Streets of Horror, Streets of Hope: The East End, 1888
Because of the ‘Jack the Ripper’ killings, the late-Victorian East End can be read as a cityscape of poverty and fear. But there is another Whitechapel – a magnet for a variety of individuals from a wide range of backgrounds who sought to grapple with the problems of the modern city and to create a better life.
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- Start Date: 08 Jul 2025End Date: 08 Jul 2025Tue (Daytime): 11:00 - 13:00In PersonFull fee £19.00 Senior fee £15.00 Concession £12.00
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What is the course about?
On this two-hour guided walk, we will look at several surviving buildings and locations that show varied approaches to helping the poor, as well as attempts to bring learning, skills and the arts to the impoverished East. En route, we will also consider attempts by the working classes themselves to organize for a better life. We will set these against a background of the ‘Whitechapel Murders’ and so in addition to the usual Ripper tour haunts, our itinerary will include: the Crispin Street Night Refuge; the Jewish Soup Kitchen; Toynbee Hall; Annie Macpherson’s Home of Industry; the Whitechapel Art Gallery; and will end at London’s first planned council estate, just behind St Leonard’s Shoreditch.
What will we cover?
Sites of interest at Whitechapel will include:
'Ripper haunts'
The Crispin Street Night Refuge
The Jewish Soup Kitchen
Toynbee Hall
Annie Macpherson’s Home of Industry
The Whitechapel Art Gallery
What will I achieve?
By the end of this course you should be able to...
Assess different sites of significance in Whitechapel related to the late Victorian period.
What level is the course and do I need any particular skills?
This is an introductory course and no prior knowledge is required. An ability to participate in a 2 hour tour off site and follow any safety instructions from your tutor are the only requirements.
How will I be taught, and will there be any work outside the class?
Tutor led guided walk.
Are there any other costs? Is there anything I need to bring?
Please attend in clothing/footwear suitable for the weather/walk
When I've finished, what course can I do next?
Please see our London Walks for T1 25/26.
You may also be interested in Dr Wise's other walk this term -
Late-Victorian Soho: sex and shopping, police and (radical) politics
Sarah Wise is an award-winning writer and historian, with an MA in Victorian Studies from Birkbeck, University of London. She teaches social history and literature at the University of California’s London Outreach Center. Her interests are urban history, working-class history, medical history and nineteenth-century literature and reportage. Her most recent book, Inconvenient People: Lunacy, Liberty and the Mad-Doctors in Victorian England, was shortlisted for the Wellcome Book Prize. Her 2004 debut, The Italian Boy: Murder and Grave Robbery in 1830s London, was shortlisted for the 2005 Samuel Johnson Prize for Non-Fiction and won the Crime Writers’ Association Golden Dagger. Her follow-up The Blackest Streets: The Life and Death of a Victorian Slum (2008) was shortlisted for the Royal Society of Literature's Ondaatje Prize. She was a contributor to the volume Charles Booth's London Poverty Maps, published by Thames & Hudson/London School of Economics, and appeared on BBC Radio 4's In Our Time to discuss Booth's work https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000wsxf For reviews www.sarahwise.co.uk/reviews.html
Please note: We reserve the right to change our tutors from those advertised. This happens rarely, but if it does, we are unable to refund fees due to this. Our tutors may have different teaching styles; however we guarantee a consistent quality of teaching in all our courses.