At Frying Pan Alley with Jack London
The twenty-six year old American novelist Jack London came to report upon the Coronation of Edward VII in the Summer of 1902, but when he arrived he chose instead to spend seven weeks exploring the East End and wrote an account published as “The People of the Abyss.” London grew up in poverty in San Francisco and worked in all kinds of menial jobs whilst becoming a writer, allying himself with the lowest of the low, tramping across America and being imprisoned as vagrant before he was able to make a living from his writing. Yet although he won wealth and success, his own experience gave him a personal understanding of what it meant to struggle and he never lost his passion to tell the stories of the lives of the poor.
One day in August 1902, walking down the Mile End Rd with a sweatshop shoemaker – “a man of twenty-eight who eked out a precarious existence in a sweating den” – Jack London accepted his invitation to visit the workplace in question and see the conditions for himself.
Passing Leman St, we cut off to the left into Spitalfields, and dived into Frying Pan Alley. A swarm of children cluttered the slimy pavement, for all the world like tadpoles just turned frogs on the bottom of a dry pond. In a narrow doorway, so narrow that perforce we stepped over her, sat a woman with a young babe, nursing at her breasts grossly naked and libelling all the sacredness of motherhood. In the black and narrow hall behind her, we waded through a mess of young life, and essayed an even narrower and fouler stairway. Up we went, three flights, each landing two feet by three in area, and heaped with filth and refuse.
There were seven rooms in this abomination called a house. In six of the rooms, twenty-odd people, of both sexes and all ages, cooked, ate, slept and worked. In size the rooms averaged eight feet by eight, or possibly nine. The seventh room we entered. It was a den in which five men “sweated.” It was seven feet wide by eight long, and the table at which the work was performed took up the major portion of the space. On this table were five lasts, and there was barely room for the men to stand to their work, for the rest of the space was heaped with cardboard, leather, bundles of shoe uppers, and a miscellaneous assortment of materials used in attaching the uppers of shoes to their soles.
In the adjoining room lived a woman and six children. In another vile hole lived a widow, with an only son of sixteen who was dying of consumption. The woman hawked sweetmeats on the street, I was told, and more often failed than not to supply her son with the three quarts of milk that he daily required. Further, this son, weak and dying, did not taste meat oftener than once a week, and the kind and quality of this meat cannot possibly be imagined by people who have never watched human swine eat.
“The way ‘e coughs is somethin’ terrible,” volunteered my sweated friend, referring to the dying boy. “We ‘ear ‘im ‘ere, while we’re workin’, an’ it’s terrible, I say, terrible!” And, what of the coughing and the sweetmeats, I found another menace added to the hostile environment of the children of the slum.
My sweated friend, when work was to be had, toiled with four other men, in his eight-by-seven room. In the Winter, a lamp burned nearly all the day and added its fumes to the over-loaded air, which was breathed, and breathed, and breathed again.
In good times, when there was a rush of work, this man told me that he could earn as high as “thirty bob a week,” – Thirty shillings! “But it’s only the best of us can do it,” he qualified. “An’ then we can work twelve, thirteen and fourteen hours a day, just as fast as we can. An’ you should see us sweat! Just running from us! If you could see us it’d dazzle your eyes – tacks flyin’ out of mouth like from a machine. Look at my mouth.”
I looked. The teeth were worn down by the constant friction of the metallic brads, while they were coal black and rotten.“I clean my teeth,” he added, “else they’d be worse.”
After he told me that the workers had to furnish their own tools, brads, “grindery,” cardboard, rent, light, and what not, it was plain that his thirty bob was a diminishing quantity.
“But how long does the rush season last, in which you receive this high wage of thirty bob?” I asked. “Four months,” was the answer, and for the rest of the year, he informed me, they average from “half a quid,” to “a quid” a week. The present week was half gone and he had earned four bob. And yet I was given to understand that this was one of the better grades of sweating.
I looked out of the window, which should have commanded the backyards of the neighbouring buildings. But there were no backyards, or rather they were covered with one-storey hovels, cowsheds in which people lived. The roofs of these hovels were covered with deposits of filth, in some places a couple of feet deep – the contributions from the back windows of the second and third storeys. I could make out meat and fish bones, garbage, pestilential rags, old boots, broken earthenware, and all the general refuse of the human sty.
“This is the last year of this trade, they’re getting machines to do away with us,” said the seated one mournfully, as we stepped over the young woman with the breasts grossly naked and waded anew through the cheap young life.
If Jack London returned he would find Frying Pan Alley unrecognisable now, with upmarket food chains in the snazzy Nido student tower on one side and the new Raven Row art gallery on the other. No doubt he would be pleased to see that the squalor and filth he witnessed here have been consigned to history.
At the time of Jack London’s visit in 1902, the population of the East End was three times what it is today, yet he would not have wander too far on his return visit to discover that overcrowded housing and child poverty persist over a century later. He would not be very happy about that. And although he would be delighted that sweatshops such as he described have gone from East London – even if only within living memory – yet he I think he would be disappointed to learn that manufacturing under comparable conditions still exists on the other side of the world and their products are on sale throughout the streets of our modern capital.
“I went down into the under-world with an attitude of mind that may be best likened to that of an explorer,” wrote Jack London of his researches in that long ago Summer. In conclusion to “People of the Abyss,” he explored questions raised by his East End sojourn. “If Civilisation has increased the producing power of the average man,” he wrote,“why has it not bettered the lot of the average man?” It is a question that, in various forms, has been debated ever since.
Frying Pan Alley, 1912, by C. A. Mathew
Frying Pan Alley, nineteen seventies.
Frying Pan Alley, 2010
Archive photographs copyright © Bishopsgate Institute
You might also like to read about Jack London at Itchy Park
Richard & Cosmo Wise’s Collection
Cosmo Wise
Richard & Cosmo Wise have the most beautiful collection of old clothes I have ever seen, a momentous stash filling three huge studios in the rambling building in Hackney Wick where they live and work, surrounded at every corner with piles and rails of historic apparel. Father & son have devoted their lives to seeking specimens of extravagantly worn-out work garments – usually pre-1930 and some as old as 1880 – in rural France and Japan. These remarkable raiments, each with its story to tell, are gathered together in this afterlife for tired clothing where they can be appreciated and cared for. If only they could speak and tell their tales, what a wonderful party it would be.
Yet although Richard & Cosmo are both knowledgeable about the history of these pieces and passionately respectful of the skill and technique displayed in their making, the intention is not recreation of another era but to look forward – finding contemporary ways to wear these old clothes and also to create new clothes inspired by their aesthetic. Darning and patching with care, following the painstaking methods which have given these clothes such longevity, and sometimes restructuring, when garments have warped and lost their shape, it is possible for this attire to have a second life. And now, using sources of rare old fabric, Richard & Cosmo are created limited numbers of “new” garments, closely based upon the patterns of their treasured discoveries, sold under their label “De Rien.”
Cosmo & Richard dress entirely in clothes from their collection, putting them together with such bravura that it creates an intoxicating prospect, stylish yet strangely liberating from all the anxieties of fashion too. As rock star Adam Ant exclaimed, when he met Cosmo for the first time – “I want to look like him!’
On my recent visit to their magical emporium of garb, Cosmo brought out some of his favourites to show me, and here you can see for yourself and learn more of the discreet appeal of these charismatic old rags.
A double-breasted blue moleskin French work jacket from the late nineteenth century, still with its original metal buttons. “This is very rare thing,” explained Cosmo in awe. Blue jackets were for factory workers and black jackets were for agricultural workers.
Reverse of the jacket above. As mass production developed through the twentieth century, the styles become boxier, and the subtleties and fit were lost. In the nineteenth century, work jackets were more tailored. The back of this one has four panels and sophisticated curved seams, which fit the jacket to the rib cage and back of the wearer.
A faded pair of late nineteenth century striped trousers with patching and darning from that time. “No-one darns like the French!” Cosmo exclaimed in sheer admiration. The patches are an interesting collection of different stripes that compliment – herringbones and cables. “Each year the textile companies competed to bring out new stripes to delight the customers.”
A woman’s silk blouse of around 1900 from Northern France. “Nice, simple and classic.”
A natural indigo dyed linen work jacket from the period between 1880 and 1900, faded almost to green. Indigo dye came from the East and was very expensive, so when a synthetic version was produced around 1900, it completely died out. “For every thousand workwear jackets you go through, you find one of these, plain, simple and well-proportioned.”
A patched coat of pre-nineteen thirties, from Normandy. “This is an incredibly made jacket,” explained Cosmo, “I love the patching, it’s an inspiration to us, and it makes me think of Comme des Garçons. When these sorts of fine old wool fade, the colours are marvellous.”
“This is an example of our trademark stuff.” said Cosmo of this moleskin work jacket from between the wars, “We have sold a lot of these over the years. When we first put them on sale, people laughed at us, but then style leaders bought them. This is impossible to source now.” The extreme fading of this garments suggests it may be from the South of France. “You get twenty different hues and incredible stitching. These clothes do become art, but I like the idea of these museum pieces being worn.”
A sturdy cotton corduroy hunting jacket from the first decades of the twentieth century. “After the revolution, the land was open to everybody so the French have a tradition of working class hunting clothes which we don’t have.” explained Cosmo, “We only have poachers.”
A young boy’s homemade hunting jacket of pre-1920,with four pockets, and the striped lining of mattress ticking contains a larger pocket.
This nineteen forties jacket is a piece from the famous haul at Creve Coeur, where the largest owner of workwear in France buried his entire stock in an underground vault to hide it from tax man after the war, and it stayed there for thirty years. A factory made garment but of high quality fabric, and it has hessian fusing and horsehair in its structure.
These panel-patched trousers made of old French denim were described by Cosmo as “an archetype of peasant clothing.” This high waisted pair made for a woman or a child are from the late forties/early fifties when the influence of American workwear was growing, visible in the use of Levis-style rivets and leather re-inforcing of pockets. “Until the nineteen thirties, French workwear was copied all over the world, and then it changed and they all started copied America.” Cosmo informed me, with a hint of regret at the passing of European dominance in the design of utilitarian clothing.
The reverse of the trousers above. The American influence is apparent in the use of zips in the pockets.
From the late thirties or early forties, this is a very early zip-up cardigan in patriotic French colours. “Up until the thirties, very little changed but then mass-produced fashion appeared and people could look like something other than their professions. Clothes became less functional and the quality slipped. It became more throw away, and clothes weren’t maintained and repaired as they once were when things were patched up over generations. In fact, these items rarely survive because they were poorly made compared with earlier clothes.”
Cosmo’s chair was created by Marisa de la Lopez
Richard Wise wears a natural indigo dyed jacket by De Rien.
Garment photographs copyright © Sofiane Boukhari
You can find Richard & Cosmo Wise in the Spitalfields Antiques Market every Thursday. Cosmo is also showing clothes at the Brimfield Market in Boston, USA on 6th-10th September and on 11th September at the Rosebowl in Los Angeles.
For sales enquiries and further information email cosmo@derien.co.uk
You might like to read my original feature about Richard & Cosmo Wise, Rag Dealers.
Spitalfields Antiques Market 25
This is Chris Ford in a state of high excitement, as you can tell from his cheerful posture and jaunty placing of his hands in his pockets. “I used to work in A&E at the Royal London Hospital, but this is much more fun!” he admitted to me breathlessly on his first day as a trader at the market – an escapade that constitutes a “day off” from his chosen profession of nursing. “I think the other dealers smelled fresh blood, they were going through our boxes before we’d even had time to unpack.” he whispered, widening his eyes in thrilled amazement, “So we were able to make big chunk of money at the beginning and everything since has been a bonus.” Coming to the market is an unexpected adventure for Chris.“My partner inherited an entire house full of antiques and we didn’t know what to do with it,” he revealed. Though, in spite of the day’s success, I doubt if he will be forsaking A&E just yet. “Somehow, I don’t think this will bring home the bacon,” Chris replied with a shrug, when I asked if he was considering a career change.
This is Danny Hamilton & Vicky Gibson, also pictured on their first day’s trading, enjoying an auspicious start in the crowded market hall filled with those escaping the Summer downpour. “It’s been really good,” Danny admitted to me, rubbing his hands in satisfaction,“There is a real buzz in here today.” Danny brought a range of things to test the market – from a fine piece of Staffordshire to a nicely painted Poole plate, and a selection of the old silverware that is his personal speciality. “I grew up with antiques because my father used to buy them to furnish the old cottage we lived in,” explained Danny, who started dealing in silver two years ago. Like many in this market, Danny began as a collector and then started trading. By contrast, “I’m just here to learn what I can,” proposed Vicky modestly. Yet, although she claimed she was only there to offer moral support to Danny, the one item she had on the stall was sold. “I bought it yesterday and sold it today, “ she announced in triumph, “doubled my money!” So I think we may conclude this pair are here to stay.
This is the softly spoken and erudite Eugene Tiernan, an antique dealer of thirty-two years experience. “My mother was a dealer in Ireland,” he began, as a conversation opener, whilst I took my perch on the vacant stool beside him.“I have always operated at the decorative end of the market, and I have an encyclopaedic knowledge of the decorative arts of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries,” Eugene told me, as if that was something quite commonplace, adding for interest’s sake “- the style of how we live today was really decided in the early nineteenth century at the time of the Prince Regent.” There is no doubt that Eugene brings a touch of class to the market, though he would blush if you were to compliment him on his educated loquacity. “I don’t stall any place other than Spitalfields Market,” he confided to me, as if he were revealing a priceless secret, “I believe in it because it has an incredible cross-section of people with great knowledge and I know a new look will emerge out of this market.” Now that Eugene has spoken, it is only a matter of time.
This dignified gentleman is Robert Russell, who got up at quarter to four in the morning to come here from Kent. “This is a side interest,” Robert admitted to me discreetly, which made his early rising even more impressive. “If I was doing this to make a living, I’d be struggling.” he added, catching my eye and talking plainly from experience, before conjuring a picture of his crowded existence in the country,“Since I retired from British Airways, I’ve got nearly ten acres of ground which keeps me busy. You’d think that if I was retired, I have all the time in the world but it doesn’t work that way. I’m not objecting, I’m happy to be busy and I have plenty of animals – five geese, two rare breed sheep, a cat, and two dogs looking for a walk.” Robert’s day out in the market may constitute a break from his rural menagerie, yet he always comes up with plenty of interesting new finds – like the nineteen seventies manually operated mixing desk and the boxes of magic lantern slides, both examples of equally arcane technology today.
This is Shep, an adventurous Yorkshireman, who started in markets on the other side of the world and now trades in Stoke Newington and Wimbledon as well as Spitalfields. “I lived in Sydney for a while, working in house clearance, and I began running a stall.” he recalled, “I am really enjoying the buying and selling, I just hate packing up at the end of every day!” Yet Shep had much less to pack away than he brought, because like many others that week, his trading had been good. “Every week I learn a bit more and every week I make a bit more money,” he confided, “I would like to take this further, but it’s a question of whether I can sustain it. I’d like to build it up and have a shop one day, that’s my dream.”
Photographs copyright © Jeremy Freedman
Bruno Besagni, Reproduction Artist
This is Bruno Besagni, pictured in the nineteen fifties, with one of the finely painted casts that he made in his factory, Bruno’s, utilising the expertise that he first acquired in Clerkenwell at the age of fourteen. Bruno still has a similar lamp in his living room today and when I admired it, he gestured aloft with whimsical delight, directing my gaze overhead and there, overarching everything, was a flamboyant ceiling rose of acanthus leaves that he also made, using one frond he retrieved from broken plasterwork in an old hotel.
Moulding and painting statues became Bruno’s life, pursuing a traditional Italian technique which has its origins in religious art. In fact, alongside his career making lamps and figurines for sale, Bruno has made and repaired devotional statues for churches, including the painted effigy of St Mary of Mount Carmel that is carried in the Italian Parade in Clerkenwell each year. There is a certain kind of magic, conjuring such animated figures out of base materials, painted in lifelike colours and highlighted with gold, and it is a magic that has sustained Bruno throughout a long career.
Being Italian, my mother said, “You’ve got to go and work in a cafe or a restaurant, at least you’ll eat.” I tried it for a while, but I never got on with it. I got a job as artistic sprayer at the factory in Great Sutton St belonging to Giovanni Pagliai who came from Lucca in Florence where they make all the traditional statues. I took to it at once, I was fairly artistic and all my life I’ve been involved in art. I worked there for a couple of years from fourteen to sixteen, that’s where I met my wife Olive.
When the war began they were all imprisoned. Most of the staff were Italian, and one day a squad car pulled up and arrested everybody. They were “undesirables,” they came under section 28(b) – you were imprisoned but you could have food sent in. As my father was born here, I was a British citizen, so everybody but me got interned. After that, I did all sorts of jobs, chasing money because we were so poor. I should have listened to my mother and gone into the restaurant business.
I was born in 1926 at 48 Kings Cross Rd next to the Police Station, and we moved to Victoria Dwellings on the corner of Clerkenwell Rd in the Italian Quarter, when I was very small. Down “the hill,” everybody ducked and dived, and I had that education, but all I ever wanted to do was to play football and run. We were babies really, sent out to work at fourteen when we left school, earning twelve shillings and sixpence a week, and giving ten bob to your mum. It was a poor wage yet I enjoyed it, there were nine of us in the family then and we were all happy.
I wish I’d gone into the army. I was called up at eighteen, but I couldn’t fight because I had an uncle in the Italian army. It was a very difficult situation for me and – even today – I’m not proud of this. I would have loved to have gone into the army, because I’m a man’s man and I knew I’d have loved it. I worked on a farm instead, at Chepstow with other Conscientious Objectors who were English, and I was disgusted with them, because if they were in Germany, Hitler would have executed them all. They weren’t my cup of tea, they were writers and poets and university types. Being an athlete and a footballer, I joined the Chepstow Football Club and I became their star player. The Chepstow people didn’t want anything to do with us at first, but once I joined the team we got on like a house on fire. I always say, “Have boots, will travel!”
I ran away from there after a couple of years, because I was worried about my mother and the bombs were still dropping on London. They caught up with me and said, “You’ve got to do something.” so I worked in a munitions factory in Ruislip. I was still trying to chase money.
I was signed by Fulham, but footballers got no wages in those days and I couldn’t stand around acting the star when I had no money. The war was coming to an end and somebody said, “I’m going into the statue business,” so we started a little company in Camden Town. We used to open the window for ventilation when we did spray painting, and once the neighbour came round covered in gold paint! For a few years it went fine, but we was becoming villains, we were getting raided for our stock by the police. The purchase tax on items was 125%, so we didn’t have chance – until we learnt that some articles had no tax, like fruit bowls. They weren’t being made yet they were on the invoice! It was our little ploy.
Everything was plaster, we made elephants, dogs and cats. After the war, people had money to spend but nothing to buy so they queued to buy these figurines – all this stuff was rubbish! Then I moved into making statues, I wanted to be more classy and artistic. I called myself a reproduction artist in the end, because I not only cast the statues, I painted them too. I set up on my own, at first on the Caledonian Rd and then in a factory in Stratford, and I made proper statues. I had staff, there were about four of us, and we made Beethoven and Shakespeare. I’ve still got the mould for Shakespeare in my wardrobe, I don’t know why. Cupid, Hermes and Michelangelo’s David were also popular.
I was the second eldest of a family of eleven children, which can be a problem because my mum and dad were still young, and they had only to look at one another and they conceived. When I was eighteen and old enough to know what went on, I said to my dad, “You’ve got to stop. You’ll kill her.” and the doctor told him too, “You’ve got to get condoms and use them.” When he died, I found four thousand condoms in his private cupboard. But I have a lovely family, although we’ve got bad eyesight and heart trouble – I’ve lost three out of eleven. I’m a lucky boy, I’ve still got all my faculties at eighty-six.
Remarkably for one in such advanced years, Bruno still exudes the irrepressible vitality that characterises him in photographs spanning eighty years. It is this brave magnanimous spirit, combined with a passion for football and running, that has carried Bruno Besagni through the ups and down of life with such enviable panache.
Bruno’s mother’s identity card, giving the date of 1919 when she emigrated to Britain from Italy.
Bruno’s father, Guiseppe Besagni, an asphalt layer.
The boys of Back Hill, the centre of the Italian community in Clerkenwell.
Bruno with his sister Lydia who was afflicted with rickets, induced by deficiency in vitamin D.
Bruno in his school football team aged ten – he is second from right in the second row.
Bruno was a keen cyclist in his teens – he is on the right.
Bruno at an Italian Navy Summer Camp in 1937- he is on the left.
Becoming a young man, Bruno stands outside Victoria Dwellings in Clerkenwell with two friends.
Bruno, aged nineteen.
Bruno stands at the centre of the group of Conscientious Objectors at Chepstow.
The Evening Standard reports Bruno signing for Fulham.
Bruno with one of the lamps he made at his factory in the fifties.
A newspaper feature from the seventies, showing Bruno with some of his top-selling casts.
Bruno with an eagle lamp base.
Bruno’s cast factory at Stratford.
Bruno with a herd of casts of horses.
Bruno with one of his statues in his living room.
Bruno Besagni
Bruno & Olive Besagni
New Portraits copyright © Colin O’Brien
You my also like to read about Bruno’s wife
Olive Besagni, Assistant Film Editor
and
An Eastender Speaks Out Against the Riots
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Monday a deputation from the parish of Bethnal Green waited upon Mr Peel to request that some measures might be devised to suppress the dreadful riots and outrages that take place every night in the parish, by a lawless gang of thieves, consisting of five or six hundred. The gang rendezvous in a brick-field at the top of Spicer St, Spitalfields, and out-posts are stationed to give an alarm, should any of the civil power approach, and their cry is “Warhawk,” as a signal for retreat.
On the brick kilns in this field they cook whatever meat and potatoes they plunder from the various shops in the neighbourhood, in the open day and in the face of the shopkeeper. Their outrages have been of the daring kind, there are now no less than five individuals lying in the London Infirmary, without hopes of recovery, that have fallen into the hands of the gang. Within the last fortnight upwards of fifty persons have been robbed, and cruelly beaten, and one of the gang was seen one day last week to produce amongst some of his associates, nearly half-a-hat-full of watches.
Mr Peel gave immediate orders for a detachment of Horse Patrol to be stationed day and night in the neighbourhood, and on Friday morning a party of forty men, to be under the jurisdiction of the Magistrates of Worship St Police Office, were mounted, they are a party of able-bodied men who have held situations in the army, accoutred with cutlasses, pistols, and blunderbusses. They will be in constant communication with forty of the dismounted patrol. The dismounted are divided into parties, and are stationed at the following posts, viz – Cambridge Heath Gate, Mile End Gate, Whitechapel Church, London Apprentice Gate, and near the Regent’s Canal in the Mile End Rd. Both parties are to remain on duty till five o’clock in the morning.
On Friday, being market day at Smithfield, the gang were on the look out for beasts, and we hear that, as early as six in the morning, two bullocks were taken from a drove. On Wednesday, a bullock was rescued from them in the Kingsland Rd, and after being secured in Clement’s barn till the gang had been dispersed, it was conveyed home to its owner, Mr Alexander, in Whitechapel market.
It was reported, that Mr Sykes, the proprietor of the ham and beef shop in Winchester St, Hare St fields, had died on Friday in the London Hospital, of the dreadful injuries he received from the gang, but we are happy to say he is still alive. It seems that Mr Sykes had only set up in business a few days, when about eight o’clock in the evening, about twenty fellows came round his shop, armed with sticks, he suspected they intended an attack, and for security got behind the counter, when the whole gang came in, and seizing a buttock of beef and a ham, ran out of the shop. He endeavoured to prevent them by putting out his arm, when one of them, with a hatchet or hammer, stuck him a tremendous blow which broke it in a dreadful manner, it has been since amputated, and he now lies in a very bad state. The gang then went into a baker’s shop and helped themselves to bread, and afterwards adjourned to the brick-field, and ate the provisions in a very short time.
It would be too tedious to state the numerous outrages that have been committed, but there is reason now to hope, that the establishment of the horse patrol, and the conviction on Thursday of three of them, at the Old Bailey, for attacking and robbing Mr Fuller, will be the means of routing them altogether.
September 24th 1826
Phil Maxwell & Sandra Esqulant, Photographer & Muse
“One day, about fifteen years ago, Sandra took a Hula Hoop and started Hula Hooping on the traffic island in the middle of Commercial St, and, without even thinking about it, I took a picture of her,” recalled Phil Maxwell in amusement, outlining the spontaneous origin of his photographic relationship with Sandra Esqulant, landlady of the Golden Heart since 1979. No-one has taken more photographs in Spitalfields than Phil, becoming the pre-eminent street photographer of the East End, and so it was inevitable that he would turn his camera upon Sandra, whose buoyant, playful nature is a gift to photography.
Once the pub for the Truman Brewery which closed more than twenty years ago, the Golden Heart was kept by Sandra and her husband Dennis together, until he died in 2009 leaving her to continue alone. Sandra has risen to the challenge heroically and, today in Spitalfields, she is among the few who connect us to that earlier time, when the life of the Brewery and the Fruit & Vegetable Market dominated, and the Golden Heart opened at dawn to serve the market porters. As a consequence, she is one who commands such affection among residents of the surrounding streets, that the question “How’s Sandra?” is exchanged as a kind of greeting, and the answer is taken as indicative of the state of things in general in this particular corner of London.
“At first, I knew her only to go in and have a pint, which I didn’t do that often. It was only in later years that I started drinking in the Golden Heart. I’d be completely broke and she’d always lend me twenty quid.” admitted Phil with an uncharacteristic blush,“After the Hula Hoop, she let me take pictures of her anytime. I was photographing her once when she was dancing in the bar and one of the customers told me to stop, and Sandra said, ‘Phil can take pictures of me whenever he pleases, he’s my photographer.'”
We were sitting in Phil’s studio in Greatorex St, in anticipation of the arrival of the great lady for a photo session, and just as Phil began glancing discreetly at his watch, Sandra made her entrance – worthy of a heroine in a musical comedy – bearing cakes and coffees and an abundance of goodwill, and exclaiming “Oh Phil, I love you!”
As we consumed our Danish pastries, Phil took the opportunity to focus his lens upon Sandra, while reminding her of the Hula Hoop incident, a cue for further hilarity. “As you know, I like making people happy and seeing everybody happy and laughing, even though I’ve been a bit down myself recently,” she confided to me, placing a hand upon my wrist. “I used to wind people up by saying I could do it for two days non-stop. My biggest thrill was doing it at two or three in the morning,” she continued, filling with glee at the mere thought of nocturnal Hula Hooping on a traffic island, “the police would come round and they’d say, ‘Don’t worry, that’s just Sandra.'”
“So when shall we do your portrait?” queried Phil, interposing the question as if it were something far off, but catching Sandra’s attention and causing her to sit up quickly, in the manner of a school girl when a teacher enters. Phil sat behind his camera on the tripod and Sandra sat facing him, expectant and eager. “I’ve put my lipstick on, do I look alright?” she asked, seeking approval. “You look good.” granted Phil gently, a little preoccupied now, peering through his lens at her.
I sat to one side, observing both photographer and subject, fascinated by Sandra’s impassive mode of readiness, with chin lifted just as she raises her countenance at the bar to greet a customer. Over all this time it has become the gaze that she raises to meet life.
Phil shifted his attention between the view through the lens and looking over the camera to meet Sandra’s eyes. In the silence of the intimate moment, emotions coursed through Sandra’s features like currents in water and as she looked towards the lens, it was if she were looking through it, deeper and deeper.
“She’s not a person who tries to hide anything when the camera is in front of her.” commented Phil afterwards, once Sandra had departed leaving a space in the room, a vacuum where her presence had been.“There’s never a moment when she isn’t the centre of attention, but she doesn’t demand your attention, you just can’t help looking at her.” he said.
Photographs copyright © Phil Maxwell
You can watch Sandra a film portrait of Sandra Esqulant by Hazuan Hashim & Phil Maxwell by clicking here.
Phil Maxwell’s latest exhibition A Sense of Place: Living in the East End runs at the Rich Mix in the Bethnal Green Rd until Saturday 6th August, and I recommend Phil’s daily photoblog Playground of an East End Photographer.
More pictures by Phil Maxwell
Columbia Road Market 73
Clockwise from top – Basil, Thai Basil, Purple Basil and Basil Mint
These are the salad days of Summer, when each evening I sit in my tiny garden in Spitalfields beneath the leafy shelter of the big tree and eat sausages with salad, or chicken with salad, or a lamb chop with salad or a trout with salad, and so it goes on.
Which means that when I returned to visit Mick Grover, the herbseller, at Columbia Rd and stepped under his canopy in the crowded market to speak with him in the shade, and he offered me these different varieties of Basil plants, I did not think twice. A couple of times each week at this season, I walk down to Whitechapel Market at around six, when they are packing up and, for the outlay of a few pounds, I come back with box of ripe mangos. So, you will appreciate, with green salad and fruit salad every day, I have plenty of use for leaves of Basil.
There is a pungent allure to the fragrance of Basil, evoking the Mediterranean and conjuring thoughts of the infamous pot of Basil in the Decameron, when Lisabetta of Messina put the decapitated head of her lover Lorenzo in a pot of Basil and watered it with tears. The tale reflects an age-old ambivalence – the Romans believed Basil would only grow if it was cursed and in medieval art the figure of poverty is sometimes portrayed carrying a pot of Basil.
It is an equivocation perpetuated in “The English Physician or Herball” of 1653 by Nicholas Culpeper, who once grew herbs in Spitalfields, on a site where the Bishop’s Square development is today, and offered remedies to the poor folk there without charge. Culpeper wrote of Basil, “And away to Dr. Reason went I, who told me it was an herb of Mars, and under the Scorpion, and therefore called Basilicon, and it is no marvel if it carry a kind of virulent quality with it.” Though Culpeper also recorded that if Basil was applied to the site of a wasp sting or bite of a “venomous beast,” it “speedily draws the poison to it.”
A quarter of a mile away from where Culpeper had his garden, walking through the passage from Allen Gardens to Brick Lane can be a grim experience – the worst alley in Spitalfields – yet here one of the chefs from the Thai restaurant has taken the initiative to create a modest herb garden of Basil upon an indeterminate scrap of earth outside the kitchen door. There is pathos in this tiny patch of cultivation, surrounded by an ineffectual border of twigs in the midst of urban chaos. One set of footsteps would destroy it, and yet, miraculously, sweet Basil thrives in this most unpromising of circumstances.
Nicholas Culpeper (1616-1654), Herbalist of Spitalfields
The chef’s herb garden behind the Thai restaurant in Brick Lane.
You might also like to read about
Mick & Sylvia Grover, Herbsellers
and their Varieties of Mint
