Nineteenth century London, like many towns and cities in Britain, experienced phenomenal population growth. At the centre of the British Empire, and driven by free trade and industry, it achieved extraordinary wealth, but this wealth was confined to the City and to the West End. East London, however, consisted of ‘an expanse of poverty and wretchedness as appalling as, and in many ways worse than the horrors of the industrial North’. There was clear evidence of the lack of urban planning, as factories were established close to the immense dock buildings constructed near Stratford. Toxic materials such as paint and varnish were produced in large chemical works owned by the German chemist, Rudolf Hersel, as were matches by the firm Bryant and May, and rubber, tar and iron for the building trade by various industrialists. Social historians have viewed the poverty of mid-nineteenth century London's East End as a symbol of urban disintegration in which skilled artisans were reduced to sweated, lowly-paid, labourers. Their homes, built close to the industrial sectors, were erected hastily and cheaply, and lacked proper hygienic and sanitary facilities, so that slum conditions prevailed. Moreover, this housing had to be demolished frequently to make way for new roads and railways, thus creating great hardship for an already destitute people.