Roy Wild, Van Boy At The Goodsyard
This precedes the Greater London Assembly public hearing on Thursday 3rd December when Mayor Sadiq Khan will decide upon the monster development proposal for Bishopsgate Goodsyard which threatens to blight the East End for generations to come.
Below you can read Roy Wild’s account of working at the site in the fifties when it was still a rail depot.
Roy looking sharp in the fifties – “I class myself as an Hoxtonite”
The great goodsyard in Bishopsgate is an empty place these days, home to a pop-up shopping mall of sea containers and temporary football pitches, but Roy Wild knew it in its heyday as a busy rail depot teeming with life and he still keeps a model of the Scammell Scarab that he once drove there as a talisman of those lost times.
A vast nineteenth century construction of brick and stone, the old goodsyard housed railway lines on multiple levels and was a major staging point for freight, with deliveries of fresh agricultural produce coming in from East Anglia to be sold in the London wholesale markets and sent out again across the country. Today only the fragmentary Braithwaite arches of 1839 and the exterior wall of the former Bishopsgate Station remain as the hint of the wonders that once were there.
Roy knew it not as the Bishopsgate Goodsyard but in the familiar parlance of railway workers as ‘B Gate,’ and B Gate remains a fabled place for him. By their very nature, railways are places of transition and, for Roy Wild, B Gate won a permanent place in his affections as the location of formative experiences which became his rite of passage into adulthood.
“At first, after I left school at fifteen, I went to work for City Electrical in Hoxton and I was put as mate with a fitter named Sid Greenhill. One of the jobs they took on was helping to build the Crawley new town. We had to get the bus to London Bridge, take the train to East Croydon and change to another near Gatwick Airport – which didn’t really exist yet. It was a schlep at seven o’clock in the morning all through the winter, but I stuck it for eighteen months.
My dad, Andy, was a capstan operator for the London & North Eastern Railway at the Spitalfields Empty Yard in Pedley St off Vallance Rd, so I said to him, ‘Can’t you get a job for me where you work?’ He said, ‘There’s nothing going at the moment but I can get you a place at B Gate.’
In 1953, at sixteen and a half, I started as van boy for Dick Wiley in the cartage department at B Gate. The old drivers had worked with horses, they were known as ‘pair-horse carmen’ or ‘single-horse carmen’ and, in the late forties when the horses were done away with and the depot became mechanised, the men were all called in and given three-wheeled Scammell Scarabs and licences, no driving tests in those days. There was a fleet of two hundred of them at B Gate and although strictly, as van boys, we weren’t allowed to drive, we flew around the depot in them.
Our round was Stoke Newington and we’d be given a ticket which was the number of your container and a delivery note of anything up to twenty-five destinations. Then we’d have lunch at a small goods yard at Manor Rd, Stoke Newington, and in the afternoon we’d do collections, picking up parcels and taking them back to B Gate, from where they’d be delivered by rail around the country.
I decided I wanted to work with George Holman, a driver who was known as ‘Cisco’ on account of his swarthy features which made him look Mexican. He was an East Ender like me, rough and ready, and always larking about. His round was Rotherhithe which meant driving through the tunnel and he was a bit of a lunatic behind the wheel. Each morning after the round, he would drop me off at my mum’s in Northport St for lunch and pick me up again at 2pm. One day, we had to go back through ‘the pipe’ as they called the tunnel in Mile End and he said to me, ‘You take it through the tunnel, you know how it works.’ I was only seventeen but I drove that great big truck through the tunnel without any harm whatsoever.
Next I went to work with Bill Scola, a driver from Bethnal Green – the deep East End. He used to do Billingsgate, Spitalfields, Borough, Covent Garden, Brentford and Nine Elms Markets. Bill was a rascal and I was nineteen by then. We were doing a bit of skullduggery and I was told that the British Transport Police were watching me, so I said to Bill, ‘Things are getting too hot,” and I left it alone completely.
Then, one day we were having breakfast with at least a dozen others at the table, including Sid Green who was in charge of Bishopsgate football team, in the new canteen at B Gate when the British Transport Police came in, pinned my arms against my side and lifted me out of the chair. I was taken across to Commercial St Police Station and charged with larceny. They told me I had been seen lifting goods into the van that weren’t on the parcels sheet, with the intention of taking and selling them. I said I didn’t know what they were talking about. What were they were alleging was a complete fabrication and I had witnesses. What they were accusing me of was impossible because I had just clocked in – my clocking in number was 1917 – and there was a least a dozen witnesses on my side, but nevertheless I was convicted. I look back on it with great regret even now.
I was taken to Newington Butts Quarter Sessions which was the nearest Crown Court and I received six months sentence, even though I had first class character witnesses. I was taken straight to Wormwood Scrubs but kept apart from the inmates as a Young Prisoner. I couldn’t believe it, this was a for a first offence. I was sent to East Church open prison on the Isle of Sheppey and given a third remission off my sentence for good behaviour. It was like a Butlins Holiday Camp and I came home after four months. After that I did a couple of odd jobs, but I was full of regret – because I loved the railway so much and I made so many friends there, and particularly because I had disappointed my dad. That was the end of me and the LNER.
Then I met this guy, Billy Davis, he and Patsy (Patrick) Murphy held up Luton Post Office, but the postmaster grabbed hold of the gun and they shot and killed him, and they both got twenty-five years. He told me he worked for the railway and I asked, ‘Which depot?’ He said, ‘London, Midlands & Scottish Railway in Camden, why don’t you apply?’ So I did, I went along to Camden Town and was interviewed and told them I’d never worked on the railway before. When I started there as a driver, they gave me a brand new Bantam Carrier with a trailer and my round was Spitalfields Market, and I was paid by tonnage. The more weight you pulled onto the weighbridge at the Camden Town LMS depot, the more you earned.
I did it for some time and I always had plenty of fruit to take home to my mum. I got together with the Goods Agent’s secretary, he was the top man in the depot and I was on good terms with him too. I got very friendly, taking her out for more than a year, until one day she told me her boss wanted to see me in his office. He said to me, ‘I’ve got bad news – you never declared you were dismissed by LNER. Our security have run a check and they found it out. It’s gone above my head and I have to let you go. It’s all out of my hands.’ He told me he was sorry to see me go because of the amount of tonnage I brought in which was more than other driver.
I was only there eighteen months. It was the finest time of my life because of the camaraderie with all the other drivers. It was a lovely, lovely job and I made friends that I still have to this day.”
Roy Wild with a model of his beloved Scammell Scarab
Roy with a Scammell Scarab in British Rail livery
Colin O’Brien’s photograph of a Scammell Scarab tipped over on the Clerkenwell Rd, 1953
Roy gets into the cabin of a Scamell Scarab of the kind he used to drive at Bishopsgate Goodsyard
Roy’s father Andy worked as a Capstan Operator at Spitalfields Empty Yard at Pedley St off Vallance Rd
Roy Wild & lifelong pal Derrick Porter, the poet – “I came from Hoxton but he came from Old St”
Bishopsgate Station c. 1900
In its heyday the area of tracks at the goodsyard was known as ‘the field’
Looking west, the abandoned goodsyard after the fire of 1964
Looking east, the abandoned goodsyard after the fire
The kitchens of the canteen at the goodsyard
The space of the former canteen where Roy was arrested by the British Transport Police
Abandoned hydraulic lift for lifting vehicles at Bishopsgate goodsyard
The remains of the records at the Bishopsgate goodsyard
When Roy saw this photograph of the demolished goodsyard, he said, “I wish I could have gone and taken one of those bricks as a souvenir.”
The arch beneath the white tarpaulin was where Roy once drove in and out as a van boy
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Doreen Fletcher, Still Standing
Commercial Cars, Commercial Rd
Doreen Fletcher‘s new exhibition, STILL STANDING opens at Townhouse, Spitalfields, next Saturday 5th December. Below she introduces a selection of her new and recently completed paintings.
Rinkoff’s, Vallance Rd
About half way down Vallance Rd is this well-known East End Jewish bakery adjoining a newsagents which was, until recently, a precarious structure. It was in this guise that I was attracted to paint the subject, especially by comparison with the stern expression of the founder of the bakery depicted on the end wall, forever overlooking the comings and goings of the street.
In the three years since I began studies for this painting, refurbishment has happened, replacing the original patina with a new flat surface. However I was relieved to see that the building was not destroyed.
I realise that I have painted a kind of a memory. When a feeling is realised, it can quickly be dissipated. I suppose that I have always painted from memory, from the thoughts and feelings I am able to take away from a subject, and I hope that contributes to the power an image can hold.
Grounded
An airport is an unusual subject for me. The skyline was the initial attraction, with the contrast between the impermanence and fragility of the aircraft against the monumental Tate & Lyle sugar refinery. It was almost two years ago I started this small painting but, as I worked, the depiction changed and the aircraft dissolved into misty light.
Most airplanes are grounded and the skies are empty now but the Tate & Lyle refinery continues to issue vapours. Along this part of the river the refinery remains one of the last vestiges of manufacturing industry still functioning. Situated between the Royal Docks and the river, on some days it melts into its surroundings.
The of Mountain of Fire & Miracles, Dagenham
I first saw this on a to visit my partner’s mother in Queens Hospital, Romford, one Sunday afternoon. I was struck by its composure and monumentality, despite the plethora of bins and graffiti. During the sixties and seventies, it had been a bowling alley been built opposite the Ford Motor Works. Now the painting is finished, my partner’s ninety-one year old mother has recovered due to the care provided by our wonderful NHS and is happily isolating at home.
Meridian Gate, Docklands
Even when the redevelopment of the London Docks began, the streets off the main thoroughfares would be largely empty and, in its early days, the Docklands Light Railway did not operate at the weekends. Then, just as the flowerbeds and trees were being planted around Canary Wharf, the economy collapsed leading to large swathes of real estate remaining empty.
I came across this painting from that time. I had once thought of it as a too cold and clean but maybe because of its age, or because our city streets are once again deserted, it has acquired an atmosphere for me that chimes with where we are now.
The Red Temple, Bethnal Green
Red brick is not such a common sight in East London, although in the Midlands, dour soot-blackened red brick Methodist churches are everywhere. Despite my title, this building is no longer used for worship. It was built as Parish Hall in 1904 next to St Matthews, Bethnal Green, though I do not know how long it functioned in this capacity. It has adapted to changes becoming a warehouse, an art gallery and more recently, a music distribution company.
Coming Home, Forest Gate
Over recent months I have enjoyed the freedom from social responsibility and have embraced the work of completing paintings that have been waiting to be resolved. Yet as the weeks passed I have also begun to miss the social rituals of daily life.
I always find night scenes challenging to paint. I have been very attracted to twilight ever since I moved to London in 1972 and wandered the streets of the West End at night, marvelling at the brightly lit shop windows.
When I revisited it, this painting had acquired a poignancy. It has gone through many changes since its inception several years ago. To me, the lone figure walking through the darkness is no longer leaving a hard day at work but arriving to a destination of safety and security.
During the lockdown, I also discovered a difficulty in starting any new pictures and a tendency to reminisce about my childhood, growing up in the back streets of a Midlands town, through exchanging memories with some of my contemporaries whom I have not thought of in decades.
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So Long, Shloimy Alman
Shloimy Alman died last Sunday 22nd November, just two weeks short of his seventieth birthday. Here Rachel Lichtenstein considers his life and photography.
Shloimy Alman was born in Manchester in 1950, three years after his Polish Jewish parents arrived in England in 1947. His father Moishe came from Tarłów, a small town half way between Krakow and Warsaw. He taught Yiddish before the war and became active in the Bund in Wlotzlawek. His first wife and child were killed during the Holocaust. Moishe spent the war years in a Siberian labour camp working as a lumberjack.
After the war Moishe was instrumental in starting the first Yiddish school for the surviving Jewish children in Walbrzych, which is where he met his second wife Sara Scheingross, Shloimy’s mother, and her daughter Eva, aged six. In 1947, Sara and Moishe married and left for Manchester where Moishe’s two brothers had settled before the First World War. ‘For my mother after coming from pre-war Warsaw which was, in terms of style akin to Paris, Manchester was a disappointment to her,’ Shloimy recalled.
His parents craved the vibrant Yiddish culture of Poland which was largely missing in post-war Manchester, although there were still a number of Jewish shops and businesses, particularly in the Cheetham Hill Rd, High Town and Strangeways areas. Shloimy would accompany his mother on shopping trips. ‘There were very few children of my pre-school age then who were speaking Yiddish so I was an attraction,’ he said. ‘When we went to the grocer, he’d shove his hand in the barrel and shlept out a sour cucumber for me. If we went to the deli, I’d have a stick of vursht. When we went to buy the live chicken, before taking it to the slaughterhouse, the owner would find a warm egg, then poke some holes in so I could suck the egg. I was a child celeb, in many ways spoilt rotten by most of the shopkeepers because I spoke to them in Yiddish.’
Shloimy’s Uncle Lazar had a barber’s shop and was involved in Yiddish literary and Zionist circles. ‘He had an amazing Yiddish library upstairs and, despite the fact he was a working man and had no formal education, he was tremendously well read. When the Yiddish theatre came to Manchester the actors would be put up on the barber’s chairs to sleep overnight and served the most magnificent breakfast by Lazar in the morning.’
Lazar introduced Shloimy’s parents to the monthly Yiddish magazine Loshn un Lebn (Language & Life), edited and compiled by London’s foremost Yiddish poet, another Polish émigré, Avram Stencl. They took a monthly subscription ‘and looked forward to its arrival with tremendous pleasure, reading the magazine from cover to cover.’ Moishe was soon writing articles in Yiddish for the magazine. ‘My father never went to London and Stencl never came to Manchester but they regularly wrote to each other.’
After Moishe died in 1964, ‘even when my mother had no money, she still kept up her subscription and read the magazine religiously’ said Shloimy. One Saturday afternoon she went to London and sang at the Saturday afternoon Friends of Yiddish meetings, which Stencl had established in 1936 after his arrival from Poland. Shloimy grew up hearing stories about the legendary Yiddish poet and years later after his parents had died, he wrote to the poet and asked if they could meet.
Like the Manchester Jewish shopkeepers of his childhood, Stencl was delighted to hear from someone of Shloimy’s generation who was a fluent Yiddish speaker and he invited the youth worker in his twenties from Manchester to meet him in Whitechapel. They met for the first time in the summer of 1977 in the ABC café near Whitechapel Station. ‘It was the place where quite a few of the people would meet before the Saturday afternoon meetings to have tea and cake, then they would all walk off together to Stepney Green to Beaumont Hall, where the meetings took place.’
The poet was already in his mid-seventies by then. ‘He cut an impressive figure,’ said Shloimy, ‘with his electric blue eyes, trilby hat and well-cut but shabby suit. He always had a copy of Loshn un Lebn under his arm and was always trying to hawk it.’
On their first walk, Stencl led him to Bevis Marks Synagogue in the city, the oldest synagogue in London, established by Sephardi Jews in the seventeenth century. ‘He walked very quickly for an old man I had trouble keeping up with him. As we walked and talked, in Yiddish of course, he pointed out places on the way, where the Jews Free School had been, the site of the Jewish Soup Kitchen, Bloom’s restaurant on Whitechapel High St and the many small synagogues, which were still operating.’ Shloimy was amazed by the amount of Jewish institutions, shops and people still evident. ‘People kept telling me the Jewish East End was dead but for me, coming from Manchester, it was buzzing with life and activity.’
They passed run-down tenement blocks and stopped briefly at Whitechapel Library, known as ‘the university of the ghetto.’ After their walk, Shloimy went with Stencl to the Friends of Yiddish meeting. There were about twenty people there who were all very welcoming. After this first, visit Shloimy began attending these meetings regularly whilst visiting his parents-in-law in London. ‘I wanted to be in that atmosphere that my parents so loved, to hear Yiddish literature being spoken and talked about again. It was most important. Stencl invariably opened with one of his poems, then he would discuss anything from the Torah portion of the week to a current piece of news. Others sang, really put their soul into it, lots of different people got up to speak, read, anything went, as long as it was in Yiddish.’
After his initial walk around Whitechapel with Stencl, Shloimy started exploring by himself before the Shabbat meetings, often drifting around the streets, coming across things by accident. ‘Knowing that places like Commercial Rd were important, I’d wander along and see a Jewish shop name and photograph it.’ He spent days recording Jewish life, from shuls to deli’s, shops, market stalls and traders. He recorded the textile-trimming merchants. ‘I love this picture of three gentlemen with trilby hats selling cloth. My father was a tailor’s son, that’s how he always described himself. My father sewed beautifully, my grandfather’s eldest son became a tailor and his eldest son became a tailor, and I remember going to buy cloth with my father and watch the way he felt it, stretched it, it was an art, a science.’
He recorded kosher poulterers in Hessel St. ‘Shop after shop, stalls with chickens plucked and hanging from a barrow, they were all surviving, all doing business, it was still a rich Jewish landscape.’ He took photographs of kosher wine merchants, the Grand Palais Yiddish Theatre – ‘I remember some of the actors who played there coming to Manchester and staying at my uncle’s house’ and the site of the Federation of Synagogue offices in Greatorex St, where he visited the Kosher Luncheon Club run by Connie Shack in the same building where ‘You got a good meal for a reasonable price – it had a specific European style.’
He took slides of the Jewish bakeries – Free Co, Cohen’s, Kossoff’s, Grodzinski’s and beigel shops in East London at the time. ‘They were all friendly, loved me coming in and chatting in Yiddish and taking a picture.’ He went into the Soup Kitchen on Brune St, which was sending out pre-packed food ‘Jacobs Crackers, eggs, Dairylea cheese, spaghetti’ to elderly Jews living in the area.
On Brick Lane, he photographed Jewish booksellers, newsagents, textile merchants. ‘All these places existed, everything the community needed – it told me how large the community still was. It wasn’t on its last legs, it was vibrant.’ On Cheshire St he saw the work of Jewish cabinet makers outside their workshops and during one visit he managed to get inside the Cheshire St Synagogue, ‘which was the most remarkable find, it was a Shabbat and the door was slightly open so I went inside and saw all this beautifully lathed woodwork done by the cabinet makers of the street. It was a working man’s shul, around the walls the donations were listed, some as little as two guineas. They made this place with their own hands. And because of the wood the synagogue had this warm, welcoming atmosphere. When I went there, there were exactly ten men praying, they had the most magnificent Kiddush, almost a full meal at the end of the service, arranged for them by the Bangladeshi caretaker because nobody lived near the shul, and they all had a long walk back home.’
He photographed the entrance to Black Lion Yard, once known as ‘the Hatton Garden of the East End’ because of all the jewellery shops there, although most of the street and shops had been demolished by then. He took pictures of the Whitechapel Waste, of the market stalls and street life, of Stencl selling his magazine to an alter bubby (old grandmother), the London Hospital, the nearby Brady St dwellings, ‘dark and ominous looking tenements which were pulled down soon after.’ He explored the back streets, visited little shops, tobacconists, market stalls and Jewish delis. ‘Roggs was my favourite, he’d always be in that old vest, sticking his great hairy arms into a barrel of cucumbers he pickled himself.’ He photographed the window of the room in Tyne St where ‘Sholem Aleichem stayed on his way to America from Odessa.’ Most of the time Shloimy walked alone but sometimes Stencl would join him. On one of these walks Stencl took him to Narod Press on Cavell St where Loshn un Lebn was printed and introduced him to the typesetter, a shy orthodox man who allowed Shloimy to take his portrait.
Overtime Shloimy became real friends with Stencl who he described as ‘a Hasid of Whitechapel. The place was good to him, it gave him a home, it gave somewhere he could write in peace (apart from the Blitz of course), he was always grateful for that, his poetry expresses his love for the place.’
Shloimy also fell in love with the area and he documented what he saw. He said, ‘I am not a photographer, I make no claim. The reason that I started this is I wanted to be able to show my children about Jewish life in England before I immigrated to Israel. It was obvious to me that what I was looking at was soon to vanish. It might be because I was an outsider that I saw this so acutely or because I had already witnessed this disappearance of Jewish life in Manchester. For an intense period of time I photographed what I considered important landmarks and eating places of Jewish London.’
His photographs capture the era absolutely and survive as a unique record of a disappeared world.In 1978 Shloimy, his wife Linda and twins made Aliya to Israel, and since December 1982 he lived in the collective village of Kfar Daniel.
Photographs copyright © Estate of Shloimy Alman
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List Of Local Shops Open For Business
Corner Shop, Canning Town, 1994 by Doreen Fletcher
These are the essential shops that are open in Spitalfields and vicinity during the lockdown. Readers are especially encouraged to support small independent businesses who offer an invaluable service to the community. This list confirms that it is possible to source all essential supplies locally without recourse to supermarkets.
The accompanying paintings are by Doreen Fletcher whose new exhibition opens at the Townhouse Spitalfields on 5th December.
Leslies, Turners Rd, Stepney, 1983 by Doreen Fletcher
GROCERS & FOOD SHOPS
The Albion, 2/4 Boundary St
Ali’s Mini Superstore, 50d Greatorex St
AM2PM, 210 Brick Lane
Planet Organic, 132 Commercial St
Banglatown Cash & Carry, 67 Hanbury St
Breid Bakery, Arch 72, Dunbridge St
Brick Lane Minimarket, 100 Brick Lane
The Butchery Ltd, 6a Lamb St
City Supermarket, 10 Quaker St
Costprice Minimarket, 41 Brick Lane
Faizah Minimarket, 2 Old Montague St
JB Foodstore, 97 Brick Lane
Haajang’s Corner, 78 Wentworth St
Leila’s Shop, 17 Calvert Avenue
Nisa Local, 92 Whitechapel High St
Pavilion Bakery, 130 Columbia Rd
Rinkoff’s Bakery, 224 Jubilee Street & 79 Vallance Rd
Sylhet Sweet Shop, 109 Hanbury St
Taj Stores, 112 Brick Lane
Zaman Brothers, Fish & Meat Bazaar, 19 Brick Lane
Terminus Restaurant, Mile End, 1985 by Doreen Fletcher
TAKE AWAY FOOD SHOPS
Before you order from a delivery app, why not call the take away or restaurant direct?
Absurd Bird Fried Chicken, 54 Commercial St
Al Badam Fried Chicken, 37 Brick Lane
Allpress Coffee, 58 Redchurch St
Band of Burgers, 22 Osborn St
Beef & Birds, Brick Lane
Beigel Bake, 159 Brick Lane
Beigel Shop, 155 Brick Lane
Bellboi Coffee, 104 Sclater St
Bengal Village, 75 Brick Lane
Big Moe’s Diner, 95 Whitechapel High St
Burro E Salvia Pastificio, 52 Redchurch St
The Carpenters Arms, 73 Cheshire St (Open for take away beers)
China Feng, 43 Commercial St
Circle & Slice Pizza, 11 Whitechapel Rd
Crosstown Doughnuts, 157 Brick Lane
Dark Sugars, 45a Hanbury St (Take away ice cream and deliveries of chocolate)
Donburi & Co, Korean & Japanese, 13 Artillery Passage
Duke of Wellington, 12 Toynbee St (Open for take away beers)
Eastern Eye Balti House, 63a Brick Lane
Enso Thai & Japanese, 94 Brick Lane
Exmouth Coffee Shop, 83 Whitechapel High St
Grounded Coffee Shop, 9 Whitechapel Rd
Holy Shot Coffee, 155 Bethnal Green Rd
Hotbox Smoked Meats, 46-48 Commercial St
Jack The Chipper, 74 Whitechapel High St
Jonestown Coffee, 215 Bethnal Green Rd
Laboratorio Pizza, 79 Brick Lane
La Cucina, 96 Brick Lane
Leon, 3 Crispin Place, Spitalfields Market
Madhubon Sweets, 42 Brick Lane
Mooshies Vegan Burgers, 104 Brick Lane
Nude Expresso, The Roastery, 25 Hanbury St
E. Pellicci, 332 Bethnal Green Rd
Pepe’s Peri Peri, 82 Brick Lane
Peter’s Cafe, 73 Aldgate High St
Picky Wops Vegan Pizza, 53 Brick Lane
Polo Bar, 176 Bishopsgate
Poppies, 6-8 Hanbury St
Quaker St Cafe, 10 Quaker St
Rajmahal Sweets, 57 Brick Lane
Rosa’s Thai Cafe, 12 Hanbury St
Shawarma Lebanese, 84 Brick Lane
Shoreditch Fish & Chips, 117 Redchurch St
Sichuan Folk, 32 Hanbury St
String Ray Globe Cafe, 109 Columbia Road
Sushi Show, 136 Bethnal Green Rd
Ten Bells, 84 Commercial St (Takeway beer)
Vegan Yes, Italian & Thai Fusion, 64 Brick Lane
The Watch House, 139 Commercial St
White Horse Kebab, 336 Bethnal Green Rd
Yuriko Sushi & Bento, 48 Brick Lane
Launderette, Ben Jonson Rd, Bow, 2003 by Doreen Fletcher
OTHER SHOPS & SERVICES
Brick Lane Bookshop, 166 Brick Lane (Books ordered by phone or email are delivered free locally)
Brick Lane Bikes, 118 Bethnal Green Rd
Day Lewis Pharmacy, 14 Old Montague St
E1 Cycles, 4 Commercial St
Eden Floral Designs, 10 Wentworth St (Order fresh flowers online for free delivery)
Flashback Records, 131 Bethnal Green Rd (Order records online for delivery)
Harry Brand, 122 Columbia Road (Order gifts online for delivery)
Leyland Hardware, 2-4 Great Eastern St
Post Office, 160a Brick Lane
Rose Locksmith & DIY, 149 Bethnal Green Rd
Sid’s DIY, 2 Commercial St
Fishmongers, Commercial Rd, 2003 by Doreen Fletcher
ELSEWHERE
E1 Dry Cleaners, Cannon Street Rd, E1 2LY
E5 Bakehouse, Arch 395, Mentmore Terrace, London Fields (Customers are encouraged to order online and collect in person)
Gold Star Dry Cleaning & Laundry, 330 Burdett Rd
Hackney Essentials, 235 Victoria Park Rd
Quality Dry Cleaners, 16a White Church Lane
Newham Books, 747 Barking Rd (Books ordered by phone or email are posted out)
Rajboy, 564 Commercial Rd, E14 7JD (Take away service available)
Region Choice Chemist, 68 Cambridge Heath Rd
Symposium Italian Restaurant, 363 Roman Road (Take away service available)
Thompsons DIY, 442-444 Roman Rd
Paintings copyright © Doreen Fletcher
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Charles Keeping, Artist
The illustrations of Charles Keeping (1924–1988) burned themselves into my consciousness as a child and I have loved his work ever since. A major figure in British publishing in the last century, Keeping illustrated over one hundred books (including the entire novels of Dickens) and won the Kate Greenaway and Carnegie Medals for his superlative talent.
In 1975, Keeping published ‘Cockney Ding Dong,’ in which he collected songs he remembered sung at home as a child. Illustrated with tender portraits of his extended family, the book is an unusual form of autobiography, recreating an entire cultural world through drawing and popular song.
Before the lockdown, I visited the Keeping Gallery at Shortlands in Kent to meet Vicky and Sean Keeping who talked to me about their father’s work, as we sat in the family home where they grew up and where much of his work is now preserved and displayed for visitors. You can read my interview at the end of this selection of illustrations from ‘Cockney Ding Dong.’
Illustrations copyright © Estate of Charles Keeping
The Gentle Author – So why did your father create ‘Cockney Ding Dong’ ?
Vicky Keeping – We come from a family – he came from a family – where they all got together. They’d have their beer, they enjoyed their beer, and their Guinness – some of the women drank Guinness – and they would all sing and his Uncle Jack would play the piano. And everybody had their own song, so people would give their song and Dad loved that. We still know them all still, because we loved it, and people didn’t say, ‘Oh no, I’m not going to do it!’ They just got up and sang, and it was lovely and the songs were all from the music hall.
The Gentle Author – But he wasn’t a Cockney – where was he was from?
Vicky Keeping – He was from Vauxhall and he was born in Vauxhall Walk, Lambeth. He was very much brought up by the female side of his family. His father passed away when he was ten, he had a burst ulcer. He was a driver on the Daily Star.
Sean Keeping – Before that, his father had been a professional boxer between about 1912 and 1922. He had many professional fights. I know he definitely fought the British champion at the time and won! A chap called Ernie Rice.
His father came from a very poor family and he was orphaned. They had a watercress stall in Lambeth Walk but they died in the workhouse. His mother’s family were also Londoners from Lambeth who came from a nautical background – his grandfather had been a sailor in the Merchant Navy. In the eighteenth century, they had come up to London from the West Country. Like many families, they had not originated in London.
Vicky Keeping – His grandfather was very important to Dad, because he was a great storyteller and would tell stories from his voyages and the different people he met and he was – I suppose – a bit ahead of his time because he was welcoming to all and would speak very positively about the people he met around the world. Dad loved hearing his stories, so he learnt from his grandfather that storytelling was important. That came through to us as well – when we sat round the family tea table we were encouraged to tell stories.
Very sadly, Dad’s dad and Dad’s grandfather passed away in the same year – in 1934 – when Dad was ten. It left Dad and his sister Grace and their mum Eliza very poorly off, but they lived in this extended family with Dad’s granny who was a very strong influence. Dad idolised her and his aunties, and they thought he was the blonde blue-eyed boy and they loved him dearly.
Sean Keeping – They lived in a small terraced house in 74 Vauxhall Walk, which was right alongside the market, and Dad’s early influences were not just his family but also the characters in Vauxhall Market – those often crop up in his books.
Vicky Keeping – One of the things that Dad loved to do in the garden was to look through a little knot hole to see the Schweppes bottling plant and the workhorses and that was something that never left him, that memory of horses.
There was no obvious creativeness in his background, but Dad said his father used to come home – because he worked in print – and bring home paper, and Dad’s sister Grace used to write a story and Dad would illustrate it.
Sean Keeping – He was not a child who would have gone running around the streets, they were children who would sit at home writing a story and drawing. From a very young age, Dad showed a fantastic aptitude for drawing and we’ve got some drawings of his from when he was twelve and thirteen, and they are really fantastic – showing a London of working horses and working people, that’s what he was trying to depict in his drawings.
Vicky Keeping – He was called up in the Second World War but he worked for Clowes the printers when he left school at thirteen. He was not a particularly great scholar at school. One of the things was that he found difficult was that he was left-handed and the teachers would try to get him to write with his right hand.
Sean Keeping – Working for Clowes the printers, he would go around on a horse & cart delivering paper, and that was where he met one of the characters who had a great influence on him – Tom Cherry. Many of the burly-looking men driving a horse through London in Dad’s pictures – they’re Tom Cherry, and usually he drew a little boy sitting next to him which was Dad. Tom had a great influence, telling him stories about London and the people of London.
Vicky Keeping – Dad became a Telegrapher on a frigate and he was on the boat at D-Day. After the war, he tried to get into Art College but that was very difficult, so he worked collecting pennies from gas meters. He worked for the Gas Light & Coke Company and he would go around on a bicycle, with a big sack on his shoulder with all the pennies in it, going from door to door in North Kensington. He used to tell us funny stories. At that time, North Kensington was a poor area and I think he got a lot out of the characters he met there, but he hated working for a company, for a boss, and he decided he wanted to do something better.
He went to night classes at the Regent St Polytechnic but, because he left school at thirteen with no formal qualifications and had been through the war, it was very difficult for him to get in at first. He tried and tried, and eventually he spent time in a psychiatric hospital due to his experiences in the War. I think it was also to do with his father. When his father and his grandfather died in the same year, they were laid out in the front room and – as a ten year old – Dad had to go and kiss them. That had a profound effect on him. He spent six months in a psychiatric hospital and two weeks of those were in a deep sleep. Yet he talked about the great characters he met there and there was a Psychiatrist, Dr Sargent, who knew Dad should go to Art College and he supported him in writing letters – and eventually that’s what happened.
Sean Keeping – When Dad went to Art College, he had to fight hard to get a grant because, at that stage, his mother had been widowed for a number of years and she had a job cleaning, so there was not a lot of money around. But eventually, he got a grant to go to Regent St Polytechnic. Right after the war, there were two types of students – those that had just come out of the forces who were much more mature and those who had come directly from school. So it was an interesting mix of people and mix of cultures.
The Gentle Author – How did he set out to make an income as an illustrator?
Sean Keeping – Dad was not motivated by making a career or making money or even motivated – I think – by success. Dad was motivated by one thing and that was doing what he wanted to do – drawing pictures of things that he wanted to draw pictures of – so he never really thought about a career. But then he got a job on the Daily Herald, drawing the strip cartoon and that started to pay very well, and from that he was able to move out of the council flat that he lived in with his mother in Kennington and buy a small terraced house in Crystal Palace.
When they were looking for houses, once he was making money from the strip cartoon, they looked in two areas – one was Crystal Palace and the other was Chelsea. Now the idea that you might choose Crystal Palace or Chelsea to look for a house nowadays is an strange idea, but they decided on Crystal Palace!
(Transcription by Rachel Blaylock)
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So Long, Pamela Freedman
Pamela Freedman died on Monday at the fine age of ninety-seven
Pamela Freedman at Sandys Row Synagogue by Jeremy Freedman
Pamela Freedman was a West End girl, born in 1923 in The Bricklayers Arms in Berwick St, Soho – the pub managed by her parents, Hetty & Albert Harris, just around the corner from The Blue Posts run by her grandfather. This was the only world Pamela knew, until one fateful day the treasurer of the pub’s Christmas Club absconded with all the savings and her father did the honourable thing, paying back the money to his customers out of his own pocket. It was a noble action that changed his family’s lives forever.
As a consequence, Hetty & Albert lost The Bricklayers Arms and in 1935, when Pamela was thirteen, they started a whole new life in the East End, managing The Princess Alice (now The Culpeper) in Commercial St. “When my mother saw it, she said, ‘Never in a million years! I can’t live in a place like that.’ The state of it was disgusting,” revealed Pamela, when I met her at The Princess Alice on her first return visit since the nineteen sixties, gazing wistfully around at the location that was once central to her life, rendered barely recognisable by alterations now. “The brewery sent the builders in and when they opened up the old counter, the rats ran everywhere. When my mother saw the seamen’s lodging house on the top that was rotten and neglected, she was frightened she might fall through the ceiling – the first thing the brewery was demolish the top floors,” she told me with gleeful satisfaction, explaining the curiously stunted architecture of the building today.
Although it was inauspicious circumstances that brought them to the East End, Hetty & Albert created a vibrant life at The Princess Alice with a large crowd of friendly regulars – as the exuberant pictures testify. But a far greater challenge was to come when World War II brought bombing, setting the East End ablaze, as Pamela recounted to me. “We had one night when the buzz bombs started, Daddy & I saw a buzz bomb catch three hundred people coming out of work from Old St. They all died. A lot of our customers were killed. We made dugouts in the cellar and we slept down there. We lay there listening to the clicking of the tram lines as the bombs hit. We kept coming up to see if anything was left standing. One night I came up from the cellar and everything was on fire. We told the firemen to take the beer and use it to put out the flames.We had no glass in the windows of the pub and the brewers said, ‘Stay open.’ We had no power and the brewers said, ‘Get candles and stay open.’ On the night the war ended, we sold out and we went up to the West End to celebrate.”
In the midst of this chaos, Pamela got married to Alf Freedman who lived across the street, “We grew up together and we were the same age. He was in the RAF for five years as a meteorological officer in North Africa, while I was a firewarden for three years. He came back from abroad and we decided to get married. Both families knew a lot of people and God forbid anyone should be ignored. It was the first big wedding after the war, Sandys Row Synagogue was too small, so we had it at the New West End Synagogue, St Petersburg Place, Bayswater and four hundred people came to the dinner. I was twenty-four when I got married and left the Princess Alice for good. All the draymen turned up early in the morning outside in the street to see me off. After I got married, I lived in a nice flat in Kensington but my husband was still away in the service. We were married nearly sixty years. We had a very good life. We worked hard and we went all over the world.”
Destiny took her back to the West End, her place of origin, and the foray into the East End became a single episode in her long life, but Pamela’s experiences here endowed her with a fearless quality and an unsentimental appreciation of the value of existence that remained with her. On the day in 1964 that her father Albert died at seven in the morning, the brewery expected her mother to open The Princess Alice, and although Hetty technically had a year’s grace as a widow, Pamela and her brother gave notice to the brewery at once.
They departed the East End with their mother in a taxi and never looked back, until forty years later when Pamela returned to pub at the invitation of her grandson Jeremy Freedman. Although, wisely, Pamela did ensure they kept the contents of the cellar from The Princess Alice when they left, which she and her family were still drinking decades later, including bottles of whisky worth over five hundred pounds each. But it was farewell to the East End, as Pamela herself said to me plainly, “We had no cause to come this way.”
Pamela recalled her own time behind the bar for me, outlined her personal method of dealing with troublesome customers, “My secret weapon was a syphon of soda behind the counter. I could let go as well as anybody, because I didn’t care, even though I was the governor’s daughter.” she declared. Describing Hetty & Albert’s style as landlords, she said, “Everything had to be regimented, if you put a bottle the wrong way round, God help you…it was bloody hard work.”
Pamela Freedman was an individual of extraordinary vitality, a charismatic diminutive woman with bright confident eyes, a shrewd yet upbeat generous matter and shrill energetic way of talking, constantly punctuating her speech with phrases like, “You tell people things, they wouldn’t believe you!”, “So many stories, am I boring you?” and her favourite exclamation, “Unbelievable!” This last word served as her personal leitmotif when called upon to consider the events of her life.
Hetty & Albert Harris with the locals the Princess Alice
Hetty & Albert Harris behind the bar
Hetty, Albert & Hetty’s brother Walter
1. Albert taps a keg
2. Albert connects the tap
3. Albert tightens the tap
These are the photographs that Alf & his wife-to-be Pamela Freedman exchanged when they were both twenty-one, before he left for North Africa in 1942 -“with undying love.”
Pamela standing in Wentworth St in the week of her eighty-seventh birthday, looking across Commercial St to The Princess Alice, on the occasion of her return for the first time in forty years
Photographs copyright © Jeremy Freedman
Moyra Peralta, Photographer
Men sleeping outside Itchy Park
“I felt Spitalfields was my home at one time, even though I was never resident there apart from staying at Providence Row for the occasional night.” admitted photographer Moyra Peralta when she showed me these pictures, taken while working in the shelter in Crispin St during the seventies and eighties.
“Every time I look at these, I see myself there,” she confided, contemplating her affectionate portraits of those she once knew who lived rough upon the streets of Spitalfields, “yet it doesn’t feel like me anymore, now that I am no longer in touch and I have no idea how many have died.” Despite its obvious social documentary quality, Moyra’s photography is deeply personal work.
Recalling the days when she and her partner, Rodger, studied under Jorge Lewinsky in the sixties, Moyra revealed the basis of her vision. “It opened up the mental apparatus to see photography not as an amateur hobby but as something fundamental to life. And it was doing the Soup Run that triggered off the urge to record. At first, I couldn’t believe what I saw, because in the day you didn’t see it. At night, you see a lot of things you wouldn’t otherwise see – hundreds of men sleeping at the back of a hotel in Central London, when there was no sign of them by day because they went to the day shelter.”
Forsaking her chosen path as a teacher, Moyra spent more than a decade working in shelters and on the street, befriending those with no other place to go and taking their pictures. “I started out as a volunteer on the night Soup Run, but once I got to know the men individually, I thought – that’s it, I don’t want to be anywhere else. I realised they didn’t lose their soul, and that spirit was what turned me from a volunteer into a full-time worker at Providence Row,” she confessed.
“Our children were exposed to the scene and spent every Christmas with us at the night shelter where we volunteered. We used to have people home for the weekend as long as they didn’t drink, but I think they found it quite a struggle to stay sober for two days. I could quite understand why people would drink, when it’s so cold you can’t sleep and you’re scared of being attacked by ‘normal’ people.”
Gerry B. in his cubicle at Providence Row – “Gerry sent me a letter containing only a few lavender seeds and a one pound note – the significance of which I shall never know, for Gerry died a few days later. He always had been so very kind and I never quite knew why. Like many before him, his remains were laid in a pauper’s grave.
I remember, above all, his intervention on my first evening at work, when men in the dormitory had planned a surprise to test the reaction of the greenhorn on the night shift. Forewarned is forearmed, and the equanimity with which I viewed a row of bare bottoms in beds along the dormitory wall stood me in good stead for future interaction.”
“The women’s entrance at the corner of Crispin St & Artillery Lane, where Sister Paul is seen handing out clean shirts to a small group of men.”
Dining Room at Providence Row.
“The two Marys, known as ‘Cotton Pickin’ and ‘Foxie,’ making sandwiches at Providence Row for the daily distribution in Crispin St.”
Providence Row Night Refuge, Crispin St.
Men waiting for sandwiches outside Providence Row Night Refuge, 1973. “Established in 1880, this refuge offered free shelter and food to those who needed it for over one hundred years.”
Market lorries in Crispin St.
White’s Row and Tenterground.
Charlie & Bob outside Christ Church. “Charlie was a well-known East End character and Bob was my co-worker at the night shelter.”
Charlie, Bob & J.W. “Charlie rendering ‘Danny Boy’ to his captive audience.”
Charlie & Bob.
Sleeping in a niche, Christ Church 1975. “The crypt was opened in 1965 as a rehabilitation hostel for meths and crude spirit drinkers.”
Mary M. in Spitalfields.
“In Brushfield St beside Spitalfields Market, Dougie is seen having his lunch at ‘Bonfire Corner.’ Traditionally there had been a fire on this corner since the fifties.”
Sylvia, Tenterground 1978. “This homeless woman slept rough but accepted meals from Providence Row in Crispin St.”
Brushfield St, 1976. “Discarded vegetables at the closing of each market day proved a godsend to people on low incomes.”
Painter, Providence Row.
The bonfire corner at Spitalfields Market, 1973. “There had been deaths here from market lorries reversing. Ted McV., however, died of malnutrition and exposure. “
Peggy
Old Mary, seventies.
John Jamieson, Commercial St 1979.
John Jamieson smiling.
J.W. with harmonica
J.W. & Pauline in Whitechapel, eighties
Pauline in Whitechapel, eighties.
Willie G. in pensive mood, rolling a fag in Whitechapel, 1976.
Gunthorpe St, 1974
Michael, Cable St 1973
Moyra & her partner Rodger in Spitalfields, late seventies.
Photographs copyright © Moyra Peralta
Signed copies of ‘NEARLY INVISIBLE,’ including these photographs and more by Moyra Peralta plus writing by John Berger & Alan Bennett, are available directly from Moyra. Email moyra.peralta@zen.co.uk to get your copy.
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The Doss Houses of Spitalfields
