London stories
Explore the stories of the world's greatest city and uncover the hidden treasures of our collections.

Photographing an east London rent strike, 1939
Cyril Arapoff captures life in a dangerously dilapidated apartment block



How Charles Booth mapped London poverty
And showed the complexity of social class in the late 19th century

Tower Hamlets Cemetery
Known locally as Bow Cemetery and the last of London’s Magnificent Seven cemeteries to be built

Limehouse: London’s first Chinatown
The Chinese communities who lived in this pocket of the East End

Joseph Merrick: 'The Elephant Man'
The life of a Victorian Whitechapel resident made famous because of his physical disabilities

The Jewish East End
How Spitalfields and Whitechapel offered new lives to thousands fleeing persecution

The Kray Twins: Notorious east London gangsters
Dangerous and famous in the Swinging Sixties

Jack the Ripper
How the murders of five women birthed an infamous East End crime story