King Sour DA MC, rapper of Bethnal Green
“I’m more of a rapper than a poet, though it’s because of poetry that I became a rapper. Since I was nine – after listening to hip hop – I wanted to rap, but before that I used to be writing poetry. It made me happy, putting words together, even just a couple of lines. I wouldn’t call it a talent, I would call it ‘practice makes perfect’. Every since I understood what life was about, when I was about seven, I have always wanted to help people out. You could say I’m a helper, a healer, I want to see people get treated equally in this world. Music is the remedy of hatred . People usually respond well to music and poetry, and my lyrics are short and to the point.”
These are the words of Yasin Ahmed, aka King Sour DA MC, spoken as we sat together one afternoon, sheltering from the rain beneath the canopy of the bandstand in Arnold Circus, at the heart of the tightly woven web of streets that he knows intimately. Blessed with an astonishing gift of eloquence, at just seventeen years old, Yasin has already established a reputation in the neighbourhood through his performances here in the bandstand and an appearance at the O2 Arena, as a finalist in a competition out of 21,000 under sixteens. Yet in spite of demonstrating the strength of character to stand up and perform in public – sometimes extempore – Yasin possesses an unassuming almost shy personality, speaking thoughtfully under his breath and pausing frequently for thought. A contemplative character who does not make eye contact when he is thinking, yet who illuminates with delight when speaking passionately of poetry and rap.
“At first, my school didn’t realise I was taking it that seriously,” he explained, taking about his evolution as a writer,“but I have Miracle MC, Naga MC and Chinx MC, they’re only a year older than me but they’ve helped me develop lyrically and Chinx he helped me to stand up again, every time I had the grief.” Yasin is referring here to lapses of courage when inventing poetry spontaneously for a live audience, a testing and definitive requirement of his chosen medium. With quiet determination, Yasin is pushing the boundary of his own ease in order to become stronger. “It helps me to think out of the box, to learn to be calm and control my anger,” he informed me in a perfectly relaxed tone that demonstrated the self-evident truth of his statement.
Yasin is vividly aware of the social politics of the world he has grown up into – in East London and beyond – a situation defined by the conflicts and controversies in the wake of 9/11. “Religion is important to me because religion gets stereotyped, when it is important to me to respect all religions.”, declared Yasin, thinking out loud as we both sat gazing at the falling rain,”People need to be open-minded and live together, because our life in this world is short.” And Yasin was not talking in abstractions, because he was eye witness to the violence provoked by the presence of the racist English Defence League outside the East London Mosque in Whitechapel recently.
Yasin prefers to speak of literature, especially of the works of John Steinbeck and William Shakespeare that he is studying, though it brings him back again to the same subjects. Reading Steinbeck’s account of characters struggling with racial conflict at the time of the dust bowl and the Wall St crash has an obvious resonance for Yasin, while the works of Shakespeare reflect back on the tensions that Yasin experiences daily in Bethnal Green.“I have lived in these streets and I know the codes, so I do feel comfortable to a certain extent, because I have friends that look out for me.” said Yasin, apprising me of the situation, “It’s not as bad as ‘Romeo & Juliet,’ but it could be.” Yasin told me he plans to go to performing arts college, has his eye set on the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in the Barbican, and in ten years time he sees himself living in Canada or Portugal – because he wants to experience other cultures.
My conversation with Yasin led me to appreciate the epic scale of the world he inhabits, even when he is walking through the small streets of Bethnal Green. Yasin looks over his shoulder and he carries his unknowable ancestry that connects him to Bangladesh and beyond back to Kenya. Yasin looks around and he sees the crisis of the current moment in global politics, and chooses to address it personally through embracing the aesthetic challenges of rhetoric and verse. Yasin looks forward and he has got hopes for the future. Yasin has got presence of mind. Yasin finds joy in words. Yasin wants to talk about human dignity, and he has a story to tell.
Meeting Yasin gave me hope too because, resisting alienation, he has fought to retain an open mind and an optimistic temperament, channelling his thoughts and abilities into finding a creative voice – and discovering a sense of moral clarity in the process. It confirms my faith that young people will always recognise the emotional truth of a situation intuitively, open-heartedly seeking freedom for everyone, when their seniors can too readily be clouded by prejudice.
You may like to watch King Sour DA MC performing “Out in Society.”
I am from the ghettos of the Bethnal Green, And on the streets there’s always crime scenes, There’s a lot of haters in my ends that wanna be seen, See I am from the ghettos of Bethnal Green, See I am from the ghettos of Bethnal Green, I can’t tell a lie but in my bits there’s a lot of thieves, Burgling houses making money to buy weed, These lunatics just survive on the seed, Forget doing a deed, Only thing they think of in my ends is how to commit a sin, F listening to the angel they listening to Lucifer the djinn, See I am from the ghettos of Bethnal Green, Bethnal Green short for B.G, I am from there you see, An area called Turin Street, See my home land is a bit like assassins’ creed, Cos everyone’s fighting for one thing, And that’s to be the honourable king, But they can’t take that title because I’m the rapping singing G, That’s right King Sour the MC, I’m no, no, no wanna b, See I am from the ghettos of Bethnal Green, The name might be green, But my area is blue, Fighting and crime is all they do, It’s like the tool is stuck to their hands with glue, My area is in a different time zone it’s like stepping into the police box from Dr Who, They greet visitors with a little boo, One step out of line and they’ll jack you for your shoes, And if you have a hat that’ll be gone too, See I am from the ghettos of Bethnal Green, I am from the ghettos of Bethnal Green.
IDENTITY
These days everyone wants to be hustling G’s, They’re fighting for identity, This is life in the 21st century, We have little kids smoking on cancer sticks, Youngsters thinking they’re in a game, Trying to make some long flex name, They just don’t know they’re acting lame, Don’t you know we’ve moved on it’s just not the same, So I say just focus your mind, You still got time, Even if you want to rap and rhyme, So please don’t commit the crime, Young people get off the streets ‘coz I’m screaming aloud, Next time you hear a loud sound, Like click, click bang just know someone got shot down, ‘Coz they were fighting for identity, Day by day they’re forgetting their responsibilities, Look we all have human dignity, And we all have individuality, We want to fly high and free, So do we really need identity? At first it was all a scream, I wanted to be a mc it was just a dream, Did I do it for me? Or did I do it for identity, This is life in the 21st century.
Vagabondiana of 1817
This is William Conway of Crab Tree Row, Bethnal Green, who walked twenty-five miles every day, calling, “Hard metal spoons to sell or change.” Born in 1752 in Worship St, Spitalfields, he is pictured here forty-seven years into his profession, following in the footsteps of his father, also an itinerant trader. Conway had eleven walks around London which he took in turn, wore out a pair of boots every six weeks and claimed that he never knew a day’s illness.
This is just one of the remarkable portraits by John Thomas Smith collected together in a large handsome volume entitled “Vagabondiana,” published in 1817, that it was my delight to discover recently in the collection of the Bishopsgate Institute. John Thomas Smith is an intriguing and unjustly neglected artist of the early nineteenth century who is chiefly remembered today for being born in the back of a Hackney carriage in Great Portland St and for his murky portrait of Joseph Mallord William Turner.
On the opening page of “Vagabondiana”, Smith’s project is introduced to the reader with delicately ambiguous irony. “Beggary, of late, has become so dreadful in London, that the more active interference of the legislature was deemed absolutely necessary, indeed the deceptions of the idle and sturdy were so various, cunning and extensive, that it was in most instances extremely difficult to discover the real object of charity. Concluding, therefore, that from the reduction of metropolitan beggars, several curious characters would disappear by being either compelled to industry, or to partake of the liberal parochial rates, provided for them in their respective work-houses, it occurred to the author of the present publication, that likenesses of the most remarkable of them, with a few particulars of their habits, would not be unamusing to those to whom they have been a pest for several years.”
Yet in spite of these apparently self-righteous, Scrooge-like, sentiments – that today might be still be voiced by mayors of major cities or any number of venerable bigots in parliament – John Thomas Smith’s pictures tell another story. From the moment I cast my eyes upon these breathtakingly beautiful engravings, I was captivated by their human presence. There are few smiling faces here, because Smith allows his subjects to retain their self possession, and his fine calligraphic line celebrates their idiosyncrasy borne of ingenious strategies to survive on the street.
You can tell from these works that John Thomas Smith loved Rembrandt, Hogarth and Goya’s prints because the stylistic influences are clear, in fact Smith became keeper of drawings and prints at the British Museum. More surprising is how modern these drawings feel – there are several that could pass as the work of Mervyn Peake. Heath Robinson’s drawings also spring to mind, especially his illustrations to Shakespeare and there are a couple of craggy stooping figures woven of jagged lines that are worthy of Ronald Searle or Quentin Blake.
If you are looking for the poetry of life, you will find it in abundance in these unsentimental yet compassionate studies that cut across two centuries to bring us a vivid sense of London street life in 1817. It is a dazzling vision of London that Smith proposes, populated by his vibrant characters.
The quality of Smith’s portraits transcend any condescension because through his sympathetic curiosity Smith came to portray his vagabonds with dignity, befitting an artist who was literally born in the street, who walked the city, who knew these people and who drew them in the street. He narrowly escaped a lynch mob once when his motives were misconstrued and he was mistaken for a police sketch artist. No wonder his biography states that,“Mr Smith happily escaped the necessity of continuing his labours as an artist, being appointed keeper of prints & drawings at the British Museum.”
Smith described his subjects as “curious characters” and while some may be exotic, it is obvious that these people cannot all fairly be classed as vagabonds, unless we chose instead to celebrate “Vagabondiana” as the self-respecting state of those who eek existence at the margins through their own wits. One cannot deny the romance of vagabond life, with its own culture and custom. Through pathos, John Thomas Smith sought to expose common human qualities and show vagabonds as people, rather than merely as pests to be driven out.
A Jewish mendicant, unable to walk, who sat in a box on wheels in Petticoat Lane.
Israel Potter, one of the oldest menders of chairs still living.
Strolling clowns
Bernado Millano, the bladder man
Itinerant third generation vendor of elegies, Christmas carols and love songs
A crippled sailor advertises his maritime past
George Smith, a brush maker afflicted with rheumatism who sold chickweed as bird food.
A native of Lucca accompanying his dancing dolls upon the bagpipes
Blinded in one eye, this beggar seeks reward for sweeping the street
Priscilla who sat in the street in Clerkenwell making quilts
Anatony Antonini, selling artificial silk flowers adorned with birds cast in wax
This boot lace seller was a Scotman who lost his hands in the wars
Charles Wood and his dancing dog.
Staffordshire ware vendors bought their stock from the Paddington basin and sold it door to door.
Rattle-puzzle vendors.
A blind beggar with a note hung round his neck appealing for charity.
Images courtesy © Bishopsgate Institute
John Olney, Donovan Brothers Ltd
John Olney told me it all began with two brothers, Jeremiah & Dennis O’Donovan, who came to Liverpool from Dublin in the eighteen thirties at the time of the potato famine in Ireland. Dennis took a passage from Liverpool across the Atlantic to seek his fortune with the Hudson Bay Trading Company, while Jeremiah came to the East End and settled in Fireball Court, Aldgate.
It sounds like an adventure story of long ago, yet John imbues it with a vivid present tense quality because Jeremiah was his great-great-grandfather and, to a degree, the nature of John’s own life has been the outcome of these events. The brothers’ tale explains both how he came to be here and why Donovan Brothers continues today in the way it does as a family business.
I was touched by John’s story because it was the first I have heard of the Irish in Spitalfields recounted to me by a descendant. Of the different waves of immigration that have passed through, the Irish are the least acknowledged and the people who have left the least evidence visible today. Yet anyone who walks through Spitalfields knows the building in Crispin St with the fine old signwriting that says “Donovan Brothers – The noted house for paper bags,” this was where the business began that John still runs today at the New Spitalfields Market in Leyton.
John and I sat talking in the office of the Market Tenants’ Association in the grey light of early morning recently, watching as the wholesale fruit & vegetable market wound up for the night and the car park emptied out. There is an innate modesty to this gracious man with a strong physical presence and a discreet, withheld quality that colours the plain telling of his stories. You can tell from his glinting eyes that John’s family possesses an intensity of meaning for him, yet he adopts a quiet unemotional tone while speaking of it which serves to communicate a greater depth of feeling than any overt emotion.
“So you’ve come to hear about the fields…” he said, thinking out loud. By “the fields” John meant Spitalfields, using a term of reference I had not heard before. In its archaic colloquial tone, it spoke eloquently of his relationship to the place where his family dwelled continuously from the eighteen thirties and where he began his lifelong involvement with markets.
“My mother was a Donovan” declared John, outlining his precise connection to the line of descent, “She was one of eight, five boys and three daughters. We were a very close knit family, and it was so exciting for a boy of seven or eight, when I first entered the Spitalfields shop and sat on the counter. My uncle would sit outside with the chicken seller at the corner of Leyden St and reminisce about old times. It was history that was being spoken, you didn’t have to read it in books. My uncle used to end up at the bottom of Whites Row where there used to be a barbers and I would sit outside on the curb with my sweets – and that’s how it was in the old days.
My grandfather Patrick Donovan was one of nine children, he started the business and then the brothers came in and that’s how Donovan Brothers came about. I always knew I had a job to go to in the family business. You did everything. If there was a job there, from sweeping up to serving, you did it. It was second nature. Our motto was politeness cost nothing, I would always say, ‘Good Morning, Mr So & So,’ and my uncle would say to the customer, ‘The boy will take it out for you.’
We ran it as a family business and if there was a problem we dealt with it at once between us. The eldest was my grandfather, the governor, and when he died my uncles took over. The governor tells you what to do but everyone else asks. To everyone that works for me today, I am the governor, but in the family my elderly uncles are still the governors. Like in all family businesses, you could count upon one another. There’s no one person shouldering all the problems at any one time.
Every one of my uncles ran a different market. We were involved in Covent Garden, Borough and Stratford Market as well as Spitalfields. I would go out and make the deliveries. Whichever market I was in, it was always the same, whenever I walked through, traders would come up to me with orders and say ‘Tell your father.’ No-one knew who I was. I was ‘the boy’ and I still am to my uncles, and this makes a family. Because although we do retire as such, there’s no retirement from the family business. You are born on the job. You die on the job.”
John’s two sons and daughter all work for Donovan Brothers now, ensuring the family business goes on for another generation. I think we may permit him to enjoy a certain swagger, coming in to work before dawn in all weathers and continuing his pattern of napping twice a day, at the end of the afternoon and in the late evening, thereby sustaining himself with superlative resilience through the extended antisocial hours that market life entails. The market is a world to itself and it is John Olney’s world.
The building in Crispin St retains its signwriting today.
In Commercial St, nineteen sixties.
John’s shop in the Spitalfields Market, nineteen eighties
John Olney outside his shop in the New Spitalfields Market, Leyton.
Portraits of John Olney © Mark Jackson
You may like to see Mark Jackson & Huw Davies’ photographs of the old Spitalfields Market.
The Trannies of Bethnal Green
Hessel St is named in remembrance of Phoebe Hessel (born 1713), known as the “Amazon of Stepney” who dressed as a man to enlist in the army to be with her lover – an honourable example which demonstrates that trannies are an integral part of the culture and history of the East End. And I am proud to report that this venerable tradition still flourishes today, reaching its exuberant zenith each year at “London’s Next Top Tranny Contest” held at the Bethnal Green Working Men’s Social Club.
It was my privilege to sit at the head of the catwalk, surrounded by a raucous and appreciative crown, to witness these glamorous extravagant flowers at close quarters as they competed furiously in last week’s nail-biting contest finale. Yet before proceedings commenced, Russella – our long-legged pole dancing hostess in pink glitter – confessed her motives with a refreshing lack of false modesty, redefining the terms of the contest unambiguously.
“Why would I want to give the title of London’s Top Tranny to someone less talented and less good looking than myself? That’s why I am the host tonight, because the winner will be London’s Next Top Tranny – after me. They will be London’s Next Top Tranny when I die. In other words, over my dead body…” she declared, fluttering her spidery eyelashes as she twisted her sparkly lips into an insouciant smile and tossed her blonde locks with self conscious grace.
Once the unassailable Russella had asserted her alpha-tranny status, it was time to bring on the contestants, Miss Cairo, Fancy Chance, Stephanie, Polly Sexual, Jean Benett and Strawberry Pickles, and what a gorgeous display of unapologetically ambiguous gender they presented – to delight the most jaded eye and uplift the weariest spirit. Six brave souls who had cast aside conventional notions of dignity in the quest for greatness. Lacking breasts, possessing male body hair (and in one case having a beard), none of these contestants aspired literally to be taken for women, instead they had adopted female trappings to aid them in exaggerated variations upon the performance of femininity. And, as if to emphasise the point, Russella even staged an uproarious cookery demonstration making pancakes on stage.
Running through the evening was a compelling dramatic tension between the trannies’ performances that invite our suspension of disbelief and their clunky pantomime outfits which simultaneously remind us of their wearers’ inauthentic gender. These fearless trannies incarnate a persuasive poetry. It is a question of how far are you prepared to go to humiliate yourself for the sake of becoming fabulous.
And these trannies held nothing back, embracing challenges to retain dignity while walking in wildly mis-matched ill-fitting shoes, displaying extreme emotions while blasted by a wind machine, drinking copious amounts of of cider, and eating live worms, raw meat and dog food. Stephanie, a shy senior tranny in a bridal gown, won affection early on for tottering in ill-matched heels displaying swollen ankles and varicose veins, and then, as if to dispel the audience’s pity, won a round of applause for eating a whole can of dog food. Other memorable highlights included Miss Cairo’s supermodel walk sustained while wearing a wooden clog and a five inch heel, Polly Sexual’s glorious dress woven from yellow and black hazard tape, Strawberry Pickles’ soulful appeal for drag queen asylum to prevent her being sent back to Sarah Palin’s America, Jean Benett’s curiously Gwyneth Paltrow-like enactment of constipation, and Fancy Chance’s performance as the artist formerly known as Prince, which made such ingenious use of an aerosol of cream and drew deafening shrieks of joy from the crowd.
It all came down to two contenders. Strawberry Pickles, distinguished by her relentless cheerfulness and Fancy Chance who accomplished that rare stage feat of being mean and charming at the same time. She was the dark horse of the contest, wearing trousers and exuding masculinity, I wrongly assumed Fancy was a man performing as a manly woman. Only part-way through the contest did I realise that Fancy Chance was the only entrant going in the opposite direction to the others, from woman to man. She had taken me in from the start. So it was only just that she won, though friends were surprised next day when I said I had been to a tranny contest and a woman won – though I have no doubt Phoebe Hessel would have approved of the result.
There is a strange nobility in the trannies’ condition, emerging from the shadowlands of gender into the limelight, so proud and flamboyant, craving attention like children, and seeking affection and respect for their fabulousness. We love them for their excess, their devotion to sentimental songs and inability to lipsynch, their make-up that smears, their wigs that come off and their trashy costumes that come apart. We cherish their magnificent failures. We love them for their audacity. They are delicate creatures of the nighttime and we do not want to know where they go in the daytime, because there is an elusive magic to these vibrant personalities unlocked by cross-dressing.
Photographs copyright © Sarah Ainslie
Find out more about the Bethnal Green Working Men’s Social Club at www.workersplaytime.net
Columbia Road Market 53
This is Neil Swailes who specialises in house plants, surrounded by some prime specimens of the tropical orchids upon which he bases his reputation. “Go and look at the web and you’ll be back to buy the best!” is one of Neil’s cries.“We pride ourselves on selling top quality stuff,” he assured me, proudly holding up an exotic bloom with a confident grin.
A relative newcomer in this long established market,“I’ve been here for just eight years,” he declared modestly, “although my family’s been here for twenty.” Neil married into the trade, his wife’s family own the business –“I married their daughter and then started working on the stall,” explained Neil with the open-hearted alacrity of one who takes life as it comes. Based in Theydon Bois, Essex, Neil’s business consists in the import and selling of indoor plants, and he works as a gardener for the rest of the week.
Each Sunday, Neil gets up at 1:30 in the morning to drive up to Columbia Rd and work a sixteen hour day. In common with many of his fellow traders he is devoted to this weekly ritual. “It’s a good business and nice people. I don’t know what I’d do without it now, I’d be lost,” he confided to me, even tolerating the mysterious meteorological phenomenon whereby, “It always usually rains on Sundays.” Just like the sale of garden plants, the trade in indoor plants also seasonal, “In the Summer it trails off but it picks up in the Winter, and Christmas is a good time.” said Neil with a grin of anticipation, as the season shifts in his favour.
There is a certain resilience of spirit and brightness of manner that is required in the market and for Neil these are innate. Though when I asked if he would like his children to come into the business, he dismissed the idea at once. “I hope not, it’s a hard old grind!” he exclaimed. Yet in this walk of life, major recognition can come in unexpected ways.“David Bailey took my photograph,” admitted Neil proudly, “He brought me a framed print and I’m going to be in his new book.”
Photograph copyright © Jeremy Freedman
In Spitalfields in Autumn
The rain is falling on Spitalfields, upon the church and the market, and on the streets, yards and gardens. Dripping off the roofs and splashing onto the pavements, filling the gutters and coursing down the pipes, it overflows the culverts and drains to restore the flow of the Black Ditch, the notorious lost river of Spitalfields that once flowed from here to Limehouse Dock. This was the watercourse that transmitted the cholera in 1832. An open sewer piped off in the nineteenth century, the Black Ditch has been co-opted into the drainage system today, but it is still running unknown beneath our feet in Spitalfields – the underground river with the bad reputation.
The shades of Autumn encourage such dark thoughts, especially when the clouds hang over the City and the Indian Summer has unravelled to leave us with incessant rain bringing the first leaves down. In Spitalfields, curry touts shiver in the chill and office smokers gather in doorways, peering at the downpour. The balance of the season has shifted and sunny days have become exceptions, to be appreciated as the last vestiges of the long Summer.
On such a day recently, I could not resist collecting these conkers that were lying neglected on the grass in the sunshine. And when I got home I photographed them in that same Autumn sunlight to capture their perfect lustre for you. Let me confess, ever since I came to live in the city, it has always amazed me to see conkers scattered and ignored. I cannot understand why city children do not pick them up, when even as an adult I cannot resist the temptation to fill a bag. In Devon, we raced from the school gates and down the lane to be the first to collect the fresh specimens. Their glistening beauty declared their value even if, like gold, their use was limited. I did not bore holes in them with a meat skewer and string them, to fight with them as others do, because it meant spoiling their glossy perfection. Instead I filled a leather suitcase under my bed with conkers and felt secure in my wealth, until one day I opened the case to discover they had all dried out, shrivelled up and gone mouldy.
Let me admit, I feel the sense of darkness accumulating now and regret the tender loss of Summer, just as I revel in the fruit of the season and the excuse to retreat to bed with a hot water bottle that Autumn provides. I lie under the quilt I sewed and I feel protected like a child, though I know I am not a child. I cannot resist dark thoughts, I have a sense of dread at the Winter to come and the nights closing in. Yet in the city, there is the drama of the new season escalating towards Christmas and coloured lights gleaming in wet streets. As the nights draw in, people put on the light earlier at home, creating my favourite spectacle of city life, that of the lit room viewed from the street. Every chamber becomes a lantern or a theatre to the lonely stranger on the gloomy street, glimpsing the commonplace ritual of domestic life. Even a mundane scene touches my heart when I hesitate to gaze upon it in passing, like an anonymous ghost in the shadow.
Here in Spitalfields, I have no opportunity to walk through beech woods to admire the copper leaves, instead I must do it in memory. I shall not search birch woods for chanterelles this year either, but I will seek them out to admire in the market, even if I do not buy any. Instead I shall get a box of cooking apples and look forward to eating baked apples by the fire. I have been busy cutting up broken pallets and scrap timber from the streets, and I already have a respectable wood pile stacked up. I am looking forward to lighting the fire. I am looking forward to Halloween. I am looking forward to Bonfire Night. I am looking forward to Christmas. And I always look forward to writing to you every day. The Summer is over but there is so much to look forward to.
My Autumn shirt, the counterpart to my Spring shirt.
You can visit the Spitalfields City Farm to celebrate Apple Day on Sunday 17th October.
Laurie Allen of Petticoat Lane
This fellow – so at home he is almost merging with the shopfront behind him – is Laurie Allen standing on a street corner in Petticoat Lane, assuming a characteristically nonchalant posture and watching the world go by. Through his debonaire stance, Laurie demonstrates his confidence, good humour and general optimistic attitude to life. Laurie grew up in Petticoat Lane and still lives in Petticoat Lane. He is at ease with the current of life in Petticoat Lane, that provides him with unceasing fascination and delight.“Throbbing with wonderment,” is his phrase for Petticoat Lane.
Yet Petticoat Lane does not exist on any map, which is appropriate, because for Laurie it is a mythic land of adventure and romance. Petticoat Lane was renamed Middlesex St in 1830 to define the boundary with the City of London, although everyone still calls it by its earlier name, now used to refer to all the streets of the market. This unwitting act of popular defiance is characteristic of the independence of spirit that reigns here in these shabby ancient streets of Spitalfields, which were long established before the roads beside the church on the more more fashionable side of the neighbourhood even existed.
Laurie grew up in Petticoat Lane in the post war years, in what is now remembered as the hey day of the Lane when it was a predominantly Jewish neighbourhood. Ask him anything about Petticoat Lane or its history and he will break into a smile of anticipation at the opportunity you have given him to expound upon his favourite subject, Petticoat Lane. “Yeah!” he exclaims to himself occasionally, when a reminiscence comes into focus and the full emotion of the moment comes back into the present tense. Unlike Marcel Proust, Laurie Allen can truly recall times past, because all his experiences stay present here in Petticoat Lane and he can run through them the way barrow boys once ran through the market, shouting “Wet paint!” to part the crowds.
For the last forty years, Laurie has lived in a small flat in Wentworth Buildings, fifty yards round the corner from Wentworth Dwellings where he grew up. Introducing his account of life in the three rooms his family inhabited, he described collecting firewood from the Spitalfields Market and his childhood wonder at the faces he saw in the flames.“It had a mystical quality about it,” he told me, raising his head a little as if to avert the heat. The abandoned bombsites were a paradise for young Laurie, and he christened them with evocative names to enrich his adventures there. Raising his eyebrows for dramatic effect, Laurie told me of China Town at the end of Middlesex St, Black Panther over in Devonshire Sq and the American Hole in Leman St, confiding their names as cherished secrets.
When Carol Reed came to Petticoat Lane in 1955 to film his classic movie of the East End, “A Kid for Two Farthings” – set against the vibrant life of the market – Laurie was given half a crown by one of the producers, as one of three boys running around the corner of Wentworth St in the background of a street scene. But the revelation to the eleven year old Laurie was fifties sex kitten Diana Dors, a platinum blonde in a cashmere sweater. Even today he winces to speak of this goddess. “All we had seen were our mothers and sisters, we had never seen a woman that shape before!” he admitted, tenderly raising his hands to his chest with prurient pleasure.
Walking through Petticoat Lane with him today you will be introduced to people worth meeting like Abdulla Fadli, ex-attendant at the former Goulston St baths for thirty nine years. Yet Laurie also recognises those that have gone who are still vivid in his mind. “The characters, the sights and sounds of Petticoat Lane are equal to any I have ever seen.” he informed me authoritatively, in the present tense while speaking of the past. There was Mary Green, selling pickled herrings from the barrel, yet she never changed her greasy stinking clothes. There was Prince Monolulu, the horse tipster who dressed like a primitive tribesman, calling “Pick a horse! Pick a horse!” knowing that one had to win. There was the soulful beigel seller crying, “Buy them hot – because when they’re gone, they’re really gone.” There was Jack Strong, a crockery seller who could fan out a set of plates like playing cards, throw them up in the air and catch them again, still in a fan. There was Jackie Bryan, selling dresses, calling out, “Buy one and I’ll get you into modelling, buy two and I’ll get you into films.” A topical spot of patter when”A Kid for Two Farthings” was being filmed round the corner.
Yet in spite of the compelling life of Petticoat Lane, Laurie saw all his contemporaries leave one by one, “People would get married or take a job out of the East End. The old boys and girls stayed on while the younger elements all moved out to North London to make a better life and buy a house.” outlined Laurie philosophically. “There’s only a couple of us left now.” he admitted with a grin.
I wondered if Laurie’s affectionate memories were a reaction to the poor living conditions that existed in Petticoat Lane, but he is insistent that this is not the case, “I knew nothing better and I wanted nothing better,” he said plainly, looking back over the intimacy and richness of experience that binds him to this place. Seeking an uncontestable example,“It’s just magic when you live with your mum and dad, and have your mates come and call for you to do something nice.” said Laurie.“It didn’t suit me to exit stage left. The East End is my life, I feel comfortable in my bolt hole.” he confirmed, “Even after all the changes, it has still got a lot going for it.”
Laurie Allen’s Petticoat Lane is a place that belongs to him. He is the least alienated person you could meet in the city. “I like people and people seem to like me.” he added, speaking the truth with a modest candour, as if this were explanation enough.
Click here to watch Sid James looks at Life – Petticoat Lane
From “A Kid for Two Farthings”
Diana Dors on Petticoat Lane, 1955
New photographs copyright © Sarah Ainslie
