Spitalfields Life

Even though I took this photograph of the hat in question, when I examined the image later it became ambiguous to my eyes. If I did not know it was a hat, I might mistake it for a black cabbage, a truffle, or an exotic dried fruit, or maybe even a specimen of a brain preserved in a medical museum.

Did you notice this hat when you visited the Smoking Room at Dennis Severs’ House in Folgate St? You will be forgiven if you did not, because there is so much detail everywhere and, by candlelight, the hat’s faded velvet tones merge unobtrusively into the surroundings. It seems entirely natural to find this hat in the same room as the painting of the gambling scene from William Hogarth’s “The Rake’s Progress” because it is almost identical to the hat Hogarth wore in his famous self-portrait, of the style commonly worn by men in his era, when they were not bewigged.

Yet, as with so much in this house of paradoxes, the hat is not what it appears to be upon first glance. If it even caught your eye at all because the gloom contrives to conjure virtual invisibility for this modest piece of headgear – if it even caught your eye, would you give it a second glance?

It was Fay Cattini who brought me to Dennis Severs’ house in the search for Isabelle Barker’s hat. Fay and her husband Jim befriended the redoubtable Miss Barker, as an elderly spinster, in the last years of her life until her death in 2008 at the age of ninety-eight. To this day, Fay keeps a copy of Isabelle’s grandparents’ marriage certificate dated 14th June 1853. Daniel Barker was a milkman who lived with his wife Ann in Fieldgate St, Whitechapel and the next generation of the family ran Barker’s Dairy in Shepherd St (now Toynbee St), Spitalfields. Isabelle grew up there as one of three sisters before she moved to her flat in Barnet House round the corner in Bell Lane where she lived out her years – her whole life encompassing a century within a quarter-mile at the heart of Spitalfields.

“I was born in Tenterground, known as the Dutch Tenter because there were so many Jews of Dutch origins living there. My family were Christians but we always got on so well with the Jews – wonderful people they were. We had a dairy. The cows came in by train from Essex to Liverpool St and we kept them while they were in milk. Then they went to the butchers. The children would buy a cake at Oswins the baker around the corner and then come and buy milk from us.” wrote Isabelle in the Friends of Christ Church magazine in 1996 when she was eighty-seven years old.

Fay Cattini first became aware of Isabelle when, in her teens, she joined the church choir which was enhanced by Isabelle’s sweet soprano voice. Isabelle played the piano for church meetings and tried to teach Fay to play too, using an old-fashioned technique that required balancing matchboxes on your hand to keep them in the right place. “I grew up with Isobel,” admitted Fay,“I think Isobel was one of the respectable poor whose life revolved around home and church. She had very thin ankles because she loved to walk, in her youth she joined the Campaigners (a church youth movement) and one of the things they did was to march up to the West End and back. She enjoyed walking, and she and her best friend Gladys Smith would get the bus and walk around Oxford St and down to the Embankment. Even when she was in her nineties, I never had to walk slowly with her.”

Years later, Fay and Jim Cattini shared the task of escorting Isabelle over to The Market Cafe in Fournier St for lunch six days a week. In those days, the cafe was the social focus of Spitalfields, as Fay told me,“Isabelle was quite deaf, so she liked to talk rather than listen. At The Market Cafe where she ate lunch every day, Isabelle met Dennis Severs. Dennis, Gilbert & George, and Rodney Archer were all very sweet to her. I don’t think she cooked or was very domestic but walking to The Market Cafe every day – good food and good company – then walking back again to her small flat on the second floor of Barnet House, that’s what kept her going.”

In fact, Fay remembered that Isobel gave her hat to Dennis Severs, who called her his “Queen Mother” in fond acknowledgement of her natural dignity, and he threw her an elaborate eightieth birthday party at his house in 1989. But although nothing ever gets thrown away at 18 Folgate St, when we asked curator David Milne about Isabelle Barker’s hat, he knew of no woman’s hat on the premises fitting the description – which was clear in Fay’s mind because Isabelle took great pride in her appearance and never went out without a hat, handbag and gloves.

“Although she was an East End person,” explained Fay affectionately,“she always looked very smart, quite refined, and she spoke correctly, definitely not a cockney. She had a pension from her job at the Post Office as a telephonist supervisor, but everything in her flat was shabby because she wouldn’t spend any money. As long as she had what she needed that was sufficient for her. She respected men more than women and refused to be served by a female cashier at the bank. Her philosophy of life was that you didn’t dwell on anything. When Dennis died of AIDS she wouldn’t talk about it and when her best friend Gladys had dementia she didn’t want to visit her. It was an old-fashioned way of dealing with things, but I think anyone that lives to ninety-eight is impressive. You had to soldier on, that was her attitude, she was a Victorian.”

When Fay showed me the photo you see below, of Isabelle Barker with Dennis Severs at her eightieth birthday party, David realised at once which hat belonged to her. Even though it looks spectacularly undistinguished in this picture, David spotted the hat in the background of the photo on the stand in the corner of the Smoking Room – which explains why the photo was taken in this room which was otherwise an exclusive male enclave.

At once, David removed the hat from the stand in the Smoking Room where it sat all these years and confirmed that, although it is the perfect doppelganger of an eighteenth-century man’s hat, inside it has a tell-tale label from a mid-twentieth century producer of ladies’ hats. It was Isabelle Barker’s hat! The masquerade of Isabelle Barker’s hat fooled everyone for more than twenty years and, while we were triumphant to have discovered Isabelle’s hat and uncovered the visual pun that it manifests so successfully, we were also delighted to have stumbled upon an unlikely yet enduring memorial to a remarkable woman of Spitalfields.

Dennis Severs & Isabelle Barker at her eightieth birthday party with the hat in the background

William Hogarth wearing his famous hat

Barker’s Dairy as advertised in the Spitalfields Parish Magazine in 1923

Fay and Isabelle in 2001

Dennis Severs House, 18 Folgate St, Spitalfields, E1 6BX

Stefan Dickers and Suresh Singh will be in conversation at Bishopsgate Institute next Wednesday 3rd April at 7pm, showing Suresh’s family photographs and discussing his book A MODEST LIVING, MEMOIRS OF A COCKNEY SIKH.

Click here for tickets

Suresh Singh has been wearing this tank top since 1973

Perhaps everyone has a favourite piece of clothing they have worn for years? I always admired Suresh Singh’s jazzy tank top and I was astonished when he told me he has been wearing it for nearly half a century.

Suresh’s father Joginder Singh came to London from the Punjab in 1949 and the Singh family have lived at 38 Princelet St longer than any other family in Spitalfields.

In our age of disposable fashion, the story of Suresh’s treasured tank top is an inspiring example of how a well made garment can be cherished for a lifetime.

“My mum made this tank top for me in 1973 when I was eleven. She had friends who all knitted and they had bits of wool left over – what you would call ‘cabbage’ –  so mum collected all these balls of different coloured wool. Otherwise, they would have been chucked away. She kept them in her carrier bag with her needles that she bought at Woolworths in Aldgate East. They were number ten needles.

Mum said to me, ‘Suresh, I’m going to knit you a tank top.’ I never asked her because dad had taught me that I should always be patient, but I think mum saw the twinkle in my eyes and she knew I wanted one. I had asthma, so it was to keep my chest warm. She knitted it over the winter, from November to January. Mum never had the spare time to spend all day long knitting, she had to do it in bits as she went along and keep putting it away.

Mum did not follow a pattern, she just looked at me and sometimes took measurements. It started getting really huge, so I said, ‘Mum, it’s going to be too big.’ She had a sense of scale, she did not draw round me and cut a pattern. Mum never did that. She replied, ‘You’ll grow into it.’ The idea was you would slowly grow into new clothes.

When my tank top was finished, it hung down to my knees and the armholes were at my waist, but Mum was adamant I would grow into it. I loved it because it was all the rainbow colours. There was red, then yellow, then black, then pink and that really beautiful green. It was so outrageous. No other Punjabi kid had one like it. They all wore Marks & Spencer or John Collier grey nylon jumpers, but I had this piece of art. To me, it was a masterpiece. It was so beautifully made, it was mum’s pride and joy. When I wore it, people would exclaim, ‘That tank top, mate, it’s classic!’ I would say, ‘Yeah, my mum made it.’ Sometimes, because it was too big, I could pull it up and tie it in a knot at the front.

Mum made it with such love that I have always kept it. Eventually, my children wore it, but I am claiming it these days. It is a one-off. What made the tank top special for mum was that she was making it for her son. People often say it is a work of art but mum never went to art school. She picked up the tradition of making something for your child. She put so much love into it and I wear it today and it is still really nice. It gives me comfort and it keeps my chest warm.

It has got swag, you know what I mean?

It fits me now.”

Suresh and his mum at 38 Princelet St

Suresh Singh aged four

Suresh Singh & Jagir Kaur at 38 Princelet St last summer (Photograph by Patricia Niven)

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Click here to order a signed copy of A MODEST LIVING for £20

Jimi Hendrix’ bedroom in Brook St

Did you know that George Frideric Handel once lived at 25 Brook St in Mayfair and James Marshall (Jimi) Hendrix lived next door at number 23? – thus rendering it irresistible not to speculate how these two musical legends might have co-existed.

On moving into a new home, no-one can know if it will be their ultimate address – as Brook St was for both Handel & Hendrix. Handel was thirty-eight years old when he moved into number 25 in 1723, the same year that he was appointed Composer of Music to the Chapel Royal. He visited London twice in his twenties, but it was when his patron Queen Anne died and George I became King of Great Britain that Handel came to London for good.

Hendrix was twenty-six years old in January 1969 when he moved into the top flat at number 23 rented by his girlfriend Kathy Etchingham, at the time he was giving his final performances with The Jimi Hendrix Experience. Seeing the blue plaque for Handel encouraging Hendrix to go out and buy ‘Music for the Royal Fireworks’ and ‘Messiah’ on LP.

Handel lived thirty-six years in his house, growing in success and producing an entire repertoire of opera and oratorio, but Hendrix died within two years of moving in. In what proved to be his final months, the flat at number 23 offered Hendrix a peaceful enclave to socialise in private and focus on his songwriting.

Those of a literal-minded disposition might assume Handel was much tidier that Hendrix, preferring an austere minimalist interior by contrast to the lush textiles chosen by Hendrix & Etchingham, and purchased nearby at John Lewis in Oxford St. Yet the truth is that Hendrix’ flat has been reconstructed from photographs while very little is known of Handel’s domestic arrangements. We may observe that Handel & Hendrix shared a foppish love of long velvet coats and big curly hair.

It is too obvious to imagine Handel taking a sturdy broom handle to clout his bedroom ceiling when he grew sick of the sound of Hendrix’s record player in the early hours, although it is equally conceivable to envisage Handel waking from his slumbers in delighted surprise to hear his own music emanating – as if by magic – from above, when Hendrix gave his copy of ‘Messiah’ a night-time spin upon the turntable.

Handel & Hendrix both presented large public personalities, but their neighbouring residences in Brook St offered them the opportunity to retreat and pursue their devotion to the craft and struggle of innovative musical composition in private in the middle of London. On the eve of his death on 18th September 1970 at the Samarkand Hotel in Notting Hill, Jimi Hendrix wrote a lyric entitled ‘The Story of Life’ – ‘The story of life is quicker than the wink of an eye. The story of love is hello and goodbye. Until we meet again.’

Disregarding the two hundred years which separate them, I shall now cherish the fancy of old Handel paying a visit upon young Hendrix and the two pals sitting crossed-legged together upon scatter cushions in their curls and velvet finery, while alternating puffs upon a shared roll-up and quaffing red wine as Hendrix extemporises on his guitar and blind Handel conducts in approval by twirling a drunken finger in the smoke that curls in the air.

In George Frideric Handel’s bedroom at 25 Brook St

Hendrix in his bedroom at 23 Brook St, 1969 © Barrie Wentzell

In Hendrix’ bedroom

Handel – ‘Handel & Hendrix shared a foppish love of long velvet coats and big curly hair’

In Handel’s bedroom

In Hendrix’ bedroom

In Handel’s bedroom (Portrait bust courtesy of The Royal Collection)

Jimi Hendrix’ windows were on the top floor at the left and Handel’s were on the first floor at the right

Visit Handel & Hendrix in London, 25 Brook St, Mayfair, W1K 4HB

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