The Life & Times Of Mr Pussy
Over the past nine years of publishing daily in the pages of Spitalfields Life, some of the most popular and best loved stories have been those about my old cat Mr Pussy who died last summer. So, with your help, I am collecting them into a book entitled THE LIFE & TIMES OF MR PUSSY, A Memoir Of A Favourite Cat to be published by Spitalfields Life Books on 20th September.
There are two ways you can help me publish the book.
1. I am seeking readers who are willing to invest £1000 in THE LIFE & TIMES OF MR PUSSY. In return, we will publish your name in the book and invite you to a celebratory dinner hosted by yours truly. If you would like to know more, please drop me an email spitalfieldslife@gmail.com
2. Preorder a copy of THE LIFE & TIMES OF MR PUSSY and you will receive a signed and inscribed copy in September when the book is published. Click here to preorder your copy
Below you can read the opening pages and in coming days I will be publishing further excerpts.
THE LIFE & TIMES OF MR PUSSY, A Memoir Of A Favourite Cat
I was always disparaging of those who doted over their pets, as if this apparent sentimentality were an indicator of some character flaw. That changed when I bought a cat, just a couple of weeks after the death of my father. My mother was inconsolable and sat immobile for days. So I bought her a tiny black kitten in Mile End in the East End of London – no bigger than my hand – and I took him on the train to Devon, arriving late at night and giving him into her care.
At that moment, she transformed from a woman with a bereavement problem to a woman with a cat problem. Looking back on it, I attribute Mr Pussy’s placid intelligent nature to those first impressionable months of his life with her. Time passed and six years later, after she died, he returned to live out his days with me in Spitalfields.
I understand now how pets become receptacles of memory and emotion, and I have learnt that this is why people can lavish such affection upon animals. Mr Pussy’s age measured the time since I lost my father and, as he grew into maturity, my father’s memory lived through him, while his distinctive personality reflected my mother’s own nature. I held him in trust for her and in memory and love of them both.
* * *
I think back to when I woke one night and decided to get a cat. It was just a few weeks after my father died and I had been lying thinking of ways to console my mother. The funeral was over but we both were still enveloped by the crisis. I decided a cat was the answer, so I set out to find one that day and take it with me on the train to Devon, as a gift for her. Yet I hit a blank at once when I rang a pet shop and discovered that cats cannot be bought. I spoke to cat charities and they could not help me either. They told me they required an inspection of the prospective owner’s house before they could even consider offering me a cat.
As a child, I owned a beloved grey tabby that I acquired when I began primary school and which died when I left home to go to college. The creature’s existence spanned an era in the life of our family and, at the time, my mother said that she would never replace it with another because its death caused her too much sadness. Yet I always wondered if this was, in fact, her response to my own departure, as her only child.
Now my father was dead, she was alone in a large house with a long garden ending in an orchard. It was an ideal home for a cat, she had experience with cats, so I knew that at this moment of bereavement, she needed a cat to bring fresh life into her world. I called her and discussed it, hypothetically. She told me she wanted a female.
I rang veterinary surgeries asking if they knew of anyone giving kittens away, without any luck. Working systematically, I rang every pet shop in the London directory, asking if they knew anyone wanting to dispose of kittens. Eventually, a pet shop offered to help me, as long as I could be discreet, they said. They had rescued a litter of kittens just a few weeks old, prematurely separated from their mother and abandoned on the street, and they needed to find homes for them urgently. Naturally, they could not sell me one because that would be illegal, but maybe – they said – I could give them something to cover the costs of taking care of the others?
So I went to the pet shop in question, in a quiet street around the back of Mile End tube station. It was mid-afternoon and the light was fading. I was planning to go to Paddington directly afterward and catch the train to Exeter. As I approached the shop, my heart was beating fast and I recognised my own emotionalism, channelling my sense of loss into this strange pursuit. I entered the shop and there on the right was a cage of kittens, all tangled up playing together. Instantly, one left the litter and walked over to the grille, studying me. This was the moment. This was the cat. A mutual decision had been made.
I asked the owner if I could have the black one that was now clawing at the mesh to hold my attention. The shopkeeper assured me the cat was female and, after a short negotiation, I gave the owner forty pounds. Becoming distressed when it was time for me to leave, “You will take care of it won’t you?” he implored me, tears dripping from his eyes.
Startled by his outburst, I walked away quickly and got onto the tube just as the rush hour began. The tiny creature in the box screamed insistently, drawing the attention of the entire carriage. It screamed all the way to Devon and that night I lay in bed clutching the animal to my chest, as the only way I could find to lull it enough to sleep. My mother christened it “Rosemary” and the cat grew calm under her influence, as she sat by the fireside reading novels through the long winter months.
The next summer, I moved back to live with my mother in the house where I grew up – when it became clear she could no longer live alone – and I discovered the new cat had fallen into all the same paths and patterns of behaviour as my childhood tabby. But when we sent the cat to the vet for neutering, there was a surprise – they rang to inform us it was a tom cat, not a female as we had believed. The name ‘Rosemary’ was abandoned, instead we called him ‘Mr Pussy’ in recognition of this early gender confusion.
I cared for my mother until she died five years later and I had to keep Mr Pussy away from her room eventually, because the presence of a cat became too threatening for her in her paralysis. Mr Pussy skulked around in disappointment and revealed an independent spirit, running wild, chasing moorhens through the water meadows of the River Exe. But then one day, I picked Mr Pussy up and sat with him on my lap in the cabin of a removal truck as we made the return journey to London for good.
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CLICK HERE TO PREORDER A COPY OF THE LIFE & TIMES OF MR PUSSY
Julius Mendes Price’s London Types
It is my greatest delight to show these examples of London Types, designed and written by the celebrated war artist Julius Mendes Price and issued with Carreras Black Cat Cigarettes in 1919. After months of searching, these are the latest acquisition in my ever-growing collection of London Street Cries down through the ages. Some of these images – such as the cats’ meat man – are barely changed from earlier centuries, yet others – such as the telephone girl – are undeniably part of the modern world.
You may also like to take a look at these other sets of the Cries of London
More John Player’s Cries of London
More Samuel Pepys’ Cries of London
Geoffrey Fletcher’s Pavement Pounders
William Craig Marshall’s Itinerant 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
William Nicholson’s London Types
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
At Minto Place, Bethnal Green
Billy Reading sent me this memoir by his great aunt Joyce Ellis, recalling her childhood visits to Minto Place, Bethnal Greet, home of her beloved grandfather James Ward (born 1861) and aunt Mary Ward (born 1888)
Joyce Ellis
During the thirties, Mum and I used to visit my grandfather James Ward nearly every week in Bethnal Green, travelling by tram and bus from our home in Leyton. He lived at 5 Minto Place which was part of a terrace of houses whose front door opened straight onto the pavement. It was a rented house and the front upstairs bedroom was sub-let to Mr & Mrs Shave whom we never met.
Steep linoleum-clad stairs led directly up to grandfather’s tiny workroom at the back of the house. His trade was making hand-sewn ballet shoes, made from lovely soft leather, black, red and white, which when finished would dangle streamer-like on hooks from their long laces around the wall. He also made light-soled shoes and I can see him now, using hob and last, cutting, fixing the sole and hammering the tacks into place.
My grandfather sewed ballet shoes with waxed thread using two needles simultaneously which were curved at the ends, one held in each hand. He always wore a well-worn coarse apron, deeply marked with grease and dirt, and his hands bore the evidence of years of hard work. A fire burned in the grate in his work room in winter and it was stifling hot in summer, even when the sash window overlooking the yard and the adjoining grimy rooftops was thrown open wide. Frequently, he stopped for a rolled fag of good British Oak tobacco, which was lit by a homemade bullet-shaped lighter with a huge uncontrollable flame that had to be carefully manoeuvred to avoid singeing his moustache. And he supped large mugs of tea, in which he left the spoon whilst he drank.
Meanwhile, downstairs in the tiny scullery, Aunt Mary managed all the household duties in a quiet detached fashion. There was a coal-burning copper for clothes washing in one corner, with a deep sink and scrubbed wooden drainer attached, beside a small table and a cooker. Everything was spotlessly clean but very basic. When needed, odd slip mats were placed on the linoleum covered floor. Obviously, times were hard yet my Aunt was a wonderful manager, making the best of what was available.
Refreshments with my Aunt were taken in the dark front room. Bread, butter and jam, and quite often soda bread was provided, plus a good solid dripping cake with a handful of dried fruit. The fireplace had an over-mantle with ornaments and framed sepia photographs and, in winter, a coal fire flickered (excellent for making toast) and shone on the china cupboard with its coloured glass and decorated plates. The gas mantle over the fireplace was lit when dusk descended but not before in an effort to keep costs to a minimum. A fire would only be lit in a bedroom if the inhabitant was seriously ill – this was the only exception!
The scullery door led out into a small, walled backyard. It contained the lavatory with its scrubbed wooden seat and newspaper, carefully cut and hung on a string. The communal tap of the house was also in the yard alongside the tin bath hung from a nail on the wall. Jim, the terrier dog, had his kennel in the corner beside the mangle with large wooden rollers.
My grandfather had a disfiguring lump in his back. Apparently, he broke a bone years earlier while climbing a ladder at home but he scorned doctors and paid no attention to it at the time. In later years however, it gave forth an unpleasant discharge, although he never made any fuss about it. A very tough man, as those of his time and circumstances were, he had to survive and any show of weakness was scorned and belittled. His personal remedy for his ailment was ‘a good dose of liquorice powder,’ a tonic which he also administered to his dog.
Aunt Mary dutifully moved into Minto Place to care for my grandfather during his middle to later years. Missionary work in the East End of London was her life’s work and calling. Quite often accommodation went with the job and finally she became a caretaker and companion to a couple at a Jewish Mission close by Bethnal Green station. She always thought of the welfare of others with complete disregard for herself.
My grandfather was an Air Raid Warden during the Blitz and ruled Minto Place and its inhabitants with authority. His ‘local’ was the Lord Canrobert, just around the the corner in Canrobert St, to which made his way with clockwork regularity for a pint of beer. Cribbage was played and I seem to remember money being paid in weekly for various Thrift Clubs, a means of ensuring money was available, however little, when needed. Sometimes an unattended pram would be seen outside with a couple of young children in it, whilst the parents were imbibing, but mostly pubs were male-dominated while the women stayed at home.
Wolverly St playground and the dark satanic school with its high walls faced Minto Place. Neighbours often gathered at their hearthstone doorways, some sitting on chairs in sociable groups, for this was the place to exchange views or just watch life pass by. A cool breeze could be created by leaving the front and back doors wide open the filter air through the house. If you were lucky enough to scrounge an orange box from the market, add a set of old pram wheels, you were much sought after by companions. Home made scooters, were also popular, as well as hoops, tops and whips.
One method of washing was the Bag Wash. Clothes were boiled in vast coppers and taken home, after they had been mangled, to drape over what was available to dry, and irons were permanently kept by the fire to be heated when necessary.
This was the hey-day of the Pawn Broker with three brass balls hanging outside the shop. People in need of money urgently to pay off a debt, usually the rent, pledged whatever they thought might bring forward some ready cash – a suit of clothes, a watch perhaps – in the vain hope that they could pay back the Broker to redeem the items at a later date.
Most streets had a corner shop where such essentials as firewood at a penny a bundle could be bought. Paraffin and Carbolic Acid for drains were dispensed to your own tin or bottle, and Vinegar was stored in wooden casks – everything was sold loose. There were biscuits displayed in tins from which you made your own choice – pick ‘n’ mix – and broken biscuits were much sought after because they were cheaper. Household soap was sold as a long bar, cut to size as required, and stored for a while to harden in order to last longer.
Groups of musicians begged in the streets, frequently ex-service First World War veterans who were quite often limbless or blind and ever hopeful of a penny thrown their way. Unfortunately, most passersby were just as hard up themselves and could not afford to contribute.
East End Sunday mornings were never complete without a visit to crowded Petticoat Lane in Aldgate for shopping and meeting friends. The choice of goods and produce was vast, ranging from home made toffee and cough candies to fruit, flowers and vegetables. Herrings were sold straight out of deep barrels and live eels wriggled in trays until they came under the thud of the cleaver to be chopped into small pieces for the waiting customer. They did not come fresher than that! I shall leave the smell that pervaded the air to your imagination.
Hawkers sold bottles of medicine which they said would cure all your ailments. I well remember one who had the answer to the elimination of worms, which were quite prevalent in those days – I suppose through lack of general hygiene. He would have the offending worms on display, preserved in glass bottles, to support his claims. One had to be careful of bag-snatchers and pick-pockets in such crowds.
Nearby, Club Row was for the sale of livestock – puppies, barely old enough to leave their mothers, chicks to be reared in back yards for much-needed eggs, goldfish to be carried away triumphant in a jam jar. More or less anything could be bought or sold there.
Horse-drawn carts and wagons, both commercial and domestic – including the baker and the milkman – were still the main form of transport. While the carters were in pubs and cafes at lunchtime, horses were given their nosebags containing chaff, usually leaving great drifts of the stuff in the road where they had thrown up their heads to eat the reminder of the bag and spilt the contents. Great long stone drinking troughs were located at busy street corners for their consumption. Someone was always on the look out, ready to rush out armed with a bucket and shovel to sweep up the resultant manure for sale to the few who may have had a postage stamp-sized garden. I think the going rate was a penny a bucket.
My grandfather’s pride and joy was a very heavy bicycle on which he travelled everywhere, lit by a huge acetylene lamp. He had a black cape and sou’wester for wet days. When we lived in Leyton, Chingford and later Ilford, he regularly visited us on Sundays ‘on the bike’ up until his late seventies. His first encounter with a roundabout on the Woodford Avenue completely flummoxed him and he said he went round it the wrong way. Rene & I always received sixpence pocket money on these welcome visits. When we lived at 20 Flempton Rd, Leyton E10, my dad and grandad rented an allotment nearby. They shared the cost of seed, the work and the produce. Grandad cycled his share back to Bethnal Green in a hessian sack tied around his body. Dad built a nice shed with seats on three sides and hooks to keep the tools. A well was sunk and protected with a creosoted wooden lid.
Grandfather died in his mid-eighties after a short illness. Aunt Mary brought us the news – few people had telephones – and I can still remember the shock and emptiness that his death brought me. No more to hear the eagerly-awaited bell ring out on his bike to herald his arrival. No more to hear the latest news of Minto Place and its environs. He was a much-loved hardworking Victorian man, full of character and strength.
Minto Place was patched up many times after bomb attacks and was eventually pulled down for redevelopment. Aunt Mary was temporarily rehoused in a flat in the Guinness Buildings, Victoria Park, Bethnal Green, which was a dreadful depressing old building, long overdue for demolition. It was so dark that the light had permanently to be kept switched on. Lines of washing, secured from the balconies, stretched across courtyards until it was dry. Conversations seemed to echo from every level and the smell and feel of poverty was all around.
Thankfully, she was transferred to a block of flats know as Peabody Buildings in the Cambridge Heath Rd district of Bethnal Green, where she lived for a while, before finally moving as part of a London County Council scheme to relocate people out of London into the countryside at the edge of the Green Belt at Chigwell Row in Essex. It was retired person’s flat but it was not long before she found part-time work, helping the family with housekeeping. I hope they appreciated her fully and thought themselves fortunate to have her services, as there never was a more conscientious or hardworking person. She lived entirely for other people – Church, family and work were her priorities.
Aunt Mary visited us at Babbacombe Gardens, Ilford, once a month, travelling by bus to Gants Hill and changing. When my brother Martin was born in 1953, she took over from my mother at the time of his birth and stayed a couple of weeks to undertake all the household duties to the last detail.
Although she never had much money to spend, Aunt Mary had the magic touch with cookery and was always able to turn basic ingredients into an appetising meal. Her needlework was also born out of making something out of nothing. Invariably, second hand material was used and her stitches were so tiny they could hardly be seen.
BBC Radio Four was her constant companion, enabling her to keep abreast of current affairs, and reading widely was a great joy. The bible was the source of her knowledge, direction and peace of mind yet she was never sanctimonious or forced her faith upon us. Poetry was of particular interest to her and she would sometimes borrow my books to share and read aloud with her friends. I remember the Welsh poet W.H. Davies being one of her many favourites. Perhaps his early days as a tramp appealed to her?
Aunt Mary died aged seventy-six and is buried in Chigwell Row churchyard. Only upon reflection as an adult do I fully realise and appreciate her sterling, selfless qualities and sensitivity which endured unwaiveringly. I feel privileged to have such a dear aunt as my mentor.
James Ward enjoys a trip to the beach dressed in a three piece suit
A family group during the Second World War with James Ward second from right
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At The Reform Club
Contributing Photographer Patricia Niven & I visited the Reform Club in Pall Mall one quiet morning recently before the members arrived to take the portraits of those who work to keep this august institution running flawlessly within its palatial clubhouse of 1841, designed by Sir Charles Barry architect of the Houses of Parliament. Perhaps most famous as the fictional rendezvous for Phileas Fogg and his friends in Around the World in Eighty Days, the Reform Club originated among Members of Parliament who pledged support for the Great Reform Act of 1832, initiating the parliamentary campaign for universal suffrage that met its resolution in the last century.
Mohammed Anzaoui, Club Steward
“I started at the Reform Club on 4th November 1991. I came as a student from Morocco via Gibraltar. I used to work in the Royal Overseas League until a friend of mine who worked here as a Chamberlain told me I would like it, so I thought I would give it it a try. I had an interview with Robin Forrest the Secretary on 2nd November 1991 and straightaway he asked me when I would like to start, so I started the next Monday. Coming to the Reform Club was a big step up. I worked as a Assistant-Chamberlain from 1991 until 1999 and then I moved to banqueting, supervising and setting up the function room for lunches and dinners.
When I first came here, I lived in the building and it was strange. I had nothing else in my life and I could not invite friends to visit because I was living in a private building. It was a lowly life. The first two years were tough but then I got used to it. After three years, I met my wife and got married and moved out to Elephant & Castle. It was a new life!
In 2008, I could have gone to work somewhere else but I really loved it in the Club. It was my home from home, and James Coldrick, the Club Steward was about to retire, so the members encouraged me to apply for the position. I asked the Secretary and he said, ‘If you like the job, you can have it any time.’ As Club Steward, I greet the members. It is a hard job, it is not just standing at the top of the stairs and smiling. You are here Monday to Friday and you have to give it 100%. You leave all your problems outside, you do not take them to work. As Club Steward, I am the face of the Club.
People come here who have been working all day and at six o’clock they want to relax and have a drink, so I make sure we are ready for them and they are looked after. Each day you stand for four hours and then you have an hour’s break and you stand for another four hours. The only other people that do this are the Royal Horseguards! I keep myself fit because as long as I am fit I will be able to do it. By November, I will complete twenty-seven years at the Reform Club.”
Sheron Easter, Subscriptions & IT
“This is my twenty-sixth year at the Reform Club. I was born in Bethnal Green but I live in Hornchurch now, although my dad – who is ninety-three – still lives there and I still go to Pelliccis now and then. After my second child, I wanted a part-time job and I saw this in the Evening Standard in July 1992 and applied because the hours suited me. There are two parts to my job, membership and subscriptions – collecting the subs and maintaining the database – and IT administration.
This is a very unusual place to work. I came here from a large firm of solicitors and it was a culture shock at first. On my first day, I put all my letters in the post box here, thinking they would get taken to the post room to be stamped or franked and delivered to the post office, but in fact I was supposed to stick stamps on them myself. People tend to stay here forever and we all feel connected to each other, so we become almost like a family. This is not a corporate organisation, it is gentlemanly and polite. The proportion of women members has risen steadily. When I joined it was about 15% but we are up to around 19% now. It is growing slowly but I think we need more.”
Nestor Castro, Barman
“I have been here for fifteen years. I was working at the Criterion in Piccadilly Circus as Waiter when a friend asked me if I would like to work at the Reform Club, so I came here and talked to the Restaurant Manager but he said they did not have any vacancy for a Waiter but they were looking for a Barman. ‘If you want the job, you can have it,’ he said. I love working here, especially as it is only Monday to Friday so I can spend weekends with my family. I started working in a hotel doing breakfasts and then in a cinema before spending fifteen years at Santori, a Japanese restaurant in St James St. I work from ten o’clock until three o’clock and then back at five o’clock until ten o’clock. I do not leave the building, I relax in the staff TV room during my break. I have been working in catering since I came to this country from the Philippines in 1986, my wife had already been here since 1975 – eleven years we were separated before we were reunited.”
Paul Austin, General Office & Events
“I just do the menial admin really, and also the box office. I graduated in 1993 from the University of Westminster and it was a recession, so I was on the dole for a bit and desperate for a job. I found an advert in the Evening Standard for a job here as a Porter. I did that for a couple of years and then this job came up in July 1995, which I was invited to apply for, and I have been in the office ever since. I have been here twenty-five years and it has always been a great place to work, they treat the staff very well which makes it a happy place to be.
When I started in the office in 1995, we did not have an email address, we were still using fax machines and I had a manual typewriter. At the end of the nineties, we got our first email address. It was reform_club@msn.com and I used to log on to msn and check it at the end of each day to see if anyone had sent us an email. That was state of the art then.
Nowadays, members do not have to wear a tie anymore – that was voted through a year ago. Also members are permitted to use their mobile phones and tablets in the club but not to make calls. They can check emails and texts, and read a book on their ipad or kindle as long as the device is silent. That is how we have evolved to reflect the modern world. Things are changing apace and sometimes the club struggles but we are getting there.
Because I have been here so long, the members often pop into my office for a chat. This week will be a significant week because it is the first test match at Lords so a number of members will come in to discuss the cricket. People ring me up if they do not know who to ask a question of and they ask me.
When the club was created in the eighteen-thirties, it was tied up with electoral reform and had its own remit. Today it is virtually impossible to describe a member of the Reform Club, we have members from all professions. There is no political aspect and we have no longer have any Members of Parliament since the last election. The last Prime Minister that was member of the Reform Club was Lloyd George a hundred years ago.”
Hugh Wynter, Banqueting
“I came to work at the Reform Club in 1996. It was through a friend who was a member, she mentioned there were some positions going here. I had two interviews and got the job straightaway. I started in catering in 1977 and I have been in it ever since, working in hotels, banqueting places and restaurants. My last job before I came was with Freemasons and they were very difficult people to look after, they wanted everything for nothing.
Coming here was quite different. I knew it was a private members club but I had not met the members. The first lunch I had to organise was for Stella Rimington, Head of MI5, but then I began to organise lunches in the library which can seat up to one hundred and seventy comfortably, or three to four hundred at a standing reception. I have personally served Mikhail Gorbachev when he came with his wife.
I tell my staff who, what and where, so they serve the right meal to whosoever. We have a new boss and a new chairman and we did our first livery dinner recently and it went without a hitch. The staff were perfect from start to finish and I was well chuffed. I really like doing functions here and looking after the members and their guests. That is why I have been here so long. Now I am organising my own sixtieth birthday party here with here with two hundred guests, about thirty of whom are members.”
Anna Kwiatek, Facilities
“I came to London from Poland in 2002 as a student studying English, but at home I had been studying Dermatology. I first came to Reform Club in 2003, working for an agency, as a Waitress serving in the restaurant. In 2005, they asked me to join the permanent staff and I accepted, and that was my beginning in the Reform Club. I was very impressed by the place when I first came here. The work was good and the members were friendly. Since 2016, I have worked as an Administrator in Facilities & Maintenance although this does not quite describe my work – Sometimes it feels like I’ve done every job in the Club!! I do all the ordering and deal with the invoices for the Club, and manage the building works as well. My office is in the basement but I go all over the building checking the maintenance and renovations. I like working here because I love this beautiful building.”
Photographs copyright © Patricia Niven
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At John Keats’ House
“Much more comfortable than a dull room upstairs, where one gets tired of the pattern of the bed curtains” – Keats was moved to this room on 8th February 1820 at the onset of tuberculosis
I set out with the intention to photograph the morning sunshine in John Keats’ study at his house in Hampstead. Upon my arrival, the sky turned occluded yet I realised this overcast day was perhaps better suited to the literary history that passed between these walls two centuries ago. The property was never Keats’ House in any real sense but, rather, where he had a couple of rooms for eighteen months as a sub-let in a shared dwelling.
Born in a tavern in Moorgate in 1795, where the Globe stands today, and baptised at St Botolph’s Bishopsgate, John Keats was ridiculed by John Gibson Lockhart in Blackwood’s magazine in 1817 for being of the ‘Cockney School,’ implying his rhymes suggested working class speech. Qualifying at first as an Apothecary and then studying to be a Surgeon, in 1816 John Keats sacrificed both these professions in favour of poetry. “It is a better and a wiser thing to be a starved Apothecary than a starved Poet, so back to the shop Mr John, back to plasters, pills, and ointment boxes,” wrote Lockhart condescendingly, but Keats was not dissuaded from his chosen path.
Early on the morning of 1st December 1818, after passing the night nursing his brother Tom through the terminal stage of tuberculosis at 1 Well Walk, Hampstead, John Keats walked down the hill to the semi-detached villas known as Wentworth Place to visit his friend Charles Armitage Brown. He invited Keats to move in with him, sharing his half of the house and contributing to the household expenses.
John Keats’ arrival at Wentworth Place was also the entry to a time when he found love with Fanny Brawne, who moved in with her mother to the other half of the villa, as well as his arrival at the period of his greatest creativity as a poet. It was a brief interlude that was brought to an end in early 1820 when Keats discovered he had tuberculosis like his brother, from whom he had almost certainly contracted the infection.
Within three weeks of moving in, Keats suffered from a severe sore throat and worried for his own health as he struggled to complete his epic ‘Hyperion,’ yet his spirits were raised by an invitation for Christmas from Mrs Brawne at Elm Cottage and the growing attachment to her daughter Fanny, whom he had previously described as “animated, lively and even witty.”
In April, the tenants vacated the other part of Wentworth Place and Mrs Brawne moved in with her daughters, which meant that John Keats met the eighteen-year-old Fanny Brawne continuously in the gardens that surround the house. At any moment, he might glance her from the window and thus their affection grew, leading to the understanding of an engagement for marriage between them. This romance coincided with a flowering of creativity on Keats’ part, including the composition of of his celebrated ‘Ode to a Nightingale,’ inspired by hearing the nightingale sing while on a walk across Hampstead Heath
Yet Keats spent the summer away from Hampstead, visiting the Isle of Wight, Winchester and Bath, while engaging in an emotionally-conflicted correspondence with Fanny and pursuing the flow of poetic composition that had begun in the spring. Although Keats wrote to Brown of his attraction to return to Fanny, admitting “I like and cannot help it,” perversely he took rooms in Great College St rather than moving back to Wentworth Place. But on Keats’ return to Hampstead to collect his possessions on 10th October, Fanny Brawne opened the door to him and he was smitten by her generosity and confidence, and his hesitation dissolved. He moved back to Wentworth Place almost at once and presented Fanny with a garnet ring, even though he could not afford to marry.
Living in such close proximity to the object of his affection led Keats to adopt a vegetarian diet in the hope of lessening his physical desire. During the long harsh winter that followed, Keats was often isolated at Wentworth Place by heavy snow and freezing fog, making only occasional trips down to London to visit literary friends. Catching a late coach back to Hampstead, Keats had left his new warm coat behind at Wentworth Place and sat on the top of the coach to save money. Descending in Pond St, Keats felt feverish but, by the time he reached Wentworth Place, he was coughing blood and realised he had suffered a lung haermorrhage. Yet he wrote that all he could think of was, “the love that has been my pleasure and torment.” He was twenty-four years old.
At first Mrs Brawne tried to keep Fanny and John Keats apart in the tiny house and he wrote her twenty-two letters in six weeks, but it proved impossible to sustain the separation and she permitted her daughter to visit him every day while he was recuperating. Keats could not see her without recognising that death would separate them and he wrote a poem entitled ‘To Fanny’ in recrimination against himself.
The tragedy of the situation was compounded when Brown, Keats’ landlord, decided to lease his part of Wentworth Place, forcing Keats to leave in the spring. At the beginning of May, he moved to cheaper lodgings in Kentish Town, still within a mile of Fanny Brawne. In July, ‘Hyperion’ was published but by then he realised was living in the shadow of death and told a friend he was suffering from a broken heart.
In August, Keats went to Wentworth Place in distress and laid himself upon the mercy of Mrs Brawne, who took him in and permitted him to live under the same roof as her daughter for a few weeks before he travelled to Italy for his health. On Wednesday 13th September 1820, John Keats walked with Fanny Brawne from Wentworth Place to the coach stop in Pond Place and they said their last farewells. Fanny went home and wrote “Mr Keats left Hampstead” in her copy of the Literary Pocket Book that he gave her for Christmas 1818. They did not meet again and Keats never returned to Wentworth Place, dying in Rome on 23rd February 1821.
Within decades, the railway came to Hampstead and then the tube train, and the village became a suburb. An actress bought Wentworth Place, redeveloping it by combining the two houses into one and adding a large dining room on the side. In 1920, the house was threatened with demolition to make way for a block of flats. However, funds were raised to restore the house as a memorial to Keats. Thus you may visit it today and enter the place John Keats and Fanny Brawne fell in love, and where he wrote some of the greatest poems in our language.
John Keats in 1819 when he lived at Wentworth Place
Wentworth Place, completed 1816 as one of the first houses to be built in Lower Hampstead Heath
John Keats lived here
In John Keats’ study
The right hand room on the ground floor was John Keats’ study and the room above was his bedroom
Keats’ room where he learnt he had tuberculosis which had killed his brother Tom a year earlier
“Dearest Fanny … They say I must remain confined to this room for some time. The consciousness that you love me will make a pleasant prison of the house next to yours.” 4th February, 1820
In Fanny Brawne’s room
The boiler for hot water. The house had no running water which had to be brought from the pump.
The Mulberry tree is believed to have been planted in the seventeenth century and predates the house.
The death mask in John Keats’ bedroom at Wentworth Place
The font at St Botolph’s, Bishopsgate, where John Keats was baptised in 1795
Visit Keats House, Keats Grove, Hampstead, NW3 2RR
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In Fleet St
Walking between Spitalfields and the West End, Fleet St has emerged as a favourite route in recent years, because the detail of this magnificent thoroughfare never ceases to fascinate me with new interest – and so I spent a morning wandering there with my camera to record some of these sights for you.
Alsal Watches
Royal Courts of Justice by George Edward Street, opened 1882
This marker at the entrance to the City of London was unveiled in 1880 and is the work of Horace Jones, architect of Tower Bridge and Smithfield, Billingsgate and Leadenhall Markets
Hoare’s Bank from Hen & Chicken Court
Hoare’s Bank founded in 1672
Clifford’s Inn founded in 1344
Entrance to Middle Temple, 1684
St Dunstan-in-the-West
Angels at the entrance to St Dunstan-in-the-West
Statue of Queen Elizabeth I that once stood upon the west side of Ludgate, demolished in 1760
Sixteenth century statues of King Lud and his sons that originally stood upon the east side of Ludgate
Old King Lud
Removed in 1878, Christopher Wren’s Temple Bar now stands at the entrance to Paternoster Sq
Prince Henry’s Room over entrance to Inner Temple, 1610
St Brides by Christopher Wren, 1672, reflected in the Daily Express building by Ellis & Clarke, 1932
St Bartholomew House by Herbert Huntly-Gordon, 1900
Carving upon The George
Pulpit in St Clement Danes by Grinling Gibbons
Eagles in St Clement Danes
Statue of Dr Samuel Johnson
Looking east down Fleet St
So Long, Eddie Johnson
It is with sadness that I report the passing of Eddie Johnson, legendary publican & celebrated former landlord of the Two Puddings in Stratford, who died last week aged eighty-six
Shirley & Eddie Johnson on their first day behind the bar in 1962
Through four decades, from 1962 until 2000, Eddie Johnson was landlord of the celebrated Two Puddings in Stratford, becoming London’s longest serving licensee in the process and witnessing a transformation in the East End. When Eddie took it on, the Two Puddings was the most notorious pub in the area, known locally as the Butcher’s Shop on account of the amount of blood spilt. Yet he established the Puddings as a prime destination, opening Britain’s first disco and presenting a distinguished roll call of musicians including The Who – though the pub never quite shook off its violent notoriety.
“I’ve had a lot of blows,” Eddie confided to me with a crooked grin, his eyes glinting enigmatically. Even at eighty-six, Eddie retained a powerful and charismatic demeanour – very tall, still limber and tanned with thick white hair. Of the old East End, yet confident to carry himself in any company, Eddie admitted to me he was the first from his side of town to make it into Peter Langan’s Brasserie in Stratton St, mixing with a very different clientele from that in Stratford Broadway. It was indicative of the possibility of class mobility at the time, and there were plenty from the West End who were persuaded to take the trip east and experience the vibrant culture on offer at the Puddings.
“I came from the Old Ford Rd and I suppose you’d refer to it as a slum by today’s standards, but I never thought that because I had a happy childhood, even if we had an outside toilet and went to the bath house each week. The public library was heaven to me, all polished wood and brass, and I got a great love of schoolboys’ adventure stories which made me wish I could go to public school though, of course, I’d have hated it if I did. After I got married and had a son and then another, I had a number of dead end jobs. When I came out of the army, I became involved with a rough crowd. I worked with my brother Kenny organising dances. I was a bit of a hooligan and I got stabbed in a dance hall. But then I found a job as a Tally-clerk in the docks and became involved with the Blue Union – the skilled workers and stevedores. I was the Tally-clerk on Jack Dash’s strike committee. I loved it down there and, though I didn’t make a lot of money, I didn’t care because I loved the freedom. We could more or less do what we wanted.
The licensee of the Two Puddings got in trouble with the police, so Kenny and I bought the lease because we were frightened of losing the dance hall. Since my brother couldn’t hold the licence owing to an earlier court case, I had to take it. Now I didn’t fancy managing a pub and I had been to the Old Bailey for GBH, so I had to be upfront with the police in Stratford but they were horrible. They said,‘We’ve seen you driving around in a flash car,’ and I said, ‘I’l tell you where you can stick your licence!’ But this butcher, Eddie Downes, a huge fat man with a completely bald head who looked like a cartoon butcher, he told me not to worry. He had a reputation as a grass and he was always boasting about his connections to the police. ‘You’ll still get your meat from me?’ he asked, and three months later we were granted a licence.
We moved into the Puddings and after the opening night, I said, ‘I can’t stand this,’ and then I stayed forty years. I used to come downstairs on a Friday night and look around hoping there weren’t going to be any fights and I’d get all tensed up, but after a few light ales I’d be happy as a sandboy. The place would be packed and we’d be serving beer in wet glasses – it was fairly clean and people didn’t mind. We sold four hundred dozen light ales in a week, nowadays a pub is lucky to sell two dozen. We worked six nights a week plus a fortnight holiday a year and, on Wednesdays, my wife and I used to go up to the West End for a night out – but after forty years, it was tough.
At the end of the sixties, they knocked down a lot of buildings and did a redevelopment in Stratford. We lost all our local trade and the immigrants that came to live there didn’t have a culture of drinking, but we still had our music crowd. It was ear-splitting music really and we were the first pub to have UV. We called the club the Devil’s Kitchen and got a licence till two in the morning, and it was ever so popular. People came from far and wide.”
At the end of the last century, changes in the law required breweries to sell off many of their pubs and the Two Puddings changed hands, resulting in a controversy over discounts offered to publicans and a court case that saw Eddie Johnson thrown out of his job. He retired to Suffolk and organised his stories of life at the Two Puddings into an eloquent memoir. It was the outcome of lifetime’s fascination with literature that began with a passion for schoolboy adventures and led Eddie to read the great novelists during his hours of employment in the London Docks. His first story was printed in The Tally-Clerk at that time, and in later years Eddie famously wrote frequent letters to The Independent. But eventually he realised his ambition to become a writer with the publication of “Tales from the Two Puddings” and I recommend it to you.
Eddie aged nine, 1941
Eddie when he worked in the docks
Early Saturday morning and preparing to open. Eddie behind the bar and George the potman to his right.
Old George the potman.
Shirley Johnson with Rose Doughty, the famous wise-cracking barmaid
Eddie’s sister Doreen (second left) and friends heading upstairs to the Devil’s Kitchen, above the Puddings (photograph by Alf Shead)
Eddie and his brother Kenny with their beloved Uncle John in the Puddings
Saturday night in the Puddings
Joe and Sue, Eddie’s father-in-law and mother-in-law, enjoying a Saturday night in the Puddings
Eddie Johnson (1932-2018)
