Railway footbridge at Poplar

You have only just a week – until 9th February – to catch the revelatory exhibition of Noel Gibson’s East London Street Scenes at the Tower Hamlets Local History & Archives in Bancroft Rd, which rediscovers an important painter from the nineteen seventies whose work has not been displayed for twenty-five years. These large paintings need to be seen in the gallery to fully appreciate the quality of impasto, with vivid black lines standing out in relief from the canvas and vigorous textures created with a palette knife, imparting a dramatic presence to these soulful visions.

Noel Gibson lived in the East End from 1962 until 1974 and the paintings in this show are the outcome of this period. Born in 1928 in Glasgow, Gibson originally trained as an opera singer and then became House Manger at the London Opera Centre based in the Troxy Cinema in Commercial Rd where he lived in a flat at the top of the building. A self-taught artist, he painted in the evenings after work.

“I began as an abstract painter but when I came to Stepney, I found paintings on my doorstep. Though I think there’s still a quiet abstract quality to my paintings. I am trying to express the spirit of the buildings, the strength of them and the people who were there. This is why I don’t put people into my paintings. People turn them into an episode with a background – but I am painting the background! I love these buildings. I walk the dog and I look at them at different times of day and in different weathers, and I keep going back. In a way I am making a record of a changing, I wouldn’t say a dying area, but often I go back to check up on a detail, a colour and a whole street has gone.” Gibson said in an interview in the Times in 1972.

Immensely successful in his day, enjoying acclaim and sell-out shows – one of which at St Botolph’s in Bishopsgate  was opened by Tubby Isaac the jellied eel king – Noel Gibson was featured on BBC’s “Nationwide,” a popular current affairs programme in 1972. In 1974, he moved to South London, working at Morley College and appointed Provost’s Verger at Southwark Cathedral, yet in 1985 he admitted, “I regard Tower Hamlets as the area of inspiration for my work and I will always return to it.”

Noel Gibson died in 2006 and this collection of paintings, originally bought by Tower Hamlets Council in 1970 to be shown in public buildings, came to light when the borough’s art collection was being photographed – inspiring Anna Haward to curate this beautiful show that recovers a major painter of the recent, yet already distant, East End.

Hessel St - “If this street were in Paris, everyone would have wanted to paint it.”

Brick Lane, looking north towards the Truman Brewery

St Anne’s, Limehouse

St John’s Tower

Small Red House in Bow

Street Scene in Poplar

The Victory in Poplar

Chilton St, Spitalfields

Tower House, Fieldgate St, Whitechapel

Arbour Sq

Noel Gibson

Images courtesy of Tower Hamlets Local History Library & Archives

You may also like to read about Marc Gooderam, Painter

Francis in the role of Newsvendor.

Let me admit to you, I do not know how I could have got through these last two winters without the sturdy tweed trousers that Marie & Will at Old Town made for me. When I visited them in their modest workshop at Holt in Norfolk to collect my trousers, they showed me a book of Irving Penn’s “Small Trades,” dignified studio portraits of artisans and tradesmen taken in the 1950s. And last weekend, Marie & Will came down to Spitalfields to create an entirely new set of Small Trades commissioned from photographer Scott Wishart.

Taking over a first floor room in Fournier St, they borrowed baskets from Leila’s Shop, feather dusters from Labour & Wait, and co-opted friends and local characters to assume the roles of the tradesmen and women, all dressed head-to-toe in Old Town clothing. These garments draw their inspiration from classic twentieth century workwear, yet now that almost all casualwear is termed “workwear” Marie & Will sought a means to illustrate the provenance of their clothes, which are derived from actual working clothes and can be worn for work.

When Francis Wheatley painted the most famous set of the Cries of London in 1790s, all featuring his wife in the roles of the different hawkers to be found around Covent Garden, he initiated the tradition of these staged portraits of working people, of which these pictures propose the latest example. Readers may recognise some of these individuals – Jim is actually a Carpenter and Barry is a Barber operating from Andrew Coram’s Antique Shop in Commercial St, but I leave you to puzzle out the rest for yourself.

Sonia in the role of Archivist at the Department of Circumlocution

Jim in the role of Carpenter.

Harvey in the role of Waiter.

Twins Lee & Lisa in the role of Housekeepers.

Chris in the role of Costermonger.

Miss Willey and Old Brown in the role of Tea Stall Proprietors.

Izzy in the role of Flower Girl.

Barry in the role of Barber.

Bommer & Appleton in the role of Piano Movers.

Photographs copyright © Old Town

You may also like to read about

Old Town in Spitalfields

A Pilgrimage for Trousers

Francis Wheatley’s Cries of London

Tom Ridge

For over twenty years, historian Tom Ridge has been fighting selflessly to save significant buildings that tell the story of the East End. A noble warrior who has single-handedly pursued a relentless campaign, writing letter after letter – waging what he terms “an endless battle” – Tom’s latest combat has been to prevent the demolition of the former Jewish Maternity Hospital in Underwood Rd in Spitalfields.

Beyond its significance as part of the history of the Jewish East End, the edifice was important as the last example of its kind in the country. Operating from 1911 until 1940, this pioneering institution was the personal mission of Alice Model who started and ran the hospital to help the sick among the poor and women at home with babies. Popularly known as Mother Levy’s Nursing Home, it was the first organisation in this country to provide home helps and maternity nurses, and among the many generations of East Enders who came into the world within the walls of this dignified Arts & Crafts building were Alma Cogan, Arnold Wesker and Lionel Bart.

The possibility of converting the elegant structure – which resembles a painting by Vermeer upon its street frontage – was never entertained, instead it was destroyed in a development by Peabody that was hastened through, in which a token consultation of the immediate residents was invited and then their wishes were ignored. Meanwhile, Angela Brady of Brady Mallalieu – the architectural practise designing the new building – who is the current RIBA president, said in The Guardian on 5th October 2011, “Let’s ask what people want,” emphasising that she is, “enthralled by the ‘rich mix’ of the capital’s culture.”

In harsh contrast to these sentiments, the developers sent a Prior Notification of Demolition to Tower Hamlets Council Planning Department that same month. Obtaining this approval in advance of any public consultation meant that Peabody could demolish the buildings irrespective of what the people of the East End had to say, and without any assessment of the historical importance of the existing structure or the environmental impact of a new block upon this quiet corner of Spitalfields.

Regrettably, this alarming set of circumstances is a familiar story for Tom Ridge, just the latest episode in a conflict in which for too long he has been a lone warrior, chasing bureaucrats around and becoming expert at deciphering their game of weasel words, as large organisations pursue their own interests at the expense of the culture of the East End. Occasionally, Tom will confess the weight of emotional responsibility he carries for his “failures” – those instances where he has lost the battle against developers and part of our history has gone forever – but it almost impossible to get him to disclose his successes.

Yet we all owe Tom Ridge a debt of gratitude for those important facets of the East End that have survived thanks to his heroic campaigning. It was he who discovered that an old building by the canal had been used by Dr Barnardo and was responsible for saving it, and creating the Ragged School Museum there - “because there should be a museum of the East End in the East End.” It was he who led the successful campaign to save the Bancroft Rd Local History Library when the Council would have preferred to close it down and sell off the collection. It was he who prevented buildings being constructed upon the small public park at the heart of Bethnal Green, by ensuring it was listed as of historic importance.

When Tom arrived in the East End from Liverpool in 1965, at the age of twenty-three, and asked the way to St Saviour’s School where he had been employed to teach geography, he was told to go over Stinkhouse Bridge and the walk down to cross Gunmakers’ Arms Bridge. Entranced by the poetry of these names – dating from 1818 – Tom did not at first realise their significance as part of a six mile ring of waterways, originating from the time when, “London was the greatest industrial city in the world  with the greatest port in the world.” Years later, Tom set up the East End Waterways group to preserve the canals and their attendant structures - “because the Waterways are the last places of peace and tranquillity in the East End.”

“I fell in love with the East End and its people – maybe it’s because I come from Liverpool which is also a port city.” Tom confided to me, tracing the origins of his passion, “I was born on a council estate in Everton, and my greatest excitement was travelling on the overhead railway along seven miles of dockland and looking into each of the docks, and seeing all the things there.”

Working in a post-war bomb-damaged East End as a young teacher, he witnessed the social effects of the closure of the London docks and the rebuilding of the territory. “I shall never forget the old cleaning ladies at the school saying to me, ‘Mr Ridge, we do miss our cottages. They took our cottages away.’”Tom recalled in sombre reminiscence, speaking of his days at St Saviour’s in Bow, -“what they were talking about were their terraced houses, that were almost entirely swept away.”

The Jewish Maternity Hospital in Underwood Rd. An elegant crow-stepped gabled building reminiscent of a streetscape by Vermeer. Although it had lost its diamond-paned leaded windows, it retained its original doors and ironwork.

The Arts & Crafts style cottage was designed by John Myers in 1911.

No amount of commemoration by Peabody will compensate for this shocking and needless destruction of a little building which meant so much to so many people. And as an affordable family home, it would have been a living memorial to a unique maternity hospital.

There are now only two historic Jewish welfare buildings which stand testament to that extraordinary outburst of vitality and creativity known as the Jewish East End. But the old people’s home in Mile End Road and the soup kitchen for the Jewish Poor in Spitalfields are relatively unknown and unloved buildings, compared to the pride of place which was embodied in the name “Mother Levy’s.”

This name and the remarkable history of the unique hospital run by women for women will live on in the history books about the East End, but as built evidence and a living memorial for future generations to understand and appreciate the Jewish East End, and the East End as an historic point of arrival for migrants from Europe and indeed the whole world, Mother Levy’s is dead.

All the buildings at the former hospital are being demolished by Peabody, aided and abetted by officers in Tower Hamlets Council but against the  unanimous wishes of its elected Councillors.All four hospital buildings on Underwood Road could and should have been adapted for residential use (with the utilitarian buildings at the back replaced by new homes). We began the campaign with this proposal but discovered that Peabody’s architects had already drawn up their plans for new buildings on the site of the former Jewish Maternity Hospital, which Peabody had purchased from Tower Hamlets Council in March 2011. It was at this point that Dr Sharman Kaddish, as director of Jewish Heritage UK, made her compromise proposal for the retention of the two cottages and their conversion to family homes.

Our petition to Peabody was based on this proposal and signed by about 760 people, including Arnold Wesker and former MP Mildred Gordon and councillors from all four political groups on Tower Hamlets Council. Dozens of letters were written to Peabody’s Chief Executive, Stephen Howlett. They included letters from the chairs of the Jewish East End Celebration Society and the East London History Society, Cllr Rabina Khan, and Cllr Bill Turner, the secretary of SAVE Britain’s Heritage and Lord Janner of Braunstone QC.

At the full council meeting on 29 November 2011, Cllr Judith Gardiner proposed the Labour group’s motion calling on the Mayor to negotiate with Peabody, and Peabody to spare the cottages. The motion noted that Peabody has a duty to optimise the amount of housing it provides but also to protect the borough’s heritage. Cllr Peter Golds, Leader of the Conservative group, spoke in support. Additionally, John Penrose MP, Minister for Tourism and Heritage recommended engagement between the Campaign, Council and Peabody for an amicable settlement to keep the two cottages. But Peabody was unmoved and, in demolishing the oldest and most attractive part of the former hospital, Peabody has committed the gross act of cultural vandalism which we all tried to prevent.

Tower Hamlets Council has the highest housing target in London and unless it formally identifies all its unlisted buildings which are heritage assets, and insists on their retention and adaptation by developers and housing associations, the borough will go on losing historical buildings capable of re-use. It is said that the Council has a list of 600 planned building sites for new housing. Most of the 600 sites will have existing buildings and doubtless many of them are unlisted buildings of some architectural and/or historic interest. Although none of them are likely to have been loved as much as Mother Levy’s, her tragic death must signal a new start for Tower Hamlets.

Had the 2008 Planning Statement for the redevelopment of the former hospital been made available for public comment, an altogether more transparent process may well have resulted in the retention and adaptation of the two cottages. Several years ago, Planning Statements for three redundant Tower Hamlets Council buildings were made available for public comment. As a matter of extreme urgency, all present and future council disposals must be subject to the same good practice. And as an integral part of this process, the Council must draw up a list of all unlisted heritage assets for retention and adaptation.

Tom Ridge

This is what became of the former Mother Levy’s Nursing Home where Alma Cogan, Lionel Bart, Arnold Wesker and many thousands of Jewish East Enders were born.

Portrait of Tom Ridge copyright © Lucinda Douglas Menzies

You may like to leave your own salute to Tom Ridge on the Save Mother Levy’s Campaign Facebook page

We all know this story, pretty much. Advent calendars end on Christmas Eve with the Nativity. A family scene, a sense of peace and calm, and mystery and magic – something we can all relate to, whether or not we are Christians. So that is it, for now. I hope you have enjoyed my Advent Calendar – I certainly enjoyed creating it. A big thank you to those who offered support, words of encouragement, suggestions and praise – I have really appreciated all the feedback. I am off for a glass or two of something sparkling and a lie-down. Advent itself ends as the magic takes place tonight.

Merry Christmas, one and all, from Paul Bommer & The Gentle Author!

Illustration copyright © Paul Bommer

Wren Day, also known as Wren’s Day, Hunt the Wren Day or the Hunting of the Wrens (in Irish, Lá an Dreoilín) is traditionally celebrated on 26th December, St Stephen’s Day, in parts of Ireland, the Isle of Man, Wales and Newfoundland. The tradition consists of “hunting” a fake wren, and putting it on top of a decorated pole. Known as “wrenboys,” crowds of mummers, musicians or strawboys celebrate the Wren (also pronounced as the Wran) by dressing up in masks, straw suits and colourful motley clothing and, accompanied by traditional céilí music bands, parade through the towns and villages in remembrance of a festival once observed by the druids. These crowds are sometimes called wrenboys.

In past times, an actual bird was hunted by Wrenboys on St. Stephen’s Day and the captured wren was tied to the Wrenboy leader’s staff pole, sometimes dead, sometimes alive – to be killed after the parade. The parade song, of which there are many variations, called for donations from the townspeople and often, the boys gave a feather from the bird to patrons for good luck. The money was used to host a dance held that night at which the pole, decorated with ribbons, wreaths and flowers, as well as the Wren, was the centrepiece. Over time, the live bird was replaced with a fake one that was hidden,rather than chased and the band of young boys was expanded to include girls, and adults were permitted to join in. Nowadays, the money that is collected from townspeople is usually donated to a local school or charity.

Some theorise that the Wren celebration has descended from Celtic mythology. The origin maybe a Samhain or Midwinter sacrifice, since in Celtic lore the Wren is a symbol of the past year  and the wren is known for singing even in mid-winter, and sometimes explicitly called “Winter Wren.” Celtic names of the Wren (draouennig, drean, dreathan, dryw etc.) also suggest an association with druidic ritual. The tradition may also have been influenced by Scandinavian settlers during the Viking invasions prior to the tenth century. Various associated legends exist, such as a Wren being responsible for treachery against Irish soldiers who fought the maurading Viking invaders by beating its wings upon their shields, and for betraying the Christian martyr Saint Stephen after whom the day is named. This mythological association with duplicity is a possible reason why the bird was hunted by Wrenboys on St. Stephen’s Day and may explain why a pagan sacrificial tradition was continued into Christian times. Despite the abandonment of the Wren killing practice, devoted Wrenboys ensure that the gaelic tradition of celebrating the Wren continues today.

In 1955, Liam Clancy recorded “The Wran Song,” which was sung in Ireland by Wrenboys. In 1972, Steeleye Span recorded “The King” on “Please to See the King,” which is along similar lines, and they made another version, “The Cutty Wren,” on their album “Time.” While “Hunting the Wren” is on John Kirkpatrick’s album “Wassail!” and The Chieftains made a collection of Wrenboy tunes on “Bells of Dublin.”

I lived in Ireland for five years though, sadly, I never saw nor heard anyone mention the Wrenboy tradition, but perhaps that was just because I was in Dublin. These fine fellas above are the Bogside Wranboys of Ballygramore and can play many a tune to set your feet a-tapping!

Illustration copyright © Paul Bommer

The Mari Lwyd (Y Fari Lwyd in Welsh or Grey Mare in English) is the strangest and most ancient of customs by which people in Wales mark the passing of the darkest days of Midwinter. Perhaps deriving from an ancient rite for the Celtic goddesses Rhiannon and Epona, the Mari Lwyd is associated with South-East Wales, in particular Glamorgan and Gwent. Though almost forgotten during the mid-20th century, nowadays some folk associations in Llantrisant, Llangynwyd, Cowbridge and elsewhere are trying to revive it.

The Mari Lwyd itself consists of a mare’s skull fixed to the end of a wooden pole with coloured ribbons and white sheets fastened to the base of the skull, concealing the pole and the person carrying it. The eye sockets are often filled with green bottle-ends and the lower jaw is spring-loaded, so that the Mari’s operator can snap it at passersby. During the ceremony, the skull is carried through the streets of the village by a party that stands in front of every house to sing traditional songs in a rhyme contest (pwnco) between the Mari party and the inhabitants of the house, who challenge each other with insulting verses.

The Mari Lwyd has become associated with the resurgence of Welsh folk culture, and the town council of Aberystwyth (in Ceredigion, well outside the Mari Lwyd’s traditional area) organised “The World’s Largest Mari Lwyd” for the Millennium celebrations in 2000.

A mixture of the Mari Lwyd and Wassail customs occurs in the border town of Chepstow, South Wales, in January. A band of English Wassailers meet with the local Welsh Border Morris Side, The Widders, on the bridge in Chepstow. They greet each other, exchanging flags in a gesture of friendship, and celebrate the occasion with dance and song before performing the pwnco at the doors of Chepstow Castle.

My mother is from Ruthin in the wild North of Wales, but here I have shown a scene from the small mining village of Pen-Y-Senfi in Glamorgan. The lady at the door is Mrs Dai Bread, the baker’s wife and the man asking her the questions is Ifor Rees-Davies, a handyman, while the figure under the blanket is young Gereint Pritchard (known as “Mitzi”), son of Nelly the Tripe. This particular Mari Lwyd actually imagines herself to be Marie Lloyd, the star of Edwardian Music Hall, infamous for her saucy performances and innuendo. When banned her from singing her song “I Sits Amongst the Cabbages and Peas” because of its implied reference to urination, she promised to alter the lyrics appropriately – and sung “I Sits Amongst the Cabbages and Leeks” instead!

Nadolig Llawen a Blwyddyn Newydd Dda!

Illustration copyright © Paul Bommer

There are several related traditions of “Wassail.” Firstly, wassailing is an ancient Southern English custom performed to ensure a good crop of cider apples next year, yet wassail also refers both to the salute “Waes Hail” (a contraction of the Middle English phrase “wæs hæil” meaning”good health”), and also to the drink of “wassail” which is a hot mulled cider drunk. The giving of libations and the pouring of a drink as an offering was common in many religions of antiquity.

In the cider-producing counties in the South West of England, wassailing involves singing and drinking the health of the orchards – the purpose being to awaken the cider apple trees and scare away evil spirits, ensuring a good harvest next year. The ceremonies vary from village to village but all have the same core elements. A wassail King and Queen lead the song from one orchard to the next, and the wassail Queen will be lifted up into the boughs of the tree where she will place toast soaked in wassail from a “Clayen Cup” as a gift to the tree spirits. Then an incantation is recited -

Here’s to thee, old apple tree, That blooms well, bears well. Hats full, caps full, Three bushel bags full, An’ all under one tree. Hurrah! Hurrah!

At Carhampton near Minehead, the apple orchard Wassailing is held on the Old Twelfth Night (17th January) as a ritual to ask God for a good apple harvest. The villagers form a circle around the largest apple tree, hang pieces of toast soaked in cider in the branches for the robins who represent the good spirits of the tree and then a shotgun is fired overhead to scare away evil spirits and the group sings -

Old Apple tree, old apple tree,
We’ve come to wassail thee,
To bear and to bow apples enow,
Hats full, caps full, three bushel bags full,
Barn floors full and a little heap under the stairs

My partner’s surname is Appleton – a name of Anglo-Saxon origin, originating from many of the places thus called, for example Appleton in Cumberland, Lancashire, Yorkshire, Norfolk, Cheshire, Berkshire and Kent. Recorded as “Apeltun” and “Epletune” in the Domesday Book of 1086 for the various counties, it derives from the Old English pre-seventh century “aeppeltun,” an orchard, a compound of “aeppel,” an apple, plus “tun,” an enclosure or settlement. Here I have shown two of Nick’s ancestors in the Kentish orchard from which they got their name. They wear Anglo-Saxon garb (note Aethelwulf Aeppeltun’s garnet-encrusted cloak broach), drinking ale or cider from horns and making merry on this, the shortest day of the year. Note too the drink-soaked crust in the branches, the dormant skep in the orchard and the tipsy Robin Redbreast looking on. Behold, the birth of the English binge-drinking culture.

Wassail! Drink Hale!

Illustration copyright © Paul Bommer

“The Box of Delights” is a children’s fantasy novel by the former Poet Laureate John Masefield, his sequel to “The Midnight Folk.” First published in 1935 and set around Christmas-time, culminating on Christmas Day, I always find myself reading it at this time.

The protagonist is a boy of ten, Kay Harker, who on returning home to Seekings House from boarding school finds himself mixed up in a battle to possess a magical “Box of Delights,” which permits the owner to go small (to shrink), to go swift (to fly), to experience wonders contained within the box and to go into the past.

The owner of the box is an old Punch & Judy man man called Cole Hawlings whom Kay meets at the railway station on his way home. “And now, Master Harker, now that the Wolves are Running, perhaps you could do something to stop their Bite?” entreats the old man. He asks Kay to protect the magic box which brings Kay and his friends many adventures. But Kay is in danger – Abner Brown will stop at nothing to get his hands on it. Yet the police don’t believe Kay, so when his guardian, friends and the Bishop are “scrobbled” just before Christmas, he knows he must act alone…

It is a great book peopled with mysterious bright-eyed immortals, Romans, Druids, fairies, Herne the Hunter, gangsters dressed as curates, talking rats, witches and much more besides. It is quite dated but all the more charming for that – characters in the book use expressions like “it’s the Purple Pim” and “queer coughdrops”! The story also features a Brazen Head used by the evil wizard Abner Brown (assisted by his wife and Kay’s former governess, the sly witch Sylvia Daisy Pouncer) for divination – it is a motif that has long fascinated me and after which Dublin’s oldest pub is named.

Above, I have shown Cole Hawlings, the Punch & Judy man, with his booth wrapped in green baize upon his back, walking near the Drop of Dew Inn in the Bear Ward of old Condicote, accompanied by his dog Barney. Note his exceptionally bright eyes and his ring, a “longways cross” of gold and garnets. Although not immediately apparent, he is very old indeed, living into the modern day from pagan times and is none other than the medieval Spanish philosopher and alchemist Ramon Llull.

If you have not read “The Box of Delights,” I recommend you do.

Illustration copyright © Paul Bommer

Much of what we now think of as Christmas comes from the writings of Charles Dickens and in particular “A Christmas Carol,” his famous ghost story of 1843 which opens -

Marley was dead to begin with. There is no doubt whatever about that. The register of his burial was signed by the clergyman, the clerk, the undertaker, and the chief mourner. Scrooge signed it. And Scrooge’s name was good upon ‘Change, for anything he chose to put his hand to. Old Marley was as dead as a door-nail.

Mind! I don’t mean to say that I know, of my own knowledge, what there is particularly dead about a door-nail. I might have been inclined, myself, to regard a coffin-nail as the deadest piece of ironmongery in the trade. But the wisdom of our ancestors is in the simile and my unhallowed hands shall not disturb it, or the Country’s done for. You will therefore permit me to repeat, emphatically, that Marley was as dead as a door-nail.

Ebenezer Scrooge is a miserable old man who works in his counting house with his clerk, Bob Cratchit, who writes out records of accounts while Scrooge oversees the business.

On Christmas Eve, Scrooge receives several visitors. First, his nephew who invites Scrooge to dine with him for Christmas. Next come two gentlemen, collecting for charity, and we discover from them that Scrooge’s partner, Jacob Marley, died on Christmas Eve seven years previously. Yet Scrooge refuses to give them anything, declaring he helps the poor already through supporting prisons and workhouses. Closing up the office, Scrooge permits Bob a holiday on Christmas Day, but insists he come back to work early next morning – Boxing Day was not usually a holiday in the nineteenth century, but the day when tradesmen collected their Christmas “boxes” – tips from their customers.

That evening, at his lodging Scrooge is visited by the ghost of Jacob Marley weighed down by massive chains made up of cashboxes, keys and padlocks. The ghost says that anyone who does not mix with others in life must travel amongst them after death and tells Scrooge that he too wears a chain, even larger, and warns of three spirits which will visit that night…

Illustration copyright © Paul Bommer

Crackers or bon-bons are an integral part of Christmas celebrations. A cracker consists of a cardboard tube wrapped in a brightly decorated twist of paper, contriving a resemblance to an over-sized sweet-wrapper. The cracker is pulled by two people and  it splits unevenly - much in the manner of a wishbone - accompanied by a small bang, created by friction upon a chemically impregnated card strip (similar to that used in a cap gun).

In Russia (where they are called “хлопушка”) and in some countries of the former Soviet Union, crackers are a part of New Year celebrations – however these are closer to pyrotechnical devices, normally used outdoors and, activated by one person, produce a bigger bang accompanied by fire and smoke.

In one version of the tradition, the person with the larger portion of cracker keeps the contents, while in another, each will have their own cracker and will keep its contents regardless of who got the larger part. Typically, these contents are a coloured paper hat or crown (a hang-over from Saturnalia perhaps?), a small toy or other trinket and a motto, a joke or piece of trivia on a small strip of paper. Ready-made crackers are sold in boxes, typically with different designs in red, green and gold, but making crackers from scratch using the tubes from used toilet rolls and tissue paper is a popular activity for children, and kits can also be purchased.

Crackers were invented by Thomas J. Smith of London in 1847 - as a development of his bon-bon sweets, which he sold in a twist of paper (the origins of the traditional sweet-wrapper). As sales of bon-bons slumped, Smith came up with promotional ideas. His first notion was to insert mottoes into the wrappers of the sweets (cf. fortune cookies) but this had only limited success. He was inspired to add the “crackle” element when he heard the crackle of a log upon the fire. Consequently, the size of the wrapper had to be increased to incorporate the banger and the sweet itself was dropped to be replaced by a small gift. This new product was initially marketed as the Cosaque (i.e. Cossack) but the onomatopoeic “cracker” soon superseded it as rival varieties were introduced to the market. The other elements of the modern cracker – gifts, paper hats and varied designs – were all introduced by Tom Smith’s son, Walter Smith, to differentiate his product from the copycat manufacturers which sprang up.

The image I have drawn is based on a late Victorian greetings card that I stumbled upon on Facebook, showing a pine-cone sprit and Mr Punch pulling a cracker, with the legend “Merry Christmas” that I have replaced that with German, which I think has a charm all of its own – plus, to my Englische ears, it sounds funny!

Illustration copyright © Paul Bommer