Today I’ve been trawling through various collections of films of the East End of London through the ages and, in particular, in the latter half of the 19th Century and the early years of the 20th century.
One of my favourite pieces of film is a clip of the Petticoat Lane Market that was filmed in 1903 and which captures this Sunday morning East End fixture as it was just fifteen years after the Jack the Ripper murders.
We actually make our way along this segment of road on our nightly Jack the Ripper Walking tour so, in some ways, you get the street (or to be precise “Lane”) as it is now and as it was back then.
What I find particularly intriguing about this little black and white film is that you are looking into the faces of some of the men and women who would have lived through the horrors of the Whitechapel Murders.
In addition you can see on their faces that they are uncertain how they should act whilst the camera is pointed at them!
Anyway, have a look at this evocative black and white film and peer back through the ages at the streets of the East End of London as they were shortly after of one of the East End of London’s, if not the world’s, most infamous crime sprees.