Sally Flood, Poet
“I had always written, as a child,” admitted Sally Flood with a shrug, “but it wasn’t stuff you showed.” For years, when her thoughts wandered whilst working in the factory in Princelet St, Sally wrote poems on the paper that backed the embroidery in the machine she operated – but she always tore up her compositions when her boss appeared.
Then, when she was fifty years old, Sally took some of her poems along to the Basement Writers in Cable St and achieved unexpected recognition, giving her the confidence to call herself a poet for the first time. Since then, Sally’s verse has been widely published, studied in schools and universities, and she has become an experienced performer of her own poetry. “At work, I used to write things to make people laugh,” she explained, “I used to say, ‘Embroidery is my trade, but writing is my hobby.'”
“I’ve got draws full of poems,” she confided to me with a blush, unable to keep track of her prolific writing, now that poetry is her primary occupation and she no longer tears up her compositions. “I’ve got so much here, I don’t know what I’ve got.” she said, rolling her eyes at the craziness of it.
Ambulance helicopters whirl over Sally’s house, night and day, the last in a Georgian terrace which is so close to the hospital in Whitechapel that if you got out of bed on the wrong side you might find yourself in surgery. Sally moved there nearly fifty years ago with her young family, and now she has three grandchildren and five great grandchildren. Framed pictures attest to the family life which filled this house for so many years, while today boxes of toys lie around awaiting visits by the youngest members of her clan.
“In 1975, when my children were growing up and the youngest was fifteen, I decided that I need to do something else, because I didn’t want to be one of those mothers who held onto her children too much.” Sally recalled, “So I joined the Bethnal Green Institute, and it was all ballroom dancing and keep fit, but I found a leaflet Chris Searle had put there for the Basement Writers, so I decided to write a poem and send it along to them. Then I got a letter back asking me to send more – and I was amazed because the poem I sent was one I would otherwise have torn up. Of your own work, you’ve got no real opinion.”
“On my first visit, I went along with my daughter, but there were children of school age and I was turning fifty. I wasn’t sure if I should be there until I met Gladys McGee who was ten years older than me. She was so funny, I learnt so much from her – she had been an unmarried mother in the Land Army. I started going regular, and the first poem I read was published.”
“I think my life is more in poetry than anything else. I sometimes think my writing is like a diary. Chris Searle of the basement writers made such an impression on my life, he gave me the confidence to do this. And when I did my writing, my life took off in a certain direction and I met so many fantastic people.”
Sally’s house is full of cupboards and cabinets filled of files of poems and pictures and embroidery, and the former yard at the back has become a garden with luscious fuchias that are Sally’s favourites. After all these years of activity, it has become her private space for reflection. Sally can now get up when she pleases and enjoy a jam sandwich for breakfast. She can make paintings and tend her garden, and write more poems. The house is full with her thoughts and her memories.
“My grandparents were from Russia and they brought my father over when he was four years old.” Sally told me, taking down the photograph to remind herself,“He became cabinet maker and he was one of the best. In those days, they used to work from six until ten at night, so they knew what work was. I was born in Chambord St, Brick Lane, in 1925, and I grew up there. From there we moved to a two-up two-down in Chicksand St and from there to Bethnal Green, just before the war broke out. We had a bath in the kitchen with a tabletop. It was the first time we had a bath, before that we went to bathhouse. I’m telling you the history of the East End here!
I was evacuated to Norfolk at first. We took the surname Morris from father’s first name, so that people wouldn’t know we were Jewish. The people up there had a suspicion against Londoners and they thought we were all the same. But I was lucky, we ended up in a hotel on the river in Torbay in Devon. Life was fantastic, we used to go fishing. It was a different experience from my life in London. I joined the girl guides, I could never have done that otherwise. Where I was evacuated, they wanted to train me to be a teacher, but my mother came and took me back and said, “They’re going to exploit you, you’re going to be a machinist.”
“Being evacuated meant I went outside my culture, and I saw that English people were nice. I think that’s why I married outside my religion. We were together fifty-five years and I always say it wasn’t enough. If I hadn’t been evacuated I wouldn’t have done that.”
Sally put the photograph of her parents back on the shelf carefully, and turned her head to the pictures of her husband, her children, her grandchildren and great-grandchildren, on different sides of the room. I watched her looking back and forth through time, and the room she inhabited became a charged space in between the past and the future. This is the space where she does her writing. And then Sally brought out a book to show me, opening it to reveal it short poems in her handwriting accompanied by lively drawings of people, reminiscent of the sketches of L. S. Lowry or the doodles of Stevie Smith.
Sally is a paradoxical person to meet. A natural writer who resists complacency, she continues to be surprised by her own work, yet she is knowledgeable of literature and an experienced teacher of writing. Appearing at the door in her apron and talking in her tender sing-song voice, Sally wears her erudition lightly, but it does not mean that she is not serious. With innate dignity and a vast repertoire of stories to tell, Sally Flood is a writer who always speaks from the truth of her own experience.
Maurice Grodinsky, Sally’s father is on the left with Sally’s mother, Annie Grodinsky, on the right, and Freda, Maurice’s mother, in between. At four years old, Maurice was brought to Spitalfields from Bessarabia at the end of the nineteenth century. The two children are Marie and Joey – when this picture was taken in 1925, Sally was yet to be born.
Sally with her first child Danny in the early nineteen fifties.
Sally’s children, Maureen, Jimmy, Pat and Theresa in the yard in Whitechapel in 1962.
Sally’s husband, Joseph Flood.
Sally in Whitechapel, early sixties.
Sally with her children, Danny, Theresa, Jimmy, Maureen, Pat and Michael.
Sitting by the canal in the nineteen seventies.
Sally with Gladys McGee at the Basement Writers.
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Henry Mayhew’s Street Traders
The Long-Song Seller
There is a silent ghost who accompanies me in my work, following me down the street and sitting discreetly in the corner while I am doing my interviews. He is always there in the back of my mind. He is Henry Mayhew, whose monumental work,”London Labour & London Poor,” was the first to give ordinary people the chance to speak in their own words. I often think of him, and the ambition and quality of his work inspires me. And I sometimes wonder what it was like for him, pursuing his own interviews, one hundred and fifty years ago, in a very different world.
Mayhew’s interviews and pen portraits appeared in the London Chronicle and were published in two volumes in 1851, eventually reaching their final form in five volumes published in 1865. In his preface, Mayhew described it as “the first attempt to publish the history of the people, from the lips of the people themselves – giving a literal description of their labour, their earnings, their trials and their sufferings in their own unvarnished language.”
These works were produced before photography was widely used to illustrate books, and although photographer Richard Beard produced a set of portraits to accompany Mayhew’s interviews, these were reproduced by engraving. Fortunately, since Beard’s photographs have not survived, the engravings were skillfully done. And they are fascinating images, because they exist as the bridge between the popular prints of the Cries of London that had been produced for centuries and the development of street photography, initiated by JohnThomson’s “Street Life in London” in 1876.
Primarily, Mayhew’s intention was to create a documentary record, educating his middle class readers about the lives of the poor to encourage social change. Yet his work transcends the tragic politics of want and deprivation that he set out to address, because the human qualities of his subjects come alive on the page and command our respect. Henry Mayhew bears witness not only to the suffering of poor people in nineteenth century London, but also to their endless resourcefulness and courage in carving out lives for themselves in such unpromising circumstances.
The Oyster Stall. “I’ve been twenty years and more, perhaps twenty-four, selling shellfish in the streets. I was a boot closer when I was young, but I had an attack of rheumatic fever, and lost the use of my hands for my trade. The streets hadn’t any great name, as far as I knew, then, but as I couldn’t work, it was just a choice between street selling and starving, so I didn’t prefer the last. It was reckoned degrading to go into the streets – but I couldn’t help that. I was astonished at my success when I first began, I made three pounds the first week I knew my trade. I was giddy and extravagant. I don’t clear three shillings a day now, I average fifteen shillings a week the year through. People can’t spend money in shellfish when they haven’t got any.”
The Irish Street-Seller. “I was brought over here, sir, when I was a girl, but my father and mother died two or three years after. I was in service, I saved a little money and got married. My husband’s a labourer, he’s out of worruk now, and I’m forced to thry and sill a few oranges to keep a bit of life in us, and my husband minds the children. Bad as I do, I can do a penny or tuppence a day better profit than him, poor man! For he’s tall and big, and people thinks, if he goes round with a few oranges, it’s just from idleniss.”
The Groundsel Man. “I sell chickweed and grunsell, and turfs for larks. That’s all I sell, unless it’s a few nettles that’s ordered. I believe they’re for tea, sir. I gets the chickweed at Chalk Farm. I pay nothing for it. I gets it out of the public fields. Every morning about seven I goes for it. I’ve been at business about eighteen year. I’m out till about five in the evening. I never stop to eat. I am walking ten hours every day – wet and dry. My leg and foot and all is quite dead. I goes with a stick.”
The Baked Potato Man. “Such a day as this, sir, when the fog’s like a cloud come down, people looks very shy at my taties. They’ve been more suspicious since the taty rot. I sell mostly to mechanics, I was a grocer’s porter myself before I was a baked taty. Gentlemen does grumble though, and they’ve said, “Is that all for tuppence?” Some customers is very pleasant with me, and says I’m a blessing. They’re women that’s not reckoned the best in the world, but they pays me. I’ve trusted them sometimes, and I am paid mostly. Money goes one can’t tell how, and ‘specially if you drinks a drop as I do sometimes. Foggy weather drives me to it, I’m so worritted – that is, now and then, you’ll mind, sir.”
The London Coffee Stall. “I was a mason’s labourer, a smith’s labourer, a plasterer’s labourer, or a bricklayer’s labourer. I was for six months without any employment. I did not know which way to keep my wife and child. Many said they wouldn’t do such a thing as keep a coffee stall, but I said I’d do anything to get a bit of bread honestly. Years ago, when I as a boy, I used to go out selling water-cresses, and apples, and oranges, and radishes with a barrow. I went to the tinman and paid him ten shillings and sixpence (the last of my savings, after I’d been four or five months out of work) for a can. I heard that an old man, who had been in the habit of standing at the entrance of one of the markets, had fell ill. So, what do I do, I goes and pops onto his pitch, and there I’ve done better than ever I did before.”
Coster Boy & Girl Tossing the Pieman. To toss the pieman was a favourite pastime with costermonger’s boys. If the pieman won the toss, he received a penny without giving a pie, if he lost he handed it over for nothing. “I’ve taken as much as two shillings and sixpence at tossing, which I shouldn’t have done otherwise. Very few people buy without tossing, and boys in particular. Gentlemen ‘out on the spree’ at the late public houses will frequently toss when they don’t want the pies, and when they win they will amuse themselves by throwing the pies at one another, or at me. Sometimes I have taken as much as half a crown and the people of whom I had the money has never eaten a pie.”
The Street- Seller of Nutmeg Graters. “Persons looks at me a good bit when I go into a strange place. I do feel it very much, that I haven’t the power to get my living or to do a thing for myself, but I never begged for nothing. I never thought those whom God had given the power to help themselves ought to help me. My trade is to sell brooms and brushes, and all kinds of cutlery and tinware. I learnt it myself. I was never brought up to nothing, because I couldn’t use my hands. Mother was a cook in a nobleman’s family when I was born. They say I was a love child. My mother used to allow so much a year for my schooling, and I can read and write pretty well. With a couple of pounds, I’d get a stock, and go into the country with a barrow, and buy old metal, and exchange tinware for old clothes, and with that, I’m almost sure I could make a decent living.”
The Crockery & Glass Wares Street-Seller. “A good tea service we generally give for a left-off suit of clothes, hat and boots. We give a sugar basin for an old coat, and a rummer for a pair of old Wellington boots. For a glass milk jug, I should expect a waistcoat and trowsers, and they must be tidy ones too. There is always a market for old boots, when there is not for old clothes. I can sell a pair of old boots going along the streets if I carry them in my hand. Old beaver hats and waistcoats are worth little or nothing. Old silk hats, however, there’s a tidy market for. There is one man who stands in Devonshire St, Bishopsgate waiting to buy the hats of us as we go into the market, and who purchases at least thirty a week. If I go out with a fifteen shilling basket of crockery, maybe after a tidy day’s work I shall come home with a shilling in my pocket and a bundle of old clothes, consisting of two or three old shirts, a coat or two, a suit of left-off livery, a woman’s gown maybe or a pair of old stays, a couple of pairs of Wellingtons, and waistcoat or so.”
The Blind Bootlace Seller. “At five years old, while my mother was still alive, I caught the small pox. I only wish vaccination had been in vogue then as it is now or I shouldn’t have lost my eyes. I didn’t lose both my eyeballs till about twenty years after that, though my sight was gone for all but the shadow of daylight and bright colours. I could tell the daylight and I could see the light of the moon but never the shape of it. I never could see a star. I got to think that a roving life was a fine pleasant one. I didn’t think the country was half so big and you couldn’t credit the pleasure I got in going about it. I grew pleaseder and pleaseder with the life. You see, I never had no pleasure, and it seemed to me like a whole new world, to be able to get victuals without doing anything. On my way to Romford, I met a blind man who took me in partnership with him, and larnt me my business complete – and that’s just about two or three and twenty year ago.”
The Street Rhubarb & Spice Seller. “I am one native of Mogadore in Morocco. I am an Arab. I left my countree when I was sixteen or eighteen years of age, I forget, sir. Dere everything sheap, not what dey are here in England. Like good many, I was young and foolish – like all dee rest of young people, I like to see foreign countries. The people were Mahomedans in Mogadore, but we were Jews, just like here, you see. In my countree the governemen treat de Jews very badly, take all deir money. I get here, I tink, in 1811 when de tree shilling pieces first come out. I go to de play house, I see never such tings as I see here before I come. When I was a little shild, I hear talk in Mogadore of de people of my country sell de rhubarb in de streets of London, and make plenty money by it. All de rhubarb sellers was Jews. Now dey all gone dead, and dere only four of us now in England. Two of us live in Mary Axe, anoder live in, what dey call dat – Spitalfield, and de oder in Petticoat Lane. De one wat live in Spitalfield is an old man, I dare say going on for seventy, and I am little better than seventy-three.”
The Street-Seller of Walking Sticks. “I’ve sold to all sorts of people, sir. I once had some very pretty sticks, very cheap, only tuppence a piece, and I sold a good many to boys. They bought them, I suppose, to look like men and daren’t carry them home, for once I saw a boy I’d sold a stick to, break it and throw it away just before he knocked at the door of a respectable house one Sunday evening. There’s only one stick man on the streets, as far as I know – and if there was another, I should be sure to know.”
The Street Comb Seller. “I used to mind my mother’s stall. She sold sweet snuff. I never had a father. Mother’s been dead these – well, I don’t know how long but it’s a long time. I’ve lived by myself ever since and kept myself and I have half a room with another young woman who lives by making little boxes. She’s no better off nor me. It’s my bed and the other sticks is her’n. We ‘gree well enough. No, I’ve never heard anything improper from young men. Boys has sometimes said when I’ve been selling sweets, “Don’t look so hard at ’em, or they’ll turn sour.” I never minded such nonsense. I has very few amusements. I goes once or twice a month, or so, to the gallery at the Victoria Theatre, for I live near. It’s beautiful there, O, it’s really grand. I don’t know what they call what’s played because I can’t read the bills. I’m a going to leave the streets. I have an aunt, a laundress, she taught me laundressing and I’m a good ironer. I’m not likely to get married and I don’t want to.”
The Grease-Removing Composition Sellers. “Here you have a composition to remove stains from silks, muslins, bombazeens, cords or tabarets of any kind or colour. It will never injure or fade the finest silk or satin, but restore it to its original colour. For grease on silks, rub the composition on dry, let it remain five minutes, then take a clothes brush and brush it off, and it will be found to have removed the stains. For grease in woollen cloths, spread the composition on the place with a piece of woollen cloth and cold water, when dry rub it off and it will remove the grease or stain. For pitch or tar, use hot water instead of cold, as that prevents the nap coming off the cloth. Here it is. Squares of grease removing composition, never known to fail, only a penny each.”
The Street Seller of Birds’ Nests. “I am a seller of birds’-nesties, snakes, slow-worms, adders, “effets” – lizards is their common name – hedgehogs (for killing black beetles), frogs (for the French – they eats ’em), and snails (for birds) – that’s all I sell in the Summertime. In the Winter, I get all kinds of of wild flowers and roots, primroses, buttercups and daisies, and snowdrops, and “backing” off trees (“backing,” it’s called, because it’s used to put at the back of nosegays, it’s got off yew trees, and is the green yew fern). The birds’ nests I get from a penny to threepence a piece for. I never have young birds, I can never sell ’em, you see the young things generally die of cramp before you can get rid of them. I gets most of my eggs from Witham and Chelmsford in Essex. I know more about them parts than anybody else, being used to go after moss for Mr Butler, of the herb shop in Covent Garden. I go out bird nesting three times a week. I’m away a day and two nights. I start between one or two in the morning and walk all night. Oftentimes, I wouldn’t take ’em if it wasn’t for the want of the victuals, it seems such a pity to disturb ’em after they made their little bits of places. Bats I never take myself – I can’t get over ’em. If I has an order of bats, I buys ’em off boys.”
The Street-Seller of Dogs. “There’s one advantage in my trade, we always has to do with the principals. There’s never a lady would let her favouritist maid choose her dog for her. Many of ’em, I know dotes on a nice spaniel. Yes, and I’ve known gentleman buy dogs for their misses. I might be sent on with them and if it was a two guinea dog or so, I was told never to give a hint of the price to the servant or anybody. I know why. It’s easy for a gentleman that wants to please a lady, and not to lay out any great matter of tin, to say that what had really cost him two guineas, cost him twenty.”
Images copyright © Bishopsgate Institute
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John Thomson’s Street Life in London
Aunt Busy Bee’s New London Cries
Marcellus Laroon’s Cries of London
More John Player’s Cries of London
William Nicholson’s London Types
Francis Wheatley’s Cries of London
John Thomas Smith’s Vagabondiana of 1817
Thomas Rowlandson’s Lower Orders
Malarky in Spitalfields
We have had a lot of Malarky in Spitalfields recently. It started up in Hackney, where I first saw Malarky, but then I spotted Malarky in Whitechapel. Next, Malarky was in Brick Lane and a moment later in Redchurch St and, the other morning, Malarky in Hanbury St too. These days, I am surrounded by Malarky. At every corner that I turn, I see all kinds of Malarky. Malarky is everywhere in Spitalfields now!
Walking the streets of Spitalfields daily – a veritable Sistine Chapel of Street Art – I am constantly aware of the ever-changing gallery, as rival artists put up their latest works in the hope of drawing popular attention. Among the members of this random academy, many painters strain for significance with elaborately contrived works that might equally be seen inside an art gallery. But then along comes Malarky, a Street Artist from Barcelona, with joyful paintings that have brought the surreal revelry of a Catalan carnival to these East End streets as an exuberant compensation for this feeble Summer.
In common with the work of Ben Eine, these are happy paintings that lift the atmosphere of the street, and in common with fellow Catalan Joan Miro, Malarky has his own vocabulary of brightly coloured creatures. There is a fox and a cat, a chick with no legs, a pear that drives a car and a robot with light bulbs for eyes. These characters are shape-shifting all over Spitalfields now, with or without limbs, with variable numbers of eyes and decorated with different patterns and textures.
Most impressive is the vibrant mural in Redchurch St – a frieze of fifty foot in length – that portrays a parade of Malarky’s freaks with big carnival heads, and their little stripy legs visible, running along underneath. With uncanny prescience, this painting completed in July is entitled the Malarkistani Riots – “reports of wild beasts everywhere and looting of vintage furniture shops and high end boutiques.” Yet just in case anyone should find these sprites and bogles threatening, Malarky emphasises, “they’re not angry, they’re just too friendly.”
In Brick Lane
In Whitechapel
In Sclater St
In Brick Lane
In Hanbury St
In Brick Lane
In Redchurch St
In Whitechapel
In Brick Lane
In Whitechapel
In Brick Lane
In Redchurch St
In Redchurch St
Click to enlarge the Redchurch St frieze
In Redchurch St
In Hanbury St
In Hanbury St
In Hanbury St
You may like to follow Malarky’s blog and see his flickr pictures,
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Irene & Ivan Kingsley, Market Traders
Irene Kingsley, Herbert House, Spitalfields 1957
Although it may not be apparent to the casual visitor, Middlesex St is the boundary between the Borough of Tower Hamlets and the City of London. It is a distinction of great significance to residents of this particular neighbourhood, because – as Irene Kingsley, who has lived here her whole life, put it to me with succinct humour – “When you are in the gutter, you are in Tower Hamlets but when you are on the pavement, you are in the City.”
“I live in the City now, but I spent most of my life in Tower Hamlets.” she added as a qualification, just in case I should take her quip in the wrong spirit. Although Irene has ascended to the lofty heights of a flat in Petticoat Tower on the City side of Middlesex St, she was not bragging that she had gone up in the world, but rather admitting that her heart remained back on the other side of the street where she started out. And when I went to visit her and her husband Ivan, I understood the difference at once, as I climbing the steps from the shabby Petticoat Lane Market into the well-tended courtyard garden of Petticoat Tower, quite a contrast to comparable developments in Tower Hamlets.
In the hallway of their flat on the seventeen floor more plants flourished, these were tended by the Kingsleys. I had only a moment to contemplate them before Ivan appeared to hustle me through the modest yet comfortable flat to the living room where Irene was waiting. Then, as I entered, my eyes were drawn by the yawning chasm of the view over the City from their window. “Everyone goes straight for the view!” Irene declared, exchanging a knowing smile with Ivan. “We used to be able to see the Tower of London, until they built that,” she said, indicating a blue glass block. “And we could see the Monument, before the Gherkin went up,” said Ivan, pointing in the other direction. With such an astonishing prospect, I could understand how anyone might get a little proprietorial.
“We’ve seen a lot of changes in Petticoat Lane.” Irene admitted to me as we sat down, and exchanging another a glance with Ivan which was the cue for him to serve tea and biscuits. I knew this was the beginning of her story.
“I was born in Brune House in Toynbee St. My father was a bus conductor and my mother was a seamstress.” she explained, “My grandfather was a cobbler in Artillery Passage and my grandmother had a tea stall in Leyden St, she had seven daughters and they all worked with her, and as time went on all the daughters had their own stalls and they were passed down to grandchildren. I left school at fifteen to work in the office of a clothing factory in Golding St, near Cable St. Until I was fifteen, I lived at Brune House, then I to moved to Herbert House nearby to live with my aunt, she had a daughter of her own and she took me in because I lost my mother. She treated me just like a mother, she took over as my mother.
In 1956 I went to Los Angeles. I took the Queen Mary to New York and then I went by plane from New York to Los Angeles. I worked in the office of an insurance company and I loved it there but I was very homesick, so after a year I came back to pick up the pieces. I had various office jobs and I enjoyed travelling with girlfriends but I never settled down. When I turned fifty, I decided to go into the market selling baby clothes and that’s where I met my husband…”
At this point Ivan and Irene exchanged big smiles, because this was the part where it became a shared narrative.
“We both started out as casual traders,” continued Irene, still looking at Ivan and saying “casual traders,” as if it were a term of endearment, “You had to put your name down on the list and wait around until there were available pitches and it just happened that while we were waiting we used to go to a cafe together. Then the old lady at the stall next to us, she had a granddaughter and we were both invited to the Bell for a celebration and we haven’t look back since!
This was the moment when Ivan took over.“I am not an East End boy,” he announced, “though until I was seven I lived on Underwood St in Spitalfields and from there we moved to Ford Sq in Whitechapel, until in 1940 when we moved to Stoke Newington which in those days was upmarket. I ran a furniture factory in Newington Green until 1976, when I took a job as milkman and from there I went to work for Conway Trading in Toynbee St. They sold socks and underwear for men, and I learnt about that trade, so when they went bankrupt I put what I had learnt into practice, I used to go up North to the sock makers, buy stock and sell it to the retailers. I even applied for the lease to the Conway Trading shop, but for some reason the council refused me and the place is still empty, thirty-five years later.”
By now, I realised where this was going, because like Irene, the climax of Ivan’s story was becoming a market trader.
“So I decided to start trading in the market.” he said, speaking like a true zealot, “Sundays was brilliant and when I started, even in the week, it was good. It was a wonderful experience because you met so many different kinds of people, all sorts, and, because you were all working in the gutter together, you got to know each other. We were all friends since we were all in the same position. At one point, the council wanted to stop casual traders for nine months, so we went on strike and marched to Bethnal Green Town Hall and demonstrated there. They realised the market could fold and they couldn’t take away the livelihood from seventy people, so from then on we got licences to trade. It was an education, and it was a hard life too, but while you are working you enjoy it.”
Irene and Ivan had stalls side by side and then they combined stalls, unifying their presence in the market, just as their lives became intertwined in marriage. “I retired from the market three and a half years ago when my husband was seventy-five and I was seventy-two, so we feel we’ve done enough.” explained Irene clasping her hands in satisfaction. Yet both acknowledge that trading in the Petticoat Lane Market was a highlight of their existence, a source of livelihood, a social education and a romantic adventure too, which all goes to prove that sometimes the gutter can be a better place to be than the pavement.
Irene & Ivan Kingsley in their flat in Petticoat Tower.
Irene at Canon Barnett School, 1947 – she is the sixth from the left in the back row.
Ivan (centre) as a young man on Hythe Beach with his family.
Irene (left) at Riccione Beach in 1970 with her friends Phyllis Gee, Stella Spanjar and Celina Martin.
Ivan returns to Conway Trading on Toynbee St where he worked in the seventies. Ivan tried to lease it from the council thirty-five years ago but they refused and it has been empty ever since.
Irene & Ivan walk through Petticoat Lane Market, in the shadow of Petticoat Tower.
Looking towards the City from Irene & Ivan’s flat in Petticoat Tower.
Photographs copyright © Jeremy Freedman
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The Stepney School Strike of 1971
Forty years ago this Summer, eight hundred pupils went on strike in Stepney, demanding that their teacher, Chris Searle, be reinstated after the school fired him for publishing a book of their poetry. At a time of unrest, following strikes by postmen and dustmen, the children’s strike became national headline news and they received universal support in the press for their protest.
More than two years later, after the parents, the Inner London Education Authority, the National Union of Teachers, and even Margaret Thatcher, then Education Secretary, came out in favour of Chris Searle, he got his job back and the children were vindicated. And the book of verse, entitled “Stepney Words” sold more than fifteen thousand copies, with the poems published in newspapers, and broadcast on television and read at the Albert Hall. It was an inspirational moment that revealed the liberating power of poetry as a profound expression of the truth of human experience.
Many of those school children – in their fifties now – still recall the event with great affection as a formative moment that changed their lives forever, and so when Chris Searle, the twenty-four-year-old student teacher of 1971 returned to the East End to recall that cathartic Summer and meet some of his former pupils, it was an understandably emotional occasion. And I was lucky enough to be there to hear what he had to say.
I grew up in the fifties and sixties, failed the eleven plus and I hated any kind of divisiveness in education, I saw hundreds of my mates just pushed out into menial jobs. So I got into a Libertarian frame of mind and became involved in Socialist politics. I was in the Caribbean at the time of the Black Power uprisings, so I had some fairly strong ideas about power and education. Sir John Cass Foundation & Redcoat School in Stepney was grim. It was a so-called Christian School and many of the teachers were priests, yet I remember one used to walk round with a cape and cane like something out of Dickens.
The ways of the school contrasted harshly with the vitality and verve of the students. As drama teacher, I used to do play readings but I found they responded better to poetry, and I was reading William Blake and Isaac Rosenberg to them, both London poets who took inspiration from the streets. So I took the pupils out onto the street and asked them to write about what they saw, and the poems these eleven-year-olds wrote were so beautiful, I was stunned and I thought they should be published. Blake and Rosenberg were published, why not these young writers? We asked the school governors but they said the poems were too gloomy, so they forbade us to publish them.
I showed the poems to Trevor Huddleston, the Bishop of Stepney, and he loved them. And it became evident that there was a duality in the church, because the chairman of the school governors who was a priest said to me, ‘“Don’t you realise these are fallen children?” in other words, they were of the devil. But Trevor Huddleston read the poems and then, with a profound look, said, “These children are the children of God.” So I should have realised there was going to be a bit of a battle.
There was even a suggestion that I had written the poems myself, but though I am a poet, I could not have written anything as powerful as these children had done. Once it was published, the sequence of events was swift, I was suspended and eight hundred children went on strike the next day, standing outside in the rain and refusing to go inside the school. I didn’t know they were going to go on strike, but the day before they were very secretive and I realised something was up, though I didn’t know what it was.
I didn’t have an easy time as a teacher, it was sometimes difficult to get their interest, and I had bad days and I had good days, and sometimes I had wonderful days. Looking back, it was the energy, and vitality, and extraordinary sense of humour of the children that got you through the day. And if, as a teacher, you could set these kids free, then you really did begin to enjoy the days. It gave me the impetus to remain a teacher for the rest of my life.
I tried to get the kids to go back into the school.
Tony Harcup, a former pupil of Chris Searle’s and now senior lecturer in Journalism at Sheffield University, spoke for many when he admitted, “It was one of the proudest days of my life, it taught me that you can make a stand. It was about dignified mutual respect. He didn’t expect the worst of us, he believed everyone could produce work of value. He opened your eyes to the world.”
During the two years Chris was waiting to be reinstated at the school, he founded a group of writers in the basement of St George’s Town Hall in Cable St. Students who had their work published in “Stepney Words” were able to continue their writing there, thinking of themselves as writers now rather than pupils. People of different ages came to join them, especially pensioners, and they used the money from “Stepney Words” to publish other works, beginning with the poetry of Stephen Hicks, the boxer poet, who lived near the school and had been befriended by many of children.
“Stepney Words” became the catalyst for an entire movement of community publishing in this country, and many involved went on to become writers or work in related professions.“The power to write, the power to create, and the power of the imagination, these are the fundamentals to achieve a satisfied life,” said Chris, speaking from the heart, “and when you look back today at the lives of those in the Basement Writers, you can see the proof of that.”
The story of the Stepney school strike reveals what happens when a single individual is able to unlock the creative potential of a group of people, who might otherwise be considered to be without prospects, and it also reminds us of all the human possibility that for the most part, remains untapped. ” I just want to thank the young people that stood up for me” declared Chris Searle with humility, thinking back over his life and recalling his experiences in Stepney, “How could you not be optimistic about youth when you were faced with that?”
Returning to the East End forty years after the school strike, teacher Chris Searle reads one of the original poems from Stepney Words,”Let it Flow, Joe.”, with some of his former pupils.
A current exhibition at the Whitechapel Gallery, entitled This is Whitechapel contains publications by the Basement Writers and it runs until September 4th.
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At Sweetings
It is no wonder this elegant gentleman of seventy-eight years old looks so serene – the picture of good health and contented refinement – he is Richard Barfoot, the noble proprietor of Sweetings restaurant in the City of London, my favourite place to eat fish for lunch. For Mr Barfoot, it is the culmination of a lifetime in the fish business to preside here at this temple of seafood. Immaculately shaved, in a well-cut suit with discreet cuff links and his Sweetings tie, he is a dignified figure who might present an austere impression if it were not for the evident twinkle in his eyes, indicative of the sheer pleasure it gives him to be here.
Opened in 1890, and unchanged today, Sweetings is a marvel. Occupying a triangular corner site, customers perch at counters in an interior lined with old panelling, mosaic, marble and mirrors, where the very finest fresh fish are served in season and oysters are a speciality. Over all these years, certain systems have been contrived which permit this operation to function with ease in its unusual space. On your right, is the marble slab where gleaming fresh salmon and lobsters are displayed and, on your left, is the first of several counters covered in plain white cloths and adorned with attractive old cutlery shining in the sunlight, each one supervised by a waitress standing behind and commanding her pitch with personal style and repartee to add to this lively theatre.
Yet before I ventured into the restaurant and took my eagerly anticipated place at a counter, I was able to enjoy the privilege of a quiet word with the venerable Mr Barfoot,who revealed himself to be a precise and emotional speaker, alive to the subtle ironies of life.
I love Sweetings, which I bought from the wife of my very best friend, Graham Needham, who, unfortunately, after a very successful spell running it from 1979, died in 1993. His wife took over ownership and she sold it to me in 2000. So here we are, really. It’s absolutely fantastic, I am the fifth owner in its history and we are an institution in the City of London. We’ve gone through two World Wars and several financial upsets that life has thrown at us, but because of our reputation customers have stayed loyal to Sweetings.
For our customers, it’s like school dinners, they sit next to each other during lunch, and most of them know each other and chat while they’re eating. It is a place which is loved by all in the City. I understood the institution, having come here since 1975 – never realising it would ever be mine – but since its mine I intend that it should stay in my family for the next hundred years so that the tradition of Sweeting can be maintained as, thankfully, I have tried to do.
I’m a fish merchant by trade, in the Billingsgate Market. I’ve been in the business since 1951, I think I’m celebrating sixy-one years in it this year, if you can call it celebrating. I’ve done it since I left school at fifteen and got a job with Macfisheries, in those days the biggest fishmonger with five hundred shops across the country and two fleets of trawlers. I worked in Leadenhall Market until the age of eighteen and did all sorts of jobs in the fish industry specialising in selling and management. This lasted until 1980 when I started out for myself and created Barfoot Ltd, a wholesale fish distribution centre in Rotherhithe where we did fish preparation for hotels. Then in 2000 when my son joined the company, I bought Sweetings restaurant and decided to run it myself.
I love it, to be involved in the day to day running and to meet old friends and old customers who appear on a regular basis, and generally to soak up the atmosphere of the place. To be honest, I’d had so many lunches and get togethers here that I felt I knew the place very well, therefore it was no surprise to me that I am able to take on the responsibility with so much ease, having been party to the place for twenty-five years already…
By now the lunchtime rush had begun and, awaiting their places, customers were gathering at the bar like wading birds at a lake.“No bookings, no coffees,” exclaimed Mr Barfoot, brimful with cheer, and observing my wonder at how they keep the crowds moving. “When I brought in credit card machines it was big news, “Sweetings have succumbed to modern day living!”‘ he jeered in amusement at his own fearless iconoclasm, “but it did stop the queue at the Halifax cash machine across the road.”
I find it such a treat to perch at the counter at Sweetings, feeling at the very centre of the world, and perusing the long bill of fare in the daylight reflected from the mirrors on either side, where the specials of the day are written in whitewash upon the glass. These same mirrors are used strategically by the staff to send messages between them, so that you might wonder how the orders get passed around – if you were not absorbed in the quaint steel tankards that drinks are served in, and wondering if you are occupying the same seat and seeing the same view as Toulouse Lautrec or Francis Bacon, who both came here in past days.
The cuisine at Sweetings is the model of simplicity with fish grilled or fried or poached, and accompanied by fresh vegetables – only around the corners of the menu are the subtlest inflections that reveal the origins of Head Chef Carlos Vasquez in Galicia. “My mother worked in the fishmarket at Arteixo,” he admitted to me later, when I made a foray into the kitchen,“She brought home all the different kinds of fish, and taught me how to prepare and cook them.”
When your fish arrives, you scrutinise it like a scientist, because the stool and counter configuration brings you closer to your plate than sitting at a table. It looks perfect and it tastes good, and there you are in your private moment of contemplation with your fish, curiously peaceful in the midst of the clattering drama of lunch at Sweetings, in this glinting prism of glass, with the City traffic roaring past outside.
Jodie Winterflood
Begonia Martinez
Chaxi Lujan & Paula Martinez
Georgina Prado
Carlos Vasquez, Head Chef
At St Mary’s Secret Garden
St Mary’s Secret Garden is situated in a quiet back street in Shoreditch and it comes as a welcome surprise to discover this verdant enclave amongst the dense maze of streets and housing that surround it. Yet two hundred years ago, this area North of Old St was the preserve of market gardens and nurseries, before the expansion of the city rendered what was once commonplace as the exception.
In 1986, some volunteers cultivated plants upon a piece of wasteground and, twenty-five years later, there are well-established trees and a density of luxuriant growth that propose a convincingly leafy grove worthy of being described as a secret garden. You walk through the gate and you leave the realm of concrete and enter the realm of plants. Here nature is not something to be eradicated but is encouraged, where the enclosing trees induce a state of calm and urban anxieties retreat.
One overcast August morning, with fine rain blowing in the wind, I walked over to spend a morning at this Shoreditch Eden. I followed a path through an overarching stand of hazels with beehives in a line, leading round to the greenhouse and an old market barrow used to display plants for sale, while beyond this lay a vegetable garden organised in raised beds and a peaceful herb garden with a huge bay tree at the centre, with plants selected for their scent and texture.
Once you have made this journey you are at the centre of St Mary’s Secret Garden, and when I sat here alone to contemplate the peace, an hour passed before I realised it. Clearly it is not just me that finds gardens therapeutic because, as well being open to the public, St Mary’s runs gardening sessions for people with disabilities of all kinds. Horticultural therapy is the smart name for it.
“I saw an ad in the Hackney Gazette for volunteers to come and clear this place up, it had been neglected” explained Ita Keown who retired from teaching in 1996, “I started volunteering then and I’ve been coming back ever since.” Ita was keen to tell me about a group she supervises who come each Thursday afternoon from the nearby Mildmay Hospital. “As they live in the hospital, they are very keen to be outside and do some digging.” she confided, “Many are from African or Afro-Caribbean or Indian backgrounds, and they know about growing food and are keen to put those skills to use. In the Autumn, we make chutneys with green tomatoes, pumpkin and beetroots. In the Winter, we work in the greenhouse planting bulbs for selling, and packing seeds in envelopes, and we make lavender bags. For these people, it can be their only opportunity to leave the hospital and it’s the most exciting day of the week for them.”
Yet before this group arrived, I joined a small club of people with mental disability who were there for the morning, planting a new garden that is approaching completion. Here I met Israel Forrest, an enthusiastic gardener who has been coming from Donnington each Tuesday and Thursday for the past six years and Victoria Fellows, an occupational therapy student on a Summer placement, and we all sat and chatted in the rain, while planting Scabious in a shingle bank. Others wheeled barrows of gravel around and some laid brick edgings and everybody was placidly occupied, working as equals and sharing the peaceful camaraderie of gardening.
Anyone can come to St Mary’s Secret Garden to find solace. You can volunteer, take gardening courses, rent space to grow vegetables, and buy plants and seeds cheaply. Or you can simply escape the city streets to sit and dream surrounded by the green leaves – as I did – enjoying horticultural therapy.
Victoria Fellows and Israel Forrest planting Scabious.
The garden where I lost an hour.
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Heather Stevens, Head Gardener at the Geffrye Museum
