The East End Vernacular Lectures
Spitalfields Market by John Allin 1974
In coming weeks, I shall be undertaking a lecture tour of the capital giving illustrated lectures on the subject of my new book EAST END VERNACULAR, Artists who painted London’s East End streets in the 20th century, showing the paintings and telling the stories that lie behind their creation.
My presentation includes work by John Allin, S. R. Badmin, Pearl Binder, Dorothy Bishop, James Boswell, Roland Collins, Alfred Daniels, Anthony Eyton, Doreen Fletcher, Geoffrey Fletcher, Barnett Freedman, Noel Gibson, Charles Ginner, Lawrence Gowing, Harry T. Harmer, Elwin Hawthorne, Rose Henriques, Dan Jones, Nathaniel Kornbluth,Leon Kossoff, James Mackinnon, Cyril Mann, Jock McFadyen, Ronald Morgan, Grace Oscroft, Peri Parkes, Henry Silk, Harold Steggles, Walter Steggles & Albert Turpin.
7:30pm Thursday 2nd November at Nunnery Gallery, Bow, as part of First Thursday at The Working Artist, The East London Group exhibition. Click here to book.
1pm Wednesday 8th N0vember at Dillons Bookshop, Gower St. Click here to book. You can also book by telephone 020 7636 1577 or buy your ticket at the bookshop.
7pm Friday 17th November at Idea Store, Whitechapel, opening the Write Idea Festival 2017. Click here to book.
Please note the lecture at Wanstead Tap on 1st November is already sold out
Click here to order a copy of EAST END END VERNACULAR for £25
Arnold Circus Celebrates Naseem Khan
Bubbles and fireworks are perhaps two of the most potent images of mortality. So it was entirely fitting that Sunday’s celebration at Arnold Circus for the life and work of Naseem Khan OBE (1939-2017) should begin with one and end with the other. Yet the occasion was far from grim. A joyous community spirit prevailed as around two hundred gathered for slices of cake and lively tunes from Boom La Tête band, while the last rays of autumn afternoon sunlight glimmered in the yard at Rochelle School – where Contributing Photographer Sarah Ainslie & I joined the throng.
Everyone piled into the schoolroom for affectionate spoken tributes, both personal and professional. As the child of an Indian father and a German mother, born on the eve of the Second World War, Naseem’s upbringing was an education in the politics of race and identity at first hand. She applied this experience in her career, writing the landmark report The Arts that Britain Ignores and developing the policy for minorities at the Arts Council, where she became Head of Diversity. In Shoreditch, Naseem became celebrated for founding the Friends of Arnold Circus which brought a new sense of community to the Boundary Estate, culminating in the renovation of the historic park and bandstand.
The assembly processed out into the darkness, led by the Nostalgia Steel Band as they made a circuit of Arnold Circus and climbed the steps to where the Freylekh Klezmer Dance Band welcomed them. The vast London planes that tower over the circus were floodlit in bright colours against the night sky, creating the ideal space for the party to join hands and dance in a circle. Then, fortified by pancakes baked on the street corner and hot chestnuts roasted over coals, the crowd gathered for the explosion of fireworks which served as the finale to the celebrations.
We all knew Naseem would have approved because she had planned the event down to the last detail during her final weeks, while completing her memoirs and delivering it to the publisher in time to sign the contract on the day before she died. Such was the nature of Naseem – her generosity of spirit was only matched by the efficiency of her achievements – and we were all inspired to have known her.
Contributions to St Joseph’s Hospice who cared for Naseem can be made in her memory by clicking here
Naseem Khan OBE (1939-2017)
Colour photographs copyright © Sarah Ainslie
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Love Tokens From The Thames
These love tokens are from the collection gathered over the last seventeen years by my Thames mudlark friend Steve Brooker, widely known as Mud God.
The magical potential of throwing a coin into the water has been recognised by different cultures in different times with all kinds of meanings. Yet since we can never ask those who threw these tokens why they did it, we can only surmise that engraving your beloved’s name upon a coin and throwing it into the water was a gesture to attract good fortune. It was a wish.
With a great river like the Thames racing down towards the ocean, there is a sense of a connection to the infinite. And there is a sweet romance to the notion of a lover secretly throwing a token into the water, feeling that the strength of their emotions connects them to a force larger than themselves.
Naturally, it was not part of the conceit that someone might ever find these coins, centuries later – which gives them a mysterious poetry now, because each one represents a love story we shall never learn. Those who threw them have gone from the earth long ago, and all we can envisage are the coins tossed by unseen hands, flying from the river bank or a from the parapet of a bridge or from a boat, turning over in the air, plip-plopping into the water and spiralling down to lie for centuries in the mud, until Steve Brooker came along to gather them up. Much as we may yearn, we can never trace them back to ask “What happened?”
In the reign of William III, it was the fashion for a young man to give a crooked coin to the object of his affections. The coin was bent both to become an amulet and to prevent it being reused. If the token was kept, it indicated that the affection was reciprocated, but if the coin was discarded then it was a rejection – which casts a different light upon these coins in the river. Are they, each one, evidence of unrequited affections?
From the end of the eighteenth century and until the early twentieth century, smoothed coins were used as love tokens, with the initials of the sender engraved or embossed upon the surface. Sometimes these were pierced, which gave recipient the option to wear it around the neck. In Steve’s collection, the tokens range from heavy silver coins with initials professionally engraved to pennies worn smooth through hours of labour and engraved in stilted painstaking letters. In many examples shown here, the amount of effort expended in working these coins, smoothing, engraving or cutting them is truly extraordinary, which speaks of the longing of the makers.
Steve has found many thousands of coins in the bed of the Thames over the years but it is these worked examples that mean most to him because he recognises the dignity of the human emotion that each one manifests. Those who threw them into the river did not know that Steve was going to be there one day to catch them yet, whatever the outcome of these romances, he ensures that the tokens are kept safe.
Benjamin Claridge.
The reverse of the Benjamin Claridge coin, from the eighteenth century or earlier.
The intials M and W intertwined upon a Georgian silver coin.
The intial W upon the smoothed face of Georgian silver coin, bent into an S shape.
Crooked Georgian silver coin, as the token of a vow or promise.
The initials AMD upon a smoothed coins that has been pierced to wear around the neck.
A copper penny with the letter D.
C.M. Marsh impressed into a penny.
The letter R punched into a penny within a lucky horseshoe.
Pierced coin set with semi-precious stones.
Who was Snod? Is this a lover’s token or a dog tag?
This pierced silver threepence commemorates the date January 11th 1921.
On the reverse of the silver threepence are the initials, L T. Are these the initials of the giver, or does it signify “Love Token”?
A smoothed penny with the name Voilet upon it. A phonetic spelling of the name “Violet”as the beloved spoke it?
Cut coins from the early twentieth century.
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The East End In The Afternoon
There is little traffic on the road, children are at play, housewives linger in doorways, old men doze outside the library and, in the distance, a rag and bone man’s cart clatters down the street. This is the East End in the afternoon, as photographed by newspaper artist Tony Hall in the nineteen sixties while wandering with his camera in the quiet hours between shifts on The Evening News in Fleet St.
“Tony cared very much about the sense of community here.” Libby Hall, Tony’s wife, recalled, “He loved the warmth of the East End. And when he photographed buildings it was always for the human element, not just the aesthetic.”
Contemplating Tony’s clear-eyed photos – half a century after they were taken – raises questions about the changes enacted upon the East End in the intervening years. Most obviously, the loss of the pubs and corner shops which Tony portrayed with such affection in pictures that remind us of the importance of these meeting places, drawing people into a close relationship with their immediate environment.
“He photographed the pubs and little shops that he knew were on the edge of disappearing,” Libby Hall confirmed for me, ‘He loved the history of the East End, the Victorian overlap, and the sense that it was the last of Dickens’ London.”
In 1972, Tony Hall left The Evening News and with his new job came a new shift pattern which did not grant him afternoons off – thus drawing his East End photographic odyssey to a close. Yet for one who did not consider himself a photographer, Tony Hall’s opus comprises a tender vision of breathtaking clarity, constructed with purpose and insight as a social record. Speaking of her late husband, Libby Hall emphasises the prescience that lay behind Tony’s wanderings with his camera in the afternoon. “He knew what he was photographing and he recognised the significance of it.” she admitted.
These beautiful streetscapes are a selection of pictures from the legacy of approximately one thousand photographs by Tony Hall held in the archive at the Bishopsgate Institute.
Three Colts Lane
Gunthorpe St
Ridley Rd Market
Stepney Green
Photographs copyright © Libby Hall
Images Courtesy of the Tony Hall Archive at the Bishopsgate Institute
Libby Hall & I would be delighted if any readers can assist in identifying the locations and subjects of Tony Hall’s photographs.
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Tony Hall’s East End Panoramas
At The Drapers’ Hall
The Drawing Room
As long ago as 1180, the Drapers in the City of London formed a Guild to protect their interests as small traders and help members who fell into distress. The full title of the company was, “The Master and Wardens and Brethren and Sisters of the Guild or Fraternity of the Blessed Mary the Virgin of the Mystery of the Drapers of the City of London.” More than eight hundred years later, it still exists to administer charitable trusts, inheriting headquarters that have been rebuilt over the centuries upon the site of Thomas Cromwell’s house – taken by Henry VIII after Cromwell’s execution at the Tower in 1540 and sold to the Drapers in 1543.
For years, I walked down Throgmorton Avenue and peered through the railings at the Mulberry trees growing there with out knowing that this tiny enclave of greenery in the heart of the city was the last remnant of Thomas Cromwell’s garden. Consequently, I was fascinated to visit the Drapers’ Hall and explore the chambers of the ancient livery company arranged around a hidden courtyard, following the ground plan of the great medieval hall that once stood upon this site. Until then, I had no idea that these palatial spaces existed, sequestered from the idle passerby.
Cromwell’s mansion was destroyed by the Great Fire of 1666, then rebuilt to designs by Edward Jarman in the sixteen seventies and later remodelled in each of the subsequent centuries to arrive at the rambling construction I encountered, which delivers some breathtaking architectural contrasts as you walk from one space to another. Offices occupy the ground floor that give no hint of the grandeur above, unless you step into the courtyard and raise your eyes to peer through the tall windows upon the first storey where the gleam of vast chandeliers reveals lofty painted ceilings. Standing there in the stone yard surrounded by an arcade embellished with heads of the prophets, you might be in Venice or Rome.
A magnificent eighteen nineties staircase by Thomas Graham Jackson, lavishly encrusted with alabaster and red emperor and green chipolina marble, and light by a five thousand piece chandelier, offers a suitable introduction to the wonders at the top, where the grand Dining Room awaits on your left and the even grander Drawing Room on your right. Overlooking the garden, the Dining Room is one of the oldest chambers at the Drapers’ Hall, dating from the seventeenth century yet heavily embellished with coats of arms in the mid-nineteenth century to create a shining firmament overhead, glistening in diffuse chandelier light.
Crossing the landing, you enter the Court Room where Nelson and Wellington face each other from full-length portraits at either end. Lit by tall windows overlooking the courtyard, even the grandeur of this space gives no indication of the vast Livery Hall beyond. In the sepulchral gloom, larger than life-size portraits of British monarchs line up around the walls of this cathedral-like space, where no sound of the city penetrates and the depth of silence hums in your ears. Incredibly, the embellishment in this ornate room was simplified in the eighteen nineties because the original decoration was so elaborate that it prevented the entry of light.
A narrow corridor leading from the hall and overlooking the courtyard holds the company’s succession of charters including Edward III’s Patent of 1364 followed by those granted by James I, Elizabeth I and our own Elizabeth II. Facing the Livery Hall across the courtyard is the Drawing Room, a chamber worthy of any of the royal palaces of Europe. Created by architect Herbert Williams and interior designer John G. Crace, it remains as they left it in 1868, – an exquisitely modulated symphony of gilt panelling and mirrors, glowing golden in the cool northern light.
Over-awed by the majesty of the building and distracted by the collection of old paintings worthy of any museum, I rubbed my bleary eyes when I found myself back in the dusty streets around Liverpool St Station in the grey dusk of the late afternoon, and it caused me to question whether my visit to the Drapers’ Hall had, in fact, been an apparition conjured by a daydream.
Bearded Persians by Henry Pegram flank the Throgmorton St entrance.
Staircase designed by Thomas Graham Jackson in the eighteen nineties.
A five thousand piece chandelier lights the staircase.
Jason and the Golden Fleece, portrayed upon the celiing of the Court Dining Room
Looking from the Drawing Room through to the Dining Room.
The Drawing Room by architect Herbert Williams and interior designer John G. Crace, 1868.
The Drawing Room c. 1920
The Shepherd Boy by Thorwaldsen, 1893.
The Livery Hall, c. 1920
The Livery Hall
The Livery Hall c.1920
The Livery Hall
The Livery Hall, c. 1890
This dial in the Livery Hall indicates the wind direction.
The Courtyard c. 1920
The last remnant of Thomas Cromwell’s garden.
The Garden, c. 1920
Glass slides courtesy Bishopsgate Institute
You can visit the Draper’s Hall on 4th December for the Wellbeing of Women Christmas Fair 11am-8pm.
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A Dead Man In Clerkenwell
This is the face of the dead man in Clerkenwell. He does not look perturbed by the change in the weather. Once Winters wore him out, but now he rests beneath the streets of the modern city he will never see, oblivious both to the weather and the wonders of our age, entirely oblivious to everything in fact.
Let me admit, although some might consider it poor company, I consider death to be my friend – because without mortality our time upon this earth would be worthless. So I do not fear death, but rather I hope I shall have enough life first. My fear is that death might come too soon or unexpectedly in some pernicious form. In this respect, I envy my father who always took a nap on the sofa each Sunday after gardening and one day at the age of seventy nine – when he had completed trimming the privet hedge – he never woke up again.
It was many years ago that I first made the acquaintance of the dead man in Clerkenwell, when I had an office in the Close where I used to go each day and write. I was fascinated to discover a twelfth century crypt in the heart of London, the oldest remnant of the medieval priory of the Knights of St John that once stood in Clerkenwell until it was destroyed by Henry VIII, and it was this memento mori, a sixteenth century stone figure of an emaciated corpse, which embodied the spirit of the place for me.
Thanks to Pamela Willis, curator at the Museum of the Order of St John, I went back to look up my old friend after all these years. She lent me her key and, leaving the bright November sunshine behind me, I let myself into the crypt, switching on the lights and walking to the furthest underground recess of the building where the dead man was waiting. I walked up to the tomb where he lay and cast my eyes upon him, recumbent with his shroud gathered across his groin to protect a modesty that was no longer required. He did not remonstrate with me for letting twenty years go by. He did not even look surprised. He did not appear to recognise me at all. Yet he looked different than before, because I had changed, and it was the transformative events of the intervening years that had awakened my curiosity to return.
There is a veracity in this sculpture which I could not recognise upon my previous visit, when – in my innocence – I had never seen a dead person. Standing over the figure this time, as if at a bedside, I observed the distended limbs, the sunken eyes and the tilt of the head that are distinctive to the dead. When my mother lost her mental and then her physical faculties too, I continued to feed her until she could no longer even swallow liquid, becoming as emaciated as the stone figure before me. It was at dusk on the 31st December that I came into her room and discovered her inanimate, recognising that through some inexplicable prescience the life had gone from her at the ending of the year. I understood the literal meaning of “remains,” because everything distinctive of the living person had departed to leave mere skin and bone. And I know now that the sculptor who made this effigy had seen that too, because his observation of the dead is apparent in his work, even if the bizarre number of ribs in his figure bears no relation to human anatomy.
There is a polished area on the brow, upon which I instinctively placed my hand, where my predecessors over the past five centuries had worn it smooth. This gesture, which you make as if to check his temperature, is an unconscious blessing in recognition of the commonality we share with the dead who have gone before us and whose ranks we shall all join eventually. The paradox of this sculpture is that because it is a man-made artifact it has emotional presence, whereas the actual dead have only absence. It is the tender details – the hair carefully pulled back behind the ears, and the protective arms with their workmanlike repairs – that endear me to this soulful relic.
Time has not been kind to this figure, which originally lay upon the elaborate tomb of Sir William Weston inside the old church of St James Clerkenwell, until the edifice was demolished and the current church was built in the eighteenth century, when the effigy was resigned to this crypt like an old pram slung in the cellar. Today a modern facade reveals no hint of what lies below ground. Sir William Weston, the last Prior, died in April 1540 on the day that Henry VIII issued the instruction to dissolve the Order, and the nature of his death was unrecorded. Thus, my friend the dead man is loss incarnate – the damaged relic of the tomb of the last Prior of the monastery destroyed five hundred years ago – yet he still has his human dignity and he speaks to me.
Walking back from Clerkenwell, through the teeming city to Spitalfields on this bright afternoon in autumn, I recognised a similar instinct as I did after my mother’s death. I cooked myself a meal because I craved the familiar task and the event of the day renewed my desire to live more life.
Visit the Museum of the Order of St John, 26 St John’s Lane, Clerkenwell, EC1M 4DA
Nicholas Culpeper, Herbalist & Surgeon
Celebrating the birthday this week of Nicholas Culpeper (1616-1654), it is my pleasure to publish this portrait of the famous herbalist of Spitalfields by Patricia Cleveland-Peck, gardener and writer.
Of all Spitalfields’ past residents, one name stands out above others – Nicholas Culpeper, born on October 18th 1616, a herbalist and medical practitioner operating from Red Lion St (now Commercial St) who devoted his life to healing, and especially to healing the poor.
While apprenticed to the apothecary Francis Drake of Bishopsgate, Nicholas accompanied Thomas Johnson (later editor of the 1633 edition of Gerard’s Herball) on plant hunting excursions. He loved herbs since boyhood and became expert at their identification, essential in those days when almost all ailments were treated with plants. Herbals served as handbooks for doctors in which each plant was named together with its ‘virtues’ or uses. Nicholas’ skill in this subject, coupled with the fact that he was very caring, meant that the people of Spitalfields flocked to him – sometimes as many as forty a morning – and they commonly received treatment for little or no payment.
This was not popular among Nicholas Culpeper’s qualified medical colleagues who were infuriated by his view that, “no man deserved to starve to pay an insulting, insolent physician.” He also believed in “English herbs for English bodies,” and went out gathering his own herbs from the countryside for free which did not endear him to the apothecaries who often insisted on expensive imported exotic plants for their ‘cures’.
In those days, there were strict divisions between what university-educated physicians, apothecaries and barber-surgeons (who drew teeth and let blood) were allowed to do. Physicians were expensive, so for most sick people the first port of call would be their own herb garden or still room, the second the ‘wise woman’ down the road, the third a visit to the apothecary – after which, for many, there was no other option but to let the illness run its course.
In 1649, Nicholas inflamed the establishment by producing an English translation of their latin ‘bible’ the Pharmacopoeia Londinensis which included all the recipes for their medicines. Published as A Physical Directory, it not only revealed the secret ingredients but gave instructions on how to administer them – one of his most important contributions, as it provided the first effective self-help book to which people could turn.
Even more galling for the medical fraternity was the fact Nicholas had never completed his apprenticeship, and chose Spitalfields to set up a semi-legal practice because it was outside the City of London and thus not governed by the rules of the College of Physicians. Spitalfields in those days was quite different from today, beyond the site of huge priory of St Mary Spital stretched the farmland of Spital Field. The priory had been dissolved under Henry VIII although parts of the precincts were still inhabited, and it was an area which attracted outsiders like Nicholas who, as well as treating his patients, was something of a political radical. In his pamphlets, he railed against the king, priests and lawyers as well as physicians. Consequently he was no stranger to controversy and at one point was even accused of witchcraft – just one of the many troubles which accumulated to beset him during his life.
The first of these even occurred thirteen days before his life began, for it was then that his father died leaving his mother without support. She and the new-born Nicholas were obliged to return to the protection of her father, William Attersole, vicar of the little village of Isfield in Sussex. Attersole was not happy about this arrangement but, although he did not welcome the child, he did see it as his religious duty to provide instruction for him as he grew. Young Nicholas learned the scriptures and the classics, he studied mathematics and, under his grandfather’s guidance, began to take an interest in astrology which later featured in his own works. He even stole a book on anatomy out of the library (where he was only supposed to read the bible) and read it in a barn.
Importantly, he also spent a lot of time with his mother who we know owned a copy of Gerard’s Herball. She was responsible for the health of the household and, from his later works, we can glean the fact that he soon became familiar with all the local Sussex ‘simples’ or wild herbs. We know only little of this period of his life, but it is thought that he went to school in Lewes before – at the age of sixteen – setting off for Cambridge ostensibly to follow in his grandfather’s footsteps by studying theology. Once there, he began to attended lectures on anatomy and, perhaps frustrated that he couldn’t change to medicine, he spent most of his time smoking, drinking and socialising in taverns.
Yet the reason for his dropping out is a sad one. Young though he was, before leaving Sussex, Nicholas had fallen in love with Judith Rivers, a local heiress. She reciprocated his love and thus, knowing her family would never consent to the relationship, they planned to elope. They were to meet near Lewes and marry secretly, but on the way Judith’s coach was struck by lightning and she was killed. Nicholas was devastated and spent months sunk in melancholy. There was no question of his returning to Cambridge to study medicine or anything else. Eventually he chose to come to London and become an apothecary. Socially, this was a step down but he enjoyed his time at Bishopsgate and became very proficient.
Nicholas was twenty-four when he found love again. Called to treat a Mr Field for gouty arthritis, his eyes fell upon the fifteen-year-old daughter of the house, Alice. By a stroke of good fortune, she too was an heiress and it was her considerable dowry which enabled Nicholas to build a house in Red Lion St, Spitalfields from which he conducted his practice.
When the Civil War broke out two years later, the anti-royalist Nicholas signed up with Cromwell. Once his profession was discovered however, the recruiting offer commented, “We do not need you at the battlefield…come along as the field surgeon since most of the barbers and physicians are royal asses and we have use for someone to look after our injured.” Later, during the battle of Reading, Nicholas himself was wounded.
On his return to Spitalfields, he devoted himself to study and writing, and produced a number of books including a Directory for Midwives. Nicholas recognised that this was an unusual topic for a male herbalist, writing in the dedication, “If you (the matron) by your experiences find anything not according to the truth ( for I am a man and therefore subject to failings) first judge charitably of me…” Having grown up so close to his mother, Nicholas had a deep respect of women but this book may also have been inspired by some painful experiences in his own family for, although Alice bore him seven children, only one daughter lived to adulthood.
In 1652, Nicholas published his master work The English Physician also known as Culpeper’s Herbal which became the standard work for three hundred years and is still in print. It was sold cheaply and made its way to America where it had a lasting impact too. By 1665, ten years after his death, Nicholas’ name was so well-known that the Lord Mayor of London chose to use it alongside that of Sir Walter Raleigh in a pamphlet about avoiding infection from the Great Plague.
Nicholas Culpeper deserves to be remembered. He was always on the side of the underdog, he opposed the ‘closed shop’ of earlier physicians and he promoted sensible self-help. He also tried to offer reasonable explanations for what he wrote – “Neither Gerard nor Parkinson or any that ever wrote in a like manner ever gave one wise reason for what they wrote and so did nothing else but train up young novices in Physic in the School of Tradition, and teach them just as a parrot is taught… But in mine you see a reason for everything that is written.”
He died in 1654, aged only thirty-eight, of tuberculosis and is believed to be buried beneath Liverpool St Station.
Title page of the 1790 edition of Culpeper’s English Physician & Complete Herbal, published by C.Stalker, 4 Stationer’s Court, Ludgate St.
Plates from the edition published by Richard Evans, 8 White’s Row, Spitalfields, August 12th, 1814
“Culpeper’s house, of which there are woodcuts extant, it is of wood, and is situated the corner of Red Lion Court and Red Lion Street, Spitalfields. It is now and has long been a public house, known by the sign of the Red Lion, but at the time it was inhabited by the sage herbalist, it was independent of other buildings. While in the occupation of Culpeper, who died in 1654, this house stood in Red Lion Field and was as a dispensary of medicines (perhaps the first) of very considerable celebrity.” The European Magazine and London Review, January 1812. Red Lion St and Red Lion Court as shown on John Horwood’s map (1794-99) before Commercial St was cut through in the nineteenth century.
Nicholas Culpeper and his house
Paul Bommer’s delft tile commemorating Nicholas Culpeper
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