By the late Victorian era in 1888, London was dubbed to be the largest capital in the world. It was the centre of the ever-increasing British empire. Queen Victoria had been on the throne for well over 50 years, and the public face of Britain reflected Victoria's lifestyle. It was the epicenter of an empire, culture, finance, communication, and transportation, with a new emerging mass media called the new journalism.
While the city grew in size and wealth, it also grew in population, and so millions lived in poverty. Right on its doorstep in the East End lay the district of Whitechapel. It was a crime-ridden sordid quarter, where more than 78,000 residents lived in abject poverty. It was an area of doss houses, sweatshops, abattoirs, overcrowded slums, pubs, a few shops and warehouses, leavened with a row or two of respectably kept cottages.
Whitechapel housed London's worst slums and the poverty of its inhabitants was appalling. In fact, malnutrition and disease were so widespread that its inhabitants had about a 50 percent chance of living past the age of five years old.
The West End of London, however, was undergoing massive renovation and prosperity, opening up to new concert halls, music halls, restaurants, and hotels. As the city expanded, cheap housing was being demolished to make way for warehouses and business offices, which forced more people into smaller areas.
Overcrowding and a shortage of housing created the abyss of Whitechapel. For most of the population in the East End, they lived and died in the same neighbourhood in which they were born. People there did not have any hopes of a better future.
The East End consisted of a maze of entries, alleyways and courtyards which were all lit by single gas lamps, giving out light to about 6 feet in length that at times were so thick, that you would have to struggle to even see your hand in front of your face. The whole neighbourhood was filled with dirt and debris. Sanitation was practically non-existent, and people would throw their raw sewage into the street, making the stench of the whole district unbearable.
Although some areas of Whitechapel during this time were relatively crime-free and had law-abiding citizens, there's no denying that its overcrowded slums were some of the worst places in the city. Around 15,000 of Whitechapel's residents were homeless and unemployed, and the little money they had often gone to drown their sorrows in the area's countless different pubs.
Not just limited to poverty and crime rates, Whitechapel was so overcrowded in its poorer areas, that up to two or three entire families would often be crammed into one small room just because they couldn't afford to pay rent anywhere else.
Whitechapel was considered to be the most notorious criminal rookery in London. The area was described as "perhaps the foulest and most dangerous street in the whole metropolis."Robbery, violence, prostitution and alcohol addiction were common things. The district was characterised by extreme poverty, sub-standard housing, poor sanitation, homelessness, drunkenness, and endemic prostitution.
Charles Booth states:
There were mainly three categories of people that were living in Whitechapel. The poor included builders, labourers, shopkeepers, dock workers & tailors. The very poor included women & children who usually worked as seamstresses, weavers, or clothes washers. The Homeless, they were people living in a permanent state of deprivation.
The only thing that they all had in common was the struggle for survival. Every day was a struggle for rights and survival in Whitechapel. There was a large scarcity of available resources such as education, health, and housing.
For people like the poor, common lodging houses offered a bed for the night. By law, every one of these common lodging houses had to be licensed and was subjected to strict police supervision. Most of the lodging houses were owned by middle-class entrepreneurs and investors, the majority of whom lived well outside the area and entrusted the day-to-day running of the businesses to "wardens" or "keepers." Many of these had criminal backgrounds and operated on the periphery of the law. They would turn a blind eye, probably in return for a share of the proceeds, to illegal activity and blatantly flout the regulation stating that men and women, unless married, must be kept separate.
Each one had to display a placard in a prominent position stating the number of beds for which it was licensed, a number that was calculated based on a minimum allowance of space per person.
Bed linen had to be changed weekly, and the windows had to be thrown open daily at 10 am to ensure that the rooms were well-ventilated. Men's and women's dormitories were meant to be separate, and rooms for married couples were meant to be separated.
Here, you would be cramped up into a small dormitory with up to 80 others, and for 4 pence, you could get a bed, which was practically a coffin lying on the ground. For 2 pence, you could lean against a rope, which was tied from one end of the wall to the other. Every night, 8,500 men, women, and children would seek shelter within these walls. These lodging houses never had a sense of cleanliness. Most people would wear the same clothes every day. They were always dirty and filled with rats. The walls had holes in them, and there were times people reportedly used them as secret compartments to hide their smaller yet valuable items. As rainy seasons approached, the ceiling leaked, and they would gather around their pots to hold the water for future use. These common lodging houses often called doss houses lay just off the main roads of commercial streets such as Thrawl Street, Flower and Dean and Dorset Street a street that had such a bad reputation that let alone commoners even the police wouldn't go down unless they were in teams of four. These lodging houses were run by greedy landlords that had one motto: 'No pay no stay.' No money meant the night in doorways, lavatories, or huddled up in the church park.
An account of one man as he said,
"We males still had our jobs mostly at dockyards offloading ships or as market porters. For women, work was outnumbered, and even if they did find any work. They were paid very little ,and to be able to survive in that was just impossible, so out of sheer desperation, many turned to the oldest profession in the world, prostitution. The wome, commonly referred to as 'fallen ones', owned only what they wore and carried in their pockets - their deeds would pay for their bed for the night. This was their only means of income and survival. With the little money they earned, most would seek comfort in alcohol as their only way of escaping from their harsh reality. However, a lack of contraception meant that unorthodox abortions were performed in dirty facilities, including the back streets. This, of course, fed into the cycle of disease, and many women would die of infection from these ill-performed surgeries or ingesting chemicals or poison."
According to one account, the women of the East End at the time were so destitute that they would sell themselves for as little as three pence, or a stale loaf of bread. According to th census record published in October 1888, the Metropolitan police estimated just over 1,200 prostitutes were working the streets in Whitechapel alone. This was almost certainly an underestimate,of the actual number of women who were working as a prostitute .Over drinking and riots with the gang that operated in the area resulted in the dreadful look into these women .Most would look like they were in their 40s despite not being over the age of 20 .There was no policy or jobs for them .Although it appears they were rather forced into it, It's certain that they could have a better future if only they tried a bit harder.
No one ,really cared about these fallen ones , whenever a prostitute was attacked or murdered, it was rarely reported in the press or discussed in the other areas in London, which led to countless of these women being subjected to physical attacks often by their customers or landlady.
However, there was one guy who tried to make some difference. His name was Frederick Charrington. He was the son and heir of a partner in one of London's largest breweries, the Charrington Brewery.
Throughout the winter of 1887, up until the year 1888, Frederick Charrington spearheaded a determined campaign to rid the East End of Vice. One day, while he was walking down the streets of Whitechapel, he saw a poorly dressed woman with her children begging her husband to come out of the pub and give her money for some food. So that her hungry kids could eat something. The furious husband came out and knocked her into the gutter. Charrington went to help and was also knocked to the ground. Looking up, he saw his name on the sign above the pub.
"When I saw that sign," he later wrote, "I was stricken just as surely as Paul on the Damascus Road. Here was the source of my family's wealth, and it was producing untold human misery before my own eyes. Then and there, I pledged to God that not another penny of that money should come to me."
Charrington left his family business and devoted his life to helping the poor. He wanted to develop the lifestyle of the people living in the East End, but to no surprise, it also had some rather disappointing results.
He opened The Great Assembly Hall in Mile End, a huge undertaking, which could accommodate some five thousand East Enders and which was crammed to the rafters on Sundays, when the local poor and destitute would arrive to enjoy tea and sustenance, before attending the evening service.
He abhorred the number of brothels in the area and used the Criminal Law Amendment Act of 1885, under the terms of which a citizen could report any house suspected of operating as a brothel to the police in return for a reward to launch his private crusade to close them down.
Armed with a large black book to note down suspect houses, Charrington cut a swathe through the East End flesh trade that saw brothel after Brothel closed down. Indeed, according to his biographer, Guy Thorne, he succeeded in closing down around 200 East End brothels. However, even though his bold move was to save the East End. It was a very likely reason for these fallen women in particular,who now were an easy target for the notorious gangs.
The poor economic conditions of Whitechapel paved its way into the headlines. But what truly made it a legendary location was not its poor and filthy condition nor the Thames River murders but the infamous Jack the ripper. It is generally believed that Jack the Ripper only had five victims, also known as Canonical five. Well, then one might say his so-called reign of terror didn't last long. It lasted a mere twelve or so weeks, which means that he wasn't at large for a particularly long period. But there's more. It wasn't his number of victims, but rather his style, his mindset that kept him apart.