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One of the things that makes Tower Hamlets such a unique quarter of London is the name itself. For the East End is not a homogeneous borough or town, but a collection of villages – the old hamlets of Bow, Bromley, Wapping and the rest.
Right up to the 18th century, two of the riverside hamlets stood side by side. Limehouse and Ratcliffe were both notorious areas, catering to the locals and the huge influx of sailors and immigrants alike with
their disreputable taverns, flophouses and brothels.
But while Limehouse has gone on to prosper – being transformed from a decaying industrial wasteland into a trendy residential area, with its restored 18th century houses – Ratcliffe has vanished.
Ratcliffe was born as the first landfall for ships hitting the capital. The first wharf was built in 1348, and was the first recorded instance of the river being used for business east of the City.
The hamlet quickly grew, spreading north along Butcher Row, the main route to Stepney and Hackney.
By the 17th century, there were more people – 3,500 –
living in Ratcliffe than in any of the other Stepney hamlets. Its bustling streets were lined with sailors’ houses, shipwrights’ offices and taverns.
But in 1794, disaster struck the area. A fire broke out on a barge loaded with saltpetre, the volatile substance used to make matches. This fire, at what is now the Free Trade Wharf, quickly spread to the wooden buildings on the shore, destroying the whole of the southern part of Ratcliffe.
Much rebuilding ensued, and with the huge influx of immigrants in the 19th century, the area changed drastically.
In 1801 the population of Ratcliffe was just 5,000; in 1861 it had soared to 17,000. Along the way, in 1840, it had been established as a parish district within Stepney, being split off from Limehouse.

The prosperous wharfingers and businessmen had now made way for sailors and dockers, and Ratcliffe was entering the period of its greatest notoriety.
Broad Street, now the east end of The Highway, became a terrible slum. Ratcliffe became renowned for drunkenness, vice, opium dens and poverty. The authorities demanded that something be done.
Like Chinatown, in neighbouring Limehouse, Ratcliffe was planned out of existence. The building of the Commercial Road, and of the London and Blackwall Railway demanded massive demolition; the digging of the Rotherhithe Tunnel did the rest.
As the 20th century rolled on, the laying out of the King Edward VII Memorial Park, the damage wreaked by the Luftwaffe’s bombs, and the ongoing programme of slum clearance finished off Ratcliffe for good.
As its warehouses fell into decline, they were not allowed to stand, like those in neighbouring Wapping and Limehouse, but were cleared in the name of improvement.
Today, of course, those derelict warehouses have been renovated into smart new homes, while Ratcliffe lies buried beneath the roads, railways and tunnel diggings of the riverside.
The only reminder is Free Trade Wharf, which you approach from The Highway – once the Ratcliffe Highway – via a huge gateway, bearing lions and the coat of arms of the East India Company.
When you pass through the gate, originally built for the bustling area in 1796, you can reflect that you are walking on what was once one of the most infamous quarters of London – but now disappeared and almost forgotten.

The East End Then And Now* is not only one of the most exhaustive histories of east London you’ll ever read – at more than 500 A4 pages, packed with glossy pictures, line drawings, contemporary reports and recollections, getting through it could be positively exhausting!

Of course this isn’t a book to read cover-to-cover all at once. It is a painstaking encyclopedia of the most diverse and fascinating region of England. The real strength of the book is in its “then and now” approach.
It’s sometimes difficult to picture the exact spot where a murder took place, or where an old building stood – the East End suffered so badly from German bombs that new buildings and remodelled streets sometimes make it hard to get your bearings.

But – on the old theory that a picture paints a thousand words – antique and contemporary pictures have been painstakingly sought out and placed next to their modern-day equivalents. Now you can actually see what the old St Mary’s Tube station – now lost forever under the Citroen garage in Whitechapel Road – really looked like. And you can take the same position as the waiting soldiers as they look towards the siege of Sidney Street – now replaced by modern flats.

Suffragettes, Krays and the Bell Foundry

Each set of pictures is accompanied by solid chunks of historical background and, where relevant, maps showing the street layouts of the time. Interested in the old pie shops of the East End? You’ll find them in here. Want to know the names of every master founder at the Whitechapel Bell Foundry? Each one since 1420 is listed in the book. And the sheer size of the work allows the authors the luxury of going into extraordinary detail – the chapters on the Suffragettes, Oswald Mosley, the Krays and the Ripper murders are almost books in themselves.

Interestingly too, it gives scope to take a broader picture of the East End. So we get the background to the Second World War and the Munich Crisis. And, post-War, we see the movement of East Enders out to the new towns of Basildon and Harlow. We also see the gradual spread of urban east London over the Essex fields of Stratford and Leytonstone. The book brings in the broader picture of east London, rather than cutting the area off at the River Lea and Hackney.
“Docks to Docklands” is one phrase the authors use to describe the destruction and rebirth of the area, and pictures of the Isle of Dogs vividly show the growing developments.

Introducing it all is the authentic voice of a Poplar eyewitness. Over 100 pages, 90-year-old Cyril Demarne strolls back around the East End of his younger days, noting how things have changed and how much, remarkably, remains the same.
Cyril recalls the characters, buildings and stories that coloured his childhood and the history of the East End. And, using the exhaustive index, you will find yourself flicking from Cyril’s recollections to more detailed chapters later in the book. You’ll find some familiar sights and a few surprises – well, I didn’t know TV gardener Geoff Hamilton came from Stepney – but what you’ll certainly get is a read you’ll never tire of.

* ISBN 0 900913 991, Edited by Winston J Ramsey, published by After The Fire books, price £39.95

When Tower Hamlets Council secured a £1.4m grant from the Arts Council for the Brady Centre recently, it guaranteed the continuation of 101 years of good work.
But it was also a world removed from the club’s humble beginnings in the poverty-stricken East End of the 19th century.
Back in 1896 Jewish immigration from Germany and Eastern Europe was at its height, as families fled persecution and pogroms – often they arrived in the East End with nothing but the clothes they stood up in.
The poor immigrants, with no money and less English, poured off the boats and straight into the rag-trade sweatshops of Stepney and Whitechapel. Wages were low and often it was not just the parents who had to work long hours, but their children too – all had to earn their keep.
Many of the earlier Jewish settlers had established themselves and done well in their new home, and up in the West End a group of wealthy Jewish businessmen looked at the situation with alarm.
They saw these young people going without proper clothing and decent meals, let alone a proper education or the chance to play organised sports to get away from the relentless misery of their hard-working lives.
This philanthropic band set up a club in Brady Street, Whitechapel and set to work putting right some of the basics – early club records tell of the boys being given boots to wear and proper meals to eat.
Things moved on. In the 1930s the club organised an annual camp. It would be a bit spartan for a lot of today’s kids. Two dozen boys slept in army tents for a week, and directly on the grass. Washing was a standpipe in the field, the toilet a hole in the ground.
Luxury it wasn’t, but for the lads it was an undreamt of break from the grime and grind of their London existence.
Meanwhile, back at the club, the boys not only played sports but many received a basic education – for many Brady boys this was where they learned to read and write.
The club moved to Durward Street, thanks to the managers’ tireless efforts to raise funds, and the work went on, only interrupted by the outbreak of war.
Full-time
Re-opening in the late Forties, the club moved to its present, Hanbury Street base. Now there was a girls’ club too, and in the 1950s a creche, parents’ section, senior citizens’ section and old boys’ section were set up. A settlement started and overseas students could stay there while pursuing their studies in London.
A full-time staff was taken on and, in a typical Sixties week, a thousand people used the Brady Centre every week.
But as the Jewish community dispersed to Essex, North London and further afield so the Brady declined, and the last youth members left in the Seventies, with the building being sold to Tower Hamlets Council.
With the Nineties came a re-birth for the centre. A new Brady Club was built in Edgware, and ex-members of the original club began running activities for the thousands who had passed through those doors.
With the Brady’s country house in Kent providing holidays for young Jewish Londoners and the Friendship Club still at Hanbury Street, the Brady is looking healthier than ever.
And that original group of philanthropists might be surprised and delighted that their vision not only helped generations through the 20th century but is now well-prepared to see the next generations long into the 21st.
l Miriam Moses, Britain’s first Jewish woman mayor, who founded the Brady Girls’ Club in 1927, was honoured on Sunday when the mayor, Cllr Albert Jacob, unveiled a plaque at her birthplace – 17 Princelet Street, Whitechapel. She became the first woman Mayor of Stepney in 1931.
Her life and times will shortly feature in East End History

Frederick Charrington had everything going for him. He was young, tall, good-looking and, best of all, he stood to come into millions as heir to one of the great brewing families of the East End.
But Fred was no idle son of the rich, he also had a conscience and it was this that would change the course of his life forever.
Charrington was born in the East End, baptised at St Dunstan’s, Stepney and raised in 3 Tredegar Place, later re-numbered 87 Bow Road. He was sent to the posh Marlborough public school but returned to the family home in the East End and it was here, as a young man, that the extraordinary coincidence occurred that would lead Fred to renounce his millions and work for the poor.
Passing the Rising Sun pub in Cambridge Heath Road, Bethnal Green, Charrington saw a sight within, all too common in the Victorian East End. A woman with her three children in tow begged her husband for money, the drunken spouse hit his wife and Fred, unable to ignore any injustice, rushed in to pull the man off. He paused in horror. There, above the door was the name of the pub’s proprietors . . . Charrington.
He renounced the family millions and dedicated his life to helping the fallen and the falling and to fighting the “evils” that dragged them down – alcohol, poverty and prostitution.
Charrington would parade up and down outside the East End gin palaces, wearing a sandwich board which carried the dire warning “The wages of sin is death”.
He kept watch on the numerous brothels, noting down the comings and goings in his little black book, later handing on the details to the constabulary.
Needless to say, Fred’s public spiritedness was not always welcome and he received many batterings from the prostitutes’ pimps.
And on one unfortunate occasion, the madame of an East End brothel was so distracted by the news that Charrington was approaching with his little black book that she rushed inside her house, had a heart attack and promptly died.
On Sundays Fred would lead his temperance brass band through Stepney and Wapping, stopping to tempt converts at the many pubs along the way – many of them bearing that name Charrington above their door. The throng would grow along the way, and by the end would contain a large number of good-natured and noisy drunks, who found “Uncle Fred’s” regular weekend procession great sport.
Many mocked Charrington, and his opposition to music halls made him appear as one of those grim Victorian philanthropists for whom any entertainment was morally suspect. But he left his monument and one that did immense good for generations of East Enders.
Charrington, having renounced riches, campaigned vigorously to raise cash and build the Great Assembly Hall in Mile End Road. The mission, opened in 1886, fed the poor bodies with bread and cocoa and their souls with evangelistic religion. Before the phrase was ever coined, the mission was a centre of social work and, in 1910, provided Christmas dinner for 850 families.
Fred died in 1936, one of the last survivors of the great Victorian philanthropists. And just a few years later his mission would be gone too – burned down in the fires of the Blitz.

Everybody knows the blue plaques dotted around London – Charles Dickens lived here, Winston Churchill died there. But did you ever wonder how your street got its name? The history of the East End is the story of the characters and personalities who built it – philanthropists, politicians, businessmen and entrepreneurs – and they live on in the names of our streets and buildings.

Like Brabazon Street, in Poplar. Reginald Brabazon, Lord Meath, was one of that huge band of Victorians who devoted themselves to philanthropic works. After a time in the diplomatic service he founded, in 1880, the Metropolitan Public Gardens Society, becoming its chairman. And Londoners have Brabazon, who was also a London County Council alderman, to thank for the creation of the capital’s parks and open spaces – among them the disused Victoria Park Cemetery which became Meath Gardens.

East London exploded in size with the massive docks-building of the 18th and 19th century, and no-one played a bigger part than the engineer, John Rennie.
The Scot moved to London in 1791 as consultant and engineer for the West India and East India Docks. In 1798 he became a member of the Royal Society and is commemorated in Rennie Cottages, Colebert Avenue, E1 and John Rennie Walk in Wapping. One of the founding industries of the East End was silk, and one man who became rich through his trade in the fabric was Thomas Parmiter, of Bethnal Green. Parmiter died in 1682 and bequeathed part of his fortune for the setting up of a school for ten poor children and six almshouses for poor and deserving old folk. His original establishments are long gone but were rebuilt in Gloucester Street, E2, now called Parmiter Street.

Every time you pick up a magazine or newspaper you owe a small debt to William Caslon, for he devised some of the most popular typefaces in printing. And though Caslon lived in the East End nearly 300 years ago, many of his designs are still popular today. Caslon was born in Worcestershire in 1692, but set up shop as a gun engraver and tool maker in Minories. He started making type for printers and later retired to his country house in rural Bethnal Green. There is the traditional blue plaque in Chiswell Street, in the City, but he is marked locally by William Caslon House, Patriot Square and Caslon Place, Cudworth Street, E1.

Brewers played a big part in the history of the East End, and more than one left a permanent mark. Edward Mann not only played his part in the history of the Mann, Cross and Paulin brewery in Whitechapel Road, he was the first mayor of Poplar, elected in 1900. Edward Mann Close, in Pitsea Street, E1 marks his contribution to the East End’s history. Henry Raine, born in 1679 into a brewing family in Wapping, may be long forgotten for his beer, but his contribution to education lives on. Raine’s School moved from Wapping more than 100 years ago, but Raine’s original 1719 schoolhouse still stands in Raine Street, Wapping. Just a few of the names and characters who live on in the streets and buildings of the East End. So next time you’re flicking through your London A to Z, just stop and think – you’re reading a true history book.

Basketball is, today, one of the world’s most popular sports. Michael Jordan, Glen Rice and Shaq are household names and, from their London Arena base, the Leopards are winning games and fans as one of the fastest growing teams in Britain. But 70 years ago the game was very different. It was American, it was small time – and it was white. The reason basketball evolved into the billion-dollar business of today was a young Jewish lad from Whitechapel with a big cigar and bigger ideas.

Abe Saperstein’s parents left Whitechapel in the early 1900s looking for a new life and fortune in the New World, taking their four-year-old boy with them. But it was Abe who was to make the fortune. In 1927 Abe was 24 and living in Chicago when he noticed the opportunity he’d been waiting for. In those days, black players weren’t allowed in the professional basketball leagues, they had to play in separate “junior” leagues. When Abe’s local black team, the Savoy Fives, broke up, he took them over. Abe’s idea was that the team wouldn’t play the small leagues, with their limited market, but go out on the road, play one-off exhibition matches followed by a challenge match against a local amateur white team. It was a winning formula – each match was a novelty that would pull big crowds, and the black-white clash added an extra edge in the often segregated American towns. The Harlem Globetrotters were on their way.

Of course they weren’t from Harlem, but that was the black centre of New York, and added to the image. The band travelled in a Stars and Stripes painted bus, they adopted the theme song Sweet Georgia Brown and, playing exhibition matches between their own two teams, they had plenty of opportunity to develop their jokey style and trick shots. The last part of the mix was a happy accident. During a game a player managed to set his vest on fire and, grabbing a bucket of water, he put it out. The crowd loved it, and Abe ensured clowning was worked into the act. By the 1960s the Globetrotters were literally that and were hugely popular all over the world. They went on to have two audiences with the Pope and visited the White House to be made “Ambassadors of Goodwill” by President Ford.

The Globetrotters were huge in Britain, filling Wembley again and again. And before his death in 1966, Abe returned to his native Whitechapel and, ever the showman, was photographed leaning on a Rolls Royce and toting his trademark Havana. The monster he had created rolled on without him – 250 shows a year at its peak, but the game had changed. By the late 1970s the pro leagues, no longer segregated thanks to Abe, were fast catching the traditional American sports of gridiron and baseball in popularity. TV was making the teams world famous and the biggest stars – thanks to Abe – were black. The Globetrotters had become a novelty act and no longer lured the best players. All the tricks they had pioneered were being outdone in the regular leagues, where stars like Michael Jordan would soon command salaries of 20million dollars a year.

They last visited London in 1991. It was a fitting tribute to Abe that their last game should be in the East End. – and they said goodbye to English basketball at the London Arena, soon to be home to the Leopards. The ‘Trotters day was over, but another chapter was just beginning.

Since this piece was written in 1997, the Globetrotters have been reborn! Visit the official website of the Harlem Globetrotters.

Wedgewood, Meissen, Delft – all are world famous names in the world of pottery. But 250 years ago it was Bow pottery that was drawing the eyes of the world, and all thanks to a young Irish painter who settled in the East End. Thomas Frye had been born in Dublin in 1710 and, having won acclaim in his native Ireland as a painter,came to London in 1734. One of his first coups as a portraitist was his commission to paint the Prince of Wales, for the Saddlers’ Company. Among the other specialities of the multi-talented artist were miniature painting, mezzotint, engraving and enamel work.

But Frye was also a keen inventor and his love of art and love of discovery came together when he devised a method of producing porcelain, the beautiful translucent china pottery as popular in the eighteenth century as it is today. Porcelain may have been popular at the time but there were two big problems. First it was very fragile and second, with all the pieces coming from abroad, it was very expensive. Frye had a solution. As a result of his experiments with china clay he discovered a method of making porcelain out of bone ash. This not only produced a porcelain of brilliant whiteness and luminescence but one of extraordinary durability. The second solution was obvious – he would set up a factory in London to manufacture his new china.

In 1744, Frye and his partner, Edward Heylen took out a patent for the production of artificial soft-paste porcelain. The inventors and manufacturers of porcelain in England called their product “New Canton”, a nod to the pottery from the Far East with which they hoped to compete. The next step was to set up a factory. Frye had attracted the interest of the rich and powerful Peers family. They owned huge tracts of land across Bromley, Bow and Stratford. They were also directors of the all-powerful East India Company, mainstay of Britain’s overseas trade at the time, and whose great ships unloaded their imported wares on the Isle of Dogs, near the mouth of Bow Creek. The Court Book of 1744 shows that Edward Heylen acquired a property on the London side of the River Lea, at Bow. On 7 July 1749, an insurance policy was taken out for the new works. And, with the backing of the Peers family, the china factory was set up near Bow Bridge in 1749, with Fry running the operation. The Bow Porcelain Manufactory of New Canton was ready to start work.

Business was good. By 1750, Frye and Heylen were in partnership with John Wetherby and John Crowther, who owned a wholesale pottery business at St Katherine by the Tower. Frye’s work was down to earth from the word go, concentrating on “the more ordinary sorts of ware for common use”. That didn’t please the purists. One expert has described Bow porcelain as “a peasant art which appeals to an unacademic sense of beauty rather than taste.” Still, what do experts know. Very soon the demand was so great that another factory was opened, this time on the Stratford side of the River Lea. But despite his success Frye was still toiling long hours in the factory furnaces as well as designing new lines. Eventually the long hours and gruelling work took their toll. Frye died in 1762, at the age of just 52, and is buried in Hornsey Churchyard. The work went on, but without his driving force and energy, quality slipped. Their was another 13 years of production at Bow, but towards the end products were underfired and lacked their earlier translucence and in 1776 the works closed. Frye’s legacy remains. His processes changed pottery forever and one of his daughters went on to work for Wedgewood. And the fact you will still find Bow porcelain today – tough enough to last 250 years – is testament to Frye’s vision.

Further reading: Bow Porcelain, Adams and Redstone (Faber and Faber.)

Victoria Park may have started life as a much-needed amenity for the poorest of London, yet it owes its existence to the bankruptcy of one of the grandest in the land. When the Duke of York died in 1827 he left debts of £2million, a legacy of a life of excess, but he also left York House, in St James’s. Just as the Duke was squandering his fortune the East End of London was experiencing a huge population explosion. Poplar, Stepney and Wapping were being changed beyond recognition. The old market gardens were being built over with thousands of acres needed for new docks, railways – and arterial roads like Commercial Road and Commercial Street which were driven through the old areas. And landowners were throwing up cheap housing to cater for the thousands moving into the area, attracted by work on the docks and in the new factories. By the 1830s around 400,000 were living in the area, in cramped housing and cheek by jowl with sweat shops and factories – pouring pollution into the air and spoil into the waterways.

It was an unhealthy mix, and the middle classes feared that the combination of overcrowding, lack of drains, lavatories and poor water would not only spark epidemics of cholera, typhoid and tuberculosis but – much more worrying – the diseases would be spread into the ‘better’ parts of London. In 1839, William Farr, the famed sanitary reformer said that: “A park in the East End would diminish the annual deaths by several thousands, and add several years to the lives of the entire population.” Good, fresh air was the answer then, and it would also stop the unwelcome cockneys coming up West to take the air in Regents and Hyde Park. A petition drawn up the MP, George Frederick Young, swiftly got more than 30,000 signatures and was presented to Queen Victoria, who gave the go-ahead.

There was only one problem, how to pay for the new park, and that was where the Duke of York came in. On 26 April, 1841, the Earl of Wicklow announced that the funds from the sale of York House, some £72,000, would be used to construct the new park. The strange source of funding is just one of the fascinating tales thrown up by A Pictorial History of Victoria Park, London E3.* The latest publication from the East London History Society is a superb, and exhaustive history of one of the greatest Victorian municipal projects. Philip Mernick and Doreen Kendall have put together a book that will not only reawaken long-buried memories but will also throw up some surprises for local readers. It includes a detailed map, not just of the the park today, but detailing long-gone features like the pagoda, the Moorish arcade shelter, and the Bronze Boy Fountain. There is a detailed history of the moves and manoeuvres leading up to the building of the park, including dodgy deals by the then speaker of the House of Commons, who sold land to the new park and received twice as much for his land as anyone else did for theirs.

There is a section of quotes down the years on the park, from newspapers and magazines of the time, including the memories of renowned local politician George Lansbury. “We did not understand what was on the island, which had, then as now, a Chinese pagoda,” Lansbury wrote in 1928. “The LCC has destroyed all mystery now by throwing open the island by means of a bridge, but 60 years ago, we children thought that Chinese lived in the pagoda and at night came out to take care of the ducks, swans and waterfowl.” There are chapters on individual features of the park, some still around, others long gone – the boating lake, the bridges, the old bandstand. And there are the people and events that make the park special – royal visits, bathing, the sporting activities of the Victoria Park Harriers, and there is a look at the other developments that grew up around the park – the hospitals, railways and roads. And, with painstaking detail, there is a calendar of dates, listing all the important events in 150-plus years in the life of the park – the constant battles to raise cash to build memorials, the fights to protect the park against development. Best of all though are the pictures. They show the changes the park has undergone. But what jumps out of the pictures is something that never changes – the people. Whether it is a postcard from the 1860s or a photo from the 1960s, the image is of East Enders having a great time in their very own park.

* A Pictorial History of Victoria Park, London E3. Published by the East London History Society, ISBN 0 950 6258 1 7, price £6.99 it is available from local bookshops or direct by post (£6,99 plus £1.50 post and packing, from Doreen Kendall, 20 Puteaux House, Cranbrook Estate, London E2 0RF.

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