THE WORST STREET IN LONDON

Mary Kelly, the last of Jack the Ripper victims was murdered in Dorset Street, Spitalfields. In 1901 the following article appeared in the Daily Mail. Although the article doesn't mention Mary Kelly or provide any detail about the Jack the Ripper slayings, the article does give an intriguing insight into what Dorset Street was like 13 years after the Jack the Ripper murders.

Dorset Street, London

Where our Criminals are Trained

 

Dorset Street, Spitalfields, has recently sprung into undesired notoriety. Here we have a place which boasts of an attempt at murder on an average once a month, of a murder in every house, and one house at least, a murder in every room. Policemen go down it as rule in pairs. Hunger walks prowling in its alleyways, and the criminals of to-morrow are being bred there to-day. 

Blue Blood

 

The lodging-houses of Dorset Street and of the district around are the head centres of the shifting criminal population of London. Of course, the aristocrats of crime - the forger, the counterfeiter, and the like do not come here. In Dorset Street we find more largely the common thief, the pickpocket, the area meak, the man who robs with violence, and the unconvicted murderer.

The Cancer of the "DOSS HOUSE"

 

There must seem, I am well aware, an air of unreality about this to follow who read it in comfortable surburban homes or bright country houses. It seems impossible that in our new century these things should continue. But perhaps those who think it unreal will look over for their own satisfaction the indictments of any of our great criminal courts.