Haggerston

"Right alongside cod, haddock, skate," bleh, "skate, and plaice.

I gave the plaice fish a go on my third visit to simply the best fish bar, Haggerston."

Mm-hmm.

"It was utterly foul." [laughs]

After experiencing many vicissitudes, he fell in his old age into poverty owing to two heavy losses, namely by the burning of the Royalty Theatre and by the drowning of 15 horses at sea, the vessel in which they were being transported being wrecked in a storm.

In his latter years, he was the proprietor of a penny gaff at Haggerston and, being prosecuted for keeping it, drove to Worship Street Police Court in a box on wheels drawn by a Shetland pony and presented himself before the magistrate in a garment made of a bear skin.

He was then in his 90th year and died two years afterwards in a miserable lodging in Mill Street, Lambeth Walk.

There is a story told of Astley by way of illustration of his ignorance of music, which, if true, would show that the amphitheater boasted an orchestra even in these early years of its existence.

In this episode, we trace the strange threads that bind twentieth century London gangsters, early Jutish migrations, eighteenth century naval warfare, and Celtic missionary work, how myth, evidence, and politics interlace across Britain's past.

Picture a narrow street in Bethnal Green on a rain slick night in the early nineteen fifties, and you can almost hear two men, identical twins, brothers from Haggerston, crawling through the shadows while the world beyond still dreams of post-war recovery.

They were Ronnie and Reggie Kray, and their story starts with petty street brawls and a hunger for power that would soon reshape an entire neighborhood.

By the early sixties, the Kray firm had carved out a monopoly on protection rackets across the East End, collecting fees from pubs, clubs, and even theaters.

Investigators led by Detective Superintendent Leonard Nipper, Red were the first to realize that two brothers could be so organized and ruthless without being caught.

They started gathering CCTV footage from nearby cinemas, bribing witnesses in exchange for alibis, and building a dossier of the firm's money lending operations.

By nineteen sixty-eight, when Red finally cornered them at their mother's flat on Haggerston Road, the evidence was enough to break through the intimidation that had long kept the press quiet.

The trial that followed in nineteen sixty-nine at the Old Bailey turned the city into a courtroom drama.