In Old Globetown
I took advantage of rare hours of January sunlight to take a stroll over to Globetown. You walk east from Museum Gardens in Bethnal Green through Sugar Loaf Walk and immediately recognise you have entered a different neighbourhood, where an atmosphere of domestic quietude prevails in distinct contrast to the clamour you encountered at the junction of Bethnal Green Rd and Cambridge Heath Rd. Cats prowl the empty streets while the residents are either snug in their homes or enjoying a long afternoon in The Camel or The Florists’ Arms.
This former marshland bisected by Globe Lane – now Globe Rd – takes its name from a old tavern that once stood here. The area was built up in the early nineteenth century by exploitative developers, throwing up poor quality homes for weavers on low incomes. Before long, commentators were comparing the notorious Globetown slum with Saffron Hill and St Giles High St. Consequently, most of the good quality nineteenth century building that remains today was constructed as social housing to alleviate the legacy of this poor development.
In Globe Rd, the first structure that you come upon is the handsome red brick Merceron Houses constructed by East End Dwellings Company in 1901. It was built upon the garden of Joseph Merceron, the most reprehensible eighteenth century resident of Bethnal Green, whose notoriety had faded by the end of the nineteenth century. Across the road is a modest sequence of terraces of workers’ cottages in the Arts & Crafts style from 1906 and, directly to the south, towers the handsome Board School with Mendip House and Shepton House beyond. All these buildings were the work of East End Dwellings Company and together they form a sympathetic complex of streets on a human scale, with The Camel adorned with its attractive Art Nouveau tiles at the centre.
Walking south and turning east into the Roman Rd, I was dismayed to discover the beloved Victoria Fish Bar has closed forever. After a lifetime of service behind the fryer, the proprietors have finally retired. On Sunday, Globetown Market Sq was empty but on weekdays this is a popular destination with stalls of keenly-priced fresh produce and the East End’s best wet fish barrow run by Del Downey, third generation fishmonger in this location.
I walked north up Bonner St and turned west again at the former Bishop Bonner pub into Cyprus St, built in a distinctly aspiration style as ‘Wellington St’ in 1850, still remembered in the name of the former Duke of Wellington pub. This is an astonishing and handsome example of an unaltered mid-nineteenth century streetscape.
These distinguished nineteenth century survivals are surrounded by twentieth century housing of greater and lesser quality, evidencing the continuing struggle to overcome the grim legacy of exploitative development – both historical and recent – and give everyone in the East End a decent home.
The Camel on Sugar Loaf Walk dates from before 1861 when it was named as the Museum Beer Shop
Cottages built by East End Dwellings company in Globe Rd
In Gawber Rd
Board School of 1900 in Welwyn St
Open staircase at Mendip Dwellings built by East End Dwellings Company in 1900
The Florists’ Arms in Globe Rd dates from before 1871 and its name refers to the former local culture of competitive flower growing introduced by the Huguenots
The Victoria Fish Bar in Roman Rd has closed forever
The Bishop Bonner, Bonner St, dates from before 1863 and its name refers to Bishop Bonner whose palace formerly stood nearby on the site of the London Chest Hospital
In Cyprus St
Memorial to former residents of Cyprus St who died in war – Bethnal Green provided the highest number of volunteers of any London borough in the First World War
Drinking fountain in Museum Gardens
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John Thomas Smith’s Antient Topography
Bethelem Hospital with London Wall in Foreground – Drawn June 1812
Two centuries ago, John Thomas Smith set out to record the last vestiges of ancient London that survived from before the Great Fire of 1666 but which were vanishing in his lifetime. You can click on any of these images to enlarge them and study the tender human detail that Smith recorded in these splendid etchings he made from his own drawings. My passion for John Thomas Smith’s work was first ignited by his portraits of raffish street sellers published as Vagabondiana and I was delighted to spot several of those familiar characters included here in these vivid street scenes of London long ago.
Click on any of these images to enlarge
Bethel Hospital seen from London Wall – Drawn August 1844
Old House in Sweedon’s Passage, Grub St – Drawn July 1791, Taken Down March 1805
Old House in Sweedon’s Passage, Grub St – Drawn July 1791, Taken Down March 1805
London Wall in Churchyard of St Giles’ Cripplegate – Drawn 1793, Taken Down 1803
Houses on the Corner of Chancery Lane & Fleet St – Drawn August 1789, Taken Down May 1799
Houses in Leadenhall St – Drawn July 1796
Duke St, West Smithfield – Drawn July 1807, Taken Down October 1809
Corner of Hosier Lane, West Smithfield – Drawn April 1795
Houses on the South Side of London Wall – Drawn March 1808
Houses on West Side of Little Moorfields – Drawn May 1810
Magnificent Mansion in Hart St, Crutched Friars – Drawn May 1792, Taken Down 1801
Walls of the Convent of St Clare, Minories – Drawn April 1797
Watch Tower Discovered Near Ludgate Hill – Drawn June 1792
An Arch of London Bridge in the Great Frost – Drawn February 5th 1814
Images courtesy Bishopsgate Institute
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John Thomas Smith’s Vagabondiana
Orange Wrappers
This is the season for oranges and lemons, when every morning I begin the day by consuming a juicy blood orange. So I was more than delighted when Keren McConnell kindly sent me her glorious fruit wrapper collection from the seventies to share with you.
“I started collecting fruit papers when I was six years old, possibly inspired by a holiday in Spain in 1971. Most of the papers stuck in my small scrapbook were picked up while shopping for groceries with my mother at the local greengrocers in Blackheath. I think they reminded me of that holiday with their bright and graphic imagery.
I was drawn to the designs and texture and feel of the crinkly tissue paper. I also collected carrier bags and paper bags for their graphics, but this collection did not survive all our house moves.
Who knows? This book of fruit papers may have even informed my career. I became a print and graphics designer for fashion brands and retailers, sometimes using this scrapbook as reference material to inspire a T-shirt design.
As a child, particular favourites were the designs depicting animals, beautiful ladies and the smiling face on the Sicilian lemon is particularly appealing. I have no idea why the Tower of London was on a fruit paper from Spain. Perhaps the designer thought London was an exotic place, just as I had found Spain so exotic? Some of the designs seem to have been inspired by sport, such as horse racing and Formula One.
Are children today inclined to make collections like this? Mine was born out of boredom, particularly on wet Sundays when the days felt so long.”
Keren McConnell
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T. Venables & Sons’ Almanack
In case you do not have an almanack yet for the new year, I am publishing this from T. Venables & Sons, Whitechapel, courtesy of Philip Mernick. This is an especially useful one because it includes a catalogue of drapery, carpets and furniture, as well as cab fares from Whitechapel, a chronicle of events of 1867/8 and a list of the powers of Europe, the Royal Family, Officers of State and Her Majesty’s Household.
Gertrude Gorham
‘Arabian’ bedsteads
Cots and bedsteads
Drawers and wardrobes
Drawing Room furniture
Tables and washstands
Toilet glasses and chairs
Silks and velvets
Uncle was laid up ill in bed in January 1882 quite helpless (gout)
Gertrude Gorham was examined at Westbourne Schools/82 (passed)
Aunt’s little bird died Saturday 1882
Mrs Pike fell downstairs and cracked her collarbone
Cab fares
Chronicle of events 1867-68: Explosion of nitro-glycerine in Newcastle. Bread and meat riots at Exeter. Hurricane at St Thomas.
Chief Powers of Europe and the Royal Family
T. Venables & Sons, 103, 104 & 105, Whitechapel and 2, 4, 6 & 8 Commercial St
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Thomas Barnes, Photographer
The most prolific nineteenth century East End photographer was Thomas Barnes, responsible for producing over one hundred thousand portraits taken between 1858 and 1885 at his studio at 422 Mile End Rd in Bow.
Although these cartes de visite are nameless, Barnes numbered most of his pictures – enabling us to create a sequence and establish an indication of their dates, as demonstrated by these fine examples selected from Philip Mernick‘s collection gathered over the past twenty years.
Remembered today primarily for his widely-discredited before-and-after photos commissioned by Dr Barnardo, nevertheless Thomas Barnes’ studio portraits reveal a photographer of abundant talent and accomplishment. It is a poignant gallery of withheld emotion, bringing us face to face with anonymous long-dead East Enders who are now inhabitants of Tower Hamlets Cemetery Park.
Number 4178 – taken between 1858 & 1864
Unnumbered
Number 21236 – 1867
Number 33999 – taken around 1870
Number 34101 – taken around 1870
Number 37432 – taken after 1873
Unnumbered
Number 38774 – taken after 1873
Number 41536 – taken mid-1870s
Unnumbered
Number 43979 – taken mid-1870s
Number 44425 – taken prior to 1877
Number 47385 – taken prior to 1877
Number 53458 – 1877
Number 56157 – 1877
Unnumbered
Number 57248 – 1877
Number 65460 – taken between 1877 and 1880
Number 75384 – taken after 1880
Photographs reproduced courtesy of Philip Mernick
Biographical details of Thomas Barnes supplied by David Webb
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Flowers Of 2024
Each Sunday, if I can afford it and have the time, I visit Columbia Rd Market to buy a bunch of flowers, seeking what is in season and avoiding repeats where possible. Here is the story of last year told in flowers. Looking back, I am reminded how much joy they brought me. Which are your favourites?
7th January, bulbs
14th January, paper whites
27th January, cherry blossom
28th January, hyacinths
5th February, snake’s head lilies
11th February, quince blosssom
25th February, tulips and anemones
17th March, tulips and hellebores
7th April, anemones and lilies of the valley
14th April, anemones and verbena
5th May, sweetpeas
12th May, Essex pinks
19th May, delphiniums
23rd June, peonies, astrantias and antirrhinums
7th July, spurge, camomile, antirrhinums and delphiniums
14th July, lilies, delphiniums, spurge and camomile
21st July, sunflowers
28th July, ranunculus
11th August, dahlias
18th August, camomile and michaelmas daisies
8th September, roses
22nd September, artichokes and chrysanthemums
6th October
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In Search Of Daniel Defoe
I am proud to publish this edited extract from GRAVE STORIES by a graduate of my writing course. ‘The Gravedigger’ invites you to come into the graveyard, where all of human life is to be discovered.
Follow GRAVE STORIES
I am taking bookings for the next writing course, HOW TO WRITE A BLOG THAT PEOPLE WILL WANT TO READ on February 1st & 2nd.
Come to Spitalfields and spend a winter weekend with me in an eighteenth century weaver’s house in Fournier St, enjoy delicious lunches and eat cakes baked to historic recipes, and learn how to write your own blog.
Defoe’s obelisk at Bunhill Fields
A year after Lockdown I turned to Daniel Defoe’s Journal of the Plague Year to compare notes. His experience was much like ours in many ways: the first signs in Holland, followed by rumours regarding possible origins in Italy or the Levant, mirrored our own experiences watching Italy and Wuhan. The gradual spread from St Giles and the West End to Cripplegate, Clerkenwell and the City reflected our monitoring of Covid hotspots.
The flight of the court and the well-heeled to their second homes was familiar. Likewise the first deaths and the sudden desolation in the streets with shops closed, Inns of Court shut up, theatres, alehouses, and taverns all dark. Attempts to control wandering beggars resembled our own government’s sudden concern to house the homeless. The sick were either sequestered and died apart from their families or whole households were shut up in their homes, as happened in our hospitals and care homes.
When Defoe bemoaned the lack of enough ‘pest houses,’ he might have been speaking of our own shortage of Covid wards leading to the construction of the Nightingale hospitals. Quack medicines appeared, just as hydroxychloroquine and the possibility of injecting bleach found favour in certain quarters in the twenty-first century.
Defoe recorded people moving onto boats in the Thames or to camp in Epping Forest and similarly, at the height of Covid, caravans and camper vans occupied green sites. Daily and weekly recording of illness and death rates confirmed that then as now, the poor, living in overcrowded conditions with inadequate ventilation and unable to avoid the breath of others, sickened more than the wealthy.
As the plague intensified, people rushed to stockpile provisions and there were shortages. Without contactless cards to replace cash, they soaked their money in vinegar. The poorest found themselves out of work, unable to purchase food or pay for their lodgings. Charity, like our food banks, supplemented Parish Relief which like our Universal Credit proved inadequate.
Servants were redeployed as nurses, sextons, gravediggers. In Defoe’s London, burials took place before sunrise and after sunset, and neighbours and friends could not attend church funerals. When people died in the streets, their bodies were removed to mass graves. In 2020, as morgues and mortuaries became overwhelmed, contract workers in hazmat suits dug mass graves in New York. When the death rate began to decline, doctors issued certificates of health to permit travel anticipating our own vaccine passports, but as people became careless the rate rose again..
There were also great differences, not least in the presence of religion in Defoe’s Britain: sects, fortune tellers, and astrologers flourished. Solomon Eagle stalked the streets, naked with a pan of burning charcoal on his head, calling on the populace to repent. Though some clergy fled, others kept their churches open and, when the plague ended, Defoe gave credit for the recovery to God. Conversely, there was less respect for the medical profession and, far from clapping for carers, Defoe wrote of nurses finishing their patients off and stealing their goods. While pet ownership increased during lockdown, Defoe’s London witnessed the wholesale killing of cats and dogs.
Defoe was only five years old in 1665 and his vivid ‘eyewitness account’ originated from his uncle Henry Foe, supplemented by Defoe’s own research. A man of many talents – merchant, spy, novelist, poet, political pamphleteer, and activist – Defoe’s life was a rollercoaster of excitement, achievements, and disasters.
In 1685, he participated in the Monmouth rebellion against James II but escaped retribution in the Bloody Assizes and, when William III came to power, he became a secret agent of the crown. His poem The True Born Englishman defended William against racial prejudice, reminding xenophobic readers that they were all descended from immigrants.
The succession of Queen Anne led to the persecution of nonconformists and Defoe’s arrest in 1703 for pamphleteering, political activity and satires directed against high-church Tories. Prior to his removal to Newgate, he was placed in the pillory for three days but his poem Hymn to the Pillory resulted in him being garlanded with flowers rather than pelted with rubbish.
Over five hundred works have been attributed to Defoe including Robinson Crusoe, Moll Flanders, A Tour through the Whole Island of Great Britain and of course A Journal of the Plague Year. No stranger to the debtors’ prison during his life, he died – as he had often lived – in debt.
Defoe was buried in the non-conformist cemetery at Bunhill but his headstone was struck by lightning and broken in 1857. The editor of Christian World, a children’s newspaper, encouraged readers to donate 6d each for a new memorial, setting up two rival subscription lists, one for girls and one for boys.
Samuel Horner, a stonemason from Bournemouth who erected the obelisk, took the gravestone home with him, selling it as part of a general lot from his yard. Then it became part of the kitchen floor at Bishopstoke Manor Farm until the manager moved to 56 Portswood Road in 1883 where it remained in his front garden for over sixty years. Charles Davey acquired it in 1945 and gave it to Stoke Newington library. An appropriate resting place since Defoe lived in Stoke Newington from the age of fourteen, but by the time I arrived it had been moved to Hackney Museum where it I found it sitting beside a bust of Defoe, backed by an image of the famous pillory.
Inscription on Daniel Defoe’s obelisk
Daniel Defoe’s headstone is now in Hackney Museum
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