18 OCTOBER 1930, Page 45

Mr. Lloyd Geor g e lon g a g o made Limehouse a synonym for

the kind of oratory that used to be associated with Billingsgate. More recently Mr. Thomas Burke's sensational tales have sent curious visitors to look for " London's under- world" in the West India Dock Road. The Rector of the parish, Mr. J. G. Birch, in his interesting little volume on Limehouse Through Five Centuries (Sheldon Press, 58.), affirms that Limehouse has been much maligned by the novelist, that there are only a few hundred resident Chinese, and that the parish is mainly English in population and quite respectable though poor. He recalls the pleasant old days when the High Sheriff of Essex could be congratulated by a friend on his " pleasant seat " by the river at Lime- house, or when Pepys and his colleagues went to see the shipyards there. The church was built from a Parliamentary grant made under Queen Anne, and finished by Hawksmoor in 1724. An old custom permits the hoisting of the White Ensign on the church tower, perhaps through the early

connexion of Limehouse with the Navy. - •