Politics, Poofs & Parties
In her sixth of seven stories Linda Wilkinson traces a fragmentary history of gay life in the East End
Diamond Lil, Queen of Columbia Rd
One imagines, given the proximity of the docks, it would prove an easy task to tell the history of gay life in the East End, that stories aplenty would pepper the archives from newspapers of the past. But it is not the case. As in many other places over the centuries, divergence from the norm was criminalised here and therefore buried.
Yet I persisted, and I uncovered not only the stories I sought but also a hotbed of political activism of which this borough should be deservedly proud. First indications that sexual activities were rife came in 1690 with the foundation of the Society for the Reformation of Manners in the East End.
For fifty years, the Society sought out brothels and secret clubs called ‘Molly Houses’ where gay, bisexual and transgender men met. Many were jailed or put into the stocks as a consequence of discovery. In 1728, the house of Jonathan Muff – alias ‘Miss Muff’ – in Black Lyon Yd, near Whitechapel Church, was searched and nine male ‘Ladies,’ including the ‘Man of the House,’ were arrested.
Moving into the twentieth century, after World War One, the phenomenon of ‘drag’ became an established part of East End life. It is commonly assumed that cross-dressing originated in Elizabethan times when men took on female roles in the theatre and, of course, pantomime and music hall traditions include transvestites both male and female. But it is to the all-male concert party troupes of World War One that we can look to for the origins of drag as we know it.
During the War, the performers cross-dressed as a matter of necessity but the continuation of these groups during the more-liberal nineteen-twenties and thirties saw them composed almost exclusively of gay men.
I was born in the nineteen-fifties when drag acts in the pubs of East London were taken for granted. In fact, during the war, our own Columbia Rd ‘Diamond Lil. had kept everyone’s spirits up and her signature tune, “I want a boy,” was known by all.
Yet Diamond Lil was safe in the bubble of the East End. The West End was a more dangerous territory into which she seldom wandered. In the nineteen-fifties, Daniel Farson, who owned a famous pub called the Waterman’s Arms, said, “When I moved into Limehouse [in the 1950’s] the East End was a No-Man’s-Land for the rest of the capital, yet gay East Enders lived in a world of their own.”
Tolerance was not something East Enders were known for but, if you were part of the tribe, the tribe looked after you. It was far from Nirvana for gay men, yet even for Ronnie Kray, before his violence made him a person to fear, his queerness gave no cause for alarm.
Not being of the tribe and landing in Bethnal Green could be problematic. In the nineteen-seventies, when the Gay Liberation Movement was emerging, Bethnal Rouge Commune was established at 248 Bethnal Green Rd. These men were part of the Radical Feminists who grew out of the Campaign for Homosexual Equality in support of lesbians whom they felt were being subjugated. Dressed in glorious and outrageous drag, they were at first looked upon with some suspicion until, as I was told recently by one of the former members, “The publican of the nearby Marquis of Cornwallis discovered some of us could play the piano, it was all right after that.”
In more recent years, the political lobbying group Stonewall was founded by a group of East Enders sitting around Ian McKellen’s dinner table in Wapping and the renaissance of East London has brought a new wave gay culture – Glyn and Amy of Sink the Pink call themselves accidental activists. Their party nights at the Bethnal Green Working Men’s Club grew from their own desire to have a good time. Bored with the sterile nature of the gay scene that they encountered in the West End they sat down and drew up a list of what would make a good night out for them. They discovered there was a need and appetite for the kind of events they arrange, which often attract more than a thousand in a night.
As Glyn said to me, “These aren’t just a thousand people coming for a look – these are people who feel that they exist on the edge of society, who really want to push boundaries and find that they can do that with us. We find that freedom of expression is being scrutinised and parodied. Being gay has been marketed and, if you are not a cuddly gay, you are not acceptable.”
The scale of their popularity has even seen them become the subject of a PhD thesis at Cambridge University entitled, “We Are Family: Ritual Structure & Pop Music’s Role in the Creation of an Egalitarian Community at Sink The Pink,” written by Jacob Mallinson Bird (AKA Dinah Lux). It garnered a first.
Splinters one of the all-male concert party troupes that evolved from World War One
The Deuragor was famed, as were many pubs, for their drag acts. The poster on the wall advertises Gaye Travers, who was famous in the East End
The Bloolips were a subversive political force that came out of the East End
Sink the Pink at Bethnal Green Working Men’s Club, 2013 – in the centre of this picture is Glynnfamous
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On The Bishopsgate Goodsyard, 13
A Garden For Thomas Fairchild
In her fifth story, Linda Wilkinson tells of a plan to create a garden in honour of Thomas Fairchild
Nineteenth century plate bought in Spitalfields
We almost certainly have the Huguenot immigrants of the seventeenth century to thank for the presence of Columbia Rd Flower Market. Their love of floriculture is legendary but what is perhaps not so well known is that wealthy Huguenot families built summer houses and hot houses upon the land that is now Columbia Rd. In 1795, market gardeners occupied 28% of Bethnal Green agricultural land. By 1800, many of these had developed into large gardens divided up like allotments, each with its own summer house, “where weavers and citizens grew flowers and vegetables and dined on Sundays.”
Eye witness reports are sparse from the period but an article from October 11th, 1827 in the London Standard Newspaper stated that “About three o’clock [in the morning] the South of Hackney Road was visited by one of the most destructive tempests witnessed in the vicinity of the metropolis for many years.” The wind was so fierce that it laid waste to the entire range of garden and orchard grounds on Crabtree Row (Columbia Rd). Hot houses were blown into fragments, chimney and window pots rained down, pigeon traps on the roofs were blown into the adjacent brick field, “and an old stable attached to the Birdcage Public House was thrown down with a frightful crash.”
It is difficult to imagine hot houses and orchards anywhere near the Birdcage Pub these days or, indeed, the pub standing in splendid isolation. The Gentle Author has previously told the story of Thomas Fairchild who had gardens in nearby Hoxton where he made history in 1717 when he took pollen from a Carnation and inserted it into a Sweet William, thereby producing a new variety that became known as ‘Fairchild’s Mule.’ It was the first reported instance of manual plant hybridisation.
Resisted in Fairchild’s era, when it was seen as interfering with creation, it took another century for his technique to be widely adopted. Yet he is also remembered for writing The London Gardener, the first guide book for gardening in the capital.
Fairchild’s local church was St Leonard’s, Shoreditch, and on his death in 1729 he was buried in what is currently Hackney Rd Recreation Ground, originally laid out in 1625. During Fairchild’s time, this was part of the church graveyard and in the nineteenth century was occupied by almshouses. These were converted from an engine and watch house in 1825, and were eventually demolished in 1904. Although there is a sparse monument to Fairchild in the grounds, he is actually interred as he directed, “In some corner of the furthest church yard belonging to the parish of St Leonard’s Shoreditch, where poore people are usually buried.”
Today it is a melancholy place, situated next to the splendid Grade II listed Ye Olde Axe public house, which presents “exotic dancers.” In 1892, the Metropolitan Public Gardens Association, laid it out as a public space and latterly it housed a tennis court, ping-pong table and, more recently, art installations.
There are now plans afoot to rejuvenate the Ground, spearheaded by a group comprising the MPGA, Friends of Hackney Rd Recreational Grounds and Worshipful Company of Gardeners whose representative and former Master, Rex Thornborough, lives locally. Supported by the London Borough of Hackney and St Leonard’s Church, one of the ideas is to turn the ground into an education-based garden about Thomas Fairchild and the history of horticulture in the local area.
As Rex explained to me when we visited the Ground recently , the funding is not yet fully secured but the role of the MPGA and the Gardeners’ Company in this endeavour is to sprinkle the magic dust to make it happen. So let us hope they succeed, because too much of our history is lost to the bulldozer at the moment and it would be a sad travesty if this important man and his bones were consigned to oblivion.
Thomas Fairchild’s memorial in the Hackney Rd Recreation Ground
Thomas Fairchild, Gardener of Hoxton
An East Ender prepares for a Floral Competition around 1900
Rex Thornborough in his full regalia as Master of the Worshipful Company of Gardeners
Rex finds the last strawberry of summer in Hackney Rd Recreation Ground
Thomas Fairchild’s memorial in Hackney Rd Recreation Ground
Contact Metropolitan Public Gardens Association for more information on their Thomas Fairchild project
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On The Bishopsgate Goodsyard, 12
Notable & Lost Buildings Of Columbia Rd
In her fourth story, Linda Wilkinson traces Columbia Rd’s architectural heritage, notable & lost
Nineteenth century glass side of Columbia Market, courtesy of Bishopsgate Institute
By the latter half of the nineteenth century, it was fashionable to send affluent young men to live in the East End as part of their societal duty. One suspects this was partly voyeurism of a class of people who were often regarded as sub-human, but no doubt it also had the effect of disseminating first-hand information about the prevailing conditions in the slums and rookeries. So it is no surprise that some of the newly self-made men of the Victorian middle classes pursued Philanthropy, nor that the poverty-ridden quarter which Columbia Rd became should have come to their attention.
The provision of social housing for the “deserving poor” was begun here by Angela Burdett-Coutts and Charles Dickens who, through the vision of architect Henry Darbishire, built an architectural masterpiece that few can believe ever existed in the East End. Photographs cannot do justice to the sweeping majesty of this series of buildings which rivalled any of that era. Part market complex and part housing scheme, this vast structure has been replaced today by Sivill House and the flats around it that comprise Market Sq.
As a market, it was a spectacular failure and the housing element hardly fared better. Purposely built with ill-fitting doors and no glass in the corridor windows, they were an icy, inhospitable series of dwellings. The basement and other parts of the structure were damaged by bombing in World War Two. It was certainly salvageable yet, despite protests at the time, the entire complex of buildings was demolished in the nineteen-sixties.
The next tenement block to be erected was Leopold Buildings in 1872, by the Improved Industrial Dwellings Company. Built upon land leased by Angela Burdett-Coutts, the block was run on similar lines to Columbia Sq with a strict selection and discipline regime, thus ensuring a healthy return on investment. It housed one hundred and twelve families and was of such individual design that, in 1994, the block received a Grade II listing. In 1997, the premises were upgraded and refurbished to a high standard, and today they enliven the otherwise architecturally bland west end of Columbia Rd.
The next tenement block to be built was in 1892 by the Guinness Trust. As theTtrust announced at the time, “The Guinness Trust … acquired a triangular site on the east side of Columbia Rd (formerly Birdcage Walk), north of the Barnet Chantry estate, in 1890. It replaced sixty-three houses with six blocks of mostly two-roomed tenements designed by Joseph & Smithem, completed in 1901.”
Finally, Ravenscroft Buildings, which stood where Ravenscroft Park sits today was built in 1897 and comprised one hundred and ninety-four flats. It was built around three sides of a rectangle to a height of five storeys. Designed in an ornate style by Davis & Emmanuel, it has not survived and the only extant photograph of the front is the one below, taken in 1898, probably from the Birdcage Public House.
Angela Burdett-Coutts (Courtesy of National Portrait Gallery)
Columbia Market Hall, 1914
These gateposts and railings are all that remain today of Columbia Market Hall
Leopold Buildngs, 1872
Architectural detail of Leopold Buildings
Leopold Buildings
Guinness Trust Buildings, 1892
The only extant shot of the frontage of Ravenscourt Buildings, taken in 1898 probably from the Birdcage Public House (Courtesy of English Heritage)
Joan resident of Ravenscroft Buildings, 1954 – her niece Carol is portrayed below
Hoardings after demolition of Ravenscourt Buildings in the eighties, on what is now Ravenscourt Park
Carol Court, long-term resident of Ravenscroft Buildings, in the park which replaces them today
Jesus Green, the Jesus Hospital Estate was built in the eighteen sixties
Nineteenth century furniture workshops on Columbia Rd
Nineteenth century shopfronts with dwellings above
Looking west down Columbia Rd towards the City of London
On The Bishopsgate Goodsyard, 11
Not Quite Murder Mile
In the third of her stories Linda Wilkinson recounts Columbia Rd’s history of violence and death
Angela Flanders, the perfumer of Columbia Rd, believes Zodiac signs are manifest upon the earth as well as in the stars. Her belief is that Columbia Rd represents Cancer the Crab and it draws people to its bosom in a fond embrace. This is as much to do with the shape of the road as the fact that, for centuries, half of Columbia Rd was called Crab Tree Row, much latterly being united with Birdcage Walk to become Columbia Rd as we know it today.
In total, the road is just eight-hundred and fifty yards long, far short of the traditional length of a ‘murder mile’ yet, even so, it seems that the cancerous motif signals not a welcome but something more akin to dark alchemies.
The overspill of the weaving industry from Spitalfields gave rise to the first recorded murders for – although the deaths were sanctioned by the powers that be – the hangings of John Doyle and John Valline in 1769 were murders nonetheless. They were weavers who had fought for a better wage and had the temerity to belong to a Union. They were hung in Bethnal Green outside the Salmon & Ball Pub.
With the collapse of the weaving trade, Cancer the Crab in the guise of Crab Tree Row, saw the affluent summer houses of the wealthy Huguenot weavers crumble in the late eighteenth century and fall into disrepair and squalor. In the early nineteenth century, law reform led to a dearth of hangings and it was this which, strangely, brought new murders to the Crab itself. In 1831, the ‘London Burkers’ murdered three – possibly more – people and sold them for dissection to the London medical schools when, quite simply, there were not enough stiffs for the students to study.
Living opposite the Birdcage Pub, on the infamous Nova Scotia Gardens and next to a dung heap of enormous proportions, John Bishop and accomplices moved on from ‘resurrecting’ corpses to drugging and drowning their victims in a well in the garden. Their crime became known as the ‘Italian Boy Murder,’ even though the boy in the case was not Italian and there was more than one death.
They too, hung for this but the murder – or worse – of a young girl in 1900 was never solved. As reported at the time, “A man dressed in ragged clothes and wearing a bowler hat took a girl of about five years, into a lavatory on Columbia Rd, Bethnal Green, stripped her of her clothing, leaving the clothing behind.” In spite of a report that a man was seen with a sack on his back with a young child’s leg sticking out of it, she was never found and what her fate might have been can only be surmised.
Just before this grim event, in 1898, two young women from Columbia Rd committed suicide together in a lake at Wanstead, leaving a note that they should be buried together.
Then, in the next century, on the 7th September 1940, literally on the site of the ‘Italian Boy Murder,’ a million-to-one-chance saw a fifty kilogramme bomb enter the air vent to a vast underground bomb shelter beneath old Columbia Rd market building where it exploded, killing fifty-three people and injured many more. This shelter had become a home to beleaguered East Enders – a place where marriages were performed, religious worship took place and a piano entertained locals and troops alike, until it became awash with their blood.
Times remained hard on Columbia Rd post-war. In the nineteen-sixties, there were at least two suicides of long-term residents and, of course, the Kray twins treated the street as their playground. Every Sunday, they held court in the Globe pub, collecting protection money and intimidating those who refused to pay. Firebombing was their preferred method of persuasion for recalcitrant business owners. Gang crime spiralled out of hand and a high-speed (for those days) car chase by the police saw the criminals’ car crash outside the Royal Oak pub where a gun was pulled on a curious passer-by.
Although the Krays went down for their crimes in 1969, the next year Mrs Beber, an old lady who ran a confectioners on Columbia Rd was murdered in her shop, leaving her ninety-year-old husband a widower, and the crime remains unsolved to this day.
Is the site of the ‘Italian Boy Murder’ cursed? In August 2007, a frenzied knife attack saw a girl of four years old, her mother and her uncle hacked to death in Sivill House, which is built on the site of Nova Scotia Gardens and the bomb shelter that saw so many deaths. Another murder of an old lady called Nora by a drug addict took place in the same building not long after.
All told, in eighty hundred and fifty yards, there have been ten murders, not counting the fifty-three bomb deaths, at least four suicides and five people hung as a consequence of local crime. Of the murders, three remain unsolved.
The crossroads at the Salmon & Ball pub where Doyle and Valline were hung in 1769
May, Bishop & Williams in the dock
John Bishop’s house in Nova Scotia Gardens
The huge dust heap that dominated Columbia Rd
The Birdcage pub, 1930
The Black Buildings of the Columbia Market Complex after a bombing raid in 1941
Now the Stringray, the Globe pub was once a Sunday haunt of the Kray Twins
Report on the still-unsolved murder of Mrs Beber in 1969
Sivill House was built on the site of the ‘Italian Boy Murder’ and has seen a few incidents itself
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Billy Frost, the Krays’ Driver
On Saturday 7th September 1940, the Columbia Market Bombing
A fundraising pub quiz for the Columbia Market War Memorial is taking place on Monday 24th November 8.30pm at Ye Olde Black Bull, 13 Broadway, Stratford. E15 4BQ. £3 per person entry with teams of up to six people accepted. There will be a prize for the winning team and a raffle. Donations to Treasurer, Columbia Market War Memorial Group, c/o Dorset Centre, Diss St, E2 7QX.
