Mark Jackson & Huw Davies, Photographers
In the last eighteen months of the Fruit and Vegetable Market in Spitalfields, young photographers Mark Jackson & Huw Davies set out to record the life of the market that operated on this site for over three centuries, before it closed forever in 1991. As recent graduates, Mark was working in a restaurant at the time and Huw was a bicycle courier. Without any financial support for their ambitious undertaking, they saved up all their money to buy cameras and rolls of film, converting a corner of their tiny flat into a darkroom.
“It was quite a struggle,” Mark Jackson confided, when I spoke to him yesterday, “because we weren’t earning a lot of money. But Spitalfields fired our imaginations. We caught the last tube to Liverpool St and spent the night there taking photographs, before heading into work next morning.”
The result of their passionate labours is an unparalleled archive of more than four thousand images that has recently been acquired by the Bishopsgate Institute and will be shown there in a major exhibition later this year. It is my privilege to be able to show you a small selection of these phenomenal pictures that have never been seen before, the first glimpse of an undiscovered photographic treasure trove.
I have the greatest respect for anyone who sets out to pursue idealistic projects such as this at great cost to themselves of money, time and labour. In this case, I am equally impressed by the quality of Mark & Huw’s photographs as distinguished social documentary, unsentimental yet infused with affectionate poetry too. Today, we are the fortunate beneficiaries of their selfless enthusiasm over all those months when they stayed up each night to take pictures and worked each day to buy film. It sounds like a beautiful story in retrospect but I have no doubt it took plenty of determination to carry the project through in isolation. I know that the market traders warmed to the young photographers and I think, in part, this accounts for relaxed intimate nature of some of these images, because the traders respected the commitment that Mark & Huw demonstrated, turning up night after night.
This particular set of images take us on a cinematic journey from the busy nocturnal world, when the market was active, through dawn into the early morning when the drama subsided. Mark & Huw photographed a dignified gallery of both the market traders and the homeless people, who were drawn by the fire that always burned to alleviate their discomfort ever since the market was granted its charter. We no longer see any of these characters in Spitalfields. These men would look displaced here in the renovated market today, they are soulful faces from a universe that is gone. When I walk through the Spitalfields Market at night now, it feels like an empty theatre, lacking the performance of the nightly drama that ran from 1638 when Charles I signed the licence to commence trading.
Even though Mark & Huw took their pictures only twenty years ago, they describe a society that feels closer to the world Dickens knew than our own present tense, ten years into the twenty-first century. Inspired by Tom Hopkinson and Bert Hardy’s work at Picture Post, these photographs were to become the first of a series documenting all the markets of London, that might have been a lifetime’s vocation for Mark & Huw. It was not to be. Life intervened and without any support the projected sequence was abandoned. Mark became a writer and Huw is now a teacher – they each have lives beyond their nascent photographic enterprises – but they deserve to be proud of these vital pictures because they are an honourable contribution to the worthy canon of British documentary photography.
All pictures © Mark Jackson & Huw Davies
Willy Moon, songwriter
Let me introduce Willy Moon, who has been sitting alone in his room for more than a year to write songs. Although the world has yet to hear Willy Moon, I am familiar with his music because Willy Moon is my neighbour. Over this time, I have heard him in the distance while I am writing at my desk, as he sits at his keyboard singing to himself, exploring the emotional subtleties of his lyrics in the deliberate careful way you might feel your way into a new pair of gloves.
If I had not revealed that I took this photo of Willy Moon yesterday, you might think, perhaps, this was an old postcard I found somewhere, but this is how he actually looks. If you meet Willy Moon in the street in Spitalfields or even if you see him weeding his garden, this is how he will be. Like Gilbert & George, his flawless demeanour is reassuringly consistent. Fastidiousness is an under-rated virtue these days and Willy Moon has it in spades. This weekend, we spent a happy Sunday afternoon together taking hundreds of pictures in between cups of tea and animated chat, until we chose this single photograph to show you as the fruit of our collaboration.
Willy Moon’s songs interest me because they are irresistibly jangling pop tunes that persist in the mind vividly and then grow in emotional resonance upon further listening. They have the rare authority of nursery rhymes – even when you hear Willy Moon’s melodies for the first time, you feel you already know them, as if they had always been around. Last November, Willy Moon posted a demo recording of one song on MySpace and in December a second one, and he did not have to wait long before he received approaches from a whole series of major record companies, managers and music industry lawyers.
Millions of people sit in their bedrooms humming and strumming to themselves for years, hoping this might happen and knowing that it can only be a dream. But the attention Willy Moon drew is not accidental. Willy Moon knows what he is doing. Through his talent, tenacity and intelligent application, he has brought this situation about. Willy Moon has drawn these people to him with the magnetic force that the silver orb in the sky controls the tides. Happening at twenty years old, this is a beautiful moment in the life of Willy Moon because the possibilities are infinite. Let us celebrate it with him.
“I found it odd – unexpected – not that I don’t see the value of my work but I thought I would have to struggle for five years before I got any attention paid to me,” Willy Moon admitted in amused reflection, before revealing a characteristically rigorous attitude to the pursuit of songwriting. “I’m putting myself to the test, to see what I can do – it’s a challenge and a means to evolve. I am never happy with anything unless it is better than I did before.” he said.
The first demo of a song Willy Moon posted on MySpace was “Girl, I wanna to be your man.“It took a long time to record because I’m doing it all on my own and I had to work out how to use the recording software.” he confessed to me with amiable levity, introducing the song, as we sat and listened together. “Girl, I wanna to be your man” appears to be a bright innocent song of unrequited love with a brittle sheen and a catchy melody that carries you through. But as the title lyric persists through repetition, accumulating emotional impact, the longing becomes frantic. With a vocal line balanced at the edge of optimism and self-deception, this is simultaneously the ballad of a hopeful extroverted young man and of an introverted secret obsessive too. And it is this tension that makes the number so compelling.
Willy Moon is a classical songwriter, powerfully aware of his predecessors, learning by immersing himself in the work of those he admires most, in particular the Beatles and those who influenced them, Little Richard, Buddy Holly, Fats Domino, James Brown and the entire canon of early Motown artists. All Willy Moon’s songs are based upon dramatic progression, structured upon the essential poetic elements of bridge, verse and chorus, “I like to play with an idea and put the pieces together. I write parts of the song separately and combine them – different ideas that come together to form one whole.”
Next, Willy Moon posted a demo recording of “She says she loves me”on MySpace, a delirious celebration of emotional fulfillment, in jubilant contrast to the earlier song and a work of greater musical ambition too. There is an authentic danceable exuberance here that affectionately declares its musical influences while refashioning them into something vibrantly contemporary. On consideration, it is no surprise that Willy Moon has drawn all this heat with his home-made recordings because they are an accomplished pair of love songs that anyone can relate to, counterpointing each other to create a complete emotional drama in microcosm.
What planet did Willy Moon come from that has endowed him with this singular charm and Bowie-esque other-worldliness? The answer is New Zealand. Growing up with parents who were both teachers, he was encouraged to be independent, read widely and think for himself from an early age. When his mother and father decided to travel the world, taking jobs as supply teachers in different capitals, Willy Moon and his elder sister came along too. Willy Moon remembers sharing a single room in the Rotherhithe YMCA years ago, when his parents slept in the bed, and he and his sister slept on the floor. “It was all very much on the cheap,” he recalled happily, telling me they lived on bread and cheese. “It was exciting – especially coming from Wellington, New Zealand – we went out and saw all the sights in London.” he added, explaining how when he was nine and his sister was twelve, they were free to explore the city by day while their parents where at work.
As soon as he was old enough, Willy Moon came back to London and today Spitalfields is his home. So now I have done the neighbourly thing and made the introductions, you can hear Willy Moon’s songs for yourself by clicking here.
Columbia Road Market 23
The market was quiet this morning after a night of rain, though there was a brief respite which permitted me to walk there and back before the day’s imminent storms broke. When there are less customers the prices at the market are keener so, perversely, I am always especially eager to get there when there is bad weather. Today I bought these five pots of Anemones from a nursery in Chingford for £13 which far exceeds my usual budget for the window box, but it was a good price because there are more than a dozen plants here.
This box on my bedroom window sill is the first sight I see when I wake each morning and the white Cyclamen I planted last Autumn have been a sorry picture for months, so I have been longing to replace the scene of Winter’s devastation though wary to replant the box with anything that is not hardy. These Anemones fit my requirements and the box perfectly, and I can transplant them into my garden in the Spring to enjoy them again next year. I think, if pushed, I should have to admit that the rich deep blue of Anemones is my favourite colour in the whole world, and these plants have plenty of new buds coming to greet me each morning with new flowers for many weeks to come.
Mr Pussy thinks he is a dog
Mr Pussy thinks he is a dog, it all began with chewing my slippers. When I come home in the evening and sit down in the wing chair to eat my supper next to the fire, it is Mr Pussy’s custom to lie at my feet, extending his claws like gleaming steel fishhooks. At this time of day, I am usually wearing my felt slippers and Mr Pussy cannot resist stretching out to hook a slipper, interrupting me painfully from my meal when his sharp claws pierce my skin. Compliant, I kick the slipper off and then Mr Pussy grips it triumphantly, holding the toe in his front paws, while kicking delightedly at the sole with his powerful back legs in the manner of a dog. Getting roused with excitement as the kicking accelerates, Mr Pussy flattens his ears, growls and turns to me with fierce eyes as if to say, “Look at me, I’m a dog!” Then he chews the slipper, just like a dog.
I have learnt to remove both my slippers as soon as Mr Pussy approaches, allowing him to undertake the usual dinner theatre performance without drawing blood from my feet. This slipper business was just the first of Mr Pussy’s canine traits that became apparent. Although, ever since he was fully grown, people proclaimed, “He’s so big, he looks like a dog!” In fact, Mr Pussy is larger than many dogs and is not in the least challenged by my neighbour’s Jack Russell, he just looks down his nose at the mutt.
Unlike most felines but in common with most canines, Mr Pussy loves water. Never concerned about getting his feet wet as cats usually are, he likes to roll in wet grass, then come into the house and shake off the raindrops. One day, when he came in soaked from the rain, I produced a towel and gave him a rub down. Mr Pussy craves this now, and will go out and get wet just to have the rub down afterwards, demanding this service with insistent miaowing that has more in common with the repeated barking of a dog than the delicate whisper of a pussycat. Once I knew Mr Pussy liked water, I gave him towel baths in Summer, to cool him when he languished in the heat. Standing him on the garden table, I soaked Mr Pussy with a wet flannel or sponge, gave him a good brushing and then towelled him down. The experience was a powerful one for Mr Pussy and sometimes his emotions got fixated on the brush, which he grasped in his paws with the same tender intensity that Elvis grasped his microphone. Afterwards, Mr Pussy ran around the garden steaming in the heat before taking a deep sleep in the shade.
Mr Pussy reminds me of my father’s Ginger Tom that once fell from the branch of an old oak at the bottom of our garden directly into the River Exe and swam confidently to the shore. In Devon, Mr Pussy used to go roving for miles and return days later with a dead rabbit in his mouth. In Spitalfields, he commands an alley instead, walking up to anyone that comes along, scrutinising them in the manner of a guard dog before greeting them affectionately. He has traded the life of an explorer and wild game hunter for that of a greeter and security guard. I do wonder if this altered circumstance created his curiously hybrid nature.
Mr Pussy likes humans because he has always been treated well and experience tells him they pose no threat. For Mr Pussy, any stranger is potentially another source of the adulation he needs to reinforce his ego. To be honest, there is an element of showing off. Mr Pussy likes to play to camera. Give him a ball and Mr Pussy will chase it up and down the house, bouncing it off the walls with the judgement and skill that indicates a simultaneous talent at both snooker and football – as long as there is an audience. Just stopping now and again, to touch up his grooming and check the spectators are giving him their full attention, like Cristiano Ronaldo, Mr Pussy possesses the killer combination of vanity, quick reflexes and powerful legs.
The canine trait that I appreciate most is Mr Pussy’s loyalty. He follows me around the house, running at my ankles just like a dog and sleeping contentedly beside my desk all day while I am writing. Whenever I leave the house, Mr Pussy walks out with me, hoping to follow at my heels. Always disappointed when I hasten my footsteps along the pavement to leave him behind, Mr Pussy does not understand why he cannot accompany me beyond Spitalfields into the city. Instead he consoles himself with his daily patrol of the territory whilst I am doing my errands – but makes absolutely certain to be there, poised for an emotional reunion upon my return, bounding to greet me. I am sure Mr Pussy thinks he is a dog.
Lenny Hamilton, Jewel Thief
Mid-afternoon on a weekday is a good time for a discreet liaison at The Carpenters Arms in Cheshire St (the pub that used to belong to the Krays), especially if you are meeting a jewel thief. Lenny was initially averse to the location, “What do you want to go to that filthy old place for?” he complained, until I reassured him they had cleaned it up nicely, though when he told me the story of his personal experience of the Kray twins I came to understand why he might harbour an aversion.
“I used to go round to their house in Vallance Rd on and off for three years, until Ronnie burnt me with the pokers, and his mother and Charlie had a go with him over it.” said Lennie with a pleasant smile, introducing his testimony, before taking a slug of his double Corvoisier and lemonade. It was a story that started well enough before it all went so horribly wrong.
“I was just six weeks out of the army, doing my National Service (I used to box for the army), when I went back to work in Billingsgate Fish Market at the age of twenty six. Georgie Cornell looked after me – he was the hardest man I ever saw on the cobbles but he had a heart of gold as well. He gave me five pounds to buy my mother some flowers and said ‘Make sure you give her the fucking change!’ He was a nice fellow. He used to line up all the tramps at the market and give them each half a crown and make sure they got a mug of tea and two slices of dripping toast. Then with the change, he’d say ‘Now go down and buy yourselves a pint.’
Leaving work, I was walking down Maidment St, and on the corner I saw this big fellow wrestling with these two little fellows. So I went to help them, they got away and I got arrested, because the guy I was wrestling with was a police officer. When I got taken down to Arber Sq police station, he said to me, ‘Do you know what you’ve done? Them two young fellows was the Krays and now they’ve got away. They’re on the run from the army.’ I apologised and they let me go.
Later, when the Krays got control of a snooker hall, The Regal, I was playing snooker there and they came in and this fellow put his hand on my shoulder and said, ‘You don’t know who I am do you? I am Reggie Kray – and this is my brother Ronnie.’ I thought I was seeing double, you couldn’t tell them apart. They took me across the road to a pub called The Wentworth to buy me a drink because I did them a favour. They liked me at first. That’s how I came to be going round their house for nearly three years.
One day, I was down the Regency Club working for Harry Abrahams, he had his own “firm” and Albert Donahue was part of it. One of the Krays’ “firm”, Pat Connolly was there and he was drinking with a young couple. Then some fellows arrived from South London and sent us all a drink over. I ordered one for myself and the young fellow, but I didn’t know what the girl was drinking, so I asked her, ‘What do you want, love?’
The fellow that was with her went to cut me with a razor! Pat Connolly said ‘You don’t do that to Lenny.’ So, the fellow asked to have a talk with me in the toilet and I thought he wanted to say sorry. As I went into the toilet, walking in front of him, someone said, ‘Watch your back!’ and he went to cut me down the back with his cut-throat razor. I dived down to the cubicle door, and ducked and dived, as he came at me with the razor. Then I got up and smashed him in the face and I didn’t realise that I broke his nose. I also didn’t realise he was Buller Ward’s son, Bonner – and Buller was friends with the Krays.
My pal Andy Paul was living with me at the time because his wife had thrown him out, and he worked with the Krays as a doorman. Once, he came home at one in the morning when I was in bed and said ‘Ronnie wants you on the phone at Esmerelda’s barn. You’d better phone him up because you know what he’s like, he’ll come round and smash the place up.’ So I got a cab all the way to Knightsbridge to Esmerelda’s in Wilton Place and asked the cab driver to wait.
I went in and walked upstairs. All the gambling tables were closed down and there were seven or eight people standing on either side. They told me to go in the kitchen and when I opened the door Ronnie Kray was standing opposite. He said,‘Nothing to worry about, Lenny.’ He had a big armchair next to the cooker and he invited me to sit down, asking ‘What’s going on Lenny? You caused a bit of trouble in the Regal. We get protection money from them.’ I sat down.
He said, ‘Alright, you can go now.’ I stood up again and, as I turned to leave, I was wondering what was going on, when he said, ‘Get hold of him.’ Two geezers grabbed hold of me and then I saw it. I thought they were pokers but there were steels that are used to sharpen knives, Ronnie had them on the gas and they were white-hot. They had wooden handles and the first one Ronnie picked up he dropped because it was so hot, so he went and got an oven glove. Then he picked one up and came over to me, to frighten me, I imagined. He singed my black curly hair. I pissed myself. I was terrified. Next he started setting fire to my suit that I only had made two weeks before.
Then he went back and got another hot poker, and dabbed it on my cheeks and held it across my eyebrows and burnt my eyebrows off. I’m half-blind in this eye because of it. Then he went back and got another poker and, as he came back, he said, ‘Now I’m going to burn your eyes out.’ and he really meant it. As he came towards me, Limehouse Willy called out from the crowd, ‘No Ron, don’t do that!’ (A nice fellow he was.) Ronnie switched, he turned and walked away.
They let me go and I hurried out, and the cab driver was still waiting outside. When he saw the state of me, he wanted to take me to Scotland Yard but I said, ‘No mate, don’t do that, just take me home.’ Then as we were driving along, he said, ‘I think there’s a car following us,’ and it was one of the Krays’ cars. They were following to see where I as going, so I went round to my friend Harry Abrahams’ house. When he came home with his friend Albert Donahue, he said, ‘There’s only one person who would do that.’ So he and Albert went round the twins home with guns next morning, and the twins told him they did it because I got too flash – too big for my boots.
About two days later, my protector from Billingsgate, Georgie Cornell, came round and gave Harry Abrahams’ wife two hundred pounds with instructions to take care of me, “Look after Lenny, take the expenses out of that.’ A day later, a big surprise, Charlie Kray came round and gave her a hundred pounds and said, ‘Don’t let my brothers know.’ Finally, Dr Blaskar, the Krays’ doctor came round – he liked to drink and gamble – he treated me, gave me stuff for the burns.
But then in 1967, when the police were after the Krays, I was in Wandsworth Prison and they got a message smuggled in to me. I was in a single cell and when I returned from the doctor one day there was an envelope on the table. (It’s in the Black Museum at Scotland Yard now) The note read, ‘If the Old Bill comes round, keep your mouth shut or we are going to shoot your kids.’ My children were six and seven years old and living with their mother in Poplar. I’m not a grass but I couldn’t risk my kids being shot, so I went to see the governor and gave him the letter. Within two hours, the police were round, they said, ‘Look Lenny, if you help us, we’ll help you. We’ll give your children twenty-four hour police protection.’ which they did. They moved me to Eastchurch prison on the Isle of Sheppey and then to Bow St to give evidence against Ronnie Kray. On my evidence, he got committed to the Old Bailey.”
We were all alone in the empty barroom and, when Lenny told the part about the poker, he fixed me eye to eye and, extending a single finger, pushed his fingertip into my face. I was speechless. It was extraordinary to hear a first hand account of the reality of characters that have become mythical. I think it is easier to accept the East End’s history of violence as mere fiction, even when you know the truth. Ironically, Lenny’s volatile experiences have fused his emotional story into a powerful narrative with an effective literary structure.
Lenny has no patience with those who seek to romanticise the Krays as working class heroes,“They were scum. The lowest of the low. You never robbed or hurt your own people, that was the old East End code. The Krays controlled people through fear. They hurt so many people. I’ve been in a saloon bar when they were there and people would arrive, order a drink, then go out to the toilet and walk straight out the back door to escape.”
Today, after plastic surgery, and many years on the straight and narrow since doing time, Lenny is a different man. Though, even walking with a stick, he retains a powerful physical presence as a legacy of his boxing years. Yet, behind this assured facade, I sensed something else, an intensity in his eyes, his “snake eyes” he calls them, that indicates a spirit forged in a dark world of violence.
Lenny doesn’t pretend to be a saint. “I’m not proud of what I done,” he admitted openly, speaking of his days blowing safes and thieving jewels. “I used to have a friend in Hatton Garden who bought all the gear off me and gave me good deal. I took him a £680,000 job one day and, after he’d melted down the gold and recut the diamonds, I got £100,000. He asked me to push my finger through a card, and then he made me this,” revealed Lenny with relish, displaying the dazzling ring upon his finger with its single glittering diamond. Always keen to emphasise that he only stole from those with insurance, Lenny even managed to make it sound like he was doing a favour for people sometimes. “There was a man whose business was going under. He came to me and said ‘There’s nothing in the safe but if you blow it up, I can claim there was.’ I felt sorry for him so I blew the safe while he was away for the weekend. Then he took the insurance payment and moved to Brighton.”
Lenny could have talked all day but after three double Corvoisiers and lemonade, I called a taxi to take him on to a pub in the Roman Rd where his pals were waiting to continue the long afternoon of storytelling. When I enquired about some recent scars on his head, he explained that he had been beaten up on the street by muggers, but he shrugged it off lightly. You have to credit Lenny for his resilience, he still possesses undaunted enthusiasm and appetite for life.
Standing up to leave, Lenny caught sight for the first time of the painting of Ronnie and Reggie Kray that hangs on the barroom wall in The Carpenters and brandished his stick in a flash of emotion. For a moment, I was expecting the sound of broken glass, but Lenny quickly relented, turning away with a grin and a wave to me, because the taxi was waiting outside and he had better things to do.
The shoe-shiners of Leadenhall Market
Yesterday afternoon, I walked over in the torrential rain to find the shoe-shiners of Leadenhall Market but they were gone. It was my mistake, I should have known better, I should have realised that you cannot polish wet leather. So today I returned under a benign blue sky and was delighted to discover that the sunshine brings out the shoe-shiners in the City of London.
Before long, I struck up a conversation with John who you see above in the throes of his swift occupation. He explained that he is one of a half dozen actors and musicians who work here in Leadenhall Market shining shoes as part of the London City Shoe Shine Company when they are between engagements. Even in these pictures, you can tell that John is a natural performer, bringing his relaxed stage presence and gallant sense of style to fulfill his current role of shoe-shiner for bankers with appealing panache. There is a sense of theatre about Leadenhall Market with its intricate carmine ironwork and John’s virtuoso performance on the shoe-shine has become a major dramatic attraction in this Victorian architectural masterpiece sequestered between Lloyds and Gracechurch St.
Observe the casual pride on the customers’ faces as they place their best foot forward to receive the polish that is the finishing touch. Assuming a stance that has an innate nobility and enjoying a tiny moment of grace, they bolster their spirits, before striding off with glazed eyes to take on the Leviathan that is the infinite tribulation of the global financial marketplace.
Meanwhile, exuding an appealing buoyant energy, John is an enthusiastic advocate for the understated art of the shoe-shine. “We all enjoy doing it because it is a window into a world you wouldn’t be party to otherwise”, he explained as he finished up another shoe-shine and eagerly pocketed another banknote, before turning to me and rolling his eyes with sardonic humour, “During the banking crisis was an interesting time to be down here. The sense of dread was palpable for a while. Anyone who works in a high powered business wants to protect their interests, they need a lot of money to live, so there were a lot of very scared people around at that time.”
But a global financial crisis is water off a duck’s back for the shoe-shiners. “It didn’t affect our business at all,” revealed John with a breezy smile,“People need to look good, especially for job interviews. It’s surprising how much pride they take in their appearance.” I asked John, if like those Wall St shoe-shiners of the nineteen thirties, any of his colleagues were tempted to cross over to work in the financial sector, but he shook his head with good-humoured disinterest, “We see the pitfalls from the ground, he concluded sagely.
There is an intimacy between the shoe-shiner and the customer, comparable to that of a barber and client, and it is this camaraderie of the city that John delights in, because actors are by nature students of humanity. “It’s a very social job and we have regulars who we consider friends. We are privy to things they wouldn’t tell their nearest and dearest”, he said, with a grin that transformed into an incongruous laugh as he revealed his customers’ curiosity for the acting life, “Everybody is very interested in what we do, because the pursuit of artistic endeavour isn’t prevalent in the City.”
I wondered whether John might get cold, working outdoors in all weathers, but he rejected my concern robustly with a smirk. ” The worst thing is the people who say ‘God you must be freezing!’ It’s a physical job, so you keep warm and you wear the right clothes,” he said, drawing my attention to the salopettes and moon boots he was wearing and explaining that he prefers to work in shorts in summer, adding, “Business is pretty even all year round,” just to confirm his state of ease in the day job, in case I had even the hint of a shred of doubt left. Then another customer arrived and, as I was taking my pictures, I overheard John speaking in care-free excitement for his next engagement as an actor/musician, a tour of South East Asia. As John was explaining that he might take some time at the beach afterwards, I could see the grey-faced city worker filling with barely-concealed jealousy and it made me realise that the balance of the transaction between shoe-shiner and businessman is not as clear cut as it might first appear.
Finally, I asked about the rain.“All of those people who were drowned yesterday will be here today, it’s swings and roundabouts.” declared John with his indefatigable alacrity, as he set upon the high-powered two-handed brush action that brings the ultimate lustrous gloss to the leather. Then his pal interrupted with a nudge, “Tell him about the pancake race, John.” and John blushed to confess he won the Leadenhall Pancake Race yesterday morning, receiving a magnum of champagne as his reward. Come rain or shine, the life of the modest shoe-shiner possesses an enivable sheen. You have to admire his polish.
Jeremy Freedman, photographer
There is a particular time in March around six thirty in the morning when the sun rising sends a narrow ray of sunlight along Sandys Row to illuminate the front of the synagogue in Spitalfields and photographer Jeremy Freedman was there for weeks in the frost to capture this haunting image with its subtly modulated dark tones and luminous mackerel sky at dawn.
It was a university photographic project that first drew Jeremy to the orthodox synagogue, established here in Sandys Row in 1854 as The Society of Loving Kindness and Truth (a Mutual Aid Society offering a community of social support and traditional funeral for those who embraced the society), in a former Huguenot Chapel built in 1766. In the nineteenth century, when there were over one hundred and fifty synagogues in the East End, Sandys Row had one of the largest congregations. Now it is one of only four that remain active and, when Jeremy came along to take his pictures, he found the attendance was dwindling.
“As a photographer, I thought was very important to photograph the senior members of the shul and try to do it in a way that captured their essence.” explained Jeremy, introducing the remarkable series of portraits you see below, which are published here for the first time. As the work of a photographer at the beginning of a career, there is an impressive restraint to these austere, warm and dignified images that stand as fine examples of classical photographic portraiture.
More significantly, there is an emotional intensity present that reveals something of Jeremy’s relationship to his subjects. Because although Jeremy grew up in North London, he is descended through his father from generations of Dutch Jewish economic migrants who came to the East End in the eighteenth century, while on his mother’s side he is descended from those who came as part of the great migration of over one hundred thousand Polish Jewish people in the late nineteenth century. The name of Deborah Englesman, Jeremy’s ancestor upon his father’s side, is there upon the humble paper and cloth plaque recording the foundation of the synagogue – as one of the mothers, daughters and wives that the poor working men who formed the Mutual Aid Society honoured, in contrast to the rich benefactors whose names were dignified in stone at the foundation of wealthier synagogues in other parts of London. Among Jeremy’s many East End antecedents, his grandfather, Alfred, who was born in Wentworth St, was once the president of the synagogue and his grandmother, Pamela, ran The Princess Alice in Commercial St.
In the late forties and early nineteen fifties, when much of the East End was derelict due to bomb damage, Jeremy’s mother’s and father’s families were among thousands who left, to escape the stigma and poor living conditions. Jeremy’s father grew up in Finchley and his mother in Wembley. “Most of Anglo-Jewry stems from the East End but they never talked about it, as soon as they left they never looked back,” revealed Jeremy, speaking candidly, “it was a dark time in their family history.” Concluding with a grin, “Now they had flushing toilets and electrical appliances.”
Returning to the photographs, “These are the people that left,” Jeremy explained, revealing his personal perspective as proud guardian of these images. They are the work of a passionate young photographer looking at those seniors who are the living connection to his own Jewish patrimony. Once Jeremy had made this connection, to which these photographs bear testimony, he could no longer observe passively. “It was apparent that if I didn’t stop taking photographs and do something, this shul would close, so I joined the board, and I came up with ideas, and got my father involved too, as treasurer. I brought fresh blood and, in turn, this attracted other younger dynamic people. ”
Today Sandys Row is on the up again, welcoming approximately eighty businessmen from the City for lunchtime services on weekdays, plus the synagogue recently received a major award from English Heritage to preserve the roof and Jeremy is currently amassing a photographic archive of all the families, like his, that have been associated with the shul over generations.
“I feel at home here in these streets”, said Jeremy, reflecting affectionately upon this neighbourhood that holds so much of his family history. You will see him frequently these days in the places his ancestors knew so well, because he now has many reasons to spend time here in Spitalfields, through his involvement with the synagogue, as a weekly trader in the Thursday antique market and as a busy working photographer too.
Reverend Malcolm Gingold. © Jeremy Freedman
Harry Gilbert, warden of the synagogue. © Jeremy Freedman
Lilly and Ray Messophia. © Jeremy Freedman
Rose Edmunds. © Jeremy Freedman
Julie Smith and Pauline Rifkind. © Jeremy Freedman
Morris and Maurine Delew. © Jeremy Freedman
© Jeremy Freedman
Henry Glass, who arrived at Liverpool St Station as a child, as part of the Kindertransport.
