By the late 1800s London's East End needed a new river crossing downstream of London Bridge, but a fixed bridge would block sailing ships reaching the Pool of London. After more than fifty designs were submitted, Parliament approved a bascule bridge in 1885, with a central span split into two leaves that rise to let ships pass. Construction started in 1886 and took eight years, with 1,200 workers involved overall and ten fatal accidents. It opened on 30 June 1894 and cost £1,184,000.

In 1909 D. W. Griffith made a 14-minute film about a speculator who corners the wheat market and doubles the price of bread. A farmer sows his field while a 'Wheat King' gambles in the Chicago wheat pit; bakers raise the loaf from five cents to ten and the poor line up for bread. Griffith cut back and forth between the farm, the feast and the breadline, a technique called parallel editing, so audiences saw both ends of the economy at once. The film drew on Frank Norris's stories and on a real scheme: months earlier Chicago financier James Patten had cornered wheat, sent bread prices up and made about $5 million, roughly $185 million today.