Joan Brown, The First Woman At Smithfield Market
Click here to learn more about my blog couse in February 2025
Following the City of London Corporation’s vote to close Smithfield and Billingsgate Markers for good, I publish my interview with Joan Brown, the first woman to be permitted to work inside Smithfield Central Market in 1945.
“When the cat can’t decide whether to go out, I say ‘Make up your Smithfield mind!'”
I visited Joan in her tiny bucolic cottage situated among overgrown gardens in a quiet cul-de-sac in Peckham. Of sprightly demeanour and impeccable manners, Joan has good claim to be the first woman to work in Smithfield Market. Yet, even though she was conscientious not to absorb the colourful vocabulary for which which the Market is famous,“When the cat can’t decide whether to go out, I say ‘Make up your Smithfield mind!'” she confessed to me.
“I went to work at Smithfield Market in 1937 when I was seventeen years old. I was studying at a school for commercial typists and, at that time, there was a recession so it was hard to find work, but my shorthand teacher was asked by a neighbour who worked at Smithfield if he knew of anyone reliable – so I was offered the job.
My mum was horrified – all those men and that bad language! But my dad said, ‘We’ll sort this out,’ and he went to take a look and discovered the office was in West Smithfield, not in the Market itself. So I took the job. It was a family business and I worked for John Jenkins, the son, as his Private Secretary. We were agents for Argentine Frigorifico and we had a stall in the market selling Argentine Chilled Beef, it was not ‘refrigerated’ but ‘chilled.’
It was very well organised, a number of Argentine famers formed a group and a ship of their meat arrived in the London Docks once a week. It opened up on a Monday and so much beef – only beef – was brought over to the market in time for the five o’clock opening. That went on each day until the ship was emptied at the end of the week. Then another one arrived and it happened all over again.
I worked there until the war came, when everything changed and I was employed by the Ministry of Food. We were evacuated to North Wales and the Ministry organised these Buffer Depots in every village in the country and my job was to keep a record of it all. I had to co-ordinate the corned beef supplies. It was incredibly complicated and there were no computers, I had a large sheet of paper – we called them ‘B*gger Depots.’
After the war, I came back to my old employer but I discovered we didn’t have an office anymore, it had been bombed. So I said, ‘John, why don’t we use one of the spaces over the shop in the Central Market?’ He said, ‘But we can’t expect customers to walk through the Market to get to our office.’ Then I reminded him that there was a door onto Charterhouse St, so they didn’t have to walk through the Market. We moved into an octagonal office in one of the rotundas above the Market and that was when I became part of Smithfield proper.
Before the War, women couldn’t go into the Market but afterwards we were allowed in. I always remember walking through the Market for the first time, the Bummarees were perfectly respectful. I walked down Grand Avenue and they all moved out of the way, calling ‘Mind the Lady!’ The Bummarees delivered the meat, they wore long overalls and they used absolutely appalling language and were famous for that. But it wasn’t real, they didn’t mean anything by it.
I worked for John for more than fifty years and sometimes we had visitors from the Argentine. After John died, the business was sold and I was taken on by the new owners, Anglo-Dutch Meats. I became Private Secretary to their Director, Mohammed El Maggot. He was Egyptian though he had been to school in England. He was known as ‘Hamdi’ in the Market and I worked for him for several years. He was a very polite young man and his father was determined that he was going to work, that’s why he bought the company to occupy his son. Mohammed came to work every day at five o’clock in the morning and he settled in to work.
One day, he walked into the office and announced, ‘I want you to come to my wedding – in Cairo!’ When we came back, he and his wife took a flat in the Barbican and he said, ‘I want you to come over and teach Imam how to make a proper cup of tea.’
As far as I was concerned, that was the end of my life in Smithfield – I was seventy-four and it was time to retire. Mohammed was terribly upset but I said, ‘It’s no good Hamdi, I have to go!’ I thought, ‘That’s where I cut my connections, otherwise it will be, ‘Can you go to Harrods to buy the baby a bottle?” So I cut myself off completely from Smithfield Market in 1994. I never married, I was always working in the Market. When I was sent to North Wales, I left all my boyfriends behind in London and I was surrounded by a lot of middle-aged men.
I was always happy to be in the Market, I was part of the Market. To look down from my office window upon the Grand Avenue and see everything going on. That was my life.”
Smithfield Market as Joan Brown first knew it in the nineteen-thirties
Entrance to the General Market on Charterhouse St, completed 1881
Entrance to the underground store at the General Market
South-east corner of the General Market
North- east corner of the General Market
War Memorial in Grand Avenue in Central Market
The Central Meat Market
Joan Brown worked in an office in one of the rotundas at Smithfield’s Central Market
The Central Meat Market at Smithfield
Archive images courtesy Bishopsgate Institute
Around Old Billingsgate
I am giving my last lecture about the astonishing East End photography of David Hoffman this Sunday 8th December at 2:45pm as the finale of the Bloomsbury Jamboree at the Art Workers’ Guild.
In the week after the City of London Corporation voted to close Smithfield and Billingsgate Markets for good, I present these evocative colour photos from the sixties.
Fish Porters at Number One Snack Bar next to St Magnus the Martyr
These intriguing photographs are selected from a cache of transparencies of unknown origin acquired by the Bishopsgate Institute. We believe they date from the nineteen-sixties but the photographer is unidentified. Can anyone tell us more?
Looking west along Lower Thames St and Monument St
Sign outside St Mary-At-Hill
Pushing barrows of ice up Lovat Lane
Passage next to St Mary-At-Hill
Carved mice on a building in Eastcheap
Old shop in Eastcheap
Billingsgate Market cat
Inside the fish market designed by Horace Jones
Old staircase near Billingsgate
The Coal Exchange, built 1847 demolished 1962
Part of London Bridge crossing Lower Thames St, now removed
The Old Wine Shades, Martin Lane
Sign of a Waterman, now in Museum of London
In All Hallows Lane
Derelict site next to Cannon St Station
Looking towards Bankside Power Station by Sir Giles Gilbert Scott, now Tate Modern
Old Blackfriars Station
The Blackfriar pub
Sculptures upon the Blackfriar
Sunrise over Tower Bridge
Images courtesy Bishopsgate Institute
You may also like to take a look at
Roy Reed At Old Billingsgate Market
I am giving my last lecture about the astonishing East End photography of David Hoffman this Sunday 8th December at 2:45pm as the finale of the Bloomsbury Jamboree at the Art Workers’ Guild.
In the week after the City of London Corporation voted to close Smithfield and Billingsgate Markets for good, I present Roy Reed’s photography of the Old Billingsgate Market from 1975.
Roy Reed took these pictures of Billingsgate Market when he was a twenty-three-year-old documentary photography student at the London College of Printing in 1975.
Roy’s enthusiasm for the subject was greater than the interest of the student journalist who asked him to take the pictures for a project on London’s dying markets. “When I suggested we get there early, she said, ‘See you there at eight,'” Roy recalled, rolling his eyes significantly. In the event, Roy got there at seven-thirty on a February morning and took his pictures just here as business was winding up at the nocturnal market. Nearly fifty years later, any disappointment Roy might harbour that the project was never written up and published is outweighed by his satisfaction in having taken these rare photographs of a lost world.
“It was nice chatting with the porters,” Roy remembered fondly, “No-one seemed to mind having their photograph taken – except maybe the guy in the tweed hat, you can see him looking at me suspiciously in the picture.” Taken at the time the market was already due to leave its ancient location next to London Bridge, Roy’s lively photographs comprise a fascinating record of a seemingly recent era in market life that grows increasingly remote.
Photographs copyright © Roy Reed
You may also like to read about
A Night At Billingsgate Market
Up to 600 homeless sleep people on the floor at the Crisis at Christmas shelter in Whitechapel, 1978.
I am giving my last lecture about the astonishing East End photography of David Hoffman this Sunday 8th December at 2:45pm as the finale of the Bloomsbury Jamboree at the Art Workers’ Guild.
In the week after the City of London Corporation voted to close Smithfield and Billingsgate Markets for good, I publish my account of a night at the market in the company of legendary fishmonger Charlie Caisey.
Eighty-five year old fishmonger Charlie Caisey retired more than twenty years ago yet he could not keep away from the fish market for long, so I was delighted to give him an excuse for a nocturnal visit – showing me around and introducing me to his pals. Charlie maintained his relationship with the fish business through involvement with the school at Billingsgate, where he taught young people training as fishmongers and welcomed school parties visiting to learn about fish.
Universally respected for his personal integrity and generosity of spirit, Charlie turned out to be the ideal guide to the fish market. Thanks to him, I had the opportunity to shake the hand and take the portraits of many of Billingsgate’s most celebrated characters and, looking back with impunity upon his sixty years of experience in the business, Charlie told me his story candidly. He did not always enjoy the high regard that he enjoyed in latter days, Charlie forged his reputation in an arena fraught with moral challenges.
“In 1950, when I joined Macfisheries and started in a shop at Ilford, I was told, “You’ll never make a fishmonger,” and they moved me to another shop in Leytonstone. I was honest and in those days fishmongers always added coppers to the scale but I wouldn’t do that. Later, when I ran my shop, it was always sixteen ounces to the pound.
In Leytonstone, it was an open-fronted shop with sawdust on the floor. You had a blocksman who did the fishmongering, a frontsman who served the customers and a boy who ran around. At twenty-one, I was a boy fishmonger and then the frontsman decided to leave, so I moved up when he left. And I found I had an uncanny ability at arranging fish in shows! I made quite a little progress there, even though I was never taught – just three weeks at Macfisheries’ school.
I got my first management of a fish shop within three years, I was sent out to a poor LCC estate at Hainault. It was a fabulous shop but it was losing money, this was where I learnt to run a business and I worked up a bit of a storm there, working eighty hours a week and accounting the stock to a farthing. As a consequence, I was offered a first hand job in a shop behind Selfridges where all the customers were lords and ladies, but I refused because, if I was manager in my own shop, it would have been a step down. So then they sent me to run a shop in Bayswater. It was a lovely shop, when I arrived I had never seen many of the fish that were on display there, and I became wrapped up in it. We had a great cosmopolitan public including ladies of the oldest profession in the world.
Within a couple of years, Macfisheries moved me to Notting Hill Gate at the top of Holland Park Avenue – absolutely fabulous. I served most of the embassies and the early stars of television. The likes of Max Wall, Dickie Henderson and the scriptwriter of The Good Life were customers of mine. I built up quite a reputation and I was the first London manager to earn £1000 a year. From there I went to Knightsbridge running the largest fish shop in London, opposite Harrods. In 1965, I had thirty-five staff working under me and I worked fourteen hours a day.
My dream was to go into business on my own but I had no money. When I started my own shop, the sad part was how poor it was. It had holes in the floor, no proper drainage and no refrigeration. I’d never been to Billingsgate Market in my thirteen years at Macfisheries and when I went with my small orders, it was a different ball game. The dealers treated me like an idiot, the odd shilling was going on the prices and I was given short measures. Yet I never took it personally and I started to earn their respect because I always paid my bills every week. And, in twenty years, my turnover went from twelve thousand pounds to over half a million a year.
Most of my experience and knowledge has come from the customers. My experience of life came from the other side of the counter. They showed me that if you go out and look, there is a better life. When I think of Stratford while I was growing up, it was a stinky place because of the smell from the soap factories. My family were all railway people, my father was an uneducated labourer and what that man used to do for such a small amount of money and bad working conditions. We were poor because my marvellous parents were underpaid for their labours. I didn’t leave London during the war and I witnessed all the horrors. I missed lots of school because I was in the East End all through the bombing, so I’ve always been conscious of my poor education. Basically, I’m a shy man and I’m always amazed that I can stand up in front of people and speak, but I can do it because it comes from the heart.
Don’t ever do what I did. I went eighteen years without a holiday. It was a little crazy, I was forty before I had time to learn to drive.”
Dawn came up as Charlie told me his story and we walked out to the back of the fish market where the dealers throw fish to the seals from the wharf. Through his tenacity, Charlie proved his virtue as a human being and won respect as a fishmonger too. Yet although he may regret the inordinate struggle and hard work that kept him away from his family growing up, Charlie is still in thrall to his lifelong passion for this age-old endeavour of distributing and selling the strange harvest of the deep.
Clearing away after a night’s trading at Billingsgate, 7:40am.
Tom Burchell, forty-nine years in the fish business.
Alan Cook, lobster specialist for fifty-two years.
Simon Chilcott, twenty-four years at Bard Shellfish.
Mick Jenn, fifty-four years in eels – “Me dad was an empty boy and I started off in an eel factory.”
Terry Howard, sixty-three years in shellfish – “I played football in the 1960 Olympics.”
Anwar Kureeman, twelve years at Billingsgate – “I am a newcomer.”
Paul Webber, seventeen years at J.Bennett, Billingsgate’s largest salmon dealers.
Andres Slips came from Lithuania eleven years ago – “I couldn’t speak English when I arrived, now my mother would blush to hear my language.”
Geoff Steadman, fourth generation fish dealer, thirty-three years at Chamberlain & Thelwell.
Charlie in his first suit at fifteen –“From Willoughbys, I paid for it myself at half a crown a week.”
Charlie at the Macfisheries School of Fishmongery (He is third from right in back row).
Charlie in his fish shop in the seventies.
Charlie Caisey – the little fish that became a big fish.
You may recall I met Charlie Caisey at The Fish Harvest Festival
You may also like to take a look at
Boiling the Eels at Barney’s Seafood
The Last Porters Of Billingsgate Market
I am giving my last lecture about the astonishing East End photography of David Hoffman this Sunday 8th December at 2:45pm as the finale of the Bloomsbury Jamboree at the Art Workers’ Guild.
In the week after the City of London Corporation voted to close Smithfield and Billingsgate Markets for good, we publish Claudia Lesinger‘s portraits of the last porters of Billingsgate who were abolished in 2013.
John Schofield, porter for thirty years
The fish porters of Billingsgate Market were abolished a decade ago and now the market itself is to be closed. On 28th April of 2013, one centuries-old way of life came to an end as the porters who had been in existence since Billingsgate started trading in 1699 had their licences withdrawn by the City of London Corporation. Long-established rights and working practises – and a vibrant culture possessing its own language and code of behaviour handed down for generations – were all swept away overnight to be replaced by cheaper casual labour.
Thus, a cut in economic cost was achieved through an increase in human cost by degrading the workforce at the market. The City recognised the potential value of the land occupied by the Billingsgate fish market at the foot of the Canary Wharf towers, and the abolition of the porters was their first step towards moving it out and redeveloping the site.
While the news media all passed this story by, photographer Claudia Leisinger took the brave initiative herself to be down at the market continuously throughout the last winter, documenting the last days of this historic endeavour, and taking these tender portraits of the porters in the dawn, which record the plain human dignity they have shown as their livelihood and identity were taken from them .
“My interest in the Billingsgate porters’ story stems from a fascination with the disappearance of manual labour, work generally considered menial by our society, yet carried out with a great deal of pride and passion by those small communities involved.” Claudia told me, and it is to her credit that in a moment of such vulnerability these men trusted her to be their witness for posterity.
Bradley Holmes, porter for twenty years.
Nick Wilson, porter for twelve years.
Micky Durrell, porter for forty-five years.
Jeff Willis, porter for twenty-five years.
Gary Simmons, porter for thirty-three years.
Dave Bates, porter for twenty-two years.
Conor Olroyd, apprentice porter.
Three generations – Edwin Singers, porter for fifty-three years, with his son, Leigh Singers, porter, and grandson, Brett Singers, porter.
Steven Black, porter for twenty years.
Tony Mitchell & Steve Martin, both porters for over thirty-two years.
Martin Bicker, porter for twenty-four years.
Andy Clarke, porter for two years.
Laurie Bellamy, porter for thirty-one years.
Alfie Sands, shopboy.
Gary Durden, porter for thirty-one years.
Jack Preston, porter for two years.
Dicky Barrott, porter for twenty years.
Alan Downing, porter for forty-five years, with his grandson Sam who comes down on Saturdays.
Dave Auldis, porter for six years.
Colin Walker, porter for forty-six years.
Brett Singers, shopboy for three years.
Bobby Jones, porter for thirty years.
Basil Wraite, porter for thirty-one years.
Steve Sheet, porter for fifteen years.
Steve Jones, porter for thirty years.
Greg Jacobs, porter for thirty-two years.
Chris Gill, porter for thirty-two years.
Photographs copyright © Claudia Leisinger
See more of Claudia Leisinger’s Billingsgate pictures and hear the voices of the porters by clicking here
You may like to read these other Billingsgate stories
Simon Costin, The Museum Of British Folklore
Simon Costin is giving a lecture at the Bloomsbury Jamboree, next Sunday 8th December at 1:30pm. Click here for tickets.
When I first came across a reference to Simon Costin’s notion to create the Museum of British Folklore, I knew it was a stroke of genius. So you can imagine my excitement when I visited him and his benign round face appeared behind the door, like the full moon emerging from a cloud.
Growing up Devon, I was always captivated by the romance – Dare I say it? The magic – of the folk traditions (like the Ottery St Mary tar barrel rolling) that surrounded me. Experiences coloured by my mother’s reminiscences, recounted to me of her own childhood in Cornwall in the nineteen thirties, and the cherished moment in our family history when my grandfather as bank manager in Helston was chosen to lead the Floral Dance in and out the houses. Consequently, these inexplicable social rituals have always delighted and fascinated me with their egalitarian poetry. Mostly unsanctioned by the church or the state, they are the celebratory culture of the working people.
“Is this your life’s work?” I asked Simon, broaching the burning question as soon as our conversation had settled down sufficiently for it not to be impertinent. And he broke into a wide emotional smile to reply with the answer I was hoping for, murmuring under his breath,“Yes.” Although Simon is a serious fellow with an distinguished career in design including five years as Alexander McQueen’s Art Director, he showed me the face of a child. Specifically, a boy who went on holidays to Cornwall and fell in love with a museum in St Ives that displayed Staffordshire Figures and Corn Dollies, awakening a lifelong passion for our vernacular culture.
As an adult, delighting in the folkloric traditions and travelling the country to participate in many of these seasonal events, especially the Jack in the Green Festival in Hastings, Simon discovered that in spite of all the cultural imports – especially from America – which might appear to homogenise our country, the native culture is thriving. When Simon first attended the Jack in the Green Festival , there were two thousand people but last year the crowd numbered over twenty thousand. And so, frustrated by the lack of any central focus to research and learn more about this culture, Simon was inspired to create the Museum of British Folklore with the purpose of celebrating and recording the indigenous culture of these Isles, and afford it the dignity it deserves. This was when his life changed.
“I’ve always loved museums,” declared Simon, casting his eyes around his house, crowded with all manner of intriguing and charismatic curios, “primarily as repositories of knowledge. You can take what you will and interpret it how you please.” At first, he visited curators of existing museums with folklore collections to learn the lie of the land, but soon he realised he needed to create a presence at the festivals, as a means to hear the response from those in the fields and byways – “to learn the language of our intangible heritage,” as he put it.
So Simon decided to set out touring the country in a caravan, and with the help of luminaries from the worlds of folklore and fashion, he spent six months planning an elaborate party for five hundred guests at Cecil Sharpe House to raise the funds. Then with his caravan painted with fairground scrolls and in an outfit consisting of a stove pipe hat designed by Stephen Jones and a long coat designed by Gareth Pugh, he set out on an eight month quest to meet the dyed-in-the-wool folkies of Britain.
“How do you manifest folk culture?” he asked rhetorically, proposing the central dilemma,“It’s the challenge with all these things, that’s why these events can be neglected, because there are no artifacts.” Simon’s solution is to involve the participants in these festivals working alongside visual artists and photographers, using his acute eye and experience as an Art Director to bring the language of contemporary art to the representation of these elusive phenomena.
“We’re looking for material,” Simon announced to me, recklessly inviting contributions to the museum. But this is such a huge subject – which has barely been tapped – that I think he will find himself inundated with wonders for inclusion in the Museum of British Folklore, though I guess that is exactly what he wants.
The Burry Man, Queensferry, second Friday of August.
Barrel Burning, Ottery St. Mary, November 5th.
Bampton Morris, 29th May
Soul-Cakers, Antrobus
Mock Mayor of Ock St, Abingdon, June
Castleton Garland Day, 29th May
Whittlesea Straw Bear Festival, 14th – 16th January.
Minehead Hobby Horse, May 1st
Winster Morris, Derbyshire.
Stained glass © Tamsin Abbott
Photographs of festivals copyright © Doc Rowe
Portrait of Simon Costin copyright © Tim Walker
Bloomsbury Jamboree Lectures
Design by Rob Ryan
You are invited to our annual BLOOMSBURY JAMBOREE which runs from 10:30am-4:30pm next weekend, Saturday 7th & Sunday 8th December at Art Workers’ Guild, 6 Queen Sq, WC1N 3AT.
We are showing the work of our favourite makers and are proud to present these accompanying lectures. Tickets are £10 which includes entry to the Jamboree.
PETER PARKER, SOME MEN IN LONDON – QUEER LIFE 1945 – 1967
(Winner of The Times History Book of the Year)
Author and biographer Peter Parker will be discussing his new, highly acclaimed two-part anthology which uncovers the rich reality of life for queer men in London, from the end of the Second World War to the beginning of decriminalisation in 1967.
Peter explores what it was actually like for queer men in London in this period, whether they were well-known figures such as Francis Bacon, Joe Orton and Kenneth Williams, or living lives of quiet – or occasionally rowdy – anonymity in pubs, clubs, more public places of assignation, or at home. It is rich with letters, diaries, psychological textbooks, novels, films, plays and police records, covering a wide range of viewpoints, from those who deplored homosexuality to those who campaigned for its decriminalisation.
Click here to book for Peter Parker’s lecture at 11am on Saturday 7th December
Photograph by Lucinda Douglas-Menzies
RUPERT THOMAS, A YEAR AT DENNIS’ SEVERS HOUSE
For 22 years Rupert Thomas was editor of The World of Interiors, but in January this year he took up the role of Director of Dennis Severs’ House in Spitalfields.
Dennis Severs’ House is both an extraordinary survival and a complete fantasy. As the presentation of historic open-houses become increasingly sanitised, the unique qualities of Dennis Severs’ House allow a more charismatic and thought-provoking way to present the past.
In this illustrated talk, Rupert will discuss the challenges of remaining true to Severs’ maverick spirit of theatricality and immersion, and of offering visitors something beyond the norm.
Click here to book for Rupert Thomas’ lecture at 12:15pm on Sunday 8th December
Photograph by TimWalker
SIMON COSTIN, THE MUSEUM OF BRITISH FOLKLORE
Simon Costin is an internationally respected art director and curator. In this illustrated lecture, Simon outlines how his life-long passion for Folklore has resulted in the creation of the Museum of British Folklore celebrating the UK’s rich folkloric heritage.
“Folklore is a vibrant element of our living cultural heritage; these beliefs, customs and expressions link the past to the present and help us understand our specific communities and cultures, as well as our shared humanity. Far from being static or an ageing genre, it remains relevant by adapting to new circumstances, with the ‘Folk’ (people), and the ‘lore’ (stories) continually informing and influencing each other.” – Simon Costin
Click here to book for Simon Costin’s lecture at 1:30pm on Sunday 8th December
Photograph by David Hoffman
THE GENTLE AUTHOR, ENDURANCE & JOY IN THE EAST END 1971 – 1987
The Gentle Author will show photographs of Whitechapel in the seventies from David Hoffman’s new book. David’s bold, humane photography records a lost era, speaking vividly to our own times.
When he was a young photographer, David came to live in a squat in Fieldgate Mansions in Whitechapel and it changed his life. Over the following years, he documented homelessness, racism and the rise of protest in startlingly intimate and compassionate pictures to compose a vital photographic testimony of resilience.
Thanks to the courage and determination of the squatters who stopped the demolition, Fieldgate Mansions still stands providing invaluable housing to families in Whitechapel today.
Click here to book for The Gentle Author’s lecture at 2:45pm on Sunday 8th December
Design by Marion Elliot
