Spitalfields Life

The beloved City Corner Cafe in Middlesex St closed this week after exactly fifty years of trading and today, as a tribute, I republish this feature from March 2011 written by Novelist Sarah Winman with pictures by Contributing Photographer Patricia Niven.

Delfina Cordani

The City Corner Cafe was exactly as its name suggested – on the corner of Middlesex Street and Bishopsgate, for half a century. I approached it one crisp morning when the sun had not as yet delivered the promise of warmth, and its steamed windows lured me towards the prospect of delicious smells and chat and coffee inside, and, of course, towards a meeting with the owners, the delightful Delfina Cordani and her son Alexander – a formidable double act.

Time stopped as you entered. This was a sixties cafe – a film set almost – with blue vinyl banquettes and panelled walls and a beautiful well-loved coffee machine by the renowned W.M Still and Son. And I imagined the deals done at these tables over the years, the stories read, the hands held, the illicit whispers of love, and I felt grateful, that here was a cafe of character and charm and warmth, a far cry from the generic, sterile cafes of today.

On the back wall was a beautifully polished mosaic from 1836 depicting the story of Dick – later the eponymous Dirty Dick – a prosperous city merchant and warehouse owner called Nathaniel Bentley, who fell into an abyss of dirt and decay and self-neglect after his fiancé suddenly died on their intended wedding day. Apparently there were two more mosaics to accompany this story, Alex told me – one of the deceased’s funeral carriage with white horses and the other of a Town Crier, both, however, were missing.

Delfina sat down with her coffee. She was an engaging woman, blessed with a youthful spirit and a mischievous smile that belied her eighty-two years. Brought up on a farm in Italy, in Emilia Romagna, she was one of seven children and first came to London as a nursemaid before going to work at Great Ormond Street Hospital.

“At eight o’clock exactly, I used to make coffee for the matron and the governor. I made it by burning the dry grounds of coffee in a saucepan and then adding the boiling water. They loved my coffee, and I still have the saucepan…” she whispered conspiratorially.

“I think I was matron’s favourite,” she laughed. “I did a bit of everything – looked after the children because in those days parents were not allowed to stay in the hospital. Matron used to give me tickets to the theatre and opera. It was quite a special thing in those days – I had to buy a new dress so they’d let me in. I saw La Boheme,” she said, beaming.

“I loved working there. It was a wonderful environment, felt very equal. In Italy, if a man was a doctor he could be a bit snooty, but there it felt different. I remember one consultant raising his hat to me and I told him he didn’t have to do that – I wasn’t an important person – and he said ‘You’re just like me. I had the chance to study. Maybe you didn’t. But that’s our only difference.’

It was my friend Ida who persuaded me to leave the hospital and I went and worked with her as a waitress in Covent Garden in a busy Italian restaurant. I went from a calm environment to the bustle of Covent Garden. But I was never without flowers or vegetables!”

During this time, she met Giuseppe at a dance in the basement of the Italian Church in Clerkenwell, and in 1958 they were married. It was Giuseppe who was eager to set up his own business, and after a quick search, Delfina and Giuseppe spent their first day in the City Corner Cafe in June 1963.

“I was nervous to start with. An Irish girl who worked there before we took it over, stayed on with us and taught me the rules – lots of rules! – ‘Faster Delfina!’ she’d say. ‘People are in a hurry – you must do things faster!’ The cafe was small, few tables. And one day someone from Dirty Dick’s pub came to us and asked if we’d like to expand into the old alleyway beside us. We bought the alleyway and, of course, the mosaic which was part of the ancient wall. It gave us an extra five tables.

I’ve had a very happy life here, met so many wonderful people. We had customers who would come around the counter and make their own tea and leave the money on the side. People were honest then. We had lots of regulars – I would always get birthday cards and Valentine cards. A tall slim distinguished Englishman bought me an orchid on Valentine’s Day – such a rare flower then. If my husband didn’t like it, he certainly didn’t show it! I often wonder what happens to people. They become part of your life and tell you about their families and then one day they disappear. Maybe they’ve retired, maybe moved away? Maybe died? You never know.”

There was a quiet moment as she reflected on the years and the faces and the memories they held. And then Alexander came over and asked proudly. “Have you told her about hiding the British soldiers on your farm?”

“That was another life ago,” Delfina said.

“I’d like to know,” I said. And so she told me.

“It was 1944, I think. I was thirteen. Blonde and small. I noticed my father making lots of sandwiches and I became suspicious because we didn’t eat lots of sandwiches. He told me that he had two British soldiers hidden under the hay in the barn. He had found them hiding in his vineyard and told them to stay put until dark, because the area was full of Germans. He hadn’t told us children because children talk, and if word got out the Germans would have burned down the farm and killed us all. He forbade me tell anyone. They stayed for a week, I think. I saw one of them once, he had blonde wavy hair. And then they disappeared and that was it. After the war the British MoD sent my father a plaque thanking him for his bravery. They also sent him money to pay for those soldiers keep.

I think they must have survived those soldiers, don’t you?”

And she looked at me with those deep eyes, as if she needed reassurance that her father’s brave efforts had not been in vain.

The extension of the cafe into a former alley.

The mosaic from 1836 upon the wall of what was once an alley leading to Dirty Dick’s next door.

Delfina

Alexander

A food order

Carlian

Delfina’s lunch

In Middlesex St for fifty years

Photographs copyright © Patricia Niven

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Bob Mazzer at eight years old

Observe the astute gaze of the young photographer – evidence, perhaps, that even before he got his first camera as a Bar Mitzvah gift at thirteen years old, Bob Mazzer already possessed the singular vision that was to make his pictures so distinctive. Indeed, if you examine all Bob’s childhood photos many possess the same arresting glance that I consider a praecursor of his future talent.

“I’m the real deal,” Bob admitted to me proudly when I first met him, “born in the Royal London Hospital, Whitechapel, I grew up in Berners St where I lived in Basil House next to the Synagogue that I went to every Saturday.”

“My experience of life up to nine years old, when we left the East End, was that it was a golden age. Of course, there was some bad stuff – I remember the iron gates to Basil House collapsing on top of somebody and we had to stay indoors. I remember running across the road from the school gates opposite and being hit by a car, and I came round in the gutter with a crowd standing over me.

Twice a year, we’d go up to Manchester to visit my mother’s family and my dad, who was a cabbie, would drop us off at Euston. I remember the sound of the steam blowing off, at six years old it is the loudest thing you’ve ever heard.

There was a photographer on my mother’s side, my Uncle Monty, a Mancunian who had his own studio. It failed and he opened a men’s wear shop when I was very young but I think the magic of it must have sunk in. The artistic talent came down through my mother’s side. One of my cousins was an architect for the London County Council and my mother’s youngest brother worked for Mather & Platt who made the engines for the fountains at Marble Arch – and as a kid, I was taken to see them. My mother’s father had been cut of out the family for philandering and giving money to floozies. He went to live in a cottage and I knew him as ‘the man with the blue face’ because in every photo his face was biroed out. I knew nothing. I was only told who he was when I was older, after he died. Engineers, architects and philanderers – all from my mother’s family and it had a huge influence upon me.

A lot of my father’s family moved out of the East End to a bright new future. We only had part of a passageway as a kitchen outside the flat and when I went back years later, I couldn’t believe how small it all was. My parents had friends that moved to Woodbery Down where there was the first Comprehensive School and that was the catalyst for us to move too.

I got a camera when I was Bar Mitzvahed at thirteen. It was an Ilford Sporty, a crap little camera of plastic and tin and I still have the first photograph I took with it, a picture of the London Hilton. But the genesis of my photography was at Woodberry Down School where they had a dark room. It was all down to my Art Master, Mike Palmer. He put the books of Irving Penn and Cartier Bresson in front of me said, ‘You can do this.’ I was the star pupil in the Art Department and I didn’t much bother with anything else, I used to bunk off other lessons and hang out in the Art Room.

At thirteen years old, I started going to Saturday Art Club at Hornsey College of Art. I didn’t know what was going on then because I was a kid, I was in my own personal universe. When I studied Graphic Design, I only completed one design project because I spent all my time developing my photographs. There was Enzo Ragazzini, an Italian Photographer who had a studio in the Cromwell Rd and we students would get stoned there and drive his Citroen around and do photography projects. He showed me the excitement of being successful at photography and I learnt a lot of darkroom technique from him.

In 1969, I was twenty-one and went to America with a camera with no lens and my American girlfriend bought me a lens in Pittsburgh. That kicked me off, I started photographing America and blew my mind at the first opportunity. I still value the innocence of the photographs I took then. Even now, I’m  trying to show the quality of seeing things for the first time that comes through in those pictures. It can be quite hard to recover that vision once you’ve had your eyes opened.”

Bob’s dad was a cab driver known as “Mottle” or “Mott” Mazzer, 1947

Mott outside Basil House in Berners St with Bob’s mother Augusta known as “Jean,” 1947

Bob sits on his dad’s taxi in Berners St, 1948

Bob is wheeled past the Tower of London by his mum in 1948, on the right is his mother’s sister-in-law and cousin.

Bob in Berners St, 1950

Bob and his dad, 1950

Bob with his dad visiting a spitfire in Trafalgar Sq, 1952

Bob at Harry Gosling school, 1953

Bob climbs on a cannon outside the Tower of London in 1956 with his grandmother and sister in the foreground and cousins on the cannon

Bob Mazzer was given his first camera for his Bar Mitzvah at thirteen years old at the Bernard Baron Settlement Synagogue.

Two of the earliest tube pictures by Bob Mazzer.

Photographs copyright © Bob Mazzer

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You might think that the life of a painter &  decorator might be uneventful, but this has not been the case for Terry Penton. “I’m thinking of writing a book,” he revealed to me, “I’ve been through so many things and so much has happened to me, and with everything I’ve done there is a story to tell.”

After bringing up his family in Bethnal Green, Terry moved to Chingford ten years ago. At one end of the street is the expanse of the King George V Reservoir and at the other is Epping Forest where Terry walks his dog every day, observing the sunset over the East End. “People don’t realise there’s sheep grazing in E4,” he informed me.

With a restless spirit and a fearless nature, Terry has always been open to the opportunities that life offers and, as a consequence, he has been granted an enviable breadth of experience and knowledge – as I quickly discovered when I sat down for a chat with him yesterday.

“I was born at 5 Treby St, Mile End, and lived there until I was four. John, my dad, was a Painter & Decorator for Stepney Borough Council. He died of lung cancer when I was three and we couldn’t afford the rent. Eve, my mother had four children so she took refuge at Parnell Rise Methodist Church and she worked there as a caretaker.

At the church, she met someone. George’d not long come from Jamaica on the Windrush. He was a bus conductor on the number eight route. She and George got married, and all her family disowned her and all her family disowned us too. The church wrote and said that now she had a husband we must get out. But we read it as because she had married a black man. They gave her one week’s notice.

I was six when we moved to Brooke Rd, Clapton. At first, it seemed everything was fine because there were other families from the West Indies but there was a lot of resentment and we had all sorts of trouble including bricks through the window. The black community didn’t like it that my step-dad had married a white woman. When my mother got pregnant and had another baby, one of the neighbours in the street asked to have a look, when she had it in a pram, and when they saw it was a mixed race baby, they spat in her face and called her a whore.

Because of my dad, I didn’t see colour. He brought me up like a Jamaican and I could speak the patois. I learnt that what colour or religion you are doesn’t matter, there’s good and bad in all. I was in a bunch of kids that included Irish kids, kids from Manchester, black kids, Turkish Cypriots and Greek Cypriots. We hadn’t been exposed to racism so it didn’t matter to us.

After we moved to Brooke Rd, my step-dad started drinking and we had holes in our shoes – he had a nice suit and tie, and we had nothing. My mother worked in a laundrette and I used to go round the bins collecting Domestos bottles for the tuppence deposit on each one. I walked to Manor House on Saturday to wash motors at nine years old. We learnt to survive. My old man hit me with a buckle until I stopped him at sixteen.

I never liked school from day one. The only subjects I engaged with were Carpentry, Geography and English – and that was because you could write stories. I had an argument with a teacher who pulled me up to the front of the class and told me to bend over, and he kicked me and he caught me underneath which resulted in me having to have an operation. Three months later, I got out of hospital and went back and bashed him up. Then I got suspended and stayed suspended, I left school at thirteen years and four months. By then, I was working for a local butcher, going down to Smithfield at three o’clock in the morning and loading lorries up. I went back to school at fifteen but left after three months and started as a trainee butcher in Bethnal Green at West Layton Butchers at £3 a week.

They played pranks on me, sending me to walk all the way to the Roman Rd and back to buy wire mesh gloves when such things didn’t exist. At the time I thought it was meant to be funny, so what I decided to do was to throw a bucket of livers’ blood over them through the grille at the side door, while they was putting the rubbish out. Unfortunately, two old ladies walked past. One had just had a blue rinse and it was covered in blood, so she went into the shop to complain and I was sacked on the spot.

I couldn’t get another job in butchery because I couldn’t get the references, so I worked five years in the rag trade and then I went into the building game at eighteen, until I was twenty years of age when I got a job working as a mobile caretaker for the Greater London Council.  I became resident caretaker in the Ocean Estate, Stepney. I was courting then and a maisonette became available in Bethnal Green, so I put in for it – only the local office didn’t like the fact that my girlfriend was living with me and I was told to get married. We married in St Matthews Bethnal Green on 29th March, 1980. After two years, my son Daniel was born in Barts Hospital, two years later my son Steven was born and twelve months later my son Frankie was born.

At that time, we were told that the GLC was handing over our caretakers’ contracts to Tower Hamlets, so at this point I joined the National Union of Public Employees as a Shop Steward, becoming Branch Secretary, Branch Chair and negotiating our terms and conditions, so we would be protected when the handover came. D-Day came on 31st October 1985, and if you didn’t sign your contract you were dismissing yourself. I was approached by management and offered a senior position if I got the other guys to sign, which I refused to do. Out of thirty-three caretakers, eleven refused to sign and were dismissed. We had to fight on our own because we were without contracts and I set up a tent and camped outside the Town Hall, and we occupied the Town Hall on an number of occasions. It went to court but, in the end, I left after thirteen years caretaking with nothing. I always believed being a caretaker was a kind of social work, I started a football team for kids on the block and I kept an eye on the old folks. A well-organised caretaker is the key to a good estate.

I became a member of Stepney & Bethnal Green Labour Party and went to Nottingham to support the miners, I was on the picket line in Wapping for a year and I was in Dover supporting the P&O workers. I even stood for election in Weavers’ Ward but got a disappointing six hundred votes.

While working for the Council, I attended Hackney Building College in my own time and did a City & Guilds in Painting & Decorating. I had three children and a wife, and rent to pay, so once I lost my job I went out and did Painting & Decorating. I also did decorative effects and I used to sell furniture and fireplace surrounds and then I’d marbleise them. I took a workshop in the Sunbury Workshops in the Boundary Estate but the recession kicked in and I couldn’t afford it. I was approached by a printer called “Johnny the Ace” who was looking for a little workshop to share for printing leaflets and flyers and he would pay 80% of the rent. So I partitioned the unit, and I could do my furniture at the front while he was doing his printing at the back.

A couple of months went by and I discovered he was printing money. I was faced with the option of going to the police and face the consequences of being revealed as a grass, so I decided not to say anything. But the workshop was wired and I was charged with conspiracy to produce counterfeit goods. The printer “Johnny the Ace” was working for the police, and it was a complete set up and there was nothing I could to about it.

I pleaded my innocence and told them I’d been set up, but I was advised by my barrister to go guilty and seek leniency. I received three years of which I served eighteen months. I’d been going to Tower Hamlets College doing an Access Course to go to University with a view to becoming a Probation Officer. I studied English, Maths, Sociology, Economics, Law and Politics. I went to London Guildhall University where I was studying for an Honours Degree in Law & Politics.

When I come out of prison, they approached me to return to University but I said ‘No,’ and I went back to Painting & Decorating. I’d like to give something back and I’d like to teach young people Painting & Decorating and decorative effects. My eldest son works with me as as Plasterer, I taught him Painting & Decorating. All my children work, they’ve got a sense of responsibility and they’ll never forget where they’ve come from.

Now we live in North Chingford and it’s not as friendly as Bethnal Green, but there’s this politeness here. People say, ‘Good morning’ and they thank the driver when they get off the bus. It’s taken me ten years to get used to it.”

Terry aged three with his father John in Ilfracombe, 1959 – “The Summer before my father died, we went down to see him at the convalescent home in Devon. He bought me a pair of woollen swimming trunks with a seahorse sewn onto them, and to this day I love seahorses.”

Terry as a six year old at his sister’s wedding, 1963.

Terry’s marriage at St Matthew’s, Bethnal Green, 29th March 1980.

Terry carries the banner for Stepney & Bethnal Green Labour Party in the eighties.

Terry with his family today

Terry Penton, Painter & Decorator

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