Hoxton - People With Hoxton Links

People With Hoxton Links

• Charles Bradlaugh was born in Hoxton.
• Frank Chapple, union leader, was born and raised in Hoxton. He was ennobled as Lord Chapple of Hoxton in 1985 by Margaret Thatcher.
• Peter Dean, who played Pete Beale in EastEnders from 1985 to 1993, was born at Hoxton in 1939.
• Jason Donovan, actor and singer, lived in Hoxton whilst appearing in numerous West End shows.
• Alfred Hitchcock began his career at the Gainsborough Studios
• Reggie & Ronnie Kray – East End gangsters born in Stene Street Hoxton (1933)
• Marie Lloyd – Music hall star, was born Matilda Alice Victoria Wood here on 12 February 1870. The eldest of nine children. She, and her sisters longed to go on the stage, and haunted the local Royal Eagle Tavern, Music hall, on City Road (where their father also worked, as a waiter). Seven of her siblings went onto professional stage careers, adopting the surname Lloyd, apart from Daisy, who had a successful career as Daisy Wood.
• Lenny McLean, actor, bouncer, bare-knuckle boxer and 'hardest man in Britain' was born here
• Jamie Oliver opened the original Fifteen restaurant in Hoxton in 2002
• James Parkinson (physician and researcher on Parkinson's Disease, was a resident of Hoxton Square)
• Jason Pierce, of the band Spaceman 3 and Spiritualized lives in Hoxton.
• Abraham Rees, (editor and Unitarian minister was a tutor at Hoxton Academy)
• George Sewell, renowned TV actor was born in Hoxton.
• Mary Wollstonecraft (social reformer, writer, mother of Mary Shelley, born and lived early years here)
• Hoxton Tom McCourt, influential in the late 1970s and early 1980s mod and oi/punk scenes and founder of the band, the 4-Skins
• Post-war variety star comedian Charlie Smithers was born in Hoxton.
• The Stage newspaper columnist Tommy Kane was born in bygone Harman Street Hoxton on 24 March 1933. In his column headed "Raising Kane", which ran from 1965 to 1981, he featured many unknowns who became famous. Amongst these were Charlie Smithers, Lennie Peters, Mike Reid, Grace Kennedy, Carol Lee Scott (Grotbags), Michael Barrymore, and Ray Donn, who became famed for his successful Publand Variety Shows from 1966 to 1980.