More Philip Cunningham Portraits
More East End portraits of friends and colleagues taken by Philip Cunningham in the seventies and eighties while he was living in his grandfather’s house in Mile End Place and beginning his career as a photographer, youth worker and teacher.
Printer at the Surma newspaper, Brick Lane. The paper supported Sheikh Mujibur Rahman & the Awami League.
Porters at Spitalfields Market c.1978
Porters at Spitalfields Market c.1978
Boys on wasteland, Whitechapel c.1977
My friends Sadie & Murat Ozturk ran the kebab shop on Mile End Rd. Their daughter Aysher was best friends with my daughter and both went to John Scurr School. We spent alternate Christmases at each others’ home until they returned to Turkey. They were very hard-working and I hope they have prospered. c.1978
Engineers in the Mile End Automatic Laundry. It was a fantastic facility for people like us, with just an outside toilet and a butler’s sink in the kitchen. It had machines to iron your sheets which was a palaver, but everyone used to help each another. c.1975
Jan Alam & Union Steward, Raj Jalal on an Anti-Fascist march in Whitechapel
Chris Carpenter & Jim Wolveridge on Mile End Waste. My long-time friend Chris was a teacher at John Scurr School who went to Zimbabwe to teach for a number of years. When he arrived there were very few books in the School, but oddly there was one called ‘Ain’t It Grand’ by Jim Wolveridge. How it got there nobody could explain. Jim Wolveridge used to have a second hand book stall on the Waste every Saturday. In this photo, Chris is telling him about finding his book in his school in Zimbabwe. c.1985
My photography student Rodney at Deptford Green Youth Centre would often say ‘Hush up & listen to the Teach!’
Michael Rosen and Nik Chakraborty both taught my daughter at John Scurr School. c.1979
Photography students at Deptford Green Youth Centre. They were eager to learn and I hope they’ve all done well. c.1979
My friend and colleague, Caroline Merion at Tower Hamlets Local History Library where she spent most of her time. I went to her house once or twice and I noticed she had a habit of hoarding bags. c.1979
Harry Watton worked in the Local History Library in Bancroft Rd for many years. He was always helpful and had an immense knowledge about Tower Hamlets. c.1979
The Rev David Moore from the Bow Mission and Santiago Bell, an exile from Pinochet’s Chile who was a ceramicist and wood carver. He taught David to carve and, on retirement, David built himself a studio and has been carving ever since. This picture was taken at the opening of Bow Single Homeless & Alcoholic Rehabilitation Project and the carving, which was the work of both David and Santiago, depicts the journey of rehabilitation. c.1986
Builders at Oxford House. c.1978
Gasmen at Mile End Place, 1977
Harry Diamond at a beer festival at Stepping Stones Farm Stepney. After I left art school in 1978, I met Harry at Camerawork in Alie St. He was always generous with his knowledge of photography and, after talking to him, I changed the type of film I was using. Harry was famously painted by Lucien Freud standing next to a pot plant, but when I asked Harry what he thought of Lucien, he did not have a high opinion of the great artist. c.1978
Teacher Martin Cale and Bob the School-keeper (an ex-docker) at John Scurr School. c.1978
At Hungerford Bridge, I came across this man in a doorway. He was not yet asleep so I asked if I could take his photo. ‘If you give me a cigarette,’ he said. ‘I only smoke rollups,’ I replied. ‘That’ll do.’ I rolled him a cigarette then took his portrait. c.1978
Photographs copyright © Philip Cunningham
You may also like to take a look at
Hilary Haydon At The Charterhouse
Celebrating the opening of the Charterhouse in Smithfield to the public, here is my profile of Brother Hilary Haydon. Charterhouse is open today, and from Tuesday to Sunday each day from 11am until 4:45pm. Admission is free.
Unlike the hermit monks of the medieval priory that once stood upon this site, the current Brothers at the Charterhouse are a sociable bunch and thus I was able to pay a visit upon Hilary Haydon, the third-most senior Brother, who took me on a tour of the accommodation.
Seniority – in this instance – is based upon how long a Brother has been resident at the Charterhouse, not age. Yet Hilary has a rather more vivid way of expressing it. Gesturing to the pigeon holes for mail, he explained that as residents die the labels of those remaining get moved up. “You start here and then you move along, until you drop off the end,” he informed me with startling alacrity.
It made me realise that residence in the Charterhouse affects the Brothers’ sense of time – inhabiting these ancient stone walls induces a certain philosophical perspective upon mortality, setting the span of an individual’s life against the centuries of history that have passed here. It is both a consolation and an encouragement to recognise the beauty of the fleeting moment, as manifest in the immaculately-tended gardens alive with bluebells and tulips, and as illustrated upon the tomb of Thomas Sutton – the benefactor – by bubbles, symbolising the transitory nature of fame.
I crossed the wide lawn that sets the Charterhouse apart from the clamour of Smithfield, aware that my diagonal path, bisecting the velvet greensward, passed over the largest plague pit in the City of London in which sixty-thousand victims of the Black Death were interred. Arriving at the entrance, I cast my eyes up to the fifteenth century gatehouse of the former Carthusian Priory. Henry VIII met with greater resistance from the monks here than any other religious order and thus he had John Houghton, the prior, cut in four and his right arm nailed to the door.
Yet this grim history seemed an insubstantial dream, as I entered to discover Hilary Haydon waiting in the gatehouse to greet me. He led me along stone passages and into hidden courtyards, through the cloisters and the Great Hall and the chapel, with its flamboyant monument of fairground showiness for Thomas Sutton.
My wonder at the quality, age and proportion of the architecture was compounded by my delight at the finely-conceived planting schemes of the gardens and it was not difficult to envisage this elaborate complex as a Renaissance palace, which it became for the Howard family through three generations until they sold it to Sutton in 1611. The wealthiest commoner in England, he endowed his fortune upon a school and almshouses here, entitled ‘King James’ Hospital in Charterhouse.’ Daniel Defoe described it as “the noblest gift that ever was given for charity, bu any one man, public or private, in this nation.”
Four centuries later, the school has moved out to Goldalming, leaving Smithfield in 1872, yet the almshouses still flourish – offering sheltered accommodation to forty Brothers. Formerly a barrister in the City, Hilary came here twenty years ago when he became a widower. “I have never regretted it,” he assured me with an emphatic grin, “Meals appear, your room is cleaned and the community is supportive.” Hilary revealed to me that among the Brothers, there are solicitors, barristers and priests, as well as an actor currently understudying for ‘The Woman in Black,’ the stage manager of the original production of ‘Oliver!’ and – as we entered the refectory – he introduced a distinguished-looking gentleman as the ballet critic of The Sunday Times.
Each morning, the Brothers are woken by the chapel bell at ten to eight. “I use it as an alarm clock,” confessed Hilary in a whisper, “I attend chapel only for funerals and when I read the lesson.” Breakfast follows in the Great Hall at eight-twenty, succeeded by morning coffee at eleven, lunch at one and afternoon tea at three – and thus time is measured out in the benign conditions of the Charterhouse. “A very silent brother who sat next to me came into lunch one day and died beside me,” Hilary admitted, “As it happens, there was a doctor who was only at the other side of the table and he was across the table like lightning – it was a beautiful way to go.”
The fifteenth century gate to the monastery is encompassed by an eighteenth century structure
Doorway and cubby hole for passing food through at the entrance to the former priory, dissolved in the fifteen-forties and bricked up ever since.
Graffiti from the days this was the refectory for Charterhouse School
Chimney piece of the three graces and a chest that may have belonged to Thomas Sutton
The Great Hall
Bluebells and an ancient fig tree at the entrance to the Charterhouse
Looking through to the chapel, with the relic of a door damaged an incendiary bomb
Thomas Sutton, the founder, has lain here for four centuries
Bubbles symbolise the futility of wordly fame
Vestments await the priest in the chapel
Graffiti carved by the bored schoolboys of the eighteen-fifties in the chapel
Note the spelling of “Clarkenwell” upon the memorial stone set into the floor
In the chapel
Eighteenth century dwelling built over the ancient gatehouse
Hilary Haydon in the cloister at the Charterhouse – “It’s always cool in here”
Visit The Charterhouse, Charterhouse Square, EC1M 6AN
You may also like to read about
Happy Birthday, Lilo Blum!
‘The first time I rode in Hyde Park was in 1937…’
I know readers will want to join me in wishing Lilo Blum many happy returns on her ninetieth birthday today. Born in Germany in 1927, Lilo and her family came to London as refugees escaping the Nazis in 1937 when she was just ten years old, but within a couple of years she had set up her own livery stable next to Hyde Park. Lilo Blum’s Riding Stables flourished for forty-five years as a popular London institution, occupying Lilo’s entire working life and proving an irresistible magnet for any celebrity, jetsetter or socialite who enjoyed a canter in the Park.
My meeting with Lilo Blum came about when her nephew Edward recognised a photograph of his aunt’s stables in Grosvenor Park Crescent in 1952 by Israel Bidermanas published on Spitalfields Life recently and wrote to me. Naturally, I jumped at the opportunity to interview Lilo at her swish flat in Park Lane with a magnificent view over Hyde Park and hear her triumphant story in her own words.
“I was four or five when I learnt to ride. My brother was three years older than me and I remember he rode in a pony race, and I cried because I wanted to ride as well. So they got me a quiet pony and I rode round the course, quite a few miles behind the others, but at least it kept me quiet. Working with horses runs in our family and my father was a well-known veterinarian. He could tell at one glance if a horse was lame, because in those days they didn’t have x-rays and you had to be able to just say what was wrong.
I started my riding stables in 1943 when I was sixteen years old. I collected threepenny bits in an old whisky bottle and then I went with my father to the big sales at Newmarket where they sold racehorses. We bought one for fifty-five guineas and I called him ‘Pick-up.’ After I had bought him, I thought ‘What am I going to do with him?’ because he was baby racehorse and unbroken, so I couldn’t use him in a riding school. But I was lucky because I had some friends who worked at Knightsbridge barracks and they agreed to keep him in their stable for me.
The sergeant offered to ask his commanding officer if I would be allowed to take my horse riding from the barracks and, luckily for me, they allowed it during the war. The sergeant broke in my horse, and got him nice and quiet and civilised, so people could eventually ride him and I knew he wouldn’t throw anybody off. Then I sold ‘Pick-up’ to the Huntley & Palmers people and he raced for them and won some races, which was good for me. I can’t remember how much I got but it was enough to buy some ponies and that was how I started my riding stable.
The first time I rode in Hyde Park was in 1937. Before the war, you could see a thousand horses riding down Rotten Row. You had to dress up properly for riding then and the ladies they rode side-saddle – I tried it once, I didn’t like it. There were hundreds and hundreds of stables in the mews around Hyde Park then. I remember when all the mews were horses. It’ll never come back again. After the war, people didn’t dress up for riding any more. Society changed.
I had around twenty horses in my stable and lived for forty-two years in Knightsbridge in Old Barrack Yard, next to The Grenadier. I’ve spent many hours in their with some of our people and I’ve seen a few landlords come and go. If I had a penny for every time people asked me ‘Where’s The Grenadier?’ without question I’d be a millionaire. Most of my friends I met through horses.
I love horses but there were some anxious moments. It was always a gamble because you’d buy a horse in the country yet if it was no good in the traffic you might just as well get rid of it. My father taught me a lot and I had a great friend, an Irish racehorse trainer who was very good at picking out horses.
My favourite horse, we called it ‘Decision’ because we saw it at a sale and my father wasn’t quite sure about it but then the owner asked, ‘What’s your decision?’ He was very popular and he made me a lot of money. He lived to be old and he worked really hard and we thought ‘Well, he’s done well for us,’ so we turned him out in a field but he didn’t like it. He was so used to working and being in the traffic that he died soon after.
With horses, it’s seven days a week, twelve hours a day starting at 5:30am. Often, I would have just locked up and put all the horses away when a whole lot of people would come down, but I would never refuse them. I would unlock the door again, get the horses out and show them all around Hyde Park. It’s nice when people appreciate what you do for them.
Once I started my stable in Grosvenor Crescent Mews, I had loads and loads of famous people coming to ride. Zsa Zsa Gabor kept her horse with us for a little while, but she liked to go one better so she took him down to the Duke of Marlborough in Wiltshire where she galloped all across his lawn and he wasn’t too happy. So she brought her horse back again and rode him out in Hyde Park. Then she decided to go abroad and asked me to sell her horse, and he became the symbol of Lloyds Bank and starred in ‘Black Beauty’ with Vivien Leigh and ‘Knights of the Round Table’ with Robert Taylor and Ava Gardner. A very famous horse.
I remember one day we had our ponies out and the Household Cavalry were training and making an awful lot of noise, so I called Andrew Parker-Bowles, who was officer in charge, and said, ‘You’re upsetting my ponies!’ To be fair he was very nice about it, and he was always very nice to me after that. In fact, one of my horses had an injury and he took it into the barracks to have it treated, so it didn’t do any harm to tell him off.
Topol lived in the house on the corner and we had Jean Simmons & Stewart Grainger at the top of the mews with their daughter Tracy who used to come and mess about with the ponies. Paul Newman came, Raquel Welch was another regular, and Stirling Moss – he lived in our mews, I knew him when he was a kid.
Luciano Pavarotti was a heavy man and he used to sit at the front of the horse, so I said to him, ‘Hey mister, you give my horse a sore back! Sit further back in the saddle.’ Mohammad Ali rode one of our horses in the Park too, but after I shook hands with him I felt mine was going to drop off! Jacqueline Kennedy’s sister’s husband, the Polish Prince Radziwiłł kept his horses with us and that’s how I got to know the Kennedys. I taught the little children, Caroline & John Kennedy to ride but I always had to have a police escort when I took them out.
Sometimes we got these pushy mums. I’ll never forget one lady, she said to me, ‘When are you going to teach my little girl to trot?’ and I said, ‘Give her a bit of a chance, she’s only two years old.’ I told the little kid, ‘Your mummy wants me to teach you to trot,’ and she did it once it, but she couldn’t get the rhythm so she said, ‘Enough now!’ I’ll never forget that but, in time, she turned out good.
I ran my stables until 1988 and it was a great success. Eventually the Duke of Westminster built the Lanesborough Hotel at Hyde Park Corner and he didn’t want any more horses in the mews. It was very disappointing after forty-five years, but life goes on. Everything has changed so much hasn’t it?
It has been an interesting life I must say. You’ve got to make the best of it. I keep telling my friends, ‘It’s a rehearsal not the real thing,’ but they don’t take any notice. I made money and blew money like everybody else. I was lucky I always worked for myself which is a great thing. I’ve done alright. I can’t complain! If I see a horse I like out in the park from my window, I still think ‘That one’s nice, that would have done me nicely.'”
Lilo Blum’s Riding Stables, Grosvenor Park Crescent W1 – as photographed by Israel Bidermanas in 1952. Lilo’s dog Peggy sleeps in the foreground.
The Grenadier, Old Barrack Yard, Lilo Blum’s local for half a century
Archive photographs courtesy © Bishopsgate Institute
You may also like to read about
The World Of The Car Washes
Mohaimenul Islam, Car Washer
Car washes come and go in the East End, opening up in vacant railway arches or disused petrol stations, enjoying a brief flowering and then vanishing as unexpectedly as they appeared. When Contributing Photographer Sarah Ainslie and I drove around in her (unwashed) car, we found several favourites had gone whilst others had sprung up overnight. Yet within the mutable world of the car washes, business goes on relentlessly, because as quickly as vehicles are cleaned, the traffic and the weather and the mud restore the necessity for it to be done all over again. Teams of men work ceaselessly in shifts, twenty-four hours a day, at a job that requires astounding stamina and patience.
It gives me the shivers just to imagine the lot of a car washer, working outside through the damp and cold of a London winter, so I was humbled by the goodwill that we encountered from these men, demonstrating resilience and tenacity in circumstances that few would envy. Arriving at T2 Car Wash under the railway arches at the Western extremity of Cable St, beneath the main line coming out of Fenchurch St Station, the car washers welcomed us into their cosy cubby hole off the main working area, a den where they enjoyed a bowl of porridge and watched satellite TV, toasting their toes by the heater during a rare break from the everlasting parade of taxis which pass through here night and day.
Yet once a vehicle pulled up, they were all over it with a preternatural dexterity and speed. Working in concert, they were spraying shampoo, mopping it with sponges – one in each hand – then rinsing it down and polishing it up with chamois leathers – again one in each hand – until the customer received his charge back, gleaming and spotless. And then the car washers moved on to the next in line with undiminished enthusiasm. While one team attended to the exterior, others were hoovering and cleaning out the interior, and everyone worked round each other – like some elaborate dance in which the moves kept shifting as everyone accommodated to everyone else in the constant imperative to keep things moving. These men are expert at what they do and show grace, in demonstrating the warmth of mutual respect, and excelling in an endeavour which to others might be of little consequence.
All this spectacle takes place within a whitewashed arch lit by fluorescents, open to daylight at either end, where, in a glacial mist, every surface glistens with damp and the floor is awash with water and soap suds draining away through culverts. For the most part these men do not wear gloves, even working with wet sponges and wringing them out in cold water, but when I asked “Don’t you get cold?” – the answer was automatic – “We don’t feel the cold when we’re working, and when we’re not working we’re in by the heater.”
In each car wash, I sought human details – the Christmas baubles, or the plastic birds, or the bunting, or the odd chairs scattered around, or the newspaper cuttings stuck to the wall, indicating that the employees had taken possession of their space. Be aware, the car wash is an arena we entered as guests, because the car washers are rulers of their soapy domain and customers must understand the decorum and necessity which requires a retreat to the waiting room, or to use the facilities, or to stand outside, at a respectful distance from the centre of activity.
Alone in the den at the T2 Car Wash, a room excavated into the thickness of the old brick vault, where I was privileged to hover and warm myself, I realised that I had found the inner sanctum in which the car washers came to regroup, sitting upon the worn couch and old office chairs, wiling away the long dark nights and bolstering each other’s resolve to make it through another winter. In the face of this arduous repetitive work, a group of Ghanaians and Romanians had banded together to make the best of it under an arch in Cable St.
You might say that washing cars is a pointless activity since the vehicles get dirty again at once, yet, as with many human occupations, the nobility lies not in the nature of the task or even in the reward, but in the manner of its execution. And there on the wall in the den, I saw the medal for car washing, awarded to the team for the ever-growing number of customers each month, objective evidence – if it were ever necessary – of the otherwise unacknowledged heroism of the car washers of the East End.
George
The den
Rosoi Lucian
Working without gloves in winter
Kofi shows off the customer facilities
Car washers never cease work, twenty-four hours a day
Albani Cletesteanu
The champion car washers of Cable St
Wet boots and socks
Photographs copyright © Sarah Ainslie
In Search Of The Red Lion Theatre
Is this the location of The Red Lion Theatre?
The Red Lion Theatre in Whitechapel was constructed in 1567 by John Brayne and his father-in-law James Burbage as London’s first purpose-built public commercial theatre, predating by some years those in Shoreditch which are celebrated as the home of Shakespeare’s first plays. Now, recent excavations up in Shoreditch have led to a renewed interest in what may be discovered down in Whitechapel, encouraging my own speculation about the location of The Red Lion Theatre.
For centuries, Whitechapel was the point of arrival and departure for those travelling east, where coaching inns – such The Boar’s Head at Aldgate – became venues for the performance of plays, and Henry VII Treasurer’s Accounts book for 1501 includes the entry – ‘6 August 1501: Also to the players at Mile End, 3 shillings, 4 pence.’
Evidence for the existence of The Red Lion Theatre resides in two legal documents which record the nature of disagreements between John Brayne and those who built his theatre. This first extract describes the location of The Red Lion and outlines its dimensions.
‘The condition of this obligation is such that if the within bounden John Reynolds, his executors, or assigns, or any of them, at his or their proper costs and charges do frame, make, or build and set up for the within named John Brayne within the court or yard lying on the south side of the garden belonging to the messuage or farmhouse called and known by the name of the sign of the Red Lion (about the which court there are galleries now building), situate and being at Mile End in the parish of St Mary Matfellon, otherwise called Whitechapel without Aldgate of London, sometime called Stark’s House, one scaffold or stage for interludes or plays of good, new, and well-seasoned timber and boards, which shall contain in height from the ground five feet of assize and shall be in length north and south forty foot of assize and in breadth east and west thirty foot of assize, well and sufficiently stayed bounden and nailed, with a certain space or void part of the same stage left unboarded in such convenient place of the same stage as the said John Brayne shall think convenient; and if the said John Reynolds, his executors, or assigns do make, frame and set up upon the said scaffold one convenient turret of timber and boards which shall contain and be in height from the ground, set upon plates, thirty foot of assize… and also that the said scaffold or stage so to be made be fully finished, wrought and workmanly ended and done before the eighth day of July then next immediately ensuing without fraud or further delay: that then this obligation to be void and of none effect or else to stand and abide in full strength and virtue.’
This second document challenges the quality of the carpenters’ work and names one of the plays performed at the theatre as The Story of Sampson.
‘Court holden the 15th day of July 1567 … by master William Ruddock, Master Richard More, Henry Whreste, and Richard Smarte, wardens, and Master Bradshaw. Be it remembered that … where certain variance, discord, and debate was between William Sylvester, carpenter, on the one party and John Brayne, grocer, on the other party, it is agreed, concluded, and fully determined by the said parties, by the assent and consent of them both with the advice of the master and wardens above said, that William Buttermore, John Lyffe, William Snelling, and Richard Kyrby, carpenters, shall with expedition go and peruse such defaults as are and by them shall be found of, in, and about such scaffolds as he the said William hath made at the house called the Red Lion in the parish of Stepney, and the said William Sylvester shall repair and amend the same with their advice substantially as they shall think good. And that the said John Brayne on Saturday next ensuing the date above written shall pay to the said William Sylvester the sum of £8 10 shillings lawful money of England, and that after the play which is called The Story of Samson be once played at the place aforesaid the said John shall deliver to the said William such bonds as are now in his custody for the performance of the bargain. In witness whereof both parties hereunto hath set their hands.’
It is unknown whether these two scaffolds were used for performances beyond 1567 but it is unlikely that such a large structure with a trapdoor and a turret would be built to serve for just one season. Within a decade, John Brayne entered into a second collaboration with his father-in-law James Burbage, building The Theatre in Shoreditch in 1575. Thus The Red Lion in Whitechapel can be seen as a prototype of The Theatre, the structure which was eventually transported across the river and rebuilt on Bankside as The Globe in 1599.
As part of Before Shakespeare, a project to explore the origins of public playhouses in sixteenth century London, actors from The Dolphin’s Back staged a reading of Robert Wilson’s play The Three Ladies of London (1584) in Whitechapel recently at The Urban Bar – the venue closest to the location of The Red Lion. One of the first playhouse scripts to be printed, this lively allegorical drama exposes the exploitation of the poor and vulnerable, drawing a picture of London as a cosmopolitan city of international trade, where rents are escalating beyond affordable levels and citizens are anxious about the amount of revenue paid to Europe. Plus ça change!
The Gascoyne Map of Stepney (courtesy Before Shakespeare)
‘…within the court or yard lying on the south side of the garden belonging to the … farmhouse called and known by the name of the sign of the Red Lion…’ The Red Lion Farm is circled and the theatre is believed to have been constructed upon the westerly piece of land labelled ‘Bowling’ . (courtesy Before Shakespeare)
The presumed location of the Red Lion Theatre between Cavell St and Millward St is now occupied by a car park and a railway cutting
Actors from The Dolphin’s Back read Robert Wilson’s The Three Ladies of London at the Urban Bar in Whitechapel close to the site of the Red Lion Theatre
This vacant lot at the corner of Middlesex St and Aldgate High St was once the site of The Boar’s Head, Whitechapel, 1557: ‘[Privy Council orders the Lord Mayor] to give order forthwith that some of his officers do forthwith repair to the Boar’s Head without Aldgate where the lords are informed a lewd play called A Sack Full of News shall be played this day, the players whereof he is willed to apprehend and to commit to safe ward . . . and to take their playbook from them and to send the same hither.’
For further information consult www.beforeshakespeare.com
You may also like to read about
At Shakespeare’s First Theatre
In Search Of Shakespeare’s London
The Door to Shakespeare’s London
Lew Lessen, Barber
Today it is my pleasure to publish this interview and series of photographs, comprising a portrait of Lew Lessen who opened his barber’s shop in Shacklewell Lane in 1932, undertaken by Neil Martinson forty years ago. “He was a gentle and modest man who was proud of his trade,” Neil admitted to me.
“The craft of barbering is a most honourable profession – even royalty take their hats off to us. I was apprenticed to a barber. My Dad signed an agreement for me to learn the trade for two years at a shop in Southampton St, which is now Conway St. The hours were long. We were open from 8am to 8pm every day with one hour for lunch, and we opened until 9pm on Saturdays. On Sundays we worked from 9am to 2pm and on Mondays from 8am to 1pm.
I learned the trade as I went on. I used to practice shaving with an old razor on a bottle – lather the bottle as if it was a chin (a very pointed chin) and shave it off. There was a lot of shaving in those days. Men used to come in regularly for their shave. They would have their own shaving mugs numbered. A man would come in and say ‘My mug is number 20.’ I’d fetch it down and lather him.
A barber’s shop was like a club in those days. People would sit and talk for hours. Some customers would come in almost every day, just for a chat. One customer I always remember was Prince Monolulu, the famous tipster, with his cry of ‘I’ve got a horse.’ His head was full of small bumps, probably fibroid growths, but his frizzy hair covered it, so that it wasn’t noticeable to the naked eye. He asked me whether I would take away a bet for him to the local street bookmaker. He wanted two shillings each way double on two horses, and he told me he didn’t want the bookmaker to know that it was his bet. Well, naturally, getting such ‘inside information’ from such a source was too good to be missed. So not only myself, but my boss, and I also prevailed upon my Dad, who was not a betting man, to join us in the bet. Needless to say both horses finished well down the field.
I’ve seen many changes here, both in the neighbourhood and in hairstyles. It used to be just a matter of short back and sides, with the occasional Boston. A Boston means the hair is cut at the back in a line, instead of gradually tapered out. Then Bostons were short, but now they are long. Before the war, of course, people wanted the sleek look. They wanted their hair slicked down. I would have men come in and want their hair brushed like Ronald Coleman’s or Raymond Navarro’s, both of whom had the patent leather look about them.
The other change has nothing to do with haircutting or shaving. The role of the barber used not to be tonsorial skills. On occasions he would become the confidant, Father Confessor, mentor and advisor of his customers, especially in sexual matters. Sexual knowledge is nowadays everybody’s right, particularly for the younger generation. But before World War Two sexual ignorance among the young was fairly high. I remember being asked for and giving advice on the functions and duties of a bridegroom. I’ve given quite a lot of advice over the years. Many were the secrets told to me in confidence of men, and their maritial and extra-marital experience, and in confidence they remained. What was more, the barber’s was the only place you could get contraceptives in those days.
Over the years I have given service to many unusual customers. There was one man who had a serious operation on this throat, with the result that one of the arteries of his throat was covered by a very thin skin, that was more red in colour than the surrounding area. He could not shave himself for fear of cutting into this thin skin and causing the artery to bleed. He warned me to be careful not to cut the thin skin as it would have been impossible for me to stop the bleeding, and he would have to go to hospital. I shaved this man three times every week, and never once did I cut his skin.
There was one aspect of my profession that always gave me a great deal of personal satisfaction, even if it did not bring me much financial reward. This was whenever it was required of me to go out and give service to customers who could not make the journey to my shop, through illness or disability. I could not leave the shop during working hours, so it meant that after closing the shop, tidying the salon, having my evening meal, then changing to go out, it was after 8pm before I left home to do this service. My charges were always very reasonable, it sometimes meant I was away from home on these evenings for up to one and half hours, and was only a few shillings in pocket. But I never minded this, as I felt it was my small contribution towards helping people who were very unfortunate.”
Lew Lessen outside the barber’s shop in Shacklewell Lane that he opened in 1932
Photographs copyright © Neil Martinson
(This interview was originally published by Centreprise as part of Working Lives, Vol 2 1945-77)
You may also like to read about
Aaron Biber, London’s Oldest Barber
Fogs & Smogs In Old London
St. Martin, Ludgate with St. Paul’s Cathedral, c. 1900
At this time of year, when dusk gathers in the mid-afternoon, a certain fog drifts into my brain and the city itself grows mutable as the looming buildings outside my window merge into a dark labyrinth of shadows beyond. Yet this is as nothing compared with the smog of old London, when a million coal fires polluted the atmosphere with clouds of filthy black smoke carrying noxious fumes, infections and respiratory diseases. In old London, the city resounded with a symphony of fog horns on the river and thousands of people coughing up their lungs in the street.
Looking at these glass slides of a century ago, once used for magic lantern shows by the London & Middlesex Archaeological Society at the Bishopsgate Institute, the fogs and smogs of old London take on quite another meaning. They manifest the proverbial mythic “mists of time,” the miasma wherein is lost all of human history, save the sketchy outline that some idle writer or other jotted down. Just as gauzes at the pantomime conjure the romance of fairyland, the hazes in these pictures filter and soften the images as if they were faded memories, receding into the past.
The closer I examine these views, the more I wonder whether the fog is, in some cases, an apparition called forth by the photographic process itself – the result of a smeary lens or grime on the glass plate, or simply an accident of exposure. Even so, this photographic fogging is no less evocative of old London than the actual meteorological phenomenon. As long as there is atmosphere, the pictures are irresistibly atmospheric. And old London is a city eternally swathed in mist.
St Paul’s Cathedral from the north-west, c. 1920
Pump at Bedford Row, 1911
Cenotaph, 1919
Upper Thames view, c. 1920
Greenwich Hospital from the Park, c. 1920
City roadworks, 1910
Looking north across the City of London, c. 1920
Old General Post Office, c. 1910
View eastwards from St Paul’s, c. 1910
Hertford House, c. 1910
New River Head, c. 1910
The Running Footman public house, c. 1900
Unidentified building, c 1910
Church Row, Hampstead, c. 1910
Danish Ambassador’s residence, Wellclose Square, Wapping c. 1910
Church of All Hallows, London Wall, c. 1890
Drapers’ Almshouses, Bromley Street, c. 1910
Battersea Bridge, c. 1910
32 Smith Grove, Highgate, in the snow, 1906
Unknown public building, c. 1910
Training ship at Greenwich, c. 1910
Flooded moat at the Tower of London, c. 1910
The Woodman, 1900
Bangor St, North Kensington, c. 1910
Terrace of the Houses of Parliament, c.1910
Statue of Boudicca on Westminster Bridge, c. 1910
Glass slides courtesy Bishopsgate Institute
You may also like to take a look at
