Origin and toponymy Whitechapel was originally part of the
Manor and Parish of Stepney, but population growth resulting from its position just outside the
Aldgate on the Roman Road to
Essex resulted in significant population growth, so a
chapel of ease, dedicated to
St Mary was established so people did not have to make the longer journey to Stepney's parish church
St Dunstans. The earliest known rector was Hugh de Fulbourne in 1329. Whitechapel takes its name from that church,
St Mary Matfelon, which like the nearby
White Tower of the
Tower of London was at one time whitewashed to give it a prominent and attractive appearance. The etymology of the
Matfelon element is unclear and apparently unique. Around 1338, Whitechapel became an independent parish, with
St Mary Matfelon, originally a
chapel of ease within Stepney, becoming the parish church.
Geography of the ancient parish Whitechapel's spine is the old Roman Road, that ran from the
Aldgate on
London's Wall, to
Colchester in
Essex (
Roman Britannia's first capital), and beyond. This road, which was later named the
Great Essex Road, is now designated the
A11. This historic route has the names Whitechapel High Street and Whitechapel Road as it passes through, or along the boundary, of Whitechapel. For many centuries travellers to and from London on this route were accommodated at the many
coaching inns that lined Whitechapel High Street. The area of the parish extended around 1400 metres from the City of London boundary, originally marked by
Aldgate Bars around 180 metres east of the
Aldgate itself, to vicinity of the junction with Cambridge Heath Road where it met the boundaries of
Mile End and
Bethnal Green. The northern boundary included Wentworth Street and parts of Old Montague Street. The parish also included an area around
Goodman's Fields, close to the City and south of St Mary's, the parish church.
Administrative history The area became an independent parish around 1338. At that time parish areas only had an ecclesiastical (church) function, with parallel civil parishes being formed in the Tudor period. The original purpose of the civil parishes was poor relief. The area was part of the
historic (or ancient) county of
Middlesex, but military and most (or all) civil county functions were managed more locally, by the
Tower Division (also known as the Tower Hamlets). The role of the
Tower Division ended when Whitechapel became part of the new
County of London in 1889, and most civil parish functions were removed when the area joined the
Metropolitan Borough of Stepney in 1900. In 1965 there was a further round of changes when the
Metropolitan Borough of Stepney merged with the
Metropolitan Borough of Bethnal Green and the
Metropolitan Borough of Poplar to form the new
London Borough of Tower Hamlets. The new borough of Tower Hamlets covered only part of the historic Tower Division (or Tower Hamlets). At the same time, the area became part of the new
Greater London, which replaced the older, smaller
County of London.
Early history Early development Whitechapel, along with areas such as neighbouring
Shoreditch,
Holborn (west of the city) and Southwark (south of the Thames), was one of London's earlier extra-mural suburbs. Beyond controls of the
City of London Corporation, Whitechapel was used for more polluting and land-intensive industries the city market demanded, such as tanneries, builders' goods yards, laundries, clothes dyers,
slaughterhouse-related work, soaperies, and breweries. Whitechapel was strongly notable for foundries, foremost of which was the
Whitechapel Bell Foundry, which later cast
Philadelphia's
Liberty Bell, Westminster's
Big Ben,
Bow Bells and more recently the London
Olympic Bell in 2012. 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, businesses and services ancillary to the
City of London that had attracted them.
Whitechapel Mount The
Whitechapel Mount was a large, probably artificial mound, of unknown origin, that stood on the south side of Whitechapel Road, about 1200 metres east of the
Aldgate, immediately west of the modern Royal London Hospital. The Mount is widely believed to have formed part of London's defences during the
Wars of the Three Kingdoms in the mid-17th century. This was either as part of a ring of fortifications known as the
Lines of Communication, which were in operation from 1642 to 1647, or additionally or alternatively, as one of the three forts replacing that system of defence immediately afterwards. The mount was removed to allow residential development in 1807–1808. , Whitechapel in 1753. The
Whitechapel Mount stands immediately to the right (west).
Davenant Foundation School In 1680,
Ralph Davenant (rector of the parish of Whitechapel), his wife and his sister-in-law bequeathed a large sum for a schoolmaster to teach literacy, numeracy and the "principles of the Church of England" to forty boys of the parish. In the same deed Henry and Sarah Gullifer undertook to provide for the education of thirty poor girls; namely a schoolmistress was to teach them the "catechism, reading, knitting, plain sewing, and any other useful work".
Royal London Hospital The London Infirmary was established as a
voluntary hospital in 1740, and within a year soon moved from
Finsbury to Prescot Street, a very densely populated and deprived part of southern Whitechapel. Its aim was "The relief of all sick and diseased persons and, in particular, manufacturers, seamen in the merchant service and their wives and children". The hospital moved to the then largely rural Whitechapel Road site in 1757, and was renamed the London Hospital. It became known as the
Royal London Hospital on its 250th anniversary in 1990. The new building, adjacent to the old building it replaced, was opened in 2012. In 2023 the old hospital building became the new
Tower Hamlets Town Hall, replacing the
Mulberry Place site in
Poplar.
18th and 19th centuries In common with many other parts of the
East End of London, Whitechapel gained a reputation for severe poverty, overcrowding, and the social problems that came with it.
William Booth began his
Christian Revival Society, preaching the gospel in a tent, erected in the
Friends Burial Ground, Thomas Street, Whitechapel, in 1865. Others joined his
Christian Mission, and on 7 August 1878 the
Salvation Army was formed at a meeting held at 272 Whitechapel Road. A statue commemorates both his mission and his work in helping the poor. The population grew quickly with migrants from the English countryside and further afield. Many of these incomers were
Irish or
Jewish. Western Whitechapel, and neighbouring areas of Wapping, became known as
Little Germany due to the large numbers of German people who came to the area; many of these people, and their descendants, worked in the sugar industry. The
St George's German Lutheran Church on
Alie Street is a legacy of that part of the community. Writing of the period 1883–1884,
Yiddish theatre actor
Jacob Adler wrote, "The further we penetrated into this Whitechapel, the more our hearts sank. Was this London? Never in Russia, never later in the worst slums of New York, were we to see such poverty as in the London of the 1880s." This endemic poverty drove many women to prostitution. In October 1888 the
Metropolitan Police estimated that there were 1,200 prostitutes "of very low class" resident in Whitechapel and about 62 brothels. Reference is specifically made to them in
Charles Booth's
Life and Labour of the People in London, especially to dwellings called
Blackwall Buildings belonging to Blackwall Railway. Such prostitutes were numbered amongst the 11
Whitechapel murders (1888–1891), some of which were committed by the serial killer known as "
Jack the Ripper". These attacks caused widespread terror in the district and throughout the country and drew the attention of social reformers to the squalor and vice of the area, even though these crimes remain unsolved today.
London County Council, founded 1889, helped deliver investment in new housing and
slum clearance; objectives which were a popular cause at the time. The "Elephant Man"
Joseph Merrick (1862–1890) became well known in Whitechapel – he was exhibited in a shop on the Whitechapel Road before being helped by
Frederick Treves (1853–1923) at the
Royal London Hospital, opposite the actual shop. There is a museum in the hospital about his life.
20th century 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. observing the events at Sidney Street, Whitechapel The
Siege of Sidney Street (also known as the
Battle of Stepney, after the
Metropolitan Borough of Stepney of which Whitechapel was part) in January 1911 was a gunfight between police and military forces, and Latvian revolutionaries. Then Home Secretary
Winston Churchill took over the operation, and his presence caused a political row over the level of his involvement during the time. His biographers disagreed and claimed that he gave no operational commands to the police, but a Metropolitan Police account states that the events of Sidney Street were "a very rare case of a Home Secretary taking police operational command decisions". The
Freedom Press, a socialist publishing house, thought it worthwhile to explore conditions in the leading city of the nation that had invented modern capitalism. He concluded that English poverty was far rougher than the American variety. The juxtaposition of the poverty, homelessness, exploitative 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 Lenin, who 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. On Sunday 4 October 1936, the
British Union of Fascists led by
Oswald Mosley, intended to march through the East End, an area with a large Jewish population. The BUF mustered on and around
Tower Hill and hundreds of thousands of local people turned out to block the march. There were violent clashes with the BUF around Tower Hill, but most of the violence occurred as police tried to clear a route through the crowds for the BUF to follow. The police fought protesters at nearby
Cable Street – the series of clashes becoming known as the
Battle of Cable Street – and Tower Hill, but the largest confrontations took place at
Aldgate and Whitechapel, notably at
Gardiner's Corner, at the junction of
Leman Street,
Commercial Street and
Whitechapel High Street. The Halal restaurant on the junction of St Mark Street and
Alie Street opened in 1939 to serve the many Indian seamen living in the area. It is now the oldest Indian restaurant in East London. Whitechapel remained poor through the first half of the 20th century following the end of the
Second World War, though somewhat less desperately so. It suffered great damage from enemy bombers during
the Blitz, and from the subsequent
German V-weapon attacks, leading to widespread rebuilding and the dispersal of much of its Jewish population to suburban districts. The parish church,
St Mary Matfelon, was badly damaged in a raid on 29 December 1940, a raid so damaging that it caused the
Second Great Fire of London. The remains were demolished in 1952, with St Mary's traced stone footprint and former graveyard remaining as part of
Altab Ali Park. Post-war slum clearance and the decline of the
London Docks deepened economic hardship. From the 1950s onwards, the area saw new waves of immigration, notably from
South Asia, including
Bengali seamen and later
Bangladeshi families who established community centres, cafés and mosques. On 4 May 1978, three teenagers murdered
Altab Ali, a 24-year-old Bangladesh-born clothing worker, in a racially motivated attack, as he walked home after work. The attack took place on Adler Street, by St Mary's Churchyard, where St Mary Matfelon had previously stood. The reaction to his murder provoked the mass mobilisation of the local Bengali community. The gardens of the former churchyard were later renamed
Altab Ali Park in his memory. The
Metropolitan line between Hammersmith and Whitechapel was withdrawn in 1990 and shown separately as a new line called the
Hammersmith & City line.
21st century Crossrail calls at Whitechapel station on the
Elizabeth line. Eastbound services will be split into two branches after leaving the historic station, which underwent a massive redevelopment that started in 2010. In order to prepare for Crossrail, in January 2016, the old Whitechapel station was closed for refurbishment and modernisation work in order to improve services and increase capacity in the station. The Royal London Hospital was closed and re-opened behind the original site in 2012 in a brand new building costing £650 Million. The old site was then repurchased by the local council to open a new town hall, replacing the existing Town Hall at Mulberry Place. In March 2022,
Whitechapel station signs had "হোয়াইটচ্যাপেল" in
Bengali installed. The
British-Pakistani Mayor of London Sadiq Khan was "delighted" that the signage was installed ahead of
Bangladesh Independence Day on 26 March. Also in 2022 a historical marker was placed in Whitechapel, on the site of the former Adler House at the junction of Adler and Coke Streets by the
Jewish American Society for Historic Preservation UK Branch. Adler House was named in honour of the Chief Rabbi of the British Empire, Herman Adler, 1891–1911. The marker recognises the significance of Whitechapel as the centre of British Jewish refugee life in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. ==Governance==