This volume begins with the early history of Stepney which covered most of the area of the London Borough of Tower Hamlets in the middle ages, followed by an account of the north-western quarter which from 1743 formed the parish of Bethnal Green

Stepney, stretching eastward along the Thames from the Tower to the Lea and commemorating an Anglo-Saxon landing place, had tidal mills by 1086. Land was in demand by Londoners in the 13th century and by courtiers in the 14th. Poplar, with its anchorage at Blackwall, and Ratcliff and Shadwell were the most populous parts by Tudor times.
Bethnal Green contained Stepney's manor house, once perhaps a hunting lodge, and a green with a chapel. It provided country retreats by the 16th century and was settled from Shoreditch and Mile End in the 17th, when it had its own officials before the building of a church completed its administrative separation. It formed a metropolitan borough from 1900.