At The Grapes in Limehouse
Of a Summer’s evening it has become my habit to take an occasional leisurely stroll from Spitalfields down to Limehouse, to enjoy a few drinks at The Grapes. Out of all the historic riverside pubs, this tiny place dating from 1585, has best retained its idiosyncratic personality and modest charm, still resembling The Six Jolly Fellowship Porters in “Our Mutual Friend,” for which it is believed Charles Dickens took The Grapes as his model in 1865.
“In its whole construction it had not a straight floor and hardly a straight line, but it had outlasted and clearly would yet outlast, many a better trimmed building, many a sprucer public house. Externally, it was a narrow lop-sided wooden jumble of corpulent windows heaped one upon the other as you might heap as many toppling oranges, with a crazy wooden verandah impending over the water, but seemed to have got into the condition of a faint-hearted diver who has paused so long on the brink that he will never go in at all…”
Coming down Narrow St, parallel to the Thames, you arrive at a handsome eighteenth century terrace and walk straight off the pavement into the bar of The Grapes leaving the sunshine behind, to discover that the building is just one room wide – no more than fifteen feet across. In the cool gloom you find yourself in a bare-boarded bar room full of attractively mismatched furniture and look beyond to the source of glimmering light, which is the river. Stepping through into the cosy back bar, no larger than a small parlour, you realise this is the entire extent of the ground floor. With an appealing surfeit of old brown matchboarding and lined with picture frames containing a whole archive of prints, photographs and paintings that tell the story of this venerable pub and outline its connection to the work of Dickens, this is one of the most charismatic spaces I know.
Through the double doors, you find yourself upon the verandah and the full expanse of the water is quite overwhelming to behold at this bend in the river where it twists towards Greenwich, shimmering in the distance. In fact, this is the frontage of the pub because, until recently, most customers would have come directly from the river. The photograph above, dating from 1918, advertises “You may telephone from here” to those passing on the water, while James Mc Neill Whistler’s lithograph of 1859 shows a gangplank laid across from the balcony onto a barge. If you are searching for the riverside atmosphere that once existed here, come one misty Autumn evening, enjoy a drink while watching the lights of passing boats gleaming through the raindrops upon the panes, and relish your proximity to the grim murky depths from the safety and warmth of the parlour.
Dickens described the landlady of The Six Jolly Fellowship Porter thus, “Miss Potterson, sole proprietor and manager… reigned supreme on her throne, the bar, and a man must have drunk himself mad drunk indeed if he thought he could contest the point with her. Being known on her own authority as Miss Abbey Potterson.” It was my pleasure to ascend the narrow staircase to the dining room overlooking the river where Dickens once sat. Here I enjoyed the honour of taking afternoon tea with the current sole proprietor and manager, the gracious Miss Barbara Haigh, who like her fictional predecessor also reigns supreme. As we sipped our tea, sitting close by the curved windows overlooking the water, it was as if we were in the stateroom of a great ship and the passing vessels, which interrupted our conversation – including a magnificent brown sailed Thames Sailing Barge – were there for our sole amusement, displaying themselves simply to enjoy the privilege of Barbara’s inspection.
The redoubtable Barbara, who has been landlady here for the past sixteen years, is a proud ex-Bunny Girl from The London Playboy Club in Park Lane, as well as a keen enthusiast for the works of Dickens and a passionate custodian of the history of The Grapes too. With so many exciting avenues to pursue, we barely knew where to commence our conversation. Speaking fondly of her twelve years at the Playboy Club, working her way up to become top bunny (appointed room director at the club), it was apparent that Barbara still retains the physical confidence and poise from these years. I was stunned when Barbara produced images of herself cavorting with David Frost, describing the camaraderie between the bunny girls, and recalling when the club shut forever in 1982.“We’d all become close friends, and we still have our reunions here each September, but when the club closed, I thought, ‘I’ll offer myself to a brewery and ask, ‘What do you want to do with me?”” Barbara’s Playboy years certainly taught her how to couch a proposition.
Working at first in partnership, Barbara quickly realised she could run a pub better by herself and, after a spell at The Brown Bear in Leman St, she was offered The Grapes although she was not at all enthusiastic at first. “I came down here to take a look at the end of February. It was freezing cold and windy. Quite desolate. I thought, ‘I’m not coming here to the back of beyond.’ All I heard was the creak of the sign blowing in the wind. But I came back for dinner and I fell in love with the place. When I first came here I used to sit in the bar after it was closed. Now I feel I was destined to be here.” explained Barbara, dismissing her former scepticism and casting her grey eyes with a tender smile of proprietary satisfaction around the narrow dining room, where she has created a reputation for serving fish delivered fresh daily from nearby Billingsgate Market.
“I haven’t changed it at all,” continued Barbara, her eyes glittering with defiance and affection, “but not a week went by during the first twelve years without a stand up row, to preserve it as it is and stop the brewery’s unwanted interference. I altered nothing but the atmosphere, I have warmed it up by loving the place. I’ve had three lots of staff in the last sixteen years, terrific teams that ran like clockwork. Then in 2006 I was offered the choice of redundancy or buying the lease, so now it is mine, until the three hundred years’ lease expires in 2042, then we’ll see what happens, because after all this time no-one knows who owns the freehold.”
Over these years, Barbara has lived in the tiny flat with river views perched precariously up on the top, and connected to the pub by a fine seventeen-twenties staircase. Her precious spare time has been spent researching the history and collecting the pictures that line the walls, becoming fascinated with Emily Judge, the model for Abbey Potterson, the landlady in “Our Mutual Friend”. With some remarkable detective work, Barbara has uncovered a portrait of Emily in an oil painting by the Victorian seascape artist Charles Napier Hemy, entitled”Limehouse Barge Builders,” which shows her bringing a basket of vittles to the group of men working on the shore, and wearing a stunning red cape. It cannot be an accident that it is the same hue as the leather jacket Barbara wears in the photograph below. We shall all be waiting to see if the mysterious freeholder appears in 2042, but in the meantime I will continue popping down to the The Grapes in the hope of stumbling upon a Bunny Girls’ reunion.
The grapes as portrayed by James McNeill Whistler in 1859.
“An old tavern on the riverside at Limehouse. There are still many delightful riverside scenes hidden away amongst much that is sordid and unsightly. Few but local inhabitants ever see them.” (This is the original caption from a magazine of a century ago)
A enigmatic face gazes down from the upper window upon landlady Charlotte (Lottie) Higgins in 1918.
This oil painting “Saturday Night at the Grapes” by Alice West in 1949, as exhibited at the Royal Academy, still hangs in the bar room today.
Looking through towards the Thames.
Looking back towards Narrow Street.
In the first floor dining room where Dickens sat.
Barbara in her heyday as a bunnygirl at the Playboy Club
Barbara making a literary connection with with Charles Dickens’ great grandson Cedric.
Barbara Haigh
Portrait copyright © Alice Hawkins
Columbia Road Market 47
Visiting Roy Emmins in his rooftop sculpture garden again this week in Whitechapel, I was inspired by his different varieties of Artemisia that thrive in these dry conditions, so this morning early I made my way through the deserted streets under an occluded pale sky to the market in search of some for myself. The market was peaceful before eight and I found two Artemisia at Lyndon’s stall, Powis Castle (left) which has fine silvery grey foliage and sweet peppery scent when crushed and Oriental Limelight (right) with exciting jagged variegated leaves. There was also this Pelargonium, Lady Plymouth (centre) with deeply veined scented leaves bordered in pale yellow, and I bought all three plants for a fiver. Such arcane poetry in these names. I trust those of you that love flowers will indulge this enthusiasm of mine for dramatically contrasted foliage, because, as you can see, I also found these wonderfully veined wine-red roses that will sit upon my desk to delight my eyes whilst writing next week’s stories for you.
The Return of Pamela Freedman
Pamela Freedman was a West End girl, born in 1923 in The Bricklayers Arms in Berwick St, Soho – the pub managed by her parents, Hetty and Albert Harris, just around the corner from The Blue Posts run by her grandfather. This was the only world Pamela knew, until one fateful day the treasurer of the pub’s Christmas Club absconded with all the savings and her father did the honourable thing, paying back the money to his customers out of his own pocket. It was a noble action that changed his family’s lives forever.
As a consequence, Hetty & Albert lost The Bricklayers Arms and in 1935, when Pamela was thirteen, they started a whole new life in the East End, managing The Princess Alice in Commercial St. “When my mother saw it, she said, ‘Never in a million years! I can’t live in a place like that.’ The state of it was disgusting,” revealed Pamela, when I met her at The Princess Alice on her first return visit since the nineteen sixties, gazing wistfully around at the location that was once central to her life, rendered barely recognisable by alterations now. “The brewery sent the builders in and when they opened up the old counter, the rats ran everywhere. When my mother saw the seamen’s lodging house on the top that was rotten and neglected, she was frightened she might fall through the ceiling – the first thing the brewery was demolish the top floors.” she told me with gleeful satisfaction, explaining the curiously stunted architecture of the building today.
Although it was inauspicious circumstances that brought them to the East End, Hetty & Albert created a vibrant life at The Princess Alice with a large crowd of friendly regulars – as the exuberant picture above testifies. But a far greater challenge was to come when World War II brought bombing, setting the East End ablaze, as Pamela recounted to me. “We had one night when the buzz bombs started, Daddy & I saw a buzz bomb catch three hundred people coming out of work from Old St. They all died. A lot of our customers were killed. We made dugouts in the cellar and we slept down there. We lay there listening to the clicking of the tram lines as the bombs hit. We kept coming up to see if anything was left standing. One night I came up from the cellar and everything was on fire. We told the firemen to take the beer and use it to put out the flames.We had no glass in the windows of the pub and the brewers said, ‘Stay open.’ We had no power and the brewers said, ‘Get candles and stay open.’ On the night the war ended, we sold out and we went up to the West End to celebrate.”
In the midst of this chaos, Pamela got married to Alf Freedman who lived across the street, “We grew up together and we were the same age. He was in the RAF for five years as a meteorological officer in North Africa, while I was a firewarden for three years. He came back from abroad and we decided to get married. Both families knew a lot of people and God forbid anyone should be ignored. It was the first big wedding after the war, Sandys Row Synagogue was too small, so we had it at the New West End Synagogue, St Petersburg Place, Bayswater and four hundred people came to the dinner. I was twenty-four when I got married and left the Princess Alice for good. All the draymen turned up early in the morning outside in the street to see me off. After I got married, I lived in a nice flat in Kensington but my husband was still away in the service. We were married nearly sixty years. We had a very good life. We worked hard and we went all over the world”
Destiny took her back to the West End, her place of origin, and the foray into the East End became a single episode in her long life, but I think Pamela’s experiences here endowed her with a fearless quality and an unsentimental appreciation of the value of existence that have remained with her. On the day in 1964 that her father Alf died at seven in the morning, the brewery expected her mother to open The Princess Alice, and although Hetty technically had a year’s grace as a widow, Pamela and her brother gave notice to the brewery at once. They departed the East End with their mother in a taxi and never looked back, until last week when Pamela returned to The Princess Alice at the invitation of her grandson Jeremy Freedman, Spitalfields Life contributing photographer. Although, wisely, Pamela did ensure they kept the contents of the cellar from The Princess Alice when they left, which she and her family are still drinking to this day, including bottles of whisky now worth over five hundred pounds each. But it was farewell to the East End, as Pamela herself said to me plainly, “We had no cause to come this way.”
Pamela Freedman is a person of extraordinary vitality, a charismatic diminutive woman with bright confident eyes, a shrewd yet upbeat generous matter and shrill energetic way of talking, constantly punctuating her speech with phrases like, “You tell people things, they wouldn’t believe you!”, “So many stories, am I boring you?” and her favourite exclamation, “Unbelievable!” This last word serves as her personal leitmotif when called upon to consider the events of her life. Yet she was as delighted and curious to meet Rebecca Lees and Nick Waring – the young couple who are the current landlady and landlord of The Princess Alice – as they were astounded to meet her.
Recalling her own time behind the bar, Pamela outlined her personal method of dealing with troublesome customers, “My secret weapon was a syphon of soda behind the counter. I could let go as well as anybody, because I didn’t care, even though I was the governor’s daughter.” she declared. Describing Hetty & Albert’s style as landlords, she said, “Everything had to be regimented, if you put a bottle the wrong way round, God help you…” A comment which drew a strong reaction from Rebecca, who dug her partner Nick in the ribs, “Just like me!” she exclaimed. Sizing them up with the benefit of a lifetime’s experience, Pamela revealed her approval of the current management, “You’re what I call ‘of the old school’, but it’s bloody hard work isn’t it?” she confided, as they all exchanged a look of mutual recognition.
Hetty & Albert Harris behind the bar at the Princess Alice
Hetty, Albert & Hetty’s brother Walter.
1. Albert taps a keg.
2. Albert connects the tap.
3. Albert tightens the tap.
These are the photographs that Alf & his wife-to-be Pamela Freedman exchanged when they were both twenty-one, before he left for North Africa in 1942 – “with undying love”
Pamela Freedman at The Princess Alice today, in the week of her eighty-seventh birthday
Pamela stands in Wentworth St, looking across Commercial St to The Princess Alice, on the occasion of her return for the first time in more than forty years.
Photographs copyright © Jeremy Freedman
Phil Maxwell, photographer
In 1981, when Phil Maxwell got a job in the East End and moved to London from Liverpool, he found himself living in a council flat in Pauline House at the end of Hanbury St where he lives to this day. “In Liverpool, they told me, ‘You won’t find people in London as friendly, they don’t have the Scouse humour.”” explained Phil, recalling his arrival in East London, “But when I moved here I found that Scouse humor and East End humour are almost the same, produced by similar forces. Just as in Liverpool, you have the river, the dockers, strong trade unions, a history of unemployment and seasonal work – humour developed out of hardship, people were able to laugh at their own demise. The East End was a small world and a wonderful place in those days. The area was a desert, so much corrugated iron, so many bombed out buildings, and many old Jewish people with a great sense of humour.”
As a teenager, Phil ran away from home in Coventry to Euston, “I stayed two nights at St Anne’s Centre in Soho and I fell in love with the place.” he told me, disclosing the origin of his affection for London. Although he spent his childhood making cameras out of boxes and created a darkroom in his bedroom, Phil’s aspirations were not encouraged at his secondary modern school,”You were basically taught you were useless and you’d be lucky if you got a job in factory,” he admitted regretfully. But it was in Liverpool where he had his first job, as a teacher of religious instruction, that Phil began to take pictures seriously. As he explained, “I was a great admirer of Bill Brandt, Humphrey Spender and Henri Cartier Bresson, and passionate to record the lives of ordinary people.” Living independently for the first time and escaping his catholic upbringing, Phil also came out amongst the teachers at his school and to some of the pupils whose parents he met on the gay scene at this time, which meant that he could no longer continue teaching. “I wasn’t going to be put in a situation where I was forced to be secretive about my sexuality.” he confided to me.
In London, Phil’s work as a media resources officer, preparing visual material for schools, allowed him an income and the time to pursue the photography that was his central concern. At once, he dedicated himself to documenting the lives of working people in the East End, commencing a lifetime’s project that thirty years later has led to the creation of an unparalleled archive of work, both in street photography and as a record of the popular antifascist political movements in London.
“I was obsessed with photography but I never thought I’d be able to make a living. And ultimately I was very lucky, because although I freelanced for some magazines, I never got a job on a major publication – which means that I kept all my negatives. And now I find that I am unique among photographers of my generation because I have complete ownership of my work. In the end, my lack of self-esteem worked to my advantage because it gave me freedom. I’ve found a way of working independently without having the integrity of my work undermined.”, outlined Phil, looking back without regrets upon the evolution of his singular career as a photographer.
The fluent pictures you see here, which serve as an introductory glimpse of his vast archive, are amongst the first Phil took in Spitalfields and the vicinity, after he arrived from Liverpool in 1981. This was the place as he found it – where he discovered his creative and personal freedom – the location which he has photographed ceaselessly throughout the intervening years and continues to photograph today. As well as recording the changes in the neighbourhood, these pictures capture many remarkable personalities that Phil knew personally. Phil’s involvement with his subjects means that he is never merely taking pictures, he is always recording life happening. Every single image is another frame in an ongoing drama, with the same people and places recurring over three decades. For this reason, Phil’s pictures have never contained anonymous faces in the street, because for him these were all the people he lived among every day.
Describing the couple stepping out of Whitechapel Station in the second photo below, Phil explained they lived in the flat below him and, once the wife died, her husband enjoyed the freedom to do all the things he was not allowed to do while she was alive. In the few years that he lived on after his wife’s death, Phil regularly steered him home drunk and left him sleeping in a chair. The demonstrators with bicycles in a lower photo were gathered in Brick Lane in support of Afia Begum, a Bengali woman who was threatened with deportation after her husband died in a fire in 1982.
It is this affectionate yet unsentimental relationship with his subjects that gives Phil Maxwell’s photographs their special quality. As Phil admitted open-heartedly, “I would be nowhere without these people, they are my constant inspiration. I always have a camera in my pocket and whenever I go out I always see something I have never seen before. I love the different cultures and histories that are on the doorstep. Wherever I travel in the world, I always come back and find a little of it here. I’ve always said I couldn’t live anywhere else – such a mixture of class, race, cultures, and aspirations and it’s all here in one go.”
Cheshire St
Whitechapel
Brick Lane
Corner of Brick Lane and Hanbury St
Wilkes St
Bethnal Green Rd
Bethnal Green Rd
Bacon St
Cheshire St
Photographs copyright © Phil Maxwell
Spitalfields Antiques Market 18
When Marlene was a child growing up in Jamaica, her parents used to have their furniture and even clothes made up locally – copying illustrations from old catalogues – thereby giving Marlene an education in taste and appreciation for the styles of yesteryear that remains with her to this day. Dealing in old china and kitchenalia, Marlene also uses it at home every day. “I never buy anything to put away and I never buy anything I can’t use.” she declared firmly as a matter of principle, before adding with a sentimental smile, “It’s so nice drinking out of an old cup and saucer!” As one who eats off old plates everyday too, I recognise a kindred spirit in Marlene.
This is the erudite Dudley from Kent, once a military photographer in the RAF, pictured here wielding a fine old bell made by Warners of Spitalfields, impressed with the name “Seabird,” indicating its nautical origins. “I like things with a story,” he confided in understatement, showing me a humble bookcase made from the teak of HMS Valiant, nearly sunk in the bay of Naples by a limpet mine in 1948, and a pair of stylish candlesticks of 1929 made from the timber of HMS Ganges, the last sailing ship in the British Navy. Dudley told me his father was an antique dealer in Shropshire dealing exclusively in old oak, revealing the origin of his passion, as a branch of the same tree.
This is Anita from Rochester, bubbling over with irresistible enthusiasm for the costume jewellery and old lace that she sells,“I’ve only been doing it ten years but I wish I’d been doing it longer because I love it so much.” she announced with gleeful vivacity, tossing her wayward blonde locks flirtatiously and showing off the lavish Whitby jet necklace and glittering diamante spider she was modelling herself.“I bring a different selection every week” she emphasised, gesturing persuasively to the sparkling array of trinkets before her,“Where else are going to get a nice vintage necklace for eight pounds?”
This is Tony Travis whose area of expertise is Tudor & Stuart hammered coins, but in Spitalfields he trades in ethnographic currency from Africa. When Tony explained that the iron manillas he sells were cast in Birmingham in the eighteenth century, exchanged with tribal chiefs in Central Africa for slaves, which were then exported to America in return for the cotton that was in turn brought back to Birmingham, it was a moment when the inescapable reality of history became apparent in a single unlikely artifact. A sobering reflection in the market on a Summer’s morning in Spitalfields.
Photographs copyright © Jeremy Freedman
Bengali lunch
With so many places to eat in Brick Lane, I am commonly baffled by too much choice. I stand in the midst of the cacophony of street cries, swept along by the drunken throng, entranced by the spices drifting on the breeze, aware that every restaurant has a prizewinning curry chef and a celebrity endorsement, almost seduced by the offers to “Step right in, the beers are on the house!” yet unable to decide where to go. But when I heard there was a restaurant where you could eat Bengali home cooking, exactly as you would find it in Bangladesh, I knew I wanted to eat there.
Abdul Shahid’s cafe, Gram Bangla, at 68 Brick Lane (opposite Christ Church School) is where Bengalis go to eat. “I used to miss my mother’s cooking when she went back to Bangladesh in 1979, so I thought I must find a way to create it for myself.” explained Abdul, declaring his quest, fulfilled today by the presence of happy family groups and workers from the other restaurants, enjoying the freshly cooked authentic dishes that speak of his homeland. In effect, Gram Bangla caters to the catering industry, with catering workers from all over London and beyond filling the restaurant on their days off, early in the week when their own restaurants are quiet. There is a relaxed yet respectful atmosphere that presides in this unpretentious cafe where large family groups gather in the late afternoon, waiters from rival restaurants exchange professional gossip over extended meals, and all the diners feel comfortable walking to the kitchen at the rear to make their orders.
The first Asian restaurants in Spitalfields in the sixties and seventies were originally to feed the immigrant workers in the garment industry, most of whom were single men without anyone to cook for them. Both the Clifton and the Aladin started as workers’ cafes, but, as Europeans also came to eat there too, gradually the menus changed, moving away from Bengali home cooking towards the Western versions of recipes from the Asian subcontinent that are familiar today.
Unless someone pointed it out to you, among the chaos of neon signs and curry touts in Brick Lane, you would never notice Gram Bangla, which has no need of either. In fact, this intriguingly undemonstrative establishment does not even have a menu because the customers already know exactly what they want to eat. Abdul Shahid, the proprietor, a startlingly healthy-looking man in deep green shirt, is a living advertisement for the Bengali food he serves which consists primarily of freshwater fish and vegetables with rice – utilising less meat and bread than cookery from the North of India. Specifically, this is the country version of Bengali food that agricultural workers would eat at home, conveyed by the name Gram Bangla – “gram” means “village” in Bengali. Even the hours reflect the Bengali working day, closer to a Mediterranean pattern, starting and ending later than the Northern European custom. Lunch at Gram Bangla is from two until four, which corresponds to the bulk of the trade, although the cafe stays open until midnight.
The first thing you do is to walk to the back of the restaurant and wash your hands in the sink. This is necessary because you will be eating with your hands. Crushing the food in your fingers allows you to discover any fish bones, as well as permitting you to rub the spicy food into the rice, encouraging it to absorb the strong flavours that are characteristic of this cuisine. Once you have washed your hands you survey the array of fish and vegetable dishes on the kitchen counter that are specialities here, many of which are to be found nowhere else outside Bangladesh. Behind the counter two cooks are at work, tending blackened pots upon the huge stove, cooking everything daily in small batches. With Abdul’s guidance, I chose a range of dishes which were swiftly delivered to my table in small bowls with plain rice, and that was where my experience of Bengali lunch truly began. People told me it was an acquired taste. “We have had two non-Bengali customers over the years,” admitted Abdul with an indulgent grin.
How can words convey my experience of Bengali lunch? From my first mouthful, I understood that Bengali food proposes its own intense palette of flavours, quite distinct from any “Indian” food I had eaten before. To enjoy these dishes, an appreciation of fish is essential and you must not be squeamish of spices or fish bones either. Abdul explained that one function of the spices was to extend the quantity of food for poor farmers, whose diet is rice with just a small amount of fish. It only takes a tiny amount of hot spicy fish to flavour a meal that is mostly rice. In Bangladesh, the price of fish makes it generally available only to the middle class, and consequently Bengali food is a frugal cuisine using every part of a fish and each part of the vegetables too, even bean pods. I started with Keski – which you might call freshwater anchovies, delicious tiny crunchy spicy fish. Then I ate Chitol – moist spicy fish balls made from the flesh of a large fish with the bones removed, which I enjoyed with Begun Bortha – stewed Aubergines with chopped green Chillis, and Korela – a popular bitter vegetable that reminded me a little of Broccoli.
Once I had whetted my appetite, I went back next day with a better sense what to expect. I had Boal with Uri and lentils with rice. My slice of Boal fish had a pale flesh with a delicate flavour that fell off the bone and the Uri was a tangy bean pod which complemented the fish nicely, while the lentils soaked up some of the spiciness, and it all added up to a satisfying meal. I was delighted. It was the beginning of something new. I cast my eyes around the modest yellow cafe decorated with prints of rural life to observe everyone else absorbed in their food, I felt comfortable. I enjoyed my Bengali lunch.
Mark Petty, trendsetter
This is what I consider a classic Mark Petty outfit. It has the high-waisted flares, wide lapels and tie – all in a vibrant colour scheme – and Mark wears it with the audacious flair that we have come to expect from him. Anyone that frequents Brick Lane on a regular basis will be familiar with Mark and his boldly coloured leather suits, because he has honoured us by adopting these streets as his stage, or rather his catwalk, upon which he performs his celebrated theatrics of fashion.
Mark and his clothing have become part of the fabric of our neighbourhood, and it always lifts my spirits to spot him among a crowd of unremarkably dressed people, bringing a splash of eye-catching colour to elevate the scene. It is a joy that is compounded when I see him later in an entirely different outfit – an event which can occur several times in the same day, increasing the delight and admiration of the many residents who hold Mark in high esteem, as our self-styled ambassador for colour.
Amongst all the snazzy dressers of Shoreditch, what makes Mark special is that he designs his own clothes, not merely to look fashionable but as an unmediated expression of himself. More than anyone else I can think of Mark uses clothing to express who he is. He shows how he feels – revealing his inner self openly – and in the process his liberationist example has become an inspiration to us all.
“The reason I started was because in the seventies I was too young to wear the fashions, and by the time I was old enough flared trousers had gone,” explained Mark as we sat in his pink living room in a quiet corner of Bethnal Green, “So I went round to Mr Singh at Batty Fashions in the Bethnal Green Rd to see if he could make me some. I have no training in fashion yet I cut my own cardboard patterns, though it wasn’t easy at first doing flares.
I tried going out in Bethnal Green and the reaction was very hostile – from children who threw bottles at me – but I thought, ‘I’ll persevere because fashion is too drab and life should be full of colour.’ I’m not the kind of person that gives in. So I went to Ridley Rd Market in my lilac seventies outfit and on the whole the reaction was good. I find each area is different, you can’t ascertain in advance whether you’ll get mugged or chased. The older people here say, ‘You’re a rebel,’ and I get requests to wear particular outfits. My most popular request is for pink.
I’ll never forget the gang of Scottish football supporters I met at a bus stop in Shoreditch High St, they said, ‘It takes a lot of nerve to wear what you’re wearing.’ and asked to be photographed with me. Hopefully something good will come of it and people will realise that life isn’t all beige and black, and you need to express yourself. It needs a kick up the backside. When I went to Tottenham, where they all wear baseball caps, track suits and have designer dogs, they said,’You’re ruining our culture!’ In Croydon, when they realised I was from East London, they said, ‘We don’t get a lot of people from the North here.’
I moved to London from Essex sixteen years ago. I was born in Oxford but my mother decided to marry and live in Essex. I had a problem in Essex at school because I had a West Country accent. They said, ‘You’re a foreigner so we don’t like you!’ My mother’s been there thirty years now and they still say to her, ‘You’ll never be one of us.’ I was forced out of of Braintree. It was all over the newspaper headlines. Once you come through that you can come through anything. I used to lie on the floor of my flat with my three cats in the dark and pretend to be out. This went on for months, until they came round at night with flaming torches and smashed all the windows.
Moving to London, I found people in pubs and clubs very cold, and I settled in London in Tottenham on the Broadwater Estate which had a fearsome reputation. I thought, ‘I’m here on my own,’ so I got Rose an English bull terrier, but it was quite terrifying even walking to the park with the dog. As they said to me in Islington when they saw my outfit, ‘There’s not a lot of people that’s got the courage.’
I must know everyone in Bethnal Green now, they say, ‘You’re quite a celebrity round here,’ but I never thought of it that way, I just did what I had to do. We had a lot of builders round here last year, so I used to try my designs out on them to see what they thought, unfortunately they’ve gone now. I used to get a lot of offers but none have been taken up. I went to Walthamstow Market recently and the girls were holding their boyfriends’ hands because they were looking at me rather than their girls. If only people could experiment more and show their bodies. Even women here dress like men. The worse thing they ever did was invent the remote control, no-one gets any exercise anymore.
I’ve noticed in Romford and Ilford that guys are starting to wear pink. You’d expect it to be the little skinny ones but it’s the big butch guys. A woman said to me in Bethnal Green Tesco, ‘You’re corrupting our men! It’s dirty and perverted.’ I said, ‘That’s pathetic.’ Her twenty-four year old son wants to dress like me apparently and I get the blame. If people don’t express themselves they’re always repressed, but you only have one life and you have to live it as you think fit. The kids still abuse me and the police are useless, so I have to take care of myself. You have to stand up to them. They say they don’t like how I look, and I tell them, ‘If you don’t like it you can put up with it,’ because I’ve been through so much that I’m not going to be persecuted anymore.”
It was a painful journey Mark travelled to realise the truth of himself and square up to the violence, hatred and ignorance he confronted as a consequence of his emotional honesty. Yet in the face of this resistance he has discovered moral courage. I was humbled to recognise Mark’s strength of character as he told his stories filled with magnanimous humour and sympathy for his tormentors.
Nowadays, the clothing he adopted as a declaration of fearless independence has become Mark’s life and, as we talked, he produced outfit after outfit to show me, each more extravagant than the one before. Simultaneously his armour and his joy, Mark takes great delight in his multicoloured wardrobe which incarnates the transformation act he has pulled off to emerge as the peacock of Brick Lane.
“A bit of colour highlights people’s moods,” Mark declared as, with a beaming smile, he proudly modelled his pink leather trousers with cupcake applique motifs which he created as a homage to a dress he saw Fanny Craddock wear. There is a certain holy innocence about Mark, like the jesters of old who were licensed to speak what no-one else dare say. It still takes courage for him to go out, but Mark Petty is a kind man who discovered bravery in the face of cruelty, and a neighbourhood dandy we are all proud to know.
Mark Petty aged nine, in the nineteen seventies.
