The East End Then and Now
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