[2] The area was built up rapidly during the 19th century, mainly to accommodate immigrant workers and poor families displaced from London.

The Manor covered an area stretching from the eastern edge of the City of London to the Lea and from Stamford Hill down to the Thames; in this way covering an area equivalent to the modern borough of Tower Hamlets, as well as the district of Hackney (in the wider modern borough of the same name).

[12] The Domesday Book survey of 1086 gives the name as Stibanhede and says that the land was held by the Bishop of London and was 32 hides large, mainly used for ploughing, meadows, woodland for 500 pigs, and 4 mills.

Bishop William held this land in demesne, in the manor of Stepney, on the day on which King Edward was alive and dead.

[14]The Bishop of London held many other estates around London, and one of them, heavily wooded Hornsey, was attached to Stepney as a remote exclave for a time (it was common practice for wooded exclaves to be attached to more intensely farmed and densely populated estates in that period).

The sub-manor of Hornsey was not part of the original territory of Stepney but was subsequently attached as an administrative convenience, and detached once more around the late 13th century.

The early origin of these arrangements is obscure and the first surviving record of the military obligation dates from 1554, but is thought to be much older, with varying estimates in the post-Norman medieval period.

St Dunstan's has a long association with the sea, with the parish of Stepney being responsible for registration of British maritime births, marriages and deaths until the 19th century.

[26] This maritime association is remembered in the old rhyme: "He who sails on the wide sea, is a parishioner of Stepney"The rapid growth in population meant that over time the parish was broken up.

The urbanisation of the area was driven by the maritime trades along the river, as well as ribbon development along the Mile End Road.

Other factors included the development of London's docks and railways, combined with slum clearance, which pushed the displaced poor and various immigrants looking for work into cheap housing being built in the area.

However, it is not known whether this naming came from the Jewish widow of the London merchant, who made his living selling war salvage, or from a later resident, the military surgeon Edward Lee.

[29] It was home to a variety of small businesses including a bookmaker and a printer, before being occupied in 1910 by the Union of Stepney Ratepayers.

Montefiore attended Balliol College, Oxford, where his posthumous memoir reports that he was a devotee of John Ruskin.

Whilst at Balliol he became a friend of Oscar Wilde, who after Montefiore's death allegedly proposed to his sister Charlotte.

He enlisted the help of local amateurs, and the Russian Jewish Operatic Company made their debut at the Beaumont Hall, close to Stepney Green tube station.

It is a large Conservation Area with an irregular shape that encloses buildings around Mile End Road, Assembly Passage, Louisa Street and Stepney Green itself.

[44] The Stepney Community Trust, a community-led charity with a long history of local action, was set up in 1982 as the St Mary's Centre to respond to the severe housing and social deprivation in the area.

It is based in the London Dockers Athletic and Social Club[49] and has installed a series of plaques on sites of historic interest.

[citation needed] Richard Mead, a physician responsible for advances in the understanding of transmissible diseases, was born in Stepney.

Others born in Stepney are entertainer Des O'Connor,[68] actor Steven Berkoff,[69] playwright Arnold Wesker, gardener Rachel De Thame, television executive Alan Yentob, artist Frank Paton, drummer Kenney Jones, musician and writer Jah Wobble,[70] singer Kenny Lynch and his sister Maxine Daniels, singer Charles Coborn, footballers Ledley King, Ashley Cole, Mark Lazarus, Barry Silkman, and Darren Purse, heavyweight boxer "Bombardier" Billy Wells, former armed robber and businessman Roy Shaw, former British featherweight boxing champion Sammy McCarthy, sportswriter Norman Giller, and Labour politician Wes Streeting.

Clergymen John Sentamu, formerly Bishop of Stepney, and Father Richard Wilson, founder of the Hoppers' Hospitals at Five Oak Green, Kent, lived in the borough at one time.

[71] Actors born in Stepney include Matthew Garber, Bernard Bresslaw, Terence Stamp, Craig Fairbrass, Jeff Shankley, John Lyons, Eddie Marsan, Ben Onwukwe, Victor McLaglen, Roy Marsden, Ruth Sheen, EastEnders actress Anita Dobson and Nicola Walker.

Musicians Monty Norman (composer of the James Bond Theme) and Lionel Bart (known for creating the book, music and lyrics to the production Oliver!

British communist Alf Salisbury, who smuggled monetary funds to German anti-fascists during Hitler's rise to power, and fought in both the Battle of Cable Street and for the International Brigades during the Spanish Civil War, was born in Stepney.

Later in life he led a successful campaign to convince the BBC and other British news outlets to stop using the term "Mongols" to refer to people with Down Syndrome.

In her 2002 memoir Call the Midwife, Jennifer Worth writes a graphic account of 1950s Stepney at the height of its urban decay describing bombsites, condemned buildings, filth, and rampant prostitution.

[citation needed] In the 1965 Rolling Stones song Play with Fire, it is said an heiress whose wealth has been carried off by her husband "gets her kicks in Stepney, not in Knightsbridge anymore."

Folk noir duo Ruby Throat released a song called "Forget Me Nots of Stepney" on their 2012 album O' Doubt O' Stars.