The Man who Bought London by Edgar Wallace

Hember Street, Commercial Road, has long since been given over to the stranger within the gate. Great gaunt "models," which are models in ugliness, models in cheerless drabness, but never models of what domestic comfort should be, raised their unshapely, lop-sided heads to the grey skies, and between model and model are untidy doorways through which, all the time, pass in and out never-ending strings of ugly men and stodgy, vacant-faced children.

Here you may catch the sound of a dozen tongues; every language that is spoken from the Baltic to the Caspian, and from the Ural Mountains to the Finnish shore is repeated in the jibber-jabber of these uncleanly men and frowsy girl-women. The neighbourhood is for the most part populated by respectable and honest (if unsavoury) people, hard-working and industrious in a sense which the average working-class man of London would not understand, for it is an industry which rises at five and ends its work when smarting eyes and reeling brain make further effort impossible.