The Brick Lane Temperance Association
It is my delight to present Charles Dickens’ raucous account of a visit by Sam & Tony Weller to the Brick Lane Temperance Association from The Pickwick Papers with these new drawings by illustrator and printmaker Paul Bommer who I featured last year.
The monthly meetings of the Brick Lane Branch of the United Grand Junction Ebenezer Temperance Association were held in a large room, pleasantly and airily situated at the top of a safe and commodious ladder. The president was the straight-walking Mr Anthony Humm, a converted fireman, now a schoolmaster and occasionally an itinerant preacher, and the secretary was Mr Jonas Mudge, chandler’s shopkeeper, an enthusiastic and disinterested vessel, who sold tea to the members.
Previous to the commencement of business, the ladies sat upon forms and drank tea, till such time as they considered it expedient to leave off, and a large wooden money box was conspicuously placed upon the green baize cloth of the business-table, behind which the secretary stood and acknowledged, with a gracious smile, every addition to the rich vein of copper which lay concealed within.
On this particular occasion the women drank tea to a most alarming extent, greatly to the horror of Mr Weller, senior, who, utterly regardless of all Sam’s admonitory nudgings, stared about him in every direction with the most undisguised astonishment. “Sammy,” whispered Mr Weller, “if some o’ these here people don’t want tappin’ to-morrow mornin’, I ain’t your father, and that’s wot it is. Why, this here old lady next me is a-drowndin’ herself in tea.” “Be quiet, can’t you?” murmured Sam.
“If this here lasts much longer, Sammy,” said Mr Weller, in the same low voice, “I shall feel it my duty, as a human bein’, to rise and address the cheer. There’s a young ‘ooman on the next form but two, as has drunk nine breakfast cups and a half, and she’s a-swellin’ wisibly before my wery eyes.”
There is little doubt that Mr Weller would have carried his benevolent intention into immediate execution, if a great noise, occasioned by putting up the cups and saucers, had not very fortunately announced that the tea-drinking was over. The crockery having been removed, the table with the green baize cover was carried out into the centre of the room, and the business of the evening was commenced by Mr Tadger, an emphatic little man, with a bald head and drab shorts, who suddenly rushed up the ladder, at the imminent peril of snapping the two little legs incased in the drab shorts, and said, “Ladies and gentlemen, I move our excellent brother, Mr Anthony Humm, into the chair.”
Silence was then proclaimed by Mr Tadger, and Mr Humm rose and said – That, with the permission of his Brick Lane Branch brothers and sisters, the secretary would read the report of the Brick Lane Branch committee, a proposition which was received with a demonstration of pocket-handkerchiefs. The secretary having sneezed in a very impressive manner, and the cough which always seizes an assembly, when anything particular is going to be done, having been duly performed, the following document was read:
REPORT OF THE COMMITTEE OF THE BRICK LANE BRANCH OF THE UNITED GRAND JUNCTION EBENEZER TEMPERANCE ASSOCIATION. Your committee have pursued their grateful labours during the past month, and have the unspeakable pleasure of reporting the following additional cases of converts to Temperance.
H. WALKER, tailor, wife, and two children. When in better circumstances, owns to having been in the constant habit of drinking ale and beer, says he is not certain whether he did not twice a week, for twenty years, taste “dog’s nose,” which your committee find upon inquiry, to be compounded of warm porter, moist sugar, gin, and nutmeg (a groan, and “So it is!” from an elderly female). Is now out of work and penniless, thinks it must be the porter (cheers) or the loss of the use of his right hand, is not certain which, but thinks it very likely that, if he had drunk nothing but water all his life, his fellow workman would never have stuck a rusty needle in him, and thereby occasioned his accident (tremendous cheering). Has nothing but cold water to drink, and never feels thirsty (great applause).
BETSY MARTIN, widow, one child, and one eye. Goes out charing and washing, by the day, never had more than one eye, but knows her mother drank bottled stout, and shouldn’t wonder if that caused it (immense cheering). Thinks it not impossible that if she had always abstained from spirits she might have had two eyes by this time (tremendous applause). Used, at every place she went to, to have eighteen-pence a day, a pint of porter, and a glass of spirits, but since she became a member of the Brick Lane Branch, has always demanded three-and-sixpence (the announcement of this most interesting fact was received with deafening enthusiasm).
HENRY BELLER was for many years toast master at various corporation dinners, during which time he drank a great deal of foreign wine, may sometimes have carried a bottle or two home with him, is not quite certain of that, but is sure if he did, that he drank the contents. Feels very low and melancholy, is very feverish, and has a constant thirst upon him, thinks it must be the wine he used to drink (cheers). Is out of employ now and never touches a drop of foreign wine by any chance (tremendous plaudits).
THOMAS BURTON is purveyor of cat’s meat to the Lord Mayor and Sheriffs, and several members of the Common Council (the announcement of this gentleman’s name was received with breathless interest). Has a wooden leg, finds a wooden leg expensive, going over the stones, used to wear second-hand wooden legs, and drink a glass of hot gin-and-water regularly every night – sometimes two (deep sighs). Found the second-hand wooden legs split and rot very quickly, is firmly persuaded that their constitution was undermined by the gin-and-water (prolonged cheering). Buys new wooden legs now, and drinks nothing but water and weak tea. The new legs last twice as long as the others used to do, and he attributes this solely to his temperate habits (triumphant cheers).
Anthony Humm now moved that the assembly regale itself with a song. Brother Mordlin had adapted the beautiful words of “Who hasn’t heard of a Jolly Young Waterman?” to the tune of the Old Hundredth, which he would request them to join him in singing (great applause). It was a temperance song (whirlwinds of cheers).
The neatness of the young man’s attire, the dexterity of his feathering, the enviable state of mind which enabled him in the beautiful words of the poet, to “Row along, thinking of nothing at all,” all combined to prove that he must have been a water-drinker (cheers). And what was the young man’s reward? Let all young men present mark this: “The maidens all flocked to his boat so readily.” (Loud cheers, in which the ladies joined.) What a bright example! “The soft sex to a man,” he begged pardon, “to a female – rallied round the young waterman, and turned with disgust from the drinker of spirits” (cheers). The Brick Lane Branch brothers were watermen (cheers and laughter). That room was their boat, that audience were the maidens, and he (Mr. Anthony Humm), however unworthily, was “first oars” (unbounded applause).
“Wot does he mean by the soft sex, Sammy?” inquired Mr Weller, in a whisper. “The womin,” said Sam, in the same tone. “He ain’t far out there, Sammy,” replied Mr Weller, “they MUST be a soft sex – a wery soft sex, indeed – if they let themselves be gammoned by such fellers as him.” Then, during the song, the little man with the drab shorts disappeared, returning immediately on its conclusion, and whispered to Mr Anthony Humm, with a face of the deepest importance. “My friends,” said Mr Humm, holding up his hand in a deprecatory manner to bespeak silence, “my friends, a delegate from the Dorking Branch of our society, Brother Stiggins, attends below.”
The little door flew open, and Brother Tadger re-appeared, closely followed by the Reverend Mr Stiggins, who no sooner entered, than there was a great clapping of hands, and stamping of feet, and flourishing of handkerchiefs, to all of which manifestations of delight, Brother Stiggins returned no other acknowledgment than staring with a wild eye, and a fixed smile, at the extreme top of the wick of the candle on the table, swaying his body to and fro, meanwhile, in a very unsteady and uncertain manner.
By this time the audience were perfectly silent, and waited with some anxiety for the resumption of business. “Will you address the meeting, brother?” said Mr Humm, with a smile of invitation. “No, sir,” rejoined Mr. Stiggins. The meeting looked at each other with raised eyelids, and a murmur of astonishment ran through the room.
“It’s my opinion, sir,” said Mr Stiggins, unbuttoning his coat, and speaking very loudly – “that this meeting is drunk, sir. Brother Tadger, sir!” said Mr Stiggins, suddenly increasing in ferocity, and turning sharp round on the little man in the drab shorts, “YOU are drunk, sir!” With this, Mr. Stiggins, entertaining a praiseworthy desire to promote the sobriety of the meeting, and to exclude therefrom all improper characters, hit Brother Tadger on the summit of the nose.
Upon this, the women set up a loud and dismal screaming, and rushing in small parties before their favourite brothers, flung their arms around them to preserve them from danger. An instance of affection, which had nearly proved fatal to Humm, who, being extremely popular, was all but suffocated, by the crowd of female devotees that hung about his neck, and heaped caresses upon him. The greater part of the lights were quickly put out, and nothing but noise and confusion resounded on all sides.
“Now, Sammy,” said Mr Weller, taking off his greatcoat with much deliberation, “just you step out, and fetch in a watchman.” “And wot are you a-goin’ to do, the while?” inquired Sam. “Never you mind me, Sammy,” replied the old gentleman, “I shall ockipy myself in havin’ a small settlement with that ‘ere Stiggins.”
Before Sam could interfere to prevent it, his heroic parent had penetrated into a remote corner of the room, and attacked the Reverend Mr. Stiggins with manual dexterity. “Come off!” said Sam. “Come on!” cried Mr Weller, and without further invitation he gave the Reverend Mr Stiggins a preliminary tap on the head, and began dancing round him in a buoyant and cork-like manner, which in a gentleman at his time of life was a perfect marvel to behold.
Finding all remonstrances unavailing, Sam pulled his hat firmly on, threw his father’s coat over his arm, and taking the old man round the waist, forcibly dragged him down the ladder, and into the street, never releasing his hold, or permitting him to stop, until they reached the corner. As they gained it, they could hear the shouts of the populace, who were witnessing the removal of the Reverend Mr Stiggins to strong lodgings for the night, and could hear the noise occasioned by the dispersion in various directions of the members of the Brick Lane Branch of the United Grand Junction Ebenezer Temperance Association.
You can follow Paul Bommer’s blog to see more of his work or read my pen portrait Paul Bommer, Illustrator. More about Charles Dickens in the East End here:
Charles Dickens in Spitalfields
Charles Dickens visits the Silk Warehouse
Charles Dickens visits the Ragged School
Charles Dickens visits the Silk Weavers
Charles Dickens visits the Young Artist
More of Paul’s Pickwick pictures
All illustrations copyright © Paul Bommer
Spring Bulbs at Bow Cemetery
When yesterday’s unseasonably warm sunshine brought temperatures of ten degrees to the East End and the promise of an early Spring, I decided to return to Bow Cemetery – where I spent one of the happiest days of last Summer – to see if the bulbs were showing yet. Already I have some Snowdrops, Hellebores and a few Primroses in flower in my Spitalfields garden, but at Bow I was welcomed by thousands of Crocuses of every colour and variety spangling the graveyard with their gleaming flowers. Beaten and bowed, grey-faced and sneezing, coughing and shivering, the harsh Winter has taken it out of me, but feeling the warmth of the sun today and seeing these sprouting bulbs in such profusion restored my hope that benign weather will come before too long.
Some of my earliest crayon drawings are of snowdrops, and the annual miracle of Spring bulbs erupting out of the barren earth never ceases to touch my heart – an emotionalism amplified in a cemetery to see life spring abundant and graceful in the landscape of death. The numberless dead of East London – the poor buried for the most part in unmarked communal graves – are coming back to us as perfect tiny flowers of white, purple and yellow, and the sober background of grey tombs and stones serves to emphasis the curious delicate life of these vibrant blooms, glowing in the sunshine.
Here within the shelter of the old walls, the Spring bulbs are further ahead than elsewhere the East End and I arrived at Bow Cemetery just as the Snowdrops were coming to an end, the Crocuses were in full flower and the Daffodils were beginning. Thus a sequence of flowers is set in motion, with bulbs continuing through until April when the Bluebells will come leading us through to the acceleration of Summer growth, blanketing the cemetery in lush foliage again.
As before, I found myself alone in the vast cemetery save a few Magpies, Crows and some errant Squirrels, chasing each other around. Walking further into the woodland, I found yellow Winter Aconites gleaming bright against the grey tombstones and, crouching down, I discovered wild Violets in flower too. Beneath an intense blue sky, to the chorus of birdsong echoing among the trees, Spring was making a persuasive showing.
Stepping into a clearing, I came upon a Red Admiral butterfly basking upon a broken tombstone, as if to draw my attention to the text upon it, “Sadly Missed,” commenting upon this precious day of sunshine. Butterflies are rare in the city in any season, but to see a Red Admiral, which is a sight of high Summer, in February is extraordinary. My first assumption was that I was witnessing the single day in the tenuous life of this vulnerable creature, but in fact the hardy Red Admiral is one of the last to be seen before the onset of frost and can emerge from months of hibernation to enjoy single days of sunlight. Such is the solemn poetry of a lone butterfly in Winter.
It may be over a month yet before it is officially Spring, but we are at the beginning now, and I offer you my pictures as evidence, should you require inducement to believe it.
The Spring bulbs are awakening from their Winter sleep.
Snowdrops.
Crocuses
Dwarf Iris
Winter Aconites
Daffodils will be in flower next week.
A single Red Admiral butterfly, out of season in mid-February – “sadly missed”
My Crocuses from Columbia Rd Market in a Doulton Lambeth bowl.
Read my original story At Bow Cemetery
Find out more at www.towerhamletscemetery.org
Mud God’s Discoveries 2
On St Valentine’s Day, it is my pleasure to show you love tokens found in the River Thames from the collection gathered over the last seventeen years by my mudlark friend Steve Brooker, widely known as Mud God.
The magical potential of throwing a coin into the water has been recognised by different cultures in different times with all kinds of meanings. Yet since we can never ask those who threw these tokens why they did it, we can only surmise that engraving your beloved’s name upon a coin and throwing it into the water was a gesture to attract good fortune. It was a wish.
With a great river like the Thames racing down towards the ocean, there is a sense of a connection to the infinite. And there is a sweet romance to the notion of a lover secretly throwing a token into the water, feeling that the strength of their emotions connects them to a force larger than themselves.
Naturally, it was not part of the conceit that someone might ever find these coins, centuries later – which gives them a mysterious poetry now, because each one represents a love story we shall never learn. Those who threw them have gone from the earth long ago, and all we can envisage are the coins tossed by unseen hands, flying from the river bank or a from the parapet of a bridge or from a boat, turning over in the air, plip-plopping into the water and spiralling down to lie for centuries in the mud, until Steve Brooker came along to gather them up. Much as we may yearn, we can never trace them back to ask “What happened?”
In the reign of William III, it was the fashion for a young man to give a crooked coin to the object of his affections. The coin was bent both to become an amulet and to prevent it being reused. If the token was kept, it indicated that the affection was reciprocated, but if the coin was discarded then it was a rejection – which casts a different light upon these coins in the river. Are they, each one, evidence of unrequited affections?
From the end of the eighteenth century and until the early twentieth century, smoothed coins were used as love tokens, with the initials of the sender engraved or embossed upon the surface. Sometimes these were pierced, which gave recipient the option to wear it around the neck. In Steve’s collection, the tokens range from heavy silver coins with initials professionally engraved to pennies worn smooth through hours of labour and engraved in stilted painstaking letters. In many examples shown here, the amount of effort expended in working these coins, smoothing, engraving or cutting them is truly extraordinary, which speaks of the longing of the makers.
Steve has found many thousands of coins in the bed of the Thames over the years but it is these worked examples that mean most to him because he recognises the dignity of the human emotion that each one manifests. Those who threw them into the river did not know that Steve was going to be there one day to catch them yet, whatever the outcome of these romances, he ensures that the tokens are kept safe.
Look out for Steve Brooker’s eight part television series MUDMEN which commences on 28th February on History – you can watch the trailer here
Benjamin Claridge.
The reverse of the Benjamin Claridge coin, from the eighteenth century or earlier.
The intials M and W intertwined upon a Georgian silver coin.
The intial W upon the smoothed face of Georgian silver coin, bent into an S shape.
Crooked Georgian silver coin, as the token of a vow or promise.
The initials AMD upon a smoothed coins that has been pierced to wear around the neck.
A copper penny with the letter D.
C.M. Marsh impressed into a penny.
The letter R punched into a penny within a lucky horseshoe.
Pierced coin set with semi-precious stones.
Who was Snod? Is this a lover’s token or a dog tag?
This pierced silver threepence commemorates the date January 11th 1921.
On the reverse of the silver threepence are the initials, L T. Are these the initials of the giver, or does it signify “Love Token”?
A smoothed penny with the name Voilet upon it. A phonetic spelling of the name “Violet”as the beloved spoke it?
Cut coins from the early twentieth century.
Read my stories
and
the Roman coin from Spitalfields that I wear around my neck.
A Spitalfields Valentine from Alan Dein – he took this picture in Fashion St in 1990, but he does not know who wrote the graffiti or why.
Petticoat Lane Market 1
Almost as much of a familiar landmark in Spitalfields as the church or the market, Fred has been standing in his flat cap and selling chestnuts from can of hot coals on a barrow every Sunday at the corner of Bell Lane and Wentworth St for over half a century.
I heard a rumour that chestnut sellers were secret millionaires who put their feet up all Summer, but he was eager to disenchant me of this notion. “The idea that you get rich quick is not true!” Fred swore to me in his singsong voice, glowing with animation, whilst expertly turning over the hot chestnuts with his blackened fingers, “For the past six weeks, I didn’t cover my expenses. I get up at half five, leave the house at a quarter to six, then I am here from eight until four, and by the time I get home it’s eight o’clock. So if I didn’t love this job, I wouldn’t be here now.”
When Fred began in the heyday of Petticoat Lane, Wentworth St was a parade of Jewish Delis, and it was this cultural identity which permitted the existence of the market when laws restricted other Sunday trading in London. “This used to be the best market in London, you couldn’t walk through it,” recalled Fred with absolute authority, his eyes focused in concentration as he stepped over to stir the peanuts that he was caramelising in a pan to one side. Remarkably, while the market has changed beyond all recognition around him, Fred has simply continued roasting chestnuts.
“I was fourteen and a half when I started. My dad sold chestnuts and I used to go and help him up the West End – Greek St and then down in Leicester Sq – until I got a licence here about fifty years ago. I used to have a casual licence, it was so busy then you couldn’t get a pitch unless someone else didn’t turn up. I was on this corner at fifteen before I got married – my wife is English and now I’ve been married fifty years.
The selling business is in the blood, my dad’s family were all chestnut sellers in Malta and my grandfather came from Sicily. King George gave the Maltese people a medal for bravery in the war. We fought the Turks. Everybody wanted a piece of Malta.
My father came over here in the forties from Malta. I was born there and came to London in 1957, helping my dad. He came here to try a different life. Plumber’s Row in Whitechapel, that’s where we lived at first. It was all prostitutes in those houses in them days. I asked my dad who these ladies were. He said, ‘They’re all film stars.’ Then we moved down to live in Christian St, it was all Maltese down there. The East End was nice place to be. We used to buy our chestnuts in the Spitalfields Market, nowadays I have to go further afield.
I’ve always loved selling chestnuts. I’ve been like this since I was a kid. I’ve never been to school, I just wanted to do this. This is about making your customers feel good. With this game, you’ve got to know how to go with people, otherwise don’t come in the market.
My dad designed the can, after two or three years, you have to make a new one. It only takes me half an hour to get the coals hot, with some bits of wood and a spot of paraffin. I work from October until March or April, only three to four months, and as soon as I have finished my year’s stock of chestnuts, it’s over. I’ll ease up now, and I won’t come up if the weather’s bad one Sunday.
I’m going to Malta next week to visit my mum and dad. He went back thirty years ago – if it wasn’t for my grandchildren and my kids, I’d move back to Malta too. But I reckon I’ll be here a few more years.
They should give me a medal for service to the English people.”
As Fred spoke, a continuous stream of eager customers carried off bags of chestnuts. Many were regulars on first name terms and others were tourists that Fred seduced with repartee, inveigling his way into their holiday snaps. As well as chestnuts, Fred sells monkey nuts, freshly caramelised and roasted peanuts, plus water and soft drinks, while his son-in-law Lee fries hamburgers and hot dogs on the other side of the pitch, and Fred’s little grandson runs around excitedly in a flat cap drumming up business. Quite a drama for a street corner.
I asked Fred if he likes chestnuts and he smiled. “I eat them all the time, if I start I can’t stop.” he admitted, picking up a stray chestnut and putting it in his mouth absent-mindedly. “They’re good for your cholesterol – any doctor will tell you.” he declared, chewing and nodding his head in emphatic confirmation.
It is a delicious thing to buy a bag of hot chestnuts on a cold day and peel them in the street – a timeless seasonal ritual. So, as much as I long for the Spring to come, I shall miss Fred on the corner of Bell Lane when he disappears in a few weeks’ time. Then I shall be waiting for his return in October, with his buoyant humour, and bringing the whiff of the new season’s chestnuts from Italy roasted on hot coals, as a time-honoured harbinger of the changing year in the East End – the legendary chestnut seller of Petticoat Lane.
Fred’s son-in-law, Lee, a locksmith by trade, helps out with the hotdogs and burgers.
Photographs copyright © Jeremy Freedman
You may also like to read Larry Goldstein, Toyseller & Cab Driver
Maurice Evans, Firework Collector
Maurice Evans has been collecting fireworks since childhood and now at eighty-two years old he has the most comprehensive collection in the country – so you can imagine both my excitement and my trepidation upon stepping through the threshold of his house in Shoreham. My concern about potential explosion was relieved when Maurice confirmed that he has removed the gunpowder from his fireworks, only to be reawakened when his wife Kit helpfully revealed that Catherine Wheels and Bangers were excepted because you cannot extract the gunpowder without ruining them.
This statement prompted Maurice to remember with visible pleasure that he still had a collection of World War II shells in the cellar and, of course, the reinforced steel shed in the garden full of live fireworks. “Let’s just say, if there’s a big bang in the neighbourhood, the police always come here first to see if it’s me,” admitted Maurice with a playful smirk. “Which it often isn’t,” added Kit, backing Maurice up with a complicit demonstration of knowing innocence.
“It all started with my father who was in munitions in the First World War,” explained Maurice proudly, “He had a big trunk with little drawers, and in those drawers I found diagrams explaining how to work with explosives and it intrigued me. Then came World War II and the South Downs were used as a training ground and, as boys, we went where we shouldn’t and there were loads of shells lying around, so we used to let them off.”
Maurice’s radiant smile revealed to me the unassailable joy of his teenage years, running around the downs at Shoreham playing with bombs. “We used to set off detonators outside each other’s houses to announce we’d arrived!” he bragged, waving his left hand to reveal the missing index finger, blown off when the explosive in a slow fuse unexpectedly fired upon lighting. “That’s the worst thing that happened,” Maurice declared with a grimace of alacrity, “We were worldly wise with explosives!”
Even before his teens, the love of pyrotechnics had taken grip upon Maurice’s psyche. It was a passion born of denial. “I used to suffer from bronchitis and asthma as a child, so when November 5th came round, I had to stay indoors.” he confided with a frown, “Every shop had a club and you put your pennies and ha’pennies in to save for fireworks and that’s what I did, but then my father let them off and I had to watch through the window.”
After the war, Maurice teamed up with a pyrotechnician from London and they travelled the country giving displays which Maurice devised, achieving delights that transcended his childhood hunger for explosions. “In my mind, I could envisage the sequence of fireworks and colours, and that was what I used to enjoy. You’ve got all the colours to start with, smoke, smoke colours, ground explosions, aerial explosions – it’s endless the amount of different things you can do. The art of it is knowing how to choose.” explained Maurice, his face illuminated by the images flickering in his mind. Adding, “I used to be quite big in fireworks at one time.” with calculated understatement.
Yet all this personal history was the mere pre-amble before Maurice led me through his house, immaculately clean, lined with patterned carpets and papers and witty curios of every description. Then in the kitchen, overlooking the garden where old trees stood among snowdrops, he opened an unexpected cupboard door to reveal a narrow red staircase going down. We descended to enter the burrow where Maurice has his rifle range, his collections, model aeroplanes, bombs and fireworks – all sharing the properties of flight and explosiveness. Once they were within reach, Maurice could not restrain his delight in picking up the shells and mortars of his childhood, explaining their explosive qualities and functions.
But my eyes were drawn by all the fireworks that lined the walls and glass cases, and the deep blues, lemon yellows and scarlets of their wrappers and casings. Such evocative colours and intricate designs which in their distinctive style of type and motif, draw upon the excitement and anticipation of magic we all share as children, feelings that compose into a lifelong love of fireworks. Rockets, Roman Candles, Catherine Wheels, Bangers, and Sparklers – amounting to thousands in boxes and crates, Maurice’s extraordinary collection is the history of fireworks in this country.
“I wouldn’t say its made my life, but its certainly livened it up,” confided Maurice, seeing my wonder at his overwhelming display. Because no-one (except Maurice) keeps fireworks, there is something extraordinary in seeing so many old ones and it sets your imagination racing to envisage the potential spectacle that these small cardboard parcels propose.
Maurice outgrew the bronchitis and asthma to have a beautiful life filled with fireworks, to visit firework factories around Britain, in China, Australia, New Zealand and all over Europe, and to scour Britain for collections of old fireworks, accumulating his priceless collection. Now like an old dragon in a cave, surrounded by gold, Maurice guards his cellar hoard protectively and is concerned about the future. “It needs to be seen,” he said, contemplating it all and speaking his thoughts out loud, “I would like to put this whole collection into a museum. I don’t want any money. I want everyone to see what happened from pre-war times up until the present day in the progression of fireworks.”
“My father used to bring me the used ones to keep,” confessed Maurice quietly with an affectionate gleam in his eye, as he revealed the emotional origin of his collection, now that we were alone together in the cellar. With touching selflessness, having derived so much joy from collecting his fireworks, Maurice wants to share them with everybody else.
Maurice with his exploding fruit.
Maurice with his barrel of gunpowder
Maurice with his grenades.
Maurice with two favourite rockets.
Firework photographs copyright © Simon Costin
Read my story about Simon Costin, The Museum of British Folklore
Before & After in Fournier St
1995, the sweatshop
2005, the music room
Ten years of renovation lies between these two photographs of the same room in Fournier St – between this snap of the abandoned sweatshop that John Nicolson purchased in 1995 and the swish interior shot by lifestyle photographer Jan Baldwin, that was one of a set taken in 2005 to celebrate the completion of the endeavour. Earlier this week, I showed you the collection of wallpapers dating from 1690 until 1960 and the curios from beneath the floorboards that John salvaged from this ancient house. And today you can see the “before” and “after” pictures which illustrate the breathtaking transformation that has been achieved, bringing new life back to what was once a derelict pile.
The tailoring industry had found its home there from 1720, through successive owners, Huguenot silk weavers, then Jewish tailors, and subsequently Bengali clothing maunfacturers, up until the nineteen nineties – when cheap manufacturing in the Far East made it no longer profitable to continue and the last owner went bankrupt, leaving the house in the ownership of the bank. No-one had lived there since the nineteen thirties, and by 1995 it was one among an entire terrace of abandoned buildings.
After the Fruit & Vegetable Market closed in 1991, many properties used to store fruit and herbs became empty in Spitalfields. The one next to John’s house had been a banana store, which gave him pause for thought when he first explored the property and discovered the yard overrun with exotic spiders. Yet in spite of this discovery, John had the courage to put his arm through a hole in the cladding on the wall on the first floor, reaching through into the darkness and touching what he believed to be eighteenth century panelling.
Many more discoveries were to be made over the coming years, as well as all the wallpapers and the curios mislaid under the floorboards in the previous three centuries. There was the lost cellar which had entirely filled up with silt. Above the false ceilings, there were grand box cornices installed by William Taylor, the joiner who built the house in 1721. Every room but one had its Georgian fireplace which had been covered over, still thick with soot. There was a mysterious brick flue from the cellar that was revealed to be ventilation for the dying of silks.
And all the doors had been taken off their hinges in the nineteenth century and hung the opposite way round from the previous century – because while the Georgians preferred doors to open into a room, offering a moment of grace as someone entered, the Victorians preferred their doors to open against the wall and wall straight into a room. “I’ve restored it to the Georgian etiquette with the doors opening into the rooms,” John admitted to me with a gracious smile, “to give my guests time to prepare for my imminent arrival.”
The house underwent successive alterations, at first to the panelling in the seventeen-eighties, and then the front wall had entirely been rebuilt in the eighteen twenties when a shopfront was added. John set about returned the house to its original proportions, removing partitions to create two rooms over each of the five floors and restoring missing panelling. He also demolished an outbuilding which filled the back garden and replaced the shopfront with a domestic facade consistent with the eighteen twenties work, including a new door case which derived its proportion and design from the eighteen twenties front door that survived. Elsewhere, John supplemented bead and butt boarding from 1900 and brought a sink back into use from this period, that had once served all the residents of the house when it was divided into tiny flats for Jewish refugees.
Today the house retains all its idiosyncratic appeal, a sympathetic amalgam of the successive alterations that speak of its different inhabitants in Fournier St over the last three centuries. Yet now it is a home again, and thanks to ten years of conscientious and imaginative work by John Nicolson, an atmosphere of peace and domesticity reigns once more.
The house as John found it.
Reconstructing the domestic facade.
The rear elevation of 1720 with original windows flush with the level of the wall.
Alternating plain and barley twist spindles from 1720, as John discovered them.
The view from John’s bathroom to the spire of Christ Church, Spitalfields.
Original lead paintwork on this door, rehung in the nineteenth century to open towards the wall, in contrast to the eighteenth century etiquette, of doors always opening into the room – permitting a moment’s grace before someone entered.
The rear basement as John first saw it, once the silt had been dug out.
“Before” photographs copyright © John Nicolson
“After” photographs copyright © Jan Baldwin
You may also like to read my other Fournier St stories
The Wallpapers of Spitalfields
John Player’s Cries Of London
It is my great pleasure to show you these beautiful specimens of John Player’s cigarette cards illustrating the Cries of London, dating from 1916 – as the latest in my ongoing series of portrayals of the street life of our great metropolis down the ages. John Player & Sons put collector’s cards in their cigarette packets from 1893 and it is a measure of the popularity of the Cries of London that the series shown here was the second which was issued.
The jaunty charisma of these gaudy cards with their cheerful hawkers in colourful dress is irresistible, even if historical veracity is sacrificed for the sake of popular appeal. Old London is transformed into a city of swashbuckling romance in these cards, where the streets are as bright as pantomime backdrops and the traders swagger like music hall acts, ready to burst into song – a notion that reached its exuberant apogee in Lionel Bart’s “Who will buy?”
Yet, thumbing through these modest little cards with their corners rounded from use, no-one can deny the affectionate quality of these images and the fond significance that collectors gave to these ephemera, investing them with an emotional meaning which is far beyond mere sentiment or whimsy. The Cries of London celebrate the ingenuity and stamina of those with nothing, who for centuries could eek out a living upon the streets of London by hawking, and use their wits to do it with panache, transforming commerce into popular culture in the process.
In this respect, the Cries of London is the history of poverty retold as the brave and self-respecting history of resourcefulness. And that is why I treasure these lovely cards, enjoying even their quaint self-conscious archaic spellings, their curious anecdotal texts, their grubbiness and their crude printing. Once collected by schoolboys in class and soldiers in the trenches, as minor tokens of intangible value, they passed through so many hands before they arrived in mine – they are rare keepsakes to evoke an entire world.
Two hundred years after Francis Wheatley – the Cries of London tea caddy. When portrait painter Francis Wheatley was elected to the Royal Academy in 1790 in favour of the King’s candidate, it destroyed Wheatley’s career and, when the aristocratic patrons deserted him, he took to painting sympathetic portraits of his wife in the guise of street hawkers instead. He was bankrupt within three years and died in 1801, yet his poignant Cries of London have been celebrated ever since in innumerable prints, cigarette cards, and on biscuit tins and tea caddies – such as mine, shown here.
You may like to take a look at
William Nicholson’s London Types
Francis Wheatley’s Cries of London
