Whitechapel, Middlesex : Historical writing

Descriptive gazetteer entries

These other entries in our collection of descriptive gazetteers are also about Whitechapel. You may be able to find further references to Whitechapel in the descriptive gazetteers by doing a full-text search here.

Place Type of entry Source
Whitechapel parish Bartholomew
WHITECHAPEL a parish and a district Imperial

This additional information from our descriptive gazetteers is for locations within the parish or parishes associated with Whitechapel.

Place Type of entry Source
GOODMANS-FIELDS a sub-district Imperial

Travel writing

This website includes the complete texts of books describing journeys around Britain, written between the twelfth and nineteenth centuries. Selecting one of the links below will take you to the first reference to Whitechapel within the selected text. This will not always be a description of a visit: travellers often mention places other than where they are, for example as a basis for comparison.

Traveller Section No. of Refs.
Daniel Defoe Letter 5 (London), Part 1: Overview and Suburbs 4
Daniel Defoe Letter 5 (London), Part 2: The City 3

This website includes two large libraries, of historical travel writing and of entries from nineteenth century gazetteers describing places. We have text from these sources available for these places near your location:

Place Mentioned in Travel Writing Mentioned in Historical Gazetteer
Mile End New Town 0 2
Spitalfields 13 5
St George in the East 0 2
Aldgate 4 2
Norton Folgate 0 2
Shadwell 2 2
Bethnal Green 6 2
St Katherine 0 2
London Docks 0 1
Stepney 5 2
Bishopsgate 3 1
Tower of London 0 6
Wapping 16 2
Ratcliffe 8 2
Billingsgate 3 0
Horsleydown 0 2
Moorfields 9 1
Haggerston 0 2
Bermondsey 1 2
Shoreditch 8 2

Names from historical writing

The following appear as names for Whitechapel. Follow the links for what the author actually said:

Name Author Source
WHITE CHAPEL Daniel Defoe A tour thro' the whole island of Great Britain, divided into circuits or journies (London: JM Dent and Co, 1927).
WHITECHAPEL John Bartholomew Gazetteer of the British Isles (Edinburgh: Bartholomew, 1887).
John Marius Wilson Imperial Gazetteer of England and Wales (Edinburgh: A Fullarton & Co., 1870-72).

NB: These variant names come from our collections of historical travel writing and descriptive gazetteers:

  • The above links take you to the first reference to this particular version of the name within a book of travel writing, or to the relevant gazetteer entry.
  • Some names may derive from research by antiquarian writers such as William Camden and Thomas Pennant into the Roman, Saxon and medieval names of places. Their claims are not always supported by modern place-name researchers.
  • References by travel writers to the place using its "normal" name are not included. Descriptive gazetteer entries are included only if the name does not appear anywhere else.