At St Botolph Without Aldgate
I am delighted to publish this extract of a post from A London Inheritance, written by a graduate of my blog writing course. The author inherited a series of old photographs of London from his father and by tracing them, he discovers the changes in the city over a generation. Follow A LONDON INHERITANCE, A Private History of a Public City
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My father’s photograph of St Botolph Without Aldgate in the fifties
The same view today
When I found the location where my father took his photograph only a single building remained in an entirely changed street scene. In his picture, the distinctive tower of St Botolph Without Aldgate is easily recognisable, although the top of the spire is missing through bomb damage. But there were no other obvious clues to identify where my father took his photo, although there is a bomb site between the church and the road.
I walked around the surrounding streets trying to find the location. My search was not helped by the new buildings obscuring the view of the church. However, when I walked down Dukes Place towards the junction with Creechurch Lane and Bevis Marks, I saw one building that looked familiar.
If you look to the left of the top photo, there is a tall building. If you look at the left of the photo below, the same building is still there – a lone survivor from the pre-war buildings in these streets.
Although the ground floor is different now, the upper floors have the same architectural features in both photographs. The building today is National Microfinance Bank House but, in my father’s time, it was Creechurch House. Walking down towards St Botolph’s without Aldgate, the church becomes visible and at the rear of the church are trees, much as in my father’s original photo.
The first written records mention St Botolph Without Aldgate in the twelfth century, although a Saxon church was probably built on the site, evidenced by tenth century burials in the crypt. Originally attached to the Priory of the Holy Trinity, it was rebuilt just before the dissolution during Henry VIII’s reign and restored in 1621. St Botolph without Aldgate was declared unsafe and demolished in 1739, making way for construction of the church we see today. This church by George Dance the Elder was built between 1741 and 1744 and aligned so the entrance and the tower faced the Minories.
“Without Aldgate” references the location of the church outside the walls of the City of London. There are several other St Botolph churches at the edge of the City, St Botolph Without Bishopsgate, St Botolph Without Aldersgate, and there was a St Botolph Billingsgate, destroyed in the Great Fire.
St Botolph established a monastery in East Anglia in the seventh century and died around the 680. In the tenth century, King Edgar had the remains of saint divided and sent to locations through London. They passed through the City gates and the churches alongside the gates through which the remains passed were named after St Botolph.He is the patron saint of wayfarers, who used the City gates as they travelled to and fro. It fascinates me that the names of these churches at the edge of the City of London today refer both to the Roman wall and to events from in tenth century.
St Botolph Without Aldgate viewed from the Minories
Elevation by George Dance the Elder of St. Botolph, c.1740s © Sir John Soane’s Museum
Section by George Dance the Elder of St. Botolph, Aldgate, c.1740s © Sir John Soane’s Museum
The interior of St Botolph without Aldgate retains the original galleries and Tuscan columns
The elaborate plasterwork was added between 1888 and 1895 by J.F. Bentley
Plasterwork by J.F. Bentley
Window commemorating the Stationers’s Company
Window commemorating the Paviour’s Company
Window commemorating the Spectacle Makers’ Company
An eighteenth century ceremonial sword rest
Photographs copyright © A London Inheritance
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George Dickinson, Sales Manager
George Dickinson, Sales Manager at Jackie Brafman’s in Petticoat Lane
Through the nineteenth and twentieth century, Petticoat Lane market was one of the wonders of London, until deregulation in the eighties permitted shops across the capital to open and the market lost its monopoly on Sunday trading.
One of the most celebrated and popular traders was Jackie Brafman, still remembered for his distinctive auctioneering style, standing on a table in the Lane and selling dresses at rock bottom prices.
George Dickinson worked as Sales Manager for Jackie Brafman for thirty-three years during the heyday of the sixties, seventies and eighties. Losing his father when he was still a child and coming to London from Newcastle as a teenager, George discovered a new family in Petticoat Lane and a surrogate father in Jackie Brafman.
“I was born as George Albert Dickinson in Heaton, Newcastle Upon Tyne, one of six brothers and a sister. We had a very good family life and we were happy until my father died when I was nine. In those days, they did not know whether it was cancer or tuberculosis. He was manager of a brewery and a very good piano player. He used to get behind the piano in the dining room and play the chords.
My mother had to sell our four-bedroomed house and we moved in with an aunt. After three months, the aunt died and we had to get out again. We moved to a small terraced house in Scotswood, and my mother did cleaning and worked in a pub in the centre of Newcastle. Our neighbour was a retired miner and every month he got a ton of coal from the coal board. His wife used to come ask, ‘George, Would you like to shovel it into the coal hole? If anybody wants to buy some coal, it’s sixpence a bucket.’ I used to do that for her and she gave me a shilling.
I lived there until I was fourteen when I was allowed to leave school and go to work because of the situation. My eldest brother became a fireman in Newcastle during the war and another was sent to Burma as a medic. There’s only me and my younger brother left now.
I had two jobs in Newcastle. First in a bedding company, making divans, and then I had a go at French polishing, but I got the sack from that – why I do not know. So I went to try to get a job at a fifty shilling tailors and I think I lasted about two days, I did not like it at all.
At fifteen years old, I decided to come to London. My sister met me at King’s Cross and took me to Camden Town. I was just mesmerised by it all. It was Irish and Greeks. A nice place to live at the time. She had a dairy in Pratt St and I lived with her for a little while. I got a job at a textile firm in the West End as a storeman and travelled back and forth by bus.
Then I got my call-up papers at the age of eighteen in 1956. I did ten weeks training at Winchester Barracks and from there we flew from Luton airport to Singapore where we were given a week’s jungle training before being sent to a rubber plantation which was a base for an army camp.
When I came out of the forces, I returned to the old firm but they went into liquidation, so I went to another firm which I did not like at all. I was walking around the West End and I bumped into a driver from a dress company, Peter. I had known him from the old firm. I said, ‘I’m looking for a job, Peter.’ He asked, ‘Do you mind what you do?’ I replied, ‘No, not at all.’ So he told me, ‘There’s a job going. It’s a Mr Brafman, he owns a place in Petticoat Lane.’ I did not know what Petticoat Lane was. Evidently it was a market but, coming from Newcastle, I did not have a clue.
So I phoned him up, went down the same day for the interview and met him in the dress shop. He asked me, ‘What are you doing now?’ I explained who I had worked for and he must have phoned them up, because he told me, ‘Mr Flansburgh thought a lot of you.’ After that, he said, ‘When can you start?’ ‘Any time,’ I replied. ‘Start on Monday,’ he told me.
Jackie Brafman was a terrific boss. At first, I did general things, sweeping and clearing up hangers. There were two shops, a small one which was retail and the large one was wholesale, full of stock. Over the course of time, I started selling in the wholesale department. Eventually, I met Mrs Brafman who was a pet lover. They bought two dogs and called them George & Albert after me. I built up a reputation as a good salesman and I never had to ask for a rise all the years I was there. If the boss was going to a boxing match, he always took me, even if it was Mohammed Ali. I was ringside with him when Cooper fought Ali and he split his glove. A very good man. He was like another father to me. He insisted I call him ‘Jack’ from the second week at work, so eventually I called him ‘JB.’ He did not mind that at all.
On Sunday, he used to stand on a table and auction goods to the public in Petticoat Lane. I arranged for a special desk to be made that was big enough and strong enough to stand on. We had iron rails suspended above from the ceiling where we could hang dresses, a few of each in different sizes. I used to stand on a ladder and feed the clothes to him. I even picked up a bit of Yiddish, I could count the dress sizes in Yiddish. He would tell the customers he had sizes from ten to eighteen and they put their hands up, asking ‘Have you got a ten? Have you got a twelve?’ and I would be feeding the dress out to the crowd. On two occasions, he was in hospital so I got up and auctioneered. It was at Christmas time and we did very well. He was so well known and liked.
One of his favourite sayings was ‘You’ve heard of Christian Dior, I’m the Yiddisher Dior!’ He always had a bottle of whisky on the shelf and he would say, ‘George, get the paper cups.’ Maggie, a regular customer, would come in and he would ask, ‘Would you like a drink, Maggie?’ He poured whisky into these paper cups and topped it up with cola. He would tell her, ‘I’m only doing this to get you a little but tipsy so you don’t know what you are buying.’
There was another guy who used to come in and stand on the side of the shop, and I realised what he wanted. I asked, ‘Can I help you, Sir?’ and he said, ‘No, I’m waiting for one of the ladies to serve me.’ So I called, ‘Celia, Can you come and look after this gentleman?’ Eventually, I gained his trust and he showed me his photographs of him in dresses with wigs and makeup. He looked brilliant. He was a drag artist, but he did not want the lads to know. He used to spend a lot of money and only Celia could serve him.
I became manager of the wholesale department, a double-fronted shop in Wentworth St, opposite the public toilets. People came from all over the world. Nigeria, Kenya, Ghana, Saudi Arabia and Arabia, as well as from all over this country. There were five girls working in the retail shop and we used to employ schoolkids to stand outside by the stall and make sure nothing got pinched.
Jack would go to the West End and buy stuff from Clifton, which was very big fashion house for larger size women, and Peter Kay and Remark and Kidmark. These were all top names years ago. He would buy ‘over-makes’ from them. If they were given an order from Marks & Spencer for a thousand garments, they might make twelve hundred in case of any problems. Jack would buy the extra at a knock-down price. We might sell a dress for four-fifty retail and three-fifty wholesale, but Jack got them for seventy pence each. He done so well Jackie.
Jackie’s father Maurice Brafman lived in Nightingale House, a home for the elderly.It was a beautiful place and he had his own room. The dining room was just like a hotel. He used to phone me up on a Friday morning and say, ‘George, Can you get me some groceries?’ I would go to Kossoff’s and buy cholla for him, and collect his kosher meat from the butcher. He did like his salami and occasionally a bit of fruit. I would put it all in a bag and, when I was going home, I would make a stop in Nightingale Lane to deliver his groceries. He would always check them and pick an argument about something. He would say, ‘You haven’t brought me so and so!’ and I would reply, ‘Mr Brafman, it’s in the bottom of the bag.’ ‘Alright,’ he would concede but he would always find fault. It was lovely seeing him. He lasted about five years there.
In the end, Jack took very ill. He was only coming in occasionally. He had a silver cloud Rolls Royce and I drove it a couple of times up to the West End to pick up stuff when he was not too well. He ran the business from home and his wife would come in occasionally to collect the takings. Sometimes, he would turn up in his wife’s car and stagger in to say, ‘Hello.’
He had two sons and two daughters and eventually Mark, the eldest brother, opened clothes shops all over London called ‘Mark One.’ His wife caught him with another woman and took him for everything. He was worth a fortune and he had a house with a ballroom in the middle. The youngest son, David, went into the business in Petticoat Lane and closed the shop.
Working at Jackie Brafman’s was the best part of my life, apart from getting married and having daughters. When I first came to London to find work at fifteen years old, I was rather shy and a bit inward. By working with Jack and talking to him, I changed. When he was not too busy, Jack would call me into the retail shop and ask me questions, ‘What do you think of this?’ I would give him my opinion and gradually I built up a bit of confidence. Mrs Brafman told me one day, ‘You know, Mr Brafman says you are the backbone of the business.’ I felt so good about it.”
Jackie Brafman, Petticoat Lane (Photograph courtesy of Jewish East End Celebration Society)
George Dickinson, Sales Manager at Jackie Brafman’s
Read these other stories about Petticoat Lane
Laurie Allen of Petticoat Lane
The Wax Sellers of Wentworth St
How Old Is The Bethnal Green Mulberry?
Graphic by Paul Bommer
In the week Tower Hamlets Strategic Development Committee meet to decide whether or not to grant developer Crest Nicholson’s request to dig up the historic Bethnal Green Mulberry for a block of luxury flats, I publish this edited transcript of the Bethnal Green Mulberry Lecture originally delivered by Julian Forbes Laird at the Garden Museum in Lambeth in the spring.
Julian Forbes Laird of Forbes Laird Arborcultural Consultancy is an expert witness in matters arborcultural and editor of the British Standard in tree conservation. He gave evidence in the High Court last year when the original permission to dig up the Bethnal Green Mulberry, granted by former Tower Hamlets tree officer Edward Buckton, was quashed.
Since this lecture was delivered in March, the Bethnal Green Mulberry was recategorised as a ‘Veteran Tree’ which gives it extra protection in planning law on top of the original Tree Protection Order. Additionally, National Planning Policy Framework was changed in July to give more protection to Ancient & Veteran Trees.
Previously, Ancient & Veteran Trees could be sacrificed if the ‘benefits of the development in that location clearly outweigh the loss’ but these criteria are no longer relevant. Under the new guidelines, Ancient & Veteran Trees can only be removed for ‘exceptional reasons.’
Does Crest Nicholson’s bog-standard block of luxury flats constitute ‘exceptional reasons’ ? I think not.
On Friday, I will publish the outcome of the council meeting and the fate of the Bethnal Green Mulberry. In the meantime, the petition to SAVE THE BETHNAL GREEN MULBERRY has passed 10,000 signatures.
Click here to sign the petition if you have not yet done so.
Nurses dance round the ancient Bethnal Green Mulberry in the grounds of the London Chest Hospital, 1944 (Courtesy of the Royal London Hospital Archives)
THE BETHNAL GREEN MULBERRY LECTURE
Delivered by Julian Forbes Laird
This lecture is in four parts. I am going to begin by looking briefly at the planning context. Then I will consider how old people think the Bethnal Green Mulberry is, before presenting the available evidence for dating it and offering a little bit of ancient history at the end.
1. THE PLANNING CONTEXT
Is it a Veteran Tree? And there are two definitions that might concern us. The most important is that from the National Planning Policy Framework. It references “trees which have great age, size or condition and potentially exceptional value for wildlife in the landscape or culturally.” The British Standard for trees in relation to design, demolition and construction – for which I was a technical editor – has another definition,“trees that by a recognised criteria show features of biological, cultural or aesthetic value.”
The bible on this subject is by Dr Helen Read. She is the Ecologist for the Corporation of London and looks after number of very old collections of trees and individual trees as part of her work. Natural England published her book ‘Veteran Trees: A Guide to Good Management,’ in which she includes, ‘How to spot your Veteran Tree.’ The features she identifies are loose bark, dead wood, holes in branches and holes for wildlife. She also draws attention to trees which are large for their species, trees which have an old look, a pollard form which indicates historic management, and have known cultural or historic value. That the concept of a Veteran Tree promoted by Natural England.
So I understand that Crest Nicholson’s tree advisor does not believe that the Bethnal Green Mulberry is a Veteran Tree, and it is a fair enough to ask whether this person is right. But I think that would be no. Self-evidently, the Bethnal Green Mulberry ticks so many of the boxes that define a Veteran Tree that I think it is outside the range of professional opinion to say otherwise.
This has implications for the planning application. The Bethnal Green Mulberry is a Veteran and the proposal to relocate it is unlikely to succeed. The tree will either fall apart or die, or possibly both.
The proposals for development will be assessed under paragraph 118.5 of the National Planning Policy Framework which says: “planning permission should be refused for development resulting in the loss of Veteran Trees unless the need for and benefits of the development in that location clearly outweigh the loss.”
2. HOW OLD IS THE BETHNAL GREEN MULBERRY?
Probably not as old as Stonehenge. Roman? No. Vikings? No. Tudor? It has been suggested that it is a Tudor tree. Bishop Bonner was a Tudor bishop of London, and the question is, “Is it his tree?” Certainly, many people believe it to be so. Conversely, is it a tree of about one hundred and fifty years old contemporary with the building of the London Chest Hospital? The latter two are the most likely suggestions.
In Crest Nicholson’s case, in the first planning application they provided a site investigation report. This identified the soil type to be plastic clay. Plastic clay is a type of soil. Unfortunately, it was read slightly differently by the archaeologists. Instead of reading plastic clay with glass and concrete inclusions it was clay with plastic, glass and concrete inclusions. The archaeologists decided this meant the soil was modern and therefore the tree sitting in the soil had to be modern as well. Which is credible if it had said plastic inclusions but it did not. It said plastic clay.
So the soil has fragments of glass and concrete and does that mean it is modern?Consider the Pantheon in Rome, it was built in AD125 and is still the world’s largest unreinforced concrete dome. The Romans knew how to make concrete. So glass and concrete in soil do not date that soil.
3. THE EVIDENCE FOR DATING THE BETHNAL GREEN MULBERRY
We are going to look now at the available evidence for dating the Bethnal Green Mulberry.
We are going to start by comparing the morphology of the Bethnal Green Mulberry in two photographs published below, one from the nineteen-thirties and the other from three years ago. In the photo from the thirties hospital fundraising pamphlet, you can see the stem of the tree goes off at an angle. Very clearly, there should have been another bit and that has gone.
If you look at the photo of the tree as it stands today, you will see precisely the same angle change. The missing branch was gone by 1930. This has a number of important implications. Firstly, the Bethnal Green Mulberry is patently much older than seventy-five years. Secondly, the failure of the crown only happens in mulberry trees after they are about one-hundred-and-twenty-years old. I have never seen a younger mulberry collapse. So when the Bethnal Green Mulberry suffered a crown failure prior to 1930, at the time of its failure it would be at least one hundred and twenty years years old.
Here we come to the famous inkwell preserved in the archive at the Royal London Hospital. A brass plaque notes that the inkwell’s base was cut in 1911 out of a broken bough from what was reputed to be Bonner’s Mulberry. If we take 1911 as the date when the bough fell off – although it could be before that – and you wind back one-hundred-and-twenty years, you get to around 1800. This is fifty years before the London Chest Hospital was built. In order to arrive at a planning-relevant judgement for the age of the Bethnal Green Mulberry, we need to understand how old it probably is. The youngest probable age of the Bethnal Green Mulberry is around 1800.
The other point to consider is that a tree planted as a sapling in the eighteen-fifties when the hospital was built was very unlikely to have sufficient stature to have had the legend of Bonner’s Mulberry attached to it. That legend would only be attached to the Bethnal Green Mulberry because it predated the hospital. So we have got the tree predating the Chest Hospital. When the hospital was built, the legend was already in place.
The Forestry Commission dating method produced by the Forestry Commission’s Research Dendrologist is a complicated series of calculations. Applying this method to the tree is fraught with difficulty because at the moment the tree only has about 680mm stem diameter. In the photographs, you can see there is quite a lot of the stem missing. So any measurement you make of the stem today is going to be a false record as to the maximum girth and therefore the likely age of the tree. At its peak, I estimate that the tree would probably have been about 800mm at its peak.
The Forestry Commission dating method also requires allowance be made for senescence. As trees age or suffer structural failures, they grow much more slowly. The minimum possible rate of growth of a tree is 0.5mm a year in its stem. A tree can only put on a fraction of growth over ten years and barely change its stem measurement.
If you start from what I believe to be a correct ballpark of 800mm stem diameter and you then allow that the Bethnal Green Mulberry has lost between fifty to one hundred years’ growth, this gives an estimate of three-hundred-and-fifty to four hundred years old for its age. This raises an interesting question – If it is too old to be planted by Bishop Bonner, where did the Bethnal Green Mulberry come from?
The Mulberry not a native British species and to propagate Mulberries in this country requires cuttings. You cannot grow them from seed. What this means is that the Mulberry which stands before us today could be a cutting of Bonner’s tree, preserving a cultural link.
There are three principal eras of introduction for Mulberries into this country. First, the Romans, secondly during Tudor times and thirdly King James’ introductions in the seventeenth century. If our tree is Bonner’s Mulberry, dating from the sixteenth century, it necessarily predates the King James’ introductions, so we can cross out number three. Therefore the chances are that it was a Tudor introduction, that is the most likely conclusion.
Yet there is another possibility which is a lot more fun, so now we are now going to delve into ancient history.
4. A HISTORY LESSON
Even before the Romans arrived, there were well established trade links between London and Colchester. The major obstacle to the movement of goods and services at the London end was the River Lea. In winter, the road heading out of London towards Colchester was often barred by the spreading Lea and the marshes of Hackney and Bow. The road immediately south of the former London Chest Hospital site is Old Ford Road which is the route to the old ford over the River Lea. In pre-Roman Britain, this would have been a necessary and important river crossing between the two trading centres.
When the Romans invaded Britain in AD43, they had to deal with the increasingly belligerent Catuvellauni who they had their tribal base in Colchester. The route of the invading army which came up from Kent into London would have taken them over the old fords of the Lea on their way to lay siege to Colchester. That was the only road. Later the Romans made a new road, still called Roman Road today, possibly because the old road was prone to flooding.
The Romans believed that Mulberries had beneficial effects on the gastro-intestinal system and a fair amount of of their writing about medical plant use has survived, recording this benefit. Mulberries were imported not simply because they thought they were pretty, they liked the shade or they liked the taste, but because they believed it was actually good for their troops to have it. They planted Mulberries at their military bases.
Let us consider the site of the former London Chest Hospital in Roman times.
It occupies relatively high ground compared to the marshes to the east, so it is a site which remained dry all year round. I would suggest that this was why it was subsequently occupied by the Bishop of London’s palaces. Higher ground permits a better view, high enough to get a good view of Old Ford Road around a hundred metres away. So you have a dry site with a good view of traffic on the road which makes it an obvious location for a Roman garrison outpost. The Illustrated London News recorded Roman tiles and bricks being discovered during the demolition of the Bishop’s Palace and the construction of the London Chest Hospital
Early in the fourth century, under Constantine the Great, the Roman Empire converted to Christianity which reached our shores around the same time. The Romans left Britain in 410AD but remains of their culture survived at least years after that. By the sixth century, the site of the former London Chest Hospital was owned by the early church. The name of ‘Bishopsgate’ in the London Wall reveals this as the portal by which the early bishops of London travelled to and from their seat at Bishop’s Hall.
The occupants inherited whatever the Romans left behind and the monks who attended the bishops were well known as herbalists. They read Latin texts about the medicinal uses of plants. This is why Mulberries are found in the physic gardens of monasteries and abbeys, because of their medicinal use. So if the Romans had planted Mulberries at the former London Chest Hospital site, they could have survived – their longevity is such – to span the gap between when the Romans left and the occupancy by the monks of the early church.
If you study the engraving of Bonner scourging a heretic from Foxe’s Book of Martyrs, there is a tree in the background, the Bethnal Green Mulberry of legend perhaps. This engraving was made in 1563, contemporaneous with the events it records. So there is no reason to doubt that Bishop Bonner had a Mulberry in his garden at the former London Chest Hospital site. The engraving shows a tree that could easily be a Mulberry. It could be something else but what reason is there to doubt it? If someone were to make up that detail, it could be an oak tree or a lime tree.
So where did Bonner’s Mulberry come from? Was it a Tudor import or was it propagated from the scion of Roman stock, discovered in a weeded-over orchard by the first monks who inherited the site from the Romans? If the latter is the case, the Bethnal Green Mulberry could be a direct lineal descendant of a tree from the time of Constantine – a tree that preserves in its DNA the original import, a tree that bore ancestral fruit which fed the legions of Roman that watched over ancient London.
Transcript by Rachel Blaylock
The Bethnal Green Mulberry, 1930 (Courtesy of the Royal London Hospital Archives)
The Bethnal Green Mulberry, spring 2015
Inkwell made in 1911 from a branch of the Bethnal Green Mulberry (Courtesy of the Royal London Hospital Archives)
This engraving of the completed London Chest Hospital published by the Illustrated London News on June 28th 1851 shows the fully-grown Mulberry tree to the left of the main building (Courtesy of Tower Hamlets Local History Library & Archives)
Illustration of Bishop Bonner scourging a heretic from Foxe’s Book of Martyrs, 1563
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
Here We Go Round The Bethnal Green Mulberry
A Plea For The Bethnal Green Mulberry
The Reckoning With Crest Nicholson
At 38 Princelet St
Spitalfields Life Books will be publishing A MODEST LIVING, Memoirs of Cockney Sikh by Suresh Singh in October. The book was inspired by the account of Suresh’s father Joginder Singh, which was first published in these pages in 2013. Here is a second instalment and further excerpts will follow over coming weeks.
In this first London Sikh biography, Suresh tells the story of his family who have lived in their house in Princelet St for nearly seventy years, longer I believe than any other family in Spitalfields. In the book, chapters of biography are alternated with a series of Sikh recipes by Jagir Kaur, Suresh’s wife.
You can support publication by pre-ordering a copy now, which will be signed by Suresh Singh and sent to you on publication.
Click here to order a signed copy of A MODEST LIVING for £20
Suresh Singh and his wife Jagir in Princelet St this summer (Photograph by Patricia Niven)
Joginder Singh at 38 Princelet St
Dad came with very little. In 1949, he left his village in the north of India, carrying a small satchel with a tin of shoe polish and not much else. Because he was from the shoemaking caste he thought he could shine peoples’ shoes in London and that was what he did at first.
Somebody told Dad that you could sleep in doorways in Spitalfields and quickly find work there. The porters piled up their barrows and it fell on the floor in abundance, so you could easily collect enough fruit and vegetables for a week. He knew people would leave you alone and you could get by. I think something drew him to Spitalfields.
A man called Mama Nanak came to London before my father. He was a friend of the family and a wheeler-dealer, a dodgy guy. No-one ever said much about him but there is a photograph of him in his suit with a big moustache. He was an enterprising, entrepreneurial man. Eventually, he went to work at Heathrow Airport cleaning toilets and moved to Southall. He brought Sikhs over and said to them, ‘You can stay here.’ He was someone who worked his way around things. He and Dad got hold of a house from a Jewish furrier. In those days, you could just buy the keys.
Our house, it was a slum then. Official records state it was vacant at the time. Dad wanted a big house so that he could welcome his mates and soon there were as many as fifty people living in it. You ask any Punjabi from here to Glasgow who arrived in Spitalfields in the fifties and they will tell you they lived at 38 Princelet Street, even if it was for one night. Some people even walked from Heathrow Airport. They were hot-bedding, with one person getting up to go to work and another climbing into the same bed. It was pretty rough but it was a place where people got on. You could mingle in Spitalfields if you had a big overcoat and a hat, tucking yourself into the area with its smell of bonfires, the brewery, and the fruit and vegetable market.
It was a dark place at night but Dad had a sense of direction even though he could not read or write. He found his way by landmarks. Hawksmoor’s tall spire of Christ Church, with its illuminated clock, dominated the neighbourhood. Even when it was dirty, Christ Church was pretty swag, and Dad liked it. Although there were tramps outside and the bustling Spitaltfields market was across the road, he believed you could elevate yourself out of it.
Our house was in the next street and Liverpool Street station was beyond. On Sundays you could pick up stuff for nothing in the flea markets and Dad got most of our furniture there. In the surrounding streets were Maltese families, Irish families, Hassidic and other Jewish families. It was a mishmash of people and Dad was in his element. Spitalfields pulled him in. The Punjab and the East End of London were two different worlds. I think the docks and the river led him to this place, where you could get by even if you had very little.
Dad found it very difficult to get work because he had a beard and long hair wrapped up in a turban. Some Sikhs shaved their heads. He was told there was a guy in Glasgow who would do it with an accompanying ritual. Dad took the coach to Glasgow to the rough part of the tenement blocks. The guy said to my Dad, ‘This is how you get a job in England.’ He took Dad into the yard and removed his turban and shaved his hair and his beard off. They said that day, ‘Joginder Singh wailed at the top of his voice.’ Dad said, ‘Now my Sikhism is from within.’ He realised that he was in a foreign land but he could keep his faith inside. He made that sacrifice to get a job.
Dad worked in Liverpool Street station and Old Broad Street shining shoes on and off for fifteen years. He did not mind it, although others in the house often asked, ‘Why do you want to do that? You’ve come to England, why do you want to get down on your knees and shine shoes?’ Dad answered, ‘That is a lovely thing to do.’
When he came back from Glasgow, he got a job at once on a building site. People in the house thought, ‘Oh well he shaves, he gets a Wilkinson blade from the market and he keeps himself clean-cut.’ Yet Dad always wore the clothes of a Punjabi Sikh in the house, even if outside he wore proper tailored suits with a nice cut from a good Jewish tailor. These were bought down Brick Lane or in Cheshire Street and probably came off a stiff but they were bespoke. His friends always used to laugh, ‘Joginder Singh, the suits are very beautiful – don’t know how you got them?’ He always kept his shoes polished too, that was very important to him. Even today, I always keep my shoes polished.
I think it is funny but also sad that Dad would do that. Why did he put his pyjamas on and become like a proper Punjabi in the house, but dress in a suit before he went out? I think if he had put a coat over his pyjamas to go out he probably would have got away with it, but he never did. He always valued being in Britain and he worked really hard. I think Spitalfields welcomed him for that.
Dad was always bringing home down-and-outs he met in the street. Often, Dad would invite his vagabond friend Karama but Mum would say, ‘Keep him downstairs,’ because he was infested. So Dad sat him in the yard, shaved his hair off and set it alight, and as they burnt, the fleas would pop like sparklers. I remember Mum being at the end of her tether sometimes because Dad fed these down-and-outs. We still eat the same diet today and, if anybody comes, they eat what we eat. We do not say, ‘We’ve got friends coming, we’ve got to get special food.’ It is what it is, that was how it was and how it is today. It was the same when Mum was here and she passed it on to Jagir, my wife.
Dad became the owner of 38 Princelet Street in 1951, about two years after he arrived in London. I remember the house being full of people, with three gas meters and cookers upstairs and downstairs. My view was of kneecaps and shoes. Mr Ford, the environmental health officer was knocking on the door all the time saying, ‘We’re going to close you down.’ When I was a child we lived on the top floor, which was just an open space with the walls knocked through and the rafters uncovered with two skylights.
Our house was quite broken down and we did not have hot water or central heating. We used to bathe outside in the yard. I remember putting pans on the gas, heating up water. Once it boiled, we tipped it into a bucket and carried it down into the yard then topped it up with cold water. Dad washed in cold water and when he threw it on him, he yelled ‘Wah Hey Guru!’ The joke in the community was that Joginder Singh was a holy man because he kept shouting ‘Wah Hey Guru!’ but really it was the shock of cold water.
Some Sikhs did not want to stay with us, saying, ‘How can you live among Muslims and Jews?’ and he replied, ‘At least they don’t gossip, so you go and I’ll stay here.’ Our house was an open house and for many people it was a safe house – especially when Dad was there.
Joginder Singh in the kitchen at 38 Princelet St – “I think it is funny but also sad that Dad would do that. Why did he put his pyjamas on and become like a proper Punjabi in the house, but dress in a suit before he went out?”
Mama Nanak – “He was an enterprising, entrepreneurial man. Eventually, he went to work at Heathrow Airport cleaning toilets and moved to Southall.”
Joginder Singh
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A Strange Storm In Shoreditch
As well as collecting his experiences of life in his diaries, Samuel Pepys collected many other things, including prints of the Cries of London, cheese wrappers and Broadsheet Ballads. Thanks to his foresight, these are all preserved in the Pepys Library at his former college, Magdalene College, Cambridge.
This broadsheet from his collection records something strange and wondrous that happened in Shoreditch on 18th May 1630, when hailstones eight inches in circumference fell from the sky resulting in the near-fatality of a hemp dresser. Connoisseurs of doggerel can enjoy the full story below.
Learn more about the history of this ancient parish at an exhibition of artefacts recently excavated by Museum of London Archaeology, open now at St Leonard’s Church from Tuesday to Sunday each week until 14th October.
Click on this image to enlarge
Image reproduced courtesy Pepys Library, Magdalene College, Cambridge
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Peter Turner, Silversmith
I am delighted to publish this post by Julie Price who was a graduate of my blog writing course this spring. Julie’s family were originally from the East End and consequently the capital has always held a fascination for her. Follow Julie’s Price’s View Of London.
We are now taking bookings for this autumn’s course, HOW TO WRITE A BLOG THAT PEOPLE WILL WANT TO READ on November 10th & 11th. Come to Spitalfields and spend a weekend with me in an eighteenth century weaver’s house in Fournier St, enjoy delicious lunches from Leila’s Cafe, eat cakes baked to historic recipes by Townhouse and learn how to write your own blog. Click here for details
If you are graduate of my course and you would like me to feature your blog, please drop me a line.
Peter Turner
One of my relatives, Peter Turner, is a retired silversmith who lives in the village of Great Abington with his wife Ann. It is inspiring for me to have another creative person in the family, so I was keen to find out more about his work.
While visiting, I was amused to hear villagers refer to him as ‘Hatton Garden Pete.’ When I asked to see his workshop, he caught my eye with a cheeky glint as he declared, “I work in a studio darling, I’m ‘Fine Art’!”.
Peter said he had always been interested in artistic subjects at school but there was no career guidance available and boys were simply told to take a form to the Labour Exchange. He said, “I always knew I wanted to do something with my hands and the Labour Exchange gave me a form for an apprentice engraver. The apprenticeship was for four years, which was lucky because it could have been up to seven years.”
Peter was offered the apprenticeship and started work at fifteen years old at H J Greenwood & Son, a father-and-son firm in Stratford High St. Mr Greenwood, was a silversmith who was known to be one of the best at lettering. Peter remembers his strict Victorian attitude but feels lucky that he was taught by such a talented man.
Peter reminisced about Stratford sixty years ago, “I remember there being a leather shop downstairs, Woolworths was opposite and it was close to Yardleys in the Mile End Rd, with beautiful tiles depicting a lavender seller. Next to Yardleys was a knacker’s yard where they boiled bones for glue and – when they opened the vats – it stank. I used to put a hanky over my mouth!”.
“I worked on simple things there, initials on signet rings, cufflinks and bracelets,” Peter recalled. After his apprenticeship, he left to work for Gill & Stevenson in Hatton Garden. The interview was at 8:00am on a Saturday morning and he was told to bring his own tools. “The guv’nor, Ernie Stevenson was the only person there so I laid my tools out on the work bench,” Peter explained. Ernie left him some work and said, “Do what you think you can do and I will be back.” Peter did all of it with an hour and a half to spare, so he did some other things that he noticed on the shelf. When the ‘guv’nor’ came back, he asked Peter, “When can you start?!”. He was chuffed because he was given £36 for the work although his weekly wage was only £11. He was only nineteen years old at the time but proudly remembers Ernie telling the other employees “This is Peter and he set his tools up himself!”.
Peter worked at Gill & Stevenson for twelve years, commuting from the village of Over in North Cambridge. He remembers, “I worked next to an old boy called Harold Fuller who was the tops in heraldry” and added, “I’ve been lucky to have had two excellent masters.”
In Hatton Garden, Peter met a gentleman who had lots of connections with major silver and antique dealers in London. This connection led to enough extra work that he could become self-employed.
While he was self-employed Peter worked for many clients in Bond St, Hatton Garden and the silver vaults in Chancery Lane. He also did work for the royal family. “Prince Charles brought his Mum a silver thimble and asked me to engrave it with ER II,” he recalls, “I think it was her Christmas or birthday present.” He engraved for the Queen too. “While she was at Sandringham,’ he explained, “she brought me a sheep’s dog whistle and I engraved it with ER II.” At this time, Joe Bugner won the European & Commonwealth Boxing Championship and Peter was asked to engrave his name onto the championship belt. Peter laughed as he confesses, “My two sons were running around the house wearing Joe Bugner’s belt on their shoulders and blowing the Queen’s sheep dog whistle at the same time!”.
I asked Peter what he was most proud of and he told me how a Jewish New York dealer had asked him to re-engrave two Paul Storr sauceboats. When I asked who Paul Storr was, he revealed, “He used to be a silversmith – one at the top of his game. A Huguenot who came over from France or Holland with a lot of silk weavers and set up shop in East London, he is rated to be the top English silversmith ever.”
Once Peter was asked by a dealer to erase a crest and coronet from a pair of Paul Storr silver sauceboats, but the engraving was so beautiful he took a print before removing it. This was silver that Lord Lucan had sold to pay off gambling debts. Later, the Lucan family asked Peter to erase the new engraving and replace it with the original crest. Fortunately, having taken a print of the Lucan crest, he was able to do it quickly. Peter admitted to me, “The family said it was so beautiful, they could not tell the difference from the original.”
I wanted to learn the basic principles of engraving and asked Peter to give me a lesson. This is what he said, “Wipe your fingers on your forehead or chin, to get a grease deposit, then rub it onto the silver. Then take a tin of powdered chalk and rub some onto the metal with cotton wool. Mark guide lines in the chalk with something that doesn’t scratch but just leaves a mark on the chalk – I used old knitting needles. Then you look at it, ask yourself, ‘Is that right?’ When you are happy, use rules and a pair of compasses to mark the size of the lettering. Scratch through the chalk with a sharp point so marks of the letters are left, then wipe off the chalk and start, using a small chisel.”
Since retiring, Peter has now taken up wood carving and wants to make handles for gentleman’s canes. He is currently working on his first, which will be in the shape of an elephant’s head. He wants to carve another in the shape of “an heraldic dolphin, the type you would see wrapped around embankment lampposts.” I cannot wait to visit Hatton Garden Pete and his wife again to see how the cane handles are progressing.
Peter’s design for a Dutch marriage box
Peter’s design for a crest
Examples of fonts engraved by Peter
Examples of romantic keepsakes that Peter makes for his wife each Valentine’s Day
Photographs copyright © Julie Price
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On Top Of Britannic House With Lew Tassell
Detective Constable Tassell of the City of London Police Serious Fraud Squad magically escorts us thirty-five years back in time and onto the roof of Britannic House in Ropemaker St to enjoy the view
“In the summer of 1983, I was part of the City of London Serious Fraud Squad, operating from Wood St Police Station. A friend and ex-colleague of mine became head of security at British Petroleum in Britannic House, Ropemaker St and he invited me to photograph the views of London from the rooftop, so I took the opportunity. I went along one June morning and took my pictures.
Britannic House was the first building in the City of London to be taller than St Paul’s Cathedral and remained the tallest until the NatWest Tower was built in 1976. It is now known as City Point – since BP moved out some years ago – and has been refurbished with extra storeys, so it is even taller.” – Lew Tassell
Looking towards Christ Church, Spitalfields
Looking northeast towards the Bishopsgate Goodsyard with Bethnal Green beyond
Looking east to Old Broad St and Liverpool St Station with Spitalfields beyond.
Car park at Old Broad St Station where the Broadgate Estate is today
Looking east along Liverpool St towards Bishopgate and Dewhurst’s Butchers
Looking southeast to Finsbury Circus and the City of London
Looking southeast across the City of London towards Tower Bridge
Looking southwest along London Wall with St Paul’s Cathedral
The dome of St Paul’s with Westminster and Big Ben
Looking west towards Old Bailey and Trafalgar Sq
Looking northwest towards the Post Office Tower with the Barbican to the right
Looking northwest across Clerkenwell with St Pancras Station in the distance
Looking north to Whitecross St Market
Looking down onto the Barbican
St Giles Cripplegate
Looking down from the top of Britannic House
Looking down on Silk St
City of London mounted police in Fore St
Photographs copyright © Lew Tassell
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