Spitalfields Life

I report the sad news that Marie Iles died last week on 16th June, the day before I her published her story. She is survived by her husband of sixty-five years, Fred Iles, and I am sure you will all wish to join with me in sending him our sympathies.

Fred & Marie Iles with Smudge

Fred Iles was born half a mile from his allotment in Stepney and his wife Marie grew up in Garden St that once stood where the allotment is today.  They were married in St Dunstan’s, just across the road, and lived fifty yards away in Rectory Sq. As for Smudge, she is a local too and gave birth to two litters in the allotment shed.

Fred grows potatoes, cabbages, strawberries, gooseberries, runner beans and nasturtiums to draw the bees in his allotment, which is a small enclosure at the heart of Stepney City Farm. Surrounded by on all sides by other plots, this is a secluded corner sheltered from the wind where Fred can pass his time gardening peacefully in the company of his cat.

Fred had a good crop of strawberries this year and, while boney old Smudge patrolled the territory, Marie searched among the runner beans and discovered the first pickable specimens of the season.

“We never had a garden of our own. My grandfather Edmund lived with us when I was a child, he had come up to London from Bristol originally with two children and he ended up with four sons and three daughters. He was a great pigeon fancier and our backyard was all pigeon lofts where he kept three hundred pigeons – that’s a lot of pigeons. He was very successful at it and when he was dying he called me into his bedroom and showed me his box of medals and asked me to take one. I picked the silver one because it had a picture of a pigeon on it. There were gold ones I could have picked but I was too young to understand. He told me that Iles is a French name and that my ancestor fought in Napoleon’s army and was brought over to Bristol as prisoner of war and then stayed.

I was born in 1926 just half a mile from here in Hartford St, in a little cobbled yard called Wades Place. My father William was a seaman in his younger days and he went all over the world. I don’t know how he learnt about classical music but he was very knowledgeable and he used to play the Gounod’s Faust and Viennese waltzes on his harmonica for me.

I was here for part of the Blitz. It started on a Saturday afternoon at 3pm. I was in the yard and I heard the roar of the aeroplanes. I was thirteen and I thought it was our planes coming back, but it wasn’t. My father took me inside and we sat under the stairs which we thought was the safest place. I couldn’t see anything but I could hear the sound of the anti-aircraft guns and the engines of the planes and, at my age, I found it very exciting.

By the time they came back to bomb the docks, we had an Anderson shelter in the garden and we sat there listening to the sound of bombs dropping. My father decided it was too much and sent me and my mother and my sister to his brother in Oxford. He worked in the Morris factory which, at that time, was building  aeroplanes and he got me job at fifteen making cowling panels for the side engines of Hawker Hurricanes. It was exciting work but it was miserable waiting in the cold for the bus to go to work at seven in the morning.

I got called up to the army on D-Day, June 6th 1944 and I was eighteen years old on my birthday, 30th June. They summoned me for 20th July, the day they tried to assassinate Hitler, so I had three weeks freedom before they put me in the army. By the time I’d learnt to shoot a gun, for some unknown reason they put me in the Royal Electrical Mechanical Engineers. I was posted to the anti-aircraft guns around London and then they sent me to an experimental laboratory in Shoeburyness where they were working on radar. I found I had an easy time for three and a half years until I was discharged in 1947.

I went to the Labour Exchange and the man said, ‘There’s not much going but I like the look of you so why not come and work on this side of the counter? And when a good job comes in you can get it.’ I worked there for six months, and my father was unemployed and he came in and signed on the dole. After six months, the London Electricity Board came along and I worked there for twenty-six years, at first in the office and then as a meter fixer.

When I started here at the allotment, it was quite hard. It was still a bomb site and I had to clear the bomb damage before I could plant anything. There were just six of us pensioners then and I needed something to do in my spare time. They retired me at sixty in 1986, but I started my allotment here four years before that. Smudge turned up on the allotment one day, fifteen years ago. And I thought ‘poor old cat’ and decided to feed it, so she made the allotment her home and now I have to come and feed her every day.”

Fred aged five with his sister Phyllis and cousin Rosamund in 1931, taken by Griffiths in the Roman Rd

Fred in uniform at eighteen  years old, 1944

Fred and his pal Gimlet in Shoeburyness

Fred stands at the base of the aerial in Shoeburyness.

Fred (left) enjoys a pint with Bernard & Jack at Shoeburyness in 1946

Fred (top left) with pals on the beach at Shoeburyness

Fred & Marie get married at St Dunstan’s Stepney, 1st August 1953

Fred & Marie on their wedding day.

Fred in the seventies.

Fred & Marie with their prizewinning dog Rufus, in July 1984 at Stepney City Farm – when Rufus won the dog with the waggliest tail and best mongrel.

Fred grew some magnificent hollyhocks on the allotment in the nineties

“Smudge turned up on the allotment fifteen years ago. And I thought ‘poor old cat’ and I decided to feed it, so she made the allotment her home and now I come every day to feed her.”

Fred and Smudge

Gooseberry time in Stepney

Fred & Marie Iles celebrated their sixty-fifth wedding anniversary in 2018

Stepney City Farm runs a Farmers’ Market every Saturday from 10am – 3pm, selling food from local producers at affordable prices.

You may also like to read about

Marie Iles, Machinist

Vera Hullyer, Parishioner of St Dunstan’s

Ian Lowe, Blacksmith

Pamela Cilia

The reputation of the Truman’s bottling girls has passed into legend in Spitalfields. In the course of my interviews so many people have regaled me with tales of this heroic tribe of independent spirited females. who wore dungarees and clogs which thundered upon the cobbles as made their way through the narrow streets en masse, that I have been seeking one of these glamorous and elusive creatures for years.

Consequently, I was more than happy to make a trip to Rainham to pay a call upon Pamela Cilia, who proved to be a fine specimen of a bottling girl, full of vitality, sharp intelligence and strong opinions to this day. Illuminated by sparkling charisma and filling with joyous emotion as she recounted her story, Pamela was no disappointment.

“I loved it, I loved it, really loved it. But when my husband discovered I was going to work at Truman’s, he said, ‘I don’t want you working in that *******.’ He called it a certain place. Yet he already worked there, so I said to him, ‘If you give the place such a bad name, why are you working there?’ My first job was at Charrington’s in Mile End Rd until that closed down, then I worked for Watney Mann’s for seven years in Sidney St before they sold it to Truman’s, and that’s how we all ended up in Truman’s.

In the bottling plant, you had the filler, then you had the discharger and the labelling. The boxes came down and we filled them up. If a vacancy appeared on a machine, they did it by seniority – I think there were about seven machines. They had one ‘Galloping Major’ that done pints and quarts, and all the others were little bottles. They also had the canning machine. I was mainly on the canning machine.

We never had all this ‘safety,’ like now.  We never wore glasses, we never had earpieces, so it was really dangerous, especially when the bottles went ‘bang’– especially when you had one in your hand and it exploded. You’d be getting them out of the pasteuriser, then all of a sudden ‘bang, bang bang, bang!’ because they hit against one another and they were hot from the pasteuriser.

I was forty-four and my children were all at school. In those days we lived in two rooms. Two pound a week, that’s what we paid.  And my friend Doris used to take the kids to school and she used to bring them home. I clocked in at half past seven and finished at five.

When we got paid on Thursday’s, we used to go over to the Clifton – Thursday was curry day. My friend Adele said ‘I’ll take you to an Indian restaurant.’ At first, she took me to a restaurant near Middlesex Street, near the old toilets. ‘I’ll take you there for a curry,’ she offered, so I said ‘All right’ but when we ate there, I told her, ‘Oh, I don’t like that, Adele.’ The food was too hot.

The following Thursday we went to the Clifton, and on the tables were peppers. Terry, the engineer – big bloke – he said ‘Pam …’ He was going out with Adele and had a row with her, they weren’t talking. He said, ‘Pam, it’s no good asking her for a roll …’ So I offered, ‘All right, I’ll get one for you.’ He said, ‘I want cheese and tomato.’ I got him two cheese and tomato rolls, but I took a pepper and took the pips out and put them in with the tomato pips.  Then I gave them to him and went home afterwards, because I knew what he would do. I was a bit of a joker. I didn’t worry about anything. Nobody got me down.

My sister was different. She was a worrier. I mean, I went there one day and she was crying her eyeballs out. And they all said to me. ‘Pam, Betty’s crying,’ and I said, ‘What are you crying for?’ So she told me that Yvonne, or whatever her name was, said, ‘We can’t go home in her car if we smoke.’ I said ‘Listen, you don’t need her car. You got a pair of legs. Walk on them. Or get a cab home. Don’t let them get you down.’ Well, all the girls in there, they said ‘Pam, how brave you are, you don’t care.’

I met my partner at Truman’s. He was a student of nineteen and I was forty-eight, they used to take students on at Truman’s at busy times. One day, I was out with Adele and she said,‘Pam, I’m not coming to dinner with you today’ and I went ‘You’re not? Why’s that?’ She said to me ‘A student has asked me to have a drink with him at dinner time.’ I replied, ‘Oh, I see, we’ll see about that’. I went straight over to Bernie and asked, ‘Excuse me, can I speak to you?’ And he said ‘Yes’ and I said ‘Are you taking my friend, Adele, for a drink at dinnertime?’ He said, ‘Yes’ and I said, ‘I don’t think so.’ He said, ‘What?’ and I said again ‘I don’t think so.’ He said, ‘Why’s that?’ and I said, ‘If you take her then you’ve got to take me too.’ He went, ‘Oh, alright then, you can come too,’ and I said, ‘Never mind about alright, I’m coming…’

Later, Adele met a student too. Bernie was only nineteen when I met him and I’ve been with him for thirty-eight years. I’ve got four children from my first marriage. My youngest one is sixty-one now. I got one at sixty-one, one at sixty-two, one at sixty-three and the eldest one’s three years older, she’s sixty-six. So I’ve not done bad, bringing up four kids in two rooms. I may be eighty-three but I’m still as lively as if I was twenty-one.

I was brought up in Malta because my father was Maltese. We used to come back and forth, he was a seaman. In the end, he gave up the sea because he had malaria and he was in Addenbrooke’s hospital in Cambridge, where they told him that he could get better treatment in London – so we all moved back to where my mother came from.

There were a lot of Maltese people in the East End then, but they had a very bad name. My husband was Maltese. He was a good husband but he used to hate me talking to bad girls and I’d ask him, ‘Why?’ In Stepney, you’d see the prostitutes, you had them all living in them houses next the hospital where they had furnished rooms. If they saw you with your kids, you don’t say to your child, ‘Don’t talk to her, she’s no good, she’s a so-and-so.’ That’s not me. For me, she’s a human being. Her life is her life. What happened was he said ‘Look Pam, say there’s a crowd of Maltese in Whitechapel’ – which there used to be years ago, they all gathered near the station. He said, ‘You’re not gonna talk to them. I’m being straightforward with you.’ He didn’t want me to get categorised like that or be labelled.

He didn’t want me to work at the bottling plant either, but I done it anyway. See, I’m stubborn. You had every creed, every race. I mean I’m gonna be fair because I have to, I got to swear. When I went in in the morning, I’d say ‘Good Morning, Sweary Mary,’ and she’d say to me ‘F*** off, you Maltese bastard!’

‘You Irish, you Welsh, you Scotch, you Black, you White’ – she’d have a name for every one of one of them. We had Lil, we used to call her ‘Barley-Wine Lil’ because, as soon as she came in, she’d grab a plastic cup. We’d all be thinking she was drinking tea – but she wasn’t! This was seven o’clock in the morning and she was drinking barley wine!

It was very, very good experience for me. I mean, if anything happens to me, I’ve had a good life. I loved the atmosphere, the fighting, and the swearing. And to me, they were straightforward people. Because they’d row with you today and speak to you tomorrow. They didn’t hold it against you. See, I’m a type of person can’t hold rows with people, I just want to be friends, you know.

Once, Me & Adele went down Brick Lane to the market and Sweary Mary was in front of us. We were in our welly boots and our overalls. They had these big stalls down Wentworth Street on a Friday or a Thursday, and we saw Mary – well I tell you what, I’ve never run from nobody. I said to Adele, ‘Look, Sweary Mary’s in front.’ Adele shouts out ‘Sweary Mary!’ Oh, she just turned round and shouted at us ‘F*** off, you Truman’s whores.’ Oh, did we laugh. I mean, it’s not nice really, but that was us. We couldn’t do it today. When you got home you were a different person because you were in your family.

If someone phoned me up and said ‘Pam, there is a permanent vacancy at Truman’s, would you do it?’ The answer’d be, ‘Yes.’ I’d probably go with one leg. You had your ups and downs but there was no violence and – the beer! It was nobody’s business.

Terry, the bloke I gave the peppers to, he was a comedian. It was so hot in the bottling plant that all we had on was our cross-over aprons and our bras and pants. I had a high chair, and I had to grab these cans and pull them forward. One day, he came behind my chair and – this is all because of the pepper in the cheese and tomato roll – I knew he’d get me back, but he didn’t get me straight away. He took my chair and tipped it upside down over a container for old cardboard boxes. He shook me, picking me up and throwing me off my chair into the big container.  I couldn’t get out, my friends had to pass me wooden boxes so I could make steps to get out. Well you know, it was dangerous.

Yes, we had a bad name. Like I told you, my husband didn’t want me to go there because of the bad name. But it doesn’t mean to say you’re all the same. Yes, I had a laugh and joke, I’m not saying I didn’t. As I said, that bloke Terry got hold of me, he turned me upside down, my boobs went over my shoulders, and I didn’t think nothing of it. But my husband – to this day – he never knew. I didn’t see harm in it. But no, it was good, I loved it. Honest, I loved it.  If it hadn’t closed down, I would still be there. I would probably be the sweeper-up!

My husband died after I left Truman’s but I had already met Bernie, and the marriage was already on the rocks. I left him in the end. I always said, ‘Once my children grow up, I’m off.’ And when my children got married, the last one, I was off. And that is how I met Bernie.

At first, they all thought that he was a policeman and I knew that thieving was going on, pinching beer. So he came in one morning and he had navy trousers on, and Adele said to me, ‘Pam, there’s a policeman in here.’ So I said, ‘What do you mean, a policeman?’ I went to him ‘Oi, are you a policeman?’ and he said, ‘No.’ Of course, when we saw him in the morning, we used to shout, ‘Morning, Officer!’ But it’s true, his father was a police sergeant at Chequers and he grew up there. We always said he was a bit of a snob.

I’m eighty-three and Bernie’ll be fifty-eight this year. We just hit it off, age didn’t make any difference. We clicked from that day we met. And he is good as gold. It was fate. I say to myself, ‘It’s fate you meeting Bernie, he wanted a bottling girl.’ He’s been in a lot of places, Bernie. He met Harold Wilson and –  who’s that other prime minister? But that’s another story…”

Pamela Cilia at home in Rainham – ” I’m eighty-three and still as lively as if I was twenty-one.”

Labels courtesy Stephen Killick

Transcript by Jennifer Winkler

You may also like to read these other Truman’s stories

First Brew at the New Truman’s Brewery

The Return of Truman’s Yeast

The New Truman’s Brewery

Tony Jack, Chauffeur at Truman’s Brewery

Derek Prentice, Master Brewer

Truman’s Returns to Spitalfields

At Truman’s Brewery, 1931