Introduction

Spitalfields has been peripheral to the mosaic of London since Roman times. It was then, and has remained ever since, a place on the edge, a bridge between the included and the excluded. A twilight ‘zone of transition’ ¹ in which the culture and economy of the native and the stranger have evolved, at times merging, at other times competing. Through metaphor Spitalfields has been presented as deprived, dangerous and exotic. It has been called, variously, ‘the city of darkest night’, ‘a jungle’, ‘a bazaar’, ‘an abyss’, words which instantly conjure up images of poverty, violence and otherness. It is encrusted with diversity and a history of tolerance living side-by-side with intolerance. Spitalfields has vibrated with the sights, sounds and smells of the minority groups who have inhabited it over the centuries and has been known as Petty France, Little Jerusalem and, now, Banglatown. Yet it is also part of the cockney East End and home to Petticoat Lane market. An area on the edge, yet only minutes from the heart of the nation, it presents the perfect geographic and temporal framework in which to undertake a comparative and thematic study of immigration in a metropolis.