The Gentle Author

By: J. David Chapman/May 23, 2019

I may have had the most interesting day of my eight years of coming to London to teach and do research. One of my favorite parts of town is the east side of London – a borough called Tower Hamlet. This area was just outside the walls of London in the day and was the chosen place for immigrants to settle upon arriving in London. The original group was the Huguenots, who were reformist Christian silk weavers fleeing persecution in France.

By the Victorian era, the silk industry had entered a long decline and the beautiful old merchant buildings had degenerated into an area of slums. My two favorite districts in the Tower Hamlet Borough are Spitalfield and Whitechapel. The area is famous for the Jack-the-Ripper murders that occurred during 1888-1891. One of the five murdered was Annie Chapman, who I insist to my students was a distant relative.

Ever since the Huguenots left the east side, it has been occupied by different immigrant groups. The Jews took a turn, followed by the Irish weavers, who were followed by the Bangladeshi weavers. The borough is now considered one of the most diverse areas in the world and the largest Muslim population in England.

Six University of Central Oklahoma research students, my colleague Dan Range, and myself were treated to a storytelling and history lesson by a well-known writer who publishes an anonymous blog on gentrification in the district. He writes by the pseudonym Gentle Author. We met in the basement of a residential town house built in 1721 that has been converted to a very unique coffee shop. The students, as well as Dan and I, were hanging on his every word.

He is currently trying to save the historic Whitechapel Bell Foundry – the world’s most famous bell foundry – which was closed a year ago when the building was sold. It is also Britain’s oldest manufacturing company. It has occupied the same building since 1738 making bells. The original Liberty Bell and Big Ben bells were manufactured in this facility. It was sold for £5.1 million and then resold the same day to an American for £7.9 million with the intention of building a bouquet hotel. In order to proceed, the developers require permission for change of use, from bell foundry to hotel, from Tower Hamlets Council.

J. David Chapman is an associate professor of finance and real estate at the University of Central Oklahoma (jchapman7@uco.edu).