Gustave Doré

When you walk through London’s East end, you sometimes catch a gimplse of an old gloomy Victorian alley or a closed-down pub that has been entombed by neighbouring development. It’s at times like this that mind wonders back to the shady notoriety of this area in the Victorian times. It was a place that the wealthy town planners of West London regarded with polite disgust and irrevocable carelessness.

Consequently, places like Whitechapel, Stepney and Aldgate became foetid holes of prostitution, alcoholism, disease, crime and  hopelessness. Photographers rarely ventured into the horrednous streets and illustrated newspapers often did most of their illustrations of East from the an office on the Strand.

One fellow of ripe curiosity and fervent dexterity did however, succeed in exposing the true level of deprivation in the East-end through a first-hand illustrative account from 1872 called the pilgrimage. That chap was the French artist Gustave Doré. Full of decay and dark ambience, his drawings depict another Victorian London, where smoggy streets harbour distress and danger. The sullen, underfed characters he penned said it all.

The BBC is currently showing a rather interesting series written by Jeremy Paxman about the Victorians and it’s well worth a watch too.