At The Jewish Soup Kitchen
Originally established in 1854 in Leman St, the Jewish Soup Kitchen opened in Brune St in 1902 and, even though it closed in 1992, the building in Spitalfields still proclaims its purpose to the world in bold ceramic lettering across the fascia. These days few remember when it was supplying groceries to fifteen hundred people weekly, which makes Photographer Stuart Freedman’s pictures especially interesting as a glimpse of one of the last vestiges of the Jewish East End.
“After I finished studying Politics at university, I decided I wanted to be a photographer but I didn’t know how to do it,” Stuart recalled, contemplating these pictures taken in 1990 at the very beginning of his career. “Although I was brought up in Dalston, my father had grown up in Stepney in the thirties and, invariably, when we used to go walking together we always ended up in Petticoat Lane, which seemed to have a talismanic quality for him. So I think I was following in his footsteps.”
“I used to wander with my camera and, one day, I was just walking around taking pictures, when I moseyed in to the Soup Kitchen and said ‘Can I take photographs?’ and they said, ‘Yes.’ “I didn’t realise what I was doing because now they seem to be the only pictures of this place in existence. You could smell that area then – the smell of damp in old men’s coats and the poverty.”
For the past twenty years Stuart Freedman has worked internationally as a photojournalist, yet he was surprised to come upon new soup kitchens recently while on assignment in the north of England. “The poverty is back,” he revealed to me in regret,“which makes these pictures relevant all over again.”
Groceries awaiting collection
A volunteer offers a second hand coat to an old lady
An old woman collects her grocery allowance
A volunteer distributes donated groceries
View from behind the hatch
A couple await their food parcel
An ex-boxer arrives to collect his weekly rations
An old boxer’s portrait, taken while waiting to collect his groceries
An elderly man leaves the soup kitchen with his supplies
Photographs copyright © Stuart Freedman
Follow Stuart Freedman’s blog Umbra Sumus
You can read more about the Soup Kitchen here
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Hazuan Hashim’s Winter Whitechapel Skies
While we have walked round with our shoulders hunched and our noses to the ground against the inclement weather of recent months, Hazuan Hashim has raised his eyes to the heavens from the eleventh storey of the tower block where he lives in Whitechapel to photograph these cloudscapes, appreciating the epic drama and beauty in the meteorology that the rest of us merely endure.
5th December, 9:01am
5th December, 1:50pm
8th December, 2:10pm
24th December, 3:57pm
25th December, 10:25am
30th December, 12:27pm
30th December, 1:22pm
19th January, 8:52am
19th January, 8:53am
4th February, 7:40am
4th February, 7:44am
4th February, 2:19pm
9th February, 4:55pm
10th February, 2:54pm
11th February, 1:00pm
13th February, 12:31pm
13th February, 12:32pm
Photographs copyright © Hazuan Hashim
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Viscountess Boudica’s Valentine’s Day
Viscountess Boudica of Bethnal Green confessed to me that she has never received a Valentine in her entire life and yet, in spite of this unfortunate example of the random injustice of existence, her faith in the future remains undiminished.
Taking a break from her busy filming schedule, the Viscountess granted me a brief audience this week to reveal her intimate thoughts upon the most romantic day of the year and permit me to take these rare photographs that reveal a candid glimpse into the private life of one of the East End’s most fascinating characters.
This year – for the first time since 1986 – Viscountess Boudica dug out her Valentine paraphernalia of paper hearts, banners, fairylights, candles and other pink stuff to put on this show as an encouragement to the readers of Spitalfields Life. “If there’s someone that you like,” she says, “I want you to send them a card to show them that you care.”
Yet behind the brave public face, lies a personal tale of sadness for the Viscountess. “I think Valentine’s Day is a good idea, but it’s a kind of death when you walk around the town and see the guys with their bunches of flowers, choosing their chocolates and cards, and you think, ‘It should have been me!'” she admitted with a frown, “I used to get this funny feeling inside, that feeling when you want to get hold of someone and give them a cuddle.”
Like those love-lorn troubadours of yore, Viscountess Boudica has mined her unrequited loves as a source of inspiration for her creativity, writing stories, drawing pictures and – most importantly – designing her remarkable outfits that record the progress of her amours. “There is a tinge of sadness after all these years,” she revealed to me, surveying her Valentine’s Day decorations,” but I am inspired to believe there is hope of domestic happiness.”
LEAVE YOUR VALENTINE MESSAGES FOR VISCOUNTESS BOUDICA IN THE COMMENTS BELOW
Be sure to follow Viscountess Boudica’s blog There’s More To Life Than Heaven & Earth
Take a look at
Viscountess Boudica’s Domestic Appliances
Viscountess Boudica’s Halloween
Viscountess Boudica’s Christmas
Read my original profile of Mark Petty, Trendsetter
and take a look at Mark Petty’s Multicoloured Coats
Andrew Coram’s Toby Jugs
Look at the old men, sitting lined up with their flasks of ale to watch the rain falling. They are late-eighteenth and early-nineteenth century Toby jugs and this is Andrew Coram’s antique shop, Beedell Coram at 86 Commercial St, which has London’s most consistently-fascinating window displays.
These curious characters only appeared at the beginning of this week and, in spite of one-hundred-mile-an-hour gusts, I halted in my path to peer from beneath my umbrella through the window and admire their ugly mugs, returning my glance with glazed expressions. Toby jugs have fallen from popularity in recent generations thanks to the proliferation of homogenised versions in the last century – but those in Andrew’s collection all date from before 1820 and, in their vividly-caricatured features and fine details, they have the authentic grotesque vigour of folk art which sets them apart from the banality of their mass-produced descendants.
“Toby Fillpot was a notorious Yorkshire drunkard whose real name was Harry Elwes,” Andrew informed me authoritatively, positing his theory of the origin of these charismatic designs when we convened in his shop yesterday, sheltering from a particularly virulent downpour. “It should be a full length figure sitting with a flask and a pipe, and wearing an eighteenth century frock coat and a tricorn hat,” he continued, admiring his treasured specimens that he acquired from a collector in Wales.
“I like the anthropomorphic quality,” Andrew admitted to me with relish, “the uglier the better.”
Look at the old men, sitting lined up with their flasks of ale to watch the rain falling
Pearlware Toby jug with stopper, early nineteenth century
London Salt Glaze, late-eighteenth/early-nineteenth century Toby jug
Ralph Wood type Toby Jug with pipe, c. 1790
Sponge ware Toby jug, c. 1790
Hearty Goodfellow, early nineteenth century Staffordshire figure
“With my pipe in one hand & jug in the other
I drink to my Neighbour & Friend
My cares in a whiff of tobacco I’ll smother
For Life you know shortly must end”
Small Toby jug, c. 1800
Toby Fillpot, etching by Robert Dighton 1786
From his shop window, antiques dealer Andrew Coram watches the rain falling upon Spitalfields
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Emily Webber’s East End Shop Fronts
Hanbury St, E1
Ten years ago, Emily Webber began photographing London Shop Fronts and now she has collected more than fifteen hundred fine examples across the capital, from which these East End favourites are selected. “I was initially fascinated with the fonts, but after a step back I started to look at the whole picture,” Emily explained to me, “I choose shops that look like they have a story to tell. I look for clues — worn signage or a sign that is half written-over, a tile design, any mark of individuality. These premises are the overlooked backdrop to our city and already a fair few have gone or changed their appearance.”
Copper Mill Lane, E17
Kenworthy Rd, E5
High Rd, Leyton, E10
Sandringham RD, E8
Casenove Rd, N16
Mile End Rd, E3
High Rd, Leyton, E10
Lower Clapton Rd, E5
Kingsland Rd, N16
Mile End Rd, E1
Whitechapel High St, E1
Wentworth St, E1
Bethnal Green Rd, E2
Grove Rd, E2
East India Dock Rd, E14
Bethnal Green Rd, E2
Chatsworth Rd, E5
Clarence Rd, E5
Roman Rd, E2
Graham Rd, E8
Bethnal Green Rd, E8
Lea Bridge Rd, E10
Well St, E9
Church St, N16
Lower Clapton Rd, E8
Roman Rd, E2
Whitechapel Rd, E1
Chatsworth Rd, E5
Rectory Rd, N16
Photographs copyright © Emily Webber
Emily is planning a book of her shop frontsand you can subscribe to updates here
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Alan Dein’s East End Shop Fronts, 1988
More of Alan Dein’s East End Shop Fronts
Eleanor Crow’s East End Fish Shops
Izis Bidermanas’ London
Lithuanian-born Israel Bidermanas (1911-1980) first achieved recognition under the identity of Izis for his portraits of members of the French resistance that he took while in hiding near Limoges at the time of the German invasion. Encouraged by Brassai, he pursued a career as a professional photographer in peacetime, fulfilling commissions for Paris Match and befriending Jacques Prévert and Marc Chagall. He and Prévert were inveterate urban wanderers and in 1952 they published ‘Charmes de Londres,’ delivering this vivid and poetic vision of the shabby old capital in the threadbare post-war years.
In the cemetery of St John, Wapping
Milk cart in Gordon Sq, Bloomsbury
At Club Row animal market, Spitalfields
The Nag’s Head, Kinnerton St, W1
In Pennyfields, Limehouse
Palace St, Westminster
Ties on sale in Ming St, Limehouse
Greengrocer, Kings Rd, Chelsea
Diver in the London Docks
Organ Grinder, Shaftesbury Ave, Piccadilly
Sphinx, Chiswick Park
Hampden Crescent, W2
Underhill Passage, Camden Town
Braithwaite Arches, Wheler St, Spitalfields
East India Dock Rd, Limehouse
Musical instrument seller, Petticoat Lane
Grosvenor Crescent Mews, Hyde Park Corner
Unloading in the London Docks
London Electricity Board Apprentices
On the waterfront at Greenwich
Tower Bridge
Photographs courtesy Bishopsgate Institute
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Melvyn Reeves, Retired Civil Servant
Here is Melvyn at the Jane St Coronation Party in Stepney in June 1953. He is the one with the curls at the centre on the right, and to left you can see the legendary flyweight champion Smilin’ Sammy McCarthy bringing a touch of his celebrity glamour to the occasion. No wonder Melvyn was astonished at the drama and excitement of his childhood world in Jane St, and chose never to leave this favoured corner of the East End.
“When people call me a stick-in-the-mud, I say, ‘Yes!'” Melvyn admitted to me with a triumphant smile, “When they ask me, ‘Why did live you with your family, why didn’t you move away?’ I always say, ‘Why?'” When I went to my college interview, they said ‘Have you listed your university preferences in order of their distance from your home?’ and I said, ‘Yes, that’s right!” And I went to Queen Mary University in Mile End and got a first class degree in Maths.”
In 1961 Melvyn’s family moved from Jane St, when it was demolished, into a newly-built council flat just a few streets away. Fifty-three years later, Melvyn lives there alone – now that his parents have died and his sister has moved away. “I used to be fat but after I lost my mum it fell away and I went from eleven and a half stone to eight and a half stone,” he revealed. Yet Melvyn is happy to be at the centre of his own personal universe and, after a decade of being the sole occupant, he is contemplating the bold step of having the place redecorated this spring and replacing the chintz curtains and floral carpet with decor that suits his personal taste.
“I do miss having someone to argue with and someone to tell me what to do,” he confessed to me when I visited him there one rainy afternoon last week.
“I was born at the Maternity Hospital in Commercial Rd on 8th December 1949, I grew up in Jane St and I moved here with my mum, dad and sister when I was eleven. My mum was very upset when Jane St was demolished as a Slum Clearance because it wasn’t a slum! They used to have a contest to see who had the cleanest front step in the street.
We were the last family left in the street to go and it got very eerie. She had offers to move out to lots of places beyond the East End but she turned them all down and the lady from the council said, ‘If you keep turning them down, you’ll have nowhere.’ Then they suggested the Mountmorres Estate and we didn’t know where it was, but as soon as she realised it was nearby she was quite happy. She had been born just two streets away in Fenton St and she was reluctant to leave Jane St, but she was pleased when we got here because before we had no bathroom and only an outside toilet.
We weren’t poor, we were just the same as everybody else in the street. Those houses would be worth one and a half million each if we had them now. The first immigrants in Jane St were a Cypriot family at the top of the street and we children were too scared to go near them. There was a guy called ‘Dirty Dick’ who had a cockerel than ran out into the street, we never went near his house either. If we played football at the far end of Jane St, the mothers would come out of the houses and say, ‘You don’t live at this end of street, go back to your own end and play football.’ So I guess we were quite parochial in our way.”
Once he graduated from Queen Mary University, Melvyn returned to the Central Foundation Boys School in Old St where had been a pupil to work as a teacher. “I was only there for four years, but people locally still know me as Mr Reeves the Maths Teacher,” he told me, amused at the persistence of this former identity nearly forty years later. “I have never worked more than five miles from Stepney,” he continued, revelling at his personal success in securing an entire career of employment close to home, working as an Inspector for the Inland Revenue and then in IT at the Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs before retiring ten years ago.
Recently, Melvyn visited Mulberry School, built upon the site of his former home in Jane St, and showed the pupils his Coronation Party photograph as evidence of the wonders that once were there – and in the hope that they may have the good sense to follow his own example and enjoy the benefits of staying put.
“My Russian grandfather, Hyem Ryefsky, was born in Novgorod in 1878 and died in Stepney in 1953”
“My Polish grandfather Henry Laibglit was born in Warsaw in 1880 and died in Stepney in 1967. He fought at Ypres during the First World War. He came to this country around 1900 and was a Market Trader in Petticoat Lane until the late fifties, selling all types of luggage and suitcases.”
“My mum – Leah Esther (nee Laibglit), known as “Lily”, born on 28 April 1915 and died in May 2003.”
Lily’s Freedom Pass
Melvyn as a baby in Jane St with his dad and cousin Arnold “My Dad – Abraham, commonly known as “Alf”, was born on 20th June 1914 and died in June 1998. He was a cabinet maker before the war, a skilled riveter during the War and worked afterwards for the Post Office, sorting letters at the Eastern District Office in Whitechapel”
Melyvn as a toddler
Melvyn’s first car
Melvyn and his sister Sheree
Melvyn on holiday at the seaside with his Aunt Polly
Melvyn with his parents Lily & Alf and his sister Sheree
Melvyn as a schoolboy
Melyvn and his dad have a bit of fun
Melvyn at his Bar Mitzvah
The receipt for Melvyn’s Bar Mitzvah party in Whitechapel, 1962
Melvyn as a young man
Melvyn at the recent wedding of his neighbour Nurul Islam
Melvyn Reeves
Images courtesy Tower Hamlets Local History Library & Archives
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