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William Nicolson’s London Types

February 15, 2025
by the gentle author

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When William Nicholson designed his stylish “London Types” in 1898 – that together with his “Almanac of Twelve Sports” and “An Illustrated Alphabet” were to make his reputation as a printmaker – his son Ben, who was to eclipse him entirely in the history of British Art through his Modernist works, was only five years old.

Yet, while working within the culture of the British popular print, William Nicholson deliberately chose to use the coarse-grained side of the block in his wood cuts, in a style that owed more to Toulouse Lautrec and Japanese precedents than to native visual traditions – which give these prints an innovative quality, even as they might seem to be celebrating unchanging roles in British society.

Although not strictly “Cries of London,” some of these characters are familiar from earlier series of prints stretching back over the previous century and, recognising this, Nicholson portrays them as quaint curiosities from another age. In each case, the ironic doggerel by W.E. Henley that accompanied them poked fun at the anachronistic nature of these social stereotypes, through outlining the ambivalent existence of the individual subjects – whether the street hawker displaced in Kensington far from his East End home, or the aristocratic lady at Rotten Row challenged by her suburban counterparts, or the drunken Sandwich-man displaying moral texts, or the fifteenth generation Bluecoat boy at Charterhouse School in Smithfield now moved out to Horsham.

These prints continue to fascinate me because, in spite of their chunky monochromatic aesthetic, they manage to convey the human presence with subtlety, placing the protagonists in dynamic relationships both with the viewer and the social landscape of London, as it was in the final years of the nineteenth century. The Lady and the Coster confront the viewer with equal assurance and, the disparity in their conditions notwithstanding, we meet both gazes with empathy. In William Nicholson’s designs, all the subjects retain self-possession because while the prints may illustrate their diverse social situations, their attitude is commonly impassive.

Working in partnership with his brother-in-law James Pryde, under the pseudonym the Beggarstaff Brothers, William Nicholson enjoyed a successful career creating vibrant graphics which served the boom in advertising that happened in the eighteen nineties. After 1900, he shifted his attention to painting, embarking on a series of portraits including J.M.Barrie, Rudyard Kipling and Max Beerbohm that filled the rest of his career. Nicholson had always wanted to paint, regarding his graphic work as a lesser achievement, a reservation illustrated by his modest self-portrait as a pavement artist.

More than a century later, William Nicholson’s “London Types” exist as a noble contribution to the series that have portrayed street life in the capital throughout the centuries, not just for their superlative graphic elegance, but because they reflect the changing society of London at the dawn of the twentieth century with complexity and wit.

News-Boy, the City – “the London ear loathes his speeshul yell…”

Sandwich-Man, Trafalgar Square – “the drunkard’s mouth awash for something drinkable…”

Beef-eater, Tower of London – “his beat lies knee-high through a dust of story.”

Coster, Hammersmith – “deems herself a perfect lady.”

Policeman, Constitution Hill – “whenever pageants pass, he moves conspicuous…”

Lady, Rotten Row – “one of that gay adulterous world.”

Bluecoat Boy, Newgate St. – “the old school nearing exile…”

Flower Girl, – “of populous corners right advantage taking…”

Guardsman, Horseguards Parade. – “of British blood, and bone, and beef and beer.”

Barmaid, any bar – “posing as a dove among the pots.”

Drum-Major, Wimbledon Common – “his bulk itself’s pure genius…”

William Nicholson portrayed himself as pavement artist.

Images copyright © Desmond Banks

You may like to take a look at

John Leighton’s London Cries

Francis Wheatley’s Cries of London

John Thomas Smith’s Vagabondiana of 1817

Adam Dant’s  New Cries of Spittlefields

Viscountess Boudica’s Valentine’s Day

February 14, 2025
by the gentle author

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On Valentine’s Day, I cannot help thinking back to the days when we had Viscountess Boudica of Bethnal Green to make the East End a more colourful place, before she was ‘socially cleansed’ to Uttoxeter

Viscountess Boudica of Bethnal Green confessed to me that she never received a Valentine in her entire life and yet, in spite of this unfortunate example of the random injustice of existence, her faith in the future remained undiminished.

Taking a break from her busy filming schedule, the Viscountess granted me a brief audience to reveal her intimate thoughts upon the most romantic day of the year and permit me to take these rare photographs that reveal a candid glimpse into the private life of one of the East End’s most fascinating characters.

For the first time since 1986, Viscountess Boudica dug out her Valentine paraphernalia of paper hearts, banners, fairylights, candles and other pink stuff to put on this show as an encouragement to the readers of Spitalfields Life. “If there’s someone that you like,” she says, “I want you to send them a card to show them that you care.”

Yet behind the brave public face, lay a personal tale of sadness for the Viscountess. “I think Valentine’s Day is a good idea, but it’s a kind of death when you walk around the town and see the guys with their bunches of flowers, choosing their chocolates and cards, and you think, ‘It should have been me!'” she admitted with a frown, “I used to get this funny feeling inside, that feeling when you want to get hold of someone and give them a cuddle.”

Like those love-lorn troubadours of yore, Viscountess Boudica mined her unrequited loves as a source of inspiration for her creativity, writing stories, drawing pictures and – most importantly – designing her remarkable outfits that record the progress of her amours. “There is a tinge of sadness after all these years,” she revealed to me, surveying her Valentine’s Day decorations,” but I am inspired to believe there is still hope of domestic happiness.”

 

Take a look at

The Departure of Viscountess Boudica

Viscountess Boudica’s Domestic Appliances

Viscountess Boudica’s Blog

Viscountess Boudica’s Album

Viscountess Boudica’s Halloween

Viscountess Boudica’s Christmas

Walter Donohue’s Screenwriting Course

February 13, 2025
by the gentle author

Walter Donohue by Sarah Ainslie

 

We are delighted to announce that script editor, producer and luminary of the British cinema, Walter Donohue has agreed to teach a two-day screenwriting course at Townhouse in Spitalfields on the weekend of 5th and 6th April.

In the eighties, Walter began working as a script editor, starting with Wim Wenders’ Paris, Texas and Sally Potter’s Orlando. Since then he has worked with some major filmmakers including Joel & Ethan Coen, Wim Wenders, Sally Potter, David Byrne, John Boorman, Viggo Mortensen, Alex Garland, Kevin Macdonald, and László Nemes.

For the past thirty years he has been editor of the Faber & Faber film list, publishing Pulp Fiction and Barbie, and screenplays by Quentin Tarantino, Wes Anderson, David Lynch, Sally Potter, and Greta Gerwig & Noah Baumbach, Joel & Ethan Coen, and Christopher Nolan among many others.

Walter also published Scorsese on Scorsese, and edited the series of interview books with David Lynch, Robert Altman, Tim Burton, John Cassavetes, Pedro Almodovar and Christopher Nolan.

THE COURSE

Walter’s course is suitable for all levels of experience from those who are complete beginners to those who have already written screenplays and seek to refresh their practise. The course is limited to sixteen students.

APPROACHES TO SCREENWRITING

Walter says –

“My course is about approaches to writing a screenplay rather than a literal step-by-step technique on how to write.

The objective of my course is to immerse participants in the world of film, acquainting them with a cinematic language which will enable them to create films that are unique and personal to themselves.

There are four approaches – each centred around a particular film which will be the focus of each of the four sessions.

The approaches are –
Structure: Paris, Texas
Viewpoint: Silence of the Lambs
Genre: Anora
Endings: Chinatown

Participants will be required to have seen all four films in advance of the course.”

This is a unique opportunity to enjoy a convivial weekend with Walter in an eighteenth century townhouse in Spitalfields and learn how to approach your screenplay. Refreshments, freshly baked cakes and lunches are included in the course fee of £350.

Please email spitalfieldslife@gmail.com to book your place.

Love Tokens From The Thames

February 12, 2025
by the gentle author

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With St Valentine’s Day looming at the end of the week, I thought this would be a good moment to publish this collection of lovers’ tokens from the Thames gathered over the past eighteen years by my old pal Steve Brooker, the mudlark – widely known as the Mud God.

Perhaps a phonetic spelling of the name ‘Violet’ as the admirer spoke it?

The magical potential of throwing a coin into the water has been recognised by different cultures in different times with all kinds of meanings. Yet since we can never ask those who threw these tokens why they did so, we can only surmise that engraving your beloved’s name upon a coin and throwing it into the water was a gesture to attract good fortune. It was a wish.

With a great river like the Thames racing down towards the ocean, there is a sense of a connection to the infinite. And there is a sweet romance to the notion of a lover secretly throwing a token into the water, feeling that the strength of their emotions connects them to a force larger than themselves.

It was not part of the conceit that anyone might ever find these coins, centuries later – which gives them a mysterious poetry now, because each one represents a love story we shall never learn. Those who threw them have long  gone from the earth and all we can envisage are the coins tossed by unseen hands, flying from the river bank or a from the parapet of a bridge or from a boat, turning over in the air, plip-plopping into the water and spiralling down to lie for centuries in the mud, until Steve Brooker came along to gather them up. Much as we may yearn, we can never trace them back to ask “What happened?”

In the reign of William III, it was the fashion for a young man to give a crooked coin to the object of his affections. The coin was bent, both to become an amulet and to prevent it being spent. If the token was kept, it indicated that the affection was reciprocated, but if the coin was discarded then it was a rejection – which casts a different light upon these coins in the Thames. Are they, each one, evidence of unrequited affections?

For centuries, smoothed coins were used as love tokens, with the initials of the sender engraved or embossed upon the surface. Sometimes these were pierced, which gave recipient the option to wear it around the neck. In Steve’s collection, the tokens range from heavy silver coins with initials professionally engraved to pennies worn smooth through hours of labour and engraved in stilted painstaking letters. In many examples shown here, the amount of effort expended in working these coins, smoothing, engraving or cutting them is truly extraordinary, which speaks of the longing of the makers.

Steve has found many thousands of coins in the bed of the Thames over the years but it is these worked examples that mean most to him because he recognises the dignity of the human emotion that each one manifests. Those who threw them into the river did not know that anyone was going to be there one day to catch them yet, whatever the outcome of these romances, Steve ensures the tokens are kept safe.

Benjamin Claridge.

The reverse of the Benjamin Claridge coin, from the eighteenth century or earlier.

The intials M and W intertwined upon a Georgian silver coin.

The intial W upon the smoothed face of Georgian silver coin, bent into an S shape.

Crooked Georgian silver coin, as the token of a vow or promise.

The initials AMD upon a smoothed coins that has been pierced to wear around the neck.

A copper penny with the letter D.

C.M. Marsh impressed into a penny.

The letter R punched into a penny within a lucky horseshoe.

Pierced coin set with semi-precious stones.

Who was Snod? Is this a lover’s token or a dog tag?

This pierced silver threepence commemorates the date January 11th 1921.

On the reverse of the silver threepence are the initials, L T. Are these the initials of the giver, or does it signify “Love Token”?

Cut coins from the early twentieth century.

You may like to read my other stories about Steve Brooker

Steve Brooker, Mudlark,

Mud God’s Collection

Mud God’s Religious Offerings from the Thames

Ebbe Sadolin’s London

February 11, 2025
by the gentle author

CLICK HERE TO BOOK

 

Danish Illustrator Ebbe Sadolin (1900-82) visited London in the years following the War to capture the character of the capital, just recovering from the Blitz, in a series of lyrical drawings executed in elegant spidery lines. Remarkably, he included as many images of the East End as the West End and I publish a selection of favourites here from the forties.

George & Dragon, Shoreditch

St Katherine’s Way, Wapping

The Prospect of Whitby, Wapping

Stocks, Shoreditch

Petticoat Lane

Tower Green, Tower of London

The Olde Cheshire Cheese, Fleet St

Rough Sleeper, Shoreditch

Islington Green

Nightingale Lane, Wapping

Fleet St

Wapping churchyard

Tower of London

Commercial Rd, Stepney

St Pancras Station

High St, Plaistow

Bride of Denmark, Queen Anne’s Gate

Liverpool St Station

You may also like to look at

Roland Collins’ London

James Boswell’s London

Lucinda Rogers’ London

David O’Mara’s Spitalfields

February 10, 2025
by the gentle author

I have published many pictures of renovations of old houses in Spitalfields over the years but David O’Mara‘s candid photography reveals the other side of these stories, recording the back-breaking labour and human toil that is expended upon these endeavours

“For the past ten years I have worked as a painter & decorator in London, both as a means of surviving and also funding my artistic practice – but the roles of artist & decorator are not always easily reconciled, time demands and budgets often lead to a conflict of interests.

My work is described as ‘restoration,’ though I began to question the truth of this description. From the beginning, you strip back the layers of previous occupants. Cupboards, doors and walls that were later additions are all removed. At every turn and removal you notice the evidence of previous lives, all to be erased and replaced with freshly painted blank surfaces – everything is pared back to the tabula rasa.

This has a resonance with my own experience: the daily repetition of tasks erodes memory, time is distilled into but a few recollections. I started photographing my working life as a way of recording the disappearing history of the houses and also to combat the erosion of memory through the repetition of work.” – David O’Mara

Photographs copyright © David O’Mara

You may also like to read about

Dave Thompson, Joiner

Jim Howett, Designer

Barbara Jezewska, Teacher

February 9, 2025
by the gentle author

Barbara as a pupil of the Central Foundation Grammar School for Girls, Spitalfields

Barbara Jezewska was not born in the East End nor was she of East End parentage, yet she lived her formative years here and it left an indelible impression upon her.“I love the people, the places and the experiences that I have known, and look for every opportunity to go back and visit,” she confessed to me, “I consider myself so rich for having grown up in a time and a place that was quite extraordinary.”

Barbara grew up in Casson St, a modest back street connecting Old Montague St and Chicksand St in Spitalfields. Opposite was Black Lion Yard, known then as the Hatton Garden of the East End because it contained eighteen jewellery shops. Old Montague St had a sleazy reputation in those days – it was a busy thoroughfare crowded with diverse life, filled with slum dwelllings, punctuated by a bomb site and a sugar factory, and lined with small shops and cafes. There, long-established Jewish traders sat alongside coffees bars in which Maltese, Somalis, Caribbeans and others congregated.

While others might consider themselves disadvantaged to grow up in such an environment,  Barbara’s experience was quite the opposite and she recognised a keen sense of loss from the moment her family were rehoused in 1965 as part of the slum clearance programme. Very little of Casson St survives today and the spot where Barbara’s house stood is now a park, yet it is a location that still carries immense significance for her.

“We moved to 1 Casson St in 1957 when I was three years old. We came to London from Paxton, Berwickshire on the border with Scotland where my mother, Elizabeth Carr, had been born. My father was Polish, born in Lublin, and when he was fifteen, he ran away from home and ended up fighting in the Warsaw Uprising in 1944. He never talked about it but he had a graze on his arm that he said was from a bullet wound. I believe he met my mother while he was washing dishes at a West End hotel where she also worked. When I was eighteen he left and married again, and I only saw him a few times before he died. We became estranged and, in 1994, we got a phone call to say he had died in Poland.

My father couldn’t speak English when he arrived in this country, but he was very talented in music and he paid for guitar lessons out of his earnings. As a child, I remember him practising and practising and I didn’t appreciate what was going on, yet eventually he ended up teaching at Trinity College, Cambridge.

We shared the house in Casson St with a Greek family, the Hambis. It wasn’t partitioned, they had some rooms and we had the others. There was no bathroom, no heating and no hot running water. We did have an inside toilet but the Hambis had one in the back yard. They had five children and there were the three of us, so there was always somebody to play with and always something going on.

Across the street from us was the Beehive Nougat Factory (‘nugget’ as we used to say it). We rang the bell and asked for an old man we called ‘Uncle Alf’ who worked there, and he gave us sweets, handfuls of broken chocolates and nougat. We used to raid the bins of the textile factories and get cardboard tubes, then we’d stage incredible battles, lining up on either side of the street and hitting each other with the tubes until they broke. There was Mrs Miller who sold toys on Petticoat Lane, when she and my mother met they would talk for hours. One day, a dandelion seed – which we called fairies – floated by and went into Mrs Miller’s mouth while they were talking. She swallowed it and never noticed, so we always remembered ‘the day Mrs Miller swallowed a fairy!’ There was Mrs Isaacs, a widow who lived next door who spent all her time at the upstairs window, watching. If you did anything she didn’t approve of, she’d shout at you. One day, I was going to chalk on the wall and she shouted out, ‘Don’t you make a mess!’ I stuck my tongue out at Mrs Isaacs and she disappeared from the window, so I ran back inside and said to my mother, ‘Mrs Isaacs is coming,’ and she came round and said, ‘Your daughter stuck her tongue out at me!’

We used to play on the bomb sites and I climbed into a basement of a bombed-out house in Old Montague St. I was scared because there was a lot of rubble on top but I found some silver threepenny bits in a bag. We took them to the sweet shop and passed them off as sixpences. I think the shopkeeper realised they were silver and was happy to accept them for sweets. Round the corner in Hopetown St, lived Alfie and his parents who were the first get a television. So, at 4pm, we’d all queue up outside Alfie’s house – half a dozen of us – and ask to watch the Children’s Hour, and we’d sit on the kitchen floor to watch. The only time we went to the seaside was on a Sunday school trip, and they gave us Christmas parties at which we’d all get a present of a second-hand toy.

There were several tramps that I remember. Coco worked for the stallholders and slept in an empty building on the corner of Black Lion Yard, every morning he came out with his bucket of slops and threw it over onto the bomb site. Ivan used to wander up and down Old Montague St, and I think I saw two men trying to kill him once, dropping bricks from the roof as he walked past. Stinky Sheridan had one leg and used to sell matches in Whitechapel Rd. Whenever we saw the tramps, my mother who was a very kind person, taught me to respect them, she’d say, ‘Remember, that’s somebody’s son.’

In 1965, we were moved out as part of slum clearance to Brownlow Rd, off Queensbridge Rd in Haggerston. At the time, I was eleven and  we thought it was very exciting. It was a maisonette with a bathroom, so we thought it was wonderful, but my experience when we moved was I felt lonely and missed the other children in our extended family. It felt strange. But being realistic, it would have been pretty awful staying in Casson St without any privacy or a bathroom.

I went to Robert Montefiore Primary School in Hanbury St and, when I left, I remember saying to my mother, tell the headmaster I want to go to the Central Foundation Grammar School in Spital Sq. I’d heard it was the good place to go. We were allowed out to wander around the Spitalfields Market at lunchtime. Every month the girls used to support a different charity there. We’d go down to the market and beg boxes of fruit and sell it at breaktimes and the money would go to charity. The art room overlooked the market and I did a painting of it that won a prize. I joined the choir so I could sing at St Botolph’s in Bishopsgate and get invited back for sandwiches and ice cream by the Worshipful Company of Fan Makers. I thought I was very clever because I went to a Grammar School.

My first job was at Fox’s the Chemist in Broadway Market, from four until six every day after school and all day Saturday for £2.50. At eighteen, I left school and worked for two years in the City at the National Westminster Bank in Threadneedle St. It was easy to get work, you could go to an agency and get a job, and if you didn’t like it you could go back in the afternoon and get a different one.

Then I did teacher training in Tooting. I couldn’t do it at eighteen because my father wouldn’t sign the grant form as he was about to remarry and didn’t want to commit himself, but when the divorce came through my mother signed. I asked to do my teaching practise in the East End and I was placed at Virginia Rd Primary School. I qualified as teacher in 1978, and I worked at Randal Cremer school in Hackney, I was part-time at Redlands School off Sidney St and deputy head at St Luke’s in Old St. I had wanted to be a teacher since the age of five, I think I just wanted a register and a red pen.

At forty-five, I had a son and we moved to Walthamstow and then to Hertfordshire, but I want to be back here – and one day I’ll be back. You can’t explain it to some people, because so many worked so hard to get out. I bring my son Adam to see the street art. I think he’s interested in the East End.”

Barbara keeps the button box from her childhood in Casson St. On the table are swatches from her mother’s dresses bought in Petticoat Lane and a necklace she made out of melon pips at age nine in 1963.

Barbara’s school report from the Central Foundation Grammar School in Spital Sq, July 1968.

Barbara, aged three.

The ‘goal’ where Barbara and her friends played football, photographed in the eighties.

Barbara, aged five.

The furniture factory opposite Barbara’s home in Casson St, photographed in the eighties.

Barbara (second from the left) in the Central Foundation School production of The Mikado.

Casson St under demolition.

Jerzy Jezewska, Barbara’s father was a celebrated guitarist who taught at Cambridge.

Barbara visits Columbia Rd in the eighties.

You may also like to read about

Cecile Moss of Old Montague St

Remembering Robert Poole

The Haggerston Nobody Knows