Linda Carney, Machinist
Linda Carney is one of the many local people you will meet on my tour. Tickets are available this coming weekend and throughout July, so come along and let me show you Linda’s old haunts.
Click here to book your ticket for THE GENTLE AUTHOR’S TOUR OF SPITALFIELDS
This is Linda Carney working at her machine in Spitalfields in 1963 and looking glamorous in the same way Lynn Redgrave, Julie Christie, Rita Tushingham and Barbara Windsor did playing happy-go-lucky girls in those films of London in the sixties. Linda’s combination of kooky glasses, stylish outfit and optimistic humorous attitude in a mundane workplace was an act of youthful defiance in itself.
Linda worked in factories making clothes all over Spitalfields, in Brune St above the Jewish soup kitchen, in Fournier St in what is now Gilbert & George’s studio and in Fleur de Lys St. It was at the latter address, she once spotted the long-haired seventeen-year-old Dan Cruickshank giving an interview to reporters on the doorstep, explaining why he was squatting an old building in Elder St, “I’m saving our heritage,” he declared. But Linda, with irrepressible anarchic ebullience, wagged her finger and called out, “You just don’t want to pay rent!” It was a scene worthy of a whimsical sixties comedy and I can imagine Linda, tottering off, arm in arm with her girlfriends, all laughing like drains.
When I met Linda outside the Jewish soup kitchen on Brune St, she described the neighbourhood in her time. “It still is busy here, but it was much more busy then because people started out earlier and worked longer hours,” said Linda, excited to return to her former workplace.”If you worked all night, you never felt on your own because you had all-night cafes servicing the market.” Looking up and down Brune St, Linda got quite carried away describing the characters among those coming to the soup kitchen from the surrounding streets of derelict tenements.
In those days – she told me – bales of cotton were carried in and out of the warehouse next door, supplies were delivered to the food warehouses in Tenterground, trucks caused chaos around Spitalfields Market at night, pubs opened at dawn, furriers in Whites Row compared pelts by daylight, Coles’ poulterers in Leyden St slaughtered fowls to order, hatters and button makers and purveyors of ribbons and trimmings worked frantically, while – further afield – the shoemakers of Hoxton and the furniture makers of Bethnal Green were all busy too. Obviously this was only a fraction of the activity but I think you can understand what Linda meant by saying Spitalfields was busier then.
Linda earned three pounds a week doing piecework for companies in Cutler St who provided the cloth, cut ready to sew. She and her co-workers made a hundred pairs of trousers in a day in the factory on the top floor of the soup kitchen. Assembling the clothes, one would sew the seams, another the buttonholes, another the buttons, the zipper and so on. “You couldn’t let anybody down. You couldn’t even go to the toilet” admitted Linda with a frown, showing me the scar where she caught her finger in a machine once and recalling in wry amusement that, in spite of her injury, the others were reluctant to stop the belt that drove all the machines, crying out, “Don’t turn it off! I haven’t finished my piecework yet!” “And that’s what made you a machinist” said Linda, in robust summary of her occupation.
“My mother was a seamstress for Savile Row, a tailoress from home, collecting her work from the West End. My grandmother rolled cigars at home, there was a big industry. It was a skill. Those skills are coming back, I think, because you see the girls today that are making their own clothes and selling them in the market. We used to make our own clothes too, because you need to have something a little different.”
Although Linda’s father worked in the Truman Brewery, his family were all dockers. She told me about the two floors of vaults beneath Wapping High St that stretch as far as Tobacco Dock, built by French prisoners of war imprisoned at the Tower of London. Apparently these cellars were sealed up just as they were when the docks closed and remain untouched to this day, full of a vast stock of the best wine and champagne waiting to be discovered. “We’d go down to the lock-ups,” said Linda with a rapturous grin, “All the best stuff was there, cinnamon, paprika, saffron, rum, ivory, tea and champagne. I’ve drunk all the best teas in the world. If some spilt from a broken chest, you could get a handful for yourself.”
At this point in our pavement chat, an African-American gentleman, who lived in the ground floor flat of the converted soup kitchen, came outside for a cigarette and joined the conversation – which prompted Linda to raise the subject of race. “We always had mixed race here because it was a port,” she declared audaciously, producing a photo of her multiracial school netball team from 1959. “So we all got brought up together. I used to go to clubs to listen to ska and reggae, where coloured groups like the Stylistics were playing to a mixed audience, which the musicians liked because they couldn’t do it in America. We mixed a lot more than our parents thought, because we were enjoying life and we didn’t have any money. We had stop-overs, and a lot of us married Afro-Caribbeans, Asians and Chinese. We were a melting pot.”
Touched by Linda’s monologue, our new friend generously invited us into his flat to take a look. We entered the central door that once led to the factory floors up above, rented out to support the soup kitchen. This was the door Linda passed through when she came to work every day. She was entranced, “It feels strange but homely, because it is so familiar” she said. Clasping her hands in delight and raising her eyes to explore the space, Linda explained that, when it was the soup kitchen, one side of his flat was used for distributing clothes and the other side for food.
To my surprise, Linda recalled the smell of bacon here in the early mornings, as the Jewish workers in the kitchen used to enjoy making themselves illicit bacon sandwiches. Then before we left, completing the sentimental pilgrimage, Linda revealed that she last walked through this hallway in 1968. Mesmerised by each other, as Linda and the bemused contemporary resident shook hands in farewell, two worlds met for a fleeting moment, distant by birth yet united in sympathy and mutual curiosity.
Linda Carney in Brune St
Linda’s netball team (Linda is on the left)
Linda Carney
Portraits © Sarah Ainslie
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Adam Dant’s Map Of Chaucer’s London
It is my pleasure to introduce Adam Dant’s map of Chaucer’s London – click on the map to enlarge it and explore further
I often think of Geoffrey Chaucer. I think of when he lived above the gatehouse at Aldgate. I think of how he witnessed bell-founding to the east of the City. I think of how he observed the hordes of the ‘peasants’ revolt’ stream the through the gate into the City of London. I think of how he was forced to listen to his noisy neighbours who imposed themselves upon him and, as a consequence, he wrote the first portraits of East Enders in our literature. I think of how he dreamed of being an astronaut, propelled up into the atmosphere to look down upon the earth below. I think of how he struggled with the unruly polar bear under his charge when Master of Armaments at the Tower of London. I think of him as Comptroller at the Custom House and how he would have laughed at the idea of it becoming a boutique hotel. I think of him at the Savoy, strutting in his scarlet paltocks and striped hose in the days before they had a cocktail bar. I think of his recurring dream, waking in a magical garden where he encountered ecstatic visions. I think of him in Navarre, where me met Islamic and Jewish poets, and how he became the first to introduce their literary forms into the English language. I think about the design of his little woollen hat. Every year, I think of him in April when I get the urge to go a pilgrimage. But most of all I think of him writing so many stories, day after day, in his ambitious attempt to create cycles of tales to rival Boccaccio and the Arabian Nights.
Adam Dant’s woodcut of The Reeve, after the cut in Caxton’s edition of Chaucer’s Works
Adam Dant’s Map of Chaucer’s London was commissioned by The Critic, Adam Dant’s Political Maps is published by Batsford on 30th June, and prints of his maps are available from TAG Fine Arts.
Bloomsbury Jamboree Tomorrow!
Tickets are available for my tour of Spitalfields next Thursday 30th June and throughout July
We are looking forward to welcoming you to the Bloomsbury Jamboree at the Art Workers Guild tomorrow from 10:30am. If you would like to volunteer with setting up and running the event, please come along from 9:00am.
Click here to book for Rob Ryan’s talk, ‘You Can Still Do A Lot With A Small Brain’
East End Beanos
Tickets are available for my tour of Spitalfields next Thursday 30th June and throughout July
A beano from Stepney in the twenties (courtesy Irene Sheath)
It is Midsummer and we have reached that time of year when a certain clamminess prevails in the city and East Enders turn restless, yearning for a trip to the sea or at the very least an excursion to glimpse some green fields. In the last century, pubs, workplaces and clubs organised annual summer beanos, which gave everyone the opportunity to pile into a coach and enjoy a day out, usually with liberal opportunity for refreshment and sing-songs on the way home.
Ladies’ beano from The Globe in Hartley St, Bethnal Green, in the fifties. Chris Dixon, who submitted the picture, recognises his grandmother, Flo Beazley, furthest left in the front row beside her next door neighbour Flo Wheeler, who had a fruit and vegetable stall on Green St. (courtesy Chris Dixon)
Another beano from the fifties – eighth from the left is Jim Tyrrell (1908-1991) who worked at Stepney Power Station in Limehouse and drank at the Rainbow on the Highway in Ratcliff.
Mid-twentieth century beano from the archive of Britton’s Coaches in Cable St. (courtesy Martin Harris)
Beano from the Rhodeswell Stores, Rhodeswell Rd, Limehouse in the mid-twenties.
Taken on the way to Southend, this is a ladies’ beano from The Beehive in the Roman Rd during the fifties or sixties in a coach from Empress Coaches. The only men in the photo are the driver and the accordionist. Joan Lord (née Collins) who submitted the photo is the daughter of the publicans of The Beehive. (Courtesy Joan Lord)
Terrie Conway Driver, who submitted this picture of a beano from The Duke of Gloucester, Seabright St, Bethnal Green, points out that her grandfather is seventh from the left in the back row. (Courtesy Terrie Conway Driver)
Taken on the way to Southend, this is a men’s beano from The Beehive in the Roman Rd in the fifties or sixties in a coach from Empress Coaches. (Courtesy Joan Lord)
Beano in the twenties from the Victory Public House in Ben Jonson Rd, on the corner with Carr St. Note the charabanc – the name derives from the French char à bancs (“carriage with wooden benches”) and they were originally horse-drawn.
A crowd gathers before a beano from The Queens’ Head in Chicksand St in the early fifties. John Charlton who submitted the photograph pointed out his grandfather George standing in the flat cap holding a bottle of beer on the right with John’s father Bill on the left of him, while John stands directly in front of the man in the straw hat. (Courtesy John Charlton)
Beano for Stepney Borough Council workers in the mid-twentieth century. (Courtesy Susan Armstrong)
Martin Harris, who submitted this picture, indicated that the driver, standing second from the left, is Teddy Britton, his second cousin. (Courtesy Martin Harris)
In the Panama hat is Ted Marks who owned the fish place at the side of the Martin Frobisher School, and is seen here taking his staff out on their annual beano.
George, the father of Colin Watson who submitted this photo, is among those who went on this beano from the Taylor Walker brewery in Limehouse. (Courtesy Colin Watson)
Pub beano setting out for Margate or Southend. (Courtesy John McCarthy)
Men’s beano from c. 1960 (courtesy Cathy Cocline)
Late sixties or early seventies ladies’ beano organised by the Locksley Estate Tenants Association in Limehouse, leaving from outside The Prince Alfred in Locksley St.
The father of John McCarthy, who submitted this photo, is on the far right squatting down with a beer in his hand, in this beano photo taken in the early sixties, which may be from his local, The Shakespeare in Bethnal Green Rd. Equally, it could be a works’ outing, as he was a dustman working for Bethnal Green Council. Typically, the men are wearing button holes and an accordionist accompanies them. Accordionists earned a fortune every summer weekend, playing at beanos. (courtesy John McCarthy)
John Sheehan, who submitted this picture, remembers it was taken on a beano to Clacton in the sixties. From left to right, you can seee John Driscoll who lived in Grosvenor Buildings, Dan Daley of Constant House, outsider Johnny Gamm from Hackney, alongside his cousin, John Sheehan from Constant House and Bill Britton from Holmsdale House. (Courtesy John Sheehan)
Images courtesy Tower Hamlets Community Homes
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Twenty New Paintings By Nicholas Borden
Some tickets are available for my tour of Spitalfields next Thursday 30th June
I have been regularly publishing the work of painter Nicholas Borden since we first met, when he was painting on the street in Bethnal Green in 2013, and these twenty painting comprise his work of the past year.
Kelly’s Pie & Mash, Roman Rd
On a 254 bus
Ten Bells
Kenton Rd, Hackney
Monger’s Almshouses, Meynell Crescent
St Paul’s Cathedral
In Whitehall
St Martin’s Lane
Camden Lock
Marquess Tavern
Piccadilly Circus
St Mary’s, Islington
Council Housing Block, Hackney
Sutton Place
Blocks with winter trees
St John of Jerusalem, Hackney
Natural History Museum Ice Rinks
Covent Garden
Greenhouse Effect
Brighton Pier
Paintings copyright © Nicholas Borden
Email nicholasborden100@yahoo.co.uk to enquire about any of these paintings
You may also like to take a look at
Nicholas Borden’s Lockdown Paintings
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Catching Up With Nicholas Borden
Nicholas Borden’s East End View
Nicholas Borden’s Winter Paintings
Nicholas Borden’s Spring Paintings
Six Days Left To Save Brick Lane!
Tonight is the benefit concert at Rich Mix to raise money for next week’s Judicial Review at the High Court
CLICK HERE TO BUY TICKETS FOR TONIGHT
The Judicial Review of Tower Hamlets Council’s undemocratic approval of the destructive Truman Brewery scheme for an ugly shopping mall and corporate offices is due to take place at the High Court next week on Wednesday June 29th. (We will publish a link for readers to watch)
The Save Brick Lane coalition brought the action against the Council after two members out of a Planning Committee of only three voting members chose to ignore the wishes of 7476 objectors – more than 1300 of whom were local residents – in order to push through the disastrous planning application.
Unfortunately, once planning consent has been granted it cannot be revoked. So the only recourse now open to the people who objected is to seek a legal investigation into the irregular processes by which the permission was granted. If it can be proven at the Judicial Review that the Planning Committee was deliberately misled and restructured to deny some Committee members the votes they were entitled to – and which their electorate deserved – the consent will automatically be quashed.
One encouraging development has been the election of a new Mayor of Tower Hamlets who is vociferously and eloquently opposed to the Truman Brewery scheme. Mayor Lutfur Rahman’s list of immediate priorities includes working on a community-focussed alternative to the current plan – and in a vigorous article for Jacobin magazine he committed to ending “the slow destruction of our local heritage, most grimly represented by the Truman Brewery on world-famous Brick Lane being handed over to luxury developers.”
The controversial scheme develops the south-eastern corner of the historic Truman Brewery site at the junction of Brick Lane and Woodseer St, by inserting a huge block, comprising a steel and glass shopping mall with corporate offices looming high overhead. The new buildings will be out of proportion to the historic terraces, at rents few local people can afford, and draining business away from the small-scale local shops and restaurants in the surrounding streets, which form the character and economic backbone of Brick Lane.
7476 people objected while only 82 supported the scheme. The plans were put forward to Tower Hamlets’ Planning Committee in April 2021, but the applicant was asked to make amendments and the decision was deferred. Shortly afterwards, the Planning Committee was restructured and, when the Committee met again in September 2021, they were told that only those members who had been there in April could vote on the revised scheme. We believe this is incorrect and all of the Committee members could have voted. Only four people on the new Committee had been there in April, but one of them was told she could not vote because she was dialling into the meeting due to Covid. Again, we believe this is incorrect.
By misleading the Committee, the approval of the scheme was secured by a vote of two against one and the wishes of the people were overridden. Ultimately, this is not just about bad design, protecting our vibrant communities and historic built environment, it is about democracy.
We urgently need your support to stop this scheme, halt the corporate shopping mall and Save Brick Lane. A clock is ticking and we only have until 29th June to reach our target – six days!
CLICK HERE TO DONATE TO OUR FIGHTING FUND FOR THE JUDICIAL REVIEW
Photograph copyright © David Hoffman
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Grayson Perry’s End Of Covid Bell
Book now for THE GENTLE AUTHOR’S TOUR OF SPITALFIELDS
Installation at the Royal Academy
The Royal Academy Summer Show opens today which features the public debut of Grayson Perry’s ‘End of Covid Bell’ that he made in support of our ongoing campaign to Save the Whitechapel Bell Foundry.
This is the first of an ambitious series of projects devised to establish the centrality of bells within our culture, recognising their long history in marking time, mourning death and celebrating life. Grayson’s bell was cast under the auspices of ‘The London Bell Foundry,’ the company established to take over the former Whitechapel Bell Foundry and re-open it as a working foundry.
“I’ve always wanted to make a bell,” admitted Grayson, “it is one of the categories of objects that are traditional and potent. This bell I conceived as a memorial to the dead of the pandemic, it is covered in what looks like an aerial view of a multicultural cemetery. It also features a doctor and a patient. It could also be rung as a celebration that we have survived.”
Nigel Taylor – who was foreman at the Whitechapel Bell Foundry for forty years – worked closely with Grayson, tuning the bell to ensure that it delivers a suitably resonant chime. Without access to the foundry in Whitechapel, the bell was fabricated by Factum Arte in Spain, cast by Pangolin Foundry, Gloucestershire and tuned at Nicholson Engineering in Dorset.
After the Royal Academy, we hope to transfer the bell to the Royal London Hospital, where those who experienced bereavement due to Covid can come to toll it in commemoration of their loss. We would like the bell to undertake a tour of major hospitals throughout the country next year.
Meanwhile down in Whitechapel, the historic foundry buildings sit forlorn, unaltered and occupied by property guardians indefinitely. Post-Covid, it is evident that the boutique hotel proposal is no longer viable. The developer’s commitment to employing the old foundry buildings as workshops for local people – which we believe they entered into to make the planning application acceptable – renders the notion of an upscale hotel at the rear problematic at best.
Grayson Perry’s maquette for his ‘End of Covid Bell’
Rob Ryan’s logo for The London Bell Foundry
You may also like to take a look at
The Fate of the Whitechapel Bell Foundry
So Long, Whitechapel Bell Foundry
The Secretary of State steps in
A Letter to the Secretary of State
14 Whitechapel Bell Foundry Poems
Rory Stewart Supports Our Campaign
Hope for The Whitechapel Bell Foundry
A Petition to Save the Bell Foundry
Save the Whitechapel Bell Foundry
Adam Dant’s Bells of Whitechapel
Dorothy Rendell at Whitechapel Bell Foundry
