The Rise of the East End Trades Guild
Founding members Paul Gardner, Leila McAlister, Shanaz Khan and Fiona Atkins sign the constitution of the East End Trades Guild on the counter at Gardners’ Market Sundriesmen
Since the launch of the East End Trades Guild last November, members have been busy behind the scenes forming an interim board and creating a legal constitution. Yet in parallel to this process of securing the foundations that will enable the Guild to speak as the authoritative voice for all proprietor-owned-and-run-businesses in the East End, there have been some notable successes which culminated in a meeting at Westminster this week.
A survey of the two hundred East End Trades Guild members by the New Economics Foundation revealed that collectively they represent a turnover of £77 million and employ twelve hundred people, of which almost all live locally. Additionally, Guild members contribute £17 million in wages to the local economy and pay £1.3 million in business rates. These figures contradict the assumption that small businesses are less significant financially than larger businesses, when in Tower Hamlets small businesses are the greater part of the economy. And it was not long before local government, in the form of Lutfur Rahman, Mayor of Tower Hamlets, recognised the political significance of the Guild, and requested to come and meet the members, visiting some of their businesses in February to hear members’ concerns directly.
The first tangible indication of the power of the East End Trades Guild came early in the year when shopkeepers in Whitechapel, including London Trimmings and M & G Hardware based in the Cambridge Heath Rd, were able to bargain collectively through the Guild to win compensation from Crossrail for loss of trade during the extended building works for the new rail link.
Another notable victory was in the resolution of the situation with Les Bobrow, who has been trading from a shop in Spitalfield Market for a decade with his business Wood N’ Things yet Ballymore, the owners of the building, wanted to evict him to replace him with a chainstore. After pressure from the Guild, Ballymore relented. “I cannot thank you enough for all your hard work in helping me to achieve what seemed an impossible task in securing a new lease.” admitted Les, “I realise there were many other people involved in helping me to achieve my goal whether they be members of the EETG or the general public, and public figures in prominent positions at local government level. Without your help in creating EETG to act on my behalf, I’m convinced I could not have taken on Ballymore by myself and secured a new lease.”
As an outcome of this debacle, the reluctance of Balllymore to negotiate or have dialogue with small businesses was addressed this week with a meeting in Westminster hosted by Rushanara Ali, MP for Bethnal Green & Bow. Members of the East End Trades Guild led by Shanaz Khan, Acting Chair, met John Turner, Ballymore’s Head of Planning and Gareth Keating, Ballymore’s Director of Asset Management, across a table in Portcullis House on Wednesday.
Although Ballymore have now sold the Spitalfields Market for £105 million, to set against their £800 million debt, they remain heavily involved in the vast new developments proposed for the site of the former Bishopsgate Goods Yard and it was this which formed the substance of the debate. While Ballymore made a profit on the sale of the Spitalfields Market based upon the increase in property value, their policy of leasing the shops to chains and their corporate management of the stallholders has reduced the footfall in recent years and sucked the life out of the market, with the notable exception of Thursday’s antiques market.
Challenging this shortcoming, Shanaz Khan, on behalf of the Guild, advocated the value of small independent businesses, not least as the primary reason why people come to the East End. She requested that Ballymore enter into a dialogue with the Guild about the Bishopsgate Goodsyard developments – something that could be beneficial to both parties, permitting Ballymore the opportunity to work in partnership with local businesses and creating the possibility that the new developments could have an integral relationship with the existing markets and small trades, and not simply introduce shopping malls filled with more chains into the East End. John Turner referred the Guild to Ballymore’s existing “community consultation” and invited them to take part in that. But when a Guild member pointed out that they had attended the consultation meeting for local businesses and no-one else had turned up, it became apparent that there was a widespread public mistrust of Ballymore, and the sincerity of their consultation process was questioned.
At this point, Rushanara Ali, who had followed the discussion closely, spoke up passionately. “People say to me, ‘What is it with your constituency? How come you have the highest level of child poverty alongside the highest rate of economic development.” she declared, directing her words at the Ballymore developers, “And you guys are right at the heart of it!” Growing up in Tower Hamlets, Rushanara has seen decades of economic development, starting with Canary Wharf, that has achieved little improvement in the quality of life for East Enders. Recalling the heroic yet doomed campaign to prevent Ballymore redeveloping the Spitalfields Market, she issued them with a challenge. “Tower Hamlets is a highly politicised borough” she asserted, recognising that no-one wants to see a repeat of the conflicts that characterised the Market development, “and these people are offering you a chance to work with them.”
“It’s going to be different this time,” claimed John Turner, advocating the merits of his expensively-conceived community-style consultation. “That’s what you said last time,” retorted Rushanara Ali in frustration, “Ballymore has created a lot of bad feeling and unhappiness in Tower Hamlets.” Chastened and recognising that they were not going to be let off the hook, Ballymore agreed to regular direct meetings with the East End Trades Guild with the date of first meeting set in July.
The East End Trades Guild has discovered a powerful ally in Rushanara Ali – who wants developers to face their responsibilities to residents and enrich the local economy, not simply grab land for their own ends. “I recognise you work under constraints,” she conceded to Ballymore, “but you need to meet these people part-way.”
Elected Mayor of Tower Hamlets, Lutfur Rahman, congratulates Paul Gardner of Gardners’ Market Sundriesmen on founding the East End Trades Guild.
At Westminster, members of the Guild with Shanaz Khan, Acting Chair, shaking hands with John Turner of Ballymore, in the presence of Rushanara Ali, MP for Bethnal Green & Bow, initiating a new dialogue between local traders and large-scale developers.
Shanaz Khan, Acting Chair of East End Trades Guild and proprietor of Chaat Tea House in Redchurch St.
The Founding of the East End Trades Guild at Christ Church, Spitalfields, last November.
Founding photograph copyright © Martin Usborne
Westminster photographs copyright © Jeremy Freedman
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The Founding of the East End Trades Guild
So Long, Tubby Isaac’s Jellied Eel Stall
It is my sad duty to report the news that the legendary Tubby Isaac’s Jellied Eel Stall in Aldgate will close forever on Friday – ninety-four years after it opened. I am republishing my feature about Tubby Isaac’s today as a tribute, and you have until the end of the week to get down there and pay your respects by enjoying a last helping of their delicious seafood.
Paul Simpson
At the furthest extent of Spitalfields where it meets Aldgate is Tubby Isaac’s Jellied Eel Stall, run today by Paul Simpson, fourth generation in this celebrated business founded in 1919, still selling the fresh seafood that was once the staple diet in this neighbourhood. Here where the traffic thunders down Aldgate High St, tucked round the corner of Goulston St, Tubby Isaac’s stall shelters from the hurly-burly. And one morning, Paul told me the story of his world-famous stall as he set up for the day, while I savoured the salty-sweet seaweed scent of the seafood and eager customers arrived to eat that famous East End delicacy, jellied eels for breakfast.
“I’ll be the last one ever to do this!” Paul confessed to me with pride tinged by melancholy, as he pulled a huge bowl of eels from the fridge,“My father, Ted Simpson, had the business before me, he got it from his Uncle Solly who took over from Tubby Isaac, who opened the first stall in 1919. Isaac ran it until 1939 when he got a whiff of another war coming and emigrated to America with his boys, so they would not be conscripted – but then they got enlisted over there instead. And when Isaac left, his nephew Solly took over the business and ran it until he died in 1975. Then my dad ran it from 1975 ’til 1989, and I’ve been here ever since.”
“I began working at the Walthamstow stall when I was fourteen – as a runner, cleaning, washing up, cutting bread, getting the beers, buying the coffees, collecting the bacon sandwiches. and sweeping up. The business isn’t what it was years ago, all the eels stalls along Roman Road and Brick Lane – they were here for a long, long time and they’ve closed. It’s a sign of the times.” he informed me plainly. Yet Paul Simpson is steadfast and philosophical, serving his regular customers daily, and taking consolation from their devotion to his stall. In fact, “Regular customers are my only customers” he admitted to me with a weary smile, “and some of them are in their eighties and nineties who used to come here with their parents!”
Understandably, Paul takes his eels very seriously. Divulging something of the magic of the preparation of this mysterious fish, he explained that when eels are boiled, the jelly exuded during the cooking sets to create a natural preservative. “Look, it creates its own jelly!” declared Paul, holding up the huge bowl of eels to show me and letting it quiver enticingly for my pleasure. The jelly was a crucial factor before refrigeration, when a family could eat from a bowl of jellied eels and then put the dish in a cold pantry, where the jelly would reset preserving it for the next day. Paul was insistent that he only sells top-quality eels, always fresh never frozen, and after a lifetime on the stall, being particular about seafood is almost his religion. “If you sell good stuff, they will come,” he reassured me, seeing that I was now anxious about the future of his stall after what he had revealed earlier.
Resuming work, removing bowls of winkles, cockles, prawns and mussels from the fridge, “It ain’t a job of enjoyment, it’s a job of necessity,” protested Paul, turning morose again, sighing as he arranged oysters in a tray, “It’s what I know, it’s what pays the bills but it ain’t the kind of job you want your kids to do, when there’s no reward for working your guts off.” Yet in spite of this bluster, it was apparent Peter harbours a self-respecting sense of independence at holding out again history, after lesser eel sellers shut up shop. “When it turns cold, I put so many clothes on I look like the Michelin man by the end of the day!” he boasted to me with a swagger, as if to convince me of his survival ability.
Then Jim arrived, one of Tubby Isaac’s regulars, a cab driver who wolfed a dish of eels doused in vinegar and liberally sprinkled with pepper, taking a couple of lobster tails with him for a snack later. Paul brightened at once to greet Jim and they fell into hasty familar chit-chat, the football, the weather and the day’s rounds, and Jim got back on the road before the traffic warden came along. “It’s like a pub here, the regulars come all day.” Paul confided to me with a residual smile. And I saw there was a certain beauty to the oasis of civility that Tubby Isaac’s manifests, where old friends can return regularly over an entire lifetime, a landmark of continuity in existence.
It is a testament to Paul Simpson’s tenacity and the quality of his fish that Tubby Isaac’s lasted so long, now that this once densely populated former Jewish neighbourhood has emptied out and the culture of which jellied eels was a part has almost vanished. Tubby Isaac’s was a stubborn fragment of an earlier world, carrying the lively history of the society it once served now all the other jellied eels stalls in Aldgate are gone and the street is no longer full with people enjoying eels. But leaving all this aside, Paul is open until the end of this week selling delicious and healthy non-fattening food, so this is your last chance to seek him out and try it for yourself.
The earliest photo of “Tubby” Isaac Brenner who founded the stall in 1919.
Tubby and one of his sons in the twenties.
Ted Simpson, Solly and Patsy Gritzman in the forties, after Tubby and his sons left for America.
In Petticoat Lane, sixties.
Ted serves jellied eels to Burt Reynolds and American talk show host Mike Douglas in the seventies
Ted shakes hands with Ronnie Corbett.
Joan Rivers helped out at the stall in the eighties.
Paul Simpson at the stall in 1989, before it became refridgerated.
Tubby Isaacs stall in Aldgate.
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Thomas Onwhyn’s Pictures Of London
Born in Clerkenwell in 1813, as the eldest son of a bookseller, Thomas Onwhyn created a series of cheap mass-produced satirical prints illustrating the comedy of everyday life for publishers Rock Brothers & Payne in the eighteen forties and fifties. In his time, Onwhyn was overshadowed by the talent of George Cruickshank and won notoriety for supplying pictures to pirated editions of Pickwick Papers and Nicholas Nickleby, which drew the ire of Charles Dickens who wrote of, “the singular Vileness of the Illustrations.”
Nevertheless, these fascinating ‘Pictures of London’ that I came upon in the Bishopsgate Institute demonstrate a critical intelligence, a sly humour and an unexpected political sensibility. In this social panorama,originally published as one concertina-fold strip, Onwhyn contrasts the culture and lives of rich and the poor in London with subtle comedy, tracing their interdependence yet making it quite clear where his sympathy lay.
The Court – Dress Wearers.
Dressmakers.
The Opera Box.
The Gallery.
The West End Dinner Party.
A Charity Dinner.
Mayfair.
Rag Fair.
Music of the Drawing Room.
Street Music.
The Physician.
The Medical Student.
The Parks – Day.
The Parks – Night.
The Club – The Wine Bibber.
The Gin Shop – The Dram Drinker.
The Shopkeeper.
The Shirtmaker.
The Bouquet Maker.
The Basket Woman. (Initialled – T.O. Thomas Onwhyn)
Images courtesy Bishopsgate Institute
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Roland Collins, Artist
Roland Collins
Ninety-four year old artist Roland Collins lives with his wife Connie in a converted sweetshop south of the river that he has crammed with singular confections, both his own works and a lifetime’s collection of ill-considered trifles. Curious that I had come from Spitalfields to see him, Roland reached over to a cabinet and pulled out the relevant file of press cuttings, beginning with his clipping from the Telegraph entitled ‘The Romance of the Weavers,’ dated 1935.
“Some time in the forties, I had a job to design a lamp for a company at 37 Spital Sq” he revealed, as if he had just remembered something that happened last week,“They were clearing out the cellar and they said, ‘Would you like this big old table?’ so I took it to my studio in Percy St and had it there forty years, but I don’t think they ever produced my lamp. I followed that house for a while and I remember when it came up for sale at £70,000, but I didn’t have the money or I’d be living there now.”
As early as the thirties, Roland visited the East End in the footsteps of James McNeill Whistler, drawing the riverside, then, returning after the war, he followed the Hawksmoor churches to paint the scenes below. “I’ve always been interested in that area,” he admitted wistfully, “I remember one of my first excursions to see the French Synagogue in Fournier St.”
Of prodigious talent yet modest demeanour, Roland Collins is an artist who has quietly followed his personal enthusiasms, especially in architecture and all aspects of London lore, creating a significant body of paintings while supporting himself as designer throughout his working life. “I was designing everything,” he assured me, searching his mind and seizing upon a random example, “I did record sleeves, I did the sleeve for Decca for the first Long-Playing record ever produced.”
From his painting accepted at the Royal Academy in 1937 at the age of nineteen, Roland’s pictures have been distinguished by a bold use of colour and dramatic asymmetric compositions that reveal a strong sense of abstract design. Absorbing the diverse currents of British art in the mid-twentieth century, he refined his own distinctive style at his studio in Percy St – at the heart of the artistic and cultural milieu that defined Fitzrovia in the fifties. “I used to take my painting bag and stool, and go down to Bankside.” he recalled fondly, “It was a favourite place to paint, especially the Old Red Lion Brewery and the Shot Tower before it was pulled down for the Festival of Britain – they called it the ‘Shot Tower’ because they used to drop lead shot from the top into water at the bottom to harden them.”
Looking back over his nine decades, surrounded by the evidence of his achievements, Roland is not complacent about the long journey he has undertaken to reach his current point of arrival.
“I come from Kensal Rise and I was brought up through Maida Vale.” he told me, “On my father’s side, they were cheesemakers from Cambridgeshire and he came to London to work as a clerk for the Great Central Railway at Marylebone. Because I was good at Art at Kilburn Grammar School, I went to St Martin’s School of Art in the Charing Cross Rd studying life drawing, modelling, design and lettering. My father was always very supportive. Then I got a job in the studio at the London Press Exchange and I worked there for a number of years, until the war came along and spoiled everything.
I registered as a Conscientious Objector and was given light agricultural work, but I had a doubtful lung so nothing much materialised out of it. Back in London, I was doing a painting of the Nash terraces in Regent’s Park when a policeman came along and I was taken back to the station for questioning. I discovered that there were military people based in those terraces and they wanted to know why I was interested in it.
Eventually, my love of architecture led me to a studio at 29 Percy Studio where I painted for the next forty years, after work and at weekends. I freelanced for a while until I got a job at the Scientific Publicity Agency in Fleet St and that was the beginnings of my career in advertising, I obviously didn’t make much money and it was difficult work to like.”
Yet Roland never let go of his personal work and, once he retired, he devoted himself full-time to his painting, submitting regularly to group shows but reluctant to launch out into solo exhibitions – until reaching the age of ninety.
In the last two years, he has enjoyed a sell-out show at a gallery in Sussex at Mascalls Gallery and an equally successful one in Cork St at Browse & Darby this spring. Suddenly, after a lifetime of tenacious creativity, his long-awaited and well-deserved moment has arrived, and we are witnessing the glorious apotheosis of Roland Collins.
Brushfield St, Spitalfields, 1951-60 (Courtesy of Museum of London)
Columbia Market, Columbia Rd (Courtesy of Browse & Darby)
St George in the East, Wapping, 1958 (Courtesy of Electric Egg)
Mechanical Path, Deptford (Courtesy of Browse & Darby)
Fish Barrow, Canning Town (Courtesy of Browse & Darby)
St Michael Paternoster Royal, City of London (Courtesy of Browse & Darby)
St Anne’s, Limehouse (Courtesy of Browse & Darby)
St John, Wapping, 1938
St John, Wapping, 1938
Spark’s Yard, Wapping
Images copyright © Roland Collins
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Matt Walters, Human Statue
Did you ever walk through the Spitalfields Market and feel the lightest touch upon you, as if the ghost of some long-departed market porter were reaching out across time? Very likely that was Matt Walters, the human statue, who has been standing on a box in the market for the last five years and become the catalyst for the long-running drama that takes place each weekend in the narrow passage between the Creperie and Les Bobrow ‘s Wood ‘N’ Things novelty shop.
As visitors arrive in the Spitalfields Market, walking from the new development into the old building and enjoying the historic ambience, including the bronze figure of a man in flat cap, they are sometimes shaken from their reverie by a tap on the head from the living statue. The innocent hilarity thus engendered has become an attraction in its own right and you will regularly find a small crowd assembled here with cameras at the ready to record the never-ending amusement as a stream of unwitting newcomers are bamboozled in similar fashion.
The mysterious and slightly sinister charisma of the human statue is one of enduring fascination to adults and children alike. Most people are more than willing to enter into the light-hearted complicity required, with the rare of exceptions of little ones that become gripped with abject terror and big ones whose dignity is affronted by such unwarranted mischief. Yet, succumbing to the pull myself – like some latter-day Don Giovanni – I arranged a private assignation with the statue and he favoured me by breaking his customary silence.
“My father a was an Orthopaedic Surgeon and General Practitioner, but I left school after I flunked all my O levels. Then I lasted a couple of months studying catering until the craze of robotic dancing came in, and I found I was good at it and I could make a living out of being a robot.
After about ten years of doing that, I saw my first human statue in Paris and by then I’d had enough of being a robot. It was at Fontainbleu and I couldn’t understand why all the French were staring at this statue in a flowerbed, so I went up to touch it and she grabbed me – scared the living daylights out of me! I literally came back and – although I didn’t know how – I decided I was going to do it. I had a booking as a robot at a night club but I turned up and said, ‘I’m going to be a human statue.’ So I got my make-up on and painted myself up and stood in the foyer for two and a half hours and that was that. It didn’t go too well, as the club owner didn’t notice me and thought I’d gone home. But after two and a half hours my calves were killing me, so I dropped the character and stepped off my plinth, and the whole club freaked out – ‘Bloody hell, it’s alive!’
That was fifteen years ago, so I have been doing this for twenty-eight years now. It’s really hard to stand still, it takes a lot of core strength and you have to breathe quite shallowly. I’m looking around for who to pick and you can always tell who’s comfortable by the way they walk towards you. I lower my heartbeat while I’m standing, my pulse goes down to twenty-eight and I feel very relaxed. It nearly killed me in November though, because I had blood clots in my lungs and the doctor said it might be from standing still such a long time. But I am fully recovered and you know, ‘Worse things happen at sea!’ I hope I’ll be doing it for a few years yet, because no-one can see my age under the make-up. The oldest human statue is in the Ramblas in Barcelona – he is seventy-four and he looks like the perfect statue of a wizened old man.
I love what I do and there is the freedom of choosing your hours. Each day, I start at 11:30am and finish about 7:00pm with a few breaks in between. A policeman said to me, ‘Every time you touch someone, technically you are assaulting them.’ but people understand that it’s harmless. I’m very lucky with the comments I get, people say, ‘I’ve never seen anything as good as that.’ I’m at the top of my tree. I’m not begging, I’m a performer and people choose to put money in the tin or not. You always give your best performance and let people take as many photos as they like, whether they give you something or not.
Before the recession, business was really good. I had thirteen people working for me at one time – training them up, breaking them in and teaching them how to apply their make-up. I’d have four or five corporate events each week and at least one wedding each weekend. In the early days, I did the opening of every new Specsavers, that’s three hundred and sixty shops. And I did all the openings for Hotel du Vin too, for a while we were synonymous. It was a successful business until it all came crashing down around me and now I am a solo street entertainer – doing Spitalfields each Sunday, South Bank on Monday, Kingston on Thursday or Friday, and Wimbledon on a Saturday. It all depends where I’m racing – I used to do ultra-marathons but now I do cycle racing. My other passion is bird watching, I’ve seen the Peregrine Falcons at St Paul’s and at the Barbican. Half my ear is listening to birdsong and the other half is listening to people around me – you get so much more attuned when you are silent.
I dress up as a Chimney Sweep generally, but if it gets hot I paint myself white all over like a Sandstone Figure. I only do that if there’s a shower because otherwise it takes six boxes of baby-wipes to remove the make-up. I have great skin because I’m always exfoliating. I do other colours as well, so if there’s a corporate logo I can spray it on my body with a stencil and match up the colour. I also do a Roman Centurion, Stars & Stripes for 4th July, and Verdigris, and I do a Torch Bearer with a real flaming torch for night-time. I don’t wear gold or silver, I make myself up to look like a real bronze statue. I was Planet Hollywood’s human statue at the Trocadero for eight years. I was there for the Olympics and I’m going back for four or five days a week this summer. They regard it as a kind of subliminal advertising because people get involved with my act and then they go into the restaurant.
Nowadays, there’s all these people down in Covent Garden with masks which I regard as cheating. In my time, there used to be the Doggy Man who sat in a cat basket, Duncan the Silver Gladiator and the Leaning Man, who had his shoes nailed to a board and could lean forty-five degrees. There were four of us lined up, so you had to work hard to earn your money but I enjoyed the competition.
I’ve been in Spitalfields for five years. I came here just after it had been redeveloped and I dropped one of my cards off at the market office, and they rang me up and I have been here ever since. When I started, the owner of the cafe came out and said ‘I love what you do, you can have a free coffee in my cafe anytime.’ The security guards are very protective and the stall holders are very friendly too. You’d think people would suss out what I’m doing by now, but there’s always a mass of new people coming through and I’ve had tourists returning each year to find me. The glass roof keeps the rain off and it’s sheltered here, unlike Covent Garden where I was exposed to the cold and snow. I love Spitalfields, it’s a great place to be a statue.”
Matt Walters, Human Statue
Don Giovanni and the Statue by Alexandre-Évariste Fragonard, c. 1830-35.
You can book Matt Walters, the Human Statue, through Mechanical Fracture
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At Charles Dickens’ Childhood Home
A gathering of Dickensians
Yesterday, I turned away from the throng of Saturday shoppers in Oxford St to seek the quiet streets of Fitzrovia, where around a hundred people met outside 22 Cleveland St for the unveiling of a new plaque upon Charles Dickens’ childhood home. Originally known as 10 Norfolk St, Dickens lodged here with his parents as a child, during 1815 and 1816, before his father’s imprisonment for debt, returning in adolescence, from 1828 until 1831, as he began to make his own way in the world.
Until recently, it was widely understood that the only one of Dickens’ places of residence to have survived in London was in Doughty St, Bloomsbury, but Ruth Richardson uncovered the existence of his childhood home in Fitzrovia while she was researching the history of the Cleveland St Workhouse, as part of a campaign to save it from demolition. This discovery led her to compare the distinctive regime and circumstances at the Cleveland St Workhouse with that described in ‘Oliver Twist’ and she realised that Dickens had used this workhouse just a few doors from his childhood home as the template for the one in his novel. Richardson tells the compelling story of her detective work in Dickens & the Workhouse and the success of her research led to a Grade II listing for the building, thereby ensuring its survival.
A key discovery for Richardson was the calling card that Dickens produced to gain employment as a shorthand writer while resident here. When she contacted the owner of the only-known copy of the card, Dan Calinescu of the Toronto branch of the Dickens Fellowship, he asked her why there was no plaque upon the building and, when she told him that there was no money for a plaque, he offered to pay for it. Thus I found myself shaking hands with Mr Calinescu yesterday, amidst a diverse crowd of fans – many in historic garb – that gathered to celebrate Dickens and consider the influence of this immediate environment upon the nascent writer.
Living in lodgings here above a grocer’s shop, young Dickens learned to read and write, and suffered the domestic insecurity brought about by his father’s gambling. Returning after his father’s imprisonment, Dickens learnt shorthand here and sought to establish his independence, applying for a reader’s ticket at the British Museum from this address. For the five years that he lived in this street, Dickens could not ignore the presence of the workhouse upon his doorstep – as the fate that he struggled to avoid – and the impression it made upon him inspired one of his greatest novels.
Preparing for the unveiling.
Lucinda Dickens Hawksley, Dickens’ great-great granddaughter, pulls away the cloth..
Ruth Richardson
Dickens’ calling card while resident in Fitzrovia. (reproduced courtesy of Dan Cilanescu)
The door where Charles Dickens once walked in.
Jennifer Emerson as Dolly Varden.
Cleveland St, with Dickens’ childhood home at number 22 – originally 10 Norfolk St.
Jane Wildgoose as Lady Dedlock
The Cleveland St Workhouse that served as the inspiration for the workhouse in Oliver Twist.
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In Fitzrovia
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Roland Collins’ Photographs
For a spell in the sixties, while Roland Collins was working as a commercial artist for the Scientific Publicity Agency in Fleet St, he had access to a darkroom which enabled him to develop his own photography, and he produced striking and imaginative photoessays – exploring different aspects of London life. Today, it is my pleasure to show this selection of Roland’s evocative images of the East End and the City, published for the first time since their original appearance. And next week, I am looking forward to introducing you to his paintings of the territory.
Fairground on the Hackney Marshes.
Salvation Army prayer meeting in the Lea Bridge Rd.
In Petticoat Lane.
In the East India Dock Rd.
Porters at Billingsgate.
Spirits are high as a porter is hoist onto his own shellfish barrow by his sixteen stone son.
A porter makes a bit extra on the side, street trading in boots and shoes.
The Monument.
View from the top of the Monument.
Looking down Eastcheap from the Monument.
Fish shop by the Monument.
Visitors at the top of the Monument.
The shadow of the Monument cast upon King William St.
Relief upon the Danish Embassy at Wellclose Sq at the time of demolition – now removed to Belgravia.
In Albury Rd, Rotherhithe.
At Limehouse Basin.
Photographs copyright © Roland Collins
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Dennis Anthony’s Petticoat Lane
