PC Tassell In The Pool Of London
Lew Tassell sent me these pictures that he took in the Pool of London on 9th July 1973
Looking west from H.M.S. Belfast
“There were normally three of us policemen on duty on Tower Bridge. Four hours was the longest duty, 07:00hrs-11:00hrs or 11:00hrs-15:00hrs on early turn shift. We used the toilet near the engine room on the north side of the bridge. Up until 1976, steam hydraulics opened and shut the bascules – and it was a fascinating, if noisy experience to step into the engine room and watch the mechanism from the inside.
When the alarm bell was sounded for the bridge to open we had make sure all the traffic was stopped. On one occasion, I received a radio call that there was a ‘disturbance’ on a 78 bus on the south side of the bridge travelling north.
The bascules on the bridge were already being raised when I went to the engine control room and informed them of the problem. They said that, if I was quick, they could stop the raising of the bridge long enough for me to jump across – and that is what I did. I vividly recall running to the edge of the open bascule and seeing the water a long way below and a drop of about five feet and a gap of about three feet to the opposite bascule.
I threw my policeman’s helmet to the other side – I did not want it to fall into the river – and took a running leap, landing safely. There was no such thing as health and safety in those days. I do not have any recollection of the disturbance on the bus, other than it was ‘all quiet on arrival’ by the time I got there.
Slow traffic was often a problem on Tower Bridge and we would be instructed to speed it up by standing between the narrow southbound and northbound lanes, waving the cars, lorries and buses through. Thinking back, this was a totally mad thing to do, not to mention the danger of the noxious fumes I was breathing in.
Commercial traffic in the Pool of London, between Tower Bridge and London Bridge, had all but vanished by the early seventies due to the introduction of shipping containers. The wharves and derricks had either been demolished or were in the process of being redeveloped, and the opening of Tower Bridge was a rare event compared to the fifties and sixties when perhaps it would be opened as many as thirty times times a day.”
Lew Tassell
Looking west towards the new London Bridge built between 1967 – 1972 and opened by Queen Elizabeth II on 17th March 1973.
Looking east from H.M.S. Belfast
Looking east from H.M.S Belfast
Looking East towards a rather grimy looking Tower Bridge, my favourite picture of the day. I spent so much time on that bridge as a young policeman in uniform when it was manned between 07:00hrs and 20:00hrs, often for four hours at a time. Next to the South Tower you can just see the outline of a small box, there was another one by the North Tower on the east side. They were police boxes and supposed to be used when there was inclement weather but more often used to natter during the quiet times. They no longer exist.
Looking east from H.M.S. Belfast.
Looking west from the bow of H.M.S. Belfast.
H.M.S. Belfast Control Room
H.M.S. Belfast taken from the Thames path in front of the Tower of London. The ship is a Town class light cruiser built for the Royal Navy at the celebrated shipyard of Harland & Wolff in Belfast, launched on St Patrick’s Day, 1938. She saw action throughout World War II and was moored on the River Thames, opening to the public in October 1971.
Looking north, the ship La Belle Simone is moored alongside the shore, it was built the previous year and owned by William Levitt, the real estate developer and credited as the father of modern American suburbia. The spire of All Hallows by the Tower can be seen behind the demolition and construction work on the north shore.
The White Tower, Tower of London.
The Monument, this view is now obliterated by the surrounding buildings.
Police Constable Lew Tassell, City of London Police, 1971
Photographs copyright © Lew Tassell
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Autumn In Spitalfields
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Map of the Gentle Author’s Tour drawn by Adam Dant
Join me on a ramble through Spitalfields taking less than two hours, but walking through two thousand years of history and encountering just a few of the people who have made the place distinctive.
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The rain is falling on Spitalfields, upon the church and the market, and on the streets, yards and gardens. Dripping off the roofs and splashing onto the pavements, filling the gutters and coursing down the pipes, it overflows the culverts and drains to restore the flow of the Black Ditch, the notorious lost river of Spitalfields that once flowed from here to Limehouse Dock. This was the watercourse that transmitted the cholera in 1832. An open sewer piped off in the nineteenth century, the Black Ditch has been co-opted into the drainage system today, but it is still running unknown beneath our feet in Spitalfields – the underground river with the bad reputation.
The shades of autumn encourage such dark thoughts, especially when the clouds hang over the City and the Indian Summer has unravelled to leave us with incessant rain bringing the leaves down. In Spitalfields, curry touts shiver in the chill and smokers stand in doorways, peering at the downpour. The balance of the season has shifted and sunny days have become exceptions, to be appreciated as the last vestiges of the long summer.
On such a day recently, I could not resist collecting these conkers that were lying neglected on the grass in the sunshine. And when I got home I photographed them in that same autumn sunlight to capture their perfect lustre for you. Let me confess, ever since I came to live in the city, it has always amazed me to see conkers scattered and ignored. I cannot understand why city children do not pick them up, when even as an adult I cannot resist the temptation to fill a bag. In Devon, we raced from the school gates and down the lane to be the first to collect the fresh specimens. Their glistening beauty declared their value even if, like gold, their use was limited. I did not bore holes in them with a meat skewer and string them, to fight with them as others do, because it meant spoiling their glossy perfection. Instead I filled a leather suitcase under my bed with conkers and felt secure in my wealth, until one day I opened the case to discover they had all dried out, shrivelled up and gone mouldy.
Let me admit I regret the tender loss of summer, just as I revel in the fruit of the season and the excuse to retreat to bed with a hot water bottle that autumn provides. I lie under the quilt I sewed and I feel protected like a child, though I know I am not a child. I cannot resist dark thoughts, I have a sense of dread at the winter to come and the nights closing in. Yet in the city, there is the drama of the coloured lights gleaming in wet streets. As the nights draw in, people put on the light earlier at home, creating my favourite spectacle of city life, that of the lit room viewed from the street. Every chamber becomes a lantern or a theatre to the lonely stranger on the gloomy street, glimpsing the commonplace ritual of domestic life. Even a mundane scene touches my heart when I hesitate to gaze upon it in passing, like an anonymous ghost in the shadow.
Here in Spitalfields, I have no opportunity to walk through beech woods to admire the copper leaves, instead I must do it in memory. I shall not search birch woods for chanterelles this year either, but I will seek them out to admire in the market, even if I do not buy any. Instead I shall get a box of cooking apples and look forward to eating baked apples by the fire. I am looking forward to lighting the fire. And I always look forward to writing to you every day.
John Claridge’s Soho Faces
Only a few tickets left for THE GENTLE AUTHOR’S WALKING TOUR OF SPITALFIELDS on Sunday October 3rd at noon. Email spitalfieldslife@gmail.com to book.
Map of the Gentle Author’s Tour drawn by Adam Dant
Join me on a ramble through Spitalfields taking less than two hours, but walking through two thousand years of history and encountering just a few of the people who have made the place distinctive.
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Spike Milligan, Comedian & Writer
Contributing Photographer John Claridge’s exhibition SOHO FACES opens at the House of St Barnabas in Greek St, Soho, W1D 4NQ, on Thursday 7th October.
“I started taking portraits of people at The French House in the seventies when I took a picture of Gaston Berlemont. Then, while taking Spike Milligan’s portrait, we got to talking about Soho. At the time, I was living in Frith St, so Ronnie Scott’s and The French were both very familiar to us and, even then, both of us voiced our sadness at changes we saw – lovely delicatessens, independent restaurants and specialists shops closing down, all of which had been there for years.
In 2004, I decided to document the customers at The French in earnest. For me, it was the one place in Soho that still held its Bohemian character, where people truly chose to share time and conversation, and I became aware that many I had once chinked glasses with were no longer around.
These portraits of the regulars are a cross-section of those who sat for me, but there is no rhyme or reason to my selection.”
– John Claridge
Molly Parkin, Painter & Novelist
Gaz Mayall, Musician
Lisa Stansfield, Simger & Songwriter
Eddie Gray, Jazz Violinist
Lesley Lewis, Owner of The French House
Kenny Clayton, Jazz Pianist
Fergus Henderson, Chef & Restauranteur
Georgina Sutcliffe, Actor
John Phillips, Journalist
Norman Balon, Landlord of the Coach & Horses
Millie Laws, Reflexologist
George Baker, Actor
Oliver Bernard, Poet
Clare Shenstone, Artist
Peter Boizot, Founder of Pizza Express
Peter Owen, Publisher
Vanessa Fenton, Dancer at the Royal Ballet & Choreographer
Sebastian Horsley, Artist
Burt Kwouk, Actor
Kevin Petillo, Television Producer
Pinkietessa, Costume maker
James Birch, Art Dealer
Jay Landesman, Nightclub Owner, Writer & Publisher
Anna Lujan Sanchez, Dancer with Ballet Rambert
Freddie Jones, Actor
Paul Lawford, of The Rubbishmen of Soho
Alison Steadman, Actor
Gaston Berlemont, Former Publican at The French House
Paul Barlow, Cyclist
Photographs copyright © John Claridge
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The Voluntary Poverty Movement
Last chance! Only a few tickets left for THE GENTLE AUTHOR’S WALKING TOUR OF SPITALFIELDS on Sunday October 3rd at noon. Email spitalfieldslife@gmail.com to book.
Map of the Gentle Author’s Tour drawn by Adam Dant
Join me on a ramble through Spitalfields taking less than two hours, but walking through two thousand years of history and encountering just a few of the people who have made the place distinctive.
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Kingsley Hall where Mahatma Gandi stayed in Bow, designed by Charles Voysey
Robert Nurden discovered his grandfather’s involvement with the Voluntary Poverty Movement recently while researching his biography Between Heaven and Earth: A Journey with my Grandfather.
Imagine four earnest people praying together round a simple wooden table on which lie notes and coins, and food and clothing, while in a corner of the bare room waiting for the ceremony to end, stand a group of London’s poorest.
You are witnessing a meeting of the Voluntary Poverty Movement. In 1921, a band of revolutionary Christians – more grandly known as the Brethren of the Common Table – met in Bow to share what was superfluous to their own needs with the needy. It was an initiative in which the rich sought to dispense their wealth and make themselves poor. Only in this way, they claimed, could they understand what it meant to be destitute. Yet, as it played out over the next few months in the back streets of the East End, this short-lived piece of pie-in-the-sky idealism constitutes one of the most hypocritical acts in the the history of do-gooding.
All started well. The Daily News, the Star, the Evening Standard, and other English-speaking newspapers across the world, covered the launch of this lofty but practical take on Christianity. The Evening Standard noted that the group were even prepared to “face exploitation” by less needy people claiming handouts with the definition of ‘need’ left to the conscience of each individual. Salt Lake City’s Deseret News declared “Millionaires & Paupers Join in Self Denial.”
The leader of the Voluntary Poverty Movement was Muriel Lester, an heiress from Loughton in Essex, who with her sister Doris had been working to alleviate the condition of the working class in Bow. She is remembered for her friendship with Mahatma Gandhi and it was she who hosted his visit in 1931.
Muriel told the Standard: “We ask no questions as to character, and welcome both saint and sinner, preacher and purloiner, dukes and dockers, clergy and convicts… We have no connection with any religious body. None of them will look at us. We came into existence because we realised that it isn’t enough to give away money. We feel we have no right to possess it.”
“Our invitation … is not into enforced poverty but into a very glorious alternative, involving a drastic readjustment in your affairs … we invite you into this condition that the needs of others, whether in our own country or abroad, may generously be supplied by the overflowing of your treasure.”
The other signatories were Rosa Hobhouse, Mary Hughes and the Rev Stanley James. They met in an old chapel that Muriel had bought on the site where Kingsley Hall was built in 1928, where Gandhi stayed, on the corner of Powis Rd and Bruce Rd in Bow.
But the four signatories completely failed to practise what they preached. They did not “reshape their lives” in line with their vow of poverty, and the press discovered these failings and lambasted them for their hypocrisy.
Journalists realised that Muriel was relying on her sister Dorothy, who did not join the movement, for financial support. The recent death of their father Henry, a wealthy shipbuilder, had made them beneficiaries of his huge estate. Although Rosa’s husband Stephen had renounced his claims to his family’s Somerset estate, he and his wife set up a family trust which cushioned them from any hardship.
Mary Hughes, who was the daughter of Thomas Hughes, the author of Tom Brown’s Schooldays, retained control over an inheritance which included substantial properties in Buckinghamshire, although she did make these available as homes for the unemployed and “fallen women.” In reality, none of them had made any significant sacrifice.
Only one – the fourth signatory, Rev Stanley James – had done so, yet the resulting burden fell not on him but on his wife and family. It is here that I must declare an interest: Stanley is my mother’s father and I learned of his involvement while researching his life for the biography I was writing, Between Heaven and Earth: A Journey with my Grandfather. At the time of his participation in this ill-fated enterprise, he and my grandmother Jess, and their seven children were living a life of poverty in a remote cottage in the Mendips.
Stanley wrote nine books and was editor of the Crusader, a pacifist journal. He wrote in his autobiography that conditions at the family cottage “were as primitive as those of a prairie shack, but no one seemed to mind”. This view was not shared by others. There was no running water, so they had to collect it from a nearby spring, and they had to subsist what they grew in the garden. The kitchen was a lean-to at the back of a house that suffered from severe damp problems throughout. The seven children were forced to share beds, sleeping top-to-tail.
With Stanley absent most of the time, my grandmother’s life was one of drudgery and hardship. My mother remembers how, when the postman arrived, all the children rushed to the door, hoping he was delivering a cheque in payment for Stanley’s writing.
There is no evidence that my grandmother knew her husband was re-directing the little money they had to the poor of the East End. In his later writings, Stanley never mentioned that he was a member of the movement. Perhaps he was ashamed of the way he had abandoned his own family in order to pursue this idealistic cul-de-sac? Quite how much money he contributed to the cause is unknown, nor is it known for how long he continued this arrangement. One assumes that his contributions petered out like those of the other more affluent participants.
Yet Muriel Lester, when interviewed by the Daily News, was in no doubt that Stanley’s unusual background made him a perfect appointment. “A great work was done by the Rev Stanley James, who served as a soldier in the Spanish-American war, worked as a cowboy in the Wild West, and nearly starved time out of number,” she said. She could also have told the reporter that he had been a shepherd, newspaper reporter, navvy and hobo in Canada, and, back in England, a preacher, pacifist, communist and supporter of women’s emancipation.
The Voluntary Poverty Movement was not the only doomed East End enterprise that Stanley joined. At the Catholic Darby Rd Mission near Tower Bridge, he encouraged Dockers to take Mass after work when they were exhausted. This proved another disappointment as Stanley admitted ruefully, “They preferred billiards to the Bible.”
Reverend Stanley James
Muriel Lester
Mahatma Gandi welcomed by Muriel Lester at Kingsley Hall, 1931
Tapestry depicting Mary Hughes (in a red cape)
Mary Hughes’ former Dew Drop Inn in Spitalfields
Kevin Boys, Blacksmith
Last chance! Only a few tickets left for THE GENTLE AUTHOR’S WALKING TOUR OF SPITALFIELDS on Sunday October 3rd at noon. Email spitalfieldslife@gmail.com to book.
Map of the Gentle Author’s Tour drawn by Adam Dant
Join me on a ramble through Spitalfields taking less than two hours, but walking through two thousand years of history and encountering just a few of the people who have made the place distinctive.
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Kevin Boys, Blacksmith
At the eastern extent of Rotherhithe, there is a tumbledown shack open to the elements where blacksmith Kevin Boys works at his anvil each day from seven every morning. A century ago, this was a receiving station where smallpox victims were wheeled in from ambulances before embarking onto quarantine vessels, but today it is the only old building amongst a sea of recent construction and sits in the midst of an overgrown city farm.
Yet this rural anachronism reminds us of Rotherhithe’s agricultural past, while the ringing of Kevin’s hammer would once have been a familiar sound in the shipyards that superseded it which have, in turn, been supplanted in the last generation by new housing.
There was soft rain falling on the morning I paid my visit to Kevin’s magnificent shed with a forge of hot coals at the centre, illuminating the interior with a golden flickering light and drawing my attention to the vast array of different varieties of rusty tongs and other iron-working tools acquired in the twenty-five years he has been working here. In his battered hat and old leather waistcoat, Kevin worked with relaxed concentration to shape a piece of hot iron with his hammer, sending a loud clanging resounding around the damp farmyard.
“Beware of sparks!” he warned me as I leaned over with my camera.
“I learnt blacksmithing off my grandfather Edwin Thurston, he worked as a blacksmith on the railways in Kent during the thirties and it was his brother Leopold who came up to London. When I was younger, I was interested in sculpture and printing, so when I left school in Bournemouth I did a foundation course followed by a degree in Fine Art & Sculpture at Canterbury. That was where I started blacksmithing and, from there, I came up to London to work with Jeff Love & John Gibbons at their studio in Woolwich, making sculptures in steel. But, after a year, I got the opportunity to do post-graduate study in Baltimore.
I returned to London 1984 and set up my first forge off the Old Kent Rd in 1985, where I started working as blacksmith, making things like candlesticks and furniture. I did commissions for Paul Smith and Joseph Ettedgui, and sold my work through the Fiell Gallery in the King’s Rd. Then I moved to Deptford to one of the railway arches next to station – my lighting and furniture business was kicking off and I did a lot for the South Bank Centre.
In 1991, I came to Rotherhithe. The whole area was desolate then but the farm had already been here a few years. Since then, I have been making gates, doing interior design, manufacturing furniture and sculpture – I did the angel at the Angel Tube Station. All this time, I have been working continuously, it has been non-stop.
It was my job to recreate the torture equipment from about 1580 for the Tower of London. I made the stretching rack, ‘the scavenger’s daughter’ and some manacles. It was an amazing job to get. Although I did a lot of research, the only image of a rack I found from this era was a decoration on the inside of an edition of Shakespeare but from this engraving we were able to reconstruct it. We got the oak rollers made down in Dorset and the rope was manufactured at Chatham Dockyard.
The Constable of the Tower asked me to make a speech, so I had to think on my feet and stand up in front of three hundred people at the unveiling. It turned out to be quite a macabre speech, not because of what I said but because, when we started ratcheting up the rack, it made a rather horrible clanking sound, which had an hypnotic impact upon the crowd.
I especially like the design side of things, but blacksmithing involves a huge range of activities from blade-smithing to historical restoration and recreation. Doing all these different jobs allows you to become very experienced.
The future of blacksmithing lies in sculptural design for interior and exterior projects, and in historical recreation. There are blacksmithing courses available and the level of skill is fantastic now. I have three apprentices today. The difficulty lies in making things that people want to buy. We do mostly commissions and we go into schools with a mobile forge doing demonstrations. All the kids do hot metal work and we often make something for the school, at St Luke’s in the East End we made a sculpture of Christian from Pilgrim’s Progess.”
Kevin Boys’ forge was originally constructed in 1884 as a receiving shelter for ambulances delivering smallpox patients to quarantine ships moored off Rotherhithe
Kevin Boys, Blacksmith
Kevin’s forge
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Spitalfields Nippers
All my tours are sold out now, apart from a few tickets remaining for the last of THE GENTLE AUTHOR’S WALKING TOUR OF SPITALFIELDS on Sunday October 3rd at noon. Email spitalfieldslife@gmail.com to book.
Map of the Gentle Author’s Tour drawn by Adam Dant
Join me on a ramble through Spitalfields taking less than two hours, but walking through two thousand years of history. Encounter just a few of the people who have made the place distinctive and visit Quaker St where many of the Spitalfields Nippers lived.
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This boy is wearing Horace Warner’s hat
I often think of the lives of the Spitalfields Nippers. Around 1900, Photographer, Wallpaper Designer and Sunday School Teacher Horace Warner took portraits of children in Quaker St, who were some of the poorest in London at that time. When his personal album of these astonishing photographs came to light six years ago, we researched the lives of his subjects and published a book of all his portraits accompanied by biographies of the children.
Although we were shocked to discover that as many as a third did not reach adulthood, we were also surprised and heartened by the wide range of outcomes among the others. In spite of the deprivation they endured in their early years, many of these children survived to have long and fulfilled lives.
Walter Seabrook was born on 23rd May 1890 to William and Elizabeth Seabrook of Custance St, Hoxton. In 1901, when Walter’s portrait was taken by Horace Warner, the family were living at 24 & 1/2 Great Pearl St, Spitalfields, and Walter’s father worked as a printer’s labourer. At twenty-four years old, Walter was conscripted and fought in World War One but survived to marry Alice Noon on Christmas Day 1918 at St Matthew’s, Bethnal Green. By occupation, Walter was an electrician and lived at 2 Princes Court, Gibraltar Walk. He and Alice had three children – Walter born in 1919, Alice born in 1922 and Gladys born in 1924. Walter senior died in Ware, Hertfordshire, in 1971, aged eighty-one.
Sisters Wakefield
Jessica & Rosalie Wakefield. Jessica was born in Camden on January 16th 1891 and Rosalie at 47 Hamilton Buildings, Great Eastern St, Shoreditch on July 4th 1895. They were the second and last of four children born to William, a printer’s assistant, and Alice, a housewife. It seems likely they were living in Great Eastern St at the time Horace Warner photographed them, when Jessica was ten or eleven and Rosalie was five or six.
Jessica married Stanley Taylor in 1915 and they lived in Wandsworth, where she died in 1985, aged ninety-four. On July 31st 1918 at the age of twenty-three, Rosalie married Ewart Osborne, a typewriter dealer, who was also twenty-three years old, at St Mary, Balham. After five years of marriage, they had a son named Robert, in 1923, but Ewart left her and she was reported as being deaf. Eventually the couple divorced in 1927 and both married again. Rosalie died aged eighty-four in 1979, six years before her elder sister Jessica, in Waltham Forest.
Jerry Donovan, or ‘Dick Whittington & His Cat’
Jeremiah Donovan was born in 1895 in the City of London. His parents Daniel, news vendor, and Katherine Donovan originated in Ireland. They came to England and settled in Spitalfields at 14 Little Pearl St, Spitalfields. By 1901, the family were resident at Elizabeth Buildings, Boleyn Rd. Jeremiah volunteered for World War I in 1914 when he was nineteen and was stationed at first at City of London Barracks in Moorgate. He joined the Royal Artillery, looked after the horses for the gun carriages, but was gassed in France. In 1919, Jeremiah married Susan Nichols and they had one son, Bertram John Donovan, born in 1920. He died in Dalston in 1956 and is remembered by nine great grandchildren.
Adelaide Springett in all her best clothes
Adelaide Springett was born in February 1893 in the parish of St George-in-the-East, Wapping. Her father, William Springett came from Marylebone and her mother Margaret from St Lukes, Old St. Both parents were costermongers, although William was a dock labourer when he first married. Adelaide’s twin sisters, Ellen and Margaret, died at birth and another sister, Susannah, died aged four. Adelaide attended St Mary’s School and then St Joseph’s School. The addresses on her school admissions were 12 Miller’s Court, Dorset St, and then 26 Dorset St. In 1901, at eight years old, she was recorded as lodging with her mother at the Salvation Army Shelter in Hanbury St.
Adelaide Springett died in 1986 in Fulham aged ninety-three, without any traceable relatives, and the London Borough of Kensington & Chelsea Social Services Department was her executor.
Charlie Potter was born in Haggerston to John – a leather cutter in the boot trade – and Esther Potter. He was baptised on 13th June 1890 at St Peter’s, Hoxton Sq. In 1911, they were living at 13 Socrates Place, New Inn Yard, Shoreditch and he was working as a mould maker. Charlie married Martha Elms at St John’s, Hoxton, on 3rd August 1913. They had two children, Martha, born in 1914 and, Charles, born in 1916. In World War One, Charlie served in the Royal Field Artillery Regiment, number 132308. He died on 19th October 1954 at the Royal Free Hospital. By then, he and Martha were living 46 De Beauvoir Rd, Haggerston, and he left four hundred and seventy pounds to his widow.
Celia Compton was born in 11 Johnson St, Mile End, on April 28th 1886, to Charles – a wood chopper – and Mary Compton. Celia was one of nine children but only six survived into adulthood. Two elder brothers Charles, born in 1883, and William, born in 1884, both died without reaching their first birthdays, leaving Celia as the eldest. On January 25th 1904, she married George Hayday, a chairmaker who was ten years older than her. They lived at 5 George St, Hoxton, and had no children. After he died in 1933, she married Henry Wood the next year and they lived in George Sq until it was demolished in 1949. In later years, Celia became a moneylender and she died in Poplar in 1966 aged eighty years old.
Lizzie Flynn & Dolly Green
Lizzie Flynn was living at 19 Branch Place, Haggerston, when she was nine years old in 1901. Daughter of John and Isabella Flynn, she had two brothers and a sister. By 1911, the children were living with their widowed father at 89 Wilmer Gardens, Shoreditch. Their place of birth was listed as “Oxton” in the census. On 9th May 1915, Lizzie married Robert May at St. Andrew, Hoxton. He died at the age of just thirty-four in 1926 and they had no children. Lizzie died in Stepney in 1969, aged seventy-seven.
Dolly Green (Lydia Green) was living at 31 Hyde Rd, Hoxton, with her parents Edward and Selina in 1901 when she was twelve years old. Dolly had a brother and sister who had been born before her parents’ marriage in 1881. Dolly married Edward Moseley in 1909 at St Jude in Mildmay Grove and they had two children – Arthur born in 1912, who died in 1915, and Lydia born in 1914, who lived less than a year. In 1959, Edward Mosley remarried after his wife’s death.
Annie & Nellie Lyons – is it their mother at the window?
Annie & Nellie Lyons, born 1895 and 1901 respectively, were the sixth and ninth of ten children of Annie Daniels. Only half of Annie’s children survived to adulthood. Their mother’s words are recorded in the Bethnal Green Poor Law document of 1901.
“My name is Annie Daniels, I am thirty-five years old. My occupation is a street seller. I was born in Thrawl St to Samuel Daniels and Bridget Corfield. Around fifteen or sixteen years ago, I met William Lyons who is thirty-eight years old, at this time he was living at 4 Winfield St. He is a street hawker. The last known address for William is Margaret’s Place. I have had eight children: Margaret born 1888 in Beauvoir Sq. William born 1889 in Tyssen Place. Joseph born 1891 in Whiston St. William born in Tyssen Place died. James died in Haggerston Infirmary. Annie born in 1895 at Hoxton Infirmary. Lily born April, one year and four months ago at Baker’s Row. Ellen born April, one month ago at Baker’s Row. About ten or eleven years ago, I had a son called John. He was sent away around seven years ago to the Hackney Union House. My eldest daughter Margaret is living with my sister Sarah and her husband Cornelius Haggerty. My son Joseph is living with my other sister Caroline and her husband Charles Johnson. I have moved from various addresses over the last ten years and have been lodging with my sister Mary for three years in Dorset St previous to Lily’s birth.”
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Piotr Frac, Stained Glass Artist
We are delighted that Bethnal Green stained glass artist Piotr Frac is featured in the newly opened exhibition LONDON MAKING NOW at the Museum of London
Happy in the crypt beneath John Soane’s St John on Bethnal Green of 1828, Piotr Frac works peacefully making beautiful stained glass while the world passes by at this busiest of East End crossroads. Contributing Photographer Sarah Ainslie & I visited Piotr in his subterranean workshop and were delighted to observe his dexterity in action and admire some of his recent creations.
Piotr’s appealingly modest demeanour and soft spoken manner belie the moral courage and determination it has cost him to succeed in this rare occupation. This is to say nothing of his extraordinary skill in the cutting of glass and the melding of lead to fashion such accomplished work, or his creative talent in contriving designs that draw upon the age-old traditions of stained glass but are unmistakably of our own time.
Gripped by a passion for the magic of stained glass at an early age, Piotr always knew this what what he had to do. Yet even to begin to make his way in his chosen profession, Piotr had to leave his home country and find a whole new life, speaking another language in another country.
It is our gain that Piotr brought his talent and capacity for work to London. That he found his spiritual home in the East End is no accident, since he follows in the footsteps of centuries of skilled migrants, starting with the Huguenots in the sixteenth century, who have immeasurably enriched our culture with their creative energies.
“I am from a working class family in Byton, Silesia, in the south of Poland. My interest in stained glass began when I was ten or eleven years old and I went with my school to see Krakow Cathedral. The stained glass was something beautiful and that was the first time in my life I saw it. I was inspired by the colours and the light, it still excites me.
I always had an interest in drawing and painting – so, after high school, I went to a school of sculpture where they taught stained glass restoration. This was more than twenty years ago, but it was the start of my journey with stained glass. After I got my diploma in the restoration of stained glass, I worked on a project at a church for a few weeks before university. I studied art education in Silesia and I learnt painting, sculpture and calligraphy. I believe every artist needs a background in drawing and painting.
My ambition was to do stained glass, but there were hardly any jobs of any kind – I sold fish in the market in winter and I worked in a hospital, I took whatever I could get. Around 2005, I decided to leave the country. I had some Polish friends who had come to London and they helped me find a place to stay in Brixton. In the beginning, it was very difficult for me because of the language barrier. Without English, it was hard for me to communicate and find a job here. I worked on building sites. Every morning I got up at five and I walked around with this piece of paper which told me how to ask for a job. Someone wrote down a phonetic version of the words for me and I asked at building sites. After two weeks, I got a labouring job.
I lived in many places south of the river but seven years ago I moved to East London and I have stayed here ever since. At first I lived in the Hackney Rd near Victoria Park and I am still in that area, close the Roman Rd. I visited stained glass workshops but I could not get a job because I could not communicate. I did not want to work as a labourer forever so I decided to go to language school to learn English and this helped me a lot. At the English school here in the crypt of St John’s Bethnal Green, my teacher asked us to prepare a talk about myself and my interests. So I talked about my profession as a stained glass artist and my teacher introduced me to a stone carver in the crypt workshop. He told me, ‘If you are willing to teach stained glass classes, you are welcome to use the workshop.’ I started eight years ago with one student.
My first commission was to repair a Victorian glass door. Most of my work has been Victorian and Edwardian windows and doors, which has allowed me to survive because there are plenty that need repair or replacement. There are not a lot of creative commissions on offer but sometimes people want something different.
Two years ago, I won a competition to design a window for St John’s Hackney. It took a year for them to approve the design and I am in the middle of working on it now. I need to finish and install it. Also the Museum of London bought a piece of mine. It is gorilla from a triptych of gorillas and it will be displayed there next year.
Once I moved to East London, I felt I belonged to here – not only because I started my workshop but because I met my wife, Akiko, here. In 2016, I become a British citizen so now I am a permanent member of the community.
Stained glass is a wonderful medium to work with and always looks fantastic because it changes all the time with the light, in different times of the day and seasons of the year. I believe there is a great potential for stained glass in modern architecture.
These days I am able to make a living and I would like to become more recognised as a stained glass artist. I am seeking more ambitious commissions.”
Constructing a nineteenth century door panel
A panel from Piotr’s triptych of gorillas
Piotr’s first panel designed and made in London
Piotr with one of his stained glass classes in the crypt of St John’s Bethnal Green
Repairing a Victorian glass door
Restoring nineteenth century church glass
Before repair
After repair
Piotr Frac, Stained Glass Artist
Studio portraits © Sarah Ainslie
Contact Piotr Frac direct to commission stained glass
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