Green’s Dictionary of Slang

Whitechapel adj.

[Whitechapel, the home of Cockney London and the heart of London’s impoverished and thus often criminal East End]

not sl. as such but used in the following combs. to denote poverty, roughness and criminality.

[[UK]N. Ward London Spy XIV 333: But as soon as ever the White-Chapple Salutation was over, Mrs. Betty I found began to exact some further Arguments of his kindness, than just barely kissing].
[US]Yankey in London 169: He guessed he should go to Brumajim [sic] to see them make Whitechapel needles.
[UK]J. Greenwood Seven Curses of London 72: The vulgar robber with his villainous Whitechapel cast of countenance.
[UK]Sl. Dict. 339: Whitechapel anything mean or paltry.
[Aus]Sydney Sl. Dict. (2 edn) [as 1873].

In compounds

Whitechapel brougham (n.) (also Westminster brougham) [the closed carriage known as a brougham was beyond the income of the average Whitechapel costermonger]

a costermonger’s donkey-barrow.

[UK]Hotten Dict. of Modern Sl. etc. (2nd edn) 246: WHITECHAPEL, or westminsterbrougham, a costermonger’s donkey-barrow.
Jrnl Household Brigade 128: Carriages of all descriptions had assembled on the brow, including the elegant barouche, the more useful wagonette, the large farmer’s dogcart, the small farmer’s pony cart, down to what we should call in London the Whitechapel brougham.
[UK]All the Year Round 17 15/1: The cockney must ride on ’bus or coach, on hearse or dray, on Whitechapel brougham.
J.W. Ward Miscellaneous Pieces 325: I would go into the Fish world, and be a purveyor of Oysters on a Whitechapel Brougham in the West End busy streets.
Whitechapel oner (n.) [oner n. (1); i.e. he is number one in local estimation]

a fashionable young man-about-Whitechapel, an East End dandy.

[UK]J. Ware Passing Eng. of the Victorian Era 264/2: Whitechapel oner (Local London). A leader of light and youth in the Aldgate district – chiefly in the high coster interests.
Whitechapel pheasant (n.)

a bloater.

Rackstraw & Muskerry Make Believe 18: Sarah (removing basin with a flourish). Kippers, Milord — kippers, Miladi Bob. Whitechapel pheasant. Allow me. (Serving them round.).
[UK]Nottingham Eve. Post 22 Sept. 3/4: A bloater to [a Londoner] is a ‘Whitechapel pheasant,’ ‘Gravesend sweetmeats’ are shrimps.
Whitechapel play (n.) [both uses stress the snobbish assumption that East Enders are unable to play ostensibly patrician games with the correct skill and subtlety]

1. in whist, the leading of all one’s best cards, with no attempt to finesse the opponent.

Connoisseur 20 Mar. in Brit. Essayists 31 (1823) 75: How many ladies, for want of such a school, are at present shut out from the best company, because they know no more of the game, than what is called Whitechapel play .
[UK]Grose Classical Dict. of the Vulgar Tongue (2nd, 3rd edn) n.p.: To play at whist Whitechapel fashion; i.e. aces and kings first.
[UK]Monthly Mag. 164/2: How we played, I shall not say, but we discovered in no long time, that it was not Whitechapel play.
[UK]Lex. Balatronicum [as cit. 1788].
[UK]Egan Grose’s Classical Dict. of the Vulgar Tongue.
Hoyle’s Games in Philidorian Dec. (1837) 16: To carry everything by a coup-de-main, rather than a ruse-de-guerre, in the way of what is termed in derision Whitechapel play.

2. in billiards, to pot an opponent’s ball.

[UK]Sl. Dict. 339: Potting one’s opponent at billiards is often known as ‘Whitechapel play.’.
Whitechapel portion (n.) (also Whitechapel fortune)

1. the vagina, ‘two torn smocks and what Nature gives’ (B.E.).

[UK]N. Ward London Spy II 46: About half a Hundred Exchange Girls, some Tall, some Short, some Black, some fair [...] but all with White-Chappel Portions and will make very good Wives.
[UK]N. Ward London Terraefilius IV 26: A Hackney Boarding-School; where Mechanicks Daughters are Taught to forget their Parentage, and Young Giddy-Brain’d Citizens are so often Cheated with White-Chappel Fortunes.
[UK]N. Ward Miseries of Whoring 155: For that White-chappel Portion; no, not he / Then what must mournful Miss’s Fortune be?
[UK]New Canting Dict. n.p.: White-chappel-portion, two torn smocks and what Nature gave.
[UK]Bailey Universal Etym. Eng. Dict. [as cit. 1725].
[UK]Grose Classical Dict. of the Vulgar Tongue.
[UK]Lex. Balatronicum.
[UK]Egan Grose’s Classical Dict. of the Vulgar Tongue.

2. ‘a clean gown and a pair of pattens’ (Hotten 1864).

[UK]Hotten Sl. Dict.
[UK]F.W. Carew Autobiog. of a Gipsey 416: My missus – as fly a bewer, she were, as ever chucked a stall, a reg’lar tip-top jamtart [...] though she brought me nothink but a Whitechapel fortin*, she was worth her weight in gold. [footnote] A clean apron and an umbrella.
Whitechapel sailor (n.)

mid-19C a beggar who poses as a victim of a shipwreck, posing in front of pictures of the supposed disaster.

[UK]Sportsman 2 Dec. 2/2: Notes on News [...] The admirably ‘made up’ Whitechapel sailors, who never saw the sea, and used to sit long hours behind a coarse picture — professionally known as a ‘fakement’ — of nautical mishaps.
Whitechapel shave (n.) [the poor cannot afford a barber to shave them]

whitening applied to the face to lighten the ‘five o’clock shadow’.

[UK]Dickens Uncommercial Traveller (1898) 325: Blue-bearded though they were, and bereft of the youthful smoothness of cheek which is imparted by what is termed in Albion a ‘Whitechapel shave’ (and which is, in fact, whitening judiciously applied to the jaws, with the palm of the hand), I recognised them.
[US]K. Porter ‘Still More Ethnic and Place names as Derisive Adjectives’ Western Folklore XXV:1 38: Jew shave. Covering an unshaven face with talcum powder. [...] In England, I believe, the expression is Whitechapel shave.