The Modern Cries of London
This comic series of The Modern Cries of London from the Bishopsgate Archive are the first I have discovered that are seasonal, illustrating produce to be bought upon the streets of Georgian London in March. These traders were struggling to sell their wares to customers without any money to spare, just as their counterparts do today – rendering this series of Cries of London “Modern” in the sense that they reflect impecunious circumstances.
Images courtesy Bishopsgate Institute
You may also like to take a look at these other series of the 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
More John Player’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
Tony Bock on the Thames
Pier at Beckton Gas Works
Photographer Tony Bock took these pictures of the dockland – published here for the first time today – between 1973 and 1978, when he worked on the East London Advertiser and lived in Wapping. Subsequently, he returned to Canada where he had been brought up and, for more than thirty years, enjoyed a career as a leading photojournalist on the Toronto Star. Yet Tony’s mother’s family had originated in the East End, and the pictures he took here comprise both an important testimony of a vanished era and the record of one photographer’s search for his roots.
“Although the Thames is such a fundamental part of London’s history, in my time it was difficult to get access to it. In East London, every foot was lined by warehouses and industry which meant there were few places I could peer into the life of the river. And the docks were surrounded by high walls, some even inspired by prison walls. The goods being handled were often fragrant, exotic and valuable, both to the importers and the Chancellor of the Exchequer. So accessing the water was often a challenge.
The seventies were a sad time. Starting upriver, the docks, wharves and warehouses were closing. St. Katherine, London and East India Docks were old, small and inefficient, and they had closed in the sixties. The Surrey Commercial Docks in Rotherhithe did not last any longer, and by the mid-seventies the West India and Millwall Docks on the Isle of Dogs and the Royals in Newham were just hanging on. They could only handle open-hold ships and there were fewer of them calling, by then most shipping had been containerized and moved downriver to Tilbury. And, as the dockers and rivermen moved or lost their jobs, there was a noticeable effect upon the old communities along the river.
There were still some barges being towed. A friend, Don Able, was a tug boat skipper who let me accompany his crew, delivering barges six at a time, to a cement works upriver. Don was a big advocate of shipping freight on the river and avoiding the traffic jams on the A13.
Wapping was changing too. The warehouses, built overhanging Wapping High St, looked just as they had for years but then there was an epidemic of fires – usually in the dead of night – and many of the finest nineteenth century riverside buildings were destroyed in scenes reminiscent of the Blitz.
My brother-in-law, Ian Olley, was one of the last to get his Lighterman’s license. It was another dying trade, so he went into the docks following his grandfather and uncles. My own grandfather, Edward Axton, had worked as as docker all his life. He started at Hay’sWharf in the the twenties. The building is still there, re-developed, on Tooley St on the South Bank between London Bridge and Tower Bridge. After a few years, he transferred to the Royal Docks and worked there through the war until he retired in the sixties. I still have his T.& G.W. union cards. I wonder, would that entitle me to get a job in the docks?”
One of the last open-hold vessels to visit West India Dock.
Royal Dock on a winter’s day.
Heading downriver from West India Dock.
View from the abandoned Free Trade Wharf.
Lightermen.
Barges hauled through East London.
Barges hauled through Central London.
New and old buildings in Limehouse.
Firemen watch as yet another warehouse succumbs to fire in the middle of the night.
Wapping High St, deserted early on a Saturday morning.
All that was left of Surrey Commercial Docks after the basins had been filled in.
Old warehouses at Wapping Wall.
Demolishing Tobacco Dock, Wapping.
View from Isle of Dogs towards the City.
Photographs copyright © Tony Bock
You may like to see these other photographs by Tony Bock
and these other stories about Lightermen and the Thames
Bobby Prentice, Waterman & Lighterman
Chris Skaife & Merlin
Every day at first light, Chris Skaife, Master Raven Keeper at the Tower of London, awakens the ravens from their slumbers and feeds them breakfast. It is one of the lesser known rituals at the Tower, so Spitalfields Life Contributing Photographer Martin Usborne & I decided to pay an early morning call upon London’s most pampered birds last week and send you a report.
The keeping of ravens at the Tower is a serious business, since legend has it that, ‘If the ravens leave the Tower, the kingdom will fall…’ Fortunately, we can all rest assured thanks to Chris Skaife who undertakes his breakfast duties conscientiously, delivering bloody morsels to the ravens each dawn and thereby ensuring their continued residence at this most favoured of accommodations.“We keep them in night boxes for their own safety,” Chris explained to me, just in case I should think the ravens were incarcerated at the Tower like those monarchs of yore, “because we have quite a lot of foxes that get in through the sewers at night.”
First thing, Chris unlocks the bird boxes built into the ancient wall at the base of the Wakefield Tower and, as soon as he opens each door, a raven shoots out blindly like a bullet from a gun, before lurching around drunkenly on the lawn as its eyes accustom to the daylight, brought to consciousness by the smell of fresh meat. Next, Chris feeds the greedy brother ravens Gripp – named after Charles Dickens’ pet raven – & Jubilee – a gift to the Queen on her Diamond Anniversary – who share a cage in the shadow of the White Tower.
Once this is accomplished, Chris walks over to Tower Green where Merlin the lone raven lives apart from her fellows. He undertakes this part of the breakfast service last, because there is little doubt that Merlin is the primary focus of Chris’ emotional engagement. She has night quarters within the Queen’s House, once Anne Boleyn’s dwelling, and it suits her imperious nature very well. Ravens are monogamous creatures that mate for life but, like Elizabeth I, Merlin has no consort. “She chose her partner, it’s me,” Chris assured me in a whisper, eager to confide his infatuation with the top bird, before he opened the door to wake her. Then, “It’s me!” he announced cheerily to Merlin but, with suitably aristocratic disdain, she took her dead mouse from him and flounced off across the lawn where she pecked at her breakfast a little before burying it under a piece of turf to finish later, as is her custom.
“The other birds watch her bury the food, then lift up the turf and steal it,” Chris revealed to me as he watched his charge with proprietorial concern, “They are scavengers by nature, and will hunt in packs to kill – not for fun but to eat. They’ll attack a seagull and swing it round but they won’t kill it, gulls are too big. They’ll take sweets, crisps and sandwiches off children, and cigarettes off adults. They’ll steal a purse from a small child, empty it out and bury the money. They’ll play dead, sun-bathing, and a member of the public will say, ‘There’s a dead raven,’ and then the bird will get up and walk away. But I would not advise any members of the public to touch them, they have the capacity to take off a small child’s finger – not that they have done, yet.”
We walked around to the other side of the lawn where Merlin perched upon a low rail. Close up, these elegant birds are sleek as seals, glossy black, gleaming blue and green, with a disconcerting black eye and a deep rasping voice. Chris sat down next to Merlin and extended his finger to stroke her beak affectionately, while she gave him some playful pecks upon the wrist.
“Students from Queen Mary University are going to study the ravens’ behaviour all day long for three years.” he informed me, “There’s going to be problem-solving for ravens, they’re trying to prove ravens are ‘feathered apes.’ We believe that crows, ravens and magpies have the same brain capacity as great apes. If they are a pair, ravens will mimic each other’s movements for satisfaction. They all have their own personalities, their moods, and their foibles, just like people.”
Then Merlin hopped off her perch onto the lawn where Chris followed and, to my surprise, she untied one of Chris’s shoelaces with her beak, tugging upon it affectionately and causing him to chuckle in great delight. While he was thus entrammelled, I asked Chris how he came to this role in life. “Derrick Coyle, the previous Master Raven Keeper, said to me, ‘I think the birds will like you.’ He introduced me to it and I’ve been taking care of them ever since.“ Chris admitted plainly, opening his heart, “The ravens are continually on your mind. It takes a lot of dedication, it’s early starts and late nights – I have a secret whistle which brings them to bed.”
It was apparent then that Merlin had Chris on a leash which was only as long as his shoelace. “If one of the other birds comes into her territory, she will come and sit by me for protection,” he confessed, confirming his Royal romance with a blush of tender recollection, “She sees me as one of her own.”
“Alright you lot, up you get!”
“A pigeon flew into the cage the other day and the two boys got it, that was a mess.”
“It’s me!”
“She chose her partner, it’s me.”
“She sees me as one of her own.”
Chris Skaife & Merlin
Charles Dickens’ Raven “Grip” – favourite expression, “Halloa old girl!”
Tower photographs copyright © Martin Usborne
Residents of Spitalfields and any of the Tower Hamlets may gain admission to the Tower of London for one pound upon production of an Idea Store card.
Read Martin Usborne’s blog A Year to Help
You may also like to take a look at these other Tower of London stories
Alan Kingshott, Yeoman Gaoler at the Tower of London
Graffiti at the Tower of London
Beating the Bounds at the Tower of London
Ceremony of the Lilies & Roses at the Tower of London
Bloody Romance of the Tower with pictures by George Cruickshank
John Keohane, Chief Yeoman Warder at the Tower of London
Constables Dues at the Tower of London
The Oldest Ceremony in the World
A Day in the Life of the Chief Yeoman Warder at the Tower of London
John Claridge’s Clowns (The Final Act)
So this is where we bring down the curtain on John Claridge‘s Clowns photographed at the 67th Annual Grimaldi Service at Holy Trinity Dalston last month, courtesy of our friends at Clowns International. Being startled or even alarmed by their curious appearances, their gurning and their dopey japes, we recognise ourselves. This is the corrective that clowns deliver with a cheesey grin, confronting us with the ridiculous in life.
Chuckles the Clown (The Clown with 1000 Faces) – Clowning for sixty-three years. “I am the last one that was taught by Coco the Clown!”
Lady Bird – Performer for many years and mother of Pippa the Clown.
Jake – Clowning for three years, son of Mr Mudge and grandson of Mr Jingles.
Stephen – On a visit from Adelaide.
Gadget – Clowning for fifteen years and husband of Pippa the Clown.
Zaz – Clowning since the age of eight, now thirty-three.
Mr Mudge – Performer for fourteen years, son of Mr Jingles.
Susie Oddball – Clowning for thirty-five years. “I left my nose behind in Brighton!”
Bluebottle – Clowning for ten years, Secretary of Clowns International.
Photographs copyright © John Claridge
You might like to take a look at
John Claridge’s Clowns (Act One)
John Claridge’s Clowns (Act Two)
and read my account
At the 65th Annual Grimaldi Service
or read these other Grimaldi stories
Soerditch by Dant
Working under the assumed identity of Dant, Spitalfields Life Contributing Artist Adam Dant has drawn one hundred and twenty-five cartoons, satirising the culture of our dearly-beloved Shoreditch, all comprising beautifully rendered views of the neighbourhood and captioned with clueless things overheard on the streets.
“Oh my God! This is the place where that Tracey Ermine told me to ‘fark orf’!”
“It’s all www this & dot com that today … I’d tell people what I think of it all … if they weren’t on the phone all the time!”
“Ere, Luv! Do you want to pet my dog? He likes long legs & nice tits …”
“There’s that Rupa … I can’t believe I lent her all my Henry Miller revision notes, she gets an A & can’t even be arsed to give them back, let alone say ‘thanks’ or anything! “
“Sorry Love – Scrub that … He just texted again, says he wants a ‘flat white’ instead …”
“I love the whole cobbley, Jack the Rippery feel of this area …”
“I’m, like sooo Anti. How about you? Oh Ya! Absolutely.”
“Well I wanted to rent ‘Dodgeball’ but the guy who runs your video store said I wasn’t allowed to see it. He made me watch this Polish film about organ trafficking instead, which I didn’t really enjoy.”
“This is the shop where the Huguenots invented the Donut …”
“Another one of those ‘Pop-up Shops’ seems to have gone & ‘popped-off’…”
“Don’t get me wrong, it’s a great lido & all, it’s just, once you’ve seen something like that floating in it … puts you off your stroke!”
“Mum …can I have an ‘ipod touch,’ can I, can I, will you get one for me, can I have one, can we use my pocket money, can I have one, can I …?”
Drawing from a pair of unlikely inspirations, namely Giles‘ cartoons for the Daily Express and Hiroshige‘s ‘One Hundred Famous Views of Edo,’ Adam Dant pulls off an astonishing sleight of hand – simultaneously portraying the urban landscape of Shoreditch with spare lines and flat tones that evoke the woodcuts of Hiroshige, while also satirising the manners and mores of the people through witty social observations in the manner of Giles.
Soerditch is the old name for Shoreditch, quoted by the historian John Stowe in his Survey of London 1598, as “so called more than four hundred yeares.” It means the Sewer Ditch, in reference to the spring beside Shoreditch Church, once the source of the lost River Walbrook which flowed from there towards the City of London.
The exhibition runs at Eleven Spitalfields Gallery from 7th March – 26th April and all one hundred and twenty-five cartoons are published in a limited edition album with an introduction by Jarvis Cocker, produced in the style of Giles’ celebrated annuals and available to buy online from Spitalfields Life Shop.
Click here to buy your copy of SOERDITCH by DANT – Diary of a Neighbourhood (125 Views of Shoreditch) – while stocks last!
Cartoons copyright © Adam Dant
Adam Dant is represented by Hales Gallery
Winter Dawn At Bow Cemetery
Photographer Duncan George sent me these pictures of Bow Cemetery at dawn, inspiring me to pay a visit at first light yesterday.
With the passing years, each winter seems to present a greater challenge to my resilience and – sometimes – as I lie in bed pulling the covers closer to keep warm in the cold of the old house, I can almost feel the chill gathering around me at night. Yet rather than cower behind my feeble defences any longer, I decided to venture out before dawn into the freezing mist in the hope of ameliorating my aversion to the grim weather.
A generation ago, Brick Lane would have been alive at six in the morning with people going to work in the clothing factories, and at the brewery and the market, but yesterday no-one was stirring except me. There was an artificial glow to the west from the lights of the City as I set out to walk down the Mile End Rd, but otherwise the low cloud which obscured the sky was grey – turning uniformly luminous by the time I turned into Southern Grove.
Passing between the high walls of Bow Cemetery, I encountered moisture in the air and a pang deep in my stomach. Even at this hour, the trees and the natural life of the place overwhelmed the presence of the tombs, and my first impressions were of wild cherry blossom glowing in the half-light and the first catkins of the year hanging from bare branches. Nevertheless, I could not help myself scanning the gravestones for any signs of movement and, spying a moving figure that I assumed to be an early dog-walker, I turned in the opposite direction walking deeper into the maze of overgrown paths.
Above my head, birds were singing in chorus from the forest canopy, yet it only served to emphasise the stillness at ground level, where I stood among funerary statues that were poised as if ready to spring into movement. Overhead, a subtle balance was shifting as the streetlights, which I saw in every direction, were losing their dominance over the cool gloom of the cemetery where snowdrops sprang luminous in the shadowy haze. In the distance, a disinterested fox barely adjusted his pace upon registering my existence.
In my fantasy, it was the coldest, chillest place – the locus of winter. In reality, there was life there, ticking over and marking the slow advance towards spring. I stood in a clearing, slowly lifting my gaze to the tree tops as the day broke. Once upon a time, I could never have been there to see this. Even well into adulthood, I could not walk into a dark room without switching on the light for fear of unknown horrors. One summer, I lived in a cottage at the end of a wooded lane and, if I returned at night down the dark road through the trees, it would always be with my heart in my mouth. Experiences that are absurd in retrospect as, through the intervening years, these irrational terrors have – inexplicably – receded and vanished from my psyche.
Yet I did not linger that morning and, as I walked, night faded from the cemetery. In spite of the Gothic statuary, I was relieved that my experience was not of the Gothic variety, save the mysterious lone figure moving amidst the stones, that I did not see again. There was no unholy chill. Neither were there dog-walkers or joggers, as I had expected. On such a morning they had stayed at home. I wondered if I was alone, until I reminded myself that you are never alone in a cemetery.
In the Mile End Rd, street lights were flickering out and the first commuters were to be seen upon the glossy damp pavements, making steps to towards the tube. In Vallance Rd, I passed Kevin the Milkman and arrived home to discover his delivery on my doorstep, and thus I was grateful to return to my warm bed again.
Photographs copyright © Duncan George
You may also like to read these other cemetery stories
At the Cemetery With Barn the Spoon
Find out more at www.towerhamletscemetery.org
At St Clement’s Hospital
Members of City of London & Cripplegate Photographic Society were invited to record the interior of the disused St Clement’s Hospital in Mile End last year. Originally opened as the City of London Union Workhouse in 1849, it was converted to an Infirmary in 1874 and renamed St Clement’s Hospital in 1936, being used as a psychiatric unit in recent years, before closing finally in 2005.
An initiative is being launched by East London Community Land Trust to convert the building to affordable housing, but in the meantime it lies in magnificent dereliction and an exhibition of these other-wordly photographs opens tomorrow, Thursday 28th February, at the Genesis Cinema.
© Hilary Barton
© Hilary Barton
© Pat Mooring
© Jean Jameson
© Bill Gilliam
© Jean Jameson
© Pat Mooring
© Pat Mooring
© Pat Mooring
© Pat Mooring
© Pat Mooring
© Pat Mooring
© Jean Jameson
© Pat Mooring
© Pat Mooring
© Jean Jameson
© Pat Mooring
© Pat Mooring
© Pat Mooring
© Pat Mooring
© Bill Gilliam
© Pat Mooring
© Jean Jameson
