The Degradation Of The Whitechapel Bell Foundry
The Whitechapel Bell Foundry, shuttered since 2017
November 2022
March 2023
July 2023
February 2024
These photos record the ongoing degradation, decay, disregard and disrespect of the world’s most famous bell foundry without any check from those authorities who have the power to do something.
Meanwhile, the London Bell Foundry is offering to acquire the former Whitechapel Bell Foundry at market value but the owners of the grade-II*-listed building refuse to engage, even though their hotel scheme is dead and they have been trying to sell it for several years unsuccessfully. The judgement of the Secretary of State’s Public Inquiry into the future of the foundry in 2020 obligates any owner to ensure foundry activity continues at this site.
The London Bell Foundry is a not-for-profit company limited by guarantee set up with the purpose of operating a bell foundry in Whitechapel, combining traditional bell founding with the use of digital technology.
When I posted my most recent photograph on social media last week, it received an astonishing reaction – over eight hundred reposts, hundreds of comments, shared by over one hundred and twenty thousand people – indicative of the extent of public feeling on this issue.
In response to the hullabaloo, Historic England issued this statement –
“Whitechapel Bell Foundry played a vital role in the long history of bell-making in this country and is an important landmark for London. Whilst the historic buildings are no longer in use as a foundry, planning permission was granted for a scheme for its re-use which we accepted would be sensitive to its significance and provide a level of public access.
We share concerns about the vulnerable condition of the building and a worrying increase in graffiti. We are monitoring the situation, but responsibility for the site lies with the owner. Tower Hamlets Council has formal powers if it considers that urgent works are required to preserve the building. We would support the London Bell Foundry’s alternative vision for the site, should they take ownership and apply for the necessary planning consents.”
THE LONDON BELL FOUNDRY
The London Bell Foundry seeks to acquire the Grade II* listed buildings as a permanent home for the London Bell Foundry. They want to open it as a fully-working foundry, re-establishing the world’s most famous bell foundry that operated in Whitechapel for five hundred years from the reign of Elizabeth I to the reign of Elizabeth II.
Their mission is to reinvigorate the art and science of bell founding through a marriage of new and old technology, casting church bells, artists’ bell, ceremonial bells, and bells for all occasions.
They are working with Nigel Taylor, foreman at the Whitechapel Bell Foundry for forty years, alongside artists of international stature and a team of the foremost experts in the technology of casting.
They plan to maximise the educational potential through apprenticeships for local people and work with schools and colleges in East London.
Their first commission was the Covid Bell in 2021, designed by Grayson Perry in support of their mission, which debuted at the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition 2022. The Covid Bell will tour NHS hospitals, enabling those have been bereaved to toll the bell in remembrance.
The London Bell Foundry has demonstrated a proven financial model that can ensure the tradition of bell founding continues in this country in perpetuity.
SUPPORTERS
“I fully support the proposal by the London Bell Foundry to establish a working foundry at the historic Whitechapel site. It is tragic that the bell foundry has been shuttered up since 2017. The presence of a rejuvenated modern bell foundry will once again assert Whitechapel as a place of creative innovation and restore the international reputation of the place where Big Ben and the Liberty Bell were made.”
Lutfur Rahman, Mayor of Tower Hamlets
“The Whitechapel Bell Foundry is one of the East End’s most treasured institutions, with a history stretching back to the 16th century. The foundry made Big Ben, America’s Liberty Bell and more locally the Bow Bells. So many people in the community are campaigning to save as much of the original building as possible, and to keep it as a working foundry. I am proud to support the Save the Whitechapel Bell Foundry campaign, and encourage everyone to join in. Together we can save this important feature of East End life.”
Rushanara Ali, MP for Bethnal Green & Bow
“The East London Mosque & London Muslim Centre welcomes the proposal from the London Bell Foundry to reestablish a working foundry in Whitechapel. This will provide apprenticeships and work experience in traditional and digital crafts for the local community.”
Sufia Alam, East London Mosque & London Muslim Centre
“The re-established Whitechapel Bell Foundry would add significantly to the creative offer in East London. As the V&A East establishes a substantial presence at Stratford and the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park and develops particular links with the adjacent boroughs, we would welcome the opportunity to promote the Whitechapel-based art and bell foundry. Combining traditional skills with innovative technology and the offer of apprenticeship and further training in this specialised field will enhance the interpretation of the V&A’s important collection of works of art in bronze. Continuing the centuries-old tradition of bell founding in London with its global outreach will enrich the cultural presence and attract national, regional and international interest.”
Dr Tristram Hunt, Director of Victoria & Albert Museum
“The Whitechapel Bell Foundry is a crucial component of historic Whitechapel. That it has survived for so long on this site, and in such fascinating and evocative buildings, is nothing short of a miracle. Its survival as a working site is vital both for future generations and for Whitechapel.”
Heloise Palin, Spitalfields Historic Buildings Preservation Trust
Learn more at our THE LONDON BELL FOUNDRY website
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The Fate of the Whitechapel Bell Foundry
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Rory Stewart Supports Our Campaign
Hope for The Whitechapel Bell Foundry
In Celebration Of Cockney Yiddish
In The Cockney Yiddish Podcast, launching today, Professor Nadia Valman, professor of urban literature and Dr Vivi Lachs, performer, researcher & translator of Yiddish culture, explore the unknown popular culture of the Yiddish East End.
Mr Mendel, the Gramophone Man, by Alfred Daniels
The East End was transformed by the arrival in the late nineteenth century of tens of thousands of Jewish immigrants from Russia and eastern Europe, among them our great grandparents. They spoke Yiddish, a hybrid language based on old German, incorporating words from biblical Hebrew and local languages. When we were growing up, hearing stories of the old East End from our relatives, we were also learning bits and pieces of this language. Years later, when we had both become researchers of the Jewish East End, we asked ourselves: How did the English language turn Yiddish into Cockney Yiddish and how did Yiddish infiltrate Cockney? How did English and Yiddish cultures converge in the music halls, markets and newspapers of the East End?
Even before the major immigration of the late nineteenth century, Yiddish words could be heard on the London streets. Henry Mayhew, who published his encyclopaedic account of the poor in 1851, recorded the word ‘gonaff’ being used among thieves to mean a young pickpocket, and around the same time other writers of lowlife used the word ‘gelt’, meaning money.
But from the 1880s Yiddish culture flourished and the Yiddish language began to absorb many English words, spoken with a strong Yiddish accent. We can see an example in the terminology of the East End sweatshop industries: bizi taym (busy time) and slek taym (slack time), which denoted the seasonal fluctuation of employment. Shifts in everyday language reflected the ways that Jewish immigrants and native Londoners were increasingly mixing in work and social life.
These changes are also visible in the popular writing and entertainment culture of the Yiddish East End. In The Cockney Yiddish Podcast we listen to Yiddish music hall songs and urban sketches, which Vivi discovered in archives and translated as part of her research with Nadia over the past few years. The songs were performed in the Yiddish music halls which thrived in the East End and they reflect the experience of immigrants in London with humour and pathos. The sketches and stories were published in the London Yiddish press, such as Der idisher ekspres (The Jewish Express) and Di tsayt (The Jewish Times) as commentary on the diversity of East End Jewish life, generational conflict, and the relationships between Jews and Cockneys.
Yiddish music halls were enormously popular with their local audiences, whether they were part of the roaring crowd in the vast Wonderland theatre in Whitechapel Rd or crowded into the back room of a pub in Philpot St (better known as the York Minster Yiddish Music Hall). What a thrill it must have been to listen to the Edwardian comic music hall song “Vos geyst nisht aheym sore gitl” (Won’t You Come Home Sarah-Gitl), which parodies the popular ragtime song “Won’t You Come Home, Bill Bailey”! The original song is sung by the hapless wife of a philandering husband. The Yiddish version, however, is sung by a hapless husband, lamenting the shenanigans of his feisty wife, Sarah-Gitl, who has run off to explore the charms of gentile men in the gin palaces of the West End. The gender switch in the Yiddish version came at a time when women’s roles were being challenged in both public and private life, and we think audiences would have relished the irony of the performance.
A more poignant expression of social change is the story that we discuss in Episode 1, ‘A London Girl’s Secret’, which you can hear read by Miriam Margolyes. The story tells of a young Jewish woman going out walking in the glittering metropolis with her non-Jewish boyfriend, whom she has met in the East End tailoring workshop where they are both employed. She lives at the intersection of two cultures: her home life with her dour Yiddish-speaking grandmother and her work life in the thrumming city.
The emotional core of the story is the young woman’s impossible struggle to make these two worlds meet. She can only speak English and the Yiddish language has become a barrier to communication with her grandmother’s immigrant generation. ‘A London Girl’s Secret’ was published in 1931 by the Yiddish short story writer and socialist I A Lisky and it looks back to the great Victorian Anglo-Jewish novelist Israel Zangwill, who in his novel Children of the Ghetto (1892) also wrote of a female protagonist, the child of immigrants, who is alienated from her past and confronting the question of her future. Like Zangwill’s novel, Lisky’s bittersweet story of the Jewish East End is also a universal tale of the challenges facing second-generation immigrants.
In The Cockney Yiddish Podcast we bring you many other forgotten gems from the Jewish East End including Shakespeare in Yiddish performed by the actor David Schneider, whose grandfather Abish Meisels haunted the wings of the New Yiddish Theatre in Adler St, Whitechapel as a playwright and prompter. We discuss how the Great Dock Strike of 1889 inspired Jewish trade union activism and the poetry of Morris Winchevsky (dubbed the ‘Grandfather of Jewish Socialism’). We mull over the long history of nostalgia for the Jewish East End, from Victorian Anglo-Jewish writing to sentimental Yiddish songs of the fifties. If you are a Yiddish speaker you will enjoy Episode 5, which is entirely in Yiddish and explores the popular Yiddish writer Katie Brown’s comic take on how immigrants negotiated celebrating Chanukah and/or Christmas.
But perhaps our most unexpected journey into the world of Cockney Yiddish was our investigation of the story of Mr Mendel, the mysterious Gramophone Man whom Nadia’s father remembered playing old-fashioned Yiddish records on his battered gramophone in Petticoat Lane Market in the thirties. When we looked, we found him everywhere – in fiction, film and photographs. And in the memories of many elderly East Enders, most intriguingly, we found him in a little Yiddish ditty that had been echoing around the streets and playgrounds of the Jewish East End for decades…
Vivi Lachs and Nadia Valman (on the left) explore ‘East Street Market’ by Maurice Sochachevsky, edited by Vivi Lachs (courtesy Dave Skye)
Wentworth St Market by Maurice Sochachevsky (courtesy Dave Skye)
Morris Winchevsky, Socialist Writer & Editor 1880s (from ‘Cahan, Bleter fun mayn lebn’ vol 3, 1926)
‘Vos geyst nisht aheym sore-gitl’ (Won’t You Come Home Sarah-Gitl) by Aaron Nager, music hall song c.1900
Masthead of Der Fonograf (The Phonograph), Yiddish newspaper, 1909 (courtesy Jewish Miscellanies)
Dockers and tailors staged successful strikes in 1912 – The tailors’ ‘victory’ cartoon in Der blofer, 1912 (courtesy National Library of Israel)
The temptations of Christmas – ‘Hanukkah and Christmas’, cartoon in Der blofer, 1912 (courtesy National Library of Israel)
Masthead of Di tsayt (The Jewish Times) Yiddish newspaper, 1919
I A Lisky, Socialist Yiddish Writer (courtesy Frances Fuchs)
Katie Brown, Popular Yiddish Writer c. 1930s (courtesy of Mazower collection)
Curb-side Concert, A B Levy (from East End Story 1951)
Dr Vivi Lachs and Professor Nadia Valman in Whitechapel
The Cockney Jewish Podcast © Jeremy Richardson
The Cockney Yiddish Podcast is available on all podcast platforms and at cockneyyiddish.org.
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The Spitalfields Nobody Knows
Conceived in homage to Geoffrey Fletcher and “The London Nobody Knows,” artist Joanna Moore introduces you to lesser-known corners of Spitalfields. (You can click on these pictures to enlarge them if you wish.)
The Old St Patrick’s School in Buxton St, dating from the eighteen sixties, stands upon the grass of Allen Gardens beside the Georgian vicarage of the former All Saints church – the last survivors of the nineteenth century streets that once stood here, long before the park was laid out. Enfolded by its lofty garden wall, containing huge exotic shrubs and dripping with climbing plants, this finely proportioned cluster of buildings rises with tall attenuated chimneys, like some mysterious castle of romance. St Patrick’s School is a tantalising enigma to those who walk through here regularly and have heard tales of the secret tropical garden which is rumoured to exist behind these implacable walls.
The Watchhouse on the corner of St Matthew’s Churchyard in Wood St was built in 1754 and, with the growing trade in human corpses for dissection, in 1792 it was necessary to appoint a watchman who was paid ten shillings and sixpence a week to be on permanent guard against resurrectionists. A reward of two guineas was granted for the apprehension of any body-snatchers and the watchman was provided with a blunderbuss and permission to fire from an upper window, once a rattle had been sounded three times. The churchwarden who lives there today told me that, according to the terms of his lease, he still holds this right – and the blunderbuss and rattle are stored in the house to this day. The small structure at the rear originally housed the parish fire engine, in the days when it was just a narrow cart. In 1965, the Watchhouse gained notoriety of another kind when fascist leader Oswald Mosley stood upon the step to give his last open air public speech.
Gibraltar Walk off the Bethnal Green Rd is a handsome terrace of red brick nineteenth century artisans’ workshops that once served the furniture trade when it was the primary industry in this area. Of modest construction, yet designed with careful proportions, the terrace curls subtly along Gibraltar Walk, turning a corner and extending the length of Padbury Court, to create one long “L” shaped structure. These appealing back streets still retain their cobbles and there are even a couple of signs left from the days of furniture factories, but, most encouragingly, the majority of these premises are still in use today as workshops for small industries, keeping the place alive.
In Emanuel Litvinoff’s memoir, “Journey Through a Small Planet” describing his childhood in Cheshire St in the nineteen twenties, he recalls the feared Pedley St Arches where, “Couples grappled against the dripping walls and tramps lay around parcelled in old newspaper. The evil of the place was in its gloom, its putrid stench, in the industrial grime of half a century with which it was impregnated.” And today, with a gut-wrenching reek of urine, graced by a profusion of graffiti and scattered with piles of burnt rubbish, the place retains its authentic insalubrious atmosphere – a rare quality now, that is in demand by the numerous street fashion photo shoots, crime dramas and pop videos which regularly use this location. There is a scheme to turn the Great Eastern Railway Viaduct into a raised park – like the High Line in New York – but in the meantime wildlife flourishes peaceably upon these graceful decaying structures dating from the earliest days of the railway, constructed between 1836 and 1840 to bring the Eastern Counties Line from Romford to the terminus at Shoreditch High St.
Nestling at the base of Nicholas Hawksmoor’s monumental spire for Christ Church, Spitalfields, is the tiny private roof garden on the top of 3 Fournier St, where what was once planted as a camomile lawn has grown to become a wildflower meadow with pink campions, oxe-eye daisies and sorrel abounding. The pitched roofs on three sides entirely conceal this verdant arbor from the street and create a favoured climate where freesias, carnations, honeysuckle, wallflowers, foxgloves, wild strawberries and lettuces flourish, surrounded by espalier fruit trees and rambling roses, all unknown to those who tread the dusty pavements of Commercial St far below. Built in 1754 by Peter Le Keux, a silkweaver, this elegant old house follows the same Tuscan order of architecture that was Hawksmoor’s guiding principle, and as you ascend the staircase endlessly winding up to the roof garden, you come upon subtle intricate details, like banisters with square capitals, that match those across the road at the church.
The Worrall House of 1720 is the quintessence of the Spitalfields nobody knows – built in a secret courtyard between Fournier St and Princelet St by Samuel Worrall, the builder responsible for many of the surrounding houses, it can only be approached through a narrow passage behind a heavily-encrusted door. When you step through this door, into the dark cobbled alley lined with ancient planks covered with paint and tar that has not been renewed in over a century, you feel – more than anywhere in Spitalfields – that you have stepped back in time. Here Samuel Worrall built a handsomely proportioned yet modest house for himself in his own builders’ yard. Just one room deep with a pedimented door and stone balls atop the gateposts, it resembles a perfect lifesize dolls’ house. Facing East and constructed of a single layer of bricks, it only receives sunlight in the morning and is not a warm building in winter, yet there is an irresistible grace and mystery about this shadowy house of enchantment, presiding silently upon a quiet courtyard that is outside time.
Joanna Moore’s drawing of Victoria Cottages in Deal St was done upon the spot where Geoffrey Fletcher, author of “The London Nobody Knows,”sat and drew the same view in May 1977, when this terrace was threatened by bulldozers. Built in 1855 by the Metropolitan Association for Dwellings for Housing the Industrious Poor, after the design of Prince Albert’s Model Cottages for the Great Exhibition of 1851, these are one of the earliest examples of two storey cottage apartments. Scheduled for demolition in a slum clearance scheme, they were saved in 1978 through the intervention of Peter Shore who was both local MP and Environment Minister. If Geoffrey Fletcher came back today he would be delighted to step through the old iron gate and discover well-tended cottage gardens where the fragrance of flowers hangs in the air. Pairs of neat white front doors lead either to the ground or first floor dwellings, which, although designed as the minimum in the nineteenth century, appear generous and sympathetic by contemporary standards.
Drawings copyright © Joanna Moore
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William Nicolson’s London Types
When William Nicholson designed his stylish “London Types” in 1898 – that together with his “Almanac of Twelve Sports” and “An Illustrated Alphabet” were to make his reputation as a printmaker – his son Ben, who was to eclipse him entirely in the history of British Art through his Modernist works, was only five years old.
Yet, while working within the culture of the British popular print, William Nicholson deliberately chose to use the coarse-grained side of the block in his wood cuts, in a style that owed more to Toulouse Lautrec and Japanese precedents than to native visual traditions – which give these prints an innovative quality, even as they might seem to be celebrating unchanging roles in British society.
Although not strictly “Cries of London,” some of these characters are familiar from earlier series of prints stretching back over the previous century and, recognising this, Nicholson portrays them as quaint curiosities from another age. In each case, the ironic doggerel by W.E. Henley that accompanied them poked fun at the anachronistic nature of these social stereotypes, through outlining the ambivalent existence of the individual subjects – whether the street hawker displaced in Kensington far from his East End home, or the aristocratic lady at Rotten Row challenged by her suburban counterparts, or the drunken Sandwich-man displaying moral texts, or the fifteenth generation Bluecoat boy at Charterhouse School in Smithfield now moved out to Horsham.
These prints continue to fascinate me because, in spite of their chunky monochromatic aesthetic, they manage to convey the human presence with subtlety, placing the protagonists in dynamic relationships both with the viewer and the social landscape of London, as it was in the final years of the nineteenth century. The Lady and the Coster confront the viewer with equal assurance and, the disparity in their conditions notwithstanding, we meet both gazes with empathy. In William Nicholson’s designs, all the subjects retain self-possession because while the prints may illustrate their diverse social situations, their attitude is commonly impassive.
Working in partnership with his brother-in-law James Pryde, under the pseudonym the Beggarstaff Brothers, William Nicholson enjoyed a successful career creating vibrant graphics which served the boom in advertising that happened in the eighteen nineties. After 1900, he shifted his attention to painting, embarking on a series of portraits including J.M.Barrie, Rudyard Kipling and Max Beerbohm that filled the rest of his career. Nicholson had always wanted to paint, regarding his graphic work as a lesser achievement, a reservation illustrated by his modest self-portrait as a pavement artist.
More than a century later, William Nicholson’s “London Types” exist as a noble contribution to the series that have portrayed street life in the capital throughout the centuries, not just for their superlative graphic elegance, but because they reflect the changing society of London at the dawn of the twentieth century with complexity and wit.
News-Boy, the City – “the London ear loathes his speeshul yell…”
Sandwich-Man, Trafalgar Square – “the drunkard’s mouth awash for something drinkable…”
Beef-eater, Tower of London – “his beat lies knee-high through a dust of story.”
Coster, Hammersmith – “deems herself a perfect lady.”
Policeman, Constitution Hill – “whenever pageants pass, he moves conspicuous…”
Lady, Rotten Row – “one of that gay adulterous world.”
Bluecoat Boy, Newgate St. – “the old school nearing exile…”
Flower Girl, – “of populous corners right advantage taking…”
Guardsman, Horseguards Parade. – “of British blood, and bone, and beef and beer.”
Barmaid, any bar – “posing as a dove among the pots.”
Drum-Major, Wimbledon Common – “his bulk itself’s pure genius…”
William Nicholson portrayed himself as pavement artist.
Images copyright © Desmond Banks
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Viscountess Boudica’s Valentine’s Day
On Valentine’s Day, I cannot help thinking back to the days when we had Viscountess Boudica of Bethnal Green to make the East End a more colourful place, before she was ‘socially cleansed’ to Uttoxeter
Viscountess Boudica of Bethnal Green confessed to me that she never received a Valentine in her entire life and yet, in spite of this unfortunate example of the random injustice of existence, her faith in the future remained undiminished.
Taking a break from her busy filming schedule, the Viscountess granted me a brief audience to reveal her intimate thoughts upon the most romantic day of the year and permit me to take these rare photographs that reveal a candid glimpse into the private life of one of the East End’s most fascinating characters.
For the first time since 1986, Viscountess Boudica dug out her Valentine paraphernalia of paper hearts, banners, fairylights, candles and other pink stuff to put on this show as an encouragement to the readers of Spitalfields Life. “If there’s someone that you like,” she says, “I want you to send them a card to show them that you care.”
Yet behind the brave public face, lay a personal tale of sadness for the Viscountess. “I think Valentine’s Day is a good idea, but it’s a kind of death when you walk around the town and see the guys with their bunches of flowers, choosing their chocolates and cards, and you think, ‘It should have been me!'” she admitted with a frown, “I used to get this funny feeling inside, that feeling when you want to get hold of someone and give them a cuddle.”
Like those love-lorn troubadours of yore, Viscountess Boudica mined her unrequited loves as a source of inspiration for her creativity, writing stories, drawing pictures and – most importantly – designing her remarkable outfits that record the progress of her amours. “There is a tinge of sadness after all these years,” she revealed to me, surveying her Valentine’s Day decorations,” but I am inspired to believe there is still hope of domestic happiness.”
Take a look at
The Departure of Viscountess Boudica
Viscountess Boudica’s Domestic Appliances
Walter Donohue’s Screenwriting Course
Walter Donohue by Sarah Ainslie
We are delighted to announce that script editor, producer and luminary of the British cinema, Walter Donohue has agreed to teach a two-day screenwriting course at Townhouse in Spitalfields on the weekend of 5th and 6th April.
In the eighties, Walter began working as a script editor, starting with Wim Wenders’ Paris, Texas and Sally Potter’s Orlando. Since then he has worked with some major filmmakers including Joel & Ethan Coen, Wim Wenders, Sally Potter, David Byrne, John Boorman, Viggo Mortensen, Alex Garland, Kevin Macdonald, and László Nemes.
For the past thirty years he has been editor of the Faber & Faber film list, publishing Pulp Fiction and Barbie, and screenplays by Quentin Tarantino, Wes Anderson, David Lynch, Sally Potter, and Greta Gerwig & Noah Baumbach, Joel & Ethan Coen, and Christopher Nolan among many others.
Walter also published Scorsese on Scorsese, and edited the series of interview books with David Lynch, Robert Altman, Tim Burton, John Cassavetes, Pedro Almodovar and Christopher Nolan.
THE COURSE
Walter’s course is suitable for all levels of experience from those who are complete beginners to those who have already written screenplays and seek to refresh their practise. The course is limited to sixteen students.
APPROACHES TO SCREENWRITING
Walter says –
“My course is about approaches to writing a screenplay rather than a literal step-by-step technique on how to write.
The objective of my course is to immerse participants in the world of film, acquainting them with a cinematic language which will enable them to create films that are unique and personal to themselves.
There are four approaches – each centred around a particular film which will be the focus of each of the four sessions.
The approaches are –
Structure: Paris, Texas
Viewpoint: Silence of the Lambs
Genre: Anora
Endings: Chinatown
Participants will be required to have seen all four films in advance of the course.”
This is a unique opportunity to enjoy a convivial weekend with Walter in an eighteenth century townhouse in Spitalfields and learn how to approach your screenplay. Refreshments, freshly baked cakes and lunches are included in the course fee of £350.
Please email spitalfieldslife@gmail.com to book your place.
Love Tokens From The Thames
With St Valentine’s Day looming at the end of the week, I thought this would be a good moment to publish this collection of lovers’ tokens from the Thames gathered over the past eighteen years by my old pal Steve Brooker, the mudlark – widely known as the Mud God.
Perhaps a phonetic spelling of the name ‘Violet’ as the admirer spoke it?
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 so, 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.
It was not part of the conceit that anyone 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 long gone from the earth 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 spent. 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 Thames. Are they, each one, evidence of unrequited affections?
For centuries, 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 anyone was going to be there one day to catch them yet, whatever the outcome of these romances, Steve ensures 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”?
Cut coins from the early twentieth century.
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