The Curious Legacy Of Francis Wheatley
Linen and cotton tea towel by Lamont
Even if you do not know the name, it is likely you recognise the work of the artist Francis Wheatley. You may have seen his prints being sold off cheap at car boot sales and charity shops, or perhaps your granny had a talcum powder tin with one of his pictures on it, or you have driven past his figures twenty-feet-high on the side of the former Yardley factory in Stratford?
Francis Wheatley created the most celebrated images of Cries of London which are still universally recognised today, although he received little recognition in his lifetime. By accident of fate, his work achieved its greatest success in the twentieth century, gaining widespread popularity and becoming symbolic of the spirit of old London – until it fell out of favour with subsequent generations, devalued by its ubiquity and dismissed as sentimental cliche.
Yet Francis Wheatley’s Cries of London deserve a second look and, once you know the circumstances of their creation, it is not so easy to write them off. They became commonplace in the last century because people loved them, investing personal meaning in these cheaply-distributed images and, by treasuring these mass-produced souvenirs, trinkets and keepsakes, they charged them with a significance that transcends sentiment.
Recognising the curious legacy of Francis Wheatley, I cannot resist collecting all the multiple incarnations of his work which others discard and giving them a home to cherish them on behalf of their former owners, on behalf of the artist himself and on behalf of the street traders of London down the ages who are the dignified subjects of these fascinating pictures. Francis Wheatley’s Cries of London deserve better than being consigned to the dustbin of cultural history.
Francis Wheatley exhibited his series of thirteen oil paintings of Cries of London at the Royal Academy over three years beginning in 1792. Two years earlier, the forty-three year old painter had been elected as an Associate to the Academy by sixteen votes to three, in preference to Thomas Lawrence, the King’s nominee, and – as a consequence – he scarcely secured any further commissions for portraits from the aristocracy. He lost his income entirely and, becoming an Academician, which should have been the crowning glory of his career, was its unravelling. Wheatley was declared insolvent in 1793 and struggled to make a living until his death in 1801 at fifty-four years old in King’s Bench Walk prison, when the Royal Academy paid his funeral expenses.
In the midst of this turmoil, lacking aristocratic sitters, Wheatley created these images of street sellers which, although regarded in his lifetime as of little consequence beside his society portraits, are now the works upon which his reputation rests. Born in Wild Court, Covent Garden, in 1747, Wheatley was ideally qualified to portray these hawkers because he grew up amongst them and their cries, echoing in the streets around the market. The stone pillars of Covent Garden that stand today may be recognised in a couple of these pictures, all of which were located in vicinity of the market.
However, these idealised images are far from social reportage and you may notice a certain similarity between many of the women portrayed in them, for whom it is believed his second wife, Clara Maria Leigh, was the model – herself a painter and exhibitor at the Royal Academy. Look again, and you will also see variants of the same ginger and white terrier occurring in these paintings – this is believed to be Wheatley’s dog. The languorous poise and artful drapery of Wheatley’s figures suggest classical models, as if these hawkers were the urban equivalents of the swains and shepherdesses of the pastoral world. Influenced by Jean-Baptiste Greuze, Wheatley had painted agricultural workers at harvest and several of the Cries he depicted are those who came to the city to sell their produce. Although too late save his career, engravings of Wheatley’s Cries were sold at seven shillings and sixpence for a plain set and sixteen shillings coloured, and the fact all thirteen were issued is itself a measure of their popularity.
In 1913, Yardley of London, cosmetic and soap manufacturers, revived Wheatley’s primrose seller by adopting it as their symbol, replacing primroses with sheafs of lavender to illustrate their most popular fragrance, Old English Lavender. Established in 1770, perhaps Yardley sought an image that reflected the era of their origin and the lavender grown for the company in the south east of England. Publishing Wheatley’s image upon countless thousands of soap packets and talcum powder tins was such a popular success that it is still in use upon their packaging over a century later.
The Wheatley revival took flight in 1916 when Players cigarette cards included all of his images in a set of twenty-five Cries of London, reworking Cries by other artists in the Wheatley style to make up the series and following these cards with a second set of twenty-five the year after. Collected by schoolboys in class and soldiers in the trenches, these minor tokens of intangible value became venerated as rare keepsakes. And, throughout the twentieth century, Wheatley’s Cries were reprinted in many guises and upon all kinds of souvenirs and knick-knacks as popular icons of London, representing the collective sense of emotional ownership that people felt for the ancient capital and its wonders.
It was an unlikely choice for Francis Wheatley to paint ‘Cries of London’ at the time he was losing grip of his life – struggling under the pressure of increasing debt – since they cannot have been an obvious commercial proposition. Yet I like to surmise that these fine images celebrate the qualities of the people that Wheatley experienced first-hand in the streets and markets, growing up in Covent Garden, and chose to witness in this affectionate and subtly-political set of pictures of street traders, existing in pertinent contrast to the portraits of aristocratic patrons who had shunned him when he was in need. This is the curious legacy of Francis Wheatley.
Two Bunches a Penny, Primroses, Two Bunches a Penny!
Irish linen tea towel by Lamont
Strawberrys, Scarlet Strawberrys!
Plate by Adams from a dinner service
Fresh Gathered Peas, Young Hastings!
Plate by Adams
Milk Below!
Tea caddy
Sweet China Oranges, Sweet China!
Frean’s ‘London Selection’ biscuit tin
Do you want any matches?
Biscuit tin
New Mackerel, New Mackerel!
Knives, Scissors & Razors to Grind!
De Beauvoir Ford’s 1951 fantasia on a theme by Wheatley configured as a patriotic jigsaw
Turnips & Carrots, ho!
Round & Sound, Five Pence a Pound, Duke Cherries!
Iconic Yardley Old English Lavender talcum powder tin
Old Chairs to Mend!
Yardley Old English Lavender soap
A New Love Song, only Ha’pence a Piece!
Wheatley figures upon the Yardley factory in Stratford (Photograph courtesy of Fin Fahy)
Francis Wheatley RA (1747-1801)
Hot Spiced Gingerbread, Smoking Hot!
Wheatley images courtesy Bishopsgate Institute
CLICK TO BUY A SIGNED COPY OF CRIES OF LONDON FOR £20
Sarsparilla & Mineral Water Sellers
By coincidence, two readers – Christine Osborne & Janice Oliver – both sent me photographs of their ancestors who produced and sold soft drinks in the East End – Brandon’s Mineral Waters of Virginia Rd, Bethnal Green, and Moody’s Sarsaparilla of Rathbone St Market, Canning Town
William Brandon and his mineral water business, 112 Virginia Rd, Bethnal Green c.1887
“William Brandon is my great-great-great uncle, born 10th August 1840 in Bethnal Green as the youngest of seven children. In 1881, he was living with his wife Matilda and their nine children at 112 Virginia Rd where he was a Mineral Water Manufacturer.
I am fascinated by the large framed photographs hanging up on the outside of the building – the one in the centre might be an advertisement as it looks like it says ‘W. Brandon’ and I can even make out ‘Brandon’ stamped on the crates under the table. If you look at the sign at top right of photograph it shows a picture of a bow tie and I believe this is his trademark, as I have obtained an old bottle dug up from a Victorian dump in Stratford with the name ‘Brandon’ and a bow tie symbol.
When William died in 1905 he left £2,343 and Matilda took over the business. A newspaper obituary referred to “William Brandon, who was a mineral water manufacturer of note” and recorded his funeral “was of an imposing character.” He was a self-made man who lived all his life on the edge of the Old Nichol, but he must have had a good life compared to most people living there.” – Christine Osborne
Annie Moody of Moody’s of Rathbone St Market, Canning Town c.1910
“My grandfather, George Moody, was born in Ramsgate in 1879 into a long line of seafarers, and became an Officer in the Navy and travelled the world. After marrying my grandmother, Annie Andrews who was born in Broadstairs, they moved to Canning Town in 1909 where he opened a Herbalists in Rathbone St and started making potions for everyday ailments, using knowledge of herbal medicine he had acquired on his travels. He also offered Homeopathy and local people came for consultations. I remember as a child helping to put ‘Rathbone’ skin ointment into tins, and there was also ‘Rathbone ‘ cough mixture and various other concoctions.
Soon he formulated a recipe for making a Sarsaparilla drink – sarsaparilla is a medicinal root which is reputed to help purify the blood. This was sold outside the shop from a stall which was equipped with barrels of the cordial and a water urn. It was served hot in the winter and huge blocks of ice were put into the water barrel to chill it in summer.
As a girl I used to ‘wash’ the glasses, which merely entailed dunking them into a bucket of cold water after use and leaving them upturned to drain. My mother told me that a famous drinks firm had offered money for the recipe but my grandfather would not part with it and I still have it until this day. So many people have requested it but it remains a family secret. My grandfather George died in 1945, but my mother and then an uncle continued with the business until the late seventies.” – Janice Oliver
Vera Moody of Moody’s of Rathbone St Market, Canning Town
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London Street Signs
Alistair Hall, author of LONDON STREET SIGNS published by Batsford, introduces a few local signs and reveals some of the background to these often overlooked and unappreciated pieces of typographic design which are so familiar as to be almost invisible.
This cartouche on the corner of Sclater St and Brick Lane reads ‘THIS IS SCLATER Street 1778’ though the lettering is hard to decipher after so many years. Dan Cruickshank notes that it was probably built for the distiller Daniel Delacourt.
Around Spitalfields you find a set of Bengali nameplates which sit alongside English ones. The Bengali signs were put up in the nineties and are set in Linotype Bengali designed by Fiona Ross and Tim Holloway around 1978.
An old cast iron nameplate has been camouflaged with paint and a contemporary Tower Hamlets sign sits above it.
A cast iron plate dating from before 1917 when numbered postal districts were introduced in the city, it is unusual for being constructed out of two separate plates.
A creative paint job on another cast iron plate matching the lettering to the surrounding wall.
On the outside of The Old Rose, a former Wapping dockworkers’ pub established in 1839. This has been called Chigwell Hill since before 1746.
Extra-condensed lettering on a pre-1917 nameplate. Despite having more condensed lettering, this sign style has some similarities to those of the N.E. postal district.
A fine blue enamel nameplate featuring the Patent Enamel Company’s manufacturer’s mark, a monogram of PEC, in the bottom right hand corner.
A milk glass nameplate from the Metropolitan Borough of Bethnal Green which was abolished in 1965. Milk glass permitted lettering to be etched into the surface of the sign which was filled with paint.
The enamel nameplate above sits on the outside of The Lauriston, formerly known as The Alexandra, established in the eighteen sixties.
A two-panel ceramic nameplate with enjoyably rudimentary lettering.
Tower St was renamed as Martello St in 1938 as part of a city-wide renaming of streets whose names were repeated elsewhere. The top sign here is from the Metropolitan Borough of Hackney, which ceased to exist in 1965, so the sign dates from some time between then and 1938.
A stone tablet with incised lettering on Rhondda Grove E3. The street, originally named Cottage Grove, was another of those renamed in the thirties.
These tiled signs were once standard throughout the City as far back as the 1870s. This one does not show a postal district – they were introduced in 1857 – so it may be earlier. Ball Court is the home of Simpson’s Tavern established 1757, the oldest chophouse in London.
A hand-painted sign on the outside of St Mary Abchurch which has stood here since the twelfth century although the medieval building was destroyed in the Great Fire of London. It was rebuilt by Sir Christopher Wren’s office between 1681 and 1687. There is a curious informality to the ‘Leading to …’ text and the lower case ‘g’ is eccentric.
This is a rare beast, one of only a few in this style left in the City of London. The rest were replaced by the Corporation of London in the eighties and many of the old signs were sold off in 1991, together with certificates of authenticity. This style features a pleasingly simple identity, though the lettering and spacing of the street names is wildly haphazard. This street below Fenchurch St Station, is named after Sir Thomas Savage’s garden which occupied the site in the seventeenth century.
A trio of signs here just off Myddleton Sq. Up top is a die-stamped nameplate from the Metropolitan Borough of Finsbury, featuring the MoT Compressed alphabet which dates from before 1965. Below is a small enamel plate which lists the un-numbered postal district. The postal districts were introduced in 1856 and the numbered districts introduced in 1917, so this is from somewhere in between. Below is lettering which is incised into the stucco of the house which was built in 1829 by William Chadwell Mylne who gave his family name to the street. Mylne was surveyor of the New River Company, founded in the early seventeenth century by Sir Hugh Myddleton to bring fresh water to London along an artificial waterway.
Just north of Old St, this elegant tablet is at the junction of Pear Tree St and Central St.
A great example of how the background to a nameplate can make a huge difference to its visibility. The black painted bricks make the nameplate stand out and emphasise the black letters.
An enamel sign on the outside of the Peabody Trust’s Clerkenwell Estate built in 1884 after the slum clearances of the late 1870s. The architect was Henry Darbishire.
A beautiful nameplate on the outside of the Eagle in Farringdon Rd, tragically this sign has vanished since it was photographed in 2016.
Condensed serif lettering in white on a black background here at a gated entrance at the junction of Strand and Fleet St. The entrance leads to Middle Temple, one of the Inns of Court to which all barristers must belong.
Photographs copyright © Alistair Hall
Follow Alistair Hall’s instagram account for more London street signs
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Outtakes Of A Press Photographer
When Libby Hall was a press photographer in the sixties, based in Clerkenwell and travelling back and forth from her home in Clapton, she occasionally photographed her immediate surroundings as a diversion from her daily work. Yet half a century later these almost inconsequential outtakes have transformed into a powerful evocation of a lost era.
Libby Hall’s desk In Farringdon Rd
‘These photographs were mostly just lens tests, or moments of light that appealed to me on my journeys back and forth to work as a press photographer. The bookstalls were immediately across the street from the newspaper I worked for. I do miss those wonderful bookstalls even though they used up a considerable chunk of my then meagre wages. It was impossible to pass by without having a look – but then what treasures there were to be found!’ – Libby Hall
Looking down onto Farringdon Rd
Looking across to Turnmills St, Clerkenwell Session House and Booth’s Gin Distillery
Bookstalls in Farringdon Rd
Farringdon Station
Liverpool St Station
Clapton Station
Photographs copyright © Libby Hall
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The Departure of Andy Willoughby
Andy Willoughby is stepping down as head gardener after more than fifteen years creating the spectacular gardens at Arnold Circus on the Boundary Estate. The Friends of Arnold Circus are seeking a replacement. Click here for details
Andy Willoughby
Over recent years, I have always made the detour up the steps through the park whenever I walk through Arnold Circus, in order to admire the planting. I like to see the native flowers on the slopes here, especially the bluebells, cowslips and foxgloves that combine with the tall trees arching overhead and the ivy garlanding the ironwork to create the effect of a piece of woodland transported to the city.
Most intriguing is the inclusion of non-native species, particularly a fine range of diverse hellebores, which complete the planting in a garden alive with detail at every season of the year – clearly the product of a sophisticated horticultural sensibility. So it was a pleasure to meet Andy Willoughby, the shrewd gardener responsible for the lyrical planting that has enriched this corner of the neighbourhood so attractively.
When we shook hands in Arnold Circus, I immediately noticed Andy’s intense steel-blue eyes, trademark guernsey sweater and direct manner, which is disarming at first because he requires you to connect with him at the same level of open-ness that he shows to you, but which quickly establishes a mutual understanding that allows an ease of discourse without requirement for small talk. The latter is especially useful when there is a job of work to be done and permits dialogue to be restricted to, “Are you warm enough?”, “Take this coat”, “Pass me the fork” and “Hold this bag.”
It is impossible not to respect the strength of character and physical constitution of a man who works fifty to sixty-hour weeks in all weathers outdoors from Easter to Christmas, and keeps very busy with other tasks in between.
“About twenty-five years ago, I was at a bit of a loose end,” revealed Andy quietly, as he worked, introducing his brief account of how gardening came to take over his life. At first, he did grounds maintenance work and cut lawns, but then a job gardening at a hospice for the terminally ill offered the chance to show more creativity. “I learnt most at St Joseph’s Hospice – they liked to keep everything neat and tidy. A friend was a gardener there, so I worked with her and took over when she went on maternity leave. I have no qualifications as a gardener, I learnt from observation – and, by looking up in books, I learnt how things grow.” Andy told me.
Nowadays, as well as his duties at Arnold Circus, Andy gardens at couple of schools, Blue Gate Fields in Cable St, Bangabandhu in Bethnal Green, plus at children’s nurseries, George Green on the Isle of Dogs and Harry Roberts in Stepney, as well Lady Mico’s Almshouses in Stepney and another senior nursing home in Rotherhithe. Andy spoke passionately of his work with children, “They come and help, because they see me doing the work and I explain to them what I do. It is very important that children get an education in plants, otherwise they trample them without knowing what they are doing,” adding, “My mother had a garden and she liked plants,” in explanation of his earliest education in horticulture and revealing the origin of his own green fingers.
It is apparent that Andy loves gardening, derives fulfilment from it and is held in great esteem too. So I was completely astonished when, as we said our goodbyes, he casually revealed all his other previous jobs and accomplishments that filled his life before he arrived at that loose end fifteen years ago – including being a trained nurse, a Buddhist monk, a qualified carpenter and joiner, a bricklayer, a musical instrument-maker specialising in early woodwind, a dustman, a bicycle courier and a skilled rock climber and mountaineer who scaled peaks in the Rockies, the Cascades and the Alps. Travelling widely, Andy was the last European to catch smallpox in India before it was eradicated forty-five years ago and has the scars to prove it, when I had merely assumed that his ruddy complexion was the result of years weeding in East London.
Now I understood something of the source of the natural authority that Andy possesses and his insight that sees right through you. I recognised that he carries a wealth of experience which he chooses not to tell, and I was fascinated that gardening brought him into contact with people at all stages of life, from the youngest children at nursery school to senior nursing homes and the dying. Although into his seventies now, I have never met anyone more vitally and physically present in their body than Andy Willoughby, who after experiencing a great deal of life has discovered happiness in cultivating plants.
Dusty Corners In The City Of London
St Andrew by the Wardrobe
The dust is gathering in the City of London. I used to visit at weekends to seek solitude in the empty streets but now the streets are always empty. In a misplaced gesture, pavements have been widened to permit more space when office workers return but the truth is they are never coming back. Corporations have learned they can function without the office and save a lot of money. No-one knows what happens next. If this is the slow death of the City of London, what will become of all the office towers? Meanwhile I walk the streets of the City and photograph my favourite dusty corners as the tumbleweed blows down Cheapside.
Amen Corner
St Andrew’s Hill
St Andrew by the Wardrobe
Greyfriars Garden
Charterhouse
Charterhouse Sq
Cloth Fair
Cloth Fair
St Bartholomew’s
Bartholomew Close
Watling St
College Hill
College Hill
Dowgate Hill
Abchurch Yard
Lawrence Pountney Hill
Lawrence Pountney Hill
Lawrence Pountney Lane
Reflection of St Margaret Pattern
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More Hounds Of Hackney Downs
Yesterday, the second instalment of Hackney Mosaic Project’s splendid series of portraits of the dogs of Hackney Downs was installed under the presiding genius of Tessa Hunkin. Immediately, proud owners were lining up to identify their pets immortalised upon the wall.
When I asked Tessa how it was possible to find so many different ways of portraying dogs in mosaic, she replied that it was simple – the infinite variety of the dogs provided the inspiration.
The mosaic can be visited any day in the park and look out for a celebration later this month when all the dogs will gather for an unveiling ceremony.
THE HACKNEY MOSAIC PROJECT is seeking commissions, so if you would like a mosaic please get in touch hackneymosaic@gmail.com
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The Mosaic Makers of Hackney Downs
The Award-Winning Mosaic Makers of Hackney
