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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A costume fitting

In the late seventies, Contributing Photographer David Hoffman documented the religious drama enacted upon the streets of Stepney around Easter time, recording astonishing images of magical realist intensity which feel closer to the medieval world than to our own day.

Gordon Kendall who played Jesus wrote this memory of his experience.

‘On a cold wet and depressing evening in April 1980, well over 100 actors, production crew and 2000 people lived through the experience of Our Lord’s Way Of The Cross enacted in the streets and estates of Stepney.

The excitement and challenge of playing Jesus really began on the Sunday before the event. Some of the actors were trying out their costumes and they looked very impressive.

Half way through the rehearsal, I needed to visit the toilet and so excused myself from the bodyguard of soldiers in costume. I knocked at the door of a flat. A lady came out and I requested the use of her toilet. She looked at me very oddly – she was a elderly lady – and she asked me who I was. I replied I was playing the part of Jesus and she flashed me a look which revealed she did not believe me, but she said ‘Come in.’

As I went through the flat I could see someone sleeping on the sofa in the lounge. When I closed the bathroom door, I could hear the woman waking up her friend and saying, ‘Nell, there’s a man in the toilet who says he’s Jesus.’ Then I heard some rapid movement and I could only wonder at the thoughts of this woman, struggling to her feet.

There was a knocking at the front door as I came out of the toilet  and the two women opened it to be confronted by a fierce Roman Centurion in full regalia, asking if Jesus was in the flat. Fortunately, they relaxed into joyous smiles and it was kisses and handshakes all round as we departed.’

Roman soldiers

Jesus in flares

The arrest of the two thieves

Preparing for the crucifixion

A Roman legion marching

Pilate speaks

Roman soldiers at St Dunstan’s

Jesus consoles Mary

Bespectacled Jesus

Roman Centurion in regalia

Jesus gives himself up

The march to the crucifixion

The soldiers stripping Jesus of his raiments

Crucifixion courtesy of Whitbread

Behold, Jesus is risen in St Dunstan’s Church!

Photographs copyright © David Hoffman

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David Hoffman at Fieldgate Mansions

Click here to order a copy of David Hoffman’s Endurance & Joy in the East End 1971-1987

Join me for ramble through 2000 years of culture and history in SPITALFIELDS followed by tea and cakes freshly baked to recipe of 1720 served in a 300 year old house. This Saturday is sold out but tickets are available on Saturday 11th, Saturday 18th and Saturday 25th April, and through the spring.

Some tickets also available for my TOUR OF THE CITY OF LONDON on EASTER MONDAY.

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In Bethnal Green

Let me admit, this is my favourite moment in the year – when the new leaves are opening fresh and green, and the streets are full of trees in flower. Several times, in recent days, I have been halted in my tracks by the shimmering intensity of the blossom. And so, each spring, I enact my own version of the eighth-century Japanese custom of hanami or flower viewing, setting out on a pilgrimage through the East End with my camera to record the wonders of this fleeting season that marks the end of winter incontrovertibly.

In his last interview, Dennis Potter famously eulogised the glory of cherry blossom as an incarnation of the overwhelming vividness of human experience. “The nowness of everything is absolutely wondrous … The fact is, if you see the present tense, boy do you see it! And boy can you celebrate it.” he said and, standing in front of these trees, I succumbed to the same rapture at the excess of nature.

In the post-war period, cherry trees became a fashionable option for town planners and it seemed that the brightness of pink increased over the years as more colourful varieties were propagated. “Look at it, it’s so beautiful, just like at an advert,” I overheard someone say yesterday, in admiration of a tree in blossom, and I could not resist the thought that it would be an advertisement for sanitary products, since the colour of the tree in question was the exact familiar tone of pink toilet paper.

Yet I do not want my blossom muted, I want it bright and heavy and shining and full. I love to be awestruck by the incomprehensible detail of a million flower petals, each one a marvel of freshly-opened perfection and glowing in a technicolour hue.

In Whitechapel

In Spitalfields

In Weavers’ Fields

In Haggerston

In Weavers’ Fields

In Bethnal Green

In Pott St

Outside Bethnal Green Library

In Spitalfields

In Bethnal Green Gardens

In Museum Gardens

In Museum Gardens

In Paradise Gardens

In Old Bethnal Green Rd

In Pollard Row

In Nelson Gardens

In Canrobert St

In the Hackney Rd

In Haggerston Park

In Shipton St

In Bethnal Green Gardens

In Haggerston

At Spitalfields City Farm

In Columbia Rd

In London Fields

Once upon a time …. Syd’s Coffee Stall, Calvert Avenue

To celebrate the arrival of spring, all our books are on sale until tonight (Sunday) at midnight and we are including a free copy of THE MAP OF THE GENTLE AUTHOR’S TOUR OF SPITALFIELDS with every order.

CLICK HERE TO VISIT THE SPITALFIELDS LIFE BOOKSHOP

Simply add the code SPRINGSALE at checkout to get 50% discount

Fifty Years Porter, Charing Cross, 1824

It is my delight to present John Dempsey’s street portraits from the eighteen-twenties held in the collection of the Tasmanian Museum & Art Gallery. Originally attributed to George Scharf, they were identified as the work of John Dempsey (1802-74) by curator David Hansen who discovered a folio of fifty-one portraits in 1996 in a drawer labelled ‘U’ for unknown.

Dempsey was an itinerant jobbing artist without any formal training who created ‘Likenesses of Public Characters’ in London and the provincial cities of England, as he travelled around in search of commissions for portrait miniatures and silhouettes. No record exists of any exhibitions and in 1845, he was declared bankrupt. Yet his achievement is unique and enduring.

In spite of Dempsey’s unconventional perspective and disproportionate figures, he created portraits full of humanity that evoke the presence of street people and the outcast poor with compassion and vitality. These are portraits of individuals and they are full of life. As an itinerant artist in an age that did not distinguish between street traders and beggars, he dignified his fellow travellers through his portraits. He understood their lives because he shared their precarious existence.

When I first saw these pictures, I was startled by how familiar they appeared to me and I assumed this was because I have spent so much time looking at prints of The Cries of London. But then I realised that I recognised the demeanour and expression of John Dempsey’s portraits because I see them, their crew and their kin, every day as I walk around the streets of London two centuries later.

Sharp, Orange Man, Colchester, 1823

Watercress, Salisbury

Black Charley, Bootmaker, Norwich, 1823

Muffin Man

Mary Croker,  Mat Woman, Colchester, 1823

Sam’l Hevens, Old Jew, 1824

Charles M’Gee, Crossing Sweeper, London, c 1824

Old Bishop, Pieman, Harwich

Woolwich, 1824

Match Woman, Woolwich, 1824

Mark Custings (commonly called Blind Peter) and his boy, Norwich, 1823

Copeman, Gardener, Yarmouth

A Bill Poster, 1825

The Doorkeeper, Royal Managerie, Exeter ‘Change, (London) 1824

Images reproduced courtesy of Tasmanian Museum & Art Gallery

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John Thomas Smith’s Remarkable Beggars

Luke Clennell’s London Melodies

Meet me on Easter Monday on the steps of St Paul’s 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 of London.

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Princelet St

In these last long months at end of winter my spirits have been consistently lifted by the sight of citrus trees flourishing, heavy with fruit in the back streets and yards to the east of Brick Lane. On cold days when the clouds hung low over the city, the sight of these evergreen specimens gave me hope.

Spitalfields has always been renowned for fruit trees. In the seventeenth century, Leonard Gurle ran a tree nursery – including 11,600 plum, cherry and pear trees, as well as nectarines – that extended from Brick Lane to Whitechapel and supplied soft fruit trees to Charles II, while Thomas Fairchild in The City Gardener, 1722, notes that the area around Bishopsgate lends itself to the cultivation of pears and plums. A piece of horticultural history which still echoes in the name of Blossom St in Norton Folgate today.

Yet centuries of the social change and recent global warming have brought citrus trees to Spitalfields today. Just as the Huguenots are believed to have brought auriculas in the eighteenth century, three hundred years later Bengali people have cultivated shatkora, a Sylheti fruit similar to grapefruit but with very thick skin used in savoury dishes. Additionally, I have found tangerines in Flower & Dean Walk and oranges and lemons in Chicksand St.

Take a pilgrimage for yourself to visit the citrus trees of Spitalfields. Remarkably, none are growing in full sunlight although most are in sheltered spots. Be inspired by the abundant life and resilience of nature, even here in the heart of the city.

Princelet St

Tangerines in Flower & Dean Walk

Deal St

Deal St

Hanbury St

Oranges and lemons in Chicksand St

Albert Cottages

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Street Scene by Barnett Freedman (Click this image to enlarge)

When I first saw Street Scene by Barnett Freedman (Reproduced courtesy of the Tate Gallery), I thought I half-recognised the location as either Whitechapel or Bethnal Green and I delighted in the painting as an evocation of the streetlife of the Jewish East End in the early twentieth century.

Surely that is The George in Bethnal Green Road in the background? In particular, the two ostentatiously dressed woman in their contrasting outfits recalled for me the custom of people to promenade along Aldgate to Whitechapel at weekends in their finery, window shopping and greeting friends, enjoying their social life in public. Indeed, Pearl Binder included a similar pair of young women togged up to the nines in one of her lithographs of Aldgate in the twenties. I also wondered if the shabby old street musician with his violin was a Russian immigrant who had arrived like Barnett Freedman’s parents at the end of the nineteenth century.

Barnett Freedman was born in Lower Chapman St, Stepney Green in 1901. A sickly child who endured extended hospital stays, he was confined to bed between the ages of nine and thirteen, yet managed to educate himself, learning to read, write, play music and draw and paint while sequestered in a hospital ward.

By the age of sixteen, Barnett was earning his living as a draughtsman to a monumental mason for a few shillings a week, while for the next five years he spent his evenings undertaking classes at St Martin’s School of Art. Before long, he moved to an architect’s office, creating attractive drawings from his employer’s rough sketches and, taking the opportunity offered by a surge in demand for the war memorials to hone his skill as a letteringh artist.

With remarkable tenacity and self-belief, Barnett applied over three successive years for a London County Council Scholarship that would enable him to study at the Royal College of Art under the direction of Sir William Rothenstein. Experiencing rejection on each occasion, Barnett summoned the courage to present his portfolio in person to Rothenstein who recognised his talent and applied to the London County Council Chief Inspector himself on behalf of the young artist. As a consequence, a stipend of £120 a year was granted, enabling Barnett to begin his studies full time in 1922.

At the Royal College of Art, Barnett’s talent flourished among fellow students including Edward Bawden, Raymond Coxon, Henry Moore, Vivian Pitchforth and John Tunnard. Yet even after graduating in 1925, he continued to struggle to support himself and in 1929, ill-health prevented him working for a year. This situation as resolved when William Rothenstein took Barnett onto the staff of the Royal College in 1930. In the same year, he married fellow illustrator, Claudia Guercio, and, during the thirties, enjoyed an increasingly  successful career as an illustrator and commercial artist.

Barnett’s lithographs for Siegfried Sassoon’s Memoirs of an Infantry Officer, published in 1931, were one of many highlights during his long association with Faber and Faber, for whom he also illustrated works by the Brontës, Walter de la Mare, Charles Dickens, Edith Sitwell, William Shakespeare and Leo Tolstoy. As a commercial artist, he undertook prestigious commissions for Ealing Films, the General Post Office, Curwen Press, Shell-Mex, British Petroleum, Josiah Wedgwood and London Transport, earning popular success.

Appointed as an official War Artist, along with Edward Ardizzone and Edward Bawden, Barnett accompanied the expeditionary force in the spring of 1940 before the retreat at Dunkirk, and was awarded a CBE for this work in 1946. Yet Barnett always retained his East End accent and once, when he hailed a taxi to the Athenaeum Club, the incredulous cabbie famously retorted, “What, you?”

Street Scene was painted between 1933 and 1939, and subsequently he reworked the image as a lithograph for Lyons Corner House. Barnett’s son Vince, who was born in 1934, recalled his father working on the picture in the first floor studio of the family home in a back street of Gloucester Rd, West London. Vince revealed to me that the building on the right of the painting was based their house, 11 Canning Place. “The fiddler was to be found at the Gloucester Road end of Canning Place just about every day, and was a figure of some threat to me at the age of four!” he recalled, “The small person on the right, with his nanny Miss Wiggle, is a reference to me!”

No wonder that I was unable to place the location of this painting precisely in the East End because it is not a literal scene at all but a composite of Bethnal Green and Gloucester Road. I often wonder if the East End itself is actually a place or a culture, and this painting proposes an answer to my quandary. Barnett Freedman employed diverse topographic elements create a portrait of a society he knew intimately, constructing an entirely subjective portrayal of his environment and personal heritage. Look in the left top corner of the painting and you will see the artist raising his hat to you, ambling happily along the pavement and eternally at home in his own East End  universe. Vincent Freedman summed up his father’s achievement in these words, “A huge optimism and compassion shows itself to me in all his work and life. Humanity was his central driving force.”

The Old George in Bethnal Green

Barnett Freedman’s house at 11 Canning Place, Gloucester Rd

Barnett Freedman in Hyde Park

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Enigmatic Photographer Jeffrey Johnson deposited a stack of his appealing pictures from the seventies and eighties with Archivist Stefan Dickers at the Bishopsgate Institute , including these photos of forgotten corners in London. I cannot resist the feeling that Jeffrey is one after my own heart when I examine these characterful pictures – a few are familiar places but I am reliant upon my readers to identify the rest.

Apostal’s

Buitifull Buttons

Arlington Way, N1

Broadway Market

Commercial Rd

Royal Exchange, City of London

Royal Exchange, City of London

King’s Cross

King’s Cross

King’s Cross

King’s Cross

King’s Cross

Teeth bought

Brick Lane

Barter St, Holborn

Great Ormond St, Bloomsbury

Little Montague Court, City of London

St Bartholomew’s Close, Smithfield

Albion Buildings

Photographs copyright © Jeffrey Johnson

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The Forgotten Corners of Old London

Around Billingate Market

Mystery Pictures of Brick Lane

Dennis Anthony’s Petticoat Lane

Geoff Perrior, Photographer

Bobbie Beecroft cuts Mr Sheridan’s hair, 1976

When photographer David Hoffman was squatting in Fieldgate Mansions in Whitechapel in the seventies, he was asked by Rev Malcolm Johnson to do fund-raising shots for the shelter in the crypt of St Botolph’s in Aldgate which offered refuge to all homeless people without distinction. Yet this commission turned into a photographic project that extended over many years and resulted in a distinguished body of work documenting the lives of the dispossessed in hundreds of intimate and unsentimental images.

Initially, David found the volatile conditions of the crypt challenging but, over months and years, he became accepted by those at the shelter who adopted him as their own photographer. Malcolm Johnson was the enlightened priest responsible for opening the crypt but, once he moved on, his brave endeavour was closed down. More than thirty years later, most of the people in David’s pictures are dead and forgotten, and his soulful photographs are now the only record of their existence and of the strange camaraderie they discovered in the crypt at St Botolph’s.

“St Botolph’s in Aldgate had a ‘wet shelter,’ an evening shelter for damaged or lost souls where alcohol and drugs were permitted. It was run by Rev Malcolm Johnson and Terry Drummond, who were very generous and accepting, and the purpose was a Christian one, based on the notion that you are accepted whoever you are. I’m not keen on organised religion, but here they were doing something that needed to be done.

I was asked if I could do some photographs to raise funds for the work and I remember arriving at the top of the steps outside the crypt and standing there for five minutes because I didn’t dare to go down. The noise was deafening and it really stank of piss and unwashed bodies. I was frightened I’d get attacked and my camera smashed but, equally, I thought it needed documenting, it was a part of life I’d never seen before. It was very noisy, very smelly, chaotic, and there was a lot of violence.

It was a place to get something to eat, get washed and get clean clothing. Not everybody was on drink or drugs but ninety per cent were. A lot were ex-servicemen who had travelled the world and would reminisce about bars in Cairo or Baghdad. It was amazing what they would talk about.

When I returned, I gave them eighth-size A4 prints so they could put them in their pockets. They gave me permission to take their pictures and, on each visit, I’d bring them prints from the previous evening. So I became their photographer.

Over six or seven years, I’d go every night for two or three months at a stretch. It was important to be regular while you were doing it. You needed to come frequently, so people relaxed and accepted you as part of the scene. I’d go every night for a couple of months. It was a place where nobody else goes, it was a humble part of life.”

Washing a shirt at St Botolph’s, 1978

A volunteer serves tea and sandwiches

Azella, a regular at St Botolph’s, makes herself up before heading to the pub with a pal in 1977. Later that year, Azella was killed when a lorry drove over the cardboard box where she slept in Spitalfields Market.

At St Botolph’s, 1978

At St Botolph’s, 1976

At St Botolph’s, 1978

At St Botolph’s, 1978

At St Botolph’s, 1978

At St Botolph’s, 1978

Leo, eighty-two years old and a non-drinker at St Botolph’s, 1976

At St Botolph’s, 1978

Percy & Jane, non-drinkers, at St Botolph’s, 1978

At St Botolph’s, 1978

At St Botolph’s,  1977

At St Botolph’s, 1978

At St Botolph’s, 1978

At St Botolph’s, 1978

At St Botolph’s, 1978

At St Botolph’s, 1978

Photographs copyright © David Hoffman

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David Hoffman at Fieldgate Mansions

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The work of Geoffrey Fletcher (1923–2004) is an inspiration to me, and today I am publishing his drawings of London’s street people in the nineteen sixties from Geoffrey Fletcher’s Pavement Pounders of 1967.

Charlie Sylvester -“I’m Charlie Sylvester, Charlie of Whitechapel. I’ve been on the markets over forty years. I can’t keep still too long, as I have to serve the customers. Then I must take me pram and go fer some more stock. Stock’s been getting low. I go all over with me pram, getting stock, I sell anythin’ – like them gardening tools, them baking tins and plastic mugs. All kinds of junk. Them gramophone records is classic, Ma, real classic stuff. Course they ain’t long playing? Wot do you expect? Pick where you like out of them baking tins. Well, I’ll be seeing you next you’re in Whitechapel. Don’t forget. Sylvester’s the name.”

Peanuts, Tower Hill – “We’ve only been doin’ this for a few months, me peanut pram and I. I only comes twice a week, Saturdays and Sundays. Sundays is best. It’s a hot day. Hope it will stay. I’m counting on it. How many bags do I sell in a day? I’ve never counted ’em. All I want is for to sell ’em out.”

Doing the Spoons, Leicester Sq -“I’ve been in London since 1932, doin’ the spoons, mostly. I does it when I’m not with the group – if they’re away or don’t show up. I’m about the only spoon man left. No, the police don’t bother us much – they know we’re old timers. We’re playing the Square tonight, later when the crowds will come.”

The Man with the X-Ray Eyes – “It’s the facial characteristics. I can usually guess within a year. It’s the emanations – that’s why they call me the man with the X-ray eyes.  I’ve been doing it thirty-two years. Thirty -two years is a long time. I’m off-form today. Sometimes I am off-form and then I won’t take their money. I’m in show business. You see me on TV before the cameras. My show took London, Paris and New York by storm.”

Selections from ‘The Merry Widow,’ Oxford St – “You need a good breath for one o’ these. It’s called a euphonium. Write it down, same as when a man makes a euphemism at dinner. If I smoked or got dissipated, I couldn’t play. I can’t play the cornet, as it is, but that’s because I only have one tooth, as I’ll show you – central eating, as you say, Guv. I come from Oldham. When I was a boy of ten, I worked in Yates’ Wine Lodge, but I broke the glasses. I’m seventy-three now, too old for a job. But I don’t want a job, I have this – the euphonium. Life is an adventure, but things is bad today. People will do you down and not be ashamed of it. They’ll glory in it. Well, that’s it. My mother-in-law is staying with us so we have plenty to eat. She gives me the cold shoulder. I’m going for a cuppa tea. Have a nice summer and lots of luck.”

Lucky White Heather – “I’ve been selling on the London streets all my life, dearie. Selling various things – gypsy things – clothes pegs – it used to be clothes pegs. The men used to make them, but they won’t now – they’re onto other things. There wasn’t much profit in them, either. You sold them at three ha’pence a dozen. That was in the old days, dearie. Now I could be earning a pound while you’re drawing me. We comes every day from Kent. People like the lucky heather. But I’ll give you the white elephant – they’re very lucky. If they weren’t, we wouldn’t be selling them on the streets of London now, would we, dearie?”

Pavement Artist at Work, Trafalgar Sq – “I’ve been away two years, I haven’t been well, but I’m back again now. I’ve worked in other parts, but nearly always in London. Used to be outside the National Gallery, where I did Constable. I used to do copies of Constable. I do horses, dogs and other animals. The children like animals best, and give me money. I’m only playing about today, you might say. I haven’t prepared the stone. It gives it a smooth surface, makes the chalks sparkle. Makes them bright and clear, y’know. These pastels are too hard. I like soft ones, but everything’s gone up and I can’t afford them. Oh yes, I always clean off the stones. I won the prize for the best pavement artist in London.”

L.S.D. the Only Criterion, Tavistock Sq – “I’ve been here thirty years. I became a combined tipster and pavement artist because I had the talent, and because I believe in independence. Some people buy my drawings. I don’t go to the races now. I used to – Epsom, Ascot and all that. I have my regulars who come to see me and leave me money in my cap. That’s what it’s for. The rank and file are no good. It’s quiet Saturdays except when there’s a football match – Scoltand, say – and they stay round here. Weather’s been terrible – no-one about. Trafalgar Sq is where the money is, but they fights. I’ve sen the po-leece intervene when they’ve been fighting among themselves, and they say, ‘ere, move on, you?’ It’s money what’s at the bottom of it. Money an’ greed. Like I’ve got written here.”

The Best Friend You Have is Jesus – “Forty years I’ve been selling plants in London, and for over thirty years the Lord’s work has been done. In 1935, I was backing a dog – funnily enough it was called ‘Real Work’ – at New Cross. All at once, a small voice, the voice of the Lord, spoke to me and said ‘Abel (My name is Abel), I’ve got some real work for you to do.’ I gave up drink and dogs and got the posters on the barrow – the messages. I’ve been thousands of miles all over London doing the work of the Lord. London is wicked, and it’s getting worse. But God is merciful, and always gives a warning. It’s like Sodom and Gomorrah. The Lord says ‘Repent’ before His wrath comes. He could destroy London with an earthquake. Remember Noah? – how God wanted them to go in the Ark? But they wouldn’t. They said, ‘We’re going to have a good time…’ The Lord could destroy London with His elements. It dosen’t worry me as I’m doing the Lord’s work. Let these iris stand in water when you get ’em home.”

One Minute Photos, Westminster Bridge – “‘Happy Len,’ they call me, but my real name’s Anthony. Fifty years on the  bridge. 1920 I came, and my camera was made in 1903. It’s the only one left. I have to keep patching it up. The man who made it was called ‘Moore,’ and he came from Dr Barnardo’s. They sent him to Canada, and he and a Canadian got together, a bit sharp like, and they brought out this camera. Died a millionaire. I’m seventy-three, and I’ve seen some rum ‘uns on the bridge. There was a woman who came up and took all her clothes off, and the bobby arrested her for indecent behaviour. Disgraceful. The nude, I mean. She was spoiling my pitch.”

Music in the Strand – “I had to make some money to live, and so I came to play in the streets. I’ve never played professionally, I play the piano as well but I never had much training. I’m usually here in the Strand but sometimes I play in Knightsbridge, sometimes in Victoria St. There’s not so many lady musicians about now. I only play classical pieces.”

Horrible Spiders – “Christmas time is the best for us, Guv, if the weather ain’t wet or cold. Then the crowds are good humoured. I like my picture and I’m going to pick out an extra horrible spider for you in return. I’ll tell you a secret – some of the spiders ain’t made of real fur. They’re nylon. But yours is real fur, and it’s very squeaky.”

Salty Bob – “Come round behind the stall and have a bottle of ale. It’s a sort of club, a private club. It’s a grand life sitting here drinking, watching the world go by. I’ve been selling salt and vinegar for fifty years and I’m seventy now. I’ve seen some changes. Take Camden Passage, it’s all antiques, like Chelsea, none of the originals left hardly. Let me pour you another drink. Here we are snug and happy in the sun. I’ve just picked up nine pounds on a horse, and I’ve got another good one for the four-thirty. Next time you’re passing, join me for another drop of ale. No, you can’t pay for it. You’ll be my guest, same as now, at our private club behind the bottles of non-brewed, an’ the bleach.”

Don’t Squeeze Me Till I’m Yours – “That’s a German accordion – they’re the best. Bought it cheap up in the Charing Cross Rd. I do the mouth organ too, this is an English one – fourteen shillings from Harrods. I began with a tin whistle and worked me way up. I’ve a room in Mornington Crescent. My wife died, luvly woman, thrombosis. I could see here everywhere, lying in bed and what not, so I cleared out. I got to livin’ in hostels. But I couldn’t stand the class of men. I work here Mondays, Fridays sometimes. I also work Knightsbridge and ‘ere. I work Aldgate Sundays. I do well there. I gets a fair livin.’ So long as I’ve got me rent, two pounds ten, and baccy money, I don’t want nothing else.”

A Barrel Organ Carolling Across a Golden Street – They received their maximum appreciation in the East End, in the days when the area was a world apart from the rest of London, and the appearance of a barrel organ in Casey Court, among patrons almost as hard pressed as the organist, meant an interval for music and dancing, while the poor little monkey, often a prey to influenza, performed his sad little capers on the organ lid.

Sandwich Man – Consult Madame Sandra – “It’s a poor life, you only get twelve shillings and sixpence a day and you can’t do much on that now, can you, sir? It was drink that got me, the drink. When I come off the farms, I became a porter at Clapham Junction, sir. I worked on the railways, but I couldn’t hold my job. So I dropped down, and this is what I do now. All you can say is you’re in the open air. Sometimes I sleep in a hostel, sometimes I stay out. Just now I’m sleeping out. It was the drink that done it, sir.”

Matchseller – “I was a labourer – a builder’s labourer – an’ I come frae Glasgow. I’ve not been down here in London verra long – eight years. Do i like it here? Weel, the peepull, the peepull are sociable, but they not gie you much, so you only exist. Just exist. I don’t sleep in no hostel, I sleep rough. I haven’t slept in a bed in four weeks. I sleep anywhere. I like a bench in the park or on the embankment. I like the freedom. Anywhere I hang my hat, it’s home sweet home to me.”

A Romany – Apart from the Romany women who sell heather and lucky charms in such places as Villiers St and Oxford St, the gypsies are rapidly disaapearing from Central London. Only occasionally do you see them at their traditional trade of selling. lace paper flowers of cowslips.  Modern living vans are invariably smart turn-outs that have little in common with the carved and painted caravans of fifty years ago. They are with-it-gypises-O! Small colonies can still be found on East End bombsites, which the Romanies favour for winter quarters.

‘A Tiny Seed of Love,’ Piccadilly – “Oh yes, Guvnor, they’re good to me if the weather’s fine. Depends on the weather. I can’t play well enough, as you might say. I used to travel all over, four or five of us, saxo, drums, like that. Sometimes there was as many as eight of us. Then it got dodgy. I’m an old hand now. I’ve settled down. I got two rooms at thirty-two bob a week, Islington way. Where could you get two rooms for sixteen shillings each in London? I can easily get along at the price I pay. What’s more, I’ve married the woman who owns the house, too. She’s eight years older than I am, but we get along amicable.”

You may also like to read

Down Among the Meths Men with Geoffrey Fletcher

and take a look at

John Thomson’s Street Life in London

Henry Mayhew’s Street Traders

The Bronte sisters visit their publisher in Cornhill, 1848

An ancient thoroughfare with a mythic past, Cornhill takes its name from one of the three former hills of the City of London – an incline barely perceptible today after centuries of human activity upon this site, building and razing, rearranging the land. This is a place does not declare its multilayered history – even though the Roman forum was here and the earliest site of Christian worship in England was here too, dating from 179 AD, and also the first coffee house was opened here by Pasqua Rosee in 1652, the Turk who introduced coffee to London. Yet a pair of carved mahogany doors, designed by the sculptor Walter Gilbert in 1939 at 32 Cornhill – opposite the old pump – bring episodes from this rich past alive in eight graceful tableaux.

Walter Gilbert (1871-1946) was a designer and craftsman who developed his visual style in the Arts & Crafts movement at the end of the nineteenth century and then applied it to a wide range of architectural commissions in the twentieth century, including the gates of Buckingham Palace, sculpture for the facade of Selfridges and some distinctive war memorials. In this instance, he modelled the reliefs in clay which were then translated into wood carvings by B.P Arnold at H. H. Martyn & Co Ltd of Cheltenham.

Gilbert’s elegant reliefs appeal to me for the laconic humour that observes the cool autocracy of King Lucius and the sullen obedience of his architects, and for the sense of human detail that emphasises W. M. Thackeray’s curls at his collar in the meeting with Anne and Charlotte Bronte at the offices of their publisher Smith, Elder & Co. In each instance, history is given depth by an awareness of social politics and the selection of telling detail. These eight panels take us on a journey from the early medieval world of omnipotent monarchy and religious penance through the days of exploitative clergy exerting controls on the people, to the rise of the tradesman and merchants who created the City we know today.

“St Peter’s Cornhill founded by King Lucius 179 AD to be an Archbishop’s see and chief church of his kingdom and so it endured for the space of four hundred years until the coming of Augustine the monk of Canterbury.”

“Eleanor, Duchess of Gloucester, did penance walking barefoot to St Michael’s Church from Queen Hithe, 1441.”

“Cornhill was an ancient soke of the Bishop of London who had the Seigneurial oven in which all tenants were obliged to bake their bread and pay furnage or baking dues.”

“Cornhill is the only market allowed to be held afternoon in the fourteenth century.”

“Birchin Lane, Cornhill, place of considerable trade for men’s apparel, 1604.”

“Garraway’s Coffee House, a place of great commercial transaction and frequented by people of quality.”

“Pope’s Head Tavern in existence in 1750 belonging to Merchant Taylor’s Company, the Vinters were prominent in the life of Cornhill Ward.”

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The Door to Shakespeare’s London

Meet me on Easter Monday on the steps of St Paul’s for a tour of sightseeing and storytelling, rambling through the alleys and byways of the Square Mile in search of the wonders and wickedness of the City of London. Click here to book

House of Sir Paul Pindar by J.W. Amber

If William Shakespeare passed along Bishopsgate around 1600, he might have observed the construction of one of the finest of the mansions that formerly lined this ancient thoroughfare, Sir Paul Pindar’s house situated on the west side of the highway beyond the City wall next to the Priory of St Mary Bethlehem.

Paul Pindar was a City merchant who became British Consul to Aleppo and subsequently James I’s Ambassador to Constantinople. Although he returned home from his postings regularly, he did not take permanent residence in his house until 1623 when he was fifty-eight and between 1617-18 it served as the London abode of Pietro Contarini, Venetian Ambassador to the Court of St James.

Who can say what precious gifts from Sultan Mehmet III comprised the inventory of Ottoman treasures that once filled this fine house in Bishopsgate? Pindar’s wealth and loyalty to the monarch was such that he made vast loans to James and Charles I who both dined at his house, as well as contributing ten thousand pounds to the rebuilding of St Paul’s Cathedral. Yet Charles’ overthrow in 1649 meant that Pindar was never repaid and he died with huge debts at the age of eighty-five in 1650. What times he had seen, in a life that stretched from the glory days of Elizabeth I to the decapitation of Charles I.

Remarkably, Paul Pindar’s house survived the Great Fire along with the rest of Bishopsgate which preserved its late-medieval character, lined with shambles and grand mansions, until it was redeveloped in the nineteenth century. His presence was memorialised when the building became a tavern by the name of The Paul Pindar in the eighteenth century.

Reading the correspondence of CR Ashbee from the eighteen-eighties in the archives of the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings in Spital Sq, I was astonished to discover that, after Ashbee’s successfully campaign to save the Trinity Green Almshouses in Whitechapel, he pursued an ultimately fruitless attempt to rescue Paul Pindar’s house from the developers who were expanding Liverpool St Station.

In his poignant letters, arguments which remain familiar in our own time are advanced in the face of the unremitting commercial ambition of the railway magnates. CR Ashbee reminded them of the virtue in retaining an important and attractive building which carried the history of the place, even proposing that – if they could not keep it in its entirety –  preserving the facade integrated into their new railway station would prove a popular feature. His words were disregarded but, since Paul Pindar’s house stood where the Bishopsgate entrance to Liverpool St Station is now, I cannot pass through without imagining what might have been and confronting the melancholy recognition that the former glories of Paul Pindar’s house are forever lost in time, as a place we can never visit.

The elaborately carved frontage, which concealed a residence much deeper than it was wide, was lopped off when the building was demolished in 1890 after surviving almost three hundred years in Bishopsgate. Once the oak joinery was dis-assembled, it was cleaned of any residual paint according to the curatorial practice of the time and installed at the Victoria & Albert Museum in South Kensington when it opened in 1909. You can visit this today at the museum, where the intricate dark wooden facade of Paul Pindar’s beautiful house – familiar to James I, Charles I and perhaps to Shakespeare too – sits upon the wall as the enigmatic husk of something extraordinary. It is an exquisite husk, yet a husk nonetheless.

Sir Paul Pindar (1565–1650)

Paul Pindar’s House by F.Shepherd

View of Paul Pindar’s House, 1812

Street view, 1838

The Sir Paul Pindar by Theo Moore, 1890

The Sir Paul Pindar photographed by Henry Dixon, 1890

Paul Pindar’s House  as it appeared before demolition by J.Appleton, 1890

Facade of Paul Pindar’s House at the Victoria & Albert Museum

Bracket from Paul Pindar’s House at the Victoria & Albert Museum

Paul Pindar’s Summer House, Half Moon Alley, drawn by John Thomas Smith, c. 1800

Panelled room in Paul Pindar’s House

Bishopsgate entrance to Liverpool St Station

Archive images courtesy Bishopsgate Institute

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