page_title: Whitechapel
section_title: 19th century
hierarchical_section_title: Whitechapel / History / 19th century
caption_attribution_description: Edward VII plaque at Whitechapel Market, London, UK
context_page_description: Whitechapel is a district in East London and the future administrative centre of the London Borough of Tower Hamlets. It is a part of the East End of London, 3.4 miles east of Charing Cross. It was part of the ancient parish of Stepney, Middlesex. It was split off as a separate parish in the 14th century. It became part of the County of London in 1889 and Greater London in 1965. Because the area is close to the London Docklands and east of the City of London, it has been a popular place for immigrants and the working class.
  The area was the centre of the London Jewish community in the 19th and early 20th century, and the location of the infamous 11 Whitechapel murders, some of which were attributed to the mysterious serial killer known as Jack the Ripper. In the latter half of the 20th century, Whitechapel became a significant settlement for the British Bangladeshi community, and has the Royal London Hospital and East London Mosque.
context_section_description: 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 into classic "Dickensian" London, with problems of poverty and overcrowding. Whitechapel Road 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 Street (now a private alley but once described as "the worst street in London"), Thrawl Street, Berners Street (renamed Henriques Street), Wentworth Street, 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 7 August 1878 the Salvation Army was formed at a meeting held at 272 Whitechapel Road. 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."
  This endemic poverty drove many women to prostitution. In October 1888 the Metropolitan Police estimated that there were 1,200 prostitutes "of very low class" resident in Whitechapel and about 62 brothels. Reference is specifically made to them in Charles Booth's Life and Labour of the People in London, specially to dwellings called Blackwall Buildings belonging to Blackwall Railway. Such prostitutes were numbered amongst the 11 Whitechapel murders (1888–91), some of which were committed by the legendary serial killer known as 'Jack the Ripper'. These attacks caused widespread terror in the district and throughout the country and drew the attention of social reformers to the squalor and vice of the area, even though these crimes remain unsolved today.
  The "Elephant Man" Joseph Merrick (1862–1890) became well known in Whitechapel — he was exhibited in a shop on the Whitechapel Road before being helped by Frederick Treves (1853–1923) at the Royal London Hospital, opposite the actual shop. There is a museum in the hospital about his life.
caption: Plaque commemorating King Edward VII, with the inscription "erected with subscriptions raised by Jewish inhabitants of East London 1911"
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