Whitechapel was originally part of the Manor and Parish of Stepney, but population growth resulting from its position just outside the Aldgate on the Roman Road to Essex resulted in significant population growth, so a chapel of ease, dedicated to St Mary was established so people did not have to make the longer journey to Stepney's parish church St Dunstans.

The role of the Tower Division ended when Whitechapel became part of the new County of London in 1889, and most civil parish functions were removed when the area joined the Metropolitan Borough of Stepney in 1900.

Whitechapel, along with areas such as neighbouring Shoreditch, Holborn (west of the city) and Southwark (south of the Thames), was one of London's earlier extra-mural suburbs.

This was either as part of a ring of fortifications known as the Lines of Communication which were in operation from 1642 to 1647,[5] or additionally or alternatively, as one of the three forts which replaced that system of defence immediately afterwards.

In the same deed Henry and Sarah Gullifer undertook to provide for the education of thirty poor girls; namely a schoolmistress was to teach them the "catechism, reading, knitting, plain sewing, and any other useful work".

[6] The London Infirmary was established as a voluntary hospital in 1740, and within a year soon moved from Finsbury to Prescot Street, a very densely populated and deprived part of southern Whitechapel.

In common with many other parts of the East End of London, Whitechapel gained a reputation for severe poverty, overcrowding, and the social problems that came with it.

[8][9] William Booth began his Christian Revival Society, preaching the gospel in a tent, erected in the Friends Burial Ground, Thomas Street, Whitechapel, in 1865.

[12] Writing of the period 1883–1884, Yiddish theatre actor Jacob Adler wrote, "The further we penetrated into this Whitechapel, the more our hearts sank.

These attacks caused widespread terror in the district and throughout the country and drew the attention of social reformers to the squalor and vice of the area, even though these crimes remain unsolved today.

[15] London County Council, founded 1889, helped deliver investment in new housing and slum clearance; objectives which were a popular cause at the time.

[16] In 1902, American author Jack London, looking to write a counterpart to Jacob Riis's seminal book How the Other Half Lives, donned ragged clothes and boarded in Whitechapel, detailing his experiences in The People of the Abyss.

[a] The Freedom Press, a socialist publishing house, thought it worthwhile to explore conditions in the leading city of the nation that had invented modern capitalism.

On Sunday 4 October 1936, the British Union of Fascists led by Oswald Mosley, intended to march through the East End, an area with a large Jewish population.

[4][23] On 4 May 1978, three teenagers murdered Altab Ali, a 24 year old Bangladesh-born clothing worker, in a racially motivated attack, as he walked home after work.

[33] The British-Pakistani Mayor of London Sadiq Khan was "delighted" that the signage was installed ahead of Bangladesh Independence Day on 26 March.

The marker recognises the significance of Whitechapel as the centre of British Jewish refugee life in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Melodrama of a rough type, farce, pantomime, &c."[37] In the early 20th century it became the home of Yiddish theatre, catering to the large Jewish population of the area, and gave birth to the Anglo-Jewish 'Whitechapel Boys' avant-garde literary and artistic movement.

This scene includes the likes of The Libertines, Zap!, Nova, The Others, Razorlight, and The Rakes, all of whom have had some commercial success in the music charts.

[40] A library, the Whitechapel Idea Store, constructed in 2005 at a cost of £12 million by William Verry to a design by David Adjaye, was nominated for the 2006 Stirling Prize.

[41][42] Whitechapel features in Charles Dickens's Pickwick Papers (chapter 22) as the location of the Bull Inn, where the Pickwickians take a coach to Ipswich.

En route, driving along Whitechapel Road, Sam Weller opines that it is "not a wery nice neighbourhood" and notes the correlation between poverty and the abundance of oyster stalls here.

Whitechapel is also the setting of several novels by Jewish authors such as Children of the Ghetto and The King of Schnorrers by Israel Zangwill and Jew Boy by Simon Blumenfeld.

Several chapters of Sholem Aleichem's classic Yiddish novel Adventures of Mottel the Cantor's Son take place in early 20th-century Whitechapel, depicted from the point of view of an impoverished East European Jewish family fleeing the pogroms.

The prostitute and daughter of a Luddite leader Sybil Gerard, main character of William Gibson and Bruce Sterling's novel The Difference Engine comes from Whitechapel.

One of the episodes in Michael Moorcock's novel Breakfast in the Ruins takes place in 1905 Whitechapel, described from the point of view of an eleven year old Jewish refugee from Poland, working with his parents at a sweatshop, who is caught up in the deadly confrontation between Russian revolutionaries and agents of the Czar's Secret Police.

Brick Lane, the 2003 novel by Monica Ali is based in Whitechapel and documents the life of a young Bangladeshi woman's experience of living in Tower Hamlets in the 1990s and early 2000s.

[45] It also features as the setting for the science fiction Webcomic FreakAngels, written by popular comics writer Warren Ellis.

Whitechapel is one of the worldwide locations referenced in Edith Piaf's song C'est à Hambourg [2], describing the harsh life of prostitutes.

In addition to the prominent figures detailed in the article: Whitechapel Market and the A11 corridor is currently the subject of a £20 million investment to improve the public spaces along the route.