eastlondonhistory.com

What’s the connection between Mahatma Gandhi, Dixon of Dock Green actor Jack Warner and Sir Walter Raleigh? Give up? They are just three of the characters who have played a part in building the rich and varied history of the East End. But now you needn’t wrack your brains anymore. All the names and faces from centuries of East End Life are gathered together in one book. The Tower Hamlets Connection, A biographical guide, has been years in the making. It all came about as the brainchild of Harold Finch. In his 27 years working for the old London County Council and ILEA, Harold not only took a keen interest in contemporary Londoners, but found himself digging further into the past.

“It was a great learning experience,” he says. “These characters became my companions over many months. In the book there is much poverty, hardship and struggle and the spirit in which this is overcome is remarkable. “While some did much to improve conditions of home and work, others made significant contributions elsewhere.” They certainly did. And alongside philanthropists such as the social reformer Annie Besant, and William Cotton, founder of the National Society for Promoting the Education of the Poor in the Principles of the Established Church, there is a rogues’ gallery of villains. Baron George Jeffreys, the infamous ‘Hanging Judge Jeffreys’ was one who should have been on the side of the good guys. He earned his grisly nickname at the ‘Bloody Assizes’ of 1685, when he tried the rebellious followers of the Duke of Monmouth. Jeffreys didn’t believe in half measures and hanged, transported, whipped and fined hundreds of the unfortunate accused. He got a taste of his own medicine in 1688 at the fall of his royal protector, James II. He tried to escape from London disguised as a sailor, but was recognised in Wapping. He escaped the noose he had prescribed for so many in his own courtroom, but was sent to the Tower of London, where he died.

Then there was George Smith, born in 1872 in Roman Road, hanged in 1915, protesting his innocence after all three of his wives died in the bath on the first night of their honeymoons! Many of the characters are cockneys born and bred, like Elizabeth Lansbury, the wife of the campaigning local MP, George Lansbury. The young Elizabeth Brine was born in the 1860s in Whitechapel, where her father owned a saw mill. Elizabeth, the mother of 12, came to fame as one of the East End suffragettes, who withstood intimidation and imprisonment to fight for the woman’s right to vote. Her struggle and her bravery are commemorated by the Elizabeth Lansbury Nursery School, in Cordelia Street, E14. Or there is Jeremy Bentham, the legal reformer, born in Red Lion Street, Spitalfields, now part of Commercial Street. The Poor Laws of 1834 and many of the legal reforms of the nineteenth century were based on Bentham’s philosophy of utilitarianism and he was instrumental in prison reform.

Many more came to make their home in the borough. Henry VIII’s Chancellor, Thomas Cromwell, novelist Joseph Conrad and founder of the Salvation Army, William Booth, to name just three. The Tower Hamlets Connection is an exhaustive and unputdownable book and essential reading for anyone interested in the names that made the East End great. You want to know the names of every East End mayor, MP or bishop? It’s here. Lavishly illustrated and with an exhaustive bibliography and suggested further reading after each entry, you’ll never be stuck for the information you need.

The Tower Hamlets Connection, by Harold Finch, is published by Tower Hamlets Library Services and Stepney Books, price £7.99 and is available now from all local libraries and good book shops.