ABSTRACT
Bill Fishman's exhaustive portrayal of the East End in 1888 brought the place and its people radiantly to life. In many ways the East End of 2016 bears little resemblance to that of 1888. Fishman's East End 1888: A Year in a London Borough among the Labouring Poor brought to people a space that was more darkness than light, peopled more by victims than by victors, where brutality scored over tenderness, and where human life had little value and opposition to alien incomers was openly voiced. One of the celebrated characteristics of Fishman's historiographical writing was the way in which he put meat on the bones of the people and places he wrote about. Fishman devoted his book to the various themes which enabled him to paint the portrait of what today is the area of London known as the Borough of Tower Hamlets.
