The ‘East End’ of London – West Ham, Stepney, Millwall, Brixton, the Docklands, Whitechapel… just a few of the many well-known places there.
It is the home of EastEnders – a popular TV series since 1985 with over six-thousand daily episodes. The Prince of Wales and the Duchess of Cornwall featured on the Albert Square set in the 2nd of June 2022 episode of the Queen’s Diamond jubilee weekend. Call the Midwife, another popular BBC period-drama series from January 2012, is based on the lives of nurse-midwives in the East End from the late 1950s.
But turn the clock back to the mid-19th century into the reign of Queen Victoria. The East End of two-million residents was notorious for its extremes of over-crowding and severe poverty, rife prostitution and neglect by the authorities. A popular novelist of the day wrote: ‘Two million people there in the East End, have no institutions of their own to speak of, no public buildings of any importance, no municipality – they have nothing – a neglected, forgotten great city of East London. Nobody goes east, no-one wants to see the place!’ Many believed that the Lord Mayor’s annual parade was deliberately kept clear of the East End!
