Spitalfields Life

At St George’s German Lutheran Church

December 12, 2013

by the gentle author

The Altar and Pulpit at St George’s German Lutheran Church, Alie St

In Aldgate, caught between the thunder of the traffic down Leman St and the roar of the construction on Goodman’s Fields sits a modest church with an unremarkable exterior. Yet this quiet building contains an important story, the forgotten history of the German people in the East End.

Dating from 1762, St George’s German Lutheran Church is Britain’s oldest surviving German church and once you step through the door, you find yourself in a peaceful space with a distinctive aesthetic and character that is unlike any other in London.

The austere lines of the interior emphasise the elegant, rather squat proportion of the architecture and the strong geometry of the box pews and galleries is ameliorated by unexpected curves and fine details. In fact, architect Joel Johnson was a carpenter by trade which may account for the domestic scale and the visual dominance of the intricately conceived internal wooden structure. Later iron windows of 1812, with their original glass in primary tones of red and blue, bring a surprising sense of modernity to the church and, even on a December afternoon, succeed in dispelling the gathering gloom.

This was once the heart of London’s sugar-baking industry and, from the mid-seventeenth century onwards, Germans brought their particular expertise to this volatile and dangerous trade, which required heating vast pans of sugar with an alarming tendency to combust or even explode. Such was the heat and sticky atmosphere that sugar-bakers worked naked, thus avoiding getting their clothes stuck to their bodies and, no doubt, experiencing the epilatory qualities of sugar.

Reflecting tensions in common with other immigrant communities through the centuries, there was discord over the issue of whether English or the language of the homeland should be spoken in church and, by implication, whether integration or separatism was preferable – this controversy led to a riot in the church on December 3rd 1767.

As the German community grew, the church became full to overcrowding – with the congregation swollen by six hundred German emigrants abandoned on their way to South Carolina in 1764. Many parishioners were forced to stand at the back and thieves capitalised upon the chaotic conditions in which, in 1789, the audience was described in the church records as eating “apples, oranges and nuts as in a theatre,” while the building itself became, “a place of Assignation for Persons of all descriptions, a receptacle for Pickpockets, and obtained the name St George’s Playhouse.”

Today the church feels like an empty theatre, maintained in good order as if the audience had just left. Even as late as 1855, the Vestry record reported that “the Elders and Wardens of the Church consist almost exclusively of the Boilers, Engineers and superior workers in the Sugar Refineries,” yet by the eighteen-eighties the number of refineries in the vicinity had dwindled from thirty to three and the surrounding streets had descended into poverty. Even up to 1914, at one hundred and thirty souls, St Georges had the largest German congregation in Britain. But the outbreak of the First World War led to the internment of the male parishioners and the expulsion of the females – many of whom spoke only English and thought of themselves as British.

In the thirties, the bell tower was demolished upon the instructions of the District Surveyor, thus robbing the facade of its most distinctive feature. Pastor Julius Reiger, an associate of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a leading opponent of the Nazis, turned the church into a relief centre offering shelter for German and Jewish refugees during World War II, and the congregation continued until 1996 when there only twenty left.

St George’s is now under the care of the Historic Chapels Trust and opens regularly for concerts and lectures, standing in perpetuity as a remembrance of more than two centuries of the East End’s lost German community.

The classically-patterned linoleum is a rare survival from 1855

The arms of George III, King of England & Elector of Hanover

The principal founder of the church Diederick Beckman was a wealthy sugar refiner.

The Infant School was built in 1859 as gift from the son of Goethe’s publisher, W. H. Göschen

Names of benefactors carved into bricks above the vestry entrance.

St Georges German Lutheran Church, c. 192o

The bell turret with weathervane before demolition in 1934

The original eighteenth century weathervane of St George & the Dragon that was retrieved from ebay

St George’s German Lutheran Church, 55 Alie Street, E1 8EB

Julian Rothenstein, Publisher

December 11, 2013

by the gentle author

Julian Rothenstein, The Redstone Press

Observe this man’s placid smile – from his composed demeanour no-one would believe that he has run his own publishing company for nearly thirty years. Yet Julian Rothenstein is the man responsible for Redstone Press, producing over a quarter century of Redstone Diaries and a whole string of inspirational and eclectic art books that no-one else would ever have dreamed of.

As I made my own first steps in publishing this year, Julian was the man I went to for advice. And he proved to be a generous mentor, which makes it a pleasure to welcome him to Spitalfields this week, bringing his celebrated Annual Christmas Bookshop to the East of London for the first time – opening today at Townhouse, 5 Fournier St, and running every day until 22nd December.

Operating from a modest office in his basement home, Julian edits, designs and supervises the production, promotion and distribution of all his books himself. And he does it with such apparent ease that you might not readily appreciate the feat of mental dexterity required to bring it off with bravura and grace, as he does. Yet this flexibility also allows him to pursue personal passions and produce books that surpass people’s expectations by their ingenuity and wit – such as his current bestseller ‘Inside the Rainbow,’ exploring the forgotten flowering of Russian Children’s books in the early Soviet era and his forthcoming project, a compendium of work by blind photographers.

I shall never forget the first time I came across a Redstone Diary, it was unlike anything else I had seen and it is this distinctive personality which makes these books so appealing. Julian’s vibrant designs, with strong colour, bold type and plenty of white space, give his titles a unity of appearance that is in contrast to their diverse form and subject matter. Obviously not the product of a corporation, they are the outcome of one man’s love of books – as Julian admitted to me when I dropped into his office this week with Contributing Photographer Patricia Niven.

“After I left school, I worked at a publisher called Peter Owen as an alternative to going to art school, which I couldn’t do because my father was well-known in that world – so I opted for being an office boy instead. I must have picked up the rudiments of publishing there.

I was a lost soul for a while after that, until I went to work with Emma Tennant on ‘Bananas’ – she was the editor and I was the art director and designer. It was a large format literary and art magazine, printed on newsprint up in Norfolk, that published the work of famous figures like J.G.Ballard, Bruce Chatwin, Angela Carter and Ted Hughes alongside unknown writers. And it was there I met my wife Hiang Kee who was very much involved with the beginnings of Bananas and Redstone Press.

My first Redstone Press book was of drawings by my father Michael, who was a child prodigy, and my grandfather William Rothenstein had kept everything he ever drew. I made all the mistakes with that first publication – it was far too big, no-one is interested in children’s drawings and I printed too many copies. Bookshops hated it, I printed fifteen hundred copies and sold only fifty or sixty.

But, shortly after that, I discovered these visual novels in woodcuts by Frans Mazereel and the first one sold out in three weeks. I published six of those and they all were very popular. I thought, ‘Publishing is really easy!’ And then I was unstoppable. Another big success was publishing boxes of ephemera from the Mexican Day of the Dead – I literally had my whole family sitting around sticking tin skeletons into boxes at one point. Then the diaries started in 1987 and I have just sent 2015 off to the printers – so that’s twenty-eight so far. The theme of 2015 is The Art of Simplicity and it includes a portrait of Barn the Spoon. Sometimes people write to say they have used my diaries year after year and cannot use anything else.

Redstone Press has become a family business with my wife Hiang Kee and my daughter Ella involved and, over the years, I have done a lot of books in partnership with my friend Mel Gooding. I had the good luck to work with David Shrigley too, one of the most productive people you could hope to meet – doing one book a year.

Yet, my whole thing has been to stay deliberately small and I can say that I have made a living out of it. People will always love to have something to read and, as the world goes more digital, they’ll be more demand for tactile things – like my books.”

Copies of Redstone Press titles adorn the shelves in Julian Rothenstein’s office

Bananas, the seventies literary magazine, edited by Emma Tennant & designed by Julian Rothenstein

One of Julian Rothenstein’s first big successes, a novel in pictures by Frans Masereel, 1988

Alfred Wallis Paintings introduced by George Melly, 1990

Redstone Diary 1992, Drawings by Writers

J. G. Posada, Messengeer of Mortality, 1989

Redstone Diary, The Lucky Diary, 1996

Ants Have Sex In Your Beer by David Shrigley, 2007

Surrealist Games compiled by Alistair Brotchie, edited by Mel Gooding, 1991

The Redstone Psychological Diary, 2005 – edited by Julian Rothenstein and Mel Gooding

Kill Your Pets by David Shrigley, 2004

The Redstone Diary – The Artist’s World, 2011 – edited by Julian Rothenstein and Mel Gooding

Julian Rothenstein, publisher of The Redstone Press

Redstone Press Books, Diaries & Prints are for sale from today at reduced prices at Townhouse, 5 Fournier St, Spitalfields. 11-6pm daily until 22nd December.

David Hoffman At St Botolph’s

December 10, 2013

by the gentle author

Bobbie Beecroft cuts Mr Sheridan’s hair, 1976

When photographer David Hoffman was squatting in Fieldgate Mansions in Whitechapel in the seventies, he was asked to do fund-raising shots for the shelter in the crypt of St Botolph’s in Aldgate which offered refuge to all homeless people without distinction. Yet this commission turned into a photographic project that extended over many years and resulted in a distinguished body of work documenting the lives of the dispossessed in hundreds of intimate and unsentimental images.

Initially, David found the volatile conditions of the crypt challenging but, over months and years, he became accepted by those at the shelter who adopted him as their own photographer. Rev Malcolm Johnson was the enlightened priest responsible for opening the crypt but, once he moved on, his brave endeavour was closed down. More than thirty years later, most of the people in David’s pictures are dead and forgotten, and his soulful photographs are now the only record of their existence and of the strange camaraderie they discovered in the crypt at St Botolph’s.

“St Botolph’s in Aldgate had a ‘wet shelter,’ an evening shelter for damaged or lost souls where alcohol and drugs were permitted. It was run by Rev Malcolm Johnson and Terry Drummond, who were very generous and accepting, and the purpose was a Christian one, based on the notion that you are accepted whoever you are. I’m not keen on organised religion, but here they were doing something that needed to be done.

I was asked if I could do some photographs to raise funds for the work and I remember arriving at the top of the steps outside the crypt and standing there for five minutes because I didn’t dare to go down. The noise was deafening and it really stank of piss and unwashed bodies. I was frightened I’d get attacked and my camera smashed but, equally, I thought it needed documenting, it was a part of life I’d never seen before. It was very noisy, very smelly, chaotic, and there was a lot of violence.

It was a place to get something to eat, get washed and get clean clothing. Not everybody was on drink or drugs but ninety per cent were. A lot were ex-servicemen who had travelled the world and would reminisce about bars in Cairo or Baghdad. It was amazing what they would talk about.

When I returned, I gave them eighth-size A4 prints so they could put them in their pockets. They gave me permission to take their pictures and, on each visit, I’d bring them prints from the previous evening. So I became their photographer.

Over six or seven years, I’d go every night for two or three months at a stretch. It was important to be regular while you were doing it. You needed to come frequently, so people relaxed and accepted you as part of the scene. I’d go every night for a couple of months. It was a place where nobody else goes, it was a humble part of life.”

Washing a shirt at St Botolph’s, 1978

A volunteer serves tea and sandwiches

Azella, a regular at St Botolph’s, makes herself up before heading to the pub with a pal in 1977. Later that year, Azella was killed when a lorry drove over the cardboard box where she slept in Spitalfields Market.

At St Botolph’s, 1978

At St Botolph’s, 1976

At St Botolph’s, 1978

Leo, eighty-two years old and a non-drinker at St Botolph’s, 1976

At St Botolph’s, 1978

Percy & Jane, non-drinkers, at St Botolph’s, 1978

At St Botolph’s, 1978

At St Botolph’s, 1977

At St Botolph’s, 1978

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David Hoffman at Fieldgate Mansions

Joan Brown, Secretary at Smithfield Market

December 9, 2013

by the gentle author

“When the cat can’t decide whether to go out, I say ‘Make up your Smithfield mind!'”

At ninety-three years old, Joan Brown is not given to protest. In fifty-seven years working as a Secretary at Smithfield Market, she mastered the art of operating through diplomacy and accommodation. Yet earlier this year, Joan was driven to write a letter of objection to the City of London Corporation when she learned of the proposed demolition of the General Market. “The bustle and excitement of Smithfield became part of my life until I finally retired at the age of seventy-four,” she wrote, “You will appreciate my feelings at the thought of even part of those lovely buildings being destroyed.”

The General Market of 1868, where Joan first began her career in West Smithfield, contains one of Europe’s grandest market parades beneath a vast glass dome, designed by Sir Horace Jones who was also responsible for Tower Bridge. Although proposals exist to refurbish the historic building and reopen it as a retail market, revitalising this part of London, the City Corporation has granted planning permission for the structure to be replaced by three tower blocks, retaining only the facade of the original edifice.

On 11th February next year, a David & Goliath battle commences at the Guildhall when SAVE Britain’s Heritage and The Victorian Society face the Corporation of the City of London, Henderson Global Investments and the Greater London Authority. Although, regrettably, Joan will not be attending due to her advanced years, the Enquiry is open to the Public and she hopes some readers might like to go along on her behalf.

Last week, I visited Joan in her tiny bucolic cottage situated among overgrown gardens in a quiet cul-de-sac in Peckham. Of sprightly demeanour and impeccable manners, Joan has good claim to be the first woman to work in Smithfield Market. Yet, even though she was conscientious not to absorb the colourful vocabulary for which which the Market is famous,“When the cat can’t decide whether to go out, I say ‘Make up your Smithfield mind!'” she confessed to me.

“I went to work at Smithfield Market in 1937 when I was seventeen years old. I was studying at a school for commercial typists and, at that time, there was a recession so it was hard to find work, but my shorthand teacher was asked by a neighbour who worked at Smithfield if he knew of anyone reliable – so I was offered the job.

My mum was horrified – all those men and that bad language! But my dad said, ‘We’ll sort this out,’ and he went to take a look and discovered the office was in West Smithfield, not in the Market itself. So I took the job. It was a family business and I worked for John Jenkins, the son, as his Private Secretary. We were agents for Argentine Frigorifico and we had a stall in the market selling Argentine Chilled Beef, it was not ‘refrigerated’ but ‘chilled.’

It was very well organised, a number of Argentine famers formed a group and a ship of their meat arrived in the London Docks once a week. It opened up on a Monday and so much beef – only beef – was brought over to the market in time for the five o’clock opening. That went on each day until the ship was emptied at the end of the week. Then another one arrived and it happened all over again.

I worked there until the war came, when everything changed and I was employed by the Ministry of Food. We were evacuated to North Wales and the Ministry organised these Buffer Depots in every village in the country and my job was to keep a record of it all. I had to co-ordinate the corned beef supplies. It was incredibly complicated and there were no computers, I had a large sheet of paper – we called them ‘B*gger Depots.’

After the war, I came back to my old employer but I discovered we didn’t have an office anymore, it had been bombed. So I said, ‘John, why don’t we use one of the spaces over the shop in the Central Market?’ He said, ‘But we can’t expect customers to walk through the Market to get to our office.’ Then I reminded him that there was a door onto Charterhouse St, so they didn’t have to walk through the Market. We moved into an octagonal office in one of the rotundas above the Market and that was when I became part of Smithfield proper.

Before the War, women couldn’t go into the Market but afterwards we were allowed in. I always remember walking through the Market for the first time, the Bummarees were perfectly respectful. I walked down Grand Avenue and they all moved out of the way, calling ‘Mind the Lady!’ The Bummarees delivered the meat, they wore long overalls and they used absolutely appalling language and were famous for that. But it wasn’t real, they didn’t mean anything by it.

I worked for John for more than fifty years and sometimes we had visitors from the Argentine. After John died, the business was sold and I was taken on by the new owners, Anglo-Dutch Meats. I became Private Secretary to their Director, Mohammed El Maggot. He was Egyptian though he had been to school in England. He was known as ‘Hamdi’ in the Market and I worked for him for several years. He was a very polite young man and his father was determined that he was going to work, that’s why he bought the company to occupy his son. Mohammed came to work every day at five o’clock in the morning and he settled in to work.

One day, he walked into the office and announced, ‘I want you to come to my wedding – in Cairo!’ When we came back, he and his wife took a flat in the Barbican and he said, ‘I want you to come over and teach Imam how to make a proper cup of tea.’

As far as I was concerned, that was the end of my life in Smithfield – I was seventy-four and it was time to retire. Mohammed was terribly upset but I said, ‘It’s no good Hamdi, I have to go!’ I thought, ‘That’s where I cut my connections, otherwise it will be, ‘Can you go to Harrods to buy the baby a bottle?” So I cut myself off completely from Smithfield Market in 1994. I never married, I was always working in the Market. When I was sent to North Wales, I left all my boyfriends behind in London and I was surrounded by a lot of middle-aged men.

I was always happy to be in the Market, I was part of the Market. To look down from my office window upon the Grand Avenue and see everything going on. That was my life.”

On Holborn Viaduct, the winged lion watches protectively over the Smithfield General Market currently under threat of demolition.

Smithfield Market as Joan Brown first knew it in the nineteen-thirties

Entrance to the General Market on Charterhouse St, completed 1881

Entrance to the underground store at the General Market

South-east corner of the General Market

North- east corner of the General Market

War Memorial in Grand Avenue in Central Market

The Central Meat Market

Joan Brown worked in an office in one of the rotundas at Smithfield’s Central Market

The Central Meat Market at Smithfield

Archive images courtesy Bishopsgate Institute

This Wednesday 11th December, SAVE Britain’s Heritage have organised a live theatre event at Smithfield from 5-7pm, telling the story of the Market. Locations will be on Holborn Viaduct, outside The Hope on Cowcross St and in the Market Grand Avenue.

Leon Kossoff At Arnold Circus

December 8, 2013

by the gentle author

Arnold Circus, Saturday Afternoon 2012 by Leon Kossoff

Limited Edition of 300 prints produced for The Friends of Arnold Circus

British expressionist, Leon Kossoff, grew up on Arnold Circus in the thirties and, over the last five years, he has returned to create a magnificent series of drawings – reconciling himself to the place in which his journey as an artist began.

On one side of Arnold Circus is Rochelle School, where Leon was educated while, in Calvert Ave, the lettering spelling out the name of Kossoff’s Bakery, the family business, can still be distinguished upon the fascia. And in between, on the corner of Club Row, was the spot where the fascists handed out their propaganda leaflets during his childhood.

In the fifties, Leon Kossoff began painting Christ Church, Spitalfields, returning to the subject over and over again, as it became an increasingly-emotionalised and highly-wrought motif in his particular vein of expressionism, wrestling an enduring image of transcendence from the fleeting chaos of existence.

An intensely private man, at eighty-six years old Leon Kossoff still carries strong feelings towards the East End. He is unsentimental about the poverty and violence that he witnessed in his youth, yet fiercely protective about the architectural fabric of the territory. A few years ago, I spent a quiet afternoon sitting with him and Joan Rose, who was his childhood contemporary at Arnold Circus. As she spoke, fondly evoking the world of the Boundary Estate before the war, Leon became emotional to rediscover lost memories of his own through her reminiscence. He was amazed to hear Joan’s stories of a joyful childhood in a place that was overshadowed by loss and melancholy in his perception.

The Arnold Circus works divide into two series, before and after the renovation of the bandstand that happened in 2010. “The school was there, where I used to go, they were very kind to me, they gave me a little space in the shed where I could keep my drawing board and charcoal. It’s still there,” he explained. Initially wary to discover that the park was to be restored, Leon’s second series of drawings express something of his delight to witness his childhood landscape brought back to life and cherished once more. “Everyone seemed happy, London seemed transformed,” he admitted in surprise, speaking of drawing at Arnold Circus in the summer of of 2012.

How many of us have the privilege to return to our childhood home and find it intact, as Joan Rose and Leon Kossoff did at Arnold Circus? Now Leon’s recent drawings have been included in a major retrospective exhibition of his London Landscapes spanning half a century and, when the pupils from Virginia Rd School in Arnold Circus were taken to see it, they were inspired to make their own drawings recording their personal landscapes, which are reproduced below.

As a gesture of support to The Friends of Arnold Circus, who were responsible for the renewal of the bandstand and the park, Leon Kossoff has produced a limited edition digital print of three hundred copies of one of his Arnold Circus pictures from the summer of 2012. It is an intensely-worked drawing that manifests the homecoming of a great artist to the East End.

Arnold Circus 2008-10 by Leon Kossoff (charcoal and pastel on paper 65.3 x 50 cm) Copyright The Artist, courtesy Annely Juda Fine Art

Arnold Circus 2008-10 by Leon Kossoff (charcoal and pastel on paper, 64.7 x 54.7 cm) Copyright The Artist, courtesy Annely Juda Fine Art

Arnold Circus 2008-10 by Leon Kossoff (charcoal and pastel on paper, 59 x 50 cm) Copyright The Artist, courtesy Annely Juda Fine Art

Arnold Circus, Before Rain 2012 by Leon Kossoff (charcoal and pastel on paper, 60.5 x 50 cm) Copyright The Artist, courtesy Annely Juda Fine Art

Pupils fron Virginia Rd Primary School at Arnold Circus visited Leon Kossoff’s London Landscapes exhibition at Annely Juda Fine Art last summer

The children made their own drawings of Arnold Circus inspired by Leon Kossoff’s work

Mussammoth Siddiqa Khatun (Anjuna)

Mohamed Abdul Muhith Bilal

Priam Ahmed

Nada Mohamed

Gulam Mubeen

Mohamed Ikramul Haque

Sheikh Ehiya Miah

Mya Zahra Chowdury

Mahin Ali Rabbi

Rita Begum

Shah Hafiz Tamjid

Mohamed Yasir Chowdhury

Shanzida Haque

Jannath Inaya Ahmed

Virginia Rd School pupils at the print launch at Leila’s Shop last week

Joan Rose holds court – a contemporary of Leon Kossoff, Joan grew up at Arnold Circus where her grandfather Albert Raymond opened the grocers – now Leila’s Shop – at 17 Calvert Ave in 1900

Click here to get a copy of Leon Kossoff’s Arnold Circus print for £30

Leon Kossoff’s, London Landscapes exhibition is currently at Mitchell-Innes & Nash, 534 West 26th St, New York City until 21st December and will be shown at L.A.Louver, 49 North Venice Boulvard, Venice, Los Angeles, from 23rd January until 1st March.

The Spitalfields Bowl

December 7, 2013

by the gentle author

One of these streets’ most-esteemed long-term residents summoned me to view an artefact that – until today – few have seen, the fabled Spitalfields Bowl. Engraved by Nicholas Anderson, a pupil of the great master of the art, Laurence Whistler, it incarnates a certain moment of transition in the volatile history of this place.

I arrived at the old house and was escorted by the owner to an upper floor, and through several doors, to arrive in the room where the precious bowl is kept upon its own circular table that revolves with a smooth mechanism, thus avoiding any necessity to touch the glass. Of substantial design, it is a wide vessel upon a pedestal engraved with scenes that merge and combine in curious ways. You have the option of looking down upon the painstakingly-etched vignettes and keeping them separate them in your vision, or you can peer through, seeing one design behind the other, morphing and mutating in ambiguous space as the bowl rotates – like overlaid impressions of memory or the fleeting images of a dream.

Ever conscientious, the owner brought out the correspondence that lay behind the commission and execution of the design from Nicholas Anderson in 1988. Consolidating a day in which the glass engraver had been given a tour of Spitalfields, one letter lists images that might be included – “1. The church and steeple of Christ Church, Spitalfields, and its domination of the surrounding areas. 2. The stacks, chimneys and weaving lofts. 3. The narrowness of the streets and the list and lean of the buildings with their different doorways and casement windows.”

There is a mesmerising quality to Nicholas Anderson’s intricate design that plays upon your perception, offering insubstantial apparitions glimpsed in moonlight, simultaneously ephemeral and eternal, haunting the mind. You realise an object as perilously fragile as an engraved glass bowl makes an ideal device to commemorate a transitory moment.

“It took him months and months,” admitted the proud owner,“and it represents the moment everything changed in Spitalfields, in which the first skyscraper had gone up and there were cranes as evidence of others to come. The Jewish people have left and the Asians are arriving, while at the same time, you see the last of the three-hundred-year-old flower, fruit and vegetable market with its history and characters, surrounded by the derelict houses and filthy streets.”

Sequestered in a locked room, away from the human eye, the Spitalfields Bowl is a spell-binding receptacle of time and memory.

The Jewish soup kitchen

To the left is the Worrall House, situated in a hidden courtyard between Princelet St & Fournier St

A moonlit view of Christ Church over the rooftops of Fournier St

The bird cage with the canary from Dennis Severs House

“He was a tinker who overwintered in Allen Gardens and used to glean every morning in the market…”

To the left is Elder St and the plaque commemorating the birth of John Wesley’s mother is in Spital Sq.

An Asian couple walk up Brushfield St, with the market the left and the Fruit & Wool Exchange and Verdes to the right

The Cries Of London

December 6, 2013

by the gentle author

It is my delight to show you the latest addition to my collection – this tiny anonymous pamphlet no larger than a folded banknote entitled simply THE CRIES OF LONDON. More than two centuries old, it is one of innumerable publications on this subject down through the ages and consequently only of little monetary worth. Yet, to me, this shabby rag is one of my favourites in the series because of the modesty of its production. The stained pages evidence its fond usage by those who, once upon a time, actually saw these mythic characters upon the streets of London.