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 StreeAltab+Ali+Met+Police+Appealt 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