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EAST END CHRONICLES
by Ed Glinert
Penguin Books Ltd, June 2006
326 pages
6.99 GBP
ISBN: 014101718X


Buy in the UK | Buy in Canada

The East End sits between between the River Lea to the east, the Thames to the south, the city wall to the west and Hackney Marsh to the north. It is a part of London that has always had more than its share of poverty, crime, disease and religious manipulation. Spring-heeled Jack, the Ratcliffe Highway murderer, Jack the Ripper, the Bessarabian gang and the Kray twins were all known for their association with this part of London.

The parts of the East End have always had their own identities. From Blackwall, known for boat building, to Stepney Marsh, now called the Isle of Dogs, to Limehouse where originally lime was burned (as in Poplar) and later barges were built, to the Ratcliffe Steps from whence ships left for faraway places, to the wharves at Shadwell, the mills of Wapping, the housing at St. Katherine's, the silk weavers of Spitalfields in Bethnal Green, Bow with its fabric dyeing, Whitechapel, the most populous borough, and Stepney, and the sailors church, and the holy ground of the Tower of London.

Victorian London saw the growth of the population of the East End. Irish and Scottish laborers came looking for work, and they settled in the laboring communities in the East End. Sailors, dockworkers, factory workers, prostitutes and housewives mingled uneasily.

Glinert documents the rise and fall and inevitable rise again of this colorful part of London. Each chapter describes another period of life in what is now called Tower Hamlets. He documents the successive waves of immigrants to this working class region, up to the invasion of the middle classes during the late 20th and early 21st centuries. The book reads like a novel.

Glinert writes on page 217: "Shipbuilding began to dominate local industry in the mid-nineteenth century. Under a sulphurous sky filled with shoots of hissing steam cranes lifted their loads through the smoke and oily grime, and hunchbacked men with blackened faces turned vast cog-wheels, bashed their hammers on sheets of steel and trained vats of molten metal into containers. Steam power and metal fired the ancient industry."

Today, all that is left of what was once Europe's busiest port, are the names of the wharves. Docklands Light Rail system makes all parts of the East End easily accessible from the City. Fleet Street has been deserted in favor of new modern plants in Wapping and the few old buildings that weren't destroyed during the bombings of World War II, are now apartments for the upwardly mobile young people with posh shops lining the once grimy streets.

Reviewed by Barbara Franchi, July 2006

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