The Great Cat & Dog Massacre
This is an extract selected by Hilda Kean from her book The Great Cat & Dog Massacre – The Real Story of the Second World War’s Unknown Tragedy published by University of Chicago Press
Blue Cross rescue of a cat (Courtesy of State Library of Victoria)
Frequently we hear the Second World War described as “The People’s War” and this phrase has become set in the public imagination, but – too often – the experiences of our own (or our relatives’) cats and dogs at the time are forgotten. Of the start of the war in September 1939, much is remembered. Certainly we remember that at the time school children were evacuated to the countryside, blackout curtains were made and even flower beds were starting to be dug up to create vegetable patches. Yet such positive action was rather different to what happened to cats and dogs at the start of the war.
In September 1939, many animals were killed by their owners. Politician Sir Robert Gower, who was also the president of the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, argued that at the decisions of ordinary people themselves nearly 750,000 pet animals were killed. Later the RSPCA and Brigadier Clabby, the author of the official history of the Royal Army Veterinary Corps, declared that 400,000, representing around 26% of cats and dogs in London alone, pet animals were killed. And this killing happened in the first week of the war in September 1939.
These acts of killing were not imposed by the government, but were undertaken by people taking their pet animals to vets and animal charities. Yet these were not the explicit decisions of the charitable organisations. Prior to the war, the RSPCA organised a conference on horse welfare involving many organisations and – in partnership with the National Air Raid Precautions Committee and with Home Office support – set up a body “to advise on all problems affecting animals in wartime.” Vets were annoyed and, with too little involvement from the government, they issued their own literature arguing that it was their responsibility to persuade people from having their pets killed.
But at the start of the war thousands of animals were killed. The RSPCA, the oldest animal charity in the world, reported the number of dogs and cats being brought in to be destroyed had doubled at its London clinics, and wrote “the work of destroying animals was continued, day and night, during the first week of the war.” The People’s Dispensary for Sick Animals, well known for its work in East London, noted that destructors were overwhelmed by thousands of animals brought for death to its clinics. Then the National Canine Defence League, set up in the eighteen-nineties to protect dogs at a time of rabies hysteria, reported that, so extensive was the slaughter of dogs, its supplies of choloroform had been exhausted. The Battersea Dogs’ Home killed fewer than other charities, having argued in the Bow and Battersea branches that people should take their animals home. Even at London Zoo there was an initial killing of poisonous snakes, and some birds including kestrels, herons and kites that were observed flying over Regent’s Park. Yet after a few months, many zoo animals were financially sponsored and continuing their lives there at the zoo – even including a dormouse paid for at the cost of a shilling per week !
During the war the government did much to ensure the status of dogs and cats including through BBC broadcasts. By Spring 1942, it was widely publicised that cats were doing work of “national importance.” Again the BBC would praise the NARPAC for offering free identification discs with the animal’s own collar. Less than half-way through the war, over three and a half million animals became registered and wore large blue and white discs.
Internally, civil servants were also working busily explaining to their ministers that “dogs are not to be interfered with” and ensuring the dogs “must be fed.” As a result, dogs could eat thousands of tons of food and cats could drink gallons of milk. If the civil service was to restrict materials for the manufacturing of dog biscuits then, they concluded, people would probably substitute for them other forms of human food! Given that so many people were in favour of their pets, the civil servants allowed genuine breeding to continue. For some months, civil servants thought about increasing dog tax but recognising such a topic was unpopular, they proposed psychological factors should be taken into account. They also rejected going along with the Nazi policy for conscription of the dog population for their war effort!
Vulnerable dogs as well as cats were looked after by the sanctuary organised by the Animal Defence House near Salisbury, which drove them to the countryside from Central London. Some of the dogs were taken to the home of Nina Duchess of Hamilton where they, together with moggies and pedigree cats, found countryside premises away from the London bombing. In their diaries and even in their mass observation interviews, many men and women talked about their own animals. Thus the writer, Fryniwyd Tennyson, took in two new cats- sharing their own food but also supporting their owner’s belief “they know nothing about war.”-
Sometimes the war situation was tragic. Thus Lilian Margaret Hart, living in Bethnal Green Rd with her husband George in the Air Raid Precautions, looked everywhere for Gyp the dog and Timmy the cat but sadly both had died in the bombing. On similar occasions others survived. Thus a parrot from Samuda St on the Isle of Dogs was kept alive in his squashed-up cage by being fed with bacon rind and crusty bread, only to give a wonderful recital of obscene language. Other animals, such as the canaries in the photograph below were rescued from a public house in southeast London. Thus the local community in West Hampstead searched for the mother of a local cat who was found by demolition workers in the debris of a nearby shop who carried her home in a sack. She was thin but was none the worse for her ordeal! In the Poplar air raids, Rip the dog helped find victims with Mr King the local air raid warden and stayed with him next to his small allotment. Together, they regularly visited an air raid shelter comforting those sheltering. As a result of his positive actions, Rip received a Dickin medal for his bravery.
Many animals were looked after and their stories passed on to children of all ages to give them emotional support. As one respondent argued, her father had given her The Photo Book of Pretty Pets for Christmas in 1940 and she recalls “The quality of my life has been enhanced by animals.”
On some occasions, children questioned why people were carrying their pets to a vet for their destruction. As a result of one particular boy becoming upset, his family returned home with the rescued ginger cat who had been about to be killed. Others, such as the late Brian Sewell, art critic, noted the seaside killing of his own dog as a “cold, hard, vengeful aversion lodged” in his long memory.
In diaries and in the records of Mass Observation during the war many adults told their stories. As one young man said to Mass Observation, “Probably dogs do more to uphold morale among their owners than anything else.” In many diaries, animals were witnessed and encouraged. Thus, the well-known Nella Last was an enthusiast about her dog Sol and cat Mr Murphy, explaining that, “To me he is more than an animal: he has kindness, understanding and intelligence and not only knows all that is said but often reads my mind to an uncanny degree.”
Even Winston Churchill publically celebrated his black cat Nelson at 10 Downing St and his ginger cat at his Chartwell home. When Rab Butler, pioneer of the 1944 Education Act, came to his room one night while Nelson was curled up at Churchill’s feet, Winston started the conversation by expressing that, “This cat does more for the war effort than you do!”
For some years the experience of wartime animals, especially in London, had stuck in my head as I rarely found them to be included when I was reading any conventional histories of the war. In my earlier book on Animal Rights: Political and Social Change in Britain since 1800, I wrote no more than a few pages about the treatment of the animals in war. This was not through ignorance but because of the paucity of animal material. Although Angus Calder’s The People’s War had talked very briefly of the destruction of animals, his common phrase “people’s war” ignored the effect on animals in the main.
Thinking about animals and researching the diary writers, family stories, animal charities and state archives, from that time highlighted the specific plight of animals in London and the East End for me. It also demonstrated the long established (if sometimes erased ) presence of animals, as well as those only thinking themselves and their ancestors as participating in ‘the people’s war.’ Rather than forgetting about this time of varying treatment, perhaps we should choose to think in different ways, remembering cats and dogs as much as humans.
Disc of the National Air Raids Precaution Animals’ Committee
Canaries rescued from a pub in southeast London, September 1940
Joint canine and human fatigue at Southwark Rest Centre c. 1940
Dog at an East End rest centre, September 1940
Families, including children and a dog, at an emergency feeding unit in Chingford, January 1945
A hen is a victim of the bombing in Hackney
Images courtesy Bishopsgate Institute
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From ‘Journal Of A Man Unknown’
Today I publish a second edited extract from Gillian Tindall’s novel Journal of a Man Unknown.
We still have a few places available on the guest list for the publication party at Hatchard’s in Piccadilly next Wednesday 19th November 6-8pm.
At 7pm Colin Thubron will speak and Alan Cox will read from the novel.
If you would like to attend please email spitalfieldslife@gmail.com and let me know if you plan to bring any guests.
CLICK HERE TO ORDER JOURNAL OF A MAN UNKNOWN FOR £10
From Journal of a Man Unknown
When I was a very small boy, in the earliest time I can recall, I thought that I had myself been created out of the land around me: I mean that I thought that I had somehow been born out of that High Weald we customarily call ‘The Forest’, with its great hills of gorse and bracken and heather, its thick-wooded parts of oak and ash and beech and hazel, its meandering streams reddened by the iron washed from the clay banks, and indeed from the earth itself.
And making no distinction between the beasts of the field and the fowls of the air and my small self, I thought that they too had been created particularly out of that heavy, useful soil: the deer that still roamed most plentifully in those days, and also all the lesser beasts, the stoats and weasels, the foxes, the squirrels. And of course all the birds of the air, though I think it puzzled me somewhat that creatures of earth could fly so lightly. Perhaps they were indeed ‘of the air’ rather than being fashioned from the same clay as the animals and me? (And, come to that, grown men too have long speculated on just how birds come to fly, but that is another matter).
This may seem an odd fancy for a small boy to have. But, after all, it says in the Book, which I heard read aloud, that the Lord created all the beasts of the field and the fowls of the air in what sounded to be a busy and craftsman-like way. In just the same well-paced way I had seen my uncles and their occasional labourers build up the layers of the furnace for another bloom of iron, and also the charcoal-burners build their close-packed ovens simply from what was to hand around them.
As to rabbits (which we called conies) being clay I was not sure. They were everywhere, as now, but I was told that they had been brought in as a delicacy by the lords in olden time who hunted across the Weald and had banks of burrows specially built for them in sheltered places, and that was how the big wood near to my uncles’ furnace came to be called Broadstone Warren. And then there were, as still today, the small herds of grazing cattle, each beast of which belongs to someone and is marked accordingly, and for which the owners are allowed to cut litter for the wintering in barns. And then there were the swine – not quite so many now, since folk have taken to building sties – that rooted for acorns in the woods; they too, I was told, all belonged to someone or other though you wouldn’t think it from their air of owning the place.
I suppose it must have been Parson himself (when he began to teach me things out of his own natural inclination that way) who told me by and by that humankind were essentially different from the beasts of the field in that they had a special, different spirit breathed into them.
It was a time I now think of as full of change and meaning, the bridge between our old world and a new one. This may seem just my own idea, being that each man is absorbed in his own life so that his life-span comes to seem to him a hinge between past and future, full of special meaning. But I am sure enough now, from what I have seen and heard and experienced myself over the years, in London and then in the North Country far from here, that I am not deluded about this. I was fortunate to have been born when I was and so to live my prime of life in a world full of new possibilities, new ways of thinking and of doing.
CLICK HERE TO ORDER JOURNAL OF A MAN UNKNOWN FOR £10
Culminating a distinguished career spanning more than sixty years, historian Gillian Tindall has written a novel as her final statement. In an astonishing feat of literary imagination, she projects herself back onto one of her forebears to conjure a compelling vision of 17th century England.
The protagonist is a Huguenot metal founder, an occupation that leads him from the Sussex Weald to the Whitechapel Bell Foundry, and beyond to the North Country. While in London, he lives above a coffee house in Brick Lane and the book conjures a vivid evocation of Spitalfields at the time of the Huguenots.
This is a hymn to those who pass through life not leaving a trace, except in the hearts of those into whose lives they have been cast.
‘Gillian Tindall’s JOURNAL OF A MAN UNKNOWN is a novel of rare distinction. Tindall’s voice is richly her own: tender but unsentimental and lit by intimate knowledge of her chosen world.’ Colin Thubron
The Maiden Voyage Of The Raybel
Only a few tickets left now for Tessa Hunkin’s illustrated talk about Hackney Mosaic Project this Saturday at the Bloomsbury Jamboree at the Art Workers’ Guild. Click here to book
For the past few years, Contributing Photographer Rachel Ferriman & I have been making regular trips down to the creek at Sittingbourne to follow the restoration of the hundred-year-old Thames sailing barge Raybel from rotting hulk to seaworthy vessel. So it was a highlight of the summer to be invited upon her maiden voyage from Queenborough on the Isle of Sheppey this August.
The day was clear but still when we departing the dock, so the engine was employed to take us out into the Medway where the sails were raised and we drifted across the wide estuary. Although there was no visible evidence on that serene summer afternoon, this was where the Dutch fleet attempted to destroy the English Navy with a surprise raid in 1667, leading to more than 600 casualties and the wrecks scattering the river bed here to this day.
On board our auspicious voyage were Professor Jackie Sully and her brother Ron Sully, grandchildren of George Sully who commissioned the building of the Raybel over a century ago. Once the voyage was underway, I sat down in the hold with Jackie and Ron, and Ron told me the story.
‘It was my grandfather George Frederic Sully who commissioned Raybel to be built at Sittingbourne in 1920. He named it after my father Raymond and his twin sister whose middle name was Isabel.
His father was a shipbroker and my grandfather bought sailing barges and went from strength to strength. Back in the day, we had eighteen or twenty barges, we were bigger than Everards. We were based in Fenchurch St near the Minories in the City of London . In those days you had to have an office in London because all the trade was done on the floor of the Corn Exchange. They went one week and spoke to the merchant and arranged the cargo, signed a charter party and the next week they went back and got paid in gold sovereigns. That’s how the trade was done because the London Docks were the terminus for everything coming into this country and the barge distributed cargos up the east coast.
Raybel was made by the shipwright at Sittingbourne, but another yard we used was Cook’s of Maldon. My grandfather had the Raybel built about one foot shorter than the conventional barge, the reason for that was so it could go through Mountford Lock at Lowestoft to get to Norwich up the Haddisco Cut without going through Yarmouth, because the dues in Yarmouth were twice the dues in Lowestoft. So it was cheaper to take a cargo up to Norwich that way.
He was quite a wealthy man, the first man in Chertsey to own a motor car – but he didn’t drive, he had a chauffeur. It was literally riches to rags in three generations!
My father moved the business from London when the Docks died, by then all the trade was up on the east coast so he opened an office in Norwich for about a tenth of the rent he was paying in London. He took the gear out of the sailing barges and put Gardner engines in them, it was quicker and more efficient, and with an engine they could get a lot more freight in and more cargos. The crews in those days were paid their share after their disbursements, it was 50-60% of the freight and the barge owner had the remainder.
The days of sail were over. It wasn’t quick enough and you were at the mercy of the wind and the tide whereas with with a single screw engine you get to places you couldn’t get to under sail. And they built wheelhouses to make the crew more comfortable while they were at sea. They traded up and these barges went across to the near continent, as well as all the little east coast ports, Maldon, Brightlingsea, Colchester, Wivenhoe and further up to Yarmouth and the Wash bay ports, Boston, Wisbech, King’s Lynne, Sutton Bridge, Fossdyke, and up the Humber. We used to go right up to Gainsborough, I don’t think any trade goes up there any more.
My father was born into it. After his wartime service, he came into the office with his brother Bernard. Grandfather died in 1948 and I was born in 1949.
The industry has demised now, we do not have a British merchant fleet anymore. The transition to containerisation was a big part of it along with the end of the London Docks. Distribution by sea was no longer needed and transport shifted to road. Our barges carried everything from animal feedstuffs, to coal, to scrap and ammunition.
The barges became less cost effective to run – our coasters were 600 tonners and we had a couple of bigger ones and a couple of smaller ones – but we could not increase the load. We had a 250 tonner, the Subaventure, she was the last barge to take malting barley to the Snape Maltings. I had an interesting conversation with an old boy who used to be the pilot to take them up to Snape. He used to scull his dinghy down there and put withies in where the water was deep with an upturned baked bean can on the top and he knew when the baked bean can floated off that there was enough water for the barge to come through. It was fine for a day until some kids went down there and shot all the cans off the withies with an airgun.
My father retired aged seventy-five in 2000, there was still a business then but it got more and more difficult as all the small ports were disappearing. I joined the business in my thirties and I was taught by my father. I had ten great years until we ceased trading. It was a great shame.’
Then Ron sat in silence in acknowledgement of the loss, but also in affectionate reverence for the recovery of the Raybel. So Jackie picked up the story and brought us back to the present moment as we sat there in the cool of the hold of the newly renovated barge, drifting on that warm summer afternoon.
‘After Raybel was decommissioned, it was moored in St Katharine’s Dock for many years as an events venue but then it was just left to rot because they weren’t using it. So it is emotional for us, coming back here now it has been renovated, because I remember being on Raybel before. I remember the smell of it, the moment you are on it you can smell it, and it still has the same smell today.’
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The Raybel at the dock at Queenborough
Jackie Sully and her brother Ron Sully, grandchildren of George Sully who commissioned the Raybel
Ron Sully
Benjamin Pollock
Gareth Maeer
Skipper Laurie Watkins
Photographs copyright © Rachel Ferriman
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The Education Of Audrey Kneller
I am sorry to report that Audrey Kneller died in September aged eighty. Below you can read Audrey’s candid memoir of her years in Spitalfields. In this second of two extracts, Audrey describes her education in Judaism.
Deal St School Trip 1955 – Audrey is third from right, peering round the girl in front
In June 1953, my sister Yvonne & I were enrolled at the Robert Montefiore Primary School in Deal St on the corner of Hanbury St. It was not surprising, given the demographic of the area, that ninety per cent of the pupils were Jewish, so we felt at home in our new environment. I was eight and a half years old, and my sister was eleven.
Yvonne was selected to start the following September at the sister school, Robert Montefiore Secondary Modern in Valance Rd, Whitechapel, which although not a grammar school had a very good reputation. Under the fatherly guidance of headmaster, Mr Nurse, the school turned out first class citizens, well equipped to deal with the pressures of modern living.
Between 1953 and 1956, Yvonne & I walked to school down Fleur-de-Lis St, passing Commercial St Police Station on the left and the little grocery shop on the right, run by a kindly old lady who was always willing to sell us a couple of eggs or four ounces of butter if we ran short. We turned right into Commercial St, dominated by the vastness of the Godfrey Phillips Tobacco Company building, past the local tuck shop and a greengrocers run by two elderly ladies. One was a widow and the other had become a confirmed spinster after her fiancé was killed in the First World War. They told us they were almost killed during the Second World War when an oil bomb fell behind the shop. Luckily, they escaped through the front and lived to tell of their hair-raising experience.
Then we crossed over into Hanbury St and walked down towards Deal St. To a child, the road seemed wide and the walk long, punctuated by intriguing sights, sounds and smells. There was always a great deal of activity inside the workshops to the left and I remember wood shavings on the ground, and hearing the electric saw and smelling the sawdust as I passed. I always kept to the left-hand side of Hanbury St, never deviating from the route.
I noticed several half-ruined houses with no roofs, merely slats of wood where the ceilings had been, allowing the sky to peep through. Were they bombed, I wondered? I assumed this explained why there were so many ruined buildings. A common sight, particularly in Aldgate and Whitechapel, was where the whole side of a building was missing and you could see one bare wall, several storeys high, with fireplaces where the floors had been. I walked with a sense of horror and bewilderment. The war had only recently given way to an austere peace, and the reminders of the damage to life, limb and property moved me deeply.
The sight of my school at the junction of Deal St and Hanbury St told me I was safe. One day, my mother came to have a chat with my teacher and they decided that I was like Schubert with his “Unfinished Symphony.” Although my work was good, I was rather slow and took a long time to finish. Yet they decided that the patience of the recipient was rewarded.
Every night I prayed that I would pass my “11 Plus,” so that I could go the revered grammar school in Spital Sq, the Central Foundation School for Girls. On the day of the exam, I was recovering from flu and had a coughing spell during the maths test. I was off sick when the results came through but I was told that I was eligible for a governors’ place at Spital Sq, subject to passing the entrance examination. I ran home with my head held high and told my family.
Later I realised that governors’ places were for those who had not passed but were termed as “Grammar Marginals,” so we could be given another chance. A couple of weeks later I entered the portals of Spital Sq to sit the examination but found some of the questions above my head, especially the arithmetical ones. Also the interview with the headmistress did not go well. She was not impressed with my replies to questions concerning a future career. So I was not surprised to learn that it was not my destiny to go there, but then another door opened.
A few of us who had not managed to get into Spital Sq were offered governors’ places for a Jewish grammar school in Stoke Newington, subject to an entrance examination, and the idea rather appealed to me. It was the Avigdor School, a privately-run school supported by the London County Council. The examination was incredibly easy, consisting of elementary questions about the Old Testament and, shortly afterwards, I and my fellows were awarded places.
Mr Nurse, my sister’s headmaster, was very disappointed at my decision to go to Avigdor School. He made no secret of this when he met me later at Yvonne’s prize-giving, as he had put my name on the waiting list ahead of hundreds of others to go to Robert Montefiore Secondary Modern. My mother tried to persuade me to change my mind but I was excited at the thought of striking out on my own.
On my first day at the new school, I was asked by the girl sitting next to me, “Are you “frum“?” This is a Yiddish term to describe someone who is religiously observant. In all innocence I answered, “Yes.” In fact, I was more in thought than deed, but Shula was frum and came from an Orthodox family. She immediately became my best friend. Her parents were émigrés prior to the war, her mother from Germany and her father from Hungary.
Shula was part of the generation of British Jewry whose parents had escaped Nazi persecution to form a new community in North London. I learned that Stoke Newington and Stamford Hill was thickly populated by Orthodox Jews of German and Polish origin.
Those of German origin were yekkes while the Poles were the chasidim (pious ones), who dressed in the sombre garb of their forefathers.The women were not allowed to reveal any part of their anatomy except hands, face and ankles, so they wore long sleeves and thick stockings. Married women had their hair cut short and wore sheitels (wigs). By contrast, the yekkes were less strict in their dress, the men dispensed with payos (sidelocks) and the women did wear sheitels but drew the line at sleeveless clothing.
Shula’s family did not view themselves as yekkes or chasidim and, although strictly Orthodox, her mother did not wear a sheitel. Another girl in my class, Caroline Rosenthal, a bouncy girl with curly black hair and rosy cheeks whose family were Orthodox also immediately became my friend. Caroline was exactly a year younger than me but, because she was very bright, she had been moved up a year.
She invited me to stay with her for the week of Pesach or Passover, and it was then that I became acquainted with the way of life of Orthodox Jews. It had a profound effect on me. Until this point, my Jewish education had been sketchy but I was now at a school with a curriculum of Jewish subjects which completely changed my way of thinking.
Over the next four years I became transformed, partly due to the visits to the homes of my religious friends and partly due to my teachings at school. Prayer played a large part in my life and I was able to recite prayers in Hebrew off by heart. Becoming religious was not an easy transition and was not entirely welcomed at home where I found myself alone in my beliefs.
Yet I was happier than I had been for a long time, with reservations. I had achieved almost the impossible in my education but grown detached from my family who, by comparison with my new friends, seemed heathen to me. Although my mother kept a kosher home, I introduced stricter dietary laws. The separation of milk and meat utensils was approved of by my mother but greeted with dismay by my sister. My mother was hard pressed to please us both.
Years later, I realised my decision to go to Avigdor School in the face of my mother’s opposition was in some ways unwise. Although I learned about Judaism, which proved an asset in later life, I had no qualifications and the events which caused me to leave were unfortunate. The London County Council tried to close the school down because of “low standards.” But, years later, I learned from the Jewish Chronicle that the governors had not approved of the interest shown by the teachers in secular subjects and felt the school should confine itself to activities of a religious nature. In 1959, following an article which appeared in the Jewish Chronicle headed “Avigdor School Has Failed,” we heard that the school would close.
For the last year, we had only five pupils in our class. Ultimately, Shula was accepted by our sister school, the Hasmonean Grammar School for Girls in Hendon, while Caroline and l left to go to another grammar school in North London. It was sad that the Avigdor School which was the experiment and brainchild of Rabbi Dr Solomon Schonfeld, Principal of the Jewish Secondary Schools Movement, had failed. He was a hero who saved countless people from the Holocaust, risking his life to do so.
My education in Stoke Newington isolated me to an extent from Elder St. I grew away from it, looking forward to each school day when I could ride on the bus northwards to cleaner, fresher air.
Although none of my family were Orthodox, my maternal grandfather, Nathan, was very observant. After his passing, as there were no men to lead the way, observances slipped though my mother and her sisters upheld our faith. When High Holydays arrived, we dressed up in our best clothes and attended Morning Service. After lunch, Auntie Sophie’s front room was the usual place for the family to congregate. Friends, neighbours and children all gathered in their finery for a mootel (chinwag).
At Rosh Hashanah we would wish everyone Happy New Year over a drink of Auntie Sophie’s homemade morello cherry wine and a slice of cake. She lived all her days in and around Spitalfields, devoting herself entirely to her children and their families.
Towards the latter part of 1958, my mother received a Notice to Quit under the 1957 Rent Act. The landlord’s agent had observed the improvements she had made and, realising that she was receiving rent from the two flats upstairs, he reported back to the landlord who immediately gave instructions for her rent to be doubled.
My mother was offered the house for £2,000, which was a fair price at the time, but she could not buy it because of its poor state and the prohibitive cost of the repairs. She sought the help of her nephew who was a chartered surveyor. In those days, single women could not take out mortgages but with his help as a guarantor, they found a property.
We moved out of Elder St in April 1959 to a more comfortable two-storey terrace in Stoke Newington. Although it was as yet still untouched by bulldozer or developer, we knew the writing was on the wall for Elder St because our landlord had plans for number 20 that included demolition.
Playing in Toynbee St in 1952. Audrey is in the front on the left, aged seven and a half, and her sister Yvonne is at the back on the right. Brune House is behind and you can just see the bottom of a big sign advertising Charringtons on The Lord Nelson.
Robert Montefiori School in Deal St is destined to be redeveloped as flats
You may also like to read the first extract of Audrey Kneller’s memoir
So Long, Audrey Kneller
I am sorry to report that Audrey Kneller died in September aged eighty. Below you can read Audrey’s evocative memoir of her early years in Elder St.
Audrey on trip to Epping Forest, aged twelve in 1957
Elder St was not a pretty place in spite of its name. No buds burst forth each spring to awaken our spirits and no birds sang merrily to remind us of the wonders of nature. Instead soot lay unmolested in every crevice of the ancient brickwork, while the clanking and hissing of steam trains shunting reminded us of the presence of the large London terminus. Poverty was a mantle we refused to wear, but it lurked menacingly on every street corner.
Early in 1953, my Auntie Sophie happened to bump into Millie Berman, an old school friend of my mother’s. This chance meeting was to bring great changes. Millie lived with her daughter on the upper floors of a rented house in Elder St and was looking for someone to take over the tenancy as she was intending to move. Clearly this was an opportunity not be missed.
Shortly after the Coronation in June 1953, we left the comfort of our temporary home in Edgware and moved into the four-storey terraced house at 20 Elder St, Norton Folgate, E1. Our first impressions were far from favourable. The tallness of the houses and total absence of trees or even a blade of grass was very forbidding. However we gradually settled and discovered the bizarre fascinations of an urban existence.
At the back, towards Bishopsgate, there was a large bomb site where I joined some boys playing cowboys and indians, and had a lovely time amid the dirt and rubble. My mother, being a genteel person, was quite horrified when I returned home looking the worse for wear. Thereafter I played more civilised games with my sister and the other refined children of the neighbourhood inside the safe confines of the street. The bomb site, however, came into its own on Guy Fawkes Night when the sky was lit up with the flames of a huge bonfire and accompanying fireworks, watched by us from a third floor bedroom window.
Our part of Elder St was an ideal playground, not only because it sheltered us from traffic but also because of the numbers of children living in the surrounding houses and tenements, so we were seldom short of playmates. In those days, the threat of the motor car was almost non-existent, leaving us to play unrestricted and unhampered, a freedom children cannot enjoy today.
In fact, I cannot remember ever, in the early days of our life in Elder St, seeing a car impinge on our games of higher and higher, piggy in the middle and others too numerous to mention. We played in the road outside our door and no-one ever prevented us from chalking out our squares on the pavement for hopscotch. The black-painted iron bars above the basement in front of the some of the houses could easily be squeezed behind, if a side bar was missing, in order to retrieve a lost ball. These hump-shaped grills were nicknamed “airies,” and a cry would often go up, “It’s gone down the airy!” It was up to the smallest and bravest of us to crawl down into the tiny space below, and once down there you had an awful feeling of being trapped in a cage until you emerged triumphant with the lost ball.
I remember long summer evenings spent playing in the street and the man who came along on his three-wheeler, peddling ices. “Yum Yum” was the brand name and yum yum his ice lollies were, delicious and creamy. A good selling point was that every so often one of the lolly sticks would have the name “YUM YUM” printed on it and whoever had such a stick could have another lolly free on presenting it to the ice cream man. Once this fact became known, some of us sat in the gutter scratching the words “YUM YUM” on our spare sticks. But the ice cream man was not fooled and, some time later, when he came round again after an unexpectedly long interval, the name of the product had been changed to “WHIM”. The lollies were the same but somehow the gilt had gone from the gingerbread.
I recall with affection the Josephs family. Simon Josephs was my age and lived with his parents, two maiden aunts and an elderly grandmother around the corner in Fleur-de-Lis St. Their house was much smaller than ours and poorly built but they were a happy family. They even had a television set, which we did not have, and we lost no opportunity when invited to view. We also spent happy hours playing with Simon and his games, especially my favourite one of Monopoly.
Next door to the Josephs lived an elderly spinster and her bachelor brother who was disabled, having been afflicted with shell shock in the First World War, and I remember sitting with them one Yom Kippur evening waiting for the fast to end. One by one, the tiny houses and the dark overcrowded tenements in Fleur-de-Lis St became empty and boarded up awaiting demolition. The Josephs, we heard later, were re-housed in a new flat on the Ocean Estate in Mile End.
Number 26 Elder St was a tall narrow house accommodating two families, one Jewish and the one Gentile. My sister Yvonne and I would sometimes sit on the steps of the house playing gobs or five stones with the daughters of the respective families. Avril Levy from the Jewish family had a famous auntie, Adele Leigh a renowned opera singer, who would often call round, leaving her sporty two-seater Sunbeam Rapier outside the house.
In Blossom St lived a family that to me epitomised poverty both materially and spiritually. The children were neglected and ran around with bare feet and bare bottoms. I was very shocked because they were so different from us yet lived almost on our doorstep. One day, Christine, a little girl who lived at 16 Elder St, decided that we should venture into the house in Blossom St. We peered inside what seemed to be a dark hole with no semblance of what I considered to be the trappings of a home. Dirt and decay lay all around and I caught a glimpse of a man lying asleep on an old armchair which, instead of cushions, was covered with sacks filled with horse hair. Overcome by feelings of horror, disbelief and the foul stench that pervaded the building, we stepped backwards into the street, and quickly walked back to the welcome ‘civilisation’ of Elder St, never to set foot again in Blossom St.
As to the past history of our house, we were led to believe that it was built in the early eighteen-hundreds. I cannot support the validity of this but the house certainly contained some unusual features.
Looking through the windows at the back, high walls surrounded the yard which was no more than ten feet in depth, just enough space for a coal storage area and a washing line to be strung across. Our convenient position near Liverpool St Station could also be a disadvantage, if the wind was blowing in the wrong direction our clean laundry would be showered with a fine layer of soot.
Ours was the only house in Elder St – and for all we knew anywhere else in Norton Folgate – to have a bathroom. The fittings were brass and, instead of having a normal plughole, there was a tall brass post affair which had to be lifted up to let the water run away. Hot water came from an ancient geyser on the wall above the bath but woe betides anyone who fell foul of the delicate lighting-up procedure. I did once and was greeted with a loud bang. The secret was to run the water first and then ignite the gas. Henceforth, unless my mother or sister were there to do the honours, I felt it safer to spend my bath times in an old zinc tub in front of the fireplace in the living room.
Nevertheless, it was handy to have a bathroom, especially as a connecting door led into the back bedroom thereby giving us a bathroom en suite! The toilet was situated next to the bathroom on the first floor landing. To have an inside toilet was again untypical of the area, most toilets being situated outside in the backyard, as I found at our cousin’s house in Buxton St.
A house of this size required regular maintenance and my mother employed a spare-time handyman to keep the interior in a good state of repair. He came and went for six years, painting, papering, plumbing and fixing, and no sooner had he finished on the top floor than it was time to start again at the bottom, rather like the Forth Bridge.
An interesting feature of the house was a long speaking tube with a whistle at one end, extending from the top floor right down to the basement. Presumably a device once used by servants, this was a source of amusement. Another source of great amusement to us, as well as to other children in our street, was the wall panelling. We succeeded in convincing them that one on the first floor landing slid back to reveal a secret passageway, such as the ones used by Cavaliers to escape the Roundheads during the Civil War.
One day, my sister told some children playing in the street that there was something strange in our basement and they immediately came to investigate. Meanwhile, I had dressed up a tailor’s dummy in an old red frock and hid behind it. As the children descended the basement stairs, I slowly moved the dummy forward, calling out in an eerie voice. The inquisitive children scattered in haste, believing me to be a headless ghost!
Not long after we moved into Elder St, we discovered the presence of unwelcome lodgers lurking behind the skirting boards. After mousetraps failed to catch them, we acquired the services of a cat. One day, one of our cousins from Buxton St called round with a tabby who had the perfect markings of a tiger, so the name stuck. Tiger was a wonderfully docile pet but he lived up this name in keeping the rodent community at bay.
One day I found him sitting on the landing and tried to pick him to carry him downstairs but he would not budge. I could not understand it until my mother pointed out that he was standing guard over a small hole in the skirting board. We left him there all that day and eventually he returned to us of his own accord, presumably having accomplished his mission.
As to the other houses in Elder St, I am sure that none of us children had any idea of their historic value. As far as I could see, we were surrounded by decaying walls and we had to make the best of the situation until circumstances improved.
Although we may have been devoid of pastoral pleasures in Spitalfields, life was far from dull. We were living on the fringes of a great nucleus of Jewish enterprise and culture – consisting of delicatessens, bakeries, butcher shops and kosher restaurants, intermingled with other Jewish-owned businesses in the garment, jewellery and shoe trades, bookshops, a Yiddish theatre and numerous synagogues – stretching from Brick Lane southward to Houndsditch and eastward as far as Bow. This was our heritage, we had returned to the roots set down by our grandparents and thousands of other immigrants fifty years earlier.
Audrey’s tenth birthday tea in 1955
At House Of Annetta
Today, I publish my photoessay of House of Annetta, 25 Princelet St, a project managed by Assemble, as a prelude to James Binning’s lecture at the Bloomsbury Jamboree next weekend, telling the story and outlining the work of this celebrated architectural collective.
ASSEMBLE: PEOPLE, PLACES & COMMUNITIES
A talk by James Binning – founding member of the inspirational, Turner-prize winning, architectural collective Assemble.
Assemble is a multi-disciplinary collective working across architecture, design and art. Founded in 2010 to undertake a single self-built project, Assemble has since delivered a diverse and award-winning body of work, while retaining a democratic and cooperative working method that enables built, social and research-based work at a variety of scales, both making things and making things happen.
James’ talk will focus on Assemble’s early work and how they produced innovative projects that were resourceful and responsive to the challenges they saw as young people and practitioners in London and around the UK.
In 2025 James set up Common Treasures, a new organisation focussing on the role for design to address challenges facing rural places, economies and communities. He is working with the Ecological Land Co-operative, an organisation that aims to build a living working countryside in ways that are equitable and ecological, through democratising access to land and supporting the development of better networks of local, regenerative food and material production, and developing low cost and low impact housing for land workers.
Click here to book for James Binnings’ lecture at 12:15pm on Sunday 16th November
When artist Annetta Pedretti died a couple of years ago, her relatives gave her eighteenth century house in Princelet St to the Edith Maryon Foundation who commissioned Assemble to turn it into HOUSE OF ANNETTA, a community centre with a focus on spatial justice – the politics of land ownership and access to housing – which is a subject of great relevance in Spitalfields. My photographs document this extraordinary partly-deconstructed house from 1710 just as it was after Annetta left it.
Annetta created this vaulting in her garden summer house
Annetta built these drawers into her staircase
Annetta’s timber supply for repair of her house fills the cellar
Fire damage on the first floor
Annetta made her bed of chairs and designed the paper clothes hanging above
The view over Hanbury St from the attic
Tessa Hunkin’s Hackney Mosaic Lectures
This month there are two opportunities to hear Tessa Hunkin speaking about her Hackney Mosaic Project, showing the mosaics, explaining how the project started and revealing how mosaics are made. Tessa will be signing copies of her book at both events.
Click here to book for Tessa Hunkin’s talk on Saturday 15th November at 12:15pm at the Bloomsbury Jamboree, Art Workers’ Guild, 6 Queen Sq, WC1N 3 AT (Ticket includes entrance to the Jamboree)
Click here to buy a copy of Tessa Hunkin’s Mosaic Project
