Survival in Victorian London's Brutal East End Slums

London's East End was dark, dirty and dangerous, where a man's life wasn't worth 'tu-punce.' There are many historical reasons for this social divide that created a capital of two halves. The dystopian nightmare that became 19th Century East London was once a very different world – pastoral farmland, becoming marshes close to the River Thames. But industrialization would change everything. The houses built to accommodate workers were thrown up as quickly as the factories they worked in – often jerry built, small and poorly constructed – for landlords to make a profit at cheap cost. They became the overcrowded streets, courts and alleyways with filthy rooms where so many cold and hungry people resorted by night. If you were to find yourself standing in nearly any street or district of East London (Whitechapel, Hoxton, Spitalfields, Bethnal Green, and Wapping to the East India Docks), you would be surrounded by abject poverty and be no more than five minutes’ walk from from a slum. Today, you will hear an account of the people of the East End, who they were and how they survived its brutal streets.