The Blind Beggar

The most famous pub murder in British criminal history happened here on 9 March 1966. Ronnie Kray walked in, found George Cornell sitting at the bar with a light ale, and shot him in the forehead. The barmaid ducked behind the counter. Nobody testified for three years. The Blind Beggar was built in 1894, but there's been a pub on this site since before 1654 — William Booth preached his first open-air sermon outside in 1865, which eventually became the Salvation Army. Two very different legacies for one Whitechapel pub. The Cornell story is on the walls now, naturally. You start here because it's the headline, and because everything that follows needs the context.