As I left the house at quarter to seven and made my way through the dark foggy streets towards Christ Church, the bells began to ring. Turning the corner from Princelet St into Wilkes St, I met Stanley Rondeau the Huguenot – whose ancestor Jean Rondeau came to Spitalfields in 1685. Stanley was lingering outside number four where his forbears’ house once stood. “The bells are ringing for us,” I said to him and he gave me a sympathetic nod of recognition as we shook hands, before walking onwards to the church together.

Coming round into Commercial St, I had the biggest surprise of my life to witness hundreds of excited people gathering to be admitted into the church. With the clamour of bells echoing in my head, I climbed the steps quickly and made my way through the crowd to the door. “They’re not opening it until seven,” I was told by an authoritative bystander, causing me to break into a sweat, and so I hammered on the door. Thankfully, speaking the magic words, “I am the author,” assured my admission.

Once inside, I was greeted by my oldest friend from college days, now a teacher in Somerset, who had let her class go home early in order to get a train from Taunton and be in Spitalfields by seven o’clock. She brought me a bunch of primroses picked in a lane near Wiveliscombe that morning and we sat quietly in a corner, immediately absorbed in exchanging news.

Then the doors opened and great surge of people led by a contingent of magnificently attired Pearly Kings & Queens came into the church filling the nave and side aisles – a wonderful vision to see so many of those I have written about, all together in one place consuming Eccles cakes and beer. At once, readers were recognising those they knew from my stories and I saw many spontaneous introductions which ignited the party, firing up the social event at the core of the evening, as hundreds of people who had never met before entered into lively conversations with each other. It was the party of the year in Spitalfields. A night that will be discussed in The Golden Heart for months to come. I could have stood and watched the spectacle of it all evening. I could have spent all evening talking to all the friends that I made through my interviews – but it was not to be.

I sat down at a table and, even without announcing myself, I was handed a book to sign and then another and another. In fact, I signed three hundred in an hour and a half, concentrating my mind upon the practical task of maintaining the quality of my handwriting and spelling everyone’s name correctly. Yet most touching were the moments of connection as I shook hands or made eye contact with readers who had so graciously come to meet me. What an extraordinary, unforgettable moment of mutual recognition it was when we got to see each other at last, meeting in the temporal world. Now I know who I am writing to.

Rodney Archer, the Aesthete, escorts Sandra Esqulant, the Queen of Spitalfields.

Leila’s Cafe served the Eccles Cakes from St John with slices of Lancashire Cheese.

Truman’s Beer served Truman’s Runner Ale.

Elizabeth Hallet, Editor of Saltyard Books, introduced the book.

Andy Rider, Rector of Christ Church Spitalfields, made a blessing upon the book.

Mark Hearld, Artist, Elizabeth Hallet, Publisher & Angie Lewin, Artist.

Gary Arber, Printer & Flying Ace, with two admirers.

Stephen & Clive Phythian, Tailors from Alexander Boyd.

Nevio Pellici & Fiancée.

Matthew Reynolds of the Duke of Uke introduces the Ukelele Orchestra.

The Ukelele Orchestra played “Troubles are like bubbles.”

King Sour, Rapper of Bethnal Green.

Pearly Kings & Queens.

Captain Shiv Banerjee, Justice of the Peace.

Paul Gardner, Paper Bag Seller, autographs books for fans.

Jason Hart, WordPress Wizard, & Rob Ryan, Artist & Papercut Supremo.

Novelist Sarah Winman & stylish friend.

Mavis Bullwinkle & photographer friend.

Jodie Krestin & Pamela Freedman, formerly of The Princess Alice in Commercial St.

Paul Gardner, Market Sundriesman & Jo Waterhouse, Antiques Market Trader.

Nick Appleton, Animator & Paul Bommer, Artist.

Boudicca & admirers.

King Sour & his crew.

Paul Bommer, Artist, Kitty Valentine, Artist & Leo, Artist.

Carrom Paul, Proprietor of the Carrom Shop, supplied Carrom Boards.

Nikki Cleovoulou, Pamela Freedman & Renee Cleovoulou.

At one point the line stretched round to St John in Commercial St.

[There is a video that cannot be displayed in this feed. Visit the blog entry to see the video.]

Photographs by Sarah Ainslie & Jeremy Freedman,

additional images by Alex Pink & Amy Smith

Film by Sebastian Sharples

Photographs copyright © Jeremy Freedman

Originally published by Spitalfields Life, Jeremy Freedman’s portraits of The Curry Chefs of Brick Lane are to be shown at Rich Mix, Bethnal Green Rd, from 23rd February until 31st March. Learn more about events accompanying the exhibition including a competition and curry cook-off here

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This photograph records the historic Sunday night when popular landlady Teresa Farnham called “Last Orders!” at The Birdcage on Columbia Rd after twenty-one years behind the bar, heralding the end of an era in this corner of Bethnal Green. I slipped over to have a quiet drink with Teresa as the light began to fade on her final day at the pub. Outside the melancholy streets were coated in slush that began to freeze as dusk gathered, yet inside the cosy barroom at The Birdcage, a lively crowd was happily cheering in enjoyment at the constant thrills delivered by the big match on a widescreen TV. To use Teresa’s phrase, “It was chock-a-block!”

Even before we began our conversation, Teresa was keen to emphasise that regulars need not be entirely dismayed, because the new publican takes over this week and a smooth handover is promised. Continuity is of paramount importance for a public house established in 1760, and with a name that reflects the popular custom of keeping caged birds which was introduced to the East End by the Huguenots in the seventeenth century. The current building, constructed in the nineteenth century, still gleams with the handsome bottle-green Doulton ceramic tiles to be seen on many establishments in the vicinity, revealing that it was once a Truman’s pub. Although the ornate architectural flourish on the top may have been destroyed and the windows blown in during World War II, landlords Mr & Mrs Joel – who managed The Birdcage from 1922 until 1955 – kept the pub open thoughout, sleeping in the cellar between shifts of firewatching.

And thanks to the joint stewardship of Teresa and John Farnham, The Birdcage has continued to hold its own in Columbia Rd in recent years. Standing at the junction of several roads, it is a mighty block that defines the Western extremity of the flower market and stands sentinel beside the curved line of Columbia Rd which cuts through the grid of the surrounding streets, revealing itself as a trackway of an earlier date.

“I have been at The Birdcage for twenty-one years but I have lived here in the turning for fifty-two years. That’s how I met John. We both grew up in this turning, Wellington Road. I lived in the flats and he lived in the houses.

When we were little, we moved out from the East End to Basildon but my mum couldn’t settle there and so we moved back again to Bethnal Green. It was because my nan lived in Vallance Rd and my mum liked to go and see her every day. I went round after school and my mum always picked me up from there. My dad used to sell stuff down Brick Lane on a Sunday. He auctioned crockery. He threw it up in the air and caught it. I used to be in front of the stall taking the money. I was twelve when I first started, I’ve always worked with people and I was brought up to be polite and know my manners.

Because we only lived across the way, this was our local and I used to come here to the off licence to buy cigarettes for my mum, but I never used to come inside that much because I had two children and John’s not a drinker. The previous owners were Bob & Jean, he used to work in the Truman Brewery. They wanted to retire and they thought John & I would make good landlords. They asked us to take over, even though we had never run a pub in our lives. I was a housewife and John was a builder – but my husband, although he’s not academic, he’s clever in his own way.

To run a pub, people have got to like you, and we were very lucky that Bob & Jean were friends, so they helped us out at first. All you really have to know is how to clean the pipes for the beer and keep the cellar spotless. We’re very particular about that, it shows in the beer if you don’t do it. I change the barrels, I do everything but I don’t do the pipes for the beer. Only John does that. No-one else could do it good enough. He’s a perfectionist. He’s like that with everything, he’s always been that way. We’re very fussy about the general upkeep of the pub, and we have nice staff. My girls have been with me nineteen years, my sister and my sister-in-law and my two very good friends – we couldn’t have done it without them. The pub is only a building, but it’s the staff and clientele that make the pub.

Me & John are working landlords. Some landlords like to sit at the end of the bar, but we came in behind the counter and we’ve done that full-on for for twenty-one years. I like to talk to everybody. I often don’t finish before five in the morning and I am up again at nine. When we first came here, it was really busy with the bands but then that stopped and business went  down, but we’ve brought it back bigger than before. Because the pub is always so busy, I haven’t had a day off in eight years. I don’t know what I am going to do now, I’m going to get up everyday and take it as it comes. I’ve got wardrobes to clear out.

I live next door. I’ve lived in this turning since I was sixteen. I’ve lived in the flats and I’ve lived in the houses, all in the same turning. There’s a strong sense of community here, we know everyone that comes to the pub. I shall miss it. I shall miss the people most. I love to see all the young ones singing and dancing. When I see that, I know it’s been well worth it. John & I, we’d like to thank everybody that’s supported us – and we’d like to say, please continue to support The Birdcage.”

Teresa & John Farnham, landlords at The Birdcage in Columbia Rd for twenty-one years.

“We both grew up in this turning, Wellington Road. I lived in the flats and John lived in the houses.”

“Some landlords like to sit at the end of the bar, but we came in behind the counter and we’ve done that full-on for for twenty-one years.”

The Birdcage as it was originally built before the flourish on the top got blown off in World War II.

Portraits copyright © Sarah Ainslie

Archive image courtesy of Truman’s Beer

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Today – the first Sunday in February – is when the clowns gather for the annual church service in Dalston to remember Joseph Grimaldi, and I am delighted to launch this new print by Spitalfields Life Contributing Artist Paul Bommer, created to celebrate the father of British clowning.

“Joey” was born in 1778 in Clare Market, a slum in Holborn composed of Elizabethan shambles which survived the Fire of London, to Guiseppe – known as “Iron Legs” – an Italian pantomime artist and Rebecca a dancer, both performers at Drury Lane. The story is told that he was literally catapulted to fame when he fell into the pit while performing as a monkey at Sadler’s Wells, aged three. Grimaldi’s father died when he was nine but by then Joey was already making a living on the stage. With star quality, a natural gift for physical comedy, ceaseless inventiveness and an obsessive propensity for work, Grimaldi enjoyed the constant adulation of his audiences even if his personal fortunes where rarely stable. When his first wife Maria, daughter of the owner of Sadlers’ Wells Theatre, died in childbirth less than two years after their marriage, he sought consolation through immersion in his creative world. Developing the role of Clown, the country buffoon from the Commedia dell’Arte, he created the notion of comedy derived from audience participation, excelled in political impersonations and invented the pantomime dame too.

Growing up in Holborn and Clerkenwell, Joey was fascinated by the street life of the city and his most famous song “Hot Codlings,” premiered in “Mother Goose” in 1806, dramatises the character of a hawker selling baked apples.

Joey invited his audience to complete the last line, inviting a dialogue in which the knowing spectators would subvert the performance by calling out “Gin,” cueing him to adopt a tone of soulful disappointment, declaring “Oh for shame!” in complicit response.

In the end, Joey’s success led to his self-destruction through a relentless performance schedule, often playing two theatres on the same night and enacting demanding physical stunts. By the age of forty-eight, he was unable to continue, and his departure from the stage and farewell to his adoring audience must rank as one of the most emotional in British theatre history. Held in the affections of all circus folk today, Joseph Grimaldi’s reputation remains current in the popular imagination as the inventor of the archetype of the white faced clown that is universally recognised.

In 1820, at seven years old, Charles Dickens saw Grimaldi perform in pantomime in London and, at twenty-five years old in 1838, he rewrote Grimaldi’s Memoirs from a manuscript discovered posthumously, fitting the job into the three month gap between completing Pickwick Papers and starting Nicholas Nickleby. George Cruickshank, who lived in Amwell St round the corner from Sadlers’ Wells, drew the lively pictures, captioned below with excerpts from the text by “Boz.”

Joe’s debut into the pit at Sadlers’ Wells in 1782, aged three - “He played the monkey and had to accompany the clown (his father) throughout the piece. In one of the scenes, his father used to lead him on by a chain attached to his waist, and with this chain he would swing him round and round, at arm’s length, with the utmost velocity. One evening, when this feat was in the act of performance, the chain broke, and he was hurled a considerable distance into the pit, fortunately without sustaining the slightest injury – for he was flung into the arms of an old gentleman who was sitting gazing at the stage with intense interest.”

Master Joey going to visit his godpapa. “He used to be allowed as a mark of high and special favour, to spend every alternate Sunday at the house of his mother’s father, a carcass butcher doing a prodigious business, besides which he kept the Bloomsbury slaughter-house. With this grandfather, Joey was a great favourite, and as he was very much indulged and petted when he went to see him, he used to look forward to every visit with great anxiety. After great deliberation and much consultation with the tailors, the “little clown” was attired in the following style – he wore a green coated embroidered with as many flowers as his father had put in the garden at Lambeth, he had a laced shirt, cravat and ruffles, a cocked-hat upon his head, a small watch set with diamonds – theatrical we suppose –  in his fob, and a little cane in his hand which he switched to and fro as clowns do now.”

A Startling Effect – John Kemble as Hamlet and Joseph Grimaldi as the Grave Digger.

Live properties - “He dressed himself in an old livery coat with immense pockets and a huge cocked hat, both were – of course – over his clown’s costume. At his back, he carried a basket laden with carrots and turnips, stuffing a duck into each pocket, leaving their heads hanging out, and carried a pig under one arm and a goose under the other.”

Appearing in public - “During the month he had to play “Clown” at both Sadlers’ Wells and Covent Garden Theatres, not having time to change his dress and indeed no reason for doing so if he had, in consequence of his playing the same part at both houses, he was accustomed to have a coach waiting, into which he threw himself the moment he had finished at Sadler’s Wells, and was straightaway carried to Covent Garden to begin again.”

The Barber’s shop – “Grimaldi sat himself down in a chair and the girl commenced the task in very businesslike manner. Grimaldi feeling an irresistible tendency to laugh at the oddity of the operation, but smothered by the dint of great efforts while the girl was shaving his chin. At length, when she got his upper lip, and took his nose between her fingers with a piece of brown paper, he could stand it no longer, but burst into a tremendous roar of laughter, which the girl no sooner saw than she dropped the razor. Just at this moment in came the barber, who, seeing three people in convulsions of mirth, one of them with a soapy face and a gigantic mouth making the most extravagant faces, threw his hat to the ground and laughed louder than any of them.”

Grimaldi’s kindness to the Giants. - “When “Harlequin Gulliver” was in preparation they were at a loss where to put the Brobdignagians, these figures were so cumbersome and so much in the way that the men who sustained the parts were obliged to be dressed and put away in an obscure corner before the curtain was raised. Grimaldi pitied the poor fellows so much that after the first night’s performance, he thought right to ask whether they could endure so much labour for the future. ”We have agreed to do it every night,” said the spokesman of the party, “if your honour will only promise to do one thing for us, and that is just to let us have a leetle noggin of whisky.” This moderate request was readily complied with, and the giants behaved themselves exceedingly well, and never got drunk.”

The last song – “In the last place, Grimaldi acted one scene, but being wholly unable to stand went through it seated on a chair. Even in this distressing condition, he retained enough of his old humour to succeed in calling down repeated shouts of merriment and laughter. ‘Ladies & Gentlemen, in putting off the clown’s garment, allow me to drop also the clown’s taciturnity, and address you in a few parting sentences. I entered in this course of life, and I leave it prematurely. Eight and forty years only have passed over my head. Like vaulting ambition, I have overleapped myself and pay the penalty in an advanced old age. If I now have any aptitude for tumbling, it is through bodily infirmity, for I am now worse on my feet than I used to be on my head. It is four years since I jumped my last jump, filched my last oyster, boiled my last sausage and set in for retirement.’”

Portrait of Joseph Grimaldi by John Cawes, 1807.

Artist Paul Bommer shivers in the February chill at Joseph Grimaldi’s grave in Pentonville.

Copies of Paul Bommer’s Joseph Grimaldi print are available from the Spitalfields Life Online Shop.

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At the 65th Annual Grimaldi Service

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Paul Bommer & Christopher Smart & His Cat Jeoffry

Paul Bommer, Illustrator & Printmaker

Nowadays the Spitalfields Market shuts at night, but for centuries this was when it opened, as a vast nocturnal wholesale market for fruit and vegetables. Initiated by charter signed by Charles I in 1638, it existed in Spitalfields until 1991 when it moved to a custom-built market hall in Leytonstone.

I have already published a few pictures of the market by Mark Jackson & Huw Davies –  two poets with cameras who came nightly during the last year and took thousands of photographs – but, returning to their vast canon of work to choose which to include in the Spitalfields Life book, I came across so many more wonderful images which have not been seen before that I could not resist publishing another selection for you today.

At the new market hall in Leytonstone forklift trucks were introduced, but in Spitalfields human labour dominated when it came to moving produce around whether by barrow, trolley or up on the shoulder. Such an occupation required brawn and physical fitness, attracting many ex-boxers, and the rigours of market life encouraged idiosyncrasy, as everyone fell into their larger-than-life roles over decades. Mark & Huw’s photographs delight in the dramatic chiaroscuro of bonfires, flaring lamps, glistening wet streets, velvet darkness and the coming dawn which impart these photographs an undeniable romance as a unique record of the last days of ancient market.

It is my privilege to be able to publish some of these photographs in print for the very first time in the book of Spitalfields Life, and the Bishopsgate Institute, which has digitized the entire collection, will be exhibiting a selection to coincide with publication.

Photographs copyright © Mark Jackson & Huw Davies

You can see the original selection of

Mark Jackson & Huw Davies’ Photographs of the Spitalfields Market

and read about

Spitalfields Market Portraits, 1991

Night at the Spitalfields Market, 1991

The Return of Mark Jackson

These are the dead cats that once hung behind the counter of the celebrated “Dustbin Bar” at Dirty Dick’s Old Port Wine & Spirit House in Bishopsgate. It is a location that holds a special place in my affections as the first pub I ever went into in London, one day after work at the Bishopsgate Institute.

Although this was longer ago than I care to admit and regrettably the cats in this picture had already gone by then, yet I still recall the sense of expectation, entering the narrow frontage and walking back, and back, and back through the warren of rooms with sawdust on the floor – descending ever deeper into the bowels of the city, it seemed. And I can only imagine how this strange drama might have been enhanced by the presence of umpteen dead cats suspended from the ceiling.

This was how it was described in 1866 – “A small public house or rather a tap of a wholesale wine and spirit business…a warehouse or barn without floorboards – a low ceiling, with cobweb festoons dangling from the black rafters – a pewter bar battered and dirty, floating with beer – numberless gas pipes tied anyhow along the struts and posts to conduct the spirits from the barrels to the taps – sample phials and labelled bottles of wine and spirits on shelves – everything covered with virgin dust and cobwebs.”

Yet all was not as it might seem, because the presence of these curious artefacts was not due to unselfconscious eccentricity, it was an early and highly successful example of what we should call a “theme pub.” Established in 1745 as The Old Jerusalem, the drinking house took the name of Dirty Dick’s in 1814 and adopted his story along with it. The original of Dirty Dick was Nathaniel Bentley, a successful merchant with a hardware shop and warehouse in Leadenhall St in the mid-eighteenth century. After his bride-to-be died on their wedding day – so the legend goes – he never cleaned up again, never washed or changed his clothes. “It’s of no use, if I wash my hands today, they will be dirty again tomorrow,” he declared. Bentley died in 1809, and the Bishopsgate Distillers appropriated this story of the notorious dirty hardware merchant, adorning their bar with dead cats and cobwebs to perpetuate the legend.

Charles Dickens knew Dirty Dick’s and was fascinated with this myth of one who sealed up the door on the wedding breakfast and left the cake and table decorations to acquire dust eternally. In a letter to the printer of his weekly publication “Household Words” dated 30th December 1852, he wrote “Don’t leave out the Dirty Old Man, he is capital.” And it has been suggested that Nathaniel Bentley was the inspiration for the character of Miss Havisham in “Great Expectations.”

Dirty Dick’s was rebuilt in the eighteen seventies, though the cellars are of an earlier date, and now the bizarre artefacts are banished to a glass case, yet it is still worth a visit. Explore the wonky half-timbered spaces and seek out the secluded panelled rooms at the rear, where you can enjoy a quiet drink away from the commotion of Bishopsgate to contemplate the ancient coaching inns that once lined Bishopsgate, long before the age of the train and the motor car.

Nathaniel Richard Bentley – the origin of the myth of Dirty Dick.

Part of the adjoining City Corner Cafe was once an alley leading into Dirty Dick’s adorned with a series of these mosaics which illustrated the tale.

Dirty Dick by William Allingham

A Lay of Leadenhall

In a dirty old house lived a Dirty Old Man.
Soap, towels or brushes were not in his plan;
For forty long years as the neighbours declared,
His house never once had been cleaned or repaired.

‘Twas a scandal and a shame to the business-like street,
One terrible blot in a ledger so neat;
The old shop with its glasses,black bottles and vats,
And the rest of the mansion a run for the rats.

Outside, the old plaster, all splatter and stain,
Looked spotty in sunshine, and streaky in rain;
The window-sills sprouted with mildewy grass,
And the panes being broken, were known to be glass.

On a rickety signboard no learning could spell,
The merchant who sold, or the goods he’d to sell;
But for house and for man, a new title took growth,
Like a fungus the dirt gave a name to them both.

Within these there were carpets and cushions of dust,
The wood was half rot, and the metal half rust;
Old curtains—half cobwebs—hung grimly aloof;
‘Twas a spiders’ elysium from cellar to roof.

There, king of the spiders, the Dirty Old man,
Lives busy, and dirty, as ever he can;
With dirt on his fingers and dirt on his face,
The dirty old man thinks the dirt no disgrace.

From his wig to his shoes, from his coat to his shirt,
His clothes are a proverb—a marvel of dirt;
The dirt is prevading, unfading, exceeding,
Yet the Dirty Old Man has learning and breeding.

Fine folks from their carriages, noble and fair,
Have entered his shop, less to buy than to stare,
And afterwards said, though the dirt was so frightful,
The Dirty Man’s manners were truly delightful.

But they pried not upstairs thro’ the dirt and the gloom,
Nor peeped at the door of the wonderful room
That gossips made much of in accents subdued,
But whose inside no one might brag to have viewed.

That room, forty years since, folks settled and decked it,
The luncheon’s prepared, and the guests are expected,
The handsome young host he is gallant and gay,
For his love and her friends are expected today.

With solid and dainty the table is dressed—
The wine beams its brightest—flowers bloom their best;
Yet the host will not smile, and no guest will appear,
For his sweetheart is dead, as he shortly shall hear.

Full forty years since turned the key in that door,
‘Tis a room deaf and dumb ’mid the city’s uproar;
The guests for whose joyance that table was spread,
May now enter as ghosts, for they’re everyone dead.

Though a chink in the shutter dim lights come and go,
The seats are in order, the dishes a row;
But the luncheon was wealth to the rat and the mouse,
Whose descendants have long left the dirty old house.

Cup and platter are masked in thick layers of dust,
The flowers fallen to powder, the wine swath’d in crust,
A nosegay was laid before one special chair,
And the faded blue ribbon that bound it is there.

The old man has played out his part in the scene
Wherever he now is let’s hope he’s more clean;
Yet give we a thought, free of scoffing or ban,
To that Dirty Old House and that Dirty Old Man.

(First published by Charles Dickens in Household Words, 1853)

Nathaniel Bentley, Eccentric Character & Hardwareman of Leadenhall St – the well-known Dirty Dick

Photograph of City Corner Cafe copyright © Patricia Niven

Archive pictures courtesy of Bishopsgate Institute

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The site of the atrocity of 7th December

Late on 7th December 1811, on the site where this Saab dealership now stands, Timothy Marr, a twenty-four-year-old linen draper was closing up his business at 29 Ratcliffe Highway – a stone’s throw from St George’s-in-the-East. In the basement kitchen, his wife – Celia – was feeding their three-and-a-half-month-old baby, Timothy junior. At ten to midnight on the last night of his life, the draper sent out his servant girl, Margaret Jewell, with a pound note and asked her to pay the baker’s bill and buy some oysters for a late supper.

Timothy Marr made his fortune through employment in the East India Company and had his last voyage aboard the Dover Castle in 1808. With the proceeds, he married and set up shop just one block from the London dock wall. Already, Mr Marr’s business was prospering and in recent weeks he had employed a carpenter, Mr Pugh, to modernise the old place. The facade had been taken down, replaced with a larger shop window and the work had been completed smoothly, apart from the loss of a chisel.

When Margaret Jewell walked down the Highway she found Taylor’s oyster shop shut. Retracing her steps along the Ratcliffe Highway towards John’s Hill to pay the baker’s bill, she passed the draper’s shop again at around midnight where, although Mr Marr now had put up the shutters with the help of James Gowen, the shop boy, she could see Mr Marr at work behind the counter.

“The baker’s shop was shut,” Margaret later told the Coroner, so she went elsewhere in search of oysters and, finding nowhere open, returned to the draper’s about twenty minutes later to discover it dark and the door locked. She jangled the bell without answer until – to her relief – she heard a soft tread inside on the stair and the baby cried out.

But no-one answered the door. Panic-stricken and fearful of passing drunks, Margaret waited a long half hour for the next appearance of George Olney, the watchman, at one o’clock. Mr Olney had seen Mr Marr putting up the shutters at midnight but later noticed they were not fastened and when he called out to alert Mr Marr, a voice he did not recognise replied, “We know of it.”

John Murray, the pawnbroker who lived next door, was awoken at quarter past one by Mr Olney knocking upon Mr Marr’s door. He reported mysterious noises from his neighbour’s house shortly after twelve, as if a chair were being pushed back and accompanied by the cry of a boy or a woman.

Mr Murray told the watchman to keep ringing the bell while he went round the back through the communal yard to the rear door, which he found open with a faint light visible from a candle on the first floor. He climbed the stairs in darkness and took the candle in hand. Finding himself at the bedroom door, he said, “Mr Marr, your window shutters are  not fastened” but receiving no answer, he made his way downstairs to the shop.

It was then he discovered the first body in the darkness. James Gowen was lying dead on the floor just inside the door with his skull shattered with such violence that the contents were splattered upon the walls and ceiling. In horror, the pawnbroker stumbled towards the entrance in the dark and came upon the dead body of Mrs Marr lying face down in a pool of blood, her head also broken. Mr Murray struggled to get the door open and cried in alarm, “Murder! Murder! Come and see what murder is here!” Margaret Jewell screamed. The body of Mr Marr was soon discovered too, behind the counter also face down, and someone called out,“The child, where’s the child?” In the basement, they found the baby with its throat slit so that the head was almost severed from the body.

When more light was brought in, the carpenter’s lost chisel was found upon the shop counter, but it was perfectly clean.

Later this week and over the coming Christmas season, you may expect further reports upon the development of this extraordinary case.

Timothy Marr’s shop.

Click on Paul Bommer’s map of the Ratcliffe Highway Murders to explore further

The Maul & The Pear Tree - P.D. James’ breathtaking account of the Ratcliffe Highway Murders, inspired me to walk from Spitalfields down to Wapping to seek out the locations of these momentous events. Commemorating the bicentenary of the murders this Christmas, I am delighted to collaborate with Faber & Faber, reporting over coming weeks on these crimes on the exact anniversaries of their occurrence.

The Map of the Ratcliffe Highway Murders – In collaboration with Faber & Faber, Spitalfields Life has commissioned a map from Paul Bommer which will update throughout December as the events occur. Once you have clicked to enlarge it, you can download it as a screensaver or print it out as a guide to set out through the streets of Wapping.

Ratcliffe Highway Murder Walk – Spitalfields Life will be hosting a dusk walk on Wednesday 28th December at 3pm from St Georges in the East, visiting the crime scenes and telling the bone-chilling story of Britain’s first murder sensation. The walk will take approximately an hour and a half, and conclude at the historic riverside pub The Prospect of Whitby. Booking is essential and numbers are limited, so please email spitalfieldslife@gmail.com to sign up. Tickets are £10.

Thanks to the Bishopsgate Institute and Tower Hamlets Local History Archive for their assistance with my research.

Peter Thomas

During one visit to the New Spitalfields Market in Leyton, I noticed a buyer who moved up and down the aisles with particular speed, wandering, looking, negotiating and ticking off his checklist. He walked up and down for hours. He never came to rest. I sought him out and tried to ask him a question; he waved me off. I persisted and he told me he’d been in this industry since he was sixteen. “You have to be the greatest actor in the world,” he said. “You have to say exactly the right thing at the right time.” He told me his name was Peter Thomas and when I asked him if I could accompany him through the market sometime, he said, “Sure, if you can keep up.”

1.20 a.m.

Peter: Come on then. Here you are, Craig. (He deposits a box of asparagus in my hands.) Just put that asparagus on there. Nice and dry underneath. Smells okay. Got that crispness. Hear that?  That squeak. This is Peruvian. This time of year it all comes from South America. English has just finished. You have your seasons, you see. (He turns to the guvnor, perched behind a podium.) Ain’t bad, John, is it. What’s the ecrip?

John: Tom  Mix?

Peter: Okay, come and talk to you in a minute.

John: All right.

(The guvnor, John, wanders away. Peter looks over some courgette flowers and says quietly, mischievously:)

Peter: Now then, what I want to do, Craig … we might have some fresh coming in in a minute, see? But he’s only got three now. So I’ll get this, I’ve got to hide the courgette flowers somewhere.

Craig: You’re going to hide the courgette flowers?

Peter: Now at least I’ve got that, you know what I mean? Now when the fresh comes in, I’ll change it over.

(He hides the veg out of sight, straightens up, tucks in his shirt, and starts to walk.)

Peter: Keep up. Now over there I spoke to them in rhyming slang. I said, “What’s the ecrip?”

Craig: The what?

Peter: The ecrip. Did you hear me say, how’s the ecrip? That’s “price” backwards, so that you didn’t know what I was talking about. And he said to me, Tom Mix, which is rhyming slang. What’s Tom Mix?

Craig: Six.

Peter: Yeah. This was why the language was designed, so that I could talk to him and no one knew what we was talking about. “Carpet” means three. That one goes back to years and years ago, when people was given a prison sentence, and if what they got was it was either three months or three years, they got a carpet in the cell and that’s what they used to say. How d’you get on? Oh, I got a carpet. Oh, fuck me, did ya? And that’s how it was. It was either three months or three years, but I know a carpet is three. “Ben neves” is “seven” backwards. “Thgiet” is “eight” backwards. “Flo’s line” is nine, “cockle” is ten. “Bottle of blue” is two and then I’ll sling one at an Aristotle. An Aristotle is a bottle. Double rhyming slang. All veg has got different ones. Celery is “horn root,” because years ago they thought that celery was an aphrodisiac. And they said it gave you the horn. So they called it horn root. “Self starters” is tomatoes. “Navigators” is taters. “Boy scouts” are sprouts. “Tom and Jerry” is cherries.

Craig: Do you have different banter with people who aren’t English? Like the Turks?

Peter: Yes, it’s no good talking rhyming slang to them, is it? They just about understand proper English. One of the young Pakistani fellows learned the rhyming slang just so he’d know what was going on. (He gestures around the market.) Now these people are all salesmen and they’re all here to make as much money as they possibly can. They will try to get as much money out of me and I will try to get as much money out of them. There’s no friends in business. We’ll be talking about football and all of a sudden the business side comes to it, and that’s it. All the time we’re talking we know that any minute now, any second, it’s going to be, “How much is that?” Then we go back to being friends. You can’t drop your card.

2.05 a.m.

Peter: Let’s go and see if those courgette vans have turned up. Come on. We’ll see Kevin. He’s one of the most experienced men on the market, Craig. There ain’t much he doesn’t know. Anything you want to know about business, that’s your man. (We approach a large stall.) Kevin, have you got any fresh courgette flowers to arrive?

Kevin: No.

Peter: No! Fibber.

Kevin: No, I forgot to order them! As soon as those words come out of your mouth I thought to myself, oh fuck! I’ve got no memory.

Peter: Okay, Kev. I’ll see you later. Don’t forget to order them for tomorrow, eh?

Kevin: Yeah, that’s right.

Peter: He forgot to order them. (We’re away) He forgot to order them. Now there’s a lot of winding up goes on in this market. One of the worst things is for a seller to come over and see what you’re up to. If a salesman knows you’re rushing about for something and you need it, then they get you at it. Now I’ve gone in there for courgette flowers and there ain’t none in and I need them for customer, an important customer, so I go to Kevin just now and I said, Kev, courgette flowers? You just missed them, Pete, I had them. That’s what he said, been and gone. I said, got any fresh, I see you’re out of them. See what I mean, it winds you up. That’s why I put those courgette flowers to one side earlier. See what I mean? Because at the other stall he had only three left and if he had none fresh come in I’ll bet them other two there are gone now. And I’d have gone back there and he’d have said, Pete, I sold them.

Craig: How do you know how to do all this? Is it like an instinct every morning?

Peter: I don’t know. You’ve just got to be on your toes. The minute I get out of bed I start thinking all the time.

2:30 a.m.

(He tosses an apricot pit in the air and kicks it. He eats another apricot.)

Peter: I have a permanent stomach ache, Craig. What can you do? It’s fruit. You can’t change the fact it’s fruit.

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Max Levitas

There were forty of them. There were eighty. There were a hundred. They marched. They sauntered. They were angry. They were bewildered. They came with two dogs and they came with none. Theirs was a daring act that saved thousands of lives. Or it was a pretty piece of propaganda, gift-wrapped for the Führer. What happened beneath the Savoy Hotel on 14th September 1940, the eighth night of the Blitz, depended on the position of the observer: whether she or he was Red or anti-Red; East Ender or West Ender; dreaming of revolution or restoration. That Saturday night, when those forty or eighty or a hundred arrived at the doors of the hotel – with their dogs, or dogless – a small army of journalists was on the premises for a briefing by the Ministry of Information. Few, however, wrote about their uninvited fellow guests until the war was safely over. The government also maintained a public silence on the story, despite the urgent Cabinet discussion held the following Monday morning – a discussion with sinister undertones. But old comrades, years later, made that West End outing into a famous victory, a second Battle of Cable Street. It worked its way into plays and novels, into the mythology of the British Left. And though no horses charged and no batons swung, the Savoy Hotel invasion was the most serious political demonstration of the war – and dramatic evidence that conflict with Germany did not bring the class war to an end.

Max Levitas has spent most of his long life on the front line of that conflict. He was part of the famous human barricade that halted the Blackshirts’ progress through the East End in October 1936. He stood his ground at Brady Mansions during a twenty-one-week rent strike – brought to an end only by the government’s decision to freeze rents for the duration of the war. He was one of the dozen Communist councillors elected to the Borough of Stepney in 1945, during that giddy moment when the electorate could still see the avuncular side of Joe Stalin. He was there in 1991 when the Communist Party of Great Britain voted for dissolution and secured victory in the long war of attrition against itself. He was there, too, on that Blitz- struck Saturday night in 1940, shouldering the red banner of the Stepney Young Communist League as his group of demon- strators marched from the Embankment towards the silvered canopy of the Savoy. They marched for better air-raid shelters in the East End. They marched against the myth that the Luftwaffe had brought equality of suffering to Britain. And they received their marching orders from a series of urgent editorials in the Communist newspaper, the Daily Worker: ‘If you live in the Savoy Hotel you are called by telephone when the sirens sound and then tucked into bed by servants in a luxury bomb-proof shelter,’ the newspaper asserted. ‘But if you live in Paradise Court you may find yourself without a refuge of any kind.’ And above these words, in thick bold print: ‘The people must act.’

Max Levitas nods in agreement when I read the article back to him. ‘The surface shelters protected you from shrapnel, from flak, but not much else,’ he reflects. ‘If a bomb fell on one of those it would collapse and kill everybody in it. The Communist Party argued for deep shelters. But the National Government wouldn’t listen. They wouldn’t even open the Underground. It was easy to ignore that message if you were sitting in the basement of a very nice hotel. So we decided to march on one.’ I ask him why they chose the Savoy. Max Levitas smiles a tolerant smile. ‘It was the nearest.’

I meet Max Levitas at the Idea Store, that gleaming cultural institution planted in the East End to compensate locals for the assimilation of their much-loved public library into the Whitechapel Art Gallery. He is a small, cloth-capped nonagenarian, wrapped tightly in a raincoat and muffler. Standing on the studded purple rubber floor of the foyer, he looks like a preserved fragment of the old Stepney. It is a chilling morning in February, and he can spare me an hour before he goes for his Turkish bath – a weekly ritual since the 1920s, when his father took him to the long-vanished Schewik steam rooms on Brick Lane. We catch the lift to the top-floor café, secure two cups of tea and a table with a view of the bristling City skyline, and he tells the story of his association with the area: how his parents fled the Lithuanian pogroms in 1912 and made landfall in Dublin, where Max was born three years later; how his father took the family first to Glasgow, and finally to Stepney, where work could be found among a supportive community of Jewish exiles. History radicalised those members of the Levitas clan it did not destroy: Max’s Aunt Sara and her family were burned to death in the synagogue of the Lithuanian shtetl of Akmian; Max’s father became a leading member of the distinctly Semitic, distinctly Red-tinged International Tailors and Pressers’ Union; Max’s elder brother, Maurice, fought against Franco’s forces in the Spanish Civil War; Max gave his youth to the Communist Party of Great Britain and was name-checked by Oswald Mosley in a speech denouncing the enemies of British Fascism.

The organisers of the Savoy invasion shared a similar ideological background: they were all revolutionaries. ‘And they’re all dead,’ Max sighs. ‘Some were clothing workers. Some were bootmakers. Some were dockers.’ It is an inventory of lost trades. The first names he sifts from his memory are two stevedores, Ted Jones and Jack Murphy, veterans of pre-war campaigns for unemployment relief. The rest comprise a knot of men from the Stepney Tenants’ Defence League, which organised rent strikes against slum landlords in the East End: George Rosen, its bullish secretary, known as ‘Tubby’; Solly Klotnick, a furrier and a veteran of the Battle of Cable Street; Solomon Frankel, a clothing worker who took a bullet in Spain that robbed him of the use of his right hand. Michael Shapiro, a wiry young academic from the London School of Economics. At the head of the group stood Phil Piratin, Communist councillor for Spitalfields, chief spokesperson of the invaders, and the author of the most widely read account of their night at the Savoy. His memoir Our Flag Stays Red (1948) puts seventy in the hotel lobby, among them a number of children and pregnant women. Max’s memories are different. ‘There were forty of us,’ he affirms. ‘I’m sure of that.’ I ask if there were any dogs. He shakes his head. ‘No dogs,’ he says. ‘It was the Savoy.’

Portraits of Max Levitas copyright © Phil Maxwell

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