Talk:Whitechapel
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There are a lot of inconsistencies between underground-station and tube-station in the links, which I will try and fix according to WikiProject London. --/Mat 10:57, 6 Apr 2004 (UTC)
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[edit] Jacob Adler
Don't know if anyone wants to use it, but Jacob Adler had some very telling comments about the poverty of Whitechapel, when he arrived there in the winter of 1883-1884: "The further we penetrated into this Whitechapel, the more our hearts sank. Was this London? Never in Russia, never later in the worst slums of New York, were we to see such poverty as in the London of the 1880s." He further describes seeing men pushing barrows who looked as if they "had come out of their mothers already gray and old. [Adler, 1999, 232-233]
There are 20-30 pages of interesting material about Whitechapel (and 1880s Jewish London in general) in his book.
Reference: Adler, Jacob, A Life on the Stage: A Memoir, translated and with commentary by Lulla Rosenfeld, Knopf, New York, 1999, ISBN 067941351.
[edit] "Bangladeshis"
Should the article really refer to "Bangladeshis" rather than "Bengalis"? The former is a national designation, the latter an ethnic one. I would imagine that a lot of the Bengalis in Banglatown are not Bangladeshi, but I don't know the neighbourhood all that well, so I could be mistaken. -- Jmabel | Talk
- 'Bangladeshi' is correct and generally in use (in fact TH council once tried to market the Brick Lane area as 'Banglatown' after Chinatown). And not only are most Asians hereabouts of Bangladeshi origin, but the majority of those are from one specific area of Bangladesh, the Sylhet region. Tarquin Binary 20:33, 25 October 2005 (UTC)
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- Yes, and of course Bangladesh can be said to be a subset of Bengal. But it's all down to the partition of India and the subsequent independence of Bangladesh from Pakistan - and a crude definition of Bangladesh would be the Muslim area of Bengal. (But note, before 1971, all Bangladeshis in the UK would have been known as Pakistanis). As it happens, the vast majority of Asians in Tower Hamlets are Muslims, while Hindus are heavily concentrated in Southall in West London. (It's not quite that ghettoised, of course, there is quite a dispersal of ethnic groups all across the city.) It's not always easy to figure out why one ethnic group settles in a particular area, but there is some evidence that in the case of Bangladeshis this may have been due to the wide employment of East Indian (as it was originally) seamen on British merchant ships who were known as lascars (Wikipedia contradicts itself on this entry, anyway, the term is widely used by Joseph Conrad, but likely considered offensive if used in any other way than historically now), but that term included Hindu seamen, and those from Africa and the Middle East too, so it does not explain everything. In any case, Bangladeshis from the Sylhet region have a long acquaintance with the sea and would have become very familiar with East London from serving on British ships. Tarquin Binary 14:31, 26 October 2005 (UTC)
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- Additional. Re: 'Banglatown', the term is not really used any more. It was TH council's bright idea once upeon a time, but it is apt to raise a sneer today. The area that was labelled that has reverted to what we always called it: 'Brick Lane' (which includes surrounding streets). Tarquin Binary 14:41, 26 October 2005 (UTC)
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- The ward is still called "Spitalfields and Banglatown" Mrsteviec 15:09, 26 October 2005 (UTC)
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- Oops didn't know that. Still it's TH council. Wouldn't be seen dead using it conversation, and feel it hasn't really taken off in common parlance... Tarquin Binary 18:06, 26 October 2005 (UTC)
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- It was the name against "Ward:" on my voting card but if you go to their website and search for "ward map" you can also see it that way. I seem to remember there were a few news stories at the time about the change as it was considered newsworthy. I remember I once used the term to describe the area - and the person I was talking to accused me of being racist. Mrsteviec 18:34, 26 October 2005 (UTC)
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- I don't think it's racist, and IIRC, when they first started to promote the name, TH council was actually trying to support the Bangladeshi community, I think (though their past record had been a trifle erratic). I do think it's sort of tacky, though, in a way that 'Chinatown' isn't, but it's hard to explain why... Tarquin Binary 19:33, 26 October 2005 (UTC)
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- Neither do I. I think the person I was speaking to was unsure of what is currently PC. Mrsteviec 19:44, 26 October 2005 (UTC)
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- Classic, like people here in the U.S. who blanch when Native Americans call themselves "Indians". Which many do. When I was last in London (about 4 years, I live on the opposite side of the globe these days) the name Banglatown seemed reasonably current, and certainly was being used on signs of neighborhood businesses owned by Bangladeshis, who were hardly likely to be using an offensive term for their own ethnicity and neighborhood.
- BTW, before 1971, when Pakistan had two "wings", there a lot more people in the UK who remembered the Raj, and the word Bengali (as an ethnicity, sometimes meaning only Muslim Bengali's, sometimes including the Hindus) probably had some currency in London, though I don't really remember (most of my time in London is mid-'70s, probably only one visit before '71). -- Jmabel | Talk 23:05, 27 October 2005 (UTC)
- Yes, I see where you're coming from, I moved to London in '73 myself, and searching my memory, 'Bengali' was largely used, but that was only just after independence, Bangladesh was a new and unfamiliar country to UK citizens. (One might argue that it was put on non-Bangladeshi people's mental maps, sadly, by natural disaster (and George Harrison)). Also the Bangladeshi community was smaller then. Tarquin Binary 23:19, 27 October 2005 (UTC)
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[edit] Huguenots
Am I mistaken in believing that more than a century before the major influx of Jews and Irish, there was an influx of Huguenots? Certainly true in the area immediately around Brick Lane, I don't know farther soutn/east in Whitechapel as well.
- Huguenots were throughout the area from Shoreditch to Bethnal Green (Huguenot weaver riots led to two ring leaders being hanged outside the Salmon & Ball for 'cutting cloth' - damaging the product). Weaving was homeworking, with piecework being taken to the masters (in Spitalfields) for onward sale. Huguenots were also active in furniture and boot making - around the area; and further afield in clock and instrument making - around Clerkenwell.
- There were several Huguenot chapels in the area, many reused as synagogues and latterly as mosques. One of my ancestors came here in 1585, but most arrived at the end of the 17th century. Since the community was pretty close, marriages took place within it and the last identifyingly 'french' name in my family died out about 1900 in Bethnal Green. There were many Huguenot charities and societies, including 'reading clubs' many of these led to early workers' associations, trade unions and other socialist organisations Kbthompson 15:51, 27 September 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Whitechapel Art Gallery
Shouldn't we mention Whitechapel Art Gallery? -- Jmabel | Talk 08:35, Feb 20, 2005 (UTC)
- Absolutely, yes! I will do something about this soonest. One of my hobbyhorses, (that I haven't had time to pursue) is that given its importance in East London, contemporary art in the area is covered very poorly indeed in Wikipedia, but the overall subject needs a proper revamp. In the meantime, it's well naff to leave the Whitechapel out. Tarquin Binary 19:40, 26 October 2005 (UTC)
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- Nice one! I fixed the redlink to the gallery, though. It does actually have a pedia entry, which I think I or someone else should strive to get a pic for. There's a lot of good material in this piece, actually, but I do think it needs organising into sections, which will generate a contents menu for a start. And more pix will help with layout too. Tarquin Binary 23:26, 27 October 2005 (UTC)
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[edit] Krays
Don't know if it merits mention/link, but the Grave Maurice pub in Whitechapel was one of the Kray twins haunts. -- Jmabel | Talk 08:39, Feb 20, 2005 (UTC)
[edit] Workhouses
Another possible source to mine for the article: a page on the Whitechapel Workhouse and Poor Law Union. -- Jmabel | Talk 08:45, Feb 20, 2005 (UTC)
[edit] Flowery phrase
Jmabel, I wote this article a couple years ago and it has stayed basically the same since (not that it should always stay the same, I'm just establishing I'm no casual editor on this one). I'll go with your deletion of that "flowery phrase that implies malign divine intervention, and tells reader he/she must believe in it", at least until I think it over more. I'm afraid, though, that you've misinterpreted it and also that one man's flowery is another man's well-turned. It is the latter point that concerns me most, actually, because I fear this general tendency to make the tone of all articles on all subjects match the tone of sci/tech articles is extremley damaging to the project. I think the best editors do believe in variety for variety's sake, and an article on a colorful hard-scrabble neighborhood presents a fine opportunity for a varying tone and spirit. It makes me think of what the best zoos have done in recent decades: instead of havng absolutely every animal locked down in a tightly caged exhibit, some have been given space to run and fly. Sure, you can clip every bird's wings and have an endlessly neat aviary. But is it better than having a few exhibits in which the birds can zing around and show off a little? Not to me.
For reference's sake, here's the removed sentence: "Regardless of one's politics, it is difficult to read either How the Other Half Lives or The People of the Abyss without wondering if such deep, large scale social ills (poverty, homelessness, exploitive work conditions, prostitution, infant mortality, etc.) are caused, or at least abetted, by something or somebody more culpable than fate."
As its author I can tell you there is no implication of malign divine intervention. The implication is that the wealthy of Olde London, those basically of the Ebeneezer Scrooge cast, as most of the wealthy in most cultures, had been so industrious over generations in concentrating the great majority of resources into their own hands that they must share some culpability for the bad condition of all these hundreds of thousands whose antecedents had not been so acquisitive (or one might even say "rapacious"). Perhaps malign, definitely not divine.
That covers the "somebody" of the sentence. The "something" also does not imply God/gods but points to greed itself as a disembodied force.
I admit the phrase is ornate and rather throwback in tone (as you can see, I'm fond of writing this way). But I submit that this sort of writing is not always inferior to the direct, clipped approach employed as the default in Wikipedia. Come now, when we are honest we admit that we enjoy Dickens more than we enjoy Hemingway. That's not to say that in the end we get more from Dickens than from Hemingway, but it is to say that the ornate familiar voice can sometimes have its place. Think it over. JDG 10:25, 11 August 2005 (UTC)
- It wasn't the ornateness of the phrase I had a problem with (and I've had people do similar things to my prose; see this example. If you can rewrite the sentence to indicate a bit more clearly where you are saying the blame lies, I'm all for restoring nice proseAfter someone else had deleted the sentence and you had restored it, I re-read it several times trying to make sense of it. If an educated reader, reading carefully, could misunderstand as I did, some rewording is probably in order. To be honest, my second guess after a malign divinity was that somehow you were blaming them and saying they somehow deserved this to happen to them. I think "Regardless of one's politics…" may be what threw me off of what you say was your intended reading: it seemed to suggest, precisely, rejection of a political explanation, so it eliminated the reading you apparently intended. "…something or somebody more culpable than fate" could be anything, so I took my cue from the other phrase: how can you both reject and embrace a political explanation in the same sentence? -- Jmabel | Talk 18:44, August 11, 2005 (UTC)
[edit] A Philosophical Question
Where does Whitechapel end and Spitalfields begin? This is confusing me. For instance Jack the Ripper's depredations are often referred to as the 'Whitechapel Murders'. However the infamous Ripper pub, 'The Ten Bells' is adjacent to Christ Church, Spitalfields and the site of Mary Kelly's murder is just a few yards away.... Colin4C 09:06, 17 May 2006 (UTC)
- In terms of the Ripper, http://www.met.police.uk/history/ripper.htm should sort this out for you. In more generality, I don't know the precise borders, or even whether there are legally established borders of anything other than the City. - Jmabel | Talk 00:24, 31 May 2006 (UTC)
- Off the top of my head, Whitechapel was a distinct region of London, part of Stepney - with an eponymous 'chapel of ease'. Spitalfields originated as 'the open land beyond Bishopgate and Whitechapel' related to the old Bethlehem Hospital (the original Bedlam, lies beneath Liverpool Station) - either because it funded it, or because it was where the patients worked. So, Spitalfields had no seperate identity, but became attached to the name both of a C17th estate and an C18th market that later occupied the site. If demanded, I can probably dig out references. I have maps, but they're only photocopies. It was also a 'tenter ground' being used for the dying of cloth - so, might be one of the origins of the area's associations with the rag trade. HTH Kbthompson 16:05, 27 September 2006 (UTC)
[edit] External links
Any particular reason for the inclusion of the link to "Barts and The London NHS Trust"? Nothing actively wrong with it, but we have plenty of good external links here, and we don't usually link a hospital. I realize that this one is a somewhat more than routinely important local institution; I still can't see why it would be of particular interest to most people who would look up this article. What is the rationale? - Jmabel | Talk 06:53, 12 December 2006 (UTC)
- Maybe more should be made of the hospital; important historically; important for colour - like Joseph Merrick; important for being the base of HEMS and taking up such a large chunk of prime real estate (even more soon). A museum, Edith Cavell and Eva Luckes. 'Black' items on the ripper and Dr Crippen.
- I know hospital websites are more like corporate 'things' now, and there is a separate article on the Royal London (apparently in need of loving care and attention, as it's uncited ... but most seems to come from the website).
- I think the principal should be, if there's a good mention in the article, and an organisation has its own website, then it's in. If it hangs in cyberspace, without explanation, then it's probably out ... Maybe hospitals should be like 'Administration' and get a link in the template? Kbthompson 10:33, 12 December 2006 (UTC)
