The East End Chronicles – Ed Glinert
Jan 11, 2010 History, Specialist Subjects
This is a very entertaining account of the history of East End London, although it does get repetitive at times – the same information appears multiple times throughout the book under different headings. Jack the Ripper, of course, is discussed at some length, but the book also gives a good overview of East End London up until the present day, including immigration patterns, some local legends and various non-Ripper grisly tales. Some of it may need to be taken with a large pinch of salt, but if you want to know more about the area then it’s a good, if perhaps sensationalised, start.
Synopsis: The East End: Roman burial ground, medieval rubbish tip, Victorian hell hole, WW2 bombing target, 21st century gentrification template. Always a rum place, the industrial revolution replaced the rose bushes and hedgerows with metallic roads and iron railways, the mud banks gave way to deep-water docks and sweatshops. East End Chronicles will tell the story of this part of London that has always enthralled writers and readers through the bizarre, the unusual, the arcane and the mysterious. Chapters on the Silk Weavers of Spitalfields; Docks, Dockers and River Pirates; Murder and Mayhem on the Radcliffe Highway; Mystics and Myth-Makers; The Blitz and Bombs; The Jewish Ghetto and more reveal the underbelly of the history of the East End.
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