[3] John Stow recounts the origin of the area from the Liber Trinitae, where the Saxon King Edgar was petitioned by 13 knights to grant them the wasteland to the East of the city wall, desiring to form a guild.

The request was said to be granted on condition that each knight should "accomplish three combats, one above the ground, one below the ground, and the third in the water; after this, at a certain day in East Smithfield, they should run with spears against all comers; all of which was gloriously performed; and the same day the King named it Knighten Guilde, and so bounded it from Ealdgate (Aldgate) to the place where the bars now are toward the east, &c. and again toward the south unto to the river of Thames, and so into the water, and throw his speare; so that all East Smithfield, with the right part of the street that goeth by Dodding Pond into the Thames and also the hospital of St Katherin's, with the mills that were founded in King Stephen's daies, and the outward stone wall, and the new ditch of the Tower, are of the saide fee and liberbertie.

[5] The southern part of East Smithfield was given by Holy Trinity Priory as a site for the Hospital of St Katharine, founded by Matilda (wife of Stephen of England), in 1148.

In 2007, a study led by the University of Albany, NY exhumed and examined 490 skeletons – finding that the disease afflicted disproportionately the already weak and malnourished.

This pattern of diversity continued, during the late 16th and early 17th centuries the parish of St Botolph without Aldgate as a whole (both the Portsoken and East Smithfield areas) is recorded as having a population of at least 25 people identified as "blackamoors.

[11] Around 1821 the writer Pierce Egan wrote a semi-autobiographical account of a visit to the Coach and Horses public house on Nightingale Lane (now called Sir Thomas More Street) in East Smithfield.

The story tells of three upper class friends who tiring of high society events decide to “see a bit of life at the East End of Town”.

every cove that put in his appearance was quite welcome, colour or country considered no obstacle...the group motley indeed; Lascars, blacks, jack tars, coalheavers, dustmen, women of colour, old and young, and a sprinkling of the remnants of once fine girls, &c. were all jigging togetherIn 1844, "An Association for promoting Cleanliness among the Poor" was established, and they built a bath-house and laundry in Glasshouse Yard.

Timbs noted that "... so strong was the love of cleanliness thus encouraged that women often toiled to wash their own and their children's clothing, who had been compelled to sell their hair to purchase food to satisfy the cravings of hunger".

Today, this building, by Robert Smirke and its gatehouse are all that remain; the rest being swept away by continual expansion, until in November 1975, the London Mint was closed and production transferred to Wales.