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
Skeptics in the Pub including more than 30 in the US and more than 40 in the UK. In 2009, D. J. Grothe described the rise of Skeptics in the Pub across cities in North America and elsewhere as a prominent example of "Skepticism 2.0". SITPs were often founded outside the realm of existing skeptical organisations (mostly centred around magazines), with some successful meetings growing out to become fully-fledged membership organisations. "Skeptics in the Pub" would later serve as the template for other skeptical, rationalist, and atheist meet-ups around the globe, including The James Randi Educational Foundation's "The Amazing Meeting", Drinking Skeptically, The Brights,