"The People of the Abyss" by Jack London The book contains his first-hand account of several weeks spent living in the Whitechapel district of the East End of London in 1902. London attempted to understand the working class of this deprived area of the city, sleeping in workhouses or on the streets, and staying as a lodger with a poor family. The conditions he experienced and wrote about were the same as those endured by an estimated 500,000 of the contemporary London poor.