Vagabondiana
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This is William Conway of Crab Tree Row, Bethnal Green, who walked twenty-five miles every day, calling, “Hard metal spoons to sell or change.” Born in 1752 in Worship St, Spitalfields, he is pictured here forty-seven years into his profession, following in the footsteps of his father, also an itinerant trader. Conway had eleven walks around London which he took in turn, wore out a pair of boots every six weeks and claimed that he never knew a day’s illness.
This is just one of the remarkable portraits by John Thomas Smith collected together in a large handsome volume entitled “Vagabondiana,” published in 1817, that it was my delight to discover in the collection of the Bishopsgate Institute. John Thomas Smith is an intriguing and unjustly neglected artist of the early nineteenth century who is chiefly remembered today for being born in the back of a Hackney carriage in Great Portland St and for his murky portrait of Joseph Mallord William Turner.
On the opening page of Vagabondiana, Smith’s project is introduced to the reader with delicately ambiguous irony. “Beggary, of late, has become so dreadful in London, that the more active interference of the legislature was deemed absolutely necessary, indeed the deceptions of the idle and sturdy were so various, cunning and extensive, that it was in most instances extremely difficult to discover the real object of charity. Concluding, therefore, that from the reduction of metropolitan beggars, several curious characters would disappear by being either compelled to industry, or to partake of the liberal parochial rates, provided for them in their respective work-houses, it occurred to the author of the present publication, that likenesses of the most remarkable of them, with a few particulars of their habits, would not be unamusing to those to whom they have been a pest for several years.”
Yet in spite of these apparently self-righteous, Scrooge-like, sentiments – that today might be still be voiced by any number of venerable bigots – John Thomas Smith’s pictures tell another story. From the moment I cast my eyes upon these breathtakingly beautiful engravings, I was captivated by their human presence. There are few smiling faces here, because Smith allows his subjects to retain their self possession, and his fine calligraphic line celebrates their idiosyncrasy borne of ingenious strategies to survive on the street.
You can tell from these works that John Thomas Smith loved Rembrandt, Hogarth and Goya’s prints because the stylistic influences are clear, in fact Smith became keeper of drawings and prints at the British Museum. More surprising is how modern these drawings feel – there are several that could pass as the work of Mervyn Peake. Heath Robinson’s drawings also spring to mind, especially his illustrations to Shakespeare and there are a couple of craggy stooping figures woven of jagged lines that are worthy of Ronald Searle or Quentin Blake.
If you are looking for the poetry of life, you will find it in abundance in these unsentimental yet compassionate studies that cut across two centuries to bring us a vivid sense of London street life in 1817. It is a dazzling vision of London that Smith proposes, populated by his vibrant characters.
The quality of Smith’s portraits transcend any condescension because through his sympathetic curiosity Smith came to portray his vagabonds with dignity, befitting an artist who was literally born in the street, who walked the city, who knew these people and who drew them in the street. He narrowly escaped a lynch mob once when his motives were misconstrued and he was mistaken for a police sketch artist. No wonder his biography states that,“Mr Smith happily escaped the necessity of continuing his labours as an artist, being appointed keeper of prints & drawings at the British Museum.”
Smith described his subjects as “curious characters” and while some may be exotic, it is obvious that these people cannot all fairly be classed as vagabonds, unless we chose instead to celebrate Vagabondiana as the self-respecting state of those who eek existence at the margins through their own wits. One cannot deny the romance of vagabond life, with its own culture and custom. Through pathos, John Thomas Smith sought to expose common human qualities and show vagabonds as people, rather than merely as pests or vermin to be driven out.
A Jewish mendicant, unable to walk, who sat in a box on wheels in Petticoat Lane.
Israel Potter, one of the oldest menders of chairs still living.
Strolling clowns
Bernado Millano, the bladder man
Itinerant third generation vendor of elegies, Christmas carols and love songs
A crippled sailor advertises his maritime past
George Smith, a brush maker afflicted with rheumatism who sold chickweed as bird food.
A native of Lucca accompanying his dancing dolls upon the bagpipes
Blinded in one eye, this beggar seeks reward for sweeping the street
Priscilla who sat in the street in Clerkenwell making quilts
Anatony Antonini, selling artificial silk flowers adorned with birds cast in wax
This boot lace seller was a Scotman who lost his hands in the wars
Charles Wood and his dancing dog.
Staffordshire ware vendors bought their stock from the Paddington basin and sold it door to door.
Rattle-puzzle vendors.
A blind beggar with a note hung round his neck appealing for charity.
Images courtesy © Bishopsgate Institute
At Oitij-jo Kitchen
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‘We want to celebrate the work that the women do’
People often ask where they can find authentic Bengali food in Spitalfields and I have found the answer in Oitij-jo Kitchen, a women’s collective who run the catering operation at Rich Mix Arts Centre in the Bethnal Green Rd.
Contributing Photographer Sarah Ainslie spent a morning recording the activity in the kitchen while I sat down with co-founder Maher Anjum who explained to me what it is all about, before we all reconvened for a taste test.
“Four of us set up the Oitij-jo collective in 2013 straight after the 2012 London Olympics. We had Akram Khan in the opening ceremony but nothing else. We were all creatives, so we asked ourselves ‘Where are we in this scenario?’
We set up Oitij-jo to be a platform for creative practitioners from the Bangladeshi disapora, representing them, supporting them, especially emerging artists, but also showcasing our rich cultural heritage and translating it into what is happening now. Oitij-jo in bangla means heritage. It was important to us to take it to the future, so that the next generation have an understanding and can interpret it in their own way, because it is only at that point that it is alive.
In 2016, we did a year’s residency at the Gram Bangla restaurant in Brick Lane displaying art works with a new exhibition every three months. It was the first restaurant which served traditional Bengali food, and that was when food became part of our project. We had a lot of conversations with the restauranteurs about the nature of our food. And we realised that food was such an important part our cultural identity, it was something we wanted to work with. There was a visible lack of women in the restaurant sector and in catering in general, so we decided to focus on bringing in Bangladeshi women. It’s culture that people carry, even if may not pay attention to it, we simply say ‘Have some food.’
One of the things that women who work with us tell us is, ‘People say ‘thank you’ for the food I prepare for them. That’s really nice because at home it’s taken for granted. No-one’s going to thank you for the food you put on the table, it’s come-eat-go.’ For a lot of these women, the recognition of what they are doing is a recognition of themselves and food becomes an intrinsic part of who they are, part of their identity.
British Bangladeshi women are some of the least economically active of the population this country, three times less likely to be paid the same wages as anyone else. What are we doing about it? The creative sector is one of the most productive, but the involvement of black, Asian and people from other ethnic minorities is one of the least.
We see Otijo-jo kitchen as the means of giving women the pathway to self-discovery and self-esteem, while exploring the question of what is food for the British Bangladeshi community.
The so-called colonial curry – and what is seen to be ‘curry’ – has a complicated lineage, but there is a place for it and it has made a huge contribution to the community where employment was not available. It was a way for people to establish themselves and be their own bosses, rather than waiting for a job that might never come. We need to acknowledge that but it gets complicated when we ask, ‘What is the food? Who does it? And how does it happen?’
What we want to do is something quite different. We want to celebrate the work that the women do and the food which we consider is traditional Bengali food that people eat at home.
We could not get any funding, so we did a crowdfund in 2018 and raised a tiny amount of money, and started in 2019. Since then we have worked with about sixty women. We do not expect them to stay with us because we want them to gain the ability and self-confidence, get the skills and experience, and move on to do what they want to do.
Many women who come to us have never been in paid employment, they have very little experience of being outside the home or being in a working environment. We want them to build up the confidence to say ‘I can be here’ and be able to talk to people.
We have around a dozen women working with us at present. Once the women have finished their training period, they can stay on working with us and earn the London Living Wage. While they are training with us, they get a daily bursary.
We are a charity and a social enterprise, so we have to make sure we earn money to continue this work. Over the years, we have developed menus and recipes that are our style of cooking. The women who join us learn to cook our recipes the way we cook them.
We serve food at Rich Mix each Thursday to Sunday from 3pm to 9pm. The rest of the time, we use the kitchen here to do catering. We do conferences, seminars, weddings, any kind of occasion. We provide a hundred student lunches for a university twice a week, that’s a very different kind of catering. We did a conference for the Serpentine Gallery at Somerset House for one hundred and twenty people, breakfast, tea, lunch and something in the afternoon too.
Most of the women find us through word of mouth and we are having people contacting us all the time. We have a wide range of ages from around twenty to over sixty and we feel that’s really important because they brings different skills, experiences and abilities. Women come from across Tower Hamlets and the East End.
When we first started, someone asked, ‘If people want vegan food, what shall we give?’ If you have plain rice and dhal which is a standard Bengali meal, that is vegan. Bangladesh is a nation of rivers, so our heritage is that we eat vegetarian and vegan food all the time. You could say that we are going with the trend, except that is normal traditional food for us.”
Surma Khanom, Maher Anjum, Hajira Bibi & Rohema Begum
Photographs copyright © Sarah Ainslie
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East End Women At Work In Black And White
This weekend we launched our crowdfund and have raised £2,714 towards our target so far.
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Sarah took these black and white portraits of women in Hackney between 1990 and 1991 as a commission for Hackney Museum. “I was aware there were a lot of women in the workplace but mostly in behind the scenes roles,” Sarah explained to me, “I wanted to give them visibly and also show the variety of work that women were doing.”
Terrie Alderton, Bus Driver
Loretta Leitch, Electrician
Rosemary More, Architect
Fontanelle Alleyne, Environmental Health Officer
Hackney Regristar of Births, Marriages & Deaths
Jenny Amos, Heating & Ventilation Engineer
Carol Straker, Dancer
Annie Johns, Sculptor
Sue Hopkins, Doctor at Lawson Practice Baby Clinic
Lilly Claridge, Age Concern Charity Shop Manager
Karen Francis & Carolyn Donovan, Dustwomen
Helen Graham, Street Sweeper
Denise Martin, Truck Driver
Judy Benoit, Studio Manager
Luz Hollingsworth, Fire Fighter
Diane Abbott, Member of Parliament
Dionne Allacker, Joanne Gillard, Winnifred John, Clothing Warehouse Supervisors
Lanette Edwards, Machinist
Nora Fenn, Buttonholist
Jane Harris, Carpenter
Eileen Lake, Chaplain at Homerton Hospital
Dr Costeloe, Homerton Hospital
Ivy Harris & E Vidal, Cleaners at Homerton Hospital
Sister Ferris Aagee, Homerton Hospital
Joan Lewis, Homerton Hospital
Sister Sally Bowcock
Valerie Cruz, Catering Assistant
K Lewis, Traffic Warden
Gerrie Harris, Acupuncturist
WPC Helen Taylor
Mary, Counter Assistant at Ridley’s Beigel Bakery
Mandy McLoughlin & Angela Kent, Faulkners Fish & Chip Restaurant
Terrie Tan, Driver at Lady Cabs
Maureen McLoughlin, Supervisor at Riversdale Laundrette
Anna Sousa, Hairdresser at Shampers
Jane Reeves, Councillor
Carolin Ambler, Zoo Keeper
Mrs Sherman, Dentist
Eileen Fisher, Police Domestic Violence Unit
Yvonne McKenzie, Jacqui Olliffe & Dirinai Harley, Supervisors at Oranges & Lemons Day Nursery
Jessica James, Active Birth Teacher
Di England, Supervisor at Free Form Arts
Sally Theakston, Chaplain, St John’s Hackney
Photographs copyright © Sarah Ainslie
Photographs courtesy Hackney Museum
East End Women At Work
Yesterday I launched our crowdfund and we raised £1,288 on the first day.
Click here to support our crowdfund to publish Sarah Ainslie’s WOMEN AT WORK
Sarah celebrates the contribution of female labour in exuberant portraits that capture the passion and struggle of the working life. Drawn from Sarah’s personal archive and her sixteen years as Spitalfields Life Contributing Photographer, this is a panoramic survey of social change over four decades.
Today we preview a small selection of Sarah’s portraits.
“It means so much to me and will be an important recognition of all the women I have photographed over the years for this book to be published by Spitalfields Life Books, a perfect home for it.”
Sarah Ainslie
Merle Curtis, Sultana Begum, Armagan Middlemast & Husna Begum, Tower Hamlets Food Bank
Afa Simpson, Painter, Decorator & Clown
Donna Wood, Postwoman, Royal Mail
Claire Carmelo, Customer Service Assistant, Bethnal Green Station
Kelly Wood, Carer, Silk Court Care Home
Kellyan Saunders, Manager, Oxfam Shop
Lucinda Rogers, Artist
Maria & Anna Pellicci, E Pellicci
Nafisa & Marlene, Newmans’ Stationery
Rachel Hippolyte, Education Manager, Spitalfields City Farm
Anita Patel, Tesco
Sue Venning, Proprietor, G Kelly Pie & Mash, Roman Rd
Iflet, Garage Mechanic, Three Colts Lane
Anjum Ishtaq, Heba Women’s Project, Brick Lane
Mrs Mustapha, Nazal Dry Cleaners, Hackney Rd
Sandra Esqulant, Publican at The Golden Heart, Spitalfields, and Molly
Shakala, Customer Assistant at Favorite Fried Chicken
Fatima Chowdury, Jumara Noor Eli and Sumsun Nahar Shirna at Mahir Sarees in Bethnal Green
Arful Nessa, Home Machinist, Spitalfields
Laura Porter, Powerlifter, Bethnal Green
Carol Burns, Manager, C.E. Burns Waste Paper Merchants, Spitalfields
Chloe Robertson, Electroplater at Margolis Silver, London Fields
Photographs copyright © Sarah Ainslie
Help Me Publish A Book Of Sarah Ainslie’s Women At Work
Today I launch a crowdfund to publish a book of the magnificent portraits of WOMEN AT WORK taken by Spitalfields Life Contributing photographer Sarah Ainslie since 1992.
Please click here to learn more
Sarah celebrates the contribution of female labour in exuberant photographs that capture the passion and struggle of the working life, forming a panoramic survey of social change over four decades.
“My pictures are a testament to the indomitable spirit of women whose work is often unrecognised, whether in factories, working from home or caring for the vulnerable – tradeswomen, community organisers, garment workers, faith leaders, artists, firefighters, shopkeepers, transport workers, cleaners and NHS staff, women who are catering, and many more who sustain and bind together communities with their warmth, labour and fellowship.
The process of searching and building relationships with the women who participate has been an adventure, and these photographs are a celebration of the generosity of these women who welcomed me into their working lives.
It means so much to me and will be an important recognition of all the women I have photographed over the years for this book to be published by Spitalfields Life Books, a perfect home for it.”
Sarah Ainslie
Please help us publish a handsome 200 page hardback to honour the work of these women who shape the fabric of our lives. We are organising a major exhibition of these portraits at the Four Corners photography gallery in Bethnal Green to coincide with publication of the book this autumn.
Please click here to learn more
Loretta Lietch, Electrician 1992 & Evie Spray, Firefighter 2022
Claire Camelo, Bethnal Green Tube Station 2022
Sabeh Miah, Mahmuda Jaigirdas, Cooks 2011 & Sister June, Sister Pam, Cooks 1992
Lanma Horton, Smithfield Market 1992
Lannette Edwards, Machinist 1992 & Hafsa Diallo, Publican, DJ 2022
Sue Venning, Kelly’s Pie & Mash 2011
William Kent’s Arch In Bow
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‘a curious vestige from a catalogue of destruction’
This fine eighteenth century rusticated arch designed by the celebrated architect and designer William Kent was originally part of Northumberland House, the London residence of the Percy family in the Strand which was demolished in 1874. Then the arch was installed in the garden of the Tudor House in St Leonard’s Street, Bow, by George Gammon Rutty before it was moved here to the Bromley by Bow Centre in 1997, where it makes a magnificent welcoming entrance today.
The Tudor House was purchased in a good condition of preservation from the trustees of George Gammon Rutty after his death in 1898 by the London County Council, who chose to demolish it and turn the gardens into a public park. At this point, there were two statues situated at the foot of each of the pillars of the arch but they went missing in the nineteen-forties. One of the last surviving relics of the old village of Bromley by Bow, the house derived its name from a member of the Tudor family who built it in the late sixteenth century adjoining the Old Palace and both were lovingly recorded by CR Ashbee in the first volume of the Survey of London in 1900.
The Survey was created by Ashbee, while he was living in Bow running the Guild of Handicrafts at Essex House (another sixteenth century house nearby that was demolished), in response to what he saw as the needless loss of the Old Palace and other important historic buildings in the capital.
Ever since I first discovered William Kent’s beautiful lonely arch – a curious vestige from a catalogue of destruction – I have been meaning to go back to Bow take a photograph of it when the wisteria was in bloom and, although for a couple of years circumstances conspired to prevent me, eventually I was able to do so and here you see the result.
William Kent (1685 –1748) Architect, landscape and furniture designer
Northumberland House by Canaletto, 1752
Northumberland House shortly before demolition, 1874
William Kent’s arch in the grounds of the Tudor House, Bow, in 1900 with its attendant statues, as illustrated in the first volume of the Survey of London by CR Ashbee (Image courtesy Survey of London/ Bishopsgate Institute)
William Kent’s arch at St Leonard’s Street, Bromley by Bow
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Andy Strowman Remembers His Uncle Barney
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Poet Andy Strowman wrote this memoir and poem as a tribute to his late Uncle Barney whose birthday it is today.
There is a quiet cemetery where you may find yourself the only living soul other than the grave diggers. It is East Ham Jewish cemetery. Amongst the graves is one Barnett Cohen, my Uncle Barney. He is the only Barnett Cohen buried there.
The East End is a sparsely populated Jewish area now. Time has crept away, and Barney and I are of a time long gone. Yet behind each gravestone there is a story.
Uncle Barney was born in Whitechapel in the early twenties, to Milka and Herschel Cohen, refugees who escaped the pogroms, the mass slaughter of Jews, in Eastern Europe.
The memory I have of him is as the personification of kindness. A man with a gentle sense of humour who came to visit our house in Milward St where he had grown up himself, a street that was one hundred and fifty years old when I was born, behind the London Hospital. He was born in Villa, now part of Russia, in 1897 and was married in 1914.
I recall he would always eat an orange after every meal to conclude it. When he visited me and my mum, he would bring us so much joy by doing magic tricks, like holding a penny in place in front of an eye. He confided to me about the time he visited London Zoo dressed in his new suit and a chimpanzee humiliated him. The large creature came to greet him at the side of the cage, then spat water all over his suit while the surrounding crowd laughed.
Yet the bravery of his choice to leave the army during the Second World War as a Conscientious Objector because he did not want to kill anyone revealed the moral courage of the man. Even so, he was ridiculed by North London Jews when he moved there from the East End.
It was something I identified with personally, since when my school moved to Essex, me and my friend were humiliated by Mr Philpott, the head teacher, in front of the school assembly when he said, ‘We will not have children in our school, who live in the gutter and play in the gutter, behaving badly in our school.’ Today I recall those words and how the rest of the school turned to look at us. I still remember how the teacher asked ‘Where’s your pen?’ with the reply, ‘I ain’t got one, Sir.’ To which the teacher said, ‘Speak properly, boy’ and the pupil said ‘I haven’t got one, Sir.’ ‘Not “I haven’t got one”‘ insisted the teacher, ‘I have not got one, Sir.’
So what became of Uncle Barney? He had an arranged marriage to a woman called Dolly. Before I was born, he had lived in the same house where I grew up. His brothers were Jack and David and his sisters were Rachel and Rose. They occupied 17 Milward St behind the London Hospital and their mum and dad were Milka (Millie in English) and Hershel (Harris in English).
I got the feeling that Barney lacked confidence. Much like me, he went to a school where University was not an option. The concern of the day was survival and so he went to work in the garment industry, leaving school at the tender age of fourteen to enter the workplace.
When the World War Two broke out, he enlisted into the army. Sensitivity and inferiority left him unable to hurt anyone and full of fear. He told his sergeant that he did not want to be shipped out to fight. Barney did not want to kill anyone. In all my time of knowing him I never heard him say a bad word about anybody. He was put in the guardhouse and then transferred to Wormwood Scrubs Prison where his weight deteriorated to five and a half stone. Millie, his mother, knew she had to act or risk his death.
She had two sisters who were well-off and lived in North London. One of them went with her to a government office and – as we say in the East End – ‘the old brown envelope’ was handed over and Barney was released.
One retired prison officer told me recently, ‘You wouldn’t have liked it in there. The cells were very small and there was only a tiny courtyard. You could have had someone banging on the wall of the next cell and shouting through the night, and be threatened too. The only time we intervened was if one prisoner hit another.’
Uncle Barney had lost a lot by being in prison and developed a habit of scratching his backside. In the workplace he was not an asset and, if he worked alongside his brother Jack, he continually asked him if it was any good the work he was doing.
When I was sixteen, my mum told me Uncle Barney had endured six sessions of Electro-Convulsive Therapy at Long Grove Hospital, the same place Ronnie Kray went to. The hospital was closed in 1992.
Yet it would be unbalanced to leave out the wonderful kindness bestowed on Uncle Barney that he transferred to others. Nor his sense of humour which he brought out in others with his magic tricks.
Such was his aura and persona that, when I was a child, I did not want Barney to leave. Whenever he visited us at 17 Milward St during his lunch hour from Ellis & Goldstein where he worked and was talking to mum, I crept quietly to the front door and locked it by sliding the bolt across. When my mum struggled to open the door, it prompted a laugh from my Uncle Barney. I must have been about eight years old at the time.
At the tender age of fourteen, my mum was chosen to be bridesmaid at his wedding to Dolly. Marriage can be very hard at times and I am sure the legacy of coming from a poor family and having complex mental health problems demanded much understanding from all the family. In my experience, it can be very challenging not only to get help for it, and good help, but having your family understand what you are going through, because unless they have been through it themselves it can be very straining for them and for the patient.
Barney looking dapper at this son’s wedding
BARNEY
I honour you today
Like an FA cup,
Your eyes glazed by kindness
And your lips sealed by honesty.
Kissing the frontiers of your life
I exchange sugar with Alan Sugar,
Tip toe through the darkness of your life
And strangle the people who ridiculed you.
Hours have passed and light bulbs have died.
We could not stop you going into the Army
Or the mental hospitals,
But we never stopped loving you
For the laughter you gave us.
Daily we watched it grow.
Uncle Barney is fourth from the left at the back at my brother Howard’s Barmitzvah party. I am seated on the chair at the bottom left.
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