Rosie Dastgir in Whitechapel Market

Rosie Dastgir lived in Ashfield St in the shadow of the Royal London Hospital in Whitechapel for ten years from 1995 – 2005, and while she was there she began to write a novel. Then she went to live in Brooklyn, New York, but five years later completed her debut novel A Small Fortune, set in Whitechapel and Spitalfields, which is published this week in London. Yesterday, Rosie returned to the East End to take a stroll around her old territory for an afternoon of contemplation before publication day on Wednesday, and I enjoyed the privilege of accompanying her.

“The story was inspired by being in Whitechapel and the characters I met there,” she admitted to me as we walked down Brick Lane together, hunched up against the cold, with the minaret looming overhead,“I took a trip to Pakistan with my father in the nineteen eighties and then later – after he died – at the time of 9/11, I wondered what he would have made of the changes in the Islamic World.” Rosie’s novel is a bitter-sweet comedy about a British Muslim – inspired by her father who emigrated from Pakistan in the 1950s – a man who is losing control of his life and his family, as his daughter is dropping out of medical school at the Royal London Hospital and his cousin is failing as an East End estate agent.

“This is my old stomping ground,” announced Rosie with a murmur of delighted recognition as we turned the corner into the Whitechapel Rd. Then, crossing Altab Ali Park - “No matter how much money they spend on this place it will always resist gentrification,” she reassured me. Rosie’s father came to stay with her in Whitechapel in his final years.“When he died, I found a stash of his letters and diaries talking about Islam,” she revealed, adding that her novel is set  in the early 2000s, after her father’s death, thereby defining a precise line between his experience and her fiction.

“I thought, ‘What am I doing, writing this in Brooklyn?’” declared Rosie, rolling her eyes humorously, “I already had the idea for it in Whitechapel and I had written a few chapters.” Her perseverance was rewarded when she found an American publisher for her novel before a British one. “That was a wonderful moment,” she confided with a modest smile, “because I had thought, ‘Maybe no-one’s going to get this?’ but it confirms this is a story that is appropriate to many cultures. It stands upon its own terms.” In retrospect, Rosie recognises that the geographical distance granted her a perspective, liberating her to write fiction.

Weaving through the narrow streets, we came upon Ashfield St and Rosie’s former house. “They haven’t even repainted the front door!” she declared in surprise, turning her back on it in disappointment to point out the houses of friends that once lived here. “I was pregnant at the time and when I saw another pregnant woman in the street, I said to her, ‘We must be friends because we’re both going to have babies!’” she told me with a grimace at the craziness of it. In spite of the chill of the afternoon, Rosie showed a buoyant energy and humour that is reflected the quality of her lively compassionate writing and graceful prose style. We sat together on the swings in Ford Sq and Rosie wondered at the gleaming new hospital tower that has sprung up since she lived here, while boys in white jalabiyas played football around us.

This is a year of significant change for Rosie, publishing her first novel and returning this summer to live in London. “I like my life in Brooklyn, but my eldest daughter is reaching thirteen and you come to the point where you need to make a decision,” she said, in quiet contemplation as we walked back towards the clamour of Whitechapel Market. Yet Rosie Dastgir’s journey has been more than simply trans-atlantic, she returns as a novelist with a distinctive voice and an outstanding first novel under her belt – and all the possibilities that fiction has to offer laid out before her.

John Keohane

Chief Yeoman Warder John Keohane wakes at 6:45am in his quarters in the Old Hospital Block and the first sight to greet his eyes as the daylight comes into focus is the mythic White Tower, gleaming in the dawn outside his bedroom window. At 7:50am each morning, trim in his Tudor uniform, he steps from his blue front door and crosses the Inner Ward of the Tower, walking down Water Lane between the ancient stone walls to reach the octagonal office in the twelfth century Byward Tower. Here John assesses the duties of his thirty-seven fellow Warders for the day, before commencing the Opening Ceremony of the Tower at 8:50am, when a contingent of soldiers in bearskins accompany him to unlock the heavy black gates at 9:00am precisely and admit the tide of visitors whose flow is as ceaseless as the Thames.

And so it has been for many years at the Tower of London. And so it was last week, when Spitalfields Life Contributing Photographer Martin Usborne and I accompanied John for a day. And so it will be today.

Only it will not be so tomorrow – because this is John’s last working day in the post of Chief Yeoman Warder. And thus the day that Martin and I shared with John was both an echo of all the other days, yet underscored with a certain poetry by the imminent conclusion of John’s time at the Tower – where he has been a Yeoman Warder since 1991.

Once John had ensured the Opening Ceremony had been completed with the essential aplomb that such rituals at the Tower require, we all strode up the hill past Tower Green to John’s Office in the Waterloo Barracks which he now shares with his successor and protégé Alan Kingshott, the current Yeoman Gaoler. Instantly, the two slipped into the freewheeling Morecambe & Wise style banter that characterises their relationship. “I just want to check my emails,” pleaded John in mock petulance, as we all piled into the tiny room and Alan vacated the work station. “I can’t get used to this desk,” John continued, squeezing himself and his voluminous Yeoman Warders’s uniform behind Alan’s newly installed office furniture with feigned distaste,“he’s got one of these ergonomically-shaped keyboards.”

“When I first arrived he was my mentor, he taught me everything,” confessed Alan reverentially, changing tone to add playfully,“It’s his fault I’m here!”

“I’ve written six pages of notes for him of things not to forget,” John confided to me to while Alan took the opportunity to get out the Brasso from a filing cabinet and polish up his belt buckle as John tip-tapped at his keyboard with one hand, stroking his beard in thought with the other. “John cleans his buckle every day,” Alan whispered to me. “And my shoes,” added John without lifting his eyes from the keyboard.

With free time on his hands, John took us on a tour of the casements, as the dwellings built into the walls of the Tower are called. Here, in the private areas of the Tower, live forty-seven families and washing lines and flower pots, even a doctor’s surgery, attested to their presence. Yet these spaces carry history as the original location of the Royal Mint and of the shooting range where Josef Jacobs, a German spy who was the last to be executed at the Tower, was shot in 1941. During his time, John has become increasingly drawn to study the events that happened here and out of all the locations it is the modest Salt Tower where Thomas More was imprisoned that touches him most. “It is just a bare room with a stone floor and a garderobe in the corner,” said John,“where they kept him for three months in 1543 before they took him to Westminster and beheaded him. One of things that strikes me about it, the temperature is always the same. You always feel how cold it is.”

This is John’s special quality – through engaging with the past on a personal level, he has come to embody the soulful history of this place and because of his presence, and that of his fellow warders, visitors are able to appreciate the reality of the human history that has been enacted here among these monumental structures.“It’s been the epitome of my career,” John confessed to me as we sat in his quiet living room looking out onto the Inner Ward, where he once came as a ten year old child on a visit and then returned in 1972 as a young soldier on temporary duty at the Tower – though he never anticipated the part that the Tower would eventually play in his life. “I’ll miss living here,” he admitted to me, “but the house I have in Paignton is on a hill looking out across the sea towards Brixham.”

We joined the tourists in the cafeteria next door for lunch before ambling back to the Byward Tower for the Ceremony of the Word at 3pm, in which a contingent of soldiers from the barracks at the Tower collected a wallet with the password that is changed daily, necessary so the guard may know who can be admitted in case of an emergency. Then it was back to John’s office to await Mr Barley, a dapper gentleman who is a veteran of fifty-four years at Mappin & Webb, bringing John’s engraved silver salver that will remain to commemorate his time at the Tower. John scrutinised the simple text and found it satisfactory.

Already the January afternoon light was fading and it was time to prepare for the Closing Ceremony, as the Warders shepherded the sparse visitors from each of the buildings and John made the rounds collecting the bunches of keys, until the last stragglers left the Byward Gate and Warder Chris Skaife rang the bell high in the tower at 5:00pm. Later, at 10:00pm, the Ceremony of the Keys would ensure the final lockdown at the Tower. And tonight, after more than twenty years, it will signal the end of John Keohane’s tenure.

“The Tower is closed now and my day is over,” he said simply as we shook hands. It was a day in the life of the Chief Yeoman Warder at the Tower of London.

Waiting to open the Tower for the day.

Opening the gates at the Byward Tower to visitors.

John Keohane with Alan Kingshott who will succeed him as Chief Yeoman Warder.

John steps out of his front door.

John wakes each morning to the sight of the White Tower.

John stands for pictures taken by schoolchildren.

John eats a bowl of soup for lunch among the tourists in the cafeteria.

John takes delivery of the salver from Mappin & Webb commemorating his time at the Tower.

The silver figure of John presented to him as a leaving gift by the Tower.

John collects the keys from his fellow Yeoman Warders.

Chris Skaife ringing the bell at the closing of the day.

John Keohane - “The Tower is closed now and my day is over”

Photographs copyright © Martin Usborne

Residents of Spitalfields and any of the Tower Hamlets may gain admission to the Tower for one pound upon production of an Idea Store card.

You may also like to read about

Alan Kingshott, Yeoman Gaoler at the Tower of London

Graffiti at the Tower of London

The Beating of the Bounds at the Tower of London

The Ceremony of the Lilies & Roses at the Tower of London

The Bloody Romance of the Tower with pictures by George Cruickshank

John Keohane, Chief Yeoman Warder at the Tower of London

Constables Dues at the Tower of London

The Oldest Ceremony in the World.

When Spitalfields Life Contributing Photographer Colin O’Brien was growing up in a slum tenement in Clerkenwell in the nineteen forties, his mother used to give him a penny and send him out to buy a copy of the Evening Standard. Since 1827, the streets of London echoed to the cry of “Standodd! Midday Special! Standodd! Evening Special!” and, at its peak, there were over seven hundred distributors sending the paper as far afield as Liverpool and Brighton. Yet by the time the Evening Standard became a free paper two years ago, there were just one hundred and sixty distributors and today there are only sixty left. So when a handful of heroic distributors from the glory days of the Evening Standard gathered at the Bishopsgate Institute on Saturday for old times’ sake, I asked Colin to be there to take their portraits.

“I used to be a paper boy when I was at school in Catford in 1962.” recalled John Cato who worked for the Standard until 2008, “And when I left school at fifteen in 1965, the guy who delivered the Evening Standard asked me if I’d like to be his van boy. I had to be at the station to collect the papers at ten and I’d go off with him in the van to deliver and collect the money from the sellers. Then I’d go home for lunch and at two o’clock there’d be another driver I worked with to deliver the later editions. We got paid weekly, so on Friday I’d go back to Shoe Lane with the driver to collect my wages and I used to mix with the other van boys and we all made friends. Sometimes we used to socialise with the van boys from the Evening News, even though they were our competitors.”

It was a furious business, bundling up the papers and tying them up with string as they came off the printing presses in Shoe Lane, then sending them off continuously in the fleet of vans as the editions updated through the day. Years now after they retired, most of these men still have the ink-stained hands and backache that are marks of a lifetime in newspaper distribution.

Frank Webster started as a rounds boy, delivering papers to newsagents by bicycle four times a day.“I was thirty years old before I graduated to a driver,” he told me with shrug, “they said it was the longest apprenticeship – in fact, it was a bit of a closed shop, the families knew each other for generations. You needed a relative in the business to get a job and it was based on seniority, it was dead man’s shoes. Yet I always enjoyed going to work, being outdoors and meeting all the vendors, they were such characters.”

“Most of us took early retirement between 2007-2009 when they were trying to cut costs, before they sold the paper to Alexander Lebedev for £1 and it went free,” explained Rob Dickers with a philosophical grin. He started at fifteen and his father worked for thirty years as a compositor at the Standard since before World War II. “From the late sixties, there was a great sense of camaraderie but when the printing moved out from Shoe Lane to Rotherhithe and we were deunionised, the money dropped.” Rob and his pal John Cato were very active in the Chapel, as the branch of the union was termed. “I became Father of the Chapel, the shop steward,” revealed John, “The management de-recognised the union but I built it up again from three to eighty. That’s my claim to fame really.” John’s efforts ensured his members received better pensions and redundancy deals, crucial for the employees as the industry itself began to flag.

The retrospective irony is that while the newspaper managements enacted aggressive policies upon their workforce to drive costs down during the last decades of the twentieth century, in this century the entire newsprint industry finds itself eclipsed by electronic media. Yet these proud men are the last of a hardy breed who devoted their lives to keep the papers rolling and then fought fiercely against tyrannical employers to protect their livelihood as the world changed around them.

On this very day, the printing of the Evening Standard moves from Rotherhithe to Broxbourne and the first issue of  the London Evening Standard not printed in London hits the streets this morning. As a new chapter opens for the capital’s most famous paper, the implications of this new development are yet to be discovered. No longer is the cry of “Standodd! Midday Special! Standodd! Evening Special!” to be heard upon the streets of London, and the soul of the city is the lesser for it.

Victor Wilson, Distributor at the Evening Standard, 1972 – 2007.

Frank Webster, Distributor at the Evening Standard, 15th August 1966 – 30th September 2007.

Ron Chadwick, Distributor at the Evening Standard, 1963 – 2006.

Former Evening Standard headquarters at Shoe Lane.

David Patten, Distributor at the Evening Standard, 1966 – 2009.

John Cato, Distributor at the Evening Standard, 1965 -2008.

Peter Steward, Distributor at the Evening Standard from 1964.

Brian Eller, Distributor at the Evening Standard from 1970 -2008.

Rob Dickers’ Newspaper Distributor’s knife. The notch on the top knife was worn by winding string around the handle to tie the bundle. “They wouldn’t let you go to work without one of these and a union card,” said Rob.

Rob Dickers, Distributor at the Evening Standard, 1966 – 2010.

Barry Pach worked in the Bill Room at the Evening Standard from 1960 – 1989, writing the bills for the newspaper hoardings by hand.

Portraits and final photograph © Colin O’Brien

Archive images courtesy of Bishopsgate Institute

The Gramophone Man

“I’m not really an East Ender, I’m more of a Bow boy,” asserted Alfred Daniels with characteristic precision of thought, when I enquired of his origin. “My parents left the East End, because they were scared of the doodlebugs and bought this house in 1945,” he explained, as he welcomed me to the generous suburban mansion in Chiswick where he lives today. Greeting me in his pyjamas and dressing gown in the afternoon, no-one could be more at home than Alfred in his studio occupying the former living room of his parents’ house. And yesterday, he was snug in the central heating and just putting the finishing touches to a commission that his dealer was coming to collect at six.

Alfred is at the point in life now where the copyright payments on the resale of works from his sixty year painting career mean he no longer has to struggle. “I’ve done hundreds of things to make a living,” he confessed, rolling his eyes in amusement, “Although my father was a brilliant tailor, he was a dreadful business man so we were on the breadline for most of the nineteen thirties – which was a good thing because we never got fat …” Smiling at his own bravado, Alfred continued painting as he spoke, adding depth to the shadows with a fine brush. “This is the way to make a living,” he declared with a flourish as he placed the brush back in the pot with finality, completing the day’s work and placing the painting to one side, ready to go. “The past is history, the future is a mystery but the present is a gift,” he informed me, as we climbed the stairs to the upstairs kitchen over-looking the garden, to seek a cup of tea.

Alfred had spent the morning making copious notes on his personal history, just it to get it straight for me. “This has been fun,” he admitted, rustling through the handwritten pages. “My grandfather came from Russia in the 1880s, he was called Donyon, and they said, ‘Sounds like Daniels.’ My grandfather on the other side came from Plotska in Poland in the 1880s, he didn’t have a surname so they said ‘Sounds like a good man’ and they called him Goodman. My parents, Sam and Rose, were both born in the 1890s and my mother lived to be ninety-two. I was born in Trellis St in Bow in 1924 and in the early thirties we moved to 145 Bow Rd, next to the railway station. I can still remember the sound of the goods wagons going by at night.

One good thing is, I gave up the Jewish religion and thank goodness for that. It was only when I was twelve and I read about the Hitler problem that I realised I was Jewish. Fortunately, we weren’t religious in my family and we didn’t go to the synagogue. But I went to prepare for my Bar Mitzvah and they tried to harm me with Hebrew. We were taught by these Russians and if you didn’t learn it they bashed you. That put me off religion there and then. Yet when we got outside the Black Shirts were waiting for us in the street, calling ‘Here look, it’s the Jew boys!’ and they wanted to bash me too. Fortunately, I could run fast in those days.

My mother used to do all the shopping in the Roman Rd market. She hated shopping, so she sent me to do it for her in Brick Lane. It was a penny on the tram, there and back. But they all spoke Yiddish and I couldn’t communicate, so I thought, ‘I’d better listen to my grandmother who spoke Yiddish.’ I learnt it from her and it is one of the funniest languages you can imagine.

Although my parents were poor, my Uncle Charlie was rich. He was a commercial artist and my father said to him, ‘The boy wants to learn a craft.’ So Charlie got me a place at Woolwich Polytechnic to learn signwriting but I spent all day trying to sharpen my pencil.  Then he took me out of the school and got me a job as a lettering artist at the Lawrence Danes Studio in Chancery Lane. It was wonderful to come up to the city to work, and his nephew befriended me and we went to art shops together to look at art books. We drew out letters and filled them in with Indian Ink, mostly Gill Sans. Typesetters usually got the spacing wrong but if you did it by hand you could get it right. It was all squares, circles and triangles.

When Uncle Charlie started his own studio in Fetter Lane above the Vogue photo studio, he offered me a job at £1 a week. Nobody showed me how to do anything, I worked it out for myself. He got me to do illustrations and comic drawings and retouching of photographs. At night, we went down in the tube stations entertaining people sheltering from the blitz. I played my violin like Django Reinhardt and he played like Stefan Grappelli, and one day we were recorded and ended up on Workers’ Playtime.

I had been doing some still lifes but I wanted to paint the beautiful old shops in Campbell Rd, Bow, so I went to make some sketches and a policeman came up and asked to see my identity card. ‘You can’t do this because we’ve had complaints you’re a spy,’ he said. It was illegal to take photographs during the war, so I sat and absorbed into memory what I saw. And the result came out like a naive or primitive painting. When Herbert Buckley my tutor at Woolwich saw it, he said, ‘Would you like to be a painter? I’ll put you in for the Royal College of Art. To be honest, I should rather have done illustration or lettering. At the Royal College of Art, my tutors included Carel Weight – he said, ‘I’m not interested in art only in pictures.’ – Ruskin Spear – ‘always drunk because of the pain of polio’ – and John Minton – ‘ a lovely man, if only he hadn’t been so mixed up.’”

Alfred was keen to enlist, “I wanted to stop Hitler coming over and stringing me up !” – though he never saw active service, but the discovery of painting and of his signature style as the British Douanier Rousseau stayed with him for the rest of his life. After Alfred left the East End in 1945, he kept coming back to make sketchbooks and do paintings, often of the same subjects – as you see above and below, with two images of the Gramophone man in Wentworth St painted fifty years apart.

With natural generosity of spirit, Alfred Daniels told me, “Making a painting is like baking a cake, one slice is for you but the rest is for everyone else.”

The Gramophone Man in Wentworth St, 1950

Sketchbook pages – Cable St, April 1964.

Sketchbook pages – Old Montague St, March 1964.

Sketchbook pages – Hessel St, April 1964.

Sketchbook pages – Old Montague St & Davenant St, March 1964.

Sketchbook pages – Fruit Seller in Hessel St, March 1964.

Leadenhall Market, drawing, 2008.

Billingsgate Market.

Tower Bridge, 2008.

The Royl Exchange, 2008.

Crossing London Bridge, 2008.

In Alfred’s studio

Alfred Daniels, Artist

To Able Seaman George Wells, the modest cluster of buildings next to St Anne’s Church, Limehouse, will always be his training ship, and even today it still sports a cheery enamelled British Sailors’ Society sign as evidence of its former identity.

In 1938, fourteen year old George – a former sea scout from Dover – became a temporary East Ender, training here at the Prince of Wales Sea Training Hostel for Boys for just six months. Yet such was the intensity of this formative experience that George recalls it vividly seventy-five years later, even as he approaches his ninetieth birthday. “I suppose there’s not so many of us chaps left that remembers it?” he suggested to me when I paid a call upon him this week.

“I was fourteen years and five months old when I went up to Limehouse on 3rd January 1938. I always wanted to be in the Merchant Navy. I wanted to see the world and I knew that merchant ships went to many more places than the navy.

You walked into the main entrance where there was a bell and an ensign that you always saluted. You didn’t linger there, you walked straight through. On the left was the secretary’s office and on the right was the Commodore’s office. The two instructors were called Jack Frost and Freddie Painter, Jack was on the port watch and Freddie was on the starboard. They taught us everything to do with boatwork and navigation – signalling, semaphore and morse code – and things you could do with ropes. You had to be able to recite all thirty-two points of the compass from N to NE and back again.Your life depended on it and, if you couldn’t do it, you’d get horrible jobs to do.

We lived in dormitories at the top of the building, sleeping in iron bunks. You were given a horsehair mattress but no sheet, two blankets, one pillow and a counterpane. We got up at six in the morning and you folded your blankets with the pillow on top and the counterpane over it, like a pudding in the middle of the bed. We wore white duck trousers and a blue sailor’s top, plimsolls in winter and bare feet in summer. We would have a mug of tea and then we had to go out onto the signal deck – as we called the yard – for muster, where we were allocated jobs and between us we did all the cleaning. I remember they found one boy had a dirty neck on parade and he was put on report. He was taken below deck and stripped and washed by his fellows, and his skin was pink when he came back. When “Rigging, up and over!” was called, we had to run up the rigging and down the other side. One of us was chosen to be the “button boy,” he had to stand upon the very top. It was scary but we were young and when I got to sea they said, “Go aloft, you’re used to it.” because they knew where I had trained. I was given two pounds and seventeen shillings per month when I started with the corps.

Instructions continued until five daily and then we had homework. Two sideboys were on duty all day to attend the door. Saturdays and Sundays were the only days we were allowed out, and I learnt about the East End. We took the tram down to Tower Bridge, you could pick up girls there, but you had to be back by five. There were no cooks on Sunday, so we ate cold meat, pickles and mashed potato, plus trifle made of bread and jam with jelly and custard on top. We went out into the West India Dock, where we had a whaling ship and a gig. We used to learn to row in the dock, but it was a bit much pulling against the tide in the Thames. We had to carry sixteen foot oars on our shoulders, they were heavy when you got there.

It was very competitive. We had boxing matches under the big tree. It was known as “Grudge Day.” If you had a disagreement with someone, you informed the instructor and they put you in the ring together. They were all different sizes. I remember this big chap Wellham from Norfolk, he caught me with a bad one and split my eye open. Since I was appointed Chief Petty Office, everyone wanted to have a go at me and I’ve still got the scar under my eye from it.

The most embarrassing thing was when you were sent to have baths in the basement and then jump into the cold swimming pool. Captain Faulkner and his wife used to come and supervise us, but then he left and his wife – the matron – she stayed to watch us. All of us young boys in the buff, we had to go and stand in front of her. I think she enjoyed it more than we did.

Most of us were under fifteen, at fifteen you could go to sea. You were sent. The shipping companies funded the school to provide them with boys. I was actually on board my first ship, the Capetown Castle when I had my fifteenth birthday. It was a new ship, one of the biggest cargo ships afloat at 22,000 tons. Of the eight deck boys, there were two of us from the school, me and Alf. It was exciting. We left Southampton, we were going along the Channel and the officer said, “You’ve done signals. Call that ship over there and ask what it is.” It was the SS Beacon Grange, and it sent back the message “Capetown Castle, Bon Voyage!” I’ll never forget the first ship I spoke to on my first night at sea.

We used to go round the Cape on the mail run, Cape Town, Port Elizabeth, London. We carried wool, hides, chick peas, wine and fruit. And once we picked up crates of marmalade oranges from Madeira, so pungent they had to be kept stacked on deck. Next year – when the war came – we switched over to troop carrying. Starting as a deck boy, I became an ordinary seaman, then a sailor then an able seaman and a gunner. I stayed with the Capetown Castle until 1946, and I quit at twenty-three because, already, I could see the way the mercantile industry was going.

When I went to sea, I knew I could do it. You had responsibility at an early age in those days.”

Once the war began, the training school moved up to Norfolk, terminating its brief period in the East End. George married three times and enjoyed a very successful career as Supervisor of the three hundred workers at Newhaven Harbour, until he retired in 1986. After being empty and squatted for years, the buildings in Newell St were bought by the squatters and divided into homes with only minimal alteration to the buildings.

As you walk through these atmospheric rooms today, the worn floors and old staircases are reminders of the former life that was here. And if you go down to basement, an old sign that reads “British Sailors’ Society” greets you on the stairs. You will find the swimming pool in the cellar is still there too and was used by all the residents of the street until quite recently.

The Sea Training School in Newell St still stands largely unaltered today. The crown over the front door has gone, but the coloured enamel sign above advertising the British Sailors’ Society remains.

The Sea Training Hostel  in Limehouse with St Anne’s in the background.

Bill Wren – I was born in Wapping and I moved to Shadwell nine years ago. I’ve had the plot for about fifteen years. We never had a garden when I was young. The nearest I came to gardening was picking hops in Kent. Later I had a friend in Burgess Hill and I used to grow things in her garden. That’s where the greenhouse came from, I put it on the roof of the car and brought it up from Sussex. I’ve built a shed here and a pond. There are plenty of frogs and newts, and I’ve planted a bank next to the road. It’s a wildlife haven now.

Jane Sill - I was born in Liverpool. My grandfather had an allotment in County Durham and my father was a very good gardener. I helped with weeding and cultivated sunflowers. I was living in Cable Street in the late seventies in a top floor flat with no balcony. One day I went to a community festival and Friends of the Earth were offering plots here. I was given one in 1980 and I knew straight away how important it was to establish ourselves as an organisation. We’ve had a two year waiting list since 1981. At one time I was working in a Job Centre and people used to come in and put their names down for a plot.

Mohammed Rahmat Ali Pathni – I have always been a gardener. I started on my father’s land in Bangladesh and when I came to live in Birmingham in 1978 I had a garden behind the back yard. I have lived in Wapping since 1983 and started gardening in Cable Street ten years ago. I’m enjoying myself and it helps my frozen shoulder. I taught my children to garden and my wife often works here too. Many gardeners provide food for other people and I regularly give vegetables to friends. I also write poetry which is printed in the Eurobangla News Weekly, and I am a member of a writers’ group.

Alison Cochran – I moved to Shadwell five years ago because of the allotments and I live just across the road. I noticed them when I was living in Bethnal Green. I was born in Salisbury on a hill fort. I was keen on gardening when I was a child but when I came here I hadn’t gardened for years. I knew I wanted lots of flowers, but now I also grow salad vegetables and leeks, tomatoes, carrots and radishes. The soil is wonderful, everything seems to thrive here. I’ve used Victorian bricks for the paths because I wanted my plot to be in keeping with nearby housing.

Monir Uddin – I’ve lived in the borough for twenty years and I’ve gardened here for eight or nine years. The plot was completely wild at first. I had to uproot everything and it took about two years to get the soil right. I used to grow about sixty different plants and vegetables, including huge pumpkins. I love experimenting with plants and growing them for their medicinal properties. I’m a photographer and I also wanted to produce plants to photograph. I’ve done many different types of work including weddings and portraits. I was involved in the Bollywood film industry, I’ve photographed celebrities and at one time I had a restaurant.

Agatha Athanaze – I’ve been gardening here for twelve years. I was born in Dominica and came to Tower Hamlets in 1961. I’ve done different jobs. I’ve been a machinist and a cleaner. I live in Wapping now. I had a garden in Dominica so I did have some experience. The vegetables came first – I grow cabbages, onions, spring onions, runner beans, carrots, tomatoes, rhubarb and kidney beans. I like flowers too. I’ve ordered roses from Holland and from Spalding. I just like to come here and grow things. There are two benches but I haven’t time to sit down.

John Kelly – I was born in Cork City and I wasn’t a gardener. I came to this country in 1943 to work in the construction industry and started gardening as a hobby and to feed the family. I’ve had the plot here for seventeen years. I didn’t know much but I picked it up as I went along. I’ve always grown vegetables, never flowers. I can’t spend too much time here because I have to look after my wife and I have health problems too. I hate the sight of weeds but I don’t throw them out. I leave them on the ground to let them rot and they form green manure.

Manda Helal - I’m from Hertfordshire and I’ve lived in Tower Hamlets for twenty-six years. I’ve always been keen on gardening. We had a big garden when I was a child and I was given a section of my own. I’ve had my plot here for three years. My flat in Whitechapel is small and dark, so it’s wonderful to come here. The wheels are a frame for pumpkins. Squashes and pumpkins are so versatile. I grow artichokes and rocket, garlic, kale, cabbage, cauliflower, spinach and climbing purple beans. I’ve taught pottery in the borough for years and more recently I became a compost educator for the Women’s Environmental Network.

John Stokes – I’ve been gardening at Cable Street since I retired six years ago. I asked one of the nuns in the convent across the road and she said the allotments were for local people. I had no experience but I was brought up on a farm and I found I had an instinct for gardening. I came over from Ireland fifty years ago. I worked for London Transport for thirty-six years and missed only nine days. Now I’m at the gardens almost every day in summer and twice a week in winter. I grow vegetables for myself and my cousin and an aunt.

Anna Gaudion – I was born in Guernsey. I’ve lived in Stepney for the last ten years and I work as a midwife in Peckham. I was brought up in the country and I love being outside, hearing birds and growing things. I like allotments too, even just seeing them from trains. I’ve had this plot for three years now. My shed is made from a packing case used to take an object abroad from the British Museum where I was a curator. I enjoy cultivating flowers so I planted a nature garden. I share my plot with Claire who grows vegetables. Mine is the higgledy-piggledy part.

Andy Pickin - I grew up in Finchley and we moved to Shadwell twenty years ago. We spent eight years in Huntingdon when the firm moved there but most of us came back to London. I wanted an allotment because I’d always had great fun sharing one with my dad. I’ve had the plot for fourteen years. I grew vegetables because money was tight and the first year’s crop was fantastic. Our thirteen children all liked coming here when they were young. The older ones grow their own vegetables now. My wife likes the gardens too, she knows I sometimes come here to get away from the telly or the kids arguing.

Robin & Maria Albert - Robin was in catering before becoming a gardener eight years ago. He was born in Mile End and he’s lived in London all his life. I was born in London too and brought up in Margate. My family is always trying to persuade us to move out to Kent but we like living in Bethnal Green. We grow flowers at home but we wanted somewhere separate for vegetables. The fact that everything is organic is part of the appeal. Producing your own pure food is very satisfying. We have some flowers too and a pond that attracts frogs. I can’t do so much now but I still find gardening very therapeutic.

Ray Newton - I’ve always grown things. I share this plot with Agatha. We grow about a dozen different types of vegetables. It’s all organic. We don’t use pesticides. I retired last year from teaching business studies at Tower Hamlets College. Before that I worked in industry and at one time I was manager of a betting shop. I studied for O and A levels at evening classes and then took a degree course. I became a teacher and taught for twenty-five years. My other interests are local history and football. I’m the secretary of the History of Wapping Trust and a lifelong Millwall supporter.

Will Daly - I was a founder member of the gardens. I was in a nearby pub when Jane came in with another Irish chap and they persuaded me to have a plot. I’ve been in the borough for twenty-seven years. I was born in Ireland and I made a living salmon fishing on a tributary of the Shannon. I came to this country in 1951 and did building work. One of my brothers came over too but he missed the river and went home after a while. I still go back to Ireland but only for weddings and funerals. I can’t do very much gardening now but I love the peace of it.

Raymond Hussey – This is my second year. I live in one of the flats nearby. I’m growing vegetables and learning as I go along. What I’m most proud of is the brussels. And my runner beans were unbelievable. I don’t know whether it’s the soil or me talking to them. Weeds are a problem. Sometimes I’d like to use gallons of weedkiller but we’re not allowed. So I come in and have a chat. I call them everything but weeds. I was born on one of the estates off Brick Lane. I’ve done lots of things including acting. In my last job I was a dustman but I got trapped by the lorry. I still can’t do heavy work so the plot’s a bit of a mess but it’s my little world and I love it.

Robin, Yvonne and Katie Guess - We live at the other end of Cable Street. There’s a small courtyard garden but Yvonne and I were used to growing fruit and vegetables before we lived in London. We love soft fruit, we had a huge crop last year. We grow several vegetables and Yvonne has planted a mixed flower and herb bed. Our daughter Katie likes planting and picking but not weeding. We’re both from the south-east. I’ve been in the East End since 1968 and I worked on the Isle of Dogs as a quality control chemist. Now I’m with the Music Alliance in Oxford Street dealing with composer copyright.

Carl Vella – I came to Tower Hamlets from Malta in 1950 and worked for the NHS, mostly as a fitter and stoker. I’m retired and since I took over the plot four years ago I like to come here every day. I grow mostly vegetables –  potatoes and cabbages. I’m on my own now so I give a lot of produce away to an elderly neighbour. I live in the flats nearby and there’s no garden. Coming here stops me getting fed up. I take my dog for a walk, go to the bookie’s and come here. I’d like to bring Pedro more often but he won’t stay in one place.

Sister Elizabeth O’Connor - Our Order has been part of the local community since 1859 and I came to the convent in 1949. After the houses here were demolished the site became a dumping ground until Friends of the Earth initiated the gardens project. When I retired from teaching in 1991, I started gardening here. All the sisters appreciate home grown vegetables and having fresh flowers for the chapel. As a child in County Clare I enjoyed helping my father in our kitchen garden. Apart from the practical use, the gardens are a great place for breaking down barriers and it’s especially good that women can feel safe here on their own.

Graham Kenlin – I was born in Bermuda. My father was a navy chef and had a land-based job working for an admiral. We came back to England when I was four and I grew up in Hackney. I’ve lived in Wapping for thirty-eight years and I’ve had a plot here for about fifteen years. My family have always had allotments. It’s very relaxing but I’m a lazy gardener. I’m an archaeologist and I work abroad sometimes so the plot gets neglected. I’ve had the odd good year but normally I do just enough to stay credible. I like growing large weeds, anything that’s interesting.

Sheila McQuaid - I came across the gardens at an open day. It was such an oasis of green and calm that I put my name down on the spot. Gardening is in the family. My parents were horticulturalists and I grew plants as a child but I’ve only become really interested in the last ten years. We decided on fruit because it’s expensive, especially if you want organic, and it doesn’t need constant attention. I was born and brought up in Cornwall and I’ve lived in Tower Hamlets for twenty-five years. I’m a housing adviser for Camden Council and I work for Stitches in Time on community textile projects.

Anna Girvan and John Griemsman – We’ve had the plot for about ten years. We’re in a 10th floor flat in Limehouse and we wanted somewhere to spend time outside and to grow vegetables. I’m from Belfast and I’ve lived in Limehouse for twenty-five years. John is from Wisconsin and he’s been here for almost thirty years. I work as a librarian in the West End and John is a special needs assistant. I’m more pleased by the flowers in the end than the vegetables. My favourite is a dahlia that Annemarie gave me. It’s a beautiful purple pink and it flowers for such a long time.

Mary Laurencin – I’ve been gardening here for about ten years. A cousin asked me to help then passed the plot on to me. I’d never gardened before but I was suffering from depression and sometimes it was the only place I felt comfortable. I learned to garden mainly by watching television. I’m from St Lucia and I’ve lived in Tower Hamlets for forty years. I came to England in 1962 and at one time I did four jobs every day – I worked in a cafe, had a job at Sainsbury’s, I was a machinist and I did some cleaning. I grow vegetables here. I love flowers but you can’t eat flowers.

Conrad, Donald and James Korek – I garden here with my wife Catherine and our two younger sons, Donald, ten, and James, six. Our eldest boy isn’t interested now. We’ve lived in the borough for fourteen years and started gardening at Cable Street about a year after we arrived. We have a flat nearby and we like to spend time outdoors. I was born in North London and Catherine was brought up on a farm in Scotland, so she has more experience of growing food. James likes weeding and he supports Arsenal. Donald is a West Ham supporter and he’s good at picking up stones and chatting to the other gardeners.

Annemarie Cooper - I’m a supply teacher and I write poetry. I’ve had a plot since 1986. I didn’t know anything about gardening but I love nature and being close to the earth. My dad was a very good vegetable gardener. He and my grandfather shared a plot and they were always arguing about it. I’ve lived in Tower Hamlets for twenty years. When I started here I thought I wanted to grow flowers then I got into vegetables. I love growing sweet peas and big flashy dahlias. Really I like anything that deigns to grow. I enjoy growing tomatoes and digging up potatoes.

Emir Hasham - I’m on the waiting list and until I have a plot I’ll be working on the communal area. My work is computer based graphics and special effects for television and what I like about gardening is the real honest labour and getting my hands dirty. It will be great to grow my own fruit and vegetables My parents used to garden and I helped as a child. I was born in Sheffield. My mum is a Yorkshire lass and my dad is mainly Asian. I’ve lived in Tower Hamlets for twelve years now. I haven’t a garden at home and there’s only so much you can grow on a balcony.

Anwara Begum - I was born in Bangladesh. My father was a businessman and had some land. My seven sisters and I helped mother with the farming. We never had to buy food from the market and we sold bamboo and bananas. When I was sixteen I came to live in Tower Hamlets and ten years ago I started gardening at Cable Street. The four children helped when they were younger but now they are busy with other things. They have to study and help with the housework. I’m studying too – IT, Childcare, Maths and English. And I’m taking Bengali GCSE as well as doing voluntary work in a nursery school.

Joseph Micallef - I first came to the borough from Malta in 1955 and settled here permanently in 1961. I’ve had the plot for ten years. I didn’t know anything about gardening but my father had a farm in Malta so I knew something about agriculture. The vegetables came first and my wife likes the flowers, but I just enjoy seeing things grow and passing the time here. A lot of the produce is given away. You do tend to get too much at once. People look at the plot and think I’m an expert but I’m not, I just plant things and they grow.

Photographs copyright © Chris Kelly

To learn more about Cable Street Community Gardens or buy copies of the Cable St Gardeners book, contact Jane Sill (janesill@aol.com) or visit www.cablestreetcommunitygardens.co.uk

You may also like to take a look at Chris Kelly’s Columbia School Portraits 1996

Old Bob

Waterman & Lighterman of the Thames, eighty-three year old Robert Prentice, is known as “Old Bob” to distinguish him from his son Robert Prentice, Waterman & Lighterman – who in turn is known as “Bobby” to distinguish him from his son, Robert Prentice, also Waterman & Lighterman.

Even before Old Bob, there were two previous Robert Prentices that were Watermen & Lightermen on the Thames – his father and grandfather. And Old Bob was feeling especially buoyant when I went down to visit him at Blackfriars Pier yesterday, because seven weeks ago another Robert Prentice was born, adding a sixth generation to the roster. So although this “New Bob” may not even yet be conscious of the nature of existence, he has an extraordinary riverine inheritance awaiting him.

We convened in the Old Pump House, a bizarre construction beside Blackfriars Bridge supported by stanchions from the river bed and here, in a cosy windowless room built like a cabin upon a ship, high above the brackish water of the Thames, Old Bob told me his story.

“We are East Enders, from Wapping and the eldest son is always called Robert. In 1944, at age fifteen, I was apprenticed to my father Robert. I was a dogsbody. You got apprenticed on Tuesday and you went to work on Wednesday. You learnt quickly. The docks were being bombed, but you worked night and day. I was a young boy and it was exciting for me. I can remember St Catherine’s Dock burning for three nights, it lit up the sky like daylight. It was a very old dock, specialising in tea, ivory and spirits.

We moved a lot of barges under oars then, my father was quite adept at it. The tide done your work for you. You’d come away on the ebb to go down along and come up on the flood tide. There are very few places where you could pull over the tide.

I worked for my dad until he went into the navy and I ended up on a sea-going tug. I sat an exam and got a licence which allowed me to work certain craft. It was only after I had served my time, five years, that I was fully qualified. At sixteen years old, you was like a man. You learnt to lie like a trooper. You seldom went to the office but you were always on the phone and radio. You was allowed to make up lies to get overtime. As lightermen, we considered ourselves the elite because we did our apprenticeship and we became freemen of the river once we had completed it. I wouldn’t know anything else.

The river was bustling, like Piccadilly Circus then. It was a way of life to be perfectly honest, a beautiful life. The amount of different work you did, you might start at six in the morning at West India Dock and finish at ten o’clock at night at Tilbury. You mixed with lighterage all day long and you went socialising. It was a great fraternity. Lightermen were militant. We had a union meeting once a week and we always headed to the pub at the end of the night.

In its heyday, the London Docks had the quickest turnaround for loading and unloading of any dock in Europe, because it was all done as piecework. But when the docks closed, whole areas like Canning Town and Silvertown were changed in a matter of weeks as thousands of people lost their jobs and all the companies, chandlers and dry docks closed too. It became like a ghost town. Once containerisation come to the docks, it shut the wharfs and so there was nowhere left to unload any more. Yet I was lucky, my guvnor, he owned a boat yard that built pleasure boats and, in 1978, he offered me the chance to become the skipper of one.”

When Old Bob retired a few years ago, he had served more than sixty years on the Thames and seen the transformation of the docks from thriving port to complete closure. At the start of his career, he worked the lighterman side of his profession, moving cargo on barges, yet he finished as a waterman, skippering a pleasure boat, a line of work continued by his son and grandson today.

At the beginning of the twentieth century, barges had sails and later auxiliary motors. When the Thames was “the silent highway,” barges were “driven,” never rowed, and the moorings were known as barge “roads.” Today, moorings with names like “The Heartbreak Buoys” recall the depression of the nineteen thirties when lightermen waited days there for work. Even in Old Bob’s time, a barge (known as a “lighter,” because it lightened a ship’s cargo) laden with one hundred and fifty tons of cargo could be driven by a skilled lighterman manipulating a single oar (known as a “sweep”) in expert relation to current and tide.

We took a break from the Old Pump House and walked down onto the pier at water level, empty of visitors on this grey January morning. Below the level of the embankment now, we were in Old Bob’s territory, where the flood tide churned under Blackfriars Bridge. Bob described the wharfs that once existed between here and Tower Bridge, and I asked if he missed the life of the docks and the days of the busy working river. “It breaks your heart sometimes.” he admitted, peering out across the empty water at his memories of vessels long gone. Yet there was a chill on the deserted waterfront and Bob turned his back on it, his energy lifting as we climbed the gangplank to the shore. “I’ve become yuppie now and bought a flat!” he confessed to me with a blush, eager to return to his centrally-heated home in Wapping and await the latest snap of the newly-born Robert Prentice.

“Old Bob” has worked on the Thames for over sixty years.

Bobby Prentice, fourth generation Waterman & Lighterman

Robert Prentice, fifth generation Waterman & Lighterman

Old Bob Prentice, third generation Waterman & Lighterman

You may also like to read about

Bobby Prentice, Waterman & Lighterman

Among the Lightermen

Harry Harris, Lighterman

If you are looking for TV repair in the East End, I recommend you visit Master Tech in Heneage St off Brick Lane – where, not only will the job be done expertly and at a fair price, but most importantly you will have the opportunity to meet Javed Iqbal, one of Spitalfields’ most engaging raconteurs.

Although I do not even possess a TV, I was happy to spend my Saturday morning in Javed’s shop beside his workbench and surrounded by TV spare parts, as he topped up my tea cup from his thermos flask, while I perched  listening to his extraordinary monologues, covering so many areas of existence with appealing levity. There is an indomitable good humour that underscores Javed’s conversation. A buoyancy which I found especially heroic when he revealed the years of overt antipathy and threats of physical violence he has withstood – just to create a modest life for himself.

One huge window gives onto Heneage St, and Javed sits upon a tall stool, level with his work bench at the centre of his shop, while the wall behind him is lined with shelves stacked with televisions waiting his attention. Upon the bench sits a large flat screen monitor with the back removed and – while exploring this labyrinth of wires and components –  Javed is in his element, talking as he works.

“I came to Brick Lane from Pakistan with my father in 1960, and I went to Christ Church School across the road. On the first day, I went into the playground and I had my arm broken. I was the first Asian boy at the school.

I was seven. I came with my five year old brother Tasleem. We came in February and it was very cold indeed. It was strange, because I had never seen snow before and there was deep snow. We travelled BOAC. It was a beautiful experience. Forget the wonder of an aeroplane, I had never been in a car.

My father came in 1958. First he went to Liverpool and then came here and ran the Star Cafe on the corner, 66 Brick Lane. Once he was established, he came to fetch us. My father was very rich man thanks to the restaurant business, but he gambled it all away playing poker with Gregory Peck. He had the talent as a gambler and in those days there were few Asians, so it was a novelty for them to have one at the table.

The first house I lived in was 22 Princelet St where my father had a basement. Jews were the only people that would rents rooms to us. In those days, Irish, Jews, Blacks and Asians were known as “dogs.” When I was a little boy, the Seven Stars across the road was dominated by the Kray Brothers. Every Friday night, somebody would go out from there round all the businesses in Brick Lane and whatever you did, you had to pay.

I was allowed to watch television from four until five thirty and then my step-mother would down sticks, she had the temper of a gorilla. After school, I went to help in my father’s cafe. The Pakistanis were all coming here to Brick Lane. It was a mixed area then, the gateway for everybody basically.

When I started at the Robert Montefiore  Secondary School in Deal St, it was a different headache. The pupils were divided between Christians and Jews, with two lunch sittings, kosher and non-kosher. One week the Jews ate first and the next week the Christians ate first. There was no halal in this country then, but Muslims can eat kosher so I ate with the Jews. I had one friend, Janel Singh, we were the only two Asians in the school, a Pakistani and an Indian. People looked at us in a different way.

On the first day, we were told to take our clothes off  and they thought we must have TB because we were both so skinny. When we went to school, the white people used to hit us. The Turkish people were scared as well, so we got together. When we went to school, we had to go four or five of us together to be safe. The headmaster was Rhodes Boyson who became education minister for Margaret Thatcher, and he said, “What happens outside the school is not my responsibility.”

When I left school, I worked as a porter at the Royal London Hospital and I was learning TV repair after hours with a man from Mauritius who had a shop in the Roman Rd. One night, I was beaten up there by skinheads – it was sixteen to one. They beat me unconscious and, after I came round and stopped a taxi to take me to the hospital, the driver refused when he saw all the blood. He said he didn’t want to get blood on the inside of his taxi. I had a broken jaw. Later, I joined an anti-racist march here in Brick Lane after the death of Blair Peach and I was beaten up again. This time, by the police with truncheons.

Thanks to a Jewish doctor, Dr Wootliff, a good friend of my father’s, I got the biggest break of my life. He wrote me a reference and I got a job at Alba TV manufacturers in Tabernacle St. I was fitting radiograms together and I got a penny, ha’penny for each one. I thought, “Bloody Hell! This is a production line.” Most of my friends were white and they had already broken into skilled trades. I really wanted to be a TV repair man.

I went to an interview in Dagenham. They said, “Forget about the job, this area is not good for black people. Just leave now before somebody puts a knife in you.” I got a job in Canning Town for Multibroadcast where I found it bloody hard. There were many customers when they answered the door and saw you, they wouldn’t let you in the house. It was the worst place I could imagine working. The people were all dockers and they didn’t like my face. I’d park my car and when I’d return there’d be shit on it. After six months, I quit.

In the late seventies, I was working for a TV repair company called Derwent in Streatham. There was this great guy called George, an English guy. If you brought in a broken TV and put it on the bench, he’d say, “Put the kettle on!” and light a fag. Before the kettle boiled and he’d smoked the fag, the TV would be repaired. He inspired me. TV repairs were in big demand. One day I went to repair a TV and the customer’s brother was there who was also TV repairman, he worked for Visionhire.  He asked me how much I earned a week, and when I told him £16, he offered me £50 a week to join his company.

I opened up my own shop here in Heneage St, Spitalfields in 1976. It used to be a sweets and paraffin shop belonging to a Mr Lewis, and I came here as a child with my father to buy sweets. It took me a year to clear out the rubbish and fix it up. I am the only Pakistani here surrounded by Bengalis. I said to them, “Fair enough, the country is divided but it’s nothing to do with me!” If God don’t give me, then the Devil will give me, and I will serve the mixed community. I started with ten shillings and I have worked here for thirty-eight years. And I am grateful to the Bengalis because I am still working and it is all through word of mouth.

I believe no country gives you anything, it’s what you can give and make that counts. I bought a house out of working in this shop. If you look back at the past, all the immigrants that made money started their own businesses. Even Marks & Spencer started here in Spitalfields in Old Montague St.

I have struggled quite a bit but with Allah’s help I have got through. I am not an Asian anymore, I am more British than the bloody British.”

“People looked at us in a different way.”

“In those days, Irish, Jews, Blacks and Asians were known as ‘dogs.’”

“If God don’t give me, then the Devil will give me …”

“With Allah’s help, I have got through …”

Master Tech, 1 Heneage St, Spitalfields, E1 5LJ 020 7247 7703

Gina has been cooking meals in Spitalfields for fifty years

Last Sunday, Spitalfields Life Contributing Photographer Colin O’Brien commenced a new project – making portraits of the customers at the celebrated Gina’s Restaurant in the Bethnal Green Rd. Here you see the first results of this novel endeavour and there will be more to come over successive Sundays.

Gina Christianou and her husband Philip first opened up for business in Brick Lane in 1961 and, although the location has shifted a couple of times, many of the customers have been coming to their restaurant ever since. Today, after more than fifty years serving meals to the people of Spitalfields, Gina and her husband Philip are in semi-retirement. Yet since they live above the restaurant, they continue to open just on Sunday for lunch, out of loyalty to their long-term customers, very many of whom are old friends now. And it is a devotion that is gratefully reciprocated by those for whom weekends in the East End would be unimaginable without Sunday roast at Gina’s.

In Spitalfields, no-one else can match Gina & Philip’s half century of service, and so these pictures are both a tribute to their perseverance and also a celebration of the lively social scene that has grown up around this beloved restaurant which becomes the centre of the world every Sunday.

Brian Welch - “I’ve been coming to Gina’s for thirty years.”

Julia Sparks - “I’ve been coming to Gina’s for thirty years.”

Don Aylan - “I’ve been coming to Gina’s for eighteen years.”

Caroline Duffy - “I’ve been coming to Gina’s about twenty years.”

Chen - “I’ve ben coming to Gina’s five years.”

John Plummer - “I’ve been coming to Gina’s for seven years.”

Tudor Davies - “I’ve been coming to Gina’s for twenty years.”

Tony Briggs - “I’ve been coming to Gina’s for thirty years.”

Sandra Benson - “I’ve been coming to Gina’s for ages … years and years.”

Ernie Taylor - “I’ve been coming to Gina’s about forty years.”

Maurice - “I’ve been coming to Gina’s for thirty weeks.”

Jake Hamilton - “I’ve been coming to Gina’s since I was ten, one year.”

Stephen Coughlan - “I’ve been coming to Gina’s for fifteen years.”

Del Martin - “I was born in Fuller St, Brick Lane. I’ve been coming to Gina’s for forty years.”

Karim Ali, waiter - “Today is my first day at Gina’s.”

Photographs copyright © Colin O’Brien

You may also like to read about

The Story of Gina’s Restaurant

The Fly-Pitchers of Spitalfields

This is Devinder Singh Battu, seen in the basement of 127 Bethnal Green Rd where he works with his brother Gurmeet creating the leatherwear sold under their own label Batty Fashions. The two brothers have always worked together, Gurmeet as pattern cutter and Devinder as machinist putting the garments together, and now Batty Fashions is the longest established leather business in Brick Lane still making clothes, when the others have switched to wholesaling imported leatherwear.

The musky tang of leather exudes from the walls here, walls lined floor to ceiling with rails hung six deep with leather jackets in muted tones of black and brown. There is a gleaming magnificence to it all, and it extends further than the eye can see – as I discovered when Gurmeet led me into the next shop, equally filled with leatherwear, and the basement workshop also hung with rails of leather jackets and a vast stash of leather in a multiplicity of colours and finishes. And as Gurmeet led me on the tour, ever garrulous and brimming with good humour, he told me the story of Batty Fashions, and the rewards that he and his brother have reaped from their labour.

“We came from Kenya in 1971. My father was a tailor and he worked in a leather shop here. My brother had rag trade connections in Whitechapel at that time and – looking at their business – we thought we can do our own. We started out as partners in this business in 1978 and we had some help from our father. We were on the second floor in the Whitechapel Rd and we were making for other people but we made some for ourselves too. It was jackets and we did some marketing and slowly we built it up. We moved here to the Bethnal Green Rd in 1986 opening up The Leather Ware House and we had up to eight people working here in this building. This used to be the centre of the leather market, before 1990 London was supplying the whole world but then the whole world started making and the quality has gone down. Now we can’t find people who want to work making leatherwear for the wages we can offer.

We’re taking it easy now because we’re secure. We worked hard for years, seven days every week we were working and late nights too. Our business is wholesale, we’re supplying a lot of leather shops around the country. We’re trying a bit of retail ourselves because so many of our wholesale customers – the High St stores – are closing down, so now we try to do everything, we even do repairs. And we enjoy our work.

On Sundays, my wife Kuldip comes here, she is a partner. Our four children are grown up, all educated. My first daughter, she is a pharmacist married to a senior maths teacher. My second daughter is a teacher married to a businessman. My third daughter is a dietitian married to a doctor and my son has just qualified as a dentist. And my brother Devinder, he has three children. His first son is an optician with three shops in Essex, his second son is a dentist, and his daughter is a student. We’ve got three sisters and four brothers – a large family –  the sisters are married and everybody is here, living their lives.

We are having a good life, we live in big houses in Essex. Our grandchildren can play football in our back gardens. We made the money and we spent it. We saved the money first and then we spent it. I attribute our success to hardworking and being a close family, we help each other a lot. My father Bachan Singh Battu, he is ninety in March – he’s active and he enjoys his life. My mother Bhagwanti is blind and every day, before work and after work, we go to visit. If we wanted to, we could sell out and pack up at any time but we want to work as long as we can, to stay fit.”

By now, we were standing in the basement workroom, where Devinder was placidly at work at his ancient sewing machine. More reserved than Gurmeet, he extended a warm hand to greet me and Spitalfields Life Contributing Photographer Sarah Ainslie, before dampening his appealingly wispy beard under the tap and scooping it up under his chin to look more kempt for the camera. Meanwhile Gurmeet was taking hold of irons and patterns demonstratively, offering any number of staged poses to Sarah’s lens. It was obvious that the two brothers delight in each others’ company and, “We have our ups and downs,” was the only admission I could evince of the nature of their relationship, though I did discover they live close to each other in Essex and drive up together each day in the same car.

Yet while Gurmeet & Devinder’s designs are modest and conservative, those the brothers create for Boudica (the trendsetter of Brick Lane formerly known as Mark Petty) are extravagant in style and in colour, bringing glamour and flamboyance into the workshop. “Mark is a nice person,” Gurmeet assured me while Devinder grinned in agreement, rolling his eyes in excited confirmation,“He comes here and we sit down with him. What we do for Mark is fun!” In fact, a pale pink fur-trimmed cape hung awaiting collection by Boudica, the single coloured item, frivolous and fluffy among a sea of dark jackets. And, after Gurmeet pointed out the cape to me proudly, I noticed the two brothers exchanged a private glance of wonder at this ostentatious confection.

Gurmeet Singh Battu

Gurmeet & Devinder

Kuldip & Gurmeet Battu with their most celebrated customer Boudica (formerly known as Mark Petty), the trendsetter of Brick Lane, in a Batty Fashions creation.

Photographs copyright © Sarah Ainslie, except Mark Petty photograph copyright © Colin O’Brien

You may also like to read about

The Return of Mark Petty to Brick Lane