Last Days At WF Arber & Co Ltd
Gary Arber
Four years have passed since I first walked eastward through the freshly fallen snow across Weavers’ Fields on my way to visit Gary Arber, third generation incumbent of W.F. Arber & Co Ltd, the printing works in the Roman Rd opened by Gary’s grandfather Walter Francis Arber in 1897. Captivated by this apparent time capsule of a shop where little had changed in over a century, I was tempted to believe that it would always be there, yet I also knew it could not continue for ever.
“In October, I couldn’t find enough money from my takings to pay my business rates,” Gary admitted to me yesterday, “and that’s when I decided it was time to call it a day.” As the last in the family business, in recent years Gary had been pleasing himself. After three generations, the metal type is all worn out and so Gary let the machines run down, taking on less and less printing. Now he has put the building up for sale with Oliver Franklin and set May 28th, when his insurance runs out, as his date to vacate the premises.
Bearing the responsibility of custodian of the contents, a major question for Gary has been where to find a home for his collection of six printing presses which are of historic significance. I am pleased to report that he has given them to the Cat’s Eye Press in Happisburgh, Norfolk, who have agreed to restore them all to working order and put them to use again. Since he made his decision in October, Gary has been at work clearing up the sea of boxes and detritus that had accumulated to conceal the machines and yesterday I took advantage of this brief moment to see the presses in their glory before the process of taking them apart and transferring them to Norfolk commences later this week.
“It’s good to see them again after thirty years,” declared Gary, as he led me down the narrow staircase to the small basement print workshop where the six gleaming beasts are newly revealed from beneath the litter. In the far corner is the Wharfdale of 1900 that has not moved since it was installed brand new and, at the foot of the stairs, sits the Golding, also installed in 1900. The Wharfdale is a heavy rectangular machine that famously was used to print the Suffragettes’ posters while the more nimble Golding was employed to print their handbills. At WF Arber & Co Ltd it has not been forgotten that Gary’s grandmother Emily would not permit his grandfather to charge Mrs Pankhurst for this work.
The Heidelberg of 1939 is the last press still in full working order and Gary informed me that since World War II broke out after it was delivered, his father (also Walter Francis) had to pay the British Government for the cost of it, although he never discovered if the money was passed on to the Germans afterwards. Next to it, stands the eccentrically-shaped Lagonda of 1946 which we are informed by its future owner is believed to be the last working example in existence.
In between these two pairs, sit the big boys – two large post-war presses, a Mercedes Glockner of 1952 and Supermatic of 1950. Gazing around at these monstrous machines, sprouting pipes and spindles and knobs, Gary can recall them all working. In his mind, he can hear the fierce din and see those long-gone printers – Fred Carter, Alfie Watts, Stan Barton & Harry Harris among others – who worked here and wrote their names in pencil underneath the staircase. Sometime in the mid-fifties, alongside their names and dates, Gary wrote his name too, but instead of the date he wrote “all the time” – a statement amply confirmed by his continuing presence more than half a century later.
Yet Gary never set out to be a printer. He set out to fly Lincoln Bombers, only sacrificing his life as a pilot after his father’s premature death, in order to take over the family print works. “I bought myself out in 1954, but I would be dead by now if I had stayed on, retired and grown fat like all the rest,” he confided to me, rationalising his loss,“I’m the only one surviving of my crew and I can still lift a hundredweight.”
“I remember when I first came here to visit the toy shop upstairs as a child but I didn’t get a toy except for my birthday and at Christmas,” Gary informed me, “My grandfather always had his bowler hat on. He had two, his work bowler and his best bowler. He was a very strict and moral man, he raised money for hospitals and he was a governor of hospitals.”
We shall all miss WF Arber & Co Ltd, but it is far better that Gary chose to dispose of the business as it suits him, and wraps it up to his satisfaction, than be forced into it by external circumstances. After all these years, Gary Arber can rest in the knowledge that he has fulfilled his obligation in a way that pays due respect to both the Walter Francis Arbers that precede him.
The Wharfdale & The Glockner
The 1900 Golding that printed the Suffragettes’ handbills
The 1900 Wharfdale that printed the Suffragettes’ posters
The 1952 Mercedes Glockner
Gary was printing with this 1939 Heidelberg last week
The last known working Lagonda in the world, 1946
The 1950 Supermatic
Gary found his Uncle Albert’s helmet under one of the machines while clearing up. Albert was killed while in the fire service during World War II.
The printers wrote their names and dates in the fifties but Gary wrote “[here] all the time”
Read my other stories about Gary Arber
Peter Sargent, Butcher
Peter Sargent
In 1983, when Peter Sargent took on his shop, there were seven other butchers in Bethnal Green but now his is the only one left. Two years ago it looked like Peter’s might go the way of the rest, until he took the initiative of placing a discreet sign on the opposite side of the zebra crossing outside his shop. Directed at those on their way to the supermarket, it said, “Have a look in butcher’s opposite before you go in Tesco.”
This cheeky intervention raised the ire of the supermarket chain, won Peter a feature in the local paper and drew everyone’s attention to the plain truth that you get better quality meat at a better price at an independent butcher than at a supermarket.“Tesco threatened legal action,” admitted Peter, his eyes gleaming in defiance, “They came over while I was unloading my van to tell me they were serious, but I told them where to go.” Shortly afterwards, it was revealed that Tesco had been selling horsemeat and Peter left a bale of hay outside his shop. “I invited customers to drop it off if they were going across the road,” he revealed to me with a grin of triumph.
This unlikely incident proved to be a turning point for Peter’s business which has been in the ascendancy ever since. “There’s not many of my old East End customers left anymore and I was close to calling it a day,” he confided to me, “but I’ve found that the young people who are moving in, they want to buy their meat from a proper butcher’s shop.”
In celebration of this change of fortune in the local butchery trade, Contributing Photographer Colin O’Brien & I paid a visit behind the counter recently to bring you this report, and we each came away with sawdust on our boots and the gift of a packet of the freshly-made sausages for which Peter’s shop is renowned.
“I started as a Saturday boy in Walthamstow, when I was sixteen, in 1970,” Peter told me, “and then it became a full-time job when I left school at eighteen.” Over the next ten years, Peter worked in each of half a dozen shops belonging to the same owner, including the one in Bethnal Green, until they all shut and he lost his job. Speaking with the bank that his ex-employer was in debt to, Peter agreed to take on the shop and, when they asked if he had a down payment, Peter’s wife Jackie produced ten pounds from her handbag.
Since then, Peter has been working twelve hours a day, six days a week, at his shop in Bethnal Green – arriving around eight each morning after a daily visit to Smithfield to collect supplies. “I love it and I hate it, I can’t leave it alone,” he confessed to me, placing a hand on his chest to indicate the depth of emotion, “it’s very exciting in a Saturday when all the customers arrive, but it can be depressing when nobody comes.”
Peter is supported by fellow butcher Vic Evenett and the pair make an amiable double-act behind the counter, ensuring that an atmosphere of good-humoured anarchy prevails. “I started as a ‘humper’ at Smithfield in 1964 for six years, then I had my own shop in Bow for twenty-three years, then one in Walthamstow Market, Caledonian Rd and Roman Rd, but none of them did very very well because I had to pay too much rent,” Vic informed me, “I came here twenty years ago to help Peter out for a few days and I stayed on.”
In a recent refit, an old advert was discovered pasted onto the wall and Peter had the new tiles placed around it so that customers may see the illustration of his shop when it was a tripe dresser in 1920. Yet Peter will tell you proudly that his shop actually dates from 1860 and he became visibly excited when I began talking about the centuries-old tradition of butchery in Whitechapel. And then he and Vic began exchanging significant glances as I explained how Dick Turpin is sometimes said to have been an apprentice butcher locally.
Thankfully, East Enders old and new took notice of Peter’s sign, “Have a look in butcher’s opposite before you go in Tesco,” and he and Vic – the last butchers in Bethnal Green – will be able to continue to make an honest living without the necessity of turning highwaymen.
Peter’s sign outside Tesco, July 2012
Excited customers on Saturday morning
Vic Evenett & Peter Sargent
Peter & Vic sold more than five hundred game birds last Christmas
The Butcher’s Shop, 374 Bethnal Green Rd, E2
Photographs copyright © Colin O’Brien
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At The Jewish Soup Kitchen
Originally established in 1854 in Leman St, the Jewish Soup Kitchen opened in Brune St in 1902 and, even though it closed in 1992, the building in Spitalfields still proclaims its purpose to the world in bold ceramic lettering across the fascia. These days few remember when it was supplying groceries to fifteen hundred people weekly, which makes Photographer Stuart Freedman’s pictures especially interesting as a glimpse of one of the last vestiges of the Jewish East End.
“After I finished studying Politics at university, I decided I wanted to be a photographer but I didn’t know how to do it,” Stuart recalled, contemplating these pictures taken in 1990 at the very beginning of his career. “Although I was brought up in Dalston, my father had grown up in Stepney in the thirties and, invariably, when we used to go walking together we always ended up in Petticoat Lane, which seemed to have a talismanic quality for him. So I think I was following in his footsteps.”
“I used to wander with my camera and, one day, I was just walking around taking pictures, when I moseyed in to the Soup Kitchen and said ‘Can I take photographs?’ and they said, ‘Yes.’ “I didn’t realise what I was doing because now they seem to be the only pictures of this place in existence. You could smell that area then – the smell of damp in old men’s coats and the poverty.”
For the past twenty years Stuart Freedman has worked internationally as a photojournalist, yet he was surprised to come upon new soup kitchens recently while on assignment in the north of England. “The poverty is back,” he revealed to me in regret,“which makes these pictures relevant all over again.”
Groceries awaiting collection
A volunteer offers a second hand coat to an old lady
An old woman collects her grocery allowance
A volunteer distributes donated groceries
View from behind the hatch
A couple await their food parcel
An ex-boxer arrives to collect his weekly rations
An old boxer’s portrait, taken while waiting to collect his groceries
An elderly man leaves the soup kitchen with his supplies
Photographs copyright © Stuart Freedman
Follow Stuart Freedman’s blog Umbra Sumus
You can read more about the Soup Kitchen here
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Hazuan Hashim’s Winter Whitechapel Skies
While we have walked round with our shoulders hunched and our noses to the ground against the inclement weather of recent months, Hazuan Hashim has raised his eyes to the heavens from the eleventh storey of the tower block where he lives in Whitechapel to photograph these cloudscapes, appreciating the epic drama and beauty in the meteorology that the rest of us merely endure.
5th December, 9:01am
5th December, 1:50pm
8th December, 2:10pm
24th December, 3:57pm
25th December, 10:25am
30th December, 12:27pm
30th December, 1:22pm
19th January, 8:52am
19th January, 8:53am
4th February, 7:40am
4th February, 7:44am
4th February, 2:19pm
9th February, 4:55pm
10th February, 2:54pm
11th February, 1:00pm
13th February, 12:31pm
13th February, 12:32pm
Photographs copyright © Hazuan Hashim
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Viscountess Boudica’s Valentine’s Day
Viscountess Boudica of Bethnal Green confessed to me that she has never received a Valentine in her entire life and yet, in spite of this unfortunate example of the random injustice of existence, her faith in the future remains undiminished.
Taking a break from her busy filming schedule, the Viscountess granted me a brief audience this week to reveal her intimate thoughts upon the most romantic day of the year and permit me to take these rare photographs that reveal a candid glimpse into the private life of one of the East End’s most fascinating characters.
This year – for the first time since 1986 – Viscountess Boudica dug out her Valentine paraphernalia of paper hearts, banners, fairylights, candles and other pink stuff to put on this show as an encouragement to the readers of Spitalfields Life. “If there’s someone that you like,” she says, “I want you to send them a card to show them that you care.”
Yet behind the brave public face, lies a personal tale of sadness for the Viscountess. “I think Valentine’s Day is a good idea, but it’s a kind of death when you walk around the town and see the guys with their bunches of flowers, choosing their chocolates and cards, and you think, ‘It should have been me!'” she admitted with a frown, “I used to get this funny feeling inside, that feeling when you want to get hold of someone and give them a cuddle.”
Like those love-lorn troubadours of yore, Viscountess Boudica has mined her unrequited loves as a source of inspiration for her creativity, writing stories, drawing pictures and – most importantly – designing her remarkable outfits that record the progress of her amours. “There is a tinge of sadness after all these years,” she revealed to me, surveying her Valentine’s Day decorations,” but I am inspired to believe there is hope of domestic happiness.”
LEAVE YOUR VALENTINE MESSAGES FOR VISCOUNTESS BOUDICA IN THE COMMENTS BELOW
Be sure to follow Viscountess Boudica’s blog There’s More To Life Than Heaven & Earth
Take a look at
Viscountess Boudica’s Domestic Appliances
Viscountess Boudica’s Halloween
Viscountess Boudica’s Christmas
Read my original profile of Mark Petty, Trendsetter
and take a look at Mark Petty’s Multicoloured Coats
Andrew Coram’s Toby Jugs
Look at the old men, sitting lined up with their flasks of ale to watch the rain falling. They are late-eighteenth and early-nineteenth century Toby jugs and this is Andrew Coram’s antique shop, Beedell Coram at 86 Commercial St, which has London’s most consistently-fascinating window displays.
These curious characters only appeared at the beginning of this week and, in spite of one-hundred-mile-an-hour gusts, I halted in my path to peer from beneath my umbrella through the window and admire their ugly mugs, returning my glance with glazed expressions. Toby jugs have fallen from popularity in recent generations thanks to the proliferation of homogenised versions in the last century – but those in Andrew’s collection all date from before 1820 and, in their vividly-caricatured features and fine details, they have the authentic grotesque vigour of folk art which sets them apart from the banality of their mass-produced descendants.
“Toby Fillpot was a notorious Yorkshire drunkard whose real name was Harry Elwes,” Andrew informed me authoritatively, positing his theory of the origin of these charismatic designs when we convened in his shop yesterday, sheltering from a particularly virulent downpour. “It should be a full length figure sitting with a flask and a pipe, and wearing an eighteenth century frock coat and a tricorn hat,” he continued, admiring his treasured specimens that he acquired from a collector in Wales.
“I like the anthropomorphic quality,” Andrew admitted to me with relish, “the uglier the better.”
Look at the old men, sitting lined up with their flasks of ale to watch the rain falling
Pearlware Toby jug with stopper, early nineteenth century
London Salt Glaze, late-eighteenth/early-nineteenth century Toby jug
Ralph Wood type Toby Jug with pipe, c. 1790
Sponge ware Toby jug, c. 1790
Hearty Goodfellow, early nineteenth century Staffordshire figure
“With my pipe in one hand & jug in the other
I drink to my Neighbour & Friend
My cares in a whiff of tobacco I’ll smother
For Life you know shortly must end”
Small Toby jug, c. 1800
Toby Fillpot, etching by Robert Dighton 1786
From his shop window, antiques dealer Andrew Coram watches the rain falling upon Spitalfields
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Emily Webber’s East End Shop Fronts
Hanbury St, E1
Ten years ago, Emily Webber began photographing London Shop Fronts and now she has collected more than fifteen hundred fine examples across the capital, from which these East End favourites are selected. “I was initially fascinated with the fonts, but after a step back I started to look at the whole picture,” Emily explained to me, “I choose shops that look like they have a story to tell. I look for clues — worn signage or a sign that is half written-over, a tile design, any mark of individuality. These premises are the overlooked backdrop to our city and already a fair few have gone or changed their appearance.”
Copper Mill Lane, E17
Kenworthy Rd, E5
High Rd, Leyton, E10
Sandringham RD, E8
Casenove Rd, N16
Mile End Rd, E3
High Rd, Leyton, E10
Lower Clapton Rd, E5
Kingsland Rd, N16
Mile End Rd, E1
Whitechapel High St, E1
Wentworth St, E1
Bethnal Green Rd, E2
Grove Rd, E2
East India Dock Rd, E14
Bethnal Green Rd, E2
Chatsworth Rd, E5
Clarence Rd, E5
Roman Rd, E2
Graham Rd, E8
Bethnal Green Rd, E8
Lea Bridge Rd, E10
Well St, E9
Church St, N16
Lower Clapton Rd, E8
Roman Rd, E2
Whitechapel Rd, E1
Chatsworth Rd, E5
Rectory Rd, N16
Photographs copyright © Emily Webber
Emily is planning a book of her shop frontsand you can subscribe to updates here
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Alan Dein’s East End Shop Fronts, 1988
More of Alan Dein’s East End Shop Fronts
Eleanor Crow’s East End Fish Shops
