Captain Shiv Banerjee, Justice of the Peace
This is Shiv Banerjee – the Captain at the wheel of his ship – on the long voyage that led from his birth in Kailish Ghosh Lane in Dhaka, East Bengal in 1945, to the Toynbee Hall in Commercial St, Spitalfields where he resides today. In fact, the accommodation block at the rear of Toynbee Hall has so many staircases opening onto galleries with lines of neat front doors stretching in every direction, that it does have a certain nautical aspect to it, and on the upper terrace where Shiv has his flat there is even a metal rail just like that on a ship – except, when you peer over, you discover Gunthorpe St below rather than the roaring ocean.
We met at the introduction of Muktha, waiter at Herb & Spice, from where it was a short hop down Commercial St to the Toynbee Hall, and as I walked through the courtyards with Shiv, other residents nodded and waved in respectful acknowledgement, enforcing my feeling that I was accompanying the Captain of the vessel. So when I entered his quarters, it was no surprise to discover a model ship in the living room of his modest yet comfortably furnished flat. We had arrived at the chosen location for Captain Banerjee to tell me about his extraordinary journey.
I was born in Kailash Ghosh Lane in Dhaka, and when I was two months old I was brought to New Delhi, where I lived in the government houses at Lake Square, designed by Edwin Lutyens. I’d never seen the sea when I applied to be a cadet, but I wanted to go to different places. I applied for the exam in 1962 and didn’t get selected for interview – about fifty-five thousand people applied for seventy-five places and they only interviewed one hundred and twenty. But I didn’t give up and I studied civil engineering for a year before I was accepted on the Dufferin, the British Navy’s cadet ship for Indians, Burmese, Ceylonese and Singaporeans. It was a lonely life but I learnt to like it because I had never known anything better. I was sixteen years old and earning beyond what anyone in my family had ever earned before and the uniform was very attractive to women too. I became an officer at twenty-one and when I went back to Lake Square and got out from the taxi, everyone would come and say, “Here is the hero!” Everyone was very proud of me and I was very proud of myself.
In 1966, I visited Liverpool. It was wonderful. I thought, “All the white people will be there and all the important people will be there too.” Going ashore was exciting, I had my first fish & chips and went out and saw the sights. At the Seaman’s Club, “Top of the Pops” was on the television and I saw The Beatles. Everything excited me, nothing was depressing or bad. I came from a poor background and everything was free on board ship and I had money to spend on shore. It was one of the most exciting times in my life.
Then, in 1972, I came to London to study for my Master’s Ticket, so I could captain a ship – because if you had it from London, you were “Made in England” and you could work anywhere in the world. At Heathrow, I was asked a lot of questions and the official wasn’t very polite. “Have you got enough money?” he asked me. “I’ve got five thousand pounds in cash.” I said. Then I took a taxi to Lancaster Gate and it was very expensive and I was pick-pocketed seventy-five pounds in the street on the first day. So I moved down to stay at the Queen Victoria’s Seamen’s Rest in the East India Dock Rd and went to study at the School of Navigation at Tower Hill.
A priest in New Zealand once told me the Toynbee Hall in Commercial St was the place to stay, so I went to find out more. They interviewed me and said I could stay for free for two nights and see how we got on. We all used to eat together then, it was very communal. I loved it. I said, “I’ll stay here.” And it was where I met my wife who was a teacher at Christ Church School. This woman asked, “Can you teach me Bengali?” and I fell in love with her and didn’t pass my exam. We moved in together to a flat in Sunley House, Toynbee Hall at £12.50 per week, including heating, maintenance and service charge. Finally, in 1977, I passed my Captain’s Exam and I told my wife, “I’ll take you to sea.” She said, “Either you stay here with me, or I change the locks on the door and get a new man.” So I gave up my sea career, but I said, “Let’s decide a few things. You are white and I am black. Our children will not know if they are black or white, so we will not have children.” Next day, I went and had a vasectomy done and then I took her to sea for a year before we settled here. I came on land but I had no job.
I became a volunteer for a year and a half working at the Attlee Adventure Playground off Brick Lane, and then Donald Chesworth, Warden of Toynbee Hall, said, “I’ll raise the money to pay you.” In those days, the staff was entirely white. I went off to sea for six months to earn some money and he sent a cable to say I was offered the job of “Volunteer Co-ordinator and Education Outreach Officer” and I became the first black worker to be employed by Toynbee Hall. I launched an out of hours project for old people – if something went wrong at night, we would come and see to it – and I also worked with mentally and physically handicapped children. Toynbee Hall became my home, I decided it was my job to keep it neat and clean, although no-one had given me that job. I was a proud person to keep this place clean.
Then I joined the Inner London Education Authority as a Social Worker, but as I still did not have any qualification on land, I did a research diploma at the City Lit on barriers to education for Bangladeshi children. Next I worked in the Homeless Families’ Team, there were so many children out of school because their families were being housed in hotels. I negotiated with teachers to get them places in schools and I set up a homeless families’ project in a church hall in Finsbury Park. Until then, the only entertainment for these people was making babies, sex and sex and sex, education was not in it.
But I was getting tired, and John Profumo CBE and Chairman of Toynbee Hall took me under his wing and took me to the Reform Club where I met the good and the great. And in 1984, he called me and said, “Do you want to be a magistrate?” I said, “I am not legally qualified, I only know about ship captain’s law.” but Lord Ponsonby, C.E.O. of British Home Stores and a retired Brigadier said, “Put me down as your referee.” They asked me to apply and I got it. I was the first Bengali speaking Justice of the Peace.
I consider language to be the basis of everything – knowledge of English language, both spoken and written. And I always felt that, for an individual, if they are to stay in this country, they had to know the language. In the past, people always said “Yes” to everything, because they were not able to express their needs. I started to teach English to blind people and encouraged the families in the Finsbury Park Homeless Families’ Project to learn English together, because I still feel strongly that lack of education is the main barrier to progress.
Shiv’s voyage was guided by an instinctive moral compass, granting him a natural authority today, even though he refrains from asserting his status. Somehow, he discovered a sympathetic crossover from his life on board ship with its respectfully structured society to the civilian world – equally employing his organisational skills and sense of humanity too.
With quiet courtesy and dressing in undemonstrative formal clothes, Shiv has devoted himself to a life of usefulness. It is rare to meet someone as open as Shiv, a shrewd man with a clear conscience, who can speak without subtext and use plain words to tell you exactly what he means. Never cynical nor flippant, Captain Shiv Banerjee, Justice of the Peace, has an open-hearted vocation to serve his people.
On the left is Shiv, aged seventeen years old, pictured here on board the Training Ship Dufferin with fellow marines Hardev Singh Boparai and Yashpal Das, in August 1963, after the oath ceremony.
Indian Mercantile Marine Training Ship, Dufferin – “There’ll always be a Dufferin upon the Indian Sea, Wherever flies the Merchant Flag there also we will be.”
Shiv’s Master’s Ticket that qualifies him to Captain a ship.
Captain Shiv Banerjee, Justice of the Peace, Toynbee Hall, Spitalfields
Chapter 1. Murder in Houndsditch
A hundred years ago tonight, on 16th December 1910, mysterious sounds of hammering were heard coming from Mr Harris’ empty jeweller’s shop at 119 Houndsditch at the boundary of the City of London. When Max Weil, a fancy goods dealer who lived over his shop next door, returned home after ten that night, he discovered his wife and servant girl agitated by the noises coming from the other side of the wall. On further investigation, he confirmed that Mr Harris had gone home long ago, because the jeweller’s steel gate was locked from the outside, and peering through the window he saw the electric light that always burned in the backroom, illuminating the iron safe rumoured to contain the Tsar’s crown jewels. Everything was as usual – apart from the unexplained hammering.
Although it was a cold night, Weil walked over to Bishopsgate where he fetched Constable Walter Piper and when they listened together outside the shop, they heard what Piper later described as “drilling, sawing and breaking away of brickwork.” He walked around to Exchange Buildings, the cul-de-sac at the rear, to investigate. When Constable Piper knocked at 11 Exchange Buildings – where gaslight glowed above the folding shutter – the door was opened at once and in a manner so furtive that the Constable chose to play innocent, asking, “Is the missus in?”
“She has gone out,” replied the unknown man who answered the door, shaking his head for emphasis. Deeply suspicious now, Piper shrugged it off. “Right, I will call back,” he said, walking away and deducing that a heist was under way. Going to seek back-up, Piper saw a man lurking in the gloom at the entrance to Exchange Buildings, but when the Constable approached, the figure sloped away silently. In Houndsditch, Piper met Constables Walter Choate and Ernest Woodhams, and they took positions outside the jeweller’s shop and at the entrance to Exchange Buildings, while he went to seek assistance from Bishopsgate Police Station.
On his way to the Station, Piper encountered Sergeant Robert Bentley accompanied by two Constables in plain clothes, James Martin and Arthur Strongman. Piper introduced Sergeant Bentley to Max Weil who had sounded the alarm, and Weil took the Sergeant into his counting house to listen to the hammering through the wall. When the Sergeant emerged into Houndsditch again, he met two Sergeants, Bryant and Tucker, sent from Chief Inspector Hayes at Bishopsgate Police Station to convey the message that he had suspicions of some foreigners living in Exchange Buildings.
At once, Bentley went round and knocked again on the door of 11 Exchange Buildings where Constable Piper had called earlier. “Have you been working or knocking about inside?” he asked when the door opened, but received no reply from the man at the door. “Don’t you understand English?” Bentley continued, again without answer. “Do you have anyone that can? Fetch them down.” he insisted, but the man simply let the door swing shut. Persevering, Bentley boldly pushed open the door and walked inside to discover an empty room with a fire burning in the grate, and a cup of tea, and bread and paste upon the table. As Sergeant Bryant stepped into the doorway behind him, both men realised they were being watched from the stairs, but they could not see the watcher’s face, only his legs.
“Is anybody working in there?” repeated Bentley. “No,” came the reply from the man on the stairs. “Anybody in the back?” asked Bentley. “No,” came the reply again. “Can I have a look in the back?” enquired Bentley. “Yes,” came the reply this time. “Show us the way,” requested Bentley. “In there,” said the man on the stairs, pointing toward the yard door, and Bentley took a step in that direction.
The door flew open and another man entered quickly with a pistol aimed at Bentley. Meanwhile, the man on the stairs shot Bentley with a bullet that passed through his helmet and flew out through the shutter. Then the man who had come through the yard door also shot Bentley, twice at point blank range through the shoulder and through the neck. As Bentley fell backwards to collapse dying in the doorway, Bryant, who stood behind him, escaped into the street, where he fell down and lost consciousness due to bullet wounds. Outside, Constable Woodhams, who all this time had been stationed at the entrance to Exchange Buildings, ran to assist on hearing the firing, and also fell to the ground unconscious when a bullet shattered his thigh bone.
Constable Strongman and Sergeant Tucker saw Woodhams fall, and they saw a hand holding a pistol appear from the door, and a pale young man with a moustache and dark curly hair emerge in a suit, firing continuously. Tucker was shot twice, in the hip and the heart. Then in the darkness, the gang ran towards the entrance of Exchange Buildings, firing indiscriminately as they made their escape. Taking refuge, James Martin, a plain clothes Constable, leapt inside the house opposite, placing a hand across the mouth of sixteen-year-old Bessie Jacobs, who lived there, terrified and vulnerable in her nightdress. “Don’t scream. I’m a detective!” he assured her, “I’ll protect your mother and I’ll protect you.”
Constable Walter Choate, a tall man of six feet four inches, had the courage to grab one of the fugitives by the wrist, attempting to seize his gun. Yet as a consequence, Choate was shot in the leg repeatedly, before the rest of the gang turned their weapons upon him too. But such was his tenacity of spirit – even after receiving five more bullets – that he only released his grip when the gang kicked or punched him in the face to free their comrade. And as he fell backwards, a bullet fired by one of the gang yet intended for the Constable, hit the fugitive in the back. Two of his fellows dragged him away to vanish into the night, but he was already mortally wounded.
Once the firing stopped, the inhabitants of Exchange Buildings came out from their houses to discover carnage in the darkness. Some fell over the bodies of the dead and dying policemen. A passing motor car in Houndsditch was requisitioned to race Sergeant Tucker to the Royal London Hospital in Whitechapel, but it was in vain, because he was already dead when examined at 11.50pm by Dr Rainey in the receiving room. Then Dr Rainey turned his attention to Constable Choate who arrived on a stretcher, and remained conscious in spite of nine bullet wounds – although had no memory of the events of the night – and died subsequently at 5:20am. Sergeant Bentley was carried to St Bartholomew’s Hospital where he died at 7:30am next morning. The heist was foiled but three officers were killed and two crippled for life on a single night, and it remains the worst incident for casualties ever suffered by the British police.
You may expect further reports here in coming days, and throughout the coming holiday season, of any new developments in this alarming case.
Artist’s impression from The Daily Graphic, December 18th 1910
The principal locations of the crime scene.
The plan of the attempted heist.
The view from Exchange Buildings looking towards Cutler St.
On the site of Exchange Buildings today.
Costa Coffee occupies the location of Mr Harris’ shop in Houndsditch now.
Archive images copyright © Bishopsgate Institute
Toilets at Dawn
Many people get up in the night to go to the toilet, but Agnese Sanvito gets up in the night and cycles across London to pay a visit. Yet her purpose in getting up is different from most, Agnese gets up to go and photograph the toilet in the dawn. Although not an early riser by temperament, “I can get up straight away – no matter how early – if there is good reason,” admitted Agnese to me candidly, so it is a measure of her commitment to photographing toilets that this constitutes such a reason.
“I kept seeing toilets from the top deck of the bus in different locations.” Agnese told me, rolling her deep brown eyes in wonder, “I find them beautiful, but no-one pays them any attention, and I find them kind of alone.” Let me confess, Agnese’ words struck a chord for me because I share her melancholy connoisseurship of these abandoned temples. Built in an era when their humble public service was considered a worthy purpose, these tragic toilets are those that never evolved into tanning parlours and are now resigned to rot – while the fetid alleys and rank backyards of our city serve as makeshift replacements. I could write at length about Pedley St off Brick Lane that now has the most vigorous fig trees in the East End thanks to all the human fertilizer deposited there. Once upon a time, somebody had the smart idea to sell off our public toilets to raise cash and now we are confronted daily with the reason why they were built.
“I started in Rosebery Avenue, where I saw the first one from the bus,” continued Agnese enthusiastically, “And then one day I was taking photographs at an event in Christ Church, Spitalfields and when I came out, there I saw another one.” Yet her photographic project was far from straightforward, “At first, I tried to photograph them in the day” explained Agnese, with a critical grimace, “but there were always cars and people everywhere, even when the light was good. So I thought maybe a dawn light could be more beautiful, and with less people and cars, you could see the structure better.”
Sentimentalists often praise the beauty of sunsets, but only a few share the secret knowledge that the dawn is far superior in enchantment, and it is the dawn light that elevates these pictures beyond elegies. The possibility of the new day emphasises the grace of these structures, whether contrived of florid wrought iron or framed in modernist simplicity, their utilitarian beauty is undeniable. They are portals to a world denied to us. Closed down and locked up, they confront us with our own conflicted natures – why create something and not use it? The misdirected ingenuity in these pictures is laughable, contriving means to prevent litter accumulating or stop people breaking in, as if anyone would rob a disused toilet. Rather than wrestle with this knotty dilemma, we have entered into a general agreement to pretend they do not exist, and let nature and decay take its course.
“They’re part of the fabric of the city, but because they’re not in use no-one pays attention to them, they are forgotten spaces,” confirmed Agnese affectionately, delighting in these structures that are the catalyst for her elegant photographic mediations upon the culture of the metropolis. “At the moment, I have just photographed those in the area that are near to me. It’s a work-in-progress, I don’t know where it’s going.” said Agnese, thinking out loud, “Now my friends call sometimes and say, ‘I’ve found another one.'”
Anecdotes gather round these disused toilets like old plastic bottles and autumn leaves. Agnese told me that the ladies’ in Smithfield was locked while the men’s was open, drawing the conclusion this was because the workforce at the meat market is male. Laurie Allen told me he was too scared to pull the flush at the one in Petticoat Lane when he was a child in case he started a tidal wave and got drowned. And I recall the sinister spectacle of the one in Whitechapel being pumped with concrete as a praecursor to obliteration, as if it never existed.
Let us applaud photographer Agnese Sanvito for recognising the poetry in this most unpromising of locations. She may not yet know where this is going, but I hope I may presume to ask readers to suggest more subterranean lavatorial locations for Agnese’ elegant lense to focus upon.
Petticoat Lane
Petticoat Lane
Bishopsgate
Smithfield
Clerkenwell Green
Rosebery Avenue/Farringdon
Rosebery Avenue/Farringdon
Rosebery Avenue/Clerkenwell Rd
Stamford Hill
Stamford Hill
Lambs Conduit St
Lambs Conduit St
Kentish Town
Foley St
Foley St
Photographs copyright © Agnese Sanvito
At the Ten Bells
The Ten Bells – seen in the top right of this busy photograph of Commercial St in 1905 – is almost as old as Nicholas Hawksmoor’s mighty edifice of Christ Church, Spitalfields, which it sits beneath just like a parcel under a Christmas tree. Once the church was completed in 1729, funds were raised for the installation of a standard peal of eight bells, and in 1755, The Eight Bells Alehouse was recorded in Red Lion St, the thoroughfare that became Commercial St in the nineteenth century. And The Eight Bells was renamed The Ten Bells in 1788, when a new set of ten chimes was installed in the belfry at Christ Church.
In 1851, as a result of the vast expansion of trade in London, Commercial St was cut through Spitalfields to convey traffic from the docks, diverting it from passing through the City, and the former Red Lion St was widened, resulting in the demolition of The Ten Bells. At the same time, the end of Fournier St was chopped off and, in compensation for the loss of their premises, Truman, Hanbury, Buxton & Co, owners of The Ten Bells were given the freehold of number thirty-three, the last house standing at the Western extremity of the street, along with five hundred pounds to rebuild the property. The architect’s solution was to build the wrap-around facade which you see today, to cover the naked embarrassment of this fragment at the end of the terrace, enclosing a Georgian building within a Victorian frontage.
I learnt all this from John Twomey, the landlord, when he took me on a tour of the current renovations that are nearing completion after six years of planning and which will result in the reopening of the upper room with its dramatic views across to the market, down Commercial St and up to the spire of Christ Church looming overhead. The internal structure is an eccentric hybrid, in which, upon the upper floors, walls veer at unexpected angles to link the regularly spaced windows of the exterior with the jumble of interior spaces derived from the previous building.
As part of the restoration, the previous signboards have been removed to reveal those from a century ago, emblazoned with “Truman’s Beers” in gold capitals upon a deep green ground, and – by chance – when I came to meet John Twomey, my arrival coincided with the new delivery of Truman’s Beer that is now returning to the pubs of the East End. Walking in off the street, I discovered that the bar has been moved to the centre of the room which throws emphasis onto the magnificent coloured tiles that gleam in the light just as they have done for over century, connecting us to the countless thousands before us for whom this pub was a refuge from their working lives. In Spitalfields, many casual workers rented beds by the night and had no place to relax, socialise and seek solace after work except the bars – giving literal meaning to the phrase “public house.” And in the smoothed stone upon the threshold, in its beaten up floors and worn staircases, everywhere throughout this old building, the soulful presence of all our predecessors is tangible at The Ten Bells.
“Coming from multiple career backgrounds and living in multiple locations, the only place I have ever felt at home is Spitalfields, which always changes,” admitted John, who lives up above the pub in the warren of rooms with views across to the church. A fearless entrepreneur with steel blue eyes and copper hair who underplays his keen intelligence through magnanimous demonstrations of Hibernian charm and levity, John brings his own story to graft onto that of The Ten Bells. “Once upon a time,” he began, “my mother started a fencing club and at thirteen I won a major competition. I began competing all over Europe, and it gave me a life of travelling and learning languages. But since the day I bought this pub, I haven’t done a day’s training.”
“As a kid, I invented electrical testing equipment for fencing and that led me to study electrical engineering as a student. In Ireland, I won the national championship ten times, which was a record in their history, so I wasn’t particularly interested in winning it eleven times. After university, I went to the Soviet Union and learnt Russian, but because I was in Estonia, which broke away, I had to learn Estonian too. It was exciting to be in a country that was being born, I got involved in starting a bank and was able to enjoy careers in banking and fencing hand-in-hand. The Soviet Union were the World Champions at the time, so to be invited to join an Estonian team was a great honour and we won their national championship. Then in 1996, I decided to move to London and by then I could speak ten languages. So I got a job designing systems for banks that allowed me to travel to places where I could do fencing, but by now I had fallen in love with Spitalfields…”
And then John fell silent, casting his eyes around humorously, after recounting his extraordinary narrative, because since 2001, this has been his life – here at The Ten Bells – even though he could not resist restoring a five hundred year old building in Morocco to create a hotel, as a side project. I could only marvel at this catalogue of achievement and draw the irresistible conclusion that John possesses that rare combination of both flourish and acumen, essential for a successful landlord.
We were sitting in the bar, upon tiny chairs from a primary school, on a sunny morning. Most prominent on the wall was William Butler Simpson & Sons’ whimsical ceramic mural dating from the eighteen eighties, now cleaned by the same company that originally manufactured it, and we took a moment to admire it. Entitled “Spitalfields in ye olden times” and displaying a scene of aristocrats coming to buy silks from a weaver in the eighteenth century, John revealed it would shortly acquire a companion piece entitled “Spitalfields in modern times,” painted by Ian Harper.
Over the next week, all manner of wild rumours reached me concerning who was being portrayed in this new painting and in what form. Then, last night, the residents gathered in a state of high anticipation in the upper room, for a party hosted by John, where Ian Harper pulled off the dust sheet to applause and murmurs of approval from the assembled crowd. It was the beginning of a new chapter, heralding renewed life at The Ten Bells.
This section of John Horwood’s map (1794-99) shows Spitalfields before Commercial St was cut through along the line of Red Lion St. At this time, The Ten Bells occupied the un-numbered building at the corner of Red Lion St and Church St (now Fournier St). When these premises were demolished in the creation of Commercial St, the Ten Bells moved to the property numbered 33 Church St on this map and a new facade was built enclosing the earlier building, which you see today.
The Ten Bells sits beneath Christ Church, Spitalfields.
John Twomey, Olympic Fencer, Tallinn 1993.
John prepares to engage.
John Twomey, landlord of The Ten Bells.
Nineteenth century ceramic mural in the bar, “Spitalfields in ye olden time – visiting a weaver’s shop.”
Ian Harper unveiled “Spitalfields in modern times” last night at The Ten Bells. Pay a visit yourself and you will recognise several figures from the pages of Spitalfields Life.
Truman’s Beer is delivered to The Ten Bells.
Patricia Niven’s Golden Oldies
It was a bold gesture when they built the Golden Lane Estate in a progressive modernist style upon a bomb site after World War II, and gave new homes to local residents who had previously inhabited the old tenements and poor housing that once defined this area at the edge of the City of London. The Estate is now fifty years old and, in celebration of this, photographer Patricia Niven set out to take portraits of long-term residents accompanied with interviews by novelist Sarah Winman. I enjoyed the privilege of meeting with Patricia and Sarah – themselves residents of the Estate – to enjoy a cup of tea with Doris McGovern, one of subjects of their portraits, at her flat in Stanley Cohen House in the Golden Lane Estate that she shares with her old cat Mischief.
Doris told me that the Estate was all young families when she moved in half a century ago, then as the years passed and the children left home it grew to be mostly old people, but now another change is happening as a new wave of younger people are moving into the flats. “I’m eighty-five myself and I’ve always taken care of my elderly neighbours because I enjoy looking after old people, but now I have young man in the flat next door, he can take care of me,” suggested Doris with a twinkle in her eye. The enduring sense of community in the Estate is a tribute to the visionary architecture of this housing development, containing a social club, a school, playgrounds, tennis courts, a pool, and shops, all within elegant sympathetic spaces where the residents feel comfortable.
I am delighted to publish Patricia Niven’s exemplary portraits. They are compelling, vibrant images, exploring the beauty, the poignancy and joy of this great mystery of ageing – an essential part of the human experience that we all come to know in time.
Doris, age 85
When I moved onto the Estate, I was married to Lawrence and had two small boys. My hair was dark brown.
After spending the first four years of our married life in rooms with gas light, and carrying a pram up five flights of stairs, you can imagine how wonderful we thought our new flat was – It had central heating, hot water and a bathroom! We were very happy there. I did not think I’d still be living on the Estate fifty years later.
Lawrence and I used to love walking along the Embankment to the park with the children, playing on the swings and enjoying a cup of tea.
My aspirations when I was younger were to marry and have children, both of which I did. My husband passed away ten years ago. Next year would have been our sixtieth.
Today, I still like the Estate and my home. Most people are friendly and easy to get on with.
I enjoy playing bowls, keep fit, and attending the Ralph Perring Club. I also like to go to church on Sunday mornings.
Iris, age 77
It was 1974. Harold Wilson was Prime Minister and I had two boys at school. My hair was brown.
We often used the club on the Estate, where there were dances and other entertainment. I wore long dresses, loved make-up! My hopes were very clear at that time: For my husband to get on in his new job, and for my children to get educated and to get good jobs too. It all happened.
I am on my own now. It was lonely at first. But I have a lot of good friends and life is once again good. I still use the club and go to St. Luke’s.
I enjoy reading, swimming, yoga, television, theatre.
Lilias, age 89
I was a redhead in my day.
When I moved onto the Estate twenty-six years ago, I had just retired from the NHS’s Chapter House Chambers, where I’d worked as a manager for ten years. I then went on to do a year’s work for the Women’s Voluntary Service.
It was the first time I’d ever owned my own flat. I was happy, very fit and even went to work at the St. James Club in the West End for another ten years. I was living life to the full.
I enjoy reading and watching television and am comfortable in my home. I do not mix well with others because of my disability. I love a gin and tonic every night.
Maureen, age 79
I moved onto the Estate in 1987 with my husband Ted. I was still working at St Bart’s hospital at the time and my hair was brown.
We’d come from a very old tenement flat and here we were in this lovely, modern flat with central heating and a balcony – it felt like heaven. (Sometimes though, I missed the old flat; simply because I was born there and had lived in it for fifty years).
I loved living on the Estate. There was a very good social club which we made great use of. My hopes at the time were looking forward to more grandchildren – I had just one then and seven more were to follow – and thinking about their future and that of my children.
Most people liked the look of these flats and I did think that I’d still be here now, because we are not people to move about much. I still love it here and think it’s the best Council Estate in London. And London is the only place I want to live.
My main aim is to keep well and to keep fit, and to go out socially as much as possible and to enjoy life.
Joan, age 83
I was a single mother when I moved onto the Estate. My hair was brown. My aspiration at the time was for my son to get a good education – first of all at St. Luke’s Primary, and then at Woolverstone Hall Grammar.
Our flat was well-planned out: light and sunny, with good storage, and best of all, with central heating. It even had a balcony. I loved that view from Hatfield House.
The world seemed quieter and cleaner then. People cleaned their windows, swept doorsteps.
I’m in Great Arthur House now – ideal because there are no stairs. The Owner’s Association provides a strong sense of community. I hope the Residents’ Association will grow.
I’m still very interested in the Associations and the young people who’ll continue to care for the Estate.
Ted, age 83
I moved onto the Estate in 1987 with my wife Maureen. I was a proofreader at the time. My hair was auburn.
I thought the modern flat we moved into was very nice. I still do. I loved my way of life; believed the world was a more gentle world then, but badly governed.
My hopes were to live to retirement and to play with my grandchildren.
I hope to live to an old age.
Elsie, age 90
1976, my husband and I moved onto the Estate when we took up the position of Stewards at the Licensed Club.
My hair was light auburn.
We hoped for an easier life than we’d had before – we used to run a pub in Watford, and though the flat we moved into was smaller than where we’d previously lived, it was easier to maintain.
People were friendly. My neighbours and I were all of similar ages and we socialized together. I think it was a better world than today. I loved the music of the time – ballads and Rod Stewart, and when we weren’t working we’d have a night in, fish and chips around the telly.
My flat today is self-contained and comfortable and I don’t want for much. I didn’t think I’d still be alive, let alone still living on this Estate! – Guess hard work keeps you going.
I love listening to the radio in the morning, reading romances, doing quizzes, watching the telly and being with my good friends – the ones who are alive. I used to go to the Ralph Perring Club where I was Secretary and then Treasurer for twenty-six years.
Doreen, age 78
It was 1957 and my hair was brown. Everything was G plan and three piece suites! I loved holidaying and shopping, and my main aspiration was to be a mother.
What did I think of the flat that I moved into? It was the tops. Number one! And fifty-two years later, I still feel the same. I love my home and the community I am part of.
I enjoy reading, shopping, line-dancing.
Doris, age 81
It was 1960. I was a mother of a 4½ year old son and working at Mencap. My hair was fair.
My husband and I used to go to the dog track at Walthamstow. Also to a nightclub at Smithfield, where there were drag performers. I loved music and dancing. I wore cerise lip stick, always loved to be ‘with it’.
At the time we hoped to own our own flat, but like so many others, we couldn’t afford it. We moved onto the Estate from Kentish Town – a world away from our new modern home.
This is a good community. It’s been wonderful having the new kitchen and bathroom installed. I have lots of friends. Sad part is that at this time of life, some are dying.
I still like to go out and enjoy myself – anything I can go to, I’ll go to! I spend time with my friends, and enjoy the estate’s social clubs. I like Bingo and card games – especially Hoy – and the dog track in Kent.
Maureen, age 90
When I moved onto the estate I was still working at St Bart’s hospital. My hair was brown.
I was on night duty then and had been living over the Gatehouse which I shared with two vicars and a security officer. Heating was minimal and the bathroom was three floors down in the basement. To move into a modern flat that had heating and a bathroom and a little fridge all under one roof, was amazing. But everyone thought the flats were amazing. People even came from China to take photos of Great Arthur House. It was something special.
I loved my work and wanted to do as much work as possible: at the hospital or helping my sisters. I could never stay still. The time I did have off, I’d go to Lyons Corner House; afternoon tea with live music. I loved reading, especially books by John Galsworthy and always took books on my travels to the Holy Land, Rome, Greece and Lourdes (eight times).
I didn’t think I’d live to be ninety, let alone still living on the Estate! I’m very happy in my home in Crescent House. I do not think the community is as good or friendly as it used to be. No one has time for others any more. Or maybe it’s just because I’m getting older.
I love reading and visiting my sister in Bognor. I like watching television especially debates and “Question Time.” I love Irish authors, if only they weren’t so fond of swearing.
Tegwyn ‘Tom,’ age 89
It was 1962 and I was the personnel manager at the Post Office on Old Street.
I remember seeing the top of Great Arthur House for the first time and wondering if it was an aeroplane wing. I knew straight away that I wanted to live on the Estate and on my next visit put my name down for a flat. I was lucky enough to get one. I moved in with two chairs that I slept on for months. I enjoyed the gradual furnishing of my flat, the making it my own.
My hair was grey. Even then. It happened when I was forty.
In those days I’d go to the theatre or to the ballet – you could go to Sadler’s Wells for a shilling. Often I simply enjoyed the walk into the West End. I travelled, too – Europe, Spain. My hopes at the time were to live a happy life and to enjoy as much of it as I could, which I have done.
Today, people don’t seem to take the same amount of care and interest in their homes: A sign of the times, I expect. In winter, my flat gets very cold due to the windows.
I love life. You must live your life to the best of your ability. I go for a walk every day – often to Epping Forest to feed the squirrels. I like to read and watch television too.
Jean, age 80
I was called ‘Blondie’ in my day.
I was a widow when I moved onto the Estate and had just retired from managing a public house. I loved the scent ‘Evening in Paris’, music, a game of bingo, the Pictures, and visiting places I’d never had the time to visit before.
I’d heard the Estate was a good place to live and I wanted to be involved in all that was going on. I knew I’d be here for the rest of my life.
As Chairman of the Sir Ralph Perring Club, I hope to keep it going for as long as I can.
Fred, age 95½
My wife and I moved into a two bedroom flat on the Golden Lane Estate in about 1960, after a mutual exchange housing programme. It was so good not to have to commute anymore. I was a technician for the medical trade, and then became a messenger for a bank in the City. I did that until I was eighty-two.
My hair was brown.
My wife loved the city after previously living in Kent. I liked meeting different people, and being inquisitive about the world. I liked dancing. I also enjoyed travelling, especially in Australia.
I think people were friendlier then.
Your body slows down as you get older. My daughter visits regularly and cares for me, and my neighbour brings me my newspaper. I should probably be in a care home, really.
I love nineteen seventies’ music and films, especially “The Green Mile” (it has amazing jail scenes), “Along Came a Spider” and “Return of Jaws.” I think there’s a load of rubbish on TV. It’s all repeats.
Photographs copyright © Patricia Niven
Patricia Niven: Golden Oldies II runs at Exhibit from 17th December until 29th January at Golden Lane Estate, 20 Goswell Rd, London EC1
Columbia Road Market 63
“We help out Carl and Mick – who I call dad – on a Sunday, selling the flowers, and we just love it. They’re my adopted family now.” explained Keith Manning proudly, speaking for himself and his brother Donald, when I managed to snatch a brief conversation with Keith round the back of Carl Grover’s stall. Keith, who magnanimously describes his baby brother Donald as “the good-looking one,” is renowned for his primary coloured outfits, always topped off by one of his collection of more than twenty hats. “I love bright colours and I find the customers like it too, ” he informed me enthusiastically.
For more than ten years, Keith and Donald have been coming to Columbia Rd to assist Mick and Sylvia Grover, the herbsellers, and their son Carl Grover, the flowerseller, at their adjoining stalls. “We get together at social occasions too, it’s a family thing. Since my dad’s passed away, Mick’s become like a father to me, and Carl’s got to share his dad with me now.” confessed Keith with a toothy grin, before revealing that this remarkable friendship between the Grovers and the Manning brothers came about quite fortuitously. “One day I was driving my black cab past Mick’s flowershop in South Kensington, when he gave me a bird of paradise flower and I put it in the front of the cab.” recalled Keith fondly. He is a colourful bird of paradise himself, and I realised it was this parallel that inspired Mick’s spontaneous gesture, which became the catalyst for their friendship.
“Then, coincidentally, we met again when we recognised each other at Columbia Rd,” continued Keith, “and me and my brother started doing flower deliveries for him on special occasions like Valentine’s Day. Then I began coming here every week to help, I started with flowers because my mother loves flowers and I help Mick pack up too.” As well as being cab drivers for thirty years and supporting the Grovers, Keith and his brother make regular trips to Gambia on a personal mission. “We collect clothes and other things, and we go out to the villages there and distribute them.” admitted Keith, who had just returned from Africa that week. On a cold morning, I was cheered by my chat with Keith Manning, illustrating the beauty of the random connections that can happen in the big city and the unexpected bonds of friendship which may result.
Photograph copyright © Jeremy Freedman
The Back Passages of Spitalfields
For ten years, Steve Wells & Alan Gilbey gave guided tours of Spitalfields under the uproarious title “The Back Passages of Spitalfields,” renowned for their anarchic comedy and ascerbic social observation. Wearing suits, pulling a shopping trolley full of props and fireworks for impromptu displays, maintaining a constant comic banter, rubbing the Jack the Ripper tours up the wrong way, disappearing down alleys to run ahead and ambush the audience, Steve & Alan were the self-appointed jesters of Spitalfields, and they made the streets and back passages their theatre.
Since it was my misfortune to miss these walks the first time around, Alan took me on a personal tour around his old haunts in Spitalfields yesterday, and it was my delight to see the neighbourhood through another’s eyes and learn some new stories. We met outside Liverpool St Station, where I discovered Alan – with an ear-to-ear grin – holding a sign that read, “Yes, this is the Spitalfields Walk.” Once upon a time, two hundred people would gather here in the glory days of the “back passages” tours, but yesterday it was just me and Alan reminiscing. Pointing across Bishopsgate, he explained it was all about the difference between this side of the road (the City of London) and that side of the road (Spitalfields).
Walking quickly, Alan vanished down Rose Alley at the side of the police station, and I followed him into a narrow passageway that I had never been in before. “Neither very historic, or atmospheric, or hygienic,” he described it, when we found ourselves in a grimy little courtyard with buildings towering on either side. Yet it illustrated perfectly the contradiction between the wealth and the filth of these two neighbourhoods side by side. Emerging into Petticoat Lane, Alan informed me that this market was originated by the first wave of Jewish immigrants in the medieval period, who were forbidden to trade within the walls of the City.
In Artillery Passage, at the heart of what was once a rat warren of houses, Alan paused to quote Dickens’ account of the poverty he discovered here a hundred and fifty years ago. “People can have very set ideas about how history should be told, ” Alan admitted with a good-natured shrug, “We always wanted to be intelligently stupid,” and he quoted the example of a woman who declared,“I am a professional historian and this walk is painful to me.” stomping off to applause from the rest of the audience. Yet Alan & Steve knew what they were talking about, adopting levity and sharp humour to engage an audience, both satirising cliches of East End history through pointing out “Jack the Ripper’s car park,” and dramatising contemporary politics by telling the story of the soon-to-be closed market with fruit & vegetables, which culminated in beating a marrow with a sledgehammer. Not popular with the market security, unsurprisingly.
All this was happening through a period of rapid change in Spitalfields, with wranglers required to keep the street alcoholics at bay in the early days and then objections from the well-to-do residents in the later days. Someone with a plummy accent once leaned out of a window in Fournier St to plead with Alan & Steve when the nightly high-jinks became too much. “People have to live here you know!” they appealed, provoking a member of the audience to declare, “I’ll swap with you,” and all the others to join in as well, Spartacus-style, calling “I’ll swap, I’ll swap.” Yet the two jesters persisted in telling the human story of those at the sharp end of social change over the centuries in Spitalfields, and satirising new developments too, even taking their audience to the site of the first cappuccino poured on Brick Lane, at Dray Walk – amongst other historic locations.
Alan cherishes the memory of when he and Steve found themselves walking in step with Gilbert & George down either side of Fournier St, each besuited couple carried on walking, studiously ignoring the other. Some members of the community chose to become participants though, and Alan delighted to tell me of the growing numbers of Bengali children that would join in the nightly Huguenot battle staged in Puma Court as part of the tour. The walk concluded outside Rosa’s Cafe where Bud Flanagan was born, beside Rossi’s Cafe where the aunt of Francis Rossi out of Status Quo worked. So, with sublime logic, Steve & Alan led the audience in a version of “Underneath the Arches” in the style of Status Quo, before everyone went into the Golden Heart for a reviving drink.
Alan’s background is in the old East End and he was born in Cable St, but he is now a screenwriter and spends his days writing at a laptop in a coffee shop on Brick Lane (writing scripts for the Mutant Ninja Turtles and working on a Pinky & Perky revival), amongst the cool people of the new East End. Yet he used to show photos of his grandmother’s wedding in Juniper St, a slum known as “Incubator St” because people had so many babies, and Alan’s father was a draftsman in an East End biscuit factory. To Alan, the debate about the relationship of the old and new East End is personal, and he can only laugh when he tries to square his family history with his current life and make sense of it all.
“I’ve never known an area that so many people wanted to own, as Spitalfields,” confided Alan to me in sprightly amazement, stopping in the street for a moment, and referring to the multiple fictions of history around us, all competing to be the authentic Spitalfields. But our walk – in and out of alleys, and in and out of stories – had demonstrated the constant flux which exists, derived from the meeting of many peoples, that together have created the infinite fascination of this place.
In Rose Alley – “Neither very historic, or atmospheric, or hygienic.”
In the footsteps of Charles Dickens and Wilkie Collins in Artillery Passage.
Organic plums were offered to members of the audience for spotting Keith Bowler’s Roundels.
Alan Gilbey
