"Kate’s Kitchen sat on St George’s Highway about a mile east of Smithfield on the corner of Neptune Street and was situated at the rough end of Wapping and Shadwell’s main thoroughfare. Her eating house drew trade from the old St Katharine’s church area and the 
tobacco docks as well as the port offices around the Royal Mint.
The shop took up most of the downstairs part of the property and allowed Kate a small parlour, accessed from behind the counter and through the back door. The room had a fireplace and a set of narrow wooden steps leading to the two rooms above, where she and her children slept. The backyard contained the privy and the chicken coop. The derelict stable formed the back wall."
This shop is situated opposite Spitalfields Market just around the corner from the City of London but it is very like the eating house that Kate lived and worked in. As dinner at this period was eaten at mid-day shops like Kate's Kitchen were immensely popular with the working-class families who had very limited access to cooking facilities. Eating houses offered low-cost but filling meals and the menu from Kate's shop was taken from Walter Besant's 1901 book East London.
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"Isaac Ketch, the bully-boy who supervised the lodgers, was sitting with his feet up on the fender cleaning his teeth with the point of his knife. He looked up and grinned as she swept over to him.
‘You made swift work of that yokel.’ His eyes drifted down to her cleavage. ‘You out for another?’
Aggie nodded. ‘Keep the room free.’ She adjusted the front of her gown again. ‘I’m popping into the Blue Coat Boy for a couple before I catch another dick.’
She stepped out into Dorset Street and shielded her eyes against the hazy December light. The closely packed houses on either side seemed to lean towards each other and the sun only illuminated the cobbles briefly at sunrise and sunset. The rest of the time the squalid thoroughfare was left in shadow. The once-fine homes were now mainly lodging houses and outside each there was the usual collection of tatty individuals waiting for the superintendent to let them in for the night. As the working day had not yet ended, it was mainly barefooted women clutching babies and children, huddled together against the biting cold."
There is no more fitting street in all East London for Aggie Wilcox to live in than Dorset Street, which ran through the heart of the Spitalfields rookery. It has the dubious honour of being known as the worst street in London. It confirmed this title when Mary Kelly, Jack the Ripper's final and most bloody victim, was discovered in a rented room in Millier's Court, a narrow courtyard at the back of Dorset Street.
Ralph L. Finn's recalling his childhood growing up in close proximity to Dorset Street as it being 'a street of whores' and than "It teemed with nasty characters - desperate, wicked, lecherous, razor-slashing hoodlums. With pubs every few yards, bawdy houses every few feet and peopled by roaring drunken fighting-mad killers"
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"Jonathan signed his name at the bottom of last week’s log, put his hands behind his head 
and leaned back.
St Katharine’s was a purpose-built single-storey rectangular building with a pitched roof. It had once faced the old medieval church of the same name but that had been swept away when the dock had been built some forty years before. Now there were only warehouses as neighbours.
The walls of the classroom had been painted a toneless grey so long ago that much of it had flaked off to expose the coarse brickwork underneath. A series of wax-coated posters depicting the kings and queens of England and a British man-of-war in full sail hung from the picture rail, like old regimental flags. Each print was so faded that even at a distance of three feet it was difficult to discern Elizabeth I from Charles II. Beside the tall teacher’s desk stood an abacus and a hinged blackboard with more wood than pitch on the surface. Tucked in the corner was a cupboard where the slates and scribers were kept. The girls’ end of the classroom looked much the same but with posters of native trees and flowers instead of military subjects."
Although education wasn't made compulsory until 1880 there were many charity schools in East London and the City for poor children to attend. Both myself and my brother went to foundation schools. I was a pupil at Sir John Cass and my brother went to Raine's Grammar, founded in the 1700s by a Wapping brewer and which has featured in all four Wapping books.
There was an actual St Katherine's school but it was swept away, along with the old medieval church it was attached to, when St Katherine's dock was built in the 1820s.
The picture above is of St John's school, with it's Coade stone figure seen so often on charity school of the period, was bombed in WW2 and is now frontage for housing.
"Jonathan went to the blackboard to chalk up the first lesson. ‘Potter and Lamb, please give out the slates,’ he said to the monitors. ‘And Logan …’ A lad sprawled across a desk at the back row looked up. ‘Down here where Mr Rudd can see you.’ He pointed at the vacant seat in the front row then finished writing the neat row of words.
He turned and addressed the class. ‘The first lesson today is reading. For those of you who are paying attention’ – he glared at two boys in the middle row elbowing each other who stopped immediately – ‘I have written this week’s words clearly on the board.’ He tapped the chalk on the first line. ‘The under eights must learn the first three rows and any of the rows after if they can. The rest of you must master all thirty words for the test on Friday. I am leaving Mr Rudd to supervise you as I have matters that require my attention. ’
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"Freddie pressed himself hard against the wall and swivelled his eyes to the right to keep them trained on the police 
officer checking the doors at the end of the alley. The beam from the officer’s bull-eyed lamp cut through the thick fog snaking up from the river. Freddie drew in a deep breath and held it. Ollie, Stefan and Inchy Pete, the gang’s slip-in boy, did the same beside him.
The officer rattled the lock of the last warehouse and then plodded out of sight. Stefan laid a massive hand on Pete’s shoulder. ‘Ready?’
‘Yes, Mr Magson.’
Stefan cupped his hands and bent forward. Inchy put one bare foot in the improvised stirrup and Stefan lifted him on to his shoulders. The boy took a knife from his belt and clamped it between his teeth, then scrambled up the narrow window ledge before disappearing inside.
The warehouse above is typical of the waterside storehouse that received millions of pounds worth of goods each day from all over the empire and were the constant target for thieves such as Freddie's Black Eagle Gang.
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"As the sun disappeared behind the row of shops opposite, Jonathan climbed the white steps to number 83 Cannon Street Road and knocked on the huge imposing door. He turned and looked around. Mrs Benson’s house seemed out of place amongst the busy shops. Its uncluttered whitewashed façade stood out in marked contrast to its neighbours, most of which had long since ceased to be homes and now had shops on the lower level with dwellings above. The painted placards advertising everything from soap to ship’s tack sat like brash newcomers alongside the genteel grey-painted shutters of the upper floors. The door was soon opened and Jonathan was greeted by an aged servant dressed in a dark suit hanging loosely from his narrow shoulders.
‘I’m Captain Quinn,’ Jonathan said, stepping in. ‘I believe Mrs Benson is expecting me.’ "
I situated Mrs Benson's house on Cannon Street Road after discovering this almost intact early Georgian door squashed between Bangladeshi cash and carrys and multi-occupancy housing.
Its ornate carpentry and grand design testifies to the affluent merchants and traders who once made their homes in the area and drove the expanse of the British Empire in the 18th and 19th centuries.
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"Mabel held up the silver teapot. ‘Can I pour you another, Captain Quinn?’
‘Please.’ Jonathan handed her his cup.
‘You have a lovely house, Mrs Puttock,’ he said, glancing around at the red flock wallpaper, tassel-fringed drapes and thick lace curtains. ‘And such an array of figurines in your display cabinets.’
‘Mama is a collector of fine porcelain, along with other novelties.’ Mabel indicated the dozen or so stuffed birds captured beneath a crystal dome on the sideboard.
Mrs Puttock gazed up at the framed photograph of her husband standing stiffly beside a potted aspidistra on the mantelshelf. ‘I see it as my God-given duty to provide my dear Ernest with a refuge from the cares of the business world. After all, he is our provider and head of the household.’"
In contrast to Kate's humble home at the back of the eating house I've given Mabel Puttock, Kate's rival for Jonathan's affections, a typical upper middle-class Victorian home. Although she didn't have Kate's day to day worries about keeping a roof over her head or feeding her children in many way's Mabel's life was much more restrictive than Kate's. Unmarried women were expected to be their mother's companion and often had very little education. They were shelter from the harsh realities of life and with no interests outside the home they were driven to fill their time, like Mabel does, with charity work and hobbies.