is a place in the
London Borough Of Tower Hamlets ,
United Kingdom . 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.
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 .
By the late
16th Century Whitechapel and the surrounding area had started becoming 'the other half' of London. Located downwind of the genteel sections of west London which were to see the expansion of
Westminster Abbey and construction of
Buckingham Palace , it naturally 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 ), slaughterhouses and, close by to the south, the gigantic
Billingsgate fish market, famous in its day for the ornately foul language of the extremely
Cockney fishwomen who worked there.
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 and
Stepney (collectively known today as "the
East End "), had evolved, or devolved, into classic "dickensian" London, rivalled in the western world for grinding poverty only by the Manhattan slum of
Five Points and, later, Manhattan's
Lower East Side . Whitechapel Rd. itself was not particularly squalid through most of this period—it was the warren of small dark streets branching from it that contained the greatest suffering, filth and danger, especially Dorset St. (now a private alley), 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.
1888 saw the depredations of the Whitechapel Murderer, later known as
Jack The Ripper . 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 the leading city of the United States. Jack London, a socialist, thought it worthwhile to explore conditions in the leading city of the nation that had created 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
V2 German rocket attacks and
The Blitz 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.
Business interest is expected to escalate when the
East London Line of the tube is extended northwards to Dalston and southwards to West
Croydon .
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 The
Rhythm Factory bar/restaurant/nightclub. This scene includes the likes of
The Libertines ,
The Others ,
Razorlight and even
The Rakes , all of whom have had some commercial success in the music charts.
