The Blind Beggar The Blind Beggar The Blind Beggar is a pub on Whitechapel Road in Whitechapel in the East End of London, England. It is where Ronnie Kray murdered George Cornell in front of witnesses, and is the location of William Booth's first sermon, which led to the creation of the Salvation Army. It was the nearest outlet (or brewery tap) for the Manns Albion brewery, where the first modern Brown Ale was brewed. The pub was built in 1894 on the site of an inn which had been established before 1654, and takes its name from the legend of Henry de
Whitechapel Adler wrote, "The further we penetrated into this Whitechapel, the more our hearts sank. Was this London? Never in Russia, never later in the worst slums of New York, were we to see such poverty as in the London of the 1880s." This endemic poverty drove many women to prostitution. In October 1888 the Metropolitan Police estimated that there were 1,200 prostitutes "of very low class" resident in Whitechapel and about 62 brothels. Reference is specifically made to them in Charles Booth's "Life and Labour of the People in London", specially to dwellings called Blackwall Buildings belonging to Blackwall Railway.