Are you a Cockney?

Simon Meyer, the St Mary-le-Bow Tower Master.

Photo: PA / The Telegraph

There are many people who claim to be a Cockney but, are they speaking the truth? According to London tradition, Cockneys are born within earshot of the bells of St Mary-le-Bow, a church situated in Cheapside and built after the Great Fire of 1666.

There has been many debates and studies about how to delimit the bell-hearing range. The areas reached were Bethnal Green, Whitechapel, Spitalfields, Stepney, Hackney, Hoxton, Shoreditch, Bow, Mile End, Poplar, Wapping, Limehouse and Millwall. Other investigations, less exaggerated, limited the area only to Bethnal Green, Whitechapel, Stepney, Hackney and Hoxton.

But nowadays the Cockneys are endangered. Due to the noise pollution, the development of the city and the construction of high buildings, every day is more difficult to heard the chimes of St Mary-le-Bow.

Also, maybe a true Cockney may never be born again, because the only hospital inside the audible area has not a maternity ward.

Whitechapel Murders

Tourists maybe don’t know what or where Whitechapel is, but Londoners have knowledge of this district, for sure. Situated in East London, in the London Borough of Tower Hamlets, it is a poor–working class neighbourhood. In its streets you can find a great diversity. Bangladeshis define the 52% of the community total inhabitants. A really particular neighbourhood full of colours, fruit stands, people and life.

But this zone, years ago, it was really famous because of some horrible crimes. Within its boundaries, from 3rd April of 1888 to 13th February of 1891, the Whitechapel murders happened. Eleven unsolved homicides, five of them prostitutes, were attributed to a serial killer known as Jack the Ripper.

It happened more than one century ago, but the mystery is still present.