I once asked Mr Wide, my boarding-house neighbour:

‘Let's go and see Whitechapel.’

He blinked his eyes in fright, refused, and advised me in a whisper to leave my wallet at home and take a stick with me instead. I was in no way surprised by his piece of advice, as I had only recently come across this strange pronouncement in Smith's ‘Century Encyclopedia’:

‘Whitechapel. A part of East London inhabited by the poorer classes and by criminals.’

Finding my way through the crooked alleys of working districts – where, despite the heat, everything is shut up, locked and curtained, and only the garish pub windows disturb the overall sepulchral air – I reached the horse tram I was looking for, climbed to the top, and experienced the sensation of something peculiar, un-London-like and un-English. The horse tram was unusually dirty, stopped for long whiles at crossroads, and I was charged 1½ pence for the ticket, which is not in keeping with London customs since even the poorest Londoner regards a penny as such small coin that charging ha’pennies in the normal course of English life would come across as scrupulous unto beggary…

An hour later, I was in Whitechapel. It felt like whole millennia rather than a mere hour separated me from central London. The centre, too, has its share of poverty, but there it is covered up, silent, hiding out of sight. It lurks somewhere in the dark nooks and crannies, frightened lest its moan should break through the cheerful bustle of red-cheeked, self-assured, broad-shouldered people who are so good at working, loving themselves and laughing.

Here it is all in plain sight – in this rancid smell of spoiled fish which is fried and eaten right there in the street; these dirty, sickly children; these narrow, rotten back-alleys which seem to be forever forgotten by God and the sun and the sanitary inspector; in these clamorous, gaudy street-markets where faded, dyed, twice-turned rags are sold for pennies, where the curses, the hawkers’ shouts, the exaggerated gestures all cry to you of squalor, lay it bare, thrust it in your face. One can hardly imagine a greater contrast with the calm and secretive life of London.