- published: 15 May 2016
- views: 139
Coordinates: 51°30′47″N 0°07′52″W / 51.513°N 0.131°W / 51.513; -0.131
Soho is an area of the City of Westminster and part of the West End of London. Long established as an entertainment district, for much of the 20th century Soho had a reputation for sex shops as well as night life and film industry. Since the early 1980s, the area has undergone considerable transformation. It now is predominantly a fashionable district of upmarket restaurants and media offices, with only a small remnant of sex industry venues.
The area of Soho was grazing farmland until 1536, when it was taken by Henry VIII as a royal park for the Palace of Whitehall. The name "Soho" first appears in the 17th century. Most authorities believe that the name derives from a former hunting cry. The Duke of Monmouth used "soho" as a rallying call for his men at the Battle of Sedgemoor, half a century after the name was first used for this area of London.
In the 1660s the Crown granted Soho Fields to Henry Jermyn, 1st Earl of St Albans. He leased 19 of its 22 acres (89,000 m2) to Joseph Girle, who gained permission to build and promptly passed his lease and licence to bricklayer Richard Frith in 1677. Frith began the development. In 1698 William III granted the Crown freehold of most of this area to William, Earl of Portland. Meanwhile the southern part of what became the parish of St. Anne, Soho, was sold by the Crown in parcels in the 16th and 17th centuries, with part going to Robert Sidney, Earl of Leicester.
Jessica Soho is Filipino broadcast journalist, documentarian and news director who received a George Foster Peabody Award and was the first Filipino to win the British Fleet Journalism Award in 1998.
She has reported for the GMA network for 27 years.
A Ka Doroy Valencia awardee, Soho was also one of the 100 Filipino Women of Distinction chosen during the centennial celebration of the Philippines.
Her story of a hostage crisis in Cagayan Valley made her the first Filipino to win in the New York Film Festival for Coverage of a Breaking Story.
She helped conceptualize the one-hour documentary television program I-Witness, which ran for over 10 years becoming the longest running late-night program on the air as of 2009
Her documentaries on the Kidneys for Sale business and Kamao death sport made her the first Filipino reporter, with GMA Network as the first Filipino network, to win the George Foster Peabody Award on 1999.
Soho hosts Kapuso Mo, Jessica Soho and was honored on October 14, 2008, by Quezon City with the Outstanding Citizen Award.