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Brixton

Brixton is a district of South London, England in the London Borough of Lambeth. It was known to the Anglo-Saxons as Brixistane, and it was named for the Saxon lord Brixi's boundary stone. The Romans built low bridges across the River Effra in Brixton, and it was not until the late 18th century that villages and settlements formed around Brixton as the woodland was reduced and replaced by farmland and market gardens. During the 1860s, the arrival of the railroad led to a building boom in Brixton, and Brixton developed into a major shopping center. From the 1860s to 1890s, Brixton became a middle-class suburb of the City of London, and, in 1888, Electric Avenue became the first street in London to be lit by electricity. At the start of the 20th century, the conversion of large expensive houses into flats and boarding houses led to an influx of the working classes and the decline of Brixton's middle class. By 1925, Brixton housed the largest shopping centre in South London, and World War II and The Blitz led to a severe housing crisis and urban decay in Brixton. The British government enacted slum clearances and built council housing, and, from the 1940s to 1950s, working-class immigrants from the Caribbean and Ireland settled in Brixton, starting in 1948 with the arrival of Jamaican immigrants on the HMT Empire Windrush. By the 1980s, however, Brixton experienced high unemployment, high crime, poor housing, no amenities, and the Metropolitan Police Service's enactment of the discriminatory "sus law" (arresting 1,000 "suspects" within five days), leading to race riots in 1981, 1985, and 1995. During the 2000s, Brixton experienced regeneration and gentrification as an influx of Portuguese and other European immigrants arrived in Brixton to bolster its (aging) population. By 2011, Brixton had a population of 78,536 people.

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