Publisher's Synopsis
The unsung and remarkable stories of the women who held London's East End together during not one, but two world wars. Minksy, Gladys, Beatty, Joan, Girl Walker. While the men were at war, these women ruled the streets of the East End. Brought up in the steaming slums and teeming tenements, they struggled against poverty, and fought for their community. But there was also joy to be found. From Stepney to Bethnal Green, Whitechapel to Shoreditch, the streets were alive with peddlers and market stalls hawking their wares, children skipping across hopscotch pitches, the hiss of a gas lamp or the smell of oxtail stew. From taking over the London Underground, standing up to the Kray twins and crawling out of bombsites, The Stepney Doorstep Society tells the vivid and moving stories of the matriarchs who remain the backbone of the East End to this day. "The remarkable story of the women who ruled the East End through the Blitz. A lively authentic social history, the book centres around five formidable working-class women . . . a hair-raising, but always warmhearted tale." MY WEEKLY
