Spitalfields Life

No doubt you have read in the national press of the plight of the New Era Estate in Hoxton which has recently been acquired by an American property company that seeks to increase the rents to market value, disregarding the circumstances of the residents many of whom live upon modest incomes.

Today I publish my interview with long-term occupant, Kitty Jennings – drawing my readers attention to the petition, which already has over a quarter of a million signatories, and the public demonstration which gathers outside the offices of Westbrook Partners in Berkeley Sq at 12:30pm on Monday and marches to Downing St to present the petition, demanding justice for the tenants of the New Era Estate. Kitty is not as mobile as she once was, but she hopes some Spitalfields Life readers might be able to attend on her behalf.

Kitty, Amelia (Doll Doll), Jimmy, Gracie & Patricia Jennings, Gifford St, Hoxton c.1930

One Sunday afternoon last summer, I walked over to Columbia Rd Market to get a bunch of flowers for Kathleen – widely known as Kitty – Jennings, who has lived in Hoxton since 1924. I found her in her immaculately tidy flat in the New Era Estate near the canal where for many years she lived with her beloved sister Doll Doll, whose ashes now occupy pride of place in a corner of the sitting room.

Once Barbara Jezewska, who grew up in Spitalfields and was Kitty’s neighbour in this building for seventeen years, had made the introductions, we settled down in the afternoon sun to enjoy beigels with salmon and cream cheese while Kitty regaled us with her memories of old Hoxton.

“Thank God we were lucky, we had a father who had a good job, so we always had a good table. There was not a lot of work when I was a kid, but we always got by. We were lucky that we always had good clothes and never got knocked about.

My father, Jim, he was a Fish Porter at Billingsgate Market and he had to work seven days. He was born in the Vinegar Grounds in Hoxton, where they only had one shared tap in the garden for all the cottages, and he was a friendly man who would help anyone. He left for work at four in the morning each day and came back in the early afternoon. We lived on fish. I’m a fish-mullah, I like plaice, jellied eels, Dover sole and middle skate. My poor old mum used to fry fish night and day, she was always at the gas stove.

I was born in Gifford St, Hoxton. There were five of us, four girls and one boy, and we lived in a little three bedroom house. My mother Grace, her life was cooking, washing and housework. She didn’t know anything else.

When my sister Amelia was born, she was so small they laid her in a drawer and we called her ‘Doll Doll.’ They put her in the Queen Elizabeth Children’s Hospital when she had rheumatic fever and she didn’t go to school because of that. She was happy-go-lucky, she was my Doll Doll.

One day, when she was at school, there was an air raid and all the children hid under the tables. They saw a man’s legs walk in and Doll Doll cried out, ‘That’s my dad!’ and her friend asked, ‘How do you recognise him?’ and Doll Doll said, ‘Because he has such shiny shoes.’ He took Doll Doll and said to the teacher, ‘My daughter’s not coming to school any more.’

I was dressmaking from when I left school at fourteen. My first job was at C&A in Shepherdess Walk but I didn’t like it, so I told my mum and left. I left school at Easter and the war came in August. After that, I didn’t go to work at all for five years. Then I went to work in Bishopsgate sewing soldiers’ trousers, I didn’t like that much either so I stayed at home.

Doll Doll and I, we used to love going to Hoxton Hall for concerts every Saturday. It cost threepence a ticket and there was a man called Harry Walker who’d sling you out if you didn’t behave. Afterwards, we’d go to a stall outside run by my uncle and he’d give us sixpence, and we’d go and buy pie and mash and go home afterwards – and that was our Saturday night. We used to go there in the week too and do gym and see plays.

On Friday nights, we’d go to the mission at Coster’s Hall and they’d give you a jug of cocoa and a biscuit, and the next week you’d get a jug of soup. It didn’t cost anything. We used to go there when we were hungry. In the school holidays, we went down to Tower Hill Beach and we’d cut through the market and see my dad, and he’d give us a few bob to buy ice cream.

Me and Doll Doll, we stayed at home with my mum and dad. The other three got married but I didn’t want to. I couldn’t find anybody that I liked, so I stayed at home with mummy and daddy, and I was quite happy with them. When they got old we cared for them at home, without any extra help, until they died. We had understanding guvnors and, Doll Doll and I took alternate weeks off work to care for them.

Doll Doll and I moved into the New Era Estate more than thirty years ago. In those days, it was only women and once, when my neighbour thought her boiler was going to explode, we called the fire brigade. Doll Doll leaned over the balcony and called, ‘Coo-ee, young man! Up here!’

We never went outside Hoxton much when we were young, but – when we grew up – Doll Doll and I went to Florida and Las Vegas. I finally settled down and I didn’t wander no more. I worked as a dressmaker at Blaines in Petticoat Lane for thirty-five years, until it closed forty years ago and I was made redundant.”

Doll Doll, Kitty and their mother Grace

Kitty in her flat in Hoxton

Doll Doll

Kitty places fresh flowers next to Doll Doll’s ashes each week

Kitty at a holiday chalet in Guernsey, 1960

Kitty Jennings with her friend and neighbour of sixteen years, Barbara Jezewska

Click here and then scroll down to sign the petition in support of the residents of the New Era Estate

You may also like to read about

Barbara Jezewska, Teacher

Remembering AS Jasper’s ‘A Hoxton Childhood’

Thomas Fairchild, Gardener of Hoxton

James Parkinson, Physician of Hoxton

Mick Hardie

Observe Mick Hardie’s quizzical smile, peering at me askance, when I took his portrait last week upon his return to the corner of Spitalfields that he left in 1967. It is a smile that is not so different from his grin of wonderment captured in a Coronation party photograph, sixty-one years earlier – taken just fifty yards away from this new picture when he was nine years old. Yet in spite of the lifetime that has passed between the two photographs, Mick was able to speak vividly of his youth and formative experiences in these narrow streets, which have changed almost beyond recognition in the last half century.

“I moved away in 1967. We got offered a house in Wanstead and we lived there thirty-nine years, and then we moved to Frinton eight years ago – I don’t know why we moved to Frinton, my wife saw a house there and liked it. Now, everyday I send my daughter a photo of the sea from my mobile phone.

In 1946, my parents moved into Albert Family Dwellings, Deal St, Spitalfields. My mother May Edith Hardie came from Waterlow Buildings in Three Colts Lane, Bethnal Green, but my father, John James Hardie, he was a Scotsman. I had been born in Hitchin in 1942 and I was four, and my elder brother Brian was six, when we moved into the Dwellings. There was still a bomb shelter in the courtyard. I can remember most of the people in the buildings and all the details of the neighbourhood, because my father died of tuberculosis when I was six and I became a child of the streets. If I ever needed anything, I called up to my mother and she would let me down a doughnut wrapped in paper on a string.

Everyone knew each other in Albert Family Dwellings, people leaned out of the windows and chatted with their neighbours above and below. You used to get the old Jewish people sitting around in the evenings, that’s what I remember, and on Friday they asked you to to turn the lights and gas on and off. One of the highlights was the procession from St Anne’s, the Catholic church. They used to process along Underwood Rd, up Vallance Rd and back along Buxton St.

The Truman’s bottling plant was nearby and, every day, I could hear the clogs of the bottling girls in Woodseer St – it was like an army on the march. From the window of Howard Buildings, you could look across and see the girls in the bottling plant.

We had two bedrooms, a living room and a small scullery with a coal bin, which had to be kept clean because my mother used the top of it as a work surface. Everyone had a coal fire and the coal man carried hundred-weight sacks of coal up the stairs on his back. The scullery was so small, you could wash your drawers while sitting on the toilet and, if you wanted a bath, you went to Cheshire St Public Baths. Under Howard Buildings, next door, there was a washhouse where all the residents did their laundry.

I belonged to every youth club, even the Jewish youth club. I bought a bike in Club Row and cycled to Victoria Park. I was always a keen reader and I borrowed books from St Matthew’s Library, across the railway line. I used to buy toast and dripping in the cafe at the foot of the Pedley St bridge and carry it up the steps, and make a greasy thumbprint on the cover of my book. When we had no money, we collected rags and waste paper and sold them to the waste merchant in Cheshire St.

They pulled down All Saints Church in Buxton St when I was was ten, fortunately I could still go to Christ Church Spitalfields – but not very often, mind! After my father’s funeral, my mother never wanted to go to church again. When I left school at fifteen, I got a job as a messenger boy in a shipping office in Gravel Lane, Wapping.

I met my wife, Doreen Delaney, through the All Saints youth club in December 1958 and that was it, we got married in 1963. I remember I was standing on a street corner one night and a friend asked me to come along carol singing with the choir, and I don’t like carol singing but I went along anyway, and that’s how I met Doreen. They never said it would last – but we just celebrated our fiftieth wedding anniversary with Rock ‘n Roll, fish and chips, and beer! She was in the choir. After we met, I went to church just to hear her sing, and I waited for her afterwards and walked her home. Doreen used to roller skate through Liverpool St Station.

A year later, when we decided to get married, my mother in law said, ‘You’d better get a proper job.’ So I became a butcher and that was my life for the next forty-five years. I worked at Smithfield and I worked at Sainsburys, and I worked in the Bethnal Green Rd when every other shop was a butcher’s shop. In those days, you could walk from Hanbury St, down Vallance Rd, then turn left and all along the Whitechapel Rd as far as the cinema, it was full of stalls that were very good.

Because Doreen was in the choir, we got married for free at Christ Church and the choir sang for us as punishment. After we married, we moved into 99 Woodseer St and my brother lived almost next door in 104. Ours had been the flat belonging to Mrs Ivory, the dinner lady at All Saints School. We just had a living room, bedroom, scullery and backyard, but we were quite happy there. I had so many part-time jobs, trying to get a buck.

I can remember everything about that time, yet I can’t tell you what I did yesterday.”

Mick stands at the centre of this detail of the Coronation Party photo with his collar over his jumper

In the full photo, Mick stands centre left at the back of the crowd celebrating in Deal St, 1953

Doreen & Mick on a youth club ramble, 1960

Doreen and friends on the Bank Holiday ramble, 1960

Mick with a friend on a youth club excursion to Littlehampton, 1960

Friends at Littlehampton, 1960

Mick and pal sky-larking for the camera, Littlehampton 1960

Mick & Doreen, married at Christ Church, Spitalfields, 1963

Mick Hardie at Albert Cottages where he lived from 1963-7 when he first married

You may also like to read about these other residents of Deal St, Spitalfilds

Mavis Bullwinkle, Secretary

The Return of Norah Pam

Remembering Robert Poole

Barbara Jezewska, Teacher