David Hoffman at Fieldgate Mansions
Children playing at Fieldgate Mansions, April 1981
This series of photographs by David Hoffman, taken while he was squatting in Fieldgate Mansions off Fieldgate St in Whitechapel from 1973 until 1984, record a vital community of artists, homeless people and Bengali families who inhabited these streets at the time they were scheduled for demolition. Thanks to the tenacity and courage of these people, the dignified buildings survive today, restored and still in use for housing.
David Hoffman’s photographs record the drama of the life of his fellow squatters, subject to violent harassment and the constant threat of eviction, yet these images are counterpointed by his tender and intimate observation of children at play. After dropping out of university, David Hoffman found a haven in Fieldgate Mansion where he could develop his photography, which became his life’s work.
Characterised by an unflinching political insight, this photography is equally distinguished by a generous human sympathy and both these qualities are present in his Fieldgate Mansions pictures, manifesting the emergence of one photographer’s vision – as David Hoffman explained to me recently.
“It was the need for a place to live that brought me here. I’d come down from university without a degree in 1970. I’d dossed in Black Lion Yard and rented a squalid slum room in Chicksand St, before a permanent room came up for very little money in Black Lion Yard in 1971 above Solly Granatt’s jewellery shop. But the whole street was due for demolition, and when he died we squatted in it until they knocked it down in November 1973.
Then I found a place in Fieldgate Mansions which was being squatted by half a dozen people from the London College of Furniture. Bengali families were having a hard time and we were opening up flats in the Mansions for them to live there. We were really active, taking over other empty buildings that were being kept vacant in Myrdle St and Parfett St, because the owners found it was cheaper to keep them empty. We also squatted many empty houses further east in Stepney preventing the council from demolishing them. We took over and got evicted, and came back the next day and, when they put them up for auction, we used to bid and our bid won but, of course, we had no money so we couldn’t pay – it was a delaying tactic. It was a war of attrition to keep the buildings for people rather than for profit.
The bailiffs and police came at four in the morning and got everyone out and boarded up the property and put dogs in. Then we got dog handlers who removed the dogs and took them to Leman St Police Station as strays, and then we moved back in again.
When I moved into Fieldgate Manions it was late November and there was no hot water and the council had poured concrete down the toilet and ripped out the wiring. There was no insulation in the roof, it was just open to the slates and the temperature inside was as freezing as it was outside. I found a gas water heater in a skip and got it working on New Year’s Eve, so I counted in the New Year 1974 with hot water as the horns of the boats sounded on the river.
I decided to do Communication Design at the North East London Polytechnic, because I’d been taking photographs since I was a child and I’d helped set up a darkroom at university. At Fieldgate Mansions, I had a two room flat, one was my bedroom and office and other I made into a darkroom and I did quite a bit of photography. When I left college in 1976, I took up photography full time and began to make a slim living at it and I have done so ever since. While I was a student, I had a grant but I didn’t have to pay rent and it was the first time in my life I had enough money to feed and clothe myself. I stayed in Fieldgate Mansions until 1984 when I moved into a derelict house in Bow which I bought with some money I’d saved and what my mother left me, and where I still live today.”
Waiting to resist eviction in front of the barricaded front door of a squat in Myrdle St, Whitechapel, in February 1973. Ann Pettitt and Anne Zell are standing, with Duncan, Tony Mahoney and Phineas sitting in front.
Doris Lerner, activist and squatter, climbs through a first floor window of a squat in Myrdle St
Max Levitas, Tower Hamlets Communist Councillor, tried unsuccessfully to convince the squatters that resistance to eviction should be taken over by the Communist Party
March on Tower Hamlets Council in protest against the eviction of squatters
Doris Lerner in an argument with a neighbour during the evictions from Myrdle St and Parfett St
Lavatory in squatted house in Myrdle St, Whitechapel, 1973
Police arrive to evict squatters in Myrdle St
Eviction in progress
Out on the street
Sleeping on the street after eviction
Liz and Sue in my flat in Fieldgate Mansions, September 1975
Coral Prior, silversmith, working in her studio at Fieldgate Mansions, 1977
Fieldgate Scratch Band
A boy dances in the courtyard of Fieldgate Mansions. Scheduled for demolition in 1972, it was squatted to prevent destruction until taken over by a community housing trust and modernised in the eighties.
Photographs copyright © David Hoffman
Remembering Rose At The Golden Heart
Rose
When Sandra Esqulant, celebrated landlady of The Golden Heart in Commercial St, saw this photo taken by Phil Maxwell of Rose sitting in her barroom twenty years ago – which is published in my Album – she told me the story of an unforgettable character who became one of her most loved regulars.
“I loved Rose. I don’t know what happened to her, she’s got to be dead now hasn’t she?
What happened was – you know how you fall in love with some people? – this woman appeared in the pub one day and I fell in love with her. I just liked her.
She asked for a rum & lemonade, and she never had to pay for a drink in my pub.
I used to have to warn everyone when Rose was coming in because she used to pick up everyone’s cigarettes and put them in her bag.
I used to dance with her.
You might think she was dumb, but she was the most astute person I ever met. She didn’t like my husband while I was there, but when I wasn’t there it was a different story!
My husband liked her a lot.
You know I lost my husband.
When she stopped coming, I went round to the Sally Army in Old Montague St, where she lived, but they told me they didn’t know what happened to her, so I went to the Police Station and they were going to search the morgue. I kept going back to the Sally Army and this Irish woman said to me, ‘Are you looking for Rose? She moved to Commercial Rd.’ So I went round to the Commercial Rd shelter and there was Rose. She was very sad because the Sally Army had put her out after forty years. So I used to send a cab to pick her up and take her back from my pub.
The Sally Army, they should have known how fond I was of her and told me where she had gone.
One Sunday, when I was on my own, she collected all the glasses and the ashtrays and the crisp packets and emptied them over the bar. I didn’t mind, Rose could do anything in my pub.
People like Rose would go into a pub and people wouldn’t serve them, but I had everyone in here – this was the dossers’ bar!
One day, Phil Maxwell asked Rose if he could put her in one of his films and she didn’t like that, but he set his camera on the table and took these pictures. And after that, he always had her picture in his exhibitions.
She must have known I was fond of her.
She did like me.
I know she liked me.
She was lovely.
She used to talk about her daughter, but I sometimes wonder if she ever had a daughter.
At Christmas, she always asked me for a Christmas box and, of course, I always gave her one.
They moved her out after forty years, what a thing to do to someone.
If Rose was here today, I’d let her smoke in my pub – I don’t care about the law.
Very special, she was.”
Photographs copyright © Phil Maxwell
Follow Phil Maxwell’s blog Playground of an East End Photographer
See more of Phil Maxwell’s work here
Phil Maxwell’s Kids on the Street
Phil Maxwell & Sandra Esqulant, Photographer & Muse
More of Phil Maxwell’s Old Ladies
Phil Maxwell’s Old Ladies in Colour
At The Pantomime Dames’ Dash
The streets of Hackney were invaded by pantomime characters yesterday as harbingers of the festive season that commences with the opening of Puss in Boots at the Hackney Empire next month. Contributing Photographer Colin O’Brien went along to join in the fun at St Joseph’s Hospice where they gathered to undertake a Dames Dash in aid of East End charities and, as the pantomime horse set out up Mare St, the obvious pun was savoured by all.
Photographs copyright © Colin O’Brien
PUSS IN BOOTS opens at Hackney Empire on 23rd November and runs until 5th January
You may also like to take a look at
Aerial Views Of Old London
In my dream, I am flying over old London and the clouds part like curtains to reveal a vision of the dirty monochrome city lying far beneath, swathed eternally in mist and deep shadow.
Although most Londoners are familiar with this view today, as the first glimpse of home on the descent to Heathrow upon their return flight from overseas, it never ceases to induce wonder. So I can only imagine the awe of those who were first shown these glass slides of aerial views from the collection of the London & Middlesex Archaeological Society at the Bishopsgate Institute a century ago.
Even before Aerofilms was established in 1919 to document the country from above systematically, people were photographing London from hot air balloons, zeppelins and early aeroplanes. Upon first impression, the intricate detail and order of the city is breathtaking and I think we may assume that a certain patriotic pride was encouraged by these views of national landmarks which symbolised the political power of the nation.
But there is also a certain ambivalence to some images, such as those of Horseguards’ Parade and Covent Garden Market, since – as much as they record the vast numbers of people that participated in these elaborate human endeavours, they also reduce the hordes to mere ants and remove the authoritative scale of the architecture. Seen from above, the works of man are of far less consequence than they appear from below. Yet this does not lessen my fascination with these pictures, as evocations of the teeming life of this London that is so familiar and mysterious in equal measure.
Tower of London & Tower Bridge
Trafalgar Sq, St Martin-in-the-Fields and Charing Cross Station
Trafalgar Sq & Whitehall
House of Parliament & Westminster Bridge
Westminster Bridge & County Hall
Tower of London & St Katharine Docks
Bank of England & Royal Exchange
Spires of City churches dominate the City of London
Crossroads at the heart of the City of London
Guildhall to the right, General Post Office to the left and Cheapside running across the picture
Blackfriars Bridge & St Paul’s
Hyde Park Corner
Buckingham Palace & the Mall
The British Museum
St James’ Palace & the Mall
Ludgate Hill & St Paul’s
Pool of London & Tower Bridge with Docks beyond
Albert Hall & Natural History Museum
Natural History Museum & Victoria & Albert Museum
Limehouse with St Anne’s in the centre & Narrow St to the right
Reversed image of Hungerford Bridge & Waterloo Bridge
Covent Garden Market & the Floral Hall
Admiralty Arch
Trooping the Colour at Horseguards Parade
St Clement Dane’s, Strand
Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens
Glass slides courtesy Bishopsgate Institute
Take a look at
The Lantern Slides of Old London
The High Days & Holidays of Old London
The Fogs & Smogs of Old London
The Forgotten Corners of Old London
The Statues & Effigies of Old London
Business in Bishopsgate, 1892
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
You might also like to read about
At James Ince & Sons, Umbrella Makers
Charles Goss’ Bishopsgate Photographs
Philip Pittack, Rag Merchant
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
The Gentle Author’s Spitalfields Pub Crawl
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
You may also like to take a look at
