Stock Photo - Scene from 1920 of a Chinese restaurant in London's Chinatown in Limehouse. The first Chinese to settle in Britain arrived in the late 18th century. They were exclusively male, and employees of the East India Company, settling in the dock areas of Liverpool and Limehouse in London. Although the success of the British in the Opium Wars (1840 - 1842) led to an increased degree of contact between Britain and China, the Chinese population in Britain remained very, very small. At the turn of the 20th Century there were just 545 Chinese in Britain, almost all male. They ran small shops and cafes, catering for the extremely transient Chinese population of seamen. This particular restaurant has a penny-in-the-slot machine on one wall. Chinatown moved from Limehouse to Soho in the 1950's.