Whitechapel’s Theatrical Terrace
As one of Whitechapel’s most appealing architectural features faces imminent threat of demolition, I tell the forgotten story that lies behind these extravagant facades in Vallance Rd.
3-13 Vallance Rd
Just last week, when I was writing about the artist Morris Goldstein who lived at 13 Vallance Rd, I was reminded of the distinctive quality of this unusual Victorian terrace in Whitechapel. Despite all the changes since World War II, these old shops have survived and the exoticism of their architecture with its strange mixture of styles fascinates me – as it does many others for whom the terrace is also a landmark in this corner of the East End, where so few old buildings remain to tell the story of what once was here.
In fact, I realised these tatty shopfronts and ornate facades have always spoken to me, but only recently have I discovered the nature of the story they were telling. The florid decoration was no whim upon the part of the architect but reflected their association and direct proximity to the adjoining Pavilion Theatre which opened here early in the nineteenth century, at first presenting nautical dramas to an audience from the docks and later becoming a Yiddish theatre to serve the Jewish population in Whitechapel.
Commanding the southern extremity of Vallance Rd, this terrace is almost the last fragment to remind us of the history of one of the East End’s most ancient thoroughfares, linking Bethnal Green and Whitechapel. Built in 1855, the vast and forbidding Whitechapel Union Workhouse once stood a few hundred yards north. In common with most of the nineteenth century buildings in this corner of what was known as Mile End New Town, it has long gone – swept away during the decades following the last war, leaving the streetscape fragmented today. Old Montague St, leading west to Commercial St and formerly the heart of the Jewish commerce in the East End, was entirely demolished.
Even Whitechapel Rd, which retains good sweeps of historic buildings – many of which are now under restoration as part of a Heritage Lottery Fund project – suffered major post-war casualties, including a fine eighteenth century terrace west of the London Hospital that was demolished in the seventies. Yet there was one building of great importance of which the loss went seemingly unnoticed -The Pavilion Theatre, a favourite resort for East Enders for nearly one hundred and fifty years before it was demolished in 1961.
The New Royal Pavilion Theatre opened in 1827 at the corner of Whitechapel Rd and Baker’s Row (now Vallance Rd) with a production of The Genii of the Thames, initiating its famous nautical-themed productions, pitched at the the maritime community. In 1856, the theatre burnt down and its replacement opened in 1858, boasting a capacity of three-thousand-seven-hundred, which was a thousand more than Covent Garden and included the largest pit in London theatre, where two thousand people could be comfortably accommodated.
‘The Great National Theatre of the Metropolis’ – as it was announced – boasted a wide repertoire including Shakespeare, opera (it became the East London Opera House in 1860) and, of course, pantomime. It gained a reputation for the unpretentious nature of its patrons, with one critic remarking “there is a no foolish pride amongst Pavilion audiences, or, as far as we could see, any of those stupid social distinctions which divide the sympathies of other auditoriums.”
In 1874, the Pavilion was reconstructed to the designs of Jethro T. Robinson, a notable theatre architect who designed two other East End theatres. both of which are now lost – the Grecian Theatre in Shoreditch and the Albion in Poplar, that was oriental in style. It was this rebuilding of the Pavilion which included the construction of a new terrace on Baker’s Row with interwoven Moorish arches evoking the Alhambra. The theatrical design of these buildings, with decorated parapets, panels and window surrounds, and the integration of side entrances to the theatre suggest the authorship or influence of J. T. Robinson himself.
In its later years, the Pavilion became one of the leading theatres in London, offering Yiddish drama, but as tastes changed and the Jewish people began to leave, the audience declined until it closed for good in 1934. In ‘East End Entertainment’ (1954) A. E. Wilson recalls a final visit to the old theatre before it closed.
“Once during the Yiddish period I visited the theatre. What I saw was all shabbiness, gloom and decay. The half-empty theatre was cold and dreary. The gold had faded and the velvet had moulted. Dust and grime were everywhere. And behind the scenes it was desolation indeed. The dirty stage seemed as vast as the desert and as lonely. I realised that there was no future for the Pavilion, that nothing could restore its fortunes, that its day was over.”
The decline of the Pavilion had been slow and painful. After the theatre closed in the thirties, it was simply left to decay after plans to transform it into a ‘super cinema’ failed to materialise. Bomb damage in the war and a fire meant that when a team from the London County Council’s Historic Buildings Division went to record the building in 1961, they found only a shell of monumental grandeur. After the theatre was finally demolished in 1961, the northern end of the terrace was also demolished leaving just number 13 (the former Weavers Arms Pub) and the battered row that has survived to this day.
Astonishingly, this last fragment of the Pavilion Theatre complex – numbers 3-11 Vallance Rd are now under threat of imminent demolition. Apparently learning nothing from the mistakes of the past, Tower Hamlets Council intends to clear the site for a new ‘landmark’ building as part of its masterplan for the area. Yet Whitechapel does not require more large-scale office and residential development at the expense of its traditional streetscape with small shops and historic character.
The Council is claiming that the terrace in Vallance Rd must be demolished – even though it is in a Conservation Area – because it poses a threat to public safety, yet the Council is the owner of the buildings and is earning rent from number 11 which is still occupied. Conveniently, it was the Council’s own surveyor who claimed the buildings are unsound and, subsequently, they have denied access to an independent structural engineer commissioned by the East End Preservation Society. Meanwhile the Spitalfields Historic Buildings Trust, which has previously restored structures in a far worse state of decay, has written to the Council offering to take on the job of repairing the buildings.
In the spirit of high theatrical farce, the Council’s consultant writes of the buildings in the Vallance Rd terrace in 2013 the Heritage Report, accompanying the application for demolition, that ‘… [they] do not contribute to the character or appearance of the Conservation Area’ directly contradicting the Council’s earlier Conservation Area appraisal of the area in 2009 which gives the following priority for action – “Encourage sympathetic redevelopment of gap sites west of Vallance Rd and secure restoration of 3-11 Vallance Rd.”
5 & 7 Vallance Rd, showing decorative window surrounds and parapet (Alex Pink)
9 & 11 Vallance Rd. With its decorative central panel, number 9 leads through to a courtyard where the theatre’s carpentry workshop once stood (Alex Pink)
3 Vallance Rd with original shopfront (Alex Pink)
Looking north over Vallance Rd (left) and Hemming St (right), 1957 (City of London, London Metropolitan Archives)
Whitechapel Union Workhouse in Vallance Rd, at junction with Fulbourne St, 1913 (City of London, London Metropolitan Archives)
Whitechapel Union Workhouse, Vallance Rd 1913 (City of London, London Metropolitan Archives)
Corner of Vallance Rd and Hereford St, 1965 (City of London, London Metropolitan Archives)
Bricklayers Arms, Vallance Rd and Sale St, 1938 (City of London, London Metropolitan Archives)
Old Montague St and Black Lion Yard, 1961 (City of London, London Metropolitan Archives)
Old Montague St and Kings Arms Court, 1961 (City of London, London Metropolitan Archives)
Old Montague St looking east with Pauline House under construction, 1962 (City of London, London Metropolitan Archives)
The first Royal Pavilion Theatre in Whitechapel, 1856 (East London Theatre Archive)
Playbill 1867, nautical drama was a speciality at the Pavilion (East London Theatre Archive)
Playbill 1854 (East London Theatre Archive)
Playbill 1835 – note reference to gallery entrance in Baker’s Row (Vallance Rd) (East London Theatre Archive)
Playbill 1856 (East London Theatre Archive)
Playbill 1833 (East London Theatre Archive)
Playbill 1851 (East London Theatre Archive)
The Great National Theatre of the Metropolis’ – the rebuilt Pavilion, 1858
Plan of the Pavilion in eighteen-seventies showing how the houses in Baker’s Row (Vallance Rd) are integrated into the theatre
The Pavilion as a Yiddish theatre in the thirties
Pavilion Theatre facade on Whitechapel Rd, 1961 (City of London, London Metropolitan Archives)
Auditorium of Pavilion Theatre, 1961 (City of London, London Metropolitan Archives)
Pit and stage at Pavilion Theatre, 1961 (City of London, London Metropolitan Archives)
Fly tower of Pavilion Theatre, 1961 (City of London, London Metropolitan Archives)
Back wall of the Pavilion Theatre, 1961 (City of London, London Metropolitan Archives)
17-29 Vallance Rd, showing the large scene doors entrance and gallery entrance beyond, all integrated into the terrace, 1961 (City of London, London Metropolitan Archives)
Sketch of the elevation of the Oriental Theatre, Poplar High St, by Jethro T. Robinson, 1873 – note usage of the arch-within-an-arch motif as seen in the Vallance Rd terrace
How the terrace could look if restored (Graphic by Nick Pope)
Elevation of the terrace as it could look after restoration (Graphic by Nick Pope)
Tower Hamlets Council’s vision for the future of Whitechapel
New photographs of Vallance Rd Terrace © Alex Pink
You have until Tuesday 14th January to click here and object to the demolition of 3-11 Vallance Rd
Follow the East End Preservation Society
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Click here to join the East End Preservation Society
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The East End Preservation Society
The Launch of The East End Preservation Society
Richard Dighton’s City Characters of 1824
Fat cats in the City of London are nothing new as these elegant cartoons of Regency bankers by Richard Dighton that I discovered in the archive at the Bishopsgate Institute testify.
Images courtesy Bishopsgate Institute
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Three Lantern Shows & Two Courses
It is my pleasure to announce another three lantern shows presented in collaboration with Bishopsgate Institute in which Spitalfields Life Contributing Photographers show their pictures and discuss their work with Archivist Stefan Dickers. Additionally – if anyone fancies new endeavours for 2014 – places are available on my writing course How To Write A Blog That People Will Want To Read in the first weekend of February and, in March, Rosie Dastgir & Kate Griffin, with guest Clive Murphy, are hosting How to Write Your First Novel.
Spitalfields Market, 1990
In the last year of the Spitalfields Fruit & Vegetable Market before it moved in 1991, Mark Jackson worked in partnership with Huw Davies, visiting nightly to record the life of the ancient market in vibrant black and white photographs. The result is a unique social record of more than four thousand images which are now preserved in the Bishopsgate Archive.
Photograph copyright © Mark Jackson & Huw Davies
Butchers, Spitalfields 1966 -”I had just finished taking a picture next door, when this lady came out with a joint of meat and asked me to take her photograph with it.”
Born in Plaistow in 1944, John Claridge photographed the people and the world he grew up in before they vanished forever. Characterised with affection and humanity, and distinguished by a distinctive graphic sensibility, his remarkable canon of photography is perhaps the largest created by anyone in the East End in the sixties.
Photograph copyright © John Claridge
Kids in Spitalfields in the nineteen-eighties
Following the publication of his new book BRICK LANE by Spitalfields Life Books on 3rd April, Phil will be showing a selection of his dramatic photographs taken over the last thirty years telling the story of volatile social change on one of Britain’s most celebrated streets.
Photograph copyright ©Phil Maxwell
HOW TO WRITE A BLOG THAT PEOPLE WILL WANT TO READ
Spend a weekend in an eighteenth century weaver’s house in Spitalfields and learn how to write a blog with The Gentle Author. This course will examine the essential questions which need to be addressed if you wish to write a blog that people will want to read.
“Like those writers in fourteenth century Florence who discovered the sonnet but did not quite know what to do with it, we are presented with the new literary medium of the blog – which has quickly become omnipresent, with many millions writing online. For my own part, I respect this nascent literary form by seeking to explore its own unique qualities and potential.” – The Gentle Author
COURSE STRUCTURE
1. How to find a voice – When you write, who are you writing to and what is your relationship with the reader?
2. How to find a subject – Why is it necessary to write and what do you have to tell?
3. How to find the form – What is the ideal manifestation of your material and how can a good structure give you momentum?
4. The relationship of pictures and words – Which comes first, the pictures or the words? Creating a dynamic relationship between your text and images.
5. How to write a pen portrait – Drawing on The Gentle Author’s experience, different strategies in transforming a conversation into an effective written evocation of a personality.
6. What a blog can do – A consideration of how telling stories on the internet can affect the temporal world.
SALIENT DETAILS
The course will be held at 5 Fournier St, Spitalfields on Saturday 8th and Sunday 9th February from 10am -5pm. Lunch catered by Leila’s Cafe and tea, coffee and cakes by the Townhouse are included within the course fee of £250. Accommodation at 5 Fournier St is available upon enquiry to Fiona Atkins fiona@townhousewindow.com
Email spitalfieldslife@gmail.com to book a place on the course.
Staffordshire dogs copyright © Rob Ryan
HOW TO WRITE YOUR FIRST NOVEL
Have you ever wondered how to find the story you want to tell?
Spend an inspirational weekend in an eighteenth century house in Spitalfields in the company of successful first-time novelists and explore how to write your novel. A two day course on how to begin writing your first novel, comprising a blend of talks by novelists, Rosie Dastgir (author of A Small Fortune) and Kate Griffin (author of Kitty Peck & the Music Hall Murders) with guest writer Clive Murphy, alongside practical exercises and discussion.
We suggest participants bring along an idea that they would like to pursue and, over the weekend, we’ll discuss and develop your work, and suggest possible approaches.
COURSE STRUCTURE
1. How Do You Get Started? Writing every day, learning to write without inhibition and finding a voice. Discovering your subject and researching it. We’ll offer a choice of writing prompts to get people moving forward with their ideas.
2. What Are The Elements of Writing Fiction? We’ll give a brief survey of narrative voice and point of view, and look at showing versus telling, intuition versus structure, and plot versus story.
3. Where Do Characters Come From? Are they born or made? How do you invent plausible characters? Drawing on examples in literature and working with practical exercises, we’ll address the elusive business of creating character.
4. Writing Dialogue. Finding your characters’ voices. How do you make characters distinctive from one another? We’ll show ways – with practical exercises – to inject life into your characters’ sentences.
5. Personal Stories. Why are so many first time novels autobiographical? How do you fictionalize your material? We’ll look at some first novels and see what works.
6. Our Practical Experiences Of Writing A First Novel. Strategies for finding an agent, getting a publisher – the pitfalls, highs and lows.
SALIENT DETAILS
The course will be held at 5 Fournier St, Spitalfields on Saturday 22nd and Sunday 23rd March from 10am -5pm. Lunch catered by Leila’s Cafe and tea, coffee and cakes by the Townhouse are included within the course fee of £250. Accommodation at 5 Fournier St is available upon enquiry to Fiona Atkins fiona@townhousewindow.com.
Email spitalfieldslife@gmail.com to book a place on the course.
Rosie Dastgir, author of A Small Fortune
Kate Griffin, author of Kitty Peck & the Music Hall Murders
Clive Murphy, Poet, Oral Historian & Author of three novels – Summer Overtures, Freedom For Mr Mildew & Nigel Someone
Portrait of Kate Griffin copyright © Colin O’Brien
So Long, Clerkenwell Fire Station
Last day at Clerkenwell Fire Station
Photographer Colin O’Brien & I made a return visit yesterday to visit our friends, the firefighters of Clerkenwell, on their last working day before the closure of Britain’s oldest fire station after one hundred and forty-two years. They invited Colin to come and take their photographs as a dignified record of this long-awaited day that everyone hoped would never come.
In fact Colin had joined White Watch, one of four watches at the station, for their last night shift earlier this week photographing their final roll call and the communal nocturnal meal they all share, which on this occasion was termed “The Last Supper.” When we arrived yesterday, we found the station busy with activity as the firefighters made their preparations for departure, clearing out personal lockers and removing moveable fixtures, such as the hefty snooker table that a team of men were manhandling from the basement.
We took this opportunity as our last chance to seek the wartime graffiti up in the roof that we heard had been left by a firewatcher seventy years ago. Climbing up through the senior officers’ quarters, unoccupied for decades, we emerged onto a high balcony at the rear of the station with views across to the City beyond and the natural advantage of this location was immediately apparent, upon the peak of the rise at Mount Pleasant.
From here, another ladder led us into the loft and the clamour of the city receded to a distant drone as we searched the roof space for graffiti. Little has changed up there, and finding ‘TOM SAYERS WATCHING FOR FLYING BOMBS 25/6/1944’ written in pencil upon a beam brought the past closer to us, as if we might have climbed the ladder, opened the roof hatch and entered that June night of 1944. Yet time was running out at the fire station and we descended back to ground level, where the business of the hour awaited us – the taking of the final group portrait of the firefighters.
In spite of the melancholy timbre of the day, we found them ebullient and even playful so it was only when I found myself standing in Rosebery Ave, with the firefighters lined up in front of two fire engines outside the station as Colin took the photo, that I realised the enormity of the event. Traffic slowed down, drivers honked their horns in tribute and passers-by stopped in their tracks.
Commonly when I am on assignment with a photographer, no-one pays any attention but from the reactions of those in Rosebery Ave, I realised that everyone knew what was going on and stood in wonder at the sight or they drew out their phones to record it for themselves – because it was a moment in the history of London we were all witnessing, as the closing of the oldest fire station was recorded at the time of the closure of ten fire stations across the capital.
Once the photos were done, I joined Captain Tim Dixey in his office for a few last words and his statements were characteristic of the stoicism we encountered in the face of the circumstances of that day. “It’s a sad day when the beautiful old station closes, but it’s all over now, the decision has been made and we’ve got to move on,” he admitted with admirable restraint, explaining that his watch start work next day at Islington Station which will be their new home. “Come and join us for a cup of tea, if you are passing,” he suggested, extending a friendly hand.
Today at 9:30am the final watch ends at Clerkenwell Fire Station.
Loft at Clerkenwell Fire Station with ladder leading to Fire Watchers’ Station from WWII
TOM SAYERS WATCHING FOR FLYING BOMBS 25/6/1944
Tim Dixey takes the last Roll Call for White Watch at Clerkenwell Fire Station
The firefighters of White Watch
Merrick Josephs & Scott Thorpe
Merrick Josephs & Mandy Watts
Henry Ayanful & Scott Thorpe
Greg Edwards cooks supper
The Last Supper at Clerkenwell Fire Station
Tim Dixey prepares to leave for a call-out
The firefighters of White Watch outside Clerkenwell Station on the last day of operations 8/1/2014
Photographs copyright © Colin O’Brien
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At Britain’s Oldest Fire Station
On the eve of the closure of Clerkenwell Fire Station, after operating from the junction of Farringdon Rd & Rosebery Ave for one hundred and forty-two years, I publish this account of my visit last year.
Clerkenwell Fire Station is the oldest operating fire station in this country, serving the people of London continuously from its handsome red brick tower at the junction of Rosebery Avenue and Farringdon Rd since 1872. Contributing Photographer Colin O’Brien grew up a quarter of a mile from here in Victoria Dwellings, a tenement just down the road at the corner of Clerkenwell Rd and Farringdon Rd, and as a young photographer in the nineteen sixties he leaned out of the window to photograph the Clerkenwell firemen when they came to extinguish a conflagration in his building.
So when I learned that that Clerkenwell Fire Station must shut forever, I realised that Colin and I needed to pay a visit upon the firefighters of Clerkenwell to celebrate these heroic individuals and record their brave endeavours, before the end of their operations here after one hundred and forty-two years. In spite of the fact that they had all recently received letters inviting them to take voluntary redundancy, we found them in buoyant mood and it was only towards the end of our visit I learnt that several members of the watch had also recently received awards for bravery after saving people trapped in a cradle high above the new University College London Hospital in Gower St.
Firefighters work in “watches” of fourteen and there are four watches at Clerkenwell Fire Station who work alternating shifts, two days of 9:30am until 8pm and two days of 8pm until 9:30am, a total of forty-eight working hours each week followed by three days off, thus providing cover every hour, every day of the year. Colin and I had the privilege of being the guests of Tim Dixey’s watch, arriving in the morning to discover the team around the table in the mess, at the end of the days’s briefing before they headed out to the yard to run through the drill that is a constant of life as a firefighter, designed to hone the co-ordination, proficiency and team work of the watch.
Although the fire station opened in 1872, it is still fully functional and it was a pleasure to see the working parts of the old building cherished – freshly painted, cleaned and maintained in tip-top order, still in daily use for the purpose for which they were built. On the Farringdon Rd side of the building are two wooden doors, a narrower one originally used for the hand cart fire engine and a wider one for the horse drawn engine.
Tim Dixey, a veteran of twenty-nine years in the service who joined at eighteen years old, explained that the founders of the Metropolitan Fire Brigade in 1866 came from a naval background and every station was designed to be sufficient to itself. “They were conceived as ships on land,” he told us. Many of the early firefighters were ex-naval men who were comfortable with heights and familiar with ropework, introducing the structure of shifts and terminology of “watches” that is still used in the fire service today.
Meeting the firefighters of Tim’s watch for the first time, Colin and I were touched by the generosity of spirit and emotional openness with which they accepted our presence. I recognised the depth of trust necessary between those who risk their lives in the course of their work and must depend upon each other absolutely. We were surprised to meet a father and son, Andy Simkins and Dave Smith, working together as firefighters in the same watch, yet it only served to enforce the sense of intimate reliance among the crew.
At Tim’s request, firefighter Gregg Edwards took us on a tour of the upper floors of the station which have been disused for decades. With views across the rooftops to the City, we found the washrooms of the eighteen-seventies with huge white sinks lined up for the firemen of a century ago to wash the soot off their faces. In the next room, an elaborate series of metal racks offered arcane facilities for drying wet uniforms in a heated chamber. Walking through another door, we entered the former accommodation of firefighters under the eaves. There were neat delft tied fireplaces and rooms still lined with faded nursery wallpaper. Abandoned in the middle of the last century, when the firefighters sought a degree of independence from their employers, these flats are now designated “unfit for purpose” even though with a modicum of repairs they could have been a boon to the firefighters of today, who are unable to afford housing locally and must commute long distances as a consequence.
Then we watched the fire drill as the watch in their yellow and black overalls, swarming like bumble bees, slid the tall aluminium ladder off the engine, extending it to the highest extremity of the tower. We asked some obvious questions, about the whether the fireman’s lift is still practised and enquired about the frequency of cats stuck in trees. “You’re not supposed to carry people down ladders,” we were told, “But, if it needs that, we will.” We learnt that rescuing felines did not take up a great deal of the fightfighters’ time. “How many skeletons of cats do you see in trees?” quipped Dave Smith, speaking with authority after twenty years in the service.
And then a call came in. Tim Dixey waved a slip of paper that reported a mother who had locked herself out of her flat when the wind blew her front door shut, trapping her baby inside.“We all go and we don’t leave anyone behind,” Tim joked, introducing a personal tenet, as he and his fellow firefighters climbed aboard their engine. In a moment, the truck turned into the Farringdon Rd, disappearing into the traffic as the siren faded into the distance, and Colin and I were left standing.
Colin O’Brien’s photograph of firemen at Victoria Dwellings in the nineteen sixties.
Tower used for firefighting exercises and as a lookout.
Firefighter Craig Wellock, seven years in the fire service.
In 1872, the door on the left was for the handcart fire engine and the door on the right for the horse-drawn fire engine.
Firefighter Dave Smith, twenty-one years in the fire service.
View from the top floor, looking south
Firefighter Mandy Watts, fourteen years in the fire service.
Wash room from 1872, used by firefighters on their return from duty.
Father and son firefighters, Andy Simkins and Dave White – twenty-seven years and seven years in the fire service respectively.
Disused furnace to heat the drying room, dating from 1872.
Drying racks for wet uniforms
Firefighters Gregg Edwards, Merrick Josephs and Henry Ayanful.
Long-abandoned living quarters for firemen and their families on the top floors
Looking towards Clerkenwell
Firefighters Gregg Edwards, Henry Ayanful, Watch Manager Tim Dixey, Firefighters Nasir Jilani and Merrick Josephs.
The change in the brickwork indicates where the station was expanded in the eighteen eighties.
Firefighter Gregg Edwards.
The view from the accommodation floor where firefighters once lived with their families.
Firefighter Henry Ayanful, twenty-two years in the fire service.
Station Manager Steve Gray, twenty-six years in the fire service.
Watch Manager Tim Dixey – thirty years in the fire service, joined at the age of eighteen.
Firefighters Mandy Watts, Dave Smith, Andy Simkins, Dave White and Craig Wellock.
Clerkenwell Fire Station, Britain’s oldest operating fire station.
Photographs copyright © Colin O’Brien
Along with nine other London Fire Stations, Clerkenwell Fire Station closes forever at 9:30am on Thursday 9th January – there will be a demonstration outside from 8:30am
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Morris Goldstein, The Lost Whitechapel Boy
Morris Goldstein, self-portrait
When Raymond Francis showed me these pictures by his father Morris Goldstein – seeking to bring them to a wider audience and reinstate his father’s position among the Whitechapel Boys – I was touched by the tender human observation apparent in Morris’ sympathetic portraits of his fellow East Enders.
The Whitechapel Boys were a group of young Jewish artists from the East End, including the poet Isaac Rosenberg, who showed together at the Whitechapel Gallery in 1914 and made a distinctive contribution to British Modernism in the early twentieth century. Yet when the list of those who comprise this group is made – including Mark Gertler, David Bomberg and others – the name of Morris Goldstein is rarely mentioned.
It was the death of Morris Goldstein’s father that forced him to leave the Slade early, in order to earn money to support his family rather than pursue his art, with the outcome that – although he exhibited a significant number of works in the 1914 Whitechapel show – his work has subsequently become unjustly neglected.
The centenary of this exhibition proposes a re-evaluation of the group that became known as the Whitechapel Boys and a re-examination the life and work of those artists who became marginalised. And, thanks to Raymond Francis, I am able to tell Morris Goldstein’s story for the first time.
Born in Poland in 1892 in Pinczow, a small town midway between Krakow and Warsaw, Morris Kugal emigrated to London at the age of six in 1898 with his parents David and Sarah, and his two younger sisters Annie and Jeannie.
Adopting the name Goldstein, the family lived in Redman’s Row, Stepney, where the poet Isaac Rosenberg was a neighbour. Growing up in poverty, Morris quickly came to understand the conflict between his dreams and reality. Although his talent led him to Stepney Green Art School, he knew that the need to leave and earn a living at fourteen years old would prevent him pursuing a career as an artist.
Like Rosenberg, he was obliged to take up an apprenticeship in marquetry but for three years they went together to evening classes in art close to their employment in Bolt Court, Fleet St, where Morris received the gold medal for best work and found himself alongside fellow students including Paul Nash. Determined to become a respected painter, Morris soon fund himself in the company of other aspiring young artists, including Mark Gertler whom he first met at the Whitechapel Gallery in 1908.
Through tenacity and determination, Morris managed to overcome the obstacle of his financial disadvantage by winning a scholarship to the Slade School of Art which he attended alongside other Whitechapel Boys – Isaac Rosenberg, David Bomberg and Mark Gertler in 1912. He applied to the Jewish Education Aid Society in 1908, 1909 and 1911, before being granted twelve shillings and sixpence a week. While at the Slade, Morris and Isaac Rosenberg walked from Mile End to Gower St every day to save money and they often went to study at the Whitechapel Library, doing their homework which entailed sketching and studying the history of art, thus escaping the distractions of home life in the evening.
As this group of young East End artists acquired confidence, they discovered the Cafe Royal in Regent St where they encountered luminaries of the day, including members of the Bloomsbury Group and socialites such as Nancy Cunard and Lady Diana Manners. Morris hailed it as Mecca and recalled making his sixpenny coffee and cake last all day.
Often Morris and Isaac Rosenberg were joined on their walks by David Bomberg and they met Sonia Cohen, a Whitechapel girl brought up in an orphanage, whom they all fell in love with. Meanwhile, Isaac Rosenberg grew increasingly conscious of the burden imposed on his family by his long preparation for a career as a painter. Morris’ mother Sarah Goldstein was a close friend of Hacha Rosenberg, Isaac’s mother, and they commiserated that they knew of young tailors in the neighbourhood earning fifteen or twenty pounds a week, while their sons brought in nothing. In 1913, Morris’ father’s unexpected death placed the responsibility of becoming the breadwinner upon him and he had to give up his study to replace the income of two pounds a week that David Goldstein had earned as a shoemaker.
He had five works in the Whitechapel Art Gallery’s Twentieth Century Art Review of Modern Movements in May 1914, along with the other Whitechapel Boys (Rosenberg, Bomberg etc), the only time that this group ever exhibited together. When the First World War broke out in August of that year, Morris sought to enlist but was rejected because he was not yet a naturalised British citizen. David Bomberg was also rejected but Isaac Rosenberg was sent to the Somme where he was killed in April 1918.
During the war, Morris was Art Master at the Toynbee Art Club at Toynbee Hall and the Annual report of 1914 -1915 notes, “classes were well attended, the members being greatly assisted by the guidance and criticism of Mr Morris Goldstein, the art master.”
When the Jewish Education Aid Society wrote to Morris asking for their money back in 1917, he replied on Boxing Day in the following defiant terms –“I am alive and that is a great deal in these days. To be alive is a great benediction – to live through these turbulent times until peace reigns once more upon earth would be the greatest joy of all. My present hope and wish is to live through these times so that after the cessation of hostilities I could put my body and soul into my spiritual work. I am not yet in the army but of course I’m liable to be called up any day now. Let us hope the war will end soon, Believe me to remain, Morris Goldstein”
Morris continued to exhibit at the Whitechapel Gallery’s annual East End Academy until 1960.
Sarah & David Goldstein stand outside the East End boot shop that was the family business, c. 1912
Sarah and David Goldstein with their daughters Annie and Jeannie, and Morris on the right.
Morris Goldstein aged twenty when he went to the Slade in 1912
Morris Goldstein paints the portrait of the Mayor of Stoke Newington in 1960
Sketch of Morris Goldstein’s son, Raymond Francis, sleeping in 1955
Raymond Francis standing at the gates of Stepney Green School where his father was educated
Raymond Francis outside 13 Vallance Rd where his father lived and wrote the letter below.
In 1940, Morris Goldstein wrote to relatives in America seeking help to send his two daughters across the Atlantic to escape the war.
A local landmark, this unusual and attractive nineteenth century terrace 3-11 Vallance Rd in Whitechapel is currently under threat of demolition.
Artwork copyright © Estate of Morris Goldstein
Photograph of Vallance Rd terrace © Alex Pink
Jack Corbett, London’s Oldest Fireman
In the week ten fire stations shut forever – Belsize, Bow, Clerkenwell, Downham, Kingsland, Knightsbridge, Southwark, Silvertown, Westminster & Woolwich – I publish my portrait of Jack Corbett, veteran of Clerkenwell Fire Station, as a tribute to the courage of London’s firefighters.
Jack Corbett, born 1910
“I like the life of a fireman,” boasted Jack Corbett, who is London’s oldest surviving fireman at one hundred and three years old. Based at Clerkenwell Fire Station for the duration of World War II, Jack and his team were fortunate enough to endure the onslaught of the London Blitz without any fatalities. “It was all coincidental because I happened to live within a mile of the station,” he announced dismissively, as if he just fell into it. Yet the same tenacious spirit that sustained him through the bombing has also endowed him with exceptional longevity. “You want to go on living,” was what Jack told himself in the midst of the chaos.
“It’s not easy remembering what you did and didn’t do.” he confessed to me vaguely, casting his mind back over more than a century of personal experiences, “It all seems so bitty trying to put it all together, but it all went like clockwork. It was rather wonderful really.” Jack’s father served in the First World War and, after Jack witnessed the Second World War in London, he cannot escape disappointment now at the persistence of warfare. “It’s a shame after what we went through that people have learnt nothing,” he confided to me in regret. The closure of Clerkenwell Fire Station, the oldest in Britain, meets with his disapproval too, “Modern life demands the police, fire service and ambulance yet, if you cut them, the longer it will take for these services to be applied – and that’s foolhardy.” he said, “Clerkenwell Fire Station is well-situated, in one direction is Kings Cross and in the other direction is the City of London.”
In wartime, as one of the firemen responsible for protecting St Paul’s Cathedral from falling bombs, Jack was given access to the entire structure and once he climbed up alone inside the gold cross upon the very top of the dome. Standing in that enclosed space so high over the city, with a single round glass panel to look out at either end of the cross-piece, was an experience of religious intensity for Jack. And now, at such a venerable age he is able to look back on his own life from an equally elevated perspective through time. “I don’t know what people think of me but I guess I’m a little on the starchy side. I try to be a man of principle but it’s not easy.” he admitted to me with a shy grin, “I don’t drink, I don’t smoke and I’ve always been a Christian.”
In 2000, Jack retired from London to live with his daughter Pamela in Maldon in an old house up above the river, surrounded by a luxuriant well-kept garden.”My parents were ordinary people but they produced a good commodity in me – my mother lived to ninety-three and my father to ninety-one.” he assured me in satisfaction, as we sat together admiring the herbaceous border from the comfort of his private sitting room. “Some people would have written their life, but I’m not that type. I’m not bothered,” Jack whispered, thinking out loud for my benefit – however, for the sake of the rest of us, I present this account of his story.
“When I left school at fourteen in Woking, I got a job as a guard boy. It was my first proper job, working for a gentleman. But in the thirties there was a financial crisis and quite a lot of people lost their property. So he said to me, ‘I’ll have to let you go.’ I didn’t realise it was the sack. Then, one wet day, I drove him to Woking Station and he said, ‘You probably realise I’ve got a business in London. Would you like to change your job?’ The business was a glass warehouse in Clerkenwell, Pugh Bros off St John St.
Isn’t it strange? I can’t remember the name of the man who gave me my job and brought me up from my lowly life in Woking to London, where I met my wife, and the story of my life proper began there.
I lived at 330 St John St, from my early twenties, when I first came to London and that’s where I met my wife Ivy. I was the lodger and she was the only daughter of the house, and we went to Sadlers’ Wells Theatre for our first date and we got married in 1935 in the Mission Church in Clerkenwell. She worked at a furrier and she was pregnant with our daughter Pamela when the war started. I was keen to get behind an ack-ack gun, but she reminded me I could get assigned anywhere and not to be so quick. My daughter was due in April 1939, not the best time to be born because of the situation with the war, but my baby, my wife and mother-in-law were evacuated to Woking where I had my original home, so that was alright. They couldn’t come back to London – they wanted to but I explained that bombs were dropping.
When I was enlisted, I joined the City of London Auxiliary Fire Service. They trained you up to a certain level but after the London Fire Brigade lost a lot of their men who were ex-army and ex-navy, when they were called back to the forces, they needed to replace them and I was accepted. So eventually I became a professional. We were always on duty, it was continuous duty during the Blitz, then they granted you four hours break, not every day but when circumstances allowed. Clerkenwell was one of eighty fire stations, so you can imagine the immensity of it. In London, there was a separate water system for the fire service but when that became broken, we had to pump water from the Thames.
I never thought about the danger – I just got on with it, like everybody else. You’d be a strange person if you didn’t know fear but in any situation, you go in and do your duty to the letter. Often, what I found exciting was that you didn’t know what kind of fire you were going to. The job consisted of extinguishing the fire and rescuing life, and rescuing life was the most important because a building can be rebuilt – your priority was saving lives.
We were being bombed in the docks where all the food storage was, so we had a job there and ,when we had to go further downstream to extinguish the oil depot, we had to go through the East End where there were lots of houses on fire, and they used to call us names. Once, we heard a group of five bombs approaching Clerkenwell and I thought one must surely be for us, but it hit the building next door. We couldn’t see inside the fire station for the dust and I really thought that one had my name on it.
When things were cooling off, you could take a weekend and I went down to Woking to see my family. Eventually when things quietened, my wife found a house in Finchley and that’s where we had our son and lived for the next sixty years and where my wife died twelve years ago. We’d been married sixty-seven years. We had a grand life if you come to think of it. I wonder what would have happened without the war – I would have continued working at the glassworks. I was moving up, after three years I was appointed manager of the guys who were going out making deliveries of glass.
After the war, I asked for a transfer nearer home, and they transferred me to Hornsey and I stayed in the fire service until 1965. The average person wanted to get back to ordinary life, but there’d been so much change it wasn’t that easy. You want to go on living and when you have two children, they want to have a life. Now I have eight great-grandchildren, it has all grown like a tree of life from Pamela’s mother.”
Jack Corbett – “I don’t know what people think of me but I guess I’m a little on the starchy side.”
Jack with Freda and Cousin Dot, 1923
Charles Corbett, Jack’s father
Charles and Ann Corbett, 1944
330 St John St where Jack lived when he came to London and met his wife Ivy. Ivy’s parents lived on the ground floor, and Jack and Ivy lived on the first floor after they married.
Jack aged twenty, 1930
Jack in his first car.
Jack and Ivy, 1934
Jack and Ivy’s marriage at Clerkenwell Mission Chapel, 18th May 1934
Jack (on the far left) joined the City of London Auxiliary Fire Service, 1939
Jack (with his back to the camera) pictured fighting a fire at St Bartholomew’s Hospital during the London Blitz.
High Jinks with the Metropolitan Fire Brigade, 1955
Jack returns to Clerkenwell Fire Station, January 2013
Jack with Green Watch at Clerkenwell Fire Station
Jack in his garden in Maldon.
Jack and his daughter Pam
Clerkenwell Fire Station, Britain’s oldest working fire station.
Photograph of Clerkenwell Fire Station copyright © Colin O’Brien
