Spitalfields is full of barbers, though you might not realise it at first because there are only a couple on Brick Lane (where, coincidentally, Sweeney Todd was born at number 85 in 1756). But a foray into the sidestreets reveals more, and a stroll over towards Bethnal Green or down to Whitechapel will discover others nestling in alleys and appropriating unexpected spaces. Thankfully, most barbers remain as small personal enterprises that speak of the diverse personalities of their owners and the culture of their clientele. I am fascinated by these rare places where men are constantly going to be shaved and trimmed and where, almost uniquely, it is acceptable for men to allow themselves to be vulnerable in a public place, as they submit themselves to the barbers for intimate grooming rituals. Above all, these are masculine spaces, designed for the comfort of men, run by men for men and where women rarely venture. They are utilitarian in appearance by contrast with the decoration of women’s salons, yet I surmise that men are the more frequent visitors to their barbers.
It seems paradoxical that barbers have such large windows (although obviously good light is required for shaving with a cut-throat razor) when the activity inside is of such a private nature, though this may account for the predominance of barbers in side streets. On the day I set out with photographer Sarah Ainslie to visit some barbers, we could not see into many because the windows were steamed up, creating a visible manifestation on the exterior of the emotional intensity within. I was eager for the opportunity to assuage my curiosity about these salons because, as you know, I always get my hair cut at the morgue, but I had reason to question my own enthusiasm as we set out through the sleet on an especially grey afternoon. However, on each occasion as we stepped from the cold street into the warm humidity of the salon, we were met graciously by the barbers and their clients, who even consented to permit a woman to photograph them in their moment of exposure, as long as a certain distance was maintained.
As I observed the men facing up to Sarah’s lense, I realised that there was an element of display involved, an element of masculine pride, even an element of vanity. Now I knew why barbers have huge windows, the expanse of glass creates a theatre where customers become protagonists in a drama enacted for the audience on the street. My assumption was confirmed when we arrived at a salon where the window was entirely free of condensation and the barber was shaving a handsome young man in the seat next to the window onto a busy street, as if to advertise the prowess of his masculine clientele, implying that any passerby could join this rank of heroes simply by coming in for a trim.
Starting in Brick Lane, Sarah and I wove our way through the sidestreets on our bizarre pilgrimage, drifting down through Whitechapel and further South as far as Commercial Rd in the unrelenting damp. We visited big salons and tiny salons, full salons and empty salons, sleek new salons and crumby old parlours. And every one secured a different place in my heart because each possessed a different poetry, a poetry that celebrates human life and hopes, equally containing the mundane need to be tidy alongside the aspiration to be be your best. The humble barbers shop is an oasis of peace and reflection, where cares are shorn away to allow a fresh start. This is where men go to get renewed.
We were told to go in search of Charlie, a legendary barber in Stepney, and eventually we found him exactly where we were told he would be, except his name was actually Michael, but we were still delighted to encounter this genial Turkish barber, who without a doubt was the afternoon’s star turn. To the uninitiated, Michael Gent’s Hair Stylists at 345 Commercial Rd is the most unremarkable barber’s shop you could imagine, but this modest salon has been in operation for over a century. Michael, a sprightly garrulous mustachioed gentleman in a neat blue overall jacket, who has been cutting hair here for thirty-two years, told me he took over from Maurice Pem, a Jewish barber, who was here for thirty-six years and whose unknown predecessor cut hair for at least forty years before that.
“All the time, I miss Istanbul,” revealed Michael striking a pensive note, mid-haircut, gazing out at the low cl0ud in Stepney, as if he could see the towers of the Blue Mosque emerging from the haze, “The city is like a dream.” A moment of nostalgia that led us into a discussion of the work of Orhan Pamuk, before Michael declared himself an Anglophile, “I love this country, the democracy – the country of equality and opportunities.” he said. Then, without a break in our conversation, he completed the haircut, unsheathing a ferocious cut-throat razor and tidying up the edges automatically before instructing his amiable teenage son to lather up the young man swathed in a red towel, prior to a shave. I could but admire the faith of this fellow in the chair, who never even blinked when Michael casually suggested his son might like to have go with the razor to practise his shaving technique. I did not like to ask if it was appropriate to practise on the customers with a cut-throat razor. If the young man had flinched, he might have lost his nose, and I could barely draw breath as Michael berated his son’s clumsy attempts at scraping the stubble, causing the unfortunate apprentice to redden with frustration.
Michael is too much of a professional to expose his customers to any risk and although the young man kept his cool, I believe it was a great relief to all concerned when Michael took over from his son, flashing a professional smile and gripping the young man’s face firmly in one hand while using the other to skim the razor over his jaw with bold strokes – demonstrating, as if to an invisible lecture theatre, exactly how it should be done. With a skill his son will master one day, Michael achieved results almost instantly, pinching the customer’s face and caressing his tender skin proudly. “Look at that, just like a baby’s bottom!” he announced in unselfconscious triumph to the entire salon with a smirk, patting the young man’s cheek in proprietorial affection.
All photographs copyright © Sarah Ainslie
Over recent years, I have always made the detour up the steps through the park and past the bandstand, whenever I walk through Arnold Circus, in order to admire the planting. I like to see the native flowers on the slopes here, especially the Bluebells, Cowslips and Foxgloves that combine with the tall trees arching overhead and the Ivy garlanding the ironwork to create the effect of a piece of woodland transported to the city. Most intriguing is the inclusion of non-native species, particularly a fine range of diverse Hellebores, which complete the planting in a garden alive with detail at every season of the year, that is clearly the product of a sophisticated horticultural sensibility. So it was a pleasure yesterday to meet Andy Willoughby, the shrewd gardener employed by the Friends of Arnold Circus, responsible for the lyrical planting that has enriched this corner of the neighbourhood so attractively.
In part, it has been the success of Andy’s work, drawing attention to the beauty and potential of this neglected circular park in Arnold Circus at the centre of the Boundary Estate that has led to the major renovation works which have just commenced – involving the restoration of the bandstand, the cleaning of the railings, new lighting and benches, and reinstatement of the soil which has subsided due to the effects of rain and gravity since the park opened in 1900. The irony of this situation is that much of Andy’s work will now get trashed before he can move back in once the restoration is complete and commence gardening all over again. However, as much as possible that can be rescued has been transplanted into pots and tubs that currently litter the Boundary Estate, providing temporary accommodation for the displaced plants, and at the end of this feature you can see the gallery of my favourites, all the wonderfully various varieties of Hellebores flowering in exile.
Unfortunately, it will be impossible to rescue everything because Andy has planted so many thousands of bulbs, though he consoles himself in the knowledge that thanks to his work the soil is rich in seeds that will regenerate once the building work is over. After all his hard toil and conscientious devotion, I can see this is understandably an emotional moment for Andy, so I was happy to spend a couple of hours holding plastic sacks as he salvaged a few more plants, while the earth-moving equipment stood waiting to move in on one side and the ironworkers cut up the railings with an angle-grinder on the other side.
When we met and shook hands in Arnold Circus, I immediately noticed Andy’s intense steel-blue eyes, trademark guernsey sweater and direct manner, which is disarming at first because he requires you to connect with him at the same level of open-ness that he shows to you, but it quickly establishes a mutual understanding which allows an ease of discourse without requirement for small talk. The latter is especially useful when there is a job of work to be done and permits dialogue to be restricted to, “Are you warm enough?”, “Take this coat”, “Pass me the fork” and “Hold this bag.”
It is impossible not to respect the strength of character and physical constitution of a man who works fifty to sixty-hour weeks in all weathers outdoors from Easter to Christmas, and keeps very busy with other tasks in between. I noticed that the other workmen on the site were curious, drawn by respect for the obvious intent sense of purpose with which Andy approaches his work, and I was proud to be recognised as Andy’s silent assistant for the morning. As Andy dug clumps from the soil and I held out the sack for him to place them inside, rescuing them from the bulldozer, I was touched to witness at close hand the reverence he has for plants as living things.
“About fifteen years ago, I was at a bit of a loose end,” said Andy quietly, as we worked, introducing his brief account of how gardening came to take over his life. At first, he did grounds maintenance work and cut lawns, but then a job gardening at a hospice for the terminally ill offered the chance to show more creativity. “I learnt most at St Joseph’s Hospice – they liked to keep everything neat and tidy. A friend was a gardener there, so I worked with her and took over when she went on maternity leave. I have no qualifications as a gardener, I learnt from observation – and, by looking up in books, I learnt how things grow.” Andy told me.
Nowadays, as well as his duties at Arnold Circus, Andy gardens at couple of schools, Blue Gate Fields in Cable St, Bangabandhu in Bethnal Green, plus at children’s nurseries, George Green on the Isle of Dogs and Harry Roberts in Stepney, as well Lady Mico’s Almshouses in Stepney and another senior nursing home in Rotherhithe. Andy spoke passionately of his work with children, “They come and help, because they see me doing the work and I explain to them what I do. It is very important that children get an education in plants, otherwise they trample them without knowing what they are doing.” adding, “My mother had a garden and she liked plants,” in explanation of his earliest education in horticulture and revealing the origin of his own green fingers.
It is apparent that Andy loves gardening, derives fulfillment from it and is held in great esteem too. So I was completely astonished when, as we said our goodbyes, he casually revealed all his other previous jobs and accomplishments that filled his life before he arrived at that loose end fifteen years ago – including being a trained nurse, a Buddhist monk, a qualified carpenter and joiner, a bricklayer, a musical instrument-maker specialising in early woodwind, a dustman, a bicycle courier and a skilled rock climber and mountaineer who scaled peaks in the Rockies, the Cascades and the Alps. Travelling widely, Andy was the last European to catch smallpox in India before it was eradicated thirty-five years ago and has the scars to prove it, when I had merely assumed that his ruddy complexion was the result of years weeding in East London.
Now I understood something of the source of the natural authority that Andy possesses, not simply a down-to-earth quality but an insight that sees right through you. I recognised that he carries a wealth of experience which he chooses not to tell, and I was fascinated that gardening brought him into contact with people at all stages of life, from the youngest children at nursery school to senior nursing homes and the dying. Although into his sixties now, I have never met anyone more vitally and physically present in their body than Andy Willoughby, who after experiencing a great deal of life has, like Michel de Montaigne, discovered happiness in cultivating plants.
Over this last weekend, Old Town, the distinctive clothiers from Holt in Norfolk that make classic British workwear, set up shop in Fournier St for three days, as they do each year, to allow their London customers to come and say “hello” while also taking the opportunity to enjoy browsing the complete range of styles and fabrics that have created the company’s reputation for uniquely characterful clothes.
As I have been running around the streets of Spitalfields in the snow, pursuing interviews and carting wooden pallets home for the fire, my only pair of warm Winter trousers have gone in holes. A tailor patched them twice to get me through but now they are entirely finished. Ever since I was a child, I have had an unbroken chain of pairs of tweed trousers that have seen me through all the Winters of my life until now. So this visit by Old Town was the perfect opportunity to go along and get measured up for a new pair all ready for next Winter, because there is no doubt I shall need them.
Let me admit, I had been corresponding in advance with Miss Willey up in Holt for months to arrange the crucial assignation on Saturday morning in Fournier St. When she threw open the door to me, I was stunned to silence by the shock of red hair that gave her the appearance of a dazzling pre-Raphaelite beauty, radiant in the low-angled March sunlight in Spitalfields. Swallowing my amazement, I followed her upstairs to enter the drawing-room where I was transported to discover it rigged out in the style of the clothing department of an early twentieth century regional store.
Everyone that lives in these so-called temperate climes, needs a reliable pair of Winter trousers that fit. And the history of my life has taught me the possession of a good pair can make all the difference when the weather turns grim. So I listened attentively as Miss Willey explained the style options to me with practised eloquence. For women, the choice is between The Denes or The Malverns, both of a wide legged cut, buttoning at either side of the waist – The Denes being of a wider leg and more relaxed waist than The Malverns. For men, there are five options, The Plains, Orfords, High Rise Trousers, Vauxhalls and Dreadnoughts which provide various permutations of leg widths and waist heights, some with high backs and others with fall fronts.
Already, I was captivated by the splendid names, their litany was a poem in itself. Once I had selected the style, I was able to rifle through the swatch book to choose between the linens, corduroys, serges, twills, moleskin and tweed. So much possibility, but, because I need maximum insulation when I am carting pallets through the windy streets of Spitalfields in the icy blast, I chose Harris tweed for my trousers. Then I had the option of herringbone or plain, but this was an easy choice because I am one of those who always chooses “plain” whenever it is an option. As they say, I find “plain” exciting. Now I was almost at the end of the multiple choice questionnaire that would lead to my new trousers. It all came down to blue or brown, specifically Lovat or Heather, and experience told me that I choose brown, which will not show the dirt as readily as blue. Now all I have to do is to travel up to Holt in a few weeks time to collect my new trousers, made especially for me.
It was Walt Whitman who first wore workwear with attitude. When he put on a pair of denim workmen’s trousers, he was a poet and liberal intellectual making a deliberate gesture of solidarity with the working people and over a century later we see the result of his powerful innovation all around us in the ubiquitous blue jeans, that are the most democratic item of clothing on the planet today. Old Town take this to a whole new level, making a wide range of work clothes inspired by classic twentieth century models. Neither slavish imitation, nor parody, the design of Old Town clothes manages to evoke the poetry of their origins while creating comfortable well made garments that transcend fashion, yet blend sympathetically with your Paul Smith, Miu Miu, Dries van Noten and Comme des Garçons pieces too. For years I used to go to great lengths seeking out rare original specimens of canvas work jackets and pull-on shirts to wear, so it is wonderful to discover you can get them made in your size. This is why Old Town evokes such passion among aficionados who are happy to travel to Norfolk for a shirt.
Will Brown, an unassumingly charismatic gentleman in a fetching tweed cap who describes himself as a clothesmaker, is the remarkable talent who designs all the clothes and is also responsible for creating the Old Town “look” including the elegantly austere graphics that make such confident use of Gill Sans. His partner in this singular enterprise is Marie Willey, the flame-haired Geordie with a poet’s grasp of the English language who described her role succintly and incontrovertibly thus, “I am the world’s best critic.” before explaining that she deals with the customers, supervises the work of the seven machinists and cutter, as well as personally making sure all the orders get sent out too. “A huge part of my job is trolling down to the laundry and washing and pressing everything,” said Marie, graphically illustrating her hands-on approach to quality control, “You’ve got to keep it tight,” she declared strictly.
I relish the humour and style of Old Town. They even produce a newspaper the “Evening Star” with the byline “Small life is here” that celebrates their playful world view and guarantees a chuckle. You could never have predicted that a business in a remote corner of Norfolk making clothes that are almost anti-fashion could thrive in the way it has. “We are the slowest growing business you could ever find,” said Marie, proudly aware of the absurdity of their success, based nevertheless upon hard work, imagination and flair. Old Town want to stay small, there will never be a chain and they will never sell out. And this is the beauty of it, doing something modest, doing it expertly, earning a decent living, treating everyone with respect and making clothes people love.
In the Spring, you will be able to read about my trip to Holt on the pilgrimage for trousers, but in the meantime you can watch a soundslide sequence about Old Town by clicking here.
“We see each other three or four times every week to hand over the keys of the laundrette, but in spite of this we have developed a solid bond of friendship,” quipped Philip Green affectionately, speaking of his fellow Director of the Boundary Estate Community Laundrette, the equable Jean Locker. Both live here on the magnificent Estate, built as the first social housing in Britain and are justifiably proud of their laundrette, nestling in Calvert Avenue opposite Leila’s Shop next to Arnold Circus – as they explained to me when I met the two community champions yesterday, for a conference amid the washers and driers, while the customers negotiated around us to manoeuvre their washing in and out of the machines, that churned and rattled as we spoke.
“We needed a laundrette”, explained Jean, “And a lot of people came together to develop the idea of a co-operative to run a laundrette as a social enterprise in the community.” She told me it took two years of hard work to raise enough money and negotiate the lease, before they could open in September 1992, at a time when most of the other shops in Calvert Avenue were derelict and many of the flats in Arnold Circus were boarded up. But the laundrette immediately proved triumphant, not just for laundry but as a vital community centre and symbol of renewal too. Today, hundreds bring their washing each week to the four employees, who also provide a service to many local businesses and, in particular, to the Shoreditch Football Team – who deliver their muddy kit after every game, including their ball in the bag to get it scrubbed up ready for the next fixture.
Although the beautiful laundrette has been a storming success for nearly twenty years now, washing clothes only covers running costs. Whenever maintenance is required funding has to be raised elsewhere, because the co-operative is without any financial reserves. “What comes in, goes out!” said Jean, referring not only to the laundry but also the co-operative’s bank account too. As we spoke, one washer was out of action until money for its repair can be found. Passionate advocates, Phil and Jean spend fifteen hours every week writing letters applying for grants from charities to cover the necessary additional expenses. This is on top of sharing the duties of locking up each night. “It’s been hard, it’s not been easy,” admitted Jean, revealing that, after the first ten years, the machines began to pack up and they raised £15,000 to replace them all. She and Phil are the only active directors of the original twelve now (apart from Anita who does the accounts) and Jean confided that she gives up a day each week of her salaried job, to do the unpaid work required to keep the laundrette open. They both agreed that some younger directors of the co-operative would be welcomed.
I realised I was in the company of a pair of unsung benefactors, Jean with her bold features and clear-eyed sense of social responsibility and Phil, a kind man with a self-deprecating laugh. They put in all this work just so that everyone has a laundrette. Jean told me she always volunteered, “You do it because you live locally and after twenty years here, people rely on us – including the people who work in the laundrette. You can’t pull the plug on that.” Phil agreed “I love the estate, I have a lot friends here and I believe things that are needed must be kept.” I was touched by the nobility of these thoughts in such a modest location, but as I cast my eyes around at the brass plaques listing grants given and awards won, the results of their ideals were self-evident. Everyone loves the beautiful community laundrette at Arnold Circus.
As we talked, there was another individual I wanted to speak with, whom I observed preoccupied with carrying baskets of laundry around, and loading and unloading machines. Marie Glace has been the manageress of the laundrette since 1992, she has been here, day in day out, over all these years, becoming a popular and respected local figure in the process. I am reliably informed that she is a confidante to many people here when they require a trusted counsellor. Eventually, I managed to pull up a chair next to her, and we sat together enjoying the warmth of a washing machine in its hot cycle, sheltered from the icy drafts by the bookshelf that holds the laundrette’s free lending library.
At once, I was spellbound by Marie’s gentle features and soft voice that draws you closer to listen. “I get everybody organised, make sure things run smoothly and deal with complaints. I know everyone round here.” she disclosed, “We’ve had a few dramas when someone’s clothes all got dyed red by accident and they blamed me for it – but the people are alright because everybody’s friendly on the whole. It’s nice to have a community to be part of. The elderly people come, they don’t see anyone all day, so they just bring a few things to wash and have a chat. We make coffee for them and maybe give them a biscuit.” This is the woman who really knows everything that goes on in Arnold Circus, I realised, as she went on to tell me about the married couple whose romance first blossomed over the spin-dry.
The Boundary Estate Community Laundrette was the initiative at the beginning of the renewal of the neighbourhood twenty years ago and it is an enterprise that is true to the spirit of those who first built Arnold Circus. Now we must ensure that the beautiful laundrette continues to exist and thrive as a necessary democratic temple where everyone can meet as equals over wash and tumble-dry.
If you want to show your support for the Boundary Estate Community Laundrette click here to go to their facebook page.
Anyone who has ever visited Dennis Severs’ house in Folgate St will recognise this spectacular chimneypiece in the bedroom with its idiosyncratic pediment designed to emulate the facade of Christ Church, Spitalfields. The fireplace itself is lined with an exquisite array of Delft tiles which you may have admired, but very few people today know that these tiles were made by craftsman Simon Pettet in 1985, when he was twenty years old and living in the house with Dennis Severs. Simon was a gifted ceramicist who mastered the technique of tile-making with such expertise that he could create new Delft tiles in the authentic manner which were almost indistinguishable from those manufactured in the seventeenth century.
In his tiles for this fireplace, Simon made a witty leap of the imagination, using them to create a satirical gallery of familiar Spitalfields personalities from the nineteen eighties. Today his splendid fireplace of tiles exists as a portrait of the neighbourhood at that time, though so discreetly done that unless someone pointed it out to you, it is unlikely you would ever notice amongst all the other beguiling details of Dennis Severs’ house.
Simon Pettet died of Aids in 1993, eight years after completing the fireplace and just before his twenty-eighth birthday, and today his ceramics, especially this fireplace in Dennis Severs’ house, comprise an intriguing and poignant memorial to remind us of a short but extremely productive life. Simon’s death imparts an additional resonance to the humour of his work now, which is touching in the skill he expended to conceal his ingenious achievement. As with so much in these beautiful old buildings, we admire the workmanship without ever knowing the names of the craftsmen who were responsible and Simon aspired to this worthy tradition of anonymous artisans in Spitalfields.
Once Anna Skrine (the former custodian of 27 Fournier St) told me the story, I wanted to go over to Folgate St and take a look for myself. And when I squatted down to peer into the fireplace, I could not help smiling at once to recognise Gilbert & George on the very first tile I saw. Simon had created instantly recognisable likenesses that also recalled Tenniel’s illustrations of Tweedledum & Tweedledee. Most importantly, the spontaneity, colour, texture and sense of line were all exactly as you would expect of a Delft tile. Taking my camera and tripod in hand, I spent a couple of happy hours with my head in the fireplace before emerging sooty and triumphant with this selection of photographs of Simon’s tiles for you to enjoy. Reputedly, there is a portrait of Dan Cruickshank, but it must be hidden behind the fire irons because I could not find it that day.
Mick Pedroli and David Milne, manager and curator at Dennis Severs’ house, who graciously permitted me to invade the fireplace for a morning, were part of the social circle connected to the house that included Simon in the nineteen eighties. They talked about Simon affectionately as a vivid and charismatic presence and revealed that Simon’s clothes remain there in his trunk in his room. Let me also admit my gratitude to Martin Lane for whom Simon made a fine fireplace in the Delft style for his Elder St dining room in 1988. Martin allowed me to photograph the plaque dating his fireplace, which has the order of service from Simon’s funeral in Christ Church, Spitalfields, tucked behind and concealed within the chimney breast.
A week later, I sat down with Marianna Kennedy (who did the gilding on the fireplace) and Jim Howett (who did some of the carpentry) and we enjoyed an afternoon looking at each of these tiles together, as they deliberated over the identities of the people, before arriving at a consensus, accompanied by colourful stories and engaging digressions about the individuals in question. Finally, Hugo Glendinning and Anna Skine told me about the last year of Simon’s life, when he knew he was dying and moved to 27 Fournier St to be cared for there. Hugo described a candlelit party in the last months of Simon’s life, when hundreds of people came to fill the house and celebrate with Simon. Fifteen years on, everyone in Spitalfields who knew Simon remembers him fondly.
When I had almost finished photographing all the tiles, I noticed one placed at the top right-hand side that was entirely hidden from the viewer by the wooden surround on the front of the fireplace. It was almost completely covered in soot too. David Milne used a kitchen scourer to remove the grime and we discovered this most-discreetly placed tile was a portrait of Simon himself at work making tiles. The modesty of the man was such that only someone who climbed into the fireplace, as I did, would ever find Simon’s own signature tile.
Gilbert & George.
Raphael Samuel, foremost historian of the East End.
Riccardo Cinelli , artist
Jim Howett, carpenter, whom Dennis Severs considered to be the fly on the wall in Spitalfields.
Ben Langlands and Nikki Bell, two artists, who made money on the side as housepainters.
Simon de Courcy Wheeler, photographer
Julian Humphreys, who renovated his bathroom regularly, “Tomorrow is another day.”
Scotsman, Paul Duncan, who worked for the Spitalfields Trust.
Douglas Blain, director of the Spitalfields Trust, who was devoted to Hawksmoor.
The person in this illustration of a famous event in Folgate St cannot be named for legal reasons.
Keith and Jane Bowler of Wilkes Street.
Her Majesty the Cat, known as “Madge,” watching “Come Dancing.”
Marianna Kennedy and Ian Harper, who were both students at the Slade.
Phyllis Archer and her son Rodney (featured in Saturday’s post).
Anna Skrine, secretary of the Spitalfields Trust.
Simon Pettet, designer and craftman (1965-93)
I walked in sunlight through the frost to discover the market full of life early this morning. The very first thing that caught my eye were these Auriculas (or Laced Primulas) and I bought the only tray of fifteen plants outright for £10. On the very same Sunday last year, I also bought the only tray of Auriculas from Denise who grows them in a nursery at Battlesbridge in Essex, and they were much admired. In fact, I learnt that Auriculas are believed to have been introduced by the Huguenot weavers in the sixteenth century, which makes it especially appropriate to have them here in Spitalfields.
Auriculas have had a special place in my affections since I first saw them when I visited the writer Lucy Boston at the Manor, Hemingford Grey in Cambridgeshire – a twelfth century manor that has been continuously inhabited since it was built and is believed to be one of the oldest houses in England. Lucy was ninety-seven at the time and warned me over the phone that she was no longer walking much, when I called to say I was on my way. So I did not know what to expect, but when she opened the front door, to my surprise, she said “Follow me!” and ran upstairs. When I commented in admiration at the breadth of the ancient floorboards in the upstairs hall, each of which was the size of a whole tree, Lucy replied, “Oh but these are not original, these were put in recently – in the fourteenth century.” The Manor at Hemingford Grey was the house that inspired Lucy Boston to write her celebrated series of children’s books about Greene Knowe and it is the most truly enchanted place I have ever been.
Among many highlights of her remarkable garden, Lucy had a section of black flowers and this is where I came across the Auriculas. Although, in general, I am not an enthusiast of articifial-looking flowers, Auriculas are the exception to my rule. I love the delicate borders on each petal that seem to have been painted on. The ones I bought today from Columbia Rd are a satisfying russet colour with custard-yellow borders to the petals and egg yolk-yellow centres. If I deadhead them conscientiously, they will give me two months of spectacular flowers, as they did last year. And if, by chance, we should get more snow, I shall run outside and carry my pots of Auriculas inside to shelter them from the blast.
Rodney Archer kindly took me to lunch at E.Pellicci yesterday, but first I went round to his eighteenth century house in Fournier St to take this portrait of him in front of his cherished fireplace that once belonged to Oscar Wilde. One day in 1970, Rodney was visiting an old friend who lived in Tite St next to Wilde’s house and saw the builders were doing renovations, so he seized the opportunity to walk through the door of the house that had once been the great writer’s dwelling. The fireplace had been torn out of the wall in Wilde’s living room as part of a modernisation of the property and the workmen were about to carry it away, so Rodney offered to buy it on the spot. For ten pounds he acquired a literary relic of the highest order, the fine pilastered fireplace with tall overmantle that you see above, and which today has become a shrine to Wilde that is the centrepiece of Rodney’s first floor living room in Fournier St. You can see Spy’s famous caricature of Wilde up on the chimneypiece, but the gem of Rodney’s Wilde collection is a copy of Lord Alfred Douglas’ poems with pencil annotations by Douglas himself. Encountering these artifacts in this environment – that already possess such a potent poetry of their own, amplified by their proximity to each other – is especially enchanting.
I adore the way Rodney lives in his lovely old house, allowing the patina of ages to remain, endowing the place with a powerfully seductive atmosphere evocative of its past residents. An atmosphere enhanced by Rodney’s sensational collection of pictures, carpets, furniture, books, china and god-knows-what, that he has accumulated over all the years he has lived in it, which transform the house into three-dimensional map of his extraordinary vigorous mind and imagination, crammed with images, stories and all manner of cultured enthusiasms. No single item is of great monetary value in itself yet everything is charismatic. In Rodney’s house, anyone would feel at home the minute they walked in the door because the effect of all these accretions is sublime, everything has arrived in its natural place yet nothing feels arranged. It is a relaxing place, with reflected light everywhere, and although there is so much to look at and so many stories to learn, it is peaceful and benign, like Rodney himself. Rodney’s style can never be replicated by anyone else, unless you became Rodney and you could live through those years again.
Rodney came to live here in London’s most magical street in 1980. It came about after his mother fell down a well at The Roundhouse and broke her hip while visiting a performance of “The Homosexual (or The Difficulty of Sexpressing Yourself)” by Copi in which Rodney was starring. It was the culmination of Rodney’s distinguished career of just eight years as an actor, that included playing the Player Queen in Hamlet at the Bristol Old Vic in a production with Richard Pasco in the title role and featuring Patrick Stewart as Horatio.
After she fell down the well, Rodney’s mother told him that her doctor insisted she live with her son, much to Rodney’s surprise. Gamely, Rodney agreed, on the condition they find somewhere large enough to live their own lives with some degree of independence, and rang up his friends Riccardo and Eric who lived in Fournier St, asking them to keep their eyes open for any house that went on sale. Within three months, a house came up. It was the only one they looked at and Rodney has lived there happily ever since. Thirty years ago, Spitalfields was not the desirable location it is today, “My mother thought I was joking when I told her where I wanted live,” declared Rodney, raising his eyebrows, “Now it would nice if there were more people living here who were not millionaires. I visit people in houses today where there are ghosts of people I used to know and the new people don’t know who they were, it’s sad.”
Rodney’s roots are in East London, he was born in Gidea Park, but once his father (a flying officer in the RAF) was killed in action over Malta in 1943, his mother took Rodney and his sister away to Toronto when they were tiny children and brought them up there on her own. Rodney came back to London in 1962 with the rich Canadian accent (which sounds almost Scottish to me) that he retains to this day, in spite of the actor’s voice training he received at Lamba which has imparted such a mellifluous tone to his speech. After his brief years treading the boards, Rodney became a teacher of drama at the City Lit and ran the Operating Theatre Company, staging his own play “The Harlot’s Curse” (co-authored with Powell Jones) in the Princelet St Synagogue with great success.
“When I retired, I decided to do whatever I wanted to do,“ announced Rodney with a twinkly smile, at this point in his life story. “Now I am having a wonderful third act. Writing about that time, my mother, the cats and me…” he said, introducing the long-awaited trilogy of autobiographical fiction that he is currently working on, in which the first volume will cover his first eight years in Spitalfields concluding with the death of his mother in 1988, the second volume will conclude with the death of his friend Dennis Severs in 1999 and the third with the death of Eric Elstob. (Elstob was a banker who loved architecture and left a fortune for the refurbishment of Christ Church, Spitalfields.) “There is something about the nature of Spitalfields, that fact becomes fiction – as you become involved with the lives of people here, it gets you telling stories.” explained Rodney, expressing a sentiment that is close to my own heart too.
Now it was time for lunch and, as we walked hungrily up Brick Lane towards Bethnal Green in the Spring sunshine, the postman saluted Rodney and, on cue, the owner of the eel and pie shop leaned out of the doorway to give him a cheery wave too, then, as if to mark the occasion as auspicious, we saw the first shiny new train run along the recently completed East London Line, gliding across the newly constructed bridge, glinting in the sunlight as it passed over our heads and sliding away across Allen Gardens towards Whitechapel. This is the elegant world of Rodney Archer, I thought.
Turning the corner into Bethnal Green Rd, I asked Rodney about the origin of his passion for Wilde and when he revealed he once played Algernon in “The Importance of Being Earnest” at school, his intense grey-blue eyes shone with excitement. It made perfect sense, because I felt as if I was meeting a senior version of Algernon who retained all the wit, charm and sagacity of his earlier years, now having “a wonderful third act” in an apocryphal lost manuscript by Oscar Wilde, recently discovered amongst all the glorious clutter in a beautiful old house in Fournier St, Spitalfields.
For over fifteen years they have kept a celebrity album behind the counter at E.Pellicci, the Italian family-run cafe in the Bethnal Green Rd that was founded in 1900 by Priamo Pellicci. Salvatore (on the extreme left of the picture above) started the album after Julie Christie came in for a cup of coffee years ago and they did not think to ask for her picture until she had gone. So Salvatore decided that any celebrity who passes through must be recorded for posterity, either in a snapshot or at very least by an autograph on a scrap of paper. Regular customers will be familiar with this fat little album which is brought out frequently, whenever anyone feels like leafing through the pages of treasured images and savouring the memorable moments enshrined there, but now thanks to generosity of the Pellicci family I am able to publish a choice selection here for you to enjoy.
The distinguished gentleman with the stylish glasses who recurs throughout these pictures is Nevio Pellicci senior and the skinny young man who grew up to develop Groucho Marx eyebrows is Nevio Pellicci junior (in the green shirt above) whose glamorous sister Anna Pellicci is also to be seen completing the happy family group in many of the photographs.
Colin Farrell and Anna Friel were photographed at Pelliccis just last July whilst filming “The London Boulevard” and there is no doubt that Colin carries the picture above with his graphic features and charismatic emotional presence, just as we are accustomed to seeing him do with such exuberant success in the cinema. But in this instance, while he makes a plausible show of looking cool at first glance, on closer inspection there is an undeniable element of the-rabbit-caught-in-the-headlights about his expression, whereas on the right hand side of the picture Nevio Pellici junior is hamming it up with gleeful reckless abandon.
In fact, as I examined these pictures in detail, it dawned on me that the real star turn here is not delivered by any of the celebrities, it is Nevio Pellicci junior himself with his outrageous cartoon features who reveals the most potent star quality on display. Scrolling through these images, I was almost blinded by his dazzling grin that has a wattage sufficient to light up the entire Bethnal Green Rd at night. Only hoary old troupers like Michael Gambon and Su Pollard manage to avoid being upstaged by young Nevio’s incandescent smile.
The truth is that I find the open-hearted playfulness of this album irresistible. Here you see the Pellicci family (except Maria Pellicci who is always in the kitchen) at home over the last fifteen years as they participate in the long-running drama enacted daily at their beloved cafe. And by the end of this series, Nevio Pellicci junior has taken over from his father Nevio Pellicci senior in Bethnal Green, just as Michael Douglas took over from Kirk Douglas in Hollywood. Interestingly, a comparison of the images of Nevio senior and Nevio junior reveals that Nevio junior inherited his trademark smile from Nevio junior, just as Michael inherited the dimple from Kirk.
If you want to see the full album for yourself and pore over all the autographs too, you simply have to go round to E.Pellicci at 332 Bethnal Green Rd, and if you are a celebrity you should be aware that you cannot truly claim with any credibility to have arrived until you have got your picture in the Pelliccis’ book. Salvatore confided that he was thinking of getting the famous album insured, which sounds like a wise move to me because it is priceless.
Eastenders star Patsy Palmer, who grew up round the corner in Columbia Rd, experiences an emotional return to the cafe where she once enjoyed spaghetti as a little girl.
David Schwimmer takes a break from filming “Run Fat Boy Run” in Columbia Rd to chill with his new friends at Pelliccis in 2007.
Eager young Frank Lampard in 1998 when he played for West Ham before he transferred to Chelsea.
Better known as Sergeant Lynch from “Z Cars,” James Ellis knows how to froth a coffee.
Dizzee Rascal takes a break from filming a video to hang with his brutha in the hood, Nevio.
Clive Owen enjoyed a slap-up breakfast with all the trimmings.
Boxing legend Sir Henry Cooper is proud to make his mark at Pelliccis.
Michael Gambon, who signed himself as Dumbledore, re-enacts a ham sandwich for the camera.
Coronation St’s Ali King and Nevio Pellicci deny all the rumours.
Lil Peters flirts shamelessly with two Chelsea Pensioners.
Ross Kemp and the Pellicci boys.
Jools Holland always pops in when he’s in the East End.
“I’m completely stuffed,” declared Su Pollard.
In 1877, photographer John Thomson and radical journalist Adolphe Smith published “Street Life in London” in twelve monthly parts. A series of portraits of common people following upon the model of Henry Mayhew’s “London Labour and London Poor,” adding photography to the project.
“We have sought to portray these harder phases of life, bringing to bear the precision of photography in illustration of our subjects. The unquestionable accuracy of this testimony will enable us to present true types of the London poor and shield us from the accusation of either underrating or exaggerating individual pecularities of appearance.” wrote the authors in their joint preface.
At first, I was attracted by the evocative photography yet suspicious of the dubious claim of scientific detachment, but when I read this plain account of the life of a man in Whitechapel my sympathies shifted. In fact, “Street Life in London” provided sympathetic interpretation of the lives of the poor for curious middle class readers who wanted to learn more about their fellow men and women.
In the photograph before us we have the calm, undisturbed face of the skilled artisan who has spent a life of tranquil, useful labour, and can enjoy his pipe in peace, while under him sits a woman whose painful expression seems to indicate a troubled existence, and a past which even drink cannot obliterate. By her side, a brawny, healthy “woman of the people” is not to be disturbed from her enjoyment of a “drop of beer” by domestic cares and early acclimatizes her infant to the fumes of tobacco and alcohol. But in the foreground the camera has chronicled the most touching episode. A little girl, not too young, however, to ignore the fatal consequences of drink, has penetrated boldly into the group, as if about to reclaim some relation in danger, and drag him away from evil companionship. There is no sight to be seen in the streets of London more pathetic than this oft-repeated story – the child leading home the drunken parent.
The most remarkable figure in this group is that of “Ted Coally” or “Hookey Alf,” as he is called according to the circumstances. His story is a simple illustration of the accidents that may bring a man into the streets, though born of respectable parents, well-trained and of steady disposition. This man’s father worked in a brewery, earned large wages, married, kept a comfortable home, and apprenticed his son to the trunk-making and packing trade. The boy frequently helped to affix heavy cases to a crane, so that they might be lowered from the top floor of a warehouse into the street. As the boxes were lined up it required considerable strength to push them out of the loop-hole out into the street, and, the young apprentice having inherited his father’s stalwart form, was selected for this work.
On one occasion, however, he threw the whole of his weight against a huge case which, through some mistake, had not been lined with tin; of course the case yielded at once to so tremendous a shock, it swung out into the street, and the lad carried away by his own unresisted impetus, fell head foremost to the pavement below. This accident at once put an end to his career in the trunk and packing trade, and rendered all the expense of his apprenticeship useless.
He recovered, it is true, from the fall, but has ever since been subject to epileptic fits. Finding that under these circumstances, he could no longer attempt complicated and difficult work, he thought he would seek out his living in one of those occupations where mere muscular strength is the chief qualification required. Thus he was able for some time to make his living as a coal porter but, even in this more humble calling, fate seemed to conspire against him. While high up on an iron ladder near the canal, at the Whitechapel coal wharfs, he twisted himself round to speak to someone below, lost his balance and fell head first to the ground. Hastily conveyed to the London Hospital, it was discovered that he had broken his right wrist and his left arm. The latter limb was so seriously injured that amputation was unavoidable, and when Ted Coally reappeared in Whitechapel society, a hook had replaced his lost arm. Thus crippled, he was no longer fit for regular work of any description, and having that time lost his father, the family soon found themselves reduced to want.
“Hookey Alf,” as he was now called, did not, however, lose heart, and, pocketing his pride, he wandered from street to street in search of any sort of work he could find. Hovering in the vicinity of the coal-yards he often met his old fellow-workers, and whenever a little extra help was required they gladly offered him a few pence for what feeble assistance he could render. Gradually he became accustomed to the use of his hook, and proved himself of more assistance than might have been anticipated, but, nevertheless, he has never been able to secure anything like regular employment.
He may often be found waiting around the brewery in the Whitechapel Rd, where ten or twelve tons of coal are frequently taken during the course of the day. “Hookey” stands here on guard, in the hope that when the coal arrives there will be some need of his services to unload. On these occasions he will earn a meal and few pence, and with this he returns home rejoicing. But, if after a long day’s patient endeavour he fails to make anything, the worry and disappointment will probably cause an attack of epilepsy, and thus add ill-health to poverty.
The tender concern of his mother cannot soothe the wounded feelings of the strong man. The energy and will are still there, it is the power of action alone that is wanting, and this good-natured honest man, feels he ought to be supporting his mother and sister, while in reality he is often living off their meagre earnings. The position is certainly trying, and it is difficult to make poor “Hookey” understand that an epileptic cripple cannot be expected to fulfil the same duties as a man in sound health.
Perhaps the lowest depths of misery were reached when “Hookey” in despair, slung a little string around his neck to hold in front of him a box or tray containing Vesuvians, and presented himself at the entrance of a neighbouring railway station, and sought to sell a few matches. “Hookey’s” misfortunes will, however, serve for one good purpose. They demonstrate that even those who resort to the humblest methods of making money in the streets are not always unworthy of respect and sympathy.
Many cases of this description might be found “Whitechapel way,” by those who have the time, energy and desire to seek them out. It will always be found that those who have the best claim to help and succour are the last to seek out for themselves the assistance that they should receive. It is only by accident that such cases are discovered, and hence my belief that time spent amongst the poor themselves is far more productive of good and permanent results, than liberal subscriptions given to institutions of which the donor knows no more than can be gleaned from the hurried perusal of an abbreviated prospectus. In this manner Dickens acquired his marvellous stores of material and knowledge of the people. Exaggerated as some of his characters may seem, their prototypes are constantly coming on the scene, and as I talked to “Hookey” it seemed as if the shade of Captain Cuttle had penetrated the wilds of Whitechapel.
To be honest, examining the picture, I cannot discern the “painful existence” of the woman from her “troubled expression” with “unquestionably accuracy” (as Thomson and Smith intended), though I was not there when the photograph was taken to learn the full story. It would be easy to distance ourselves from this pitiful tale of “Hookey Alf” by dismissing it as illustrative of the world before employers’ liability and incapacity benefits, yet it remains a common sight today to see people with visible disabilities on the streets of East London who are either begging or selling the Big Issue.
I respect Adophe’s engagement with “Hookey Alf’s” feelings of frustration, humiliation and desperation, drawing the reader to empathise with his subject, creating a sympathetic portrait that anyone with an ounce of humanity can recognise. Significantly, Dickens is the touchstone when it comes descriptions of the common people of London. And I feel that Adophe is evangelically persuasive in arguing the case for the moral integrity of the man to refute a contrary voice that, like Ebenezeer Scrooge, is condemning the poor as feckless and irresponsible.
Most interesting and radical is Adolphe’s proposal to his educated readers that they might actually consider spending time among the poor, engaging directly with their fellow humans, rather than merely making charitable donations to salve their guilt. Living in the city, it is hard not to become inured or indifferent to those who ask for money in the street, but Adolphe Smith’s article speaks across more than a century to remind us, if we should need it, that “those who resort to the humblest ways of making money in the street are not always unworthy of respect and sympathy”.
One Saturday morning recently, I was walking down Brick Lane when I saw a long line of hundreds of excited young people that stretched the entire length of Sclater St. When the Thrift Store decided to post an invitation to their jumble sale on facebook, they never dreamed that over two and a half thousand people would arrive, many coming from as far away as Oxfordshire and Cambridgeshire. At opening time there was already a queue of four hundred people waiting outside but during the morning it grew and grew, until the line reached all the way round the corner into Brick Lane. You have to admit it was a good deal, for £10 you could fill a small bag with as many clothes as you pleased or for £20 you could fill a big bag.
There are so many reasons to love thrifting but I had no idea the culture of secondhand was this huge – until I saw the line of enthusiasts in Sclater St, all dressed in their diverse individual styles created from vintage. Spitalfields is now the capital of this culture and thousands of eager people come every weekend from all over, to trawl through the different thrift stores side by side on Brick Lane, Cheshire St and Sclater St. Taking the occasional break for coffee or lunch, and meeting up with friends along the way, it is a pleasant day’s occupation. I see them parade back to Liverpool St clutching their bags triumphantly at the end of the afternoon.
Quite simply, vintage clothes have brought the fun and creativity back to fashion because they are cheap and every item is unique. With tantalising ambiguity, these clothes manage to be both democratic and exclusive simultaneously, permitting everyone to create a distinctive look, expressive of their personal identity, that no-one else has or can have. And the alterations that are often required invite the purchaser to restyle the garments, using second-hand to become fashion-forward. Another attraction is that old clothes often display higher quality workmanship and are manufactured from better fabric than many new clothes.
I love the poetry of old clothes that carry their history, of design, of manufacture, of the previous owner, and of other times and other worlds. There is a fascinating dynamic present when a younger generation take on the garments of a previous generation, subtling adjusting them to the suit the requirements and expectations of contemporary life. We wear them differently. In their form and structure, these clothes connect the wearer to the social custom of the past while revealing how the world has changed too.
For those politically aware fashionistas, wearing secondhand clothes is an ethical statement in itself, and one of the best kinds of recycling, providing the easiest path to the moral high ground that I know. Because you are conserving the resources that would be used to make new clothes and also dissociating yourself from the exploitative labour practices of the High St stores. Imagine, all this integrity that can be acquired just by purchasing some old rag!
Each month, the East End Thrift Store holds a lively shopping party with a free bar at their vast warehouse in Whitechapel. Once I heard about it, I realised this was an opportunity too good to be missed. So last week, photographer Sarah Ainslie and I went along to investigate. We hoped to photograph some extravagant wild flowers to show you, but instead of a bunch of secondhand roses, we discovered these raging beauties…
Poppy is thinking about whether to buy this silver hat for £10.
Duke knows how to look good in primary coloured sweaters.
This is Nimi and Tina, showing off the snazzy red dress she discovered for £15.
This is Jen, triumphant with the classic shirtdress she found for £30.
This is Rafal who knows instinctively how to carry off a cape.
This is Nina delighted with the nautical-themed shiftdress she will wear all summer long.
This is Paula and Ainara who are going to share this jacket.
This is Robson, an artist and curator, looking for an outfit for the opening of his show on Thursday.
Emma is deliberating between a red dress and this one in deep turquoise for £30.
Max has just moved to London from Weymouth and is considering investing in a leather jacket, maybe.
All pictures copyright © Sarah Ainslie
In recent years, a recurring highlight in my existence has been the opportunity to walk from Spitalfields through Hoxton and along the canal path up to Islington to enjoy a light lunch with the sublimely elegant novelist Nina Bawden, who lives in an old terrace backing onto the canal and whom I consider it a great honour to count as my friend. I first met Nina when I took my copy of “Carrie’s War” along to a bookshop and queued up with all the hundreds of other children to have it signed by the famous author. She appeared to my child’s eyes as the incarnation of adult grace and authoritative literary intellect, and it is an opinion that I have had no reason to qualify, except to say that my estimation of Nina has grown as I have come to know her.
Years after that book signing, Kaye Webb, Nina’s editor who had encouraged my own nascent efforts at writing, rang me up at six-thirty one evening to say she had just remembered Nina and her husband Austen Kark were coming to dinner that very night and she had nothing to give them. At this time Kaye was over eighty and housebound, so I sprinted through the supermarket to arrive breathless at Kaye’s flat beside the canal in Little Venice by seven-thirty – and when Nina and Austen arrived at eight, dinner was in the oven.
They were an impressive couple, Austen (who was Head of the BBC World Service) handsome in a well-tailored suit and Nina, a classically beautiful woman, stylish in a Jean Muir dress. I regret that I cannot recall more of the evening, but I was working so hard to conceal my anxiety over the hasty cuisine that I was completely overawed. Naturally, in such sympathetic company, it all passed off smoothly and I only revealed the whole truth to Nina last year when Valerie Grove was writing her biography of Kaye Webb, “So Much to Tell,” to be published by Penguin in May.
Given the background to our friendship, it has been my great delight to get to know Nina a little better since we became “neighbours” on this side of London and I was thrilled when she consented to my writing this pen portrait, celebrating the occasion of her recent nomination for the Lost Booker Prize of 1971 for her novel “The Birds on the Trees” which has just been republished by Virago. When a journalist from The Times rang Nina to ask what “The Birds on the Trees” was about, Nina pulled a copy from her shelves, where it had sat since 1971, crowded among all her other works in her peaceful study at the back of the house overlooking the garden, and read it to find out. “You do learn as you go on,” admitted Nina to me, “so I expected bad bits but I wasn’t displeased as I expected.” Adding rhetorically, “Who was it who said,’We write novels so we have something to read when we are old?’”
Born in East London in 1925, Nina was evacuated during the blitz and then became amongst the first of her post-war generation to go up to Oxford. At Somerville College, she had the temerity to attempt to persuade fellow undergraduate Margaret Thatcher (Margaret Roberts as she was then) to join the Labour Party, that enshrined the spirit of egalitarianism which defined those years. Even then, young Margaret displayed the hard-nosed pragmatism that was her trademark, declaring that she joined the Conservatives because they were less fashionable and consequently, with less competition, she would have a better chance of making it into parliament.
The catalogue of Nina’s literary achievement, which stretches from the early fifties into the new century, consists of over forty novels, twenty-three for adults and nineteen for children. A canon that is almost unparalleled among her contemporaries and that, in its phenomenal social range and variety, can be read as an account of the transformation brought about by the idealistic post-war culture of the Welfare State, and of its short-comings too.
Nina met Austen, the love of her life, by chance on the top of a bus in 1953 when they were both in their twenties and married to other people. They both divorced to remarry, finding happiness together in a marriage that lasted until Austen’s death in 2002. At first,they created a family home in Chertsey, moving in 1979 to Nina’s current home in Islington, when it was still an unfashionable place to live. Although her terrace is now considered rather grand (Boris Johnson lives a stone’s throw away), Nina told me she understood they were originally built for the servants and mistresses of those who lived on the better side of Islington.
Nina is someone who instinctively knows how to live, and through her persistent application to the art of writing novels and in her family life with Austen and their children, she won great happiness and fulfillment. I know this because I sense it in her bright spirit and powerfully magnanimity, but equally I know that her life has been touched with grief and tragedy in ways that give her innate warmth and generosity an exceptional poignancy. When Nina reread “The Birds on the Trees”, she discovered it had been inspired by the suicide of her son Nicky, “When bad things happen, you absorb them into yourself and make use of them in novels.” she said soberly, “In the case of Austen, I had a fight with the railways.”
On 1oth May 2002, Nina and Austen boarded a train at Kings Cross to got to Cambridge for a friend’s birthday party. They never arrived. The train derailed at over one hundred miles an hour and Nina’s carriage detached itself, rolling perpendicular to the direction of travel and entering Potters Bar station to straddle the platforms horizontally. Austen was killed instantly and Nina was cut from the wreckage at the point of death, with every bone in her body broken. In total, seven people died and seventy were injured that day.
After multiple surgeries and, defying the predictions of her doctors, Nina stood up again through sheer willpower, walked again and returned to live in the home that she had shared with Austen. In grief at the loss of Austen and no longer with his emotional support, Nina found herself exposed in a brutally politicised new world, “I suppose I am lucky to have lived so long believing that most men are for the most part honourable. And lucky to have taken a profession in which owning up and telling the truth is rarely a financial disadvantage” she wrote. Nothing in her experience prepared her for the corporate executives of the privatised rail companies who refused to admit liability or even apologise in case their share price went down. It was apparent at once that the crash was caused by poorly maintained points as the maintenance company had cut corners to increase profitability at the expense of safety, but they denied it to the end.
Refused legal aid by a government who for their own reasons deemed the case of the survivors seeking to establish liability as “not in the public interest”, it was only when Nina stepped forward to lead the fight herself, setting out to take the rail companies to the High Court personally, that they finally admitted liability. If Nina had lost her case, she risked forfeiting her home to pay legal costs. But after losing so much, inspired by her love for Austen, Nina was determined to see it through and, in doing so, she won compensation for all the survivors.
You can read Nina’s own account of this experience in “Dear Austen”, a series of letters that she wrote to her dead husband to explain what happened. “When we bought tickets for this railway journey we had expected a safe arrival, not an earthquake smashing lives into pieces,” wrote Nina to Austen,“I dislike the word ‘victim’. I dislike being told that I ‘lost’ my husband – as if I had idly abandoned you by the side of the railway track like a pair of unwanted old shoes. You were killed. I didn’t lose you. And I am not a victim, I am an angry survivor.”
Sometimes extraordinary events can reveal extraordinary qualities in human beings and Nina Bawden has proved herself to be an extraordinary woman, remarkable not only as a top class novelist, but also as a woman with moral courage who risked everything to stand up for justice. It is one thing to write as a humanitarian but is another to fight for your beliefs when you are at your most vulnerable – this was the moment when Nina transformed from writer to protagonist, and became a heroine in the process. Nina may not look like an obvious heroine because she is so fragile and retiring, but her strength is on the inside.
Whenever I visit Nina, my sanity is restored. I walk home to Spitalfields along the canal and the world feels a richer place as I carry the aura of her gentle presence with me. Concluding our conversation in the study last week, before we went downstairs to enjoy our lunch, Nina smiled radiantly and said, ” I’ve decided to get on with my novel…” in a line that sounded like a defiant challenge to the universe.
This is the unforgettable moment when the rock chicks of the Speed Angels (the world’s first trans-sexual pop group) took Spitalfields by storm, caught on film by photographer Hugo Glendinning who lived at 27 Fournier St when he took this picture. For nearly twenty-five years, Henry Barlow, the owner of this magnificent eighteenth century house, let it out to a lucky group of young actors and artists at rents they could afford, until it was sold this year. When Hugo arrived in 1989, he was just three years into his career but by the time he moved out in 2002, after more than a decade of ceaselessly inventive and stylish photography, he had achieved a reputation as one of the most distinguished and prolific photographers in the sphere of theatre and dance.
All the photographs shown here were taken by Hugo using 27 Fournier St as his location. And the location fees for these shoots covered the electricity and gas bills for years – even though it is a large old house and expensive to heat. So in return for accepting the occasional invasion by trans-sexual rock chicks and other extravagant glamorous personalities, the residents of 27 Fournier St were able to remain warm all winter. Speaking as someone who collects broken pallets in the street to chop up for firewood, this sounds like a very good deal to me.
Each of these superlative pictures were commissions for major publications, work that Hugo undertook in addition to his performing arts photography. When I met with Hugo in his studio last week, we thought it would be amusing to show you these photographs because collectively they tell a different story from their original intention. Many people have speculated about the stories that this sedate old house could tell but I do not think anyone ever imagined the scenarios pictured here.
Even though these photo shoots were undertaken years apart, I cannot resist imagining them all happening simultaneously, as some kind of phantasmagoric party at 27 Fournier St. They propose a bizarre game of consequences in which the Speed Angels encounter Patrick Stewart, better known as Jean-Luc Picard, the Captain of the Star Ship Enterprise, in a time-warp in which Amelia Fox is dressed up for a costume drama (looking as if she might be one of the original residents from the early eighteenth century), while the high-flying Fuel Design team cavort in the back garden, and maverick dancer and choreographer Nigel Charnock takes a bath to promote AIDS awareness.
Hugo’s innovative panoramic photography takes a step further in permitting the architecture of 27 Fournier St to become an integral part of the drama, metamorphosing into a theatrical landscape heaving with surreal possibilities. In fact, digital manipulation permitted Hugo to twist and reconfigure the house to become as labyrinthine as the Topkapi Palace. These panoramas present a compositional challenge to a photographer that is closer to narrative painting than to conventional photography. Although in Hugo’s case, he was placing figures within his own personal domestic space, which may account, in part, for the graceful accomplishment of these notable examples of the genre. You might like to click on each of the panoramas below to enlarge them so you can examine all the nooks and crannies of the old house in detail.
The first panorama is an elegant group portrait of a whole generation of young women artists photographed in the ground floor living room at 27 Fournier St in 1997. You will recognise Tracey Emin, who is a neighbour in Fournier St, perched on top of the television set, but how many others can you identify? The next eight panoramas were the result of Hugo’s collaboration with Forced Entertainment Theatre Company, entitled “Frozen Palaces” and shot in the house over a single weekend as a very early Quick Time Virtual Reality project. Conceived by Forced Entertainment as “a landscape of interlocking dreams, these images allowed the viewer to explore, view or investigate – in an experience akin to wandering, or trying out versions of the truth and of making playful connections.” I am fascinated by these enigmatic melodramas, an unlikely combination of eighteenth century architecture and the technology of virtual reality, as a means to unlock the dream life of the old house. Finally, you can see one of Hugo’s witty “Chill in tonight” series of panoramic advertisements that he shot for Guinness. Once they were posted around the East End, Hugo ran out with his camera to photograph his own pictures on billboards and enjoy the secret irony of these private interiors visible in the public arena. The one pictured here shows Hugo’s living room in 27 Fournier St on display in Old St.
Scattered across different publications at different times, no-one would ever have made the connection that unifies these diverse photographs but, seen together, this set of pictures illustrates just how inspiring a single charismatic architectural space can be, for a photographer with such an exceptionally fertile imagination as Hugo Glendinning.
All photographs copyright © Hugo Glendinning
I am grateful to Hugo Glendinning for permitting me to use a detail of a photograph he took of the Market Cafe in Fournier St on the day it closed down, as the header for the month of March. In this picture, the passersby are reading the notice announcing the closure. I look forward to showing you more of the pictures Hugo took during his time in Spitalfields at a later date.
I woke in the night several times to the sound of rain falling and, sure enough, I found myself walking up the road to the market in the wet early this morning. The market was the emptiest I ever saw it, with just the stallholders huddling under their canopies clutching cups of hot tea after a long night, loading their vans, travelling and setting up in the pouring rain. I was admiring all the additional herbs on sale this week, when I saw the herb women shivering and congratulated them on their courage in making it here. “We’ve got no choice, this is our living,” they replied brightly, “Let’s hope we get some brave customers today!”
Certainly, the prices were as ridiculous as the weather, with cut flowers at four bunches for a fiver. Anyone that braves the rain today can buy armfuls of flowers for just a few pounds. I bought four pots of tiny lustrous Aconites (Eranthis hyemalis) for £5 and replanted them in this bowl to place on my old dresser, continuing the display of plant life that I have maintained through the Winter while I await the Spring flowers in my garden.
I returned to Gary Arber’s printing shop in the Roman Rd to collect the correspondence cards he has printed for me in the Perpetua typeface that I like so much. On this visit, Gary graciously permitted me the opportunity to take more photographs, recording the extravagant poetry of the old printing works and toy shop opened by his grandfather, W.F. Arber, in 1897 and of which he is the last custodian.
Gary is an extraordinarily talented man, not just an ex-flying ace, but also a skilled technician who has maintained the printing presses for the last half century and done all the typography in the printing works too, including drawing illustrations for print jobs. This is in addition to doing all his own plumbing and wiring here and at home, always undertaking car repairs himself, and leaving time over to be an expert wildlife photographer and RSPB conservation warden at weekends. It is refreshing to meet a man with so many varied accomplishments, it gives Gary a certain confidence. And he demonstrates an appealing modesty too when, for example, he shows you the sash window he is in the process of renovating. As you are probably aware, a sash window is a complex piece of joinery but Gary had already disassembled one, replaced the rotten timber and reinstalled it, when he showed me the next one he was going to tackle.
Once upon a time, six printers worked here in the printing shop, alongside compositors, trimmers, shop assistants and managers but now there is just Gary knocking around on four floors of the works doing a little printing, playing patience on his computer and repairing the sash windows when he feels like it. Alone, like Prospero on his island, surrounded by his secret kingdom, Gary does as he pleases – when not interrupted by a string of admiring young visitors who come to wonder and in hope that Gary will tell more of his beguiling tales. I count myself among this group of devotees who appreciate Gary Arber for his dignified flippant philosophising as a palliative to the earnest literalism of modern life.
As anyone who has visited the shop will already know, the strings above the counter once suspended a fine display of box toys. This was more than generation ago. I love the way that Gary has carried on working here without ever tidying up. Our culture is puritanical where it comes to order and organisation. We are taught to believe there is innate moral value in tidiness, but it is an entirely spurious notion. I have often wondered what it would be like if you never changed anything, never threw anything away and never cleared up. Gary’s printing works conscientiously illustrates the result of such an independent-spirited approach. Almost everything from the last century of business remains and the textures of human activity are vivid. You might assume that the past is gone, vanished like the wind, but in Gary’s world time is manifest in the layers and layers of things used by all those who were once here. Gary accepts that his existence is contingent too, confiding to me that, in spite of multiple leaks, he will not be shelling out for the new roof that is required because he would rather leave that for the next owner who comes along. A sentiment that is touching in its unsentimental realism.
In the meantime, Gary is the custodian who alone knows the stories, who alone knows how everything works, who can pick up anything and tell you what it is and why it is there. For example, Gary pointed out the Alto Lagonda printing press, one of six in the basement (you can see it pictured below piled with boxes), the machine that printed the handbills for the Suffragettes. It is accompanied by a Wharfedale, a Heidelberg, a Supermatic, a Golding Jobber and a Mercedes Glockner, all from the early twentieth century except the Supermatic. I photographed Gary beside this and he described the machine as “new” because it was manufactured in the nineteen fifties. Only the Heidelberg is in use at present. This is the one that printed my cards, and when Gary set it in motion for me, it whirred into life with all the easy grace of a vast sea-beast twirling in deep water.
Gary’s grandparents, Walter and Emily, lived on the floors above the shop but, once they died, Gary’s father, also Walter, turned their first floor living room into a compositor’s room (the “comp room”as Gary terms it) and the rest of the living space became storage for the print works. The golden nineteen thirties wallpaper and chocolate colour scheme make an attractive background to the tall cabinets of trays of type and compositors’ desks set on either side of a compositors’ stone. A Healthy and Safety Inspector, with a bureaucratic mania worthy of Peter Sellers, once insisted that the walls must be whitewashed because people have to work in white rooms, apparently. However, Gary stood his ground like a true Englishman and the thirties wallpaper remains today in all its shabby glory.
Most of the type here is worn out with use and we walked upon a layer of thousands of tiny pieces of dusty grey metal type spilled onto the floor of the comp room, undulating like the surface of the moon and crunching beneath our feet. Gary delighted to snatch a case of type from the cabinet and show me the V and J compartments in the bottom right corner – apart from the rest of the letters because they were added to the alphabet later, after the design of printers’ cases had been standardised, centuries ago. This case was all capital letters.“This is the upper case”, announced Gary gleefully before putting it back and pulling out the one beneath with a flourish, “And this is the lower case!” In an instant, I understood the origin of the terminology I have used all my life to distinguish what in school were referred to as” the big letters and the small letters.” I shall never forget that as long as I live. Neither shall I ever forget my visits to this unique printing shop and now, every time I use my correspondence cards (that he printed for me so kindly at the price they were thirty years ago) I will always think affectionately of Gary there in the eternal magic kingdom that is W. F. Arber & Co Ltd.
In previous installments of Charles Dickens’ article “Spitalfields,” that he published in his weekly journal “Household Words” on 5th April 1851, we accompanied Dickens and his sub-editor W.H.Wills to a silk warehouse, a Ragged School and a weaver’s loft, with Mr Broadelle, manager of the silk warehouse as our guide. Having witnessed the wealth of the silk merchants and the poverty of the weavers, in this final part, with strange prescience, and striking a deliberately upbeat note, Dickens concluded his visit to Spitalfields by paying a visit to the studio of an ambitious young artist…
Spitalfields, however, has its bright side. As yet machinery has not been invented to turn artist, or to guide the shuttle through the intricate niceties of the Jacquard loom, so as to execute designs. Figured and brocaded silks must still be done by hands, and those hands must be skillful.
We knock at the door of a cheerful little house, extremely clean. We are introduced into a little parlour, where a young artist sits at work with crayons and watercolours. He is a student of the School of Design. He is at work on a new pattern for a table-cover. He has learnt to paint in oil. He has painted the portraits of his sisters – and of some one who I suspect is not a sister, but who may be a nearer one yet and a dearer one, and they decorate the room. He has painted groups of flowers. He shows us one that was in last year’s Exhibition at the Royal Academy, he shows us another that he means to finish in good time to send to the next Exhibition. He does these things over and above his regular work. He doesn’t mind work – he gets up early. There are cheap casts prettily arranged around the room, and it has a little collection of chapbooks of a good sort in it. The intrinsic worth of every simple article of furniture or embellishment is enhanced by a hundred-fold ( as it always may be) by neatness and order.
Is father at home? Yes, and will be glad to see the visitors. Pray walk up!
The young artist shows us the way up to the top of the house, apologising cheerfully for the ladder-staircase by which we mount at last. In a bright clean room, as pure as soap and water, and scrubbing, and fresh air, can make it, we find a sister whose portrait is down stairs – we are able to claim her instantly for the original, to the general satisfaction. We find also, father, who is at his Jacquard loom, making a pretty pattern of cravat, in blue upon a black ground. He is a cordial, sensible, intelligent a man as any one would wish to know. He has a reason for everything he says, and everything he does. He is learned in sanitary matters among other necessary knowledge, and says the first thing you have to do, is, to make your place wholesome, or you can’t expect to work heartily. Wholesome it is as his own pleasant face and the pleasant faces of his children well brought up. Industry, contentment, sense, and self-respect, are the hopeful characteristics of everything animate and inanimate in this little hose.
If the veritable summer light were shining, and the veritable summer air were rustling, in it, which the young artist had tried to get into the sketches of green glades from Epping Forest that hang near father’s loom, and can be seen by father whilst at work, it could not be more cheering to our hearts, oppressed by what we have left.
I meant to have had a talk with Mr Broadelle, respecting a cruel persistence in one inflexible principle which gave the New Poor Law a particular severity in its application to Spitalfields, a few years back, but which I hope may have been amended. Work in the stone-yard was the test of all able bodied applicants for relief. Now, the weaver’s hands are soft and delicate, must be so for his work. No matter. The weaver wanting relief, must work in the stone-yard with the rest. So, the Union blistered his hands before it relieved him, and incapacitated him from doing his work when he could get it.
But, let us leave Spitalfields with an agreeable impression, and be thankful that we can.
Dickens foresaw the end of Spitalfields as a location for mass-manufacturing while recognising the possibility for artists and designers who can create and sell their own personal work. A trend that is continued today by the young artists who show their work in all the tiny galleries here and the designers who sell their handiwork in the Upmarket and Backyard Market every Sunday. And just like Dickens’ young artist, many have day jobs to keep them going.
Dickens published his first issue of “Household Words” on 30th March 1850 with an editorial declaration that is an inspiration to me as I write to you each day, “We aspire to live in the Household affections and to be numbered among the Household thoughts of our readers. In this summer-dawn of time, the reader will be introduced to the world around us, the knowledge of many social wonders, good and evil, but he will be subjected to no mere utilitarian spirit, no iron binding of the mind to grim realities. For one thing is certain; society must tenderly cherish that light of Fancy which is inherent in the human breast; or woe betide the results.”
1851, the year of Dickens’ visit to Spitalfields, does not seems so long ago if you think that Paul Gardner’s great-grandfather, James Gardner, began trading as Gardners Market Sundriesman in Commercial St in 1870, in the same building where Paul still sells paper bags today.
For threepence a week, Dickens’ readers received a twenty-four page copy of “Household Words” in the mail every Saturday morning, with features such as the article about Spitalfields you have just read, alongside installments of his latest fiction. In “Household Words”, Dickens won the editorial independence from publishers that he long desired and created an independent open medium of communication with his readers who quickly amounted to more than forty thousand a week. Dickens’ project is one we can recognise, because I think we all know how he would have used the internet to pursue the same ambitions today.
The artist’s box pictured above was kindly provided by Brian Oxley (featured in yesterday’s post) who is currently selling a collection of fine nineteenth century artist’s boxes, including this one, through his stall in the Spitalfields Antiques Market each Thursday.
Today we commence an occasional series introducing the traders in the weekly Spitalfields antiques, vintage and collectors’ market, held every Thursday. This is quickly becoming London’s pre-eminent antiques market and I love the way the traders carefully lay out the items on display upon their stalls, providing an endless source of fascination for browsers. To me, every one is a work of art and for a long while I have been eager to record them all, so I am delighted to collaborate with photographer Jeremy Freedman (who is himself a trader in the market) to bring you these first portraits that initiate our project.
This is Dale Stephens who has been trading in the Spitalfields Market for a year. “It feeds my own collecting habit”, Dale confessed to me cheerfully, explaining that he is a trained cabinet maker and furniture designer, which makes him especially appreciative of the skill and technique that went into the manufacture of even the most run-of- the-mill artifacts in the past. As Dale was speaking, my eye fell upon some lovely old handmade bone rulers and I knew exactly what he meant.
This is Karen Beardsmore who has been trading in the Spitalfields Market for six months. “I used to manage a pub”, Karen explained recklessly,“but I gave it up to do the things I liked. I’m doing pottery courses and having a lazy year!” Karen can regularly be seen mudlarking at Wapping and sells exquisite old matchboxes full of seventeenth century china fragments from the Thames for just £4. In fact, everything on Karen’s stall fits into one suitcase which she drags along each week. It must be quite a large one.
This is Brian Oxley who has been collecting for forty-five years and is currently selling off some of his precious things to fund an extension to his home on Romney Marsh, creating an additional room with a view over the marsh for his wife who has MSA. An experienced painter and teacher of art, Brian restores and reframes old paintings, and is also selling a wonderful collection of fine nineteenth century artist’s paint boxes. You can learn more about Brian’s own paintings here and here. What a gentleman.
This is Jess Collins who trades in vintage clothing and accessories with her boyfriend Oliver Stannion. Surrounded by a mind-boggling array, dating from the nineteenth century up until the nineteen eighties, Jess rolled her eyes around in amusement as she revealed where it all came from, “We started collecting in Manchester at car boot sales but we got so much stuff we began selling it. Then Ollie moved to London and I followed. We’ve only been doing it for year but we’ve already got enough stock to last a lifetime!”
After my conversation with Lenny Hamilton, the jewel thief, I went back on another afternoon to the Carpenters Arms in Cheshire St (the pub that once belonged to the Kray twins) to meet Billy Frost who was Ronnie and Reggie Kray’s driver. I recognised him at once by his pinstripe suit, which must be the preferred uniform for senior reprobates and, sure enough, he asked for a double Corvoisier and lemonade too, exactly as Lenny had done.
Already, Billy had discovered through the grapevine that I had been consorting with Lenny, so he went straight for the jugular, challenging me,“You’ve been talking with Lenny, haven’t you? “ I could not deny it, so Billy put me straight, “Lenny’s very prejudiced, just because Ronnie burnt him a bit with a poker, but the twins, they could be very kind to a lot of people – like old people and kids – and they did a lot of charitable work.” Then Billy clarified his statement, for the sake of a balanced argument, “Obviously, they could be very nasty too, if you got on the wrong side of them.”
Vividly outlining the full extent of his experience, “I knew them over a period of twenty years from when they were very young boxers, and Ronnie hit the referee and quit the boxing club.” Billy said, including an inconsequential detail that appeared entirely characteristic of his former employer, before setting out a lively account of his own conscientiously thorough apprenticeship in crime.
“When I was young I used to go to a dance hall in Tottenham called the Regal and that’s where I first met Ronnie and Reggie. Everyone used to go there each weekend. That’s when Ronnie got his first conviction – he beat up a fellow with a chain off a machine for manufacturing furniture (there were a lot of furniture factories in Bethnal Green at the time). When I met him I was on the run from the army. Saturday night at the Regal was the top night, people came from all over and we used to hang around the dance floor.
Then I lost touch with them because I had to go back to the army and I deserted again and I got caught stealing a truck load of metal and I got sent to borstal and from borstal I went back to the army and then I was arrested for stealing a car. I was on a licence from borstal and after I done my prison sentence they revoked my licence from borstal and I done a further eleven months.
When I come out, I was in the 181 Club in Gerrard St in the West End where I met Charlie Kray by chance. I asked him how Ronnie and Reggie were, and he said they were working with Jack Scott and Billy Hill. Later, I met the twins in the West End and they told me they didn’t want to be used by Jack and Billy any more and they were going out on their own. And that’s what they did.
I used to be with them. And I got arrested for something I actually never did! I was trying to help someone out, selling a bit of gear – cigarettes which came from Lee Green in South London. And then, mysteriously, the police found the same red glass substance in my trouser turn-ups from the rear of a Wolsey car that was used to ram the shop the cigarettes came from. It was a fellow called Terry Barnes who pleaded guilty to it, but I was found guilty and I got two years. When I came out, I caught up with Ronnie and Reggie again, by then they were involved in the race tracks, protection rackets and all that.”
Once he had dictated thus far, I had acquired a good sense of the general picture and was in awe of Billy’s ability to spin a sentence too. Though occasionally, to my alarm, he became a little impatient when I didn’t quite follow his drift. There was an attractive young couple at the next table who were curious of my charismatic guest speaking in such animated fashion. When they went out to the garden to have a smoke, leaving all their valuables, the young woman leaned across sweetly, asking Billy “Would you mind watching our things?” I was dumbstruck at the irony, thinking, “If only you knew…”
But now that Billy had declared himself to me, fair and square, it was time for me to get him another Corvoisier and lemonade before he settled down to recount the story of the murder of Georgie Cornell – whom Lenny Hamilton described to me as “the hardest man on the cobbles.”
“The argument was over a fellow named Nicky Morris. Georgie Cornell told Nicky’s mum, May, that Ronnie was after Nicky and ‘You know he’s a fat pouf,’ and this got back to Ronnie and Ronnie was furious. He had word with Georgie about it, but then Georgie started telling other people, ignoring Ronnie.
One night, I drove Ronnie & Reggie to The Stork Club in Swallow St. When they got inside , Georgie Cornell was sitting at a table on his own. Reggie went over and spoke to Georgie, but Ronnie wouldn’t go and sit with him (I never knew what it was really about at the time). Me and Ronnie sat at another table opposite and we got a couple of drinks. Ronnie was mumbling but he was incoherent and I couldn’t hear a word he said. Then we left The Stork Club after thirty minutes and went back to The Grave Maurice in Whitechapel. As we were driving back, they never said a word to each other, Ronnie and Reggie, and when we got into The Grave Maurice, they sat on their own and had a private conversation.
The day that Ronnie shot Georgie I had a day off. It was about a week later, when Ronnie and Scotch Jack were driving round to the widow’s pub in Bethnal Green, Ronnie saw Georgie Cornell’s car parked outside The Blind Beggar in Whitechapel High St. And he told Scotch Jack to turn round and go to the Green Dragon where someone was keeping a gun for him. Then Ronnie walked into The Blind Beggar and shot Georgie Cornell in the head.
Afterwards, I was present when Ronnie said ‘Has anyone got Nicky Morris’ phone number? Will you tell him to come over, I want to give him a nightcap?’ Nicky came over and I personally poured him out a gin and tonic. The next thing I knew, Ronnie punched Nicky in the face. And Nicky said, ‘I thought you was my friend, Ronnie?’ Reggie got hold of him and I expected he was going to let him go, but instead Reggie pushed Nicky into a storeroom. Then Ronnie got Nicky in a headlock and Reggie pulled out a big hunting knife and pushed it straight through Nicky’s arm. Ronnie said to Reggie, ‘Do it properly, stick it up his fucking guts!‘ Nicky howled when the knife went through his arm.
I said to Reggie, ‘Look, there’s people on the balcony opposite looking over and there’s people in the bar who can hear, they’re wondering what’s going on.’ I wanted to save the guy, I liked him, he was a nice boy. I said, ‘Come into the bathroom, Nicky, and I’ll do you up in some towels,’ but he was scared because he was bleeding buckets. I couldn’t take him to the London Hospital myself, in case the police got involved, because I had a warrant out for my arrest. Another member took him to the hospital.
A couple of days later, I was driving along the Lea Bridge Rd and Ronnie asked me to stop at Nicky Morris’ house and he said to Nicky, ‘Next time, it’ll be done properly.’”
Strangely, Billy appeared not to comprehend Nicky Morris’ reluctance to enter the bathroom. I thought of asking Billy if, in retrospect, he thought his logic for not taking Nicky Morris to the London Hospital was admirable but it was a redundant question, so instead I asked Billy if he was ever scared of Ronnie and Reggie.“Once I stayed the night at their house in Vallance Rd and I fell asleep on Reggie’s bed, and I woke to find him standing over me with a big Wilkinson’s sword that he had.” he replied, enacting the fierce gesture of raising the sword with the practised conviction of a Shakespearean actor.
As someone with an aversion to violence, I barely knew how to react to Billy’s stories and I think he could read it in my face at that moment, because he admitted quietly with a gentle smile, “They were good times, though personally I didn’t like all the violence, but if you’re going to do protection and be a villain then it comes naturally.” – as if it was the most normal thing in the world.
Billy was on his third Corvoisier and lemonade, and I was beginning to feel uncomfortable. He was polite and he was personable, and it was decent of him to grant me an interview but, considering what he had told me, I could not but wonder what there was that did not bear telling. I respect Billy greatly for his nerve – having the guts to survive the viper’s nest – living through so much brutality to reach this current point of benign equilibrium. Equally, I can never know whether those experiences induced in Billy a certain degree of acceptance of the long pitiful catalogue of cruelty that was inflicted by his employers, the psychopathic twins Ronnie and Reggie Kray. It is a private question for Billy to reconcile with his conscience and we shall not be party to it.
I left Billy Frost in conversation with the young couple from the next table who were captivated by his charms. Running back in the dusk, through the rainy streets, thankful to arrive at the safety of my house in Spitalfields, the afternoon’s experience grew strangely familiar in my mind. It touched a chord of familiar unease, and I realised that I could now better appreciate Pip’s mixed emotions when he met the enigmatically fearsome convict Abel Magwitch in those brilliant early terrifying chapters of Great Expectations.
You can see Billy Frost interviewed as part of the documentary “The Krays by Fred Dinenage” to be premiered on the Crime & Investigation Network on Monday 15th March at 9:00pm.
In the last eighteen months of the Fruit and Vegetable Market in Spitalfields, young photographers Mark Jackson & Huw Davies set out to record the life of the market that operated on this site for over three centuries, before it closed forever in 1991. As recent graduates, Mark was working in a restaurant at the time and Huw was a bicycle courier. Without any financial support for their ambitious undertaking, they saved up all their money to buy cameras and rolls of film, converting a corner of their tiny flat into a darkroom.
“It was quite a struggle,” Mark Jackson confided, when I spoke to him yesterday, “because we weren’t earning a lot of money. But Spitalfields fired our imaginations. We caught the last tube to Liverpool St and spent the night there taking photographs, before heading into work next morning.”
The result of their passionate labours is an unparalleled archive of more than four thousand images that has recently been acquired by the Bishopsgate Institute and will be shown there in a major exhibition later this year. It is my privilege to be able to show you a small selection of these phenomenal pictures that have never been seen before, the first glimpse of an undiscovered photographic treasure trove.
I have the greatest respect for anyone who sets out to pursue idealistic projects such as this at great cost to themselves of money, time and labour. In this case, I am equally impressed by the quality of Mark & Huw’s photographs as distinguished social documentary, unsentimental yet infused with affectionate poetry too. Today, we are the fortunate beneficiaries of their selfless enthusiasm over all those months when they stayed up each night to take pictures and worked each day to buy film. It sounds like a beautiful story in retrospect but I have no doubt it took plenty of determination to carry the project through in isolation. I know that the market traders warmed to the young photographers and I think, in part, this accounts for relaxed intimate nature of some of these images, because the traders respected the commitment that Mark & Huw demonstrated, turning up night after night.
This particular set of images take us on a cinematic journey from the busy nocturnal world, when the market was active, through dawn into the early morning when the drama subsided. Mark & Huw photographed a dignified gallery of both the market traders and the homeless people, who were drawn by the fire that always burned to alleviate their discomfort ever since the market was granted its charter. We no longer see any of these characters in Spitalfields. These men would look displaced here in the renovated market today, they are soulful faces from a universe that is gone. When I walk through the Spitalfields Market at night now, it feels like an empty theatre, lacking the performance of the nightly drama that ran from 1638 when Charles I signed the licence to commence trading.
Even though Mark & Huw took their pictures only twenty years ago, they describe a society that feels closer to the world Dickens knew than our own present tense, ten years into the twenty-first century. Inspired by Tom Hopkinson and Bert Hardy’s work at Picture Post, these photographs were to become the first of a series documenting all the markets of London, that might have been a lifetime’s vocation for Mark & Huw. It was not to be. Life intervened and without any support the projected sequence was abandoned. Mark became a writer and Huw is now a teacher – they each have lives beyond their nascent photographic enterprises – but they deserve to be proud of these vital pictures because they are an honourable contribution to the worthy canon of British documentary photography.
All pictures © Mark Jackson & Huw Davies
Let me introduce Willy Moon, who has been sitting alone in his room for more than a year to write songs. Although the world has yet to hear Willy Moon, I am familiar with his music because Willy Moon is my neighbour. Over this time, I have heard him in the distance while I am writing at my desk, as he sits at his keyboard singing to himself, exploring the emotional subtleties of his lyrics in the deliberate careful way you might feel your way into a new pair of gloves.
If I had not revealed that I took this photo of Willy Moon yesterday, you might think, perhaps, this was an old postcard I found somewhere, but this is how he actually looks. If you meet Willy Moon in the street in Spitalfields or even if you see him weeding his garden, this is how he will be. Like Gilbert & George, his flawless demeanour is reassuringly consistent. Fastidiousness is an under-rated virtue these days and Willy Moon has it in spades. This weekend, we spent a happy Sunday afternoon together taking hundreds of pictures in between cups of tea and animated chat, until we chose this single photograph to show you as the fruit of our collaboration.
Willy Moon’s songs interest me because they are irresistibly jangling pop tunes that persist in the mind vividly and then grow in emotional resonance upon further listening. They have the rare authority of nursery rhymes – even when you hear Willy Moon’s melodies for the first time, you feel you already know them, as if they had always been around. Last November, Willy Moon posted a demo recording of one song on MySpace and in December a second one, and he did not have to wait long before he received approaches from a whole series of major record companies, managers and music industry lawyers.
Millions of people sit in their bedrooms humming and strumming to themselves for years, hoping this might happen and knowing that it can only be a dream. But the attention Willy Moon drew is not accidental. Willy Moon knows what he is doing. Through his talent, tenacity and intelligent application, he has brought this situation about. Willy Moon has drawn these people to him with the magnetic force that the silver orb in the sky controls the tides. Happening at twenty years old, this is a beautiful moment in the life of Willy Moon because the possibilities are infinite. Let us celebrate it with him.
“I found it odd – unexpected – not that I don’t see the value of my work but I thought I would have to struggle for five years before I got any attention paid to me,” Willy Moon admitted in amused reflection, before revealing a characteristically rigorous attitude to the pursuit of songwriting. “I’m putting myself to the test, to see what I can do – it’s a challenge and a means to evolve. I am never happy with anything unless it is better than I did before.” he said.
The first demo of a song Willy Moon posted on MySpace was “Girl, I wanna to be your man.“It took a long time to record because I’m doing it all on my own and I had to work out how to use the recording software.” he confessed to me with amiable levity, introducing the song, as we sat and listened together. “Girl, I wanna to be your man” appears to be a bright innocent song of unrequited love with a brittle sheen and a catchy melody that carries you through. But as the title lyric persists through repetition, accumulating emotional impact, the longing becomes frantic. With a vocal line balanced at the edge of optimism and self-deception, this is simultaneously the ballad of a hopeful extroverted young man and of an introverted secret obsessive too. And it is this tension that makes the number so compelling.
Willy Moon is a classical songwriter, powerfully aware of his predecessors, learning by immersing himself in the work of those he admires most, in particular the Beatles and those who influenced them, Little Richard, Buddy Holly, Fats Domino, James Brown and the entire canon of early Motown artists. All Willy Moon’s songs are based upon dramatic progression, structured upon the essential poetic elements of bridge, verse and chorus, “I like to play with an idea and put the pieces together. I write parts of the song separately and combine them – different ideas that come together to form one whole.”
Next, Willy Moon posted a demo recording of “She says she loves me”on MySpace, a delirious celebration of emotional fulfillment, in jubilant contrast to the earlier song and a work of greater musical ambition too. There is an authentic danceable exuberance here that affectionately declares its musical influences while refashioning them into something vibrantly contemporary. On consideration, it is no surprise that Willy Moon has drawn all this heat with his home-made recordings because they are an accomplished pair of love songs that anyone can relate to, counterpointing each other to create a complete emotional drama in microcosm.
What planet did Willy Moon come from that has endowed him with this singular charm and Bowie-esque other-worldliness? The answer is New Zealand. Growing up with parents who were both teachers, he was encouraged to be independent, read widely and think for himself from an early age. When his mother and father decided to travel the world, taking jobs as supply teachers in different capitals, Willy Moon and his elder sister came along too. Willy Moon remembers sharing a single room in the Rotherhithe YMCA years ago, when his parents slept in the bed, and he and his sister slept on the floor. “It was all very much on the cheap,” he recalled happily, telling me they lived on bread and cheese. “It was exciting – especially coming from Wellington, New Zealand – we went out and saw all the sights in London.” he added, explaining how when he was nine and his sister was twelve, they were free to explore the city by day while their parents where at work.
As soon as he was old enough, Willy Moon came back to London and today Spitalfields is his home. So now I have done the neighbourly thing and made the introductions, you can hear Willy Moon’s songs for yourself by clicking here.
The market was quiet this morning after a night of rain, though there was a brief respite which permitted me to walk there and back before the day’s imminent storms broke. When there are less customers the prices at the market are keener so, perversely, I am always especially eager to get there when there is bad weather. Today I bought these five pots of Anemones from a nursery in Chingford for £13 which far exceeds my usual budget for the window box, but it was a good price because there are more than a dozen plants here.
This box on my bedroom window sill is the first sight I see when I wake each morning and the white Cyclamen I planted last Autumn have been a sorry picture for months, so I have been longing to replace the scene of Winter’s devastation though wary to replant the box with anything that is not hardy. These Anemones fit my requirements and the box perfectly, and I can transplant them into my garden in the Spring to enjoy them again next year. I think, if pushed, I should have to admit that the rich deep blue of Anemones is my favourite colour in the whole world, and these plants have plenty of new buds coming to greet me each morning with new flowers for many weeks to come.
Mr Pussy thinks he is a dog, it all began with chewing my slippers. When I come home in the evening and sit down in the wing chair to eat my supper next to the fire, it is Mr Pussy’s custom to lie at my feet, extending his claws like gleaming steel fishhooks. At this time of day, I am usually wearing my felt slippers and Mr Pussy cannot resist stretching out to hook a slipper, interrupting me painfully from my meal when his sharp claws pierce my skin. Compliant, I kick the slipper off and then Mr Pussy grips it triumphantly, holding the toe in his front paws, while kicking delightedly at the sole with his powerful back legs in the manner of a dog. Getting roused with excitement as the kicking accelerates, Mr Pussy flattens his ears, growls and turns to me with fierce eyes as if to say, “Look at me, I’m a dog!” Then he chews the slipper, just like a dog.
I have learnt to remove both my slippers as soon as Mr Pussy approaches, allowing him to undertake the usual dinner theatre performance without drawing blood from my feet. This slipper business was just the first of Mr Pussy’s canine traits that became apparent. Although, ever since he was fully grown, people proclaimed, “He’s so big, he looks like a dog!” In fact, Mr Pussy is larger than many dogs and is not in the least challenged by my neighbour’s Jack Russell, he just looks down his nose at the mutt.
Unlike most felines but in common with most canines, Mr Pussy loves water. Never concerned about getting his feet wet as cats usually are, he likes to roll in wet grass, then come into the house and shake off the raindrops. One day, when he came in soaked from the rain, I produced a towel and gave him a rub down. Mr Pussy craves this now, and will go out and get wet just to have the rub down afterwards, demanding this service with insistent miaowing that has more in common with the repeated barking of a dog than the delicate whisper of a pussycat. Once I knew Mr Pussy liked water, I gave him towel baths in Summer, to cool him when he languished in the heat. Standing him on the garden table, I soaked Mr Pussy with a wet flannel or sponge, gave him a good brushing and then towelled him down. The experience was a powerful one for Mr Pussy and sometimes his emotions got fixated on the brush, which he grasped in his paws with the same tender intensity that Elvis grasped his microphone. Afterwards, Mr Pussy ran around the garden steaming in the heat before taking a deep sleep in the shade.
Mr Pussy reminds me of my father’s Ginger Tom that once fell from the branch of an old oak at the bottom of our garden directly into the River Exe and swam confidently to the shore. In Devon, Mr Pussy used to go roving for miles and return days later with a dead rabbit in his mouth. In Spitalfields, he commands an alley instead, walking up to anyone that comes along, scrutinising them in the manner of a guard dog before greeting them affectionately. He has traded the life of an explorer and wild game hunter for that of a greeter and security guard. I do wonder if this altered circumstance created his curiously hybrid nature.
Mr Pussy likes humans because he has always been treated well and experience tells him they pose no threat. For Mr Pussy, any stranger is potentially another source of the adulation he needs to reinforce his ego. To be honest, there is an element of showing off. Mr Pussy likes to play to camera. Give him a ball and Mr Pussy will chase it up and down the house, bouncing it off the walls with the judgement and skill that indicates a simultaneous talent at both snooker and football – as long as there is an audience. Just stopping now and again, to touch up his grooming and check the spectators are giving him their full attention, like Cristiano Ronaldo, Mr Pussy possesses the killer combination of vanity, quick reflexes and powerful legs.
The canine trait that I appreciate most is Mr Pussy’s loyalty. He follows me around the house, running at my ankles just like a dog and sleeping contentedly beside my desk all day while I am writing. Whenever I leave the house, Mr Pussy walks out with me, hoping to follow at my heels. Always disappointed when I hasten my footsteps along the pavement to leave him behind, Mr Pussy does not understand why he cannot accompany me beyond Spitalfields into the city. Instead he consoles himself with his daily patrol of the territory whilst I am doing my errands – but makes absolutely certain to be there, poised for an emotional reunion upon my return, bounding to greet me. I am sure Mr Pussy thinks he is a dog.
Mid-afternoon on a weekday is a good time for a discreet liaison at The Carpenters Arms in Cheshire St (the pub that used to belong to the Krays), especially if you are meeting a jewel thief. Lenny was initially averse to the location, “What do you want to go to that filthy old place for?” he complained, until I reassured him they had cleaned it up nicely, though when he told me the story of his personal experience of the Kray twins I came to understand why he might harbour an aversion.
“I used to go round to their house in Vallance Rd on and off for three years, until Ronnie burnt me with the pokers, and his mother and Charlie had a go with him over it.” said Lennie with a pleasant smile, introducing his testimony, before taking a slug of his double Corvoisier and lemonade. It was a story that started well enough before it all went so horribly wrong.
“I was just six weeks out of the army, doing my National Service (I used to box for the army), when I went back to work in Billingsgate Fish Market at the age of twenty six. Georgie Cornell looked after me – he was the hardest man I ever saw on the cobbles but he had a heart of gold as well. He gave me five pounds to buy my mother some flowers and said ‘Make sure you give her the fucking change!’ He was a nice fellow. He used to line up all the tramps at the market and give them each half a crown and make sure they got a mug of tea and two slices of dripping toast. Then with the change, he’d say ‘Now go down and buy yourselves a pint.’
Leaving work, I was walking down Maidment St, and on the corner I saw this big fellow wrestling with these two little fellows. So I went to help them, they got away and I got arrested, because the guy I was wrestling with was a police officer. When I got taken down to Arber Sq police station, he said to me, ‘Do you know what you’ve done? Them two young fellows was the Krays and now they’ve got away. They’re on the run from the army.’ I apologised and they let me go.
Later, when the Krays got control of a snooker hall, The Regal, I was playing snooker there and they came in and this fellow put his hand on my shoulder and said, ‘You don’t know who I am do you? I am Reggie Kray – and this is my brother Ronnie.’ I thought I was seeing double, you couldn’t tell them apart. They took me across the road to a pub called The Wentworth to buy me a drink because I did them a favour. They liked me at first. That’s how I came to be going round their house for nearly three years.
One day, I was down the Regency Club working for Harry Abrahams, he had his own “firm” and Albert Donahue was part of it. One of the Krays’ “firm”, Pat Connolly was there and he was drinking with a young couple. Then some fellows arrived from South London and sent us all a drink over. I ordered one for myself and the young fellow, but I didn’t know what the girl was drinking, so I asked her, ‘What do you want, love?’
The fellow that was with her went to cut me with a razor! Pat Connolly said ‘You don’t do that to Lenny.’ So, the fellow asked to have a talk with me in the toilet and I thought he wanted to say sorry. As I went into the toilet, walking in front of him, someone said, ‘Watch your back!’ and he went to cut me down the back with his cut-throat razor. I dived down to the cubicle door, and ducked and dived, as he came at me with the razor. Then I got up and smashed him in the face and I didn’t realise that I broke his nose. I also didn’t realise he was Buller Ward’s son, Bonner – and Buller was friends with the Krays.
My pal Andy Paul was living with me at the time because his wife had thrown him out, and he worked with the Krays as a doorman. Once, he came home at one in the morning when I was in bed and said ‘Ronnie wants you on the phone at Esmerelda’s bar. You’d better phone him up because you know what he’s like, he’ll come round and smash the place up.’ So I got a cab all the way to Knightsbridge to Esmerelda’s in Wilton Place and asked the cab driver to wait.
I went in and walked upstairs. All the gambling tables were closed down and there were seven or eight people standing on either side. They told me to go in the kitchen and when I opened the door Ronnie Kray was standing opposite. He said,‘Nothing to worry about, Lenny.’ He had a big armchair next to the cooker and he invited me to sit down, asking ‘What’s going on Lenny? You caused a bit of trouble in the Regal. We get protection money from them.’ I sat down.
He said, ‘Alright, you can go now.’ I stood up again and, as I turned to leave, I was wondering what was going on, when he said, ‘Get hold of him.’ Two geezers grabbed hold of me and then I saw it. I thought they were pokers but there were steels that are used to sharpen knives, Ronnie had them on the gas and they were white-hot. They had wooden handles and the first one Ronnie picked up he dropped because it was so hot, so he went and got an oven glove. Then he picked one up and came over to me, to frighten me, I imagined. He singed my black curly hair. I pissed myself. I was terrified. Next he started setting fire to my suit that I only had made two weeks before.
Then he went back and got another hot poker, and dabbed it on my cheeks and held it across my eyebrows and burnt my eyebrows off. I’m half-blind in this eye because of it. Then he went back and got another poker and, as he came back, he said, ‘Now I’m going to burn your eyes out.’ and he really meant it. As he came towards me, Limehouse Willy called out from the crowd, ‘No Ron, don’t do that!’ (A nice fellow he was.) Ronnie switched, he turned and walked away.
They let me go and I hurried out, and the cab driver was still waiting outside. When he saw the state of me, he wanted to take me to Scotland Yard but I said, ‘No mate, don’t do that, just take me home.’ Then as we were driving along, he said, ‘I think there’s a car following us,’ and it was one of the Krays’ cars. They were following to see where I as going, so I went round to my friend Harry Abrahams’ house. When he came home with his friend Albert Donahue, he said, ‘There’s only one person who would do that.’ So he and Albert went round the twins home with guns next morning, and the twins told him they did it because I got too flash – too big for my boots.
About two days later, my protector from Billingsgate, Georgie Cornell, came round and gave Harry Abrahams’ wife two hundred pounds with instructions to take care of me, “Look after Lenny, take the expenses out of that.’ A day later, a big surprise, Charlie Kray came round and gave her a hundred pounds and said, ‘Don’t let my brothers know.’ Finally, Dr Blaskar, the Krays’ doctor came round – he liked to drink and gamble – he treated me, gave me stuff for the burns.
But then in 1967, when the police were after the Krays, I was in Wandsworth Prison and they got a message smuggled in to me. I was in a single cell and when I returned from the doctor one day there was an envelope on the table. (It’s in the Black Museum at Scotland Yard now) The note read, ‘If the Old Bill comes round, keep your mouth shut or we are going to shoot your kids.’ My children were six and seven years old and living with their mother in Poplar. I’m not a grass but I couldn’t risk my kids being shot, so I went to see the governor and gave him the letter. Within two hours, the police were round, they said, ‘Look Lenny, if you help us, we’ll help you. We’ll give your children twenty-four hour police protection.’ which they did. They moved me to Eastchurch prison on the Isle of Sheppey and then to Bow St to give evidence against Ronnie Kray. On my evidence, he got committed to the Old Bailey.”
We were all alone in the empty barroom and, when Lenny told the part about the poker, he fixed me eye to eye and, extending a single finger, pushed his fingertip into my face. I was speechless. It was extraordinary to hear a first hand account of the reality of characters that have become mythical. I think it is easier to accept the East End’s history of violence as mere fiction, even when you know the truth. Ironically, Lenny’s volatile experiences have fused his emotional story into a powerful narrative with an effective literary structure.
Lenny has no patience with those who seek to romanticise the Krays as working class heroes,“They were scum. The lowest of the low. You never robbed or hurt your own people, that was the old East End code. The Krays controlled people through fear. They hurt so many people. I’ve been in a saloon bar when they were there and people would arrive, order a drink, then go out to the toilet and walk straight out the back door to escape.”
Today, after plastic surgery, and many years on the straight and narrow since doing time, Lenny is a different man. Though, even walking with a stick, he retains a powerful physical presence as a legacy of his boxing years. Yet, behind this assured facade, I sensed something else, an intensity in his eyes, his “snake eyes” he calls them, that indicates a spirit forged in a dark world of violence.
Lenny doesn’t pretend to be a saint. “I’m not proud of what I done,” he admitted openly, speaking of his days blowing safes and thieving jewels. “I used to have a friend in Hatton Garden who bought all the gear off me and gave me good deal. I took him a £680,000 job one day and, after he’d melted down the gold and recut the diamonds, I got £100,000. He asked me to push my finger through a card, and then he made me this,” revealed Lenny with relish, displaying the dazzling ring upon his finger with its single glittering diamond. Always keen to emphasise that he only stole from those with insurance, Lenny even managed to make it sound like he was doing a favour for people sometimes. “There was a man whose business was going under. He came to me and said ‘There’s nothing in the safe but if you blow it up, I can claim there was.’ I felt sorry for him so I blew the safe while he was away for the weekend. Then he took the insurance payment and moved to Brighton.”
Lenny could have talked all day but after three double Corvoisiers and lemonade, I called a taxi to take him on to a pub in the Roman Rd where his pals were waiting to continue the long afternoon of storytelling. When I enquired about some recent scars on his head, he explained that he had been beaten up on the street by muggers, but he shrugged it off lightly. You have to credit Lenny for his resilience, he still possesses undaunted enthusiasm and appetite for life.
Standing up to leave, Lenny caught sight for the first time of the painting of Ronnie and Reggie Kray that hangs on the barroom wall in The Carpenters and brandished his stick in a flash of emotion. For a moment, I was expecting the sound of broken glass, but Lenny quickly relented, turning away with a grin and a wave to me, because the taxi was waiting outside and he had better things to do.
You can see Lenny Hamilton interviewed as part of the documentary “The Krays by Fred Dinenage” to be premiered on the Crime & Investigation Network on Monday 15th March at 9:00pm.
Yesterday afternoon, I walked over in the torrential rain to find the shoe-shiners of Leadenhall Market but they were gone. It was my mistake, I should have known better, I should have realised that you cannot polish wet leather. So today I returned under a benign blue sky and was delighted to discover that the sunshine brings out the shoe-shiners in the City of London.
Before long, I struck up a conversation with John who you see above in the throes of his swift occupation. He explained that he is one of a half dozen actors and musicians who work here in Leadenhall Market shining shoes as part of the London City Shoe Shine Company when they are between engagements. Even in these pictures, you can tell that John is a natural performer, bringing his relaxed stage presence and gallant sense of style to fulfill his current role of shoe-shiner for bankers with appealing panache. There is a sense of theatre about Leadenhall Market with its intricate carmine ironwork and John’s virtuoso performance on the shoe-shine has become a major dramatic attraction in this Victorian architectural masterpiece sequestered between Lloyds and Gracechurch St.
Observe the casual pride on the customers’ faces as they place their best foot forward to receive the polish that is the finishing touch. Assuming a stance that has an innate nobility and enjoying a tiny moment of grace, they bolster their spirits, before striding off with glazed eyes to take on the Leviathan that is the infinite tribulation of the global financial marketplace.
Meanwhile, exuding an appealing buoyant energy, John is an enthusiastic advocate for the understated art of the shoe-shine. “We all enjoy doing it because it is a window into a world you wouldn’t be party to otherwise”, he explained as he finished up another shoe-shine and eagerly pocketed another banknote, before turning to me and rolling his eyes with sardonic humour, “During the banking crisis was an interesting time to be down here. The sense of dread was palpable for a while. Anyone who works in a high powered business wants to protect their interests, they need a lot of money to live, so there were a lot of very scared people around at that time.”
But a global financial crisis is water off a duck’s back for the shoe-shiners. “It didn’t affect our business at all,” revealed John with a breezy smile,“People need to look good, especially for job interviews. It’s surprising how much pride they take in their appearance.” I asked John, if like those Wall St shoe-shiners of the nineteen thirties, any of his colleagues were tempted to cross over to work in the financial sector, but he shook his head with good-humoured disinterest, “We see the pitfalls from the ground, he concluded sagely.
There is an intimacy between the shoe-shiner and the customer, comparable to that of a barber and client, and it is this camaraderie of the city that John delights in, because actors are by nature students of humanity. “It’s a very social job and we have regulars who we consider friends. We are privy to things they wouldn’t tell their nearest and dearest”, he said, with a grin that transformed into an incongruous laugh as he revealed his customers’ curiosity for the acting life, “Everybody is very interested in what we do, because the pursuit of artistic endeavour isn’t prevalent in the City.”
I wondered whether John might get cold, working outdoors in all weathers, but he rejected my concern robustly with a smirk. ” The worst thing is the people who say ‘God you must be freezing!’ It’s a physical job, so you keep warm and you wear the right clothes,” he said, drawing my attention to the salopettes and moon boots he was wearing and explaining that he prefers to work in shorts in summer, adding, “Business is pretty even all year round,” just to confirm his state of ease in the day job, in case I had even the hint of a shred of doubt left. Then another customer arrived and, as I was taking my pictures, I overheard John speaking in care-free excitement for his next engagement as an actor/musician, a tour of South East Asia. As John was explaining that he might take some time at the beach afterwards, I could see the grey-faced city worker filling with barely-concealed jealousy and it made me realise that the balance of the transaction between shoe-shiner and businessman is not as clear cut as it might first appear.
Finally, I asked about the rain.“All of those people who were drowned yesterday will be here today, it’s swings and roundabouts.” declared John with his indefatigable alacrity, as he set upon the high-powered two-handed brush action that brings the ultimate lustrous gloss to the leather. Then his pal interrupted with a nudge, “Tell him about the pancake race, John.” and John blushed to confess he won the Leadenhall Pancake Race yesterday morning, receiving a magnum of champagne as his reward. Come rain or shine, the life of the modest shoe-shiner possesses an enivable sheen. You have to admire his polish.
There is a particular time in March around six thirty in the morning when the sun rising sends a narrow ray of sunlight along Sandys Row to illuminate the front of the synagogue in Spitalfields and photographer Jeremy Freedman was there for weeks in the frost to capture this haunting image with its subtly modulated dark tones and luminous mackerel sky at dawn.
It was a university photographic project that first drew Jeremy to the orthodox synagogue, established here in Sandys Row in 1854 as The Society of Loving Kindness and Truth (a Mutual Aid Society offering a community of social support and traditional funeral for those who embraced the society), in a former Huguenot Chapel built in 1766. In the nineteenth century, when there were over one hundred and fifty synagogues in the East End, Sandys Row had one of the largest congregations. Now it is one of only four that remain active and, when Jeremy came along to take his pictures, he found the attendance was dwindling.
“As a photographer, I thought was very important to photograph the senior members of the shul and try to do it in a way that captured their essence.” explained Jeremy, introducing the remarkable series of portraits you see below, which are published here for the first time. As the work of a photographer at the beginning of a career, there is an impressive restraint to these austere, warm and dignified images that stand as fine examples of classical photographic portraiture.
More significantly, there is an emotional intensity present that reveals something of Jeremy’s relationship to his subjects. Because although Jeremy grew up in North London, he is descended through his father from generations of Dutch Jewish economic migrants who came to the East End in the eighteenth century, while on his mother’s side he is descended from those who came as part of the great migration of over one hundred thousand Polish Jewish people in the late nineteenth century. The name of Deborah Englesman, Jeremy’s ancestor upon his father’s side, is there upon the humble paper and cloth plaque recording the foundation of the synagogue – as one of the mothers, daughters and wives that the poor working men who formed the Mutual Aid Society honoured, in contrast to the rich benefactors whose names were dignified in stone at the foundation of wealthier synagogues in other parts of London. Among Jeremy’s many East End antecedents, his grandfather, Alfred, who was born in Wentworth St, was once the president of the synagogue and his grandmother, Pamela, ran The Princess Alice in Commercial St.
In the late forties and early nineteen fifties, when much of the East End was derelict due to bomb damage, Jeremy’s mother’s and father’s families were among thousands who left, to escape the stigma and poor living conditions. Jeremy’s father grew up in Finchley and his mother in Wembley. “Most of Anglo-Jewry stems from the East End but they never talked about it, as soon as they left they never looked back,” revealed Jeremy, speaking candidly, “it was a dark time in their family history.” Concluding with a grin, “Now they had flushing toilets and electrical appliances.”
Returning to the photographs, “These are the people that left,” Jeremy explained, revealing his personal perspective as proud guardian of these images. They are the work of a passionate young photographer looking at those seniors who are the living connection to his own Jewish patrimony. Once Jeremy had made this connection, to which these photographs bear testimony, he could no longer observe passively. “It was apparent that if I didn’t stop taking photographs and do something, this shul would close, so I joined the board, and I came up with ideas, and got my father involved too, as treasurer. I brought fresh blood and, in turn, this attracted other younger dynamic people. ”
Today Sandys Row is on the up again, welcoming approximately eighty businessmen from the City for lunchtime services on weekdays, plus the synagogue recently received a major award from English Heritage to preserve the roof and Jeremy is currently amassing a photographic archive of all the families, like his, that have been associated with the shul over generations.
“I feel at home here in these streets”, said Jeremy, reflecting affectionately upon this neighbourhood that holds so much of his family history. You will see him frequently these days in the places his ancestors knew so well, because he now has many reasons to spend time here in Spitalfields, through his involvement with the synagogue, as a weekly trader in the Thursday antique market and as a busy working photographer too.
Reverend Malcolm Gingold. © Jeremy Freedman
Harry Gilbert, warden of the synagogue. © Jeremy Freedman
Lilly and Ray Messophia. © Jeremy Freedman
Rose Edmunds. © Jeremy Freedman
Julie Smith and Pauline Rifkind. © Jeremy Freedman
Morris and Maurine Delew. © Jeremy Freedman
© Jeremy Freedman
Henry Glass, who arrived at Liverpool St Station as a child, as part of the Kindertransport.
In the first three installments of Charles Dickens’ article “Spitalfields” that he published in his weekly journal “Household Words” on 5th April 1851, we accompanied Dickens and his sub-editor W.H.Wills to a silk warehouse where they met the manager, Mr Broadelle, and the silk buyer of Messrs Treacy & McIntyre. With Mr Broadelle as their guide, they set out through the streets of the Spitalfields, dropping in to a Ragged School and eventually finding themselves at a weaver’s workshop…
Up a narrow winding stair, such as are numerous in Lyon or in the wynds and closes of the old town of Edinburgh, and into a room where there are four looms; one idle, three at work.
A wan thin eager-eyed man, weaving in his shirt and trousers, stops the jarring of his loom. He is the master of the place. not an Irishman himself, but of Irish descent.
“Good day!”
“Good day!” Passing his hand over his rough chin, and feeling his lean throat.
“We are walking through Spitalfields, being interested in the place. Will you allow us to look at your work?”
“Oh! Certainly.”
“It is very beautiful. Black velvet?”
“Yes. Every time I throw the shuttle, I cut out this wire, as you see, and put it in again – so!” Jarring and clashing at the loom, and glancing at us with his eager eyes.
“It is slow work?”
“Very slow.” With a hard dry cough, and the glance.
“And hard work?”
“Very hard.” With the cough again.
After a while, he once more stops, perceiving that we really are interested, and says, laying his hand upon his hollow breast and speaking in an unusually loud voice, being used to speaking through the clashing of the loom:
“It tries the chest, you see, leaning for’ard like this for fifteen or sixteen hours at a stretch.”
“Do you work so long at a time?”
“Glad to do it when I can get it to do. A day’s work like that, is worth a matter of three shillings.”
“Eighteen shillings a week.”
“Ah! But it ain’t always eighteen shillings a week. I don’t always get it, remember! One week with another, I hardly get more than ten or ten-and-six.”
“Is this Mr Broadelle’s loom?”
“Yes. This is. So is that one there;” the idle one.
“And that, where the young man is working?”
“That’s another party’s. The young man working at it, pays me a shilling a week for leave to work here. That’s a shilling, you know, off my rent of half-a-crown. It’s rather a large room.”
“Is that your wife at the other loom?”
“That’s my wife. She’s making a commoner sort of work, for bonnets and that.”
Again his loom clashes and jars, and he leans forward over his toil. In the window by him, is a singing bird in a little cage, which trolls its song, and seems to think the loom an instrument of music. The window, tightly closed, commands a maze of chimney pots, and tiles, and gables. Among them, the ineffectual sun, faintly contending with the rain and the mist, is going down. A yellow ray of light crossing the weaver’s eager eyes and hollow white face, makes a shape something like a pike-head on the floor.
The room is unwholesome, close, and dirty. Through one part of it the staircase comes up in a bulk, and roughly partitions off a corner. In that corner are the bedstead and the fireplace, a table, a chair or two, a kettle, a tub of water, a little crockery. The looms claim all the superior space and have it. Like grim enchanters who provide the family with their scant food, they must be propitiated with the best accommodation. They bestride the room, and pitilessly squeeze the children – this heavy, watery-headed baby carried in the arms of its staggering little brother, for example – into corners. The children sleep at night between the legs of the monsters, who deafen their first cries with their whirr and rattle, and who roar the same tune to them when they die.
Come to the mother’s loom.
“Have you any children besides these?”
“I have had eight. I have six alive.”
“Did we see any of them, just now, at the – “
“Ragged School? O yes! You saw four of mine at the Ragged School!”
She looks up, quite bright about it – has a mother’s pride in it – is not ashamed of the name: she, working for her bread, not begging it – not in the least.
She has stopped her loom for the moment. So has her husband. So has the young man.
“Weaver’s children are born in the weaver’s room” says the husband, with a nod at the bedstead. “Nursed there, brought up there – sick or well – and die there.”
To which, the clash and jar of three looms – the wife’s the husband’s and the young man’s, as they go again – make a chorus.
“This man’s work, now, Mr Broadelle – he can’t hear us apart here, in this noise? – “
“Oh, no!”
- “requires but little skill?”
“Very little skill. He is doing now, exactly what his grandfather did. Nothing would induce him to use a simple improvement (the ‘fly shuttle’) to prevent the contraction of the chest of which he complains. Nothing would turn him aside from his old ways. It is the old custom to work at home, in a crowded room, instead of in a factory. I couldn’t change it, if I were to try.”
Good Heaven, is the house falling? Is there an earthquake in Spitalfields! Has a volcano burst out in the heart of London! What is this appalling rush and tremble?
It is only the railroad.
The arches of the railroad span the house; the wires of the electric telegraph stretch over the confined scene of his daily life; the engines fly past him on their errands, and outstrip the birds; and what can the man of usage hope for, but to be overthrown and flung into oblivion!
There, we leave him in the dark, about to kindle at the poor fire the lamp that hangs upon his loom, to help him on his labouring way into the night. The sun has gone down, the reflection has vanished from the floor. There is nothing in the gloom but his eager eyes, made hungrier by the sight of our small present; the dark shapes of his fellow-workers mingled with their stopped looms; the mute bird in its little cage, duskily expressed against the window; and the watery- headed baby crooning a in a corner God knows where.
In “Household Words”, this interview followed directly from Dickens’ account of the ostentatious affluence of the silk buyer and the immense financial turnover of the silk warehouse, upon the previous pages. By strategically placing these accounts of the different components of the silk industry side by side, Dickens presents his readers with the impoverished weavers, who actually produce the cloth, uneasily contrasted with those who profit handsomely through trading the fruit of their labours. The reader is invited to draw their own conclusion upon the inequalities of the textile industry, a trade in which injustice persists. Except today, rather than being on the other side of the city from the privileged customer, the workers are likely to be on the other side of the world.
Next time, in the final installment of Dickens’ article, we shall accompany him on a visit to the studio of a young British artist in Spitalfields.
The rare photograph at the top shows a Spitalfields weaver’s workshop, taken in June 1885. Both illustrations were kindly provided by the Tower Hamlets Local History Collection.
Kitty Valentine invited me round to Worship St for tea on Saturday afternoon to visit her tiny apartment in the terrace designed by the pre-eminent Arts & Crafts’ architect Philip Webb in 1862. These buildings were conceived as living and working spaces, with a workshop in the basement, a shop on the ground floor and dwelling for the family on the floors above. Designed in a handsome neo-medieval style with modest proportions yet providing decent living conditions for the artisans, they represent an admirable social ideal – though, disappointingly, the terrace was later divided up into offices and now each floor is let out as a separate dwelling. Kitty’s flat occupies a space that was previously a shop and we enjoyed a lively conversation as we drank our tea upon the raised platform in front of the window, originally used to display items for sale.
Kitty was attracted to the building when she first saw a little picture on the letting agents’ website and, two years ago, she persuaded the sceptical landlord to let it to her when he was suspicious of artists, preferring City workers whom he believed were more responsible. A presumption that we hope he has revised in the light of recent events. It was an inspiring discovery for Kitty to learn of the noble origins of the building, once she had moved in, especially as was she studying screen-printing at the Working Men’s College in Camden, which had been founded by William Morris and where Dante Gabriel Rossetti taught.
Although history may have taken Philip Webb’s building away from its conception and purpose, in her part Kitty has brought it back to its origin as a creative space. Lining every corner of her flat with her wonderful market finds, clothes and artwork (all lovingly organised, arranged, displayed and cared for), Kitty has fashioned an exquisite bower. A nest woven by an ingenious magpie with a million glittery, flowery, feathery things to create the charismatic living space of a woman with with a rich self-confident imagination. I was spellbound by this secret feminine enclave at the base of the vast steel Broadgate Tower.
Kitty studied Fine Art at St Martins School of Art where, like so many talented artists of the younger generation, she came up against the stultifying hegemony of conceptualism. “They weren’t interested in your inspiration, because they thought you weren’t trying hard enough to be modern,” she revealed with a doleful grin. Adding derisively, “They even thought using colour was frivolous,” before looking me in the eye to declare light-heartedly, “but I am glad I stuck with painting because it has given me so much joy.”
There is a brave side to Kitty that is not at first apparent. She is her own woman, who through hard work and directed intelligence has found a way to support herself as an artist. She has won an independent life, making her work here in the living place that she has established. It is a room of her own, which even today can be elusive for many to achieve, but remains essential for anyone pursuing creative work, as a private imaginative space. Somewhere to discover who you are and work out what you are capable of.
Kitty showed me her recent work, a series of miniature paintings, embellishments upon nineteenth century portrait photographs, which she titles “Victorian Mischief”. Kitty’s work is an entirely personal and darkly humorous vision of the Victorians, in which prim and proper worthies and nobility, encased in their uniforms and corsets, acquire animal heads and skulls, with horns or antlers. It is a curious perspective, Lytton Strachey undermined in the spirit of Max Ernst’s collage novel “Une Semaine de Bonte”. But more than this, Kitty’s works are superb paintings, executed with the skill of a miniaturist and revealing an acute ability to express the paradoxes of the human personality. “I look at them and I know what animal they are going to be,” says Kitty describing her response on the discovery of new examples of these small unloved anonymous cabinet photos. Produced in millions by nineteenth century photographers, they were made in addition to the sitters’ prints as disposable advertising material.
I think Kitty’s work has a captivating poetry, proposing images of the hidden emotions and imaginative life of the unknown subjects, while also enriching their mystery by masking their faces with bizarre yet strangely appropriate replacements. And it is a measure of the power of her imagination that you cannot envisage these pictures anymore with mere human faces. This is serious work that explores the tensions and contradictions of our relationship with photography, and with the past, but it is the tenderness of these pieces that touches me most. In the strange world of contemporary art, it takes courage to be tender and, in my opinion, courage is Kitty Valentine’s defining quality.
You can see more of Kitty Valentine’s work by clicking on her name at the top of this story which will take you to her blog, where you may also click on her Etsy shop. Prints of the “Victorian Mischief” series are currently also available at the Two Magpies Emporium in the Tea Room Market in Brick Lane each weekend.
If you look closely at the nineteenth century engraving of Philip Webb’s building below you can see the niche where I photographed Kitty Valentine on Saturday.
Not so long ago, I used to go out and buy my daily loaf from St John and walk home again, and the only person I knew in Spitalfields to speak to was Sandra Esqulant, the landlady of the Golden Heart. Just six months later, all that has changed entirely, now I cannot walk anywhere here in Spitalfields without meeting someone I know! My life has been transformed.
For several years, I nursed my mother Valerie at home through the Dementia that afflicted her. It was an isolated existence, caring for her, feeding her and reading her stories until eventually she died. Throughout these years, I lived constantly in the presence of death. At almost any point in the final two years, she might have died. Whenever I came upon her sleeping deeply (as I did most days when I came to feed her), there was always a moment when I had to ask myself if she had died and I would observe her breathing to confirm whether she lived, before I woke her.
Years later, it has become apparent that this experience has filled me with the compulsion to write about life. By “life”, I mean all the aspects of existence you see in the categories on the right hand side of this page. In particular, my passion is to explore human life through examining the different qualities of people. I want to use my writing to draw me closer to life. When I began to write Spitalfields Life, I had no idea where it would lead. For over a year, I had been sending pictures daily to my friends from my phone and so it was a natural progress to transfer this process to the internet. But at the moment of commencement, in envoking the name of Spitalfields, I recognised a responsibility to undertake the project with the greatest of care, endowing it with a dignity that reflects my affection for this corner of London. Though equally, I am personally vividly aware that “life” is no less an operative word in the title for me.
Kierkegaard compared the experience of being a writer to that of constantly running through a burning house snatching whatever can be rescued. I think this describes something of my feeling, as I walk through the streets here, because I have this drive to record all the stories of the people and the place, as many as I can, at the rate of one a day, before I meet my own demise. Spitalfields has always been in flux, on account of its position at the boundary of the City of London and so it is in the nature of this place that it is always changing. My pursuit is to record as much as possible, especially the experiences of the people here, in midst of this constant transformation and reconfiguration, as it happens.
Once I began to write posts, something wonderful happened. People began to read them, more and more people. It was an extraordinarily uplifting experience to discover that there was an appetite for my stories of Spitalfields and it confirmed what I had always hoped, that if you strive to do something to the best of your abilities, people will seek it out. All the generous responses I have received from you, my readers, have touched my heart, filled me with humility and given me confidence too – inspiring me to raise the bar, trying to write better and better stories to delight and intrigue you. And you have obviously been talking to your friends, because each week there has been an increase, as more have come to read.
Above all, I cannot disappoint you. The presence of you reading has inspired me with courage to go out and talk to people, seeking stories to write – and the outcome of this is that I have met so many diverse people here in Spitalfields and each one of these people has become fascinating to me in a different way. It has enriched my life far more than I ever expected. I have learnt so much and Spitalfields has become even more intriguing to me. I count my own good luck to live somewhere with an exceptionally long and interesting history, inhabited by a phenomenal range of people. The more I learn, the more I want to know, and every person I meet suggests someone else for me to talk to. And so it goes on. Over the last harsh winter (in what was previously always the most dejected season for me), there has been this rising chord as the stories have become more compelling and the readership has grown too.
At first, I assumed the role of a journalist undertaking an interview but almost immediately this boundary dissolved – because everyone I met treated me with unexpected kindness and because these are the people who inhabit the place I live. Many of the subjects of these interviews have become friends and so what began as a project entitled Spitalfields Life has quite simply become my life. Transforming my life, it has made me look at people differently as I grow to understand their motives better and the result is that the city has become a more human place for me.
I owe it all to you. All this happened because you came along. I sacrificed my career to be a full-time nurse for my mother, then afterwards I could not go back, but Spitalfields Life has permitted me a new direction. Now, because of you, I find myself in this situation where I shall be writing to you every day for the next twenty seven years and I cannot think of a more beautiful way to spend the rest of my life.
The gentle author loves the gentle reader. You are my Spitalfields valentine.
The splendid Valentine at the top is the work of Rob Ryan and I am grateful to him for permitting me to reproduce it here. If you are reading this on Sunday morning, Valentine’s Day, there is still time to go to Ryantown in Columbia Rd and get one for your beloved.
The picture below is my mother Valerie aged seven, taken by my grandfather Leslie.
The weather was unremitting and my shoes were leaking, so I went round to E.Pellicci, the Italian café at 332 Bethnal Green Rd where Maria Pellicci, the head cook, proprietor, and beloved matriarch, cooked me a generous dish of steaming hot spaghetti with freshly made Bolognese sauce which Salvatore, Maria’s nephew, topped off with some Parmesan and ground black pepper. As I wolfed down the delicious spaghetti, I could feel my spirits reviving. Overcome with the intense culinary experience afforded by the tangy tomato sauce and the sweet spaghetti that was of perfect consistency, I was barely aware of the enthusiastic lunch crowd arriving and filling every seat in this historic, perfectly-proportioned, supercosy café, lined with exquisite Italian marquetry by Achille Cappoci in 1946.
As the multiple conversations around me accumulated symphonically, it was like sitting in the centre of an orchestra and hearing all the different instruments playing at once. Yet I felt quite comfortable enjoying my solitary meal peacefully in the midst of this gregarious friendly crowd of locals and regulars, some of whom, Nevio, Maria’s son, told me, have been coming for lunch for more than four generations now, ever since Pellicci’s opened in 1900. Justifiably, this café is a legend in its own lunchtime – a lunch service that has now extended over one hundred and ten years. There is room for thirty customers and there are five waiting staff, which means that everyone gets respectful attention paid to them, and Anna (Maria’s daughter), Nevio, Salvatore and their colleagues have time to enjoy relaxed animated conversations with their guests, whilst keeping the service running efficiently with deceptive ease.
Peering out through the graceful ballet of customers coming and going, and drinks and meals being served, all accomplished through the ingenious collective manoeuvres that have evolved in this confined space over a century of use, I could just make out the sleet falling in the blue light outside and took great comfort in being inside among this happy community of diners. There is a constant debate about whether the East End spirit still exists but all that is required is a visit to Pellicci’s to experience the egalitarian human spirit for yourself.
In that moment when you have finished eating, peek back through the hatch at the rear of the café and you will see Maria busy in the kitchen where she has worked six days a week since 1961, from six in the morning until seven at night (from four in the morning originally), ever since she first came to Bethnal Green leaving the small Tuscan village of Casclana that was her birthplace. Taking a glance through from the café into the kitchen, you will not be ignored, you will not be met with disinterest, Maria will raise her Sophia Loren brows to meet your gaze with her glittering eyes and the gentle smile that you recognise from all those Tuscan paintings of the early Renaissance.
Consequently, it was with some humility that I accepted the honour of Maria’s invitation to visit her there in her kitchen, whence she presides upon her entire domain. “Mama Maria” the children call her, when their parents bring them to the café, where they also came to eat as children once upon a time. If these children can show themselves well behaved throughout their meal, as a reward, they are sometimes permitted to visit Mama Maria in the kitchen, who might dispense a sweet treat if they are especially good.
With her strong features, deep chestnut eyes and exuberant nature, I was immediately under Mama Maria’s spell. She showed me her hands with which she has been cooking her whole life, beautiful working hands, nimble and strong and graceful. She wears the gold ring that her husband, Nevio senior, gave her. It was Nevio’s senior’s father, Priamo Pellicci, who began here in 1900, but he died young and left his wife Elide to run the business and bring up seven children, which she did with great success. Elide Pellicci was the E.Pellicci whose name is still upon the grade II listed facade today. Her son Nevio, who was born above the cafe in 1927, took over from her until his death just a year ago, which leaves Maria as the head of the family business now, supported in the cafe by Nevio junior, her son, Anna, her daughter, and Salvatore, her nephew.
Maria Pellicci cooks every dish on the menu herself, all the meat pies, speciality pasta dishes and traditional desserts, prepared from scratch using fresh ingredients each day. Maria even cuts every chip personally by hand, a feat that recently won her an award for the best in London. She is keen to emphasise that she takes exceptional pride in her cooking and is always eager to respond to the requests of her customers. Scrupulous, Maria orders her meat from the nearby butcher, making regular small orders so that food never hangs around and she has rigorous cleaning regime too, everything is left spotless at the end of each day.
“There is no secret here,” declared Maria, gesturing playfully around her immaculate kitchen, once she had authoritatively outlined the nature of her work. The fact is the Pelliccis love their café and their loyal customers reciprocate the affection, inspiring a passionate human tradition that thrives today as it has always done over so many years. It is a rare haven of kindness, appreciated as it deserves.
I kissed Maria’s hand as I left the kitchen and I was just shaking hands with Nevio before I stepped outside, when Maria appeared unexpectedly through the stained glass door that leads to the kitchen and flashed her huge eyes, holding up a tinfoil parcel for me. It was my sweet treat.
As I walked along the Bethnal Green Rd and crossed Weavers’ Fields in the dark, on my way back to Spitalfields in the gathering blizzard, I could not resist opening the parcel, discovering two slices of bread pudding in there. Let me confess, I ate them both before I got home. My shoes were still leaking but I was warm inside thanks to Mama Maria.
We have all lived through this worst Winter together, following what we had believed was the worst Winter ever last year. So you may share my delight to see these hazel catkins dancing flamboyantly in the churchyard of St James, Clerkenwell, where they stopped me in my tracks. Another of those familiar rural sights that acquire an exotic poetry, displaced here in the heart of the city.
I was walking home to Spitalfields when I saw the catkins, as I was taking a detour through Clerkenwell to avoid the bitter East wind that numbs my face and pinches my nose, blowing directly along Old St. In Summer, the churchyard is a pleasant shady place to sit, in Winter the buildings and surrounding trees create a shelter from the Arctic blast. At this time of year, I avoid Old St entirely, walking instead along the smaller parallel roads. Closer to home, in Spitalfields, I am familiar with which streets channel the wind and which exclude it. Hanbury St, for example, is a wind tunnel whereas Princelet St is always sheltered from the traffic of air currents, while Commercial St and Great Eastern St are especially prone to raging winds that cause pedestrians to walk with their heads down, bent double against the furious blast.
Being a perennial optimist, whenever I have woken to sunshine over recent weeks, I have briefly convinced myself it is Spring. A self-deception exposed each time that notorious East wind brings another whirling blizzard across the North Sea to engulf us. In fact, the pot of fresh green mint that I bought at Columbia Rd Market on Sunday to brighten my kitchen window sill had to be hauled inside on Wednesday when the snow fell again.
Yet I cannot relinquish the wishful thinking engendered by my longing for Spring and every day I cast my eyes upon the garden searching for signs of growth. There are points of green poking from the dark earth where Spring bulbs declare their first intentions but, however many times I check, they appear reluctant to reveal themselves and make a further commitment to new life. They have a more prudent appreciation than I do of the potential for bad weather still ahead.
As I continued on my way beyond Clerkenwell Green, I acquired a spring to my step because of my discovery. At last, the catkins were positive proof, botanical evidence that life advances ceaselessly and this stasis at Winter’s end cannot be interminable. If your wishful thinking is directed towards something that you know will come, I think it can be dignified with the name of hope, I told myself. And then, even as these thoughts were crossing my mind, I realised my newly fleet feet were carrying me quickly eastwards and I found myself in Allen Gardens, next to Brick Lane, where I looked down to discover these first snowdrops here in the Spring sunshine.
My path led from the catkins of Clerkenwell to the snowdrops of Spitalfields.
Yesterday, I met with Alf Morris at Nico’s Cafe next to Bethnal Green Tube Station. Alf is one of the few remaining survivors of the Bethnal Green Tube Disaster, when one hundred and seventy-three people died in the single worst civilian calamity of World War II in Britain. No bombs fell, the casualties were the result of a series of tragic circumstances, when a crowd of three hundred people mistook the sound of anti-aircraft rockets for bombs dropping and stampeded into the narrow stairwell at the tube entrance, falling over each other in panic like helpless human dominos.
For over fifty years, Alf carried his story without even telling his wife or children, but in 2007, when he was approached by the people who want to create a memorial to this forgotten calamity, Alf broke his silence. The result is an extraordinary eye witness testimony which he dictated to me and it is my privilege to publish Alf’s compelling story here in his own words.
“On 3rd March 1943 at a quarter to eight, in our home at 106 Old Ford Rd, the radio went off, as it did every time there was an air raid. My father, Alfred George Morris, insisted that me and my aunt, Lilian Hall, go to the tube to shelter. As we crossed Victoria Park Sq, the air-raid siren sounded. In Bethnal Green Gardens, between the Toy Museum and St John’s Church, there was a radio controlled searchlight that came on. This meant the searchlight had found an aircraft, me and my aunt knew this from other nights. So we ran across Victoria Park Sq to reach Roman Rd (which was then called Green St), then across the road to the entrance to Bethnal Green Tube and started down the steps.
There was a wooden hoarding and a narrow entrance with just a twenty-five watt bulb, but we knew where we were going because we had been there many times and there were handrails at each side. Me and Lilian, we started walking down the centre of the staircase and everything was as normal. The air-raid had stopped. We continued on down and as we got halfway down, the rocket guns in Victoria Park fired at the aircraft above. There was a deafening noise as they flew over. At that time, two buses arrived at the number eight bus stop and they were full of people. Above the noise, somebody shouted ‘There’s bombs! There’s bombs! There’s bombs! They’re bombing us!’ And as they did everybody ran to the entrance.
The rush of people separated me and my aunt. I was pushed to the left and my aunt was pushed to the right. I was thirteen years old. As I was pushed downwards, I was carried down. I got to the third step from the bottom and I was pushed up against the rail with people falling from above. They fell on top of one another. They were all screaming for their mothers and fathers. I couldn’t see my aunt and I couldn’t move my legs because the people were all pushed up against them. I was calling for my aunt but she had her own problems, she was stuck too.
And then, on the landing at the bottom of the staircase, there was a lady air raid warden, her name was Mrs Chumbley. She could see me calling and crying. She put her arms across the people who were down and the first thing she did was grab my hair, and I screamed because the pain was tremendous, but she could not move me. So she reached further over the people and put her hands under my arms and pulled me out like I was a bag of rubbish, and I started to move and I came out.
When she pulled me, I must have stepped on several of the bodies, she pulled me over these people. Then she stood me on the landing, grabbed my collar and said, ‘You go downstairs and you say nothing of what has happened here.’ She had a very dominating voice. Then I walked away from her and descended the escalator, which was not working because the station was still under construction and when the war began they ceased working on it.
At the bottom of the escalator, there was a big steel door. They pulled the door open and as I went in they asked why I was crying but I said nothing. I walked down to my bunk, and I sat there and cried. Ten minutes later, my aunt came down. They pulled her out, and she had left her coat and shoes in the crush. Her stockings were torn, and she was black and blue down one side. We got some tea in the canteen and settled down but we were worried about my mum, who had gone to another shelter with my sister who was a babe in arms at the time.
Around nine thirty, three people came walking along the tunnel, a policeman, an air raid warden and a fireman who had climbed down the shaft at Carpenters Sq next to Bancroft Rd. You could hear their footsteps approaching and people were asking why they came through the tunnel. But no-one said anything because there were fifteen hundred people in the shelter and we didn’t want panic. It quietened down at ten thirty when we went to bed but I didn’t sleep much because I was so worried.
The next morning I came up around seven o’ clock and when I walked up the stairs there were piles of shoes and all the steps had been washed down. I got home at seven thirty but no-one knew how bad the tragedy was at this time. I was very pleased to see my mum and sister, my mum told me when she heard the guns she thought it was bombs so she ran into the shelter under the catholic church and when the all clear sounded at eight thirty in the evening she went home.
Just before I went to school, Lilian Trotter used to bring her seven year old daughter Vera round and Vera and me would go to school together. But that morning Lilian Trotter didn’t show. I waited till nine before I left for school. At school, there were so many children missing out of the class. The teachers asked, ‘Where are they?’ I said, ‘There’s been something happened at Bethnal Green Tube.’ When school finished at four, I went home but Lilian and Vera had still not arrived. Their uncle asked my dad where they were. They’d all heard rumours. You wasn’t allowed to talk about what happened.
My dad was very level-headed. I thought a lot of my dad. He said to my mother, ‘I’m going to look round the hospitals.’ He went to the Bethnal Green Hospital, then the Hackney Rd Children’s Hospital and the Marmaid Hospital. They was all laid in the different mortuaries. So then he realised there had been a terrible tragedy. He found Lilian and Vera. Vera could not be recognised she was so mutilated, her face was crushed. The way he recognised her was because he had taken a nail out of her shoe two weeks before the accident. She was unrecognisable. That went for most of the bodies that were pulled out from there. All those people I heard crying for their mothers and fathers, gradually getting less and less and no-one could help them. It was terrible.
When my father came home and told my mother Elizabeth, he sat on the kitchen steps and cried like a baby. That was the only time I ever saw my father break down. We accepted that Lil and Vera were dead, and then we carried on as best we could because we thought there might be another raid that night. When we went to line up for the shelter, newspaper reporters were asking us what happened but we were instructed to say nothing. This is how it was covered up.
And we went down into the shelter and gradually it got around that one hundred and seventy-three people had died, sixty-two of whom were children.”
As Alf dictated to me in Nico’s Cafe, one sentence at a time, I could see he was reliving the events and describing what he saw precisely. Paradoxically, since Alf never spoke of it for over fifty years, the story retains absolute clarity in his telling. He has carried the experience itself and it has not become supplanted in his mind by the repeated narrative of the events. I was touched to be there with him having our private conversation (learning of these big events that once happened so close at hand in Bethnal Green), amid the banal public clamour of the steamy cafe. I found it impossible not to warm to this open-hearted man still struggling with the experience today. Time breeds indifference amongst the general populace yet brings Alf no solace. He is the solitary guardian of his story, lucky to survive but deeply unlucky to become part of a tragedy he can never escape. Watching him bring the events into the present tense, as we sat with our faces just inches apart, I could see the thirteen year old boy of 1943 still present in Alf today.
Now he has unburdened his lonely secret, the troubled emotions Alf carried all these years have come to the surface, “Inside me I am bitter because all these people died and no-one recognises it even after all this time.” he reveals. Alf wants a memorial to those who were killed that night in those unforgettable minutes while he was trapped under the bodies before he was rescued, this is the moral cause he has embraced to channel his grief. He is a passionate man, carrying raw feelings, yet although he describes himself as bitter, Alf revealed a warm human nature to me. Telling me how a recent newspaper feature brought him to meet Suzanne Lane, the grand-daughter of his saviour (who knew nothing of her grandmother’s heroism until she learnt it from Alf ), he remembers Mrs Chumbley, the air raid warden, with great respect and affection.
“She stood at the top of the escalator in a blue smock. She was a tall woman and she’d point at you and say ‘Stop running!’ or ‘Shut Up!’ and you’d do it. She scared everyone but when it came to this incident, she was a true godsend.”
Mrs Chumbley, heroine of the Bethnal Green Tube Disaster.
Lilian Trotter and her daughter Vera.
Alf is one of the prime movers in the Stairway to Heaven project to raise money for the memorial to the victims of the Bethnal Green Tube Disaster. In the next month, there is the launch of a book of survivors’ testimonies, a play reading and service of remembrance on 3rd March in Bethnal Green. Alf asked me to publish his phone number here, so anyone who would like to help may call him direct 07767402781
You will recall that I wrote about Paul Gardner, the fourth generation paper bag seller, recently. Gardners’ Market Sundriesmen is the longest established family business in Spitalfields, trading in the same building for one hundred and forty years. Yesterday, I went back to Paul’s shop at 149 Commercial St to photograph some of the unique collection of artifacts that have accumulated there since his great-grandfather James Gardner first opened in 1870, trading as scalemakers. We took down some things from the walls and photographed them on the floor, we arranged other items on the worn counter-top and I stood upon Paul’s chair to take my pictures. Let me say, both Paul and his customers were extremely gracious, continuing their transactions and buying their bags as usual, politely disregarding the morning’s photographic mayhem.
Paul told me that if he were a paper bag, he would be a brown paper bag because they are his bestsellers – multi-purpose bags, and the ones he has made most money out of over the years. So it is entirely appropriate that when Lucinda Rogers drew this portrait of Paul in his shop a few years back, she drew it on brown paper. Now it hangs in pride of place high up on the wall behind the counter.
Coming upon the artifacts pictured below in a museum would be intriguing but not surprising. In a museum they would be removed from life and arranged. But the only arrangement you see below was created for these photos. Discovering these items still remaining in the living working place where they belong is enthralling in a different way. In Paul’s shop they retain their full functional quality as objects that were once in use here (the coin tray and Oxo tin are still in use), now acquiring an intoxicating poetic meaning as the relics of the three antecedents who pursued the same trade in this place where Paul works today. Quite simply, these are the things that James, Bertie and Roy left behind, and their presence lingers in these everyday possessions as the evidence of their working lives and as evocations of the world they knew. Today, Paul is his predecessors’ unselfconscious living representative and the custodian of their stuff. I do not think Paul thinks twice about his wooden coin tray that is worn by four generations of use, unless someone points it out to him. And there is something profoundly beautiful about this.
You will recognise the style of the price labels from the one which Paul was holding up in my portrait of him. I love the varieties of apples and pears specified here, Comice, Ripe Williams, Dunn’s Seedlings, Choice Worcesters and Ellison’s Orange, names as lyrical as a Betjeman verse. Equally, there is a powerful magic to the simple phrase “morning gathered” that fills my mind with images of dawn in the orchards, though I do wonder what kind of world it was that could be enticed by the pale allure of “Worthing grown”.
Most fascinating to me was the Day Book begun by James Gardner on 1st January 1892 with some bold calligraphic flourishes. We all recognise that auspicious sense of possibility when you write your name to inaugurate a new book, revealing the future as a sequence of blank pages, ripe with potential. James used this sturdy book with fine marbled endpapers to record all the different East End greengrocers where he serviced the scales on a regular basis. James’ elegant italic hand can readily be deciphered to read many familiar addresses in Spitalfields. It is remarkable that he could maintain such poised handwriting when you consider how many customers James visited in a single day sometimes, though as business increased through the life of this ledger, his handwriting becomes hastier and more excited.
There was so much more I could show you, the family bible “Won by the Bugler James Gardner of the 1st Tower Hamlets rifle Brigade for shooting. Presented by Lady Jane Taylor, December 21st 1882″, with the entire family tree over five generations (revealing James’ year of birth as 1847 and his origin as Thaxted in Essex), the catalogues of scales, the insurance certificates, various family military cards from the different wars, and the modern receipt books with their blue carbon pages that end in 1968 on the day Paul’s father Roy Gardner died – all the pamphlets and pieces of paper that add up to four generations of trading for Gardners.
As you know, Paul Gardner’s business is now under threat as the landlord threatens to raise his annual rent from £15000 to £25000 in June. For a business with a small turnover, this is an untenable increase. Meanwhile, hundreds of the smallest businesses and market traders, that are the basis of the economy in East London, rely upon Paul – because no-one else is prepared to sell such small quantities of bags at a time. I am relieved to report that he has commenced renegotiation of the increase and we have to hope that Messrs Tarn & Tarn, the managing agents, recognise their wider social responsibility to the neighbourhood in their handling of Gardners, because I am sure they would not wish to become responsible for sending Spitalfields’ oldest family business to the wall.
I never want to see Paul Gardner’s collection in a museum, I want to see it stay where it belongs in his shop, scattered among all the different stacks of coloured paper bags, and hidden among the tapes and tags, to be discovered on shelves and racks, behind the modest green facade of this celebrated business in Commercial St.
