Whitechapel Road Road in 1884. Visitors paid to see him in the back room of a shop owned by showman Tom Norman. The shop was directly opposite the Royal London Hospital, and Merrick was frequently visited by doctors. Merrick later moved to the hospital permanently, where he spent the last years of his life. The Blind Beggar is at No. 337 and was the founding point of the Salvation Army following a meeting outside the pub by William Booth in 1865. On 9 March 1966, the venue became notorious after Ronnie Kray fatally shot George Cornell at the pub. The premises remains
Astor Club club in the—at the time—very disreputable area of West London known as Notting Hill. He was acquitted amid talk of "jury nobbling" and interference with witnesses, but the following year was accused of Grievous Bodily Harm (GBH), convicted and sentenced to 5 years' imprisonment. It was at the Astor in December 1965 that the infamous East End (East London) Kray twins had a confrontation with the South London criminals known as the Richardson Gang; during that face-off, the gangster George Cornell is said to have referred to Ronnie Kray as a "fat poofter" (in another version, "a big fat poof"),