The Blind Beggar

About The Blind Beggar

A large Whitechapel Road corner pub named after a medieval ballad, twice pivotal to East End history: William Booth preached here in 1865, and Ronnie Kray shot George Cornell at the bar in 1966.

The Blind Beggar takes its name from the medieval ballad of Bessee, the beggar's daughter of Bethnal Green, and a pub has traded on this Whitechapel Road corner for centuries, with the current building dating from a Victorian rebuild. It earned a permanent place in social history on 2 July 1865, when the Methodist minister William Booth preached an open-air sermon outside its doors that led directly to the founding of the Salvation Army, an event marked today by a plaque on the wall. A century later the pub turned gangland landmark: on 9 March 1966, Ronnie Kray walked in and shot rival gang member George Cornell dead at the bar, reportedly moments after the jukebox began playing The Walker Brothers' 'The Sun Ain't Gonna Shine Anymore'. Now run independently after a refurbishment, it trades as a large, comfortable Whitechapel local with a function room upstairs, drawing a steady mix of curious visitors tracing Kray history and regular Whitechapel Road trade.