The East End of London, known locally as the East End, generally refers to the area of London, England, east of the medieval 'City of London' and north of the River Thames, although it is not defined by universally accepted formal boundaries. Use of the term began in the late 19th Century.
Origin and scope
The term East End was first applied to the districts immediately to the east of, and entirely outside, the medieval walled City of London and north of the River Thames; these included Whitechapel and Stepney. By the late 19th century, the East End roughly corresponded to the Tower division of Middlesex which from 1900 formed the metropolitan boroughs of Stepney, Bethnal Green, Poplar and Shoreditch in the County of London. Today it corresponds to the London Borough of Tower Hamlets and the southern part of Hackney.
invention about 1880 of the term East End was rapidly taken up by the new halfpenny press, and in the pulpit and the music hall ... A shabby man from Paddington, St Marylebone or Battersea might pass muster as one of the respectable poor. But the same man coming from Bethnal Green, Shadwell or Wapping was an East Ender, the box of Keating's bug powder must be reached for, and the spoons locked up. In the long run this cruel stigma came to do good. It was a final incentive to the poorest to get out of the East End at all costs, and it became a concentrated reminder to the public conscience that nothing to be found in the East End should be tolerated in a Christian country.
Parts of the London boroughs of Newham and Waltham Forest, formerly in an area of Essex known as London over the border, are sometimes considered to be in the East End. However, the River Lee is usually considered to be the eastern boundary of the East End and this definition would exclude the boroughs but place them in East London. The common extension of the term further east is probably due to the diaspora of East Enders who moved to suburban east London, in particular the new estates at Becontree and Harold Hill, or otherwise left London entirely.
History
The East End came into being as the separate villages east of London spread and the fields between them were built upon, a process which occurred in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. From the beginning, the East End has always contained some of the poorest areas of London.
The main reasons for this include
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 August 7, 1878 the Salvation Army was formed at a meeting held at 272 Whitechapel...
