The Dinners Of Old London
Dinner at the Mercers’ Hall, c.1910
Is that your stomach rumbling or is it the sound of distant thunder I hear? To assuage your hunger, let us pass the time until we eat by studying these old glass slides once used for magic lantern shows by the London & Middlesex Archaeological Society at the Bishopsgate Insititute. Observe the architecture of gastronomy as expressed in the number and variety of ancient halls – the dining halls, the banquet halls and the luncheon rooms – where grand people once met for lengthy meals. Let us consider the dinners of old London.
The choicest meat from Smithfield, the finest fish from Billingsgate, and the freshest vegetables from Covent Garden and Spitalfields, they all found their way onto these long tables – such as the one in Middle Temple Hall which is twenty-seven feet long and made of single oak tree donated by Elizabeth I. The trunk was floated down the river from Windsor Great Park and the table was constructed in the hall almost half millennium ago. It has never been moved and through all the intervening centuries – through the Plague and the Fire and the Blitz – it has groaned beneath the weight of the dinners of old London.
Dinners and politics have always been inextricable in London but, whether these meals were a premise to do business, make connections and forge allegiances, or whether these frequent civic gatherings were, in fact, merely the excuse for an endless catalogue of slap-up feasts and beanos, remains open to question. John Keohane, former Chief Yeoman Warder at the Tower of London told me that his troupe acquired their colloquial name of “beefeaters” because – as royal bodyguards – Henry VII granted them the privilege of dining at his table and eating the red meat which was denied to commonfolk. In the medieval world, your place at dinner corresponded literally to your place in society, whether at top table or among the lower orders.
Contemplating all these empty halls where the table has not been laid yet and where rays of sunlight illuminate the particles of dust floating in the silence, I think we may have to wait a while longer before dinner is served in old London.
Christ’s Hospital Hall, c.1910
Buckingham Palace, State Dining Room, c.1910
Grocers’ Hall, c.1910
Ironmongers’ Hall, Court Luncheon Room, c.1910
Mercers’ Livery Hall, 1932
Merchant Taylors’ Hall, c.1910
Painters’ Hall, c.1910
Salters’ Livery Hall, c.1910
Skinners’ Hall, c.1910
Skinners’ Hall, c.1910
Stationers’ Hall, Stock Room, c.1910
Drapers’ Hall, c.1920
The Admiralty Board Room, c.1910
King’s Robing Room, Palace of Westminster, c.1910
Buckingham Palace, Throne Room, c.1910
Houses of Parliament, Robing Room, c.1910
Lincoln’s Inn, Great Hall, c.1910
Lincoln’s Inn Old Hall, c.1928
Drapers’ Hall, c.1920
Middle Temple Hall, c.1910
Mansion House Dining Room, c.1910
Ironmongers’ Hall, Banqueting Room, c.1910
Apothecaries’ Hall, Banquet in the Great Hall, c.1920
Boys preparing to cook, c.1910
Boar’s Head Dinner at Cutler’s Hall, c.1910
Lord Mayor’s Banquet at the Guildhall, 1933
Baddeley Cake & Wine, Drury Lane, c.1930
Glass slides courtesy Bishopsgate Institute
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Chapter 3. The Burial Of The Victims
On 15th December 1811, one week after their violent deaths, the Marr family were buried in the churchyard of St George’s-in-the-East in the shadow of the pepperpot tower designed by Nicholas Hawksmoor. In spite of the frost, crowds of mourners lined the Highway from early morning and at one o’clock the coffins were carried out from the draper’s shop at 29 Ratcliffe Highway, where the deceased met their end, and into the church where two months earlier the family had attended the christening of Timothy Marr junior.
The following verse was inscribed upon the stone –
- Stop mortal, as you pass by
- And view the grave werein doth lie
- A Father, Mother and a Son
- Whose Earthly course was shortly run.
- For lo all in one fatal hour
- O’er came were they with ruthless power
- And murdered in a cruel state
- Yea, far too horrid to relate!
- They spared no-one to tell the tale
- One for the other could not wail
- The other’s fate in anguish sighed
- Loving they lived, together died
- Reflect, O Reader, o’er their fate
- And turn from sin before too late
- Life is uncertain in this world
- Oft in a moment we are hurled
- To endless bliss or endless pain
- So let not sin within your reign.
Meanwhile, no progress had yet been made in the detection of the perpetrators of the crime. Three Greek sailors loitering with blood on their trousers on the Ratcliffe Highway were arrested on the night of the murders but released again once an alibi was established, proving they had just come up from Gravesend.
More pertinently, Mr Pugh the carpenter who had undertaken the improvements to the Mr Marr’s shop was questioned. He had employed a subcontractor to make the shop window, who requested the iron chisel (discovered on the shop counter after the killings) which Mr Pugh had borrowed from a neighbour. Once the work was complete the chisel could not be found, though the contractor claimed he had left it in the shop for Mr Pugh. However, Mr Pugh was found to be of good character and had a reliable alibi too. Either Mr Marr succeeded in finding the chisel after Margaret Jewell, the servant girl, had gone out at ten to midnight to buy oysters – or he had kept it secretly all along and brought it out in vain self-defence against persons unknown – or one of the murderers had brought it into the house as a weapon and not used it.
Without any significant leads in the case, the neighbourhood was left with only speculation and the deadly brooding fear that – although the Marr family were now buried – the train of events unleashed by their savage murder on the night of 11th December was far from over.
Click on Paul Bommer’s map of the Ratcliffe Highway Murders to explore further
I am indebted to PD James’ ‘The Peartree & The Maul’ which stands as the authoritative account of these events. Thanks are also due to the Bishopsgate Institute and Tower Hamlets Local History Archive.
You may like to read the earlier instalments of this serial which runs throughout December
Robson Cezar’s Whitechapel Houses For Sale
ALL ROBSON CEZAR’S HOUSES ARE SOLD!
Spitalfields artist Robson Cezar has put twenty-five of the wooden houses he has made from fruit crates from Whitechapel Market for sale at £30 each, plus £4 postage & packing. Every house is different and each comes with an LED light and battery.
We are selling them on a first-come-first-served basis, so if you would like one please email spitalfieldslife@gmail.com giving your first, second and third choice, and we will supply payment details. We can only post these within the United Kingdom.
These houses are sculptures not toys and we do not recommend them for children under the age of twelve.
Click here to read the story of the creation of these houses
Photographs © Sarah Ainslie
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Readings At Midwinter
Sarah Winman
On Midwinter’s Night, 21st December at 6:30pm, I shall be giving a reading with my friend, novelist Sarah Winman, at BURLEY FISHER BOOKS in Haggerston. Sarah will be reading from her celebrated new novel STILL LIFE and I shall be reading my Christmas stories.
Click here to book your ticket
Still Life is a richly tapestried story of characters brought together by love, war, art, flood, and the ghost of E.M. Forster. It is 1944 and in the ruined wine cellar of a Tuscan villa, as the Allied troops advance and bombs fall around them, two strangers meet and share an extraordinary evening together.
Burley Fisher Books, 400 Kingsland Rd, E8 4AA
Schrodinger will be otherwise engaged on Midwinter’s Night
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The Lives Of George Lansbury & Will Crooks
In this second feature from his recently-published book, Out of Sight, Out of Mind – Abuse, Neglect and Fire in a London Children’s Workhouse, John Walker considers how Will Crooks and George Lansbury continued the nineteenth century welfare reforms which Henrietta Barnett began.
This Wednesday 15th December at 7:30pm, John Walker will be giving an online lecture about the work of Henrietta Barnett to improve conditions for children in the Whitechapel workhouse.
‘He lived and died a servant of the People’
I wrote recently of the significant role played by Henrietta Barnett in ending the workhouse system in which children were taken away from their parents as young as two years old and became prey to abuse. After a twenty-year campaign to humanise conditions, she obtained government agreement to close down the barrack schools in 1896 – just as her quarter of a century as governor of the Forest Gate District School came to an end.
When she left, two men who were to complete her mission arrived, setting the standard for children in care in the twentieth century. Future Labour members of parliament Will Crooks and George Lansbury were both guardians of the Poplar Union, one of the other unions controlling the Forest Gate School. Each cut his public service teeth as governors there, closing the school and replacing it with better, more suitable accommodation.
Will Crooks was a former workhouse boy, born into poverty in Poplar in 1852. His father was disabled by an industrial accident and he was put into the workhouse at eight years old. The guardians sent him and his brother to the South Metropolitan District School in Sutton, Surrey, which made a lasting impression on him and shaped his stewardship of the Forest Gate institution.
According to Crooks’ biographer, George Haw, he was separated from his younger brother on entering the school and ‘in the great hall of the school he would strain his eyes hoping to get a glimpse of the lone little fellow among the other lads, but never set his eyes upon him until the day they went home together.’
Crooks told Haw ‘Every day I spent in that school is burned on my soul.’ From that day, he was determined to change the system for Poor Law children.
Crooks first came to public prominence during the great London Dock Strike of 1889 and, three years later, was elected to the recently established London County Council under the Progressive banner. One of his early achievements was to change the eligibility criteria for elections to local boards of guardians – which were responsible for running workhouses – to enable working-class people to stand for election.
Taking advantage of the change he had engineered, he was elected to the Poplar Board in 1893 and, within four years, had himself appointed as a governor of the Forest Gate School. He was reminded of his own childhood as soon as he entered, observing that the youngsters ‘got no schooling and no training, save for the training that fitted them for pauperism.’
He became Chairman of the Poplar Board in 1899 and was elected Chair of the Forest Gate School governors, setting himself the task of removing the stigma of the Poor Law. According to biographer Haws his mission was to make the children ‘feel like ordinary working-class children … to grow up like them, becoming ordinary working-men and working-women themselves, so the Poor Law knew them no longer.’
Crooks furthered this ambition through public speaking, petitioning government, forcing school managers to improve conditions and encouraging children to grow in confident in the world outside the school. He took particular pride in entering Forest Gate’s pupils in sporting competitions and encouraging young musicians to perform in public, increasing the children’s social confidence.
By 1906, Poor Law schools’ inspector, Dugard, declared ‘There is very little, if anything of the institutional mark about the children … They compare very favourably with the best elementary schools.’
George Lansbury was born in Suffolk, the son of a railway worker, in 1859. He came to London as a young man, married, and after a brief spell in Australia, moved to Bow where he became involved with politics, working as agent for the local Liberal MP. Frustrated by the party’s lack of radicalism, he joined the Social Democratic Federation. Within a year, Lansbury was one of its Poor Law guardian candidates for the Poplar Union and his manifesto included a commitment to improving the Forest Gate School, writing ‘All children left to the care of the Board shall not be made to feel their dependence is criminal or disgraceful, and shall not be marked out by dress or treatment from their fellows.’
He wanted the children to be educated in local schools alongside non-workhouse pupils. In his election address the following year, he called for the abolition of workhouse school uniforms and that ‘the food given shall be sufficient of good quality and properly prepared.’
In 1895, after serving on Poplar’s Board of Guardians for two years, he was appointed a governor of the Forest Gate School, along with Crooks. They spent the next ten years improving conditions for the children while trying to replace the school with much more suitable accommodation, deeper in the Essex countryside. They identified Charles Duncan, the school’s superintendent, as the major obstacle and pensioned him off, along with other unsympathetic staff. They introduced camping holidays for boys in Essex and London excursions for girls.
But their reforms did not go unopposed. Poplar ratepayers complained at the cost and there were arguments in parliament decrying the fact the children were now being cared for rather than simply disciplined. The national press condemned the ‘extravagancies’ in treating the children humanely. Yet when a parliamentary committee was established to examine this apparent scandal, Lansbury & Crooks were exonerated.
From 1898, they were planning to move the children to purpose-built accommodation in Brentwood at a cost of £100,000, spending a great deal of time raising the money and looking for a buyer for the Forest Gate site while seeking loans to bridge the difference.
The scheme they devised was Hutton Poplars, opening in 1908. It was a series of houses, each catering for around thirty children under the care of a house-mother rather than an ex-army sergeant. Swimming baths, a gymnasium and recreation rooms were provided, and children attended local schools, without having to wear pauper uniforms.
Outrage at Lansbury & Crooks’ reforms were ultimately silenced when Hutton Poplars received a national seal of approval, ordained by a royal visit.
George Lansbury & Will Crooks’ lives afterwards
Both became Labour MPs – Will Crooks for Woolwich and George Lansbury for Bromley & Bow – although they had very different political careers.
Will Crooks was an MP between 1902 and 1921. A century later, we condemn his record and the causes he championed as reprehensible. He was anti-immigrant, particularly during the First World War when he became a flag-waver in favour of conflict. He was also a eugenicist with shameful views towards those with disabilities.
George Lansbury’s activity as a Labour MP was of a different timbre. He was a champion of women’s suffrage and an ally of Sylvia Pankhurst, resigning his seat to fight a by-election on the issue of suffrage which he lost. He was the founding editor of the Daily Herald during his period out of office. On his return to Westminster he became one of the minority of pacifist MPs, opposed to the First World War. As leader of Poplar Council, he led a successful, campaign of civil disobedience that saw him and his fellow councillors imprisoned to get the funding of local government reformed so it no longer disadvantaged poor communities.
He became leader of the Labour MPs in the thirties after Ramsey Macdonald deserted the party, taking most of it with him to lead a ‘national’ government. Lansbury’s pacifism cost him the leadership in 1935 and he spent the last five years of his life valiantly persuading leaders around Europe to disarm and avoid a Second World War.
He failed, dying within months of the outbreak of war, but in 1950 A.J.P Taylor described George Lansbury as ‘the most lovable figure in modern British politics.’
George Lansbury’s memorial in Bow Rd – ‘A great servant of the people’
George Lansbury
George Lansbury’s 1893 election handbill to become a member of the Poplar Boards of Guardians
Will Crooks
Forest Gate District School
Pupils at Forest Gate School photographed by Henrietta Barnett in he eighteen-eighties
Pupils at Forest Gate School photographed by Henrietta Barnett in the eighteen-eighties
Hutton Poplars which replaced Forest Gate School
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Walk Through Time With The Gentle Author
Map of the Gentle Author’s Tour drawn by Adam Dant
In celebration of the festive season, I shall be hosting a walk on Boxing Day at noon.
Ramble with me through two thousand years of culture in the streets of Spitalfields and encounter some of the people and places that make this historic neighbourhood distinctive.
I invite you to join my tour in the footsteps of all those who came before, with a keen eye and an open heart, to discover the manifold wonders of this place.
Tickets cost £50 and include a signed copy of one of The Gentle Author’s books of your choice as a souvenir. To book please email spitalfieldslife@gmail.com
Sandys Row from the north
After seeing the work of photographer C.A.Mathew in these pages, Adam Tuck was inspired to revisit the locations of the pictures taken over a century ago. Subtly blending his own photographs with C.A.Mathew’s images of Spitalfields in 1912, Adam initiated an unlikely collaboration with a photographer of the beginning of the last century and created a new series of images of compelling resonance.
In these montages, people of today co-exist in the same space with people of the past, manifesting a sensation I have always felt in Spitalfields – that all of history is present here. Yet those of the early twentieth century ago knew they were being photographed and many are pictured looking at the camera, whereas passersby in the present day are mostly self-absorbed. The effect is of those from the past wondering at a vision of the future, while those of our own day are entirely unaware of this ghostly audience.
It is hard to conceive of the meaning of time beyond our own lifespan. But these photographs capture something unseen, something usually hidden from human perception – they are pictures of time passing and each one contains more than a hundred years.
Sandys Row from the south
Looking from Bishopsgate down Brushfield St, towards Christ Church
Looking down Widegate St towards Sandys Row
Looking down Middlesex St towards Bishopsgate
From Bishopsgate looking up Middlesex St
In Bell Lane
In Artillery Lane looking towards Artillery Passage
From Bishopsgate through Spital Sq
Frying Pan Alley
Montages copyright © Adam Tuck
C.A.Mathew photographs courtesy Bishopsgate Institute
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The Lantern Slides Of Old London
Hundreds of lantern slides from the London & Middlesex Archaeological Society Collection are published in THE GENTLE AUTHOR’S LONDON ALBUM, making it the ideal present for lovers of London’s history.
A few years ago, I became enraptured by a hundred-year-old collection of four thousand lantern slides. They were once used for educational lectures by the London & Middlesex Archaeological Society at the Bishopsgate Institute in Spitalfields. When Stefan Dickers became archivist there, he discovered the slides in dusty old boxes – abandoned and forgotten since they became obselete. Yet it has become apparent that these slides, which were ignored for so long, are one of the greatest treasures in the collection. And it is my delight to be the one responsible for publishing a selection of these wonderful images in my London Album.
When I was first offered the opportunity of presenting these lantern slides which have been unseen for generations, I was overwhelmed by the number of pictures and did not know where to start. The first to catch my fancy were the ancient signs and symbols, dating from an era before street numbering located addresses and lettered signs advertised trades to Londoners.
Before long, I grew spellbound by the slide collection because, alongside the famous landmarks and grand occasions of state, there were pictures of forgotten corners and of ordinary people going about their business. It was a delight to discover hundreds of images of things that people do not usually photograph and I was charmed to realise that the anonymous photographers of the London & Middlesex Archaeological Society were as interested in pubs as they were in churches.
The more I studied the glass slides, the more joy I found in these arcane pictures, since every one contained the rich potential of hidden stories, seducing the imagination to flights of fancy regarding the ever-interesting subject of Old London. Once I had published The Signs of Old London, I realised there were many other such sets to be found among the slides, as a result of the systematic recording of London which underscored the original project by the London & Middlesex Archaeological Society, a hundred years ago, and parallels my own work in Spitalfields Life, today.
I arranged them quite literally – in terms of doors, or night, or dinners, or streets, or staircases. I did this because I was interested to explore how the pictures might speak to me and to you, the readers. No evidence has survived to indicate in what sequence or order they were originally shown and it was my intention to avoid imposing any grand narratives of power or poverty, although these pictures do speak powerfully of these subjects. Recognising that objects and images are capable of many interpretations, I am one that prefers museums which permit the viewer to decide for themselves, rather than be presented with artefacts subject to a single meaning within an ordained story and so, with the Album, we have presented the pictures and invited the reader to draw their own conclusions.
Equally, in publishing the slides, we chose not to clean them up or remove imperfections and dirt. Similarly, we did not standardise the colour to black or a uniform sepia, either. Instead, we have cherished the subtle variations of hues present in these slides and savoured the beautiful colour contrasts between them, when laid side by side. There is a melancholic poetry in these shabby images, in which their damage and their imperfections speak of their history, and I came to glory in the patina and murk.
Above all, in publishing these pictures in my Album, I wanted to communicate the pleasure I have found in scrutinising them at length and entering another world imaginatively through the medium of this sublime photography. Today I publish this serendipitous selection of glass slides which fascinate me but that did not make it into my Album.
In the Inns of Court
At Eltham Palace
At Euston Station
The Anchor at Bankside
Crocodiles at the Natural History Museum
Reading Room at the British Museum
Chelsea Pensioner
In Fleet St
In Fleet St
St John’s Gate, Clerkenwell
Between the inner & outer dome of St Paul’s
Along the Embankment
The Old Dick Whittington, Clothfair, Smithfield
Firemen take a tea break
Lightermen on the Thames
Flood in Water St, Tower of London
The White Tower, London’s oldest building
Glass slides courtesy of Bishopsgate Institute
Take a look at these sets of the glass slides of Old London
The High Days & Holidays of Old London
The Fogs & Smogs of Old London
The Forgotten Corners of Old London
The Statues & Effigies of Old London
The City Churches of Old London
