After three weeks of crowdfunding – thanks to the generosity of  87 supporters – we have raised £11,304, which is close to half of our target of £25,000 to publish the book of Sarah Ainslie’s photographs, accompanied by an exhibition of the pictures.

We have just a week to go now and I call upon my readers to help us at this crucial moment. If every reader of Spitalfields Life gave even a small donation, we could reach our total today. Additionally, if you are able to contribute now, this will build momentum and encourage others.

CLICK HERE TO VISIT THE CROWDFUND

I believe Sarah Ainslie’s book is important. Firstly, because these are seriously good photographs. Secondly, because our world is shaped by the work done by women who are too often unseen and this project is a means to give them visibility and celebrate them. Thirdly, because – by documenting working women through four decades – Sarah has created a vital record of social change.

Below you can read some of the things supporters have been saying and see some pages from the book.

‘Sarah Ainslie’s portraits are always wonderful, and it will be a joy to see these pictures of women gathered together in what will I know be the be the beautiful trademark hardback of a Spitalfields Life publication.’ Arbabella Warner

‘Wonderful to see this compelling visual testimony to women’s work. Thank you for bringing it to light.’ Olivia Horsfall Turner

‘Thank you for your work recognising and celebrating women’s lives.’ Caz Richards

‘Lived in the East End for 40+ years. An inspired book Sarah.’ LisaFerguson

‘Good luck with the book. It sounds great.’ Alice Rawsthorn

‘This is an amazing project. Good luck with the crowdfund and looking forward to the publication. Best, Fatima’

‘Looking forward to seeing this in print. Well done Sarah!’ David Hoffman

‘This will be a wonderful, inspiring and fascinating book. So looking forward to seeing it published.’ Mary Norden

‘Bravo for the women doing the work, and Sarah for celebrating them!’ Robin Huffman

‘The Alcove in Rhode Island is one of the only publicly accessible libraries in the world focused entirely on women at work. We are thrilled to support this book, and to someday boast a copy on our shelves.’

‘Lovely portraits of terrific women. It’s so nice to see ordinary people and their work photographed with such skill.’ Mary Dalton

‘What an amazing project! So happy to support it.’ Vivienne Palmer

‘A wonderful celebration of the work of women in the East End. For my 3rd great great grandmother Isabella Hirst and her four daughters Isabella, Charlotte, Elizabeth and Harriett.’ Carolyn Hirst

Here are a few excerpts from the pages of the book.

Bow food bank volunteers

‘There are number of women who work in teams like the rubbish collectors and street sweepers. When I went out on the dustcart in Hackney it was interesting to experience at first-hand what their work entails and how much we don’t think about the services that are seemingly unseen, it also gave me an insight into how important it was for them to be able to create their own systems of working as a team, to be in charge of their own patch in their own way. Often the smell would become overwhelming as we drove around the streets, stopping periodically to collect and empty the bins. I really enjoyed the moments during their tea breaks whilst sitting in the back of the truck chatting, laughing and sharing snippets of their lives with each other as they did crosswords.’ Sarah Ainslie

‘I think one of the most fascinating places in the East End is C. E. Burns in Bacon St, a second-hand furniture and bric-a-brac store, and finding Carol Burns within her personal domain of a garden shed that is her office, she is a woman in charge sitting gloriously in the midst of the office paraphernalia, filing boxes filled with receipts spilling everywhere, memorabilia and family photos especially those of her dad Charlie Burns who was an East End waste paper merchant and boxing entrepreneur. I loved all these details that told a story about her and the family and the life that they had lived and whose business she now runs.’ Sarah Ainslie

‘The labour force in the area of health, well-being and caring is predominantly made up of women who are often unrecognised for their work, their capacity for care is so vital to each of our lives. It was a great experience to have access to so many different hospital departments at Homerton Hospital where everyone gave me their precious time and a greater understanding of how a hospital works, especially as I had been a patient there only the year before. As I photographed I very quickly realized that everyone from consultants, doctors, nurses, midwives and admin staff to cleaners, physios, chaplains, and porters are interdependent and all equally important to each other and the patients, and without any one of those elements the hospital would cease to function properly.’ Sarah Ainslie

‘I discovered Shirif Izzet one morning when I walked into Solis Launderette (owned by her brother) where she is the manager. She was so welcoming to me and everyone who came in, and as we were chatting, she kept going off to make mugs of tea and biscuits for the elders who were waiting for their washing. On the walls there were photographs of customers and postcards that they had sent from their holidays, revealing a genuine feeling of warmth and care for the community. When I asked about coming to photograph her, she immediately said she would and was happy to do it right there and then, so that’s what we did. Launderettes are part of the wonderful places to have around us, not just to get your washing done or a service wash but a place that is warm and friendly to hang out in, they are a hub like cafes, chicken shops, libraries and community centres.’ Sarah Ainslie

I love to visit dark old houses on bright sunny days. There is something delicious about stepping from the light of the day into the dark of the interior, almost as if the transition from one zone to another was that of time travel, from the present into another era.

I wonder if this notion is a residue of my childhood, when my parents took me on holiday trips to visit stately homes, so that now I associate these charismatically crumbling old piles of architecture with bright English afternoons.

Such were my feelings when visiting Sutton House, the oldest house in the East End, recently. It made me think of the country mansions of city burghers that once filled Spitalfields before the streets were laid out and the terraces built up.

Built between 1534-5 by Ralph Sadleir, an associate of Thomas Cromwell, Sutton House employed oak beams from the royal forest of Enfield given to Cromwell by Henry VIII. In 1550, Sadleir sold his house to John Machell who became Sheriff Of London, acquiring wealth as a City merchant. Overreaching himself in debt, the house was repossessed by Sir James Deane, a money-lender.

By 1627, it was in the ownership of Captain John Milward, a silk merchant and member of the East India Company, who furnished it with oriental carpets and commissioned elaborate strapwork murals upon the staircase that survive in fragments to this day.

Sarah Freeman leased the house in 1657 for a girls’ school which ran for nearly a century until it was divided into two dwellings in the mid-eighteenth century, Ivy House and Milford House. Only at the end of the nineteenth century were the two halves reunited when Canon Evelyn Gardner created St John’s Institute as a recreational club for ‘men of all classes.’ Within ten years the building was condemned as unsafe, but thanks to a public appeal which raised £3000 it was extensively renovated with additions in the Arts & Crafts style.

After the Institute left, a failed attempt was made to buy Sutton House for the nation before the National Trust stepped in to save it in 1938. For decades, rooms were let as offices to voluntary organisations until squatters occupied the house in the eighties. Then developers were prevented from converting it into luxury flats by a successful local campaign to Save Sutton House which eventually opened to the public in 1991.

Thus history passed through Sutton House like a whirlwind yet, despite all the changes, the atmosphere of past ages still lingers, especially in the shadowy panelled rooms that enfold the overwhelming mystery of numberless untold stories.

Tudor door and Georgian fanlight

Original transom window dating from the Tudor era

In the Linenfold Parlour

Looking downstairs from the Great Chamber

Looking from the Little Chamber into the Great Chamber

The Great Chamber

Cabinet in the Little Chamber

Tudor kitchen

Cellar stairs

Looking through the courtyard

Looking up from the courtyard

Known as the ‘Armada Window,’ this is the oldest window in the East End

Sutton House can be visited as part of a guided tour. Tickets go on sale every Friday for tours on the following Wednesday, Friday & Sunday.

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At Eastbury Manor

Tessa Hunkin and the members of Hackney Mosaic Project never stop creating. Their latest masterpiece, Birds of Hoxton, was installed in the residents’ garden at Follingham Court this week, where it can be seen by passers-by walking south down Hoxton St.

Three years in the making, this ambitious diptych illustrates the ornithology of the neighbourhood with each species created by a different mosaic maker, imparting diverse personalities to each of the birds and vivid life to the completed mosaic.

Further up in Hoxton Market, decorative mosaic roundels have been installed outside Shoreditch Library, Hoxton Hall and Hoxton Garden, while just round the corner where Pitfield St meets Old St, you will find the Hoxton Varieties Mosaic from 2013. These new projects mark a return to their roots for the project, since this is where it all began with the Shepherdess Walk Mosaics back in 2012.

Tessa Hunkin is giving an illustrated talk, showing the mosaics and telling the story of the project, this Sunday 10th May at 4pm at Sutton House, Homerton High St, E9 6JQ, as part of Hackney History Festival.

Click here to buy a ticket for £3

Sutton House is the oldest house in Hackney and one of London’s few remaining Tudor mansions, built in 1535, so this is a great opportunity to pay a visit.

Roundel outside Hoxton Garden

Roundel outside Hoxton Hall

Roundel outside Shoreditch Library

Tessa Hunkin with two local councillors on the eve of the local election

The Hoxton Varieties mosaic was installed in Pitfield St in 2013

Click here to order a copy of Tessa Hunkin’s Hackney Mosaic Project

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.

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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

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

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The Juvenile Almanac

The Trade of The Gardener

Darton’s Nursery Songs

The Little Visitors

In the six days since we launched our crowdfund, fifty people have contributed £4,639

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

Artist and collector, Shaun Caton, currently has an exhibition of his authentically surreal photo-collages at the Bookartbookshop, 17 Pitfield St, Hoxton, N1 6HB, until 8th May, coinciding with the publication of his chapbook Songs Seldom Heard. Sharp-eyed readers may spot images by Harold Burdekin from London Night 1938.

“For want of a more useful occupation, I have been collecting and recording my dreams since 1988. While creating the montages, I had continual dreams that seeped erratically into an ever-evolving visual language, helping to shape the images towards a non-literal iteration. The montages are all interconnected by propagating urban themes and reappearing characters.” Shaun Caton

Montages copyright © Shaun Caton

Click here to book for my next City of London tour on Spring Bank Holiday May 4th

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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Andy Stroman, Poet of Stepney

From Andy Stroman’s Album 

The illustrations of Charles Keeping burned themselves into my consciousness as a child and I have loved his work ever since. A major figure in British publishing in the last century, Keeping illustrated over one hundred books (including the entire novels of Dickens) and won the Kate Greenaway and Carnegie Medals for his superlative talent.

In 1975, Keeping published ‘Cockney Ding Dong,’ in which he collected songs he remembered sung at home as a child. Illustrated with tender portraits of his extended family, the book is an unusual form of autobiography, recreating an entire cultural world through drawing and popular song.

I visited the Keeping Gallery at Shortlands in Kent to meet Vicky and Sean Keeping who talked to me about their father’s work, as we sat in the family home where they grew up and where much of his work is now preserved and displayed for visitors. You can read my interview at the end of this selection of illustrations from ‘Cockney Ding Dong.’

Illustrations  copyright © Estate of Charles Keeping

The Gentle Author – So why did your father create ‘Cockney Ding Dong’ ?

Vicky Keeping – We come from a family – he came from a family – where they all got together. They’d have their beer, they enjoyed their beer, and their Guinness – some of the women drank Guinness – and they would all sing and his Uncle Jack would play the piano. And everybody had their own song, so people would give their song and Dad loved that. We still know them all still, because we loved it, and people didn’t say, ‘Oh no, I’m not going to do it!’ They just got up and sang, and it was lovely and the songs were all from the music hall.

The Gentle Author – But he wasn’t a Cockney – where was he was from?

Vicky Keeping – He was from Vauxhall and he was born in Vauxhall Walk, Lambeth. He was very much brought up by the female side of his family. His father passed away when he was ten, he had a burst ulcer. He was a driver on the Daily Star.

Sean Keeping – Before that, his father had been a professional boxer between about 1912 and 1922. He had many professional fights. I know he definitely fought the British champion at the time and won! A chap called Ernie Rice.

His father came from a very poor family and he was orphaned. They had a watercress stall in Lambeth Walk but they died in the workhouse. His mother’s family were also Londoners from Lambeth who came from a nautical background – his grandfather had been a sailor in the Merchant Navy. In the eighteenth century, they had come up to London from the West Country. Like many families, they had not originated in London.

Vicky Keeping – His grandfather was very important to Dad, because he was a great storyteller and would tell stories from his voyages and the different people he met and he was – I suppose – a bit ahead of his time because he was welcoming to all and would speak very positively about the people he met around the world. Dad loved hearing his stories, so he learnt from his grandfather that storytelling was important. That came through to us as well – when we sat round the family tea table we were encouraged to tell stories.

Very sadly, Dad’s dad and Dad’s grandfather passed away in the same year – in 1934 – when Dad was ten. It left Dad and his sister Grace and their mum Eliza very poorly off, but they lived in this extended family with Dad’s granny who was a very strong influence. Dad idolised her and his aunties, and they thought he was the blonde blue-eyed boy and they loved him dearly.

Sean Keeping – They lived in a small terraced house in 74 Vauxhall Walk, which was right alongside the market, and Dad’s early influences were not just his family but also the characters in Vauxhall Market – those often crop up in his books.

Vicky Keeping – One of the things that Dad loved to do in the garden was to look through a little knot hole to see the Schweppes bottling plant and the workhorses and that was something that never left him, that memory of horses.

There was no obvious creativeness in his background, but Dad said his father used to come home – because he worked in print – and bring home paper, and Dad’s sister Grace used to write a story and Dad would illustrate it.

Sean Keeping – He was not a child who would have gone running around the streets, they were children who would sit at home writing a story and drawing. From a very young age, Dad showed a fantastic aptitude for drawing and we’ve got some drawings of his from when he was twelve and thirteen, and they are really fantastic – showing a London of working horses and working people, that’s what he was trying to depict in his drawings.

Vicky Keeping – He was called up in the Second World War but he worked for Clowes the printers when he left school at thirteen. He was not a particularly great scholar at school. One of the things was that he found difficult was that he was left-handed and the teachers would try to get him to write with his right hand.

Sean Keeping – Working for Clowes the printers, he would go around on a horse & cart delivering paper, and that was where he met one of the characters who had a great influence on him – Tom Cherry. Many of the burly-looking men driving a horse through London in Dad’s pictures – they’re Tom Cherry, and usually he drew a little boy sitting next to him which was Dad. Tom had a great influence, telling him stories about London and the people of London.

Vicky Keeping – Dad became a Telegrapher on a frigate and he was on the boat at D-Day. After the war, he tried to get into Art College but that was very difficult, so he worked collecting pennies from gas meters. He worked for the Gas Light & Coke Company and he would go around on a bicycle, with a big sack on his shoulder with all the pennies in it, going from door to door in North Kensington. He used to tell us funny stories. At that time, North Kensington was a poor area and I think he got a lot out of the characters he met there, but he hated working for a company, for a boss, and he decided he wanted to do something better.

He went to night classes at the Regent St Polytechnic but, because he left school at thirteen with no formal qualifications and had been through the war, it was very difficult for him to get in at first. He tried and tried, and eventually he spent time in a psychiatric hospital due to his experiences in the War. I think it was also to do with his father. When his father and his grandfather died in the same year, they were laid out in the front room and – as a ten year old – Dad had to go and kiss them. That had a profound effect on him. He spent six months in a psychiatric hospital and two weeks of those were in a deep sleep. Yet he talked about the great characters he met there and there was a Psychiatrist, Dr Sargent, who knew Dad should go to Art College and he supported him in writing letters – and eventually that’s what happened.

Sean Keeping – When Dad went to Art College, he had to fight hard to get a grant because, at that stage, his mother had been widowed for a number of years and she had a job cleaning, so there was not a lot of money around. But eventually, he got a grant to go to Regent St Polytechnic. Right after the war, there were two types of students – those that had just come out of the forces who were much more mature and those who had come directly from school. So it was an interesting mix of people and mix of cultures.

The Gentle Author – How did he set out to make an income as an illustrator?

Sean Keeping – Dad was not motivated by making a career or making money or even motivated – I think – by success. Dad was motivated by one thing and that was doing what he wanted to do – drawing pictures of things that he wanted to draw pictures of – so he never really thought about a career. But then he got a job on the Daily Herald, drawing the strip cartoon and that started to pay very well, and from that he was able to move out of the council flat that he lived in with his mother in Kennington and buy a small terraced house in Crystal Palace.

When they were looking for houses, once he was making money from the strip cartoon, they looked in two areas – one was Crystal Palace and the other was Chelsea. Now the idea that you might choose Crystal Palace or Chelsea to look for a house nowadays is an strange idea, but they decided on Crystal Palace!

(Transcription by Rachel Blaylock)

Visit The Keeping Gallery at Shortlands in Kent where you can see the work of both Charles & Renate Keeping preserved in their family home. Visits are by appointment arranged through the website and Shortlands is a short train ride from Victoria.

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When I encountered the work of Chiang Yee (1903-77) writing as ‘The Silent Traveller’ I knew I had discovered a kindred spirit in self-effacement. These fine illustrations are from his book ‘The Silent Traveller in London’ published in 1938 and I am fascinated by his distinctive vision which renders familiar subjects anew.

‘This book is to be a sort of record of all the things I have talked over to myself during these five years in London, where I have been so silent,’ he wrote, ‘I am bound to look at things from a different angle, but I have never agreed with people who hold that the various nationalities differ greatly from each other. They may be different superficially, but they eat, drink, sleep, dress, and shelter themselves from the wind and rain in the same way.’

Summer afternoon in Kew Gardens

Morning mist in St James’s Park

Snow on Hampstead Heath

Early Autumn in Kenwood

Fog in Trafalgar Sq

Coalman in the rain

Umbrellas Under Big Ben

Deer in Richmond Park

Seagulls in Regent’s Park

At the Whitechapel Gallery

London faces in a public bar

London faces in winter

Coronation night in the Underground

Jubilee night in Trafalgar Sq

London faces at a Punch & Judy show

Images copyright © Estate of Chiang Yee

You may also like to take a look at

Ebbe Sadolin’s London

Izis Bidermanas’ London

Last call for The Gentle Author’s Tour of the City of London: Meet me at 2pm on EASTER MONDAY on the steps of St Paul’s Cathedral for a tour of sightseeing and storytelling, rambling through the alleys and byways of the Square Mile in search of the wonders and the wickedness of the City. (Also booking for Spring Bank Holiday Monday 4th May)

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On Easter Sunday, we celebrate our dearly beloved Viscountess Boudica of Bethnal Green who once entertained us with her seasonal frolics and capers but now is exiled to Uttoxeter

She may be no spring chicken but that never stopped the indefatigable Viscountess Boudica of Bethnal Green from dressing up as an Easter chick!

As is her custom at each of the festivals which mark our passage through the year, she embraced the spirit of the occasion wholeheartedly – festooning her tiny flat with seasonal decor and contriving a special outfit for herself that suited the tenor of the day. “Easter’s about renewal – birth, life and death – the end of one thing and the beginning of another,” she assured me when I arrived, getting right to the heart of it at once with characteristic forthrightness.

I felt like a child visiting a beloved grandmother or favourite aunt whenever I call round to see Viscountess Boudica because, although I never knew what treats lie in store, I was never disappointed. Even as I walked in the door, I knew that days of preparation preceded my visit. Naturally for Easter there were a great many fluffy creatures in evidence, ducks and rabbits recalling her rural childhood. “When my uncle had his farm, I used to put the little chicks in my pocket and carry them round with me,” she confided with a nostalgic grin, as she led me over to admire the wonder of her Easter garden where yellow creatures of varying sizes were gathering upon a small mat of greengrocer’s grass, around a tree hung with glass eggs, as if in expectation of a sacred ritual.

I cast my eyes around at the plethora of Easter cards, testifying to the popularity of the Viscountess, and her Easter bunting and Easter fairy lights that adorned the walls. There could be no question that the festival was anything other than Easter in this place. “As a child, I used to get a twig and  spray it with paint and hang eggs from it,” she explained, recalling the modest origin of the current extravaganza and adding, “I hope this will inspire others to decorate their homes.”

“Cadbury’s Dairy Milk is my favourite,” she confessed to me, chuckling in excited anticipation and patting her waistline warily, “I probably will eat a lot of chocolate on Easter Monday – once I start eating chocolate, I can’t stop.” And then, just like that beloved grandmother or favourite aunt, Viscountess Boudica kindly slipped a chocolate egg into my hands, as I said my farewell and carried it off under my arm back to Spitalfields as a proud trophy of the day.

Viscountess Boudica writes her Easter cards

“yellow creatures of varying sizes were gathering upon a small mat of greengrocer’s grass, around a tree hung with glass eggs, as if in expectation of a sacred ritual”

Viscountess Boudica turns Weather Girl to present the forecast for the Easter Bank Holiday – “I predict a dull start with a few patches of sunshine and some isolated showers. In the West Country, it will be nice all day with temperatures between sixty and eighty degrees Farenheit. There will be a small breeze on the coast and sea temperature of around fifty-nine degrees Farenheit.”

Easter blessings to you from Viscountess Boudica!

Viscountess Boudica and her fluffy friends

Take a look at

The Departure of Viscountess Boudica

Viscountess Boudica’s Domestic Appliances

Viscountess Boudica’s Blog

Viscountess Boudica’s Album

Viscountess Boudica’s Halloween

Viscountess Boudica’s Christmas

Viscountess Boudica’s Valentine’s Day

Viscountess Boudica’s St Patrick’s Day

Read my original profile of Mark Petty, Trendsetter

and take a look at Mark Petty’s Multicoloured Coats

Mark Petty’s New Outfits

Mark Petty returns to Brick Lane