Lucius Davoren, Volume I by Mary Elizabeth Braddon

Behold, O reader, the eastern end of the great city; a region strange beyond all measure to the dwellers in the west; a low flat marshy district, where the land and the river seem to have become entangled with each other in inextricable confusion, by reason of manifold creeks and creeklets, basins, and pools, which encroach upon the shore, and where the tall spars of mighty merchantmen and giant emigrant-ships rise cheek by jowl with factory chimneys; where the streets are dark and narrow, and the sound of engines hoarsely labouring greets the ear at every turn; where the staple commodity seems to be ship-biscuit; where the shipchandler has his stronghold; where the provision-dealer has his storehouse, in which vast hoards of dried meats and tinned provisions, pickles, and groceries are piled from floor to ceiling and from cellar to garret; a world in which the explorer stumbles unawares upon ropewalks, or finds himself suddenly involved in a cloud of bonnetless factory girls, thick as locusts in Arabia, who jibe and flout at the stranger. Roads there are, broad and airy enough, which lead away from the narrow streets and the stone basins, the quays, the docks, the steam-cranes, and tall ships-not to the country, there seems no such thing as country accessible from this peculiar world-but to distant marshes and broader water; roads fringed with dingy houses, and here and there a factory, and here and there a house of larger size and greater pretension than its neighbours, shut in by high walls perchance, and boasting an ancient garden; a garden where the tall elms were saplings in the days when kings went hunting on the Essex coast yonder; and when this east-end of London had its share of fashion and splendour.

Perhaps of all these broader thoroughfares, Shadrack-road was the shabbiest. It had struggled into existence later than the rest, and in all its dismal length could boast but one of those substantial old red-brick mansions whose occasional appearance redeemed the commonness of the other high roads. There was a sprinkling of humble shops, a seamen's lodging-house, a terrace or two of shabby-genteel houses, three-storied, with little iron balconies that had never been painted within the memory of man; poor sordid-looking little houses, which were always putting bills in their smoke-darkened windows, beseeching people to come and lodge in them. There were a few modern villas, of the speculative-builders' pattern, whose smart freshness put to shame their surroundings; and one of these, a corner one, with about half a perch of garden-ground, was distinguished by a red lamp and a brass-plate, on which appeared the following inscription: