On Publication Day For My Album
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The Album is published with the generous investment of the following readers of Spitalfields Life – Fiona Atkins, Jill Browne, Dana Burstow, Rosemary Burton, Robson Cezar, Stephane Derone, Charlie de Wet, East London History Society, Gerald Elfein, David Ethier, Ceryl Evans, Diana Fawcett, Lynda Finn, Hardy Ford, Susie Ford & Jonathon Green, Janice Fuscoe, Deby Goldsmith, Libby Hall, Carolyn Hirst (on behalf of Rowland Hirst), Barry Jackson, Michael Keating, Richard Long, Anthony Loynes, Mirela Mardare, Philip Marriage, Irene Mcfarlane, Annie Medcalf, Jack Murphy, Museum of British Folklore, Tatiana Nye, Terry Penton, Sian Phillips & Rodney Archer, Jonathan Pryce & Kate Fahy, Honor Rhodes, Corvin Roman, Tim Sayer, Elizabeth Scott, Melanie Shaw, Vicky Stewart, Neville Turner, Robert Welham and J.M.Winkler.
CLICK HERE to buy your copy direct from Spitalfields Life and have it signed or personally inscribed by the Gentle Author.
Faber Factory Plus part of Faber & Faber are distributing The Gentle Author’s London Album 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.
Joe McLaren, Illustrator
Yesterday, I took a trip down to Rochester to deliver an advance copy of my London Album to illustrator Joe McLaren in person, as a gesture of thanks for drawing the pair of dogs that are the symbol of Spitalfields Life Books.
Joe McLaren at Rochester Castle
“When I realised I was an illustrator and not an artist, it was such a relief because I didn’t have to philosophise any more,” admitted Joe McLaren with a self-effacing smile,“now I do what people pay me to do to earn the butter for my bread.” Yet, in spite of his modest demeanour, Joe’s distinctive graphic illustrations are to be found on book covers in every bookshop in the land.
Joe and I were standing on top of Rochester Castle with panoramic views across the Medway and he explained that this part of the country has strong family connections for him. “My grandfather, Bernard Long, joined the Merchant Navy in Chatham at fourteen in 1925 and retired at sixteen to join the Royal Navy. By the end of World War II, he was Captain of a minesweeper and then he retired to Leyton where he became a police detective,” Joe revealed, “My mother remembers visiting them in their small house in Vicarage Rd.”
After graduating from Brighton College of Art and a spell in London, Joe and his girlfriend moved to a remote house in Lower Higham, upon the dramatic landscape of the Kent Marshes, where she had family and he found himself caring for the abandoned church of St Mary’s which Dickens featured in ‘Great Expectations.’ “I used to ring the bells once a year on New Year’s Eve,” Joe informed me fondly, “and we turned it into a cinema and showed David Lean’s film there. ‘Great Expectations’ was my first Dickens novel and I loved it, even though I had to read it at school.” Subsequently, Joe featured the church of St Mary’s in his cover design for a new edition of the novel.
While in London, David worked in the basement of Smythson in Bond St, applying the gold letters to monogrammed leather cases. “In 2008, I saved up enough money to live for three months and left to become a freelance illustrator,” he recalled, “If I ran out of money, I would have gone back to my old job but, after a couple of weeks, David Pearson rang up to commission me and it went from there. We’ve been friends ever since.” Book designer David Pearson compares Joe McLaren’s work to that of Reynolds Stone, the celebrated wood engraver who supplied vignettes for the covers of early Penguin Books, and Joe has created motifs in a comparable vein for David’s contemporary reinventions of Penguin designs.
“I have been influenced by Edward Bawden and he was influenced by heraldry,” Joe confessed, “Everything I do is in a flat space, so it doesn’t matter where the light’s coming from, you are portraying the thing itself.” There is a certain unique clarity of line and an intensity of image which characterises Joe’s work, making it instantly recognisable, catching the eye and then holding its focus.
Yesterday, Joe was working on a scraperboard view of Rochester Castle when I interrupted him. Few use scraperboard anymore, it has become a degraded technique that is consigned to children’s kits in craft stores, yet Joe excels in exploiting its unique graphic potential. Invented a hundred years ago, it was an innovation for engravers when images could be reproduced for printing using photographic technology and there was no longer any need to engrave onto metal plates.
Standing there upon the outcrop over the Medway on that bright autumn day, the sunlight imparted a crisp edge to the buildings, highlighting the lively textures and contrasted forms of the diverse architecture in Rochester and giving everything the appearance of a Joe McLaren illustration. In this inspiring environment, with family history and literary association enriching a landscape full of visual drama, Joe has found his home.
Selected Poems of John Betjeman, commissioned by Miri Rosenbloom for Faber & Faber
Secret Lives of Buildings by Edward Hollis, commissioned by David Pearson for Portobello Books
We, The Drowned by Carsten Jensen, commissioned by Suzanne Dean for Vintage
Some Thoughts on the Common Toad by George Orwell, commissioned by David Pearson for Penguin
Why Look at Animals? by John Berger, commissioned by David Pearson for Penguin
Memory Place by Edward Hollis, commissioned by David Pearson for Portobello Books
The Once and Future King by T.H. White, commissioned by Clare Skeats for Voyager Classics
Silver by Andrew Motion, commissioned by Suzanne Dean for Vintage
The Christmas Books by Charles Dickens, commissioned by David Pearson for Whites Books
Great Expectations by Charles Dickens, commissioned by David Pearson for Whites Books
Logo for the Owl Bookshop, commissioned by David Pearson
Illustrations for Alice in Wonderland for Whites Books
Illustrations for Potty! a cookery book by Clarissa Dickson Wright, for Hodder & Stoughton
Symbol for Spitalfields Life Books, commissioned by David Pearson
Illustrations courtesy of Joe McLaren
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Here follow some snaps from my Rochester trip
Eastgate House in Rochester High St
Lodging House for Poor Travellers, founded 1579 in Rochester High St
Old wooden house in the Cathedral Close, Rochester
Charles Dickens’ writing cottage transplanted from his garden to a park in Rochester.
Old yard off Rochester High St
The Lantern Slides of Old London
Two years ago, I became enraptured by a hundred-year-old collection of four thousand lantern slides. They were once used for educational lectures by the London & Middlesex Archaeological Society at the Bishopsgate Institute in Spitalfields. When Stefan Dickers became archivist there, he discovered the slides in dusty old boxes – abandoned and forgotten since they became obselete. Yet over the last decade, it has become apparent that these slides, which were ignored for so long, are one of the greatest treasures in the collection. And it is my delight to be the one responsible for publishing a selection of these wonderful images in print for the first time in my London Album this week.
When I was first offered the opportunity of presenting these lantern slides which have been unseen for generations, I was overwhelmed by the number of pictures and did not know where to start. The first to catch my fancy were the ancient signs and symbols, dating from an era before street numbering located addresses and lettered signs advertised trades to Londoners.
Before long, I grew spellbound by the slide collection because, alongside the famous landmarks and grand occasions of state, there were pictures of forgotten corners and of ordinary people going about their business. It was a delight to discover hundreds of images of things that people do not usually photograph and I was charmed to realise that the anonymous photographers of the London & Middlesex Archaeological Society were as interested in pubs as they were in churches.
The more I studied the glass slides, the more joy I found in these arcane pictures, since every one contained the rich potential of hidden stories, seducing the imagination to flights of fancy regarding the ever-interesting subject of Old London. Once I had published The Signs of Old London, I realised there were many other such sets to be found among the slides, as a result of the systematic recording of London which underscored the original project by the London & Middlesex Archaeological Society, a hundred years ago, and parallels my own work in Spitalfields Life, today.
If you cast your eye over the list of categories at the end of this story, that I chose to arrange these slides, you will see that I arranged them quite literally – in terms of doors, or night, or dinners, or streets, or staircases. I did this because I was interested to explore how the pictures might speak to me and to you, the readers. No evidence has survived to indicate in what sequence or order they were originally shown and it was my intention to avoid imposing any grand narratives of power or poverty, although these pictures do speak powerfully of these subjects. Recognising that objects and images are capable of many interpretations, I am one that prefers museums which permit the viewer to decide for themselves, rather than be presented with artefacts subject to a single meaning within an ordained story and so, with the Album, we have presented the pictures and invited the reader to draw their own conclusions.
Equally, in publishing the slides, we chose not to clean them up or remove imperfections and dirt. Similarly, we did not standardise the colour to black or a uniform sepia, either. Instead, we have cherished the subtle variations of hues present in these slides and savoured the beautiful colour contrasts between them, when laid side by side. There is a melancholic poetry in these shabby images, in which their damage and their imperfections speak of their history, and I came to glory in the patina and murk.
Above all, in publishing these pictures in my Album, I wanted to communicate the pleasure I have found in scrutinising them at length and entering another world imaginatively through the medium of this sublime photography.
Today I publish a serendipitous selection of glass slides which fascinate me but that did not make it into the book – to provide you with a little idle distraction to pass the time until the Album is published later this week.
In the Inns of Court
At Eltham Palace
At Euston Station
The Anchor at Bankside
Crocodiles at the Natural History Museum
Reading Room at the British Museum
Chelsea Pensioner
In Fleet St
In Fleet St
St John’s Gate, Clerkenwell
Between the inner & outer dome of St Paul’s
Along the Embankment
The Old Dick Whittington, Clothfair, Smithfield
Firemen take a tea break
Lightermen on the Thames
Flood in Water St, Tower of London
The White Tower, London’s oldest building
Glass slides courtesy of Bishopsgate Institute
Take a look at these sets of the glass slides of Old London
The High Days & Holidays of Old London
The Fogs & Smogs of Old London
The Forgotten Corners of Old London
The Statues & Effigies of Old London
Eleanor Crow’s East End Fish Shops
Victoria Fish Bar, Roman Rd
I try to eat fresh fish at least once a week and so, as I travel around the East End, I tend to navigate in relation to the fish shops. Illustrator Eleanor Crow shares a similar passion, witnessed by these loving portraits of top destinations for fish, whether jellied eels, fish & chips or fresh on the slab. “These places are a reminder of our river-dependent history,” Eleanor informed me, “I love the look of London’s famous eel shops with their ornate lettering and wooden partitions. Nothing beats having a proper fishmongers’ shop or market stall in the neighbourhood – not only do the shops look good, but these guys really know about fish.”
F.Cooke, Broadway Market
The Fishery, Stoke Newington High St
George’s Place, Roman Rd
G. Kelly, Bethnal Green Rd
Mike’s Quality Fish Bar, Essex Rd
Davies & Sons, Hoe St
The Fish Plaice, Cambridge Heath Rd
Mersin Fish, Morning Lane
Dennis Chippy, Lea Bridge Rd
Kingfisher, Homerton High St
Mersin 2, Lower Clapton Rd
Golden Fish Bar, Farringdon Rd
Tubby Isaacs, formerly in Aldgate
L. Manze, Walthamstow High St
Sea Food & Fresh Fish, Chatsworth Rd
G. Kelly, Roman Rd
Steve Hatt, Essex Rd
Jonathan Norris, Victoria Park Rd
Downey Brothers, Globe Town Market Sq
Barneys Seafood, Chambers St
Billingsgate Market
Illustrations copyright © Eleanor Crow
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Eleanor Crow’s East End Bakers
and read these other fish stories
John Dolan, Artist, & George the Dog
John Dolan and his thoughtful dog, George, have become an East End landmark in recent years, sitting patiently day after day in the same spot opposite the petrol station on Shoreditch High St while the world and the traffic passed by. Yet, all this time, John was watching and, after a year of looking at the same view each day, he picked up a pen and began to draw what he saw before him. Soon after, John’s drawings were published in a local magazine and it proved to be a life-changing moment.
“That’s when I knew in life what I should do,” he assured me, standing in the Howard Griffin gallery where he has his first exhibition. It is just across the road from the spot where John used to sit and has been a sell-out success, leaving him inundated with commissions and a book deal. Yet George takes it all in his stride even if John is rather startled by the attention, gratefully embracing this opportunity to forge a new identity for himself as a artist. ‘None of this could have happened without the support of Roa, the street artist,” John admitted to me, in relief at the current twist of fate, “It’s got me away from breaking into shops to steal money.”
When you meet John, you are aware of a restless man with a strong internal life and he looks at you warily, his eyes constantly darting and moving, as if he might leave or take flight at any moment. But although John may have only one foot on the ground, George plants himself down and surveys the world peacefully – as the natural counterpoint to his master’s nature.
“I’m from King’s Sq, Goswell Rd, and I could walk from my door to St Paul’s in five minutes when I was a kid,” John revealed, speaking with affection for this neighbourhood in which he has spent his life, “From my window I could see the three towers of the Barbican and the dome of St Paul’s. At fourteen, I climbed up the to the top of St James Clerkenwell when it was covered in scaffolding.” John’s minutely detailed urban drawings are equally the result of an observant sensibility and an intimate knowledge of the streets and street life of Shoreditch.
A few years ago, a series of misadventures and spells in Pentonville Prison led to a low point when John found himself bereft. “I was spending my days in day centres and only mixing with homeless people and I couldn’t relate to my family at that time,” he confessed, “but having this exhibition has been a way of getting back to them – when they came on the opening night, they were very impressed. It’s been called ‘a successful debut show’ and you can’t get much better than that.”
The exhibition has been the unexpected outcome of a series of events that coalesced to permit John to regain control of his life. “I got rehoused in a flat in Arnold Circus after I had been living in temporary accommodation on Royal Mint St and before that I was homeless,” he explained, “In the recent benefits shake-up, I had my benefit cut to £36 a week and, each time I appealed, they cut it down more until I had nothing. I’ve got arthritis in my legs and I can’t walk very far, so I came down here to Shoreditch High St and started begging to get some money. But I’m no good at it, so I put a cup in front of George like he was begging and people gave him money. Then I got bored and I started drawing the two buildings on the opposite site of the road.”
John outlined to me how he acquired George, the dog that gave him a new focus. “When I was living in Tower Hill, I used to let homeless people come and live with me and there was this couple – and one of them, Sue, she was offered the chance to buy George for the price of a can of lager by a Scottish fellow, so she gave him £2o.” John recalled, speaking in almost a whisper, underscored by an emotional intensity, “He was a pretty violent guy who would go round robbing homeless people.”
“George is my first dog in a very long time, I had a dog from the age of ten until I was twenty-three – Butch. He was named after a dog that my grandfather had that was legendary. It was so painful when Butch died, I said I would never have another – but George was such a lovely dog and needed a home. When the Scottish fellow came back and told people he was going to take the dog off me and expecting money every time he saw me, I had to have serious words with him.”
John gave me a significant look that indicated he and George are never to be separated now. “I went to Old St Central Foundation School and the only thing I was good at was Art,” he informed me proudly, puffing on his cigarette in excitement, “The teacher said I was so bad at Geography it was a wonder I could find my way home.”
Photographs copyright © Colin O’Brien
Howard Griffin Gallery, 189-190 Shoreditch High St, E1 6HU
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At the Workhouse on Cleveland St
My esteemed colleague Dr Ruth Richardson outlines the background to her bravura campaign that saved an eighteenth century workhouse from demolition and uncovered important literary history at the same time. Yet, as she reports, the battle to preserve the building in a way that respects its cultural significance continues.
Please Sir, I want some more!
Many readers will be aware of the successful campaign waged in late 2010 and early 2011 to prevent the destruction of the Workhouse on Cleveland St – which stands at the Goodge St end of Fitzrovia, in Camden on the border with Marylebone.
In October 2010, when I was asked to become the historian of the campaign, I was in the midst of other things but the plea was plaintive and urgent, and something told me I should not put it aside. For generations, the building had been a major London workhouse – the Strand Union Workhouse – before it became an annexe of the Middlesex Hospital in 1948. Back in 1989, I and my sweetheart had written about a Poor Law Medical Officer – Joseph Rogers – who had worked in the building in the mid-Victorian era. The campaigner who tracked me down had read our article.
Dr Rogers’ Reminiscences of a Workhouse Medical Officer make the place unique, because Cleveland St is the only workhouse in England to have a published doctor’s memoir detailing the regime as it operated, written from the inside. Dr Rogers instigated a ground-breaking series of investigative articles in The Lancet in the eighteen-sixties which lifted the lid on the terrible conditions for the sick poor in such places. He founded the ‘Society for the Improvement of Workhouse Infirmaries’ which attracted influential supporters including Florence Nightingale and Charles Dickens. The reforms that followed in the eighteen-seventies, that originated in Cleveland St, involved the erection of major new hospitals in a ring round London and other cities, establishing many of the locations still in use for NHS health-care provision today.
When I went over to Cleveland St to meet the campaigners, I was horror-struck to find the Middlesex Hospital – a once proud and venerable institution, always buzzing with vitality – just a vast field of rubble. My father’s life had been saved there, I loved the place. I was aghast. The other campaigners, I soon realised, were also suffering what can only be described as post-traumatic shock, after the wilful destruction of that fine institution. In place of the beating heart of the neighbourhood, there was a black hole.
All of us had that crater in our minds as we worked. It was the sheer vandalism of its destruction which gave focus to the campaign to save the Middlesex Hospital’s Outpatients Department. The Camden Council planning meeting that could permit the demolition was only five weeks away.
English Heritage had done a thorough job in recommending the Workhouse building should be listed. Every scrap of supportive evidence had been submitted, including our work on Dr Rogers. Only a tiny number of recommendations are ever rejected, but after lobbying by the local MP Frank Dobson, Margaret Hodge, the minister responsible under the previous Labour government, had refused to list the Workhouse. A ministerial decision cannot be appealed without ‘substantive’ new evidence and we had nothing to add.
I had only ever worked on one such campaign before. At the height of the Thatcher era, the last-minute attempt to save the Rose Theatre had been half-successful. I knew from that experience that without Mr Shakespeare, this one stood little chance. But the Rose had garnered huge support in only six days and here we had five weeks. Our chances of saving the Workhouse were dismal but – and this was the important thing – at least we could put up a good fight. Future historians looking at its loss would know a battle had taken place.
I spent the first week drafting a good letter to The Times and getting a decent clutch of signatures for it, agreeing the final tweaks to the text with every signatory. Such things take time. The Times came up trumps with a colour photo and a dream headline, “Georgian Gem on the Danger List.” The workhouse is certainly Georgian – it is older than Brighton Pavilion, built in the seventeen-seventies. But it is not a beautiful building. It is plain and utilitarian, built in local London stock brick shortly after the overcrowded parish of St Paul Covent Garden had purchased a field from the Duke of Bedford for its new poorhouse and burial ground.
I was enormously grateful to The Times for that headline. Now we had only four weeks to find something on which to base an appeal to the Conservative minister. While I was digging in the history, I pondered the identity of the patron saint of workhouses? It had to be Saint Charles. I prayed that he and Mr Dickens would sort it out between them, and they did.
The first glimmer of hope was when I discovered that one of the two blacking factories in which Charles Dickens had worked as a boy had been within the parish of Covent Garden, so he might have worked alongside parish apprentices sent out from this workhouse. That was something, especially as he had named the villain ‘Fagin’ in Oliver Twist after a boy in the factory.
Wondering where he had been living at that time, while his family was incarcerated in the Marshalsea Debtors’ Prison, I landed upon the answer which became the key to solve my problem. The Dickens family had moved about a lot and one of their London addresses – which curiously appeared twice – was in a street called Norfolk St, near the Middlesex Hospital.
The street-name no longer exists but, poring over an old map in the Westminster Archives with a magnifying glass, I think I yelped out loud with delight. Norfolk St is now the southern end of Cleveland St! None of the biographers had ever made a connection between that address and the Workhouse, yet Dickens lived there for nearly five years before he wrote Oliver Twist.
When I shared the news with my fellow campaigners, we found ourselves shaking with a sense of blissful coincidence. It was sufficient new evidence to delay matters until we could mount an appeal and, when we did, the Minister referred the matter back to English Heritage who again recommended listing. This time, because of the connection with Dickens, the Minister listed the building.
Since then, I have done further research on the street and the district in Dickens’ day, and found good grounds for supposing that the Workhouse was important to Oliver Twist – the central plotline fits the topography, and the uniforms and regime were closely similar between the reality and his book. Not least, right opposite the Workhouse I found that, in Dickens’ day, there had been a shopkeeper called – YES – Bill Sykes!
Regrettably, when the Minister listed the Workhouse, he also issued what is known as a ‘certificate of immunity’ on the rest of the site, which exempts it from protection. Quite why this was done to a location with significant heritage is unclear. Dead from the Strand parishes are buried deep in the ground around the Workhouse and there are several good solid Victorian buildings, including the Master’s House and the Receiving Wards, on each side of the listed building. At the back, there are two splendid Nightingale Wards which are unique in London for being attached to an eighteenth century poorhouse.
The owners of the site have recently put forward plans which envisage the destruction of everything but the listed building. A high-rise apartment block will occupy the burial ground and glitzy buildings are planned to flank the most famous Workhouse in the world, which will be broken up internally for expensive flats. I asked a man who said he was the architect if his buildings would last as long as those already standing there have done – yet, for some reason, he seemed unable to enunciate a reply.
Dickens house with the blue plaque
Charles Dickens’ calling card while resident in Fitzrovia. (reproduced courtesy of Dan Cilanesco)
Showing the proximity of Dickens’ childhood home and the Strand Union Workhouse
Follow Cleveland St Workhouse blog to keep in touch with developments.
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Charles Dickens at Park Cottage
Charles Dickens in Limehouse & Shadwell
Dr Syntax in London
Written anonymously and published in 1820, The Tour of Dr Syntax Through the Pleasures & Miseries of London was one of a popular series of comedies featuring the idiosyncratic Dr Syntax, a character originated by William Coombe and drawn by Thomas Rowlandson. These plates are believed to be the work of Robert Cruikshank, father of George Cruikshank.
Dr Syntax & his Spouse plan their trip to London
Setting out for London
Arriving in London
Robbed in St Giles High St
A Promenade in Hyde Park
A Flutter at a Gaming House
At an Exhibition at the Royal Academy
At a Masquerade
In St Paul’s Churchyard on a Wet & Windy Day
Inspecting the Bank of England
Presented to the King at Court
A Night at Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens
A Visit to the House of Commons
A Trip behind the Scenes at the Opera
A Lecture at the London Institution
Going to Richmond on a Steam Boat
Reading his Play in the Green Room
Overshoots London Bridge & pops overboard into the Thames
Images courtesy of Bishopsgate Institute
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More of Tom & Jerry’s Life in London
