Cecile Moss Of Old Montague St
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Cecile aged four
Although Cecile Moss lived in Old Montague St for fourteen years, this is the only photograph taken of her in Spitalfields, and it was taken for a precise purpose. A photographer came round to take it in 1955, the year Cecile arrived from Jamaica aged four years old, and the picture was sent back to her family in the Caribbean as evidence that she was attending a proper Catholic school with a smart uniform and therefore all was well in London. Yet in contrast to the image of middle class respectability which Cecile’s mother strove to maintain, the family lived together in one room in a tenement and the reason there are no other photographs is because they had no money for a camera.
Almost no trace survives today of the Old Montague St that Cecile knew – a busy thoroughfare crowded with diverse life, filled with slum dwellings, punctuated by a bomb site and a sugar factory, and lined with small shops and cafes. There, long-established Jewish traders sat alongside dodgy coffees bars in which Maltese, Somalis, Caribbeans and others congregated to do illicit business. In fact, Old Montague St offered a rich and stimulating playground to a young child filled with wonder and curiosity, as Cecile was.
The presence of black people proved a challenge to many East Enders at that time. “Sometimes, they knotted their handkerchiefs when they saw me,” recalled Cecile with mixed emotion, “and they’d say, ‘If you see a black person that’s good luck.'” Fortunately, Cecile’s mother’s professional status as a teacher proved to be an unexpected boost to Cecile in this new society and later Cecile became a teacher herself, an occupation that she pursues today from her home in New Cross Gate where she lives with her children and grandchildren. “Since the new overground train, I’ve spent a lot more time in the East End and I still have a lot of friends there.” she admitted to me when I visited her, “As you grow older, you tend to want to go back to your home.”
“We came to England from Jamaica in 1955, me, my sister Clorine and my mother, Marlene Moss, to Old Montague St in Spitalfields. She left my father and came over to live with her sister, Daisy. I was four years old and I didn’t know I was coming to England, I was traumatised. But I remember what I was wearing, I wore a double-breasted coat with a velvet Peter Pan collar and lace-up shoes. My mother was a teacher in Jamaica and she didn’t want us to look like refugees arriving in England. The voyage lasted ten days and we were met by my uncle at Southampton. It was very confined on the boat so that when I got off, I kept on running around.
We lived in a building where the Spitalfields health centre is today. We were 9b, above a shop where two elderly Jewish sisters lived. My mother cried for days because we had to share one toilet with three other floors, so it was really quite disgusting. I was told that I had come to get a doll. But it was an ugly chalky-skinned blond doll, and I was so angry and upset that I threw it away and smashed it, which made my aunt think I was a very ungrateful little girl. My mother,my sister and I all lived in one room. My sister was eleven and she remained silent, whereas my mum and I just cried a lot. I missed my family in Jamaica.
Because we were Catholics, we went to St Anne’s Catholic church and mother got talking to the priest. He told her she could teach in St Gregory, a Secondary Modern in Wood Close, doing supply work. When she started at the school she was shocked. One of the pupils was absent from the register and they said, ‘He’s gone down for GBH.’ My mother came back and asked my aunt, ‘What is this GBH?’ She said she was going introduce Shakespeare to the school but they said,’We don’t want you bringing any of your kind of rubbish here!’
I went to St Patrick’s school around the back of St Anne’s and my sister, because she had already passed the eleven-plus, went to Our Lady’s convent in Stamford Hill. Yet I only lasted two weeks at St Patrick’s because the kids hit me and pushed me over. I can’t remember if they called me racist names, but I know I was terribly unhappy. My mother took me away and sent me to Stamford Hill too. I was five years old, and she put me on the 653 bus and told the conductor where to let me off. The people on the bus would look after me and I never missed my stop. I felt safe. So we lived in the East End but we went to school in North London. That was unusual but, because my mother was a teacher, we were middle class, even though we lived in Old Montague St which was a slum. Old Montague St had quite a reputation for drugs. There were dark tenements with dark passages with dark dealings.
When my mum got a permanent job at St Agnes’ school in Bow, she took me away from Our Lady’s at seven years old. So I never went back to school in Spitalfields but I used to play out on the street a lot. Most of the children I played with were second generation Irish with names like Touhy, O’Shea, Latimer and Daley – that’s who I grew up with. There was an older Irish boy who looked out for me, he said I was part of the gang. He told us we mustn’t speak to the people on Brick Lane because they were Jewish. He was looked after by his grandmother. She was a character. Every Saturday night, she went to the pub on the corner of Chicksand St and filled a jug with port or whatever and stumbled back singing, ‘Daisy, Daisy give me your answer do.’ And my mother cried and said, ‘Look what we have come down to.’ One day, the old lady, she tied a skipping rope across the street to stop the traffic so that we could play. When the police came along, she said, ‘ The children have got nowhere to play.’ And we were all shocked, but later they opened a playground on the corner of Old Montague St and Vallance Rd.
I loved going to Petticoat Lane. Every Friday, my aunt would go and get a chicken – you could choose one and they would kill it for you. There were street entertainers, an organ grinder and man who lay on a bed of hot coals. Walking up Wentworth St, there were all Jewish shops with barrels of pickles and olives outside. I was fascinated but my mother said, ‘That’s not our food.’ A lot of the stallholders were quite friendly to me and my mother because they thought we were the next wave of immigrants. There was a cafe I walked past with my mum, it was full of black-skinned men but I couldn’t understand what they were saying even though they were like us. They were Somalis. The men outside, they’d give me sixpence and put me on their knee. They liked to see me because they were away from their own children. I think we were some of the first West Indians here, there were no other black kids.
I spent a lot of time in the fleapit cinema on Brick Lane on Saturdays. But by the time I turned seven, my mum stopped me playing out. She forbade me, so my wanderings around Spitalfields stopped and I don’t mix with the kids on the street anymore. Instead I became more friendly with the kids I was at school with in Bow.
My aunt Daisy went back to Jamaica and my sister returned when she was eighteen. So it was just me and my mum in the end. We shared a bedroom and we had a sitting room, with the kitchen in the hallway. I was very embarrassed about where I lived and I didn’t bring friends home because it was a slum. All this time, my mother was not divorced, she was still married and it really held her back. She even had to ask a friend to his name down for her to be able to buy a television.
There was a hardware shop and other shops run by Jewish people, where they got on well with my mother. There was a bit of snobbishness because she was a teacher. It used to cushion me too, I was Mrs Moss’ daughter. When she complained, they used to say to her, ‘Never mind, we had it, now it’s your turn.’ Referring the racial prejudice, they meant it was something you put up with, then it would pass. And by the time I left Spitalfields, it was the Bengalis coming in, so it was quite profound what they said – it was a rite of passage at that time.
When I was eighteen, we moved out. Looking back on it, I’ve got to say it was a happy time. I knew when I’d forgotten Jamaica and made my transition to England. I played a lot on the stairs and I pretended to have a ‘post office’ there. One day my mother was there too, washing some clothes on the landing and she corrected my speech. ‘It’s not ‘spag-ETTEE,” she said, ‘It’s ‘spaghetti” And, I realised then, that was because I’d left Jamaica behind and I spoke Cockney.
Today I often teach immigrants, children for whom English is their second language, and I can say to them, ‘I know what you are going through.'”
Old Montague St 1965 by Geoffrey Fletcher
Cecile Moss
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Secrets Of St Anne’s, Limehouse
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The exhibition The Original Chinatown in Limehouse, Myths & Realities is at St Anne’s Limehouse, Three Colt St, E14 8HH, each Thursday to Saturday 10-4pm until July, admission free.
To me, St Anne’s Limehouse has always been the most mysterious of Nicholas Hawksmoor’s churches. So it was the fulfilment of a long-held ambition when I was granted the opportunity to visit the hidden spaces – from the secret chambers high up inside the tower, graven with eighteenth century graffiti, all the way down to the depths of the crypt which harbours the relics of a World War II Air Raid shelter.
Chamber in the tower with a wall of eighteenth century graffiti
Staircase winding ever upward
The workings of the clock with the names of clock-winders chalked on the door
Ladder up to into the tower
Door into the roof
Inside the roof
View from the rear roof towards the tower
In the gallery
In the gallery
In the gallery
Plasterwork above the gallery
Stairs to the gallery
Lamp bracket in the rear vestibule
Clock hand in the shape of an anchor in the vestibule
The font
In the crypt
St Anne’s, Limehouse
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Doreen Fletcher In Her Own Words
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On the eve of the opening of her new exhibition at Townhouse, Fournier St, E1 6QE, here is my interview with Doreen Fletcher. Doreen will be at the gallery tomorrow to meet visitors. Her exhibition, CORNERS, runs from Saturday 13th June until Sunday 5th July.
Portrait of Doreen Fletcher in her studio by Stuart Freedman
Doreen Fletcher – Looking back, I think I was attracted to painting even from the age of four or five. I loved colour and my dad used to take me to the local toy shop where I always insisted on the best quality paints. I was an only child, born into a working class family, and my parents were – as you might say these days – semi-literate. Consequently, from the age of about eight years old, I took responsibility for helping them out in dealing with officialdom, not unlike – I suppose – immigrant children in the East End today whose parents have limited English.
My mum and dad were very loving, and keen for me to have the opportunities they had missed. When I was five, I was bought a set of encyclopaedias from a salesman selling door-to-door on the never-never. It had colour reproductions of famous paintings such as Constable’s ‘The Hay Wain’ by Constable and Turner’s ‘The Fighting Téméraire’ and I thought they were wonderful.
I passed my eleven-plus exam but I had a very difficult time at grammar school because – although I was clever and always in the top six of the top stream – I came from the wrong side of the tracks. I felt I had to pretend I was from somewhere else, because most of the pupils came from professional middle-class families. Consequently, I could not invite school friends to our tiny terraced home. I did not speak with the right accent, have the social ease of the other children or possess their cultural knowledge.
The art room was a refuge for me because there I could express myself fluently under the expert tutelage of the art teacher Mr Hanford. He had trained at the Royal Academy School and was probably the only teacher of any influence I ever listened to. I loved Fridays when there was a two hour after-school art club. It was at one of these sessions that Mr Hanford advised against using black paint straight from the tube. To this day, I mix ultramarine and burnt umber for a warm black and raw umber and indigo for a cool black.
The Gentle Author – What work did your parents do?
Doreen Fletcher – Alice, my mother, worked in a munitions factory during the war and then became a domestic servant afterwards. It gave her ideas about not putting the newspaper or ketchup bottle on the table and she adopted ‘healthy eating,’ much to my irritation. She was also particular about keeping the front step, windows and net curtains clean. Colin, my dad, started off as a farm worker. He wanted to be a vet but due to illness he missed a year’s education at seven years old which meant that he left school hardly able to read or write.
After I was born, we moved from the village of Barlaston to Newcastle-Under-Lyme because my dad could earn more money in the town. In the late fifties, when the government erected pylons across the nation, he worked on the construction of these and later he found employment laying pipes for North Sea Gas. When my dad was fifty-seven, he had a brain haemorrhage at work, probably due at least in part to the vibrations of the pneumatic drill. He did not work again after that.
The Gentle Author – What was the first landscape that you knew?
Doreen Fletcher – It was composed of greys and browns – soot-streaked streets with sparrows and pigeons. I used to long for colour, for tinsel, for fairy lights and fairgrounds. Yet although I grew up in a two-up-two-down terrace in Stoke-on-Trent, every Sunday my parents took me on excursions by bus into the country, a different destination each time. This was rare at the time and I think it revealed their great sensitivity and care.
These trips were always accompanied by the purchase of a quarter pound of sweets and latterly, a brownie box camera that took tiny black and white photos. I liked going for long walks alone too. I was always looking and observing the variety of houses lining the streets I wandered through. Sometimes I roamed the countryside as well, walking along busy trunk roads. These days eyebrows might be raised, but there was nothing unusual in seeing unaccompanied children exploring back then. I loved my solitary walks.
The Gentle Author – What took you away from the Potteries?
Doreen Fletcher – I did not like living in a small town, it lacked cosmopolitanism. I hated the social constrictions and the pettiness I encountered. After A Levels, I decided I to study a subject that would earn me a living, so I enrolled on Bsc Sociology Course at North Staffordshire Polytechnic in Stoke. I have always been fascinated by other people’s lives, attitudes and behaviour.
However it proved a disastrous choice for me because the course dealt mostly with statistics and their interpretation. I did not even last two terms. So I went to work in a local tile factory – of which there were plenty in those days – where my job was sorting broken tiles. After six months I left, realising there was no future in it for me.
I knew my vocation was to be an artist. I spent a very happy year doing a foundation course in Newcastle-Under-Lyme. I felt at home there. I was comfortable and totally at ease in the chaotic atmosphere of the leaky portacabins that served as our studios. For the only time in my life, I did very little work. Instead I enjoyed making friends and formed a close relationship with a fellow student. Together we moved to London in 1972 where he attended Wimbledon School of Art and I worked as an art school model.
The Gentle Author – Did you apply to art school?
Doreen Fletcher – Yes, I applied to study at Croydon College. Even then, I was very independently minded and did not want a structured degree course where I might be expected to conform to a ‘house style’. At this point, I was painting quite a lot of self-portraits and still lifes.
One day in late 1973 I saw an exhibition of paintings of Mow Cop by Jack Simcock in Cork Street. Mow Cop was a hilltop village not far from my home. In Newcastle-under-Lyme, if I leaned out of my bedroom window at a dangerous angle, I could just see the Victorian folly on the summit of Mow Cop in the distance.
The houses were built out of Peak District sandstone and local millstone grit. The place was bleak and dour. I was captivated, deciding then that I wanted to be an urban landscape painter, recording my own environment.
The Gentle Author – Where did you live when you first came to London?
Doreen Fletcher – To begin with, I stayed around Wimbledon, then I spent seven years living in Paddington where my fascination with urban scenes escalated. Coming from a small town in the North, it was an exciting place to be. I was close to the Serpentine Gallery, Kensington Gardens, Notting Hill Gate and Portobello Road. I started painting local landmarks, the Electric cinema and the Serpentine boathouse. Then I became interested in Underground stations at night, Bayswater and Paddington. This project continued when I moved to the East End.
The Gentle Author – What brought you to the East End?
Doreen Fletcher – At that time artists were attracted to live and work in the East End because of the cheap studio space that was available. It was easy to rent because the local population were moving out and and artists were happy to live in dilapidated accommodation if it gave them room to work. Before long, a mutually supportive community of artists developed around Bow, Stepney and Mile End.
The Gentle Author – How do you remember the East End then?
Doreen Fletcher – I noticed the skies first, open and dramatic as they advanced into Essex. There were corrugated fences everywhere, still bombsites where buddleia proliferated and a few prefabs inhabited by artists. There was an openness in the streets which has since gone, now every corner has been built up and every vacant space filled.
Yet the distinctive quality of light remains particular to this part of London, a luminescence generated by the proximity of the river. I loved it here because I had had enough of the West End. It felt to me as if I were returning home. Like Stoke, the East End was predominantly working class and also had once been an important centre for industry. Corner shops and tiny pubs proliferated among street markets.
The Gentle Author – Why did you start painting the East End?
Doreen Fletcher – I was excited visually by being somewhere new to me yet that also reminded me of where I grew up. In the Potteries, the town planners’ ethos was ‘If it’s old, let’s sweep it away’ – regardless of its cultural and historical significance. I saw the same fate awaiting the East End. The first painting I did here was the bus stop in Mile End in 1983 and then Rene’s Café next.
The Gentle Author – Was this your full time occupation?
Doreen Fletcher – I was working as an artists’ model in an art school. It was the most boring job you could imagine, but I stuck at it during term-time so I could have periods of full-time painting. I was able to keep myself by working three days a week as a model.
The Gentle Author – How central to your life were your paintings at that time?
Doreen Fletcher – Painting was the focal point of my life. My studio was a small room at the top of a run-down three-storey house in Clemence Street. It faced north so the light was good for painting.
I walked around the East End at different times of day and in different weathers. Eventually a particular scene imprinted itself on my mind that could have potential as a painting. I did thumbnail sketches and took a photograph. Once I had gathered this information, I made a detailed drawing as a basis for the painting. This might evolve over a period of months or even years, as the tension built up between my need to represent reality and the demands made by the painting itself. I always struggle to resolve a picture in an abstract way as well as portraying a subject. To this day,I follow this methodical process to make a painting.
I worked a minimum of twenty-eight hours a week, a target I still adhere to. I was determined not to become a Sunday painter.
The Gentle Author – Did you have ambition for this work?
Doreen Fletcher – Yes and I did have some limited success in the eighties showing within the borough, receiving a few grants and being accepted in open exhibitions such as the Whitechapel and the London Group. Companies bought work from time to time and local people appreciated my paintings, but there was little interest from any critics or commercial galleries.
The Gentle Author – Did you pursue other avenues to get recognition for your work?
Doreen Fletcher – Once a month, I used to send off slides in response to competitions and requests for submissions in Artists’ Newsletter. It was time-consuming and costly without reward.
The Gentle Author – How did you maintain morale through those twenty years?
Doreen Fletcher – I am an optimist and I remained optimistic up until the late nineties, when my work grew increasingly unfashionable due to the rise of conceptual art. It became more difficult to find any places where I could exhibit my work that would even accept representational painting. My work was simply out of fashion My interest in the East End was waning too, as Canary Wharf transformed into a financial metropolis. I found I did not know what to paint any more. It felt as though a period of my life was coming to an end.
The Gentle Author – What made you feel that?
Doreen Fletcher – The East End was changing in a way that I could not understand or portray. The new buildings were densely packed, destroying the distinctive sense of place and community. At first, I was interested in the construction – on the Isle of Dogs for instance – but once it was finished there were just too many people and too much architectural uniformity.
The Gentle Author – Were there changes in your life too?
Doreen Fletcher – I grew more involved in teaching art to youngsters with special needs, taking a part-time job in further education. I became more interested because I found I was good at it and my teaching work was appreciated. Gradually, I worked more in the administrative side of education, supporting other lecturers.
The Gentle Author – Did you find that satisfying?
Doreen Fletcher – Yes, I was earning a salary and contributing to the community. It was rewarding to be working with other people after my years of isolation. I enjoyed participating in the local community rather than being an observer.
The Gentle Author – Once you had completed nearly twenty years of painting the East End, what were your feelings about that series of work?
Doreen Fletcher – I did not realise that I was creating any kind of social document at the time because I was so absorbed with each painting, each one constituting such a lot of work. I had tried very hard to get my pictures out there and get them seen. I had hoped for some kind of recognition. I was never ambitious in terms of international recognition but I did feel that the work was good enough to be recognised more than it was.
The Gentle Author – Were you disappointed?
Doreen Fletcher – Yes. I remember the day I made a conscious decision to pack away my paints. It was November 16th 2004. I said, ‘That’s it! I am not going to paint again.’ I had no knowledge that I was undertaking a journey and enduring a struggle that other artists in the East End had already experienced. If I had been aware of the East London Group and their example, I might have had the heart to continue.
The Gentle Author – Do you think your project reached its culmination?
Doreen Fletcher – At the time I did not think so, I believed I had done all that work for nothing. But looking at the work again, I am very glad I did it. I think it was important that I recorded something which has now vanished.
The Gentle Author – Do you think you evolved as a painter by doing this work?
Doreen Fletcher – If I had I been taken on by a gallery, I might have developed more as a painter. Instead, I think I found a method of working that suited what I was doing and I stuck with it. Maybe with a bit more encouragement I would have done what I am doing now, since I have come back to painting.
The Gentle Author – How do you judge if one of your paintings is successful?
Doreen Fletcher – A painting is successful for me when I believe I have captured an essence of a place in a moment. A picture must sit comfortably and solidly on the canvas. My concern as an artist is with the pockets of life that we ignore.
Now I have started painting again and the series of pictures I have been working in the last two years are the result of having lived in East London for thirty-five years. I have been reflecting on how much remains from the early years and come to appreciate how those people who still live here have adapted to the changes.
In the early eighties, this part of London was run down and very few people chose to be here. Some streets and buildings remain as reminders of that era, left to compete with new concepts of London that have emerged since the closing of local industries and the rise of corporate culture. In representing their utilitarian quality, I envisage my subjects not only as reminders of the past but also as active survivors struggling positively to find a place in a world changing beyond recognition.
I am a painter concerned with environments that are or have been inhabited. I try to resolve the struggle between how I see things and with abstraction, where the pictorial demands of structure, organisation and balance hold sway. My work is carried out slowly and methodically using a range of techniques to communicate a place of quietude and serenity. The difference between the work I am making today and the work I was doing before is that now I am a participant, no longer only an observer of East End life.
At Benjamin Truman’s House
Behold, the dusk is glimmering in this old house in Princelet St built in the seventeen-twenties for Benjamin Truman. A hundred years later, a huge factory was added on the back which more than doubled the size. In the twentieth century, this became the home of the extended Gernstein family from whom the last owners bought the house in the eighties. Notable as Lionel Bart’s childhood home, who once returned to have his portrait taken by Lord Snowden on the doorstep, in recent years it has served as the location for innumerable film and photo shoots. And now, as if to complete the circle, the house belongs the proprietors of the Old Truman Brewery.
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Raju Vaidyanathan, Photographer
Back of Cheshire St, 1986
“I used to climb up on the railway bridge and take photos,” explained photographer Raju Vaidyanathan when he showed me this picture which he has seen for the first time only recently even though he took it forty years ago. A prolific taker of photos around Spitalfields, Raju possesses over forty thousand negatives of people and personalities in the neighbourhood which, after all this time, he is now beginning to print. So I went down to the Idea Store in Watney Market where Raju works to learn more about his remarkable photography.
“I was born in Brick Lane above the shop that is now called ‘This Shop Rocks,’ and I still live on the Lane. My father, Vaithy came to this country in 1949, he was brought over as one of the very first chefs to introduce Indian cooking and our family lineage is all chefs. They brought him over to be chef at the Indian embassy and the day he arrived he discovered they had already arranged a room for him and that room was on Brick Lane, and he lived there until he died.
In 1983, I managed to get hold of an old camera that someone gave me and I started taking photos. As a kid I was very poor and I knew that I was not going to be able to afford take photos, but someone said to me, ‘Instead of taking colour photos, why don’t you take black and white?’ I went to the Montefiore Centre in Hanbury St and the tutor said he would teach me how to process black and white film. So that is what I did, I am a local kid and I just started taking photos of what was happening around me, the people, the football team, the youth club – anything in Brick Lane, where I knew all the people.
Photography is my passion but I also like local history and learning about people’s lives. Sometime in the late eighties, I realised I was not just taking photographs for myself but making a visual diary of my area. I have been taking photos ever since and I always have a camera with me. I am a history collector, I have got all the Asian political leaflets and posters over the years. In the Asian community everyone knows me as the history guy and photographer
Until four years ago, I had been working until nine or ten o’clock every night and seven days a week but then they restructured my hours and insisted I had to work here full time at the Idea Store. Before, I was only working here part-time and working as a youth worker the rest of the time. Suddenly, I had time off in the evenings.
People started saying, ‘You’ve got to do something with all these photos.’ So I thought, ‘Let me see if I can start sorting out my negatives.’ I started finding lots put away in boxes and I took a course learning how to print. For the last two years, I go in once a week and print my photos and see what I have got. I bought a negative scanner and I started scanning the first two boxes of negatives. I have never seen these photos because I never had the money to print them. I just used to take the photos and process the film. So far, I have scanned about eight thousand negatives and maybe next year, once I have sorted these out, I will start scanning all the others.”
Junk on Brick Lane, 1985
Outside Ali Brothers’ grocery shop, Fashion St 1986. His daughter saw the photo and was so happy that his picture was taken at that time.
Modern Saree Centre 1985. It moved around a lot in Brick Lane before closing three years ago.
BYM ‘B’ football team at Chicksand Estate football pitch known as the ‘Ghat’ locally, 1986
108 Brick Lane, 1985. Unable to decide whether to be a café or video store, it is now a pizza shop.
‘Joi Bangla Krew’ around the Pedley Street arches. The BBC recently honoured Haroun Shamsher from Joi (third from left) and Sam Zaman from ‘State of Bengal (far left) with a music plaque on Brick Lane
Myrdle Street, 1984. Washing was hung between flats until the late nineties.
Chacha at Seven Stars pub 1985. Chacha was a Bangladeshi spiv and a good friend of my father. Seven Stars was the local for the Asian community until it closed down in 2000.
Teacher Sarah Larcombe and local youths (Zia with the two fingers) on top of the old Shoreditch Goods Station, which was the most amazing playground
Halal Meat Man on Brick Lane, 1986
Filming of ‘Revolution’ in Fournier St, 1986. The man tapping for cash was killed by some boys a few months later.
Mayor Paul Beaseley and Rajah Miah (later Councillor) open the Mela on Hanbury Street, 1985
The Queen Mother arrives at the reopening of the Whitechapel Gallery, 1986
Photographs copyright © Raju Vaidyanathan
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Moyra Peralta’s Worldly Goods
“These are all my worldly goods,” said Darren when he spread out these modest items to show Photographer Moyra Peralta in 1997. Moyra asked those she had befriended who lived upon the street to permit her to photograph the contents of their pockets and these pictures were the result.
Darren (Waterloo) – Dog, dog leads, keys on key-ring, penknife, cigarettes, lighter, matches, loose change, shoppers’ points card, religious medals on a string, prayer printed on a metal plate, photo of a dog, paperclip, safety pins, nine packets of sugar, paper serviette, personal papers, pain-killers, emery board and several plastic change bags.
Richard (Holborn) – Busking spoons (for `ham and egg-ing’, ie begging), diary, passport, one roll-up , matches, tobacco, cigarette papers, allowance book, medical prescription, Department of Social Security letter, penknife, photograph, paper tissues, and twenty-one pence.
Michael (Covent Garden) – Social Security book, moneybag, a pair of spectacles with case, a religious picture and prayer, a crucifix and chain, a five pound note, London Underground travel ticket, loose change, a US coin, two lighters, a pencil, comb, a chewing gum, a Medilink card and church postcards.
Chris, Malcolm & Jimmy (Trafalgar Sq) – Personal stereo, lighters, cigarettes, vitamin tablets, legal and medical papers, a photograph of Jack Nicholson, a cartoon drawing, copper coins, a match, a wristband and a lucky sprig of heather.
Sean (Covent Garden) – A Begging placard, a peeled orange, money tin, loose change, a paper hankie, cashew nuts, a pair of socks, an origami flower, a pocket dictionary, a postcard, a religious picture, a whistle, shoelaces, a plaster, a broken pencil and an Irish coin.
Rory – Virgin Atlantic docket, address book, a miniature elephant mascot, a personal stereo, two paperbacks, `british passport, an inhaler, a brush, two cigarette lighters, a matchbook, a pen, a hammer (for breaking into squats) and a torch (belonging to a friend).
Johnnie (Holborn) – A hairbrush, reading glasses, cigarette papers, tobacco, a lighter, a pair of scissors, a razor, a toothbrush, a toothpaste, vitamin capsules, a wallet, photographs, an envelope with more photographs, batteries, coins, a pen, a paperback and cream bath lotion.
Simon (Holborn) – A tobacco tin, some dog-ends, matches, a candle stub, loose change, paper towels, dog biscuits and bone, a collar and lead, a necklace, combs, a prescription, a notebook, a paperback, two photos, stamps, a copy of In & Around Covent Garden magazine, a cassette, a button, an envelope, a pencil, a bullet, a plastic knife and fork, and three tubes of glue.
Ray (Strand) – a wallet, a notebook, tissues, an address book, a news cutting, an Outreach contact card, phone cards, dice, a stamp, loose change, combs, a pair of spectacles, a watch, a pen, a playing card, a cigar stub, a pen cap, bottle of mouthwash, matches, buttons, shaving cream, soap, a piece of string, a needle, thread, a safety razor in a plastic case, throat sweets, scissors, antiseptic cream, wire and wire springs and a paperback.
Tommy (Holborn Station) – Copies of The Big Issue, a Vendor’s Identity Card, a spectacle case, cigarettes, peppermints, nail-clippers and a wristwatch.
Tony & Sandy – Rolling tobacco, a lighter, cigarette papers, painkillers, a plaster and a comb.
Richard displays his worldly goods in Holborn.
Photographs copyright © Estate of Moyra Peralta
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London Characters
In my desk drawer, I keep this fine set of London Characters, cigarette cards by an unknown artist issued by Lambert & Butler in 1934.
Remarkably, The Chestnut Seller, The Boot Black, The Coffee-Stall Keeper, The Flower-Seller, The Ice-Cream Vendor, The Fish-Stall Keeper and The Pavement Artist survive, in very limited numbers and in differing forms. With references to black-shirts and the depression, these cards speak eloquently of the life of inter-war London, – ‘these enlightened days of stainless steel ‘ as they are described here with brash confidence. Yet, only yesterday, I saw a woman standing outside Liverpool St Station with a large handmade placard ,’2 Bedroom Flat to Sell,’ which made me wonder if we might be on the brink of a street-selling revival in our capital.
“Baked Chestnuts!” – With the approach of autumn, the Baked Chestnut Man wheels his barrow with its glowing fire – over which the chestnuts pop and sizzle – to a frequented spot where the appetizing smell of his wares tempts pennies from the pockets of the passers-by.
A Billingsgate Porter – Beginning his day’s work at five am, the Billingsgate Porter has nearly finished his labours by the time the trains and buses are unloading hundreds of City workers onto Eastcheap and Fish St Hill – streets which are pervaded by the unmistakable sea-weedy and fishy odours which never entirely depart from the neighbourhood of the Monument.
The Boot-Black – In bygone days, the boot-black was found in every street corner. Each man had a large tin kettle for removing mud, two or three brushes and a very old wig – the latter being indispensable in a shoeblack outfit, very useful for whisking away dust and wiping off wet mud.
The “Cabby” – Drivers of “growlers” and “hansom” cabs are still to be seen, and may be recognised by their whole-hearted contempt for motors, their ready wit and and preferences for frequenting places associated with horses, such as Tattersall’s, Barnet Fair and Regent’s Park on Whit Monday.
“Catch ‘Em Alive!” – Modern hygiene with its slogan “Swat that fly” has done away forever with, “Catch ’em alive, O!” – the cry of the tall man in the tall hat which displayed a struggling mass of flies on its sticky trimming.
The Chair-Mender – The kerbside mender of chairs, who “if he had more money to spend would not be crying – “Chairs to mend!” is one of the neatest-fingered of street traders. Watch how deftly he weaves his strips of cane in and out – how neatly he finishes off each chair, returning it to the owner, “good as new.”
The Coffee-Stall Keeper – Many a drama of London-in-the-darkness is enacted at the coffee stall, which trundles its way each evening to its pitch where it remains until the city begins to awaken. Men and women of many types seek its hospitality during the hours of darkness, “down and outs” rubbing shoulders with revellers returning home in the early morning – and not a few are gladdened by a copper or two thrust into their hands by comrades a little better off than themselves.
The Cornet Player – A character never lacking in London streets is the Cornet Player, who provides a kind of magic that draws dogs like a magnet to him. He relies chiefly upon the licensed houses for his living, and can usually be recognised by his bulk.
The Covent Garden Porter – The Covent Garden Porter is the “Cockney of all the Cockneys” – good-humoured, hard working and possessed of a ready wit. Like his confrère at Billingsgate, he has been accused of being a “linguist” but although his speech may occasionally be forceful and picturesque, there is doubtless many a fox-hunting squire who might give him points and a licking!
The Crossing Sweeper – In bygone days, the Crossing Sweeper was a veritable “gentleman” of the road, who in many cases inherited his broom and his pitch from his parents. Tradition relates that the profession of a crossing sweeper was at one time a safe road to fortune.
The Flower Seller – The Flowers Sellers or perhaps more correctly “flower-girls” – for flower sellers in London always remain girls irrespective of age – are among the most picturesque of London characters. The flower-girl of Piccadilly, sitting beside her gay and fragrant basket in the shadow of “Eros” is the aristocrat of them all.
The Hyde Park Orator – Red-shirt, black-shirt, green-shirt and others – all are sure of an audience, especially on Sundays, when occupying their rostrums near Marble Arch. they are usually prepared for good-natured heckling – and often get it! Should things take a less friendly turn, there is always a “bobby” to keep his eye on things!
The Ice-Cream Vendor – The old-fashioned ice-cream barrow is dying hard, despite the rivalry of mass-production. Ice-cream “merchants” were usually Italian and the gaudy representations of Lake Como and the Rialto decorating his stall. Invariably called “Johnnie,” he met the demands of his of his youthful clientele, of messenger-boys and the like – to whom ice-cream makes an irresistible appeal – with exemplary patience and good humour.
The Kerbstone Trader – Dignity fails at the sight of the Kerbstone Trader. Aldermen, merchants and mere office-boys “fall” for his latest novelty “all made to wind up.” Red hot from an important board meeting, the Chairman of the Company relaxes on hearing the unspeakable sounds which proceed from the slow collapsing india-rubber pig.
The Newsboy – In some respects, the Newsboy reveals quite remarkable business instincts, chief among them his gift of shouting commonplace news in such a manner to make it sound important. He reads his own papers – how and when is a complete mystery – for his eye is always on a likely customer, but he can always tell you what Arsenal has done, and who is riding the favourite in the “big ‘un.”
The Old Fish-Stall Keeper – Wherever Londoners gather together, the fish-stall is found, whether in the crowded streets or one of the seas-side resorts where Cockneys take their doses of ozone. “Arry” and “Arriet” do much of their courting around the whelk stall, and comic singers owe much amusing patter to its delicacies, winkles and the necessary “extra” in the shape of a pin.
The Organ Grinder – The Organ Grinder and his monkey belong to a less sophisticated age than the present, with its bands of unemployed musicians and “tinned music” in various forms. This organist of the eighties was usually a native of Switzerland and instrument was a worn-out organ, under the weight of which he could sometimes scarcely stagger.
The Pavement Artist – He is above all an optimist – a sudden shower and all his day’s work is in vain! You may find him in any open space – near St Martin-In-The-Fields, Trafalgar Sq or on the Embankment – with his equipment of brightly-coloured chalks and a duster. The pavement artist is said to have been “the cradle” of some successful artists, but is certain that many who have known better days have resorted to this means of making a living.
The Quack Medicine Man – The “Medicine Man” of the street corner sells many things, from a cure for toothache to a remedy for broken hearts. Blessed with a wonderful gift of the gab and an endless store of ready wit, he is ready to expose all the secrets of Pharmacopoeia.
The Rag & Bone Man – The cry of “rags and bones” is familiar in the meaner streets, but often it is nit easy to recognise the words! Closely allied with the dealer in “rags” is the dealer of “old clo!” – the lady or gentleman who offers an aspidistra or a pot of ferns for an overcoat or a pair of trousers which has seen better days!
The Knife Grinder – Even in these enlightened days of stainless steel, the old-fashioned Knife Grinder may still be seen plying his trade in the London streets, with his well-known cry, “Knives, scissors, grind!” His lack of wares is more than compensated for by the picturesqueness of his outfit.
The Muffin Man – This is the Muffin Man, his bell clangs out its story of cosy fireside teas, and at the same time announces that summer is over! But history relates that ever since one of the fraternity was summoned for ringing his bell on a Sunday afternoon, the Muffin Man must choose with care the locality in which he goes selling the muffins.
The Sandwich Man – The Sandwich Man strikes a minor note in the great symphony of London life. His is the métier of the unfortunate, and sometimes his role as a perambulating advertisement is tinged with bitter irony. The shabby man directing all and sundry to the smart tailor, and the shaggy man advertising a first-class barber are bad enough, but what is one to say of the poor stray condemned to carry a board advertising the price of a first-class lunch with complete menu?
The Windmill Man – The Windmill Man will go down to posterity as a kind of “Pied Pier” who lured away the children from the noise and squalor of the streets to fairyland. The sound of his voice – for street vendors are still permitted to call their wares in the meaner streets – is a signal for a throng of scampering children to gather round him to exchange old bottles for gaily-painted windmills.
You may also like to take a look at these other sets of the Cries of London
Geoffrey Fletcher’s Pavement Pounders
William Craig Marshall’s Itinerant Traders
H.W.Petherick’s London Characters
John Thomson’s Street Life in London
Aunt Busy Bee’s New London Cries
Marcellus Laroon’s Cries of London
More John Player’s Cries of London
William Nicholson’s London Types
Francis Wheatley’s Cries of London
John Thomas Smith’s Vagabondiana of 1817
John Thomas Smith’s Vagabondiana II
John Thomas Smith’s Vagabondiana III
