Wharfinger: The East End

By Giles Broadbent on June 16, 2011 3:54 PM |

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The East End was originally considered to be the district outside the medieval walled City of London, north of the river.

Today such an area would consist of the London Borough of Tower Hamlets with some of the southern part of Hackney.

However, the heart of the East End - Whitechapel, Wapping, Shadwell Stepney, Bethnal Green, and Shoreditch - drifted east as the city spread.

The River Lea was originally seen as the eastern part of the border but the river is to the west of Newham, with its traditional centres of West Ham, which sprouted in 1886, and East Ham, in 1894, to cater for the growing docks.

The term East End grew in popularity about this time as the new half-penny press promulgated the idea of the shabby poor.

Jack the Ripper's antics around that time also provided a solid basis for an area of London far from the respectable City and West End.

In the inter-war period, migration occurred to new estates built to alleviate conditions in the East End, in particular at Becontree and Harold Hill, or out of London entirely.