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Remembering Robert Poole

February 15, 2013
by the gentle author

The novelist, Robert Poole, wrote of himself   “Born Stepney 1923, about fifty yards from Brick Lane. Education practically nil. Occupations: 1, Office boy. 2, Telegram boy. 3, Office boy. 4, Office boy. 5, Light factory hand. 6, Tomato grower (everyone was poisoned!). 7, War factory making gun brushes. 8, Volunteered for the navy, became wireless operator – anti-U-boat detection, later PYU landings in Burma. After demob became – 9, Garage store assistant. 10, Estate agent – hopeless! 11, Fractured spine in car crash, wrote short stories. 12, Joined the merchant navy as a steward. Jumped ship in New Zealand. Changed name to dodge police. Wrote and broadcast for NZ radio and became radio actor. Also an import agent and sub-editor on a daily newspaper. Police caught up. Clink for four weeks, then deportation. Back in London failed to get into the BBC so sold clothes in Oxford St. Then in 1958 went to Margate and ran the bingo stall in Dreamland. Fabulous! Showed short stories to Russell Braddon, who liked them. These stories developed into LONDON E1.” (Biography from the jacket of the first edition of LONDON E1, 1961.)

A couple of weeks ago, Robert Poole’s nephew, John Charlton, got an unexpected phone call to say that LONDON E1 was being republished for the first time since 1961. It triggered a lot of memories for John, both of his uncle Robert and of the East End of his childhood, and I was lucky enough to accompany him when he returned recently to take a look around the old territory upon the occasion of the republication of LONDON E1.

For John, revisiting his youthful past was also to recall his uncle’s novel, because the two are inextricable. Out of the eight children that survived infancy in a family of eleven siblings, John told me his mother Emmy Poole was closest to her brother Robert. It was an intimacy that was to last their whole lives and ultimately result in Robert portraying Emmy as “Janey” in LONDON E1.

“My grandfather George Poole had a stall under the railway bridge in Brick Lane selling fruit & veg. I was only eight when he died, but I remember that he used to boil up sheeps’ heads and sit there by the fire, peeling off the meat in slices with his pocket knife and slipping it into his mouth. He wore a flat cap, he loved his pint of beer, he drank in the Queens’ Head in Chicksand St and he always used to give me a couple of bob.

There was three years difference between my mother and Bobby (as we called him), and they were always together and they often used to go together to the West End. He gave a copy of the book to each one of his sisters but they all lost them except my mother, she would never part with it. I remember, when he died she was very upset. Bobby, he was very talented man, he spoke a few languages and he was a natural musician self-taught. He used to arrange music for Russ Conway, Winifred Atwell and Eartha Kitt, and he often stayed with her in Paddington. Bobby used to come down to the East End on a Sunday and play the piano at the Queens’ Head and he’d bring Eartha Kitt or some big star, and they were over the moon.

I knew him as a child, he was very quiet and well spoken, not a cockney – he changed his accent. I got on well with him, he lived with me and my mum for  a while. I remember listening to him doing book reviews on the BBC. He wanted to get away from the East End. He won a scholarship to go to college but my grandfather wouldn’t let him go, he had to earn money instead to keep the family.

I remember he worked in Dunns outfitters on the corner of Goulston St and then he worked in Dunns in the West End. He worked in pubs behind the bar, anything to get a job really. And he went to work in Dreamland for six months as a bingo caller, so he could learn about fairgrounds. It was for another book that he was writing and it was almost finished when he died, “Carnival for Shadows.” I was told his publisher Secker & Warburg were going to get a ghost writer to finish it, but we never heard anything more and no-one knows what happened to the manuscript.”

Two years after the publication of LONDON E1, Robert Poole died at the age of forty of an accidental overdose of the painkillers he had being taking for the spinal injury acquired in a car crash a few years earlier. By then he was drinking heavily and the promise of his first novel was destined never to be fulfilled. He struggled and it took its toll. Yet it had been a miraculous journey he had travelled, defying extraordinary odds, as one denied further education yet blessed with exceptional abilities. The stature of Robert Poole’s writing ensures that, half a century since it was first published, LONDON E1 stands as a vivid and authentic social portrait of Spitalfields at the end of the war, when Jewish people were moving out and the first Asians were moving in.

John Charlton left forty years ago. “The East End is not as I knew it, but I don’t miss it because I got a better life by moving away,” he assured me, speaking frankly,”Leaving was the best thing I ever did.” Yet even after he left, John could not keep away, returning every day to earn his living from a stall in Petticoat Lane selling menswear until his retirement three years ago. He treasures his copy of LONDON E1, inscribed by Robert Poole in 1961 to Em, his mother, Bill, his father and to himself, Johnnie. He carried it swathed in a plastic bag for protection as we walked the streets together in the freezing drizzle, clutching it to himself as a precious object of infinite value – because the book is a reliquary that contains an entire world.

Robert Poole ‘s 1961 author photograph on the jacket of LONDON E1.

Emmy and Robert Poole as children in the nineteen twenties.

Robert Poole’s inscription in the first edition of LONDON E1 to his sister Emmy, her husband Bill Charlton and his nephew John.

The Evening Standard’s review of LONDON E1, February 1961

John Charlton returns to 14 Deal St where he lived in 1961 when his uncle’s novel was published.

Looking west from Chicksand House, where John grew up, towards Brick Lane in 1942.

John’s clothing ration book as a child.

Eleven year old John stands wearing a suit and tie, centre right at the back of the crowd celebrating the coronation in Deal St, 1953.

John’s invitation to the Deal St Coronation party.

A crowd gathers for a beano outside the Queens’ Head in Chicksand St in the early fifties. John’s grandfather George stands in the flat cap holding a bottle of beer on the right of this picture with John’s father Bill on the left of him, while John stands directly in front of the man in the straw hat.

John stands with his hands in his pockets to observe the high-jinks.

Gipsy George from Bermondsey plays the accordion for the regulars of the Queens’ Head before they set out on a beano.

LONDON E1 by Robert Poole can be ordered direct from the publisher Five Leaves and copies are on sale in bookshops including Brick Lane Bookshop, Broadway Books, Newham Bookshop, Stoke Newington Bookshop and London Review Bookshop.

13 Responses leave one →
  1. February 15, 2013

    You’ve whetted my appetite. I’ll look it out.

  2. gary permalink
    February 15, 2013

    brilliant important blog, we should be grateful, Im a person born with bow bells and Id like to thank this author for her concern regarding cockneys but above all great history

  3. February 15, 2013

    I love these life story / image blogs that you do so brilliantly. What a character – Robert’s biography makes me want to read his book.

  4. joy marshall permalink
    February 15, 2013

    My Mum was Jane, one of Robert’s sisters, she too treasured her signed copy of London E1 and, by the way it was’t lost, she was very proud of her brother.

  5. H from Canada permalink
    February 16, 2013

    Life was tough (and can still be tough) – it is wonderfully inspirational to read on how people make the best of it and succeed.

  6. Jean Ireton permalink
    March 1, 2013

    My Mum is Jane, Roberts Sister. My Mum was extremely proud of what Robert had achieved. She treasured the book that he had written, and when she sadly passed away Roberts signed book was passed on to his Grandson who also treasures this and keeps it in his Safe!

  7. lynnette rowley permalink
    April 7, 2013

    Emmy Poole was my Grandmother and John Charlton is my dad. Emmy always told me stories about her brother and life growing up in the East End. I lived at 14 Deal St until the age of 7 and have lots of fond memories of the area. Nan Em always had the original London E1 book in her bureau and as i child i was not allowed to touch or read it just incase it got damaged !

  8. Joan Herbert (nee Poole) permalink
    March 23, 2014

    My father, Richard (Dick) was Robert (Bob’s) brother. We too have a copy of the book with a dedication within from Bob – to my Mum & Dad! All of his siblings (I believe) had a copy from the first edition and to many of the family it is still on show on our bookcases – a real treasure and family heirloom that provokes many memories for us all of times gone by.

    It’s lovely to see that it has been re-published 50 years later – it only seems like yesterday!

    My daughter and her book group are now in the process of reading this as the Rachel Lichtenstein article has provoked interest from them all!

    Bob would have been very pleased and proud to know that 50 years later folks are still reading and enjoying it!

  9. m.hardie permalink
    November 16, 2014

    I’m in the coronation picture with John Charlton.
    He used to sell dodgy shirts(only joking) in Bethnal Green Road and then Whitechapel Road.
    I remember his mum in the Queens Head and my Mum used to go in there too.

  10. stephen jarvis permalink
    February 23, 2015

    Re Queens Head Beano photo my grandfather william bellamy used to be the landlord at the pub and is in the photograph standing far right in front of the door and my father is in the doorway and I am the little boy in the white shirt being held by the soldier. Even though I was young I still remember that day. I believe the boy with his hands in his pockets in the second photograph is a lad I used to play with in the flats behind the pub when I visited my grandparents. I remember going to a small corner shop nearby to get a 1d drink.

  11. Joy Purnell permalink
    January 19, 2018

    My Grandfather George (Pop) was Roberts (Bob) brother. I believe I only met Bob a couple of times, but one time in particular was a very special memory and I’ve never forgotten him. Pop talked about him a lot. I have a copy of his book that I bought in the late 1960 s. I am so proud of him and what he achieved in his short life. He is an inspiration to me. The strange thing is I am in the throes of writing my own book, and have just written the chapter with my encounter with Robert in it. I just started to re read his book yesterday, and today thought I’d just see if there was anything about him on the internet and found this. It’s great to see the old photographs , I’ve only ever seen one of my Greatgrandfather George so what a delight to see another. Only last year I met again some of my old extended East End family at my Aunt Joy and Uncle Bobs wedding anniversary. So , Robert Poole’s legacy lives on. And I’ve just bought the new reprinted version of his book. Joy, Rene’s daughter. Love to all my extended family

  12. Dudley Diaper permalink
    August 3, 2021

    I recently noticed that London E1 had been reissued and ordered a copy. I already have one of the 1961 editon. This was recommended to me by my late uncle Charles Saunders, my late mother’s brother. He must have read a review of the book at the time because he made sure to get hold of a copy. The reason for his interest was that Charles grew up in Albert Buildings, Deal Street, in the 1930s with my mum and their three brothers and two sisters. He remembered Bobby Poole and also recognised incidents in the narrative, such as the death of a little girl trampled by a horse. I think he also recognised our Saunders family in the novel under another name, but that may have been wishful thinking. Our connection to the area began in the 1850s when my great great grandfather George Matthew Seaman Saunders moved from Norfolk to open a greengrocers in Buxton Street. Today I checked your archive for mention of the author and the book and was delighted to read more about both.

  13. Debbie Towns permalink
    September 22, 2021

    My nan Jane was Robert Poole’s sister.
    She treasured her copy of his book and had it wrapped in multiple layers of paper to keep it safe.
    After a lot of searching I too was able to buy a copy of the original book which I too treasure and keep wrapped up for safekeeping.
    My own children know all about Robert Poole and are very interested in his life.

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