The Flowergirls of 1851
The image of the London flowergirl lingers in the popular imagination today primarily because of the writing of George Bernard Shaw who created the most famous of East End flowergirls, Eliza Doolittle, in his play “Pygmalion.” Subsequently transformed by Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe into the musical “My Fair Lady,” and filmed with great success by George Cukor starring Audrey Hepburn, the romance of the flowergirl has seduced the world. Yet there was a vivid historical reality behind Shaw’s fiction that was less glamorous but equally revealing of human nature.
To complement my portraits of two contemporary flowersellers Tony Purser of Fenchurch St Station and Finty Chester of Columbia Road Market – I am publishing this account of two flowersellers by Henry Mayhew from his “London Labour & London Poor,” 1851.
Sunday is the best day for flowerselling, and one experienced man computed, that in the height and pride of the summer four hundred children were selling flowers on Sundays in the streets. The trade is almost entirely in the hands of children, the girls outnumbering the boys by more than eight to one. The ages of the girls vary from six to twenty, few of the boys are older than twelve, and most of them are under ten.
Of flowergirls there are two classes. Some girls, and they are certainly the smaller class of the two, avail themselves of the sale of flowers in the streets for immoral purposes, or rather, they seek to eke out the small gains of their trade by such practices. Their ages are from fourteen to nineteen or twenty, and sometimes they remain out offering their flowers until late at night.
The other class of flowergirls is composed of girls who, wholly or partially, depend upon the sale of flowers for their own support or as an assistance for their parents. They are generally very persevering, more especially the younger children, who will run along barefooted, with their, “Please, gentleman, do buy my flowers. Poor little girl!” or “Please kind lady, buy my violets. O, do! please! Poor little girl! Do buy a bunch, please, kind lady!”
The statement I give is of two orphan flowersellers, the elder was fifteen and the younger eleven. Both were clad in old, but not torn, dark print frocks and they wore old broken black chip bonnets. The older had a pair of old worn-out shoes on her feet, the younger was barefoot, but trotted along, in a gait at once quick and feeble – as if the soles of her little feet were impervious, like horn, to the roughness of the road. The elder girl has a modest expression of countenance, with no pretensions to prettiness except in having tolerably good eyes. Her complexion was somewhat muddy, and her features somewhat pinched. The younger child had a round, chubby, and even rosy face, and quite a healthful look. Her portrait is here given.
The elder girl spoke not at all garrulously, but merely in answer to my questions, “I sell flowers, sir, we live almost on flowers when they are to be got. I sell, and so does my sister, all kinds, but it’s very little use offering any that’s not sweet. I think it’s the sweetness as sells them. I sell primroses, when they’re in, and violets, and wallflowers, and stocks, and roses of different sorts, and pinks, and carnations, and mixed flowers, and lilies of the valley, and green lavender, and mignonette.
The best sale of all is, I think, moss-roses, young moss-roses. We do best of all on them. Primroses are good, for people say, ‘Well, here’s spring again to a certainty.’ Gentlemen are our best customers. I’ve heard that they buy flowers to give to the ladies. Ladies have sometimes said, ‘A penny, my poor girl, here’s three-halfpence for the bunch.’ Or they’ve given me the price of two bunches for one, so have gentlemen. I never had a rude word said to me by a gentleman in my life. I never go among boys, I know nobody but my brother.
I was born in London. Mother was a chairwoman, and lived very well. None of us ever saw a father. We were all ‘mother’s children.’ Mother died seven years ago last Guy Fawkes’ day. I’ve got myself, and my brother and sister a bit of bread ever since, and never had any help but from the neighbours. I never troubled the parish.”
In answer to my inquiries their landlady assured me that these two poor girls were never out of doors all the time she had known them after six at night.
“I buy my flowers at Covent Garden, sometimes, but very seldom, at Farringdon. I pay 1s. for a dozen bunches, whatever flowers are in. Out of every two bunches I can make three, at 1d. a piece. We make the bunches up ourselves. We get the rush to tie them with for nothing. We put their own leaves round violets. The paper for a dozen costs a penny, sometimes only a halfpenny. The two of us doesn’t make less than 6d. a day unless it’s very ill luck.
I always keep 1s. stock-money if I can. If it’s bad weather, so bad that we can’t sell flowers at all, and so if we’ve had to spend our stock-money for a bit of bread she (the landlady) lends us 1s., if she has one or she borrows one of a neighbour. We never pawned anything, we have nothing they would take in at the pawnshop. We live on bread and tea, and sometimes a fresh herring of a night.”
The brother earned from 1s. 6d. to 2s. a week, with an occasional meal, as a costermonger’s boy. Neither of them ever missed mass on a Sunday.
CUT FLOWERS
I now give the quantity of cut flowers sold in the streets. The returns have been derived from nurserymen and market salesmen. It will be seen how fully these returns corroborate the statement of the poor flowergirl, “it’s very little use offering anything that’s not sweet.” I may remark, too, that at the present period, from the mildness of the season, wallflowers, primroses, violets, and polyanthuses are almost as abundant as Spring sunshine.
Wallflowers ………………………………………. 115,200 bunches Lavender…………………………………………… 296,640 bunches Pinks and Carnations ……………………………..63,360 bunches Moss Roses …………………………………………172,800 bunches China Roses ……………………………………….. 172,800 bunches Mignonette …………………………………………. 86,400 bunches Lilies of the Valley …………………………………… 1,632 bunches Stocks ………………………………………………… 20,448 bunches Total cut flowers sold yearly in the streets …. 994,560 bunchesGeorge Bernard Shaw played upon the perceived moral ambiguity of the flowergirl in “Pygmalion.” While Eliza Doolittle protests her virtue by declaring, “I’m a good girl, I am,” her father is entirely amenable to prostitute his daughter to Professor Higgins for whatever he can get. Henry Mayhew’s testimony confirms the historical veracity of this ambivalence, while emphasising that the majority of flowergirls struggled to scrape a living by selling flowers and chose to retain moral dignity in spite of their poverty. And the cathartic moment in Shaw’s play when Eliza throws Professor Higgins’ slippers to the floor dramatises this crucial assertion of self-esteem.
Speaking with Tony Purser on the day of his retirement as a flowerseller after fifty-two years, I was surprised to learn of his early arrests for flowerselling without a licence. It reminded me that the lack of distinction between street traders and beggars – categorising all street people as low-life – which existed in the nineteenth century, persisted well beyond the Victorian era. I was inspired to meet Finty Chester, a contemporary Sunday flowergirl, who attends college in the week studying for a professional career, though the irony of our age is that even as a full time student, she also needs to run a flower stall to support herself.
Seventeen year old Finty Chester, twenty first century flowergirl, is studying media with a view to pursuing a parallel career as a journalist.
Photograph copyright © Jeremy Freedman
Columbia Road Market 54
This is Finty Chester who, at the tender age of seventeen years old, has the distinction of being the youngest trader in Columbia Road Market. Jeremy took a photograph of Finty a few weeks ago, but we decided to reshoot the portrait when we examined it and realised she had a black eye. With cheerful alacrity, Finty explained that she acquired the injury while defending herself against a gang of thieves who stole her mobile phone. I winced to hear this story but, with admirable strength of character, Finty had already put the experience behind her.
Such is her self-assurance that I had assumed Finty was in her mid twenties – since with her bright energy, charisma and great taste in flowers, she has already established herself as one of the most popular traders in Columbia Rd. No blushing violet, Finty has shown she has the personality to hold her own amongst the loud cries and banter of the more experienced stallholders that surround her, all of whom have become endeared by her spirited approach. The senior flowersellers have taken Finty to heart because she reminds them of their early days.
It is apparent that Finty is a young woman of independent nature, living on her own since the age of fifteen and trading here for over a year now with the support of her father. “I spend Saturday getting ready, and I set up the stall and run it on Sunday, while he prepares all the flowers and gets the van ready for me,” she explained enthusiastically, delighting in the whole process. While Finty studies at college in the week, her father goes to the wholesale market to get the stock, although she decides what he should buy. It means that by selling flowers at the weekend Finty can support herself through college. “I’ve always known Columbia Rd,” said Finty with open-hearted affection for the life of the market, “It’s great company, I have regular customers and it’s something I want to do always.”
Yet Finty cherishes other ambitions too, she is pursuing media studies with the intention to become a journalist and combine this career with selling flowers in Columbia Road. Finty has the qualities to stay the course, and match Tony Purser’s career and be there selling flowers over fifty years from now if she chooses. But Finty brings a new perspective, shrewdly recognising that a parallel career in media will enrich her life and give her financial security. Finty Chester is the model of a twenty-first century flower girl.
Photograph copyright © Jeremy Freedman
Tony Purser, Flowerseller of Fenchurch St
Although the man in the foreground is unaware, this photograph records an historic moment in the City of London – Tony Purser’s last day selling flowers from his stall in the vicinity of Fenchurch St Station after fifty-two years of business. I took the opportunity to walk over from Spitalfields and sit with Tony to keep him company for a few hours on his last afternoon. A dignified popular figure with a ready smile, Tony told me he remembers the very first day of business. He was driving around in a van with his father Alfie in 1959, looking for a place to sell flowers and they drew up outside Fenchurch St Station, parked the van and decided to start trading at once. “It was quite a success, but I wasn’t that interested,” said Tony, bemused at his former self, “I was just a kid, I was cold and wanted to go home.” Tony never dreamed that he would still be there over a half a century later, yet his father’s instinct was a good one because the passing trade ensured that for fifty years Tony earned a living selling fruit and flowers in the heart of the City.
Without a licence in the early years, Tony & Alfie were regularly arrested, their stock was confiscated, they were fined three shillings and spent the night in the cells at the Bishopsgate Police Station. An event that recurred until they were granted a licence in 1963. “My father started in the nineteen forties and my grandfather was in the business before him, so he thought you didn’t need a licence, but if you’re licenced you don’t get any trouble from the police.” explained Tony ruefully. “He was a fruiterer just after the war, one of seven brothers and sisters, who all worked for him at one time or another. He was still working when he was eighty-four – a good old boy he was – but I want to enjoy a bit of life before I die.” Tony admitted with a smile of eager anticipation at the thought of no longer getting up every morning at half past three, working until seven at night and spending all day on the street exposed to the weather.
In 1998, when Fenchurch St Station was rebuilt and rents increased, Tony moved over to a new location nearby at the foot of the neat little medieval tower of All Hallows Staining in Mark Lane. He enjoyed another ten years of profitable trading there, but in these last two years Tony has made no money at all, though he has continued undaunted, going to the flower market at dawn, setting up stall each day and selling flowers to a dwindling number of loyal customers while living off his savings.
Tony decided to retire, recognising that the market for the street flowerseller has been taken by supermarkets and companies supplying corporate displays where once a secretary would have simply bought a bunch of carnations for reception. “Business is so bad, I’ve barely paid the rent,” he announced to me with a grimace and a shrug of grudging acceptance, “Otherwise I’d have handed it down to one of the boys, my son, my two grandsons or two great grandsons.”
Nevertheless, the news of Tony’s retirement brought an unexpected series of affectionate responses from his last loyal customers, as he recounted to me proudly, “I served one guy yesterday who has been buying from me for thirty-two years. A retired chap who came in specially to bring me a bottle of champagne and wish me well. A little girl I’ve seen here for four years, I know she’s got no money – not that there’s many of them round here, but they’re the best kind of people – she brought me a bottle of malt whisky. And a lady I haven’t known very long, she brought me a card. It’s those you don’t expect that do it. You see these people for years and you don’t know their lives. I don’t suppose many of them know my name, but some people are just very nice.”
“One guy, he gave me five pounds for a banana!” continued Tony with crazed amusement, now that he had detached himself emotionally, uplifted by these gestures of appreciation. In confirmation of Tony’s situation, there were more people asking for directions than customers on that last afternoon and our conversation was constantly interrupted by enquiries for directions to the intriguingly named Seething Lane. “I get plenty of enquiries, if I had a pound for every one I should be a rich man,” commented Tony, rolling his eyes ironically. Yet Tony always gave directions as if it were the first time he had been asked, which struck me as remarkable largesse after fifty-two years. Tony’s heroic composure was both in line with the strength of character that has got him through the last half century trading on the street and indicative of his sense of relief at letting go of the responsibility too.”I’m not angry because the trade has been good to us, we’ve done very well. We used to take the whole of August off, though I’ve not had a holiday in twelve years. I’m sad because it’s been my life, but the trade is over.” he confessed to me in a quiet moment.
Once the flower buckets were empty, Tony began giving away bags of fruit to surprised customers who only asked for an apple or banana. He gave me a bag of oranges to take back to Spitalfields. Then Mark, a droll Liverpudlian, stopped by to pick up the weekly bunch of flowers for his wife. He shook hands with Tony, brandishing the lilies for his wife extravagantly, “That’s the last she’ll see for a while,” he quipped. It was the end of an era at Fenchurch St Station.
Tony Purser, his last day on the stall.
Alfie Purser, selling flowers at Tower Hill Station, nineteen seventies.
Alfie selling flowers at the Wake Arms, Loughton, nineteen sixties.
As a young man, Tony (left) briefly tried working at the Jeyes Fluid factory in Plaistow.
Tony Purser aged seven with his sister.
The Roundels of Spitalfields
Around the streets of Spitalfields there are circular metal plates set into the pavement. Many people are puzzled by them. Are they decorative coal hole covers as you find in other parts of London? Or is there a mysterious significance to them? Sculptor Keith Bowler was walking down Brick Lane one day when he heard a tour guide explaining to a group of tourists that these plaques or roundels – to give them their correct name – were placed there in the nineteenth century for the benefit of people who could not read. Keith stuck his neck out and told the guide this was nonsense, that he made them on his kitchen table a few years ago. And although the tour guide gave Keith a strange look and was a little dubious of his claim, this is the truth of the matter.
“I was approached by Bethnal Green City Challenge in 1995, and I was asked to research, design and fabricate twenty five roundels. I was given a list of sites and I spent a few months doing it.”, explained Keith summarily, as we sat at the famous table where he cast the moulds for the roundels in the basement kitchen of his house in Wilkes St. Keith cut the round patterns out of board and then set real objects in place on them, such as the scissors you see above. From these patterns he made moulds that were sent over to Hoyle & Sons, a traditional family-run foundry in the Cambridge Heath Rd, where they were cast in iron before being installed by council workers.
The notion was that the pavements were already set with pieces of ironwork, making this a natural context to introduce pieces of sculpture, and the emblems and locations were chosen to reflect the diverse culture and history of Spitalfields. Sometimes there was a literal story illustrated by the presence of the roundel, like the match girls from the Bryant & May factory who met in the Hanbury Hall to create the first trade union. Elsewhere, like the scissors and buttons above in Brick Lane, the roundel simply records the clothing industry that once existed there. At first there were interpretative leaflets produced by the council which directed people on a history trail around the neighbourhood, but these disappeared in a few months leaving everyone to create their own happy interpretations ever since.
The roundels have acquired a history of their own. For example, the weaver’s shuttle and reels of thread marking the silk weavers in Folgate St were cast from a shuttle and reels that Dennis Severs found in his house and lent to Keith. And there was controversy from the start about the roundels, when two were mistakenly installed on the City of London side of the street in Petticoat Lane and at at the end of Artillery Passage in City territory, leading to angry phone calls from the Corporation demanding they be moved. Six are missing entirely now, stolen by thieves or covered by workmen, though occasionally roundels turn up and wind their way back to Keith. He has a line of errant roundels in his hallway, ready to be reinstalled and, as he keeps the moulds, plans are afoot to complete the set again.
Keith told me he liked the name “roundels” because it was once used to refer to the symbols on the wings of Spitfires, and is also a term in heraldry. There is an elegant austerity to these attractive designs that I walk past every day and which have seeped into my subconscious, constantly reminding me of the history that surrounds me, and witnessing the presence of what has gone. Keith is planning a book of photographs, explaining the background to each of his roundels – to delight the curious and prevent any further confusion among tour guides. But in the meantime, I photographed half a dozen of my favourites to show you, which you can see below. Now keep your eyes open, because there are at least eight more roundels still to be found on the streets of Spitalfields.
On Brick Lane, among the Bengali shops, a henna stenciled hand.
Commemorating the Bryant & May match girls, outside the Hanbury Hall on Hanbury St.
In Folgate St, cast from a shuttle and reels from Dennis Severs’ House.
In Brick Lane, outside the railings of Grey Eagle Brewery.
In Princelet St, commemorating the first Jewish Theatre, where Jacob Adler once played.
In Petticoat Lane, on the site of the ancient market.
In Wentworth St, an over-vigilant council worker filled in this roundel as a potential trip hazard.
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.
