Postcards From Petticoat Lane
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Today I am sending you postcards from Petticoat Lane. Here are the eager crowds of a century ago, surging down Middlesex St and through Wentworth St, everyone hopeful for a bargain and hungry for wonders, dressed in their Sunday best and out to see the sights. Yet this parade of humanity is itself the spectacle, making its way from Spitalfields through Petticoat Lane Market and up to Aldgate, before disappearing into the hazy distance. There is an epic quality to these teeming processions which, a hundred years later, appear emblematic of the immigrants’ passage through this once densely populated neighbourhood, where so many came in search of a better life.
At a casual glance, these old postcards are so similar as to be indistinguishable – but it is the differences that are interesting. On closer examination, the landmarks and geography of the streets become apparent and then, as you scrutinise the details of these crowded compositions, individual faces and figures stand out from the multitude. Some are preoccupied with their Sunday morning, while others raise their gaze in vain curiosity – like those gentlemen above, comfortable at being snapped for perpetuity whilst all togged up in their finery.
When the rest of London was in church, these people congregated to assuage their Sunday yearning in a market instead, where all temporal requirements might be sought and a necessary sense of collective human presence appreciated within the excited throng. At the time these pictures were taken, there was nowhere else in London where Sunday trading was permitted and, since people got paid in cash on Friday, if you wanted to buy things cheap at the weekend, Petticoat Lane was the only place to go. It was a dramatic arena of infinite possibility where you could get anything you needed, and see life too.
Images copyright © Bishopsgate Institute
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Wow! That’s the first thing that came to my mind. Then I realized that in most of these photographs the throngs are made up by men… Women only appear around vegetable stalls. Please, give my regards to Schrödinger.
Mathilde’s claim that women appear only around vegetable stalls is obviously untrue. I looked specially and found that I could see many women but that it required more careful scrutiny because they are generally shorter and their hats less prominent. But many dresses and aprons can be seen.
“……a necessary sense of collective human presence”. My mind got caught on that phrase, and how perfectly it suited the photos above. Given the chance to time travel back to London on that Sunday morning, I would prefer the Market to the Church. I would select a hat, shawl and my most comfortable shoes, gather up a few carry bags and then I would wade in; eager to witness the faces, hands, garb, chatter, attitudes and glances of my fellow shoppers.
What tremendous crowds went to the Markets back then. I loved Petticoat Lane, and the Columbia Flower Market, but no longer living in London so it’s a long time since I’ve been to either. Still thankfully have a small twice weekly market in the Market Town I now live in.
I remember Sunday mornings in East Street Market Walworth with crowds just like this in the late 1950s -1960s. You all shuffled along heading for your favorite stalls, always (on Sundays) for me was the Seafood stalls for a bowl of Jellied Eels with a chunk of bread and a plate of cockles with a bag of Winkles to take home for my Mum,s tea. Fresh fruit and Veg for Sunday dinner. Who thought then that this way of life for us Londoners would ever end!