Robert Wells, The Boy On The Bicycle
Rob Wells cycles down Brick Lane in 1984
Rob Wells cycles down Brick Lane in 2014
When Robert Wells – or Rob as he is widely known – moved with his family at nine years old from Tomlinson Close at the north end of Brick Lane to Nathaniel Close at the south end of the Lane, he was always cycling back and forth from his new house in Spitalfields on his BMX to visit his old friends in Bethnal Green. One day unawares, Rob cycled into the frame, as Phil Maxwell pressed the button and the shutter fell while Rob crossed the junction of Brick Lane and Princelet St – recording the moment for ever. Yet Rob did not know he had been photographed and Phil soon forgot the picture among the thousands he took of Brick Lane at that time.
Thirty years later, Rob got a call from a friend to say that he was pictured on the cover of Phil Maxwell’s book Brick Lane. “It was just a wow, I was happy!” Rob admitted to me, recalling his surprise when he first saw the photograph recently, “At first, I didn’t believe it – but when I looked at the picture, I began to remember the clothes I was wearing.”
I met Rob when he introduced himself to me.“I’m the boy on the bicycle!” he said proudly. It was an astonishing encounter because at once I recognised Rob from his picture and I saw that he still possessed the same brightness of spirit today which Phil captured in the photograph thirty years ago. Realising this was an opportunity too good to miss, I asked Rob if he would be willing to collaborate with Phil Maxwell to reshoot the photograph and that is what we did at ten o’clock on Saturday morning.
Brick Lane is a one way street and Saturday is the quietest morning, so I watched out for cars while Rob cycled up and down a couple of times, passing Phil standing on the corner of Princelet St. Thus we accomplished our task and you can compare the changes wrought by thirty years in the pair of photographs above. Once the business of the day was concluded, we sought refreshment and Rob revealed more of the background to the picture to us.
“I wish I still had that bike. All my friends had bikes and we were always exchanging parts, so if someone got new wheels then someone else got the hand-me-downs. You’d go round to a friend’s house and they’d have all these spare parts lying around in the garden, and they were like little mechanics. My bike was a mish-mash of bits and pieces, it was probably a hand-me-down from my brother or friends. I used to go everywhere on it. I didn’t tell my mum, but I cycled all the way to King’s Cross to look at trains. Society has changed, children can’t do that anymore.
One day, I went home to go to the toilet and left my bike outside. My mum said it was dinner time and I forgot about it, but half an hour later it was gone. Someone had nicked it – this must have been shortly after the picture was taken.
When I was six or seven there was quite a bit of racial tension here. At the Bethnal Green end of Brick Lane, white kids were in the majority and they picked on the Asian kids but, when I moved to the other end, I got picked on by Asian kids – so I experienced both sides of the situation. In those days, if there was any piece of green, you played football on it and I ended up playing for the BYF – Bengali Youth Football. They said, ‘You can’t play for us, you’re white,’ but I said, ‘I want to play football, does it matter whether I come from Bangladesh or not?’ And that’s what I did.
My mum had three kids with my dad – who was a champion boxer in Bethnal Green – but she left him because he knocked us about. One day he kidnapped us after school, and the police had to come and take us back. For a while, he worked in the amusement arcade next to McDonald’s in Bethnal Green and I used to visit him there. A lot of people I knew in my crowd when I was young got involved in hard drugs and ended up in prison or on the streets, but I turned out all right. I’m a self-employed builder and I only work when I please. I am my own boss and I have two daughters, Eliza and Darcy.
We moved to Stepney when I was thirteen and I live in Epping now, but my family have been around this area a long time. I was born in the Royal London Hospital in 1975 and Brick Lane was my home. I used to go down to the market when I was five. I went to St Matthias School in Bacon St and walked there every day down Brick Lane, and ran to get home by three o’clock to watch Thomas the Tank Engine. I do miss that Brick Lane, but you’ll never get it back. I had a happy childhood there. I love this area and it’ll always be in my heart.”
Rob may not live on Brick Lane any more but, thanks to Phil Maxwell, he will always be there as the boy on the bicycle because, on that day he cycled unwittingly into the photograph thirty years ago, he cycled into eternity.
“I wish I still had that bike”
“I love this area and it’ll always be in my heart”
CLICK HERE TO BUY A COPY OF PHIL MAXWELL’S BRICK LANE FOR £10
Rachael South, Chair Caner & Upholsterer
Rachael South at her workshop in Dalston
It never fails to inspire me when I meet someone who finds joy in the work they do – and Rachael South, third-generation chair caner, is a prime example. The chain of events that led to making contact with Rachael was extraordinary and the resultant visit to her workshop proved a rewarding outcome.
A couple of weeks ago, I published a picture of an unknown man in a suit sitting on the kerb mending a cane chair, which came from David Sweetland’s A London Inheritance, where he writes a weekly commentary upon his father’s photographs of London in the fifties and sixties. The picture fascinated me because of its similarity to the age-old images of chair menders to be found in the Cries of London series of prints published in these pages. Imagine my surprise when his granddaughter, Rachael, got in touch, naming him as Michael South and explaining that she carries on the trade to this day which was taught to her by her father, who had in turn been taught by her grandfather.
My quest led me to an old workshop in Shacklewell Lane where Rachael spends her days caning and upholstering chairs by the light of a large window. “The family lived in Ladbroke Grove but was Irish in origin, I believe there were a lot of Irish immigrants there at one time,” she revealed to me, talking as she worked at her caning, “Michael, my grandfather, was a prizefighter and bare-knuckle boxer, but over time the chair caning took over as his boxing career waned. He had a pedlar’s licence and walked up the hill from Ladbroke Grove to work around Kensington and Knightsbridge. They may have been travelling people once, because I was told it was called ‘Gypsy Caning.’ You can do it in the street because you don’t need any tools, just a knife and a block of wood or hammer to knock out the pegs.”
Certainly, chair caning has been carried out upon the streets of London for centuries and Rachael delights in the notion of being the inheritor of this artisan tradition, which suits her independent nature very well and guarantees a constant income as long as she chooses to do it.
“Terry, my dad, wanted to stay on at school and train as a draughtsman but at fourteen my granddad said, ‘You’ve got to get a job,'” Rachael admitted to me. “He had been brought up doing chair caning and he managed to get an apprenticeship with Mrs Shield, who was a celebrity decorator of the time – before setting up his own upholstery workshop in Harrow where he trained six apprentices”
My dad taught me caning when I was fourteen. I used to go along to his workshop and I liked it, because I’m quite a patient person and the upholsterers were a good laugh,” Rachael recalled fondly, “and when I went to Art College, it was what I did to make money – I lived in Hammersmith and went round all the antiques dealers and they supplied me with enough caning to see me through.”
Employed as a textile designer, Rachael soon felt the need for freedom and set up her own workshop as upholsterer and chair caner. “I’ve never been without work and I have three people working with me. I’m forty-four now and I’ve been caning chairs for thirty years,” she confided to me proudly, “I can’t turn work away because I know I can do it and people are always so delighted when I give it back to them. I say, ‘That’s it done for another generation.'”
Rachael’s grandfather Michael South (1905-1964) at work in Kensington, sitting on his tool box
Michael worked with a pedlar’s licence in West London –“He had many brothers and sisters. One called Samson used to ride a motorbike on the wall of death and another called Danny had only one ear.”
Rachael’s father Terry South at work in his workshop in Harrow in the seventies
Rachael South at work today in Dalston
Terry South and Rachael at his workshop in 1978
Rachael sets to work with cane soaked in water for flexibility
Michael always went to work dressed in a suit and leather shoes
Rachael with a bundle of reeds
“Israel Potter, one of the oldest menders of chairs still living” – as portrayed by John Thomas Smith in Vagabondiana, 1819
Photo by John Thomson from Street Life in London, 1876: Caney the Clown – ”thousands remember how he delighted them with his string of sausages at the yearly pantomime, but Caney has cut his last caper since his exertions to please at Stepney Fair caused the bursting of a varicose vein in his leg and, although his careworn face fails to reflect his natural joviality, the mending of chairs brings him constant employment.”
“Old Chairs to mend!” by Thomas Wheatley, seventeen-nineties
“Any Old Chairs To Mend! & Green and Young Hastings!” by Sam Syntax
“Old Chairs to mend, Old Chairs to Mend!” by J. Kendrew
“Chairs to Mend!” from The New Cries Of London, 1803
“The kerbside mender of chairs, who ‘if he had more money to spend would not be crying – “Chairs to mend!’ is one of the neatest-fingered of street traders. Watch how deftly he weaves his strips of cane in and out – how neatly he finishes off each chair, returning it to the owner, ‘good as new.'” from London Characters, 1934
William Marshall Craig’s Itinerant Traders in their Ordinary Costune, 1804 : “Chairs to mend. The business of mending chairs is generally conducted by a family or a partnership. One carries the bundle of rush and collects old chairs, while the workman seating himself in some convenient corner on the pavement, exercises his trade. For small repairs they charge from fourpence to one shilling, and for newly covering a chair from eighteen pence to half a crown, according to the fineness of the rush required and the neatness of the workmanship. It is necessary to bargain for price prior to the delivery of the chairs, or the chair mender will not fail to demand an exorbitant compensation for his time and labour.”
Chairmender at corner of Prince Orange Lane, Greenwich from Charles Spurgeon’s Londoners
From Julius Mendes Price’s London Types, 1919
From The Cries of London, early nineteenth century
Archive photos of Michael South © A London Inheritance
Cries of London courtesy Bishopsgate Institute
Contact Rachael South for chair caning and upholstery
Whitechapel Lads
Seen for the first time in over a century, these are a series of portraits taken around 1900 at the Working Lads Institute, known today as the Whitechapel Mission. After my first visit with Colin O’Brien to take portraits at the Mission on Easter Tuesday, I returned this week to select these glass plates from the archive.
Founded in 1876, the Institute offered a home to young men who had been involved in petty criminal activity, rehabilitating them through working at the Mission which tended to the poor and needy in Whitechapel. Once a lad had proved himself, he was able to seek independent employment with the support and recommendation of the Institute.
The Working Lads Institute was the first of its kind in London to admit black people and Rev Thomas Jackson, the founder, is pictured here with five soldiers at the time of World War I
Stained glass window with a figure embodying ‘Industry’ as an inspiration to the lads
In the dormitory
Rev Thomas Jackson & the lads collect for the Red Cross outside the Mission
Click here to learn more about The Whitechapel Mission
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Andrew Tuer’s Old London Cries
Andrew White Tuer (1838–1900) was a bookseller, writer and publisher who set up the Leadenhall Press in the City of London, and had a passion for the centuries-old culture of chapbooks and pamphlets that preceded him.
In 1885, within ten year of John Thomson publishing Street Life in London, the first photographic survey of street traders in 1876, Tuer published Old London Cries – a self-consciously arcane production in the form of a chapbook from an earlier age.
It was an affectionate anecdotal history of the popular print tradition of the Cries of London, put together just as it was coming to an end, and I am proud to have acquired a first edition this week for a mere pittance, as the latest in my ever-growing collection that I have been amassing in recent years.
“Three rows a penny, pins!”
“Buy a fine singing bird!”
“Fine writing ink!”
“Buy a fork or fire shovel!”
“Troope every one!”
“Hot spice gingerbread!”
“Knives to grind!”
“Cabbages O! Turnips!”
“Cherries O! Ripe cherries O!”
“All a blowin’ !”
“Fresh oysters! Penny a lot!”
“Sand O!”
“Fine large cucumbers!”
“Large silver eels!”
“Buy my fine myrtles and roses!”
“Tiddy diddy doll!”
“Young lambs to sell!”
“Chairs to mend!”
You may also like to take a look at these other sets of the Cries of London
More John Player’s Cries of London
More Samuel Pepys’ Cries of London
Geoffrey Fletcher’s Pavement Pounders
William Craig Marshall’s Itinerant Traders
H.W.Petherick’s London Characters
John Thomson’s Street Life in London
Aunt Busy Bee’s New London Cries
Marcellus Laroon’s Cries of London
William Nicholson’s London Types
Francis Wheatley’s Cries of London
John Thomas Smith’s Vagabondiana of 1817
John Thomas Smith’s Vagabondiana II
John Thomas Smith’s Vagabondiana III
Thomas Rowlandson’s Lower Orders
More East End Soldiers Of World War I
Approaching the centenary of the outbreak of World War I, we remember some of those from the East End who served in the conflict. These photographs are a second selection from those already collected by Tower Hamlets Community Homes for an exhibition and booklet to come in August. Readers are invited to contribute their family pictures and stories by emailing andy.coleborn@thch.org.uk
George Joseph Dubock was descended from a Huguenot family that arrived in the East End in 1706. He was born on 5th December 1878 in 109 Eastfield St, Limehouse, and his family moved shortly after to Mile End Old Town. George worked as a Dock Labourer and a Road Sweeper/Scavenger for the Council. Serving as Private #14373 in the Sixth Dorset Regiment, George was a victim of a gas attack and suffered post-traumatic stress after the War. Later, George became a Master Cabinet Maker and ended his days working in Newbury, restoring old furniture until he died in 1951.
Cards sent home from the Front by George Joseph Dubock
Alfred William Blanford was born in Poplar in 1894 and lived in Whitethorn St, Bow. At eighteen, in April 1912, he married Florence Jenkins and, in the December of the same year, they had their first child – also called Alfred. In February 2014, Alfred & Florence’s second son, Fredrick, was born and their third child, Edith, in December 1916.
Alfred joined the Army before his twentieth birthday and, in December 1914, by the time of Fredrick’s birth, he was in training in Aldershot. He served as a Driver in the Royal Field Artillery and was killed in action in May 1916, before the birth of his daughter Edith.
Henry George Crooney, also known as Harry, was born in Poplar in 1897 and served in the Royal Artillery from 1914-1918. Lying about his age, Henry enlisted in the Army before he was legally eligible. He joined the Royal Artillery because of his experience with horses, having worked since a child with his father who ran horses and carts from the docks.
Henry’s grand-daughter, Cheryl Loughnane, recalls the wartime stories Henry would tell – including his hatred of bully beef and of the time he stole a pig from French farm.
After the war, Henry married Annie and worked as a haulier. When he retired, he could not stop driving around the East End and became a volunteer for ‘Meals on Wheels,’ delivering dinners to pensioners.
Alfred James Barwell was a Private in the Queen’s Own (Royal West Kent Regiment). He lived with his parents, Alfred & Alice Barwell, at 27 Museum Buildings, Chester St, Bethnal Green. Aged just nineteen, Alfred was killed in action on 21st March 1918. His is listed on the Pozieres Memorial (Panel Ref 58 and 59) in the Somme.
James Polston, Rifleman 5059 in the Eighteenth Battallion London Regiment – London Irish Rifles. James was born on 20th September 1884, the eldest son of James & Elizabeth Polston who lived at Warner Place, Bethnal Green, and Lauriston Rd in Bow. He was killed in action on 8th December 1916 and is commemorated at the Railway Dugouts Burial Ground in Flanders.
(Photo of Water Tull courtesy of Doug Banks)
Second Lieutenant Walter Tull was the first black British Army Infantry Officer. The son of a joiner, Walter was born in Folkestone on 28th April 1888. His father, the son of a slave, had arrived from Barbados in 1876. In 1895, when Walter was seven, his mother died and his father remarried only to die two years later. The stepmother was unable to cope with all six children and so Walter and his brother Edward were sent to a Methodist -run orphanage in Bethnal Green.
Walter was a keen footballer and played for a team in Clapton. In 1908, his talents were discovered by a scout from Tottenham Hotspur and the club decided to sign the promising young footballer. He played for Tottenham until 1910, when he was transferred for a large fee to Northampton Town. Walter became the first black outfield player to play professional football in Britain.
When World War I broke out, Walter abandoned his football career to join the Seventeenth (First Football) Battalion of the Middlesex Regiment and, during his military training, he was promoted three times. In November 1914, as Lance Sergeant, he was sent to Les Ciseaux but, in May 1915, he was sent home with post-traumatic stress disorder.
Returning to France in September 1916, Walter fought in the Battle of the Somme between October and November. His courage and abilities encouraged his superior officers to recommend him as an Officer and, on 26th December, 1916, Walter went back to England to train as an Officer.
There were military laws forbidding ‘any negro or person of colour’ being commissioned as an Officer. Despite this, Walter was promoted to Lieutenant in 1917 and became the first ever black Officer in the British Army, and the first black Officer to lead white men into battle.
Walter was sent to the Italian Front where he twice led his Company across the River Piave on a raid and both times brought all of his troops back safely. He was mentioned in Despatches for his ‘gallantry and coolness’ under fire by his commanding officer and he was recommended for the Military Cross, but never received it.
After their time in Italy, Walter’s Battalion was transferred to the Somme and, on 25th March 1918, he was killed by machine gun fire while trying to help his men withdraw.
Walter was such a popular man that several of his men risked their own lives in an attempt to retrieve his body under heavy fire, but they were unsuccessful due to the enemy soldiers’ advance. His body was never found and he is one of the many thousands from World War I who has no known grave.
(Story & photo of John Arthur Tribe courtesy of East London Advertiser)
John Arthur Tribe was part of a large, close-knit family from Kirby St, Poplar. John lied about his age and joined the Army in 1911, serving in the Fourth Battalion, King’s Royal Rifle Corps, at first in India and then at the Battle of Loos in 1915, where he was killed in action. John is commemorated at the Loos Memorial but has no known grave.
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In Mile End Old Town
Much of the streetscape of the East End was broken in the last century, with fine squares lost in Stepney, Spitalfields and Haggerston, yet in Mile End an entire quarter of early-nineetenth century construction still exists surrounding Tredegar Sq (1823-9) and is cherished to this day. Taking advantage of the dramatic lighting afforded by the April weather, I spent an afternoon in these streets with my camera this week. Within a stone’s throw of St Clement’s Hospital, formerly the City of London Union Workhouse, I discovered a stuccoed terrace worthy of Belgravia – while the intervening streets were filled by houses which manifested all the degrees of social and economic distinctions that lay between the two.
Terrace in Mile End Rd erected by Ratcliffe builder, William Marshall ,in 1822-4
Formerly the City of London Union Workhouse, 1849
Tredegar Sq, 1828-9
Stucco was applied upon the north side of Tredegar Sq in the eighteen-thirties
Tredegar Square was re-landscaped in 1951
40 Tredegar Sq was formerly home to brush-maker Henry Wainwright who murdered his mistress and buried her dismembered body under the floor of his Whitechapel warehouse in 1875
Litchfield Rd – Sir Charles Morgan, Lord Tredegar sold this land for development
In Coborn Rd
Coborn Rd
Coborn Rd
Central Foundation School for Girls, Morgan St
School Entrance, College Terrace
Holy Trinity Church, Morgan St
Eighteen-thirties villa, Rhondda Grove
Cottage Grove of 1823, now Rhondda Grove
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Return Of The East London Group
In 2012, David Buckman published From Bow to Biennale which recovered the lost history of The East London Group, one of the major artistic movements to come out of the East End in the last century yet – extraordinarily – almost forgotten until recently.
Today, we preview some of the works – several of which have not been seen publicly in generations – from the major retrospective of nearly seventy paintings by members of the Group, accompanied by archive material, which opens at the Nunnery in Bow on May 9th and runs through into the summer.
Columbia Market, Bethnal Green by Albert Turpin
Canal at Mile End by Walter Steggles
St Clements Hospital Bow by Grace Oscroft
Bryant & May Factory, Bow by Grace Oscroft
Old Houses in the East End by Grace Oscroft, dated 1934
Hackney Empire by Albert Turpin
Pavilion in Grove Hall Park, Bow, by Harold Steggles
The Lumber Yard by Harold Steggles, dated 1929
The Scullery by Walter Steggles
The Stable by Walter Steggles, exhibited at the Tate 1929
Brymay Wharf by Walter Steggles
Bow Backwater by Walter Steggles
Brymay Wharf by Walter Steggles
Old Ford Rd by Harold Steggles
The Chapel by Walter Steggles, dated 1932
Railway siding by Walter Steggles, dated 1929
Bow Bridge by Walter Steggles
Blackwall by Harold Steggles
Warner St, Clerkenwell, by Harold Steggles
Canonbury Tower by Harold Steggles, dated 1938
Canonbury Grove by Elwin Hawthorne
Canvey Island by Walter Steggles
The Chair by the Bed by Henry Silk
You can read more about the East London Group
Albert Turpin, Artist & Mayor of Bethnal Green
Henry Silk, Artist & Basketmaker
From Bow to Biennale: Artists of the East London Group by David Buckman can be ordered direct from the publisher Francis Boutle and copies are on sale in bookshops including Brick Lane Bookshop, Broadway Books, Newham Bookshop, Stoke Newington Bookshop, London Review Bookshop, Town House, Daunt Books, Foyles, Hatchards and Tate Bookshop.
