The Luchadors Of Bethnal Green
Lucha Britannia
Passing the terrace in Paradise Row, Bethnal Green, with a blue plaque commemorating the former residence of the legendary eighteenth century prize-fighter, Daniel Mendoza, I took the next turning under the railway, and walked through a dark and narrow arch to enter an unmarked door between the panel-beating and the joinery workshops, where I discovered an empty wrestling ring beneath blazing lights, awaiting the contestants of the night.
I had arrived at the European centre of Lucha Libre – an evolved style of Mexican Wrestling characterised by the use of colourful masks and employment of rapid sequences of flamboyant moves, including high-flying aerial techniques. Contributing Photographer Simon Mooney was already poised at the ringside, ready to capture the spectacle of Lucha Britannia in close up.
Before I knew it, the space was crammed with an excited audience of aficionados and fans cheering in anticipation as Benjamin Louche, the be-sequinned MC, asked “Do you like the sound of breaking bones?” When the Luchadors emerged from the crowd amidst loud music, bursting into the ring and taunting the audience, I realised that this was sport counterpointed with an equal measure of pantomime. First came the robotic Metallico, then Freddie Mercurio crowd-surfed his way onto the platform, followed by the undead Necrosis and the African Prince Katunda in tiger skin pants.
I wondered what universe these ill-assorted spectres had been conjured from – whether a comic book Parnassus or murky Gothic netherworld. Yet all regions of the collective imagination were represented in this trashy posse of snarling and roaring grotesques, both male and female, who took turns in the ring during the evening. These were brash fantasy alteregos unleashed by the wearing of a mask and a skimpy costume – needy, petulant emotional characters finding primal expression in violent physicality.
The luchadors flew around the ring, chopping and punching, bouncing off the elasticated ropes, leaping off the corners, spinning and somersaulting, twisting arms and pulling each other around in swift acrobatic moves that sent their partners crashing onto the floor – as if they were as incapable of injury as cartoon characters, but leaving me wincing at the bruises thus inflicted. Innumerable times, wrestlers ended up in the crowd and came flying back into the ring. Underscored by a constant soundtrack, this was a night of unrelenting energy intensified by the confines of the cavernous arch and whipped up by an audience that grew increasingly intoxicated by the drama, and the heat, and Day of the Dead beer.
This collective excitement proved irresistible, delighting in chaos and excessive behaviour, yet coloured with pathos too. We all cheered for the working class Bakewell Boys to beat Sir Reginald Windsor and then booed when the posh nobs prevailed over the scruffy plebs. Similarly, when the five foot Lucha Britannia champion took on the seven foot Fug in the most exciting match of the evening, leaping around the ring with the grace and speed of a flying monkey, he won the fight only to be defeated in the final moment by Fug’s brutal pal appearing in the ring. These poignant losses won the hearts of the audience and undermined simple notions of victory in a sport which finds its expression in bravura theatrical technique as much as in physical domination of the opponent.
To one such as myself, only vaguely familiar with wrestling in any form, the presence of more than two fighters in the ring at once compounded the dramatic possibility exponentionally. Meanwhile at the ringside, Benjamin Louche and his colleague, Tony Twotops, kept a running commentary, showgirls, Maz & Viva, strutted around with signs announcing the acts, while referee, Gino Giovanni, struggled to keep the contest fair and Nurse Buckett, in a green rubber dress, tended the casualties.
As an audience, we were such willing co-conspirators in this charismatically surreal version of a wrestling match – so far beyond self-parody and satire yet enacted with a winning display of skill and panache – that when all the contestants invaded the ring at the finale and Benjamin Louche suggested, “Let’s not fight, let’s take a photograph,” we were more than willing to participate in this sublime moment, capturing the exhilarating emotional triumph of the night.
Photographs copyright © Simon Mooney
Lucha Britannia takes place monthly at 265 Poyser St, Bethnal Green, E2 9RF
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The Language of Beer
Since I published the Printers’ Terminology last week, my attention has been drawn to this collection of specialist lingo associated with another area of passionate interest – pubs and beer – and so I offer this selection today lest it may be of use to any of my readers who might be planning to spend Saturday night at the local.
Life in the East – At the Half Moon Tap, 1830
Barrel – A cask built to hold thirty-six gallons.
Beer – There is no bad beer but some is better than others.
Binder – The last drink, which it seldom proves to be. Also used to describe the person who orders it.
Boiling Copper – Vessel in which wort is boiled with hops.
Boniface – Traditional name for an innkeeper, as used by George Farquhar in ‘The Beaux’ Stratagem.’
Bragget – A fancy drink made of fermented honey and ale.
Brewer – The artist who by his choice of barley and other ingredients, and by his sensitive control of the brewing process, produces beer the way you like it.
Butt – A cask built to hold one hundred and eight gallons.
Buttered Beer – A popular sixteenth century drink of spiced and sugared strong beer supplemented with the yolk of an egg and some butter.
Cardinal – A nineteenth century form of mulled ale.
Casual – An occasional visitor to the pub.
Cheese – A heavy wooden ball used in the game of skittles.
Chitting – The appearance of the first shoots while the barley is growing during the first stage of the malting process.
Coaching Glass – An eighteenth century drinking vessel with no feet that was brought out to coach travellers and consumed at one draught.
Collar – The frothing head on a glass of beer between the top of the beer and the rim of the glass.
Crinze – An earthenware drinking vessel, a cross between a tankard and a small bowl.
Crawler – One who visits all the pubs in one district, drinking a glass of beer in each.
Dipstick – An instrument used to measure the quantity of wort prior to fermentation.
Dive – A downstairs bar.
Dog’s Nose – Beer laced with gin.
Down The Hatch – A toast, usually for the first drink.
Finings – A preparation of isinglass which is added to the beer in the cask to clarify it.
Firkin – A cask built to hold nine gallons.
Flip – Beer and spirit mixed, sweetened and heated with a hot iron.
Fob – The word used in a brewery to describe beer froth.
Goods – The name used by the brewer to describe the crushed malted grains in the mash tuns.
Grist – Malt grains that have been cleaned and cracked in the brewery mill machines.
Gyle – A quality of beer brewed at one time – one particular brewing.
Heel Tap – Term for beer left at the bottom of the glass.
Hogshead – A cask built to hold fifty-four gallons.
Hoop – A device displayed outside taverns in the middle ages to indicate that beer was sold. Later, it became the practice to display certain objects within the hoop in order to differentiate one tavern from another. eg The Hoop & Grapes
Kilderkin – Cask holding eighteen gallons.
Lambswool– A hot drink of spiced ale with roasted apples beaten up in it.
Liquor – The term used in the brewing industry for water.
Local – The pub round the corner.
Long Pull – Giving the customer more than they ordered, the opposite of a short pull.
Lounge – The best-appointed and most expensive bar of the public house.
Mash – The mixture of crushed malted grains and hot liquor which is run through the masher into the mash tun and from which is extracted liquid malt or wort.
Merry-Goe-Down – Old term describing good ale.
Metheglin – A spiced form of mead.
Mether Cup – A wooden drinking cup used by the Saxons, probably for Metherglin.
Mud-In-Your-Eye, Here’s – Traditional toast, with a meaning more pleasant than it sounds.
Nappy – Term describing good ale, foaming and strong.
Noggin – Small wooden mug, a quarter pint measure.
Noondrink – Ale consumed at noon when trade was slacker. Also, High Noon, drunk at three o’clock when street trading was finished.
One For The Road – Last drink before leaving the pub.
Pig’s Ear – Rhyming slang for beer.
Pocket – A large sack made to contain one and a half hundredweight of hops.
Porter – Popular in the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries among London market porters, equivalent to a mixture of ale, beer and twopenny.
Public Bar – Where everything is cheapest and decoration and equipment is smiplest.
Puncheon – Cask built to hold seventy-two gallons.
Quaff – To drink in large draughts.
Regular – One of the mainstays of the public house.
Round – An order of drinks for more than one person.
Saloon Bar – Enjoying better amenities than a Public Bar and therefore more expensive to the customer.
Shandy – A drink of beer mixed with ginger beer, or sometimes beer and lemonade.
Short – A gin or whisky, usually taken before a meal.
Small Beer – A beer of lesser gravity, hence a trifling matter.
Smeller – A man employed in the brewery to examine casks after they have been washed and prior to their being filled with beer.
Snifter – Colloquial term for a drink.
Snug or Snuggery – Semi-private apartment in the pub, by custom reserved for use of the regulars.
Sparge – To spray hot liquor onto the grist in the mash tuns.
Spell, To Take A – To go round to the local for a beer, coined by Mr Peggotty in David Copperfield.
Stingo – A strong ale, similar to Barley Wine, popular during the winter months and usually sold in a bottle.
Stool – A useful piece of furniture for a customer who wants to stay at the bar, but is anxious to sit down.
Swig – To take a draught of beer, generally a large one.
Thirst – Suffering enjoyed by beer drinkers.
Tipple – To drink slowly and repeatedly.
Trouncer – The drayman’s mate who pushed and manhandled the wagon over potholes.
Tumbler – A flat bottomed drinking glass, derived from the Saxon vessel that could not stand upright and must be emptied in one draught.
Tun – Vessel in the brewery where the fermenting takes place.
Twopenny – A pale, small beer introduced to London from the country in the eighteenth century at fourpence a quart.
Wallop – Mild ale.
Wassail – Hot ale flavoured with sugar, nutmeg and roasted apples.
What’s Yours? – An invitation which sums up the companionable atmosphere of a public house.
Wort – The solution of mash extract in water, derived from the grist in the mash tuns.
Image from Tom & Jerry’s Life in London courtesy © Bishopsgate Institute
In Old Holborn
Holborn Bars
Even before I knew Holborn, I knew Old Holborn from the drawing of half-timbered houses upon the tobacco tins in which my father used to store his rusty nails. These days, I walk through Holborn once a week on my way between Spitalfields and the West End, and I always cast my eyes up in wonder at this familiar fragment of old London.
Yet, apart from Leather Lane and the International Magic Shop on Clerkenwell Rd, I rarely have reason to pause in Holborn. It is a mysterious, implacable district of offices, administrative headquarters and professional institutions that you might never visit, unless you have business with a lawyer, or seek a magic trick or a diamond ring. So this week I resolved to wander in Holborn with my camera and present you with some of the under-appreciated sights to be discovered there.
Crossing the bed of the Fleet River at Holborn Viaduct, I took a detour into Shoe Lane. A curious ravine of a street traversed by a bridge and overshadowed between tall edifices, where the cycle-taxis have their garage in the cavernous vaults receding deep into the brick wall. John Stow attributed the name of Holborn to the ‘Old Bourne’ or stream that ran through this narrow valley into the Fleet here and, even today, it is not hard to envisage Shoe Lane with a river flowing through.
Up above sits Christopher Wren’s St Andrew’s, Holborn, that was founded upon the bank of the Fleet and stood opposite the entrance to the Bishop of Ely’s London residence, latterly refashioned as Christopher Hatton’s mansion. A stone mitre upon the front of the Mitre Tavern in Hatton Garden, dated 1546, is the most visible reminder of the former medieval palace that existed here, of which the thirteenth century Church of St Etheldreda’s in Ely Place was formerly the chapel. It presents a modest frontage to the street, but you enter through a stone passage way and climb a staircase to discover an unexpectedly large church where richly-coloured stained glass glows in the liturgical gloom.
Outside in Ely Place, inebriate lawyers in well-cut suits knocked upon a wooden door in a blank wall at the end of the street and brayed in delight to be admitted by this secret entrance to Bleeding Heart Yard, where they might discreetly pass the afternoon in further indulgence. Barely a hundred yards away across Hatton Garden where wistful loners eyed engagement rings, Leather Lane Market was winding down. The line at Boom Burger was petering out and the shoe seller was resting his feet, while the cheap dresses and imported fancy goods were packed away for another day.
Just across the road, both Staple Inn and Gray’s Inn offer a respite from the clamour of Holborn, with magnificent tranquil squares and well-kept gardens, where they were already raking autumn leaves from immaculate lawns yesterday. But the casual visitor may not relax within these precincts and, when the Gray’s Inn Garden shuts at two-thirty precisely, you are reminded that your presence is that of an interloper, at the gracious discretion of the residents of these grand old buildings.
Beyond lies Red Lion Sq, laid out in 1684 by the notorious Nicholas Barbon who, at the same time, was putting up cheap speculative housing in Spitalfields and outpaced the rapacious developers of our own day by commencing construction in disregard of any restriction. Quiet benches and a tea stall in this leafy yet amiably scruffy square offer an ideal place to contemplate the afternoon’s stroll.
Then you join the crowds milling outside Holborn tube station, which is situated at the centre of a such a chaotic series of junctions, it prompted Virginia Woolf to suggest that only the condition of marriage has more turnings than are to be found in Holborn.
The One Tun in Saffron Hill. reputed to be the origin of the Three Tuns in ‘Oliver Twist’
In Shoe Lane
St Andrew Holborn seen from Shoe Lane
On Holborn Viaduct
Christopher Wren’s St Andrew Holborn
In St Etheldreda’s, Ely Place
Staircase at St Etheldreda’s
The Mitre, Hatton Garden
Charity School of 1696 In Hatton Garden by Christopher Wren
Choosing a ring in Hatton Garden
In Leather Lane
Seeking sustenance in Leather Lane
Shoe Seller, Leather Lane
Barber in Lamb’s Conduit Passage
Staple Inn, 1900
In Staple Inn
In Staple Inn
In Gray’s Inn
In Gray’s Inn Gardens
In Gray’s Inn
John Bunyan died in Holborn in 1688
Chaos at Holborn Station
Rush hour at Holborn Station
Fusiliers memorial in High Holborn
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Phil Maxwell’s Whitechapel Market
“Whitechapel Market is the heart of the East End,” Contributing Photographer Phil Maxwell assured me recently,” I walk down there every day of my life and it gives me the energy that keeps me going. Stallholders work hard to sell their goods and make a living, and the customers are working hard to keep themselves together, because the food is cheaper there than in supermarket so it is very important resource for those on low incomes. It thasn’t been gentrified like Brick Lane, it’s people struggling to survive and it’s something I need to photograph – it’s the quintessential East End.”
Photographs copyright © Phil Maxwell
CLICK HERE TO GET A COPY OF PHIL MAXWELL’S ‘BRICK LANE ‘FOR £10
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Phil Maxwell’s Kids On The Street
Printers’ Terminology
In little over a year, I have become the publisher of five books and so I thought it was high time I acquainted myself with all the correct language that I may have a better grasp of what the printers are talking about. To this end, Charles Pertwee of Baddeley Brothers, the longest established engravers in the City of London & the East End, lent me his copy of John Southward’s ‘Dictionary of Typography’ from 1875, which lists all the relevant terminology. Today, I have selected some of my favourite entries – as much for their arcane poetry as for the education of my readers.
ABRIDGEMENT – An epitome of a book, made by omitting the less important matter.
ADVERSARIA – Commonplace books: a miscellaneous collection of notes remarks and extracts.
APPRENTICE – An apprentice is a person described in law books as a species of servant, and so called from the French verb apprendre – to learn – because he is bound by indenture to serve a master for a certain term, receiving in return for his services instruction in his masters’s trade, profession or art.
BASTARD TITLE – The short or condensed title preceding full title of the work.
BATTER – Any injury to the face of the type sufficient to prevent it showing clearly in printing.
BEARD OF A LETTER – The outer-angle of the square shoulder of the shank, which reaches almost to the face of the letter, and is commonly scraped off by the Founders, serving to leave a white square between the lower face of the type and the top part of any ascending letter which happen to come in the line following.
BIENVENUE – An obsolete term by which was meant formerly the fee paid on admittance to a ‘Chapel.’
BODKIN – A pointing steel instrument used in correcting, to pick wrong or imperfect letters out of a page.
BOTCHED – Carelessly or badly-done work.
BOTTLE-ARSED – Type that is wider at the bottom than the top.
BOTTLE-NECKED – Type that is thicker at the top than the bottom.
CANDLESTICK – In former times, when Compositors worked at night by the light of candles, they used a candlestick loaded at the base to keep it steady. A few offices use candlesticks at the present day.
CASSIE-PAPER – Imperfect paper, the outside quires of a ream.
CHAFF – Too frequently heard in the printing office, when one Compositor teases another, as regards his work, habits, disposition etc
CHOKED – Type filled up with dirt.
COVENTRY – When a workman does not conform to the rules of the ‘Chapel,’ he is sent to Coventry. That is, on no consideration, is any person allowed to speak with him, apart from business matters, until he pays his dues.
DEAD HORSE – When a Compositor has drawn more money on account than he has actually earned, he is said to be ‘horsing it’ and until he has done enough work in the next week to cover the amount withdrawn, he is said to be working a ‘dead horse.’
DEVIL – is the term applied to the printer’s boy who does the drudgery work of a print office.
DONKEY – Compositors were at one period thus styled by Pressmen in retaliation for being called pigs by them.
EIGHTEENMO – A sheet of paper folded into eighteen leaves, making thirty-six pages.
FAT-FACE LETTER – Letter with a broad face and thick stem.
FLOOR PIE – Type that has been dropped upon the floor during the operations of composition or distribution.
FLY – The man or boy who takes off the sheet from the tympan as the Pressman turns it up.
FORTY-EIGHTMO – A sheet of paper folded into forty-eight leaves or ninety-six pages.
FUDGE – To execute work without the proper materials, or finish it in a bungling or unworkmanlike manner.
GOOD COLOUR – When a sheet is printed neither too dark or too light.
GULL – To tear the point holes in a sheet of paper while printing.
HELL – The place where the broken and battered type goes to.
JERRY – A peculiar noise rendered by Compositors and Pressmen when one of their companions renders themselves ridiculous in any way.
LAYING-ON-BOY – The boy who feeds the sheets into the machine.
LEAN-FACE – A letter of slender proportions, compared with its height.
LIGHT-FACES – Varieties of face in which the lines are unusually thin.
LUG – When the roller adheres closely to the inking table and the type, through its being green and soft, it is said to ‘lug.’
MACKLE – An imperfection in the printed sheets, part of the impression appears double.
MONK – A botch of ink on a printed sheet, arising from insufficient distribution of the ink over the rollers.
MULLER – A sort of pestle, used for spreading ink on the ink table.
NEWS-HOUSE – A printing office in which newspapers only are printed. This term is used to distinguish from book and job houses.
OCTAVO – A sheet of paper folded so as to make eight leaves or sixteen pages.
ON ITS FEET – When a letter stands perfectly upright, it is said to be ‘on its feet.’
PEEL – A wooden instrument shaped like a letter ‘T’ used for hanging up sheets on the poles.
PENNY-A-LINER – A reporter for the Press who is not engaged on the staff, but sends in his matter upon approbation.
PIE – A mass of letters disarranged and in confusion.
PIG – A Pressman was formerly called so by Compositors.
PIGEON HOLES – Unusually wide spaces between words, caused by the carelessness or want of taste of the workman.
PRESS GOES EASY – When the run of the press is light and the pull is easy.
QUIRE – A quire of paper for all usual purposes consists of twenty-four sheets.
RAT-HOUSE – A printing office where the rules of the printers’ trade unions are not conformed to.
SCORPERS – Instruments used by Engravers to clear away the larger portions of wood not drawn upon.
SHEEP’S FOOT – An iron hammer with a claw end, used by Pressmen.
‘SHIP – A colloquial abbreviation of companionship.
SHOE – An old slipper is hung at the end of the frame so that the Compositor, when he comes across a broken or battered letter, may put it there.
SLUG – An American name for what we call a ‘clump.’
SQUABBLE – Lines of matter twisted out of their proper positions with letters running into wrong lines etc.
STIGMATYPY – Printing with points, the arrangement of points of various thicknesses to create a picture.
WAYZGOOSE – An annual festivity celebrated in most large offices.
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At Herne Bay
I spent all of my week away from Spitalfields Life in August working on the Spitalfields Nippers book but, now it has gone to the printers, I was able to make up for this yesterday and take advantage of the Indian Summer with a day trip to Herne Bay.
Reculver Towers
Several years ago, I grew fascinated with a ruin upon the seashore in the background of a photograph of members of the Cambridge & Bethnal Green Boys’ Club taken by Harry Tichener in 1938 . When Maxie Lea, who is featured in the picture, told me that it was taken at Herne Bay, I knew that one day I must go and seek this location for myself.
Yet, when I arrived yesterday and walked from the railway station to the deserted seafront, I discovered there were many other attractions that make this secluded corner of the Kent coast worthy of a visit. Set back fifty yards from the shingle beach, sits a magnificent line of grand hotels and seafront villas. Some are whimsical Victorian fripperies and others are elegant bow-fronted Georgian, and it makes an appealing backdrop to the well-kept and newly-renovated municipal gardens, basking in the September sunlight beneath an azure sky flecked with feathery trails.
A proud white stucco gatehouse guards a poignant remnant of what was Britain’s second longest pier in 1896, now just a stub attached to the shore with the far end marooned out at sea, unreachable and distant since the storm of 1978. You can take a stroll past the huts, adorned with saucy paintings in the style of Donald McGill, to reach the end of what remains and join a sparse line of fishermen and senior local residents, casting their eyes wistfully towards the horizon and awaiting a miraculous reconstruction.
Turning my gaze to the east, I could already recognise the towers at Reculver shining white in the far distance and encouraging me to take my leave of the town and seek the coastal path. The outskirts of Herne Bay present a curious mixture of dereliction and some cherished Regency villas, culminating in Marckari’s ice cream parlour where I had my first taste of an authentic Turkish delight ice cream. Thus fortified, I strolled onward upon the broad featureless concrete promenade with the towers reassuringly present, constantly in my vision.
Climbing a winding stairway takes you to the cliff path, lined with sloes and hawthorn, and giving way to meadows that descend towards Reculver. Soon, the towers are no longer an image on the horizon but looming above you. You ascend the path beneath them as a colony of swifts swoop and dive over your head, filling the air with their cries before returning to roosting places high in the turrets. You have arrived upon a raised platform of green, overlooking the sea, where the sweet fragrance of nectar hangs in the air. This was where the Romans built a fort in 42AD, when this was the end of the land and the marshes to the east were open water, known as the Wantsum, a channel that isolated the Isle Of Thanet from the mainland.
St Augustine brought Christianity to Kent at the end of the sixth century and, by AD 669, King Ecgbert gave this land for the foundation of a monastery. A tall church was built upon the Roman ruins, creating a landmark that signalled the spiritual significance of this favoured spot, visible from such a great distance. In 1810, the ruins of this church were reconstructed by Trinity House to create a stable structure that could function as a navigational aid. Once there was a thriving village of Reculver, yet the encroachment of the sea and regular flooding led to its decline until only a couple of houses are left today. Yet it retains a distinctive atmosphere and, after all this time, the imposing sea-battered towers are like natural excrescences of rock.
Setting out across the marshes as the afternoon sun declined, I was entranced by the naturally occurring gardens upon the shingle, where grey-green sea kale grew in star shapes complimenting the pink leaves of sorrel spreading close to the ground and interspersed with curious bushes of yellow poppies that seeded themselves all along the beech. Glancing over my shoulder, the towers of Reculver seemed to get no further away, watching over me now as they had beckoned me earlier.
Nine miles to the east of Herne Bay, I arrived at Birchington – a suburban resort with art deco villas, some dignified austere brick farmhouses and an unexpected half-timbered medieval cottage. My feet were sore and my face was burned from wind and sunshine, and I fell asleep upon the train – only waking again as we drew into London to wonder if the whole excursion had been a dream.
Herne Bay pier was once the second longest in Britain
Bow-fronted Georgian terrace on the seafront
Regency villas in a side street
The path to Reculver
At Reculver
Harry Tichner’s photograph of Maxie Lea (standing right) at Herne Bay in 1938
1685 Map of the lost village of Reculver
At Minnis Bay
Cottage at Birchington-on-Sea
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A Walk from Shoeburyness to Chalkwell 2013
A Stepney Remembrance
Jimmy Paige at St Dunstan’s
St Dunstan’s Stepney is the oldest church in the East End and was once the parish church for the entire area that we know as Tower Hamlets. Within living memory, it was surrounded by streets of modest nineteenth-century terraces which were home to a long-established community of inter-related families. Today, although many of those streets are gone, the old church stands as a sentinel of this vanished world and the receptacle of its history, providing a focus for those whose familial traditions are closely woven with this place – such as Jimmy Page whose ancestors have been resident here for generations.
When you step into St Dunstan’s Church, you enter a space that has altered little in the last century, as if time had stopped. For parishioner Jimmy Page, an ex-soldier with the Royal Green Jackets, the side chapel has particular meaning because it is home to the memorial for those of his parish who died in World War One. The long columns of names inscribed upon five wooden panels confronted Jimmy with the scale of the loss that was suffered here in Stepney a century ago, inspiring him to learn more about these former parishioners and rekindle their memory.
Searching these names in the records, Jimmy sought to find out their regiments, the date of their deaths and their home addresses. At once, it became apparent that families in every street surrounding St Dunstan’s Church suffered losses of young men and, soon, as Jimmy grew aware of the former homes of those who were killed, the map of the neighbourhood was redrawn in his perception. The presence of the loss became immediate when Jimmy discovered that one of the parishioners he was researching had lived in a house that is inhabited today by a friend of his.
Today I am publishing the names and addresses from Jimmy Page’s book of remembrance, so that those who know Stepney may be able to place the former homes of those who left a century ago and never returned. The list is far from complete, as I have only included those for whom we have addresses, but the scale of the loss in this small neighbourhood alone may be extrapolated across the East End to give a sense of how many died in the relentless accumulation of fatalities of World War One.
23rd October 1914. Robert Elder, 59 Beaumont Sq
9th May 1915, Stephen Freshney, 35 Ben Jonson Rd
23rd May 1915, Robert Frehney, 35 Ben Jonson Rd
10th August 1915, Norman Winterbourne, 9 Portland St
10th August 1915, William Wittey, 278 Oxford St
10th September 1915, William Fox, 97 Grosvenor St, Commercial Rd
27th September 1915, Percy Stewart, 38 Belgrave St
13th October 1915, Richard Vicat, 7 Lufton Place, Halley St
3rd July 1916, Edgar Watts, 89 Belgrave St
24th August 1916, Thomas Pocock, 127 White Horse St
15th September 1916, Alfred Knowden, 22 Durham Rd
15th September 1916, Sidney Squires, 6 Chaseley St
23rd September 1916, Harry May, 59 White Horse Lane
21st October 1916, George Legon, 32 Copley St
13th October 1916, Richard Bull, 6 Market St
13th November 1916, Henry Turner, 30 Portland St
21st December 1916, George Palmer, 13 Bromley St
2nd February 1917, Frederick Page, 17 King John St
4th February 1917, William Wotten, 5 Wakeling St
9th February 1917, Joseph Ellis, 3 Oley Place
27th March 1917, William Page, Flat 4, 45 Jubilee St
14th May 1917, John Jenkins, 27 Commercial Rd
9th May 1917, Herbert Graves, 78 Diggon St
10th May 1917, Henry Middleton, 82 Old Church Rd
16th June 1917, John Moonie, 85 White Horse Lane
6th July 1917, Thomas Crouch, 21 White Horse Lane
9th July 1917, Walter Page, 63 White Horse Lane
11th July 1917, Robert Kirby, 73 Ernest St
16th July 1917, William Long, Pole St
26th July 1917, William Lynch, 41 Belgrave St
30th July 1917, George Reid, 38 Diggon St
3rd September 1917, Sidney Biggs, 12 Matlock St
20th September 1917, Edward Webber, 16 Dean St
24th September 1917, William Grainger, 49 Diggon St
26th October 1917, Alfred Walmer, 12 White Horse Lane
26th October 1917, Ruchard Tyndall, 3 Rectory Sq
2nd November 1917, John Fox, 3 Oley Place
10th November 1917, Henry Nicholas, 38 Latimer St
25th November 1917, Albert Clarke, Salmon Lane
8th December 1917, Albert Stokes, 9 Louisa Gardens
21st March 1918, Harry Gray, St Thomas St
21st March 1918. Arthur Hallett, 52 Bromley St
3rd April 1918, Horace Vincent, 21 Copley St
1st May 1918, Robert Parlett, 51 Belgrave St
27th May 1918, Albert Mitchell, Grosvenor St
15th July 1918, Henry Smith, 169 Stepney Green
1st September 1918, Walter McMinn, 635 Commercial Rd
19th September 1918, Arthur Murphy, 23 Rhodeswell Rd
17th October 1918, Raymond Smith, 10 Latimer St
18th October 1918, Arthur Reids, 38 Diggon St
2nd November 1918, Charles Legon, 107 Rhodeswell Rd
& 106 more from the parish for whom we have no addresses
St Dunstan’s, Stepney
Portrait of Jimmy Page copyright © Sarah Ainslie
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