The rag merchant's home, Coulston Street, Whitechapel

In Chapter XV of 'London: a Pilgrimage' by Blanchard Jerrold and Gustave Doré, 1872, Jerrold contrasts the affluence of the City with the poverty of the East End: "The extremes lie close together. How many minutes' walk have we between St Swithin's Lane ... and this humble authority in Exchanges, in materials for shoddy, in left-off clothes cast aside by the well-to-do, to be passed with due consideration and profit to the backs of the poor? The old clothesman's children are rolling about upon his greasy treasure, while he, with his heavy silver spectacles poised upon his hooked nose, takes up each item and estimates it to a farthing."