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Jimmy Huddart, Spitalfields Market Porter

December 16, 2011
by the gentle author

A market porter of forty years standing, Jimmy Huddart is proud to display the clothing of his trade. He keeps this apron pristine for ceremonial occasions now, but it is of the traditional design made of the full width of strong canvas, with leather straps and reinforcement across the front where the boxes cause most wear. In use, an apron like this would quickly acquire a brown tinge yet provide its owner with at least two years of wear, with prudent repairs. In the pocket, Jimmy always kept his porter’s knife and string to sew up broken sacks. And the offcuts from these aprons were used to make “cotchel” bags, which held all the fruit and vegetables that the porter might acquire for his own use, gathering it in the lining of his coat as he went about his work. “Cotchelling up,” they called it – and today, although employees in the market now get a vegetable box to take home, it is still referred to as  a “cotchel.”

The most significant item in the outfit is the porter’s licence, indicated by the enamel badge. Throughout Jimmy’s time in the market, you could only work as a porter if you had one of these and it was a badge of office, denoting its own rights and privileges which had to be earned. At first, young men entered the market as “empty boys,” collecting and sorting empty wooden boxes and claiming the deposits, until they had earned the right to become licenced porters. Before the introduction of fork-lift trucks, this was intense physical work, manhandling crates of fruit and sacks of vegetables, and manoeuvring the heavy wooden barrows piled high with produce which had a life of their own once you set them going.

“I grew up in Bethnal Green, Brady St, and, at the age of twelve, I used to go to the market to watch all the tussle and bustle, and all the porters with their barrows. At school, I was very much interested in carpentry but I couldn’t get an apprenticeship, although by then I had already been introduced to the market. I loved to go up the Spitalfields with my Uncle Bill, he worked for a haulage company and we used to go around the farms in Kent to collect the English plums and apples and deliver them to the market. There was something about it, the atmosphere and the characters – a love of it developed inside me – and I wanted to become a porter. If you worked in the market or the docks you earned better than the average salary.

When I was fifteen, my uncle got me a job with Percy Dalton at the corner of Crispin St and Brushfield St. He was a well-dressed Jewish man, softly spoken, who had started his business with a barrow selling roast peanuts and he took me under his wing. The first day I started working for Percy Dalton, he showed me how to sweep the shop. He was that sort of person, hands on. He had a fruit shop at the front and in the warehouse there’d be eight people roasting peanuts. The peanut factory backed onto the alley where the lorries came, he had these red vans with Percy Dalton on the side that you always saw outside dog meetings and football matches. He was a likeable man, very popular, and people often came to him for advice. If you were in trouble you could go and speak to him, he would lend you money if you needed it. He always said, get a corner shop and you get two premises for the price of one.

I used to go out with the drivers all around the London Docks to pick up the fruit and make deliveries. I looked forward to it among my duties – being a boy, they took care of me and bought me breakfast, and they taught me how to stack a lorry. But I wanted to be a porter, so I asked in the market if I could work as an empty boy until I came of age. A job come up as a banana boy for Ruby Mollison, helping him to ripen the bananas, hanging them up in the ripening room.  I used to wear a leather glove when I had to put my hand under the banana stalk because I was frightened of the spiders. When you cut a bunch of bananas, you cut a “v” shape and they come away from the stalk, and that’s where your spider might be. They could be very dangerous, especially if they were pregnant, and if you were bitten you’d have to go to hospital because your arm could get paralysed by the poison.

Then a chance came up at Gibson Pardoe as an empty boy with the view of getting a licence, and I worked with them for a year until Alf Hayes of the porters’ union came to me and said, “There’s an opportunity to work in the flower market as a porter, would you be interested?” and I was issued a porter’s licence at twenty-one. But there was decline in the fruit trade in the nineteen seventies and they brought in fork-lift trucks. The job changed, it became less physical and where you once needed four porters now you only needed two. I can recall the first time I was given an electric truck. It was one of two milk floats all sprayed up without a scratch on them and they said to me, “treat it like it was new-born baby.” My first trip with it was to go over to Commercial St, and I was making a delivery there when a forty-ton truck came past and clipped it, taking half the fibre-glass roof with it. Luckily, I wasn’t seriously injured, only shaken up. I explained to governor what happened, that it was an accident and he said, “Did you get the number plate ?” He never asked if I was hurt or injured in any way. I suppose you could say, that’s the market sense of humour.

I became elected to the union. In life, I always believed in fairness and I recognise there has to be give and take. I had to build up trust from my members and in dealing with the traders too, yet most of the problems were solved over a cup of tea and a handshake. I was the porters’ representative for ten years but Alf Hayes, who was my inspiration, he had been porters’ representative for forty years before me. The porters’ union was founded in the depression of the twenties and thirties. Although they had to keep it a secret, they invented a form of recognition so they could discuss it – it was “union” backwards, “you’ve got none.” It was lost on those who weren’t in the know, and the union became fully recognised in the late nineteen thirties.

My sport was road running and thirty-five of us formed the Spitalfields Market Runners. Celebrating the tercentenary of the market in 1982, we were supported by the traders and greengrocers and porters in a relay from the Spitalfields Market to Southend Pier and back. We each ran ten miles and the whole of the market came together to do something for charity.

Jimmy remembers when unemployed porters once waited for work under the clock at the centre of the Spitalfields Market and how the union acquired an office so that traders seeking a porter could telephone, thereby saving the humiliation of the porters. Yet now, in common with the other London markets, the porters are becoming deregulated, losing their licences as the balance in the labour market shifts again. However, after forty years as a porter, Jimmy chooses to remain positive – because experience has granted him a broad perspective upon the endlessly shifting culture and politics of communal endeavour in market life.

Jimmy’s Huddart’s porter’s licence.

The final year of the licenced porters.

Jimmy’s first year as a porter at twenty-one years old.

Jimmy (right) with his predecessor in the porter’s union Alf Hayes, photographed in the 1980s.

Jimmy Huddart, Honorary Fruit Porter to the Worshipful Society of  Fruiterers

You may also like to read about

Peter Thomas, Fruit & Vegetable Supplier

Ivor Robins, Fruit & Vegetable Purveyor

John Olney, Donovan Brothers Ltd

Jim Heppel, New Spitalfields Market

Blackie, the Last Spitalfields Market Cat

A Farewell to Spitalfields

and take a look at these galleries of pictures

Night at the Spitalfields Market, 1991

Spitalfields Market Portraits, 1991

11 Responses leave one →
  1. Jim Pollock permalink
    December 17, 2011

    Nice photos Jim!

  2. Edward Strilesky permalink
    October 21, 2012

    Worked in Percy Dalton’s peanut factory from Sept. 61 to April 62. Lots of fond memories: Dino’s, Jack Bond, Joe Dalton, Jack Dalton, Eddie Phillips, Vic Andriatti etc. You were coming Jim as I was leaving. Also worked at Commercial Road factory and Percy’s cold store at Bow. Edward Strilesky

  3. George Young permalink
    May 13, 2014

    Glad to see your still going Jim.

  4. David j Gabriel permalink
    June 17, 2014

    Thanks for the memory’s jim
    I used to work with you Ronny Dunn joe dove Arther lambert Johnny Arson Fred Johnny Goodson & jim Bartlett to name just a few I worked in the cellar with lez Briggs / Terry moor then as a checker with jack radley & jock great memory’s great times .
    Then I got my licence and went to work on Charley knights and menny more.

  5. David j Gabriel permalink
    June 20, 2014

    Jim I have sent a photo of a painting of the inside of the market hopefully it will get
    Printed on this page it was done for me by Alan the Beadle in 1978 it will jog some memory’s

  6. Jim Huddart permalink
    July 4, 2014

    Great to hear from you David I remember you well. Thanks for reminding me of the names of some of the old porters. Remembering the good days.
    Best regards Jimmy Huddart

  7. Paul Blacketer permalink
    July 26, 2014

    Dear j
    Jim,
    Thank you for your story and for reminding me of some lovely memories. I worked at Spitalfields in my school holidays as a kid in the righties with my Grandfather William or ‘Billy Edwards’. He worked for D Appell although the owner was called Michael Appell. I loved working there and it was such an eye opener as a kid. My Grandfathers Brother Henry Edwards worked there to and Billy was a half decent boxer. He wad a Porte there well into his Seventies and he retired when the old market closed.
    Sadly, my Grandfather died this year aged ninety three. He still lived in the East End and was such a lovely honest man and a really funny character.
    If anyone can remember him I would love yo hear from them.
    I remember the art minders such as simi or Simon who was a hilarious lunatic and joe the nose as well as a lovely cuppa in the floral and lawmakers the bananaman as well as Kenya veg.
    I remember going to the centenary too.
    Lovely memories of a lovely grandad
    Thank you
    Paul

  8. Beryl Dadson permalink
    November 3, 2014

    My father DANNY POPPY worked as a barrow boy for Percy Dalton for over 30 years from some time after the war. His family used to live in Whitecross Place in the horrible old buildings. I have a dim memory of a photo of him pulling his barrow in one of the newspapers when there had been a murder or something in the market. Unfortunately I dont know any of the details or the newspaper. Its very interesting to read about the life then. How different today!!.

  9. March 12, 2016

    paul blackened,I remember you grandad with great affection,what a lovely man,he looked after me as a young greengrocer at the mercy of the fruit market,billy the Sam name as my dad.i remember how proud he was of him Brownew Caravanette,VW.i also have a vague memory of your nan as well,i visited there maisonette in Bancroft road. Micky appell ,Jimmy cooling Peter Cornwall,and hammonds,all top quality produce.

  10. bob Holt permalink
    November 13, 2017

    What a stunning story. My dad, grandfather and my dad’s brothers worked there. My Uncle Harry, was the barrow maker under Wheeler Street arch. As a kid, I loved the market and have fond memories of the Christmas Party and Boxing Night. Remember the Osbornes and Danny Mcguire? My dad, Bobby Holt. sadly died very young but my Uncle Billy went on for many years. I still have my grandfathers licence, 427 and I have licence badge 500. Somebody should collect them.

  11. December 28, 2018

    Wondering if you have any record of a James Knox or Jimmy Knox who worked as a porter in the market in early 1900’s

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