Why Whitechapel?

TV Series "Whitechapel"

Whitechapel has become synonymous with murder stories - Jack the Ripper, the Kray Twins, bla, blah. So much so that an ITV drama series is based on the association Click here for ITV drama "Whitechapel"

As far as I can see this is principally because of the "Jack the Rippeer"  murders in the late 19th century (you can look up no-end of ghoulish stuff on them if you want to). These were called the "Whitechapel murders" in contemporary accounts. The Museum in the Docklands had an excellent exhibition on them click here for more . But all sorts of ill-doings have got lumped together so that the area has become thoroughly stigmatised by the likes of the Kray Twins (more Bethnal Green)  or elements in Peter Ackroyds Historical novel Hawksmoor. The latest television series featutres the nearby Ratcliffe Highway Murders, the alleged murderer of which was buried in the crossroads of Cannon Street Road and Cable Street near the Crown and Dolphin.   But the reasons are more prosaic and have much to do with why the Ripper murders were such a press sensation in the 1880s. It is because Whitechapel frightens people.

The reasons are foremost its  location, close to the heart of economic power in the City of London, its poverty and the number of immigrants as a poor area near to docks.  The consequence is an implied threat to the given social order. That was explicit in the (over-?)response to the anarchist armed bank robbers in the Siege of Sydney Street  (and why Churchill prevented the fire brigade from extinguishing the fire). It is because it is an implied "alien" threat to the existing order. Despite his otherwise left-wing leanings, the strangeness of its inhabitants led Lack London to describe them as  "doomed to a moral degeneracy which puts them lower than the savage in cleanliness and decency." in The People of the Abyss

It is the same impulse which lead to this area welcoming people who were otherwise out of sorts with society. Thomas Paine - who wrote the The Rights of Man taught at Mr Noble's school on Leman Street, and the exile Trotsky lived on Sydney Street, for a while and Joseph Conrad - the Polish author - lived in a seaman's hostel on Wellclose Square  

It is also the strangeness that frightened neo-nazi thugs, who brutally murdered local textile/garment worker Altab Ali, and later set a bomb in nearby Brick Lane

They rarely show the generosity and creativity which characterised the recent public archaeology event in Altab Ali Park, the site of the White Chapel (St Mary) 

So, next time you enjoy scaring yourself with stories about exotic Whitechapel, give a thought to us, its ordinary inhabitants