Most folk know that the capital city of the United Kingdom is London in the south east of England. As Europe's largest city, with a population exceeding 7 million people, there are several areas where different cultures seem to congregate leading to a multi-cultural and rather cosmopolitan society. One of the areas most people associate with true Londoners is the East End of London.



The East End of London is, really, most of the area found east of the city centre. Although most of the most famous tourist attractions of London are found in the centre the, often overlooked, East End has a number of incredibly popular attractions and places of interest. One place that is well worth a visit is the fantastic Bethnal Green Museum which has one of the finest collections of antique dolls houses to be seen anywhere with examples dating as far back as 1673.

When you mention the East End of London, a great many people automatically think of the word "Cockney" or "Cockneys". A Cockney is a person who was born in the East End of London within hearing distance of the bells at Bow Church (Bow Bells). You may wonder about the origins of such a strange word and you may be surprised to learn that it came from an old middle English word for a misshapen egg (or cock's egg) - "cokeney".

During the time of the plague (1348 and 1350), or "Black Death" as Londoner's called it, there were so many victims that the corpses were thrown into huge pits known as plague pits. In excavations of a plague pit close to Tower Bridge over seven hundred skeletons were discovered in only a small space.

The very first dock to be built in the East End was called the West India Dock (built 1800-1802) closely followed by the building of the East India Dock (1806). Servicing the city of London the port continued to expand and until the 1960's it was the busiest port in the world. With such a large amount of goods being handled, around 35 million tons at it's peak in the 1930's, the port had an extremely large workforce of around one hundred thousand souls.

The East End of London has been home to many famous & infamous characters. The famous explorer Captain Cook married the daughter of the landlord of an East End public house in which Cook often visited. Another famous person closely associated with the East End is Joseph Merrick because he had been appearing in a freak show at the Mile End Road billed as "The Elephant Man", sadly a name to which he remains most widely known as to this day.

The East End of London has had a number of "high profile" criminals. During the 1960's the area was ruled by the infamous Krays, twins Ronnie and Reggie Kray. In 1888, the Whitechapel district of the East End was witness to the horrific murders of the infamous serial killer, "Jack the Ripper". Although he murdered 5 women he was not caught and even today there are powerful arguements for and against him being one of many suspects.

At the time of the Ripper murders the population of Whitechapel was about ninety percent Jewish and this led to many assuming that the Ripper must, almost certainly, have been a Jew. The East End has always been one of the areas in which new cultures settle when first arriving in England. Even today this is the case and the East End is all the richer for it.