My Coin Collection
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Over twenty years ago, I bought this coin from a street trader at the time of the excavation of the Roman cemetery in Spitalfields. In 1576, John Stow wrote about the Roman coins that were dug up here in Spitalfields and I suspect mine came from the same source. A visit to the British Museum confirmed that the coin had been minted in London and the piercing was done in the Roman era when it was the custom to wear coins as amulets. Somebody wore this coin in London all those centuries ago and today I wear it on a string around my neck to give me a sense of perspective.
As you can see, my collection has grown as I have discovered that coin collectors are eager to dispose of pierced coins at low prices and I have taken on the responsibility of wearing them on behalf of their previous owners. It was only when the string broke in Princelet St one dark night in the rain at Christmas and I found myself scrabbling in the gutter to retrieve them all that I realised how much they mean to me.
Coin of the Emperor Arcadius minted in London
Figure of Minerva upon the reverse
Silver sixpence minted at the Tower of London, 1569
Head of Queen Elizabeth and Tudor rose
Silver sixpence minted at the Tower of London, 1602
Head of Elizabeth
Silver sixpence, 1676
Head of Charles II
Farthing, 1749
Head of George II
Silver sixpence, 1758
Head of George II
Young Queen Victoria
Half Farthing, 1844
Head of Queen Victoria
Silver sixpence, 1896
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Lesley Lewis, The French House
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‘It is a sort of family, a very strange family’
When you walk into the French House in Dean St, you enter a magical realm of possibility where you discover you are welcome and where you might meet almost anyone. It is the last place I can think of where the spirit of old Soho lingers and where you feel you are at the heart of London. It is a public place and yet people behave as if they were in private, a place where – just by walking in the door – you become accepted into a community.
Since 1891 when it opened, there have only been three publicans at the French House. In 1989, Lesley Lewis took over when Gaston Berlemont passed into legend. Today, Lesley presides with a regal hauteur worthy of Catherine Deneuve, a shrewd humour worthy of Marie Lloyd and a generosity of spirit worthy of Mistress Quickly.
On the road to the French house, Lesley performed with a python in cabaret before graduating to managing a strip club in Old Compton St in 1979, where admission cost 50p and senior customers brought sandwiches to stay all day. As it turned out, these formative experiences proved the ideal qualifications when destiny called.
Lesley tells how Gaston Berlemont’s family took over the pub from the first landlord, a German by the name of Schimdt, whose wife returned – after he had left the country at the outbreak of WWI – to sign over the lease on September 12th, 1914. Gaston spent his whole life at the French House and, on his return from WWII, his father said,”Enough of that. You’re behind the bar, I’m off.”
It was a brawl in the twenties between French sailors smashing pint glasses over each other’s heads that led to the house policy of only serving half pints of beer, which continues to this day with the annual exception of April 1st.
During the last war, the pub – known as the York Minister – became a centre for French ex-patriates in London, serving wine which was a rare commodity then. Gaston’s daughter Giselle recalls Errol Flynn and Orson Welles tasting wine in the cellar at this time, and in June 1940 General De Gaulle wrote his famous speech in the bar -“La France a perdu une bataille. Mais la France n’a pas perdu la guerre!” After the war, the nickname of ‘The French House’ stuck and, in 1984, the name was officially changed.
With such illustrious predecessors, it was a great delight and privilege to sit down with Lesley in a quiet corner of the bar and hear her story in her own words over a glass of Ricard.
“I was General Manager at Peppermint Park, a restaurant and cocktail bar in Upper St Martin’s Lane, and when they sold the company I was offered redundancy or a pub. So I took the pub. It was the George & Dragon in Clerkenwell, a marvellous old pub. I had never poured a pint in my life, but some of my staff came with me because we were all made redundant, and that was the start of loving the pub business.
It took me a while to get into the swing of things and I learnt a good few lessons. We had no idea what we were doing but the customers helped us. After the first week, we were called together by some of the regulars and they said, ‘Lesley, this is fine. We don’t mind you looking after our pub for us.’ That is the truth of pubs, it is not my pub it is the customers’ pub – because without them, we are absolutely nothing.
Slowly, we learnt to pull pints and amuse the customers. We were next door to the school of journalism so we had a lot of students, but most of our customers were the old time, edge-of-the-East-End, Clerkenwell people. They were characters – all been pretty much wiped out, it is something quite different now.
I lived above the George & Dragon and I live upstairs here, it is a very difficult job to do without living on the premises because you are pretty much on for seven days a week. After about five years in Clerkenwell, they offered me a ‘wine bar,’ and this was the wine bar! I knew the French House already and I had always loved it, and I have been here thirty years.
It was always full of wonderful characters – it still is, but they are different kinds of characters today – writers, painters and bohemians. Gaston was the landlord then and it was condemned when he retired in 1989, which I did not discover until I went to get the licence and I was given three months to sort it out. The place had been left to rack and ruin, which I think is probably why Gaston wanted to retire. He was facing a huge bill, instead I got the huge bill but it was worth it.
We had to rebuild it in a way that people would not notice, so we were building through the night. It was the most loved place in the world and I had this feeling I was going to destroy it but the red linoleum on the bar top had to go. It is British oak to go with the rest of the interior and it cost a fortune. Then I had to bash it up a bit so it looked in tune with the whole pub. The windows had not opened since the sixties but we fixed that. There was this awful seating along the window and you burnt your ankles on the heating which was underneath, so we got rid of that and bar stools came in. This pub has evolved.
I have stayed thirty years at the French House because I love it, this is what I do. It is a sort of family, a very strange family. Most of my staff have been with me a very long time and we are very close. Eighty per cent of my customers are regulars and we are all close to each other. We help each other through everything. To be honest, I do not know what I would do without it.
A big city can be a lonely horrible place sometimes and if there is a place where you can go for a bit of comfort and conversation. It is not just about drinking, it is about going to have a chat with somebody, and feel safe in an environment that is yours – where you are not threatened in any way, as you are in a lot of clubs. It is for all ages. Our eldest customer is Norman who is ninety-two but he does not come in very often and our youngest is a year and two months, Georgie’s little boy who has been coming in here since he was conceived.
For me, it all about the people who have been in here over the years – like Francis Bacon, Dylan Thomas, Dan Farson and Lucian Freud. I think at some point just about everybody who is anybody has put a foot over the threshold. They are all still here in a funny kind of way. Their essence is here.
I think it is really important that we keep our pubs. You notice how – particularly in Soho – they are disappearing all the time. It is even more important in the country villages where, if the pub goes, there is nothing. People need to have somewhere to go. It is a very British thing, a pub.”
Portraits copyright © Sarah Ainslie
The French House, 49 Dean Street, Soho, London, W1D 5BG
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At Mile End Place
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Mrs Johnson walks past 19 Mile End Place
Whenever I walk down the Mile End Rd, I always take a moment to step in through the archway and visit Mile End Place. This tiny enclave of early nineteenth century cottages sandwiched between the Velho and the Alderney Cemeteries harbours a quiet atmosphere that recalls an earlier, more rural East End and I have become intrigued to discover its history. So I was fascinated when Philip Cunningham sent me his pictures of Mile End Place from the seventies together with this poignant account of an unspoken grief from the First World War, still lingering more than fifty years later, which he encountered unexpectedly when he moved into his great-grandparents’ house.
“In 1971, my girlfriend – Sally – & I moved from East Dulwich to Mile End Place. It was number 19, the house where my maternal grandfather – Jack – had been born into a family of nine, and we purchased it from my grandfather’s nephew Denny Witt. The house was very cheap because it was on the slum clearance list but it was a lot better than the rooms we had been living in, even with an outside toilet and no bath.
There were just two small bedrooms upstairs and two small rooms downstairs. In my grandfather’s time, the front room was kept immaculate in case there might be a visitor and the sleeping was segregated, until Uncle Harry came back from the Boer War when he was not allowed to sleep with the other boys. For reasons left unexplained, he was banished to the front room and told he had better get married sharpish – which he did.
I first met my neighbour Mrs Johnson when gardening in the front of the house. I said ‘Morning,’ but there came no reply.‘What a nasty woman’ I thought, yet worse was to come. Mrs Johnson lived at the end of the street and two doors away lived a vague relative of hers who was married to an alcoholic. ‘She picked ‘im up in Jersey,’ I was told. He drank half bottles of whisky and rum, and threw the empties into the graveyard at the back of our houses – sometimes when they were half full.
I would often go to our outside toilet in socks and, on one occasion, nearly stepped upon pieces of broken glass that had been thrown into our backyard. At first, I assumed it was Paul – the graveyard keeper – and went straight round to his house in Alderney St. I nearly knocked his door down and was ready to flatten him, until he became very apologetic and explained that Mrs Johnson had told him we were students and always having parties. True in the first count, lies in the second. Mrs Johnson knew quite well who the culprit was, as did the everyone else in street. I was still angry, so I threw the glass back where it came from – which must have been a real chore to clear up on the other side
Sometime after all these events, Jane Plumtree – a barrister – moved into the street. She said ‘We must have street parties!’ and so we did. At the first of these, the longest established families in the street all had to sit together and – unfortunately – I was sat next to Mrs Johnson. She hissed and fumed, and turned her back on me as much as she could, until suddenly she turned to face me and said, ‘I knew your grandfather J-a–c—k, he came b-a–c—k!’ She spat the words out. I did not know what she was talking about so I just said, ‘Yes, he was a drayman.’
Later, I reported it over the phone to my Auntie Ethel. ‘Oh yes,’ she explained, ‘Mrs Johnson had three brothers and, when the First World War broke out, they thought it was going to be a splendid jolly. They signed up at once, even though two were under-age, and they were all dead in three months.’ Unlike my grandfather Jack, who came back.
Jack was married and living in Ewing St with his five children, but he was called up immediately war was declared because had been in the Territorial Army. He was present at almost every major piece of action throughout the First World War and, at some point, while driving an ammunition lorry, he got into the back and rolled a cigarette when there was no one around. He got caught and was sentenced to be shot, but – fortunately – someone piped up and declared they did not have enough drivers, so his punishment was reduced to six weeks loss of pay, which made my grandmother – to whom the money was due – furious!
When Jack and the other troops with him came under fire in a French village, he and an Irish soldier broke into a music shop for cover. On the wall was a silver trumpet which Jack grabbed at once, but his Irish companion grabbed the mouthpiece and would not let Jack have it unless he went into the street, amid the falling shells, to play. Reluctantly, Jack did this – playing extremely fast – and he brought the trumpet home with him to the East End.”
19 Mile End Place
Philip’s grandfather Jack was born at 19 Mile End Place
View from 19 Mile End Place
Philip purchased 19 Mile End Place from his cousin Danny Witt, photographed during World War II
Outside toilet at 19 Mile End Place
Backyard at 19 Mile End Place
View towards the Alderney Cemetery with the keeper’s house in the distance
Paul Campkin, the Cemetery Keeper
The Alderney Cemetery
Looking out towards Mile End Rd
Entrance to Mile End Place from Mile End Rd
Photographs copyright © Philip Cunningham
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So Long, Bethnal Green Gasometers
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As work commences on the demolition of these longtime landmarks, I publish my eulogy to two beloved citadels soon to vanish from the landscape.
Behold the majestic pair of gasometers in Bethnal Green, planted regally side by side like a king and queen surveying the Regent’s Canal from aloft. Approaching along the towpath, George Trewby’s gasometer of 1888-9 dominates the skyline, more than twice the height of its more intricate senior companion designed by Joseph Clarke in 1866.
Ever since these monumental gasometers were granted a ‘certificate of immunity against listing’ by Historic England, which guarantees they will never receive any legal protection from destruction, their fate has been sealed.
The Bethnal Green gasometers were constructed to contain the gas that was produced by the Shoreditch Gas Works, fired by coal delivered by canal. The thick old brick walls bordering Haggerston Park are all that remains today of the gas works which formerly occupied the site of the park, built by the Imperial Gas Light & Coke Company in 1823.
Crossing Cat & Mutton Bridge, named after the nearby pub founded in 1732, I walked down Wharf Place and into Darwen Place determining to make as close a circuit of the gasometers as the streets would permit me.
Flanked by new housing on either side of Darwen Place, the gasometers make a spectacularly theatrical backdrop to a street that would otherwise lack drama. Dignified like standing stones yet soaring like cathedrals, these intricate structures insist you raise your eyes heavenward, framing the sky as if it were an epic painting contrived for our edification.
Each storey of Joseph Clarke’s structure has columns ascending from Doric to Corinthian, indicating the influence of classical antiquity and revealing the architect’s chosen precedent as the Coliseum, which – if you think about it – bears a striking resemblance to a gasometer.
As I walked through the surrounding streets, circumnavigating the gasometers, I realised that the unapproachable nature of these citadels contributes to their magic. You keep walking and they always remain in the distance, always just out of reach yet looming overhead and dwarfing their surroundings. In spite of the utilitarian nature of this landscape, the relationship between the past and present is clear in this place and this imparts a strange charisma to the location, an atmosphere enhanced by the other-wordly gasometers.
After walking their entire perimeter, I can confirm that the gasometers are most advantageously regarded from mid-way along the tow path between Mare St and Broadway Market. From here, the silhouette of George Trewby’s soaring structure may be be viewed against the sun and also as a reflection into the canal, thus doubling the dramatic effect of these intriguing sky cages that capture space and inspire exhilaration in the beholder.
We hope that the developer recognises the virtue in retaining these magnificent towers and integrating them into their scheme, adding value and distinction to their architecture, and drama and delight to the landscape.
The view from Darwen Place
Decorative ironwork and classical columns ascending from Doric to Corinthian like the Coliseum
The view from Marian Place
The view from Emma St
The view from Corbridge St
The view from Regent’s Canal towpath
George Trewby’s gasometer of 1888 viewed from Cat of Mutton bridge over Regent’s Canal
Demolition begins
Iron plate torn off like orange peel
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The Spitalfields Talks
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In collaboration with the Spitalfields Society, I have curated a series of eight monthly talks at the Hanbury Hall on subjects of local interest. The talks take place on the first Tuesday of each month, commencing in October and running through the winter into next spring.
Tickets are £6 and you can book for individual talks through the links below, but we hope many readers will take advantage of season tickets at £36, available direct from info@spitalfieldssociety.org All talks will be accompanied by a bar and we expect this will become a popular social event in Spitalfields.
The Hanbury Hall was built as a Huguenot chapel in 1740 as ‘La Patente’ and has recently been renovated. Two talks are of particular local importance because the Matchgirls met in the hall in 1888 and Joseph Merceron was baptised there when it was a Huguenot chapel.
Click here to book for 4th October: Adam Dant on his Maps of Spitalfields & Shoreditch
Cartographer Adam Dant will be showing each of his wonderful maps of Spitalfields & Shoreditch, and telling the stories behind them.
Click here to book for 1st November: Rachel Kolsky on The Jewish East End, From Beigels to Bhajis
Prize-winning London Blue Badge Guide Rachel Kolsky explores Spitalfields and the East End’s rich Jewish heritage.
Click here to book for 6th December: Dan Cruickshank on The Last Lost Buildings of Spitalfields
Dan Cruickshank will be discussing three eighteenth century houses that are being brought back into use, 2 Wilkes St, 19 & 25 Princelet St.
Spitalfields resident Caroline Hamilton speaks of her awe-inspiring polar adventures in the frosts of the high Arctic & Antarctic.
Click here to book for 7th February: The Gentle Author on Horace Warner’s Spitalfields Nippers
The Gentle Author tells the story of photographer Horace Warner and shows his astonishing portraits taken in Spitalfields around 1900.
Click here to book for 7th March: Samantha Johnson on My Grandmother and the Matchgirls of 1888
Samantha Johnson discusses the life of Sarah Chapman who was one of the prime movers in the Matchgirls’ strike at the Bryant & May factory in Bow.
Click here to book for 4th April: Suresh Singh on A Modest Living, Memoirs of a Cockney Sikh
Suresh Singh tells the story of his family in Princelet St, beginning with the life of his father Joginder Singh who came to Spitalfields from the Punjab in 1949.
Click here to book for 2nd May: Julian Woodford on Joseph Merceron, The Boss of Bethnal Green
Historical biographer Julian Woodford discusses the breathtakingly appalling life of the eighteenth century Huguenot gangster and corrupt politician, Joseph Merceron.
The Tombs Of Old London
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Monument to Lady Elizabeth Nightingale, Westminster Abbey, c.1910
On the day that our dearly beloved old queen is laid to rest, what could be more appropriate than a virtual tour of the Tombs of Old London, courtesy of these glass slides once used by the London & Middlesex Archaeological Society for magic lantern shows at the Bishopsgate Institute?
We can admire the aesthetic wonders of statuary and architecture in these magnificent designs, and receive an education in the history and achievements of our illustrious forbears as a bonus.
In my childhood, no festival or national occasion was complete without a visit to some ancient abbey or cathedral. Yet while ostensibly we went to pay our respects, my interest was always drawn by the stone tombs and ancient monuments.
It is a human impulse to challenge the ephemeral nature of existence by striving to create monuments, even if the paradox is that these attempts to render tenderness in granite will always be poignant failures, reminding us of death rather than life. Yet there is soulful beauty in these overwrought confections and a certain liberating consolation to be drawn, setting our personal grief against the wider perspective of history.
Tomb of Sir Francis Vere, Westminster Abbey, c. 1910
Monument to William Wilberforce, Westminster Abbey, c.1910
Memorial to Admiral Sir Peter Warren, Westminster Abbey, c.1910
Monument to William Wordsworth in Baptistery, Westminster Abbey, c.1910
St Benedict’s Chapel, Westminster Abbey, c.1910
Chapel of St Edmund, Westminster Abbey, c.1910
Tombstone of Laurence Sterne, St George’s Hanover Sq, c.1910 – Buried, grave-robbed and reburied in 1768, subsequently removed to Coxwold in 1969 due to redevelopment of the churchyard.
Hogarth’s tomb, St Nicholas’ Churchyard, Chiswick, c.1910
Sir Hans Sloane and Miller Monuments in Old Chelsea Churchyard, c. 1910
Stanley’s Monument in Chelsea Church, c. 1910
Sanctuary at All Saint’s Church, Chelsea, c. 1910
Shakespeare’s memorial, Westminster Abbey, c. 1910
Colville Monument in All Saint’s Church, Chelsea, c. 1910
Tomb of Daniel Defoe at Bunhill Fields Burial Ground, c. 1910
At the gates of Bunhill Fields, c. 1910
Tomb of John Bunyan, Bunhill Fields Burial Ground, c. 1910
North Transept of Westminster Abbey, c. 1910
North Ambulatory, Westminster Abbey, c. 1910
Ambulatory, Westminster Abbey, c. 1910
Monument to John Milton, St Giles, Cripplegate, c. 1910
Offley Monument, St Andrew Undershaft, c. 1910
Pickering Monument, St Helen’s Bishopsgate, c. 1920
Plaque, Christ Church, Newgate, 1921
Tombs in Temple churchyard, c. 1910
King Sebert’s Tomb, Westminster Abbey, c. 1910
Monument to Historian John Stow in St.Andrew Undershaft, c. 1910
Tomb of Edward III, Westminster Abbey, c. 1910
Queen Elizabeth I’s Tomb, Westminster Abbey, c. 1910
Tomb of Henry VII and Elizabeth of York, Westminster Abbey, c. 1910
Monument to Charles James Fox, Westminster Abbey, c. 1910
Poets’ Corner with David Garrick’s Memorial, Westminster Abbey, c. 1910
Memorial to George Frederick Handel, Westminster Abbey, c. 1910
Monument to Francis Holles, Westminster Abbey, c. 1910
Tombstone of the Kidney family, c. 1910
Cradle monument to Sophia, Daughter of James I, Henry VII’s Lady Chapel, Westminster Abbey, c. 1910
Tomb of Sir Francis Vere, Chapel of St John the Evangelist, Westminster Abbey, c. 1910
Tomb of John Dryden, Westminster Abbey, c. 1910
Wellington’s Funeral Carriage, St Paul’s Cathedral,c. 1910
Robert Preston’s grave stone, St Magnus, c. 1910
Tomb of Henry VII, Westminster Abbey, c. 1910
Glass slides courtesy Bishopsgate Institute
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Blackie, The Last Spitalfields Market Cat
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Here you see Blackie, the last Spitalfields market cat, taking a nap in the premises of Williams Watercress at 11 Gun St. Presiding over Blackie – as she sleeps peacefully among the watercress boxes before the electric fire with her dishes of food and water to hand – is Jim, the nightman who oversaw the premises from six each evening until two next morning, on behalf of Len Williams the proprietor.
This black and white photograph by Robert Davis, with a nineteenth century barrow wheel in the background and a nineteen-fifties heater in the foreground, could have been taken almost any time in the second half of the twentieth century. Only the date on the calendar betrays it as 1990, the penultimate year of the Spitalfields Fruit & Vegetable Market, before it moved East to Stratford.
In spite of Jim the nightman’s fond expression, Blackie was no pet. She was a working animal who earned her keep killing rats. Underneath the market were vaults to store fresh produce, which had to be sold within three days – formalised as first, second and third day prices – with each day’s price struck at two in the morning. But the traders often forgot about the fruit and vegetables down in the basement and it hung around more than three days, and with the spillage on the road which local residents and the homeless came to scavenge, it caused the entire market to become a magnet for vermin, running through the streets and into the labyrinth beneath the buildings.
It must have been paradise for a cat that loved to hunt, like Blackie. With her jet black fur, so black she was like a dark hole in the world running round on legs, vanishing into the shadow and appearing from nowhere to pounce upon a rat and take its life with her needle-sharp claws, Blackie was a lethally efficient killer. Not a submissive creature that could be easily stroked and petted as domestic cats are, Blackie was a proud beast that walked on her own, learnt the secret of survival on the streets and won independent status, affection and respect through her achievements in vermin control.
“They were all very pleased with Blackie for her great skill in catching rats, she was the last great market cat,” confirmed Jim Howett, a furniture maker who first met Blackie when he moved into a workshop above the watercress seller in 1988. “The other traders would queue up for kittens from Blackie sister’s litters because they were so good at rat-catching. Blackie brought half-dead rats back to teach them how to do it. Such was Blackie’s expertise, it was said she could spot a poisoned rat at a hundred feet. The porters used to marvel that when they said, ‘Blackie, there’s a rat,’ Blackie would focus and if the rat showed any weakness, would wobble, or walk uncertainly, she would turn her back, and return to the fire – because the rat was ill, and most likely poisoned. And after all, Blackie was the last cat standing,” continued Jim, recounting tales of this noble creature that has become a legend in Spitalfields today.
“The story was often told of a kitten trained by Blackie, taken by a restaurant and hotel in the country. One day it brought a half-dead rat into the middle of a Rotary Club Function, seeking approval as it had learnt in Spitalfields, and the guests ran screaming.”
The day the Fruit & Vegetable Market left in 1991, Blackie adjusted, no longer crossing the road to the empty market building instead she concentrated on maintaining the block of buildings on Brushfield St as her territory by patrolling the rooftops. By now she was an old cat and eventually could only control the three corner buildings, and one day Charles Gledhill a book binder who lived with his wife Marianna Kennedy at 42 Brushfield St, noticed a shadow fly past his window. It was Blackie that he saw, she had fallen from the gutter and broken a leg on the pavement below. “We all liked Blackie, and we took care of her after the market left,” explained Jim, with a regretful smile. “So we took her to the vet who was amazed, he said, ‘What are you doing with this old feral cat?’, because Blackie had a fierce temper, she was always hissing and growling.”
“But Blackie recovered, and on good days she would cross the road and sun herself on palettes, although on other days she did not move from the fire. She became very thin and we put her in the window of A.Gold to enjoy the sun. One day Blackie was stolen from there. We heard a woman had been seen carrying her towards Liverpool St in a box but we couldn’t find her, so we put up signs explaining that Blackie was so thin because she was a very old cat.”
“Two weeks later, Blackie was returned in a fierce mood by the lady who taken her, she apologised and ran away. Blackie had a sojourn in Milton Keynes! We guessed the woman was horrified with this feral creature that growled and scratched and hissed and arched its back.”
“After that, Blackie got stiffer and stiffer, and one day she stood in the centre of the floor and we knew she wasn’t going to move again. She died of a stroke that night. The market porters told me Blackie was twenty when she died, as old as any cat could be.”
Everyone knows the tale of Dick Whittington, the first Lord Mayor of London whose cat was instrumental to his success. This story reminds us that for centuries a feline presence was essential to all homes and premises in London. It was a serious business to keep the rats and mice at bay, killing vermin that ate supplies and brought plague.
Over its three centuries of operation, there were innumerable generations of cats bred for their ratting abilities at the Spitalfields Market, but it all ended with Blackie. Like Tess of the D’Urbevilles or The Last of the Mohicans, the tale of Blackie, the Last Great Spitalfields Market Cat contains the story of all that came before. Cats were the first animals to be domesticated, long before dogs, and so our connection with felines is the oldest human relationship with an animal, based up the exchange of food and shelter in return for vermin control.
Blackie at 42 Brushfield St
Blackie in her final years, 1991/2
Nineteenth century print of Dick Whittington & his cat
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