Paul Bommer & Christopher Smart & His Cat Jeoffry
Whenever I walk along Old St, I always think of the brilliant eighteenth century poet Christopher Smart, who once lived here in the St Luke’s Hospital for Lunatics with only his cat Jeoffry for solace, on the spot where the Co-operative and Argos are today. So when artist Paul Bommer asked me to suggest a subject for an illustrated print, I had no hesitation in proposing Christopher Smart’s eulogy to his cat Jeoffry, the best description of the character of a cat that I know. And, to my amazement and delight, Paul has illustrated all eighty-nine lines, each one with an apposite feline image.
In an age when only aristocrats with private incomes were able to be poets, Christopher Smart was a superlative talent who struggled to make his path through the world, and his emotional behaviour became increasingly volatile as result. With small means, he fell into debt whilst a student at Cambridge and even though his literary talent was acknowledged with awards and scholarships, his delight in high jinks and theatrical performances did not find favour with the University. Once he married Anna Maria Canaan, Smart was unable to remain at Cambridge and came to London, seeking to make ends meet in the precarious realm of Grub St. His prolific literary career turned to pamphleteering and satire, publishing hundreds of works in a desperate attempt to keep his wife and two little daughters, Marianne and Elizabeth Ann.
Eventually, he signed a contract to write a weekly magazine, The Universal Visitor, and the strain of producing this caused Smart to have a fit, sometimes ascribed as the origin of his madness. Yet there are divergent opinions as to whether he was mad at all, or whether his consignment to the madhouse was in some way political on the part of John Newbery, the man who was both Smart’s publisher and father-in-law. However, Smart made a religious conversion at this time, and there is an account of him approaching strangers in St James’ Park and inviting them to pray with him.
In Smart’s day, Old St was the edge of the built up city with market gardens and smallholdings beyond. The maps of St Luke’s Hospital show gardens behind and it was possible that like John Clare in the Northamptonshire Lunatic Asylum, Smart was simply left alone to tend the garden and get on with his writing. Consigned at first on 6th May 1757 as a “curable” patient, Smart was designated “incurable” whilst there and subsequently transferred to Mr Potter’s asylum in Bethnal Green as a cheaper option. Meanwhile his wife Anna Maria took their two daughters to Ireland and he never saw them again. In 1763, Smart was released through intervention of friends and lived eight another years, imprisoned for debt in King’s Bench Walk Prison in April 1770, he died there in May 1771.
“For I Will Consider My Cat Jeoffry” was never printed in Smart’s day, it was first published in 1939 after being discovered in manuscript amongst Smart’s papers, and subsequently W.H. Auden gave a copy to Benjamin Britten who wrote a famous setting as part of a choral work entitled “Rejoice in the Lamb” in 1942.
The irony is that the “madness” of Christopher Smart, which was his unravelling as a writer in his own time, signified the creation of him as a poet who spoke beyond his age. Smart is sometimes idenitified as one of the Augustan poets, notable for their formality of style and content, but the idiosyncratic language, fresh observation and fluid form of “For I Will Consider My Cat Jeoffry” break through the poetic convention of his period and allow the poem to speak across the centuries.
It is the tender observation present in these lines that touches me most, speaking of the fascination of a cat as a source of joy for one with nothing else in the world. In fact, Smart was often known as Kit or Kitty and I wonder if he saw an image of himself in Jeoffry and it liberated him from the tyranny of his circumstance. Simply by following his nature, Jeoffry becomes holy in Christopher Smart’s eyes, exemplifying the the wonder of all creation.
It was a triumphant observation for a man who was losing his life, yet it is all the more remarkable that it is solely through this playful masterpiece he is remembered today. He did not know that, at the moment of disintegration, his words were gaining immortality thanks to the presence of his cat Jeoffry. And this is why, whenever I walk along Old St with my face turned to the wind, I cannot help thinking of poor Christopher Smart.
Christopher Smart (1722-71)
Paul Bommer at St Luke’s, Old St.
The St Luke’s Hospital for Lunatics in Old St where Christopher Smart lived with his cat Jeoffry on a site now occupied by Argos and The Co-operative.
St Luke’s Hospital for Lunatics, Old St, in the nineteenth century.
Paul Bommer in the rose garden on the site of the former St Luke’s Hospital garden where Christopher Smart’s cat Jeoffry once roamed.
Paul Bommer’s print of Christopher Smart’s “For I will consider my cat Jeoffry.”
The Gentle Author’s cat Mr Pussy.
Paul Bommer’s delft tile portrait of Mr Pussy.
Copies of Paul Bommer’s limited edition print of Christopher Smart’s “For I will consider my cat Jeoffry” are available from the Spitalfields Life online shop.
Artwork copyright © Paul Bommer
Archive image from Bishopsgate Institute
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Boundary Estate Cooking Portraits
This is Julie Begum of the Boundary Women’s Group dishing up a curry that she cooked for Spitalfields Life contributing photographer Sarah Ainslie. It was part of a collaboration between Sarah and members of the group, in which they cooked food and Sarah took pictures – and, as a consequence, both parties have enjoyed getting to know each other over some delicious meals. Naturally, I took the opportunity to join the feast, dropping in to one of the weekly meetings, that take place every Tuesday morning at the St Hilda’s Community Centre on the Boundary Estate, to learn something of what it is all about.
“I’ve been coming since 2005,” explained Sabeha Miah, who runs the group today, “I moved here and I had a young son, and I felt very isolated – but being in the group gives you a chance to breathe and you feel part of something bigger.” When Sabeha first joined, the need was for language classes and so the group all learnt English together. Subsequently, interests have broadened into other kinds of activities including a financial literacy course, the creation of an ambitious tapestry that was displayed at the Museum of London and the development of a food co-op which allows local people to buy food at low prices.
But at the core of the endeavour is cooking and conversation – providing a rare opportunity for these women to talk freely amongst their peers and discuss serious issues such as politics, sex education and the place of religion, all whilst preparing and eating a meal together. “I’m forty-two and I have been coming three or four years,” revealed Julie Begum, talking plainly, “We talk about being women in London, trying to run our lives and make other people happy too – all the things we need to do.”
Once the food was cooked, we helped ourselves from the dishes laid upon the counter, engendering lively curiosity over the different recipes employed, which gave full scope to the wit and raucous humour of the members of the group. “I really look forward to coming every Tuesday. My child is seven and I am at home the rest of the week,” the softly spoken Halima Khatun confided to me as the conversation level subsided and a hush descended upon the table while we savoured our food. “What could be more civilised?” I thought as a satisfied silence presided, “- than a group of women meeting each week to share their experiences over lunch.”
Sarah offered the opportunity to the members to have their portraits taken and you see some examples of these collaborations here. “The consensus was they wanted the portraits to be quite formal and they brought outfits to wear,” explained Sarah,“they chose how they wanted to present themselves.” From Sarah’s fascination and the excitement of the women at exploring photographic images of themselves, I could see this was only the beginning. “It quickly evolved to the point where they said, “Are you coming next week?”” Sarah confessed to me, delightedly, “I’ve become part of the group now and I’m going back to do more.”
Sabeha Miah’s recipe for Onion Bhajis Finely slice some onions, coriander, fresh chillies and ginger – roughly mix up together by hand. To this mixture add half and half mix besan (chick pea flower) and plain flour until all mixture is coated. Slowly add some warm water to this mixture until a smooth batter is formed around the onions etc (adding more water/bison/flour if you feel it is needed). In a deep frying pan with an inch depth of hot vegetable oil, slowly drop ping-pong ball sized blobs of the mixture in, turning once or twice until golden, then remove. Eat while fresh and warm!
Sufia’s Fish Curry Recipe Fry onion, green chili, bay leaves, curry powder, salt and coriander in oil, then add fish, then water. No need to cook long – the fish is ready quick.
Mahmuda Jaigirdas – in her Asian clothes
Sultana Begum – My husband likes to get in the kitchen. I used to say, “Get out, I’m the woman! The kitchen is my domain – if you got any suggestions you can cook it yourself!” Now he does cook, things he’s watched me make. He says, “You have to stand there and really lovingly watch your curry while it cooks.” I say, “No,” while it simmers, I go on the internet.
Mahmuda Jaigirdas – in her western clothes
Julie Begum’s recipe for Sardine Curry This is my favourite quick home cooking recipe after a long hard day’s work. Ingredients – half a kilo of sardines, two tomatoes, one onion, three green chilis, one teaspoon of red chili powder, half a teaspoon of turmeric powder, one teaspoon of coriander, one piece of ginger, eight cloves of garlic, one dessert spoon of lemon juice and salt as required. Procedure – Cut and clean the fresh sardines (score on both sides) or just open the tins ( I prefer the ones in tomato sauce). Heat oil in a pan. Add sliced onion, green chili, ginger, garlic and saute well.To this, add red chili powder, turmeric powder, salt, lemon juice and tomato slices. Saute well until tomatoes are done. Add water as required and until fish are cooked. Serve with fresh coriander and a slice of lemon with white basmati rice. Yum!
Sabeha Miah – her recipe for simple Dhal Add dhal (two hundred grams of red lentils) to a pot and wash until water runs clean. Put on a stove on a medium heat. Add a teaspoon of haldi (turmeric), salt to taste and a bay leaf. Leave pot covered, stirring from time to time, until all the dhal has turned mushy. Once at this stage – In a frying pan containing two tablespoons of hot oil, add four cloves of crushed garlic and three to four dried red chilis. When garlic has browned and chilis have turned a very dark red, add to the pot of dhal and stir in ( be careful as the oil and dhal will spit). Add chopped coriander to finish.
Jobeda’s recipe for Ghajjar Ka Halwar Ingredients: dozen grated carrots, half pint of milk, sugar, cinnamon sticks/cardamon, little bit of single cream, raisins, ghee and mixed nuts. Step one – boil milk with sugar, cinnamon sticks, cardamon, add the grated carrots and let it cook for thirty minutes. Step two – add single cream, for extra sweetness, and raisins after fifteen/twenty minutes. Step three – stir in ghee in the last five minutes. Step four – add mixed nuts for decoration. End result all milk should be gone.
Photographs copyright © Sarah Ainslie
You may also like to take a look at the Curry Chefs of Brick Lane
Third Annual Report
Three years ago, I set out in pursuit of a hare-brained ambition to write ten thousand stories and now – even if you discount my distinguished guest authors, the picture sets and the occasional repeats – I have written over a thousand. Already this number enters the realm of more than I can grasp, but it also strengthens my resolve by making the possibility of reaching ten thousand seem more credible.
I often think of the “Arabian Nights,” one of my favourite collections of stories. I have so many different versions upon my shelves and over the years I have amassed a trove of illustrations, posters, cards, scraps, films and even figures relating to the “Tales Of The Thousand & One Nights.”
You will recall the Sultan was convinced of the innate deceitfulness of women and therefore unable to find a satisfactory wife, executing each of the failed candidates, which was surely the ultimate deterrent to successful matchmaking. Yet Scheherazade conceived the ploy of telling the Sultan a story each night and not finishing it until the next night, when she commenced another one immediately. The Sultan was rapt and, after one thousand and one nights, Scheherazade and he had produced three children. By then he had no intention of executing the beloved mother of his family. But, most significantly, through her tenacious pursuit of storytelling, Scheherazade revealed the common humanity she shared with the Sultan and, in doing so, educated him beyond his moral prejudice against women. The multiplicity of tales in the “Arabian Nights” show that everyone has motives for their actions which resist simple moral judgement and that neither sex is more or less deceitful than the other.
Even though – thankfully – I do not have the possibility of a death sentence hanging over me at dawn, I feel I may now presume to have some special understanding of the circumstance of Scheherazade, because I know what it means to tell a story every night for a thousand nights. Unlike her, my imperative is self-imposed and I am blessed with a sympathetic audience, although I do feel the need keenly to give of my best each night and I often work into the early hours until weariness begins to take grasp upon my consciousness. My imagination is released when the tethers of daily concerns are cut away, as my thoughts drift towards the inevitable sleep, and this drowsy moment is commonly when the nightly essay takes flight. Over the course of writing these first thousand stories, my mind has become trained to berth each piece of writing before I take my slumber and I know of readers in other time zones who read my new story each night before they go to sleep, which makes these nocturnal tales of a kind.
After the first three years of my “Tales Of The Ten Thousand & One Nights,” only the opening of the narrative has unfurled and, like Scheherazade, I do not know where it will lead. Like her, I am also part of this story as well as being the teller. But, unlike Scheherazade, who knew the stories she was going to tell, mine are revealed to me as I learn about the people around me day by day and new characters are introduced all the time. It makes the evolution of these tales a shared discovery for both the reader and the writer equally – though I sometimes wonder if, perhaps, there is an overview which is granted to you, my audience, that is not available to me.
For many years almost no-one read or even saw what I wrote, but doggedly I carried on writing just the same because I knew nothing else. All that time, I was searching for a direction that I found quite unexpectedly when I began to write Spitalfields Life, even though old friends remind me now that I was always telling them stories of the kind which fill these pages – as if it were somehow inevitable. Yet the wonder has been that I have discovered such an appreciative audience which has brought a joyous momentum to my work and been instrumental in the success of the book of Spitalfields Life too.
Naturally, each of these anniversaries proposes a moment of assessment and I must confess to you that, as a writer who worked for so long without readers, recognition, or even income, this has been an extraordinary year of fulfilment and delight. Let me admit, I chose ten thousand stories as my target because I calculated this was the number of days I had until I reached the age at which both my parents died. It was a conceit to force me to make the most of my time. Since I began, more than a tenth of those days have passed but I can look back and know that they were well spent, and this permits me to look forward in excited anticipation to those which lie ahead.
So, I hope you will not find it entirely whimsical if I suggest that, after more than a thousand stories, I may now lay claim to the title of “the Scheherazade of Whitechapel.”
And thus, with all these thoughts in mind, I come to the end of this third year of Spitalfields Life.
I am your loyal servant
The Gentle Author
A thousand stories’ worth of notebooks.
The Adventures of Sinbad the Sailor, chromolithographic collector’s cards offered with Liebig’s Meat Extract, Antwerp 1901.
For the next week I shall be revisiting some favourites from the past year and then resume with new stories on Monday 3rd September.
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So Long, Nina Bawden
Novelist Nina Bawden, who was a friend and inspiration to me, died yesterday aged eighty-seven and I republish my profile of her as a tribute to a woman of outstanding literary talent and moral courage.
In recent years, a recurring highlight in my existence has been the opportunity to walk from Spitalfields through Hoxton and along the canal path up to Islington to enjoy a light lunch with the sublimely elegant novelist Nina Bawden, who lived in an old terrace backing onto the canal and whom I considered it a great honour to count as my friend.
I first met Nina when I took my copy of “Carrie’s War” along to a bookshop and queued up with all the hundreds of other children to have it signed by the famous author. She appeared to my child’s eyes as the incarnation of adult grace and authoritative literary intellect, and it is an opinion that I have had no reason to qualify, except to say that my estimation of Nina grew as I came to know her.
Years after that book signing, Kaye Webb, Nina’s editor who had encouraged my own nascent efforts at writing, rang me up at six-thirty one evening to say she had just remembered Nina and her husband Austen Kark were coming to dinner that very night and she had nothing to give them. At this time Kaye was over eighty and housebound, so I sprinted through the supermarket to arrive breathless at Kaye’s flat beside the canal in Little Venice by seven-thirty – and when Nina and Austen arrived at eight, dinner was in the oven.
They were an impressive couple, Austen (who was Head of the BBC World Service) handsome in a well-tailored suit and Nina, a classically beautiful woman, stylish in a Jean Muir dress. I regret that I cannot recall more of the evening, but I was working so hard to conceal my anxiety over the hasty cuisine that I was completely overawed. Naturally, in such sympathetic company, it all passed off smoothly and I only revealed the whole truth to Nina more than twenty years later after Kaye and Austen had both died. Given this unlikely background to our friendship, it was my great pleasure to get to know Nina a little better once we became “neighbours” on this side of London.
Born in East London in 1925, Nina was evacuated during the blitz and then became amongst the first of her post-war generation to go up to Oxford. At Somerville College, she had the temerity to attempt to persuade fellow undergraduate Margaret Thatcher (Margaret Roberts as she was then) to join the Labour Party, that enshrined the spirit of egalitarianism which defined those years. Even then, young Margaret displayed the hard-nosed pragmatism that was her trademark, declaring that she joined the Conservatives because they were less fashionable and consequently, with less competition, she would have a better chance of making it into parliament.
The catalogue of Nina’s literary achievement, which stretches from the early fifties into the new century, consists of over forty novels, twenty-three for adults and nineteen for children. A canon that is almost unparalleled among her contemporaries and that, in its phenomenal social range and variety, can be read as an account of the transformation brought about by the idealistic post-war culture of the Welfare State, and of its short-comings too.
Nina met Austen, the love of her life, by chance on the top of a bus in 1953 when they were both in their twenties and married to other people. They both divorced to remarry, finding happiness together in a marriage that lasted until Austen’s death in 2002. At first,they created a family home in Chertsey, moving in 1979 to Islington, when it was still an unfashionable place to live. Although the terrace where she lived is now considered rather grand, Nina told me she understood they were originally built for the servants and mistresses of those on the better side of Islington.
Nina was someone who instinctively knew how to live, and through her persistent application to the art of writing novels and in her family life with Austen and their children, she won great happiness and fulfillment. I know this because I sensed it in her bright spirit and powerfully magnanimity, but equally I knew that her life was touched with grief and tragedy in ways that gave her innate warmth and generosity an exceptional poignancy. When Nina’s 1972 novel “The Birds on the Trees,” was shortlisted for the lost Booker prize in 2010, she re-read it and recalled it had been inspired by the suicide of her son Nicky, “When bad things happen, you absorb them into yourself and make use of them in novels.” she said soberly, “In the case of Austen, I had a fight with the railways.”
On 1oth May 2002, Nina and Austen boarded a train at Kings Cross to got to Cambridge for a friend’s birthday party. They never arrived. The train derailed at over one hundred miles an hour and Nina’s carriage detached itself, rolling perpendicular to the direction of travel and entering Potters Bar station to straddle the platforms horizontally. Austen was killed instantly and Nina was cut from the wreckage at the point of death, with every bone in her body broken. In total, seven people died and more than seventy were injured that day.
After multiple surgeries and, defying the predictions of her doctors, Nina stood up again through sheer willpower, walked again and returned to live in the home that she had shared with Austen. In grief at the loss of Austen and no longer with his emotional support, Nina found herself exposed in a brutally politicised new world, “I suppose I am lucky to have lived so long believing that most men are for the most part honourable. And lucky to have taken a profession in which owning up and telling the truth is rarely a financial disadvantage” she wrote. Nothing in her experience prepared her for the corporate executives of the privatised rail companies who refused to admit liability or even apologise in case their share price went down. It was apparent at once that the crash was caused by poorly maintained points as the maintenance company had cut corners to increase profitability at the expense of safety, but they denied it to the end.
Refused legal aid by a government who for their own reasons deemed the case of the survivors seeking to establish liability as “not in the public interest,” it was only when Nina stepped forward to lead the fight herself, setting out to take the rail companies to the High Court personally, that they finally admitted liability. If Nina had lost her case, she risked forfeiting her home to pay legal costs. But after losing so much, inspired by her love for Austen, Nina was determined to see it through and, in doing so, she won compensation for all the survivors.
You can read Nina’s own account of this experience in “Dear Austen,” a series of letters that she wrote to her dead husband to explain what happened. “When we bought tickets for this railway journey we had expected a safe arrival, not an earthquake smashing lives into pieces,” wrote Nina to Austen,“I dislike the word ‘victim’. I dislike being told that I ‘lost’ my husband – as if I had idly abandoned you by the side of the railway track like a pair of unwanted old shoes. You were killed. I didn’t lose you. And I am not a victim, I am an angry survivor.”
Sometimes extraordinary events can reveal extraordinary qualities in human beings and Nina Bawden proved herself to be truly extraordinary, not only as a top class novelist but also as a woman with moral courage who risked everything to stand up for justice. It is one thing to write as a humanitarian, but is another to fight for your beliefs when you are at your most vulnerable – this was the moment when Nina transformed from writer to protagonist, and became a heroine in the process. Nina may not have looked like an obvious heroine because she was so fragile and retiring, but her strength was on the inside.
Whenever I visited Nina, my sanity was restored. I walked home to Spitalfields along the canal and the world seemed a richer place as I carried the aura of her gentle presence with me. Concluding our conversation in the study one day, before we went downstairs to enjoy our lunch – on what turned out to be one of my last visits – Nina smiled radiantly to me and said, ” I’ve decided to get on with my novel…” in a line that sounded like a defiant challenge to the universe.
Our final conversation was when, after a silence of many months, Nina rang to offer her congratulations on my book of Spitalfields Life, and it made me realise that our friendship had travelled a long way since we first met. Now it is with great regret that – unlike Carrie in Nina’s most celebrated book – I must accept I can never go back. l shall never walk back along the towpath to have lunch with Nina again, though I shall carry her inspiration with me for always.
Nina Bawden (1925-2012) with her husband Austen Kark (1926–2002)
Pictures Of Real Life For Children, 1819
Long before the internet and before photography, the first means of cheap mass-distribution of images was by woodcuts. These appealing examples, enlarged from originals no larger than a thumbnail, are selected from a set of chapbooks, Pictures Of Real Life For Children, Printed & Sold by R.Harrild, Great Eastcheap, London. Believed to date from around 1819, the series included some Cries Of London and, in spite of the occasionally pious text, these are sympathetic and characterful portrayals of working people.
While some are intended as illustrations of professional types, such as Mr Prescription the physician, others are clearly portraits, such as the Rhubarb Seller who was also included in William Marshall Craig’s Itinerant Traders of 1804. Although we shall never know who they all were, the expressive nature of each of these lively cuts – achieved with such economy of means – leads me to suspect that many were based upon specific individuals who were recognisable to readers in London at that time.
Man with his Dancing Bear. This curious sight is frequently seen about the streets of this great city, and is far from being the most contemptible.
Mary Fairlop was always industrious, she rises with the lark to pursue her labour.
Mr Prescription, the physician, is taking the round among his patients. He is pleased to see Master Goodchild so well. By taking his physic as he ought, he is just recovered from a dangerous illness.
This is Mr Ridewell, the smart little groom, who is noted for keeping himself, his stable, and his master’s horse clean.
The Farmer.
The Milkmaid.
Hair Brooms.
Clothes Props. “Buy a Prop, a prop for your clothes.”
“Pickled Salmon, Newcastle Salmon.” Here comes Johnny Rollins, known for selling Newcastle salmon.
“Fine Yorkshire Cakes, Muffins and Crumpets.” In addition to his vocal abilities, this man has lately introduced a bell, by which means the streets are saluted every morning and afternoon with vocal and instrumental music.
“Rhubarb! Rhubarb!” This is a well-known character in our metropolis. He is a Turk as his habit bespeaks him. With his box before him, he offers his rhubarb to every passerby.
“Live Cod, dainty fresh Cod.” Much praise is due to the Fishman for his honest endeavours to obtain a livelihood. At break of day, he is seen at Billingsgate buying fish, and before noon he has been heard in most parts of the metropolis.
“Old Clothes, any shoes, hats or old Clothes.”
This is John Honeysuckle, the industrious gardener, with a myrtle in his hand, the produce of his garden. He is justly celebrated for his beautiful bowpots and nosegays all round the country.
The Nut Woman.
“Beer!” This is the publican with the nice white apron. I like this man’s beer, he keeps the Coach & Horses and his pots always look so clean.
This porter, for his industry and obliging disposition, is respected.
The Cooper is just now with adze in hand. hooping a large wine cask, which is part of a large order he has received from a merchant who trades to the East and West Indies.
The Pedlar.
The Organ Grinder.
The Watchman.
You can read my feature about William Marshall Craig’s prints of Itinerant Traders in the September issue of World of Interiors on the newstands now.
You may also like to take a look at these other sets 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
More of Thomas Rowlandson’s Lower Orders
At Tom’s Flat
Tom in his living room
And so it turns out that Tom the Sailor, who was living in a van near Brick Lane, has had a flat all along but the conditions were such he would rather not stay there even in the severest winter weather. “If you saw it, you wouldn’t believe it!” he declared, conjuring both the enigma and wonder of it – and by way of issuing an invitation to me to visit. A gentleman of soulful character, Tom is to be seen almost every day on Brick Lane with his dog Matty, and is blessed with a gift for rhetoric and storytelling that I find irresistible – which explains how I came to find myself sitting at the front of the top deck on a bus with him going through Bethnal Green yesterday on the way to his flat.
“Do you know why I sit on the front of the bus? Because I can see what’s being thrown out, that’s the big advantage of a bus. You’re high up and you can see everything, if you’ve got a trained eye like mine. It’s better than a lorry, or a car, or a bike. Look there’s a bed there being thrown out! And when you do see something, you get off. I can’t believe the gear I find. I can tell by the way it’s piled up whether it’s on the way in or on the way out. These are the things you look for, you train yourself. Last week, I saw this gear, coming out of one of the wheelie bins. I got off and went through the lot, there was cine-cameras and cameras, handbags and lipstick of all sorts, all brand new. It had to be the Poles, they always throw everything out when they move. My Christ! I had it all in big black bag and I got back on the bus, and I struggled.”
During this speech, Tom was scanning the kerb on either side, as eagle-eyed and alert as a hunter, focusing on the familiar bins, the dumpsters and places where people abandon things which comprise the landmarks along his route and that have provided the source of his trading income on Brick Lane for decades. “There’s so much to tell, but the story you would learn it’s unbelievable,” he assured me as we reached the stop where we had to get off, “Just remember, I used to have a beautiful home.”
As we navigated the narrow lanes to reach Tom’s flat, he made a few detours to examine some piles of debris and peek inside a few bins. “See I can’t help it!” he informed me with a helpless grin, spreading his hands demonstratively, as if to renounce responsibility for these habitual actions.
When we reached the entrance to the block, Tom showed me a new sign warning tenants not to put anything in corridors – raising his eyebrows in disdain – and then as we approached his flat – with a defiant gesture – he indicated a dressing table next to the front door. Then, “Man, I’ve got to get a torch,” he announced theatrically, to himself, before turning to me and emphasising, “Remember, there’s a reason for everything.”
He opened the red door and went inside, and I followed in anticipation. The smell was ripe, and the air was heavy and humid. Two rooms were crowded with junk leaving narrow passages littered with old newspapers and waste paper, just wide enough to walk through. Following Tom’s flickering torch, I entered the living room where the contents were stacked almost to the ceiling. I concentrated upon Tom’s speech to avert my attention from retching in the foul atmosphere. He showed me the power meter that had been cut off but still clocked up a tariff. He explained the newspapers were because of a flood and pointed out the holes in the ceiling where the water came through. He told me that the possessions of his wife who died of cancer were under the pile. And he told me that he was the last resident remaining from when he moved in thirteen years ago, now that the building has been sold off to a management company.
In the next room, Matty was sleeping upon a mattress which, on further examination, belonged to a bed submerged under the clutter. Beside it were Matty’s water dish and food bowl, and a portable stove where Tom cooked for himself without leaving the bed. Tom told me he lived here happily until three years ago when he let his son have it for a year. Since then, his son moved on and Tom became so alienated by the interventions of the new management company that he preferred to sleep in his van. Yet now the van is sold, he is back in the flat and resolute that nothing will remove him.
I found the grief of the place unbearable, as if someone had died there long ago and Tom was the ghost of that person lingering among the debris of a life. “Why don’t you get rid of all this stuff?” I asked, impatient to dispel the torpid mood of stagnation,”Why don’t you sell it?” Tom looked at me critically and shook his head in disappointment. “You don’t understand, do you?” he said.
“You don’t understand an orphan. My wife didn’t understand an orphan. My kids didn’t understand an orphan. Only I understand an orphan, because I was born an orphan. You might say ‘You’ve got kids, so you’re not an orphan anymore,’ but you’re wrong. An orphan is one who never had a mother and father. If you’ve never seen or known them, you are an orphan. You think as an orphan.
If you knew what I have gone through you wouldn’t believe it. In an orphanage, you go from a cot to a bed in a dormitory and you don’t know what they’re going to do to you in there. One boy says, ‘Do you want a pillow fight with me?’ and you say ‘Yes’ and grab your pillow, and he hits you on the head with a pillow case that has got something metal in it. You put your hand up and it cuts your fingers open – Look! I still have the scar – but you don’t tell anyone, you cover your hands, and next day they find you in the bed unconscious and blood everywhere. They never dare do it again. Do you know why? When I came back, I stabbed the geezer. They got the message – Stay away from me! And this was how I was brought up.”
We were walking back through the streets and Tom spoke his thoughts out loud to counteract my silence. “I haven’t told you the stories, I’ve only made a start. If I told you all the stories you wouldn’t believe it.” he asserted again. “Are you with me?” he kept repeating after each statement, to disturb the mass of thoughts that were whirling in my head.
“Are you lonely?” I asked him when we were sat together on the top of the bus again.”I am not lonely, I’ve got my dog. He’s with me twenty-four hours a day. He sleeps in my bed because he likes the smell of me.” Tom barked in reply, his eyes glittering as he returned to his monologue about the perceived conspiracy to remove him from his flat, and asserting his passion to resist it with fighting talk. “If you’ve been sunk in a sailing ship in the Atlantic as a young man and survived that – I was only thirteen at the time – what harm can they do to me?” he insisted.
And then Tom brought out a spare travelcard with eight pounds on it and offered it to me, as a gift to console my unspoken distress at his flat. “What they’re doing to me is keeping me going – it’s the excitement. I don’t care, it just flows off of me. I can’t complain, I have had a good life. I’ve got three boys and a girl.” he admitted, apparently reconciled to his circumstance. I took the travelcard in my hand, touched by his generosity. I was overwhelmed by Tom’s flat. “Have you got a bit wiser now?” he asked.
“I can see what’s being thrown out, that’s the big advantage of a bus.”
“Man, I’ve got to get a torch.”
“Remember, there’s a reason for everything.”
“I am not lonely, I’ve got my dog.”
“If I told you all the stories you wouldn’t believe it.”
Tom the Sailor, more formally known as Thomas Frederick Hewson Finch.
Tom outside the eighteenth century Drapers’ Almshouses across the road from his flat.
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Some East End Portraits by John Claridge
Boy, E7 1961 – “He was the son of a friend of my father’s – Peter, an electrician who worked down the docks. To find out if anything was live, he’d stick his finger in the socket!”
Eaten up by the consumption of chocolate, this lad is entirely unaware of the close proximity of photographer John Claridge‘s lens. And, judging from the enthusiasm with which he is sticking the chocolate in his mouth, it looks like he took after his father when it came to poking fingers into holes.
Published for the first time, these vibrant photographs reveal the range of John’s approaches to portraiture. “Most of the time I ask,” he admitted to me, “and sometimes people ask me to take their pictures, but at other times you just see something and grab it. I’ve no single way of doing it.”
“I talk to them and it is through talking that you can open a door,” he continued, ” if you’ve known someone for a while, it is very different from if they only have ten minutes to give me their soul. So I never set people up to look foolish, I treat them with dignity because I need to win their trust.”
Offering a variety of moods and contrasted energies, these portraits share a common humanity and tenderness for their subjects. In particular, John’s self-portrait fascinates me. He says he took it in a semi-derelict toilet “for the hell of it,” but, in retrospect, it is emblematic of his extraordinary project – he was a photographer in a world that was spiralling down.
The body of work from which these photos have been selected – of which I have published hundreds in weekly instalments over the last few months – is believed to be the largest collection of images by any single photographer covering this period in the East End. In their quality, their number, and their range, they will come to represent the eye of history – but it makes them especially interesting that they were taken by an insider. When he took these photographs, John Claridge was an Eastender looking at the East End. John was taking portraits of his own people.
Clocking Off, Wapping 1968 – “He was a neighbour and I arranged to meet him down at the warehouse after work.”
Boxer, E16 1969 – “A chap putting on his wraps at Terry Lawless’ gym in Canning Town. I walked in and I was talking to the guys – and I just took the picture.”
Man at Booth House Salvation Army, Whitechapel 1982 – “I printed this picture for the first time the other day. They guy is somewhere else, but I didn’t notice until this week the man with the camera taking the picture on the television.”
Children at the Salvation Army Care Centre, Whitechapel 1970s – “Some children were permanently in care and others were just there for the day. I can’t tell which these were. People only came in these places if there was a problem, if their dad was in the nick or their mum couldn’t take care of them.”
Worker at the Bell Foundry, Whitechapel 1982 – “You expect a man who works lugging bells around to be brawnier than this, but he’s got his cardigan on and he looks like a watchmaker.”
Antiques Dealer, E6 1962 – “He sold everything, penny farthings, paintings, cigarette cards … everything. I used to go down there and see him, and have cup of tea and poke around.”
My Dad in the Back Yard, E13 1961 – “He had a deck chair and he sat in the garden with a cup of tea. I said to him, ‘Just sit and don’t do anything,’ and he’d just laugh. Great times! There isn’t a day that goes by when I don’t think about him.”
Mates in Wapping, 1961 – “I think we were going down to the Prospect for a drink. I was seventeen years old, so everyone’s seventeen. It was Sunday and everyone’s got polished shoes. I haven’t been in touch, but they’re still around – I haven’t seen them for years.”
Man and Mannequin, Spitalfields 1965 – “This was just off the market. He’s listening to a portable radio on earphones. It looks like he has a mate with him and their bellies are almost touching.”
Edward and Mrs Simpson, Spitalfields 1967 – “Another kind of portrait. I love the military jackets for sale and Edward’s got one on, while Wallace is hiding and pointing him out.”
Caretaker at Wilton’s Music Hall, Wapping 1964 – “It said, ‘Please ring for caretaker.’ So I rang for the caretaker. I said, ‘Are you the caretaker?’ He said, ‘Yes.’ So I said, ‘May I take a photo of you?’ and he gave me this lovely smile.”
Self-Portrait, E14 1982 – “It was an old toilet in Poplar, in use but at the end of its day. The mirror was still there. People asked me if I ‘d done self-portraits, so I thought I’d do one down there for the hell of it.”
My Mates, 1961 – “We all went out from the East End for the day somewhere. It might have been Southend, Brighton or Clacton, but I remember it was freezing.”
Man in a Knitted Hat, E17 1964 – “This was at Walthamstow Town Hall. He’d finished his fight, had a shower, put his hat on to keep warm, and we were chatting over a cup of tea. He was a visiting fighter from the States and his shirt says, ‘The Big Apple.'”
Woman in Her Kitchen, E12 1969 – “She had no home and a young family, and was staying in a building that was derelict. The council didn’t want people to use it, so there was barbed wire outside. It was a shelter, and they asked me to go down and take pictures to show how people were living there.”
Tony Moore and Joe Gallagher, Wapping 1970 – “Tony was an ex-heavyweight boxer and Joe was my ex-father-in-law. They look like they’re about to sort somebody out.”
My Friend JB, E14 1972 – “We met when we were both fifteen years old and working at McCann Erickson. We were both Eastenders. He was an incredible designer. He had a wonderful sense of humour. He died of a heart attack. He looked like a villain, and one day we went to New York together, and were in Little Italy in a restaurant, and this guy came in and said, ‘I remember you!’ I said, ‘We’d better get out of this place.'”
My Son, Spitalfields, 1982 – “I went along on a home visit with the Salvation Army and I saw this picture on the sideboard. I said, ‘Is that your son?’ and she said, ‘Yes, he was killed in the war.'”
Headless Bear, E2 1964 – “I just came across it. He had his head burnt off. He was lying there at the edge of a bomb site.”
Photographs copyright © John Claridge
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