East End of London

The East End began with the medieval growth of London beyond its walls, along the Roman roads leading from Bishopsgate and Aldgate and also alongside the Thames.

Growth was much slower in the east, and the modest extensions on this side were separated from the much larger extensions in the west by the marshy open area of Moorfields adjacent to the wall on the north side, which discouraged development in that direction.

Building accelerated in the 16th century, and the area that would later become known as the East End began to take shape.

In 1720 John Strype gives us our first record of the East End as a distinct entity when he describes London as consisting of four parts: the City of London, Westminster, Southwark, and "That Part beyond the Tower".

The relevance of Strype's reference to the Tower was more than geographical. The East End was the urbanised part of an administrative area called the Tower Division, which had owed military service to the Tower of London since time immemorial, having its roots in the Bishop of London's historic Manor of Stepney. Later, as London grew further, the fully urbanised Tower Division became a byword for wider East London, before East London grew further still, east of the River Lea and into Essex.

For a very long time the East End was physically separated from London's western growth by the open space known as Moorfields. Shoreditch's boundary with the parish of St Luke's (and its predecessor St Giles-without-Cripplegate) ran through the Moorfields, which became, on urbanisation, the boundary of east and north London. That line, with very slight modifications, also became part of the boundary between the modern London Boroughs of Hackney and Islington.

Moorfields remained largely open until 1812, and the longstanding presence of that open space separating the emerging East End from the western urban expansion of London must have helped shape the different economic character of the two parts and perceptions of their distinct identity (see map below).

Ogilby & Morgan's 1673 map of London. The East End is developing outside Bishopsgate, Aldgate and along the river - it is separated from the western growth of the city by Moorfields

The East End has always contained some of London's poorest areas. The main reasons for this include:

• The medieval system of copyhold, which prevailed throughout the East End into the 19th century. Essentially, there was little point in developing land that was held on short leases.[13]
• The siting of noxious industries, such as tanning and fulling downwind outside the boundaries of the City, and therefore beyond complaints and official controls. The foul-smelling industries partially preferred the East End because the prevailing winds in London traveled from west to east (i.e. it was downwind from the rest of the city), so that most odours from their businesses would not go into the city.
• The low paid employment in the docks and related industries, made worse by the trade practices of outwork, piecework and casual labour.
• The concentration of the ruling court and national political centre in Westminster, on the opposite, western side of the City of London.

Historically, the East End is arguably conterminous with the Manor of Stepney. This manor was held by the Bishop of London, in compensation for his duties in maintaining and garrisoning the Tower of London. Edward VI passed the land to the Wentworth family, and thence to their descendants, the Earls of Cleveland. The system of copyhold, whereby land was leased to tenants for terms as short as seven years, prevailed throughout the manor. This severely limited scope for improvement of the land and new building until the estate was broken up in the 19th century.[16]

In medieval times trades were carried out in workshops in and around the owners' premises in the City. By the time of the Great Fire of London in 1666 these were becoming industries, and some were particularly noisome, such as the processing of urine for the tanning industry, or required large amounts of space, such as drying clothes after process and dying in fields known as tentergrounds. Some were dangerous, such as the manufacture of gunpowder or the proving of guns. These activities came to be performed outside the City walls in the near suburbs of the East End. Later, when lead-making and bone-processing for soap and china came to be established, they too located in the East End rather than in the crowded streets of the City.[13]

The lands east of the City had always been used as hunting grounds for bishops and royalty, with King John establishing a palace at Bow. The Cistercian Stratford Langthorne Abbey became the court of Henry III in 1267 for the visitation of the Papal legates, and it was here that he made peace with the barons under the terms of the Dictum of Kenilworth. It became the fifth largest Abbey in the country, visited by monarchs and providing a retreat (and a final resting place) for the nobility.[17] The Palace of Placentia at Greenwich, to the south of the river, was built by the Regent to Henry V, Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester and Henry VIII established a hunting lodge at Bromley Hall.[18] These Royal connections continued until after the Interregnum (1649–60) when the Court established itself in the Palace of Whitehall and the offices of politics congregated around them. The East End also lay on the main road to Barking Abbey, important as a religious centre since Norman times and where William the Conqueror had first established his English court.[19]

During the Middle Ages, settlements were established predominantly along the lines of the existing roads. The principal villages were Stepney, Whitechapel and Bow. Settlements along the river began at that time to service the needs of shipping on the Thames, but the City of London retained its right to land the goods. The riverside became more active in Tudor times (16th century), as the Royal Navy expanded and international trading developed, and a major fishing port developed downstream at Barking to provide fish for the City. These and other factors meant that industries relating to construction, repair, and victualling of naval and merchant ships flourished in the area.

Royalty such as King John had had a hunting lodge at Bromley-by-Bow, and the Bishop of London had a palace at Bethnal Green, but later these estates began to be split up, and estates of fine houses for captains, merchants and owners of manufacturers began to be built. Samuel Pepys moved his family and goods to Bethnal Green during the Great Fire of London, and Captain Cook moved from Shadwell to Stepney Green, where a school and assembly rooms had been established (commemorated by Assembly Passage, and a plaque on the site of Cook's house on the Mile End Road). Mile End Old Town also acquired some fine buildings, and the New Town began to be built. As the area became built up and more crowded, the wealthy sold their plots for subdivision and moved further afield. Into the 18th and 19th centuries, there were still attempts to build fine houses, for example Tredegar Square (1830), and the open fields around Mile End New Town were used for the construction of estates of workers' cottages in 1820. This was designed in 1817 in Birmingham by Anthony Hughes and finally constructed in 1820.[20]

Globe Town was established from 1800 to provide for the expanding population of weavers around Bethnal Green, attracted by improving prospects in silk weaving. Bethnal Green's population trebled between 1801 and 1831, with 20,000 looms being operated in people's own homes. By 1824, with restrictions on importation of French silks relaxed, up to half these looms had become idle, and prices were driven down. With many importing warehouses already established in the district, the abundance of cheap labour was turned to boot, furniture and clothing manufacture.[21] Globe Town continued its expansion into the 1860s, long after the silk industry's decline.

The East End in 1741–5, as depicted on John Rocque's Exact Survey of the city's of London Westminster ye Borough of Southwark and the Country near ten miles round. London is expanding, but there are still large areas of fields to the east of the City.

1882 Reynolds Map of the East End. Development has now eliminated the open fields shown on the earlier map.

Part of Charles Booth's poverty map showing the Old Nichol slum. Published 1889 in Life and Labour of the People in London. The red areas are "middle class, well-to-do", light blue areas are "poor, 18s to 21s a week for a moderate family", dark blue areas are "very poor, casual, chronic want", and black areas are the "lowest class...occasional labourers, street sellers, loafers, criminals and semi-criminals".

Boundary Estate bandstand was built on the rubble from the clearance of the Old Nichol slum.

During the 19th century, building on an ad hoc basis could not keep up with the expanding population's needs. Henry Mayhew visited Bethnal Green in 1850 and wrote for the Morning Chronicle, as a part of a series forming the basis for London Labour and the London Poor (1851), that the trades in the area included tailors, costermongers, shoemakers, dustmen, sawyers, carpenters, cabinet makers and silkweavers. He noted that in the area:

roads were unmade, often mere alleys, houses small and without foundations, subdivided and often around unpaved courts. An almost total lack of drainage and sewerage was made worse by the ponds formed by the excavation of brickearth. Pigs and cows in back yards, noxious trades like boiling tripe, melting tallow, or preparing cat's meat, and slaughter houses, dustheaps, and 'lakes of putrefying night soil' added to the filth

— Henry Mayhew London Labour and London Poor (1851), [22]

A movement began to clear the slums. Burdett-Coutts built Columbia Market in 1869 and the "Artisans' and Labourers' Dwelling Act" passed in 1876 to provide powers to seize slums from landlords and to provide access to public funds to build new housing.[23] Philanthropic housing associations such as the Peabody Trust were formed to provide homes for the poor and to clear the slums generally. Expansion by the railway companies, such as the London and Blackwall Railway and Great Eastern Railway, caused large areas of slum housing to be demolished. The "Working Classes Dwellings Act" in 1890 placed a new responsibility to house the displaced residents and led to the building of new philanthropic housing such as Blackwall Buildings and Great Eastern Buildings.[24]

By 1890, official slum clearance programmes had begun. These included the creation of the world's first council housing, the LCC Boundary Estate, which replaced the neglected and crowded streets of Friars Mount, better known as The Old Nichol Street Rookery.[25] Between 1918 and 1939 the LCC continued replacing East End housing with five- or six-storey flats, despite residents preferring houses with gardens and opposition from shopkeepers who were forced to relocate to new, more expensive premises. The Second World War brought an end to further slum clearance.[26]

West India Docks by Pugin and Rowlandson from Ackermann's Microcosm of London, or, London in Miniature (1808-11)

Industries associated with the sea developed throughout the East End, including rope making and shipbuilding. The former location of roperies can still be identified from their long straight, narrow profile in the modern streets, for instance Ropery Street near Mile End. Shipbuilding was important from the time when Henry VIII caused ships to be built at Rotherhithe as a part of his expansion of the Royal Navy. On 31 January 1858, the largest ship of that time, the SS Great Eastern, designed by Isambard Kingdom Brunel, was launched from the yard of Messrs Scott Russell & Co, of Millwall. The 692-foot (211 m) vessel was too long to fit across the river, and so the ship had to be launched sideways. Due to the technical difficulties of the launch, after this, shipbuilding on the Thames went into a long decline.[27] Ships continued to be built at the Thames Ironworks and Shipbuilding Company at Blackwall and Canning Town until the yard closed in 1913, shortly after the launch of the Dreadnought Battleship HMS Thunderer (1911).

Isambard Kingdom Brunel against the launching chains of the Great Eastern at Millwall in 1857

Minories station on the LBR, c. 1840. Winding drums and Cooke-Wheatstone "needle" telegraph shown in left foreground

The London 2012 Opening Ceremony portrayed the trauma of the Industrial Revolution

The West India Docks were established in 1803, providing berths for larger ships and a model for future London dock building. Imported produce from the West Indies was unloaded directly into quayside warehouses. Ships were limited to 6000 tons.[28] The old Brunswick Dock, a shipyard at Blackwall became the basis for the East India Company's East India Docks established there in 1806.[29] The London Docks were built in 1805, and the waste soil and rubble from the construction was carried by barge to west London, to build up the marshy area of Pimlico. These docks imported tobacco, wine, wool and other goods into guarded warehouses within high walls (some of which still remain). They were able to berth over 300 sailing vessels simultaneously, but by 1971 they closed, no longer able to accommodate modern shipping.[30] The most central docks, St Katharine Docks, were built in 1828 to accommodate luxury goods, clearing the slums that lay in the area of the former Hospital of St Katharine. They were not successful commercially, as they were unable to accommodate the largest ships, and in 1864, management of the docks was amalgamated with that of the London Docks.[31] The Millwall Docks were created in 1868, predominantly for the import of grain and timber. These docks housed the first purpose built granary for the Baltic grain market, a local landmark that remained until it was demolished to improve access for the London City Airport.[32]

The first railway (the "Commercial Railway") to be built, in 1840, was a passenger service based on cable haulage by stationary steam engines that ran the 3.5 miles (5.6 km) from Minories to Blackwall on a pair of tracks. It required 14 miles (22.5 km) of hemp rope, and "dropped" carriages as it arrived at stations, which were reattached to the cable for the return journey, the train "reassembling" itself at the terminus.[33] The line was converted to standard gauge in 1859, and steam locomotives adopted. The building of London termini at Fenchurch Street (1841),[34] and Bishopsgate (1840) provided access to new suburbs across the River Lea, again resulting in the destruction of housing and increased overcrowding in the slums. After the opening of Liverpool Street station (1874), Bishopsgate railway station became a goods yard, in 1881, to bring imports from Eastern ports. With the introduction of containerisation, the station declined, suffered a fire in 1964 that destroyed the station buildings, and it was finally demolished in 2004 for the extension of the East London Line. In the 19th century, the area north of Bow Road became a major railway centre for the North London Railway, with marshalling yards and a maintenance depot serving both the City and the West India docks. Nearby Bow railway station opened in 1850 and was rebuilt in 1870 in a grand style, featuring a concert hall. The line and yards closed in 1944, after severe bomb damage, and never reopened, as goods became less significant, and cheaper facilities were concentrated in Essex.[35]

The River Lea was a smaller boundary than the Thames, but it was a significant one. The building of the Royal Docks consisting of the Royal Victoria Dock (1855), able to berth vessels of up to 8000 tons;[36] Royal Albert Dock (1880), up to 12,000 tons;[37] and King George V Dock (1921), up to 30,000 tons,[38] on the estuary marshes, extended the continuous development of London across the Lea into Essex for the first time.[39] The railways gave access to a passenger terminal at Gallions Reach and new suburbs created in West Ham, which quickly became a major manufacturing town, with 30,000 houses built between 1871 and 1901.[40] Soon afterwards, East Ham was built up to serve the new Gas Light and Coke Company and Bazalgette's grand sewage works at Beckton.[41]

Redevelopment on the Isle of Dogs

The East End has historically suffered from poor housing stock and infrastructure. From the 1950s, the area was a microcosm of the structural and social changes affecting the UK economy. The closure of docks, cutbacks in railways and loss of industry contributed to a long-term decline, removing many of the traditional sources of low- and semi-skilled jobs.

The docks declined from the mid-20th century, with the last, the Royal Docks, closing in 1980. Various wharves along the river continue to be used but on a much smaller scale. London's main port facilities are now at Tilbury and London Gateway (opened in 1886 and 2013 respectively), further downstream, beyond the Greater London boundary in Essex. These larger modern facilities can accommodate larger vessels and are suitable for the needs of modern container ships.[42]

There has been extensive regeneration, and the East End has become a desirable place for business,[6] partly due to the availability of brownfield land. Much of this development has been of little benefit to local communities and has caused a damaging rise in property prices, meaning that much of the area remains among the poorest in Britain.

The area had one of the highest concentrations of council housing, the legacy of slum clearance and wartime destruction.[43] Many of the 1960s tower blocks have been demolished or renovated, replaced by low-rise housing, often in private ownership, or owned by housing associations.[44]

By the mid-1980s, the District line (extended to the East End in 1884 and 1902)[45] and Central line (1946)[46] were beyond capacity, and the Docklands Light Railway (1987) and Jubilee line (1999) were subsequently constructed to improve rail transport in the area.

There was a long-standing plan to provide London with an inner motorway box, the East Cross Route, but only a short section was built.[47] Road links were improved by the completion of the Limehouse Link tunnel under Limehouse Basin in 1993 and the extension of the A12 to connect to the Blackwall Tunnel in the 1990s. The extension of the East London line provided further improvements in 2010. From 2021, the Elizabeth Line will create an east-west service across London, with a major interchange at Whitechapel. New river crossings are planned at Beckton, (the Thames Gateway Bridge)[48] and at the proposed Silvertown Link road tunnel, intended to supplement the existing Blackwall Tunnel.[49]

The continued strength of the City's financial services sector has seen many large office buildings erected around the City fringe, with indirect benefits accruing to local business. The area around Old Spitalfields Market has been redeveloped and Brick Lane, dubbed London's curry capital,[50] or Bangla Town,[51] has benefited from the City's success.

Art galleries have flourished, including the expanded Whitechapel Gallery and the workshop of artists Gilbert and George in Spitalfields.[52] The neighbourhood around Hoxton Square has become a centre for modern British art, including the White Cube gallery, with many artists from the Young British Artists movement living and working in the area. This has made the area around Hoxton and Shoreditch fashionable, a busy nightlife has developed,[53] but many former residents now driven out by higher property prices.

East London Tech City, a cluster of technology companies has developed in and around Shoreditch, and the Queen Mary University of London has expanded its existing site at Mile End, and opened specialist medical campuses at the Royal London Hospital and Whitechapel.

The devastating closure of the docks and the loss of the associated industries led to the establishment of the London Docklands Development Corporation[54] in 1981; the body was charged with using deregulation and other levers to stimulate economic regeneration.

As a consequence of this, and of investment in the area's transport infrastructure, there have been many urban renewal projects, most notably Canary Wharf, a huge commercial and housing development on the Isle of Dogs. Another major development is London City Airport, built in 1986, in the former King George V Dock to provide short-haul services to domestic and European destinations. There has been extensive building of luxury apartments, mainly around the former dock areas and alongside the Thames.

The Docklands regeneration has been a success, but being based on service industries, the work does not closely match the skills and needs of the dockland communities.

Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park, 2014

The 2012 Summer Olympics and Paralympics were held in the Olympic Park, created on former industrial land around the River Lea. The park includes a legacy of new sports facilities, housing, industrial and technical infrastructure intended to further regenerate the area.[5] Other developments at Stratford include Stratford International station and the Stratford City development.[55] Nearby, the University of East London developed a new campus, which provided the United States Olympic Team its training base during the 2012 Games.[56]

In 1915–17, the capital experienced a series of raid by airships of the German Army and Navy.[79] 1917 and 1918 saw a series of raids by fixed wing aircraft. The morning of 13 June 1917 saw the first ever daylight air-raid over the East End, by German Gotha bombers, a raid which killed 104 people. Eighteen died at Upper North Street School, Poplar. A memorial still stands today in Poplar Recreation Ground. During the war a total of 120 children and 104 adults were killed in the East End by aerial bombing, with many more injured.[80]

The largest single loss of life occurred due to an industrial accident a plant producing supplies for the war effort. On 19 January 1917, 73 people died, including 14 workers, and more than 400 were injured, in a TNT explosion in the Brunner-Mond munitions factory in Silvertown. Much of the area was flattened, and the shock wave was felt throughout the city and much of Essex. This was the largest explosion in London history, and was heard in Southampton and Norwich. The explosion happened in the early evening, if it had occurred in the day, or at night then the death toll would have been much greater. Andreas Angel, chief chemist at the plant, was posthumously awarded the Edward Medal for trying to extinguish the fire that caused the blast.[81]

Heinkel He 111 bomber over the Surrey Commercial Docks in South London and Wapping and the Isle of Dogs on 7 September 1940

Hardest of all, the Luftwaffe will smash Stepney. I know the East End! Those dirty Jews and Cockneys will run like rabbits into their holes.

— "Lord Haw-Haw", collaborator and broadcaster[82]

Initially, the German commanders were reluctant to bomb London, fearing retaliation against Berlin. On 24 August 1940, a single aircraft, tasked to bomb Tilbury, accidentally bombed Stepney, Bethnal Green and the City. The following night the RAF retaliated by mounting a forty aircraft raid on Berlin, with a second attack three days later. The Luftwaffe changed its strategy from attacking shipping and airfields to attacking cities. The City and West End were designated "Target Area B"; the East End and docks were "Target Area A". The first raid occurred at 4:30 p.m. on 7 September and consisted of 150 Dornier and Heinkel bombers and large numbers of fighters. This was followed by a second wave of 170 bombers. Silvertown and Canning Town bore the brunt of this first attack.[13]

Between 7 September 1940 and 10 May 1941, a sustained bombing campaign was mounted. It began with the bombing of London for 57 successive nights,[83] an era known as "the Blitz". East London was targeted because the area was a centre for imports and storage of raw materials for the war effort, and the German military command felt that support for the war could be damaged among the mainly working class inhabitants. On the first night of the Blitz, 430 civilians were killed and 1,600 seriously wounded.[83] The populace responded by evacuating children and the vulnerable to the country[84] and digging in, constructing Anderson shelters in their gardens and Morrison shelters in their houses, or going to communal shelters built in local public spaces.[85] On 10 September 1940, 73 civilians, including women and children preparing for evacuation, were killed when a bomb hit the South Hallsville School. Although the official death toll is 73,[86] many local people believed it must have been higher. Some estimates say 400 or even 600 may have lost their lives during this raid on Canning Town.[87]

Children of an eastern suburb of London, made homeless by the Blitz

The effect of the intensive bombing worried the authorities and Mass-Observation was deployed to gauge attitudes and provide policy suggestions,[88] as before the war they had investigated local attitudes to anti-Semitism.[89] The organisation noted that close family and friendship links within the East End were providing the population with a surprising resilience under fire. Propaganda was issued, reinforcing the image of the "brave chirpy Cockney". On the Sunday after the Blitz began, Winston Churchill himself toured the bombed areas of Stepney and Poplar. Anti-aircraft installations were built in public parks, such as Victoria Park and the Mudchute on the Isle of Dogs, and along the line of the Thames, as this was used by the aircraft to guide them to their target.

The authorities were initially wary of opening the London Underground for shelter, fearing the effect on morale elsewhere in London and hampering normal operations. On 12 September, having suffered five days of heavy bombing, the people of the East End took the matter into their own hands and invaded tube stations with pillows and blankets. The government relented and opened the partially completed Central line as a shelter. Many deep tube stations remained in use as shelters until the end of the war.[13] Aerial mines were deployed on 19 September 1940. These exploded at roof top height, causing severe damage to buildings over a wider radius than the impact bombs. By now, the Port of London had sustained heavy damage with a third of its warehouses destroyed, and the West India and St Katherine Docks had been badly hit and put out of action. Bizarre events occurred when the River Lea burned with an eerie blue flame, caused by a hit on a gin factory at Three Mills, and the Thames itself burnt fiercely when Tate & Lyle's Silvertown sugar refinery was hit.[13]

On 3 March 1943 at 8:27 p.m., the unopened Bethnal Green Underground station was the site of a wartime disaster. Families had crowded into the underground station due to an air-raid siren at 8:17, one of 10 that day. There was a panic at 8:27 coinciding with the sound of an anti-aircraft battery (possibly the recently installed Z battery) being fired at nearby Victoria Park. In the wet, dark conditions, a woman slipped on the entrance stairs and 173 people died in the resulting crush. The truth was suppressed, and a report appeared that there had been a direct hit by a German bomb. The results of the official investigation were not released until 1946.[90] There is now a plaque at the entrance to the tube station, which commemorates the event as the "worst civilian disaster of World War II". The first V-1 flying bomb struck in Grove Road, Mile End, on 13 June 1944, killing six, injuring 30, and making 200 people homeless.[20] The area remained derelict for many years until it was cleared to extend Mile End Park. Before demolition, local artist Rachel Whiteread made a cast of the inside of 193 Grove Road. Despite attracting controversy, the exhibit won her the Turner Prize for 1993.[91]

Prefabricated post-war home at Chiltern Open Air Museum: Universal House, steel frame clad with corrugated asbestos cement

It is estimated that by the end of the war, 80 tons of bombs had fallen on the Metropolitan Borough of Bethnal Green alone, affecting 21,700 houses, destroying 2,233 and making a further 893 uninhabitable. In Bethnal Green, 555 people were killed, and 400 were seriously injured.[26] For the whole of Tower Hamlets, a total of 2,221 civilians were killed, and 7,472 were injured, with 46,482 houses destroyed and 47,574 damaged.[92] So badly battered was the East End that when Buckingham Palace was hit during the height of the bombing, Queen Elizabeth (the future Queen Mother) observed that "It makes me feel I can look the East End in the face."[93][94] By the end of the war, the East End was a scene of devastation, with large areas derelict and depopulated. War production was changed quickly to making prefabricated houses,[95] and many were installed in the bombed areas and remained common into the 1970s. Today, 1950s and 1960s architecture dominates the housing estates of the area such as the Lansbury Estate in Poplar, much of which was built as a show-piece of the 1951 Festival of Britain.[96]

Despite a negative image among outsiders, the people of the area take pride in the East End and in their Cockney identity. The term Cockney has loose geographic and linguistic definitions with blurring between the two. In practice people from all over the East End, the wider East London area and sometimes beyond, identify as Cockneys; some of these use the Cockney dialect to some degree and others not.

A traditional definition is that to be a Cockney, one had to be born within the sound of Bow Bells, situated on Cheapside. In general, the sound pattern would cover most of the City, and parts of the near East End such as Aldgate and Whitechapel, but it is unlikely that the bells would have been heard in the docklands. In practice, with Royal London the only maternity hospital nearby, few would today be born within earshot.

The Cockney dialect has lexical borrowings from Yiddish, Romani, and costermonger slang, and a distinctive accent that includes T-glottalization, a loss of dental fricatives, diphthong alterations, the use of rhyming slang and other features. The accent is said to be a remnant of early English London speech, modified by the many immigrants to the area.[97] Cockney English is spoken widely in the East End, other areas of East London and in many traditionally working-class areas across London.

The position of the Cockney dialect in London has been weakened by the promotion of Received Pronunciation (RP) in the 20th century, and by the scale of migration to London. This has included both gentrifying domestic migration (RP speakers) and the scale of international migration. Conversely, out-migration from East London has spread the Cockney dialect beyond the capital.

The Cockney dialect taken beyond London is sometimes referred to as Estuary English, heavily influenced by Cockney and named after the Thames Estuary area where the movement of East Londoners to south Essex and to a lesser extent parts on north Kent led it to be most widely spoken.[98] Within London Cockney speech is, to a significant degree, being replaced by Multicultural London English, a form of speech with a significant Cockney influence.

In 1360, Geoffrey Chaucer, then living in the City Wall's Aldgate gatehouse, recorded a pre-existing bell-founding industry, outside the wall in the Aldgate\Whitechapel area.

Two of the six sets of bells featured in the Nursery rhyme Oranges and Lemons are in the East End (Whitechapel and Shoreditch), as well as that symbol of the East End - Bow Bells (at St Mary-le-Bow on Cheapside, within the former walls and therefore outside of the East End). Older versions of the rhyme include the bells at Aldgate, though this may instead reference the bell founding industry in that area. The Shoreditch bells that feature in the rhyme are used to represent Shoreditch in the Coat of arms of the London Borough of Hackney.

The Olympic Bell, at the London Stadium.

The Whitechapel Bell Foundry opened in 1570, and until its closure in 2016 was the oldest manufacturing company in the UK.[99] The foundry built many of the most famous bells in the world including Big Ben, the Liberty Bell in Philadelphia and Bow Bells. Other Whitechapel cast bells of local significance include St Dunstan's in Stepney, and the parish churches of West Ham and Hackney. The Olympic Bell at the London Stadium – the largest harmonically tuned bell in the world and used in the opening ceremony of the 2012 games was jointly developed by Whitechapel, in partnership with a Dutch foundry.

Dunstan was a tenth century churchman, statesman and saint with strong links to the East End area. As Bishop of London he was also the Lord of the Manor of Stepney, an estate that included most or all of what would become the East End, and like subsequent bishops may have lived in the manor. The extent of the manor, and the association with the Tower means the Tower division, also known as the Tower Hamlets may have been based on Stepney.[100]

Dunstan was a 10th century English saint closely linked to the East End area.

In 952, Dunstan is recorded as founding (or rebuilding) St Dunstan's Church in Stepney. This was initially the only church for the Parish of Stepney which, like the manor, originally included much or all of the East End area, with daughter parishes forming much later as a result of population growth. For this reason, St Dunstan's is known as The Mother Church of the East End [101] (not to be confused with St Mark's in Dalston, known as the Cathedral of the East End due to its size). As patron of Stepney, Dunstan is the closest East London has to a patron saint. He is also the patron saint of bell ringers and various types of metalworker. His feast day is 19 May.

A folk story about Dunstan is that the devil, in the guise of a beautiful woman, came to tempt Dunstan - a talented metalworker - while he was working in his forge. Dunstan spotted hooves under the skirt, realised that it was the devil, so took his red-hot tongs from the fire and grabbed the devil by the nose, causing him intense pain. The fire-tongs have become a symbol of St Dunstan. The encounter is commonly referenced in English literature, for instance A Christmas Carol and in the folk rhyme:

Dunstan's links to the area led to his fire-tong symbol being included in the coat of arms of the Metropolitan Borough of Stepney, and the arms of its successor, the modern London Borough of Tower Hamlets.

Throughout its history, the East End has evolved in response to economic and social change, including migration, with its population being joined by large numbers of people from the UK and overseas. This is exemplified by the Brick Lane Mosque.[103][104]

The mosque was first built as a church by Huguenot Protestant refugees who came to East London to escape persecution in France. After much of that community moved on from the Spitalfields area it was used as a Methodist chapel for a more widely based Christian congregation. It later became a synagogue, used by Jewish people who came to avoid pogroms in the Russian Empire and other parts of Europe. The Jewish community of the area dwindled, and in 1976 the building was taken on by the local Bengali community and is now used as a mosque.

Tower Hamlets men bolstered the Tower garrison at times of crisis

The Tower Division (also known as the Tower Hamlets), was a part of Middlesex, but managed the reserve forces and other county functions itself; it was independent of the Lord Lieutenant of Middlesex, having its own Lord Lieutenant, the Constable of the Tower. The Tower Hamlets men, or Hamleteers, were needed to supplement the Tower of London's small Yeoman Warder garrison at times of heightened international of domestic tension. The first surviving reference to the service owed to the Tower dates to 1554, but it describes pre-existing obligations, so the association is likely to be considerably older.[105]

Recruitment poster for the Tower Hamlets Rifles, c.1930

Local forces continued to be primarily based on the Tower Division until its abolishment in 1900, though Tower Hamlets units remained part of the army until 1967. During the twentieth century, army units were generally based on more local areas, for instance the Poplar and Stepney Rifles. The First World War saw a proliferation of local battalions, including several “Pals” units, but this representation was reduced in the Second World War due to the smaller size of the army and the reduced emphasis on units with small recruitment areas.

The Pearly Kings and Queens, or more usually pearlies, are a traditional part of London costermonger culture, their name derives from their clothes which are decorated with mother-of-pearl buttons.

Pearly King and Queen

The pearlies are described as the ‘aristocracy‘ of the costermongers and were originally elected by them to safeguard their rights from competitors and ‘roughs’. They are now devoted entirely to charitable activities.[106] Pearlies are part of the East End's heritage, but contrary to the widespread perception, they are not an exclusively East End institution, there are Pearly Kings and Queens across inner London. A parade of real-life Pearly Kings and Queens was featured at the 2012 Summer Olympics Opening Ceremony.

The East London Mosque was one of the first in Britain to be allowed to use loudspeakers to broadcast the adhan.[107]

Immigrant communities first developed in the riverside settlements. From the Tudor era until the 20th century, ships' crews were employed on a casual basis. New and replacement crew would be found wherever they were available, local sailors being particularly prized for their knowledge of currents and hazards in foreign ports. Crews were paid at the end of their voyages. Inevitably, permanent communities became established, including colonies of Lascars and Africans from the Guinea Coast. Large Chinatowns at both Shadwell and Limehouse developed, associated with the crews of merchantmen in the opium and tea trades. It was only after the devastation of the Second World War that this predominantly Han Chinese community relocated to Soho.[108]

In 1786, the Committee for the Relief of the Black Poor was formed by citizens concerned at the size of London's indigent Black population, many of whom had been expelled from North America as Black Loyalists — former slaves who had fought on the side of the British in the American Revolutionary War. Others were discharged sailors and some a legacy of British involvement in the slave trade. The committee distributed food, clothing, and medical aid and found work for men, from various locations including the White Raven tavern in Mile End.[109] They also helped the men to go abroad, some to Canada. In October 1786, the Committee funded an ill-fated expedition of 280 black men, 40 black women and 70 white women (mainly wives and girlfriends) to settle in Sierra Leone.[110] From the late 19th century, a large African mariner community was established in Canning Town as a result of new shipping links to the Caribbean and West Africa.[111]

Immigrants have not always been readily accepted. In 1517 the Evil May Day riots, in which foreign-owned property was attacked, resulted in the deaths of 135 Flemings in Stepney. The Gordon Riots of 1780 began with burnings of the houses of Catholics and their chapels in Poplar and Spitalfields.[112]

Anti-immigration poster, from 1902

In the 1870s and 1880s, so many Jewish émigrés were arriving that over 150 synagogues were built. Today four active synagogues remain in Tower Hamlets: the Congregation of Jacob Synagogue (1903 – Kehillas Ya'akov), the East London Central Synagogue (1922), the Fieldgate Street Great Synagogue (1899) and Sandys Row Synagogue (1766).[113] Jewish immigration to the East End peaked in the 1890s, leading to anti-foreigner agitation by the British Brothers League, formed in 1902 by Captain William Stanley Shaw and the Conservative MP for Stepney, Major Evans-Gordon, who had overturned a Liberal majority in the 1900 General Election on a platform of limiting immigration. In Parliament in 1902, Evans-Gordon claimed that "not a day passes but English families are ruthlessly turned out to make room for foreign invaders. The rates are burdened with the education of thousands of foreign children."[114] Jewish immigration slowed only with the passing of the Aliens Act 1905, which gave the Home Secretary powers to regulate and control immigration.[115]

At the beginning of the 20th century, London was the capital of the extensive British Empire, which contained tens of millions of Muslims, but London had no mosque for Muslim residents or visitors. On 9 November 1910, at a meeting of Muslims and non-Muslims at the Ritz Hotel, the London Mosque Fund was established with the aims of organising weekly Friday prayers and providing a permanent place of worship for Muslims in London.[116] From 1910 to 1940 various rooms had been hired for Jumu'ah prayers on Fridays. Finally, in 1940, three houses were purchased at 446–448 Commercial Road in the East End of London as a permanent place of prayer. On 2 August 1941 the combined houses were inaugurated as the East London Mosque and Islamic Culture Centre at a ceremony attended by the Egyptian Ambassador, Colonel Sir Gordon Neal (representing the Secretary of State for India). The first prayer was led by the Ambassador for Saudi Arabia, Shaikh Hafiz Wahba.[117] From the late 1950s the local Muslim population began to increase due to further immigration from the Indian subcontinent, particularly from Sylhet in East Pakistan, which became Bangladesh in 1971. The migrants settled in areas already established by the Sylheti expatriate community, working in the local docks and Jewish tailoring shops set up in the days of British India.[118] During the 1970s, this immigration increased significantly. In 1975 the local authority bought the properties in Commercial Road under a compulsory purchase order, in return providing a site with temporary buildings on Whitechapel Road. The local community set about raising funds to erect a purpose-built mosque on the site. King Fahd of Saudi Arabia donated £1.1 million of the £2 million fund,[119] and the governments of Kuwait and Britain also donated to the fund.[120] Seven years later, the building of the new mosque commenced, with foundations laid in 1982 and construction completed in 1985. It was one of the first mosques in the European Union to broadcast the adhan from the minaret using loudspeakers. Currently, the mosque has a capacity of 7,000, with prayer areas for men and women and classroom space for supplementary education. By the 1990s the capacity was already insufficient for the growing congregation and the range of projects based there.[121] The contribution of Bangladeshi people to British life was recognised in 1998, when Pola Uddin, Baroness Uddin of Bethnal Green became the first Bangladeshi-born Briton to enter the House of Lords and the first Muslim peer to swear her oath of allegiance in the name of her own faith.

Community tensions were again raised by an antisemitic Fascist march that took place in 1936 and was blocked by residents and activists at the Battle of Cable Street.[122] From the mid-1970s anti-Asian violence occurred,[123] culminating in the murder on 4 May 1978 of 25-year-old clothing worker Altab Ali by three white teenagers in a racially motivated attack. Bangladeshi groups mobilised for self-defence, 7,000 people marched to Hyde Park in protest, and the community became more politically involved.[124] The former churchyard of St Mary's Whitechapel, near where the attack took place, was renamed "Altab Ali Park" in 1998 in commemoration of his death. Racial tension has continued with occasional outbreaks of violence, and in 1993 the British National Party won a council seat (since lost).[125] A 1999 bombing in Brick Lane was part of a series that targeted ethnic minorities, gays and "multiculturalists".[126]

As London extended east, East Enders often moved to opportunities in the new suburbs. The late 19th century saw a major movement of people to West Ham[40] and East Ham[41] to service the new docks and industries established there.

There was significant work to alleviate overcrowded housing from the start of the 20th century under the London County Council. Between the wars, people moved to new estates built for this purpose, in particular at Becontree and Harold Hill, or out of London entirely.

The Second World War devastated much of the East End, with its docks, railways and industry forming a continual target for bombing, especially during the Blitz, leading to dispersal of the population to new suburbs and new housing being built in the 1950s.[13] Many East Enders went further than the eastern suburbs, leaving London altogether, notably to the Essex new towns of Basildon and Harlow and a number of expanded towns in south Essex and elsewhere.

The resulting depopulation accelerated after the Second World War and has only recently begun to reverse.

These population figures reflect the area that now forms the London Borough of Tower Hamlets only:

By comparison, in 1801 the population of England and Wales was 9 million; by 1851 it had more than doubled to 18 million, and by the end of the century had reached 40 million.[20] Today, Bangladeshis form the largest minority population in Tower Hamlets, constituting 33.5% of the borough's population at the 2001 census; the Bangladeshi community there is the largest such community in Britain.[132] The 2006 estimates show a decline in this group to 29.8% of the population, reflecting a movement to better economic circumstances and the larger houses available in the eastern suburbs.[133] In this, the latest group of migrants are following a pattern established for over three centuries.

Society at large viewed the East End with a mixture of suspicion and fascination, with the use of the term East End in a pejorative sense beginning in the late 19th century,[171] as the expansion of London's population led to extreme overcrowding throughout the area and a concentration of poor people and immigrants.[21] The problems were exacerbated with the construction of St Katharine Docks (1827)[172] and the central London railway termini (1840–1875) that caused the clearance of former slums and rookeries, with many of the displaced people moving into the East End. Over the course of a century, the East End became synonymous with poverty, overcrowding, disease and criminality.[13]

[The] invention about 1880 of the term "East End" was rapidly taken up by the new halfpenny press, and in the pulpit and the music hall ... A shabby man from Paddington, St Marylebone or Battersea might pass muster as one of the respectable poor. But the same man coming from Bethnal Green, Shadwell or Wapping was an "East Ender", the box of Keating's bug powder must be reached for, and the spoons locked up. In the long run this cruel stigma came to do good. It was a final incentive to the poorest to get out of the "East End" at all costs, and it became a concentrated reminder to the public conscience that nothing to be found in the "East End" should be tolerated in a Christian country.

— The Nineteenth Century XXIV (1888)[173]

This idea of the East End as lying beyond the pale of respectability was also emphasised by Jack London when he visited London in 1902, and found that his Hackney carriage driver claimed not to know it. London observed: "Thomas Cook and Son, path-finders and trail-clearers, living sign-posts to all the World.... knew not the way to the East End".[174]

Gus Elen, The Coster's Mansion, 1899 sheet music

The East End has been the subject of parliamentary commissions and other examinations of social conditions since the 19th century, as seen in Henry Mayhew's London Labour and the London Poor (1851)[175] and Charles Booth's Life and Labour of the People in London (third, expanded edition 1902–3, in 17 volumes).[74] Arthur Morrison's novel A Child of the Jago (1896) is set in Bethnal Green, and recounts the story of a boy growing up in a slum surrounding Arnold Circus.[176] Narrative accounts of experiences amongst the East End poor were also written by Jack London in The People of the Abyss (1903), by George Orwell in parts of his novel Down and Out in Paris and London, recounting his own experiences in the 1930s, as well as the Jewish writer Emanuel Litvinoff in his autobiographical novel Journey Through a Small Planet set in the 1930s. A further detailed study of Bethnal Green was carried out in the 1950s by sociologists Michael Young and Peter Willmott, in Family and Kinship in East London.[177]

Themes from these social investigations have been drawn out in fiction.[12] Crime, poverty, vice, sexual transgression, drugs, class-conflict and multi-cultural encounters and fantasies involving Jewish, Chinese and Indian immigrants are major themes. Though the area has been productive of local writing talent, from the time of Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray (1891) the idea of 'slumming it' in the 'forbidden' East End has held a fascination for a coterie of the literati.[178]

The image of the East Ender changed dramatically between the 19th century and the 20th. From the 1870s they were characterised in culture as often shiftless, untrustworthy and responsible for their own poverty.[177] However, many East Enders worked in lowly but respectable occupations such as carters, porters and costermongers. This latter group particularly became the subject of music hall songs at the turn of the 20th century, with performers such as Marie Lloyd, Gus Elen and Albert Chevalier establishing the image of the humorous East End Cockney and highlighting the conditions of ordinary workers.[179] This image, buoyed by close family and social links and the community's fortitude in the war, came to be represented in literature and film. However, with the rise of the Kray twins in the 1960s the dark side of East End character returned with a new emphasis on criminality and gangsterism.

The success of Jennifer Worth's memoir Call the Midwife (2002, reissued 2007), which became a major best-seller and was adapted by the BBC into their most popular new programme since the current ratings system began,[180] has led to a high level of interest in true-life stories from the East End. Melanie McGrath's Silvertown (2003), about her grandmother's life in the East End, was also a best-seller, as was the follow-up Hopping, about the annual East Enders' 'holiday' hop-picking in Kent.[181] A raft of similar books was published in the 2000s, among them Gilda O'Neill's best-selling Our Street (2004),[182] Piers Dudgeon's Our East End (2009), Jackie Hyam's Bombsites and Lollipops (2011) and Grace Foakes' Four Meals for Fourpence (reprinted 2011). In 2012, HarperCollins published The Sugar Girls, a book which tells the true stories of women working at Tate & Lyle's factories in Silvertown since 1944. The authors commented that many of the East Enders they interviewed were unhappy with the way their neighbourhoods had previously been portrayed in books and on screen – as squalid and criminal, in the Dickensian vein,[183] and as a result they were keen to emphasise the positive aspects of East End life and community.[184] 2012 also saw the publication of Spitalfields Life, a book adapted from the very successful blog of the same name, in which 'the gentle author' (who is anonymous) writes about, and celebrates, the lives of the men and women who live and work in the East End community of Spitalfields.[185]

• Island History Trust
• Ragged School Museum
• V&A Museum of Childhood