At The Two Puddings
In response to popular demand I am hosting a midweek tour on Thursday 10th November.
Click here to book for THE GENTLE AUTHOR’S TOUR OF SPITALFIELDS
Shirley & Eddie Johnson on their first day behind the bar in 1962
Through four decades, from 1962 until 2000, Eddie Johnson was landlord of the celebrated Two Puddings in Stratford, becoming London’s longest serving licensee in the process and witnessing a transformation in the East End. When Eddie took it on, the Two Puddings was the most notorious pub in the area, known locally as the Butcher’s Shop on account of the amount of blood spilt. Yet he established the Puddings as a prime destination, opening Britain’s first disco and presenting a distinguished roll call of musicians including The Who – though the pub never quite shook off its violent notoriety.
“I’ve had a lot of blows,” Eddie confided to me with a crooked grin, his eyes glinting enigmatically. Even at eighty, Eddie retained a powerful and charismatic demeanour – very tall, still limber and tanned with thick white hair. Of the old East End, yet confident to carry himself in any company, Eddie admitted to me he was the first from his side of town to make it into Peter Langan’s Brasserie in Stratton St, mixing with a very different clientele from that in Stratford Broadway. It was indicative of the possibility of class mobility at the time, and there were plenty from the West End who were persuaded to take the trip east and experience the vibrant culture on offer at the Puddings.
“I came from the Old Ford Rd and I suppose you’d refer to it as a slum by today’s standards, but I never thought that because I had a happy childhood, even if we had an outside toilet and went to the bath house each week. The public library was heaven to me, all polished wood and brass, and I got a great love of schoolboys’ adventure stories which made me wish I could go to public school though, of course, I’d have hated it if I did. After I got married and had a son and then another, I had a number of dead end jobs. When I came out of the army, I became involved with a rough crowd. I worked with my brother Kenny organising dances. I was a bit of a hooligan and I got stabbed in a dance hall. But then I found a job as a Tally-clerk in the docks and became involved with the Blue Union – the skilled workers and stevedores. I was the Tally-clerk on Jack Dash’s strike committee. I loved it down there and, though I didn’t make a lot of money, I didn’t care because I loved the freedom. We could more or less do what we wanted.
The licensee of the Two Puddings got in trouble with the police, so Kenny and I bought the lease because we were frightened of losing the dance hall. Since my brother couldn’t hold the licence owing to an earlier court case, I had to take it. Now I didn’t fancy managing a pub and I had been to the Old Bailey for GBH, so I had to be upfront with the police in Stratford but they were horrible. They said,‘We’ve seen you driving around in a flash car,’ and I said, ‘I’l tell you where you can stick your licence!’ But this butcher, Eddie Downes, a huge fat man with a completely bald head who looked like a cartoon butcher, he told me not to worry. He had a reputation as a grass and he was always boasting about his connections to the police. ‘You’ll still get your meat from me?’ he asked, and three months later we were granted a licence.
We moved into the Puddings and after the opening night, I said, ‘I can’t stand this,’ and then I stayed forty years. I used to come downstairs on a Friday night and look around hoping there weren’t going to be any fights and I’d get all tensed up, but after a few light ales I’d be happy as a sandboy. The place would be packed and we’d be serving beer in wet glasses – it was fairly clean and people didn’t mind. We sold four hundred dozen light ales in a week, nowadays a pub is lucky to sell two dozen. We worked six nights a week plus a fortnight holiday a year and, on Wednesdays, my wife and I used to go up to the West End for a night out – but after forty years, it was tough.
At the end of the sixties, they knocked down a lot of buildings and did a redevelopment in Stratford. We lost all our local trade and the immigrants that came to live there didn’t have a culture of drinking, but we still had our music crowd. It was ear-splitting music really and we were the first pub to have UV. We called the club the Devil’s Kitchen and got a licence till two in the morning, and it was ever so popular. People came from far and wide.”
At the end of the last century, changes in the law required breweries to sell off many of their pubs and the Two Puddings changed hands, resulting in a controversy over discounts offered to publicans and a court case that saw Eddie Johnson thrown out of his job.
He retired to Suffolk and organised his stories into an eloquent memoir. It was the outcome of lifetime’s fascination with literature that began with a passion for schoolboy adventures and led Eddie to read the great novelists during his hours of employment in the London Docks. His first story was printed in The Tally-Clerk at that time, but he realised his ambition to become a writer with the publication of “Tales from the Two Puddings,” and I recommend it to you.
Eddie aged nine, 1941.
Eddie when he worked in the docks.
Early Saturday morning and preparing to open. Eddie behind the bar and George the potman to his right.
Old George the potman.
Shirley Johnson with Rose Doughty, the famous wise-cracking barmaid.
Eddie’s sister Doreen (second left) and friends heading upstairs to the Devil’s Kitchen, above the Puddings (photograph by Alf Shead)
Eddie and his brother Kenny with their beloved Uncle John in the Puddings.
Saturday night in the Puddings.
Joe and Sue, Eddie’s father-in-law and mother-in-law, enjoying a Saturday night in the Puddings.
Eddie Johnson
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Dennis & Christine Reeve, Walnut Farmers
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The Romans introduced walnut trees into this country and they have been cultivated here ever since, but you would have to go a long way these days to find anyone farming walnuts. Contributing Photographer Sarah Ainslie & I travelled to the tiny village of West Row in East Anglia – where walnuts have been grown as long as anyone can remember – to meet Dennis & Christine Reeve, the last walnut farmers in their neck of the woods.
Dennis’ grandfather Frank planted the trees a century ago which were passed into the care of his father Cecil, who supplemented the grove of around thirty, that today are managed by Dennis and his wife Christine – who originates from the next village and married into the walnut dynasty. Dennis has only planted one walnut tree himself, to commemorate the hundredth birthday of his mother Maggie Reeve who subsequently lived to one hundred and five, offering a shining example of the benefits to longevity which may be obtained by eating copious amounts of walnuts.
I was curious to understand the job of a walnut farmer beyond planting the trees and Dennis was candid in his admission that it was a two-months-a-year occupation. “You just wait until they fall off the trees and then go out and pick ’em up,” he confessed to me with a chuckle of alacrity that concealed three generations of experience in cultivating walnuts.
Perhaps no-one alive possesses greater eloquence upon the subject of walnuts than Dennis Reeve? He loves walnuts – as a delicacy, as a source of income and as a phenomenon – and he can tell you which of his thirty trees a walnut came from by its taste alone. He is in thrall to the mystery of this enigmatic species that originates far from these shores. Even after all these years, Dennis cannot explain why some trees give double walnuts when others give none, or why particular trees night be loaded one season and not the next. “There’s one tree that’s smaller than the rest yet always produces a lot of nuts while there’s nothing on the trees around it,” he confessed, his brow furrowed with incomprehension.
Yet these insoluble enigmas make the walnut compelling to Dennis. The possibility of ‘a sharp frost at the wrong time of the year’ is the enemy of the walnut but Dennis has an answer to this. “They say ‘keep your grass long in the orchard and the frost won’t affect them,'” he admitted to me, raising a sly finger to his nose in confidence.
“Walnuts are the last tree to come into leaf in the orchard, in Maytime, and you start to harvest them at the end of the September right through to November. I used to climb into the tree with a bamboo pole about twenty foot long and I thrashed them because walnuts are sold by weight and the longer you leave them the more they dry out. We call it ‘brushing.’ Nowadays, I am a bit long in the tooth to get up into the trees, so I have to wait until the walnuts drop and I walk round every day from the end of September picking them up. They get dirty when they fall on the ground so I put them in my old tin bath and clean them up with water and a broom, and then I put them on a run to dry.”
You would be mistaken if you assumed the life of a walnut farmer was one of rural obscurity, celebrity has intruded into Dennis & Christine’s existence with requests to supply their produce to the great and the good. “One year in the seventies, my father had a call in the summer from a salesman in London saying they needed about eight pounds of walnuts urgently,” Dennis revealed to me, arching his brows to illustrate the seriousness of the request as a matter of national importance.
“‘I don’t care how you get them here, but we’ve got to have them,’ they said. They were for Buckingham Palace, but the walnuts on the tree were still green with the green husk around them. We told them, ‘They’re not ready yet and there’s nothing we can do about it.’ They said, ‘We don’t care, we’ve got to have them.’ Now we kept pigs at the time and there was a muck dump where we put all the waste, so we put the walnuts in the muck dump for them to heat, just like in a cooker. After about two days the husks started to crack, and that’s how we ripened the nuts for the Queen, in our muck dump!'”
Christine recounted a comparable story about how their walnuts went to Westminster. “There was a dinner in the Houses of Parliament to celebrate British produce and our walnuts were served,” she explained to me with a thin smile, “and they sent us the printed menu which listed the provenance of all the ingredients, including ‘walnuts from Norfolk,’ which was a bit of a let down – because we are in Suffolk here.” Yet I did not feel Christine was unduly troubled by this careless error. Both stories served to confirm the delight that she and Dennis share – of living at the centre of their own world secluded from the urban madness, in a house they built on land bought by Dennis’ grandfather and surrounded by their beloved walnut trees.
Too few are aware of the special qualities of English walnuts, especially the distinctive flavour of wet walnuts early in the season when they possess an appealing sharpness that complements cheese well. “Sometimes people want them earlier before they are ripe if they are going to pickle them,” Dennis told me, “if you can stick a match right through from one side to the other, that is the ideal time to pickle walnuts.” Over the years, those who know about walnuts have sought out Dennis & Christine for their produce. “We have a regular customer in Kent who found our nuts in Harrods,” Christine informed me proudly, “she rang us and now we send her our wet walnuts every year. She peels them and eats them with a glass of sherry and that’s the highlight of her Christmas.”
The walnut grove
Dennis & Christine Reeve
Dennis with the tin bath and brush that he uses for washing his walnuts
Dennis with his scoop for walnuts
Dennis outside his father’s cottage
Dennis Reeve, third generation walnut farmer
Photographs copyright © Sarah Ainslie
Jacqueline Billings Of Wellclose Square
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Jacqueline Billings
It was my delight to take the train down to Farnborough to meet Jacqueline Billings. She is one of the few people left to recall the fabled beauty of Wellclose Sq in Wapping which was demolished in the last century as part of ‘slum clearance.’
‘I can’t remember anything because I am so old and very little has registered,’ she declared to me, shaking her head in feigned disappointment, before regaling me with the tales of her formative years in Wellclose Sq which you can read below.
In the East End, Jacqueline discovered two prevailing passions which remain with her to this day. She began her career as a teacher in Poplar in her twenties and, seventy years later, still tutors children at home. She remembers visiting the Whitechapel Bell Foundry over half a century ago and has been an enthusiastic handbell ringer for more than forty years, still practising several nights a week.
With high cheek bones, classical features and with her long white hair pulled back, Jacqueline possesses a commanding yet magnanimous spirit. She is well spoken, with precise diction and elegant consonants, and it was my privilege to listen as she told me her story in her own words.
“I was born in 1926 which makes me ninety-two years old. I was born in Ilford and my father, George Thompson, was an analytical chemist and worked for the Gas Light & Coke Company. My mother Elise was French, from Saint Omer in Normandy, she was a hairdresser and people came round to our house to get their hair done. She was coming over to England one day and he had been to France, and they met on the ferry.
My grandfather lived at 7 Campbell Rd in Bow and was a ship’s carpenter in the London Docks. At some point, they asked for a halfpenny an hour wage increase and it was refused. After nine months of stalemate, the company closed and he was out of a job. We used to visit my grandparents in Bow, they had a tiny front room, a backroom and scullery with a tin bath.
The Gas Light & Coke Company had a gas substation in a house in Wellclose Sq in Wapping and we moved there in 1937, when I was ten years old. The first floor rooms were kept locked and my father had to check instruments through a glass panel in the wall. In the kitchen, during the war, there was a disc on the wall and it had a pen attached which we had to fill with ink. It drew a line that recorded the gas pressure. Sometimes the gas pipes were hit by bombs and the line dropped – there was no gas at all.
It was a lovely house with sixty-seven stairs from the bottom to the very top. The bathroom was at the top of the house but at some point somebody had built a lavatory in the yard. It was not very large but it was fascinating because it was castellated. You had to climb thirteen steps from the kitchen to get outside and then walk down this little yard to reach the castle at the bottom. Looking out from the front of the house into Wellclose Square, you could see the church and St Paul’s School and trees. It was very peaceful and I am sorry it has gone.
When we came to the East End from Ilford, it seemed a dirty and noisy place. In those days, it was mainly a Jewish quarter. Old ladies would be sitting outside their front doors after they had whitened the step, which they did every day. I can remember a lot of live chickens being sold.
At school, the East End children thought we spoke funny. We did not know how else to speak. We spoke as we had been brought up. I was never more than an average pupil and I do not remember having school friends. I was only there about a year before I was evacuated although, towards the end of the war, I came back every weekend. St Paul’s School was closed because all the children were evacuated and it never reopened in my time there. Consequently, the square was empty and always very quiet.
I had a brother George and a sister, Andrée. Our bedroom was at the top of the house and my sister did something frightening. The window opened onto a sloping roof, where there there was a gully and parapet. Lo and behold, if she did not get out of the window – which we had done several times – and stood in the gully. She walked along the top of the parapet and she survived. I was something I was never temped to do.
It was always frightening to me because my sister and I, we had to go down North East Passage to get to Cable St and then walk along Cable St. I do not know why it was frightening but I was always frightened in Cable St. People spoke about the blackshirts but not in any detail. We felt there might always be somebody there ready to jump out at us and in fact my sister was attacked one night. In the other direction, we would go down Cable St and walk up Leman St to Aldgate East underground station. On my way back down Leman St, even when I was twenty, I used to go into the Police Station and ask, ‘Please could a policeman accompany me back to the house.’
Sometimes we could hear ships sounding in the docks. Wellclose Square was very big and there was the Highway beyond and the docks were over a wall on the other side of the Highway. It was not traffic we heard, it was the sound of the ships. We never visited the docks. We were well insulated inside our house, I do not think we opened the windows very much. Certainly not at the front. We were never cold, we had gas lights and gas fires. You could go in the front door, walk down the passage and switch on the gaslight, which we thought was very advanced. You had to handle the gas mantle very carefully when you replaced it. I do not know when we got electricity.
We used to swim in the Thames by Tower Bridge. You could go down the steps and when the tide was out there was a gravelly beach. Lots of people went. We were always on our own but we did not come to any harm.
My father was only forty-eight when he died. He was still young but he had been ill all his life. He had a damaged kidney from a fall in the school gymnasium. It atrophied and finally he had it removed. He was born in 1900, so he was too young to serve in the First World War. During the Second World War, he was issued with a gun and he had to be able to shoot at a packet of cigarettes at twenty metres.
I remember hearing the sirens one Sunday morning and I said to my sister, ‘You know that means we’re at war.’ George, Andrée and I were evacuated to Egham in Surrey for four years, next door to where aircraft were being built. It was quite a dangerous spot. Once I looked up and I could see a dogfight overhead. My brother was sent to Virginia Water, and me and my sister were sent to Thorpe Lea. Our school was in a large house in Englefield Green. The lady who took us in was the widow of a Methodist minister and life was very quiet. There was no radio and we were not even allowed to knit on a Sunday. It was a strict life but we survived it.
We came back whenever we could and I remember being in London when the doodlebugs came over. We would come back to London on the Friday night and leave again on Saturday afternoon. There was not a lot of bomb damage around Wellclose Square. Although the eighteenth century houses were jerry built, when bombs came down, the houses blew out and lurched back again. The only shelter we had was a wine cellar underneath the pavement with an iron door. It was the best we could do, but we did not feel vulnerable.
Gradually, people drifted back to London. When I returned to live in Wellclose Sq, I was approaching eighteen and I went off again to college to train as a teacher in Southampton. My brother and my sister moved to Bethnal Green. He had cerebral palsy, so walking was difficult for him but he got around and he became a proofreader for a newspaper.
Once I became a teacher, I taught back in the East End in Poplar. In those days, we had classes of at least thirty and they spoke cockney. I had a pile of comics and I would make the children go to the cloakroom and wash their hands before I handed out the comics, because they were precious. We had to store them and bring them out again and again as a special treat for the children. We wanted to teach respect for the written word.
I enjoyed teaching so much that I have not stopped. I shall be teaching this afternoon. The pupils come to my home in Camberley, they are all Bangladeshi and Pakistani children. The parents are keen for them to do well and so many of them want to be doctors. I was pleased to leave the East End because I like all the green here in Surrey.”
Stable Yard, Wellclose Sq (London & Middlesex Archaeological Society, Bishopsgate Institute)
The Old Court House, Wellclose Sq (City of London, London Metropolitan Archives)
The former Danish Embassy, c.1930. (City of London, London Metropolitan Archives)
At the corner of Stable Yard, Wellclose Sq. (London & Middlesex Archaeological Society, Bishopsgate Institute)
Geoffrey Fletcher’s drawing of Wellclose Sq, 1968.
Wellclose Sq looking east from the steps of No.5 (City of London, London Metropolitan Archives)
Wellclose Sq, south side, 1961. (City of London, London Metropolitan Archives)
Old Court House, view to first floor landing showing the fine Barbon staircase, 1911 (City of London, London Metropolitan Archives)
Watch House, Wellclose Sq, 1935. (City of London, London Metropolitan Archives)
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Last Call For My Writing Course In November!
There are a just few places remaining for my course
HOW TO WRITE A BLOG THAT PEOPLE WILL WANT TO READ: 12th-13th November 2022
Spend a weekend in an eighteenth century weaver’s house in Spitalfields and learn how to write a blog with The Gentle Author.
This course is suitable for writers of all levels of experience – from complete beginners to those who already have a blog and want to advance.
We will examine the essential questions which need to be addressed if you wish to write a blog that people will want to read.
“Like those writers in fourteenth century Florence who discovered the sonnet but did not quite know what to do with it, we are presented with the new literary medium of the blog – which has quickly become omnipresent, with many millions writing online. For my own part, I respect this nascent literary form by seeking to explore its own unique qualities and potential.” – The Gentle Author
COURSE STRUCTURE
1. How to find a voice – When you write, who are you writing to and what is your relationship with the reader?
2. How to find a subject – Why is it necessary to write and what do you have to tell?
3. How to find the form – What is the ideal manifestation of your material and how can a good structure give you momentum?
4. The relationship of pictures and words – Which comes first, the pictures or the words? Creating a dynamic relationship between your text and images.
5. How to write a pen portrait – Drawing on The Gentle Author’s experience, different strategies in transforming a conversation into an effective written evocation of a personality.
6. What a blog can do – A consideration of how telling stories on the internet can affect the temporal world.
SALIENT DETAILS
Courses will be held at 5 Fournier St, Spitalfields on 12th-13th November, running from 10am-5pm on Saturday and 11am-5pm on Sunday.
Lunch, tea, coffee & cakes by the Townhouse are included within the course fee of £300.
Email spitalfieldslife@gmail.com to book a place on a course.
Comments by students from courses tutored by The Gentle Author
“I highly recommend this creative, challenging and most inspiring course. The Gentle Author gave me the confidence to find my voice and just go for it!”
“Do join The Gentle Author on this Blogging Course in Spitalfields. It’s as much about learning/ appreciating Storytelling as Blogging. About developing how to write or talk to your readers in your own unique way. It’s also an opportunity to “test” your ideas in an encouraging and inspirational environment. Go and enjoy – I’d happily do it all again!”
“The Gentle Author’s writing course strikes the right balance between addressing the creative act of blogging and the practical tips needed to turn a concept into reality. During the course the participants are encouraged to share and develop their ideas in a safe yet stimulating environment. A great course for those who need that final (gentle) push!”
“I haven’t enjoyed a weekend so much for a long time. The disparate participants with different experiences and aspirations rapidly became a coherent group under The Gentle Author’s direction in a gorgeous house in Spitalfields. There was lots of encouragement, constructive criticism, laughter and very good lunches. With not a computer in sight, I found it really enjoyable to draft pieces of written work using pen and paper.Having gone with a very vague idea about what I might do I came away with a clear plan which I think will be achievable and worthwhile.”
“The Gentle Author is a master blogger and, happily for us, prepared to pass on skills. This “How to write a blog” course goes well beyond offering information about how to start blogging – it helps you to see the world in a different light, and inspires you to blog about it. You won’t find a better way to spend your time or money if you’re considering starting a blog.”
“I gladly traveled from the States to Spitalfields for the How to Write a Blog Course. The unique setting and quality of the Gentle Author’s own writing persuaded me and I was not disappointed. The weekend provided ample inspiration, like-minded fellowship, and practical steps to immediately launch a blog that one could be proud of. I’m so thankful to have attended.”
“I took part in The Gentle Author’s blogging course for a variety of reasons: I’ve followed Spitalfields Life for a long time now, and find it one of the most engaging blogs that I know; I also wanted to develop my own personal blog in a way that people will actually read, and that genuinely represents my own voice. The course was wonderful. Challenging, certainly, but I came away with new confidence that I can write in an engaging way, and to a self-imposed schedule. The setting in Fournier St was both lovely and sympathetic to the purpose of the course. A further unexpected pleasure was the variety of other bloggers who attended: each one had a very personal take on where they wanted their blogs to go, and brought with them an amazing range and depth of personal experience. “
“I found this bloggers course was a true revelation as it helped me find my own voice and gave me the courage to express my thoughts without restriction. As a result I launched my professional blog and improved my photography blog. I would highly recommend it.”
“An excellent and enjoyable weekend: informative, encouraging and challenging. The Gentle Author was generous throughout in sharing knowledge, ideas and experience and sensitively ensured we each felt equipped to start out. Thanks again for the weekend. I keep quoting you to myself.”
“My immediate impression was that I wasn’t going to feel intimidated – always a good sign on these occasions. The Gentle Author worked hard to help us to find our true voice, and the contributions from other students were useful too. Importantly, it didn’t feel like a ‘workshop’ and I left looking forward to writing my blog.”
“The Spitafields writing course was a wonderful experience all round. A truly creative teacher as informed and interesting as the blogs would suggest. An added bonus was the eclectic mix of eager students from all walks of life willing to share their passion and life stories. Bloomin’ marvellous grub too boot.”
“An entertaining and creative approach that reduces fears and expands thought”
“The weekend I spent taking your course in Spitalfields was a springboard one for me. I had identified writing a blog as something I could probably do – but actually doing it was something different! Your teaching methods were fascinating, and I learnt a lot about myself as well as gaining very constructive advice on how to write a blog. I lucked into a group of extremely interesting people in our workshop, and to be cocooned in the beautiful old Spitalfields house for a whole weekend, and plied with delicious food at lunchtime made for a weekend as enjoyable as it was satisfying. Your course made the difference between thinking about writing a blog, and actually writing it.”
“After blogging for three years, I attended The Gentle Author’s Blogging Course. What changed was my focus on specific topics, more pictures, more frequency, more fun. In the summer I wrote more than forty blogs, almost daily from my Tuscan villa on village life and I had brilliant feedback from my readers. And it was a fantastic weekend with a bunch of great people and yummy food.”
“An inspirational weekend, digging deep with lots of laughter and emotion, alongside practical insights and learning from across the group – and of course overall a delightfully gentle weekend.”
“The course was great fun and very informative, digging into the nuts and bolts of writing a blog. There was an encouraging and nurturing atmosphere that made me think that I too could learn to write a blog that people might want to read. – There’s a blurb, but of course what I really want to say is that my blog changed my life, without sounding like an idiot. The people that I met in the course were all interesting people, including yourself. So thanks for everything.”
“This is a very person-centred course. By the end of the weekend, everyone had developed their own ideas through a mix of exercises, conversation and one-to-one feedback. The beautiful Hugenot house and high-calibre food contributed to what was an inspiring and memorable weekend.”
“It was very intimate writing course that was based on the skills of writing. The Gentle Author was a superb teacher.”
“It was a surprising course that challenged and provoked the group in a beautiful supportive intimate way and I am so thankful for coming on it.”
“I did not enrol on the course because I had a blog in mind, but because I had bought TGA’s book, “Spitalfields Life”, very much admired the writing style and wanted to find out more and improve my own writing style. By the end of the course, I had a blog in mind, which was an unexpected bonus.”
“This course was what inspired me to dare to blog. Two years on, and blogging has changed the way I look at London.”
Remembering Rose Strowman
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Rose Strowman with her husband and two of her three sons on a day trip to Cliftonville in the sixties
ANDY STROWMAN is hosting a poetry reading with fellow East End writers at House of Annetta, 25 Princelet St at 3pm on Sunday 30th October. Writers include Shamim Azad, Paul Collins, Jeffrey Kleinman, Roger Mills, Farah Naz, Milton Rahman, Ian Saville and Jamie Strowman.
The event is entitled THE MIND KEEPS THE SCORE, Remembering our past, honouring our future in stories and poems.
All are welcome, admission is free and no booking is required.
Paul Collins sent me this heroic memoir of the life of his mother, Rose Strowman.
Amid growing concern for mental health, the life of my mother Rose proves a salutary case study. Born disabled into a low-income Jewish refugee family in Whitechapel, she remained unwashed and slept in the daytime for a year when her marriage ended and her beloved mother died. She spent time in three mental hospitals, yet regained her ebullience and made beautiful hats for modest prices that matched or even surpassed in quality those worn by the rich.
After her sister Rachel was divorced, Rose invited her to live with us and, although we all shared a cramped home that lacked a bathroom and indoor toilet, my mother brought up three children successfully.
Despite abuse and harassment at school, Andy, the youngest, wrote the poetry book Story of a Stepney Boy, then became a botanist, social worker, gardener and maths tutor. As her middle son, I swapped my uninterested father’s surname for Collins and trained as a reporter on the East London Advertiser, before pursuing journalism for national newspapers including the Daily Mirror. Then I worked as a media campaigner, fighting poverty including the hardship suffered by Bangladeshi workers making clothes for British stores. Meanwhile, the eldest son, my brother Howard, climbed from hairdressing to prominence as a multimillionaire businessman.
Rose’s strong character always shone through against persistent adversity. Emotional challenges began early when other schoolgirls teased her for the birth handicap of a foot turned inward. Then she lost two brothers, Dave and Barney, to early deaths from heart troubles.
Rose missed her friendly neighbours in Whitechapel after the forced move to Bow when the London Hospital sold her rented Milward St home to create parking space for Post Office vans. After her sons had gone their separate ways, Rose fell out with her sister Rachel and was treated at St Clement’s Hospital for a nervous breakdown.
As the nurses led her away, I had to remain strong for Mum. It was the only time I saw my brother Howard cry. On leaving St Clement’s, he found Mum a nursing home. But moments into visiting, I realised the mistake. The place had a pervasive smell of urine and residents begged me to help them escape. Soon Rose disappeared and slept two nights on Hampstead Heath before being consigned to a hospital bed for her own safety.
After discharge, she went to live at a flat beside Kew Gardens that Howard bought for her near his own home. But the unfamiliarity and isolation triggered a relapse that saw her vanish and wander alone for hours, requiring a return to in-patient care.
My uncle Jack and I searched all night, fearing to find her body in the Thames until she came back at dawn. As he drove us to the hospital, I cuddled her in the back seat, aware the longstanding illness she could not overcome had denied me hugs in childhood.
As further psychiatric hospital admissions followed, all three of us brothers dreaded that the cheerful mother we once knew might never re-emerge. But the turning point came after I secured a coveted place for Rose at the acclaimed Jewish home for elderly people, Nightingale House, which now also boasts a nursery that enables old and young to socialise together.
This Clapham establishment, with frequent outings for residents and craft activities, rekindled the Stepney warmth she had missed so much. Mum adored the staff and neighbours and they all loved her.
She needed to be needed and, being among the youngest residents, would go shopping for the housebound. She liked to laugh a lot and saw humour in things that others might not. Once, a neighbour at Nightingale House had diarrhoea and Rose constipation. Each received pills meant for the other. Mum was moved in more ways than one but she saw the mix-up as a big joke.
Rose smoked throughout life to calm her mood swings and developed a rare ear cancer. Yet even with cancer and after contracting pneumonia Rose’s courage never faded. I took her flowers in hospital and next day a nurse summoned me. “Your mum is a real character,” she beamed. “Guess what she’s done now?”
“You’d better tell me,” I replied.
“Remember the bouquet you brought, that we put in a vase of water?”
“Er, yes,” I faltered.
“And the nil-by-mouth sign behind her bed?”
“It’s still there.”
“Well, she took the flowers out of the vase and drank the water.”
Rose had a simple explanation. “Oy, was I thirsty!”
Mum outlived her consultant’s prognosis and returned from hospital to Nightingale House. Residents and staff there celebrated her seventy-fourth birthday weeks before she died.
Rose’s spirit lives on in the lives of Howard, Andy and me, her three sons.
Rose and her husband Sam at the time of their marriage, 1944
Rose’s youngest son Andy in Milward St, Whitechapel
Jamie Strowman wrote this poem in memory of his grandmother
FOX’S GLACIER MINTS
the taste would hit our mouths like a cloudburst
of spring rain though it was always December
down there in the sweet shop the corridor lit
by a single light on the way I would feel
the coins warming my hand to the promise shared
because I was an adult as much as you were a child
yet both of us were filled with that playground
rush our fingers like foxes rummaging through
the open packet throats catching the cool clear
‘and so’ in a breath yet now what sticks
most of all is the image of the polar bear delicately
poised on a Glacier Mint fragile but still strong
Rose Strowman in her sixties
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Nathaniel Kornbluth, Etcher
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Butchers’ Row, Aldgate, 1934
This view was a familiar one for Nathaniel Kornbluth (1914–97) because he spent his working life running the family menswear business at 56 Whitechapel High St, just a few hundred yards away. As a child of Polish immigrants, Nathaniel found his aspirations to an artistic career were discouraged, yet he proved himself a loyal son by devoting himself to the wholesale clothing trade by day, while taking evening classes in printmaking at night.
Nathaniel learnt the techniques of etching at classes at Hackney Technical School in the thirties and then came under the influence of some of the most important printmakers of his time at the Central School of Arts & Crafts in the forties.
While Nathaniel’s choice of medium and subject matter display an awareness of Whistler, a distinctly twentieth century expressionist influence may also be perceived in the moody atmosphere that prevails. His prints reveal an artist of superlative technical accomplishment, with a rigorous quality of draftsmanship, a commanding sense of space and a subtle appreciation of the grim utilitarian beauty of the working city, especially the riverside.
During the thirties, Nathaniel first exhibited his etchings at the East End Academy at the Whitechapel Gallery, which was situated directly across the road from his family business. Subsequently, his prints were purchased for major collections both nationally and internationally, and he was holding solo exhibitions of new work until the nineteen-eighties.
Although Nathaniel sought subject matter all over the capital, his intricately detailed representations of the London Docks in particular survive as an invaluable record of a lost industry.
Limehouse Cut, 1935-6
Lovell’s Wharf, Greenwich, 1932
Regent’s Canal, Stepney, 1934
Junk Shop, Limehouse, 1935
Butcher’s Row & Limehouse Cut courtesy of Tower Hamlets Local History Library & Archives
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Henry Silk’s Still Life
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In 1930, basketmaker and artist Henry Silk sits alone in his sparsely furnished room in Rounton Rd in Bow surrounded by few personal possessions. He glances in the mirror and realises that he is no longer young. Yet the pair of medals from the Great War laid on the table remind him how lucky he is to be alive.
He wakes in the camp bed in the early morning and the empty green room is flooded with light as dawn rises over the rooftops of the East End and washing flaps on the line. Weaving baskets suits a contemplative nature and, when Henry returns from the kitchen with a cup of tea, he sits at the table with the pink cloth and studies the objects upon the surface in the morning sunlight.
The forms and colours of these familiar things fascinate him. His pipe, his purse and his pocket knife that he carried for years are as commonplace to him as his own hands. Each day, Henry paints a picture to catalogue his personal possessions, comprising the modest landscape of his existence. It is a whole life in a handful of paintings.
Henry Silk and his sister
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Henry Silk, Basketmaker & Artist
