Pearl Binder, Artist
“City and East End meet here, and between five and six o’clock it is a tempest of people.”
At the outbreak of war, it is salutary to recognise the close connections between the East End and Ukraine. Many thousands of the refugees who fled here, escaping pogroms against Jewish people in the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century, came from this region. Here is just one of those stories.
This is Aldgate pictured in a lithograph of 1932 by Pearl Binder, as one of a series that she drew to illustrate The Real East End by Thomas Burke, a popular writer who ran a pub in Poplar at the time. Among the many details of this rainy East End night that she evokes so atmospherically with such economy of means, notice the number fifteen bus which still runs through Aldgate today. In her lithographs, Pearl Binder found the ideal medium to portray London in the days when it was a grimy city, permanently overcast with smoke and smog, and her eloquent visual observations were based upon first hand experience.
This book was brought to my attention by Pearl Binder’s son Dan Jones who is also an artist. He explained that his mother came from Salford to study at the Central School of Art and lived in Spread Eagle Yard, Whitechapel in the nineteen twenties and thirties. It was an especially creative period in her life and an exciting time to be in London, when one of as the first generation after the First World War, she took the opportunity of the new freedoms that were available to her sex.
In Thomas Burke’s description, Pearl Binder’s corner of Whitechapel sounds unrecognisably exotic today, “It is in one of the old Yards that Pearl Binder has made her home, and she has chosen well. She enjoys a rural atmosphere in the centre of the town. Her cottage windows face directly onto a barn filled with hay-wains and fragrant with hay, and a stable, complete with clock and weather-vane; and they give a view of metropolitan Whitechapel. One realises here how small London is, how close it still is to the fields and farms of Essex and Cambridgeshire.” From Spread Eagle Yard, Pearl Binder set out to explore the East End, and these modest black and white images illustrate the life of its people as she found it.
Her best friend was Aniuta Barr (known to Dan as Aunt Nuta), a Russian interpreter, who remembered Lenin, Kalinin and Trotsky coming to tea at their family home in Aldgate when she was a child. Dan described Aunt Nuta announcing proudly, “Treat this bottom with respect, this has sat upon the knee of father Lenin!” He called her his fairy godmother, because she did not believe in god and at his christening when the priest said, “In the name of the father, the son and the holy ghost…”, she added, “…and Lenin”.
Pearl Binder’s origins were on the border of Russia and the Ukraine in the town of Swonim, which her father Jacob Binderevski, who kept Eider ducks there, left to come to Britain in 1890 with a sack of feathers over his shoulder. After fighting bravely in the Boer War, he received a letter of congratulation from Churchill inviting him to become English. Pearl lived until 1990 and Nuta until 2003, both travelling to Russia and participating in cultural exchange between the two countries through all the ups and downs, living long enough to see the Soviet Union from beginning to end in their lifetimes.
Pearl left the East End when she married Dan’s father Elwyn Jones, a young lawyer (later Lord Elwyn Jones and member of parliament for Poplar), and when they were first wed they lived at 1 Pump Court, Lincoln’s Inn Fields, yet she always maintained her connections with this part of London. “Mum was trying to fry an egg and dad came to rescue her,” was how Dan fondly described his parents’ meeting, adding,“I think the egg left the pan in the process,” and revealing that his mother never learnt to cook. Instead he has memories of her writing and painting, while surrounded by her young children Dan, Josephine and Lou. “She was amazingly energetic,” recalled Dan,“Writing articles for Lilliput about the difficulties of writing while we were crawling all over the place.”
Pearl Binder’s achievements were manifold. In the pursuit of her enormous range of interests, her output as a writer and illustrator was phenomenal – fiction as well as journalism – including a remarkable book of pen portraits Odd Jobs (that included a West End prostitute and an East End ostler), and picture books with Alan Lomax and A.L.Lloyd, the folk song collectors. In 1937, she was involved in children’s programmes in the very earliest days of television broadcasting. She was fascinated by Pocahontas, designing a musical on the subject for Joan Littlewood at the Theatre Royal Stratford East. She was an adventurous traveller, travelling and writing about China in particular. She was an advocate of the pearly kings & queens, designing a pearly mug for Wedgwood, and an accomplished sculptor and stained glass artist, who created a series of windows for the House of Lords. The explosion of creative energy that characterised London in the nineteen twenties carried Pearl Binder through her whole life.
“She was always very busy with all her projects, some of which came about and some of which didn’t.” said Dan quietly, as we leafed through a portfolio, admiring paintings and drawings from his mother’s long career. Then as he closed the portfolio and stacked up all her books and pictures that he had brought out to show me – just a fraction of all of those his mother created – I opened the copy of The Real East End to look at the pictures you can see below and Dan summed it up for me. “I think it was a very important part of her life, her time in the East End. She was really looking at things and using her own eyes and getting a feel of the place and the people – and I think the best work of her life was done during those years.”
A Jewish restaurant in Brick Lane.
A beigel seller in Whitechapel High St.
A Jewish bookshop in Wentworth St.
A slop shop in the East India Dock Rd.
Pearl Binder’s self-portrait
Pearl Binder ( 1904-1990)
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Charles W. Cushman’s London
American Photographer Charles Weaver Cushman (1896-1972) visited London only a couple of times and yet, alongside shots of landmarks such as Big Ben & Trafalgar Sq, he recorded these rare and unexpected images of markets and street vendors in Kodachrome. He bequeathed over 14,000 of his images to Indiana University, where the entire range of his work may be explored in the Charles W. Cushman Photograph Collection.
Aldgate huckster, April 30th 1961
Bell Lane, April 30th 1961
Petticoat Lane, April 30th 1961
Petticoat Lane, April 30th 1961
Petticoat Lane, April 30th 1961
New Goulston St, April 30th 1961
At St Botolph’s Bishopsgate, April 30th 1961
Liverpool St Station, June 26th 1960
Liverpool St Station, Sunday May 30th 1965
Finsbury Sq, May 30th 1965
St Giles Cripplegate, June 26th 1960
Moorgate, April 30th 1961
Sunday morning on London Bridge, June 26th 1960
Gas lamp cleaners London Bridge, May 29th 1965
Looking east from London Bridge, May 29th 1965
Smithfield Market, May 2nd 1961
Leather Lane, April 28th 1961
Leather Lane, April 28th 1961
Leather Lane, April 28th 1961
Covent Garden, June 26th 1961
Covent Garden, June 26th 1961
Covent Garden, June 26th 1961
Covent Garden, June 26th 1961
Covent Garden, June 26th 1961
Covent Garden, June 26th 1961
Buskers, Leicester Sq, May 14th 1961
St. Martin in the Fields, Trafalgar Sq, June 19th 1960
Photographs copyright © The Trustees of Indiana University
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Richard Dighton’s City Characters
In contrast to yesterday’s ‘Costume of the Lower Orders of the Metropolis’, I thought I would publish Richard Dighton’s ‘City Characters’ from 1824 in the archive at the Bishopsgate Institute.
Images courtesy Bishopsgate Institute
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Costume of the Metropolis
Despite the patronising pseudo-ethnographic tile, Thomas Lord Busby’s ‘Costumes of the Lower Orders of the Metropolis’ offer an evocative glimpse of London street life two hundred years ago.
Images courtesy Getty Research Institute
The Juvenile Almanack
On this frosty day in mid-January, I thought this might be a good moment to look forward through the year with this almanac from the eighteen-twenties, published by Hodgson & Co, 10 Newgate St. I am grateful to Sian Rees for drawing my attention to these wonderful images.
Images courtesy University of California Libraries
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Vagabondiana
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This is William Conway of Crab Tree Row, Bethnal Green, who walked twenty-five miles every day, calling, “Hard metal spoons to sell or change.” Born in 1752 in Worship St, Spitalfields, he is pictured here forty-seven years into his profession, following in the footsteps of his father, also an itinerant trader. Conway had eleven walks around London which he took in turn, wore out a pair of boots every six weeks and claimed that he never knew a day’s illness.
This is just one of the remarkable portraits by John Thomas Smith collected together in a large handsome volume entitled “Vagabondiana,” published in 1817, that it was my delight to discover in the collection of the Bishopsgate Institute. John Thomas Smith is an intriguing and unjustly neglected artist of the early nineteenth century who is chiefly remembered today for being born in the back of a Hackney carriage in Great Portland St and for his murky portrait of Joseph Mallord William Turner.
On the opening page of “Vagabondiana”, Smith’s project is introduced to the reader with delicately ambiguous irony. “Beggary, of late, has become so dreadful in London, that the more active interference of the legislature was deemed absolutely necessary, indeed the deceptions of the idle and sturdy were so various, cunning and extensive, that it was in most instances extremely difficult to discover the real object of charity. Concluding, therefore, that from the reduction of metropolitan beggars, several curious characters would disappear by being either compelled to industry, or to partake of the liberal parochial rates, provided for them in their respective work-houses, it occurred to the author of the present publication, that likenesses of the most remarkable of them, with a few particulars of their habits, would not be unamusing to those to whom they have been a pest for several years.”
Yet in spite of these apparently self-righteous, Scrooge-like, sentiments – that today might be still be voiced by any number of venerable bigots – John Thomas Smith’s pictures tell another story. From the moment I cast my eyes upon these breathtakingly beautiful engravings, I was captivated by their human presence. There are few smiling faces here, because Smith allows his subjects to retain their self possession, and his fine calligraphic line celebrates their idiosyncrasy borne of ingenious strategies to survive on the street.
You can tell from these works that John Thomas Smith loved Rembrandt, Hogarth and Goya’s prints because the stylistic influences are clear, in fact Smith became keeper of drawings and prints at the British Museum. More surprising is how modern these drawings feel – there are several that could pass as the work of Mervyn Peake. Heath Robinson’s drawings also spring to mind, especially his illustrations to Shakespeare and there are a couple of craggy stooping figures woven of jagged lines that are worthy of Ronald Searle or Quentin Blake.
If you are looking for the poetry of life, you will find it in abundance in these unsentimental yet compassionate studies that cut across two centuries to bring us a vivid sense of London street life in 1817. It is a dazzling vision of London that Smith proposes, populated by his vibrant characters.
The quality of Smith’s portraits transcend any condescension because through his sympathetic curiosity Smith came to portray his vagabonds with dignity, befitting an artist who was literally born in the street, who walked the city, who knew these people and who drew them in the street. He narrowly escaped a lynch mob once when his motives were misconstrued and he was mistaken for a police sketch artist. No wonder his biography states that,“Mr Smith happily escaped the necessity of continuing his labours as an artist, being appointed keeper of prints & drawings at the British Museum.”
Smith described his subjects as “curious characters” and while some may be exotic, it is obvious that these people cannot all fairly be classed as vagabonds, unless we chose instead to celebrate “Vagabondiana” as the self-respecting state of those who eek existence at the margins through their own wits. One cannot deny the romance of vagabond life, with its own culture and custom. Through pathos, John Thomas Smith sought to expose common human qualities and show vagabonds as people, rather than merely as pests or vermin to be driven out.
A Jewish mendicant, unable to walk, who sat in a box on wheels in Petticoat Lane.
Israel Potter, one of the oldest menders of chairs still living.
Strolling clowns
Bernado Millano, the bladder man
Itinerant third generation vendor of elegies, Christmas carols and love songs
A crippled sailor advertises his maritime past
George Smith, a brush maker afflicted with rheumatism who sold chickweed as bird food.
A native of Lucca accompanying his dancing dolls upon the bagpipes
Blinded in one eye, this beggar seeks reward for sweeping the street
Priscilla who sat in the street in Clerkenwell making quilts
Anatony Antonini, selling artificial silk flowers adorned with birds cast in wax
This boot lace seller was a Scotman who lost his hands in the wars
Charles Wood and his dancing dog.
Staffordshire ware vendors bought their stock from the Paddington basin and sold it door to door.
Rattle-puzzle vendors.
A blind beggar with a note hung round his neck appealing for charity.
Images courtesy Bishopsgate Institute
Matchbox Models By Lesney
It is my pleasure to publish the Matchbox 1966 Collector’s Guide & International Catalogue by Lesney Products & Co Ltd of Hackney Wick, courtesy of the late Libby Hall. The company was founded by Leslie & Rodney Smith in 1947 , closed in 1982 and the Lesney factory was demolished in 2010.
It all began in 1953, with a miniature diecast model of the Coronation Coach with its team of eight horses. In Coronation year, over a million were sold and this tremendous success was followed by the introduction of the first miniature vehicle models packed in matchboxes. And so the famous Matchbox Series was born.
More than five hundred million Matchbox models have been made since the series was first introduced during 1953, and today over two million Matchbox models are made every week. The life of a new model begins at a design meeting attended by Lesney senior executives. The suitability of a particular vehicle as a Matchbox model is discussed and the manufacturer of the full-sized car is approached for photographs, drawings and other information. Enthusiastic support is received from manufacturers throughout the world and many top secret, exciting new cars are on the Matchbox drawings boards long before they are launched to the world markets.
1. Once the details of the full-size vehicle have been obtained, many hours of careful work are required in the main drawing office in Hackney.
2. In the pattern shop, highly specialised craftsmen carve large wooden models which form the basic shape from which the miniature will eventually be diecast in millions.
3. Over a hundred skilled toolmakers are employed making the moulds for Matchbox models from the finest grade of chrome-vinadium steel.
4. There are more than one hundred and fifty automatic diecasting machines at Hackney and all have been designed, built and installed by Lesney engineers.
5. The spray shop uses nearly two thousand gallons of lead-free paint every week, and over two and a half million parts can be stove-enamelled every day.
6. Final assembly takes place over twenty lines, and sometimes several different models and their components come down each line at the same time.
7. Ingenious packing machines pick up the flat boxes, shape them and seal the model at the rate of more than one hundred and twenty items per minute.
8. Ultra-modern, automatic handling and automatic conveyor systems speed the finished models to the transit stores where electronic selection equipment routes each package.
From the highly individual, skilled worker or the enthusiast who produces hand-made samples of new ideas, to the multi-million mass assembly of the finished models by hundreds of workers, this is the remarkable story of Matchbox models. Over three thousand six hundred people play their part in a great team with the highest score in the world – over a hundred million models made and sold per year. Enthusiasts of all ages throughout the world collect and enjoy Matchbox models today and it is a true but amazing fact that if all the models from a year’s work in the Lesney factories were placed nose to tail they would stretch from London to Mexico City – a distance of over six thousand miles!
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