Manny Silverman, Tailor
Manny Silverman, aged nine in 1941
Manny Silverman has a lucky ticket. It is a bus ticket numbered 9999, punched with a single hole to indicate the destination as Brick Lane and it dates from Manny’s childhood, growing up in Bacon St in the nineteen forties. Until this day, Manny keeps the ticket as a talisman, and, “I’ve been very lucky,” Manny assured me several times while he was telling me his story. Yet while it is apparent that Manny has enjoyed good fortune in his life, it soon became clear there were other forces than simply good luck at work in shaping Manny’s destiny.
Diminutive of build with delicate hands, weary eyes, and a gracious deferential style, Manny wears his history lightly. Fastidiously groomed and neatly dressed, he picked me up from the station at East Finchley in his two seater open-topped Mercedes. At home, Manny produced photocopies of his birth certificate, his indenture papers as an apprentice, his medal for performing King John, his letter offering a directorship of Moss Bros and – of course – his lucky bus ticket. Speaking of the ups and downs of his life, Manny was neither apologetic nor swanky, instead his tone was that of wonder at how it has all turned out.
“I was born in Mother Levy’s Nursing Home in Whitechapel in January 1932. My parents had only come from Lithuania a few months before, so I arrived just in time. My father Abraham was a tailor and my mother was Altke, known as Ettie, and I had a younger sister, Lilli. At first, we lived in Myrdle St, and then we moved to Bacon St where I spent my childhood. We shared two rooms, the four of us, and in the winter the pipes froze and when the spring came they burst. We had no running water and the toilet was in the yard. Each week, we used to go the Hare St (now Cheshire St) public baths and pay one penny to have a wash.
When I saw those baths, years later from first class carriage of a train coming into Liverpool St Station, I thought, ‘You’ve been lucky somewhere along the line.’ If you are the child of first generation immigrants, the first thing they want you to have is a trade that you can carry, because if you can sew or cut hair then you always have the opportunity to make money at your finger tips. And I thought, ‘Here I am, after all this time, still doing the same thing, even if they don’t ask me to sew a suit anymore.’
I only spoke Yiddish when I went to school in Wood Close at the age of four, and my schooling was limited because I was evacuated several times during the war. At twelve, I overcame the shyness that is still with me, braved the blackout, and made my way along to join the Cambridge & Bethnal Green Boys Club in Chance St. My first experience was seeing Maxie Lea and I made lifelong relationships there, not necessarily friends, but when we meet up it is as if time has stood stood still. I was never athletic but really good at drama and when we entered the London Federation of Boys’ Clubs contest, all the members came along to support us. At seventeen, I won a medal for playing King John and I’ve still got the script. I also got a good crit for my performance as Cassius, I always played heavies.
After I left school in 1946, at the age of fourteen, I was overseen by the Jewish Board of Guardians. My father had been ill for a while and they were helpful to me when he died. Harry Moss, Chairman and Managing Director of Moss Bros, was one of the patrons of the Boys Club. (They started as Moses Brothers but decided that ‘Moss Bros’ sounded better than ‘Moses Bros.’) He said to me, ‘Look, you can join us in our workshop in Covent Garden.’ In those days, Moss Bros still did bespoke tailoring and they had six cutters.
At twenty-one, I got itchy feet and left on good terms, on the understanding I could come back. And then, when Monty Moss who produced our plays at the Boys’ Club got engaged, I dropped in to wish him congratulations and he said, ‘You’re not working?’ He took me into Harry Moss’ office, and I told them I didn’t want to be a tailor anymore, so Harry said, ‘Start work as a porter in the secondhand department.’ The business had begun in the 1850s with Old Moses, who bought unredeemed pledges of suits and sold them in Kings Cross and Covent Garden, wheeling a barrow between both places. In the secondhand hand department, I recorded what I thought the suits were worth alongside what they had been bought for and in no time, Harry Moss said, ‘Will you do a bit of buying for me?’ I saw a lot of opportunities for the company that no-one else could see.
In the following years, I was made production director, deputy managing director, chief executive, and unemployed – replaced by a member of the Moss family. After forty years with the company, I found myself in my mid-fifties, out of work with a young family and a large mortgage. Some friends of mine asked me to join them and in 1987 we bought Norman Hartnell, the Royal Couturier, which was in administration, with a view to relaunch it. We made worldwide news and employed Marc Bowham from Dior as designer on the principle that if he brought 10% of his clientele with him, we would have a success. But we ran out of cash and that was the end of that. Since 1985, I have been working as an expert witness in the fields of criminal negligence and insurance claims. I say to people, ‘I will never tell you what you want to hear, but – whatever I advise you to do – I will always explain.’ This is how I operate.
I left the East End when I moved to East Finchley in 1969. I always admired the scarlet geraniums outside this house and when it came on the market I was lucky enough to be able to buy it. I try to go back to the East End, with my son who is in his forties, once a year. He says, ‘Dad, I already know where you went to school.’ But I do like to go back, I’m an unashamed romantic, when it comes to the past. It’s not just to look at where I came from, it’s part of who I am. You can’t not be what you are, and I was a cockney.”
Manny Silverman’s lucky bus ticket to Brick Lane.
Manny at his Bar Mitzvah in 1945.
Manny learns tailoring at fourteen years old.
Manny won a medal for playing the lead in Shakespeare’s “King John” at seventeen.
Manny in the swinging sixties.
Manny was Chief Executive of Moss Bros from 1980 to 1987.
Manny bought Royal Couturier Norman Hartnell in 1987
Manny (Emmanuel) Silverman
Read my other Cambridge & Bethnal Green Boys Club Stories
Maxie Lea MBE, Football Referee
At the Cambridge & Bethnal Green Boys Club 86th Annual Reunion
Tom & Jerry’s Life in London
This frontispiece was intended to illustrate the varieties of “Life in London,” from the king on his throne at the top of the column to the lowest members of society at the base. At the centre are the protagonists of the tale, Tom, Jerry & Logic, three men about town. Authored by Pierce Egan, their adventures proved best sellers in serial form and were collected into a book in 1820, remaining in print for the rest of the century, spawning no less than five stage versions, and delineating a social landscape that was to prove the territory for both the fictions of Charles Dickens and the commentaries of Henry Mayhew.
Accounts of the urban poor and of life in the East of London are scarce before the nineteenth century, and what makes “Life in London” unique is that it portrays and contrasts the society of the rich and the poor in the metropolis at this time. And, although fictional in form, there is enough detail throughout to encourage the belief that this is an authentic social picture.
The characters of Tom, Jerry & Logic were loosely based upon the brothers who collaborated upon the illustrations, Isaac Richard & George Cruickshank, and the writer Pierce Egan, all relishing this opportunity to dramatise their own escapades for popular effect. Isaac Richard & George’s father had enjoyed a successful career as a political cartoonist in the seventeen-nineties and it was his sons’ work upon “Life in London” that brought the family name back into prominence in the nineteenth century, leading to George Cruikshank’s long term collaboration with Charles Dickens.
Jerry Hawthorn comes up from the country to enjoy a career of pleasure and fashion with Corinthian Tom, yet as well as savouring the conventional masquerades, exhibitions and society events, they visit boxing matches, cockpits, prisons and bars where the poor entertain themselves, with the intention to “see a ‘bit of life.” It is when they grow weary of fashionable society, that the idea arises to see a “bit of Life” at the East End of the Town.” And at “All Max,” an East End boozer, they discover a diverse crowd, or as Egan describes it, “every cove that put in an appearance was quite welcome, colour or country considered no obstacle… The group was motley indeed – Lascars, blacks, jack-tars, coal-heavers, dustmen, women of colour, old and young, and a sprinkling of the remnants of once fine girls, and all jigging together.” In the Cruikshanks’ picture, Logic has Black Sall on one knee and Flashy Nance upon the other while Jerry pours gin into the fiddler and Tom carouses with Mrs Mace, the hostess, all revealing an unexpectedly casual multiracial society in which those of different social classes can apparently mix with ease.
Situated somewhere between the romps of Fielding, Smollet and Sterne and prefiguring Dickens’ catalogue of comic grotesques in “Pickwick Papers,” the humour of “Life in London,” spoke vividly to its time, yet appears merely curious two centuries later. By the end of the nineteenth century, the comedy had gone out of date, as Thackeray admitted even as he confessed a lingering affection for the work. “As to the literary contents of the book, they have passed clean away…” he wrote, reserving his enthusiasm for the illustrations by the Cruikshank brothers – which you see below – declaring,“But the pictures! Oh! The pictures are noble still!”
Lowest life in London – Tom, Jerry & Logic amongst the unsophisticated sons & daughters of nature in the East.
The Royal Exchange – Tom pointing out to Jerry a few of the primest features of life in London.
A Whistling Shop – Tom & Jerry visiting Logic “on board the fleet.”
Tom, Jerry & Logic “tasting” wine in the wood at the London Dock.
White Horse Cellar, Picadilly – Tom & Logic bidding Jerry “Good bye.”
Jerry “beat to a standstill” Dr Please’ems’ prescription.
Tom & Jerry “masquerading it” among the cadgers in the back slums.
“A shilling well laid out” – Tom & Jerry at the exhibition of pictures at the Royal Academy.
Tom, Jerry & Logic backing Tommy, the ‘sweep at the Royal Cockpit.
Tom, Jerry & Logic in characters at the Grand Carnival.
Symptoms of the finish of “some sorts of life” – Tom, Jerry & Logic in the Press Yard at Newgate.
Life in London – Peep ‘o day boys, a street row. the author losing his “reader.” Tom & Jerry showing fight and Logic floored.
The “ne plus ultra” of Life in London – Kate, Sue, Tom, Jerry & Logic viewing the throne room at Carlton Palace.
Tom & Jerry catching Kate & Sue on the sly, having their fortunes told.
Jerry’s admiration of Tom in an “assault” with Mr O’Shannessy at the rooms in St James’ St.
Tom introducing Jerry & Logic to the champion of England.
The art of self-defence – Tom & Jerry receiving instruction from Mr Jackson.
Tom & Jerry larking at a masquerade supper at the Opera House.
Tom & Jerry in trouble after a spree.
Jerry in training for a “swell.”
Tom & Jerry taking blue ruin after the spell is broke up.
Images courtesy © Bishopsgate Insitute
You may like to look at these other sets of pictures by George Cruikshank
Jack Sheppard, Thief, Highwayman & Escapologist
So Long, Charlie Burns
As a tribute to East End legend Charlie Burns who died yesterday, aged ninety-six, I am republishing my interview with the grand old man of Brick Lane from May 2010.
You may not have seen Charlie Burns, the oldest man on Brick Lane, but I can guarantee that he has seen you. Seven days a week, Charlie, who is ninety-four years old, sits in the passenger seat of a car in Bacon St for half of each day, watching people come and go in Brick Lane. The windscreen is a frame through which Charlie observes the world with undying fascination and it offers a deep perspective upon time and memory, in which the past and present mingle to create a compelling vision that is his alone.
For a couple of hours yesterday, I sat in the front seat beside Charlie, following the line of his gaze and, with the benefit of a few explanations, I was able to share some fleeting glimpses of his world. The car, which belongs to Charlie’s daughter Carol, is always parked a few yards into Bacon St, outside the family business, C.E. Burns & Sons, where they deal in second hand furniture and paper goods. Carol runs this from a garden shed constructed inside the warehouse, and lined with a rich collage of family photographs, while Charlie presides upon the passage of custom from the curbside.
Many passersby do not even the notice the man in the anonymous car who sits impassive like Old Father Time, taking it all in. Yet to those who live and work in these streets, Charlie is a figure who commands the utmost respect and, as I sat with Charlie, our conversation was constantly punctuated by a stream of affectionate greetings from those that pay due reverence to the king of Bacon St, the man who has been there since 1915.
The major landmark upon the landscape of Charlie’s vision is a new white building on the section of Bacon St across the other side of Brick Lane. But Charlie does not see what stands there today, he sees the building which stood there before, where he grew up with his brothers Alfie, Harry and Teddy, and his sister, Marie – and where the whole family worked together in the waste paper merchants’ business started by Charlie’s grandfather John in 1864.
“We lived on this street all our life. We were city people. We all grew up here. We were making our way. We were paper merchants. We all went round collecting in the City of London and we sold it to Limehouse Paper Mills. There was no living in it. Prices were zero. Eventually we went broke, but we still carried on because it was what we did. Then, in 1934, prices picked up. We were moving forward, up and up and up. We carried on through the war. We never stopped. This was my life. We used to own most of the houses in this street. They were worth nothing then. They couldn’t give them away.”
Once the business grew profitable, the family became involved in boxing, the sport that was the defining passion of the Burns brothers, who enjoyed a longstanding involvement with the Repton Boxing Club in Cheshire St where Tony Burns, Charlie’s nephew, is chief coach today.
“Somehow or other, we got into boxing and then we were running the Bethnal Green Men’s Club and then we took a floor in a pub. We were unstoppable. We used to box the Racing Men’s Club. We used to box at Epsom with all the top jockeys. We made the Repton Boxing Club. I was president for twenty years and I took them to the top of the world. When we joined there was only one boy in the club. (He still comes over and sees me.) We built them up, my brothers, myself and friends. They all done a little bit of boxing.
We had some wonderful boxers come here. They were all poor people in them days, they were only too glad to get into something. We used to take all the kids with nothing and get them boxing. They played some strokes but they never did anything bad. Everything we done was for charity. We were young people and we were business people and we had money to burn.
All of the notorious people used to come to our shows at the York Hall. We had the Kray brothers and Judy Garland and Liberace. I remember the first time I met Tom Mix, the famous cowboy from the silent films. We met all the top people because this was the place to be. I had a private audience with the Pope and he gave me a gold medal because of all the work we did for charity.”
You would think that the present day might seem disappointing by contrast with vibrant memories like these, but Charlie sits placidly in the front seat of the parked car every day, fascinated by the minutiae of the contemporary world and at home at the centre of his Bacon St universe.
“This place, years ago, was one of the toughest places there was, but one of the best places to be.” he announced, and I could not tell if Charlie was talking to himself, or to me, or the windscreen, until he charged me with the rhetorical question, “Where else can you go these days?” I was stumped to give Charlie a credible reply. Instead, I peered through the windscreen at the empty street, considering everything he had said, as if in expectation that Charlie’s enraptured version of Bacon St might become available to me too.
Charlie reminded me again,“We were paper merchants. We were moving forward.”, as he did several times during our conversation, recalling an emotional mantra that had become indelibly printed in his mind. It was an incontestable truth. We were King Lear and his fool sitting in a car beside Brick Lane. Becoming aware of my lone reverie, Charlie turned to reassure me. “I’ll get some of the boys round for a chat and we’ll go into it in depth,” he promised, with quiet largesse, his eyes glistening and thinking back over all he had told me,”This is just a little bit for starters”.
Charlie Burns in his customary location in Bacon St, August 2011.
On the wall of Carol’s shed, in the yellowed photo at the centre, taken in Bacon St in 1951, you can see Charlie’s brothers Alfie and Teddy, with Charlie on the right.
The Burns family in 1951, with Charlie again in the right.
The redoubtable Carol Burns in her shed with the photo of her Uncle Tony, president of the Repton Boxing Club, being honoured by the Queen.
Charlie’s good friend and neighbour Asad Khan sent in this photo of the two of them together.
Painting the portrait of Charlie Burns on Bacon St last August.
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Last week, I invited Richard Ince (6th generation umbrella maker of James Ince & Sons), Henry Jones (4th generation dairyman of Jones Brothers) and Paul Gardner (4th generation paper bag seller of Gardners Market Sundriesmen) along to the Bishopsgate Institute for a chit chat about family businesses in Spitalfields. Colin O’Brien took their portraits.
I’m Paul Gardner, a fourth generation paper bag man and scale repairer. My business started in 1870 in Spitalfields and it was my great grandfather – James Gardner, that began it, and he carried on until he died, when my grandfather, Bertie, went into the business. He was sent to the Western Front in 1917 and got called off the train because he was one of the only people who could do scales repairs in the area, and it saved him. He carried on until my dad, Roy, came into the business in the 1940s, he was in the Elite Air Arm in the Second World War. Slowly we diversified into selling paper bags, carrier bags, and things like that, shop sundries really. My dad carried on in the shop until 1968 when he died at forty-two and my mum had to run the shop and leave us to get ready to go to school by ourselves – until 1972, when I took over.
It was something I wanted to do really. On the first day of my school holidays, my mum said to me, “You’ll have to go up to the shop,” and that was it. I think she asked me, “Do you mind working the first Saturday? Just working six days a week to start with?” I said “Alright” and I was doing it for twenty-six years. I used to get to the shop at half five but I finished by one o’clock so that wasn’t too bad. It was always entertaining up there, you had all sorts of different characters coming in the shop. When the Spitalfields Fruit & Vegetable Market moved to the Hackney Marshes it was a big worry how we would continue, but slowly the area has improved for me in the last few years with lots of little markets opening up. I do want to carry on as long as I can because its something I’ve done all my life. And the other thing is that most of my customers are my friends now.
My name’s Henry Jones of Jones Brothers Dairy. My grandfather, Henry, started it in 1877. He came from the family farm in Borth, near Aberystwyth. They were cow keepers and they drove the cows up from Wales and kept them around the Barbican area, milked them and then bottled the milk and actually delivered it around the City and East End. My grandmother was Sarah and they had thirteen children and all lived beside Middlesex St, in Stoney Lane. They actually lived behind the business and you can appreciate how difficult it is to keep cows, run a business, deliver milk and have thirteen children.
When my grandfather passed away in 1921, he left my grandmother with five children under the age of six to bring up, as well as running the business. She did marvellously well and when she passed away in 1937, two hundred people went to Paddington station to see her off, because she was very good to the local community. She’s buried in Borth, same as my grandfather, back where our roots are.
The children each had shares, but my father Henry and one of his brothers bought the shares off the other siblings and that’s how the name changed to Jones Brothers. When my father and his brother went off to serve in the war and the girls ran the business, delivering the milk all around the city. After the war the brothers came back and, in 1968 when Stoney Lane was pulled down, we moved into the new shop, where we’ve been for forty-two years, in Middlesex Street. I’m fortunate my children follow in my footsteps – and I’m very proud, one of the proudest people around, that I’ve managed to keep my children involved.
I’m Richard Ince, sixth generation umbrella manufacturer. Circa 1800 or so, my ancestors came down from mid-Suffolk, round Cavendish way, moving to this part of town because silk was woven here and I imagine whalebone came off the docks – mainly out the front door, but maybe out the back door as well – for ladies’ carriage parasols.
Two or three Inces merged into James Ince & Sons, round about 1830. My father did all the research into the history and he just left me the umbrellas. So I do different research, buying old Ince umbrellas or finding some of the patents that my ancestors took out, I know of three. We had about half a dozen premises in Spitalfields including the one next door to the Bishopsgate Institute, plus we were based where Pizza Express are right next door and we were based in Norton Folgate too, I believe we were also in White’s Row at some point. But the biggest property was the corner of Spital Square, 298 Bishopsgate, where we were for about forty-eight years, manufacturing ladies umbrellas, gents umbrellas, what people call parasols these days but then were called garden umbrellas or sun umbrellas.
We had a big export trade through the NAAFI and Army and Navy Stores and organisations like that. We had a big staff, too up to about thirty people, but today I employ three, plus myself, and it’s been like that for the last fifteen years. Nowadays, we do niche work – umbrellas that perhaps you wouldn’t think of, flame retardant umbrellas for welders, lot of theatre props, film work. As Paul Gardner was saying, it’s never dull, every day’s different, and it’s always a challenge.
I’m fairly sure we’re two hundred years old. So we’re looking forward, but obviously we’re not sure what the next two hundred – no, next twenty years – will bring…
PAUL GARDNER: Two years!
RICHARD INCE: I think the biggest challenge will be staff, finding people who are interested in craft. We’re not a sweat shop, we pay proper money and you treat as you wish to be treated. That’s what my grandfather did and he drove the business through the war years.
HENRY JONES: I would say though it’s always difficult for an old business to come through. It is a success story – Spitalfields – without a doubt and it’s lovely to be involved in it, but if you’re a small trader, it’s very difficult because the rents are pushed up by the big companies coming in.
PAUL GARDNER: With me now, I’ve got Urban Outfitters and Tesco and Nandos more or less opposite me so that my last lease was quite hard to negotiate. I’m worried for the people in the Spitalfields Market, some of the rents for small shops are 90,000 pounds – it’s madness really. In Cheshire St, three shops moved out about a year ago and the places are still empty because they’re asking too much rent.
RICHARD INCE: I’m so surprised you’re still going, with respect Paul.
PAUL GARDNER: I know.
RICHARD INCE: It’s fantastic.
PAUL GARDNER: It’s a unique shop. You can get things off the internet, but once people come into my shop they find it different. It’s such a mess – you can hardly get in the door. It’s a selling point.
RICHARD INCE: But you know where it all is, don’t you? It’s organised chaos.
HENRY JONES: Do you sell predominantly paper still?
PAUL GARDNER: It’s gone full circle, I used to sell 50,000 carrier bags a week which were all plastic. I find that the people in the markets just go for the cheapest, but the shops now are going over to paper and I’ve had a few film companies, they buy them for extras in the films. I think there’s a film about Paul Raymond coming out in Soho …
HENRY JONES: Richard, you’re doing some umbrellas for films, aren’t you?
RICHARD INCE: We’ve done all the props for Singing in the Rain. Front three rows get wet, very wet apparently. We’ve done about four Harry Potter films with various props, Dumbledore’s Umbrella, Mrs McGonagall’s umbrella, Hagrid’s umbrella, background props…
PAUL GARDNER: That’s amazing, if you can do that.
RICHARD INCE: It’s being able to turn your hand to something no one else can do.
HENRY JONES: Something special?
RICHARD INCE: Indeed. We did all the props for the Mary Poppins shows. And that was a nice earner, because it went from the West End to Broadway, then touring the States, and there’s another one touring the Far East, Australia and Japan. So you thought one order was nice and then …
HENRY JONES: Can I get one of them umbrellas?
RICHARD INCE: What where she flies off? Do you know, the funniest thing about that was, when it first started in the West End, she was literally breaking one of those props every other night
PAUL GARDNER: Handy.
RICHARD INCE: Well it was for me, because they’d all come back for repair or replacement.
PAUL GARDNER: You know with your dairy Henry, do you go out delivering things all the time? Because that must be hard to now to get around London or do you still go out very early in the morning?
HENRY JONES: We start a lot earlier than what we used to – about 1 o’clock in the morning now.
PAUL GARDNER: Blimey, that’s not much fun is it really?
RICHARD INCE: Are we holding you up?
HENRY JONES: (Laughs) I’m used to it! It’s changed, we deliver to businesses, to schools, to cafes, restaurants, we haven’t any residential customers any more. We got through to the last two companies in the tenders to deliver to the Olympics. It’s hard, you have to go through such a long process today with all the paper work you have to fill in. The difficulty I find is I get to the top level and fill in all the paperwork and then they go, “Oh, you’re not on the list of approved suppliers,” so the difficulty for the small business is to get into these companies at all. And obviously, if you have a small profit margin, it’s nice to have that turnover – it pays your rent, pays your rates, lets you go into the pub and have a drink, doesn’t it?
PAUL GARDNER: Only once a week!
RICHARD INCE: The tender process for the Olympics is fantastic, you think “great opportunity” and yes, I was asked, and I can tell you about this because they’ve mothballed the idea and it’s too late to get 7,600 umbrellas, one for every athlete in the opening and closing ceremonies. You have to provide three years of profit and loss accounts, proof of professional indemnity, employer’s liability, and you have to have it all on computer so that you can upload it to them. So, thankfully, that tender went away because I…
PAUL GARDNER: Good job they didn’t need any paper bags from me then.
RICHARD INCE: It promised a lot didn’t it? The theory was great because we’re all within a stone’s throw of the Olympics.
HENRY JONES: I was able to fight through it, because I’ve got another generation below me that’s actually capable of doing the paperwork for me.
RICHARD INCE: Everything above 7000 pounds has to go through the tender process, so that’s a lot of tenders. Fortunately, I’m going through someone else now who’s already done the tender process and been accepted.
PAUL GARDNER: So you’re making some things?
RICHARD INCE: I’m not allowed to tell you too much because obviously they’d shoot me.
QUESTIONS FROM THE AUDIENCE
QUESTION: Henry, just going back to what you were saying about your grandparents coming up from Wales, bringing their cows with them, obviously at that time it was a real feat? It would be a real feat now. Why did they do it?
HENRY JONES: They drove the cows up and milked them and sent them back again. I don’t know how they ever did it. At the time, London was a magnet for Welsh people to come and start dairies. I think a lot of Welsh people came up – D.H. Evans, John Lewis, Peter Jones, all the big stores.
QUESTION: Throughout the time that your families have been in the area have you ever been aware of any traders’ association existing?
RICHARD INCE: No.
HENRY JONES: I think it’s an excellent idea to be quite honest with you.
QUESTION: What would you like it to do?
HENRY JONES: My business is quite active, promoting ourselves but there needs to be more promotion for the likes of Paul Gardner, people need to know that he’s there. Obviously what we’re all after is getting customers and being introduced to larger businesses in the area, especially larger businesses, where they can be supplied from us.
PAUL GARDNER: We need to unite the small shops because, in the next few years, unless they stick together, they’ll all go – especially if the rents keep on going up – and the rates. I think my rates have doubled in three years. It is a worry for me, what’s going to happen in the next few years. So, it would be good if we could bring the small businesses together, so we have more of a voice. Because, you’re by yourself and you’re confronted by big rent increases… I’ve had it over the years where I was scared of answering the phone. Luckily, I came through, but it isn’t much fun when you’re on your own, so if we can unite the small businesses that would be a good idea, I think.
Portraits copyright © Colin O’Brien
Columbia Road Market 76
Carl Grover & his Uncle Bob
When Carl Grover was seventeen, he already had his own pitch at the market and, one Sunday in the late seventies, a photographer came along to take pictures, returning later with an envelope of black and white prints as a gift. This was long before photographers became commonplace in Columbia Rd, before the swarms of tourist with cameras that flock to the market today. Carl kept the pictures carefully in a cardboard file and although the photographer told him they had been exhibited, Carl never saw the exhibition.
Carl still has a pitch in Columbia Rd Market and last Sunday he showed me the cardboard file of ten by eight prints by the unknown photographer that it is my pleasure to publish here today. If you look closely at these fascinating pictures of Carl, his Uncle Bob, and pals Laurie and Lee at work, you can see they are selling plants without pots. In those days, Columbia Rd was still lined with furniture trades and the atmosphere on Sunday was relaxed enough for stallholders to enjoy a drink from the pub while they were at work, as Carl explained to me.
“I used to grow shrubs, and I went to auctions on Saturday and loaded up with plants, each with a root ball. By ten o’clock at night, I’d be driving up to the market to set up in my lorry, an ex-brewer’s articulated truck that had been used for transporting barrels. I started working at Columbia Rd on Sundays while I was still at school and and when I left it became my first job. We always sold cut flowers as well as plants but, when I sold off the nursery in the eighties, I switched over completely to cut flowers, which I sell today.
Laurie, the old man, he used to live in an ancient caravan close to the nursery where we grew shrubs and came along to Columbia Rd to lend a hand. He was an ex-navy man and sometimes on Sundays he liked to ride his bicycle on the wrong side of the road. He’d tell people, “On weekends, I cycle on the continental side, so I am ready for when we change over!” You can see him and my Uncle Bob with glasses in one of the pictures, they liked to have a drink from the Royal Oak.
At seventeen, I had a pitch between my dad Mick and my Uncle Bob, a little further down from where I am now. In those days, there were no lines to mark the pitches, we had to go by cracks in the pavement. Years later, the market authorities painted lines and we all got jiggled around.
At that time, we were selling delphiniums, lupins and hollyhocks – all the English cottage garden varieties – as bare root plants. We wrapped them in newspaper, there were no carriers or plastic bags in Columbia Rd then. We saved papers ourselves, and people used to collect them for us too and bring them along, the posh people used to bring the Times and the Daily Telegraph. When I think about it now, it was highly sustainable what we did.
The market wasn’t as busy then. It was a local market, not widely known as it is now and it was seasonal. We never saw a tourist, it was all real gardeners.”
It sounds a far cry from Columbia Rd today, lined with fashionable shops and cafes – a major attraction, drawing customers from across London and tourists from across the world. Yet Carl obviously still loves trading in the market and delights in the life it attracts. “Markets bring communities together.” he assured me, “Everyone’s equally welcome in a market, it doesn’t matter if you haven’t got any money.” Anyone that knows Carl will recognise him from these photographs of more than thirty years ago – he is still lean and eager and smiling, one of the most popular traders in the market.
The young man in the centre is Lee Irvine who worked with Carl for many years.
Bob Grover
At seventeen, Carl Grover had his own pitch selling shrubs at Columbia Rd.
Uncle Bob & Laurie enjoy a glass from the Royal Oak while trading.
Laurie lived in a caravan, was partial to rum and liked to cycle on the wrong side of the road at weekends.
You may also like to take a look at
Mick & Sylvia Grover, Herbsellers
George Gladwell’s photographs of Columbia Rd Market in the 1960s
Coffee Morning
For all those who were not able to make it to the book launch at the beginning of the month, I am hosting a Spitalfields Life Coffee Morning at Rough Trade East, Dray Walk in the Truman Brewery, Brick Lane, next Saturday 31st March from 10am until midday.
It will be an opportunity to see the originals of the six drawings by Lucinda Rogers of the streets of Spitalfields commissioned for the book, and you can watch Lucinda making a huge new drawing live during the morning.
King Sour, Rapper of Bethnal Green, who made such a hit at the launch, will perform his poems and other people whose stories are in the book will be dropping by.
Please come along to join us for a cup of coffee and say “hello!”
You may also like to read about
Philip Lindsey Clark’s Sculptures in Widegate St
Next time you pass through Widegate St, walking from Bishopsgate towards Artillery Passage on your way to Spitalfields, lift up your eyes to see the four splendid sculptures of bakers by Philip Lindsey Clark (1889 – 1977) upon the former premises of Nordheim Model Bakery at numbers twelve and thirteen. Pause to take in the subtle proportions of this appealing yet modest building of 1926 by George Val Myers in which the sculpture is integrated so successfully, just as at Broadcasting House which Val Myers designed five years later, placing Eric’s Gill’s figures upon the front.
In fact, Philip Lindsey Clark was a friend of Eric Gill – his work shares the same concern with illuminating the transcendental in existence, and from 1930 onwards his sculpture was exclusively of religious subjects. Born in Brixton, son of Scots architectural sculptor Robert Lindsey Clark, he trained in his father’s studio in Cheltenham and then returned to London to study at the City & Guilds School in Kennington. Enlisted in 1914, he was severely wounded in action and received a Distinguished Service Order for conspicuous gallantry. Then, after completing his training at the Royal Academy Schools, he designed a number of war memorials including those in Southwark and in Kelvingrove Park, Glasgow.
The form of these ceramic reliefs of bakers – with their white glaze and sparing use of blue as a background – recalls religious sculpture, especially stations of the cross, and there is something deeply engaging about such handsome austerely modelled figures with their self-absorbed presence, preoccupied by their work. The dignity of labour and the poetic narrative of transformation in the baking of bread is made tangible by these finely judged sculptures. My own favourite is the figure of the baker with his tray of loaves upon his shoulder in triumph, a satisfaction which anyone who makes anything will recognise, borne of the work, skill and application that is entailed in creation.
These reliefs were fired by Carters of Poole, the company that became Poole Pottery, notable for their luminous white glazes, elegant sculptural forms and spare decoration using clear natural colours. They created many of the tiles for the London Underground and their relief tiles from the 1930s can still be seen on Bethnal Green Station.
Philip Lindsey Clark’s sculptures are those of a man who grew up in the artists’ studio, yet witnessed the carnage of First World War at first hand, carrying on fighting for two days even with a piece of shrapnel buried in his head, and then turned his talents to memorialise those of his generation that were gone. After that, it is no wonder that he saw the sublime in the commonplace activity of bakers. Eventually Lindsey Clark entered a Carmelite order, leaving London and retiring to the West Country where he lived until the age of eighty-eight.
So take a moment next time you pass through Widegate St – named after the wide gate leading to the ‘spital fields that once was there – and contemplate the sculptures by Philip Lindsey Clark, embodying his vision of the holiness of bakers.
George Val Myer’s former Nordheim Model Bakery with sculptures by Philip Lindsey Clark.
You may also like to read about
A Night in the Bakery at St John
Dorothy Annan’s Murals in Farringdon St
