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Conservation At St Bartholomew’s Hospital

September 22, 2024
by the gentle author

Cover price is £35 but if you order now you can buy it for £30 and you will receive a signed copy on publication in October.
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William Palin, who is responsible for supervising the conservation of the historic James Gibbs buildings at St Bartholomew’s Hospital in Smithfield, invited me over to take a look.

An intricate web of scaffolding has been woven through the these mighty structures to enable access to the ceiling for the restoration of the Great Hall and the cleaning of William Hogarth’s murals on the staircase, so I put on a hard hat and climbed up to take a closer look.

Afterwards, Will outlined the nature of his undertaking to me.

‘We’re sitting in James Gibbs’ North Wing that dates from the 1730s. It’s a fantastic building of incredibly significant architecture with two spectacular interiors, the Great Hall and the Hogarth Stair. It has not been well looked after for the past thirty years, so we have a lot of problems.

Bart’s Heritage has taken lease of the building from the hospital and raised the money to do the first phase of conservation of the envelope of the structure, with around half coming from the Heritage Lottery Fund.

This consists of repairing the stonework, the brickwork, one hundred and sixty windows, stripping the roof slates back and laying new lead. For the interiors, it is a loving conservation project using the best experts and craftsmen from around the country, with training and apprenticeships built in at every level. They will be cleaning, repairing and redecorating the surfaces, and we will be reopening in September next year hopefully.

The Great Hall will then be splendid and open regularly to the public for the first time in its history. Until the end of January, you can join a Conservation Tour to go up onto the deck and watch the restoration of the ceiling and the Hogarth Stair in progress, meet the conservators and get a feel of what the project is all about.’

 

Click here if you would like to take a tour and learn more

 

‘Bird’s nest’ scaffolding supported by external trusses fills the Great Hall

Steps up to the roof

The letters B and H are interwoven on the ceiling as the insignia of the hospital

The temporary deck installed for the restoration of the ceiling

The plan of the ceiling design

Early ground and base coats revealed

Wooden panels honour donors in the eighteenth century

Paint samples for the repainting of the ceiling

A crack caused by water ingress

A cartouche with a grotesque face high up on the wall

The good Samaritan and his charge as portrayed by Hogarth and viewed through scaffolding

Jesus at Bethesda viewed through scaffolding

A wealthy woman seeking healing viewed through scaffolding

Poor women seeking healing viewed through scaffolding

The grand chandelier from the staircase has been removed for restoration

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At Bart’s Great Hall

Purim In Stamford Hill

September 21, 2024
by the gentle author

Photographer Neil Martinson introduces his pictures of the Purim festival celebrated by an orthodox Jewish community in Hackney

‘It’s the most surprising festival in London, in which the largest orthodox Jewish community in Europe discard their traditional black clothing and break into a dazzle of colour and costumes for the festival of Purim.

Hackney has always been a place of incredible diversity and energy. The orthodox Jewish community in Stamford Hill has long been an integral part of the borough, and I wanted to share their story, particularly around Purim, which is such an expressive and joyful festival. I first took photos of Purim in 1981 when it was a modest event held in peoples homes.

The Charedi community was established in Hackney in the 1920s, growing significantly after the Second World War as survivors of the Holocaust and refugees fled the devastation of Europe. Now numbering at least 30,000, there are seventy-five synagogues within walking distance of their homes. As the community has grown so has the festival. This is a celebration of their strength, their joy, and their traditions.’ – Neil Martinson

 Photographs copyright © Neil Martinson

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Neil Martinson, Photographer

Lew Lessen, Barber

Click here to buy a copy of Neil Martinson’s 28 page book of photos for £11

So Long, Maxie Lea MBE

September 20, 2024
by the gentle author

Cover price is £35 but if you order now you can buy it for £30 and you will receive a signed copy on publication in October.
CLICK HERE TO ORDER A SIGNED COPY OF ENDURANCE & JOY

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Maxie Lea died on Wednesday aged ninety-four

Maxie Lea (1930-2024) – Ready for training!

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At the top of Brick Lane, there was once a nest of densely populated streets where a group of young boys became friends in the nineteen thirties and although the topography has changed beyond all recognition, their friendship remains alive today. Max Lea was one of those who shared in the lively camaraderie engendered at the Cambridge & Bethnal Green Boys’ Club, which was based nearby in Chance St, where the boys met each evening to let off steam and enjoy high jinks, while escaping their crowded homes.

‘Maxie,’ as he was commonly known, became a member in 1941 and then a club manager in 1947, a post that he held until it closed in 1989. For many years Maxie organised the annual reunions and, in 2000, the Queen gave him an MBE for his stalwart devotion to the heroic boys’ club. Of diminutive stature and playful by nature, with his pebble glasses and exuberant humour, Maxie was always a popular figure, but his experiences at the Cambridge & Bethnal Green Boys’ Club encouraged his gregarious personality and his respect for justice – finding equal expression in the sporting life he pursued both as player and as referee.

I was born in the Royal London Hospital Whitechapel on 29th June 1930 as a twin, with a blue baby that died after eight hours. My parents lived at 265 Brick Lane in a small grocery shop. My mother’s family came from Lodz in Poland and they had a tailoring business in Plumbers Row, Stepney. My father’s family were from Russia but I don’t know where, he came with his family to Portsmouth in the nineteen twenties. They met through friends. My father travelled up from Portsmouth and they got married and lived on Brick Lane where he started a tailoring business in the house. Mum ran the grocery shop, which was opposite Gossett St. There were five children, we all slept in the two upstairs rooms and we kept ourselves together, we were never short of food.

At nine, I was evacuated, at first to Soham and then to Stoke Hammond for eighteen months. The thing that always comes back to me was when we had a big snowfall, I was walking to school with my sister and the next thing she said was, “Where are you?” I fell into a ditch. Life was good, quite peaceful and I played football and cricket with the other boys. It taught me a lot about friendship.

At thirteen years, I came back for my Bar Mitzvah but on the day of the service I had Quinsy, a swelling of the throat. I was lying in bed and I could hardly speak. I heard my mother and father downstairs, saying,“What are we going to do?” At that moment, it burst! We went along but I could only say a portion of the Torah – just the pages in the front – and after that I went back to bed.

Then, at fourteen, I left school and, as my brother was a pastry cook, I decided I was going to do the same and I went to work at Joe Lyons in Coventry St, Piccadilly. Going to work so early in the mornings, the good-time girls used to take my arm and say “Come with me.” But I said, “I’m on my way to work!” I didn’t hardly know what it was all about – I was just a little fella.

In 1941, I joined the Cambridge & Bethnal Green Boys Club in Chance St. Until then, the only holiday I ever had was Southend, staying in Mrs Lewis’ boarding house for a week while my father travelled back and forth to work each day. Joining the club, I got to go on camps and Harry Tichener, the club manager known as “T,” became like a second father to me. He was a photographer by profession and an Associate of the Royal Photographic Society. At fourteen, I joined the committee as a junior officer. It built a life of comradeship for us. And it taught me how to deal with others and how to talk to people. It taught me management, that you don’t say, “Oi, Can you do this?” You say, “Can you please help me?”

I moved out of Brick Lane in 1960, when they pulled the shop down and offered us a place in Vallance Rd. But it was under the railway, so we moved to Rostrevor Avenue instead and eventually to Stamford Hill. My mother ran the shop all this time and I lived with her until she died at seventy-seven in 1976. From being a pastry chef, I became a stock keeper for sportswear company and then I worked for Tower Hamlets Housing Office, staying until I retired in 1995. When I was working for Tower Hamlets, I used to deal with new properties and, one day, a lady came in to present the papers of 265 Brick Lane and my heart stopped. “What’s the matter?” she asked, and I said, “Before they pulled it down, I used to live at that number.”

Maxie had been back only twice to Brick Lane since 1960. “Each time, I went for walk and got lost,” he admitted to me with a crazy grin of self-parody, “but it’s just as mixed now as it ever was.” Yet although the streets are changed and the building in Chance St has gone long ago, Harry Tichener’s affectionate and beautiful photographs survive to witness the vibrant world of the Cambridge & Bethnal Green Boys’ Club – which once offered an invaluable taste of freedom to so many young men from the East End.

Maxie was in regular contact with the friends he made in Brick Lane in the nineteen thirties and he lived Stanmore surrounded by trophies and certificates, commemorating his meritorious services to refereeing football matches. At first, I could not quite understand the appeal of refereeing until Maxie confided, “As a player you only make acquaintances, but as a referee you make many more lasting friendships. It has given me a very fruitful and interesting life.”

Max enjoys a casual cigarette at age eleven, pictured here with Victor Monger, 1941.

Boat trip, Max raises his fingers to his chin in the centre left of the picture.

Camp Banquet, Max is on the far left.

On Herne Bay Sands, Max stands in profile on the right.

Looking down on Dover, Max is on the left of the group.

Max is in the chef’s hat with a pipe on the left of this picture.

Max is pictured doing the washing up on the left of the table.

Max is in the centre right, paddling with his pals, Stanley, Manny, Butch & Ken.

Max & Stanley go boating.

Treasure Hunt, Max is centre left beneath the tree.

The Treasure Hunt continues, Max is on the right.

A Human Pyramid with Max at the top.

Tea in the orchard 1942, Max sits on the right drinking a mug of tea.

Max peels the spuds at the centre of this picture.

Harold goes for breakfast while Paul & Max look on.

1950, Shackelford. Max, Roy & Albert get water.

Weekend Camp, Easter 1955. Max with his head in his pal’s lap.

France, 1959, Max at the centre of this group.

France 1959, Max is seen in profile, waving at the centre left of this picture.

France, 1959, Max is at the centre of this happy group.

Easter, 1955.

Weekend Course at Amersham, Max at the centre.

Hastings, 1957, Max and his scooter.

Max & pals at Middelkerne Beach.

In 2000, Max receives his MBE for services to the Cambridge & Bethnal Green Boys’ Club.

Max Lea MBE  –“The sporting life has kept me fit for all these years.”

Cambridge & Bethnal Green Boys’ Club photographs by Harry Tichener ARPS

Portrait copyright © Jeremy Freedman

Read my other Cambridge & Bethnal Green Boys Club Stories

The Return of Aubrey Silkoff

Ron Goldstein of Boreham St

At the Cambridge & Bethnal Green Boys Club 86th Annual Reunion

Aubrey  Goldsmith of Shoreditch

Susannah Dalbiac’s Diary, 1776

September 19, 2024
by the gentle author

Cover price is £35 but if you order now you can buy it for £30 and you will receive a signed copy on publication in October.
CLICK HERE TO ORDER A SIGNED COPY OF ENDURANCE & JOY

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Margaret Nairne brought her great-great-great-great-aunt’s diary to show me and I publish these excerpts today. It is an Almanack of 1776 belonging to fourteen-year-old Susannah Dalbiac, whose father Charles Dalbiac was a silk & velvet merchant who ran the family business with his brother James at 20 Spital Sq. The Dalbiacs were Huguenots and Susannah’s grandfather escaped France as a youth in a hamper in July 1681 after his parents and three sisters were murdered. At the opening of the diary in January 1776, London was suffering a Great Frost with temperatures as low as minus eighteen degrees. (You can click on any diary page to enlarge it)

Monday JANUARY 1st 1776

Mama & Lucy drank tea at Mrs Martin’s. I stayed at home to make tea for Papa and Cousin James

Tuesday

Papa & Cousin James Dalbiac went to Town before Dinner.

Wednesday

Mama went to Town in the Coach at nine o’clock, took Harriet & Nurse with her. The man came to take down the Organ.

Thursday

We worked at our muffs, drew and did the same as when Mama is at home.

Friday

The man finished packing up the organ. We finished our muffs.

Saturday

I was very glad to see Papa and Mama. They came to dinner. Mama was so good as to make a present of a fan and an Almanack.

Sunday

We did not go to Church. We read a sermon in the morning… The text was Felix’s behaviours towards Paul explained.

Monday JANUARY 15th

Mr Cooke call’d in the morning. They play’d at Quadrille in the evening.

Tuesday

Papa went to town. Mama read Cyrus in the evening.

Wednesday

At Home alone.

Thursday

Mama read Cyrus in the evening.

Friday

Papa came down to dinner. They play’d at Quadrille in the evening.

Saturday

Papa took a ride in the morning to Admiral Geary’s. They play’s at Quadrille in the evening.

Sunday

We read a sermon in the morning, the text was National Mercies considered. I wrote what I understood by it. I kept up a hundred at Battledore Shuttlecock with Miss Watson.

Monday MARCH 11th

Went to Town. Took CM. Din’d at GM’s. Came back to tea. Mama drank tea at Mr Sebly’s. We at home with CM. Papa went to Bookham.

Tuesday

CKL & CM drank tea here. DK slept here.

Wednesday

Papa came to tea. Sally & Frank came to dinner from Bookham.

Thursday

Papa went to Town. We took a ride with Mama & Aunt L to Hackney. Papa came to Dinner.

Friday

Mama took a ride in the Phaeton with Papa.

Saturday

Papa went to Town. Came back to dinner, Papa went to Mr Paris’s. At home with Mama, Lucy and CM.

Sunday

Went to church with CL & we din’d here Papa & Mama drank tea at Uncle Lamotte’s.

(Susannah mistakenly entered her grandmother’s death on the wrong date and crossed it out)

Monday APRIL 1st

Aunt Lamotte went to town with Papa. Came back to tea. They all came in the evening. Grandmama very ill.

Tuesday

Papa went to town. Took CM with him. Came back to tea.

Wednesday

Aunt & Uncle Lamotte went to town with Papa. Aunt and Uncle came back to tea. We spent the day with Mama at Uncle Lamotte’s.

Miss Louise Delaporte

Thursday

Aunt & CL went to town with Papa. Aunt & Uncle came back to tea. We spent the day with Mama at Uncle Lamotte’s.

Grandmama died at four in the evening. Though expected at her age it is always a great loss. She was 84 next July

Friday

Aunt and CL went to Town Came back to dinner with Papa. They spent the evening here. CM came in the morning.

Friday

Papa went to town. Came back to tea. Mama drank tea at Uncle Lamotte’s. CM came here.

Saturday

Went to town with Papa, Uncle and Aunt L & CL who was so good as bespeak some mourning for us, Mama not being well enough. Saw G’mama. Did not find her much alter’d.

Sunday

CL came in the morning. We drank tea at Uncle Lamotte’s. Papa came down in the evening.

Monday APRIL 22nd

Drank tea at Uncle Lamotte’s where we met Uncle Dalbiac’s family

Tuesday

CK call’d. Papa slept in town

Wednesday

Papa came to dinner. Mr Paul and Peter L [..?] spent the day here

Thursday

CM spent the day here. CK called

Friday

Papa went to town. We spent the day at Uncle Lamotte’s

Saturday

CK call’d in the afternoon with MJ Lamotte.

Sunday

Went to church with CK. Sukey din’d here. CM came in the morning.

(Susannah’s own mother had died young and her stepmother gave birth to a baby boy in April.)

Monday APRIL 29th

Mama rather low at little boys going out to nurse. We drank at Uncle. Aunt came here to tea and CL in the evening. Note on opposite page – The little boy went out to nurse upon the Forest the nurse not being able to come.

Tuesday

Papa went to town

Wednesday MAY 1st

Went with nurse Flaxman to see the little boy. Found him very well

Thursday

Staid at home. Aunt Ch CS Dalbiac drank tea here

Friday

Went with nurse Flaxman to see the little boy

Saturday

Papa went to Uncle Lamotte’s in the evening where he met a great many people

Sunday

Went to church with CKL. After church we went with CM to fetch little boy. She spent the day with us.

Monday MAY 13th

Sir John Silvester came to see mama, she was so very low. CK call’d

Tuesday

Sir John Silvester came. Papa went to town came back at night

Wednesday

Papa went to town. Came back for tea.

Thursday

Sir John Silvester came

Friday

Papa went, came to back to tea. Took a ride after tea to see little boy. Found him very well. Call’d on Uncle Lamotte

Saturday

Sir John Silvester came. Ordered mama today a bed till Monday as had a little rash. CM drank tea here.

Sunday

There was no service. Took a ride with Papa & Aunt Lamotte. Called at Uncle Dalbiac.

(Sir John Silvester was a doctor from the French Hospital and one of the top physicians of the day)

(Susannah records her winnings at Quadrille on the right hand page)

Monday JUNE 10th

We drank tea at Mrs Brickendon’s with Mr and Mrs B and C. Walles. Met Mr ? and Mr Forbes

Tuesday

At Home. Play’d at Quadrille in the evening

Wednesday

Mr and Mrs Jourdan came down to dinner. Mrs Fellen and Mrs Draper dined here. Played at Piquet with Mr Barbut.

Thursday

Mrs Brickendon and Miss Streton drank tea here.

Friday

Drank tea at Mrs Brickendon. Lucy played at cards after they came home. Went halfs with her.

Saturday

Drank tea at Mrs Fellen’s. Mr Barbut came down in the Phaeton

Sunday

Went to Church with Miss Barbut. Mrs Rose & Mrs Forbes. Drank tea here.

Monday JUNE 24th

Spent the day at Uncle Lamotte’s. Slept there. Left Wanstead Lane.

Tuesday

In the Morning Papa tooke with the Phaeton to Uncle Dalbiac’s. Took a walk in the evening to see Harriet with Aunt.

Wednesday

At home alone.

Thursday

Spent the day at Sir J Silvester’s with Aunt & Uncle, CL & CM. We had a very agreeable day.

Friday

At home all day

Saturday

We went with Aunt in the morning to see little boy. Found him very well at 1 0’clock Mr Gallie called in the coach. We went with him to Uncle Lamotte’s

Monday JULY 1st

The coach came for us after Dinner to go to Town. Found Mama very well which made me quite happy

Tuesday

Went with mama the other end of Town in the morning. Very busy all day.

Wednesday

We all went down to Uncle Lamotte’s in the evening.

Thursday

Went to Town in the morning. CL & CM with us. We all went to Vauxhall in the evening & I found it much greater than my expectations as I had never see it before. In the morning we saw little Harriet and little boy.

Friday

Very busy all day. Mr Laport din’d with us. He came from New Providence to see Grandmama his sister but was disappointed.

Saturday

We set out a journey…

There is a gap in Susannah Dalbiac’s diary between 6th July and 14th October, after which she is in Paris and from then on many of the entries are written in French. It may be that her stepmother’s illness led the family to return to France where she had relatives or that the turbulence of the Weavers’ Riots in Spitalfields at this time caused James Dalbiac to withdraw his business. Susannah never married or had children but, living with her sister Louisa, she died at her brother-in-law Peter Luard’s house, Blyborough Hall, Lincolnshire in 1842, aged eighty.

Click here for details of events in the current HUGUENOT SUMMER festival

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The Huguenots of  Spitalfields

At Ben Truman’s House

September 18, 2024
by the gentle author

Cover price is £35 but if you order now you can buy it for £30 and you will receive a signed copy on publication in October.
CLICK HERE TO ORDER A SIGNED COPY OF ENDURANCE & JOY

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Behold the shadows glimmering in this old house in Princelet St built in the seventeen-twenties for Benjamin Truman. A hundred years later, a huge factory was added on the back which more than doubled the size. In the twentieth century, this became the home of the extended Gernstein family who left the house in the eighties. Notable as Lionel Bart’s childhood home, who once returned to have his portrait taken by Lord Snowden on the doorstep, in recent years it has served as the location for innumerable film and photo shoots. More recently, it has become a venue for art exhibitions. Now, as if to complete the circle, the house has been acquired by the proprietors of the Old Truman Brewery.

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My Quilt

September 17, 2024
by the gentle author

In response to the nights closing in, I have been spending more time under my quilt

The great majority of my stories were written beneath this quilt that I made a few years ago and which has special meaning for me. Once dusk gathers, I retreat to my bed to work each afternoon, abandoning my desk that has become piled with layers of paper and taking consolation in the warmth and comfort under my quilt, as the ideal snug location to devise my daily compositions. While the autumn enfolds the city and rain falls outside, I am happy in my secure private space, writing to you through the long dark nights in Spitalfields.

This is the only quilt I ever made and I make no claims for my ability as a stitcher which is functional rather than demonstrating any special skill. Once I made a shirt that I sewed by hand, copying the pattern from one I already had, and it took me a week, with innumerable unpicking and resewing as I took the pieces apart and reassembled them until I achieved something wearable. It was a beautiful way to spend a week, sitting cross-legged sewing on the floor and although I am proud of the shirt I made, I shall not attempt it again.

My quilt is significant because I made it to incarnate the memory of my mother, and as a means to manifest the warmth I drew from her, and illustrated with the lyrical imagery that I associate with her – something soft and rich in colour that I could enfold myself with, and something that would be present in my daily life to connect me to my childhood, when I existed solely within the tender cocoon of my parents’ affections. My sweetest memories are of being tucked up in bed as a child and of my parents climbing onto the bed to lie beside me for ten minutes until I drifted off.

For several years, after the death of my father, I nursed my mother as she succumbed to the dementia that paralysed her, took away her nature, her mind, her faculties and her eventually her life. It was an all-consuming task, both physically and emotionally, being a housewife, washing bed sheets constantly, cooking food, and feeding and tending to her as she declined slowly over months and years. And when it was over, at first I did not know what to do next.

One day, I saw a woollen tapestry at a market of a fisherman in a sou-wester. This sentimental image spoke to me, like a picture in a children’s book, and evoking Cornwall where my mother was born. It was made from a kit and entailed hours of skillful work yet was on sale for a couple of pounds, and so I bought it. At once, I realised that were lots of these tapestries around that no-one wanted and I was drawn to collect them. Many were in stilted designs and crude colours but it did not matter to me because I realised they look better the more you have, and it satisfied me to gather these unloved artifacts that had been created at the expense of so much labour and expertise, mostly – I suspected – by old women.

I have taught myself to be unsentimental about death itself, and I believe that human remains are merely the remains – of no greater meaning than toenails or hair clippings. After their demise, the quality of a person does not reside within the body – and so I chose to have no tombstone for my parents and I shall not return to their grave. Instead, through making a quilt, I found an active way to engage with my emotion at the loss of a parent and create something I can keep by me in fond remembrance for always.

I laid out the tapestries upon the floor and arranged them. I realised I needed many more and I discovered there were hundreds for sale online. And soon they began to arrive in the mail every day. And the more I searched, the more discriminating I became to find the most beautiful and those with pictures which I could arrange to create a visual poem of all the things my mother loved – even the work of her favourite artists, Vermeer, Millet, Degas and Lowry, as well as animals, especially birds, and flowers, and the fishing boats and seascapes of her childhood beside the Cornish coast.

Over months, as the quilt came together, there with plenty of rejections and substitutions in the pursuit of my obsession to create the most beautiful arrangement possible. A room of the house was devoted to the quilt, where my cat Mr Pussy came to lie upon the fragments each day, to keep me company while I sat there alone for hours contemplating all the tapestries – shuffling them to discover new juxtapositions of picture and colour, as each new arrival in the mail engendered new possibilities.

The natural tones of the woollen dyes gave the quilt a rich luminous glow of colour and I was always aware of the hundreds of hours of work employed by those whose needlecraft was of a far greater quality than mine. After consideration, a soft lemon yellow velvet was sought out to line it, and a thin wadding was inserted to give it substance and warmth but not to be too heavy for a summer night.

It took me a year to make the quilt. From the first night, it has delighted me and I have slept beneath it ever since. I love to wake to see its colours and the pictures that I know so well, and it means so much to know that I shall have my beautiful quilt of memories of my mother to keep me warm and safe for the rest of my life.

The first tapestry I bought.

Seventies silk butterflies from Florida.

From Thailand.

My grandmother had a print of Millet’s “The Angelus” in her dining room for more than sixty years.

Note the tiny stitches giving detail to the lion’s head in this menagerie.

A unique tapestry from a painting of a Cornish fishing village.

From the Czech Republic.

These squirrels never made it into the quilt.

I could not take this wonderful seascape from its frame, it hangs on my bedroom wall today

You may like to read about Mr Pussy in Winter

John Dempsey’s Portraits

September 16, 2024
by the gentle author

Cover price is £35 but if you order now you can buy it for £30 and you will receive a signed copy on publication in October.
CLICK HERE TO ORDER A SIGNED COPY OF ENDURANCE & JOY

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Fifty Years Porter, Charing Cross, 1824

It is my delight to present John Dempsey’s street portraits from the eighteen-twenties held in the collection of the Tasmanian Museum & Art Gallery. Originally attributed to George Scharf, they were identified as the work of John Dempsey (1802-74) by curator David Hansen who discovered a folio of fifty-one portraits in 1996 in a drawer labelled ‘U’ for unknown.

Dempsey was an itinerant jobbing artist without any formal training who created ‘Likenesses of Public Characters’ in London and the provincial cities of England, as he travelled around in search of commissions for portrait miniatures and silhouettes. No record exists of any exhibitions and in 1845, he was declared bankrupt. Yet his achievement is unique and enduring.

In spite of Dempsey’s unconventional perspective and disproportionate figures, he created portraits full of humanity that evoke the presence of street people and the outcast poor with compassion and vitality. These are portraits of individuals and they are full of life. As an itinerant artist in an age that did not distinguish between street traders and beggars, he dignified his fellow travellers through his portraits. He understood their lives because he shared their precarious existence.

When I first saw these pictures, I was startled by how familiar they appeared to me and I assumed this was because I have spent so much time looking at prints of The Cries of London. But then I realised that I recognised the demeanour and expression of John Dempsey’s portraits because I see them, their crew and their kin, every day as I walk around the streets of London two centuries later.

Sharp, Orange Man, Colchester, 1823

Watercress, Salisbury

Black Charley, Bootmaker, Norwich, 1823

Muffin Man

Mary Croker,  Mat Woman, Colchester, 1823

Sam’l Hevens, Old Jew, 1824

Charles M’Gee, Crossing Sweeper, London, c 1824

Old Bishop, Pieman, Harwich

Woolwich, 1824

Match Woman, Woolwich, 1824

Mark Custings (commonly called Blind Peter) and his boy, Norwich, 1823

Copeman, Gardener, Yarmouth

A Bill Poster, 1825

The Doorkeeper, Royal Managerie, Exeter ‘Change, (London) 1824

Images reproduced courtesy of Tasmanian Museum & Art Gallery

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