Nowadays Lisson Grove is much improved west London, but for over a hundred years it was one of the capital's worst slums. The area was notorious for drinking, crime and prostitution, as well as the extreme poverty of the people and the squalor and dilapidation of the homes they lived in. Local police officers only patrolled the district in pairs, and they described the women of the area as the most drunken, violent and foul-mouthed in all London. The fictional Eliza Doolittle in George Bernard Shaw's Pygmalion was born and raised in Lisson Grove.