Derrick Porter, Poet Of Hoxton
Derrick Porter
This is the gentle face of Derrick Porter, craggy and wise, framed by snowy hair and punctuated with a pair of sharp eyes that reveal a hint of his imaginative capacity. Standing against a rural backdrop upon the banks of the river Ching in Essex not far from High Beach where John Clare was confined, Derrick looks every inch an English poet and he is quick to admit his love of nature. Yet, although he acquired an affection for the countryside at an early age and Chingford is his place of residence, the focus of Derrick’s literary landscape and centre of his personal universe is his place of origin – Hoxton.
“It was a place we all wanted to get out of – it was a tough place to live,” Derrick confessed to me, recalling his childhood, “but the the culture of Hoxton and that era was my imaginative education.”
“My interest in literature stems from spending so many years in hospital up to the age of thirteen and they used to read to us – I looked forward to it so much, I learnt to love reading stories,” he confided, explaining that he suffered from tuberculosis as a child and was exiled from London for long stretches in hospitals. “They made us stay out in the fresh air which was the worst possible thing because it actually helped the germs to flourish, when the foggy atmosphere of London was much more beneficial to sufferers – but they didn’t understand that in those days.
My dad worked at the Daily Mail as a printer and my mum was a housewife, but I never saw him until I was six when he returned from the war. He had been captured by the Japanese and was held in a prisoner of war camp. At first, they sent him to America which was where they kept them to build them up again before they came home.
Before the age of ten years old, I lived in a prefab in Vince St next to the Old St roundabout and then we moved to Fairchild House in Fanshawe St. The prefabs were made of asbestos without any insulation and were very cold in winter. As children, we used to break off pieces of asbestos and throw them on to the bonfire to watch them explode. Maybe that affected my health? We had free rein then and we played in the old bombed buildings at the back of Moorgate – that was our playground.
At thirteen, I had an operation to have half of my lung removed and they told my mother that they didn’t know if I would recover. From then on, I took care of my own health and I became a fitness and health junkie. When I left school I thought I’d like to go back to the countryside and, when the teacher asked my ambition, I said, ‘I’m going to work on a farm,’ he told me, ‘You won’t find many in ‘Oxton, Porter.’ My father got me a job as in the general printing trade but it did my lungs in.
I always had this compulsion to get away from Hoxton and write. So I decided to emigrate to Australia on my own. I knew I had to get away. I was nineteen when I went for two years. I was engaged to be married but I broke the engagement and emigrated. I went to writing workshops in Australia and my earliest poems were written while I was there. I got a job as a printer on the Sydney Morning Herald. At first, they told me I couldn’t get a job without a union card, but then there was a bit of skullduggery. They took pity on me and, when I got a job, they gave me a card.
After that, I travelled in the USA with this small bag of my poems. Then, in Las Vegas, I stayed in this $1-a-night fleapit for three nights while I was waiting for the coach to take me to Los Angeles. Twenty minutes after I had boarded the bus, I realised I had left my bag behind with all the poems I had written in the previous two years. I cried, I felt so dismayed. It was a significant loss.
On my return, I moved into Langbourne Buildings off Leonard St in Shoreditch. I was surrounded by my friends and family and this was where I first joined a writing group. It was in Dalston and I started to write regularly. After seven years, I began to write some decent poems and then I read in the Hackney Gazette about Centreprise Literary Trust. So I went along there and met Ken Worpole, and gave him some of my poems. Then he got back in touch and said he’d like to publish them, and that was the first work I ever had in print.
By now I was twenty-nine and married with two young children, and we were offered the opportunity of swapping our flat for a house in Orpington. It was a fabulous house with a garden and we couldn’t refuse, but the rent was three times the price. We lived there for thirty-odd years and my poetry developed, I became a member of the Poetry Society and had my works published in magazines, although I rarely send my poems out because I always think I can do better.
I bought paintings from D & J Simons & Sons Ltd, picture frame and moulding makers, in the Hackney Rd and, when I moved to Orpington, I bought all their ‘second’ picture frames off them and sold them there. I started working for myself, buying reproduction furniture and selling it in Orpington Village Hall and I earned a living from that for twenty years. But all the time I was writing, writing and I had a lot of encouragement from people.
I rework my poems a lot because I’d rather have one good one than a lot of mediocre ones. I have written a lot of poems and discarded most of them because I’d rather just keep my best. I love letter writing and I believe it can be an art if it is done well. As long as I live, I’ll carry on writing.”
Writing has always been at the centre of Derrick Porter’s life and, now in his seventies, he is to publish his first collection of poetry entitled Voices of Hoxton, from which I reprint three poems below.
Derrick and his childhood friend Roy Wild on the steps of the eighteenth century house in Charles Sq where they played as children
Sitting Under a Tree in Charles Square
The clear urgency of the voice caused me
to look up, my finger marking the place
in the newspaper I was then reading…
How old do you think this tree is? it asked.
I said it was here when I was a boy.
Well, it won’t be for much longer, it said.
The owner of the voice began to circle
the tree before running his hands over
the gnarled trunk as if in search of a precise spot.
From under his coat appeared a long-handled axe.
It would be better if you moved, he said.
But not before the tree had endured
several blows…and a large, older woman, shouted
Are we to suffer this nonsense again?
Come home and do something useful for once.
Instantly the attack ceased and – without
another word passing between them – his steps
quickened to reach, if not overtake, the other.
My thumb then lifted from the newspaper
returning my eye to the Middle East
where, as yet, no allaying voice can be heard.
Derrick standing outside the flat at Fairchild House in Fanshawe St where he grew up
Derby Day in Fairchild House
Walking along our third floor balcony
I can see – before I enter the door – the piano
blocking the view into our living room.
You are watching the TV, circling horses
in The Sporting Life as John Rickman
calls home another of those certainties
you always said you should have backed.
From the kitchen the clang of pots
tells me it’s a Friday and mum’s busy
preparing a stew. A day perhaps
when sand had been kicked into my face
and I’d come home to pump iron.
If so, my bedroom door will be locked
and I’ll be lifting sand-filled-petrol-cans
hung along an old broom handle.
It’s also possible it’s the evening
of the Pitfield Institute’s Weight-Lifting final
when I won my only trophy. Or the day
cash went missing and I bought my first watch.
But as I turn the key and enter the door
I want it to be the day when even
the piano joined in…and Gordon Richards
rode Pinza to victory in the Derby.
The Apprentice
When Mr Hounslow asked the class what jobs
we had in mind, I answered,
Working on a farm, sir. “You won’t find many
in Hoxton” the reply. Come summer
I started work for a musical instrument
supplier in Paul Street, close to the old Victorian
Fire Station later re-sited in Old Street.
For one day a week I was promoted
to van boy and helped deliver to the likes
of Ronnie Scott’s Jazz Club in Soho,
a world far removed from that of Hoxton.
Here I saw the upbeat side of the business,
the posh shiny part that could open doors
if you had the right kind of connections.
After a year working with men who enjoyed
nothing better than to send the new boys out
to buy rubber nails and glass hammers,
if never themselves discovering who put
the mouse droppings into their biscuit tin,
I began to question where I was heading.
That summer – while on holiday in Ostend
with the Lion Club – my dad handed in
my notice…and when I returned, was told
I had to start work in the Printing Trade.
Its every aspect – machinery, ink, oil,
noise and dust, the very air – a sort of
road taken, as old Hounslow might have said,
for there being no farms in Hoxton.
Derrick Porter at Fairchild House, Hoxton
Poems copyright © Derrick Porter
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The Last Days Of London
At twelve years old, he photographed the end of the trams in 1952 and, since then, Spitalfields Life Contributing Photographer Colin O’Brien has become fascinated by recording the ‘last days’ of vanishing aspects of London Life …
Thames Embankment, 1952 “When I was twelve, the trams stopped running forever so I took this picture with my box camera while the driver posed for me. I loved going out with my dad on Sunday mornings for a ride through the Kingsway Tunnel and out on to the Embankment. It was even more exciting if we managed to get the front seat on the top deck where I could imagine I was driving the tram.”
Skinner St, Clerkenwell, 1952 “Long since demolished, the Rio Cinema was where we used to go as kids and watch films over and over again until we got bored. Westerns were my favourite and we all loved to mimic the actors and shout and clap at inappropriate moments”
Clerkenwell Rd, 1970s “After more than a century of use by hundreds of families, Victoria Dwellings – once my home – was demolished and I moved with my family to a flat on the twenty-third floor of the newly built Michael Cliffe House on the other side of Clerkenwell”
Covent Garden, 1973 “The fruit and vegetable market moved to the New Covent Garden Market between Vauxhall and Battersea in 1974”
Hackney, early 1980s “One of the last rag and bone men plying his trade by going door-to-door, picking up metal and scrap”
Regent’s Canal, Bethnal Green, 1987 “George Trewby’s magnificent gasometer constructed for the Gas Light and Coke Company in 1889 towers over the frozen canal”
Nightingale Estate, Hackney Downs, 1999 “Hackney Council decided that many of their high-rise blocks were failures as housing and decided to blow them up. Of the six towers that made up the estate, five were demolished. Since 2003, low-rise buildings have been constructed where the blocks once stood.”
Long Acre, Covent Garden, 1986 “The building was being demolished by a crane swinging an iron ball while two men stood on top of the ruin and finished the job with sledgehammers. There must be an easier way to earn a living”
The Griffin, Shoreditch, 30th June 2007 “Three smokers enjoy their last cigarettes on the final day of legal smoking in public places”
Highbury Corner, 7th May 2006 “Three men sit comatose after the last football match at Highbury Stadium before Arsenal moved to the new Emirates Stadium in Holloway Rd”
Chatsworth Rd, Hackney, 2010 “Suleyman bought this shoe repair shop in 1967, when it was like a time-capsule full of old leather sewing machines and calendars from the 1950s. Even pairs of shoes that were repaired more than ten years ago but never claimed by their owners were still lying around. He got up at 4am every morning and opened the shop between 7am and 4pm, until it closed recently.”
Mare St, Hackney, 2009 “I always had a soft spot for Woolworths. The first shop opened on the 6th November 1909 and I took this photograph on 6th January 2009, the last day of trading”
Chatsworth Rd, Hackney, 2008 “A friend took me for a meal one Saturday morning at Jim’s Cafe and it was the best breakfast I had eaten in a long time. I asked Dave, the proprietor, if I could take some pictures and I did shots of him standing in the doorway. When I returned about a month later with the prints, Dave’s wife told me he had died and the cafe closed soon after.”
Chatsworth Rd, Hackney, 2010 “Steve sits on his stock of tyres in the shop that he and his family ran for more than fifty years. It smelled of rubber and the Michelin man in the window was covered in dust. The shop closed on 2nd October 2010, shortly after I took this photograph.”
Clapton Pond, Hackney, 2005 “A group pose proudly to have their picture taken on the last day of the Routemaster buses running on the 38 route, from Clapton Pond to Victoria Station”
Clerkenwell Fire Station, Rosebery Avenue, 2014 “When Clerkenwell Fire Station closed in January 2014 after 142 years, I photographed the fire-fighters on their last day of service at Britain’s oldest operating fire station.”
Photographs copyright © Colin O’Brien
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Vote For The George Tavern!
In recognition of the magnificent achievement of Pauline Forster, who has devoted the last ten years to restoring the George Tavern in Commercial Rd, she has been shortlisted for an Historic England Angel Award. Please CLICK HERE to vote for Pauline.
Let me admit, The George in Commercial Rd is one of my favourite pubs in the East End. From the first moment I walked through the door, I knew I had discovered somewhere special.
In the magnificently shabby bar room, with gleaming tiles and appealingly mismatched furniture all glowing in the afternoon light filtering through coloured glass windows, there was not a scrap of the tidying up and modernisation that blights the atmosphere of too many old pubs. There was no music and no advertising – it was peaceful, and I was smitten by the unique charisma of The George.
Curious to learn more, I paid a visit upon the owner, who has been described to me as one of the last great publicans of the East End, and I was far from disappointed to explore behind the scenes at this legendary institution because what I found was beyond what I ever imagined.
Pauline Forster, artist and publican of The George, brought up her five sons in a remote valley in Gloucestershire. It was more than ten years ago when she bought The George and her sons came up to London with her, then in the following decade they all met partners in the bar and moved out. Yet such a satisfactory outcome of events was not the result of any master-plan on Pauline’s part, merely the consequence of a fortuitous accident in which she stumbled upon The George when it was lying neglected and fell in love with it, buying it on impulse a week later, even though it had never been her intention to become a publican.
“It’s a beauty, this building!” she declared to me as I followed her along the dark passage from the barroom, up a winding stair and through innumerable doors to enter her kitchen upon the first floor. “When I came to view it, there were twenty others after it but they only wanted to know how many flats they could fit in, none of them were interested in it as a pub.” she informed me in response to my gasps of wonder as she led me through the vast stairwell with its wide staircase and a sequence of high-ceilinged rooms with old fireplaces, before we arrived at her office lined with crowded bookcases reaching towards the ceiling. “The interior was all very seventies but I was hooked, I could see the potential.” she confided, “I gravitated to the bar and I started possessing it. I sat and waited until everyone else had gone and then I told the agent I would buy it for cash if he called off the auction.”
With characteristic audacity, Pauline made this offer even though she did not have the cash but somehow she wrangled a means to borrow the money at short notice, boldly taking possession, exchanging contracts and moving in three days later, before finding a mortgage. It was due to her personal strength of purpose that The George survived as a pub, and thanks to her intelligence and flair that it has prospered in recent years.“I thought, ‘I’ve got to open the bar, it would be a sin not to,'” she assured me, widening her sharp grey eyes to emphasise such a self evident truth, “I decided to open it and that’s what I did.”
A decade of renovations later, the false ceilings and recently installed modern wall coverings have been stripped away to reveal the structure of the building, and the early nineteenth stucco facade is now revealed in all its glory to the Commercial Rd. “I’m used to taking on challenges and I’m a hardworking person,” Pauline admitted, “I don’t mind doing quite a bit of work myself, you’ll see me up scaffolding chipping cement off and painting windows.”
Yet in parallel with the uncovering of the fabric of this magnificent old building – still harbouring the atmosphere of another age – has been the remarkable discovery of the long history of the pub which once stood here in the fields beside the Queen’s Highway to Essex before there were any other buildings nearby, more than seven hundred years ago. When Commercial Rd was cut through by the East India Company in the early nineteenth century, the orientation of the building changed and a new stuccoed frontage was added declaring a new name, The George. Before this it was known as The Halfway House, referenced by Geoffrey Chaucer in The Reeve’s Tale written in the thirteen-eighties when he lived above the gate at Aldgate and by Samuel Pepys who recorded numerous visits during the sixteen-sixties.
A narrow yard labelled Aylward St behind the pub, now used as a garden, is all that remains today of the old road which once brought all the trade to The Halfway House. In the eighteenth century, the inn became famous for its adjoining botanic garden where exotic plants imported from every corner of the globe through the London Docks were cultivated. John Roque’s map of 1742 shows the garden extending as far as the Ratcliffe Highway. At this time, William Bennett – cornfactor and biscuit baker of Whitechapel Fields – is recorded as gardener, cultivating as many as three hundred and fifty pineapples in lush gardens that served as a popular destination for Londoners seeking an excursion beyond the city. As further evidence of the drawing power of the The Halfway House, the celebrated maritime painter Robert Dodd was commissioned to paint a canvas of “The Glorious Battle of the Fifth of June” for the dining room, a picture that now resides in the Maritime Museum in Greenwich.
When you have ascended through all the diverse spaces of The George to reach the attic, you almost expect to look from the dormer windows and see green fields with masts of ships on the river beyond, as you once could. I was filled with wonder to learn just a few of the secrets of this ancient coaching inn that predates the East End, yet thanks to Pauline Forster has survived to adorn the East End today, and I know I shall return because there are so many more stories to be uncovered here. I left Pauline mixing pure pigments with lime wash to arrive at the ideal tint for the facade. “I don’t get time to do my own paintings anymore,” she confessed, “This is my work of art now.”
Nineteenth century tiling in the bar.
A ceramic mural illustrates The George in its earlier incarnation as The Halfway House.
Stepney in 1600 showing The Halfway House and botanic garden on White Horse Lane, long before Commercial Rd was cut through by the East India Company in the early nineteenth century.
The Halfway House in the seventeenth century.
The Halfway House became The George and the orientation of the building was changed in the nineteenth century when Commercial Rd was cut through. Note the toll booth and early telegraph mast.
Detail of the stucco facade before restoration.
In the attic, where Pauline lived when she first moved in
Pauline’s collection includes the dried-out carcass of a rat from Brick Lane.
Entrance to the attic
Living room
Living room with view down Commercial Rd
Dining Room
Wide eighteenth century staircase.
Pauline’s bathroom with matching telephone, the last fragment of the nineteen seventies interior that once extended throughout the building.
Pauline Forster, Artist & Publican.
Kitchen looking out onto the former Queen’s Highway, now the pub garden
Pauline’s dresser
Pauline hits the light-up dancefloor at “Stepney’s” nightclub next door.
The George Tavern, 373 Commercial Rd, E1 0LA (corner of Jubilee St).
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Sandra Esqulant, The Golden Heart
Brushseller outside Shoreditch Church by William Marshall Craig, 1804
For centuries, the most popular prints in the capital were the Cries of London. From the Elizabethan era onwards, these lively images were treasured by Londoners, celebrating the familiar hawkers and pedlars of the city. Those who had no job or shop or market stall could always make a living by selling wares in the street and, by turning their presence into a performance through song, they won the hearts of generations and came to embody the spirit of London itself.
This November – if I can gather enough investment from readers of Spitalfields Life – I plan to publish a beautiful book designed by David Pearson which will be the first major visual survey of this important cultural tradition of the London streets. The Gentle Author’s Cries of London will assemble a diverse selection of the best examples, telling the stories of the artists and the most celebrated traders, and revealing the unexpected social realities contained within these cheap colourful prints produced for the mass market.
To coincide with the publication of The Gentle Author’s Cries of London, I am delighted to be collaborating with Spitalfields Music who are opening their Winter Festival with a concert in St Leonard’s, Shoreditch, of music from old songbooks of the Cries of London, while the Bishopsgate Institute will be be staging a cultural festival around the theme of street trading, including a pedlars’ conference and an exhibition of fine examples of Cries of London from their archive.
Samuel Pepys collected sets of Cries of London both from his own day and a century earlier, and I believe he was the first writer to recognise that they comprised a significant social record. Over the past five years, I have been publishing sets of Cries of London in the pages of Spitalfields Life and grown fascinated by these wonderful images and the stories they tell of the lives of Londoners down the centuries.
Drawing upon hundreds of interviews I have undertaken, The Gentle Author’s Cries of London concludes with a survey of the situation for traders and pedlars in London today, and reflects upon the aged-old ambivalence with which those who seek to make a living in the street are viewed.
Below, I publish my account of William Marshall Craig’s ‘Intinerant Traders in Their Ordinary Costume’ from 1804 as a taster of the book.
As with previous titles I have published, I need to gather enough readers who are willing to invest £1000 each to make it possible. Please email Spitalfieldslife@gmail.com if you would like to help me publish The Gentle Author’s Cries of London and I will send you further information.
As fresh as the day they were hand-tinted in 1804, these plates from William Marshall Craig’s “Itinerant Traders of London in their Ordinary Costume, with Notices of Remarkable Places given in the Background” were discovered bound into the back of another volume at the Bishopsgate Institute in Spitalfields, and the vibrancy of their pristine hues suggests they have never been exposed to daylight in two centuries.
Yet, in contrast to their colourful aesthetic, these fascinating prints are often unexpectedly revealing of the reality of the lives of the dispossessed and outcast poor who sought a living upon the streets as hawkers at the beginning of the nineteenth century. Look again at the showman in the gaudy uniform with the peep show in the turquoise box and the red squirrel in a wheel – in fact, this reserved gentleman is a veteran who has lost a leg in the war. Observe the plate below of the woman in Soho Square feeding her baby and minding a bundle of rushes while her husband seeks chairs to mend in the vicinity, she looks careworn.
A fashionable portrait artist who exhibited at the Royal Academy between 1788 and 1827, William Marshall Craig was appointed painter in watercolours to Queen Charlotte, and in this set of prints he dignifies the itinerant traders by including some unsentimental portraits of individuals, allowing them self-possession even as they proffer their wares in eager expectation of a sale. In his drawings, engraved onto thirty-one plates by Edward Edwards, he shows tenderness and human sympathy, acknowledging the dignity of working people in portrayals that admit the vulnerability and occasional weariness of those who woke in the dawn to spend their days trudging the streets, crying their wares in all weathers. Despite their representation with rosy cheeks and clothes of pantomime prettiness, we can see these are street-wise professionals – born survivors – who could turn a sixpence as easily as a penny and knew how to scratch a living out of little more than resourcefulness.
William Marshall Craig’s itinerants exist in a popular tradition of illustrated prints of the Cries of London which began in the seventeenth century, preceded by verse such as “London Lackpenny,” attributed to the fifteenth century poet John Lydgate, recording an oral culture of hawkers’ cries that is as old as the city itself. In the twentieth century, the “Cries of London” found their way onto cigarette cards, chocolate boxes and, famously, tins of Yardley talcum powder, becoming divorced from the reality they once represented as time went by, copied and recopied by different artists.
The sentimentally cheerful tones applied by hand to William Marshall Craig’s prints, that were contrived to appeal to the casual purchaser, chime with the resilience required by traders selling in the street. And it is our respect for their spirit and resourcefulness which may account for the long lasting popularity of these poignant images of the self-respecting poor who turned their trades into performances. By making the streets their theatre, they won the lasting affections of generations of Londoners in the process, and came to manifest the very soul of the city itself. Even now, it is impossible to hear the cries of market traders and newspaper sellers without succumbing to their spell, as the last reverberations of a great cacophonous symphony echoing across time and through the streets of London.
Yet there is contradictory side to this affection. Equally, street traders have always been perceived as socially equivocal characters with an identity barely distinguished from vagabonds. The suspicion that their itinerant nature facilitated thieving and illicit dealing, or that women might be selling their bodies as as well as their legitimate wares, has never been dispelled. It is a tension institutionalised in this country through the issuing of licences, criminalising those denied such official endorsement, while on the continent of Europe the right to sell in the street is automatically granted to every citizen.
William Marshall Craig placed each of his itinerants within a picturesque view of London, thus giving extra value to the buyer by simultaneously celebrating the wonders of architectural development as well as the infinite variety of street traders. But there is a disparity between the modest humanity of the hawkers and the meticulously rendered monumentalism of the city. These characters are as out of place as those unreal figures in artists’ impressions of new developments, placed there to sell the latest scheme. Even as the noble buildings and squares of Georgian London speak of the collective desire for social order, the presence of the hawkers manifests a delight in human ingenuity and the playful anarchy of those who come singing through the streets. Depending upon your point of view, the itinerants are those who bring life to the city through their occupation of its streets or they are outcasts who have no place in a developed modern urban environment.
Yet none can resist the romance of the Cries of London and the raffish appeal of the liberty of vagabondage, of those who had no indenture or task master, and who travelled wide throughout the city, witnessing the spectacle of its streets, speaking with a wide variety of customers, and seeing life. In the densely-populated neighbourhoods, it was the itinerants’ cries that marked the times of day and announced the changing seasons of the year. Before the motorcar, their calls were a constant of street life in London. Before advertising, their songs were the announcement of the latest, freshest produce or appealing gimcrack. Before radio, and television, and internet, they were the harbingers of news, and gossip, and novelty ballads. These itinerants had nothing but they had possession of the city.
William Marshall Craig’s prints reveal that he understood the essential truth of London street traders, and it is one that still holds today – they do not need your sympathy, they only want your respect, and your money.
Chairs to mend. The business of mending chairs is generally conducted by a family or a partnership. One carries the bundle of rush and collects old chairs, while the workman seating himself in some convenient corner on the pavement, exercises his trade. For small repairs they charge from fourpence to one shilling, and for newly covering a chair from eighteen pence to half a crown, according to the fineness of the rush required and the neatness of the workmanship. It is necessary to bargain for price prior to the delivery of the chairs, or the chair mender will not fail to demand an exorbitant compensation for his time and labour.(Soho Sq, a square enclosure with shrubbery at the centre, begun in the time of Charles II.)
Band boxes. Generally made of pasteboard, and neatly covered with coloured papers, are of all sizes, and sold at every intermediate price between sixpence and three shillings. Some made of slight deal, covered like the others, but in addition to their greater strength having a lock and key, sell according to their size, from three shillings and sixpence to six shillings each. The crier of band boxes or his family manufacture them, and these cheap articles of convenience are only to be bought of the persons who cry them through the streets. (Bibliotheque d’Education or Tabart’s Juvenile Library is in New Bond St.)
Baskets. Market, fruit, bread, bird, work and many other kinds of baskets, the inferior rush, the better sort of osier, and some of them neatly coloured and adorned, are to be bought cheaply of the criers of baskets. (Whitfield’s Tabernacle, north of Finsbury Sq, is a large octagon building, the place of worship belonging to the Calvinistic methodists.)
Bellows to mend. The bellows mender carries his tools and apparatus buckled in a leather bag to his back, and, like the chair mender, exercises his occupation in any convenient corner of the street. The bellows mender sometimes professes the trade of the tinker. (Smithfield where the great cattle market of London is held, on which days it is disagreeable, if not dangerous to pass in the early part of the day on account of the oxen passing from the market, on whom the drovers sometimes exercise great cruelty.)
Brick Dust is carried about the metropolis in small sacks on the backs of asses, and is sold at one penny a quart. As brick dust is scarcely used in London for any other purpose than that of knife cleaning, the criers are not numerous, but they are remarkable for their fondness and their training of bull dogs. This prediliction they have in common with the lamp lighters of the metropolis. (Portman Sq stands in Marylebone. In the middle is an oval enclosure which is ornamented with clumps of trees, flowering shrubs and evergreens.)
Buy a bill of the play. The doors of the London theatres are surrounded each night, as soon as they open, with the criers of playbills. These are mostly women, who also carry baskets of fruit. The titles of the play and entertainment, and the name and character of every performer for the night, are found in the bills, which are printed at the expense of the theatre, and are sold by the hundred to the criers, who retail them at one penny a bill, unless fruit is bought, when with the sale of half a dozen oranges, they will present their customer a bill of the play gratis. (Drury Lane Theatre, part of the colonnade fronting to Russell St, Covent Garden.)
Cats’ & dogs’ meat, consisting of horse flesh, bullocks’ livers and tripe cuttings is carried to every part of the town. The two former are sold by weight at twopence per pound and the latter tied up in bunches of one penny each. Although this is the most disagreeable and offensive commodity cried for sale in London, the occupation seems to be engrossed by women. It frequently happens in the streets frequented by carriages that, as soon as one of these purveyors for cats and dogs arrives, she is surrounded by a crowd of animals, and were she not as severe as vigilant, could scarcely avoid the depredations of her hungry followers. (Bethlem Hospital stands on the south side of Moorfields. On each side of the iron gate is a figure, one of melancholy and the other of raging madness.)
Cherries appear in London markets early in June, and shortly afterwards become sufficiently abundant to be cried by the barrow women in the streets at sixpence, fourpence, and sometimes as low as threepence per pound. The May Duke and the White and Black Heart are succeeded by the Kentish Cherry which is more plentiful and cheaper than the former kinds and consequently most offered in the streets. Next follows the small black cherry called the Blackaroon, which is also a profitable commodity for the barrows. The barrow women undersell the shops by twopence or threepence per pound but their weights are generally to be questioned, and this is so notorious an objection that they universally add “full weight” to the cry of “cherries!” (Entrance to St James’ Palace, its external appearance does not convey any idea of its magnificence.)
Doormats, of all kinds, rush and rope, from sixpence to four shillings each, with table mats of various sorts are daily cried through the streets of London. (The equestrian statue in brass of Charles II in Whitehall, cast in 1635 by Grinling Gibbons, was erected upon its present pedestal in 1678)
Dust O! One of the most useful, among the numberless regulations that promote the cleanliness and comfort of the inhabitants of London, is that which relieves them from the encumbrance of their dust and ashes. Dust carts ply the streets through the morning in every part of the metropolis. Two men go with each cart, ringing a large bell and calling “Dust O!” Daily, they empty the dust bins of all the refuse that is thrown into them. The ashes are sold for manure, the cinders for fuel and the bones to the burning houses. (New Church in the Strand, contiguous to Somerset House and dividing the very street in two.)
Green Hastens! The earliest pea brought to the London market is distinguished by the name of “Hastens,” it belongs to the dwarf genus and is succeeded by the Hotspur. This early pea, the real Hastens, is raised in hotbeds and sold in the markets at the high price of a guinea per quart. The name of Hastens is however indiscriminately used by all the vendors to all the peas, and the cry of “Green Hastens!” resounds through every street and alley of London to the very latest crop of the season. Peas become plentiful and cheap in June, and are retailed from carts in the streets at tenpence, eightpence, and sixpence per peck. (Newgate, on the north side of Ludgate Hill is built entirely of stone.)
Hot loaves, for the breakfast and tea table, are cried at the hours of eight and nine in the morning, and from four to six in the afternoon, during the summer months. These loaves are made of the whitest flour and sold at one and two a penny. In winter, the crier of hot loaves substitutes muffins and crumpets, carrying them in the same manner, and in both instances carrying a little bell as he passes through the streets. (St Martin in the Fields, the design of this portico was taken from an ancient temple at Nismes in France and is particularly grand and beautiful.)
Hot Spiced Gingerbread, sold in oblong flat cakes of one halfpenny each, very well made, well baked and kept extremely hot is a very pleasing regale to the pedestrians of London in cold and gloomy evenings. This cheap luxury is only to be obtained in winter, and when that dreary season is supplanted by the long light days of summer, the well-known retailer of Hot Spiced Gingerbread, portrayed in the plate, takes his stand near the portico of the Pantheon, with a basket of Banbury and other cakes. (The Pantheon stands on Oxford St, originally designed for concerts, it is only used for masquerades in the winter season.)
Mackerel – More plentiful than any other fish in London, they are brought from the western coast and afford a livelihood to numbers of men and women who cry them through the streets every day in the week, not excepting Sunday. Mackerel boats being allowed by act of Parliament to dispose of their perishable cargo on Sunday morning, prior to the commencement of divine service. No other fish partake that privilege. (Billingsgate Market commences at three o’clock in the morning in summer and four in winter. Salesmen receive the cargo from the boats and announce by a crier of what kinds they consist. These salesmen have a great commission and generally make fortunes.)
Rhubarb! – The Turk, whose portrait is accurately given in this plate, has sold Rhubarb in the streets of the metropolis during many years. He constantly appears in his turban, trousers and mustachios and deals in no other article. As his drug has been found to be of the most genuine quality, the sale affords him a comfortable livelihood. (Russell Sq is one of the largest in London, broad streets intersect at its corners and in the middle, which add to its beauty and remove the general objection to squares by ventilating the air.)
Milk below! – Every day of the year, both morning and afternoon, milk is carried through each square, each street and alley of the metropolis in tin pails, suspended from a yoke placed on the shoulders of the crier. Milk is sold at fourpence per quart or fivepence for the better sort, yet the advance of price does not ensure its purity for it is generally mixed in a great proportion with water by the retailers before they leave the milk houses. The adulteration of the milk added to the wholesale cost leaves an average profit of cent per cent to the vendors of this useful article. Few retail traders are exercised with equal gain. (Cavendish Sq is in Marylebone. In the centre of the enclosure, erected on a lofty pedestal is a bronze statue of William Duke of Cumberland, all very richly gilded and burnished. In the background are two very elegant houses built by Mr Tufnell.)
Matches – The criers are very numerous and among the poorest inhabitants, subsisting more on the waste meats they receive from the kitchens where they sell their matches at six bunches per penny, than on the profits arising from their sale. Old women, crippled men, or a mother followed by three or four ragged children, and offering their matches for sale are often relieved when the importunity of the mere beggar is rejected. The elder child of a poor family, like the boy seen in the plate, are frequent traders in matches and generally sing a kind of song, and sell and beg alternately. (The Mansion House is a stone building of considerable magnitude standing at the west end of Cornhill, the residence of the Lord Mayor of London. Lord Burlington sent down an original design worthy of Palladio, but this was rejected and the plan of a freeman of the City adopted in its place. The man was originally a shipwright and the front of his Mansion House has all the resemblance possible to a deep-laden Indiaman.)
Strawberries – Brought fresh gathered to the markets in the height of their season, both morning and afternoon, they are sold in pottles containing something less than a quart each. The crier adds one penny to the price of the strawberries for the pottle which if returned by her customer, she abates. Great numbers of men and women are employed in crying strawberries during their season through the streets of London at sixpence per pottle. ( Covent Garden Market is entirely appropriated to fruit & vegetables. In the south side is a range of shops which contain the choicest produce and the most expensive productions of the hot house. The centre of the market, as shown in the plate, although less pleasing to the eye is more inviting to the general class of buyers.)
A Poor Sweep Sir! – In all the thoroughfares of the metropolis, boys and women employ themselves in dirty weather in sweeping crossings. The foot passenger is constantly importuned and frequently rewards the poor sweep with a halfpenny, which indeed he sometimes deserves for in the winter after fall of snow if a thaw should come before the scavengers have had time to remove it, many streets cannot be crossed without being up to the middle of the leg in dirt. Many of these sweepers who choose their station with judgement reap a plentiful harvest from their labours. (Blackfriars Bridge crosses the river from Bridge St to Surrey St where this view is taken. The width and loftiness of the arches and the whole light construction of this bridge is uncommonly pleasing to the eye and St Paul’s cathedral displays much of the grandeur of its extensive outline when viewed from Blackfriars Bridge.)
Knives to grind! – The apparatus of a knife grinder is accurately delineated in this plate. The same wheel turns his grinding and his whetting stone. On a smaller wheel, projecting beyond the other he trundles his commodious shop from street to street. He charges for grinding and setting scissors one penny or twopence per pair, for penknives one penny each and table knives one shilling and sixpence per dozen, according to the polish that is required. (Whitehall – this beautiful structure stands in Parliament St, begun in 1619 from a design by Inigo Jones in his purest manner and cost £17,000. The northern end of the palace, to the left of the plate, is that through which King Charles stepped onto the scaffold.)
Lavender – “Six bunches a penny, sweet lavender!” is the cry that invites in the street the purchasers of this cheap and pleasant perfume. A considerable quantity of the shrub is sold to the middling-classes of the inhabitants, who are fond of placing lavender among their linen – the scent of which conquers that of the soap used in washing. (Temple Bar was erected to divide the strand from Fleet St in 1670 after the Great Fire. On the top of this gate were exhibited the heads of the unfortunate victims to the justice of their country for the crime of high treason. The last sad mementos of this kind were the rebels of 1746.)
Sweep Soot O! – The occupation of chimney sweep begins with break of day. A master sweep patrols the street for custom attended by two or three boys, the taller ones carrying the bag of soot, and directing the diminutive creature who, stripped perfectly naked, ascends and cleans the chimney. The greatest profit arises from the sake of soot which is used for manure. The hard condition of the sweep devolves upon the smallest and feeblest of the children apprenticed from the parish workhouse. (Foundling Hospital, a handsome and commodious building in Guildford St, stands at the upper end of a large piece of ground in which the children of the foundation are allowed to play in fine weather.)
Sand O! – Sand is an article of general use in London, principally for cleaning kitchen utensils. Its greatest consumption is in the outskirts of the metropolis where the cleanly housewife strews sand plentifully over the floor to guard her newly scoured boards from dirty footsteps, a carpet of small expense and easy to be renewed. Sand is sold by measure, red sand twopence halfpenny and white five farthings per peck. (St Giles’ Church at the west end of Broad St Giles is a very handsome structure. Over the gate, entering the church yard is fixed a curious bass-relief representing the Last Judgement and containing a very great number of figures, set up in the 1686)
New potatoes – About the latter end of June and July, they become sufficiently plentiful to be cried at a tolerable rate in the streets. They are sold wholesale in markets by the bushel and retail by the pound. Three halfpence or a penny per pound is the average price from a barrow. (Middlesex Hospital at the northern end of Berners St is the county hospital for diseased persons. It stands in a large court with trees, covered by a wall in front with two gates, one of which is represented in the plate.)
Water Cresses – The crier of water cresses frequently travels seven or eight miles before the hour of breakfast to gather them fresh. There is a good supply in the Covent Garden Market brought along with other vegetables where they are cultivated like other garden stuff, but they are inferior to those grown in the natural state in a running brook, wanting that pungency of taste which makes them very wholesome. (Hanover Sq is on the south side of Oxford St, there is a circular enclosure in the middle with a plain grass plot. In George St, leading into the square, is the curious and extensive anatomical museum of Mr Heaviside the surgeon, to the inspection of which respectable persons are admitted, on application to Mr Heaviside, once a week.)
Slippers – The Turk is a portrait, habited in the costume of his nation, he has sold Morocco Slippers in the Strand, Cheapside and Cornhill, a great number of years. To these principal streets, he generally confines his walks. There are other sellers of slippers, particularly about the Royal Exchange who are very importunate for custom while the venerable Turk uses no solicitation beyond showing his slippers. They are sold at one shilling and sixpence per pair and are of all colours. (Somerset House is a noble structure built by the government for the offices of public business. The plate shows the west side of the entrance which contains a gate for carriages and two foot ways. A visit will amply repay the trouble of a stranger.)
Rabbits – The crier of rabbits in the plate is a portrait well known by persons who frequent the streets at the west end of town. Wild and tame rabbits are sold from ninepence to eighteen pence each, which is cheaper than they can be bought in the poulterers’ shops. (Portland Place is an elegant street to the north of Marylebone. From the opening at the upper end is a fine view of Harrow and the Hampstead and Highgate Hills, making it one of the airiest situations in town. The houses being of perfect uniformity and no shops or meaner buildings interrupting the regularity of the design, it is one of the finest street in London.)
Images courtesy Bishopsgate Institute
You may like to explore these other sets of Cries of London
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
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
Norton Folgate Is Saved!
It is with great joy I announce the good news to you that, thanks in no small measure to the readers of Spitalfields Life – the 576 letters of objection that you wrote and more than 500 of you who came to join hands – the Tower Hamlets Strategic Development Committee unanimously rejected British Land‘s proposals last night and Norton Folgate is saved.
Two years ago, we were able to save a pub – the Marquis of Lansdowne – from demolition, but now we have saved a whole neighbourhood!
In celebration, Contributing Artist Adam Dant has drawn this portrait of Mister Norton Folgate himself, constructed from details sketched in the streets, and this is accompanied with a eulogy in verse.
THE BALLAD OF NORTON FOLGATE
by Adam Dant
To show our respect for an elder
of stature assuredly great,
Let us toast all that’s human
In a noble and true man
The incomparable Norton Folgate.
For near and far his admirers
With spital-flecked passion all state,
That it is accorded
and he be rewarded
the respect due to Norton Folgate.
There are those who would see our man gutted,
Their curs bit his hand hard of late,
Now it’s time that we ought
sort the Goodman from naught
as defenders of Norton Folgate.
Let his enterprise tastefully blossom
Let him fend off the ugly estate
of the anodyne face
who would seek to debase
the good person of Norton Folgate.
Princes and Bishops and ordinary folk
sing his praises, step up to the plate,
To despoilers, no quarter,
No lamb to the slaughter
Join the cause ‘ Save Norton Folgate.’
His stature is adequate lofty,
His height proved sufficiently great
For serving the needy
As opposed to the greedy,
Three cheers now for Norton Folgate!
Click on the map to enlarge
To purchase limited edition prints of Adam Dant’s Map of the Liberty of Norton Folgate as trophies for framing email Adam direct adamdant@me.com
D-Day For Norton Folgate
Reflecting the wider significance of the battle for Norton Folgate, my post today is co-published with Guardian Cities
Please come to the meeting of Tower Hamlets Strategic Development Committee when the fate of Norton Folgate will be decided tonight, Tuesday 21st July at 7pm, at the Town Hall, Mulberry Place, 5 Clove Crescent, E14 2BG
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Some simply stepped out from their front doors into the street, but most came from around the capital and a few even travelled across the country to be there. More than five hundred people joined hands around Norton Folgate as a symbol of their wish to see the old buildings restored for reuse rather than demolished by British Land. There were young and old, there were families and dogs, and among them was Stanley Rondeau, whose Huguenot ancestor came to Spitalfields in 1685.
Londoners are growing increasingly frustrated at the wave of large developments which are being foisted upon them and this event permitted the opportunity of expression for those who feel disenfranchised. Most of the towers that are currently proposed for London have been devised to serve the international property investment market rather than provide genuinely affordable homes for Londoners, of which there is a chronic shortage.
Similarly, the vast floor plates of British Land’s development in Norton Folgate are best suited to the corporate financial industries of the City of London and are likely to be occupied by a single tenant. This is already the case with the Spitalfields Fruit & Wool Exchange development of which the entire office space has been leased to an international law firm. Significantly, this redevelopment was imposed upon Tower Hamlets by Boris Johnson, overruling the unanimous vote of the borough planning committee twice, and the fear is that he will act in the same undemocratic way to further the interests of British Land in Norton Folgate.
The Spitalfields Fruit & Wool Exchange was formerly home to several hundred small businesses for whom there is a lack of office space in the capital. If the nineteenth century warehouses of Norton Folgate are redeveloped and only their facades remain affixed like postage stamps onto the front of new buildings, the raised land value will ensure that the rental costs exclude all but large corporate tenants. But Tech City in Shoreditch evolved quite naturally in post-industrial buildings that once housed furniture factories and other small-scale manufacturing, and it would serve locally-based businesses if the old warehouses in Norton Folgate could be restored in a similar fashion.
Thus Norton Folgate has emerged as a key battleground in the current conflict over the future of London, as the potential for the city to become an arid forest of perfume-bottle shaped towers serving the requirements of international capital supplants the historical continuum of the lively metropolis – where rich and poor live cheek by jowl, where newcomers can build a life, and where large and small businesses thrive side by side. This is the sense in which the current battle is one for the identity of London.
Sitting at the boundary of the City of London, Norton Folgate is a former medieval Liberty created when the Priory of St Mary Spittal was dissolved at the time of the Reformation. As an autonomous entity governed by its own residents, the Liberty of Norton Folgate was independent both of the rule of the City of London and of the Church. And, even though the Liberty was absorbed into the London Borough of Stepney in 1900, the spirit of independence is not forgotten and there are those who still claim that Norton Folgate’s autonomous political status was never formally abolished.
In a strange precursor of the current situation, British Land attempted to demolish part of Norton Folgate in 1977 but were halted by a group of young Conservation activitists, including Dan Cruickshank, who squatted in the eighteenth century weavers’ houses to stop the bulldozers. The Spitalfields Historic Buildings Trust was born and with the help of Sir John Betjeman they saved the neighbourhood, emerging as one of Britain’s most-respected Conservation trusts through the following decades.
Now British Land faces the Spitalfields Trust in Norton Folgate again. Yet the Spitalfields Trust was essentially honed as a machine to stop British Land and many current members of the Trust took place in the first battle, only now they have forty years of experience challenging developers behind them and maintain close contacts with some of Britain’s foremost planning lawyers. Recently, multi-billionaire Troels Holch Povlsen stepped forward to support the Spitalfields Trust by providing significant funds as a war chest for any forthcoming legal battle with British Land. Thus the lines are drawn.
In the nineties, the City of London successfully extended its territory into Spitalfields when the former Spitalfields Fruit & Vegetable Market was redeveloped as a corporate plaza for the financial industries that is already looking dated and worn. This was followed by the redevelopment of the Spitafields Fruit & Wool Exchange which is currently underway, but – like a posse of old warriors – the Spitalfields Trust has chosen to stand up at the boundary of the City to say, “Enough is Enough!” and they are better equipped than anyone else to take on the adversary.
The Spitalfields Trust’s defeat of British Land in Norton Folgate in 1977 was a seminal moment in British Conservation history when public opinion recognised the necessity to balance ‘progress’ in the form of new development against the need to preserve national heritage. With the wellspring of popular feeling against exploitative development at this moment, it is possible that Norton Folgate may become the testing ground yet again in which commercial imperative is set against cultural significance. Additionally, whatever happens in Norton Folgate will affect other looming developments such as the nearby Bishopsgate Goodsyard and – in this sense – it may also become a crossroads that defines direction of future policy in urban development.
British Land seek to demolish more than 72% of the fabric of their site in Norton Folgate which lies entirely within a Conservation Area. If this were to go ahead, then any Conservation Area might be at risk of similar treatment and the term risks losing its meaning. As with the proposed Smithfield Market redevelopment and the Strand terrace, that King’s College sought to demolish, English Heritage is also supporting the developers in Norton Folgate and finds itself on the wrong side of public opinion for the third high-profile case in London in a row. Yet the recent turnaround, when English Heritage changed opinions over the Strand, advocating the retention not the demolition of the buildings when the Secretary of State called a Public Enquiry, renders their advice of dubious currency.
The five hundred people who joined hands around Norton Folgate wanted to express their love of London and its history, of its diverse life and infinite variety. As more of the vast developments currently threatened in the capital are enacted, the passions of Londoners will continue to rise and prospective candidates for the next Mayor of London would do well to pay attention. Tonight, Tower Hamlets Strategic Development Committee meets to decide upon the British Land proposal for Norton Folgate but, whatever the outcome, it is unlikely to be the end of this story.
Sandra Esqulant of The Golden Heart & Robson Cezar, King of the Bottletops
Photographs by Sarah Ainslie, Colin O’Brien & Edie Sharples
Please come to the meeting of the Tower Hamlets Strategic Development Committee when the fate of Norton Folgate will be decided tonight, TUESDAY 21st JULY at 7pm at Town Hall, Mulberry Place, 5 Clove Crescent, E14 2BG
Follow the Campaign at facebook/savenortonfolgate
Follow Spitalfields Trust on twitter @SpitalfieldsT
You may also like to take a look at
Taking Liberties in Norton Folgate
The Seven Ages Of Rodney Archer
In Rodney’s study
I am sure you wish to join me in sending greetings to Rodney Archer the Aesthete for his seventy-fifth birthday today. To celebrate, he is opening an exhibition at his house which illustrates the Seven Ages of Rodney and also inaugurating the Oscar Wilde Room as a shrine to his favourite writer, supplementing the fireplace from Wilde’s house in Tite St, which was installed in Fournier St many years ago, with his prized collection of Wilde memorabilia.
For the last year, Rodney has been collaborating with Artist & Curator, Trevor Newton, to stage shows at his old house as a way to display and sell off items from his vast collection that he has accumulated from the markets in Brick Lane and all over the East End since he moved into Fournier St in the eighties. If you would like to explore the world of Rodney for yourself and wish him happy birthday in person then drop an email to info@31fournierstreet.london to arrange a visit.
At first, the infant…
Then the whining schoolboy…
And then the lover…
Then a soldier…
And then the justice…
Rodney as he will be in 2046
Rodney’s inner sanctum
Oscar Wilde’s fireplace takes the place of an altar in Rodney’s shrine
Rodney’s collection of Oscar Wilde memorabilia
In Rodney’s study
In Rodney’s garden
In Rodney’s arbour
THE SEVEN AGES OF RODNEY is at 31 Fournier St from Tuesday 28th July until Saturday 15th August at the following times – 10-4pm on Tuesday 28th & Thursday 30th July, 2-4pm on Saturday 1st August, 10-4pm on Tuesday 4th & Thursday 6th August, 2-4pm on Saturday 8th August, 10- 4pm on Tuesday 11th & Thursday 13th August & 2-4.00pm on Saturday 15th August.
Numbers are limited and visits are by appointment only.
To receive an invitation, please email info@31fournierstreet.london saying when exactly you would like to visit and how many will be in your party.
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