In Search of the Spitalfields Nippers
Portrait of Tommy Nail, Courtesy of The Religious Society of Friends
“Let me introduce you to the Spitalfields Nippers of 1901-2 as photographed by Horace Warner. Although the origin of these pictures is something of an enigma, these frisky nippers of a century ago require no introduction or explanation, because they assert themselves as the mettlesome inhabitants of their territory. Geographically, they are creatures of the secret byways, alleys and yards that lace the neighbourhood. Imaginatively, theirs is a discrete society independent of adults, in which they are resourceful and sufficient, doing their own washing, chopping wood, nursing babies and even making money by cleaning windows and running errands.”
Horace Warner’s breathtaking series of portraits known as the Spitalfields Nippers have long been one of the sets of photographs that have excited most interest in these pages, and so it is a great delight to be able to publish them in print courtesy of The Religious Society of Friends in my forthcoming book The Gentle Author’s London Album, alongside my other favourite pictures from Spitalfields Life.
I first came upon the Nippers in a pamphlet published to accompany an exhibition in 1975 and, even in primitive reproduction in one colour, it was apparent that they were a distinctive set of pictures of the highest quality. The pamphlet explained that the photographs were first published in 1911 in the annual report of the charitable Bedford Institute in Quaker St, Spitalfields, and were a selection from more than two hundred and forty that existed.
At that time, I tried to learn more about Horace Warner and the Nippers but my research led nowhere. Although the Bedford Institute still stands in Quaker St, it was closed long ago and I found that the archives had been passed from one organisation to another until no-one knew where they were.
Yet the photographs haunted me, and I was convinced that Warner’s prints still existed somewhere. His pictures demonstrate such a sympathetic sensibility towards his subjects that I wanted to know who he was, and there was also the tantalising possibility of the more than two hundred unseen photographs.
Aware that the Bedford Institute was a Quaker Mission, we contacted The Religious Society of Friends in the Euston Rd and asked them to look in their archive. Imagine my delight, when the message back came that, after a search, the original prints were discovered there preserved in good condition, just a mile from Spitalfields. At Friends House, Melissa Atkinson led me to a tiny desk in the corner of the basement and opened a box to reveal twenty-five of Warner’s own prints of his photographs, possessing a lustrous tone and sharp detail that imparted an extra quality of life to these extraordinary pictures. Thanks to the lucid vision of Horace Warner, the presence and gaze of these children remains vivid, more than a century after the photographs were taken.
Additionally, the archive contains unpublished pictures that show the yards of Spitalfields, between buildings with the characteristic long windows that indicate domestic weavers’ workshops. More than this, there was a letter from Gwen McGilvray, Horace Warner’s daughter, which dates the photographs to 1901-2, ten years earlier than was previously believed, and gives names for several of the children which permits me to publish a small selection of portraits here today with their names for the very first time.
I learnt that Horace Warner (1871-1939) was superintendent of the Sunday School at the Bedford Institute and knew many of the children he photographed personally, which accounts for playful relationship of photographer and subject exhibited in many of his pictures. A wallpaper printer and designer by trade, Warner taught himself photography at home in Highbury and worked at the family business of Jeffrey & Co in the Essex Rd where they printed wallpaper for William Morris.
You will be able to see a larger selection of the Spitalfields Nippers, reproduced from the original prints, in The Gentle Author’s London Album in October. But in the meantime, I could not resist introducing these Nippers to you by name, and enquiring if anyone knows how I can contact the descendants of Horace Warner and his daughter Gwen McGilvray – because I should dearly like to discover if the other two hundred and forty portraits exist?
Isaac Levy cleaning windows
Charlie Long and Dolly Green, dressed in a special frock.
Dominic & Dennis, two brothers
Lizzie Flynn & Dolly Green
Lizzie Flynn
This boy is wearing Horace Warner’s hat
Photographs copyright © The Religious Society of Friends in Britain
You may also like to take a look at
The Return of Crescent Trading
The boys are back!
No doubt you remember my pals Philip Pittack & Martin White – the Mike & Bernie Winters of the textile business – famous for their ceaseless repartee and classy taste in fabrics? They run Crescent Trading, Spitalfields’ last cloth warehouse, and possess more than one hundred and twenty years of experience in the trade between them.
Last winter, they suffered a fire that nearly put them out of business but, displaying singular tenacity and strength of purpose, they are now open again with their premises restored and an entirely new stock of cloth.
During the interim, I visited regularly to offer moral support while they carried on trading with a hole in the roof, arriving to discover Martin lugubrious in Wellington boots as he spent four hours each day sweeping out rain water and Philip shedding sentimental tears over fire-damaged rolls of rare cashmere. Every single piece of fabric had to go, the roof had to be replaced, and the interior restored and repainted. Yet through all the grim winter months, Philip & Martin came into work each day, greeting customers brightly in spite of their pitiful circumstance.
“It cost us everything,” admitted Philip last week, sitting with Martin in their newly-painted office and looking out in wonder upon the shelves of brand new stock in the refurbished warehouse. It was a rare moment of contemplation, afforded now that they have reached the other side of their ordeal. Having witnessed the extended struggle, I enquired why they did not simply close the business and retire after the fire – a question that Martin seized upon with a passion. “This is our life and our livelihood,” he declared, his eyes shining and his voice raised, ” We love doing it and, as long as there’s breath in us, we will continue – we are not interested in retiring.”
“Jews don’t give up,” was Philip’s simple summation, crossing his arms demonstratively with a broad smile as, from the other side of the room, Martin nodded in agreement.
“It’s a way of life, and it’s been my way of life for sixty years,” Martin assured me, turning to catch Philip’s eye as he proceeded to speak for them both, “We’ve been wrapped up in fabrics all our lives. We love touching fabrics. In Yiddish, it’s called ‘tupping.’ To understand fabrics, you’ve got to touch them and know the feel in your hand.”
“We are passing on our knowledge about fabric to fashion students and young designers that even their teachers don’t know,” continued Philip, picking up Martin’s drift, “We like the youngsters coming in and having a laugh, it keeps us young.”
“I couldn’t afford to retire,” barked Martin in comic affront, as an afterthought, recalling my initial question.
“We’ve worked bloody hard,” declared Philip, folding his hands with incontrovertible authority and pride, and casting his eyes around the refurbished warehouse to meet Martin’s gaze in an exchange of unspoken understanding.
I was delighted by such a lively display of emotion which demonstrated that Philip & Martin are undaunted by the fire and undiminished in enthusiasm for business, even after all these years. Their warehouse in Quaker St is the last remnant of the textile trade that occupied Spitalfields for centuries, and Philip & Martin embody the culture with aplomb. At Crescent Trading, you will discover an infinite variety of ends of runs and surplus stock of high-end fabrics, mostly from British mills. The place is a magnet for students and fashion designers, and – once again- during business hours you may walk in and reliably encounter a lively social scene, centred around the selection and purchase of luxury textiles at bargain prices.
Martin organises his new stock in the refurbished warehouse.
Photographs copyright © Jeremy Freedman
Crescent Trading, Quaker Court/Pindoria Mews, Quaker St, E1 6SN. Open Sunday-Friday.
You may like to read my earlier stories about Crescent Trading.
Philip Pittack & Martin White, Cloth Merchants
All change at Crescent Trading
Julius Mendes Price’s London Types, 2
Here is the second set of London Types designed and written by celebrated war artist Julius Mendes Price and issued by Carreras with Black Cat Cigarettes in 1919. Although Price reveals a strange fascination with those involved in social control, he counters this with a generous appreciation of those employed in the most menial occupations. Given the pick of these jobs, I think I should choose to be the Keeper of the Ape House at the Zoo.
You may also like to take a look at these other cigarette card sets of the Cries of London
Julius Mendes Price’s London Types 1
William Caslon, Letter Founder
Learning of the work of William Caslon, whose Doric & Brunel typefaces, newly digitised by Paul Barnes, are being used by David Pearson in The Gentle Author’s London Album, I was inspired to write this brief account of the life of Britain’s most celebrated letter founder.
Portrait by Francis Kyte, 1740
Double-click to enlarge William Caslon’s Specimen of Typefaces from 1734
William Caslon was the first major letter founder in London and, nearly three centuries later, remains the pre-eminent letter founder this country has produced. Before Caslon, there was little letter founding in Britain and most type was imported – even Shakespeare’s First Folio was printed with French type. But Caslon’s achievement was to realise designs and produce type which have been widely used ever since. And it all happened here, around the eastern fringes of the City of London. The Caslon family tomb stands alone today in front of St Luke’s Old St, just yards from where William Caslon started his first letter foundry in Helmet Row in 1727 and, with pleasing consistency, it is lettered in Caslon type.
A native of Cradley in Worcestershire and the son of a shoemaker, Caslon was apprenticed as a Loriner (or metalworker) to Edward Cookes in the Minories in 1706. Here the young apprentice learnt the essentials of metal casting that were to prove so crucial to his career but, most significantly, he undertook the engraving of letters onto gun barrels. Equally, the company produced punches of letters for book-binding and there is a legend that Caslon’s talent for type design was first spotted by a printer, coming upon his lettering upon the spine of a book in a shop.
Marrying the sister of a fellow apprentice in 1719, Caslon set up his first type foundry in Helmet Row in 1727. This initiative was based upon the success of a commission for the Society for the Promotion of Christian Knowledge who required an Arabic typeface to be used in religious texts distributed among Christian communities in the Middle East. Yet it was in the creation of his distinctly English version of Roman letters and italics, derived from the Dutch typefaces that were most commonly used in London at that time, which was the decisive factor in the establishment of Caslon’s reputation.
Caslon’s first type Specimen of 1734 exemplifies a confidence and clarity of design which has become so familiar that it is difficult to appreciate in retrospect. The Specimen offered a range of styles and sizes of type with an unprecedented authority and a distinctive personality which is immediately recognisable. As a consequence of the legibility and grace of Caslon’s work, his became the default choice of typeface for books and all kinds of publications in the English-speaking world for the next two centuries.
Caslon’s own background in engraving and metalwork was the ideal preparation for the cutting of letter punches and, among the related trades of watch-making and instrument-making which thrived in the City of London, he was able to find others with the necessary skills. Each letter had to be cut by hand at first and some of these punches are preserved at St Bride Printing Library – breathtakingly intricate pieces of metalwork upon a microscopic scale. Once complete, these punches were impressed into copper to make moulds, known as matrices, that were used for the casting of type for printing.
Moving in 1727 to larger premises in Ironmongers’ Row, by 1730 Caslon had eclipsed his competitors, securing the exclusive contract to supply type to the King’s printers. Later, Benjamin Franklin was to choose Caslon’s type for printing both the Declaration of Independence and the American Constitution.
In 1734, Caslon established himself in his permanent premises in Chiswell St, where the letter foundry continued until 1936. At this address, he staged monthly concerts upon an organ fitted into his music room, serving beer that he brewed himself. Caslon had inaugurated a long-standing dynasty, naming his first son William and, by 1742, specimens designed by William Caslon junior were being produced. It was a pattern that, like the typefaces, was replicated until well into the twentieth century. Caslon retired in 1750 to a house in the Hackney Rd opposite the Nag’s Head (where Hackney City Farm is today), and soon after he moved into his country house in Bethnal Green, where he died in 1766.
Within a generation, Caslon’s first types acquired the moniker Caslon Old Face, referring to their antique credentials yet, with innumerable recuttings, these typefaces have persisted to the present day when other types that once superceded them have been long forgotten. Caslon’s letters are often characterised as distinctively British in their sensibility and there is a lack of uniformity among them which sets them apart from their European counterparts, yet the merit of Caslon’s letters is their ability to mingle harmoniously among their fellows and create a pleasing texture upon the page – balancing the requirements of order and variety to achieve a satisfying unity.
In Helmet Row, off Old St, where William Caslon established his first type foundry in 1727.
William Caslon’s letter foundry in 1750
The Caslon letter foundry in 1900 (Photograph from St Bride Printing Library)
Dedication page of William Caslon’s Specimen
The Caslon Letter Foundry in Chiswell St ran from 1734 until 1936.
Elisabeth Caslon (known as the Widow Caslon) who ran the foundry after her husband’s death
William Caslon II (born 1720, died 1778)
William Caslon III (born 1754, died 1833)
Henry William Caslon IV (born 1786, died 1850)
Henry William Caslon V (born 1814, died 1874)
Display faces became very popular in the nineteenth century.
Vignettes from a nineteenth century Caslon Specimen Book.
Steam trains from a Caslon Specimen Book.
The Caslon Family tomb at St Luke’s Old St.
Caslon letters on Caslon’s tomb.
Unless otherwise ascribed all archive images courtesy Bishopsgate Institute
You may also like to read about
Julius Mendes Price’s London Types
It is my greatest delight to show these examples of London Types, designed and written by the celebrated war artist Julius Mendes Price and issued with Carreras Black Cat Cigarettes in 1919. After months of searching, these are the latest acquisition in my ever-growing collection of London Street Cries down through the ages. Some of these images – such as the cats’ meat man – are barely changed from earlier centuries, yet others – such as the telephone girl – are undeniably part of the modern world.
You may also like to take a look at these other sets of the Cries of London
More John Player’s Cries of London
More Samuel Pepys’ Cries of London
Geoffrey Fletcher’s Pavement Pounders
William Craig Marshall’s Itinerant Traders
H.W.Petherick’s London Characters
John Thomson’s Street Life in London
Aunt Busy Bee’s New London Cries
Marcellus Laroon’s Cries of London
William Nicholson’s London Types
Francis Wheatley’s Cries of London
John Thomas Smith’s Vagabondiana of 1817
John Thomas Smith’s Vagabondiana II
John Thomas Smith’s Vagabondiana III
Thomas Rowlandson’s Lower Orders
At Barts Pathology Museum
You enter a door at the hospital and over it are the words, ‘Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might.’ Then the first thing you come upon as you climb the stairs is a vast stone sarcophagus, stored on the landing as if it were a spare piece of medical equipment. It is wedged half open as if the inhabitant had climbed out and could return at any moment, and a sign above it warns ‘Smoking Prohibited,’ just in case they considered lighting up.
By the time you reach the top of the winding staircase in this lonely corner of West Smithfield, you are emotionally prepared to enter Barts Pathology Museum – one of the saddest and strangest places I have ever been. Arranged in bottles and jars, preserved in fluids and organised upon shelves spanning three storeys, is a vast, encyclopaedic collection of human body parts acquired by the hospital over centuries, for the study of anatomy and ailments. There are more varieties of carcinomas and hernias, more malformations and deformations, more ways that the human body can be blighted and broken than in your worst nightmares.
Each one of the five thousand specimens represents a different example of human suffering, and you stand overawed to see pain quantified and categorised in this way. Gazing around from the centre of the room at the expansive galleries that run floor to ceiling, I became wary to approach the display in any direction out of reluctance at what I might discover.
In such a circumstance, Contributing Photographer Patricia Niven & I were grateful to be greeted by the pragmatic enthusiasm of Carla Valentine, Technical Assistant Curator. “I’m a mortician,” she admitted reassuringly, “for eight years, I worked in mortuaries doing autopsies, but this is what I always wanted to do. I wanted to do it since I was ten, I think some people are born to do this. I was always cutting up slugs and worms from the garden, and probably I was a weird child.”
Carla has been employed to work upon the conservation of the collection.“They’re all leaking over there,” she revealed, gesturing to a long gallery lined with organs in bottles that she has been transferring into safe containers. I learnt that in recent decades, the practice of preserving new specimens has ceased, except in rare cases. “The only people who are placed in here now are those who choose to be,” Carla explained helpfully, “if, for example, they have some unusual cancer that they want to have put on display.”
Eager to reward our interest, Carla drew our attention to the case of foreign objects extracted from the human body – the toothbrush removed from the oesophagus in 1944, the pencil case removed from the bladder in 1932, the needle removed from the heart in 1879, the torch removed from the rectum in 1933 and the metal dart removed from the brain at an unspecified date. It became apparent that each specimen had its own story, even if they were not always obvious.
“We have a lot of Victorian factory workers,” Carla informed me, moving on and indicating a case of semi-disintegrated jaw bones that were examples of ‘Phossy Jaw’ – the condition acquired by those who worked with phosphorus in the manufacture of matches. Beside them were specimens that illustrated ‘Chimney Sweeps’ Cancer’ – the testicular cancer that came about as a result of a life spent climbing up chimneys. And then there was the fractured mandible of the fourteen year old boy whose head was caught between the rollers of a rotary printing machine and died a week later. And I shall not easily forget the metal cap designed to hold together the broken pieces of the skull of a man run over by a carriage, that enabled him to live several years after.
Proudly, Carla showed us the inguinal hernia from around 1750 that is the earliest specimen in the collection, preserved by Percivall Potts – one of the museum’s most celebrated curators. “Unfortunately the perspex box was leaking, so I decided that – for the safety of the specimen and for aesthetic appeal – I would put the hernia into a glass pot with fresh fluid.” Carla confided to me cheerfully. You stand helpless in front of these examples and others, nodding politely at the explanations and feeling numb as you seek to discover a relationship with what you are seeing. The skull of John Bellingham who murdered the Prime Minister in 1812 and the skull of a Norman killed at the Battle of Hastings in 1066 leer back at you, and a vision of the largest centipede you ever saw in your life that, although safely preserved in a glass bottle, nevertheless wriggles deep into your consciousness.
There is certain grim grandeur to this museum designed by Edward l’Anson in 1878, where mustachioed busts of James Paget and John Hunter, two nineteenth curators, stare eternally upon their creations from either end of the gallery. Once you have confronted the detail for yourself, you cannot but admire the moral courage of those who were unflinching in their pursuit of medical science. As Carla Valentine concluded sagely, this is a museum of how we got to where we are today in medicine. Yet I could not resist a surge of personal grief when confronted with particular examples of afflictions suffered by those I have known closely and so, after everything I had seen, it made me grateful for my own good health.
In a lonely corner of the hospital.
“Whatsoever they hand findeth to do, do it with thy might”
The sarcophagus on the stair.
Specimens of ‘Chimney Sweeps’ Cancer’
Carla Valentine, Technical Assistant Curator & Mortician.
The oldest specimen is this inguinal hernia from around 1750, preserved by by Percivall Potts.
Specimens of ‘Phossy jaw’ – a decay of the jaw bone caused by exposure to phosphorus and suffered by workers in East End match factories in the nineteenth century.
Bladder stones
Skull of John Bellingham, the assassin who killed the Prime Minister, Spencer Percival, in 1812.
A rat that suffered from tuberculosis
Photographs copyright © Patricia Niven
Archive images courtesy of the Royal London Hospital Archives
Follow the Pathology Museum blog Potts’ Pots
Learn about forthcoming Autumn Seminars at the Pathology Museum.
You may also like to read about
Cruikshank’s London Almanack, 1838
This set of engravings is the fourth in a series of calendars illustrating the seasons and festivals of the London year, drawn annually by George Cruikshank for The Comic Almanack published by Henry Tilt of Fleet St. 1838 was the year of Victoria’s coronation and I had no idea that frost fairs persisted until this era, equally the ‘Flying Showers’ of July provide evidence – should we ever need it – of the constant volatility of English summer weather. (Click on any of these images to enlarge)
JANUARY – New Year’s Eve, 1837 departs and 1838 arrives
FEBRUARY – Frost Fair on the Thames
MARCH – St Patrick’s Day at Seven Dials
APRIL – Street market on Low Sunday
MAY – Street plant sellers ‘All a growing!’
JUNE – The Coronation of Queen Victoria
JULY – Flying Showers in Battersea Fields
AUGUST – ‘Sic Omnes,’ on board the steamer from London Bridge to Boulogne
SEPTEMBER – The Michaelmas Gander, ‘De goostibus non est disputandum.’
OCTOBER – Battle of A-gin-court in Petty France
NOVEMBER – The Gunpowder Plot or Guys in Council
DECEMBER – Christmas Eve
You may also like to take a look at
Cruikshank’s London Almanack, 1835
Cruikshank’s London Almanack, 1836
Cruikshank’s London Almanack, 1837
