Whitechapel

London - Pax Britannica

Intro

Whitechapel is an area in the London Borough of Tower Hamlets, London, England. It is in East London and part of the East End. It is the location of Tower Hamlets Town Hall and, therefore, the borough town center. Whitechapel is 3.4 miles (5.5 km) east of Charing Cross.

The district is primarily built around Whitechapel High Street and Whitechapel Road, which extend from the City of London boundary to just east of Whitechapel station. These two streets together form a section of the originally Roman road from the Aldgate to Colchester, a route that later became known as the Great Essex Road. Population growth resulting from ribbon development along this route led to the creation of the parish of Whitechapel, a daughter parish of Stepney, from which it was separated in the 14th century.

Whitechapel has long been known for its diverse immigrant communities. From the late 19th century until the late 20th century the area had a very high Jewish population, with multiple Yiddish-language theatres, newspapers and synagogues.

Whitechapel and neighboring Spitalfields were the locations of the infamous 11 Whitechapel murders (1888–91), some of which were attributed to the unidentified serial killer known as Jack the Ripper. These factors and others have led to Whitechapel being seen by many as the embodiment of London's East End, and for that reason it is often used to represent the East End in art and literature.

Landmarks include the: London Hospital

History

Whitechapel was originally part of the Manor and Parish of Stepney, but population growth resulting from its position just outside the Aldgate on the Roman Road to Essex resulted in significant population growth, so a chapel of ease, dedicated to St Mary was established so people did not have to make the longer journey to Stepney's parish church St Dunstans. The earliest known rector was Hugh de Fulbourne in 1329.

Whitechapel takes its name from that church, St Mary Matfelon, which like the nearby White Tower of the Tower of London was at one time whitewashed to give it a prominent and attractive appearance. The etymology of the Matfelon element is unclear and apparently unique.

Around 1338, Whitechapel became an independent parish, with St Mary Matfelon, originally a chapel of ease within Stepney, becoming the parish church.

Geography of the Ancient Parish

Whitechapel's spine is the old Roman Road, that ran from the Aldgate on London's Wall, to Colchester in Essex (Roman Britannia's first capital), and beyond. This road, which was later named the Great Essex Road, is now designated the A11. This historic route has the names Whitechapel High Street and Whitechapel Road as it passes through, or along the boundary, of Whitechapel. For many centuries travelers to and from London on this route were accommodated at the many coaching inns that lined Whitechapel High Street.

The area of the parish extended around 1400 meters from the City of London boundary, originally marked by Aldgate Bars around 180 meters east of the Aldgate itself, to vicinity of the junction with Cambridge Heath Road where it met the boundaries of Mile End and Bethnal Green.

The northern boundary included Wentworth Street and parts of Old Montague Street. The parish also included an area around Goodman's Fields, close to the City and south of St Mary's, the parish church.

Administrative History

The area became an independent parish around 1338. At that time parish areas only had an ecclesiastical (church) function, with parallel civil parishes being formed in the Tudor period. The original purpose of the civil parishes was poor relief. The area was part of the historic (or ancient) county of Middlesex, but military and most (or all) civil county functions were managed more locally, by the Tower Division (also known as the Tower Hamlets).

The role of the Tower Division ended when Whitechapel became part of the new County of London in 1889, and most civil parish functions were removed when the area joined the Metropolitan Borough of Stepney in 1900.

Early History

Early development

Whitechapel, along with areas such as neighboring Shoreditch, Holborn (west of the city) and Southwark (south of the Thames), was one of London's earlier extra-mural suburbs. Beyond controls of the City of London Corporation, Whitechapel was used for more polluting and land-intensive industries the city market demanded, such as tanneries, builders' goods yards, laundries, clothes dyers, slaughterhouse-related work, soaperies, and breweries. Whitechapel was strongly notable for foundries, foremost of which was the Whitechapel Bell Foundry, which later cast Philadelphia's Liberty Bell, Westminster's Big Ben, Bow Bells and more recently the London Olympic Bell in 2012. 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, businesses and services ancillary to the City of London that had attracted them.

Whitechapel Mount

The Whitechapel Mount was a large, probably artificial mound, of unknown origin, that stood on the south side of Whitechapel Road, about 1200 meters east of the Aldgate, immediately west of the modern Royal London Hospital. The Mount is widely believed to have formed part of London's defenses during the Wars of the Three Kingdoms in the mid-17th century. This was either as part of a ring of fortifications known as the Lines of Communication, which were in operation from 1642 to 1647, or additionally or alternatively, as one of the three forts replacing that system of defense immediately afterwards.

The mount was removed to allow residential development in 1807–1808.

Davenant Foundation School

In 1680, Ralph Davenant (rector of the parish of Whitechapel), his wife and his sister-in-law bequeathed a large sum for a schoolmaster to teach literacy, numeracy and the "principles of the Church of England" to forty boys of the parish. In the same deed Henry and Sarah Gullifer undertook to provide for the education of thirty poor girls; namely a schoolmistress was to teach them the "catechism, reading, knitting, plain sewing, and any other useful work". In 1701 an unknown donor gave the foundation £1,000 (equivalent to £190,000 in 2023) so the children might be suitably clothed as well as educated. Between 1783 and 1830 the school received twenty gifts totaling over £5,000. Typical income seems to have been about £500 per year, which was much more than most vicar's and rector's livings, net. Supporting modern education, the Davenant Centre continues and the Davenant Foundation School has, since 1966, been based at Loughton in Essex.

Royal London Hospital

The London Infirmary was established as a voluntary hospital in 1740, and within a year soon moved from Finsbury to Prescot Street, a very densely populated and deprived part of southern Whitechapel. Its aim was "The relief of all sick and diseased persons and, in particular, manufacturers, seamen in the merchant service and their wives and children".

The hospital moved to the then largely rural Whitechapel Road site in 1757, and was renamed the London Hospital. It became known as the Royal London Hospital on its 250th anniversary in 1990. The new building, adjacent to the old building it replaced, was opened in 2012.

In 2023 the old hospital building became the new Tower Hamlets Town Hall, replacing the Mulberry Place site in Poplar.

18th and 19th centuries

In common with many other parts of the East End of London, Whitechapel gained a reputation for severe poverty, overcrowding, and the social problems that came with it.

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.

The population grew quickly with migrants from the English countryside and further afield. Many of these incomers were Irish or Jewish. Western Whitechapel, and neighbouring areas of Wapping, became known as Little Germany due to the large numbers of German people who came to the area; many of these people, and their descendants, worked in the sugar industry. The St George's German Lutheran Church on Alie Street is a legacy of that part of the community.

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.[19] Reference is specifically made to them in Charles Booth's Life and Labor of the People in London, especially 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.

London County Council, founded 1889, helped deliver investment in new housing and slum clearance; objectives which were a popular cause at the time.

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.

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