East End

Reputation

Society at large viewed the East End with a mixture of suspicion and fascination, with the use of the term East End in a pejorative sense beginning in the late 19th century, as the expansion of London's population led to extreme overcrowding throughout the area and a concentration of poor people and immigrants. The problems were exacerbated with the construction of St Katharine Docks (1827) and the central London railway termini (1840–1875) that caused the clearance of former slums and rookeries, with many of the displaced people moving into the East End. Over the course of a century, the East End became synonymous with poverty, overcrowding, disease and criminality.