The Return Of Nicholas Culpeper
Thanks in no small part to votes cast by readers of Spitalfields Life in the Tower Hamlets People’s Plaques Scheme and to my great delight, I cast my eyes up yesterday in Commercial St to discover a metal plaque for Nicholas Culpeper had appeared upon the building at the corner of Puma Court, close to the site of Red Lion House where Culpeper lived, ran his clinic, tended his herb garden and wrote his English Herbal in the seventeenth century.
Culpeper translated medical books into English from Latin so that people could diagnose themselves and he came to Spitalfields to be outside the jurisdiction of the College of Physicians. Through example, he was one of the first to propose that healthcare should be given free as a basic human right, treating local people without charge each day at his surgery in Red Lion House.
Red Lion House, Nicholas Culpeper’s home in Spitafields. Becoming the Red Lion Tavern after his death, the building was demolished in the eighteen-forties as part of road widening when Commercial St was cut through to carry traffic from the docks.
The plaque that was installed yesterday
By a strange piece of synchronicity, Spitalfields Organics stands upon the site of Red Lion House
“Culpeper’s house, of which there are woodcuts extant, it is of wood, and is situated the corner of Red Lion Court and Red Lion Street, Spitalfields. It is now and has long been a public house, known by the sign of the Red Lion, but at the time it was inhabited by the sage herbalist, it was independent of other buildings. While in the occupation of Culpeper, who died in 1654, this house stood in Red Lion Field and was as a dispensary of medicines (perhaps the first) of very considerable celebrity.” The European Magazine and London Review, January 1812. Red Lion St and Red Lion Court as shown on John Horwood’s map (1794-99) before Commercial St was cut through.
Sebastian Harding’s model of Nicholas Culpeper’s house in Spitalfields.
APPRECIATION OF CULPEPER BY PATRICIA CLEVELAND-PECK, Gardener & Writer
No Spitalfields resident deserves recognition better than the seventeenth century Physician, Herbalist and Astrologer, Nicholas Culpeper.
He first came here because, as an unlicensed medical practitioner, St Mary Spital was beyond the City walls and thus not under the jurisdiction of both the College of Physicians and the Society of Apothecaries. Neither had any liking for the young upstart who treated poor patients cheaply or for free and rejected the expensive herbs sold by the apothecaries, preferring to search for his own growing locally. Culpeper lived in troubled times and his own life was fraught with difficulties, but at the moment he came to Spitalfields things were looking up for him.
Without completing his degree at Cambridge, he began a seven year apprenticeship to the Apothecary Simon White at Temple Bar but the business failed and his master ran off to Ireland with the money Culpeper paid him. Left homeless and penniless, he was fortunate to find a new master, Francis Drake of Threadneedle St who – instead of charging – asked Culpeper for Latin lessons in exchange for the apprenticeship. Yet Francis Drake died within two years, leaving Culpeper and his fellow-apprentice Samuel Leadbetter ‘turned over’ to the elderly Apothecary Stephen Higgins and, shortly afterwards, Culpeper dropped out.
At the age of twenty-four, he fell in love with the young heiress Alice Field. They married in 1640 and it was her fortune which allowed him to buy the house in Spitalfields and set up his practice yet, soon after, he fought a duel which required him to pay his opponent’s medical expenses and flee to France until the rumpus died down.
When Culpeper got back, an accusation of witchcraft was levelled against him – such accusations were not uncommon at the time the Civil War broke out. A patient by the name of Sarah Lyne consulted Culpeper and after a month, when she was no better and began wasting away, she reported him and he was imprisoned. The accusation gained weight because Culpeper practised astrological as well as herbal medicine and this, with its associations of magic, counted against him. He was lucky to get acquitted.
As early as 1641, Culpeper had seen local soldiers practising drill upon the Artillery Ground in Spitalfields and, when the Civil War broke out, he joined the Parliamentarians. They invited him to be a Field Surgeon and, on the way to the battlefield, he collected medicinal herbs but at the Battle of Newbury he was shot in the chest and badly wounded.
Upon his return to Spitalfields, Culpeper did not receive a hero’s welcome – only more grief. Samuel Leadbetter, his fellow apprentice, had taken over the shop of their former master in Threadneedle St and they made an agreement which permitted Culpeper to use the premises as an alternative surgery and for preparation of medicines. But in January 1643, the College of Apothecaries,‘ordered and warned’ Leadbetter to ‘put away Nicholas Culpeper’ – which he did, bringing their long friendship to an end.
After the war, there was no censorship and books could be published more freely. Recognising the opportunity, Culpeper, who had always wanted to bring medicine within the reach of the poor, set about translating the handbook of the College of Physicians from Latin into English – The Physical Directory or Translation of the London Dispensary. More books followed and the College launched an abusive broadside against him entitled, A farm in Spittlefields where all knick-kacks of Astrology are exposed to open sale. Undeterred, in 1653, Culpeper published his English Physician known today as Culpeper’s Herbal, which has never been out of print since.
Nicholas Culpeper was only thirty-nine when he died and was buried beneath the site of Liverpool St Station. He never fully recovered from his chest wound but – even so – he treated hundreds of patients in Spitalfields and educated them in maintaining their own health, which was something quite new at that time. Out of his seventy-nine books and translations, Culpeper’s Herbal was amongst the books taken by pilgrims to the New World.
So let us remember Nicholas Culpeper in Spitalfields.
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Around Billingsgate Market
These intriguing photographs are selected from a cache of transparencies of unknown origin, recently acquired by the Bishopsgate Institute. We believe they date from the nineteen sixties but the photographer is unidentified. Can anyone tell us more?
Fish Porters at Number One Snack Bar next to St Magnus the Martyr
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
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Inns Of Long Forgotten London
Leafing through the fat volumes of Walter Thornbury’s London Old & New is the least energetic form of pub crawl I know and yet I found I was intoxicated merely by studying these tottering old inns, lurching at strange angles like inebriated old men sat by the wayside. Published in the eighteen-seventies, these publications looked back to London and its rural outskirts in the early nineteenth century, evoking a city encircled by coaching inns where pigs roamed loose in Edgware Rd and shepherds drove sheep to market down Highgate Hill.
White Hart Tavern, Bishopsgate
Bell Tavern, Edmonton
Jack Straw’s Castle, Hampstead
Spaniards’ Hotel, Highgate
Old Crown Inn, Highgate
Gate House Tavern, Highgate
The Brill Tavern, Somers Town
The Castle Tavern, Kentish Town
Old Mother Red Cap Tavern, Camden
Queen’s Head & Artichoke, Edgware Rd
Bell Inn, Kilburn
Halfway House, Kensington
Black Lion Tavern, Chelsea
World’s End Tavern, Chelsea
Gun Tavern, Pimlico
Rose & Crown, Kensington
Tattersall’s, Knightsbridge
Three Cranes Tavern, Upper Thames St, City of London
The Old Queen’s Head, Islington
Old Red Lion, Upon the banks of the Fleet – prior to demolition
Saracen’s Head, Snow Hill – prior to demolition
Old Tabard Tavern, Southwark – prior to demolition
White Hart Tavern, Borough
Inns of the Borough
Images courtesy Bishopsgate Institute
You may like to take a look at other engravings from London Old & New
and more pubs
Out of the blue, one of the readers sent me some photographs last summer taken by their friend Bob Mazzer on the London Underground in the eighties. I was immediately captivated by Bob’s irresistibly joyous pictures but I had no idea of the sensation they would create, drawing so many hundreds of thousands of readers from around the world. Within weeks, they were being published in national newspapers and the emergence of this previously-unknown photographer with these breathtaking images became a widespread news story.
Prior to this, Bob had spent decades trying to gain recognition for his work and being rejected by publishers and galleries. Yet the publication of his photographs on Spitalfields Life drew universal acclaim immediately – both for their excellence as photography, and for the humour and poetry of Bob’s vision of humanity.
Encouraged by the success of Phil Maxwell’s Brick Lane published last week, I am asking you to help me produce a beautiful two hundred page hardback book of Bob’s Underground pictures and enable Bob’s debut London exhibition at Howard Griffin Gallery in Shoreditch. The plan is to publish the book and open the show on June 12th with a great party.
I am inviting any of my readers who are willing to invest the sum of no more and no less than one thousand pounds each to cover production costs. We will ask you to bring your cheque along to a celebratory dinner for Bob later this month and we will put your name in the book. In June, prior to publication, I will present you with a copy inscribed by Bob and, six months later, we will commence repayment of your investment – unless you choose to offer it as a donation towards the publication of further titles by Spitalfields Life Books.
Additionally, you can show your support by placing an order for the book now by clicking here and we will send you a copy upon publication.
Following Colin O’Brien’s Travellers’ Children in London Fields, The Gentle Author’s London Album and Phil Maxwell’s Brick Lane, Bob Mazzer’s Underground is the fourth title from Spitalfields Life Books – and Faber Factory Plus (part of Faber & Faber) will distribute it to bookshops nationwide.
If you are willing to be an investor and help me publish Bob Mazzer’s Underground, please drop me a line at Spitalfieldslife@gmail.com and I will be delighted to send you further details.
Photographs © copyright Bob Mazzer
Click here to pre-order Bob Mazzer’s UNDERGROUND
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The Apotheosis Of Phil Maxwell
On Thursday night at six o’clock, crowds poured in to the Rich Mix Centre to celebrate the work of Phil Maxwell and his extraordinary thirty years of photographing the East End, upon publication day of his new book.
Beginning in 1981, Brick Lane records the passing away of one world and the arrival of another in the span of a generation. Looking at Phil’s early pictures, you feel are witnessing the last lingering glimmer of the nineteenth century – the last shreds of Dickens’ London – yet, by the end, it is unquestionably the present day and our own time. Repeatedly this week, I have found myself leafing back and forth through the three hundred pages of ‘Brick Lane’ to seek a perspective upon the changes we have seen. Each time, I discover new details and I know I shall keep returning to Phil’s book for years to come.
Many hundreds came to carry off copies and meet the man responsible for this epic record of turbulent social change upon one street. Some suggested that Phil’s book documents how Brick Lane has been ruined, while others commented that it shows the place is in better repair these days and people on the street look healthier and happier – that the poverty apparent in the earlier photographs has gone. But the fascination and success of Phil Maxwell’s vision is that it defies any simple interpretation and, as guests stood around leafing through pages and studying the book, a consensus arose that these photographs comprise the historic record of our times.
Thanks to the generosity of Truman’s Beer, everyone was welcomed with a glass of ale and the collective excitement of this lively gathering, with many of those featured in the photographs present, conjured a strong community atmosphere – as captured in these pictures by Contributing Photographer Simon Mooney.
Phil Maxwell signed books for two hours without respite as the line of those awaiting his autograph grew no shorter, until eight o’clock when the crowd fell silent as Lola Perrin took to the stage for a performance at the piano accompanying film sequences of Phil’s photographs edited by Hazuan Hashim. Each one revealed alternative versions of the same shot, permitting us to see through Phil’s eyes as he sought the definitive image. We stood in rapture to see our familiar streets inhabited by the shades of the past and then watched as they faded like memories.
The culmination of the evening came at the end when Phil Maxwell appeared on stage for a short curtain call with his partner Hazuan Hashim and Lola Perrin the musician. A roar of thunderous applause and loud cheers filled the space from the floor to the balcony. It was a clamour of delight at a one man’s remarkable lifetime of achievement in photography. It was the apotheosis of Phil Maxwell.
Phil Maxwell, Lola Perrin and Hazuan Hashim take a bow
Photographs copyright © Simon Mooney
CLICK HERE TO GET YOUR COPY OF PHIL MAXWELL’S BRICK LANE FOR £10
Posters can be obtained free from Bishopsgate Library, Brick Lane Bookshop, Broadway Bookshop, Gardners’ Market Sundriesmen, The Golden Heart, Rough Trade, SCP, Labour & Wait, Leila’s Shop, Newham Bookshop & Townhouse. Each outlet has 50 posters to give away.
A New Quill For Old John Stow
Let me confess, I am a biro writer. I get through so many pens at such a rate that there really is no alternative. Yet in the case of my illustrious predecessor, John Stow, one the earliest historians of London, a quill is his preferred writing instrument and, every five years, a replacement is delivered upon a satin cushion to his monument in St Andrew Undershaft in the City of London.
This week it was time was for a new quill, so Photographer Colin O’Brien & I joined the excited crowds to witness the Lord Mayor of London put it into the hand of John Stow at a ceremony honouring the work of this celebrated antiquarian.
John Stow was a tailor born in 1525, who struggled to keep himself while writing, yet successfully undertook his epic Survey of London between 1560 and 1598, describing the streets, buildings, history, culture and people of his City. In Stow’s lifetime the population of the London quadrupled, going from 50,000 to 200,000, and he saw the churches ransacked of their medieval monuments and brasses with the names of the dead erased. As a parishioner of St Andrew Undershaft, he witnessed the great maypole taller than the tower – and from which the church takes its name – torn down and discarded as an idol.
In the Survey of London, John Stow recorded more than fifteen hundred names of Londoners who would otherwise have been condemned to oblivion, rescuing their identities in perpetuity while omitting the names of those did the damage, that they might be forgotten. Through his writing, Stow sought to preserve the memory of the world that he saw passing away and, in doing so, he created the most complete record we have of medieval and renaissance London.
John Stow’s monument was placed upon the wall in the corner of the church by his widow after his death in 1605, just six years after the publication of the great Survey by which we remember him and, thankfully, his memorial has avoided the fate of the medieval brasses and tombs which caused Stow such grief in his lifetime.
Thus, today and for eternity, John Stow sits snug in his marble cubicle in a quiet corner of St Andrew Undershaft, lost in thought, with a large book open in front of him on his desk and two other small volumes conveniently placed upon brackets on either side, for ease of reference. Old Stow writes in silence and no-one knows what he is working on. But now he has a new quill to keep him going for another few years and, after four centuries, we hope that he might complete another volume of his Survey one day – because the pace of change has not abated in London.
John Stow (1525-1605)
St Andrew Undershaft
Verger, Tom Wright, carries the quill
Lord Mayor of London, Fiona Woolf, with the Master of the Merchant Taylors’ Company, John Price, and Vicar of St Andrew Undershaft, William Taylor
St Andrew Undershaft takes its name from a great maypole that once stood here, taller than the tower
John Stow with his new quill
Photographs copyright © Colin O’Brien
On Phil Maxwell’s Publication Day
Join me tonight from 6pm for a glass of Truman’s Beer to celebrate the publication of Phil Maxwell’s BRICK LANE at Rich Mix, Bethnal Green Rd. There will be an exhibition of the photos and Phil will be signing books. At 8pm, the films of Hazuan Hashim & Phil Maxwell will be screened with live piano accompaniment by Lola Perrin.
[vimeo 88003159 nolink]
CLICK HERE TO GET YOUR COPY OF PHIL MAXWELL’S BRICK LANE FOR £10
Posters at Rough Trade East in the Truman Brewery
We shall be giving away posters to all comers at Rich Mix this evening. After tonight, posters can be obtained free from Bishopsgate Library, Brick Lane Bookshop, Broadway Bookshop, Gardners’ Market Sundriesmen, The Golden Heart, Rough Trade, SCP, Labour & Wait, Leila’s Shop, Newham Bookshop & Townhouse. Each outlet has 50 posters to give away..
BRICK LANE is published with the generous investment of the following readers of Spitalfields Life – Fiona Atkins, Jill Browne, Robson Cezar, Stephane Derone, Charlie de Wet, Sandra Esqulant, David Ethier, Diana Fawcett, Lynda Finn, Susie Ford & Jonathon Green, Libby Hall, Carolyn Hirst (on behalf of Rowland Hirst), Michael Keating, Martin Ling, Julia Meadows, Jack Murphy, Colin O’Brien, Jan O’Brien, Kate Phillips, Sian Phillips & Rodney Archer, Jonathan Pryce & Kate Fahy, Honor Rhodes, John Ricketts, Corvin Roman, Tim Sayer, Elizabeth Scott and Zoe Woodward.
Click here to order a copy of THE GENTLE AUTHOR’S LONDON ALBUM
Click here to order a copy of TRAVELLERS CHILDREN IN LONDON FIELDS
Faber Factory Plus part of Faber & Faber are distributing BRICK LANE and other titles published by Spitalfields Life Books nationwide, so if you are a retailer and would like to sell copies in your shop please contact bridgetlj@faber.co.uk who deals with trade orders.
