Spitalfields Life

Sarah Ainslie, Photographer

May 5, 2026

by the gentle author

It is my pleasure to publish this interview with photographer Sarah Ainslie by Julia Harrison, author of the fascinating literary blog THE SILVER LOCKET.

Lannette Edwards, Machinist at Burberry 1991

I have collaborated with photographer Sarah Ainslie twice in the course of my writing, both occasions were creating portraits of local cafes: Paul Rothe & Sons, near Daunt Books in Marylebone where I work, and Beppe’s Cafe in Smithfield Market near where I live. I was delighted that these pieces were published here by The Gentle Author.

In addition to writing Spitalfields Life, The Gentle Author also produces books, so I was very excited to learn that Spitalfields Life is running a crowdfunding campaign to publish a book of Sarah Ainslie’s portraits of women at work, accompanied by an exhibition of the photos. I was curious to find out how this came about, so last week I met Sarah for a chat about her life as a photographer. I began by asking her when she started taking photographs.

‘When I was ten I had a little box brownie, I think it was called a Brownie 44a and it had two different exposures, a twelve and a thirteen, so you could just press the button. I took pictures of animals and family, things like that.’

Sarah wasn’t interested in the professions suggested to her by her headmistress. ‘I think I always wanted to go into the arts. I had my portrait painted with my brother when I was nine and it was such a visceral experience. I remember thinking at the time, ‘I absolutely love this’. It was the smell of paint. We had these plums to eat and we would just sit there. My brother hated it. It wasn’t a great painting because my brother really didn’t like doing it but it was a pivotal moment for me, being in a room where someone is painting – the smell of it – very physical, and that’s the thing I love about photography and being in the dark room.

I wasn’t very good at painting or drawing so I went to Derby Art College to do photography. It was very male, there were only three of us girls in our year. We shared a dark room and we were doing quite wacky stuff, while the guys were doing pictures of cars and things. Of course, we weren’t interested in anything like that. We were painting emulsion on paper and being experimental. The three of us are still in touch. One is Canadian and I am going to be part of a show with her next year in Canada.

Then I went on a course in printmaking in Oxford, doing etching and lithographs, and I worked with two tutors as their assistant, printing editions. I had never done it before. That’s what brought me to London, the tutors rented a printing studio and asked me if I would come and be their assistant, printing their editions. That would have been in the late seventies.

We decided we needed a space for the etching press, so I was wandering around the East End looking for studios and found myself down in Wapping where I found a studio which we used to do the printmaking. Then I took on another floor which was about 4,000 square feet and divided it up into studios. I did most of it myself, apart from the electricity and plumbing. It was right on the river, an incredible place. Today it is a gated community but it was still a working industrial building then. There were masses of artists in all these buildings and I wanted to have my own space, and I lived there. It was very raw.

I got involved with taking photographs for theatre companies as well as doing my own projects, Brick Lane, Smithfield Meat Market and Shoreditch, at night. I was working mainly in fringe theatre, I really enjoyed working with the Women’s Theatre Group, Shared Experience, Theatre de Complicite and the Almeida.

I built my first darkroom in Wapping. There were six of us and I rented it for a tiny amount of money and then sublet the space. I got to know artists who were living there as well and met a couple of filmmakers Sally Potter and Jo Ann Kaplan, and started working with them. I was working on The Gold Diggers, it was night shoots in the middle of the city and was amazing, filming in all these little hidden alleys around Bank.’

The more we talk, the more fascinated I become with how Sarah found her connection with the city and the area she has loved for so long. ‘I did quite a lot of work with City Limits. They had no money, so when they asked you to do something you got paid hardly anything, but they published my theatre pictures which was helpful for me because it meant other theatre companies saw my work.

When we were thrown out of the building in Wapping, three or four of us got together and found this other building off Columbia Rd. At that time, the whole area was all about furniture and furniture restoration. It had no electricity or running water so we had to put all that in. Friends said this was a mad place to be buying, but it’s where I am now and where I have been since the mid-eighties.’

I tell Sarah that it is no wonder that she feels embedded in the East End, but then she tells me how she worked in South Africa, a fundamental experience in shifting her photography away from theatre. ‘I wanted to get more involved with other projects and be more collaborative,’ she confirms.

‘I went to South Africa with a company called Theatre Nomad and met a woman who asked if I would I like to visit a township. ‘I work with a group of women there and I’m really happy to take you in,’ she said, ‘I’m always asking people to come but no-one ever does.’ So we went and met some of the women, and I did some portraits. Then I realised I want to go back and do more, but I had to consider how I could do that because I am not part of that world. I came up with the idea of giving the women disposable cameras so that they took pictures and then I could make portraits of them.’

At the same time Sarah began a project focussing on striptease in the East End. ‘It happened after an exhibition at Shoreditch. The guy who ran the gallery asked ‘Do you think you would be interested in taking pictures of the strippers? I was keen because the photography I had done before had been in the street but I was keen to be within a community.

Lara, one of the strippers, was trying to organise a fanzine. She wanted to have the strippers’ words and some pictures of them, and pull it all together. A lot of the clubs were closing at that point so I felt it was important. There was one on the Hackney Rd and all the strippers worked in four or five different pubs down towards Bishopsgate. Because she trusted me, Lara took me in and I worked in the way I had worked with the women in Africa. I hung out in the toilets and the back rooms while they were changing. There was a camaraderie between the women, they looked after each other in the same way as the women in South Africa did. This project became the book, Baby Oil & Ice.’

In 1992, Sarah was commissioned by Hackney Museum to document the working lives of women in Hackney and she has continued to photograph women at work ever since, including through her work as Contributing Photographer for Spitalfields Life.

During the hour and a half we spent together I became totally drawn into Sarah’s working life as a photographer. I am amazed by how these projects have taken her into so many different worlds. To Sarah, this is her daily work but to me it is extraordinary. It reminds me of a friend’s catchphrase ‘be bold and proceed.’ When I told Sarah this she said, ‘It’s funny because I never think of myself as being bold at all.’

Sarah Ainslie and The Gentle Author have worked together on many stories over the past sixteen years. In their commitment to supporting and recording lives in their community they are perfectly matched. I wish them every success in reaching their goal of publishing Women at Work: East End Portraits 1992-2025.

Stephen & Paul Rothe. ‘I said look at each other and, of course, what happens is that when they turn back to the camera they relax a bit and smile.‘

Portrait of Daniela and her cousin Sergio outside Beppe’s Cafe in Smithfield

‘Working in this area in the eighties, I was fascinated by Brick Lane market, a surreal place where dramas were being played out in the streets. There was so much chaos, life and energy, with people displaying their personal possessions to sell on the pavements.’

‘Smithfield Market had a strange subterranean feel, where the darkness and glowing lights lit rows of animals hanging off their hooks, reminding me of a Rembrandt. This world I explored has now completely transformed into something much more clinical, losing the soul and humanity of the place it once was.’

Portrait of Rosie in her home in the Grahamstown Township, South Africa

Photos by participants in the Grahamstown project. ‘I had to think of a way of collaborating rather than just going in, taking the pictures and leaving. It was amazing. I went two or three times over a year and then we had an exhibition – part of the Grahamstown Festival. The township had never been part of the festival. It was a great project.’

Dawn, Stripper

‘I was invited to photograph women who worked in the strip pubs in Shoreditch in 1999, it was an invitation into another world. In the very intimate area of the toilets and changing rooms I heard stories about their lives, laughter, banter, boredom, drinking, glamour and camaraderie. I was there when the outfits were chosen for each strip…and there when they returned naked holding their discarded clothes and still wearing their heels.’

Click here to support publication of Sarah Ainslie’s WOMEN AT WORK

At The Punch & Judy Festival

May 4, 2026

by the gentle author

Next tickets available for my tour of Spitalfields on 9th and 16th May

CLICK HERE TO BOOK

One of my favourite annual events in London is the Punch & Judy Festival which is always held on the second Sunday in May at the churchyard of St Paul’s Covent Garden. This year it is to be held on Sunday 10th May.

Carmen Baggs with figures made by her father

On 9th May 1662, Samuel Pepys wrote in his diary “Thence to Covent Garden… to see an Italian puppet play that is within the rayles there, which is very pretty, the best that ever I saw, and a great resort of gallants …” It was the first record of a Punch & Judy show in London and, as a consequence, May 9th has become celebrated as Mr Punch’s birthday – when the all Punch & Judy “professors” gather each year upon the leafy green behind the church.

After an early morning shower on the day of my visit, the sun broke through to impart a lustre to the branches of may blossom growing in the churchyard, which create an elegant foliate surround to the freshly sprouting lawn, where the Punch & Judy booths were being assembled as the centrepiece of the Covent Garden May Fayre. As they set up their booths, the professors were constantly interrupted by the arrival of yet another member of their clan, and emotional greetings were exchanged as they reunited after another year on the road. Yet before long, a whole line of booths encircled the lawn and vibrant red stripes filled my vision whichever direction I chose to turn.

Peter Batty, a Punch & Judy professor of forty years, who has been coming here for thirty years, could not help feeling a touch of melancholy in the churchyard in spite of the beauty of the morn. “We go from one box to another,” he said, reaching up with the hand that was not holding Mr Punch to touch his booth protectively, and recalling those professors who will not be seen upon this green again. “I think of Joe Beeby, Percy Press – the first and the second, Hugh Cecil and Smoky the Clown,” he confided to me regretfully – “People keep getting old.”

Yet Peter works in partnership with his youthful wife, Mariake, and their fourteen year old son, Martin, who is just starting out with his own shows. “It’s such a lovely way of life, we’re really lucky when so many people have to do proper jobs, and it’s a brilliant way to bring up children.” she assured me, cradling Judy, while Martin nodded in agreement, holding the Policeman. “We play together and have a fantastic time – it suits us very well and it’s completely stress free.” she declared. They were an appealing paradox, this contented family who had found happiness in performing Mr Punch and his bizarre drama of domestic violence.

“I was just a bored housewife,” recalled Mrs Back to Front, a lively Punch & Judy professor with her brightly coloured clothes reversed, “twenty-nine years ago, I had a six month old baby and a three year old son, and I was asked to do a puppet show for a fete at his school and I was converted to it. I came here to Covent Garden and I bought a set of Punch & Judy puppets, and I got a swozzle too and found I could use it straightaway.” Then, with a chuckle of satisfaction at the exuberant life she has invented for herself and batting her glittery eyelashes in pleasure, she announced – “My six month old baby is now Dizzy Lolly – she does magic and she’s very good with a monkey puppet too.”

My next encounter was with Geoff Felix, an experienced puppeteer with a background in film, television and theatre who has been doing Punch & Judy since 1982.“I was influenced by Joe Beeby,” he explained, revealing his source of inspiration, “he saw a show in 1926, which the player learnt from someone in the nineteenth century, and Joe kept it going. And that’s how the oral tradition has been preserved.” Geoff explained that the Punch & Judy characters we recognise today, both in appearance and in the story, are based upon those of Giovanni Piccini whose play was transcribed by John Payne Collier in 1828 and illustrated by George Cruikshank. Casting his eyes around at his peers, “It is the swozzle that unites us,” he whispered to me, as if it were a sacred bond, when referring to the metal instrument in the mouth used to make the shrill voice of Mr Punch – “it forces us to create shows based in action.”

Then, Alix Booth, a feisty Scotswoman in a top hat, who has been a Punch & Judy professor for thirty-seven years, told me, “When I was eleven, I inherited a set of paper mache figures. I started working with them and in the end I was doing small shows in Lanark. I still have the figures, over a hundred years old, and although I had to replace Mr Punch’s coat, his waistcoat and trousers are perfect. My figures are based on the Piccini book of 1828, they have their mouths turned down at the ends and huge staring eyes – nowadays Mr Punch is sometimes given a smile, but I prefer him with his mouth turned down, it’s more realistic.”

“I have learnt my craft, and I can keep a children’s party happy for an hour and a half without any trouble at all.” she informed me plainly. “But it was very much for adults originally – entertainment for the Georgian man in the street and it’s full of laughs – it’s all in the timing.”

After my conversations with the professors, I was delighted to stand and enjoy the surreal quality of all the booths lined up like buses at a terminus when I have only ever seen them alone before – yet what was fascinating were the differences in spite of the common qualities. There were short fat ones and tall skinny ones, plain and fancy, with the height defined by the reach of each individual puppeteer. And while the red and white theatres standing under the great chestnut tree awaited their audiences, the professors enjoyed the quiet of the morning to catch up and swap stories.

“It has established a club, brought us all together and kept the tradition alive,” Alix asserted, turning impassioned in her enthusiasm, “And that’s so important, because every year new young performers come along and join us.” But then we were interrupted by the brass band heralding the arrival of Mr Punch and we realised that, as we had been talking, crowds of people had gathered. It was a perfect moment of spring in London, but for Punch & Judy professors it was the highlight of the year.

Professor David Wilde has the largest collection of Punch & Judy puppets – over six hundred.

Professor Geoffrey Felix, scenery based upon a design by Jesson and Mr Punch in the style of Piccini.

Professor James Arnott restores and repaints old figures.

Mrs Back To Front

Professor Alix Booth, thirty-seven years doing Punch & Judy professionally.

The Batty Family of Puppeteers, Mariake, Martin and Peter.

Professor Brian Baggs, also known as “Bagsie.”

Professor Paul Tuck – “I’ve only been let out for today – I’m really a ladies’ hairdresser.”

Parade to celebrate the arrival of Mr Punch in Covent Garden.

You may also like to read about

At the Pearly Kings & Queens Harvest Festival

At the 65th Annual Grimaldi Service

Beating the Bounds in the City of London

At the Baishaki Mela in Spitalfields

The Widow’s Buns at Bow

Stepney’s Lost Mansions

May 3, 2026

by the gentle author

Click here to order a copy of Journal of a Man Unknown

Today I publish Novelist & Historian, Gillian Tindall‘s exploration of the lost mansions of Stepney that came to light during the Elizabeth Line construction

Three hundred years ago, Stepney was still green fields with just a frill of ribbon-development along the main road and around St Dunstan’s. Even at the beginning of the nineteenth century, though terraces of neat Regency houses were spreading fast, there was pasture land beyond. The Stepney of Cockney tradition only arrived with the expansion of the docks, the laying of railway lines to service them, and the rapid in-filling of the fields with rows and rows of small houses for the population that provided the work force.

But what was Stepney like before – much longer ago – when London was still contained within its medieval walls whose gates shut at night? By one of those flukes of time and chance, it was the construction of the Elizabeth Line which helped literally to bring to light what Stepney once was. Near the church, where the line divides in two, a big access and ventilation shaft was constructed on the site of one of the area’s oldest recorded buildings. From early Victorian times until the Second World War, streets covered this acre of land and there was no possibility of recovering the lost big house that only existed as a vague folk memory. Yet bombs and planners between them have so devastated this area that archaeological excavation has now become possible. By this means, the foundations of long ago, cess-pits, animal bones, shards of pottery and glass and even the seeds of plants that once grew round a moat, have again been revealed.

The archaeologists of the London Museum, who undertook the excavations, knew from local lore and earlier, partial digs that something important had stood there. Maps as late as the nineteenth century record ‘King John’s Palace’ – or, at least, the towered gateway to it. In fact, there is no evidence that King John (reigning from 1199 to 1216) had a house in Stepney. It has been said that whenever the origins of a venerable building passed from the memory of man, it is ascribed to the wicked King John because there was only one, making him easier to distinguish from the bevy of royal Henries, Edwards and Richards.

The gateway, which survived till 1858 when it was witlessly demolished by the non-conformist institution occupying the site, appears to have belonged to a Tudor edifice dating from after 1450, well over two hundred years later than John’s reign, though it may have been constructed upon the foundations of an earlier building. It is this Tudor house, complete with a moat, that the archaeologists have been excavating – thought to be the ‘Great Place’ belonging to a John Fenne, that was rented to a Lord Darcy when Henry VIII was a young and popular monarch, and the divorces, the beheadings and the Reformation lay in the future.

This was not the only grand house set in these fields at that time. Stepney, an easy walk or ride from London proper, was becoming popular as a dormitory suburb for prominent courtiers and men of the City. There were several big houses not far from St Dunstan’s church, including one where the City Farm is now that was owned by Henry Colet, a leading member of the Mercers Company. This appears to have been a traditional timbered courtyard house, not quite as grand as Lord Darcy’s home even if the Colets turned it into a meeting place for the great and good of their day.

Only one of the twenty-two children that Dame Colet bore survived, a tragic record even for those times of high infant mortality, but John Colet, the sole survivor, was to become famous. As Dean of St Paul’s, he founded the school that still bears that name in west London today. Upon his father’s death he acquired his acquired a large, timbered house for himself near by, set among orchards at the corner of today’s Salmon Lane. Here he entertained the leading European thinkers of his generation, including the reformist scholar Erasmus.

Dean Colet died of ‘the sweating sickness’ in 1519 which may have been just as well, for if he had lived fifteen years longer he – with his radical views on religion – might well have lost his head to Henry VIII, like his younger friend and protegé, Thomas More. During the chaos of the Reformation, it was probably at the former Colet house that Thomas Cromwell, the King’s right-hand man, lived in state. He sent his neighbour Darcy to the gallows for opposing the King – with Darcy angrily prophesying that one day Cromwell’s head would be cut off too. And so it was.

Two generations later, after Elizabeth I had been Queen for many years, life was more settled and new money flowed from overseas. The moated Place with a gatehouse in Stepney was acquired by Henry Somerset, later Marquis of Worcester. He undertook works to smarten and modernise the property, and his name became permanently attached to it. Somerset came near to losing his own head in the next round of mayhem – the Civil War and the execution of Charles I – and, after him, the supposed ‘King John’s Palace’ became used by as series of non-conformist religious groups. A Meeting House, assorted chapels and then terraced houses were built on the gardens.

A new gentry replaced the old in Stepney. These were men who made fortunes in foreign trade and Stepney, near to where their ships were berthed, was well-recognised as ‘a convenient spot for the habitation of mariners.’ Some lived in the old, courtyard houses of earlier generations, while others built themselves modern gentlemen’s residences in classical brick. In the late eighteenth century, the old Colet house became the ‘Spring Gardens Coffee House.’ Then, in the nineteenth century it, like Dean Colet’s house, Worcester House was destroyed when these ancient mansions were pulled down to be replaced by narrow streets, as Stepney was swallowed up by London.

Now those streets are gone, the greater part of them needlessly demolished not by World War II bombs but by post-war planners dreaming of ‘green spaces’ and ‘radiant towers.’ Yet incendiary bombs did fall close to St Dunstan’s church onto the site of Worcester House. They destroyed a Baptist chapel which, when it was built in the eighteen forties, had been only a few yards along the road from the then-just-surviving gate-house to ‘King John’s Palace’. The chapel’s mock-Tudor doorway alone still stands. I suspect that increasing numbers of people may think this nineteenth century remnant is a legacy from medieval times – King John lives!

A similar illusion is also available in the heart of the City Farm just down the road, on what was once the south side of Worcester House’s grounds, near the Colets’ home. Here, in the eighteen sixties, a grand, Congregationalist church was built in the fashionable Gothic style. It too fell to firebombs early in the War. Today, sacks and seed boxes are piled up and free-range chickens peck round the stone wall and arched doorway that is all that remains. So battered have these not-very-ancient structures been, by misfortune, abandonment and the weather, that it is quite possible to believe that you are gazing at something far older – and the long-ago grand people of Stepney do not seem so far away.

Old stone wall at Stepney City Farm

Dean Colet by Hans Holbein the younger

Dean Colet’s house, c.1790

The Baptist College, 1840

Gloomy Sunday by John Claridge (Stepney in the sixties)

St Dunstan’s church

You may also like to read about

Vera Hullyer, Parishioner of St Dunstan’s

Fred Iles, Meter Fixer

Marie Iles, Machinist

Ian Lowe, Blacksmith

Nicholas Culpeper, Herbalist Of Spitalfields

May 2, 2026

by the gentle author

May Day 1835 by George Cruikshank. Meet me this Bank Holiday Monday on the steps of St Paul’s for a jovial ramble through the alleys of the Square Mile in search of the wonders and the wickedness of the City of London. Click here to book

It is my pleasure to publish this profile of the famous herbalist of Spitalfields by Patricia Cleveland-Peck, gardener and writer.

Nicholas Culpeper (1616-1654)

Of all Spitalfields’ past residents, one name stands out above others – Nicholas Culpeper, born on October 18th 1616, a herbalist and medical practitioner operating from Red Lion St (now Commercial St) who devoted his life to healing, and especially to healing the poor.

While apprenticed to the apothecary Francis Drake of Bishopsgate, Nicholas accompanied Thomas Johnson (later editor of the 1633 edition of Gerard’s Herball) on plant hunting excursions. He loved herbs since boyhood and became expert at their identification, essential in those days when almost all ailments were treated with plants. Herbals served as handbooks for doctors in which each plant was named together with its ‘virtues’ or uses. Nicholas’ skill in this subject, coupled with the fact that he was very caring, meant that the people of Spitalfields flocked to him – sometimes as many as forty a morning – and they commonly received treatment for little or no payment.

This was not popular among Nicholas Culpeper’s qualified medical colleagues who were infuriated by his view that, “no man deserved to starve to pay an insulting, insolent physician.” He also believed in “English herbs for English bodies,” and went out gathering his own herbs from the countryside for free which did not endear him to the apothecaries who often insisted on expensive imported exotic plants for their ‘cures’.

In those days, there were strict divisions between what university-educated physicians, apothecaries and barber-surgeons (who drew teeth and let blood) were allowed to do. Physicians were expensive, so for most sick people the first port of call would be their own herb garden or still room, the second the ‘wise woman’ down the road, the third a visit to the apothecary – after which, for many, there was no other option but to let the illness run its course.

In 1649, Nicholas inflamed the establishment by producing an English translation of their latin ‘bible’ the Pharmacopoeia Londinensis which included all the recipes for their medicines. Published as A Physical Directory, it not only revealed the secret ingredients but gave instructions on how to administer them – one of his most important contributions, as it provided the first effective self-help book to which people could turn.

Even more galling for the medical fraternity was the fact Nicholas had never completed his apprenticeship, and chose Spitalfields to set up a semi-legal practice because it was outside the City of London and thus not governed by the rules of the College of Physicians. Spitalfields in those days was quite different from today, beyond the site of huge priory of St Mary Spital stretched the farmland of Spital Field. The priory had been dissolved under Henry VIII although parts of the precincts were still inhabited, and it was an area which attracted outsiders like Nicholas who, as well as treating his patients, was something of a political radical. In his pamphlets, he railed against the king, priests and lawyers as well as physicians. Consequently he was no stranger to controversy and at one point was even accused of witchcraft – just one of the many troubles which accumulated to beset him during his life.

The first of these even occurred thirteen days before his life began, for it was then that his father died leaving his mother without support. She and the new-born Nicholas were obliged to return to the protection of her father, William Attersole, vicar of the little village of Isfield in Sussex. Attersole was not happy about this arrangement but, although he did not welcome the child, he did see it as his religious duty to provide instruction for him as he grew. Young Nicholas learned the scriptures and the classics, he studied mathematics and, under his grandfather’s guidance, began to take an interest in astrology which later featured in his own works. He even stole a book on anatomy out of the library (where he was only supposed to read the bible) and read it in a barn.

Importantly, he also spent a lot of time with his mother who we know owned a copy of Gerard’s Herball. She was responsible for the health of the household and, from his later works, we can glean the fact that he soon became familiar with all the local Sussex ‘simples’ or wild herbs. We know only little of this period of his life, but it is thought that he went to school in Lewes before – at the age of sixteen – setting off for Cambridge ostensibly to follow in his grandfather’s footsteps by studying theology. Once there, he began to attended lectures on anatomy and, perhaps frustrated that he couldn’t change to medicine, he spent most of his time smoking, drinking and socialising in taverns.

Yet the reason for his dropping out is a sad one. Young though he was, before leaving Sussex, Nicholas had fallen in love with Judith Rivers, a local heiress. She reciprocated his love and thus, knowing her family would never consent to the relationship, they planned to elope. They were to meet near Lewes and marry secretly, but on the way Judith’s coach was struck by lightning and she was killed. Nicholas was devastated and spent months sunk in melancholy. There was no question of his returning to Cambridge to study medicine or anything else. Eventually he chose to come to London and become an apothecary. Socially, this was a step down but he enjoyed his time at Bishopsgate and became very proficient.

Nicholas was twenty-four when he found love again. Called to treat a Mr Field for gouty arthritis, his eyes fell upon the fifteen-year-old daughter of the house, Alice. By a stroke of good fortune, she too was an heiress and it was her considerable dowry which enabled Nicholas to build a house in Red Lion St, Spitalfields from which he conducted his practice.

When the Civil War broke out two years later, the anti-royalist Nicholas signed up with Cromwell. Once his profession was discovered however, the recruiting offer commented, “We do not need you at the battlefield…come along as the field surgeon since most of the barbers and physicians are royal asses and we have use for someone to look after our injured.” Later, during the battle of Reading, Nicholas himself was wounded.

On his return to Spitalfields, he devoted himself to study and writing, and produced a number of books including a Directory for Midwives. Nicholas recognised that this was an unusual topic for a male herbalist, writing in the dedication, “If you (the matron) by your experiences find anything not according to the truth ( for I am a man and therefore subject to failings) first judge charitably of me…” Having grown up so close to his mother, Nicholas had a deep respect of women but this book may also have been inspired by some painful experiences in his own family for, although Alice bore him seven children, only one daughter lived to adulthood.

In 1652, Nicholas published his master work The English Physician also known as Culpeper’s Herbal which became the standard work for three hundred years and is still in print. It was sold cheaply and made its way to America where it had a lasting impact too. By 1665, ten years after his death, Nicholas’ name was so well-known that the Lord Mayor of London chose to use it alongside that of Sir Walter Raleigh in a pamphlet about avoiding infection from the Great Plague.

Nicholas Culpeper deserves to be remembered. He was always on the side of the underdog, he opposed the ‘closed shop’ of earlier physicians and he promoted sensible self-help. He also tried to offer reasonable explanations for what he wrote – “Neither Gerard nor Parkinson or any that ever wrote in a like manner ever gave one wise reason for what they wrote and so did nothing else but train up young novices in Physic in the School of Tradition, and teach them just as a parrot is taught… But in mine you see a reason for everything that is written.”

He died in 1654, aged only thirty-eight, of tuberculosis and is believed to be buried beneath Liverpool St Station.

Title page of the 1790 edition of Culpeper’s English Physician & Complete Herbal, published by C.Stalker, 4 Stationer’s Court, Ludgate St.

Plates from the edition published by Richard Evans, 8 White’s Row, Spitalfields, August 12th, 1814.

Red Lion House, Nicholas Culpeper’s home in Spitafields. Becoming the Red Lion Tavern after his death, the building was demolished in the eighteen-forties as part of road widening when Commercial St was cut through to carry traffic from the docks.

“Culpeper’s house, of which there are woodcuts extant, it is of wood, and is situated the corner of Red Lion Court and Red Lion Street, Spitalfields. It is now and has long been a public house, known by the sign of the Red Lion, but at the time it was inhabited by the sage herbalist, it was independent of other buildings. While in the occupation of Culpeper, who died in 1654, this house stood in Red Lion Field and was as a dispensary of medicines (perhaps the first) of very considerable celebrity.” The European Magazine and London Review, January 1812. Red Lion St and Red Lion Court as shown on John Horwood’s map (1794-99) before Commercial St was cut through in the nineteenth century.

Plaque commemorating Nicholas Culpeper installed thanks to a campaign by Spitalfields Life

You may also like to read about

The Auriculas of Spitalfields

Thomas Fairchild, Gardener of Hoxton

On International Workers’ Day

May 1, 2026

by the gentle author

On International Workers’ Day, we celebrate the work of women who shape the fabric of our lives but who are too often unseen. These portraits are from Sarah Ainslie’s book WOMEN AT WORK which we are currently crowdfunding to publish this autumn.

Thanks to the contributions of 68 supporters we have raised £7,174 in the first two weeks but we still have quite a way to go to reach our target of £25,000.

If you have not yet contributed please consider doing so now.

Click here to support publication of WOMEN AT WORK

Denise Martin, Street Sweeper, Hackney 1992

Annette Wakerley, Locksmith, Roman Rd 2018

Ivy Harris & E Vidal, Cleaners, Homerton Hospital, Hackney 1992

Sarah Pillar, Senior Midwife, Barkantine Birth Centre, Isle of Dogs 2012

Jane Harris, Carpenter, Hackney 1992

Janet Savage, Funeral Director, Bethnal Green 2022

Judy Benoit, Musician/Producer, Omni Studio, Hackney 1992

Mrs Mustapha, Manager Nazal Dry-Cleaners, Hackney Rd 201o

Karen Francis & Carol Donovan, Rubbish, Collectors, Hackney 1992

Perdi Finn, Gardener, Bethnal Green 2022

Lilly Claridge, Volunteer, Age Concern, Hackney 1992

Dr-Anu-Kumar, GP Elsdale Surgery, Hackney 2023

Rosemary More, Architect, Hackney 1992

Lynda Oazer, Campaigner, Solidarity Britannia Food Bank, Bethnal Green

Eileen Fischer, Domestic Violence Police Officer, Hackney 1992

Kelly Wood, Carer (with Kitty Warden) Silk Court Care Home, Bethnal Green 2022

Mrs Sherman, Dentist, Hackney 1992

Mother Erin Clark, Rector, St Matthews Bethnal Green 2022

Liz Hollingsworth, Firefighter, Shoreditch Fire Station, 1992

Frances Mayhew, Saviour & Director of Wiltons Music Hall, Wapping 2010

Donna Wood, Postwoman, Emma St Sorting Office 1992

Donna Wood, Postwoman, Emma St Sorting Office 2022

Click here to support publication of Sarah Ainslie’s WOMEN AT WORK

On The Eve Of May Day

April 30, 2026

by the gentle author

Street Strolling Clowns by John Thomas Smith, 1816 (courtesy Bishopsgate Institute)

Sweeps on May Day in the City of London c. 1920 (courtesy Bishopsgate Institute)

Meet me on May Day, at 2pm on the steps of St Paul’s and we shall undertake a jovial tour of sightseeing and storytelling together, rambling through the alleys and byways of the Square Mile in search of the wonders, the mysteries and the wickedness of the City of London.

CLICK TO BOOK FOR MY CITY OF LONDON TOUR ON MON 4th MAY

May Day is a traditional time of celebration in London when we look forward to the summer that lies ahead, so I present this chapbook of The Seasons by W S Johnson from 1846 which was brought to my attention by Sian Rees.

Courtesy of McGill Library

You may also like to take a look at

The Juvenile Almanac

The Trade of The Gardener

Darton’s Nursery Songs

The Little Visitors

Paul Anthony Gardner’s East End

April 29, 2026

by the gentle author

Click here to book for my Tour of Spitalfields

Over the last quarter century, Photographer Paul Anthony Gardner (not the famous paper bag seller of the same name) has been recording the diverse architectural heritage of the East End. In the intervening years, some buildings have been cherished while others have been neglected and too many have been destroyed, but thanks to Paul we have these atmospheric photographs as evidence.