Drakes of London, Tiemakers
Although less known in this country, the name of Drakes is synonymous around the world with the most beautiful silk ties that money can buy. Founded thirty years ago on a top floor in Old Bond St and operating from a former Royal Mail depot in Old St for the past twenty, Drakes brought manufacturing back to the East End at the time everyone else was moving out. Working with companies of silk weavers in East Anglia that were once in Spitalfields centuries ago, the true legacy of the Huguenot weavers is manifest here in the exquisite sophistication of these ties manufactured by Drakes that are prized by the cognoscenti of Italy and Japan. Hidden in an East End backstreet, they are the largest independent producers in this country, supplying conservative English ties to an international market of stylish men who eschew the mere fashionable, and collaborating with Comme des Garcons too.
The rich colour of the silks with their subtly woven patterns delight the eye with sensuous pleasure, and it is quite inspirational to step inside from the rainy world of compromise into Drakes’ factory where a small group of skilled tiemakers work fastidiously to create superlative covetable items, sleek and sinuous with a life of their own. At first, the cutters mark out the silk with chalk, placing the patterns upon the bias of the cloth to ensure the perfect hang of the tie, before taking a sharp knife to slice through as many of twenty layers of cloth at once. The blade, the neck and the tail are the three primary parts of a tie. And next, the blade and tail are “tipped” – as it is called when the silk lining is attached. Once tipped and the three pieces sewn together, the tie is “slipped” – meaning, folded around the interlining to achieve its destined shape.
Turning the corner from the stillness of the cutters’ workroom, and passing the racks of silks upon rolls, I came into the centre of the factory where amidst a riot of colour – ties of every description and hue, garlanded and draped upon rails – sat those who did the sewing, more precisely known as the “artisan slippers.” When the interlining is tucked into the lining at the tip of the “blade”, the tie can be folded into shape, ensuring the seam is at the centre, and pinned in place. Then, using a curved needle, a loose slip-stitch along its length secures the tie’s shape. Now, tipped and slipped, with judicious pressings, the finished tie is ready for its label and those pieces of flat cloth have become transformed into an elegant three dimensional form of dynamic grace.
On a gantry up above the workroom, I found Michael Drake, bright-eyed and keen, surrounded by swatch books of gorgeous silks and boxes of colourful woolly scarves, preparing to fly to Florence where he will be showing his Winter collection 2011 at the trade exhibition this week in the city’s historic Fortessa, before returning on Saturday and then jetting off to New York for ten days. Part of the continuous cycle of design and sales, involving constant travel, that he has pursued tirelessly since starting the company with partners Jeremy Hull & Isabel Dickson in 1979.
“We’ve always made a decent living and we’ve always been successful,” he admitted to me with a sublimely relaxed smile, before revealing with a twinkle in his eye,“But it still is a nightmare. Over the years I’ve had so many sleepless nights.’ For a moment I was disarmed, until he said, “It’s good to worry, the more you worry, the more likely you are to pick up on mistakes before they happen.” Yet, in contradiction to this declaration, Michael still did not look convincingly stressed, rather he looked like a man in his element. “I could do this twenty-four hours a day and never catch up with what needs to be done…” he concluded with an amiable shrug, taking refuge in the former brewmaster’s house next door, which he keeps stocked with the lush art books that are his inspiration and delight. There, as we pored over collections of Mughal miniatures and paintings done by Matisse in Morocco – that Michael consults for ideas for colour combinations for ties – I could appreciate the merging of sensibilities that inform the luxuriously understated aesthetic of Drakes, while Michael explained to me how it all began.
When Michael joined Aquascutum, the traditional rainwear company, straight from school, one of the brothers who owned the company took a shine to him, putting Michael on a training programme that sent him to New York and California. He worked in the factory, and even served in the Regent St shop on Saturday to earn extra money. At twenty, Michael was assisting the design director and when he left, Michael stayed on and took over, creating the Aquascutum check still in use today. “I had two company cars in my early twenties,” recalled Michael fondly, with a gleeful smile,“even the accountant didn’t know I’d been given them.” It is apparent that the formative experience Michael had at Aquascutum, of a family-owned clothing company which valued employees and encouraged the transmission of skills, stayed with Michael throughout his career.
“We started with basic things,” explained Michael, outlining the origin of Drakes a few years later, producing scarves, “I discovered it’s much easier to do something new when you don’t have any knowledge. You do something on a whim and you do something fresh. We attended our first trade exhibition in Paris and we had the smallest stand and we took £100,000 of orders – but then my partner picked up the wrong briefcase at the airport and lost the one with the orders in it.” Thankfully, the briefcase was recovered and the company grew, yet all the scarves were delivered to Bond St and Michael remembers carrying the boxes up and down the stairs, “We worked hard, but we worked for ourselves and we could see it was working, and we always enjoyed ourselves.”
“I used to wear these nice ties and people came up to me and said, ‘You should do ties.'” continued Michael breezily, acknowledging this unexpected yet natural progression in the business,“We had to learn how to do it. There’s no book that tells you, so we wrote our own manual and we still refer back to it.” Today, Michael has a following of customers who have been buying ties from Drakes for twenty-five years. “I’m always trying to be better than before,” he told me, reminding himself of a personal mantra,“I think it’s more important to be better, than to try to be newer.”
Yet Drakes ties were rarely available in Britain – until they began direct sales from their website two years ago, and received so many orders from customers here that this Spring they are opening a shop in Savile Row. When asked why Drakes’ factory is in the heart of the East End rather than in some soulless business park in Outer London, Michael simply explains that this central location makes it easy for all his staff to get there. Through imagination, flair and tenacity, Michael Drake has found a way to contradict received wisdom and bring new life to the centuries’ old textile industry of the East End in a way that respects the craft traditions and offers sympathetic conditions to his employees too. And Drakes is thriving, “The only problem we have now is fulfilling all the orders,” he confessed to me, rolling his eyes in pleasure.
Holmes & Watson, Spitalfields Piglets
I hope my readers will forgive me if I admit that I chose to keep a discreet silence over the peaceful death of Itchy, the old sow at the Spitalfields City Farm last year, and instead to share my delight in beginning this new year by introducing these two beloved young squealers, Holmes & Watson.
When I went along to take these portraits of Holmes & Watson in the sty that serves as their approximation to 221B Baker St, I did not know which was which. But, as you can see from the photograph above, it soon became visibly apparent that the smaller darker one possessed the keener eye and more remarkable faculties in general, and that one was Holmes. Helen Galland, the pink-haired farm manager, who plays the role of Mrs Hudson, providing food and housekeeping for these two bachelors, revealed she spotted the disparity when they first arrived at their new lodgings three months ago. “They like play-fighting, pushing each other out of the way to discover who is the dominant – and seemingly it is the smallest one!” she told me with a grin of astonishment.
“When I tried training them by whistling and giving rewards if they came, Watson didn’t understand the game at all but Holmes deduced it at once – ‘If I do this I get food!'” explained Helen in custodial affection, “They have a love/hate relationship over food. When I scatter the vegetables in the pen and they run around finding them, the smaller one always gets more than the bigger one, which is strange. Maybe he’s hiding them somewhere?”
Holmes & Watson are officially registered Kuni Kuni pigs, like Itchy who came before them, hailing from New Zealand and descended from just sixteen hardy survivors when the breed came close to extinction in the nineteen sixties. Born at a rare breeds farm, near Ipswich, they were weaned early when their mother died of a spinal abcess. But in spite of this early tragedy, both piglets have embraced life wholeheartedly, as Helen proudly explained to me, “They love people, because they know people bring them food and if you tickle their bellies they lie down, it’s an instinctive response.”
Little else is known of their early months, yet on this basis of these ominous words that I overheard from Holmes – whilst they were at the trough – we can only assume they are relieved to find themselves in Spitalfields, “It is my belief, Watson, founded upon my experience, that the lowest and vilest alleys in London do not present a more dreadful record of sin than does the smiling and beautiful countryside.” Subsequently, I was surprised to hear Watson confess, “I naturally gravitated to London, that great cesspool into which all the loungers and idlers of the Empire are irresistibly drained. There I stayed for some time at a private hotel in the Strand, leading a comfortless, meaningless existence, and spending such money as I had, considerably more freely than I ought.” Let us be thankful that Holmes & Watson have found a satisfactory home now at the City Farm.
I certainly enjoyed my brief opportunity to share the serenity of their existence whilst photographing the piglets in their pen, although I did become frustrated that they barely took their snouts out of the mud, until Helen helpfully explained that this is called,“the investigative instinct.” When she conjured this phrase, I could not help recalling the unfortunate break-in and abduction of a ferret at the farm a year ago and I wondered if this event might have proved a factor in the decision to bring in Holmes & Watson. Yet at just six months old, it seemed premature to enquire about the crime-busting potential of these piglets. May it suffice to know that Holmes & Watson have ended up in clover.
Personal callers who wish to pay respects to Holmes & Watson are welcome at Spitalfields City Farm and you can learn more about sponsoring animals at www.spitalfieldscityfarm.org
Watson keeps his nose to the ground, surveying the muddy details of the case.
Holmes, “When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.”
Bramble & Bentley, the twin goats, are Holmes & Watson’s neighbours at the farm.
Watson,“If I irritated him by a certain methodical slowness in my mentality, that irritation served only to make his own flame-like intuitions and impressions flash up the more vividly and swiftly. Such was my humble role in our alliance.”
You may enjoy these other stories of farm life:
Helen Galland, Spitalfields City Farm
Sheepshearing at Spitalfields City Farm
The Manhole Covers of Spitalfields
Ever since I wrote about sculptor Keith Bowler’s Roundels, describing how he set new manhole covers into the pavements of Spitalfields with motifs to commemorate all the people, cultures and trades that have passed through, I have been noticing the old ones that inspired him in the first place. This one from the eighteen eighties in Fournier St is undoubtably the most snazzy in the neighbourhood with its dynamic sunburst and catherine wheel spiral. So much wit and grace applied to the design of a modest coalhole cover, it redefines the notion of utilitarian design. In Bath, Bristol, Brighton and Edinburgh, I have seen whole streets where each house has a different design of coalhole cover, like mismatched buttons on a long overcoat, but in Spitalfields they are sparser and you have to look further to find them.
There is a second example of this Clark, Hunt & Co sunburst, that I like so much, in Redchurch St, just a hundred yards from the former showrooms at 159/60 Shoreditch High St of this company who called themselves the Middlesex Iron Works – founded in 1838, proud contractors to the H.M. War Office, the Admiralty and London County Council. And like many local ironworks, gone long ago, but outlived by their sturdy cast iron products. Alfred Solomons of 195 Caledonian Rd is another name I found here in Spitalfields on a couple of manhole covers, with some rather fetching, almost orientalist, nineteenth century flourishes. I discovered that the Jewish Chronicle reported the birth of a son to Alfred’s wife Celia on 18th December 1894 at the Caledonian Rd address, so these plates commemorate them personally now.
Meanwhile Hayward Brothers of 187 & 189 Union St, Borough, are the most ubiquitous of the named manufacturers with their handsome iron artefacts in the pavements of our neighbourhood. They were founded by William & Edward Hayward, glaziers who had been trading since 1783 when they bought Robert Henley’s ironmongery business in 1838. As glaziers they brought a whole new progressive mentality to the humble production of coalhole covers, patenting the addition of prisms that admitted light to the cellar below. You can see one of their “semi-prismatic pavement lights” illustrated below, in Calvert Avenue. Such was the success of this company that by 1921 they opened a factory in Enfield, and even invented the “crete-o-lux” concrete system which was used to repave Regent St, but they ceased trading in the nineteen seventies when smokeless zones were introduced in London and coal fires ceased. Regrettably, Spitalfields cannot boast a coalhole by the most celebrated nineteenth century manufacturer, by virtue of their name, A.Smellie of Westminster. The nearest example is in Elizabeth St, Victoria, where I shall have to make a pilgrimage to see it.
Unfailingly, my fascination with the city is deepened by the discovery of new details like these, harbouring human stories waiting to be uncovered by the curious. Even neglected and trodden beneath a million feet, by virtue of being in the street, these ingenious covers remind us of their long dead makers’ names more effectively than any tombstone in a churchyard. There was rain blowing in the wind yesterday but when the sun came out afterwards, the beautiful old iron covers shone brightly like medals – for those who had the eyes to see them – emblazoned upon the streets of Spitalfields.
In Old Broad St.
In Fournier St, a nineteenth century coalhole cover by Alfred Solomons, 195 Caledonian Rd – I am reliable informed there are similar covers in Doughty St and around Bloomsbury.
A more minimal variant on the same design by Alfred Solomons.
Hayward Brothers’ “Patent Self-Locking Semi-Prismatic Pavement Light” in Calvert Avenue.
A more recent example of Hayward Brothers’ self -locking plate.
In Gunthorpe St, this drain cover commemorates Stepney Borough Council created in 1900 and abolished in 1965.
At the Rectory in Fournier St, this early plate by Hayward Brothers of 187 & 189 Union St, Borough, which is also to be found in Lower Richmond Rd.
Another by Haywood Brothers in Spitalfields – although unlabelled, it follows the design of the plate above.
Bullseye in Chance St
In Commercial St, at the junction with Elder St, is this worn plate is made by Griffith of Farringdon Rd, Clerkenwell
In Middlesex St. LCC – London County Council was abolished in 1965. Can it be only co-incidental that this old manhole cover in Petticoat Lane Market, in the former Jewish quarter, has a star of David at the centre?
Mud God’s Discoveries 1
It is my pleasure to begin the new year by inaugurating a new series on Spitalfields Life, in which each month I visit my esteemed friend Steve Brooker, the mudlark – widely known as Mud God – and he shows me prized discoveries from his personal collection, accumulated over seventeen years of scouring the bed of the Thames.
Steve found this knuckle guard from a medieval gauntlet ten years ago at the Customs House near the Tower of London. “I’ve had some amazing finds but, out of all my discoveries, this is the one thing I love the most, a gauntlet knuckle guard from a suit of armour. It’s so delicate, yet by nature of the kink it’s so strong – I can’t bend this,” he told me with a excited grin, his eyes glistening in wonder and delight at the skill displayed in fashioning this gracefully curved sliver of brass and copper alloy inscribed with diagonal lines, once attached by rivets to a chain mail glove. The armoured glove was worn by knight with a cloth or leather glove underneath, yet this knuckle guard just sits upon of Steve’s finger, suggesting that it was made for a much smaller hand, as you would expect in medieval London.
“I dug this one out, which I don’t do much anymore,” explained Steve, recounting the memorable discovery as he picked the knuckle guard from his cabinet of treasures, “I dug a hole really deep down into the river bed, and then I put everything onto a board and ran a metal detector over it.” The knuckle guard was lying in anaerobic mud, with no oxygen, which means it was preserved without rust and gleamed with an enticing mystery when he found it, exactly as it does now. Declaring its precise yet obsolete purpose and elegant manufacture, it evokes an entire world gone more than five hundred years ago.
“I can just imagine a knight coming back from the Crusades and crossing the Thames,” said Steve, inspired by holding the cherished artifact between his fingers, and conjuring a picture for me, “His armour was being dragged off the boat at the landing place and the gauntlet caught against something, the rivets broke and the knuckle guard got knocked off into the river.”
“One day this couple joined me, they’d come to experience the joys of mudlarking but all they could see was gloop – four to five inches of wet mud stretching across the shore at Wapping.” Steve recalled, turning apologetic on behalf of his beloved Thames,“It only happens once in a blue moon.” Yet there was a line at the foreshore that was clean, where there were some corroded lumps of iron and Steve saw a spike emerging from one. “That could be part of a sword, let’s crack it open” suggested Steve, mustering a vain swagger. Yet when he took a look, to his surprise, it was this highly decorated renaissance rapier handle from around 1600. “It was rusty, but shining with silver wire and it had a gold sheen,” said Steve proudly, “You should have seen the look on their faces.”
“The whole thing is a work of art,” Steve declared to me, cradling it lovingly in his hands to show me, “A rapier was an man’s education, when accomplishment with a sword was everything. Everyone that could afford it had one.” And he pointed out the face at the centre of the elaborate design of flourishes upon the guard that had been bent backwards over the hilt, showing me the silver wire that once contained the binding upon the hand grip. The entire hilt sat within Steve’s hand, revealing, like the knuckle guard, that it was made for the much smaller hand of a Londoner over four centuries ago.
“It was thrown away because it was bust,” he theorised with a frown, indicating the useless broken stump of the blade protruding from the hilt, yet balancing the metalwork in his hand appreciatively. “It’s so ornate, but it feels there’s more power to it when it’s rusty,” he continued, perplexed and mulling over this intriguing survivor from Shakespeare’s London which still carries the dynamic spirit of its age today, even in its damaged state.
Even before tobacco was introduced by Walter Raleigh in 1586, sailors brought it back and smoked it – but it was very expensive, which is why this early clay pipe dating from 1600 is so tiny. Out of an estimated ten thousand pipes that he has found, mostly from later periods when they were disposable and two-a-penny pre-filled with tobacco, Steve has only found three of these early ones intact.
“This is a stevedore’s pipe that I found at Rotherhithe, still blackened inside. He can work with it in his mouth because it is so short,” said Steve, putting it into his mouth to give a demonstration, before adding with cheery grin, “You find their bodies with the teeth rotted out at one side.”
Then, “Who was at the end of it?” he asked me, taking the pipe from his mouth and gesturing naturally with it for emphasis, “Who was that man or woman or child, that sucked upon this?” As I could not answer his question, Steve pursued his thought further. “This pipe has been through the Plague and the Fire of London,” he said, placing the modest object respectfully on the table, “And it just awes me.”
“I don’t know why I like it so much. I love the bear and, being bald, – it’s for hair growth – it makes me laugh!” This was Steve’s explanation when I asked him why this nineteenth century lid from a pot of Russian bear’s grease means so much to him. You can admire the elegant typography and the poignant engraving of the creature, while recognising the sad irony of killing bears for a remedy that does not work, but the appeal of this lid remains intangible to Steve.
“If I had to choose between this and something of monetary value in the collection, I would choose this,” he confirmed to me resolutely, “I’ve had thousands of things up from the river, but I always wanted to find one of these, and a cannon.” It seems that the nature of mudlarking is such that you can almost never discover what you are looking for in the Thames. “You can’t choose what to find, there’s this guy who finds all these gold coins when he only wants a crotal bell,” Steve confided to me, shaking his head with a playful smirk, as an example of the capricious nature of the river.
But one day Steve got lucky when Old Father Thames directed him to a bear’s grease pot lid. “I’d been to test some mud at Charlton near to the O2 Arena but it was poor for finds, although when I walked back along the foreshore there were a lot of bottles, and that’s where I found what I had sought for years, sitting on a tip.” he told me, widening his eyes in excitement as he recalled the sentimental moment fondly. Now Steve just has the find the cannon, because – as you can see below – he already has the cannon balls to go with it.
Steve’s finds have spilled out of his house into the garden – boathooks, padlocks, cannon balls, broken Bellarmine jugs and old pipes.
You can find out more at Steve Brooker’s website www.thamesandfield.com and there will be further Mud God’s Discoveries here in February.
Beggars, Newspaper Sellers & Bubblegum Machines
It was a year ago this week that the Evening Standard became a free newspaper, when overnight the cry of the newspaper seller ceased for ever upon the London streets. So I was especially touched to come across Phil Maxwell’s sympathetic pictures of this once familiar sight, published on his daily blog yesterday.
With a panoply of unlikely yet memorable posts about beggars and bubblegum machines, hawkers, hoodies, skateboarders, trolley ladies, and people carrying chairs and wheeling tyres – all witnessed by Maxwell’s superlative photographs – this endeavour is developing into a compelling panorama of the East End over the past thirty years. He dignifies his subjects through compassionate unsentimental observation, taking those who might otherwise be perceived as ‘marginal’ and creating images that place these people where they truly exist, at the centre of life’s drama.
Always alive to the subtle poetry of humanity, Phil Maxwell has become the pre-eminent recorder of London street life in our day, and I wholeheartedly recommend Playground of an East End Photographer to you.
This lady was a regular feature begging at the entrance to Aldgate East tube station in 1984.
This lady was photographed begging outside the entrance to a newsagent on Whitechapel Rd in 1986.
Newspaper sellers at Whitechapel Station, 1988.
Newspaper sellers at Aldgate East Station, 1987.
Newspaper seller at Aldgate East Station, 1985.
Newspaper seller at Aldgate East Station, 1985.
Newspaper seller at The Birdcage, Columbia Rd, 1987.
Bubblegum machine on Brick Lane, 1984
Bubblegum machine next to a shop entrance in Brick Lane, early nineteen eighties.
Photographs copyright © Phil Maxwell
More pictures by Phil Maxwell
Remembering the Cat Lady of Spitalfields
Chapter 5. Shootout in Sidney St
It will be a hundred years ago tonight, that the policemen surrounded the house at 100 Sidney St and waited all night in the snow with their guns ready. At 3:30am, Detective Inspector Wensley spoke to Mrs Bluestein at 102, and by means of a subterfuge – sending her to request the assistance of Mrs Fleishman, the landlady at 100, with her sick husband – he managed to extricate everyone from the house save the two suspects, sleeping in the front room.
At dawn, Wensley threw some pebbles at the window to wake them but received no response. Then, as he was collecting more pebbles, there were six shots from the upper floor and Sergeant Leeson was shot. “Mr Wensley, I am dying. They have shot me through the heart. Goodbye. Give my love to the children. Bury me at Putney.” he said. A bullet had passed right through Leeson’s chest and come out the other side. Once a doctor arrived and Leeson was placed upon a stretcher, it became imperative to get him to hospital, but shooting began again and the doctor was grazed upon the temple by a bullet. Wensley took refuge in the gutter where he lay in the freezing slush for half an hour as the firing continued.When the shooting ceased, Wensley ran back to Arbour Sq Police Station. It was obvious that the police with their antiquated rifles were outgunned by the semi-automatic pistols used by the shooters, so he rang Scotland Yard for assistance.
Winston Churchill, the Home Secretary, was enjoying his morning bath when he received the message from Scotland Yard, requesting authority to bring in troops from the Tower of London. Two officers of the Scots Guards and seventeen soldiers with rifles were dispatched from Tower Hill to join the two hundred policemen already in place, surrounding the two unknown suspects firing from 100 Sidney St. And they were given authority to use any force necessary to resolve the situation, including the use of the Maxim gun that was deployed.
By the time Churchill arrived at noon, the gun battle had been raging for four hours with thousands of shots fired, “We got out of the car. There was a considerable crowd of angry and alarmed people, and I noticed the unusual spectacle of Metropolitan constables armed with shot-guns hastily procured from a local gunsmith. The atmosphere of the crowd was not particularly friendly and there were several cries of ‘Oo let ’em in?’ in allusion to the refusal of our Liberal Government to introduce drastic laws restricting the immigration of aliens. Just at this moment, however, a shot rang out, followed by another and another until there was a regular fusillade… nothing of the sort had ever been seen within living memory in quiet, law-abiding, comfortable England.”
Although he had arrived as an observer, Churchill became part of the discussion about whether to storm the house but at one o’clock, before any decision was made, flames were seen at 100 Sidney St. From a nearby rooftop, a reporter saw a gas jet burning on the first floor, suggesting that the fire may have been a attempt to create a diversion, permitting the desperadoes to escape from the back of the house. Ashes of scraps of paper rose in the billowing clouds of black smoke and drifted over the excited crowds. One gunman leaned out of the window, possibly to take breath, and he was shot in the head, then the other – a burning figure – climbed onto the window ledge, to a gasp of horror from the crowd of thousands. Within seconds, after a burst of shots, he fell backwards into the room, and quickly the fire consumed the house, as the roof and floors came crashing down amongst a roar of flames.
Churchill who claimed he got a bullet hole in his top hat that day, was later criticised for preventing the Fire Brigade from tackling the blaze, his alleged words being, “No, let the buggers burn!”
When a policeman kicked open the door and firemen entered to explore the smoking debris afterwards, they discovered a headless body with the legs burnt away which had fallen from the floor above. Then part of the sidewall collapsed upon five firemen, killing one of them who died of his injuries the following July. Yet by the evening of that day, they found the second charred body, still with his pistol but with his head also missing like his comrade. Although these corpses were unidentifiable, on the basis of the landlady’s testimony, they were named as Fritz Svaars and William Solokoff. No trace was ever found of the legendary Peter the Painter, to whom – in popular lore – is commonly attributed the masterminding of the gang’s activities. If he existed, he remained at large. A century later, scholarly controversy over his true identity continues and recently Tower Hamlets Community Housing named two new housing developments in Sidney St as Peter and Painter houses.
An eleven day trial of the five suspects in custody commenced in May 1911 but, with only fragmentary evidence, they all had their charges dropped, were acquitted or had their convictions quashed. And the judge drew the convenient conclusion that those who fired the shots killing the three policemen upon the night of 16th December 1910 in Houndsditch were the three dead members of the gang. It was an appalling episode in the violent history of the East End, but it proved to be a mere tremor of the coming earthquake that erupted as the First World War on July 28th 1914.
Watch news footage of the siege of Sidney St by clicking here and here, and the fictional scene from Alfred Hitchcock’s “The Man Who Knew Too Much,” inspired by these events, is here.
You may expect an epilogue to this tale shortly.
Soldiers of the Scots Guards take up positions.
Churchill in his top hat and astrakhan coat stands to the centre left in the crowd.
The conflagration.
Detective Inspector Frederick Wensley (left) in conference with Chief Detective Inspector John McCarthy.
Images copyright © Bishopsgate Institute
Read the full pitiful story
Chapter 1. Murder in Houndsditch
Chapter 3. A Funeral at Christmas
Churchill & the Anarchists, a free exhibition (including many artifacts and pieces of evidence from the case) runs at the Museum of London in the Docklands until April.
Chapter 4. A Tip Off
Sunday evening at the Anarchists’ Club in Berner St, E 1 – “Awake, ye men who toil! Up proletarians!”
The murder of the three policemen in Houndsditch on 16th December 1910 set Detective Inspector Frederick Porter Wensley – known as ‘the Weasel’ – and the Whitechapel police on a hunt throughout Christmas for members of the Latvian Anarchist Gang on the run in the East End, intensified by the discovery of the dead body of one of their number, George Gardstein, in a rented room in Stepney.
At that time, the term “anarchist” was not yet synonymous with that of “terrorist,” as it subsequently became, rather these were people who sought to bring about social change through agitation and strikes instead of violence. However, the Houndsditch Murders occasioned a significant change in perception of the movement in Britain, even though it had an established presence in the East End, dating from the eighteen seventies when insurrectionists came as refugees from Russia, Germany, and France after the civil war.
Several presumed members of the gang were already in custody thanks to informant Nicholas Tomacoff, the mandolin teacher who was enjoying five weeks in a hotel over the festive season with all expenses paid and had fitted himself out in new clothes thanks to the police reward. It was established that members of the gang had rented properties in Exchange Buildings, staging an attempt to break through the wall into the jeweller’s shop in Houndsditch and steal the Tsar’s jewels that were rumoured to be held there. Arthur Harding, an East End villain who knew them personally described the gang in his autobiography, “We knew they were crooked but we were told they were on the run from the Russian Secret Police, that fact alone gained them our sympathy. They had to live, they had to pay their lodgings, and they needed money for their politics when all’s said and done. That’s why they did these robberies.” Many were educated young Jewish people who had participated in the Latvian revolt for independence from the Russian Empire in 1905, which was brutally repressed by Russian troops – with particular savagery directed against Jews – and several had been imprisoned and tortured, as letters discovered in the room in Grove St testified.
Meanwhile, Louise Bentley, the widow of Sergeant Bentley, had given birth to a son over Christmas, named Robert after his heroic father shot dead on 16th December. “Baby Bentley,” he was christened by the press, emphasising the poignancy of his birth, and a Daily Express fund raised almost two thousand pounds for the three families of the dead policemen in a matter of days.
Then, late on New Year’s Day, an old man appeared at City Police Headquarters, walking in from the driving snow. He was Charles Perelman, who proved to be the most significant informant. He had rented rooms to several members of the gang, and he confirmed there were fifteen in total and told the police that the remaining members were hiding out at an address which was to go down in history, 100 Sidney St. Among those allegedly taking refuge were Fritz Svaars in whose room George Gardstein’s body was discovered and the leader of the gang himself, the enigmatic – even mythic – unnamed figure of “Peter the Painter.”
Later, Detective Inspector Wensley received a phone call after midnight at the Leman St Police Station. “We don’t like the look of things!” he was told, and reinforcements were swiftly drafted from other forces to move in on Sidney St before dawn. They gathered at Arbour Sq Police Station at 12:45am and set out with guns, walking together in the dark through the snowy East End streets, uncertain what they might encounter. Ominously, in the light of the Houndsditch shootings, married men were excluded from the showdown, which was to be the culmination of the violent train of events set in motion before Christmas.
You may expect to read a full account of the events that transpired in Sidney Street imminently.
Until 1892, the tall building on the right of this photograph, 40 Berner St (now renamed Henriques St) was the Russian Anarchists’ Club. It was closed when an LCC inspector declared the premises as unsafe.
In this building on the corner of Fulbourne St in Whitechapel Market was held the Fifth Congress of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party, consolidating the Bolshevik Party in May 1907, while Lenin, Trotsky, Stalin, Litvinov and Gorky, founders of the future Soviet Union, were all living in exile in Whitechapel.
In Jubilee St, on the corner of Lindley St, (where the pillar box now stands) was the location of the Anarchist’s Club between 1906 & 1914. Previously Lenin addressed a meeting here on March 21st, 1903, and was reportedly seen in the Club in 1907 & 1908.
Archive images copyright © Bishopsgate Institute
