Comments on: Two Spitalfields Shopkeepers

By: George Kearse

George Kearse — Sun, 06 Apr 2025 13:30:53 +0000

‘Black Jacks four for a farthing’ one of my earliest memories from around ’56 / ’57

By: Keith Hehir-Lynch

Keith Hehir-Lynch — Mon, 09 Dec 2024 02:11:42 +0000

My mam lived above the shop with her friend Marie. My mam was a single mother with me and married Martin Hehir from the great eastern building. There were a lot of Hehir’s in the buildings (Irish) and I remember the buildings growing up very well growing up and playing on the roof. My mam lodged with the Obriens at first after leaving the shop in the buildings then met me dad.

By: steven harris

steven harris — Thu, 09 Jul 2020 15:06:38 +0000

@Cheryl
These are my memories and recollections as a 9 year old. I didn’t have your adult or modern knowledge/insight. Maybe he was good to others; if so, I never saw it. As for his family background I am very sorry to hear that anyone went through that – nobody should suffer that – but I can only recount what I knew as a child and what a few others have said to me. It’s absolutely nothing to do with mean spiritedness.

By: Cheryl

Cheryl — Mon, 22 Jun 2020 09:28:13 +0000

Harry Fishman was indeed a lovely man. But what a mean-spirited piece of writing about Leon. I heard that he was a hard working ex soldier who lost all his family in the Holocaust and have read on other sites that he was very good to his customers in the community. I guess he just didn’t like people who thought it was fun to steal from him. Go figure….

By: Barry Moger

Barry Moger — Sun, 09 Jun 2019 10:44:41 +0000

I too have fond memories of Harry Fishman’s shop and the man himself from the early 1970s when I worked in the offices at Truman’s Brewery. Many times I witnessed the discreet sale of a single cigarette but my abiding memory is of a hot summer’s day and being perhaps the most junior in the office at the time, I was sent across the road to Harry’s shop to purchase a block of vanilla ice cream and a bottle of R White’s Cream Soda. Back in the office these were put together in Truman’s glasses (of course!) and I had my first taste of ice cream soda. I really don’t know why, but some 48 years later I haven’t had another ice cream soda and now I doubt I ever will for fear of diminishing my memory of Brick Lane and the inimitable Harry Fishman!

By: Afia Khatun

Afia Khatun — Wed, 29 Nov 2017 13:06:23 +0000

I used to buy all my sweets and comics from Harry’s shop..I was mad about girls comics..I do remember buying sweets for half a penny..this was in the early 70’s..if I recall, he was quite elderly and moved slowly..if I was short, he would say ‘go on, pay me next time’..I used to buy all my favourite comics..we lived a few doors away and went to Harry’s shop every day to get our sweets..it used to seem like an alladins cave..Marion was’t so friendly and seemed quite strict..she always had make up on and her brown hair permed..also, she was quite bossy with harry and I used to Greek sorry for him..I stopped going to the shop after the street was closed because of the compulsorary purchase. My dad had a workshop in the house..we were rehoused in Flower and Dean Walk and after school, I had to go to the old house to see my dad, they he moved his workshop to chicks and street. This when I stopped visiting our original end of Brick Lane and I didn’t see Harry again. He was a really lovely shopkeeper.

By: Clive Elsworth

Clive Elsworth — Sun, 05 Nov 2017 13:54:18 +0000

Nice work Steve.

Have you read ‘A Kestrel for a Knave’? You might be able to write a similar book – and hit the big time.

By: Sheila

Sheila — Sat, 10 Jun 2017 23:23:18 +0000

I lived in great eastern buildings all my life It first meeting with this lovely man was as a child he used to serve me sweets then into adulthood with cigarettes then when I was 25 I got married and harry did me the honour of saying grace at my wedding . So I knew him all my life truly a gentle soul always had a smile for me bless him kind regards Sheila Butt nee Bell

By: ASW

ASW — Sat, 13 May 2017 23:50:35 +0000

I remember I had a bleeding nose bleed on the way home from school and Harry kindly asked what was wrong and gave me a packet of tissues to wipe away the blood. Also remember the old Ford Anglia he drove. One time he gave all of us kids cramming into the back a lift.

As for Leon, grumpy old soul most times. There were the old occasion on one of his goods could
be civil, but that was rare. There was the bakery in between Harry’s and Leon’s. Always wary about buying bread and cakes there though.

A friend used to work for his son, Paul. Wonder what became of Paul. He ran a computer payroll business, and I remember his computer in a tiny flat in Farringdon using punch cards for the programming.

Cheers Steve, look forward to more.

ASW

By: danny lyons

danny lyons — Fri, 12 May 2017 05:42:12 +0000

What a great piece of writing. The little vignettes that pepper the broader story work extremely well, and provide the context of the story, namely that being poor doesn’t make you necessarily bad, but that being a bad person affects one’s behavior when one is down poverty street.

In both of your pieces there’s a nice level of dualism, and you mix the causality of goodness and badness with the actual practicality of it all, and this draws the reader in.

Who doesn’t know good people and bad people? And who doesn’t love the naughty things that good people get up to, laid nicely alongside the horrible things that bad people get up to.
There is a good exploration of moral boundaries here, and you make it very clear on which side you stand.

I have thoroughly enjoyed reading both of your extracts, and I think the greatest praise that I can give is that it really does bring memories flooding back about my childhood days, also spent in the 1960s East End.

Thanks a million, and more please, if you can.