Henrietta Keeper, Ballad Singer
Friday is an especially good day to have lunch at E. Pellicci in the Bethnal Green Rd, because not only is Maria Pellicci’s delicious fried cod & chips with mushy peas likely to be on the menu, but also – if you are favoured – you may also get to hear Henrietta Keeper sing one of her soulful ballads. Celebrated for her extraordinary vitality, the venerable Henrietta (known widely as “Joan”) is naturally reticent about her age, a discretion which you will appreciate when I reveal that she is able to pass as one thirty years her junior.
Henrietta tucked into her customary fried egg & chips last Friday as the essential warm-up to her weekly performance while I sat across the table from her enjoying the cod & chips with mushy peas, and helping her out with her chips. “My husband died fourteen years ago, of emphysema from smoking and he ate a lot of hydrolized fat.” she admitted to me, her dark eyes shining with emotion,“When he died, I threw away the biscuits and I bought a book on nutrition and studied it, and now I’ve got strong. I only eat wholemeal bread, white bread’s a killer. I am keeping well, to stay alive for the sake of my children because I love them. I don’t want to go the same way my husband did.”
“Anna Pellicci makes me laugh, ‘She says, ‘Are you still here?”” continued Henrietta with affectionate irony, leaning closer and casting her eyes around the magnificent panelled cafe that is her second home,“I first came to Pelliccis in 1947 when I got married. No-one had washing machines then, so I used to take my washing to the laundrette and come here with my three babies, Lesley hanging onto the pram, Linda sitting on the front and Lorraine the baby inside.” Yet in spite of being around longer than anyone else, Henrietta possesses a youthful, almost childlike, energy and wears a jaunty bow in her hair. “I’m so tiny,” she declared to me batting her eyelids flirtatiously, “I’m just a little girl.”
As a prelude the afternoon’s performance, I asked Henrietta the origin of her singing and she grew playful, speaking with evident delight and invoking emotions from long ago. “It all started with my dad when I was a little girl, he had a beautiful voice.” she recalled fondly, “He was a road sweeper, but years ago there wasn’t much work – so, when he couldn’t get a job, he used to stand outside the pub singing. And people put money in his hat, and he took it home and gave to my mum. That was the only entertainment we had in those days. Everybody was poor, so the best thing was to go to the pub and make your own music. When I was sixteen years old, I used to sing duets with my dad in pubs. The first song I sang was “Sweet Sixteen – When I first saw the love light in your eyes, when you were sweet sixteen…”
Henrietta got lost in the sentiment, singing the opening line of Sweet Sixteen across the table in a whisper, before the choosing the moment to assure me,“I’m a ballad singer, I don’t like to sing ‘Hey, Big Spender!’ even though I think Shirley Basset’s marvellous – that suits her voice, not mine.” I nodded sagely in acknowledgement of the distinction, before she continued with a fresh thought, “But I like Country & Western. Have you heard of Patsy Cline and Lena Martell? I like that one, ‘I go to pieces each time I see you again…'”
Born in the old Bethnal Green Hospital in the Cambridge Heath Rd, Henrietta and all her family – even her great-grandparents – lived in Shetland St opposite. Evacuated at the age of ten to Little Saxham, near Bury St Edmunds in Suffolk, Henrietta found herself with a devout Welsh family who worked on the land and went to church on Sundays. Here Henrietta excelled in the choir and “that’s how I learnt singing. I got to sing, ‘My Lord is Sweet,’ on my own and I loved it.” she confided to me with a tender smile.
Returning to the East End at the time of the doodlbugs, Henrietta was out playing with her friend Doris when they heard the sound of the Luftwaffe overhead followed by explosions. In the horror of the moment, Doris suggested they take refuge in Bethnal Green Tube Station, but Henrietta had the presence of mind to refuse and went instead to join her family sleeping under the railway arches. That night, one hundred and seventy three people were killed on the staircase as they crowded into the entrance of the tube, including Henrietta’s friend Doris. “It’s not for your eyes,” Henrietta’s father told her when they laid out the bodies on stretchers upon the pavements in lines, but she recalls it in vivid detail to this day.
We ate in silence for a while before Henrietta resumed her story.“When my children started school, I joined the Diamond “T” Concert Party,” she told me,”I had a friend who worked at Tate & Lyle in Silvertown and one of the things they did for the community was organise entertainments. We used to go to old people’s homes, churches and hospitals, and I became one of their singers for thirty years. We had quite a laugh. The only reason I left was that everyone else died.”
I understood something of Henrietta’s circumstance, her story, the origin of her singing and how she made use of her talent over all these years. I realised it was imperative that Henrietta continues singing, if she is to seek the longevity she desires, and for one born and bred in Bethnal Green, Pelliccis is the natural venue. Yet there was one mystery left – why does everyone know Henrietta as ‘Joan’ ?
“My mum was called Henrietta, and because I was the eldest I was called Henrietta, but I hated it so I when I went for my first job interview, as a machinist in Mare St making army denims, I told them I was called, “Joan.” she confessed, “They was more cockney there than I am, they said, ‘What’s your name, love?’ and I didn’t like calling out ‘Henrietta’ because it sounded so posh, I just said the first name that came into my head – ‘Joan.’ All my neighbours and my mother-in-law know me as Joan, but my family know me as Henrietta. And that’s how I told a little white lie, in case you might be wondering.”
As our conversation passed, we had completed our meals. Joan ordered a piece of bread pudding to take home to eat later and I polished off a syrup pudding with custard. And then, the moment arrived – Henrietta took her microphone from her bag and composed herself to sumon the spirit of the place, a hush fell upon the cafe and she sang…
“I’m a ballad singer, I don’t like to sing ‘Hey, Big Spender!”
Henrietta Keeper – “I’m so tiny, I’m just a little girl.”
You may like to read my other Pelliccis stories
In Narrow St, Limehouse
Charles Dickens’ godfather Christopher Huffam lived and ran his sailmaking, blockmaking and chandlery business from a substantial house in Newell St, next to St Anne’s Limehouse. Huffam adored his godson, declaring the boy a prodigy, tipping him half a crown on his birthday and encouraging him to dance and perform comic songs upon the kitchen table – and also, it is said, upon the bar at The Grapes. In the company of his godfather, Dickens first explored Shadwell and Limehouse, engendering a lasting fascination with these teeming waterside regions that he returned to throughout his writing life, both in fiction and journalism.
It is a landscape that I came to know through Dickens’ writing even before I visited it for myself and, in spite of all the changes, when I walk through Shadwell and Limehouse today, I cannot dispel his vision of this distinctive area of London. So, after riffling through some bookshelves, I set out to see what I could photograph of Dickens’ imaginative perspective in these riverside streets.
“Shadwell Church! Pleasant whispers of there being a fresher air down by the river than down by the Docks, go pursuing one another playfully, in and out of the openings in its spire. Gigantic in the basin just below the church looms my Emigrant Ship… two great gangways made of spars and planks connect her with the wharf, and up and down these gangways, perpetually crowding to and fro and in and out, like ants, are the Emigrants. Some with cabbages, some with loaves of bread, some with cheese and butter, some with milk and beer, some with boxes beds and bundles, some with babies – nearly all with children.” – The Uncommercial Traveller, Bound for the Great Salt Lake. In July 1863, Dickens visited a Mormon mission of 895 emigrants on board a ship in Shadwell Basin.
“I found myself on a swing bridge, looking down on some dark locks in some dirty water. Over against me, stood a creature remotely in the likeness of a young man with a puffed sallow face, and figure all dirty and shiny and slimy, who may have been the youngest son of his filthy father, Thames, or the drowned man about whom there was a placard on the granite post like a large thimble that stood before us. ‘A common place for suicide?’ said I, looking down at the locks. ‘Sue?’ returned the ghost with a stare. ‘Yes! And Poll. Likewise Emily. And Nancy. And Jane.'” – The Uncommercial Traveller, All the Year Round. In January 1860, Dickens visited the Wapping Workhouse for female paupers.
One day everyone will be chalking about it
“The wheels rolled on, and rolled on down by the Monument and the Tower, and by the Docks, down by Ratcliffe, down by where the accumulated scum of humanity seemed to be washed from higher ground..” Our Mutual Friend, Gaffer Hexham’s Abode,1864.
“Down by the river’s bank in Ratcliffe, I found the Children’s Hospital established in an old sail loft or storehouse, of the roughest nature, and on the simplest means. There were trap-doors in the floors where goods had been hoisted up and down, inconvenient bulks and beams and awkward staircases perplexed my passage through its wards, but I found it airy, sweet and clean. In its seven and thirty beds I saw but little beauty, for starvation in the second or third generation takes a pinched look, but I saw the sufferings of infancy and childhood tenderly assuaged.” New Uncommercial Samples, A Small Star in the East, 1868.
“Look at the marine store dealers, in that reservoir of dirt, drunkenness and drabs – thieves, oysters, baked potatoes, and pickled salmon, Ratcliffe Highway. Here the wearing apparel is all nautical. rough blue jackets with mother -of-pearl buttons, oilskin hats, coarse checked shirts, and large canvas trousers, that look as if they were made for a pair of bodies, instead of a pair of legs, are the staple commodities. In the window are a few compasses, a small tray containing silver watches in clumsy thick cases, and tobacco boxes, the lid of each ornamented with a ship or an anchor. A sailor generally pawns or sells all he has before he has been long ashore.” Sketches by “Boz,” Illustrative of Every-day Life and Every-day People, 1836.
“Captain Cuttle lived on the brink of a little canal near the India Docks, where there was a swivel bridge which opened now and then to let some wandering monster of a ship come roaming up the street like a stranded leviathan. The gradual change from land to water, on approaching Captain Cuttle’s lodgings, was curious. It began with the erection of flagstaffs as appurtenances to public houses, then came the slop-sellers’ shops. These succeeded by anchor and chain-cable forges, where sledgehammers were dinging upon iron all day long. Then came rows of houses, with little vane-surmounted masts.” Dombey and Son, 1848.
“Rogue Riderhood dwelt deep in Limehouse Hole, among the riggers, and the mast, oar, and block makers, and the boat builders, and the sail lofts, as in a kind of ship’s hold stored full of waterside characters, some no better than himself, some very much better, and none much worse.” Our Mutual Friend, Pleasant’s Mysterious Vision, 1864.
“Past Limehouse Church, at the great iron gate of the churchyard, he stopped and looked in. He looked up at the great tower spectrally resisting the wind, and he looked at the white tombstones, like enough to the dead in their winding sheets, and he counted nine tolls of the church bell.” Our Mutual Friend, Think it Out, John Proudfoot, 1864.
“ The Six Jolly Fellowship-Porters, already mentioned as a tavern of dropsical appearance, had long settled into state of hale infirmity. In its whole construction, it had not a straight floor and hardly a straight line, but it had outlasted and clearly would yet outlast, many a better trimmed building, many a sprucer public house. Externally, it was a narrow lop-sided wooden jumble of corpulent windows heaped one upon the other as you might heap as many toppling oranges, with a crazy wooden veranda impending over the water, but seemed to have got into the condition of a faint-hearted diver who has paused so long on the brink that he will never go in at all…” Our Mutual Friend, Cut Adrift, 1864.
Dickens in Shadwell & Limehouse – Spitalfields Life will be hosting a walk in the footsteps of Charles Dickens on Easter Monday 9th April at 3pm from St Georges in the East, visiting locations described in his novels and journalism. The walk will take approximately an hour and a half, and conclude at the historic riverside pub The Grapes.
Booking is essential and numbers are limited, so please email spitalfieldslife@gmail.com to sign up. Tickets are £10.
You may also like to read about
Charles Dickens at Park Cottage
Charles Dickens In Spitalfields
Charles Dickens in Spitalfields 2 – The Silk Warehouse
Charles Dickens in Spitalfields 3 – In the Streets
Charles Dickens in Spitalfields 4 – The Silk Weavers
Charles Dickens in Spitalfields 5 – The Young Artist
The Brick Lane Temperance Association
Joanna Moore’s Drawathon
Spitalfields Life Contributing Artist Joanna Moore did this drawing of the Brick Lane Beigel Bakery on Thursday afternoon. It was the thirteenth of fifteen drawings that she did to commission last week as part of an epic two day drawathon to raise money for the Alzheimer’s Society – in commemoration of her grandmother Christine Brock who died of the disease last year. “London blessed me with sunshine and warm temperatures, as if summer had arrived early.” said Joanna introducing her spirited drawings that she executed on the streets, travelling between each location by bicycle, “I had not quite prepared for just how gloriously bright and colourful it would be, and as a result I set out inspired and ambitious, and attacked my sheet of paper with every hue in my watercolour box … and couldn’t quite stop.”
Day one, 8:00am, Wednesday. The Shell Building – I was drawing against the sun, so I was glad I brought sunglasses! Though a very simple building, the Shell Centre always looks incredibly elegant against the river, a giant monument.
Day one, 9:30am, Wednesday. View from Waterloo Bridge – Another bridge, another bright bright drawing. At this time of the day, the City is thrown into extremes of light and shade, so the cityscape is somewhat blurred but I tried to pick out shapes from the shadows and sunlight reflecting on glass. There was so much to take in and the wind was up, blowing my hair all over the place, and I sketched quickly.
Day one, 11:00am, Wednesday. Middle Temple Gardens – Always fairly quiet, save for legal suits and wigs going back and forth, and the odd tourist. Found a lovely spot on a bench overlooking Middle Temple to see this Magnolia tree in full bloom. I love how the pinks offset the deep red of the old brickwork. I sat here and ate my picnic in the beautiful gardens before braving Fleet St…
Day one, 1:00pm, Wednesday. Hoares Bank – A classical building, made tricky by busy traffic and buses constantly stopping in front of me. The sun started to make me light-headed by now, so I sought the shade.
Day one, 2:30pm, Wednesday. The Prudential Assurance Building – A great Victorian building, and I had never seen it so bright and red. I hid in the shade opposite and considered how funny it was that my mum used to work here before I was born. I was desperate to spend longer here, as the architecture and ornamentation is so over-the-top, but time pushed me on so I could only do my best to sketch in every arch. The afternoon was getting me tired, and even though a large mocha Frappuccino delivered a caffeine and sugar hit, I feared the whipped cream made me even sleepier.
Day one, 3:45pm, Wednesday. St Brides Church – This wonderful Wren church is neatly slotted into the City fabric and tucked off Fleet St, which makes it tricky to find the best location to draw. So I ended up sitting cross-legged in the middle of Fleet St outside the Express Building and had City workers tripping over me. Once again, the sun was so bright that the shadows were extreme, and London’s Portland stone became shades of purple and blue.
Day one, 5:00pm, Wednesday. The Blackfriars Pub – Getting very tired now and after another session on a street corner (literally next to road works for new Blackfriars station) my eyes were dry and my lungs tight. Thankfully, this request just happened to be my favourite pub in London, so I pushed through and rewarded myself with a half of ale.
Day one, 6:00pm, Wednesday. St Paul’s from One New Change – My friend Mandy was so keen to sponsor me for a good cause that she completely forgot to tell me what to draw. Now she has moved to Australia, so I picked her a classic London scene. I have many grumblings about this new shiny shopping centre, but the view from the top is exceptional. Up in the air, my lungs were cleared and I was invigorated by the sharpness of the sun, cutting through streets and creating a halo around the monumental cathedral.
Day one, 7:30pm, Wednesday. Southwark Cathedral – Very tired now, and I hastened through the streets and across London Bridge to get to another cathedral before the light is lost. The garden here was shut by now and the market traders all packed up, but it mattered not as this view from the east end is one of my favourites. I love being raised so that I can draw both up and down the cathedral. The sunset cast the end of the church into purple shadows, apart from where it streamed through the south transept window. I had to work fast as the light faded minute by minute, which is very disorienting when you are drawing. By 8.30pm it was dark and I could no longer make any judgement, so I took my picture to a street light and in the yellow haze decided it was complete. I packed up and staggered back across the bridge, and eastwards home.
Day Two, 8:00am, Thursday Swiss Re Building – Another stunning sky. My sponsor Alex had just requested the Gherkin, but since he has been so generous with his commission and I love this view with St Andrew Undershaft, I chose to show the new against the old. The cleaners were out on the Gherkin, mesmerising to watch as, spiderlike, they worked their way up and down the glass on spindly wires.
Day two, 11:15am, Thursday. The Barbican – I spend a while getting lost, wandering around the strange beast that is this 1960s development. I love it even though it scares me rigid to draw. It is not a simple modernist building, but something giant and sculptural, a maze, a monument to post-war ambitions and hopes, yet still manages to be a humane, beautifully detailed environment. This drawing took a while to set up, as I fretted over the proportions, but then got absorbed by endless windows and the distinctive balconies. Thankfully, the bright sun was helpful in discerning shapes. But yesterday began to catch up with me, and I found I was already tired. Luckily, I happened to be chanced upon by my friend Louise – a fellow Princes Drawing School student – on her way to London Zoo to draw. A quick chat and the gift of a chocolate biscuit perked me up, and I hopped back on my bike.
Day two, 1:30pm Thursday. Wesley Chapel – I stop for lunch at Bunhill Fields, the beautiful graveyard for dissenters opposite the chapel. I hid in the shade for a while before I staked out the best place to draw the chapel and found myself back in the sun. I felt I had to include the man himself too, and I like the contrast of his sculpture against the characterful pollarded trees. Afterwards I was met by my parents – in town to see my progress – who rewarded me with a large iced coffee and more whipped cream. By this point, I became dizzy after too much time in the sun!
Day two, 5:15pm, Thursday. Christ Church, Spitalfields – Another regular feature of my drawings. I knew that Karen who commissioned this picture had a print of one of my drawings with a view from the front, so I decided she should have a side view. This shows the way it appears to shelter the rows of brick houses in the quiet street around it, while the busy Victorian market buildings in the bright sunlight – just a hop and skip across Commercial St – seem to exist in another world.
Day two, 7:00pm, Thursday. Former Gladding Bookshop, Whitechapel Rd – This was a request from Bob, whose ancestor once ran a bookshop on this busy street. This handsome Victorian building is a lucky survivor in an area where so much was destroyed by bombs. I pushed on with my drawing, driven by the knowledge that this is my last. I finished as the light started to fade and the traffic gathered pace. Across the road, the call to prayer was sounded from the East London Mosque, and I packed up my bike and was called home.
Drawings copyright © Joanna Moore
You may also like to take a look at other work by Joanna Moore
The Spitalfields Nobody Knows (Part One)
The Spitalfields Nobody Knows (Part Two)
Phil Maxwell on the Tube
This is unique among the hundreds of pictures that East End Street Photographer Phil Maxwell has taken on the tube in the last thirty years – since he appears, reflected in the glass with his camera. On this rare occasion, Phil felt confident to raise the camera from the position he usually holds it while on the tube, nursed between his legs, because his subject was so absorbed in the newspaper.
Over all this time, Phil Maxwell has perfected the trick of taking pictures without needing to look through the lens, allowing him to take these extraordinary covert photographs of unselfconscious people absorbed in their own worlds. “You have to become like a magician with the camera,” he revealed to me, “You have to know what the lens is seeing from every angle.”
This technique accounts for most of the pictures in this selection and explains the low point of view in many of them. “It’s good to photograph from low down, you see so much more,” Phil explained to me, “And it’s more challenging to the eye because we are all used to seeing at eye level.”
While Phil has been photographing the life of the London streets, taking pictures on the tube has proved a natural counterpoint, offering the opportunity to photograph Londoners in private within a public space.
“Photographing people on the tube encapsulates all the skills required for being a street photographer. You have to deal with the constantly changing light and be judging the correct exposure. You can go from Whitechapel to the West End and it’s like travelling from day to night. In this respect, I have always regarded the tube as very special photographic studio for Londoners because it has such dramatic changes in lighting, from 100% artificial lighting one minute then bright sunlight the next.
And just as you’ve got different moods in lighting, people show different aspects of themselves at different times of day. If you take a picture at night they might be joyful and laughing from the pub, but if you take picture in the morning you will encounter the silent mournful masses – I always consider myself lucky that I don’t have a nine to five job, and there’s the evidence. Passengers may be carrying briefcases or toolboxes, but when they walk into the tube it’s as if they walk into my photographic studio.
The tube has become a very special and hallowed place for me. I’d be going from an assignment photographing a senior politician and I’d get on the tube, and I’d have as many as twenty frames left that I’d use taking pictures. If you look at my negatives, you’ll see that at one moment I am photographing Tony Blair and the next minute Mrs Smith sitting opposite me on the tube, which for me is much more interesting and enjoyable because politicians are totally plastic. It is a great joy to get on the tube, I always carry my camera with me and I always take pictures. You never know who’s going to get on and sit opposite.
People’s behaviour changes on the tube, almost as if they’ve gone into the operating theatre. Their breathing slows down and they go off and daydream, which suits me very well because they don’t realise what I’m doing when they’re on another planet.”
[vimeo http://vimeo.com/39431919 w=600&h=480]
Photographs copyright © Phil Maxwell
You can watch a film of Phil Maxwell’s tube photos by clicking here
and see more of Phil Maxwell’s work here
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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