Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
district east of London, famed for the work of refugee Huguenot weavers who took up residence there, from St. Mary Spital, from spital, a Middle English shortened form of hospital, sometimes also spittle, hence spittle-man "one who lives in a hospital."
Wikipedia
Spitalfields is a former parish in the borough of Tower Hamlets, partly in Central London and partly in the East End of London, near to Liverpool Street station and Brick Lane. The Liberty of Norton Folgate and the neighbouring Liberty of the Old Artillery Ground were merged into Spitalfields in 1921.
The area straddles Commercial Street and is home to several markets, including the historic Old Spitalfields Market, Brick Lane Market and Cheshire Street. Petticoat Lane Market lies on the area's south-western boundaries.
Usage examples of "spitalfields".
Some time later, on the 10th of November to be exact, during the very early hours of the morning Cicely and I were walking along Dorset Street in Spitalfields, a dingy and poverty-stricken neighborhood.
It was erected by a Spitalfields silk manufacturer, whose family belonged to those parts.
East End of London, specifically Whitechapel and Spitalfields, in the final decades of the Victorian era.
One, Henry Holland, found a constable a couple of blocks away at Spitalfields Market, but the officer told him he could not leave his fixed point.
In any event, she was living by her wits, supplementing whatever small amounts of money she could earn on the streets from selling matches, flowers, and her own crocheting with even smaller amounts from prostitution, working the area right around Spitalfields Market.
Someone thought he saw her in the Ten Bells pub across from Spitalfields Market soon after it opened at 5 A.
On April 2, 1888, another prostitute, Emma Elizabeth Smith, who lived in Spitalfields, had been robbed and raped and a blunt instrument, possibly a bottle, forced into her vagina.
It was almost right next to Spitalfields Market and a short walk from both Goulston Street to the south and Hanbury Street, site of the Chapman murder, to the northeast.