So Long, ‘Smilin’ Sammy McCarthy
With sadness, I report the death on Monday of ‘Smilin’ Sammy McCarthy aged eighty-eight
Let me tell you the story of “Smilin'” Sammy McCarthy, one of legends of East End Boxing. Voted “Best British Boxer of 1951” by Boxing Times, Sammy was a golden boy who won eighty-three out of his ninety amateur contests and represented England four times in the nineteen fifties, before becoming British Featherweight Champion twice and then Lightweight Champion after that.
Yet Sammy was resolute in his refusal to be called a hero. With his impeccable manners and old-fashioned proper way of talking, he was the paragon of self-effacement – an enigma who modestly ascribed his spectacular boxing career to no more than a fear of disappointing others. His contemporaries informed me that only once I knew about his background, could I fully appreciate the true impulse behind Smilin’ Sammy’s suave temperament, but what I discovered was something far more surprising than I ever expected.
Born in 1931 as one of ten children, Sammy grew up in a terrace off Commercial Rd next to Watney Market as the son of costermonger. “My father used to go round the streets selling fruit and veg and we all helped him, and I helped him more than anyone but I always hated it,” Sammy revealed to me, explaining how he visited Spitalfields Market each day with his father in the early morning and stood outside the church while his father bought the produce. Then Sammy had to wheel the loaded barrow back to Stepney but, although it gave him the physical strength which made him a boxer, it was also was a source of humiliation when Sammy’s schoolmates jeered. “Subconsciously, I suppose I was a bit of snob – I wanted to be posh even though I didn’t know the meaning of the word.” he confided with a blush, expressing emotions that remained current for him even after all the years.
Sammy’s elder brother Freddie was a boxer before him and Sammy had a vivid memory of hiding under the table as a child, while his father and brother listened to the celebrated Tommy Farr and Joe Louis fight on the radio. “All the talk was of boxing and I so much wanted to participate but I was naturally timid,” he admitted to me shyly, “I was frightened of being frightened, I suppose – but after my fights I was always so elated, it became like a drug.”
Sammy joined the St George’s Gym in Stepney where his brother trained. “I absolutely loved it but each time I went, I was extremely nervous.” he continued, breaking into his famous radiant smile, “At fifteen I had my first fight and lost on points, so I didn’t tell my father but he found out and cuffed me for not telling him, because he didn’t mind.”
“I had a great following thanks to my two uncles who sold tickets and everybody in the markets bought them because my brother was already well-known. So there used to be coach loads coming to watch me box and I was always top of the bill, not because I was good but because I always sold plenty of tickets.” It was a characteristic piece of self-deprecation from a champion unrivalled in his era.
At nineteen, Sammy turned professional under the stewardship of renowned managers Jarvis Astaire and Ben Schmidt. “Every time I go to West End, I still go to Windmill St and stand outside where the training gym used to be. All the big film stars, like Jean Simmons and John Mills, they used to go there to the weigh-in before a big fight.” he told me proudly.
In spite of his meteoric rise, Sammy was insistent to emphasise his vulnerability. “Everyone’s nervous, but I was petrified, not of fighting but of letting the side down,” he assured me. “I’d rather fight a boxer who thought he could fight but actually couldn’t,” Sammy announced, turning aphoristic and waving a finger,“than a boxer who thought he couldn’t fight but really could.” And I understood that Sammy was speaking of himself in the latter category. “It makes you sharp,” he explained, “your reflexes are very fast.”
‘”I retired at twenty-six, but I didn’t know I was going to retire,” admitted Sammy with a weary smile,“I had to meet these people who were putting a book together about me and it turned out to be the ‘This Is Your Life’ TV programme. It was 1957 and they expected me to announce I was going to retire. I must have been a little disappointed but maybe I hadn’t seen I was slowing down a little.”
Married with two children and amply rewarded by the success of his boxing career, Sammy bought a pub, The Prince of Wales, known as “Kate Odders” in Duckett St, Stepney. You might think that Sammy had achieved fulfilment at last, but it was not so. “I hated every moment because I like home life and as a publican you are always being called upon.” he confessed, “I had a little money and I spent it all unfortunately.”
“My boxing career, it gave me confidence in myself. Boxing made me happy.” Sammy concluded as our conversation reached its natural resolution,” I didn’t enjoy the fights, but I love the social life. You meet the old guys and you realise it’s not about winning, it’s about giving of your best.” Living alone, Sammy led a modest bachelor existence in a neatly kept one bedroom flat in Wanstead but he met regularly with other ex-boxers, among whom he was popular character, a luminary.
And that is where this story would have ended – and it would have been quite a different kind of story – if Sammy had not confronted me with an unexpected admission. “I want you to know why I am divorced from my wife and separated from my children,” he announced, colouring with a rush of emotion and looking me in the eye, “I’m telling you, not because I’m boasting about it but because I don’t want you to make me out to be a hero.”
There was a silence as Sammy summoned courage to speak more and I sat transfixed with expectation. “I robbed banks and I stole a lot of money, and I was caught and I was put in prison for years.” he said.
“I think I was too frightened not to do it,” he speculated, qualifying this by saying,“I’m not making excuses.”
“I’m reformed now.” he stated, just to be clear.
“I was alright in prison because I’m comfortable with my own company and I read books to pass the time,” he added, to reassure me.
“But why did you do it?” I asked.
“Because we never had anything,” he replied, almost automatically and with an abject sadness. His lips quivered and he spread his hands helplessly. He had been referring back – I realised – to his childhood in the family of ten. A phrase he said earlier came back into my mind,“I can’t say that I experienced hardship,” he told me,“not by comparison with what my parents went through.”
Subsequently, a little research revealed that Sammy had been convicted three times for armed robbery and served sentences of three, six and fourteen years. When I think of Smilin’ Sammy now, I think of his sweet smile that matched the Mona Lisa in its equivocation. It was a smile that contains a whole life of fear and pain. It was a smile that knew joy yet concealed secrets. It was a smile that manifested the uneasy reconciliation which Sammy made with the world in the course of his existence.
Smilin’ Sammy McCarthy
Sammy McCarthy, the Stepney Feather, has Peter Morrison against the ropes under a fierce attack at the Mile End Arena.
Sammy McCarthy makes Denny Dawson cover up under a straight left attack.
Jan Maas goes headlong to the canvas after taking a Sammy McCarthy “special” to the chin.
Still smiling! Not even a knockdown can remove the famous smile from Sammy McCarthy, as he goes down for a count of “eight” in the fifth round.
Smilin’ Sammy McCarthy
You may also like to read about
A Walk Through Time In Spitalfields
Sandys Row from the north
After seeing the work of photographer C.A.Mathew in these pages, Adam Tuck was inspired to revisit the locations of the pictures taken over a century ago. Subtly blending his own photographs with C.A.Mathew’s images of Spitalfields in 1912, Adam initiated an unlikely collaboration with a photographer of the beginning of the last century and created a new series of images of compelling resonance.
In these montages, people of today co-exist in the same space with people of the past, manifesting a sensation I have always felt in Spitalfields – that all of history is present here. Yet those of the early twentieth century ago knew they were being photographed and many are pictured looking at the camera, whereas passersby in the present day are mostly self-absorbed. The effect is of those from the past wondering at a vision of the future, while those of our own day are entirely unaware of this ghostly audience.
It is hard to conceive of the meaning of time beyond our own lifespan. But these photographs capture something unseen, something usually hidden from human perception – they are pictures of time passing and each one contains more than a hundred years.
Sandys Row from the south
Looking from Bishopsgate down Brushfield St, towards Christ Church
Looking down Widegate St towards Sandys Row
Looking down Middlesex St towards Bishopsgate
From Bishopsgate looking up Middlesex St
In Bell Lane
In Artillery Lane looking towards Artillery Passage
From Bishopsgate through Spital Sq
Frying Pan Alley
Montages copyright © Adam Tuck
C.A.Mathew photographs courtesy Bishopsgate Institute
You may like to read the original stories
Wenceslaus Hollar At Old St Pauls
Contributing Writer Gillian Tindall sent me her account of the role of Wenceslaus Hollar in creating the historical record of old St Pauls
Wenceslaus Hollar by Jan Meyssens
As all readers interested in old London will know, Sir Christopher Wren’s great domed cathedral – which still holds at bay the sky-scrapers of the City – was built as a replacement for old St Pauls which was lost in the Fire of London in 1666.
The Fire, starting in a baker’s shop near the Tower, was blown by a westbound wind and readily consumed the timbered houses of the City in its path, while the occupants did their frantic best to salvage their belongings in boats. Fires were not uncommon and after a hot summer everything was dry, but no one expected that the great stone edifice of St Pauls would not offer protection.
Printmakers, booksellers and the Stationers’ Company, which had its Hall nearby, rushed to stash their stocks in safety – as they thought – in the crypt of the cathedral, which was designated as a separate chapel, St Faiths. No use! By the third day the Fire reached St Pauls and took a-hold, helped by the fact that the cathedral was encased in wooden scaffolding for repairs. The whole huge early medieval edifice, said to have been the longest in Europe, was burnt out down to the crypt, along with everything that had been put there. The blaze at one point was so hot that melted lead from the roof flowed down Ludgate Hill.
Huge numbers of prints, drawings and records of old London were lost, but not all. As luck would have it, since the cathedral was being restored – Sir Christopher Wren’s original commission before the Fire changed everything – a careful record had been made of the interior, its fine aisles and splendid arching roofs. The artist and etcher employed to do this, for the handsome sum of £200, was a Bohemian (Czech) immigrant, Wenceslaus Hollar. His drawings and etchings were safe in his workshop just off the Strand near St Clement Danes, which the Fire never reached.
We have all seen Hollar’s views of seventeenth century London, though often without realising it. If you visit the Tower of London and buy a souvenir, it is likely to be his portrayal of the place on the plastic bag you are given. But he did far more than that. He was an indefatigable artist and recorder of the city of his time, and a skilled map-maker too. It is largely thanks to him that we know what the appearance of London before the Fire was from the south bank, and what the newly-laid-out Covent Garden looked like before the fruit and vegetable market arrived there, how the river looked when there were still grand old houses along its north bank, what the palaces of Whitehall and Lambeth, Windsor, and Greenwich were like, and how Charing Cross figured before the cross was pulled down.
Yet Hollar was nearing thirty before he came to London. Born in Prague in 1607, he spent his youth knocking around a Europe made chaotic by the Thirty Years War. Where he acquired his remarkable skills is not clear – possibly in Antwerp – but in 1636, when the grand and wealthy Lord Arundel was sent by Charles I to try to mediate between the warring parties, Hollar managed to meet and impress him.
Arundel, who was inclined to collect useful people much as he did fine pictures or pieces of statuary (plenty of pickings in war-torn Europe), took Hollar with him on a great journey down the Rhine – “I have one Hollarse with me,” he wrote to a friend, “who drawes and eches prints in strong water quickley, and with a pretty spiritte…”
When Arundel finally returned to England, Hollar came with him and was given a room in Arundel House on the Strand. There he blossomed, married Lady Arundel’s waiting-woman, got to know the great and good, even gave lessons to young Prince Charles – and went about drawing London and documenting current events. He saw the Earl of Strafford executed and he was there at the trial of Archbishop Laud.
The world inhabited by Arundel and his kind was coming to an end. The rise of Cromwell and the Parliamentarians, the Civil War and finally the traumatic execution of Charles I, sent many people fleeing for safety abroad, Hollar among them. He only returned half way through the sixteen-fifties. By that time his old friends and patrons, including Arundel, were dead or impoverished. But he found new employers among the rising generation of well-educated men, scientists, architects and thinkers, who were within a few years (with a king back on the throne) to form the Royal Society.
The years of the Restoration, from 1660 onwards, were really the first time in history when something that we would recognise as a conservation movement was just beginning. `Antiquarianism,’ respecting and examining old stones, became the fashion. The destruction and losses of the previous century had been great. Medieval monasteries and abbeys all over England had been ruined at the Reformation, and their libraries of manuscripts scattered. (Much of this irreplaceable parchment continued turning up through the decades, put to uses such as lining pie-dishes or cleaning guns). In the next century, under Cromwell, the castles of Royalists were wrecked in turn and there was another round of moralistic church destruction. Carvings and statues were hacked off and stained glass smashed. Old St Paul’s cloister had already been demolished (some of the stones are said to have been used in the rebuilding of Somerset House on the Strand) along with a fine Dance-of-Death mural and the very tall spire had already collapsed in an earlier City fire. By Cromwell’s time, small shops had been installed along the sides of the aisles. Then, in what can only have been a deliberate gesture of insult to the moderate Church of England, Parliamentary troops were allowed to stable their horses in the nave.
No wonder, by the period of relative calm and growing prosperity of the sixteen-sixties, it was felt that something must be done about the church. One of the up-and-coming men of the age – Christopher Wren – was invited to restore it. He commissioned Hollar to record the whole place, duly cleaned up, with neither shops nor horses in evidence, no doubt so that he, Wren, could show when his work was done how faithfully he had maintained the character of the old structure. After the night of Sept 3rd-4th 1666 that was not to be, and thus Hollar’s detailed and beautiful etchings have become a unique and precious record.
Never the man to miss a chance, as soon as the fire was quenched Hollar was out and about in the devastated City – the ground still hot under his feet – creating invaluable evidence of that too. His London-after-the-Fire map has become one of the most famous and often-reproduced to his works to this day.
He spent much of the ten years that remained to him recording battered castles and ruined abbeys in various parts of the country for several different well-to-do antiquarians. Yet he died ‘not rich.’ It was said, by those who knew him well, that he was as decent and amiable a man as you could wish to meet, and a compulsive worker, but hopeless with money. We owe him, in other terms, an incalculable amount.
South view of old St Paul’s with the spire
The west end of old St Pauls
The east end of old St Pauls
The crypt of old St Pauls
Covent Garden Piazza
Easterly view looking towards the city from the roof of Arundel House
Gillian Tindall’s new book The Pulse Glass and the Beat of Other Hearts has just been published by Chatto & Windus
You may like to read these other stories by Gillian Tindall
Memories of Ship Tavern Passage
Gillian Tindall’s Wartime Memories
At Captain Cook’s House in Mile End
My Winter Blooms
‘No enemy but winter and rough weather…’ As You Like It
Every year at this low ebb of the season, I go to Columbia Rd Market to buy potted bulbs and winter-flowering plants which I replant into my collection of old pots from the market and arrange upon the oak dresser, to observe their growth at close quarters and thereby gain solace and inspiration until my garden shows convincing signs of new life.
Each morning, I drag myself from bed – coughing and wheezing from winter chills – and stumble to the dresser in my pyjamas like one in a holy order paying due reverence to an altar. When the grey gloom of morning feels unremitting, the musky scent of hyacinth or the delicate fragrance of the cyclamen is a tonic to my system, tangible evidence that the season of green leaves and abundant flowers will return. When plant life is scarce, my flowers in pots that I bought for just a few pounds each at Columbia Rd acquire a magical allure for me, an enchanted quality confirmed by the speed of their growth in the warmth of the house, and I delight to have this collection of diverse varieties in dishes to wonder at, as if each one were a unique specimen from an exotic land.
And once they have flowered, I place these plants in a cold corner of the house until I can replant them in the garden. As a consequence, my clumps of Hellebores and Snowdrops are expanding every year and thus I get to enjoy my plants at least twice over – at first on the dresser and in subsequent years growing in my garden.
Staffordshire figure of Orlando from As You Like It
Further Along The Regent’s Canal
The towpath fiddler in Camden
Taking advantage of the crystalline February sunlight on Thursday, I continued my ramble along the towpath of the Regent’s Canal which is two hundred years old this year. I walked as far as Paddington Basin in the frost, picking up my journey where I cast off in Shoreditch. Swathed in multiple layers of clothing against the cold, I was alarmed to encounter rough sleepers under bridges when I set out but, as the temperature rose, I was astonished to discover a zealous sunbather in Camden. My most inspiring meeting of the day was with fiddler Lee Westbrook who, like me, had also been encouraged to venture out by the sunlight. His music echoed hauntingly under the multiple bridges at Gloucester Ave. And by the time I reached Paddington, it was warm enough to unbutton my coat before taking the Metropolitan Line back again to Liverpool St.
Approaching Bridport Place Bridge
De Beauvoir Rd Bridge
Approaching City Rd Lock
Lock keeper’s cottage at City Rd Lock
At City Rd Lock
Danbury St Bridge
Approaching the Islington Tunnel
Entrance to the Islington Tunnel
Lock Keeper’s Cottage at St Pancras Lock
Bridge at Royal College St
Canalside Terrace in Camden
At Camden Lock
At Camden Lock
Lee Westbrook
Mansions by Regent’s Park
Bridge into Regent’s Park
Mansion in Regent’s Park
Onwards towards Paddington
In Lisson Grove
In Maida Vale
Little Venice
Paddington Basin
You may also like to take a look at the earlier part of my journey
The Bethnal Green Mulberry Saga
Readers may wonder what has become of the Bethnal Green Mulberry and what the future holds for the oldest tree in the East End.
When I was first taken to see the Bethnal Green Mulberry five years ago, I had no idea what part it would play in my life or the long fight that would ensure to prevent it being dug up. I had no idea that it would lead to me becoming a ‘Mulberry Martyr’ when I fell out of an ancient Mulberry and broke my wrist last summer while picking Mulberries for the campaign.
Next Saturday afternoon, 15th February at 2:30pm, I shall be giving a lecture on the subject of the Bethnal Green Mulberry, recounting the history of Mulberries in London, the tale of the most venerable East End specimen, the story of the fight to save it, and the next steps to ensure its survival.
The lecture is organised by the Friends of the Geffrye Museum at St Peter de Beauvoir Church, Northchurch Terrace, N1 4DA.
Tea and scones will be served.
The Bethnal Green Mulberry (Photograph by Bob Philpots)
The Haggerston Mulberry
The Dalston Mulberry
The Whitechapel Mulberry
The Mile End Mulberry
The Stoke Newington Mulberry
The Spitalfields Mulberry
The Tower of London Mulberry
Click here to read my feature in The Daily Telegraph about the scandal of the Bethnal Green Mulberry
Read more here about the Bethnal Green Mulberry
The Fate of the Bethnal Green Mulberry
How Old is the Bethnal Green Mulberry?
Here We Go Round The Bethnal Green Mulberry
A Plea For The Bethnal Green Mulberry
The Reckoning With Crest Nicholson
So Long, Henrietta Keeper
With sadness, I report the death yesterday of my friend Henrietta Keeper, the irrepressible ballad singer, at the fine age of ninety-three
Friday was always an especially good day to have lunch at E. Pellicci in the Bethnal Green Rd, because not only was Maria Pellicci’s delicious fried cod & chips with mushy peas likely to be on the menu, but also – if you were favoured – you might also get to hear Henrietta Keeper sing one of her soulful ballads. Celebrated for her extraordinary vitality, the venerable Henrietta (known widely as “Joan”) was naturally reticent about her age, a discretion which you will appreciate when I reveal that she was able to pass as one thirty years her junior.
Henrietta tucked into her customary fried egg & chips as the essential warm-up to her weekly performance while I sat across the table from her enjoying the cod & chips with mushy peas, and helping her out with her chips. “My husband died fourteen years ago, of emphysema from smoking and he ate a lot of hydrolized fat.” she admitted to me, her dark eyes shining with emotion,“When he died, I threw away the biscuits and I bought a book on nutrition and studied it, and now I’ve got strong. I only eat wholemeal bread, white bread’s a killer. I am keeping well, to stay alive for the sake of my children because I love them. I don’t want to go the same way my husband did.”
“Anna Pellicci makes me laugh, ‘She says, ‘Are you still here?”” continued Henrietta, with affectionate irony, leaning closer and casting her eyes around the magnificent panelled cafe that was her second home,“I first came to Pelliccis in 1947 when I got married. No-one had washing machines then, so I used to take my washing to the laundrette and come here with my three babies, Lesley hanging onto the pram, Linda sitting on the front and Lorraine the baby inside.” Yet in spite of being around longer than anyone else, Henrietta possessed a youthful, almost childlike, energy and wore a jaunty bow in her hair. “I’m so tiny,” she declared to me batting her eyelids flirtatiously, “I’m just a little girl.”
As a prelude to the afternoon’s performance, I asked Henrietta the origin of her singing and she grew playful, speaking with evident delight and invoking emotions from long ago. “It all started with my dad when I was a little girl, he had a beautiful voice.” she recalled fondly, “He was a road sweeper, but years ago there wasn’t much work – so, when he couldn’t get a job, he used to stand outside the pub singing. And people put money in his hat, and he took it home and gave to my mum. That was the only entertainment we had in those days. Everybody was poor, so the best thing was to go to the pub and make your own music. When I was sixteen years old, I used to sing duets with my dad in pubs. The first song I sang was “Sweet Sixteen – When I first saw the love light in your eyes, when you were sweet sixteen…”
Henrietta got lost in the sentiment, singing the opening line of Sweet Sixteen across the table in a whisper, before the choosing the moment to assure me,“I’m a ballad singer, I don’t like to sing ‘Hey, Big Spender!’ even though I think Shirley Basset’s marvellous – that suits her voice, not mine.” I nodded sagely in acknowledgement of the distinction, before she continued with a fresh thought, “But I like Country & Western. Have you heard of Patsy Cline and Lena Martell? I like that one, ‘I go to pieces each time I see you again…'”
Born in the old Bethnal Green Hospital in the Cambridge Heath Rd, Henrietta and all her family – even her great-grandparents – lived in Shetland St opposite. Evacuated at the age of ten to Little Saxham, near Bury St Edmunds in Suffolk, Henrietta found herself with a devout Welsh family who worked on the land and went to church on Sundays. Here Henrietta excelled in the choir and “that’s how I learnt singing. I got to sing, ‘My Lord is Sweet,’ on my own and I loved it.” she confided to me with a tender smile.
Returning to the East End at the time of the doodlebugs, Henrietta was out playing with her friend Doris when they heard the sound of the Luftwaffe overhead followed by explosions. In the horror of the moment, Doris suggested they take refuge in Bethnal Green Tube Station, but Henrietta had the presence of mind to refuse and went instead to join her family sleeping under the railway arches. That night, one hundred and seventy three people were killed on the staircase as they crowded into the entrance of the tube, including Henrietta’s friend Doris. “It’s not for your eyes,” Henrietta’s father told her when they laid out the bodies on stretchers upon the pavements in lines, but she recalled it in vivid detail all her days.
We ate in silence for a while before Henrietta resumed her story.“When my children started school, I joined the Diamond “T” Concert Party,” she told me,”I had a friend who worked at Tate & Lyle in Silvertown and one of the things they did for the community was organise entertainments. We used to go to old people’s homes, churches and hospitals, and I became one of their singers for thirty years. We had quite a laugh. The only reason I left was that everyone else died.”
I understood something of Henrietta’s circumstance, her story, the origin of her singing and how she made use of her talent over all these years. I realised it was imperative that Henrietta continued singing, that was how she won the longevity she desired, and for one born and bred in Bethnal Green, Pelliccis was the natural venue. Yet there was one mystery left – why did everyone know Henrietta as ‘Joan’ ?
“My mum was called Henrietta, and because I was the eldest I was called Henrietta, but I hated it so I when I went for my first job interview, as a machinist in Mare St making army denims, I told them I was called, “Joan.” she confessed, “They was more cockney there than I am, they said, ‘What’s your name, love?’ and I didn’t like calling out ‘Henrietta’ because it sounded so posh, I just said the first name that came into my head – ‘Joan.’ All my neighbours and my mother-in-law know me as Joan, but my family know me as Henrietta. And that’s how I told a little white lie, in case you might be wondering.”
As our conversation passed, we had completed our meals. Joan ordered a piece of bread pudding to take home for later and I polished off a syrup pudding with custard. And then, the moment arrived – Henrietta took her microphone from her bag and composed herself to summon the spirit of the place, a hush fell upon the cafe and she sang…
“I’m a ballad singer, I don’t like to sing ‘Hey, Big Spender!”
Henrietta Keeper – “I’m so tiny, I’m just a little girl.”
You may also like to read about
