Mavis Bullwinkle

Today we are celebrating the birthday of one of Spitalfields’ best-loved residents, Mavis Bullwinkle. We count ourselves favoured that, apart from her six years enforced exile as an evacuee in Aylesbury during World War Two, Mavis has shown the good sense to spend her entire eighty years here. In this picture, you can see her standing at the door of the church house in Buxton St where her grandfather Richard Pugh lived when he came from North Wales as a lay preacher in 1898 to minister to the people of the East End, and it was here that Mavis’ mother Gwen was born in 1904. I regret that we cannot turn back the wheels of time, so that Richard could step through this door to wish his granddaughter a happy birthday, but the unfortunate reality is that he died of pneumonia in 1905 and left Mavis’ grandmother to bring up seven children alone – an event which created repercussions that resonate to this day for Mavis.

Yet Mavis displayed her characteristic good humour, amplified by her bright red ankle-length raincoat, when I met her outside Christ Church after morning prayers on an especially grey and cloudy morning this week. And it was my privilege to take a stroll around the neighbourhood with Mavis, as she pointed out some of the landmarks on her personal landscape, because after her eighty years, there are few who know Spitalfields as well as Mavis.

Although Mavis remembers Christ Church (or “Spitalfields Church” as she knew it) when her Uncle Alf Bullwinkle was caretaker at during the nineteen thirties, she did not come here regularly until 1951 when her local church All Saints in Buxton St was shut. “I found it very gaunt with all that dark masonry,” she recalled, rolling her eyes dramatically and casting her gaze up to the tall spire looming over us. Then, in 1958, death watch beetle was discovered at Christ Church and this was shut too. “They found it on the Thursday and it was closed by the weekend,” Mavis revealed in a disappointed tone, “My sister Margaret was due to be married on the Sunday and she had to make do with the horrible hall in Hanbury St.”

Already the rain was setting in, so we set off briskly towards the Hanbury Hall and Mavis ameliorated her opinion of the place by the time we got there. “My uncle and his family lived here on the ground floor,” she explained, “the bedroom was on the right of the entrance and the living room and kitchen to left.” Mavis told me there was so much unemployment in the nineteen twenties that young men were encouraged to go to Australia and, eager to relieve the burden on his mother, Alf emigrated at nineteen, only to have an accident in the Outback that left him with a curvature of the spine. On his return, he found it even harder to get work until the rector of Christ Church appointed him caretaker. And when he died young in 1943, leaving a wife and children, the Rector arranged for them to have a flat in the market building at the corner of Brushfield St. Mavis ran the Sunday School here at the Hanbury Hall from 1951 until 1981, while the congregation was in exile, and she stood in the rain looking up at the building in disbelief that so much time could have passed.

Then we set off towards the the north-easterly quarter of Spitalfields, once known as Mile End New Town, to the small web of streets which Mavis counts as home and that remains the focus of her existence. Taking a minor detour down Brick Lane to visit the former Mayfair Cinema – once an Odeon and now Cafe Naz – where Mavis came in her teens with her mother during the nineteen forties, “We didn’t come down here much otherwise,” she admitted with a shrug, “We did our shopping in Whitechapel or Bethnal Green.”

The nature of our odyssey caused Mavis to peer in wonder at her familiar streets. “When you live in a place so long you take it for granted, until it’s not there anymore and then you can’t even remember what was there before.” she confessed as we turned from Brick Lane into Buxton St, approaching Allen Gardens. Before the green field that we know today, Mavis recalls a warren of little streets here surrounding All Saints Church, the centre of her emotional and social universe growing up in Albert Family Dwellings in Deal St. This was the block her grandmother moved into in 1905 and Mavis moved out of in 1979 when it was demolished.

“The Reverend Holdstock used to give wonderful Christmas parties, and I had some of the happiest times of my life in here,” she confided to me as we stood outside the square rectory, one of the few old buildings remaining in the street today. “Around 1913, when my aunt Esther was young, she remembered meeting the cows coming up Buxton St to be milked, each morning as she was on her way to work at a factory in Shoreditch.” Mavis informed me, gesturing back towards the Lane and conjuring an image of the herd. When Mavis’ grandfather died, her Aunt Esther had to give up her training to be a teacher, working first as a nanny in the rectory and then at a clothing factory. “She never got over it that she never got to be a teacher,” recalled Mavis tenderly, “and when she used to go on about it, I’d remind her that if she’d never gone to work in the factory she’d never have met her husband, Uncle Jack.”

Then we reached the patch of green where the church of All Saints once stood. “It was a very pretty church, late Victorian,” she told me, “built at the same time as the terraces round here. In those days people wouldn’t live somewhere unless there was a church. It was damaged by the bombing and once, when the rain came in the roof, the vicar made a hole in the floor with his umbrella so that it could drain away.”

From here, we walked down Deal St where Albert Family Dwellings formerly stood on the south corner of Underwood Rd. Only the the iron bollards labelled M. E. N. T. remain today to indicate that this was once Mile End New Town. Yet in Mavis’ mind it all still exists – the Prince of Wales pub on the corner of Buxton St, Davis’ Welsh Dairy on the north corner of Underwood Rd and Mrs Finkelstein’s sweetshop opposite, where for penny you could put your hand in a bran tub and get a little thing to put in your dolls’ house. Standing outside the former entrance of  Albert Family Dwellings, Mavis recalled the evening of 2nd September 1939 when she and her sister Margaret were summoned to the school to be evacuated without being told where, and Mavis’ mother went home alone clutching a card with her daughters’ address in Aylesbury. Today, Mavis is probably the only witness to the former life of these streets that still resides in this location and the empty pavements are crowded with memories for her.

Mavis gave up a career in the City in preference to a lower paid job as a secretary at the Royal London Hospital because she wanted to be of service to people, and she worked there for forty years. Her grandfather Richard Pugh, the lay preacher from Wales, would have been proud of Mavis, following his example. The last of the Bullwinkles, she fills with delight to speak of Spitalfields, and more than a century of striving and thriving in her family in this corner of the East End. Out of almost everyone I know, Mavis could most be said to be of this place. With a self-effacing nature, she has shown moral courage and selflessness in her work at the hospital, and in caring for her mother and aunt until they both died at ripe old ages. After eighty years, Mavis Bullwinkle knows what it means to live, and we salute her example and applaud her spirit.

Gwen Bullwinkle holds up Mavis in Hanbury St in 1933. “Every time my mother saw this picture, she would say, ‘Fancy taking us outside a pub!’”

Mavis by the War Memorial at Christ Church which her father tended. “He used to grow flowers around it and keep it tidy.”

All Saints Sunday School in 1939 – seven year old Mavis is in the second row on the extreme right and her sister Margaret has her hands upon her shoulders.

Mavis outside the former rectory of All Saints Church. “I had some of the happiest times of my life here.”

Mavis & Margaret’s evacuation card, 1939.

Mavis stands on the spot where All Saints Church used to be in Buxton St until 1951.

Spitalfields’ celebrations for the coronation of King George VI, 1937.

Mavis in Vallance Rd outside the house of Quaker philanthropist Mary Hughes, daughter of Thomas Hughes. “Mary Hughes came up to my mother pushing me in a pram in the Whitechapel Rd in 1932 and exclaimed ‘Oh you wonderful mother!’ She was a little old lady dressed in black silk, from the nineteenth century, and my mother pulled away in fear. Only later did she learn who it was.”

You may also like to read my original profile

Mavis Bullwinkle, Secretary

and

When Mavis Bullwinkle met Norah Pam

and

Mavis, Henrietta & Joan Chit Chat

PLEASE LEAVE YOUR BIRTHDAY MESSAGES BELOW FOR MAVIS

Steve Benbow, London Honey Company

Once upon a time, Steve Benbow, the urban beekeeper, sold honey from the back of an old Morris Traveller in Brushfield St at the entrance to the Spitalfields Market. You may recall when Steve was first introduced in these pages, seeking homes for bees, and then – through the intervention of one of our readers – he was granted the roof of the Tate Gallery to keep his hives. These days, Steve has a railway arch in Maltby St, Bermondsey, and it was here that Tif Hunter took this portrait as part of his series recording the community of those who have created this flourishing endeavour, selling honestly produced food and drawing customers from across the London every Saturday morning.

Yet even as Tif completed his set of portraits, other railway arches opened up just a little further down the line at Spa Terminus, and some of the traders from Maltby St transferred to these larger spaces while new companies moved into those which had been vacated – confirming the contingent  nature of all markets, endlessly shifting and evolving as street commerce ebbs and flows in the city.

Taken with a 5×4 nineteenth-century-style camera using just a single exposure for each portrait, Tif’s pictures are remarkable for their spontaneity, emphasising the ephemeral quality of the image. But when he set out to take these luminous photographs, he did not realise that Maltby St itself would change so quickly, granting them an extra level of transient poetry. Fortuitously, Tif Hunter’s set of portraits exists now as the record of a critical moment at Maltby St – the time before this current metamorphosis began.

Philip – Jacob’s Ladder Farms

Lucie – The Ham & Cheese Company

Archie – Coleman Coffee Roasters

Kitty – La Grotta Ices

Roy – Neal’s Yard Dairy

Paul – Tayshaw Limited

Flori – Monmouth Coffee Company

Archie – The Ham & Cheese Company

Claire – Violet Bakery

Roberto – Monmouth Coffee Company

Alaena – Kase Swiss

Harry – 40 Maltby St

Barbara – Kernel Brewery

Harry – Fern Verrow

Georgia – St John Bakery

Tristan – Fern Verrow

Lucy – St John Bakery

Nathan – The Butchery Ltd

Tania – Kernel Brewery

Photographs copyright © Tif Hunter

You may also like to see

Tif Hunter’s Maltby St Portraits (Part One)

and  read about

Steve Benbow, Beekeeper at Tate Modern

Behold the noble Crudgie!

I have been hoping for the opportunity to catch up with Crudgie ever since we were first introduced at the Fish Harvest Festival last year, so this week I was delighted to accept his invitation to meet at that legendary bikers’ rendezvous, the Ace Cafe on the North Circular.

Over six foot six in height, clad head to toe in black leather, with extravagant facial hair trained into straggling locks and carrying the unmistakable whiff of engine oil wherever he goes, Crudgie makes an unforgettable impression. Crudgie’s monumental stature, beady roving eyes and bold craggy features adorned with personal topiary, give him the presence of one from medieval mythology, like Merlin on a motorbike. Yet in spite of his awesome appearance and gruff voice, I found Crudgie a warm and friendly personality, even if he does not suffer fools gladly, issuing fearsome warnings to pedestrians not to get in his way.

“I’m only called by my surname, Crudgington. “Ington” means family living in an enclosed dwelling, and “crud” is a variation of curd, so they were probably cheesemakers. There’s a place in Shropshire named Crudgington, but there’s nobody buried in the church with that name, nobody living there with that name either and nobody that lives there has ever heard of anybody called Crudgington. The shortened version of my name came about when I went to play rugby and cricket where everyone gets a nickname ending in “ie.” I’ve swum for the county, and competed as an athlete in the four hundred metres and javelin, as well.

I grew up in Billericay, famous for being the first place to count the votes in the General Election. My father was builder called Henry but everyone knew him as Nobby. I went into banking for ten years in Essex but I couldn’t get on with it, even though I was the youngest person ever to pass the banking exam. So then I went to work in insurance in the City, I worked for Barclays for ten years and played for their rugby team until they couldn’t afford to fund it anymore. In the nineteen nineties, I felt I was getting nowhere in insurance so I started motorbicycle couriering. I got a motorbike from my parents for fifteenth birthday, so I’ve always been a biker and I do thousands of miles on it every year, going to sporting events, meet-ups and scrambles.

It’s the camaraderie of it that appeals to me, meeting up with your mates, but unfortunately you are perceived as an outlaw. I have been stopped eighty-nine times in twenty-one years by the police. Apparently, couriers are the second most-disliked Londoners after Estate Agents. It’s because people get scared out of their wits when they are not thinking where they are going and a courier brushes by and gives them the shock of their life. People should look where they are going. If you are going to hit a pedestrian, it’s best to hit them them straight on, that way they get thrown over the handlebars. A few cuts and bruises, but nobody gets killed by a motorbicycle. Whereas if you veer to either side to avoid them, the danger is you clip them with your handlebars and it sends you into a tailspin, and you fall off.

I’m a member of the most important biker club – The 59 Club, set up by Father Bill Shergold in 1959. He was a vicar who was a biker, and he wanted to bring the mods and rockers together,  so he opened up in a church hall in West London in 1961 and on the first day he had Cliff Richard & The Shadows performing there. Then in 1985, it moved to Yorkton St, Bethnal Green. It was open three days a week, and you could go in and have a cup of tea after work. They had a bike repair workshop for maintenance, two snooker tables and a stage where lots of bands performed. And once a year, you could go to a church service. They moved to Plaistow now, but everybody that was in it is still in it – it’s the largest bike club in the world.

There’s only a few British couriers left, most are Brazilians now. It used to be Polish until they earned enough money and all went back home. Once upon a time, there was a lot of money in it though it’s gone down thanks to technology, but the beauty is you can work when you like and you get to go interesting places that you’d never go otherwise. I’ve picked up the Queen’s hair products from SW3 and driven into Buckingham Palace to deliver them. I do a lot of deliveries for film companies and quite often I stay around on set to watch, especially if it’s in some interesting stately home that you wouldn’t normally get to visit. If I have to go somewhere on a journey out of London, I always take time to visit the museum or castle or whatever there is to see.

I’ve worked from nine until seven for years, but I’ve decided I’m only going to do nine thirty to six because I’m getting old. If I had independent funds, I wouldn’t be riding anymore. I haven’t missed a day in quite a few years and I’ve only ever had one week off in twenty years…”

When I arrived at the Ace Cafe, I saw Crudgie’s bike outside and I spotted him through the window, head and shoulders above his fellows. Inside, a long counter ran along one wall, facing a line of windows looking out on the North Circular, and the space in between was filled by tables, scattered with helmets to indicate those which were reserved by customers. Once Crudgie had greeted me with a firm bikers’ handshake, we settled by the window where he squeezed every drop from his teabag to achieve a beverage that was so strong it was almost black. A characteristic Crudgie brew.

Like the questing knight or the solitary cowboy, Crudgie has no choice but to follow his ordained path through the world, yet he is a law unto himself and the grime he acquires speeding through the traffic is his proud badge of independence. A loner riding the city streets with his magnificent nose faced into the wind, Crudgie is his own master.

Crudgie at the Ace Cafe on the North Circular. “- Like Merlin on a motorbike.”

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At the Fish Harvest Festival

Rodney with the birch tree he planted in Fournier St in 1985.

Rodney Archer is one of Spitalfields’ most popular long-term residents, and over the years he has seen many come and go as part of the transformation that has overcome the place since he came to live here in 1980. Among the the few occupants that is not a millionaire in Fournier St today, Rodney delights in the patina of ages’ past that dignifies his ramshackle old house, enhanced by all the glorious paraphernalia he has accumulated over the last thirty years, including – most famously – Oscar Wilde’s fireplace which is installed in his living room.

Yesterday, taking advantage of a brief respite of sunshine on a cloudy April afternoon, I asked Rodney to take me on a tour of his personal landmarks in Spitalfields yet, to my surprise, his modest realm did not extend beyond Fournier St. We commenced in Rodney’s shady back garden beneath the majestic silver birch which has become a well-known feature as the largest tree in this hidden space enclosed between the houses of Fournier St, Brick Lane, Princelet St and Wilkes St. “My mother and I planted this in 1985. We got it from the council for £15 when they were encouraging people to plant trees.” he said, slipping an arm round the trunk affectionately,“I was born in London, but it reminds me of the woods where I used to go camping in Ontario where I grew up.”

Across the street from his front door, Rodney showed me the former home of his friends Eric & Ricardo. “I came to Club Row in 1970 to buy kittens, but the first time I was invited over was in the mid-seventies when I came here for lunch. I asked Eric & Ricardo to let me know if a house came up in the street and the first one they called me about was the one I live in now. ” he recalled, “It changed my life. It was the beginning of being happy, and it was Spitalfields that did it. I had never felt comfortable where I lived before.” Rodney came to Spitalfields after his mother broke her hip and the doctor told her she had to live with her son, and so they shared the house in Fournier St. “All the basements were workshops for leather goods then, and there was Mr Lustig the tailor, and Solly at Gale Furs who’d been there since the thirties,” Rodney said, casting his eyes up and down street as he thought back over the years.

A few doors down, we came to another magnificent house where, remarkably, Rodney once mixed the plaster for the walls. “I worked as an unskilled labourer here for fifty hours a week for £67 in 1980, I was a plasterer’s mate and my boss was twenty years old. It was my venture into the working class,” he admitted, raising his eyebrows significantly with a shy smile, “Michael & Donald the couple who lived here were very polite and they never acknowledged me as a neighbour while I was working on site. The Times later described them as ‘a celibate couple’ in Donald’s obituary.” Yet there was another resident in this house who made the biggest impression on Rodney.“Nelly Foreman was a Jewish woman from the nineteen thirties, a sitting tenant who had survived into the nineteen eighties. She’d look out the top window at everybody and always called my mother ‘Violet’ rather than Phyllis. She was moved to the ground floor but she didn’t like looking out the window as much from there and she was very particular about disturbance during the building work, so she and I had a feisty relationship.” he confided to me fondly, “She was the last Jewish woman on Fournier St and she saw everything change.”

Across the street, we stood outside another grand eighteenth century house. “My friend Julian lived here,” Rodney explained gesturing towards the unyielding door with a smile, “He used to give elaborate dinner parties in the eighteenth century style with footmen. There were no lights and the place was painted in the original colours, so it was very dark and atmospheric. At one point, Dennis Severs, Julian and I spent a day scumbling the front room together – we were pretty close.” Today, Julian lives in a castle in Ireland, Rodney informed me.

Passing Wilkes St, as we walked westward, Rodney sat on the steps that previously led to the famous Market Cafe which operated here from 1947 until 1997, run by the brother and sister team of Phylis & Clyde (widely known as Clive). “They arrived around five in the morning, and began serving amazing puddings and roast beef meals from seven o’clock,” Rodney said, rolling his eyes hungrily, “Phylis was a colourful character, always fully made up at five in the  morning. If she didn’t like someone, she threw them out. Clyde worked down in the kitchen and, if you were one of the favoured few, you were able to walk past her and order directly from him.”

At the end of Fournier St, we reached The Ten Bells or “Jack the Ripper,” as Rodney knew it in the eighties when it was a strip pub. “I once spent a New Year’s Eve here with the strippers, prostitutes and taxi drivers, when I was feeling sorry for myself. There was part of me, in my loneliness, that identified with them.,” he confessed as we sat in the large tiled bar room, “There was always a certain bleakness here in Spitalfields and it hasn’t shaken it off entirely, even today.”

“In the eighties, property developers realised that, when gay people moved in here, it would go up in value and then straight people would come afterwards. ” he continued, “Yet I don’t understand why people who are drawn to a place for what it is then feel compelled to change it. They complained about the vegetables from the market in the street and they were looking forward to the gentrification, but there were those of us who came here because of the roughness and authenticity of the people and the place. “

As we returned up Fournier St, I was concerned that our walk had been a tour of things which had gone, so I asked Rodney what he had found here and his answer was immediate.“I found myself in Spitalfields,” he assured me, stopping in his tracks, “Until I came here I wasn’t happy in myself, but this place has become part of my being.”

Rodney outside the former home of his friends Eric & Ricardo.

Rodney outside the house where he mixed all the plaster for the walls.

Rodney outside the former home of his friend Julian.

Rodney outside the former Market Cafe, run by brother and sister Phylis & Clyde between 1947 and 1997.

Rodney at The Ten Bells where he once spent New Year’s Eve.

Rodney in his living room with Oscar Wilde’s fireplace.

You may also like to read my original profile

Rodney Archer, Aesthete

Nicola McShane & Ruth Ward-Jackson of Pattern Textiles, showing off their design samples.

In a former clothing factory in Bethnal Green, where once machinists sweated sewing endless identical garments for low wages, a group of astute young women have set up their own business designing patterns for textiles and – in just six years – achieved considerable success in a fiercely competitive industry, selling their designs to the big players in the High St and internationally.

After writing so many stories of the long history of textiles in the East End, it was my pleasure to visit Pattern Textiles and realise that I was meeting those who carry the future of this endeavour. Stepping in from the gloomy weather of a disappointing late spring day, and climbing up the second floor, I entered the large studio teeming with life and colour. Here, patterns were being drawn on paper. Here, patterns were being rendered digitally on screens. Here, with superlative efficiency and speed, patterns were emerging from a vast industrial-sized digital printer. And here, patterns were being printed with a traditional silk screen too. A harmonious atmosphere prevailed, as if everyone knew what to do, and they were getting on with it. As if everyone in the team understood their place in the larger pattern.

Yet the greatest wonder came when Nicola McShane, who began Pattern Textiles in partnership with Ruth Jackson-Ward and Stephanie Neal, threw open a huge suitcase crammed with hundreds of pieces of silk chiffon and, like a conjurer’s assistant, began to pull them out with a flourish, one-by-one, for me to see. Each piece was a unique textile design sewn into the shape of the front of a dress, and she held them up to demonstrate how an experienced buyer could envisage each one as a potential garment. When a design is sold to a maufacturer, the customer keeps the sample and it is taken out of the case. Here in this single well-travelled suitcase was the entire stock in trade of Pattern Textiles – florals and geometrics and leopard skin and stripes, and everything else you care to imagine, designs for women of different ages and to suit different needs, at work, at home, and dressing up for occasions. The versatility of the range is crucial to sales, but the common factor here was a vibrant use of colour, and a positive graphic sense of pattern and texture, imbuing all the designs with a sensuous appeal.

“The three of us used to work in another studio – that’s how we met – and we decided we could set up a studio of our own.” explained Ruth. “It was tough. We built up a collection of our own before we went out to sell it.” continued Nicola, “Ruth specialised in embroidery and embellishment, whereas I had worked as a textile designer for four different companies and Stephanie was very skilled at screen-printing. But in fact, we mixed it up and we all did everything. We gathered together people we thought were good and we recruited from friends. That was six years ago. We started in Hackney Wick because the rent was low, and our first studio was a tiny room where we did screenprinting, dying, sewing, embroidery and calling for appointments to sell our designs. And we got a friend to come in really early on as a saleswoman, because we realised that it wasn’t enough just to design.”

These days, Nicola and her partners fly to New York and Los Angeles once a month, they go to Australia every three months, and take regular day trips around Europe to sell their work, as well as visiting the British retailers such as Marks & Spencer and Top Shop that are major clients for their designs. “The buyers know what they want,” Ruth assured me with wry smile, as she illustrated the routine that permits the customer to choose, holding up an armful of samples and letting them drop one-by-one in the manner of Bob Dylan and his cue cards in “Don’t Look Back.”

As quickly as patterns get sold, the case must be filled up again with new ones, and this is the endless task that preoccupies everyone at Pattern Textiles. “The crux of what we do is to keep the collection fresh. So we have to be constantly looking at new ideas.” admitted Ruth.“We look at what’s on the catwalk to understand the trends, and it’s very enjoyable working with all the designers here and seeing what they produce,” said Nicola, extending Ruth’s thought, “but we also go down Brick Lane to the vintage shops for inspiration too.”

Around a dozen women work at Pattern Textiles and – as I spoke with Ruth and Nicola – elsewhere in the room, sales staff were discussing feedback from buyers, while all around us the business of producing more patterns continued. One woman in a bold print dress, working at designing animal skin prints, confessed to me that she never wore patterns until she came to work here, while her neighbour showed me a range of new Ikat designs she had just created, convincing as if they had always existed. In the midst of all this industry and shrewd thinking to conjure the designs that will draw an emotional response, capturing women’s imaginations and selling clothes, I succumbed to the intangible magic of patterns myself. Mostly abstract, this is an subtle art whose practitioners are barely acknowledged, as if patterns came out of nowhere. Yet patterns are omnipresent and memorable, shaping our experience and perceptions of each other, creating the texture of life and lifting our spirits through their universal language of delight.

Nicola McShane

Silkscreening a sample of a pattern onto a t-shirt.

Charlie Nelson, one of the pattern designers at Pattern Textiles, with some Ikat designs she created.

The team at Pattern Textiles show off examples of their handiwork.

You may also like to read about

A Dress of Spitalfields Silk

and Spitalfields’ most famous textile designer, Anna Maria Garthwaite, in

Stanley Rondeau at the V&A

When Leila McAlister commissioned Michael Marriott to design and make a shelf to sell copies of Spitalfields Life at her cafe in Calvert Avenue, it gave me the ideal excuse to walk along the canal to the former Briggs Tarpaulin Factory where Michael has his workshop and pay him a call. Briggs Bros have let their complex of dignified shabby nineteenth century buildings to an assortment of small trades and craftsmen, thereby retaining the chaotic working life of the place, and at the heart of this warren of diverse enterprises is Michael’s den. Anyone would break a into a large smile, as I did, to step into this extraordinarily crowded yet meticulously organised space with myriad bicycle parts hanging from the ceiling and every corner crammed with scraps of salvaged timber, metal and plastic, leaving just enough space for the pair of small workbenches where Michael realises his designs.

With the restless animated energy of a teen and the eccentricity of a favourite uncle, Michael is a designer who excels in what I call “wonky modernism.”  In other words, he creates designs of pared-down functionalism in which their form is dictated by their utility and the use of materials is unapologetic, yet as objects they possess something else as well – an undefinable idiosyncrasy which gives his pieces their unmistakeable personality. Michael is no mere bricoleur though, he teaches furniture design at the Royal College of Art and is internationally recognised for his innovative work. So, as you can imagine, I could not wait to discover what the Spitalfields Life shelf was going to look like.

“I always made things when I was a child, but once my mum took me to the Ford factory at Dagenham and I saw this metal pressing machine that was the size of a house and I was totally entranced by it,” Michael told me, recalling his childhood in Essex, when I asked him how it all began. “I’m quite an unusual designer,” he admitted, “in that I make my own designs and I enjoy it.” Trained as a cabinetmaker at the London College of Furniture, Michael  recognises that the making can inform the design and that if, for example, you are designing something with a handle then you need to know how it feels to touch. No Luddite, Michael commonly  works on a computer and then takes the idea into the workshop to refine it further through realising it in three dimensions.

“I work in lots of different ways, I have designed furniture for SCP on-and-off for fifteen years, I do quite a bit of exhibition design, and lot of other things that are less easy to describe.” Michael explained to me enigmatically. Anyone that has been to Leila’s Shop will recognise the cafe tables that he designed and the counter made of an old chest of drawers. He is especially adept at using found materials and creating poetic juxtapositions in which materials of acknowledged quality such as oak or douglas fir are set in unexpectedly sympathetic contrast with plywood or pegboard, revealing a democratic, craftsman’s appreciation of their relative merit and utility.

For the Spitalfields Life shelf, Michael salvaged some oak drawer fronts that were once part of a thirties chest of drawers, which he artfully mis-matched with some douglas fir scavenged from a packing case and combined with a piece of mdf perforated by two mysterious holes that were the result of its previous use. As we spoke, Michael set to work trimming the pieces to size and placing them side by side to appreciate their contrasts while contemplating the angles of the supports, the proportions of the differently-sized shelves and making all the subtle judgements which would result in a piece with its own consistent rationale. “I often reuse things that have been discarded, I think it’s more interesting to reuse than to recycle.” he said, absorbed in his occupation.

Later, I met with Michael at Leila’s Cafe when he was installing the shelves. At once, it became apparent both that the design fitted the contours of the room and that the individual shelf for copies stacked on their side, counter-balanced the other shelves displaying the book face out. The spectrum of mid-brown wood tones complemented the deep blue of David Pearson’s book jacket nicely and, once in place, the shelf looked as if it had always been there – a continuum with the cafe tables and all the other woodwork in the room.

Then Michael climbed on his Mini-Moulton bicycle with a shopping basket strapped onto the back and, looking for all the world like a latter-day Professor Branestawm in a baseball cap and aviators, he gave an extravagant wave as a flourish and peddled away up Calvert Avenue.

“With the restless animated energy of a teen and the eccentricity of a favourite uncle”

Installation for Tokyo Design Week, 1999. Fifty lampshades hanging from a one metre square grid, and accompanied by a soundtrack of Morecambe and Wise performing ‘Bring Me Sunshine’.

Reworking of the Windsor Chair, manufactured in solid ash in Hereford, and available in natural ash or white finish, with red dipped feet, 2009.

Coffee table with float glass top and four turned beech legs attached directly through the glass top, 1995.

Shoe storage unit. Aluminium and re-claimed wood panels, with painted top and oak feet, 2009.

Drawer unit constructed from birch plywood, pegboard and Spanish fruit crates, 1996.

Side table made in Spain with paella dish, 2011.

Chopping board for Polish foods producer, Topolski, for chopping and serving Polish sausages in particular, 2006.

Michael fits the Spitalfields Life bookshelf at Leila’s Cafe.

Michael’s design for the Spitalfields Life bookshelf.

The Spitalfields Life bookshelf at Leila’s Cafe – note the third hole added for compositional effect.

Mick Taylor invited me over to his flat in Whitechapel. After hanging around outside the Beigel Bakery for the last half century, and becoming renowned for his personal sense of style, so familiar is he as a living landmark upon Brick Lane that I was honoured to accept Mick’s invitation and discover his actual place of habitation.

As soon as I entered the large square between the modernist housing blocks, filled with huge trees in blossom, I lifted up my eyes to the top balcony where Mick was waiting, immediately recognising his white beard and red neckerchief, as he sat perched upon a stool outside his front door on that bright April morning. We exchanged salutes and I ascended the concrete stairs quickly, hurrying along the top balcony which gave a panoramic view of the estate, eager to shake his hand and step inside. A skinny cat ran between my legs as I crossed the threshold and walked through into the room at the back, where Mick and I settled ourselves down upon two armchairs to savour the quiet in this hidden corner amidst the clamour of Whitechapel.

The room was almost empty save for the chairs and a wardrobe with a few clothes hung carefully on hangers. Sleeping on a camp bed at one end, was a homeless young woman from the street that Mick had offered shelter and protection to, so we spoke in whispers to avoid waking her. Nevertheless, Mick was keen to talk, relating how he came to the flat and thinking out loud for my benefit, contemplating the nature of his lifelong relationship with Brick Lane.

“I was living in rented accommodation in one room on the ground floor in Fieldgate St for a year before I came here. It was opposite Rowton House – that was a rough place – and sometimes at night young people used to come and take drugs right outside my door. I didn’t know much about that side of life then.

When I went to the housing office, they gave me this flat and, since I came here seven years ago, I never looked back. They said, “If you want this flat, you must view it tomorrow.” It was in a state but I took it at once. I had all the walls done and new fittings, and I had curtains that I got down Wentworth St. I held them out and said, “They’ll do me.” I had a wall of mirrors too, it looked good. Everyone that came liked it. But I’ve cleared the flat out and I’m going to start again. I want to strip the walls and paint the ceiling with a roller. That old lamp’s been there so long, I can’t remember where I got it. Maybe it was Brick Lane?

Originally I went down the “Lane” to find things, you can’t find things there anymore. The days are gone when people used to leave things out to take. I didn’t do anything bad really, I think I’m pretty straight. I’ve grown a beard and it makes me look like a hundred years’ old man but it gives me freedom. I’m sixty-seven. I’ve changed a helluva lot. Maybe it’s going down the Lane has ruined me? I know all the people there in the shops. If I go anywhere else, I’m lost. A girl who works in the coffee shop, she asked me, “Why do you wear that red suit?” I said, “It’s the way I am.” You can only be what you are.

Every day I walk along the Bethnal Green Rd, across Weavers’ Fields, over Vallance Rd and up Cheshire St to Brick Lane. So many places to go looking for things, back alleys and streets where once you could pick up things. It was a funny way of life I had but I enjoyed it. All I know is to go down the Lane. I trust all the people down there, there’s no bad ones. A photographer from New York took more than twenty pictures of me and gave me one pound fifty. I said, “Are you short of money?” and give it back to him. I’ve had a few arguments with people, but things get better. You’ve got to see the good in people. Life’s never what you want it to be, but you learn a little humility along the way.

It’s nice to come back home and sit down in the peace and warm. It’s a good feeling to sit here and know the rent’s paid, and be enjoying a bit of grub. Whereas if you sit in a coffee shop, you wonder what you’re going to do with your life? “

All this time the girl slept, unaware of our conversation. Mick explained that, to give her privacy, he had spent the previous night in the flat below belonging to his friend Johnny. And so, recognising that perhaps this was the reason Mick had sat outside awaiting me and that maybe he intended to visit his neighbour upon my departure, I took my leave. “I’ll go down to Johnny’s flat in a bit,” Mick admitted in a low voice, as we shook hands, “He takes care of me and I take care of him. He’s a good friend, we’ve always got along well. We hit it off when we met on the day I moved in. He takes care of his grandfather who’s ninety-odd.” Walking back down the stairs, I was struck by the modesty of Mick’s frugal dwelling and touched that, when he had so little, he would sacrifice his only room to one more vulnerable than he.

“It’s a good feeling to sit here and know the rent’s paid, and be enjoying a bit of grub.”

She asked me,“Why do you wear that red suit?” I said, “It’s the way I am.”

“I’ve grown a beard and it makes me look like a hundred years’ old man but it gives me freedom.”

You may also like to read about

A Walk with Mick Taylor

The Return of Mick Taylor

Mick Taylor, the Sartorialist of Brick Lane

Safaraz Loonat

If you need to have a key cut, get scissors sharpened or buy a sturdy metal bucket, there is no better place in Whitechapel to go than M&G Building Supplies, Hardware & Ironmongery at 20 Cambridge Heath Rd, where you can be assured of a generous welcome by proprietor Sarfaraz Loonat. Sitting behind the counter like the captain at the bridge of a great ship, he waits poised to supply your every need in do-it-yourself and household maintenance. In his mind, Sarfaraz has an exact virtual replica of the shop and, by searching this mental labyrinth, he can instantly recall where every single size and type of nut, bolt, watering can, hinge or spanner can be located in the crowded shelving, cupboards, racks and draws of his actual shop. Sarfaraz relishes the opportunity to offer a personal service that cannot be matched by the superstores and, for connoisseurs of ironmongery and hardware, M & G is a rare delight.

If you should ask, Sarfaraz will be proud to tell you that the business was started in 1884 by James de Hailes, as a locksmith and ironmongers, just around the corner in the appropriately-named Key Close. He will bring out the old photographs and explain that the shop moved to its present location after the original premises was destroyed in the blitz, and he will inform you that it once occupied three generations of the de Hailes family. First there was James, then his son James George, and finally his daughter Dorothy who ran it with her husband Ronald Bull until September 1985, when they put the shop up for sale. At sixty-two, Dorothy, who had worked for her grandfather James since she was a small girl, recalled affectionately, “My only clear memory of him was when burnt me with his cigar by accident.” Adding regretfully, “It is sad to go, but we have worked here a long time and we want a bit of enjoyment.”

Fortunately, Malagar Singh bought the shop, succumbing inexorably to the irresistible magnetism of ironmongery and cherishing the endeavour with equal devotion to that shown by the de Hailes family – so that when he came to retire four years ago, he was diligent to appraise his successor. This was the point at which the young contender appeared, ambitious twenty-seven year old Sarfaraz, graduate in business management and rising employee of Philip Green’s Arcadia Group in the West End. “For two years I enjoyed working there,” Sarfaraz admitted to me, leaning over the counter at M&G to confide, “but when I decided to get married, I need more money to buy a flat for me and my wife to live in. And, even though I saved the company hundreds of thousands of pounds in my work preventing fraud, they refused to give me a pay rise. It was always my dream to have a business of my own. So I sat down with my grandfather, my uncles and my father, explained my situation and told them that I needed to do something with my life.”

Sarfaraz was overjoyed when his grandfather suggested that he consider the hardware store.“We had a family meeting and they said they’d back me,” Sarfaraz explained, “It was a bit daunting though, when I went along to meet Mr Singh. He was quite up for it, but he said, ‘You’ve got to work here for two weeks and if I like you, you can have it.’” Then, once Sarfaraz confessed that he had no holiday weeks left that year, Mr Singh turned dogmatic. “If you really want this, you must hand in your notice,” he insisted, challenging Sarfaraz to show the whole-hearted commitment which running a hardware store entails.“I wanted to implement the corporate way of doing things at once,” Sarfaraz told me with a blush at his former self, “but Mr Singh insisted I abide by the traditional way. My wife Mohsina came along and worked with me – and, after four weeks, Mr Singh handed over the keys and left.”

And so, with an interest-free loan from his family and after selling his car, Sarfaraz began a new life at M&G Ironmongers as a married man. “It was a complete unknown but with the love and support of my family, it was possible,” Sarfaraz assured me with a tender smile, “they gave me the confidence to believe I could do it.”

“After four years, I have paid back my family. I remember the first day I woke up and had no debt on my head – the shackles were off! I had two fantastic years at first, followed by one year of not taking a penny home due to a drop in sales caused by the economic crisis – we lived hand to mouth – but then this past year has been my best yet. People search on Google to learn how to do-it-yourself, and they are slowly buying tools and making their own toolkits. Through the recession, they have gained confidence in doing household repairs themselves. Often couples come in together, fathers come in with their children or they bring their friends. People are working together to get things done.”

In the meantime, Sarfaraz and his wife had two daughters, and all their friends and relatives now assist in keeping the shop staffed until the children are of school age. “Then it will be me and my wife together in this shop full-time and our aim will be to work towards buying a house for our family.” said Sarfaraz, eagerly envisaging his future.

“Most Asian shopkeepers they go for takeaway chicken or mobile  phone shops, but I wanted to do something different. There aren’t many Indian Gujaratis in the hardware trade, it’s mostly white guys and some Sikhs.” he declared, growing passionate in his personal manifesto, “Offering a friendly service is very important to me. If people come in to buy two screws, I will give them five. I want them to know I am trying to look after them, it’s not just about the money. I expect to be here behind the counter with my wife in twenty years time. This shop has a story and a history, and I’m not going to be the one to let it die.”

Making an unexpected radical choice, Sarfaraz Loonat swapped the corporate world for that of the independent shopkeeper and, at thirty-two years old, he has found that the challenge has given him more self-respect and and satisfaction, as well as bringing him back to heart of his family and the centre of his local community in Whitechapel.

Sarfaraz Loonat - “It was always my dream to have a business of my own.”

Sarfaraz’s nephew Mohammed Mayat helps out in the shop.

De Hailes’ Locksmith & Ironmongery in Key Close, Whitechapel, 1890. James George de Hailes stands on the far right with his father James next to him.

M&G Building Supplies, Hardware & Ironmongery, 20 Cambridge Heath Rd, Whitechapel, E1 5QH 020 77901757

You may also like to read about Sarfaraz’s father and uncles

At London Trimmings

With this sign, Paul Gardner, fourth generation paper bag seller and proprietor of Spitalfields’ oldest family business, eloquently expresses the situation that he and other small independent traders find themselves in. “2 & 8″ is rhyming slang for “a bit of a state,” as he explained to me when I called round to his shop, Gardners’ Market Sundriesmen in Commercial St, yesterday.

Since the rebuilding of the Spitalfields Market introduced expensive office property and chain-stores into the neighbourhood, landlords have been pushing up rents mercilessly to the detriment of the small trades and family businesses which have always characterised this area at the boundary of the City of London.

Now change is in the air, as these independent traders are gathering together to form The East End Trades Guild, a union that can square up to exploitative landlords, demand the concessions from local government that are being granted to corporations, and be an advocate for the interests of shopkeepers and small businesses. It all started after community organiser Krissie Nicolson went to visit Paul Gardner, when she read in the pages of  Spitalfields Life that he was being confronted with an overnight rent increase from £15,000 to £25,000 a year. It soon became clear that many others were facing similar pressure and then – in a defining moment – the Duke of Uke, Britain’s only ukulele shop, was forced out of Hanbury St. Matthew Reynolds, the proprietor, had created a destination that drew people from far and wide, encouraging some high-end brands to open there beside him, and raising the value of all the property in the street. Through this example, the simple paradox became apparent – upmarket companies are moving into the area because of the attractive identity created by local businesses, and those same businesses are getting pushed out as a result.

In such a climate, looking to short-term gain, landlords have escalated rents wildly with destructive outcome – as seen in Cheshire St, where exorbitant increases led to the departure of Shelf, Mimi, Labour and Wait, and other businesses which drew customers to come there from across London. Over a year later, many of those properties remain empty in a street that has lost its passing trade as a consequence, such is the hubris of the greedy landlord. The irony here is that the Duke of Uke has now opened in Cheshire St and looks set to bring it back to life by attracting other businesses, just as happened in Hanbury St. Maybe in a few years, he will get pushed out once more when the properties surrounding him are full, after he has put the street back on the map?

Landlords are seduced by fantasies of replacing independent traders with chain-stores, yet I am informed that among the largest chain-stores in Spitalfields some are unable to pay their rents. These overblown corporate enterprises stumble from one financial crisis to the next, seeking constant recapitalisation while still adding to their property portfolios by opening more unprofitable shops. As an alternative to this, a responsible private individual who commits themselves to paying a realistic rent long-term is a more prudent option for the owner of the property – if the landlords were not blinded by the pound signs in their eyes. Pursued to its bitter end, the landlords’ short-term profit motive will result in streets lined with chain-stores, and then the value of the commercial property will fall when the area resembles everywhere else and its distinctive appeal is gone.

Unless this situation can be changed, the outcome will be a complete loss of the culture of  artisans and family businesses that has defined Spitalfields historically. As Raphael Samuel, the foremost historian of the East End, wrote with remarkable prescience in 1988 -“The fate of Spitalfields Market illustrates in stark form some of the paradoxes of contemporary metropolitan development – on the one hand, the preservation of “historic” houses, on the other, the wholesale destruction of London’s hereditary occupations and trades and the dispersal of its settled communities. The viewer is thus confronted with two versions of “enterprise” culture – the one that of family business and small scale firms, the other that of international high finance with computer screens linking the City of London to the money markets of the world.”

It was in Spitalfields that the match girls of Bryant & May met to form the very first trade union in the nineteenth century and now, demonstrating the same indomitable spirit, the shopkeepers and independent small businesses of the East End are gathering next Monday 30th April at 6:30pm at the Bishopsgate Institute to inaugurate The East End Trades Guild, which launches formally as a pressure group in September. All local small trades are invited to this open meeting to discuss what can be done to ensure their survival and to contribute ideas which can form the policy for the guild. If you are a shopkeeper or you run a small business in the East End, you need to be there to make your voice heard.

Paul Gardner, whose plight was the catalyst for the founding of The East End Trades Guild is its founder member. When I visited him in the building in Commercial St where his family have traded, serving the people of the East End for over one hundred and forty years, he said to me, “I hope it will unite us and give the little businesses a chance to survive, because unless something is done we’re all going to be gone from here in the next five years.”

Graphic by James Brown

You may also like to read

CHIT CHAT – The Umbrella Maker, The Dairyman & The Paper Bag Seller

and the article that started it all

Paul Gardner, Paper Bag Seller

and Raphael Samuel’s essay

A Farewell to Spitalfields

Joan Rose - To reach eighty-six years of age and to sit here and look and see everybody smiling, it’s wonderful and I’m feeling very important at the moment. Who am I? I’m just a little girl who was born on the Boundary Street Estate in Shoreditch in 1926 from a family of costermongers, a cockney. One day, I thought “I’m sick and tired of going to Oxford Street and the department stores, I’ll go back to where I was born. I’ll go to the Boundary Estate.” And I strolled down Calvert Avenue and it was very emotional because it was at the top of the avenue that my grandparents – and I’m going back to 1874 – had a business. And I stood and I was trying to visualise my grandparents’ shop, which was a fruiterers and green grocers, when I noticed a little cafe on the right and I went in and met Leila McAlister. She has reopened my grandparents’ grocery shop and, from there, I have met such lovely people and I’ve been made Honorary Patron of the Friends of Arnold Circus.

Mavis Bullwinkle - I’m the youngest one here, I’m eighty in May.  I’ve lived in this little area – Spitalfields – all my life, except for when I was evacuated to Aylesbury with the school. We were away for six years – which was very sad, to be away from your mother and your father. All things come to an end and, when I was thirteen, we came back home, which we’d been looking forward to. Every night we used to pray, “Please God, let the war be over tomorrow.” For six years we prayed and one day it was, and of course we had won, so it was marvellous, God had answered. Otherwise, I’ve lived all my life here, I’ve not married – I lived with my parents until they died. When I was a baby, I’m talking about 1932, my mother used to take me, in the afternoon, for a walk down Whitechapel Rd which was very lovely, you’d get the sun down there. It was the most beautiful road, Whitechapel Rd, very wide with trees – and you didn’t used to have so many stalls then. They had very nice shops and right at the top there was this big department store, Wickhams, and it was a lovely place to walk down.

Henrietta Keeper - I was evacuated when I was twelve and I was away for three years and came back to the doodlebugs – when the war was still on. My Dad didn’t think it was safe enough to be in the Anderson shelter – so we went up to an arch in the Bethnal Green Road and underneath it there were bunk beds. My friend, Doris said, “Me Mum’s worried about me, she’s down the tube, because the warning’s gone. Will you come with me down the tube?” So I linked my arm in my Mum’s and said, “No, I love my Mum and I want to stay here,” but she said “Oh come on.” She kept on and on, and I got fed up with it. All of a sudden, I thought, “All right, OK.” I was really going to go with her. I took two steps, and then I went back and put my arm into my Mum’s, and I said, “No, I don’t want to go. You go down there.” Everyone was racing to the tube, the police were all around, the traffic had stopped and big red buses were all lined up the length of the Bethnal Green Rd. So Doris went and there was a tube accident, one hundred and seventy-three people died, they all fell downstairs on top of each other and got suffocated – and I was saved, and I’m so glad I didn’t go.

When I was married, my husband done night work down at Smithfield Meat Market and because I was on my own in the evenings I used to write poetry. I always have to be doing something! I can’t go through life without doing anything. When I was a little girl, I used to hear my dad singing, he had the most beautiful voice and I sang in harmony with him and with my sisters – me, Maureen, Kathy –we used to sing like the Andrews Sisters. I joined Tate &Lyle’s factory down at Silvertown as part of the entertainment and I was in their works concert party for thirty years, until everyone else died. We’d go every Tuesday and I’d sing. I’ve sung as far away as Ilford. I loved it, I loved every minute of it. My husband didn’t mind me doing it because they always came and picked us up, took us to the venue and brought us right back to our door, so we was safe. If they hadn’t have done that my husband probably wouldn’t have let me done it. I’m a cockney, always been a cockney but when I sing I don’t sing cockney.

Joan Rose - Everybody sings with an American accent now – do you sing with an English accent?

Henrietta Keeper -I tell you what, I talk really cockney don’t I? I mean you can hear me, but when I sing I sing the Queen’s English. I don’t know where I got it from. I’m eighty-five and I’ve had a lovely life, really.

Mavis Bullwinkle - I can’t tell you, after the war, how much the place changed because so many people moved away.  My mother and father were here during the blitz, until he went into the air force. My sister and I, it didn’t cross our minds that they might get killed.  We were too young to realise the danger, and my mother would make jokes about it when she came to visit us, so we didn’t dream she could be killed.  We lived near Vallance Road in Deal St and  the last but one V2 fell on a big block of flats  in Vallance Road, Hughes Mansions – it was so close – at seven o’clock in the morning. My mother was filling up her kettle to make a morning cup of tea. All she saw was a flash, there wasn’t a sound, and she found herself surrounded with glass from the window.  There’d been this terrible tragedy but she was alright. I really feel I can never complain. If I complain, I have to pull myself up and say, “Look, your mother wasn’t killed.’ But a lot of other people had been killed – and I tell myself, “You’ve got to live your life to make up for them.”

I thank God for regeneration. We prayed for years for somebody to help us because after the war, the sixties and seventies, they were hellish times here.  Nobody cared about us, the people who stayed here. They did all this building because there’d been so much bombing – but the housing was only for people with children and once you got married there was no chance of staying in the area, even if your parents, grandparents had all lived there, if you didn’t have any children. And the area lost all these wonderful people who could have been useful. In our block where my parents lived, where my mother had lived since the age of four, we had two bedrooms, we didn’t have a bathroom. But my parents and us two children, both girls, although they’d lived there all their lives, there was no chance of us being re-housed. No chance of ever getting a bathroom.  If they’d had a boy and a girl that might’ve been different – but because there were two girls there were just two bedrooms. The new estates were only for larger families, so you had this dead area here in Spitalfields – it was absolutely dead. We eventually got re-housed, when I was nearly fifty and my mother was nearly eighty, because the buildings got pulled down!  Before that we had no bathroom.

I worked at the Royal London Hospital for forty years. People say to me, “Oh, you still live there?” and I say, “Why shouldn’t I still live there?” People ask, “Where do you come from? And you say ‘Whitechapel’ and they say ‘Oh, Jack The Ripper!’” My niece lives in Yorkshire and when I go up there, I don’t say “Can you show me the streets where the Yorkshire Ripper killed all those poor women?” I think there’s something peculiar about people who want to see where those women were killed.  Here in the East End, we’ve always had a bad name.  But you see how beautifully we’re all dressed? We’re real! We’re real Tower Hamlets people! Brought up in Tower Hamlets.

Question from the audience - Can you tell us about your first jobs?

Joan Rose – I worked at De La Rue’s, they used to print money in the City. I only worked there for two days because I didn’t like it, I didn’t even pick up my two days’ pay. My next job was as a machinist on the Bethnal Green Rd, in the building which is now Shoreditch House. I was fourteen and my mother said, “You have to find yourself a job, darling.” So I worked making khaki trousers for the army, but an air raid happened and I ran home because my mother was a very nervous person and I knew she was on her own. That was another week’s wages I never picked up, because I never went back. It was piece work then and at the end of the first week, I’d be lucky if I made eighteen shillings or a pound. Whatever I earned, I’d give it to my mother and she’d give me sixpence to go to the cinema. This was 1940 and – fortunately – my father, who had gone through the First World War, said he couldn’t go through another one, so he took us and we all went to live in Blackpool for ten years. I ended up being a teacher in a college, so I didn’t do too bad.

Mavis Bullwinkle – The Sir John Cass School Foundation used to pay for two girls to go to Pitmans’ College and I was a lucky one.  At first, I worked as a shorthand typist in the City for five years but then I worked at the Royal London Hospital in the social work department for forty years. When I went for the interview, they said, “How much are you getting in the City?” I was only twenty-one and I was getting four pounds a week. They said, “Well, you won’t get that here – you’ll get three pounds and ten shillings,” and I had longer hours and worked Saturday mornings.  But I was quite happy to do it. That’s the difference between hospitals then and now. Everybody – not just doctors and nurses, even the secretaries and the cleaners – they were all prepared to work for less money in a hospital because they wanted to do something useful.  It was a totally different world. I didn’t think twice, it was what I wanted to do.

Henrietta Keeper - I was a machinist for thirty years in ladies’ tailoring. I was on the top machine and I ended up being a sample maker. They got their work, the guvnors, by taking my samples up the Richards Shop in the West End. They’d come back smiling, saying, “We’ve got work! We’ve got work!” Then we were alright for a few weeks. While everyone else was earning fifteen pound, I was earning between twenty-six and thirty pounds. I got my first job on Mare St in a firm making army denims. I’d just come home from evacuation and because I’d been away, I’d become a bit countrified so when they said “What’s your name, love?” I didn’t like saying ‘Henrietta’ – so I said the first name off the top of me head, ‘Joan!’ (to Joan Rose) I’m sorry about that, Joan. And I’ve been ‘Joan’ to me mother-in-law and all me neighbours, they all know me as ‘Joan’.  I’ve got a lot of aliases. I’ve got a nickname, I had it when I was a baby.  Shall I tell it to you?  ‘Minxie!’

(The evening concluded with Henrietta singing an old cockney song that her father taught her.)

Photographs copyright © Sarah Ainslie

You may also like to read my pen portraits

Mavis Bullwinkle, Secretary

Henrietta Keeper, Ballad Singer

The Return of Joan Rose