Joan Brown, The First Woman In Smithfield
On the final day of the Smithfield Market Public Enquiry, I publish my interview with Joan Brown, the first woman to be permitted to work inside the Smithfield Central Market in 1945
“When the cat can’t decide whether to go out, I say ‘Make up your Smithfield mind!'”
At ninety-three years old, Joan Brown is not given to protest. In fifty-seven years working as a Secretary at Smithfield Market, she mastered the art of operating through diplomacy and accommodation. Yet last year, Joan was driven to write a letter of objection to the City of London Corporation when she learned of the proposed demolition of the General Market. “The bustle and excitement of Smithfield became part of my life until I finally retired at the age of seventy-four,” she wrote, “You will appreciate my feelings at the thought of even part of those lovely buildings being destroyed.”
The General Market of 1868, where Joan first began her career in West Smithfield, contains one of Europe’s grandest market parades beneath a vast glass dome, designed by Sir Horace Jones who was also responsible for Tower Bridge. Although proposals from SAVE Britain’s Heritage exist to refurbish the historic building and reopen it as a retail market, revitalising this part of London, the City Corporation has granted planning permission to Henderson Global Investments to replace it with three tower blocks, retaining only the facade of the original edifice.
Today, Friday 28th February, is the final day of the Smithfield Public Enquiry with closing submissions and although, regrettably, Joan will not be attending due to her advanced years, she hopes some readers might like to go along on her behalf.
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
The Smithfield Market Public Enquiry concludes today, Friday 28th February, with final submissions from 10am at the Basinghall Suite (accessed through the Art Gallery) at the Guildhall in the City of London.
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Sarah Ainslie at Smithfield Market
David Hoffman At Smithfield Market
Photographer David Hoffman visited Smithfield Market in November 1989 under commission by New Statesman & Society. In the event, only David’s black and white pictures were published in the magazine but he shot thirteen rolls of colour film, and today I publish a selection of these photographs of Smithfield for the first time.
“It took me two weeks to get permission from Mr Noakes, Market Clerk & Superintendent,” David explained, “I visited three or four nights until eight in the morning and then I went for a huge fry-up at the Cock Tavern.”
“The men who worked in the market were a really friendly, happy bunch – rough and ready,” he recalled fondly, “a few lumps of fat came flying and hit me on the neck, but nothing evil.”
“It was a privilege to go to Smithfield and take these photographs – I love the way the culture of the market has evolved organically from the needs of the buyers and the sellers over centuries, rather being organised from the top down.”
Photographs copyright © David Hoffman
The Smithfield Market Public Enquiry concludes tomorrow, Friday 28th February, with final submissions from 10am at the Basinghall Suite (accessed through the Art Gallery) at the Guildhall in the City of London.
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Wonderful London
It is my pleasure to publish these dignified and characterful portraits of Londoners, believed to be by photographer Donald McLeish (1879-1950), selected from the three volumes of Wonderful London edited by St John Adcock and produced by The Fleetway House in the nineteen-twenties.
Telescope Man on Westminster Bridge
Old woman who inhabited the alleys off Fleet St
Breton Onion Seller
Costermonger and child
Cats’ Meat Man
Knife Grinder
Charwoman
Islington Window Cleaner
Flower Seller
Concertina Player
Hurdy-Gurdy Man
Gramophone Man
Escapologist
Wandering Harpist
Street Sweeper
Scavenger
District Messenger
Telephone Messenger
Railway Fireman
Railway Engine Driver
Carman
Railway Porter
Gold Beaters
Gas Fitters
Chimney Sweep
Telephone Cable Man
Photographs courtesy Bishopsgate Institute
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John Thomson’s Street Life in London
William Nicholson’s London Types
Sarah Ainslie At Smithfield Market
For six months during the winter and into the spring of 1994, Spitalfields Life Contributing Photographer Sarah Ainslie visited Smithfield Market one night each week from two or three until six or seven in the morning, and these are a selection of her pictures. This was the Horace Jones’ Central Market prior to restoration, in the days when all the meat was still out in the open, before the building was altered and the meat put behind glass in refrigerators. “It was like going into a subterranean world and I loved it,” Sarah admitted to me, “You could walk right through the market and see everything.”
“I feel a huge respect for what they do at Smithfield and I find it beautiful to see the animals hanging up”
“There’s a strong camaraderie amongst the guys and a lot of banter”
“I grew fascinated by it, this thing that operated at night and closed when everyone else woke up”
“Smithfield Market is different from everything else in London because it’s so functional, and people aren’t used to seeing that, especially in the midst of the city. Now it’s become a taboo, something that people are more comfortable to have hidden away.”
“I was drawn to the visceral quality of the environment with its smell of meat and people running around carrying big pieces of meat, there’s such drama to see these people in the midst of it all.”
“We tend to forget where meat comes from, when you go to a supermarket you don’t see the origin”
“I never found it disgusting but people used to ask me, ‘Don’t you find it horrible?’ Yet, coming from a farming background, I had seen cows and pigs brought up and sent off to feed people.”
“Sometimes, I used to go into the cafe and take photos and, one morning, these guys who were sitting there covered in blood, who had been cutting up meat all night, they started having a philosophical discussion about God…”
Photographs copyright © Sarah Ainslie
The Smithfield Market Public Enquiry runs today (25th February) from 10am – 5pm at the Basinghall Suite (accessed through the Art Gallery) at the Guildhall in the City of London. and on Wednesday 26th and Friday 28th February – the latter being the culmination of the enquiry with final submissions.
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At Dalston Lane
Can you believe that this partly-demolished late Georgian terrace is the outcome of a “conservation-led’ scheme? So it is in Hackney, where the bulldozers moved in last month only to be hastily withdrawn when it was pointed out to the council that their action was illegal, forcing Murphy (their developer partners) to seek permission at a planning meeting which takes place next week, on March 3rd.
However, this pitiful sequence of events does permit members of the public to submit objections in the hope that the rest of the terrace may be spared the wreckers’ ball. And, in the meantime, Spitalfields Life Contributing Photographer Simon Mooney went inside to take the pictures you see below, permitting us a glimpse of the historic interiors.
In 1800, Dalston Lane was – as its name suggests – merely a country track through agricultural land, but the pace of development up the Kingsland Rd, served by the brickyards that opened to produce building material from the London clay, delivered three symmetrical pairs of dignified Italianate villas constructed by Richard Sheldrick in 1807.
By 1830, terraces on either side filled up the remaining plots to create a handsome row of dwellings with front gardens facing onto the lane. In this era, Dalston was still rural and it was not until the end of the century that the front gardens were replaced by the run of shopfronts divided by Corinthian capitals which we see today.
This modest yet good quality terrace represents the essential fabric of the East End and its evolution manifests two centuries of social history in Dalston. Consequently, the terrace is enfolded by a Conservation Area that embraces other contemporary buildings which define the distinctive quality of this corner of Hackney and thus, when the council sought to regenerate the area in 2012, it was with a “conservation-led” scheme.
Yet when the council’s surveyors questioned the structural integrity of the terrace, if it were to stand up to being woven into the facade of a new development, nobody suggested reworking the development to suit the terrace – or simply repairing the buildings. Instead the council decided, without any consultation, to demolish the terrace and replace it with a replica that would permit higher density housing within the development.
In January, this destruction was halted when the council’s survey was called into question by the Society for Protection of Ancient Buildings and others, who called for an independent appraisal by a surveyor with experience of historic structures. So now we have until next week to object to this “conservation-led” scheme that entails the demolition of all the buildings. As one wag so eloquently put it, “Is that like a picnic without the sandwiches?”
Click here before March 3rd to object to the demolition of the terrace in Dalston Lane
In your objection, please point out the substantial harm this demolition will do to the Dalston Lane (West) Conservation Area and emphasise that it does not comply with national, regional or local heritage planning policies and guidance.
The shameful hole in the terrace
Paired villas of of 1807 to the left and terrace of 1830 to the right
Rear of 1830 terrace
Paired villas built by Richard Sheldrick in 1807
The villas built in symmetrical pairs, note detail of long stairwell window
The rendering is a late nineteenth century addition
Late Georgian shutters re-used as a partition
Original reeded arch in plaster
Reeded panelling
Late Georgian newel with stick banisters
Original panelling
One house is still inhabited
The presiding spirit of the terrace
Late nineteenth century shop interior panelled with tongue and groove, with original shelves and fittings
A century of use illustrates changing styles of fascia lettering
One of the paired villas of 1807 has been destroyed and another half-demolished
The terrace of 1830 on the right has an unusual single window detail on the first floor
The terrace with the graphic of its replica with which the developers hope to facade their structure
Run of nineteenth century shopfronts punctuated by Corinthian capitals
Dalston Lane 1900
Dalston Lane 1940
Kingsland Rd, c. 1800. Brickworks manufacture building materials for the rapid development that is spreading across the agricultural land. The buildings to the right still stand in the Kingsland Rd, just around the corner from Dalston Lane.
Photographs copyright © Simon Mooney
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At The Spring Flower Show
There may yet be another month before spring begins, but inside the Royal Horticutural Hall in Victoria it arrived with a vengeance last week. The occasion was the RHS Plant & Design Show held each year at this time, which gives specialist nurseries the opportunity to display a prime selection of their spring-flowering varieties and introduce new hybrids to the gardening world.
I joined the excited throng at opening time on the first day, entering the great hall where shafts of dazzling sunshine descended to illuminate the woodland displays placed strategically upon the north side to catch the light. Each one a miracle of horticultural perfection, it was as if sections of a garden had been transported from heaven to earth. Immaculate plant specimens jostled side by side in landscapes unsullied by weed, every one in full bloom and arranged in an aesthetic approximation of nature, complete with a picturesque twisted old gate, a slate path and dead beech leaves arranged for pleasing effect.
Awestruck by rare snowdrops and exotic coloured primroses, passionate gardeners stood in wonder at the bounty and perfection of this temporary arcadia, and I was one of them. Let me confess I am more of a winter gardener than of any other season because it touches my heart to witness those flowers that bloom in spite of the icy blast. I treasure these harbingers of the spring that dare to show their faces in the depths of winter and so I found myself among kindred spirits at the Royal Horticultural Hall.
Yet these flowers were not merely for display, each of the growers also had a stall where plants could be bought. Clearly an overwhelming emotional occasion for some, “It’s like being let loose in a sweet shop,” I overhead one horticulturalist exclaim as they struggled to retain self-control, “but I’m not gong to buy anything until I have seen everything.” Before long, there were crowds at at each stall, inducing first-day-of-the-sales-like excitement as aficionados pored over the new varieties, deliberating which to choose and how many to carry off. It would be too easy to get seduced by the singular merits of that striped blue primula without addressing the question of how it might harmonise with the yellow primroses at home.
For the nurserymen and women who nurtured these prized specimens in glasshouses and poly-tunnels through the long dark winter months, this was their moment of consummation. Double-gold-medal-winner Catherine Sanderson of ‘Cath’s Garden Plants’ was ecstatic – “The mild winter has meant this is the first year we have had all the colours of primulas on sale,” she assured me as I took her portrait with her proud rainbow display of perfect specimens.
As a child, I was fascinated by the Christmas Roses that flowered in my grandmother’s garden in this season and, as a consequence, Hellebores have remained a life-long favourite of mine. So I was thrilled to carry off two exotic additions to a growing collection which thrive in the shady conditions of my Spitalfields garden – Harvington Double White Speckled and Harvington Double White.
Unlike the English seasons, this annual event is a reliable fixture in the calendar and you can guarantee I shall be back at the Royal Horticultural Hall next year, secure in my expectation of a glorious excess of uplifting spring flowers irrespective of the weather.
Double-gold-medal-winner Catherine Sanderson of ‘Cath’s Garden Plants’
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Time To Write Your Novel?
The Bronte sisters arrive in Cornhill to meet their publisher Thackeray, 1848
In response to popular demand, we are running our HOW TO WRITE YOUR FIRST NOVEL course again in Spitalfields on the weekend of Saturday 22nd & Sunday 23rd March. The course is hosted by two writers who achieved notable success with their first novels – Rosie Dastgir author of A Small Fortune published by Quercus & Kate Griffin author of Kitty Peck and The Music Hall Murders published by Faber.
As guests, Walter Donohue, Senior Editor at Faber, will be talking about what he looks for in a first novel and Spitalfields resident Clive Murphy will be amusing us with his experiences as a novelist in London in the seventies.
The course will be held at 5 Fournier St, an eighteenth century weavers’ house, on Saturday and Sunday from 10am – 5pm. Lunch catered by Leila’s Cafe and tea, coffee and cakes by the Townhouse are included within the course fee of £250.
There are just fourteen places available, email spitalfieldslife@gmail.com to book your place on the course. Accommodation at 5 Fournier St can be provided upon enquiry.
Walter Donohue, Senior Editor at Faber
“I am looking for a distinctive narrative voice and an arresting first line, one that makes the reader ask, ‘What happens next?’ Of course, any novel must have structure – a beginning, middle and an end, though each part doesn’t have to be of equal length. I hope for characters that are grounded and authentic, with whom the reader can empathise, and prose that flows across the page, drawing the reader into a believable world. Originality and imagination are essential, expressed in a strong story. But above all, I look for a certain confidence that derives from a writer responding to what their instinct tells them to write about.”
Rosie Dastgir
“I never made a conscious decision to be a writer. Writing was always something I did from a very early age. But I did make a conscious decision to write a novel when I moved to New York in 2005, it was the moment to try something new. I’d been writing screenplays and had worked in documentaries at the BBC for many years. One day, a project that I’d worked on for a while stalled and I was so demoralized that I decided I’d write something that didn’t require a committee of approval. So I wrote a short story, inspired by a trip I’d made to Pakistan when I was a teenager, and that became the seed of this novel. It evolved over several years and went through many iterations, as I rewrote it. I finished it in New York where it was published in 2012.”
Kate Griffin
“Writing is an oddly lonely thing to do. It’s just you, staring at a notebook or a laptop, perhaps the sound of a clock ticking somewhere in the background, the occasional gurgle of central heating pipes, maybe a radio playing softly in an another room, a child laughing in the street?
That’s my experience anyway. I’m sure every writer will tell you something different. We all work in different ways. Despite the impression I might have given above of an isolated hermit-like existence, the main reason I write is that I love being surrounded by people. More specifically, I love it when my own sense of self is crowded out by the characters in my head clamouring to have their say. On a good day, they tell their own story – I don’t even have to do the work! On a bad day, I give up and attempt to find inspiration in the fridge. (It’s never there.)
Writing appeals to the thwarted theatrical in me. Not only do I get to set the scene, build and decorate the sets and write the script, I get to play all the parts too. Sometimes I run characters’ lines through my head as I type (I’m a lap top writer, not a long-hander) and at other times I read them aloud in suitable voices to make sure they sound right. There’s a chasm of difference between words on a screen and words spoken aloud. Often the only way to bridge that gap – and find out if they fly – is to try them out.
Having the opportunity to become a new person and explore an alien world through their eyes is something that motivates me to write. It’s like setting off on an adventure – even if you think you’ve got a map and a plan you’ll often surprise yourself. That’s part of the fun and part of the challenge.
My first novels ‘Kitty Peck and the Music Hall Murders’ and ‘The Jade Boy,’ for children, were published in the summer of 2013. I think it’s no coincidence that on Midsummer’s Day last year I also turned fifty. It was a watershed moment.
I’ve always written, in some way, for a living. I started out as a journalist on a local newspaper and then I hopped over the fence to work as a press officer. I love playing with words, but increasingly I found myself frustrated that I was telling other people’s stories not my own. I don’t think I ever admitted this, even to myself, but at some level, a small but horribly insistent voice kept insinuating itself into my mind, whispering that there was something else, something more creative and personal, that I could be doing with my ‘skills’.
Eventually I listened. Outside of work, I started writing about things that interested and entertained me. I was quite surprised at some of the macabre, strange, fanciful, gothic and, frankly, camp scenes that leapt from my head to the page. Once I started, I couldn’t stop. I was like Cecil B. DeMille directing a private and slightly mad epic. I’ve realised I don’t really do ‘small’. I’d love to pretend that I write with the precision and miraculous delicacy of Jane Austen, but, in truth, my characters and stories have a larger than life quality that owes a great deal to fairy tale, pantomime and the stage – the great obsessions of my childhood.
Actually, those passions have never gone away. They’ve clearly been marinating on a low flame for nearly half a century, but now they’re ready to serve and I’m grateful that despite the terrible things I put them through, my characters – the repertory company that lives in my head – still want to talk to me and tell me what happens next.
When they don’t, I’ll start to worry. ”
Clive Murphy, Poet, Oral Historian & Author of three novels – Summer Overtures, Freedom For Mr Mildew & Nigel Someone. Brigid Brophy wrote of Summer Overtures, “It makes angelic use of words (and sentences and paragraphs). It is lucid, cool, sly and inventive … may well be required reading, having become a classic.”
HOW TO WRITE YOUR FIRST NOVEL, 22nd & 23rd March, 5 Fournier St, Spitalfields
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