33 Dunstan Dwellings, home to Rudolf Rocker and anarchists
Opposite Bourgeois house www.flickr.com/photos/davidsankey/4771957650/in/set-72157... are these Victorian flats. In 1885 Rudolf Rocker arrived in London. Rocker, a Roman Catholic by birth, came from Germany and was an anarchist. He had worked with Jews in Paris, where they were relatively prosperous, and was deeply shocked at the conditions he found in the East End. Rocker lived in St Dunstan's Buildings, Stepney Way, with a Jewish anarchist commune of 'chavarim' (comrades) who worshipped the very ground on which he stood.
An exceedingly energetic man, Rocker taught himself Yiddish and was the founder of the International Workers' Educational Club in Berner Street (now Henriques Street) off the Commercial Road. It was in the yard that sided onto this club that the body of Elizabeth Stride, Jack the Ripper's third victim, was found on 30th September 1888.
Here, at the club which everybody called the 'Anarchist Club', Rocker organized lectures by such socialist and anarchist superstars as Prince Peter Kropotkin, William Morris, Enrico Malatesta and Louise Michel. There was a tea room (selling Russian tea) and a library, and Rocker would also organize children's trips to Hampstead Heath or lecture tours of the British Museum.