Some of the events that have taken place in the East End
1381 Peasant Revolt leaders put demands to Richard II at Mile End Fields
1648 Levellers hold mass meetings in Well Yard, Wapping
1682 Spitalfields Market founded
1683 Truman’s brewery founded
1729 Christ Church of Spitalfields consecrated
1860 Chinatown established in Limehouse
1884 Toynbee Hall founded
1885 Rothschild Buildings – model dwellings for the skilled working class – replace slums in Thrawl Street and Flower and Dean Street
1886 Miriam Moses born – became first woman mayor of Stepney
1887 First purpose built Yiddish theatre in Britain established in Princes (later Princelet) Street
1888 Match Women’s strike at Bryant and May
1889 Tailors’ strike for reduction to 12 hours day with two breaks, and the
Great Dock Strike demanding a 2 pence rise
1892 Whitechapel Library founded
1901 Whitechapel Art Gallery opens
1912 Sylvia Pankhurst forms the East London Federation of Suffragettes
Tailors and dockers on strike. Joint meetings held on Mile End Waste
1917 People’s Dispensary for Sick Animals (PDSA) founded in Vallance Road, Bethnal Green
1918 Anti-War poet Isaac Rosenberg killed in action
1920 Bloom’s Kosher Restaurant opens in Brick Lane and first Indian restaurant opens in East London
1921 Poplar councillors imprisoned for refusal to levy unfair rates
1936 Battle of Cable Street
1938 Mass rent strikes in Stepney
1939 Local artist Mark Gertler commits suicide
1943 Indian Seaman’s Welfare League set up in Commercial Street
1945 Communist MP elected in Mile End – Phil Piratin
1976 Makhzikey Hadas synagogue re-opened as Jamme Masjid mosque
1978 Clothing worker Altab Ali murdered in Adler Stree
t E1 just days after the first Anti-Nazi League Carnival in Victoria Park. Mass demonstrations led by Bengali Youth Movement against the National Front selling their paper on the corner of Brick Lane
1982 Kobi Nazrul arts centre opens in Hanbury Street, named after the national poet of Bangladesh
1993 BNP councillor elected on Isle of Dogs. Local community campaigns supported by anti-racists and anti-fascist groups force him out after a year
1999 Area around Brick Lane renamed “Banglatown”
2001 First East End film festival
2010 Rushanara Ali elected as Labour MP, Bethnal Green and Bow – Britain’s first Bengali MP
