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Business in Bishopsgate, 1892

October 26, 2013
by the gentle author

A Bishopsgate Trade Directory of one hundred and twenty years ago was recently discovered in the archive at the Bishopsgate Institute and the adverts for all the specialist small trades that once gathered there portray a very different kind of commerce to the faceless corporate financial industries in their gleaming blocks which dominate this street today.

St Botolph’s Church & White Hart Tavern, Bishopsgate

A residual fragment of old Bishopsgate

Images courtesy Bishopsgate Institute

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Philip Pittack, Rag Merchant

October 25, 2013
by the gentle author

You may recall my stories following the progress of Crescent Trading, Spitalfields’ last cloth warehouse, and today it is my pleasure to introduce the tale of Philip Pittack who runs the business in partnership with Martin White – together constituting the most celebrated comedy double-act in London textiles.

“Even though my parents didn’t have a lot, they always made sure we were properly turned out”

There are very few who can say – as Philip Pittack can – that they are a third generation rag merchant. In fact, Philip’s grandfather Mendell was a weaver in Poland before he came to this country, which means the family involvement with textiles might go back even further through preceding generations.

Although the work of a rag merchant may seem arcane now, it was the praecursor of recycling. Today, with characteristic panache, Philip has found an ingenious way to embody the past and present of his profession. He has carved a cosy niche for himself – working with Martin White, a cloth merchant of equal pedigree, at Crescent Trading – selling high quality remnants, ends of runs and surplus fabric, to fashion students, young designers and film and theatre costumiers.

Few can match Philip encyclopaedic knowledge of cloth, its qualities and manufacture, yet he is generous with his inheritance – delighting in passing on his textile wisdom, acquired over generations, to young people starting in the industry.

My grandfather Mendell came over from Poland more than a hundred years ago, before the First World War. ‘Ptack’ means ‘little bird’ in Polish but, when he arrived at the Port of London as an immigrant, it got written incorrectly down as Pittack, and that was what it became. He lived in Stamford Hill and had a warehouse at 102/104 Mare St. He went around the textile factories in the East End, collecting the waste which got shredded up and made back into cloth, but he was a lazy bugger who liked whisky and women. My grandmother, she was a tough nut, she worked at the Cally selling rags. It was a free-for-all, and she barged her way in and always made sure she got a good pitch.

My father David, he went to school in Mile End and went into the family business as a kid. He learnt the rag business with his brother Joe. They were tough guys brought up the hard way. When Mosley and his cronies came around, they were in the front row – you didn’t argue with them. They moved into buying surplus rolls of cloth as well as rags and opened a shop too. He did that until he died in February 1977, aged sixty-six. He smoked Churchman’s No 1 like a chimney. He was big fellow with hands like bunches of bananas but he wasted away to a twig.

I used to have a Saturday job, when I was ten years old, to get my pocket money, at a shop selling electrical goods and records, Bardens. I went out with the guys installing televisions and fridges. Eventually, they offered me a job at fourteen years old and were training me to be TV engineer. But, one day, my dad bought a large pile of remnants which took three days to sort and he said, ‘You’re not going to work tomorrow, you’re going to come and help me schlep!’ I lost my job at Bardens and that’s how I started as a rag merchant at fourteen and a half.

After three days of carrying sacks of rags, my father said to me, ‘This is what you are going to do, and you are also a rag sorter.” And that’s what I did, night and bloody day. And if I did anything wrong, my grandfather would come up and thump me on the head. You had either wools, cottons or rayons in those days. There were over a hundred grades of rags, both in quality and material, and  I could tell you hundreds of names of different grades of rags but they wouldn’t mean anything to you.

Then eventually, when I was eighteen, my father said, ‘Here’s a hundred pounds, go out and buy rags, and if you don’t buy any and I don’t sell any, then you don’t earn anything.’ There were hundreds of clothing factories in the East End in those days and you had to go cold-calling to buy the textile waste. There used to be twenty other chaps doing the same thing, so it was very competitive. You climbed under the sewing tables and filled up sacks, then weighed them on a hand-held butchers’ scale with a hook on one end. If they were looking, they got the correct weigh. But the art of the exercise was balancing the sack on your toe while you were weighing it and you could get several pounds off like that. My father taught me how to do it. You’d say, ‘Do you want the correct weight or the correct price?’ and if they said, ‘The correct price,’ then you cut down the weight. They’d have to have paid the dustman to take it away, if we didn’t, but they got greedy.

Over several years, I built up my own round and went round in the truck. But then, my uncle got caught stealing off my dad. By that time, we had a shop in Barnet, so my father turned round – he’d had enough of my uncle thieving – and he said, ‘Give him the shop.’ We had to give up that side of the business. After my father got sick, and I got married and became a parent, he took a back seat. It was very hard work, packing up three or four tons of rags into sacks. Each sack weighed between fifty and one hundred and fifty pounds, and I used to carry them on my back. I can’t believe I used to do it now!

We carried with the business until I walked away. I’d had enough of my brother, I found he was doing things behind my back with the money. I signed away all the merchandise and suppliers to him in June 1978. I had nothing, they cut off my gas and electricity, and I had my kids at private school. I borrowed five hundred pounds from my sister-in-law to do a little deal. It was the first deal I did on my own. I bought all this cloth for a gentleman who operated twenty-four hours a day out of Great Titchfield St, but when I got there I discovered he already had a warehouse full of the same stuff and I was stuck with a rented van containing five hundred pounds worth of it.

I was almost crying as I was sitting in the truck, waiting for the light to change, until this guy who I knew through business walked up and said, ‘Why don’t you sell it to me?’ I opened up the truck to show him and he said, ‘We’ll buy that.’ But he had a reputation for not paying, so I said, ‘I’ve got to have the money now. As long as you can give me the five hundred pounds, I can come have the rest tomorrow.’ I went and paid back my sister-in-law, and the next day I came back and he gave me the rest. It all came out in the wash! I made four hundred pounds on the deal, and I was jumping up and down on the pavement. Then I went off, and paid the gas and electricity bills and everything else.

I built up my own round with my own people and, eventually, I went to Prouts and bought my own truck. I knew which one I wanted and ex-wife loaned me the money. I went out and filled it up with diesel and it was only me – I’d arrived as a rag merchant.”

At a family wedding, 1946. Philip is three years old. On the left is Barnet Smulevich, Philip’s grandfather. Mendell Pittack, Philip’s other grandfather stands on the right. Philip’a parents, Tilley & David stand behind him and his elder brother Stanley and their cousin, Rosalind Ferguson.

Philip holds his mother’s hand at Cailley St Clapton, shortly after the war, surrounded by other family members.

Riding Muffin the Mule on the beach at Cliftonville, aged six in 1949

Philip with his parents, David and Tilley

Aged fourteen

Bar mitvah, 1956

David Pittack sorting rags at his warehouse in Mare St in the sixties

Skylarking after hours at the Copper Grill in Wigmore St in the sixties

Philip on bongos, enjoying high jinks with pals in Mallorca

In a silver mohair suit, at a Waste Trades Dinner at the Connaught Rooms in Great Queen St

Posing with a pal’s Mustang at Great Fosters country house hotel

passport photo, seventies

Best man at a wedding in the seventies

In the eighties

Martin White & Philip Pittack, Winter 2010

Crescent Trading, Quaker Court/Pindoria Mews, Quaker St, E1 6SN. Open Sunday-Friday.

You may like to read my earlier stories about Crescent Trading

The Return of Crescent Trading

Fire at Crescent Trading

Philip Pittack & Martin White, Cloth Merchants

All Change at Crescent Trading

The Gentle Author’s Spitalfields Pub Crawl

October 24, 2013
by the gentle author

In Spitalfields, I can undertake a pub crawl whenever I please without even leaving the parish.

The Golden Heart, Commercial St

The Pride of Spitalfields, Heneage St

Ten Bells, Commercial St

Commercial Tavern, Commercial St

Woodin’s Shades, Bishopsgate

Dirty Dick’s, Bishopsgate

Water Poet, Folgate St

The Magpie, New St

The Bell, Middlesex St

Duke of Wellington, Toynbee St

King’s Stores, Widegate St

The Gun, Brushfield St

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The Gentle Author’s Lantern Shows

October 23, 2013
by the gentle author

The publication of my Album gives me a wonderful excuse to stage live presentations of some of the photos of London I love the most and, announcing the first shows today, gives me the opportunity to publish more unseen glass slides from the hundred year-old collection of the London & Middlesex Archaeological Society at the Bishopsgate Institute – like this enigmatic picture of an unidentified street plastered with bills.

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MY MAGIC LANTERN SHOW

Monday 28th October 7pm at Rich Mix, Bethnal Green Rd, E1

I will be showing and talking about my favourite pictures of London, both past & present.

Free admission but tickets must be reserved by emailing info@bricklanebookshop.co.uk

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A NIGHT IN OLD LONDON

Thursday 31st October 6:30pm at Westminster Arts Library, Leicester Sq, WC2

I will be showing the lantern slides of London 100 years ago from the collection of the London &  Middlesex Archaeological Society with live piano accompaniment by David Power, the eighty-six-year-old Showman, and Henrietta Keeper, thirty-year-veteran of Tate & Lyle Concert Parties, will be singing the songs of old London.

Presented by Salon for the City and sponsored by Hendricks Gin

Tickets £7 & £4 available from We Go Tickets

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If you are a bookseller in London and you would like me to come and do a magic lantern show in your shop before Christmas please email me spitalfieldslife@gmail.com.  If you are a retailer and you would like to sell copies of The Gentle Author’s London Album please email bridgetlj@faber.co.uk who deals with trade orders.

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Holborn Bars

Women shelling peas at Covent Garden Market

Graffitied doorway at Westminster School

The Monument

Leicester Sq

The throne of England, Westminster Abbey

In Fleet St

St George St, Hanover Sq

In Pump Court, Middle Temple

Chopping block & executioner’s mask at the Tower of London

Raven at the Tower of London

Rays of sunlight in St Bartholomew-the-Great

Unknown street with billboards

At the back of St Bartholomew-the-Great, Smithfield

Delivering newsprint to the News of the World and Boys Own Paper off Fleet St

Watch House at Newgate

Farringdon Rd

Funeral effigy of Nelson in Westminster Abbey

In Lincoln’s Inn Fields

Westminster Abbey

Paddington Station

St Ethelburga’s, Bishopsgate

St Lukes, Old St, on a foggy day

Lantern slides courtesy Bishopsgate Institute

HOW TO WRITE A BLOG THAT PEOPLE WILL WANT TO READ

This course will examine the essential questions which must be addressed if you wish to write a blog that people will want to read.

A few places are still available  on my two-day course this weekend at The Guardian, 90 York Way, N1

Saturday 26th & Sunday 27th October, 10am – 5pm

Book your place online at Event Brite

At the Mannequin Factory

October 22, 2013
by the gentle author

In the Museum Department

You are never alone at the mannequin factory. Wherever you turn at Proportion>London’s manufacturing operation in Walthamstow, there is always someone else in the room with you – and, even if these naked figures are inanimate, you cannot ignore their presence.

Eighty people work in the factory yet they are outnumbered by mannequins and, when Contributing Photographer Patricia Niven & I walked into the building, the first thing we saw were hordes of them lined up as far as the eye could see.

It might easily turn ugly if the mannequins decided to rebel but – fortunately – they are placid, waiting patiently for their time to go out into the world. Perhaps their good nature is explained by the love and care lavished upon them by their creators, producing well-balanced shop dummies with perfect bodies. Those created in this particular Eden are shameless in their nudity, even if their destiny lies in clothing. These are pedigree mannequins manufactured by Britain’s leading supplier for many of the most famous High St brands and fashion houses. More than eighty per cent migrate, constituting a global retail display diaspora originating from Walthamstow.

Built in 1911 for manufacturing buses to transport recruits to the First World War, the handsome factory in Blackhorse Lane has seen many incarnations – used for manufacturing chocolates and then footwear before it became the birthplace for a new race of mannequins in 2000. “Thirteen years ago, I was in shoe manufacturing,” explained Peter Ferstendik, the owner, “but the industry was destroyed by the Far East and we had no option but to cease production, so then I decided to buy this company and improve it.”

Seigel & Stockman was founded in Paris in 1867 and began trading in London in the nineteen-twenties, manufacturing paper maché dummies for couture houses and dressmakers’ showrooms, and benefitting from the rise of department stores. When Peter acquired the company, it was independent of the parent and operating with fifteen employees from a factory Old St, still making mannequins in the traditional manner as it had done for one hundred and thirty years.

Today, with five times the staff, Proportion>London produces fibreglass models alongside the original paper maché and has diversified into a wide range of display mannequins for retail and museum use that are continually redesigned and updated. “Our competitors copy our mannequins,” admitted Peter, with more than a hint of swagger,“but we are always a year ahead. The only time we should worry is if they stop copying us!”

Peter Ferstendik, Chairman of the company  – “We live and breathe retail display”

Leon Silva, Supervisor for Paper Maché – “I am the only original employee from Old St – when I started here in 1993, we just had paper maché but now fibreglass is the thing.”

Mayur Bhadalia, Mould Maker – “Since 1987, I worked in this factory as a shoemaker, but in 2000 I became a mould maker.”

Mark Deans, Mould Maker – “I’ve always made models, since I was a boy”

Arjan Shbani & Basil Simoni, Laminators

Des Riviere & Dilhan Mustafa, wood finishers. Des – “When I started I did whole figures but now I just do arms.”

Ghazala Asghar, Anna Ostrowko & Amina Burosee

Andrew Thomas, Cleaner & Odd Jobs Man – “I used to pack chocolates here twenty years ago.”

Old museum dummies

George Bush & The Queen

Photographs copyright © Patricia Niven

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Remembering The Queen Elizabeth Hospital For Children

October 21, 2013
by the gentle author

Playing at Doctor – A Scene in the Hospital for Children, Hackney Rd, Bethnal Green

The former Queen Elizabeth Hospital for Children in the Hackney Rd is a landmark of deep significance for generations of East Enders, yet a decision to flatten it and replace it with densely-built generic ‘new slums’ type flats has been made by Tower Hamlets Council, without any public consultation, dismissing the option of integrating the old building into the housing scheme. As the decision goes to the Mayor of London, Boris Johnson, on Wednesday this week there is one last chance to save it. So today, I sketch a brief history of the tradition of care that had its home there for over one hundred and twenty years in the hope that this will not be erased.

In 1867 – Quaker sisters, Ellen & Mary Elizabeth Phillips, established a Dispensary for Women & Children in two rented rooms in Virginia Rd, Shoreditch. The previous year, at the time of the cholera epidemic in the East End, Ellen had worked in the cholera wards at the Royal London Hospital in Whitechapel through a connection to Elizabeth Garret, Britain’s first woman doctor. By 1871, the sisters had the lease at 327 Hackney Rd, on the site that would one day become their custom-built hospital to minister exclusively to the needs of sick children.

Just three years later, they laid the foundation stone for the building in adjoining Goldsmith’s Row, attracting Royal patronage and the support of Oscar Wilde who wrote a poem for their fund-raising publication. The attractive terracotta sunflower freizes upon William Beck’s building reflect the Arts & Crafts style of this era and, throughout the interior, details of iron work and ceramic tiled floors continue this decorative theme. In 1904, the building on Hackney Rd was added, defining the triangular shape of the complex which continued to expand, acquiring additional buildings to fulfil the needs of the hospital throughout the twentieth century.

Amalgamation with the Queen Elizabeth Children’s Hospital in Shadwell in 1942 delivered the name by which it was most commonly known. Charles Dickens was patron of this hospital, that he found operating in a sail loft in 1869 and for which he raised money to build a dedicated hospital building.

Thus, two nineteenth century philanthropic ventures combined to create an institution that was absorbed into the National Health Service and closed at the end of the twentieth century when the services it offered were fulfilled elsewhere, rendering it defunct. Yet in 1974, it was the largest children’s teaching hospital in Britain with three hundred students every year and Victoria Holt, General Practitioner, remembers her time there fondly – as the most inspirational part of her training.

“I worked there in 1988 when I was training to be a GP in Hackney. The Hospital served the East End but it was also used by Great Ormond St as the place where their nurses were trained – they had to spend some time ‘roughing it’ in the East End. What was so special about the Queen Elizabeth was that it was the opposite of Great Ormond St, it didn’t have a rarified atmosphere. You could literally walk in the door and be seen in the Accident & Emergency Department. It was a genuinely open door policy, whoever you were and wherever you came from – people who had grown up in the East End would bring their children there from Essex because it felt like home to them.

The complete range of all children’s illnesses came through the door and I learnt to distinguish between a not-very-ill and a very-ill child really quickly. I learnt so much there, it meant that even though I was incredibly young, I had this depth of experience in paediactrics. It was about an ethos – there was a collective wisdom in the community – people understood that you took your sick children there, because that hospital had looked after their families for generations.”

Sign the petition to save the Queen Elizabeth Hospital Building here

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The Queen Elizabeth Hospital closed in 1996

The Queen Elizabeth Hospital opened on this site in 1872

“Each nurse shall attend to the children with care and kindness, and use every endeavour to make them happy.” – from the Hospital Constitution of 1874

The Hackney Rd building opened in 1904

The Goldsmiths Row Building with its attractive sunflower freizes was opened in 1880

Victoria Holt is a GP who did part of her training at Queen Elizabeth Hospital for Children in 1988 – “The complete range of all children’s illnesses came through the door and I learnt to distinguish between a not-very-ill and a very-ill child really quickly. I learnt so much there…”

Portrait of Victoria Holt © Colin O’Brien

Archive images courtesy Prof Rob Higgins

At The Launch Of My Album

October 20, 2013
by the gentle author

The crowds pour into Christ Church

In Spitalfields, the October dusk was gathering as the bells rang out through the narrow streets to summon the crowds and, when the great wooden doors swung open, the excited throng poured in to fill the magnificent baroque church.

But Crudgie, London’s most famous motorbicycle courier, celebrated for his great height and astonishing facial hair, was already inside. Ever ingenious at finding ways in, “Don’t people realise there is a side door? “ he queried with more than a hint of swagger. I showed him his portrait in my Album. “Oh! Couldn’t you have airbrushed my nose?” he gasped, exclaiming in surprise at seeing himself. “It’s a very fine nose, Crudgie,” I reassured him, as he took consolation in a glass of Truman’s beer.

Just that morning, I had collected the huge screen sewn together by the tailor in Hanbury St from fabric supplied by Crescent Trading in Quaker St, and now favourite images from the Album appeared shining like apparitions in the gloom of the old church. After all the months that designer David Pearson and I worked through the night to make the most beautiful Album that we could for you, it was a joy to see people taking up the treasured copies and leafing through them with eager curiosity now.

With newly-purchased copies under their arm, guests were enjoying Justin Gellatly’s spicy buns and slices of his enormous ‘Cathedral Loaf ‘served by the team from Leila’s Shop. One by one, people from the Album appeared as if they had stepped from its pages to join the party.

There were Punch & Judy Professors meeting Wax Ladies from Wentworth St meeting Boxers photographed by John Claridge. There was Gary Arber the printer, Henrietta Keeper the ballad singer, Sandra Esqulant the Queen of Spitalfields, Clive Murphy the Oral Historian, Viscountess Boudica the Trendsetter from Bethnal Green, Mister Mondo representing the Pellicci regulars, among many others – and Aaron Biber, London’s Oldest Barber at ninety-one years old, was guest of honour. Meanwhile in a corner, Barn the Spoon produced an unfeasibly large pile of wood chips as he took the opportunity to show off his bravura spoon-making abilities by knocking up a few examples for guests.

Then it was time to sit at a table and inscribe copies of my Album and enjoy the rare opportunity of this special occasion to meet you, the readers. It was an extraordinary moment, as I sat signing books – after writing more than fifteen hundred stories over the last four years and two months – to realise how far we have come together. And it fills me with excited anticipation to continue in my chosen path through the years that lie ahead and discover where it will all lead…

Event photographs by Simon Mooney & paparazzi shots by Jeremy Freedman

On bookshop duty, Charlie De Wet and friend enjoy a bracing drink before the doors open

Leila McAlister serves Justin Gellatly’s spicy buns with slices of caerphilly to Punch & Judy Professors

Glasses of Truman’s Swift & Swallow to quench our literary thirst

Stefan Dickers, Archivist at the Bishopsgate Institute, makes the speech of welcome

Admiring Adam Dant’s ‘The Map of Spitalfields Life’

Actor Harry Landis settles down to look at the Album

Paul Gardner regales Ros Niblett and Jo Waterhouse

Tate & Lyle Concert Party Veteran, Henrietta Keeper, sings

Roger Mills and Mavis Bullwinkle spotted in the crowd

Carrom Paul was teaching the rudiments of Carrom

At 91 years old, Aaron Biber London’s Oldest Barber, was guest of honour

Pearly Queens enjoy a chinwag

London’s most famous motorcycle courier, Crudgie, flirts with Joan Rose

Barn the Spoon quickly produced a pile of wood chips

King Sour performed his poems

Henrietta Keeper signed autographs for fans

Staff of Bishopsgate Institute performed as ‘The Costermongers’

Remembering Philip Christou of Gina’s Restaurant

Photographer, Jeremy Freedman, got out his ring flash and turned paparazzi, as you see below

Pictures above copyright © Simon Mooney

Pearly King grapples with Tayo & Abby Abimbola

Delwar Hussain and Julie Begum

Landlady of The Golden Heart & Queen of Spitalfields, Sandra Esqulant, & Rodney Archer, Aesthete

Photographers Bob Mazzer & Patricia Niven with Paul Bommer, Artist.

The glamorous Abimbola sisters of Franceskka Fabrics in Wentworth St

Henry Freedman with Philip Pittack of Crescent Trading

Angling Writer, John Andrews, & the Duchess

Cheers to the Spitalfields bell ringers!

The Truman’s van arrives at Christ Church

Paparazzi shots copyright © Jeremy Freedman

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On Publication Day For My Album