On The Bishopsgate Goodsyard, 22
Remembering Frank Thompson
Frank in 1931, aged twenty-three years, when he adopted the surname Thompson
In contemporary Britain, more children are born to unmarried parents than to wedded couples yet – just a generation ago – the shame of a birth outside wedlock was such that even the innocent offspring would be stigmatised. Consequently, many chose to carry the truth of their origins privately their whole lives without admitting it even to their nearest and dearest.
Imagine Sarah Thompson’s surprise when, after she and her sisters had grown up and left home, they were summoned back by their father, Frank Thompson – who was a Vicar in the Church of England – and informed that he had been born as Frank Peters to an unmarried mother. It was a startling discovery, although it did not change their affection for their father, yet it remained such a sensitive subject for the family that Sarah was only able to research the full story after both her parents had died.
“I am the youngest of four daughters and while we were growing up there was a man called John Thompson who we knew as our grandfather and Altrincham was where we came from,” Sarah admitted to me, “It wasn’t until after my father retired that he summoned us all to tell us his life story. He didn’t tell us before because he had been born in Stepney Workhouse and was illegitimate, and my mother Eileen had reservations about revealing the truth because she felt they had a social position to maintain. She had known from when she first met him and she was close to his adoptive mother, and obviously we all loved John.”
Sarah Thompson’s research confirmed her father had been born in Stepney Union Workhouse on June 28th 1908 and his mother was Ellen Rosina Peters who was twenty-eight years old and a resident of Limehouse. “I think she must have had a drink problem,” Sarah revealed to me,“He told me he remembered waiting for her outside a pub as a child. In the hospital records, I found he had a brother Albert, born in 1911, who died aged eleven months. He never talked about that and I found it very sad.“
“At some point he must have lived with his grandparents, George & Ellen Peters, because he told me he remembered looking under the bed for Christmas presents and his grandfather got out and stepped on his finger and broke it – he told me this when I asked him why his little finger was crooked. His grandfather was a Lighterman who had three daughters and five sons.”
Frank’s mother Ellen earned twenty-four pounds a year as a kitchen maid but she was unable to maintain steady employment and was admitted to the Red Lamp Rescue Home for Fallen Women, although she could stay only three months. Frequent ill-health put her in the Stepney Workhouse, leaving her unable to care or provide for Frank, and after being passed around among friends and relatives, he was admitted at eight years old to the Children’s Society home at Knutsford in 1917. His mother agreed to contribute four shillings a week to his care.
On 17th December 1922, at fourteen years old, Frank enlisted into the Royal Engineers’ Training School and he took the surname ‘Thompson’ at twenty-three years old, when he became part of the family of Jack Thompson who ran the Children’s Society home in Altrincham, though he was never officially adopted because he was too old.
The fragments that Sarah has pieced together tell a tragic story of a young woman losing control of her life and her child, and a child learning to survive without parents or a family, leaving us only to speculate about the emotional cost of these experiences. Yet the outcome was that Frank became a hardworking, selfless individual who chose to devote his life to public service as a priest. Beloved of his wife and daughters, he enjoyed a happy family life and always put the well-being of others above his own.
Contemplating her discoveries, Sarah is relieved that her father won the love of John Thompson and his wife, the matron, who ran the children’s home, so that – even after he left to go into the army – he always returned to stay with them while on leave. Yet Sarah also regretted she had never been able to speak with her father about his childhood and the loss of his mother. I just wish I’d known all this when he was alive, so we could have talked about what it was like growing up in an orphanage and I could have told him how proud I was of him,” she confided to me.
There is an unexpected symmetry in the conclusion to this story which imbues it with a poignant irony and speaks of the nature of social change across one generation – since Sarah is a single parent herself. “I can remember telling him, and him giving me a big hug and saying, ‘Don’t worry, I’ll take care of you,'” she recalled fondly, ” My elder sister said she thought, perhaps, it had helped him come to terms with his past.”
Application to put Frank into the Children’s Society home, December 11th 1916, when he was eight
Frank is sitting second from left in the football team at St Aidan’s Theological College, Liverpool, where he studied for the priesthood
Eileen Thompson, taken at the time of her engagement to Frank in 1938
Frank Thompson at the time of his engagement
Wedding at St Anne’s church, Birkenhead, where Frank was a curate on November 20th 1939 – John Thompson is standing on Frank’s left
Sarah in her school uniform, aged seven, at a family-friend’s Christening in 1957
Sarah and her three older sisters and pet dog Muffin on the vicarage lawn, Ryhall 1960
Frank & Sarah on holiday in the Isle of Man in 1960
The family having tea in the vicarage kitchen,1961
Frank dancing at his daughter’s twenty-first birthday party in 1961
Frank & Eileen outside the vicarage at Ryhall, Lincolnshire, 1965
At the Christening of Sarah’s son in London, 1981
Sarah Thompson has been a teacher in Hackney for thirty-five years
Portrait of Sarah Thompson copyright © Sarah Ainslie
On The Bishopsgate Goodsyard, 21
The Queenhithe Mosaic
Queenhithe is a natural inlet of the Thames in the City of London, it means ‘Queen’s harbour’ and is named after Queen Matilda who granted a charter for the use of the dock at the beginning of the twelfth century. This is just one of two thousand years of historical events illustrated in a new twenty metre mosaic recently installed upon the river wall at Queenhithe.
Commissioned by the City of London and paid for by 4C Hotel Group, who are constructing a new hotel on the waterfront, it was designed by Tessa Hunkin and executed by South Bank Mosaics under the supervision of Jo Thorpe – and I recommend you take a stroll down through the City to the river, and study the intricate and lively detail of this epic work for yourself.
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On The Bishopsgate Goodsyard, 20
In The Rotunda At The Museum Of London
Have you ever wondered what is in the dark space beneath the rotunda?
I remember the first time I visited the Barbican, it was to see the newly-opened Museum of London and, as I walked up from St Paul’s Cathedral, I was astonished by the towering brick rotunda that confronted me. Only by passing across a bridge over the road could you enter this secret enclave, and within I found a hidden garden spiralling down to a large closed door, just as implacable as the blank walls upon the exterior.
Recently I discovered the use of this vast construction is as a mausoleum to store the fourteen thousand human remains in the Museum’s collection, sequestered there in their dark castle in the midst of the roundabout for eternity. Thus it was the fulfilment of more than thirty years of curiosity this week, when I walked over to London Wall and paid a visit to the interior of the rotunda.
My hosts were Rebecca Redfern & Jelena Beklavac, two Bioarchaeologists who are Curators of Human Osteology at the Museum and my particular interest was the more than ten thousand ex-residents of Spitalfields who now rest in the rotunda. “We look after them,” Rebecca reassured me. “We make sure that anyone who wants to see them is a bona fide researcher,” Jelena, explained as we sipped tea and nibbled chocolate biscuits in the subterranean office of the Department of Human Osteology, prior to visiting the rotunda.
Spitalfields was the largest cemetery ever excavated in an urban centre, I learnt, and is thus of enormous scholarly and human significance. All the skeletons were recorded spatially and chronologically when they were removed over three and a half years, at the time of the redevelopment of the Spitalfields Market, to create a database of unrivalled scale – permitting the study of human remains from the eleventh century, when the Priory of St Mary Spital was founded, until the Reformation, when the Priory was closed. As well as residents of the Priory, mass burials were found from times of crisis, such as the Famine, when parish churchyards could not cope.
“It’s incredible, they tell us so much about Medieval London – everyday life, the arrival of new diseases, pollution, diet and immigration,” Rebecca revealed, as if she were conveying direct testimony. “It’s a snapshot of people through time,” she added fondly.
I was struck by the use of the word ‘people’ by Rebecca and the phrase ‘such lovely people’ by Jelena, in describing their charges, yet it became apparent that this work brings an intimate appreciation of the lives of the long-dead. “We see the things they suffered and what’s remarkable is that they survived,” Jelena admitted, “People were super-tough and a lot more tolerant to pain.” Rebecca told me of a child afflicted with congenital syphilis who had survived until the age of eleven, evidencing the quality of care provided by the infirmary of St Mary Spital. Equally, there were those with severe, life-threatening head wounds who had recovered, and others with compound fractures and permanent injuries who carried on their lives in spite of their condition. “There must have been quite a lot of interesting looking people walking around in those days,” Jelena suggested, tactfully.
“If you didn’t do what you needed to do, to get food, heat and shelter, you would die,” Rebecca added, “We’ve lost that resilience. Children in Medieval London were riddled with tuberculosis except most recovered.” The outcome of the catastrophies that came upon the City was the genetic transformation of Londoners and, even today, those who are descended from Black Death survivors possess a greater resistance to AIDS and certain cancers. Medieval Londoners were more resistant to infection than their present day counterparts. “People lived in vile conditions but they became hardy and, if you survived to the age of five, you were pretty robust,” Jelena informed me, “Whereas the contemporary culture of cleanliness has disconnected us from our environment.”
Once I had grasped a notion of what is to be learnt from the people in the rotunda, it was time to pay them a visit. So Rebecca, Jelena and I left our teacups behind to trace a path through the Piranesian labyrinth of concrete tunnels beneath the Museum to reach the mausoleum. As the fluorescent tubes flickered into life, all was still within the rotunda and an expanse of steel shelving was revealed, extending into the distance and stacked neatly with cardboard boxes, each containing the mortal remains of a Londoner. “They’re Spitalfields,” indicated my hosts, gesturing in one direction, before turning and pointing out other aisles of shelves, “That’s the Black Death and they’re Romans.” Outside the traffic rumbled and as we passed fire-doors which gave onto the street, I could hear the rush of trucks close by. The identical cardboard boxes were a literal reminder that we are all equal in death.
Extraordinarily, the rotunda was not built to house the dead but simply as a structure to fill the roundabout, yet I am reliably informed the stable low temperature which prevails is ideal for the storage of bones. Inside, it was a curiously unfinished edifice – with raw concrete and a platform from a crane used in the construction still visible and, elsewhere, the builders had left their graffiti. This was a mysterious incidental space for which no plans survive, but that has found its ideal purpose. Entirely lacking in the gothic chills of a cemetery, the rotunda was peaceful and I had no sense of the silent hordes surrounding us, although I am told contract workers sometimes get nervous when they learn what is stored there.
It is the exterior world which which becomes the enigma when you are inside the rotunda, a world composed of distant traffic noise, curiously transmuted snatches of conversation upon the Barbican broadwalk above and the sound of kitchen equipment in the restaurant overhead. But you may be assured that I sensed no discontent among the thousands of supplanted former-residents of Spitalfields, resting there in peace yet with life whirling all around them.
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