East End is located mainly in the inner London borough of Tower Hamlet. Alison frequently mentioned this location and told many stories about her times in this area. She also hoped to train girls there by ways of cooking and cleaning. East End was mostly known for the impoverished people and large immigrant population, however, the area became more widely known because of the Jack the Ripper cases.

"On the days when he went to lecture at the London University, she would either walk with him, or go to fetch him on those afternoons when he was coming straight home to tea instead of making his way to the Athenaeum Club." (Chapter 4 of The Story of a Modern Woman) The Athenaeum Club is a private club in London for men and women with shared intellectual interests and distintictions in areas such as engineering, literature, science, or art. 

        In 1857, the same year author of "The Story of a Modern Women", Ella Hepworth Dixon, was born the British Museum opened a reading room in their library. This was a place that scholars could gather to eduaction themselves and explore different books. It has been renovated since, but was still in use up until 2017.