Spitalfields Life

In 1835, George Cruikshank drew these illustrations of the notable seasons and festivals of the year in London for The Comic Almanack published by Charles Tilt of Fleet St. Produced from 1835 – 53, distinguished literary contributors included William Makepeace Thackeray and Henry Mayhew, but I especially enjoy George Cruikshank’s drawings for their detailed observation of the teeming street life of the capital. (Click on any of these images to enlarge)

JANUARY – Everybody freezes

FEBRUARY – Valentine’s Day

MARCH – March winds

APRIL – April showers

MAY – Sweeps on May Day

JUNE – At the Royal Academy

JULY – At Vauxhall Gardens

AUGUST – Oyster day

SEPTEMBER – Bartholomew Fair

OCTOBER – Return to Town

NOVEMBER – Penny for the Guy

DECEMBER – Christmas

You may also enjoy

George Cruikshank’s Comic Alphabet

Tom & Jerry’s Life in London

More of Tom & Jerry’s Life in London

The Microcosm of London

The Microcosm of London II

It is my pleasure to publish the Matchbox 1966 Collector’s Guide & International Catalogue by Lesney Products & Co Ltd of Hackney Wick (courtesy of Libby Hall). The company was founded by Leslie & Rodney Smith in 1947 , closed in 1982 and the Lesney factory was demolished in 2010.

It all began in 1953, with a miniature diecast model of the Coronation Coach with its team of eight horses. In Coronation year, over a million were sold and this tremendous success was followed by the introduction of the first miniature vehicle models packed in matchboxes. And so the famous Matchbox Series was born.

More than five hundred million Matchbox models have been made since the series was first introduced during 1953, and today over two million Matchbox models are made every week. The life of a new model begins at a design meeting attended by Lesney senior executives. The suitability of a particular vehicle as a Matchbox model is discussed and the manufacturer of the full-sized car is approached for photographs, drawings and other information. Enthusiastic support is received from manufacturers throughout the world and many top secret, exciting new cars are on the Matchbox drawings boards long before they are launched to the world markets.

1.  Once the details of the full-size vehicle have been obtained, many hours of careful work are required in the main drawing office in Hackney.

2. In the pattern shop, highly specialised craftsmen carve large wooden models which form the basic shape from which the miniature will eventually be diecast in millions.

3.  Over a hundred skilled toolmakers are employed making the moulds for Matchbox models from the finest grade of chrome-vinadium steel.

4. There are more than one hundred and fifty automatic diecasting machines at Hackney and all have been designed, built and installed by Lesney engineers.

5. The spray shop uses nearly two thousand gallons of lead-free paint every week, and over two and a half million parts can be stove-enamelled every day.

6. Final assembly takes place over twenty lines, and sometimes several different models and their components come down each line at the same time.

7. Ingenious packing machines pick up the flat boxes, shape them and seal the model at the rate of more than one hundred and twenty items per minute.

8. Ultra-modern, automatic handling and automatic conveyor systems speed the finished models to the transit stores where electronic selection equipment routes each package.

From the highly individual, skilled worker or the enthusiast who produces hand-made samples of new ideas, to the multi-million mass assembly of the finished models by hundreds of workers, this is the remarkable story of Matchbox models. Over three thousand six hundred people play their part in a great team with the highest score in the world – over a hundred million models made and sold per year. Enthusiasts of all ages throughout the world collect and enjoy Matchbox models today and it is a true but amazing fact that if all the models from a year’s work in the Lesney factories were placed nose to tail they would stretch from London to Mexico City – a distance of over six thousand miles!

You may also like to take a look at these other magnificent catalogues

Crowden & Keeves Hardware

Nicholls & Clarke’s Hardware

Allen & Hanburys’ Surgical Appliances

I am delighted to announce more in the ongoing series of free webinars presented by the Spitalfields Trust as part of the Save Brick Lane campaign

The meeting at which Tower Hamlets Council decides upon the Truman Brewery’s application to build an ugly shopping mall with four floors of corporate offices on top is likely to be on 27th April.

If you have not lodged a formal objection, there is still time.

Learn how at www.battleforbricklane.com

VOICES FROM BRICK LANE’S JEWISH PAST

7:30pm Tuesday 20th April

NADIA VALMAN and RACHEL LICHTENSTEIN investigate the Jewish history of Brick Lane.

From the late nineteenth century until the Second World War, Brick Lane and the surrounding streets were home to Britain’s largest Jewish population. Originating from towns and villages in Russian and Eastern Europe, Jews came to London in search of freedom and a better life. Crowded into dilapidated eighteenth-century houses, they built a rich and complex subculture over generations.

Professor Nadia Valmam explores the locations around Brick Lane that once housed centres of Jewish social and religious life – where Jews prayed, shopped, debated, worked, learned and played – through the words of journalists, writers and residents.

Rachel Lichtenstein shares voices from the archive of recordings she has gathered over the past thirty years researching the Jewish East End. Some of these appear in her book On Brick Lane  and, more recently, the digital project Memory Map of the Jewish East End. You will hear recordings of some who are no longer with us, such as Professor Bill Fishman, the historian who put the story of the Jewish East End on the map and the Polish tailor Majer Bogdanski, who made Brick Lane his home.

Rachel Lichtenstein is an artist, writer and curator who is internationally known for her books, multi-media projects and artworks examining place, memory and Jewish identity. Her publications include Estuary (Penguin, 2016), Diamond Street: The Hidden World of Hatton Garden, (Penguin, 2012), On Brick Lane (Penguin, 2007), and Rodinsky’s Room co-written with Iain Sinclair (Granta, 1999).

Nadia Valman is Professor of Urban Literature at Queen Mary, University of London. She is a cultural historian of the East End and author/editor of eight books. She has written about several East End authors including Alexander Baron, Margaret Harkness and Israel Zangwill, and is the creator of Zangwill’s Spitalfields, a multimedia tour of nineteenth century Spitalfields through the eyes of Jewish immigrants.

Click here to register for free for VOICES FROM BRICK LANE’S JEWISH PAST

HOUSE OF ANNETTA, SITE OF RESISTANCE

7pm Tuesday 13th April

LOUIS SCHULZ of Turner Prize winning architects ASSEMBLE introduces ANNETTA’S HOUSE, a new centre for campaigning and resistance against exploitative development.

25 Princelet St in Spitalfields was the home of the architect, cybernetician, conservationist, builder, beekeeper, and campaigner ANNETTA PEDRETTI until her death in 2018. An obsessive polymath, her work has been all but forgotten.

Her large home has been given to charity and is now to be used as a social centre for all, and a base for mounting a resistance against proprietarian society, and campaigning for land reform and housing justice for all.

In this talk Louis Shulz, from the Turner Prize winning architecture collective ASSEMBLE, who are leading the project, will discuss what we know of Annetta’s life and work, as well as plans to harness the site – forever removed from the flow of land speculation and inheritance – as a place that can catalyse a resistance against the relentless top-down redevelopment of the city.

Click here to register for free for HOUSE OF ANNETTA, A SITE OF RESISTANCE

Annetta’s House, 25 Princelet St

The ugly big block proposed for the corner of Brick Lane & Woodseer St

HELP US SAVE BRICK LANE

* This development will undermine the authentic cultural quality of Brick Lane.

* The generic architecture is too tall and too bulky, ruining the Brick Lane & Fournier St Conservation Area.

* It offers nothing to local residents whose needs are for genuinely affordable homes and workspaces.

* It is an approach that is irrelevant to a post-Covid world, with more people working from home and shopping locally or online.

* Where it meets the terraces of nineteenth century housing, the development is out of scale and causes up to 60% loss of light.

* Instead of this arbitrary scheme, we need a plan for the entire brewery site that reflects the needs and wishes of residents.

HOW TO OBJECT EFFECTIVELY

You can help us stop this bad proposal by writing a letter of objection to the council as soon as possible.

Please write in your own words and head it OBJECTION.

Quote Planning Application PA/20/00415/A1

Anyone can object wherever they live.

Members of one household can each write separately.

You must include your postal address.

Send your objection by email to  Patrick.Harmsworth@towerhamlets.gov.uk

Or by post to Planning Department, Town Hall, Mulberry Place, 5 Clove Crescent, London, E14 2BG