let'em eat amotal

[Burgess, John]

I agree we've about run this into the ground.  Thus, my last posting on 
it (unless you really do want to carry on):

The easy ones:

There's only one Harrods in the UK, no branches anywhere.  The store is, 
in fact, west of the City (the 1 mi^2), in Knightsbridge, in the Burough 
of Kensington & Chelsea which, at that time, would have been Kensington. 
At that time, the area -- off the main streets which is mostly shops, 
though not as upscale as Harrods -- would have been mostly middle class 
houses, with scattered council housing and the occasional 'town house.'

Tower Hamlets were built to house people displaced by the bombings of 
WWII. They replaced what had been mostly little two-story 'terraces' or 
row houses.  Tucked in and around what is now the Tower Hamlets estate 
are 17th-19th Cent. "country houses" of various very upperclass foax, now 
mostly turned into offices and 'community service' operations, though a 
few are still inhabited by the descendants of the original owners.

Again, London doesn't exactly match the traditional west-east gradient of 
increasing industry.  At times in its history, it did; at others, not.  
In its earliest periods (say, through the 1850s) industry was light and 
was mixed in among dwellings.  Thus, "Threadneedle St." on which the Bank 
of England is now cited (which is just about dead center in the City [as 
well as "London"]), was once dedicated to tailors and needlecrafts.  
Mayfair, until about that same period, was where the May Fair, complete 
with cattle, was held. Chelsea had been a residential area since probably 
the 15th Cent. and had been the cite of both pottery kilns and breweries 
until about 1900 at the latest. 

Heavy industries did build up in the east, but that was at least as much 
due to the presence of the docks (where raw materials came in and 
finished products went out) as for the lay of the land.  The automobile 
manufacturers set up west of the main residential areas, but east of 
Chiswick, where the first V2 fell.

Remember, too, the "killer fogs" of London, as when some 3,000 people 
died in one day in the 1950s because of the pollution caused by the coal 
burning (in both houses and industries).

A lot of the points you make are good, general ones, but don't quite fit 
London, for a variety of reasons.

I've been living in London for the past 18 months and make it a practice 
to learn as much as possible about the cities I live in, as I keep moving 
every few years.  As a point of fact, I live in a "maisonette" in 
Pimlico, a couple of streets from Chelsea, and probably within sniffing 
distance of banana breakfasts.

[NOTE: I'm off the circuit for a couple of weeks, so I won't see any 
replies]