Lucinda Rogers’ Cards
Contributing Artist Lucinda Rogers who did the beautiful drawings of the East End streets in my first book Spitalfields Life, has now produced this set of six greetings cards printed in London which you can order direct from her website Lucinda Rogers’ Shop and she will post them off to you direct from her favourite Post Office in the Hackney Rd.
Spitalfields drawn from a rooftop in Brick Lane in 2002
Columbia Rd Flower Market drawn from the back of an empty flower lorry looking over the market
Smithfield Market – The General Market has been under threat for many years, but in 2014 was given a stay of execution when the Secretary of State agreed that the proposed demolition to build an office complex was wrong. However, the buildings are still deteriorating while we wait for the owners to swallow their pride and let the alternative scheme go ahead.
Brick Lane seen from the junction with Hanbury St before the construction of the minaret at the mosque
The Grassy Bridge – This view down Kingsland Rd from the time when the railway was still out-of-use is now altered by all the buildings that have appeared since and would be rendered unrecognisable by the Bishopsgate Goodsyard proposals
Hackney Bus Garage – This was drawn at night in the bus depot at Hackney Central when Routemasters were still running
Drawings copyright © Lucinda Rogers
You can buy these cards along with prints and original drawings direct from Lucinda Rogers
You may like to take a look at more of Lucinda Rogers’ work
Frost Bros, Rope Makers & Yarn Spinners
Founded by John James Frost in 1790, Frost Brothers Ltd of 340/342 Commercial Rd was managed by his grandson – also John James Frost – in 1905, when these photographs were taken. In 1926, the company was amalgamated to become part of British Ropes and now only this modest publication on the shelf in the Bishopsgate Institute bears testimony to the long-lost industry of rope making and yarn spinning in the East End, from which Cable St takes its name.
First Prize London Cart Parade – Manila Hemp as we receive it from the Philippines
Hand Dressing
The Old-Fashioned Method of Hand Spinning
The First Process in Spinning Manila – The women are shown feeding Hemp up to the spreading machines, taken from the bales as they come from the Philippines. These three machines are capable of manipulating one hundred and twenty bales a day.
Manila-Finishing Drawing Machines
Russian & Italian Hemp Preparing Room
Manila Spinning
Binder Twine & Trawl Twine Spinning – This floor contains one hundred and fifty six spindles
Russian & Italian Hemp Spinning
Carding Room
Tow Drawing Room
Tow Spinning & Spun Yarn Twisting Room
Tarred Yarn Store – This contains one hundred and fifty tons of Yarn
Tarred Yarn Winding Room
Upper End of Main Rope Ground – There are six ground four hundred yards long, capable of making eighteen tons of rope per ten and a half hour day
Rope-Making Machines – This pair of large machines are capable of making rope up to forty-eight centimetres in circumference
House Machines – This view shows part of the Upper Rope Ground and a couple of small Rope-Making Machines
Number 4 House Machine Room
The middle section of a machine capable of making rope from three inches up to seven inches in circumference, any length without a splice. It is thirty-two feet in height and driven by an electric motor.
Number 4 Rope Store
Boiler House
120 BHP. Sisson Engine Direct Coupled to Clarke-Chapman Dynamo
One of our Motors by Crompton 40 BHP – These Manila Ropes have been running eight years and are still in first class condition.
Engineers’ Shop with Smiths’ Shop adjoining
Carpenters’ Store & Store for Spare Gear
Exhibit at Earl’s Court Naval & Shipping Exhibition, 1905
View of the Factory before the Fire in 1860
View of the Factory as it is now in 1905 – extending from Commercial St
Images courtesy Bishopsgate Institute
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Graham Kennedy, Directions Man
“People often ask me what the ‘i’ stands for,” admitted Graham Kennedy proudly, “and I tell them it is the internationally recognised symbol for Information.” Everyone who goes through Liverpool St Station regularly will recognise Graham, he is the eager Directions Man who stands at the Bishopsgate entrance in all weathers, performing a public service by pointing out the way to visitors, those who are lost and anyone who needs guidance to find Spitalfields, Brick Lane and other local destinations.
“I approach people who are looking around and politely ask where they are looking for and are they ok,” he explained to me, “You’ve got to be able to read people and understand their body language, because you can’t just go up to anybody and ask if they need directions.”
When I first noticed Graham, I thought he might be employed by the railway station or the bus company or the tourist board, but then I quickly realised that his was a self-appointed role and I grew curious to know how and why he got there. So I asked the man who spends his days giving directions to others to explain his route to this particular point in his life, standing outside Liverpool St Station.
“I’d from Romford but I was born in the Royal London Hospital in Whitechapel and I grew up in Dagenham, the car manufacturing city. I ended up in this situation after getting divorced eight months ago after being married for twelve years and having two daughters.
Me and my wife started fighting after she began to drink and became someone I didn’t even know. I ended up feeling like a bad person and my children became scared of me and I didn’t like that. I didn’t like myself. So I decided to leave and, for six weeks, I stayed on friends’ settees until I outstayed my welcome.
I got divorced from my wife and I signed the council house over to her, and applied to Dagenham & Barking to get rehoused. I’d been in a council house since I was eighteen years old until the age of thirty-nine and never missed paying my rent. They gave me an interview and, after a thirty minute chat, they said, ‘You’ll get your a decision in ten minutes.’ They said they couldn’t help me because I’d chosen to leave and made myself homeless. They gave me a list of homeless shelters and I was shocked. If I’d lied and said she threw me out, they’d have given me a council home. That was when I realised that it doesn’t always benefit you to be honest.
My parents have been divorced for twenty years. My mother lives in Dagenham and my father has just been put in prison for six years at seventy-three years old after being caught delivering a packet of cocaine. But I’ve always been working, I had a job ever since I left school at fifteen years old and I was an electrician for twenty-two years. It’s impossible for me to find a job now because my ex-wide sold all my tools. I did contract work for Tower Hamlets, Westminster and City of London Councils. That’s why I came up to London once I became homeless, because I know my way around the city.
I started living on the street and I got a fireman’s key from a hardware shop so I could sleep in stairwells, to keep safe and warm and charge my phone. But then I became part of a circle of people that I was taking heroin and crack cocaine with, which I’d never done before in my life. I was on heroin for six to seven months until I got myself medicated, and that went on for three months. I’m no longer on medication, so now I am clean.
I started giving directions four months ago. I didn’t want to beg and I’ve always thought about what people need, and I’m keen to be useful and of service to others. It’s quite legal as long as I don’t ask for money. So, once I have given directions, I say, ‘Excuse me, would consider buying me a tea or coffee?’ There are three things that will happen. They’ll say, ‘No,’ or they’ll give me their spare change, or they’ll buy me a tea or coffee. I’ve learnt that being helpful is a lot more appreciated than just hanging around asking for money.
On Sunday, I stand outside Aldgate East but mostly I am here at Liverpool St. Thursday is the biggest day, it’s been like that for a while. People work until Thursday then go for a night out to relax, and then they get through Friday and rest at the weekend. From four until eight, you will find me at Aldgate East then I go to Liverpool St until midnight, and afterwards I go to Shoreditch and wander around and give directions until six in the morning.
I meet people of all nationalities and walks of life. I’ve had people give me their number and say, ‘Call me if you need help or money,’ but I never call them, I don’t know why. After a year and a half sleeping on the street and in stairwells, I met a Christian and I gained a friend. For the last seven weeks, I’ve been living with him on Brick Lane and repairing his flat and mending all his appliances.
I’ve learnt that you don’t need to have money, you can find anything you want in the city if you know where to look. If you know what time to go round to the back of Tesco in Commercial St, you can find as much food as you want being thrown out.
In the next couple of months, I’ll start looking for a job and get my own place and start seeing my children on a regular basis. I talk to them on the phone but it’s not the same thing.”
Graham Kennedy
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An East End Remembrance
Yesterday, Contributing Photographer Colin O’Brien & I joined the pupils of Morpeth School at the Alderney, Britain’s oldest Ashkenazi cemetery, for a remembrance upon the seventieth anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz death camp. Around thirty senior pupils walked over from Bethnal Green to the cemetery for a modest service. Standing quietly in a semi-circle, they listened while a fellow student who had visited the camp recently gave a bare historical account of what took place there. Then four others read out survivors’ testimonies and there was a minute’s silence followed by the lighting of candles.
It was a group that was mixed in creed and race, yet united in respect as demonstrated by their uniformly subdued demeanour. In the minute’s silence, I looked around at the pupils standing in the January sunshine among the stillness of the tombs in this most ancient of graveyards. It was a welcome moment of peace upon an anniversary that only resonates more painfully in the light of recent violence in Europe.
Photographs copyright © Colin O’Brien
You may like to read more about Jewish Cemeteries in the East End
My Coin Collection
Around twenty years ago, I bought this coin from a street trader at the time of the excavation of the Roman cemetery in Spitalfields. In 1576, John Stow wrote about the Roman coins that were dug up here in Spitalfields and I suspect mine came from the same source. A visit to the British Museum confirmed that the coin had been minted in London and the piercing was done in the Roman era when it was the custom to wear coins as amulets. So somebody wore this coin in London all those centuries ago and today I wear it on a string around my neck to give me a sense of perspective.
As you can see, my collection has grown as I have discovered that coin collectors are eager to dispose of pierced coins at low prices and I have taken on the responsibility of wearing them on behalf of their previous owners. It was only when the string broke in Princelet St one dark night in the rain at Christmas and I found myself scrabbling in the gutter to retrieve them all that I realised how much they mean to me.
Coin of the Emperor Arcadius minted in London
Figure of Minerva upon the reverse
Silver sixpence minted at the Tower of London, 1569
Head of Queen Elizabeth and Tudor rose
Silver sixpence minted at the Tower of London, 1602
Head of Elizabeth
Silver sixpence, 1676
Head of Charles II
Farthing, 1749
Head of George II
Silver sixpence, 1758
Head of George II
Young Queen Victoria
Head of Queen Victoria
Silver sixpence, 1896
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Tony Garrett, Porter, Postman & Chauffeur
Contributing Photographer Sarah Ainslie & I returned to the New Era Estate in Hoxton to meet Tony Garrett who lives there with his daughter Lindsey Garrett, Chairman of the Tenants Association and leader of the successful fight to save the Estate from corporate property developers.
A thoughtful man of quiet dignity, I was fascinated to hear Tony speak of his family history which reflects the dramatic changes in Hoxton over the last century. Today, several members of the extended Garrett family live in the New Era Estate as part of the long-established and closely-woven community that proved to be so resilient in the face of last year’s threat.
Tony is a proud father and fierce supporter of Lindsey and her achievements. His account reveals the origin of her political beliefs and sets the recent conflict into a wider perspective of social history – explaining why Estates like New Era came into being in the first place.
“Here at the New Era Estate, most people have lived in Hoxton all their lives and their families have always lived in Hoxton. I was born in Hoxton in 1949. At that time, it was one of the poorest areas in London and we lived in Essex St which was one of the worst streets in Hoxton. There were four families in each house – one in the basement, the ground floor, the first floor and the attic, where we lived in two rooms. There was our front room which was furnished with just a table and three chairs, and a back room with two double beds. My mum and dad slept in one and we three kids slept in the other. There was a toilet in the yard shared by all four families, and we had a gas ring on the landing and a cupboard which we called a larder, no refrigerator.
At ten years old, it was my job to take my brother and sister to the Public Baths in Haggerston each week. It was called a slipper bath. I got in first, then my brother and sister. It was just rows of baths with curtains round them and everybody used to go there. We had a tin bath but it wasn’t really practical, heating the water and carrying it upstairs. There was sixty houses in Essex St and everyone was poor, they kept their door keys on a string so you could reach through the letterbox to get it and open the door. Because nobody had anything, there was no jealousy.
My dad wasn’t there. He was a crook and he was in prison, but I didn’t realise that at the time. It was only later we found out we were poor. There was no social security or benefits then, and I wish I’d asked my mum how she survived, because she always got money to feed us – though we never had enough to eat and we were hungry all the time. Everyone was the same. My mum was always ill, she had pleurisy that became pneumonia which was quite a serious thing then. She was in hospital and they sent her away to a convalescent home out of London, so we couldn’t see her. We had to go into foster care – our grandparents couldn’t take care of us, there were already six of them living in their home in Falkirk St – they had eleven children.
When I was eleven, Essex St was demolished as part of ‘Slum Clearance’ and my father was released from prison. I remember coming home from my first day of secondary school and my mum said, ‘We’re moving.’ We moved into a newly-built three bedroom flat and it felt like Buckingham Palace to us. That was 1960 and I can still remember walking through the door. We had no furniture but people lent us bits and pieces. We had no blankets, in the old place we slept under coats on the bed in winter. It was full of bugs and fleas. Once a month, we went to this place where you took all your clothes off and they painted you with blue unction. You were blue for days, it was under your nails and in your hair.
The new flat was in a building called Touchard House and things seemed better for us there. We had a bit more comfort and a bit more food, until my dad went into prison again for another two years. My mum got ill again too, so the three of us went to my gran and we lost the flat, but later the council rehoused us in Queenhythe House.
When I was fourteen, I left school and got a job. I got in trouble with the police, just petty offences but after four or five times I was committed to borstal at seventeen years old. All my friends’ dads were either in prison or had been in prison, there was no-one I knew that didn’t have that. The justice system was different then, more severe and disciplinarian. After three offences, you were automatically sent to borstal – the minimum period was nine months and the maximum three years. It was like a boot camp and you had to work your way out. When you arrived you wore a red tie for three months, but then you could earn a blue tie and finally a green tie which meant you were due for release. You were assessed every month, and I was labelled anti-establishment and anti-authority. I did two and a half years, so it proves I could have been more sensitive. We had to get up at five and march in all weathers before making your bed pack. Your boots had to be shiny. It was like the army and all the officers were ex-military. It certainly worked for me though, because I was never in trouble again.
I was sent to a place called Moreton Hall in Lincolnshire. I was one of only two from London there – me and Johnny Hughes – and because we were this pair of Cockneys among all these Northerners, we got it harder than the rest. Every day was a battle. There was a lot of violence and if you were soft your life was hell. A lot of people used to abscond because of bullying.
I came out at nineteen and got a job as a porter down at Smithfield Market. Then I met my wife Christine and got married when I was twenty, and at twenty-one I had my first son, Nicholas. We had a flat about above a chemist in Blackstock Rd, Highbury, but it was terrible cold place with mice and we was rehoused in Sutton Dwellings, Old St. Times got better for us with Christine working and I got a job at the Post Office. I worked long hours, and we built up a bit of money and got a three bedroom council house in Broadway Market which we managed to buy under the right-to-buy, and we lived there for a few years. We had two sons Nicholas and Simon, and then twin daughters, Anne and Lindsey.
We sold that house and used the money to pay the fees for Lindsey to go to university. It funded four years at university. That’s when we moved back here to the New Era Estate in Hoxton. You had to be recommended but I had an aunt who had lived here her whole life, so she spoke to the caretaker. It was means tested and we had to fill in a form. We met the criteria and we moved in, and we’ve been here twenty-six years.
Over the years, I worked as a porter at Smithfield, Billingsgate and Spitalfields, then a postman and finally as a chauffeur for Islington Council. I liked that job but I got knocked over by a car and was ill for years, and was given a pension and a lump sum. So I left at fifty-five and haven’t been able to work since.
I’ve always been interested in politics and I’ve always been in the union and been shop steward. I’ve always been to the Left of everything. At the Post Office, I was asked if I’d ever been a member of the Communist Party and I used to be – because I believe in equality for all – so I said, ‘Yes,’ and they sacked me for that.
Lindsey is a fighter. I think she gets it from me. In her public speaking, some of the things she says, I can hear myself. She belonged to the debating society at the University of Northumbria. She just gets up and it comes to her. She was brilliant on the steps of Number 10. It’s confidence.”
Tony aged five standing in Hoxton Market with his father John Garrett and pals in 1953
Tony Garrett
Portraits copyright © Sarah Ainslie
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Lindsey Garrett, Chairman of New Era Estate Tenants Association
Adam Dant & The Budge Row Bibliotheque
Contributing Artist Adam Dant has installed a life-size replica of a cabbies’ shelter as the centrepiece of his new exhibition at the Bloomberg Space in Finsbury Sq. Adam’s proposition is that these cherished landmarks are reliquaries which contain the collective unconscious of the city, where only those initiates possessing ‘the Knowledge’ may enter. Yet at the gallery all are invited to step inside the shelter to hear a litany of archaeologists’ dreams recorded by Adam as manifestations of the urban imagination at work.
Complementing the cabbies’ shelter, the walls are hung with a series of the vast intricate drawings for which Adam is celebrated, rivalling Piranesi and Hogarth in their audacious scale and overwhelming detail. The largest of these is entitled ‘The Budge Row Bibliotheque’ which envisions the hole that comprises the largest building site in the City of London at present, filled with a surreal sequence of simultaneous events selected from the last two thousand years of history and lore.
Adam Dant at the Cabbies’ Shelter in Warwick Avenue
The Budge Row Biblotheque (Click image to enlarge)
Post debt crisis restructuring: Fleet Place (Click image to enlarge)
The Abandoned City: Guildhall (Click image to enlarge)
Dismantling the printing presses at Paternoster Square (Click image to enlarge)
An Anecdotal View of Walbrook (Click image to enlarge)
Drawings photographed by Dave Morgan
You can visit the cabbies’ shelter and view The Budge Row Bibliotheque at Bloomberg Space, 50 Finsbury Sq, EC2A 1HD – Monday-Saturday 11-6pm until 15th March 2015
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