The site of 255–259 Whitechapel Road was developed or redeveloped around 1675 when a 499-year manorial lease was granted. There are still buildings of a humble early scale here, perhaps with early nineteenth-century origins, though little old fabric appears to survive. The shop at No. 259, then a glass warehouse, was where in 1884 Joseph Carey Merrick (the Elephant Man) was put on display and first encountered by Frederick Treves, the surgeon who took him to the London Hospital. The façade’s brickwork was re-exposed around 2012.1
The National Archives, IR58/84806/2347: London Metropolitan Archives, District Surveyors Returns: Post Office Directories: Peter Ford and Michael Howell, The True History of the Elephant__ Man: The definitive account of the tragic and extraordinary life of Joseph Carey Merrick, 2010 ↩