Jonathan Madden’s East End Pub Paintings
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Today it is my pleasure to introduce the work of painter Jonathan Madden
Last Orders at The Still Star
My family had lodgings nearby, above a shop in Aldgate High St during the early twenties, so it is quite conceivable that they frequented this ancient pub. During the early nineteen-hundreds this pub, along with the The Hoop & Grapes nearby, was frequented by many of the slaughtermen and meat porters who worked on Butcher’s Row. I frequently used to drop in on my way home from St Katharine Docks where I worked in the early two-thousands. There has been a pub here since 1820 but it closed its doors finally in 2017, prior to demolition and reconstruction as part of a huge office development on the site.
JONATHAN MADDEN, PUB PAINTER
‘I have lived and worked in and around London for over sixty-five years and, from my early days at art school in the seventies, I was encouraged to keep a sketchbook and record the scene in front of me. I have always enjoyed spending time in a decent pub, although the decline of many of them saddens me more and more as the years pass.
I decided to start painting them in 2015 and these first paintings were from areas around Aldgate, Whitechapel and the Highway, which is where my father’s family and his parents all lived from the late nineteenth century. I wanted to create a connection back to them. Then I expanded my search to Limehouse, Ratcliffe, Wapping and Southwark and wherever I found pubs that were architecturally interesting.
All these neighbourhoods, due to their proximity to London’s Docks, were traditionally working class. The pubs were focal points for their community, warm, mostly welcoming and often splendrous, and their demise was acutely felt. Regretfully we have lost far too many, they stand on corners like memorials now, mournful but with a quiet dignity, often covered in tags and flyposters, their life and soul dissipated.”
Jonathan Madden
The Prince of Wales, Grove Rd
The Prince of Wales on Grove Road was one of the first pubs I painted back in 2016. I isolated it from the surrounding buildings and added a stormy sky. Called the Prince of Prussia until the outbreak of WW1, it has a chequered past. In 2002, a murder was committed by the landlord which did not help its reputation and it closed in 2005. It was popular in the late nineties as a stopping place before heading off to Benjys nightclub in the Mile End Rd. I believe it is now a burger bar.
The Albion, Albion St
I painted this pub 2018, along with another in Albion St called The Little Crown. These mock Tudor pubs are often derided architecturally but I really like them. There are many decent examples around London, mainly in the outer suburbs near Underground stations. There is currently a fight from locals to save The Albion from a developer.
The Lord Napier, Hackney Wick
This was a commission and when I began the painting in 2019 it had probably been the most graffitied and most photographed pub after it pulled its last ‘official’ pint back in 1996. My client was a music producer who used to run club nights there and had good memories and affection for it. But after squatters, parties and countless raves, I am pleased to say it has now reinvented itself and is a very popular local called The Lord Napier Star.
The Star in the East, Reborn
This was in a sorry state a few years ago but is a wonderful example of Moorish influenced Victorian splendour on the Commercial Rd, an architectural gem. I am pleased to say after many incarnations, closures and re-openings it was given a new lease of life in 2019 by The Old Spot Pub Company. It is truly magnificent and I just had to paint it. I began it in mid-2021 and completed it in time to reproduce it as a Christmas card, which I thought fitting.
The Albion
There are so many Albions, I did consider producing a series of them from around the country. This abandoned pub was in a sorry state of repair when I visited Lauriston Rd back in 2018. I drew some preliminary sketches on site and from these produced an initial painting which was completed in 2019. However I was not happy with the result so during 2020, prompted by the pandemic, I decided take a different approach. I placed the pub in a new and different landscape in which I included rising water levels and a low setting sun. The graffiti on the building was how I saw 2020.
The Black Horse, Stepney
Although there are many repurposed pubs lining the Whitechapel and Mile End roads, many are easy to ignore. Nearly all are mid-to-late-nineteeth-century and this one is Grade 2 listed. Most have been converted to betting shops, fast food outlets or clothing shops. I wanted to pick one to record in paint, so I chose The Black Horse which has good proportions. It is opposite Stepney Green station and has had many incarnations, including as a gay bar before finally closing its doors in 2009.
The Royal Duke
I have walked past this pub many times and always wanted to record it. It is on the busy Commercial Rd and has been derelict for many years. It was built in 1879 and finally stopped serving beer in 1995. It then was repurposed as The Royal Duke Superstore, a supermarket, that has now closed. It has some lovely cream plaster detailing and a stone corner-splay. Owned by Trumans’ Brewery, as were many in this area, it is identified by the brewery’s signature dark green tiling on the entire ground floor.
The Rising Sun
This was commissioned in 2020 by a friend whose family used to live in the area around Upper Norwood. I explored the ghost pubs of the area and found this neat little building standing on its own on Spa Hill. I love its symmetry and its pleasant setting backing on to a small park.
The Anchor & Hope, E14
This old pub caught my attention because it stood defiant amongst the towers of steel and glass in Canary Wharf. Like a few in the area it was a local pub and very popular during the London Marathon. Unfortunately, this was not enough to save it and it closed in 2011. An successful application was made for change of use and since 2018, it has been used as a fitness centre. It is now barely recognisable as a former pub.
The Thames after the Great Flood
Known as the Rose & Crown until a fire in 1986, the Campaign for Real Ale’s South-East London Pub Guide from two years later records the Thames as being “a large single bar with aquarium,” adding “The ex-docker ghost who haunted the cellar has extended his range to the rest of the pub.” This picture is set fifty years in the future. The River Thames has flooded and a group of walkers have chanced upon the abandoned building. Its composition is loosely based on ‘Landscape with Aeneas at Delos’ by Claude Lorrain, the master of light. Canary Wharf is on the distant shore and nature has begun to spread its arms around the pub.
The Old Rose, Ratcliff Highway
I have strong family connections with the surrounding area, so felt compelled to paint this pub. Its location is on the once notorious and dangerous ‘Ratcliff Highway’, a very lively place in the nineteenth Century as a gathering place for sailors and dock labourers. From 1986 it became popular with journalists from News International when Rupert Murdoch moved his printing presses to ‘Fortress Wapping.’ Today it stands semi-derelict, with an endless stream of heavy traffic thundering past, where its primary function is to support a huge illuminated advertising hoarding on its west wall.
Paintings copyright © Jonathan Madden
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At The Halal Restaurant
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It is just before midday at the Halal Restaurant, the East End’s oldest Indian restaurant, and Mahaboob Narangali braces himself for the daily rush of curry hounds that have been filling his dining room every lunchtime since 1939. On the corner of Alie St and St Mark’s Place, occupying a house at the end of an eighteenth century terrace, the Halal Restaurant has plain canteen-style decor and an unpretentious menu, yet most importantly it has a distinctive personality that is warm and welcoming.
For the City workers who come here between midday and three each day – nipping across the border into the East End – the Halal Restaurant is a place of retreat, and the long-serving staff are equally comfortable at this establishment that opens seven days a week for lunch and dinner but only get busy at lunchtime on weekdays. Stepping in by the modest side door of the Halal Restaurant, it is apparent that the small dining room to your right was the original front room of the old house while the larger room to your left is an extension added more recently. The atmosphere is domestic and peaceful, a haven from the nearby traffic thundering along Aldgate High St and down Leman St.
Even though midday was approaching, Mahaboob was happy to talk to me about his beloved restaurant and I was fascinated to listen, because I realised that what I was hearing was not simply the story of the Halal Restaurant but of the origin of all the curry restaurants for which the East End is celebrated today.
“Usman, my father, started working here in 1969. He came to Britain in the merchant navy and at first he worked in this restaurant, but then he became very friendly with the owner Mr Chandru and soon he was managing all three restaurants they had at that time. The other two were in Collum St in the City and in Ludgate Circus. Mr Chandru was the second owner, before that was Mr Jaffer who started the Halal Restaurant in 1939. Originally, this place was the mess of the hostel for Indian merchant seamen, with rooms up above. They cooked for themselves and then friends came round to eat, and it became a restaurant. At first it was just three kinds of curry – meat, meatball or mince curry. Then Vindaloos came along, that was more spicy – and now we sell more Vindaloos than any other dish. In the early nineties, Tandoori started to come in and that’s still popular.
My father worked hard and was very successful and, in 1981, he bought the restaurant from Mr Chandru. At twenty-one years old, I came to work here. It was just on and off at first because I was studying and my father didn’t want me to join the business, he wanted me to complete my studies and do something else, but I always had my eye on it. I thought, ‘Why should I work for someone else, when I could have this?’ And in 1988, I started running the restaurant. The leases of the other restaurants ran out, but we own the freehold here and I enjoy this work. I’ve only been here thirty-four years while many of our customers having been coming for forty years and one gentleman, Mr Maurice, he has been coming since 1946! He told me he started coming here when was twelve.”
Intrigued to meet this curry enthusiast of so many years standing, I said my farewells to the Halal Restaurant and walked over from Aldgate to Stepney to find Mr Maurice Courtnell of the Mansell St Garage in Cannon St Row. I discovered him underneath a car and he was a little curious of my mission at first, but once I mentioned the name of the Halal Restaurant he grew eager to speak to me, describing himself proudly as “a true East Ender from Limehouse, born within the sound of Bow Bells.” A little shy to reveal his age by confirming that he had been going to the Halal Restaurant from the age of twelve, yet Maurice became unreservedly enthusiastic in his praise of this best-loved culinary insitution. “My father and my uncles, we all started going round there just after the Second World War.” he recalled with pleasure, “Without a doubt it is the best restaurant of any kind that I know – the place is A1, beautiful people and lovely food. I remember Mr Jaffer that started it, I remember holding Mahaboob in my arms when he was a new-born baby. Every Christmas we go round there for our Christmas party. It is the only restaurant I recommend, and I’ve fifteen restaurateurs as regular customers at my garage. When Leman St Police Station was open, all the police officers used to be in there. It is always always full.”
Held in the affections of East Enders and City Gents alike, the Halal Restaurant is an important landmark in our culinary history, still busy and still serving the same dishes to an enthusiastic clientele after more than eighty years. Of the renowned Halal Restaurant, it may truly be said, it is the daddy of all the curry restaurants in the East End.
Asab Miah, Head Chef at the Halal Restaurant, has been cooking for forty-two years. Originally at the Clifton Restaurant in Brick Lane, he has been at the Halal Restaurant for the last nineteen years.
Quayum, Moshahid Ali, Ayas Miah, Mahadoob Narangoli, Asab Miah and Sayed.
At 12:01pm, the first City gent of the day arrives for curry at the Halal Restaurant.
Abdul Wahab, Mohammed Muayeed Khan and J.A. Masum.
At 12:02pm, the second City gent of the day arrives for curry at the Halal Restaurant.
Maurice Courtnell, owner of the Mansell St Garage and the Halal Restaurant’s biggest advocate, has been going round for curry since 1946. – “The place is A1, beautiful people and lovely food. I remember Mr Jaffer that started it, I remember holding Mahaboob in my arms when he was a new-born baby.”
Mahaboob Narangoli, owner of the East End’s oldest Indian restaurant.
At M & G Hardware & Ironmongery
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Sarfaraz Loonat
If you need to have a key cut, get scissors sharpened or buy a sturdy metal bucket, there is no better place in Whitechapel to go than M&G Building Supplies, Hardware & Ironmongery at 20 Cambridge Heath Rd, where you can be assured of a generous welcome by proprietor Sarfaraz Loonat. Sitting behind the counter like the captain at the bridge of a great ship, he waits poised to supply your every need in do-it-yourself and household maintenance. In his mind, Sarfaraz has an exact virtual replica of the shop and, by searching this mental labyrinth, he can instantly recall where every single size and type of nut, bolt, watering can, hinge or spanner can be located in the crowded shelving, cupboards, racks and draws of his actual shop. Sarfaraz relishes the opportunity to offer a personal service that cannot be matched by the superstores and, for connoisseurs of ironmongery and hardware, M & G is a rare delight.
If you should ask, Sarfaraz will be proud to tell you that the business was started in 1884 by James de Hailes, as a locksmith and ironmongers, just around the corner in the appropriately-named Key Close. He will bring out the old photographs and explain that the shop moved to its present location after the original premises was destroyed in the blitz, and he will inform you that it once occupied three generations of the de Hailes family. First there was James, then his son James George, and finally his daughter Dorothy who ran it with her husband Ronald Bull until September 1985, when they put the shop up for sale. At sixty-two, Dorothy, who had worked for her grandfather James since she was a small girl, recalled affectionately, “My only clear memory of him was when burnt me with his cigar by accident.” Adding regretfully, “It is sad to go, but we have worked here a long time and we want a bit of enjoyment.”
Fortunately, Malagar Singh bought the shop, succumbing inexorably to the irresistible magnetism of ironmongery and cherishing the endeavour with equal devotion to that shown by the de Hailes family – so that when he came to retire four years ago, he was diligent to appraise his successor. This was the point at which the young contender appeared, ambitious twenty-seven year old Sarfaraz, graduate in business management and rising employee of Philip Green’s Arcadia Group in the West End. “For two years I enjoyed working there,” Sarfaraz admitted to me, leaning over the counter at M&G to confide, “but when I decided to get married, I need more money to buy a flat for me and my wife to live in. And, even though I saved the company hundreds of thousands of pounds in my work preventing fraud, they refused to give me a pay rise. It was always my dream to have a business of my own. So I sat down with my grandfather, my uncles and my father, explained my situation and told them that I needed to do something with my life.”
Sarfaraz was overjoyed when his grandfather suggested that he consider the hardware store.“We had a family meeting and they said they’d back me,” Sarfaraz explained, “It was a bit daunting though, when I went along to meet Mr Singh. He was quite up for it, but he said, ‘You’ve got to work here for two weeks and if I like you, you can have it.'” Then, once Sarfaraz confessed that he had no holiday weeks left that year, Mr Singh turned dogmatic. “If you really want this, you must hand in your notice,” he insisted, challenging Sarfaraz to show the whole-hearted commitment which running a hardware store entails.“I wanted to implement the corporate way of doing things at once,” Sarfaraz told me with a blush at his former self, “but Mr Singh insisted I abide by the traditional way. My wife Mohsina came along and worked with me – and, after four weeks, Mr Singh handed over the keys and left.”
And so, with an interest-free loan from his family and after selling his car, Sarfaraz began a new life at M&G Ironmongers as a married man. “It was a complete unknown but with the love and support of my family, it was possible,” Sarfaraz assured me with a tender smile, “they gave me the confidence to believe I could do it.”
“After four years, I have paid back my family. I remember the first day I woke up and had no debt on my head – the shackles were off! I had two fantastic years at first, followed by one year of not taking a penny home due to a drop in sales caused by the economic crisis – we lived hand to mouth – but then this past year has been my best yet. People search on Google to learn how to do-it-yourself, and they are slowly buying tools and making their own toolkits. Through the recession, they have gained confidence in doing household repairs themselves. Often couples come in together, fathers come in with their children or they bring their friends. People are working together to get things done.”
In the meantime, Sarfaraz and his wife had two daughters, and all their friends and relatives now assist in keeping the shop staffed until the children are of school age. “Then it will be me and my wife together in this shop full-time and our aim will be to work towards buying a house for our family.” said Sarfaraz, eagerly envisaging his future.
“Most Asian shopkeepers they go for takeaway chicken or mobile phone shops, but I wanted to do something different. There aren’t many Indian Gujaratis in the hardware trade, it’s mostly white guys and some Sikhs.” he declared, growing passionate in his personal manifesto, “Offering a friendly service is very important to me. If people come in to buy two screws, I will give them five. I want them to know I am trying to look after them, it’s not just about the money. I expect to be here behind the counter with my wife in twenty years time. This shop has a story and a history, and I’m not going to be the one to let it die.”
Making an unexpected radical choice, Sarfaraz Loonat swapped the corporate world for that of the independent shopkeeper and, at thirty-two years old, he has found that the challenge has given him more self-respect and and satisfaction, as well as bringing him back to heart of his family and the centre of his local community in Whitechapel.
Sarfaraz Loonat – “It was always my dream to have a business of my own.”
Sarfaraz’s nephew Mohammed Mayat helps out in the shop.
De Hailes’ Locksmith & Ironmongery in Key Close, Whitechapel, 1890. James George de Hailes stands on the far right with his father James next to him.
M&G Building Supplies, Hardware & Ironmongery, 20 Cambridge Heath Rd, Whitechapel, E1 5QH
You may also like to read about Sarfaraz’s father and uncles
East End Women Protest
East End Peace Women’s Group in action in Dalston
If on International Women’s Day, we should need evidence that the spirit of the East End Suffragettes of a century ago is still with us, Contributing Photographer David Hoffman‘s astonishing images of women’s protest in the eighties are an enduring and inspirational witness to our unquenchable desire for justice.
“Some of these photographs are of our gang, Tower Hamlets Women for Peace, along with two blokes from Tower Hamlets Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament, blocking the Whitechapel Rd near the Cambridge Heath Rd crossing early in the morning of Tuesday 20th Dec 1983. Most of us were nicked and defended ourselves in a remarkable court case at which we were all found guilty but unconditionally discharged.
Other photographs show when we blocked Whitechapel Rd close to the Vallance Rd crossing, sometimes by crossing the road back and forth repeatedly rather than sitting down. We did this whenever we got a message on the Greenham ‘phone-tree’ that Cruise nuclear convoys were on the road. We wanted to publicise this as well as the fact that Whitechapel Rd is a Military Service Route to be taken over as such should our government or the United States government decide to wage a nuclear war.
There are also photographs here of the Blood Money demo outside British Association of Film & Television Arts at 195 Piccadilly where there was a conference of arms traders and manufacturers on International Women’s Day, 8th March 1984. Our Peace Group joined others there to chuck red paint in their general direction. One of the pictures shows the arrest of an older woman in a shawl writing a note on her wrist, who was the one who had the good wheeze – sadly not possible on modern public transport – of hopping onto a bus and chucking her paint from the platform as it passed. Unfortunately, the cops caught up with the bus at the traffic lights.
Various arrests and court cases ensued, of which I remember only my own at which I got off by showing – with the help of David Hoffman’s photos – that my red paint had actually hit BAFTA’s door, not the public pavement I was accused of damaging.”
A Member of Tower Hamlets Women for Peace
East End Peace Women’s Group in action in Whitechapel
East End Peace Women’s Group in action in Hackney
East End Peace Women’s Group in action in Piccadilly
“I started photographing protest and other social issues in the seventies. I was living in Whitechapel at that time and the women I knew were involved in squatting and generally trying to resist the horrors of the Thatcher era. The women’s peace movement really took off with the establishment of the American nuclear missile base in Greenham and East End women were among the most active and committed.
I felt privileged to be trusted with advance notice of some of the actions and to be able to photograph them. These pictures are from the winter of 1983-84 and, if anyone has caption information or memories to share, I would love to be able to add that to these images.”
David Hoffman
East End Peace Women’s Group in action in Whitechapel
Photographs copyright © David Hoffman
Old Spitalfields In Colour
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Photographer Philip Marriage took these pictures on 11th July 1984
Crispin St
Widegate St
White’s Row
Artillery Passage
Brushfield St
Artillery Passage
Brushfield St
Fashion St
Widegate St
Artillery Passage
Gun St
Brushfield St
Gun St
Brushfield St
Parliament Court
Leyden St
Fort St
Commercial St
Brushfield St
Photographs copyright © Philip Marriage
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The Auriculas Of Spitalfields
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An auricula theatre
In horticultural lore, auriculas have always been associated with Spitalfields and writer Patricia Cleveland-Peck has a mission to bring them back again. She believes that the Huguenots brought them here more than three centuries ago, perhaps snatching a twist of seeds as they fled their homeland and then cultivating them in the enclosed gardens of the merchants’ grand houses, and in the weavers’ yards and allotments, thus initiating a passionate culture of domestic horticulture among the working people of the East End which endures to this day.
You only have to cast your eyes upon the wonder of an auricula theatre filled with specimens in bloom in Patricia’s Sussex garden to understand why these most artificial of flowers can hold you in thrall with the infinite variety of their colour and form. “They are much more like pets than plants,” Patricia admitted to me as we stood in her greenhouse surrounded by seedlings,“because you have to look after them daily, feed them twice a week in the growing season, remove offshoots and repot them once a year. Yet they’re not hard to grow and it’s very relaxing, the perfect antidote to writing, because when you are stuck for an idea you can always tend your auriculas.” Patricia taught herself old French and Latin to research the history of the auricula, but the summit of her investigation was when she reached the top of the Kitzbüheler Horn, high in the Austrian Alps where the ancestor plants of the cultivated varieties are to be found.
Auriculas were first recorded in England in the Elizabethan period as a passtime of the elite but it was in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries that they became a widespread passion amongst horticulturalists of all classes. In 1795, John Thelwall, son of a Spitalfields silk mercer wrote, “I remember the time myself when a man who was a tolerable workman in the fields had generally beside the apartment in which he carried on his vocation, a small summer house and a narrow slip of a garden at the outskirts of the town where he spent his Monday either in flying his pigeons or raising his tulips.” Auriculas were included alongside tulips among those prized species known as the “Floristry Flowers,” plants renowned for their status, which were grown for competition by flower fanciers at “Florists’ Feasts,” the precursors of the modern flower show. These events were recorded as taking place in Spitalfields with prizes such as a copper kettle or a ladle and, after the day’s judging, the plants were all placed upon a long table where the contests sat to enjoy a meal together known as “a shilling ordinary.”
In the nineteenth century, Henry Mayhew wrote of the weavers of Spitalfields that “their love of flowers to this day is a strongly marked characteristic of the class.” and, in 1840, Edward Church who lived in Spital Sq recorded that “the weavers were almost the only botanists of their day in the metropolis.” It was this enthusiasm that maintained a regular flower market in Bethnal Green which eventually segued into the Columbia Rd Flower Market of our day.
Known variously in the past as ricklers, painted ladies and bears’ ears, auriculas come in different classes, show auriculas, alpines, doubles, stripes and borders – each class containing a vast diversity of variants. Beyond their aesthetic appeal, Patricia is interested in the political, religious, cultural and economic history of the auricula, but the best starting point to commence your relationship with this fascinating plant is to feast your eyes upon the dizzying collective spectacle of star performers gathered in an auricula theatre. As Sacheverell Sitwell once wrote, “The perfection of a stage auricula is that of the most exquisite Meissen porcelain or of the most lovely silk stuffs of Isfahan and yet it is a living growing thing.”
Mrs Cairns Old Blue – a border auricula
Glenelg – a show-fancy green-edged auricula
Piers Telford – a gold-centred alpine auricula
Taffetta – a show-self auricula
Seen a Ghost – a show-striped auricula
Sirius – gold-centred alpine auricula
Coventry St – a show-self auricula
M. L. King – show-self auricula
Mrs Herne – gold-centred alpine auricula
Dales Red – border auricula
Pink Gem – double auricula
Summer Wine – gold-centred alpine auricula
McWatt’s Blue – border auricula
Rajah – show-fancy auricula
Cornmeal – show-green-edged auricula
Fanny Meerbeek – show-fancy auricula
Piglet – double auricula
Basuto – gold-centred alpine auricula
Blue Velvet – border auricula
Patricia Cleveland-Peck in her greenhouse.
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In Celebration Of Cockneys
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Portrait by James Pearson-Howes
In popular lore, being born within earshot of the bells of St Mary-Le-Bow, Cheapside, in the City of London – known as the Bow Bells – is the defining quality of a true cockney. It is a charismatic myth that possesses its own quirky appeal, yet also reveals the elusive quicksilver nature of cockney identity.
Lexicographers propose multiple origins for the word, each of which reveals aspects of its meaning and timbre as a term that has never been far from derogatory. Yet cockney offers the only authentic piece of vocabulary we have to describe the indigenous culture of the people of the East End and, as such, its historical usage is commonly a measure of their standing.
The first recorded use of the word “cockney” is by William Langland in 1362, meaning a “cock’s egg”, an abnormality, and it crops up again in the work of Geoffrey Chaucer, meaning a spoilt child or effeminate man, dated to around 1386 when Chaucer was an East Ender dwelling above the gatehouse to the City of London at Aldgate. Both usages imply an antipathy to urban dwellers who were spared the labour of agricultural work and it is an equivocation about the status of the cockney that persists to this day.
Culturally, the identity of the cockney is inextricably bound up with the East End and the costermongers – roving vendors of fruit and vegetables who developed their own tribal code and practices that became formalised at the end of the nineteenth century as Pearly Kings & Queens. Rhyming slang is the braggadocio of the cockney, a flowering of the wit and theatre of street trading, while pies and mash and jellied eels are the cuisine of choice. There is also an aura of criminality that cannot be denied, yet it is perhaps merely indicative of our centuries-old collective anxiety over the morals of the poor.
Regrettably, the over-familiarity of these cockney tropes in popular culture has come to mask the sophistication and subtlety of this culture, just as the well-worn narratives of sensational crime and poverty have obscured the social complexity of the East End itself. But in all the interviews I have undertaken, I have never come across any of the feckless cockneys of popular lore.
“People like to think that we were all drunks who dropped their ‘h’s, and we were dirty,” said Mavis Bullwinkle, nonagenarian resident of Spitalfields and proud cockney, speaking to me in contempt at the common misrepresentation of her kind. Sacrificing a career in the City for a less-well-paid job as a secretary at the Royal London Hospital where she worked for forty years, Mavis exemplifies the best of the cockney East End – of those who grew up in modest circumstances within a close-knit community and developed a strong sense of social responsibility as a result.
To tell the story of the cockney is to recount the history of poverty in the East End, yet in my work I propose a parallel history of resourcefulness as the definitive trait of the region. To me, the cockney embodies this quality as one who has the moral courage and wit to invent a means of living out of nothing, creating employment for themselves and others. And it is a sensibility that still prevails in the streets and markets of the East End, where today we have Scots cockneys, Sikh cockneys, Italian cockneys and cockneys of every nationality and race to be found in the territory.
Being a cockney is not simply about being born within earshot of Bow Bells. To me, cockney is a state of being and a relationship to existence. Cockney embodies the virtues of self-reliance and magnanimity that are characteristic of these unjustly misrepresented people. Let us celebrate the commercial nous, the independence of spirit and the egalitarianism of the cockney – because, God knows, we need them now.
Click to learn about the series of COCKNEY CONVERSATIONS happening this month
Victorian scrap of a costermonger
Lithograph of a Costermonger by H W Petherick, 1874 (courtesy of Bishopsgate Institute)
Costermonger and child from Wonderful London by Donald McLeish published in the twenties (courtesy Bishopsgate Institute)
Costermonger by William Nicholson, 1898 (courtesy Desmond Banks)
Engraving of a Costermonger by Marcellus Laroon, 1687 (courtesy Bishopsgate Institute)
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