The Life of a Mudlark, 1861
After my portrait yesterday of Steve Brooker, the contemporary mudlark, it is my pleasure today to publish this account of a nineteenth century mudlark by Henry Mayhew from his extra volume of “London Labour & London Poor,” 1861.
The mudlarks generally consist of boys and girls, varying in age from eight to fourteen or fifteen. For the most part they are ragged, and in a very filthy state, and are a peculiar class, confined to the river. As soon as the tide is out they make their appearance, and remain till it comes in. These mudlarks are generally strong and healthy, though their clothes are in rags. Their fathers are robust men. By going too often to the public house they keep their families in destitution, and the mothers of the poor children are glad to get a few pence in whatever way they can.
The following narrative was given to us by a mudlark we found on a float on the river Thames at Millwall, to the eastward end of the Ratcliffe Highway. On our calling to him, he got the use of a boat lying near and came towards us with alacrity. He was an Irish lad of about thirteen years, dressed in a brown fustian coat and vest, dirty greasy canvas trousers roughly-patched, striped shirt with the collar folded down, and a cap with a peak.
“About two year ago I left school, and commenced to work as a mudlark on the river, in the neighbourhood of Millwall, picking up pieces of coal and iron, and copper, and bits of canvas on the bed of the river, or of wood floating on the surface. I commenced this work with a little boy of the name of Fitzgerald.
When the bargemen heave coals to be carried from their barge to the shore, pieces drop into the water among the mud, which we afterwards pick up. Sometimes we get as many coals about one barge as sell for 6d. On other occasions we work for days, and only get perhaps as much as sells for 6d. We generally have a bag or a basket to put the articles we gather into. I have sometimes got so much at one time, that it filled my basket twice – before the tide went back. I sell the coals to the poor people in the neighbourhood. I generally manage to get as many a day as sell for 8d.
We often find among the mud, in the bed of the river, pieces of iron; such as rivets out of ships, and what is termed washers and other articles cast away or dropped in the iron-yards in building ships and barges. We get these in the neighbourhood of Limehouse, where they build boats and vessels. I generally get some pieces of iron every day, which sells at ¼d. a pound and often make 1d. or 2d. a day, sometimes 3d., at other times only a farthing. Pieces of rope are occasionally dropped or thrown overboard from the ships or barges and are found embedded in the mud. Rope is sold to the marine store dealers at ½d. a pound. We also get pieces of canvas, which sells at ½d. a pound. I have on some occasions got as much as three pounds. We also pick up pieces of fat along the river-side. Sometimes we get four or five pounds and sell it at ¾d. a pound at the marine stores; these are thrown overboard by the cooks in the ships, and after floating on the river are driven on shore.
I generally rise in the morning at six o’clock, and go down to the riverside with my youngest brother you saw beside me at the barges. In the winter time we do not work so many hours as in the summer; yet in winter we generally are more successful than in the long days of summer. There are generally thirteen or fourteen mudlarks about Limehouse in the summer, and about six boys steadily there in the winter, who are strong and hardy, and well able to endure the cold. Some of the mudlarks are orphan boys and have no home. In the summer time they often sleep in the barges or in sheds or stables or cow-houses, with their clothes on. Some of them have not a shirt, others have a tattered shirt which is never washed, as they have no father nor mother, nor friend to care for them. Some of these orphan lads have good warm clothing; others are ragged and dirty, and covered with vermin.
The mudlarks generally have a pound of bread to breakfast, and a pint of beer when they can afford it. They do not go to coffee-shops, not being allowed to go in, as they are apt to steal the men’s ‘grub.’ They often have no dinner, but when they are able they have a pound of bread and 1d. worth of cheese. I never saw any of them take supper.The boys who are out all night lie down to sleep when it is dark, and rise as early as daylight. Sometimes they buy an article of dress, a jacket, cap or pair of trousers from a dolly or rag-shop. They get a pair of trousers for 3d. or 4d., an old jacket for 2d, and an old cap for ½d or 1d. When they have money they take a bed in a low lodging-house for 2d. or 3d. a night.
I take what I can get as well as the rest when I get an opportunity. The Thames’ police often come upon us and carry off our bags and baskets with the contents. The mudlarks are generally good swimmers. When a bargeman gets hold of them in his barge on the river, he often throws them into the river, when they swim ashore and take off their wet clothes and dry them. They are often seized by the police in the middle of the river, and thrown overboard, when they swim to the shore. I have been chased twice by a police galley.
I have been in the habit of stealing pieces of rope, lumps of coal, and other articles for the last two years; but my parents do not know of this. I have never been tried by the police court for any felony. It is my intention to go to sea, as my brothers have done, so soon as I can find a captain to take me on board his ship.”
Henry Mayhew chose to include this account in the extra volume of “London Labour & London Poor” – which was published ten years after his original three volumes – describing “Those that will not work,” because, in spite of their industriousness, mudlarks were dismissed as thieves. The mudlark was published in a chapter entitled “Felonies on the River Thames” alongside smugglers and pirates. There is a tragic poignancy in this nineteenth century account of a resourceful child scraping a living in the face of tyrannical circumstances, yet in spite of its apparent exoticism there are working children elsewhere in the world struggling under comparable depredations today.
Henry Mayhew met his unnamed mudlark in the same stretch of Thames between Limehouse where Steve and I combed the shore. Although the shipyards and almost everything that Mayhew would have seen have gone, the rivets mentioned by the mudlark still litter the foreshore today as evidence of the ships, including the SS Great Eastern, that were built there. You could say Steve and I were in the footsteps of Mayhew’s mudlark, if the mud had not erased them long ago. We will never know if the mudlark went to sea, but I hope he found a captain to take him and his brother Fitzgerald on board, and they sailed far away to experience the wonders of the greater world beyond the Thames.
Mudlarking is legal today, as long as you have a licence from the Port of London Authority which costs forty pounds for three years. And the Thames is no longer an open sewer these days, it is a cleaner living river where Steve finds eels and shrimps under every rock he lifts. Steve Brooker became a mudlark out of a passion for history and seventeen years later he has signed a contract with the History Channel to co-present a six part series with Johnny Vaughan, entitled “Mudmen.” Life is very different for a mudlark in London a hundred and fifty years later, there are career prospects now.
Steve Brooker, twenty-first century mudlark, has a deal with a television network.
Steve Brooker, Mudlark
In London, the Thames has always been the natural receptacle for concealing and disposing things, creating a miry hoard of secrets, all just waiting for Steve Brooker, the mudlark, to come along and snaffle them up. Over the last seventeen years while he has been searching, the mud has been eroded by wash from the Thames Clippers, exposing an unprecedented level of finds that compel Steve to come mudlarking several times each week at low tide and be the first to see what has been newly revealed.
Steve is widely known as the Mud God – which seemed a little far fetched to me – until I saw him striding towards me eagerly in his chest-high bespattered waders, clutching his yellow plastic bucket and trowel. Over six feet tall with a grizzled beard and intense, glittering eyes, he was as excited to get down onto the beach as a child on the first day of the Summer holiday. Only someone with Steve’s natural authority can carry off such unmediated enthusiasm naturally. He is a man who is confident of his place in the world, and that place is the foreshore of the Thames.
We came down the slipway as the tide fell towards its lowest ebb. The day was mild yet occluded, and my heart lifted as I was released from city streets into a vast open space, the domain of water and sky. The territory of the Mud God. He understands the idiosyncrasies of the tide, and the nuances of the mud banks and the river bed. As well as coins and buttons, he finds Roman shoes, Medieval pins, eighteenth century witches’ bottles, nineteenth century lovers’ tokens, twentieth century voodoo dolls, live bombs and new guns – and sometimes he find human bodies too. He knows where to look and he does not need a metal detector because he has sharp eyes.
When Helen Mirren lost her ring throwing her grass clippings over the river wall from her Wapping garden, it was Steve who found it for her in the river. When villains throw handguns and sawn-off shot guns into the river at Woolwich to lose them forever, it is Steve who collects them and hands them to the police – he found fifteen recently.
Mudlarks tend to work in pairs for safety’s sake on this hazardous river and I had the privilege to be Steve’s partner in slime for a day. And I was happy to be in his company because Steve is a member of the Society of Thames Mudlarks, has a licence from the Port of London Authority and has the necessary experience to judge the treacherous movement of the tide against the access points to the shore.
On the beach, Steve used his trowel to indicate where the mud had been washed away revealing a fresh bed of stones beneath, suggesting the type of location worthy of searching. Scraping away the top layer, he scanned for objects and passed me a Medieval pin – a sign that other personal or domestic artifacts might be present. Thus the pattern was established of walking, scanning and pausing to scrape at promising sites. We continued until Silvertown where thousands of bullets mysteriously litter the foreshore, an unexplained military dump from World War II. All around the Isle of Dogs, we walked upon a shore littered with the metalwork of the ship building industry that was once here. Lying redundant, we saw eighteenth century iron splitters used for breaking up tree trunks into planks, to build ships sunk long ago.
At low tide, we reached Mast Point where Steve finds whole clay pipes. Pipes that once fell from a stevedore’s hand and sunk into the mud without breaking. Here I saw impacted layers of eighteenth and nineteenth century river bed, now exposed by erosion, with tantalising fragments of white pipe protruding. We squatted down to peer at the tiny bowl of a pipe, washed from the mud by the waves that very day and exposed from the mud for the first time. In the shape of a lady with a wide skirt that formed the bowl of the pipe, it was a tiny sculpture with a presence all its own, and we were the first to touch it since whoever dropped it two hundred years ago. Steve’s eyes popped because he never saw one like it before. Moments like this are what keep bringing Steve back, because he knows will always find something, yet he never knows what it will be.
We walked miles along the water’s edge in the centre of London and the only others we met were two friends of Steve’s, also searching the shore. I forgot entirely about the city on the river bank above us, because I was down in the river bed in the land of the mudlarks. All of the history of London was present with us, you just had to look, and it was a magical place to be.
Take a look at www.thamesandfield.com where you can see more than thirteen thousand pictures of Steve Brooker’s incredible finds that have earned him his reputation as the Mud God.
The detritus of the former shipyards lines the shore.
Thousands of bullets lie in the mud at Silvertown.
The lady as we found her face down in the Thames mud.
The lady recovered after two hundred years.
Our haul, a tudor brick, decimal coins, bullets, marbles, a spur, an eighteenth century fork, a cabinet handle, clay pipes, a shell dated 1942, a fragment of a Bellemine jug, a broken seventeenth century buckle and a horse’s tooth.
Steve Brooker, the Mud God.
Mudlarking on the Thames, with remnant of a mesolithic forest in the foreground.
At the Pearly Kings & Queens’ Harvest Festival
On Sunday afternoon, the Pearly Kings & Queens came together from every borough of London and gathered in the square outside the Guildhall in the City of London for a lively celebration to mark the changing of the seasons. There was Maypole dancing and Morris Dancing, there was a pipe band and a marching band, there were mayors and dignitaries in red robes and gold chains, there were people from Rochester in Dickensian costume, there were donkeys with carts and veteran cars, and there was even an old hobby horse leaping around – yet all these idiosyncratic elements successfully blended to create an event with its own strange poetry. In fact, the participants outnumbered the audience and a curiously small town atmosphere prevailed, allowing the proud Pearlies to mingle with their fans, and enjoy an afternoon of high-spirited chit-chat and getting their pictures snapped.
I delighted in the multiplicity of designs that the Pearlies had contrived for their outfits, each creating their own identity expressed through ingenious patterns of pearl buttons, and on this bright afternoon of early Autumn they made a fine spectacle, sparkling in the last rays of September sunshine. My host was the admirable Doreen Golding, Pearly Queen of the Old Kent Rd & Bow Bells, who spent the whole year organising the event. And I was especially impressed with her persuasive abilities in cajoled all the mayors into a spot of maypole dancing, because it was a heartening sight to see a team of these dignified senior gentlemen in their regalia prancing around like eleven year olds and enjoying it quite unselfconsciously too.
In the melee, I had the pleasure to grapple with George Major, the Pearly King of Peckham (crowned in 1958), and his grandson Daniel, the Pearly Prince, sporting an exceptionally pearly hat that is a century old. George is an irrepressibly flamboyant character who taught me the Cockney salute, and then took the opportunity of his celebrity to steal cheeky kisses from ladies in the crowd, causing more than a few shrieks and blushes. As the oldest surviving member of one of the only three surviving original pearly families, he enjoys the swaggering distinction of being the senior Pearly in London, taking it as licence to behave like a mischievous schoolboy. Nearby I met Matthew (Daniels’s father) – a Pearly by marriage not birth, he revealed apologetically – who confessed he sewed the six thousand buttons on George’s jacket while watching Match of the Day.
Fortunately, the Lambeth Walk had been enacted all round the Guildhall Yard and all the photo opportunites were exhausted before the gentle rain set in. And by then it was time to form a parade to process down the road to St Mary-le-Bow for the annual Harvest Festival. A distinguished man in a red tail coat with an umbrella led the procession through the drizzle, followed by a pipe band setting an auspicious tone for the impressive spectacle of the Pearlies en masse, some in veteran cars and others leading donkeys pulling carts with their offerings for the Harvest Festival. St Mary-le-Bow is a church of special significance for Pearlies because it is the home of the famous Bow Bells that called Dick Whittington back to London from Highgate Hill, and you need to be born within earshot of these to call yourself a true Cockney.
The black and white chequerboard marble floor of the church was the perfect complement to the pearly suits, now that they were massed together in delirious effect. Everyone was happy to huddle in the warmth and dry out, and there were so many people crammed together in the church in such an array of colourful and bizarre costumes of diverse styles, that as one of the few people not in some form of fancy dress, I felt I was the odd one out. But we were as one, singing “All Things Bring and Beautiful” together. Prayers were said, speeches were given and the priest reminded us of the Pearlies’ origins among he costermongers in the poverty of nineteenth century London. We stood in reverent silence for the sake of history and then a Pearly cap was passed around in aid of the Whitechapel Mission.
Coming out of the church, there was a chill in the air. The day that began with Summery sunshine was closing with Autumnal rain. Pearlies scattered down Cheapside and through the empty City streets for another year, back to their respective corners of London. Satisfied that they had celebrated Summer’s harvest, the Pearlies were going home to light fires, cook hot dinners and turn their minds towards the Wintry delights of the coming season, including sewing yet more pearl buttons on their suits during Match of the Day.
Columbia Road Market 52
Dawn had not yet broken at six this morning when I rose in the dark to walk up the road to have a chat with Denis Madden, one of the most spirited traders in the Columbia Road Market. When I arrived at six thirty, he was already set up and bright with anticipation for the day’s trading.
“I’ve been here forty years, since I was seventeen,” he revealed to me with a droll grimace, rubbing his hand together in sentimental contemplation,”I met this girl, she was third generation, her family had been trading here since the nineteen thirties, they used to come down from Hoxton on a horse and cart. I was playing football on a semi-professional basis at the time, but her father (he became my father-in-law) put me on the stall and I was a natural. Previous to that, I was somebody who couldn’t take to anything, I’d had at least fifteen jobs – disaffected you might say. But it’s very easy for me to stand behind a stall and shout, and meet people. I just took took to it.”
Denis had been up since three-thirty this morning, driving from Hertfordshire. “I shall be tired come four thirty this afternoon,” he admitted with a shrug,” You’ll see it in my eyes.” And he gestured to his eyes enacted a cartoon version of sleepiness. I admire his stamina, because this pitch in Columbia Rd is just a third of his business. Yesterday, Denis was trading, as he does every Saturday, in Saffron Walden, and on Friday in Uppingham in Rutland – and he spends two days each week prepping back in Hertfordshire. Yet Denis is full of magnanimous humour and energy, steeling himself for another winter on Columbia Rd. “You learn to tolerate the cold, you accept the bad weather in Winter just as you accept the good weather in Summer. The only real problem comes with the flowers when the water freezes, some don’t like getting frozen and defrosted again.” he explained in characteristically practical terms. After forty years trading here, Denis takes all it in his stride now.
“I’ve already retired once, packed it up and moved to France but I found I kept coming back to sort things out…” Denis confessed to me, rolling his eyes with an absurd grin of self-parody and spreading his hands as if to say, “What can I do?” The market is his life and he is not going to give it up any day soon.
Photograph copyright © Jeremy Freedman
The Secret Gardens of Spitalfields
During these last months of Summer, Luis Buitrago called me each time he came to tend the gardens of Spitalfields. With the gracious permission of the owners, I was able to visit these hidden enclaves of green that are entirely concealed from the street by the houses in front and the tall walls that enclose them. If you did not know of the existence of these gardens, you might think Spitalfields was an entirely urban place with barely a leaf in sight, but in fact every terrace conceals a string of verdant little gardens and yards filled with plants and trees that defy the dusty streets beyond.
Luis Buitrago is a gardener and landscape architect who came to Spitalfields ten years ago and lived here for four years while working on the renovation of 7 Fournier St, where he created his first garden which you can see above. In subsequent years, as the news of the charming Luis’ unique talent to conjure horticultural magic has spread, he has become the preeminent gardener in Spitalfields, designing and maintaining the gardens of many of the resident luminaries that discretion prevents me from naming. It makes for a very satisfactory arrangement, because Luis has become uniquely experienced in the special challenges posed by these shady humid locations and when he comes over to do the weeding and watering, he can simply run up and down the street going in and out of all the doors, moving from one garden to the next.
The incarnation of modesty, Luis did not reveal that he has a degree in classics from the University of La Mancha, instead he simply explained that he found himself teaching at a school in South London and had an itch for something more. His three passions were languages, architecture and gardens and so he chose to study landscape architecture at the University of Greenwich.
“In Spitalfields the gardens are quite particular, they are micro-climates that are very shady and very sheltered.” explained Luis, in the gentle tone that is his characteristic mode of speech. “My approach to number 7 Fournier St, which is quite a small garden, was to create the feeling of a hidden woodland glade. I used large ferns to create the shade and planted birch and, over the years I have worked on it, I have added pieces of architectural salvage I have picked up.” I visited this garden one hot July afternoon when Luis had just watered it and I was astounded to walk from the street through the house and be transported into the cool of the garden where shafts of sunlight penetrated the green shade and every leaf glistened. The most mature of Luis’ Spitalfields gardens, this has a such diversity and detail that I could happily have passed my afternoon in this peaceful retreat.
Over in Princelet St, I discovered a much larger more formal garden with a playful cat that insisted on being photographed. “The nice thing about this garden is that you think it’s finished when you get to the end of the path but then there’s more.” said Luis, as he led me down the path with the cat following along behind us.“The tall walls make it mysterious and the owner has placed pieces of statuary to be discovered that give it a magical atmosphere. But in such humid conditions you have to be very careful with planting and you tend to go for texture rather than flowers.” he added. There was no sound of the city to be heard, birdsong filled the air and I loved all the deep contrasted foliage of this extraordinary lyrical garden full of shadow and drama.
Back in Fournier St, Luis showed me a shady courtyard between the house and a guesthouse. “There is a symmetry of structure here but the planting is asymmetric,” he informed me as I inhaled the heavy scent of Jasmine that lined the walls, “On this side I planted Hydrangea and on this side is a Strawberry Tree. The garden is simple but very effective because it is enclosed like a box.” Again, I wondered at this secret space that, paved with shining marble and sheltered from the blinding sunlight, could be anywhere in Italy or Spain.
Down in Walden St, we walked through a terrace of nineteenth century cottages to discover a garden exposed to the sun, “This is just four years old, quite a hot garden, and the owner wanted it to feel bright and enjoy the sunshine, so big structures were out.” revealed Luis, gesturing at the blue sky,” I had to choose plants that thrive in dry sunny conditions, sheltered all around by walls, so I was able to grow Echiums that are quite tender and Verbascum have been successful here. They have seeded themselves and there have been more each year.” Let me admit, I especially enjoyed the modest informality of this garden, sitting upon the oak bench here I could easily imagine I was in the Cotswolds rather than Whitechapel.
Each of the four was distinctive, yet all of Luis Buitrago’s gardens share his self-effacing charm – in the sense that they are not demonstrative, lacking in ostentatious conceptions, instead by complementing the environment and the architecture they offer relaxing spaces to seek solace. These are landscape designs that are responses to the architectural space, which have evolved through canny choices of plants that suit the respective locations. I admire Luis’ sense of poetry and romance in gardens, balanced by his practical delight in the act of gardening. I love the way that each of his gardens is like a magic box, playing upon the surrealism of their urban location, and exploiting their high walls to construct alternative worlds that are outside time.
In Fournier St
In Princelet St
The owner of this garden has placed pieces of statuary among the plants for the visitor to discover.
In this courtyard in Fournier St the walls are covered with a curtain of Jasmine, giving a intense fragrance that is strongest at night and lingers all Summer long.
In Walden St
Luis Buitrago with the smallest garden in Spitalfields, that he contrived in two granite troughs in Fournier St.
Frances Mayhew, Wilton’s Music Hall
When I first walked into Wilton’s Music Hall I thought I had entered a derelict building by mistake. With its austere crumbling facade and reception rooms stripped back to bare brick, it is quite the opposite of the plush Victorian grandeur I equate with Music Hall. Yet once I stepped into the cavernous auditorium with its gleaming barley sugar twist pillars and elaborate gilt balcony, I was captivated by the romance of this shabby old theatre. Alone in the gloom of the oldest surviving music hall in the world where as many as fifteen hundred pleasureseekers once came nightly to celebrate, the warm intensity of the atmosphere arrested me in my tracks. And I stood to gaze upon this sublimely resonant space – conjured for delight by John Wilton in 1859 – evoking familiar images of audience and performers by Sickert, Lautrec and all the other great painters of theatre and stage entertainments.
I had come to meet Frances Mayhew and, from her reputation as the rescuer of Wilton’s, I was expecting a latter day Joan Littlewood. So I was pleasantly disarmed when she arrived and proved to be a glamorous young woman, lighthearted in a vintage crimplene dress and plimsolls – though as our conversation developed Frances revealed a shrewdness and resolve that make her a worthy successor to Miss Littlewood.
As she took me around, Frances explained the chequered history of her beloved theatre. The area was a busy cosmopolitan dockland when John Wilton built his Music Hall – constructed in the back yard of five houses dating from the seventeen twenties housing The Prince of Denmark, an enormous pub renowned for its fine mahogany bar and named in honour of the Danish Embassy situated nearby in Wellclose Square. In the days when it was reputedly a landmark as famous as St Pauls, Champagne Charlie performed at Wilton’s and top acts from Covent Garden would race in carriages across London to give a second performance of the evening there. Constructed as an extension to the bar, it was among the earliest London music halls to open, yet it was superseded by custom built theatres by the end of the century.
Taken over as a Methodist Mission in the eighteen eighties, two thousand meals a day were served there in the Dockers’ Strike of 1889, later it became a safe house for those escaping the fascists during the battle of Cable St in 1936 and during World War II served as a refuge for people bombed out of their homes. In spite of the building’s significance, it was only the intervention of Sir John Betjeman in 1960 that saved Wilton’s from demolition when all the surrounding streets were flattened.
When Frances came along in 2004, Wilton’s had been empty for two years and the bank gave the management six months notice before repossessing the building in lieu of £250,000 debts – the outcome of a series of brave attempts to give the it new life as a performance venue. Learning of the plight of Wilton’s, with extraordinary courage and insight, Frances quit her job as a producer for International Management Group staging classical stadium concerts and came to work for no salary at first, as she attempted to save the shambolic old theatre that everyone else had abandoned.
“The building was going go to bankrupt and Wetherspoons were planning to take it over, so I came along and said, ‘May I put on some gigs and things and try and pay off your debts?’ I was on my own for the first sixth months booking in weddings and photoshoots, but it was very successful as a location for film and photography, and now five years later we have almost paid it off. It’s been a frugal enterprise. Loads of volunteers have given their time. We’ve had to earn our keep without public subsidy, yet it’s been good for the building to earn it’s own stability. I hope we’ve laid down a philosophy for the future that will last. We’ve had to listen to our audience and it’s been important to understand their feelings because they are the ticket buyers.”
Frances’ resourceful mixture of romantic idealism and modest pragmatism is an appealing one that has saved the building from the receivers, but now she has the Victorian drains to contend with. Soaking away unseen beneath the houses that comprise the street frontage, they are creating subsidence moving the theatre away from the rest of the building, and she needs to apply for a capital grant from the National Lottery Fund to rectify this problem if the building is to remain open. Yet with the enterprise financially stable and Wilton’s re-established at the heart of its community, presenting plays, opera and music hall, Frances has proved herself the worthy custodian of this venerable music hall and is prepared for the next challenge.
The place was full of young actors, rehearsing, warming up and being flamboyant in that bold carefree way which is characteristic of their profession. The place was alive, demonstrating that the world of the theatre is a one of youth and fleeting spontaneity. Yet while performance requires a space where imaginative freedom can be enacted, Frances knows that the architecture of romance also requires an income, debts paid and drainage that functions. I wondered what motivated her to take it on, working behind the scenes and dealing with the mundane offstage drama.
She became guarded, looking daunted when I asked if Wilton’s Music Hall is her life’s work, but then she confessed, “I suppose it is quite personal because it’s become a big responsibility. I can’t repair the building at the rate it is crumbling. When I first came here I just wanted to see if it could be rescued, but now I have ambitions for what I want it to be.” Hearing this last admission and sensing her withheld emotion, I realised that after five years Frances is just beginning her work at Wilton’s Music Hall and this story is not just about the past but about the future too.
A rare image of a performance in the early days of Wilton’s Music Hall.
By the 1970s, Wilton’s had fallen into neglect.
The auditorium today
Frances Mayhew at the entrance to Wilton’s Music Hall in Graces Alley.
Fifty yards from Wilton’s, these ten bollards are all that remain of the Royal Brunswick Theatre, one of the East End’s many lost theatres.
The weathervane on St Paul’s School, Wellclose Square, reminds us this was once dockland.
New photographs © Sarah Ainslie
Tubby Isaac’s Jellied Eel Stall, Aldgate
At the furthest extent of Spitalfields where it meets Aldgate is Tubby Isaac’s Jellied Eel Stall, run today by Paul Simpson, fourth generation in this celebrated business founded in 1919, still selling the fresh seafood that was once the staple diet in this neighbourhood. Here where the traffic thunders down Aldgate High St, tucked round the corner of Goulston St, Tubby Isaac’s stall shelters from the hurly burly. And one morning this week, Paul told me the story of his world famous stall as he set up for the day, while I savoured the salty sweet seaweed scent of the seafood and eager customers arrived to eat that famous East End delicacy, jellied eels for breakfast.
“I’ll be the last one ever to do this!” Paul confessed to me with pride tinged by melancholy, as he pulled a huge bowl of eels from the fridge,“My father Ted Simpson had the business before me, he got it from his Uncle Solly who took over from Tubby Isaac, who opened the first stall in 1919. Isaac ran it until 1939 when he got a whiff of another war coming and emigrated to America with his boys, so they would not be conscripted – but then they got enlisted over there instead. And when Isaac left, his nephew Solly took over the business and ran it until he died in 1975. Then my dad ran it from 1975 ’til 1989, and I’ve been here ever since.”
“I began working at the Walthamstow stall when I was fourteen – as a runner, cleaning, washing up, cutting bread, getting the beers, buying the coffees, collecting the bacon sandwiches. and sweeping up. The business isn’t what it was years ago, all the eels stalls along Roman Road and Brick Lane – they were here for a long, long time and they’ve closed. It’s a sign of the times.” he informed me plainly. Yet Paul Simpson is steadfast and philosophical, serving his regular customers daily, and taking consolation from their devotion to his stall. In fact, “Regular customers are my only customers” he admitted to me with a weary smile, “and some of them are in their eighties and nineties who used to come here with their parents!”
Understandably, Paul takes his eels very seriously. Divulging something of the magic of the preparation of this mysterious fish, he explained that when eels are boiled, the jelly exuded during the cooking sets to create a natural preservative. “Look, it creates its own jelly!” declared Paul, holding up the huge bowl of eels to show me and letting it quiver enticingly for my pleasure. The jelly was a crucial factor before refrigeration, when a family could eat from a bowl of jellied eels and then put the dish in a cold pantry where the jelly would reset preserving it for the next day. Paul was insistent that he only sells top quality eels, always fresh never frozen, and after a lifetime on the stall, being particular about seafood is almost his religion. “If you sell good stuff, they will come,” he reassured me, seeing that I was now anxious about the future of his stall after what he said earlier.
Resuming work, removing bowls of winkles, cockles, prawns and mussels from the fridge, “It ain’t a job of enjoyment, it’s a job of necessity,” protested Paul, turning morose again, sighing as he arranged oysters in a tray, “It’s what I know, it’s what pays the bills but it ain’t the kind of job you want your kids to do, when there’s no reward for working your guts off.” Yet in spite of this bluster, it was apparent Peter harbours a self-respecting sense of independence at holding out again history, after lesser eel sellers shut up shop. “When it turns cold, I put so many clothes on I look like the Michelin man by the end of the day!” he boasted to me with a swagger, as if to convince me of his survival ability.
Then Jim arrived, one of Tubby Isaac’s regulars, a cab driver who wolfed a dish of eels doused in vinegar and liberally sprinkled with pepper, taking a couple of lobster tails with him for a snack later. Paul brightened at once to greet Jim and they fell into hasty familar chit-chat, the football, the weather and the day’s rounds, and Jim got back on the road before the traffic warden came along. “It’s like a pub here, the regulars come all day.” Paul confided to me with a residual smile. And I saw there was a certain beauty to the oasis of civility that Tubby Isaac’s manifests, where old friends can return regularly over an entire lifetime, a landmark of continuity in existence.
It is a testament to Paul Simpson’s tenacity and the quality of his fish that Tubby Isaac’s is still here, now that this once densely populated former Jewish neighbourhood has emptied out and the culture of which jellied eels was a part has almost vanished. Tubby Isaac’s is a stubborn fragment of an earlier world, carrying the lively history of the society it once served now all the other jellied eels stalls in Aldgate are gone and the street is no longer full with people enjoying eels. But leaving all this aside, Paul is open seven days a week selling delicious and healthy non-fattening food, so please seek him out and try it for yourself.
The earliest photo of “Tubby” Isaac Brenner who founded the stall in 1919.
Tubby and one of his sons in the 1920s
Ted Simpson, Solly and Patsy Gritzman in the 1940s, after Tubby and his sons left for America.
In Petticoat Lane, 1960s
Ted serves jellied eels to Burt Reynolds and American talk show host Mike Douglas in the 1970s
Ted shakes hands with Ronnie Corbett
Joan Rivers helped out at the stall in the 1980s
Paul Simpson at the stall in 1989, before it became refridgerated.
Tubby Isaacs stall in Aldgate today.
