An excellent overview of Dorset Street, once dubbed 'the worst street in London', and the surrounding Spitalfields area. Rule traces the area's history, from its beginnings as a rural retreat to its acme as a wealthy silk-weaving district and its slow slide into poverty and violence.

This is something of an antidote to most books on Jack the Ripper, which tend to focus almost exclusively on the murders and the suspects. This is an exploration of the lives the people of Spitalfields and Whitechapel actually led, and the misery and squalor that shocked a nation in the wake of the Whitechapel murders. ( )