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Post by edwardfox on Jan 8, 2011 11:49:34 GMT
If the Whitechapel area was as terrifyingly scary and lawless in Jack The Ripper's time - as almost all Jack The Ripper histories strongly imply - what persuaded the MDR to put a station there just at that time?
I've often wondered.
Yes, there was already a separate ELR station there, opened 8 years previously, but passenger services apparently ceased a few months after the opening of the MDR station.
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Post by phillw48 on Jan 8, 2011 12:11:04 GMT
The aim of the main line companies was to reach the City of London and often the only way to do so was through some of the less salubrious parts of London. Also the ELL was considered as part of the main line system as indeed was the Metropolitan and MD systems. The origional purpose of the ELL was to connect the docks on both sides of the river to the main line. Another reason was that land was a lot cheaper in such areas and a lot of the social problems were caused by the railways displacing these people.
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Post by railtechnician on Jan 8, 2011 14:47:25 GMT
I worked out of Whitechapel depot from 1977-1979 on night shift and it was a rather scary place then. Winos used to congregate in the street at the back of the depot, incidentally the vicinity of the first ripper murder, and lob bottles of cider over the wall from time to time exploding as they hit the eastbound platform. I used to park my car out the back in the street alongside the supervisors Escort vans and walking through the alleys to reach the station entrance could be unnerving with dim lighting and gloomy alcoves. If I was lucky I could get straight into the depot via the back door and stores but most often I had to use the alleys.
When I worked there jack the ripper tours were run late at night, the guide would walk the party up the dead end street to the back of the depot and an actor dressed as the ripper would creep up behind them under cover of the arches of the derelict/bombed out building and scare the living daylights out of them. I drove up the road one night just before 2300 and the party was gathered behind the depot, my headlights caught jack in the act and the guide was not happy!
The area is perhaps less dodgy today as it is very much 24/7 but back then on Sunday to Friday nights everything but the station was closed before midnight and it was a ghost town so the odd person in the street really stood out. I used to use the pubs around there at the time and they could be very dodgy too, it was still very much gangster territory even though many of the 60s villains were locked up.
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Post by phillw48 on Jan 8, 2011 15:10:05 GMT
My first job after leaving school was with Kearley & Tonge in Mitre Square, also the scene of one of the Ripper murders. K & T also had a warehouse on the north side of Whitechapel station.
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Jan 8, 2011 20:07:31 GMT
Off thread admittedly but Kearley & Tonge were bought out by Booker Belmont Wholesale in 1979/80 and the resultant shortage of staff in the Fareham branch of the cash & carry saw me get my second job after school. I began as a shelf-stacker and ended up as Buyer. I'm sure that half of the sales reps I saw were related to Jack the Ripper! I resigned in 1986 having seen more than enough reps to last a lifetime. Leaving there was the best career move I ever made as, although it took six months of signing on, it led to me joining the railways that November.
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Post by phillw48 on Jan 8, 2011 20:57:32 GMT
That was well after my time there. The buildings when I was there were the same ones that were there at the time of the ripper. I worked in an office on the ground floor that was like something out of Dickens with high desks all around the walls and even some of the old stools that the clerks used to sit on. In those desks were some old and dusty ledgers filled with figures written in immaculate copperplate hand writing. The whole lot was probably skipped when the buildings were demolished.
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