Tower House (London)

Tower House was a working class jewel in the East End of London during the early 19th Century. A respite from the squalid conditions of disease-ridden lodgings around the area, Tower House provided a safe and relatively clean place to put your head down for a night.

Built in 1902 under the vision and philanthropy of Lord Rowton, Tower House was the fifth development from the Rowton Houses scheme. Lord Rowton, troubled by the conditions he saw on the streets of London, wanted to provide cheap accommodation for the poorly paid. He wanted to provide something that surpassed anything that was on offer at the time for the working man.

Joseph Stalin spent a fortnight in a sixpence-a-night cubicle in Tower House in 1907, when he attended the Fifth Congress of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party across the road in Whitechapel Road, which consolidated the supremacy of the Bolshevik Party.

Writer Jack London called it the "Monster Doss House" in People of the Abyss, his 1902 journey through the poverty of London. He said it was packed with "life that is degrading and unwholesome".

George Orwell, in Down and Out in Paris and London, published in 1933, described it as the best of all common-lodging houses, with "excellent bathrooms". Orwell's only objections to the shilling-a-night rent were the "no cards, no cooking" rules and harsh discipline. No one was admitted before 7pm.


In 2005 it went through extensive renovations and is now offers chic and expensive loft-style flats, which is a shame considering its original purposes