw, whose Fabian Society met regularly in Whitechapel, to Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, who boarded and led rallies in Whitechapel during his exile from Russia. The area is still home to Freedom Press, the anarchist publishing house founded by Charlotte Wilson.
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.
The East London line of the tube is being extended northwards to Dalston and southwards to West Croydon, planned for completion in 2010. A further extension is planned in phase 2, to provide a complete rail ring route around south London to Clapham Junction, this is unlikely to be completed before 2015. Whitechapel is also scheduled to be a stop on the Crossrail project, again, unlikely to be completed before 2015.
These changes are likely to lead to a radical redevelopment of the area, making it more attractive to businesses, but pricing existing residents out of the area.
Whitechapel Road was the location of two 19th century theatres: 'The Effingham' (1834-1897) and 'The Pavilion' (1828-1935; building demolished in 1962). Charles Dickens, Jr (eldest child of Charles Dickens), in his 1879 book Dickens's Dictionary of London, described the Pavilion thusly: "A large East-end theatre capable of holding considerably over 3,000 persons. Melodrama of a rough type, farce, pantomime, &c."[6] In the early 20th century it became the home of Yiddish theatre, catering to the large Jewish population of the area.
Since at least the 1970s, Whitechapel and other nearby parts of East London have figured prominently in London's art scene. Probably the area's most prominent art venue is the Whitechapel Art Gallery, founded in 1901 and long an outpost of high culture in a poor neighbourhood. As the neighbourhood has gentrified, it has gained citywide, and even international, visibility and support. As of 2005, the gallery is undergoing a major expansion, with the support of £3.26 million from the Heritage Lottery Fund. The expanded facility is due to open in 2007/8.
Whitechapel in the early 21st century has figured prominently in London's punk rock/skuzz rock scene, with the main focal point for this scene being Whitechapel Factory and Rhythm Factory bar/restaurant/nightclub. This scene includes the likes of The Libertines, Zap!, Nova, The Others, Razorlight and The Rakes, all of whom have had some commercial success in the music charts.
Whitechapel features in Charles Dickens's Pickwick Papers where it is characterised by Sam Weller "as not a wery nice neighbourhood". Fagin in Dickens's Oliver Twist was based on a notorious local 'fence' named Ikey Solomon (1785-1850). Whitechapel is also the scene of Israel Zangwill's Children of the Ghetto and the novels of Simon Blumenfield. A more contemporary novel set in Whitechapel is the bizarre White Chappel Scarlet Tracings (1987) by Iain Sinclair[7].
In addition to the prominent figures detailed in the article:
- Born in Whitechapel
- Jack Kid Berg, boxer, "The Whitechapel Windmill", British Lightweight Champion 1934
- Tina Charles, 70s disco artist, 1954
- Peter Cheyney, mystery writer and journalist, 1896-1951
- Ashley Cole, Chelsea and England footballer 1980
- Jack Cohen, British-Jewish businessman who founded the Tesco supermarket chain , 1898-1979
- Roger Delgado, Actor (best known as "The Master" in Doctor Who), 1918-1973
- Bud Flanagan, (born Chaim Reuven Weintrop), music hall comedian on stage, radio, film and television, 1896-1968
- Margaret Pepys (née Kite), mother of famous diarist Samuel Pepys, d. 1667
- Shahara Islam, 20 year old of Bangladeshi descent killed in the 7 July 2005 London terrorist attacks
- Simon Blumenfeld, novelist, playwright and columnist,1907-2005.
- Jack "Spot" Comer, Jewish gangster and anti-Fascist, 1912-1996
- Alan Tilvern, film and television actor, 1918-2003
- Abraham Beame, first Jewish mayor of New York City, 1906-2001
- Abe Saperstein, founder of the Harlem Globetrotters basketball team
- Resident in or otherwise associated with Whitechapel
- Charles Lahr, anarchist bookseller/publisher, secretary of Whitechapel branch of the Industrial Union of Direct Actionists (IUDA), 1885-1971.
- Avrom Stencl, Yiddish poet, early companion of Franz Kafka, published Loshn and Lebn in Whitechapel, 1897-1983.
- Rudolf Rocker, anarcho-syndicalist writer, historian and prominent activist, active in Whitechapel 1895-1918, 1873-1958
- For details of education in Whitechapel see the List of schools in the London Borough of Tower Hamlets
- Aldgate East tube station
- Aldgate tube station
- Bethnal Green tube station
- Shadwell station
- Whitechapel tube station
- Sources consulted
| This section needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding reliable references. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (August 2007) |
- Endnotes
- ^ 'Stepney: Communications', A History of the County of Middlesex: Volume 11: Stepney, Bethnal Green (1998), pp. 7-13 accessed: 09 March 2007
- ^ Ripper Casebook: 1901 The Worst Street in London accessed 5 May 2007
- ^ 1878 Foundation Deed Of The Salvation Army accessed 15 Feb 2007
- ^ Jacob Adler, A Life on the Stage: A Memoir, translated and with commentary by Lulla Rosenfeld, Knopf, New York, 1999, ISBN 067941351. p. 232–233
- ^ Donald Rumbelow (2004) The Complete Jack the Ripper: 12. Penguin
- ^ Dickens, Charles, Jr (1879). "Pavilion Theatre". Dickens's Dictionary of London. Retrieved on 2007-08-22.
- ^ Glinert, Ed (2000). A Literary Guide to London. London: Penguin. Page 256.
- Official web site for the ward of Whitechapel
- Primary source articles
- Tower Hamlets History Online
- Jack London - The People of the Abyss - account of his 1902 stay amongst the East End poor (Text)
- Nighttime photos of Whitechapel and environs. Commentary is in German, but it is mostly photos.
- The Whitechapel Gallery
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| Districts |
Bethnal Green · Blackwall · Bow · Bromley-by-Bow · Cambridge Heath · Cubitt Town · Globe Town · Isle of Dogs · Limehouse · Mile End · Millwall · Old Ford · Poplar · Ratcliff · Shadwell · Spitalfields · Stepney · Wapping · Whitechapel |
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| Parks and open spaces in Tower Hamlets | ||