Noel Gibson in Bow
Railway footbridge at Poplar
There is a rare chance to see the work of East End painter Noel Gibson (1928-2006) at the Nunnery Gallery in Bow until September 21st. These large paintings need to be seen in the gallery to fully appreciate the quality of impasto, with vivid black lines standing out in relief from the canvas and vigorous textures created with a palette knife, imparting a dramatic presence to these soulful visions.
Born in Glasgow, Gibson originally trained as an opera singer and then became House Manger at the London Opera Centre based in the Troxy Cinema in Commercial Rd. A self-taught artist, he painted in the evenings after work.
“I began as an abstract painter but when I came to Stepney, I found paintings on my doorstep. Though I think there’s still a quiet abstract quality to my paintings. I am trying to express the spirit of the buildings, the strength of them and the people who were there. This is why I don’t put people into my paintings. People turn them into an episode with a background – but I am painting the background! I love these buildings. I walk the dog and I look at them at different times of day and in different weathers, and I keep going back. In a way I am making a record of a changing, I wouldn’t say a dying area, but often I go back to check up on a detail, a colour and a whole street has gone.” Gibson said in an interview in the Times in 1972.
Immensely successful in his day, enjoying acclaim and sell-out shows – one of which at St Botolph’s in Bishopsgate was opened by Tubby Isaac the jellied eel king – Noel Gibson was featured on BBC’s “Nationwide,” a popular current affairs programme in 1972. In 1974, he moved to South London, working at Morley College and appointed Provost’s Verger at Southwark Cathedral, yet in 1985 he admitted, “I regard Tower Hamlets as the area of inspiration for my work and I will always return to it.”
Hessel St – “If this street were in Paris, everyone would have wanted to paint it.”
Brick Lane, looking north towards the Truman Brewery
St Anne’s, Limehouse
St John’s Tower
Small Red House in Bow
Street Scene in Poplar
The Victory in Poplar
Chilton St, Spitalfields
Tower House, Fieldgate St, Whitechapel
Arbour Sq
Noel Gibson
Images courtesy of Tower Hamlets Local History Library & Archives
Empty Streets: Noel Gibson’s East London (1967-75) is at the Nunnery Gallery, 181 Bow Road, E3 2SJ until 21st September
Ray Newton, Historian Of Shadwell
Ray Newton at the churchyard gate of St Paul’s Shadwell
You do not meet many people who can say they come from Shadwell these days, not in the way that Ray Newton can when he tells you his family have been there since at least 1820 – which is only as far he chooses to probe, yet more than sufficient to claim Shadwell as his place of origin.
Ray has dedicated himself to learning the history of Shadwell and, for the past thirty years, he has run the local history trust with Madge Darby who is his counterpart in Wapping. Between the pair of them they are able to enjoy specialist conversations that trace niceties of historical detail, especially concerning the boundary between their adjoining Thames-side parishes. “Madge will tell you that the Prospect …” Ray began, referring to the ancient Prospect of Whitby riverside pub by its familiar name, “Madge will tell you that the Prospect is in Wapping because, since the early nineteenth century when the Docks were built, the Wapping people have said that you have to cross water to get to Wapping – yet prior to that the Prospect was in Shadwell.”
In confirmation of this assertion, Ray took me round the back of St Paul’s Church in Shadwell and gestured significantly towards a blank wall before turning one hundred and eighty degrees to indicate a route crossing the Basin towards the Thames. “This used to be Fox’s Path, from the Highway down to the Prospect,” he informed me, “it was raised on stilts across the marshes that were here before the Docks.”
Thus Ray’s thesis about the shifting boundary of Shadwell and Wapping was proven, though it left me with an unfulfillable yearning to cross Fox’s Path upon the long-gone stilts over the marshes and down to the Prospect of Whitby.
“My father, Thomas Newton, was born in 1904 in Cornwall St off Watney St Market but he lived his early life in Juniper St, which was swarming with hundreds of children then. Although it was a big family, my grandfather John Newton had a good job, he was a foreman in a cold store at Bankside, so my father got educated and he could read and write letters for people in Juniper St.
We were lucky because my dad had a secure job and even in the thirties, when there were no jobs, he worked. At twelve years old, my father left school and went to work with my grandfather at the cold store, and his brothers worked there with him too. When he was fourteen, he went to Broad St Boys’ Club in the Highway that was run by the son of Bombardier Billy Wells (the man who wielded the hammer on the gong at the start of J. Arthur Rank films) and, at eighteen years old, my father became a professional boxer. He fought against Raymond Perrier, the Champion of France, and beat him and he topped the bill in the twenties. He fought all over the East End but, because he was boxer not a fighter, he had trouble with his eye and he had to have an operation. After that, he couldn’t box anymore so he became a manager and ran a gym in Davenport St above the Roebuck.
My mother, Maria Edgecombe, was born in Gravesend. Her mother was a farmer’s daughter who married my grandfather, who was a waterman who came from Shadwell and worked for the Tilbury Dock Company. When it was taken over by the Port of London Authority, he moved out and worked on the Pierhead and they lived in Cable St, where my mother met my father and they had three boys and a girl. On my dad’s side, they were all dockers and on my mother’s side they all worked for the Port of London Authority. They were different people, because in the docks it was all casual labour whereas the Port of London Authority was regular employment. It was very hard work in the docks but I never met anyone that didn’t love working there. The docks could find a job for anyone.
When the War came, my dad was still working in the cold store and it was a reserved occupation. He joined the Home Guard and his job was to guard the London Dock and the King Edward VII Memorial Park which was the entrance to the Rotherhithe Tunnel – and he was given five rounds of ammunition. I remember him in his uniform because I was born just before the War.
My father was always into everything sporty and boxing was his life so, when his father died, he become a bookmaker and set himself up as a turf accountant and gave up the docks. Next, he decided to be a publican and bought a pub on the Highway opposite Free Trade Wharf called the Cock but, while I was doing National Service, he became ill. At fifty-one, he was told he had lung cancer and had five years to live, and he died at fifty-six. He was a lad but he wasn’t a criminal. He was a hard man and he could fight anyone just like that, yet he was also very generous. He was into everything, he organised dances and sold tickets.
We had a boxing gym in the cellar of the pub and he gave away all the equipment to the St Georges Boxing Club in the church crypt – where they produced a world champion, Terry Marsh. I didn’t want him to give it away because I thought they’d damage it but he said to me, ‘You don’t know what it’s like to have no money.’
At twenty-three years old, I took over the pub and I was a publican right on the docks, serving seamen and dockers. So you had to be a little hard – but I’m not. During the days, it was dockers, lightermen and ships’ captains but at nights, and at weekends, local families came. We had a piano player and everyone knew the words, they had competitions – one song in the Saloon Bar then one in the Public Bar. In the Saloon, you could charge what you pleased but in the Public Bar the drinks’ prices were set. Ships’ officers, customs’ men and the management of Free Trade Wharf went into the Saloon and dockers and lightermen went in the Public Bar – they never met, that was the class system.
I ran the pub until it was pulled down to make way for the widening of the Highway and I was rehoused in Gordon House, where I still live today. After the pub came down, I worked for my elder brother – he was a bookmaker – in his betting shops, but it wasn’t me. When he decided to sell the shop in Walthamstow, I stayed 0n and worked for the new people – for the company which became City Tote.
Yet I realised I didn’t want to do this for the rest of my life so, at thirty-two, I decided to get an education and, after the shop closed at night, I used to go to evening classes. I enrolled for a basic English class and the teacher said, ‘Write something down so I can look at it,’ and when he saw it he said, ‘This ain’t your class but if you help me with teaching the other students, I’ll mark your essay each week.’ So I got a year of personal tuition.
Then I was doing my homework in the betting shop one day, when two young men who were different from the other punters asked what I was doing. I said, ‘I’m doing O levels.’ They were lecturers and they said, ‘We’ll help you with your O levels if you’ll teach us gambling.’ After I did my O levels and A levels, I realised that if I don’t go to university, I’d be disappointed for the rest of my life, so I went to Middlesex Polytechnic and did a four year degree in Social Sciences. While I was a student, I was working as an Adult Literacy volunteer and after I got my degree I became a lecturer in Social Sciences at West Ham College, but the most rewarding thing I did was teaching partially blind people.
After thirty-six years of teaching, I retired and for the past ten years I’ve had an allotment in Cable St Gardens, and I’m secretary of the History of Wapping Trust. I used to teach a Local History class and one day Madge Darby came along, there’s nothing about Wapping she didn’t know. We published over twenty books. We never set out to make money, it is a thing we did for love.
Once upon a time, we were all in the same boat, we all went to the same school, we all went to the same pub, we all had the same doctor and everybody knew everybody. Now nobody knows anybody. I think I was lucky because I worked in a pub at twenty-three and I met the full range of people, and it got me interested in local history.”
Ray upon the steps overlooking Shadwell Basin
Ray shows the stone plaque in the churchyard wall of St Paul’s Shadwell, placed after it was shored up when Shadwell Basin was being excavated between 1828-32 and the church began to slide downhill
Ray pointed out these early nineteenth century doors facing the Highway, in the side of the Vestry at St Paul’s Shadwell, which were once the entrance to Shadwell’s first Fire Station
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Truman’s Spitalfields Pub Crawl
Fancy a couple of pints on Friday night? You are invited to come along on Truman’s pub crawl in Spitalfields this Friday in the company of Derek Prentice former Master Brewer in Brick Lane and Jack Hibberd of Truman’s Beer to learn the history of the rise and fall and rise again of brewing in the East End, and enjoy the opportunity to sample some of fine ales now being brewed by Truman’s. To join the party, simply meet at at 6:30pm this Friday 15th August at the Pride of Spitalfields in Heneage St and look forward to visiting some of the celebrated hostelries in these pictures.
The Pride of Spitalfields, Heneage St
Sandra Esqulant at The Golden Heart, Commercial St
Ten Bells, Commercial St
You may also like to read my stories about Truman’s Beer
First Brew at the New Truman’s Brewery
Tony Jack, Chauffeur at Truman’s Brewery
Truman’s Returns to Spitalfields
and take a look at
The Gentle Author’s Next Pub Crawl
The Gentle Author’s Spitalfields Pub Crawl
The Gentle Author’s Dead Pubs Crawl
The Gentle Author’s Next Dead Pubs Crawl
The Gentle Author’s Wapping Pub Crawl
WW1 At Gardners’ Market Sundriesmen
Paul Gardner with the portrait of his Great Uncle Claud Gardner
At Spitalfields’ oldest family business, Gardners Market Sundriesmen – in Commercial St since 1870 and now into the fourth generation – the past is never far away. Paul Gardner, the current incumbent, keeps a large old family bible under the counter, with a detailed list of all the comings and goings of the Gardners in Spitalfields over the past hundred and forty years written in the front, so that he may consult it whenever the need arises. “In my grandfather’s generation, there were thirteen in the family but only eight made it to adulthood,” he admitted to me.
The centenary of the outbreak of World War One proposes just such a moment of reflection by Paul, contemplating the lives of his grandfather Bertie (John) Gardner and Great Uncle (William) Claud Gardner whose fates were decided by the conflict in tragically divergent ways.
The story is often told of Bertie Gardner, the Scale Maker, who was enlisted in 1914 but called back off the train to Calais because his profession was deemed essential to the War effort. It was a stroke of good fortune that saved his life and brought him back to pass his years checking the scales in the Spitalfields Market weekly and selling bags from the shop in Commercial St, until he died from a heart attack in 1958 upstairs in the flat above the family business.
Yet his brother Claud never joined the business and was granted no reprieve. He was sent to the front where he died in 1917 and Paul keeps a copy of The Daily Sketch, with the news of Claud’s death, in the shop to this day. It was sent to the family in Commercial St by the newspaper rolled up in a tube and, if you ask, Paul will remove the tattered paper of a century ago from its cardboard tube and point out to you that the picture is not of Claud but a random portrait serving as a generic illustration. If deliberate and not a mistake, this was a strangely callous act by the newspaper – it seemed to me – since, although the readers might be unaware, it must have been a grave disappointment for his family, serving only to compound their loss.
“Bertie was born over the shop in Commercial St in 1893,” Paul told me, picking up the story of his grandfather who died when he was just two years old, “He joined up for the Merchant Navy in 1911 as a Pantry Boy and was discharged on May 20th 1914, so he came out prior to the war. It was my Nan who told me how he was called up again, but was called back off the train because he was one of the last Scale Makers in London and, obviously, being so close to the Spitalfields Market it was a very important job.” And Paul took this opportunity to retrieve the ledgers from the eighteen-nineties, so that we could enjoy poring through the columns of elegant script and recognise familiar addresses of customers all over the East End.
“I was only small when Bertie died and he just had one son, Roy my dad, so I only know him from what people say.” Paul continued, “Joan Rose told me that although she was a child, he always treated her like an adult when she came to buy bags for her grandfather’s greengrocers in Calvert Avenue. My Nan told me Bertie was a stickler for punctuality and, if he went upstairs to the flat for his dinner and if it wasn’t ready, he’d throw a wobbly – that was from his time in the Merchant Navy. He was very tidy and organised, and my Nan used to clean the shop every day.”
“Bertie went into the business with his elder brother Jimmy, they took over from their father and were B & J Gardner, but then Jimmy had a heart attack and it became B. J Gardner. When they started out they were Scale Makers, but then they diversified into sales tickets and paper bags, even pairs of bellows and carpet beaters – I’ve still got one somewhere. They used to paste the paper bags in the shop in those days. The apprentices slept down below in the basement and the family lived up above. They went round in a pony and trap to all the grocers to service the scales regularly, and sometimes, he took my Nan and all the family to Bournemouth in it. They kept the pony and trap in Fleur de Lis St and the pony was called Pat. We had the carriage lamp for years afterwards, I remember it in my time.”
“He had a working life and he was a hard-working sort of person, ” Paul concluded, lapsing into silence.
If Bertie had not been a Scale Maker, he might not have been spared combat in 1914 and history would have been different – and Paul Gardner might not be behind the counter at Gardners’ Market Sundriesmen today. Yet Bertie was fortunate enough to live and accumulate stories and be remembered by his descendants, unlike his elder brother, Claud, whose life was cut short and whose death was recorded in a newspaper, illustrated by a photograph of someone else. Thus is the curious manner in which the modest lives of Scale Makers and Bag Sellers in Spitalfields are intertwined with the great events of history.
Announcement of Claud Gardner’s death in the Daily Sketch – the paper did not have a photo and substituted a random soldier portrait in his place
Claud Gardner’s name is upon the memorial in Christ Church Spitalfields, formerly in St Stephen’s
Bertie Gardner & Evelyn Hayball
Bertie Gardner’s Certificate of discharge from the Merchant Navy
Bertie Gardner in uniform
Bertie with Paul’s father Roy
Outside the shop in Commercial St
The Gardners’ family bible, with more that four generations of Scale Makers and Bag Sellers
Gardners’ Market Sundriesmen, 149 Commercial St, E1 6BJ (6:30am – 2:30pm weekdays)
You may like to read my other stories about Paul Gardner
Paul Gardner, Paper Bag Seller
At Gardners’ Market Sundriesmen
Joan Rose at Gardners’ Market Sundriesmen
James Brown at Gardners’ Market Sundriesmen
So Long, Sir Richard MacCormac
Today we remember the celebrated Architect and long-time Spitalfields resident, Sir Richard Cornelius MacCormac, CBE, PPRIBA, FRSA, RA, whose funeral takes place in Christ Church this morning. Just two months ago, he published Two Houses in Spitalfields as a record of the adjoining properties that he and Jocasta Innes inhabited in Heneage St – each manifesting their owners’ contrasted sensibilities yet by their connection emblematic of the personal relationship which bound them together for thirty years.
Sir Richard MacCormac photographed at Southwark Station in 2013 by Dominic Harris
Born in Marylebone in 1938, Richard MacCormac came from a distinguished medical and naval family of Irish origin that included Queen Victoria’s House Physician. As a boy, he built model boats and then did his National Service in the Royal Navy. Possessing a life-long love for sailing, in recent years he owned a 1908 oyster-fishing smack that he sailed on the Thames Estuary.
Passionate to forge an humane version of Modernist architecture, Richard MacCormac worked on social housing projects in Merton in the nineteen-sixties before establishing his own practise in Spitalfields, MacCormac Jamieson Prichard, in 1972. Reconciling an Arts & Crafts appreciation for fine materials with Frank Lloyd’s delight in sympathetic geometry, he designed a series of notable buildings for Oxford & Cambridge colleges, including an accommodation block for Trinity College, Cambridge, that he considered his finest work. More recent projects included Southwark Station and the new Broadacasting House in Portland Place which succeeded in elegantly counterbalancing George Val Myers’ 1935 building, despite the meddling of BBC executives.
In Spitalfields, Richard MacCormac will be fondly remembered for his shrewd intelligence, wit and generosity of spirit. Within one month last year, he and Jocasta Innes each discovered they were afflicted with terminal cancer and both met these tragic circumstances with singular fortitude and strength of character.
Secret door in Richard MacCormac’s house that led to Jocasta Innes’ house
View back from Richard MacCormac’s house towards the secret door
Stairwell with display of medals belonging to Richard MacCormac’s ancestors
Model boat constructed by Richard MacCormac
Richard MacCormac’s library
Folding desk in Richard MacCormac’s study
Hallway of Jocasta Innes’ house
Jocasta Innes’ kitchen
Jocasta Innes’ library with portrait of her mother
Chest in Jocasta Innes’ bedroom
Secret door on the landing in Jocasta Innes’ house leading to Richard MacCormac’s house
“The two Spitalfields houses, and our lives, were bound together, continually touched by our shared interests. They have many characteristics in common – illusion, allusion, surprise, humour and, of course, colour, but with the distinct identities which reflect us both” – Richard MacCormac
All photographs except exterior shot © Jan Baldwin
Exterior photograph © Hélène Rollin
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In Dutch Tenterground
Norman Jacobs sent me this unpublished memoir written by his father Isaac (known as Ikey) Jacobs, entitled Fleish or no Fleish? Below I publish extracts from his extraordinarily detailed manuscript, comprising a tender personal testimony of a Spitalfields childhood in the years following World War I.
Ikey Jacobs in 1959
My Tenterground consisted of six streets in the form of a ladder, the two uprights being Shepherd St and Tenter St, and going across like four rungs. Starting at the Commercial St end were Butler St, Freeman St, Palmer St and Tilley St – and this complex was encapsulated by White’s Row, Bell Lane, Wentworth St and finally Commercial St.
Our family lived in Palmer St which had about ten houses each side. They were terraced with three floors, ground, first and top. Each floor had two rooms, the front room overlooking the street and the back room overlooking the yard. By today’s standard the rooms were small. The WC and water tap were in the yard, and there was no inside toilet or running water.
The house we lived in contained three families. On the ground floor was a tailor who used his two rooms as a workshop. He was a foreigner, or – to us – a ‘Pullock.’ All foreign Jews were called ‘Pullocks’ by English Jews, no matter which part of Europe they came from. It was a corruption of ‘Pollack.’ Should my mother be having a few words with a Pullock, she would tell her to go back to Russia – Geography not being her strong point. Incidentally, if we had words with an English family they would tell us to go back to Palestine. So it evened itself out. Our family, with roots of settled residence in England traceable back to the seventeen-nineties, spoke no Hebrew or Yiddish worth mentioning, and I’m ashamed to say paid but only lip service to Jewish holidays.
Jack Lipschitz was the tailor’s name. He threatened me with dire consequences for mispronouncing his name – his surname of course. He had a sewing machine in his front room where his wife and daughter, Hetty, worked and a sewing machine and long bench for ironing in the back. He did all the ironing whilst his brother, Lippy – also part of the menage – worked the back room machine. In the summer, Jack did all the pressing in the yard where there was a brick fire for the irons. How these four people lived and slept there too, I don’t know.
Up one flight of stairs to a small landing saw the door to Solly Norton’s rooms, which he shared with his wife, Polly, and son, Ascher, who was about my age. They had the first gramophone I ever saw, the type with the big horn. I would often go down and play with Ascher to hear it. The Nortons kept a fruit stall in the Lane.
Up another flight, along another very small landing, the door to our front room faced you. We moved to Palmer St from Litchfield Rd in Bow where we had lived in my Aunt Betsy’s house. She was one of my mother’s elder sisters, so I assume my parents must have rented a room or two off her.
I came into the world as the second child on December 21st 1915, my sister Julia having joined the human race on on April 30th 1914. The move to Palmer St must have taken place in late 1916 or early 1917. Once there, the family increased at a steady pace – Davy 1917, Woolfy 1919, Abie 1921, Joe 1923 and Manny 1924. We were named alternatively, one on Dad’s side of the family and one on Mum’s, Julia being the name of Dad’s mum and Isaac the name of Mum’s dad.
Rebecca & John Jacobs
My father was by trade a French polisher. When there wasn’t much in that line – which was often enough – he would turn his hand to other things. He was a very good lino-layer and, as he knew quite a few furniture shops along the Whitechapel and Mile End roads, he would get the occasional job doing that. From time to time, he would act as a waiter at the Netherlands Club in Bell Lane (note the connection with the Dutch Tenterground). He did this with a tall elderly man called Phillip, and I would often boast to my friends that my father was Head Waiter at the Bell Lane Club, which is what we called it.
My mother worked as a Cigar Maker, when she was single, in a firm she referred to as Toff Levy. Like many other cigar and cigarette firms of that time, it was situated in Aldgate. It was all handwork and girls were cheap labour. Working in the same firm was a certain Sarah Jacobs, and a friendship sprang up between her and Mum. This friendship sealed my destiny for – although as yet I was unborn – Fate had decreed that I was to be a Jacobs.
My mother was christened Rebecca (but known ever after as Becky), and she was the eighth child of Isaac and Clara Levy, born in the heart of the Lane at 214 Wentworth Dwellings on November 22nd 1888, just a few months after Jack the Ripper was supposed to have written the cryptic message “The Juwes are the men who will not be blamed for nothing” on one of its walls. My Nan, who had produced this heavenly babe, was herself a midwife. But alas for poor Isaac Levy, whose forename I proudly bear, he died at the turn of the century in company with Queen Victoria. My mother had told me that she left Castle St School at thirteen years of age, which seems to coincide with the death of her Dad, who had been a lifelong cripple and had to wear, as my mother put it, a ‘high boot.’
My dad, John, first saw the light of day on March 7th 1892 at 23 Bell Lane as the first child to bless the union of David and Julia Jacobs. His arrival was followed in quick succession by that of a brother Woolf and sister Sarah, the eventual link between John and Becky when she too worked for Toff Levy.
Upon our arrival in Palmer St, a stone’s throw as the crow flies from both Wentworth Dwellings and Bell Lane, we were a family of four, but we steadily increased to nine. Living on the top floor with this ever-expanding family had its problems – getting the pushchair up and down stairs, the occasional tumble down the stairs by one of the little ones, carrying up all the water and then the disposal of the dirty water again. Sharing one WC between three families didn’t help either.
On entering our front room, on the far right wall was a small coal-fired range, grate and oven. To its right, in a sort of recess, was a bed which was occupied by Mum and Dad, and generally the latest arrival. To the left of the fireplace, was a dresser which held the plates, cups and saucers and jam jars. Cups had a high mortality rate amongst us kids, so stone jam jars were pressed into service. Most of the cups were handleless. Some of the plates were of the willow pattern design and Mum would often tell us the story they depicted – “Two little boys going to Dover” etc.
We slept in the back room. We never had pyjamas, I don’t think we’d ever heard of them. So going to bed was quite a simple procedure – jersey, trousers, boots and socks off and into bed in our shirts. I can’t remember Julie’s night attire, she slept with the younger ones. We older boys slept like sardines, heads top and bottom, with all our legs meeting in the middle.
Ikey Jacob’s Map of Dutch Tenterground
On reflection, I suppose we were a very poor family. Dad did not seem to have regular work and the burden of feeding our ever increasing family fell heavily on the shoulders of mother. In the main, we lived on fillers like bread, potatoes and rice, but it wasn’t all doom and gloom. When Dad was working we did have good meals, but memory tells me there may have been more lean times than fat ones.
Bread and marge was the usual diet for breakfast and tea. Rice boiled with shredded cabbage or currants was served for dinner many a day. Potatoes, with a knob of marge, or as chips did service another day. Fried ox heart or sausages sometimes accompanied the potatoes. Fried herrings and sprats were issued when they were plentiful and cheap. There were times we would have a tomato herring and a couple of slices of bread, William Bruce was the name on the tin of these delicacies, still a favourite of mine today.
It was a common practice in our house to buy stale bread. One of us would be sent to Funnel’s with a pillow case and sixpence to make the purchase. Early morning was the best time to go as many other families did the same thing. We were not always lucky but when we were the lady would put four or five loaves in the pillow case, various shapes and sizes, for our tanner. When we got them home mum would sort out the fresher, or shall I say the least stale, for eating, and the remainder would then be soaked down for a bread pudding. Delicious.
We would also buy cakes that way too from Ostwind’s in the Lane. Six penn’orth of stale pastries was our order to the shop assistant and she would fill a paper bag up with them, probably glad to get rid of them. When in funds, large cakes were also bought on the stale system and I would often be sent to Silver’s, high class baker in Middlesex St, to purchase a sixpenny stale ‘bola,’ a large posh-looking cake.
‘Itchy Park’ was the only park in the area. Not very large, it contained the usual gravestones, seats, trees and a few swings. As boys we were not always welcomed by our elders, who would probably be trying to have a kip. I used to like picking the caterpillars, little yellow ones, off the trees and putting them in matchboxes. Someone had told me they would eventually grow into butterflies but, after watching them carefully for a few days and finding nothing had happened, I would discard them – box and all.
The park was contained by a small wall from which sprouted high railings. Along this wall, sat the homeless and down and outs. It was said the park got its name from these people rubbing their backs against the railings because they were lousy. A drinking fountain, was set in between the railings with a big, heavy metal cup secured by a heavier chain. It was operated by pressing a large metal button, and the water emerging from a round hole below it.
In front of this stood a horse trough, much needed then as most of the traffic serving Spitalfields Market was horse drawn. The Fruit & Vegetable Market was very busy, especially in the morning when Commercial St would be choked with its moving and parked traffic. All the produce would be laid out on sacks, in baskets or in boxes, and one of the sights of the market was to see porters carrying numerous round baskets of produce on their heads. For me, this was the best time of day to go looking for ‘specks’ – these were bad oranges or apples thrown into a box. Selecting those with half or more salvageable, I would take them home where the bad parts were cut away and the remainder eaten.
Ikey Jacobs in 1938
There were times when Dad would have to pay the Relieving Officer a visit. I don’t know how the system worked, but if you could prove you were in need he would allocate certain items of foodstuffs, and, I suppose, a few bob. After all, the rent had to be paid. His establishment was popularly called ‘the bun house.’ When Dad returned we all gathered round to inspect the contents of the pillow case as he placed them on the table. The favourite was always the jar of Hartley’s strawberry jam. Being a stone jar, when emptied, and that didn’t take long, it served as another cup. The least popular item was the cheese, suffice to say we called it ‘sweaty feet.’
Our main provider in the winter months was the soup kitchen in Butler St. It opened two or three nights a week and issued bread, marge, saveloys, sardines and of course soup. The size of the applicant’s family decided how many portions they were entitled to – the portions ran from one to four. When you first applied they issued you with a kettle, we called it a can. It had a number stamped on the side depicting how many portions you were to get. Ours had four.
When it opened for business we would all line up outside along Butler St. Once inside, six crash barriers had to be negotiated in a single line till the door leading to the serving area was reached. There would be two men doing the serving, both dressed in white and wearing tall chef’s hats. The first one would give me four loaves, always brick loaves, two packets of Van den Burgh’s Toma margarine and two tins of sardines. If I preferred saveloys to soup, he would give me eight of those. I was always told to get the soup, because we had saveloys once and they were 80% bread.
Having dealt with the grocery department, I moved along to the soup-giver. He was a great favourite of mine, known by our family as ‘the fat cook,’ a stout, domineering man with a fine beard. As I gave him the can, he would look me in the eyes and ask, “Fleish or no Fleish?” If you did not want any meat you’d say “No Fleish.” Although, as a rule, the meat was 50% fat, I was always instructed to get some. So I would look up into his eyes and reply in a loud voice “Fleish.” He would glare at me and go off to a large boiler to get it.
There was a long table with form seating down each side, set out between the boilers and the servers, where anybody, Jew or Gentile, could go in and sit down to a bowl of soup and a thick slice of bread. They did three different varieties of soup – rice, pea and barley alternatively, one variety per night. People who did not want the soup at all, but just the groceries, were given a metal disc with the portion number stamped on it. Funny, not wanting soup in a soup kitchen.
Every Passover, before they closed for the summer, we would be given four portions of groceries for the holiday. Four packets of tea and of coffee, (I loved the smell of that coffee, its aroma came right through the red packet with Hawkins printed on it) Toma marge and many other foodstuffs. But not matzos – these were obtainable from the synagogue. Dad would come back from Duke’s Place Shul with about six packets of these crunchy squares. The ones we disliked most were Latimer’s because they were hard, but generally he would bring Abrahams & Abrahams, a trifle better. But beggars can’t be choosers and I suppose we were beggars, now I come to think of it.
Eventually the time came when we were told we were to leave the Tenterground. It was going to be pulled down. All I felt was despair. I knew no other place or way of life. Those dirty streets and slum houses were part of me. Long after we left, I would dream I was back there only to wake up to the reality that the Tenterground had gone for ever. Well, not quite for ever, there is still a little boy who haunts those long vanished streets – Ikey Jacobs.
A page of Ikey Jacobs’ manuscript
You may also like to read about
More Of Charles Hindley’s Cries Of London
In his History of the Cries of London, Ancient & Modern of 1884, Charles Hindley reused many woodblocks from earlier publications and this series below dates from perhaps a century earlier.
Of all the sets I have published in these pages, these prints best illustrate the necessity of the Cries, since in most cases it would not be possible for customers to tell at a distance what sellers had in their baskets so, as well as announcing their presence, the Cries declared the wares on offer. There is a particular animated quality to this set, tracing the footsteps of the hawkers as they trudge the narrow streets, negotiating the puddles and the filth – and it makes you realise how much walking was involved, lugging produce round the city on foot.
Newcastle Salmon! Dainty fine Salmon! Dainty fine Salmon! Newcastle Salmon!
Yorkshire Cakes, who’ll buy Yorkshire Cakes? All piping hot – smoking hot! hot! hot!
Buy my Flowers, sweet Flowers, new-cut Flowers! New Flowers, sweet Flowers, fresh Flowers, O!
Buy green and large Cucumbers, Cucumbers, green and large, Cucumbers, twelve a penny!
Buy Rosemary! Buy Sweetbriar! Rosemary & Sweetbriar, O!
Come and buy my Walking Sticks or Canes! I’ve got them for young and old.
Buy my Cranberries! Fine Cranberries! Buy my Cranberries! Fine Cranberries!
Buy my fine Gooseberries! Fine Gooseberries! Threepence a quart! Ripe Gooseberries!
Pears for pies! Come feast your eyes! Ripe Pears, of every size, who’ll buy?
One a penny, two a penny, Hot Cross Buns! One a penny, two a penny, Hot Cross Buns!
Worcestershire Salt!
Buy Great Eels!
Buy Great Plaice!
Buy Great Smelts!
Buy Great Whiting!
Hats or Caps! Buy, Sell or Exchange!
Bread & Meat! Bread & Meat!
Hot fine Oatcakes! Hot fine Oatcakes!
Fine Oranges & Lemons! Oranges & Lemons!
I sweep your Chimney clean, O! Sweep your Chiney clean, O!
Buy my Diddle Dumplings, hot! hot! Diddle, diddle, diddle, Dumplings hot!
I have Hot Codlings, Hot Codlings!
You may also like to take a look at these other sets of the Cries of London I have collected
More John Player’s Cries of London
More Samuel Pepys’ Cries of London
Geoffrey Fletcher’s Pavement Pounders
William Craig Marshall’s Itinerant Traders
H.W.Petherick’s London Characters
John Thomson’s Street Life in London
Aunt Busy Bee’s New London Cries
Marcellus Laroon’s Cries of London
William Nicholson’s London Types
Francis Wheatley’s Cries of London
John Thomas Smith’s Vagabondiana of 1817
John Thomas Smith’s Vagabondiana II
John Thomas Smith’s Vagabondiana III
Thomas Rowlandson’s Lower Orders