THE REAL EAST LONDON.
By the Lord Bishop of Stepney.
(Photo: H. V. Hornville, Gawber Street, E.)
THE "MOTHERS'" GARDEN PARTY GROUP.
(Showing the Bishop in the Background.)
East London is a very different place from what many people expect it to be. There are not a few who still think that they will have their throats cut if they venture into it, and I remember one visitor who turned up very late for dinner one night at Oxford House, and gave as the reason for his lateness that his landlord had got one side of him and his landlady on the other, and had held him by his coat-tails to prevent him coming to be murdered in Bethnal Green.
OLD "OXFORD HOUSE."
As a matter of fact, East London is probably, by daylight or by night, one of the safest parts of London, except in a very few selected streets, well known to the police; and one of my predecessors, the much-lamented Bishop Billing, was quite right when he used to say to the West-End mother, anxious about her daughter's safety, if she came to work in East London, "See her as far as Temple Bar, and then she will be all right."