Spitalfields Life

Ron McCormick’s Spitalfields & Whitechapel

July 29, 2018

by the gentle author

Today it is my pleasure to publish a third installment of Ron McCormick’s fine photographs of Spitalfields and Whitechapel taken in the seventies when he lived in Princelet St

Carrying bicycles over Pedley St bridge

Street musician in Brick Lane market

Faces in the crowd, Commercial St

‘The boys’ pass time on the steps of the Great Synagogue, Fournier St

Costa cobblers, Hanbury St

Engineering works, Heneage St

Bottling girls in the Truman Brewery

Mother and toddler, Buxton St Holiday Club

Street scene, Whitechapel

Flower seller, Whitechapel

Shoe shop, Wentworth St

Mr & Mrs Ali with their children, Brick Lane

Bakery, Whitechapel

Leaving Spitalfields, Artillery Passage opens onto Middlesex St

Family playtime in streets off Whitechapel Rd

Cheshire St market

Girl and her grandmother, Great Eastern Buildings, Quaker St

Rooftop playground, Great Eastern Buildings, Quaker St

Roof of Great Eastern Buildings, Quaker St

Tenement buildings, Spitalfields

Street singer, Brick Lane market

Diamond merchants, Black Lion Yard

Woman with dogs in alley off Quaker St

Cafe Royal Books have published two books of Ron McCormick’s photographs of Whitechapel and Spitalfields. Click here to order copies

A new expanded hardback edition of Chris Searle’s Whitechapel Boy, a reading of the poetry of Isaac Rosenberg including a photoessay by Ron McCormick is now available. Click here to order

You may also like to take a look at

Ron McCormick’s Whitechapel

Ron McCormick’s Spitalfields

Mr Pussy’s Animal Instinct

July 28, 2018

by the gentle author

With your help, I am producing a handsome collection of stories of my old cat, THE LIFE & TIMES OF MR PUSSY, A Memoir Of A Favourite Cat to be published by Spitalfields Life Books on 20th September. Below you can read an excerpt.

Support publication by preordering THE LIFE & TIMES OF MR PUSSY and you will receive a signed copy when the book is published.

Click here to preorder your copy

Every night, Mr Pussy sleeps at my feet just like those dogs you see curled up at the feet of effigies on medieval tombs. There is a sheepskin, strategically placed across the corner of the bed and this is his rightful place. Sometimes, when I roll over in the night, my feet meet the reassuring resistance of a solid lump and I know it is Mr Pussy. At first light, he wakes, climbs down and then strolls along to the head of the bed, full of the joy of morning, and miaows in my face. Commonly, I open my eyes to confront him eyeballing me and then I turn my back on him, rolling over to sleep further because this may be five in the morning. Mr Pussy is full of optimisim and delight at the new day and cannot understand my reluctance.

Mr Pussy’s disappointed response will be to scratch half-heartedly for a little upon the side of the bed to encourage me to rise. Once this avenue is exhausted, he leaps in one bound onto the oak chest of drawers, where I place my watch and rings at night. The thunderous plonk as Mr Pussy lands upon the chest of drawers always stirs me from my slumbers because I know what comes next. A little tinkling, a little scraping and a little scratching, as Mr Pussy manoeuvres my possessions to the edge of the chest of drawers in preparation for knocking them onto the floor. As I lie there in a half-slumber, I am trying to remember if I left my phone on the chest of drawers or not. So I roll over in bed, sitting up, and our eyes meet as Mr Pussy looks down at me accusingly, because he expects better than this sleepy-headed disinterest. Mr Pussy wants me to get up. “Pussy!” I yell in a melodramatically over-reactive tone, throwing back the covers as if I am about to rise. Mr Pussy jumps down and runs from the room, eager to be the first into the bathroom – but I am too smart for him, I pull back the covers and return to sleep. It works every time.

I know what Mr Pussy wants, because sometimes I play along if the fancy takes me. Mr Pussy wants me to rise when he does, so he can follow me into the bathroom to lick the pools of water in the shower, then return to the bedroom to observe me dressing. Once this is complete, he runs to the head of the stairs and pauses, preparing for the moment of triumph when we run downstairs together to embrace the glorious day. If Mr Pussy’s desired scenario does not to take place then he skulks off out of the house in frustration, as happened the other morning when I woke to a frenzied screaming in the back yard. Mr Pussy was halfway up a tall willow with his hackles up, snarling, eyes popping and generally letting rip like a wild predatory beast. At the top of the tree was a young brown cat clinging onto mere twigs. Mr Pussy had pursued this poor creature that had invaded his territory until it had nowhere left to run, just like those fearsome pirates of old who made their adversaries walk the plank.

There is no doubt Mr Pussy has his dark side. The pet shop owner who sold him to me in Mile End years ago told me that he had been rescued as part of a litter from an East End street. I took the cat, who was the size of my hand then, to Devon on the train that night. My notion was that a kitten would be a consolation to my mother, who was recently bereaved, but he caused havoc, running around the house screaming and smashing things. Even the neighbours complained, asking her to keep her cat quiet. Although, at first, he was not quite the joy I had anticipated, I told myself that a cat problem was preferable to a bereavement problem. It was an exorcism, and sure enough, over his first year, he settled down under her placid influence.

I knew my mother wanted a female cat and when I entered the shop, one kitten ran up to me. I realised, in a moment of mutual recognition, that this was the one. The owner assured me this was a female. My mother named the kitten Rosemary and it was only after a year, when we sent the cat to be neutered, that the plain facts were revealed. I broke the news to my mother, “Pussy is a boy.” Immediately she responded,”That’s why he is so bossy!” with characteristic insight. This was when he first acquired the name Mr Pussy, indicative of his early gender confusion. He was never Rosemary again, except very occasionally when we chose to tease him and Mr Pussy responded with filthy looks.

Years later, my mother is gone and Mr Pussy has made Spitalfields his home. When I leant out of the window to confront Mr Pussy in the tree here, I only had to yell “Pussy!” and a transformation came upon him. The wild beast vanished to be replaced by my domestic cat once more. Mr Pussy came running back into the house and we performed the morning ritual just as he likes it. I respect Mr Pussy for being his own creature and as long as we can maintain the pretence of a pet and owner relationship, I am prepared to accept his animal instinct that is wild at heart.

Support publication by preordering THE LIFE & TIMES OF MR PUSSY and you will receive a signed and inscribed copy when the book is published.

Click here to preorder your copy

A E Batchelor Ltd, Saddlers

July 27, 2018

by the gentle author

Contributing Photographer Patricia Niven & I took the train down to Epping to meet Anthony Batchelor and his dad John who work together as the third and fourth generation in their family saddlery business. Anthony picked us up from the station and drove us through the town, past the former shoe shop and saddlery established by his great-grandfather in an old weatherboarded house in 1919.

Since 2005, high street premises have no longer been required by A E Batchelor Ltd. Anthony drove us through the winding lanes until we turned into the yard behind an imposing Georgian farmhouse, where he and his father operate today from a comfortable and quiet workshop in a converted barn. Such is their reputation that, even without a website, Anthony and his father find they have as much work as they can handle simply by word of mouth.

While John stays in the workshop at his bench, Anthony sets out on the road driving seven hundred miles a day to visit customers across East Anglia, from the daughters of wealthy businessmen in Southend up to old hunting families in Norfolk. I was assured that, given their different preferences in music and choice of radio channels, such a division of responsibility suits father and son very well.

“In 1919, my great-grandfather Alfred Edward Batchelor returned from the West Indies where he had a sugar plantation,” Anthony explained to me,”he worked for Freeman Hardy and Willis in Croydon and then he bought a shoe shop in Epping.” In the thirties, the family purchased the saddlery next door and ran both shops until 2005.“He always called himself the reluctant saddler,” admitted Anthony, referring to his grandfather Alfred Robert,“so he went and worked at Blisses.”

Bliss & Co of Sun St, behind Liverpool St Station, were the last of the many saddlers that once existed in the vicinity of Bishopsgate, originally serving the needs of travellers in the days before the coming of the railway. Thus Alfred Robert and then his son Alfred John both trained at Blisses, which – astonishingly – only closed in the eighties and today its handsome red brick building, custom-built as a saddlers, still stands in Sun St unfortunately awaiting imminent demolition.

“We still use my grandfather’s tools,” Anthony revealed, lifting and brandishing up a half-moon shaped knife which his father had just employed,“he ‘liberated’ this knife from an abandoned saddlery when he went into occupied France at the end of World War II.”

Neither father nor son have any regrets about abandoning the retail side of the business in Epping.“When we had the shop we were there all hours, it was a hard life,” confided John,“now I can take a day off whenever I please.” I watched John as he stitched a simple dog lead with painstaking care. “The work we do is rustic in style,” he informed me modestly, almost apologetically, confessing that his primary concern was to create items which serve their purpose at a reasonable price. Yet, to my eyes, John’s expert stitching and years of experience conspired to produce a distinctive object of subtle beauty in which the form fitted the function perfectly.

The shoe shop in Epping High St opened by Alfred Edward Bachelor in 1919 with the saddlers next door

Alfred John Batchelor

In the saddlery in Epping in the sixties

Alfred John Batchelor with his father Alfred Robert

John at his work bench

Sewing a dog lead with the traditional saddlers’ double stitch

Bob Cuthbert repairing harnesses at A E Batchelor in the sixties

The knife ‘liberated’ by Alfred Robert Batchelor in World War II and still in use

Anthony shows the card templates used to ensure saddles fit the horse’s back

A Sciver – a machine for splitting leather straps

Catalogue for Bliss of Sun St, beside Liverpool St Station

You may also like to read about

Mia Sabel, Saddler

Tom Burch, Farrier

At Wood St Stables

Charles Keeping, Illustrator

July 26, 2018

by the gentle author

The illustrations of Charles Keeping (1924–1988) burned themselves into my consciousness as a child and I have loved his work ever since. A major figure in British publishing in the last century, Keeping illustrated over one hundred books (including the entire novels of Dickens) and won the Kate Greenaway and Carnegie Medals for his superlative talent.

In 1975, Keeping published ‘Cockney Ding Dong,’ in which he collected songs he remembered sung at home as a child. Illustrated with tender portraits of his extended family, the book is an unusual form of autobiography, recreating an entire cultural world through drawing and popular song.

I visited the Keeping Gallery at Shortlands in Kent to meet Vicky and Sean Keeping who talked to me about their father’s work, as we sat in the family home where they grew up and where much of his work is now preserved and displayed for visitors. You can read my interview at the end of this selection of illustrations from ‘Cockney Ding Dong.’

The Gentle Author – So why did your father create ‘Cockney Ding Dong’ ?

Vicky Keeping – We come from a family – he came from a family – where they all got together. They’d have their beer, they enjoyed their beer, and their Guinness – some of the women drank Guinness – and they would all sing and his Uncle Jack would play the piano. And everybody had their own song, so people would give their song and Dad loved that. We still know them all still, because we loved it, and people didn’t say, ‘Oh no, I’m not going to do it!’ They just got up and sang, and it was lovely and the songs were all from the music hall.

The Gentle Author – But he wasn’t a Cockney – where was he was from?

Vicky Keeping – He was from Vauxhall and he was born in Vauxhall Walk, Lambeth. He was very much brought up by the female side of his family. His father passed away when he was ten, he had a burst ulcer. He was a driver on the Daily Star.

Sean Keeping – Before that, his father had been a professional boxer between about 1912 and 1922. He had many professional fights. I know he definitely fought the British champion at the time and won! A chap called Ernie Rice.

His father came from a very poor family and he was orphaned. They had a watercress stall in Lambeth Walk but they died in the workhouse. His mother’s family were also Londoners from Lambeth who came from a nautical background – his grandfather had been a sailor in the Merchant Navy. In the eighteenth century, they had come up to London from the West Country. Like many families, they had not originated in London.

Vicky Keeping – His grandfather was very important to Dad, because he was a great storyteller and would tell stories from his voyages and the different people he met and he was – I suppose – a bit ahead of his time because he was welcoming to all and would speak very positively about the people he met around the world. Dad loved hearing his stories, so he learnt from his grandfather that storytelling was important. That came through to us as well – when we sat round the family tea table we were encouraged to tell stories.

Very sadly, Dad’s dad and Dad’s grandfather passed away in the same year – in 1934 – when Dad was ten. It left Dad and his sister Grace and their mum Eliza very poorly off, but they lived in this extended family with Dad’s granny who was a very strong influence. Dad idolised her and his aunties, and they thought he was the blonde blue-eyed boy and they loved him dearly.

Sean Keeping – They lived in a small terraced house in 74 Vauxhall Walk, which was right alongside the market, and Dad’s early influences were not just his family but also the characters in Vauxhall Market – those often crop up in his books.

Vicky Keeping – One of the things that Dad loved to do in the garden was to look through a little knot hole to see the Schweppes bottling plant and the workhorses and that was something that never left him, that memory of horses.

There was no obvious creativeness in his background, but Dad said his father used to come home – because he worked in print – and bring home paper, and Dad’s sister Grace used to write a story and Dad would illustrate it.

Sean Keeping – He was not a child who would have gone running around the streets, they were children who would sit at home writing a story and drawing. From a very young age, Dad showed a fantastic aptitude for drawing and we’ve got some drawings of his from when he was twelve and thirteen, and they are really fantastic – showing a London of working horses and working people, that’s what he was trying to depict in his drawings.

Vicky Keeping – He was called up in the Second World War but he worked for Clowes the printers when he left school at thirteen. He was not a particularly great scholar at school. One of the things was that he found difficult was that he was left-handed and the teachers would try to get him to write with his right hand.

Sean Keeping – Working for Clowes the printers, he would go around on a horse & cart delivering paper, and that was where he met one of the characters who had a great influence on him – Tom Cherry. Many of the burly-looking men driving a horse through London in Dad’s pictures – they’re Tom Cherry, and usually he drew a little boy sitting next to him which was Dad. Tom had a great influence, telling him stories about London and the people of London.

Vicky Keeping – Dad became a Telegrapher on a frigate and he was on the boat at D-Day. After the war, he tried to get into Art College but that was very difficult, so he worked collecting pennies from gas meters. He worked for the Gas Light & Coke Company and he would go around on a bicycle, with a big sack on his shoulder with all the pennies in it, going from door to door in North Kensington. He used to tell us funny stories. At that time, North Kensington was a poor area and I think he got a lot out of the characters he met there, but he hated working for a company, for a boss, and he decided he wanted to do something better.

He went to night classes at the Regent St Polytechnic but, because he left school at thirteen with no formal qualifications and had been through the war, it was very difficult for him to get in at first. He tried and tried, and eventually he spent time in a psychiatric hospital due to his experiences in the War. I think it was also to do with his father. When his father and his grandfather died in the same year, they were laid out in the front room and – as a ten year old – Dad had to go and kiss them. That had a profound effect on him. He spent six months in a psychiatric hospital and two weeks of those were in a deep sleep. Yet he talked about the great characters he met there and there was a Psychiatrist, Dr Sargent, who knew Dad should go to Art College and he supported him in writing letters – and eventually that’s what happened.

Sean Keeping – When Dad went to Art College, he had to fight hard to get a grant because, at that stage, his mother had been widowed for a number of years and she had a job cleaning, so there was not a lot of money around. But eventually, he got a grant to go to Regent St Polytechnic. Right after the war, there were two types of students – those that had just come out of the forces who were much more mature and those who had come directly from school. So it was an interesting mix of people and mix of cultures.

The Gentle Author – How did he set out to make an income as an illustrator?

Sean Keeping – Dad was not motivated by making a career or making money or even motivated – I think – by success. Dad was motivated by one thing and that was doing what he wanted to do – drawing pictures of things that he wanted to draw pictures of – so he never really thought about a career. But then he got a job on the Daily Herald, drawing the strip cartoon and that started to pay very well, and from that he was able to move out of the council flat that he lived in with his mother in Kennington and buy a small terraced house in Crystal Palace.

When they were looking for houses, once he was making money from the strip cartoon, they looked in two areas – one was Crystal Palace and the other was Chelsea. Now the idea that you might choose Crystal Palace or Chelsea to look for a house nowadays is an strange idea, but they decided on Crystal Palace!

(Transcription by Rachel Blaylock)

Visit The Keeping Gallery at Shortlands in Kent where you can see the work of both Charles & Renate Keeping preserved in their family home. Visits are by appointment arranged through the website and Shortlands is a short train ride from Victoria.

An Afternoon In Great Bardfield

July 25, 2018

by the gentle author

Inspired by the Edward Bawden exhibition at Dulwich and encouraged by an invitation from resident Stella Herbert, I enjoyed a trip to Great Bardfield last week. Stella is an inveterate collector but perhaps most impressive is her collection of watering cans parading through her yard like a flock of prize geese. Did you know that English watering cans have a handle positioned laterally over the can while French watering cans have a handle that traverses the can from back to front? This was just the first of many interesting facts I learned in what proved to be a day filled with wonders.

Alas I arrived a few weeks too late to view Stella’s cherished rainbow-hued herbaceous border, yet I was entranced by her garden with its hidden arches and mysterious pathways leading to an old brick-floored greenhouse where an ancient vine and a lemon tree preside.

After the clamour of London, the quietude of Great Bardfield was startling. When we ventured to walk up through the High Street, the peace that is distinctive to an English village in the middle of the day in the middle of summer prevailed. No pedestrians and few cars. The square Brick House where Edward Bawden and Eric Ravilious lived in the middle of the last century sits at the centre of an appealing array of immaculately kept old houses of idiosyncratic form and style. Our destination was the cottage museum with its memorable display of locally made corn dollies and agricultural tools, all preserved within a cosy one room dwelling.

Great Bardfield was the subject of Edward Bawden’s Life in an English Village in 1949, illustrating the small trades that were essential to community life in his time, including the butcher, the baker, the tailor and the saddler. All gone now except the local pub, The Bell, and perhaps more residents work in London these days than in the village itself. Yet I was delighted to visit the excellent bookshop which is clearly a vital social focus as well as a supply of good reading material.

Stella is the keeper of the keys for the ‘cage,’ a lock-up for presumed miscreants in past days. We peered through the grille at the bearded mannequin perched upon his straw mattress and patiently listened to the recording which explained the history of misbehaviour in Great Bardfield, before Stella locked up for the night.

The attractive flint parish church sits on a hill overlooking the village which may explain the huge blue and gold tower clockface, claimed to be the largest in the land, which is of a scale to be read comfortably from a distance. Dating from the twelfth century, it has a modest down-to-earth squat proportion and is notable for its curious fourteenth century stone rood screen, sprouting like a tree diverging into branches of tracery with corbels representing Edward III and his wife. Within the sanctified stillness of the old church, tombs, artefacts and monuments testify to eight hundred years of village life in Great Bardfield.

A flock of watering cans

An avenue of apple trees

Edward Bawden’s house

Stella locks the village ‘cage’ for the night

Graffiti at the church

Great Bardfield church has one of the largest clockfaces in the land

Parish Church of Great Bardfield

You might also like to read about

Edward Bawden on Liverpool St Station

The New Cries of London, 1803

July 24, 2018

by the gentle author

This battered little chapbook of 1803 with its intricate hand-tinted engravings of street-sellers – that I found in the Bishopsgate Library – is the latest wonder to be uncovered in my investigation into popular prints of Cries of London down through the ages.

Even within the convention of these images, each artist brought something different and these plates are distinguished by their finely drawn figures – including some unexpected grotesques that appear to have stepped from the pages of a fairy tale, imparting an air of mystery to these everyday scenes of street trading.

I will be speaking about the Cries of London and showing favourite pictures on Tuesday 21st August at the meeting of London Historians at Sir Christopher Hatton in Leather Lane, EC1. The theme of the evening is London Retail and includes Tina Baxter on Leadenhall Market, Jane Young on Co-operative Stores, Dave Whittaker on Gamages, Andrea Tanner on Fortnum & Mason and Diane Burstein on St James’s – Locke & Co, Lobb and Floris. Click here to book a ticket

Milk below!

New Mackerel!

Dust Ho!

Chairs to mend!

Hot cross buns!

Any work for the tinker?

Cherries, threepence a pound!

Flowers for your garden!

Green cucumber!

Buy my watercress!

Sweep! Sweep!

Ground Ivy!

Green hastings!

Scarlet strawberries!

Primroses!

Past ten o’clock!

Images courtesy Bishopsgate Institute

You may also like to take a look at these other sets of the Cries of London

London Characters

Geoffrey Fletcher’s Pavement Pounders

Faulkner’s Street Cries

William Craig Marshall’s Itinerant Traders

London Melodies

Henry Mayhew’s Street Traders

H.W.Petherick’s London Characters

John Thomson’s Street Life in London

Aunt Busy Bee’s New London Cries

Marcellus Laroon’s Cries of London

John Player’s Cries of London

More John Player’s Cries of London

William Nicholson’s London Types

John Leighton’s London Cries

Francis Wheatley’s Cries of London

John Thomas Smith’s Vagabondiana of 1817

John Thomas Smith’s Vagabondiana II

John Thomas Smith’s Vagabondiana III

Thomas Rowlandson’s Lower Orders

More of Thomas Rowlandson’s Lower Orders

Adam Dant’s New Cries of Spittlefields

Victorian Tradesmen Scraps

Cries of London Scraps

Whitechapel Noise

July 23, 2018

by Vivi Lachs

Vivi Lachs introduces her new book, Whitechapel Noise: Jewish Immigrant life in Yiddish Song & Verse, London 1884-1914, exploring popular musical culture and how it spoke of social realities encountered by recent arrivals in the East End a century ago

Vivi Lachs by Sarah Ainslie

Hostu gezen a grinem”yid

hir blondzhendik aleyn?

Keyn koyrev nit, keyn goyel nit

un elnt vi a shteyn?

Di raykhe “kenen gornit ton”

Zey hobn tekhter, zin…

Di Londoner “komite-layt”

far zey iz er tsu GRIN.

Have you seen an immigrant Jew

Wandering here alone?

No relatives, no saviour

Just acutely lonely?

The rich ‘can’t do anything to help,’

They have daughters, sons…

And for the London ‘committee members’

He’s too new to be an immigrant.

London Bay Nakht (London At Night)

This Yiddish poem by Morris Winchevsky was published in 1884 in the newspaper Der Poylishe Yidl (The Polish Jew). Set to music and sung, the lyrics articulate a complaint about the rich, powerful London Jewish leadership who ignored the suffering of the poor, the unemployed, the homeless and the most recent immigrants. Each verse asks ‘have you seen?. London Bay Nakht pinpoints the social politics of its time – the homeless being moved on by the police and not allowed to rest, the death of a breadwinner leaving a family destitute, a newly-arrived Jewish immigrant not supported by the Jewish establishment until they have managed to survive in London for six-months. Morris Winchevsky was a Jewish socialist, a comrade of William Morris and his political poems became anthem for activists.

Whitechapel 1884 was a cacophony of talk, debate, laughter and bickering. All in Yiddish, because from the early eighteen-eighties the East End became home to over a hundred thousand Yiddish-speaking immigrants from Eastern Europe. They lived in cramped rooms, formed new relationships, struggled to find work in tailoring sweatshops, argued over politics and religion, discussed the latest strikes, the best bargain in Petticoat Lane, and Aaron Nager’s new song at York Minster Music Hall in Philpot St. Yiddish posters plastered the walls and printing houses produced scores of Yiddish newspapers, journals, pamphlets, and songsheets. Yiddish was ubiquitous in the streets, cafes, synagogues, markets and theatres.

Whitechapel Noise is a collection of tales of Jewish East End immigrant lives before the First World War. These tales have not been told before because they come from lyrics of penny song sheets sung in the Yiddish music hall and from the poetry and satire of Yiddish newspapers and journals that lie forgotten in libraries and archives. Popular poetry and pop songs are unusual sources for historians, yet these lyrics are immediate, filled with clever allusion and cheeky innuendo. Fierce battles about politics, sex and religion emerge.

More than four hundred rhyming lyrics depict the rich mosaic of immigrant life – pickpockets outside Broad St Station, courting couples at Crystal Palace, families struggling to pay rent on Berner St, child prostitution in Victoria Park and infants selling matches outside the Stock Exchange in Cornhill. Characters include William Gladstone, Lord Rothschild and anarchist leader Rudolf Rocker, as well as Yiddish theatre stars Beki Goldstein and Joseph Sherman. They speak of the 1892 general election, the 1905 Alien Act, and controversies surrounding the building of the Feinman Yiddish People’s Theatre in 1911. They reveal how the pressure of immigration changed religious practice and the roles of men and women. Lyrics describe working conditions in the sweating trades, child labour, and the age of consent. Others dramatise controversies over the decline of religious observance, levels of teachers’ pay, problems of gambling, sexual exploitation, and the clash between exponents of aesthetic high-brow Yiddish theatre and low-brow Yiddish music hall.

In a sheyner zumer nakht

gey ikh mir fartrakht.

Tref ikh mayn vaybl vi a tayvl

volkndik bay nakht

in ridzhent strit –

es vert mir nit git.

Oysgeshnitn azoy vayt,

un vinkt tsu yunge layt.

Nu freg ikh aykh,

tsi iz dos glaykh?

A brokh ir dort in zayt,

nor ikh of kors

bin balebos.

On a lovely summer night

I go out strolling and contemplating

And meet my wife like the devil

walking at night

In Regent Street

It won’t be good for me.

Her low-cut dress,

And winking at young people.

So tell me

Is this right?

To hell with her

I am, of course

The man of the house.

Vos Geyst Nisht Aheym, Sore-Gitl? (Won’t You Come Home Sarah-Gitl?)

Arn Nager, a well-known Yiddish comic, played roles in the Yiddish music-hall of pathetic and disgruntled men whose wives were running rings around them. His song Vos geyst nisht aheym, Sore-gitl?, describes Sarah-Gitl out and about kissing men in pubs while her husband throws a tantrum, ineffectually trying to get her to come home. At the top of the songsheet, the instruction reads, ‘to be sung to the tune of Won’t You Come Home, Bill Bailey?,’ a popular ragtime tune by Hughie Cannon written in 1902.

Yet Arn Nager’s song is far more than a mere Yiddish translation, the gender roles are reversed. Bill Bailey was gallivanting with other women while his wife pleaded with him to return, but in Yiddish the woman is given the promiscuous role. Why this turnaround? Clearly, it was not a reflection of everyday life. The situation may be funnier than the original, but there may also be a deeper reason. This is not the only song that pivots on gender role-reversal. Many similar examples offer an insight into the circumstances of immigrant life.

Amongst the audience, there were men who had chosen to leave the poverty of Eastern Europe to give their families a better chance in London yet struggled to be the breadwinner in this new world. Their wives worked long hours and they had to take in lodgers to make ends meet. The failure of their traditional role as patriarch gave them a sense of powerlessness and they may have taken cathartic relief in recognising a scenario in which a male protagonist experiences even greater humiliation than they had known.

You may notice words in the Yiddish text that come from English – popularly called Cockney Yiddish – such as ridzhent strit (Regent St), bavelkomt (welcomed), votsh un tsheyn (watch and chain) and bizi un slek (busy and slack periods in sweatshop work). The word grin in London Bay Nakht (London At Night) is the English word ‘green,’ taken here to mean a naive new arrival from Eastern Europe. London’s immigrant community was in a state of flux and this anglicized Yiddish reflected the spoken language of the Jewish East End streets.

Shuln makht men do lehavdl poshet gor fun kloysters

Peysekh hit men op getray

teykef nokh dem seyder geyt men esn oysters

anshtot afikoymen est men gor pay.

People make synagogues here out of churches

They keep Passover loyally

Yet right after the Seder they eat oysters

Instead of the ritual matza they eat pie.

Freg Keyn Katshanes (Don’t Ask Silly Questions) 1900

Many Eastern European immigrants were orthodox Jews and they often found London a challenging place to observe their religious practice. The established Anglo-Jewry had large synagogues which were more like churches than the small khevres or prayer rooms the immigrants prayed in. England brought added difficulties – of the requirement to work on the Sabbath and the temptation to abandon religion altogether, eating non-kosher pies and oysters. Some struggled with a middle way, seeking a practising Judaism that was more modern. Lyrics of these popular songs speak eloquently of day-to-day struggles as people assimilated with the changing reality of a new place, fulfilling their need to become settled and conform to new social standards.

Freg nit keyn katshanes, es iz england

Don’t ask silly questions, this is England!