The throbbing dark heart at the centre of the district was Spitalfields. Here, near to the fruit and vegetable market and the soaring white spire of Christ Church, were situated some of the worst streets and accommodation in the area, if not in all of London. Dorset Street, Thrawl Street, Flower and Dean Street, and the smaller thoroughfares contiguous to them, were feared even by the police. Lined primarily with cheap, vice-riddled lodging houses (or ‘doss houses’), and decrepit dwellings whose damp, crumbling interiors had been divided into individual ‘furnished rooms’ for let, these streets
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