Spitalfields Nippers At Broadway Bookshop

Your last chance to hear me talking about Horace Warner’s Spitalfields Nippers this year is at Broadway Bookshop in Broadway Market, Hackney, next Wednesday 17th December at 7pm, when I shall be showing the photographs and reading biographies of the children in the pictures. This event is free and tickets can be reserved by emailing books@broadwaybookshophackney.com

“Adelaide Springett in all her best clothes” photographed by Horace Warner c. 1900

Adelaide Springett was born in February 1893 in the parish of St George-in-the-East, Wapping. Her father, William Springett came from Marylebone and her mother Margaret from St Lukes, Old St. Both parents were costermongers, although William was a dock labourer when he first married. Adelaide’s twin sisters, Ellen and Margaret, died at birth and another sister, Susannah, died aged four. Adelaide attended St Mary’s School and then St Joseph’s School. The addresses on her school admissions were 12 Miller’s Court, Dorset St, and then 26 Dorset St. In 1901, at eight years old, she was recorded as lodging with her mother at the Salvation Army Shelter in Hanbury St. Adelaide Springett died in 1986 in Fulham aged ninety-three, without any traceable relatives, and the London Borough of Kensington & Chelsea Social Services Department was her executor.

Click here to order a copy of SPITALFIELDS NIPPERS by Horace Warner

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