Dickens in Spitalfields 4, the silk weavers
In the first three installments of Charles Dickens’ article “Spitalfields” that he published in his weekly journal “Household Words” on 5th April 1851, we accompanied Dickens and his sub-editor W.H.Wills to a silk warehouse where they met the manager, Mr Broadelle, and the silk buyer of Messrs Treacy & McIntyre. With Mr Broadelle as their guide, they set out through the streets of the Spitalfields, dropping in to a Ragged School and eventually finding themselves at a weaver’s workshop…
Up a narrow winding stair, such as are numerous in Lyon or in the wynds and closes of the old town of Edinburgh, and into a room where there are four looms; one idle, three at work.
A wan thin eager-eyed man, weaving in his shirt and trousers, stops the jarring of his loom. He is the master of the place. not an Irishman himself, but of Irish descent.
“Good day!”
“Good day!” Passing his hand over his rough chin, and feeling his lean throat.
“We are walking through Spitalfields, being interested in the place. Will you allow us to look at your work?”
“Oh! Certainly.”
“It is very beautiful. Black velvet?”
“Yes. Every time I throw the shuttle, I cut out this wire, as you see, and put it in again – so!” Jarring and clashing at the loom, and glancing at us with his eager eyes.
“It is slow work?”
“Very slow.” With a hard dry cough, and the glance.
“And hard work?”
“Very hard.” With the cough again.
After a while, he once more stops, perceiving that we really are interested, and says, laying his hand upon his hollow breast and speaking in an unusually loud voice, being used to speaking through the clashing of the loom:
“It tries the chest, you see, leaning for’ard like this for fifteen or sixteen hours at a stretch.”
“Do you work so long at a time?”
“Glad to do it when I can get it to do. A day’s work like that, is worth a matter of three shillings.”
“Eighteen shillings a week.”
“Ah! But it ain’t always eighteen shillings a week. I don’t always get it, remember! One week with another, I hardly get more than ten or ten-and-six.”
“Is this Mr Broadelle’s loom?”
“Yes. This is. So is that one there;” the idle one.
“And that, where the young man is working?”
“That’s another party’s. The young man working at it, pays me a shilling a week for leave to work here. That’s a shilling, you know, off my rent of half-a-crown. It’s rather a large room.”
“Is that your wife at the other loom?”
“That’s my wife. She’s making a commoner sort of work, for bonnets and that.”
Again his loom clashes and jars, and he leans forward over his toil. In the window by him, is a singing bird in a little cage, which trolls its song, and seems to think the loom an instrument of music. The window, tightly closed, commands a maze of chimney pots, and tiles, and gables. Among them, the ineffectual sun, faintly contending with the rain and the mist, is going down. A yellow ray of light crossing the weaver’s eager eyes and hollow white face, makes a shape something like a pike-head on the floor.
The room is unwholesome, close, and dirty. Through one part of it the staircase comes up in a bulk, and roughly partitions off a corner. In that corner are the bedstead and the fireplace, a table, a chair or two, a kettle, a tub of water, a little crockery. The looms claim all the superior space and have it. Like grim enchanters who provide the family with their scant food, they must be propitiated with the best accommodation. They bestride the room, and pitilessly squeeze the children – this heavy, watery-headed baby carried in the arms of its staggering little brother, for example – into corners. The children sleep at night between the legs of the monsters, who deafen their first cries with their whirr and rattle, and who roar the same tune to them when they die.
Come to the mother’s loom.
“Have you any children besides these?”
“I have had eight. I have six alive.”
“Did we see any of them, just now, at the – “
“Ragged School? O yes! You saw four of mine at the Ragged School!”
She looks up, quite bright about it – has a mother’s pride in it – is not ashamed of the name: she, working for her bread, not begging it – not in the least.
She has stopped her loom for the moment. So has her husband. So has the young man.
“Weaver’s children are born in the weaver’s room” says the husband, with a nod at the bedstead. “Nursed there, brought up there – sick or well – and die there.”
To which, the clash and jar of three looms – the wife’s the husband’s and the young man’s, as they go again – make a chorus.
“This man’s work, now, Mr Broadelle – he can’t hear us apart here, in this noise? – “
“Oh, no!”
– “requires but little skill?”
“Very little skill. He is doing now, exactly what his grandfather did. Nothing would induce him to use a simple improvement (the ‘fly shuttle’) to prevent the contraction of the chest of which he complains. Nothing would turn him aside from his old ways. It is the old custom to work at home, in a crowded room, instead of in a factory. I couldn’t change it, if I were to try.”
Good Heaven, is the house falling? Is there an earthquake in Spitalfields! Has a volcano burst out in the heart of London! What is this appalling rush and tremble?
It is only the railroad.
The arches of the railroad span the house; the wires of the electric telegraph stretch over the confined scene of his daily life; the engines fly past him on their errands, and outstrip the birds; and what can the man of usage hope for, but to be overthrown and flung into oblivion!
There, we leave him in the dark, about to kindle at the poor fire the lamp that hangs upon his loom, to help him on his labouring way into the night. The sun has gone down, the reflection has vanished from the floor. There is nothing in the gloom but his eager eyes, made hungrier by the sight of our small present; the dark shapes of his fellow-workers mingled with their stopped looms; the mute bird in its little cage, duskily expressed against the window; and the watery- headed baby crooning a in a corner God knows where.
In “Household Words”, this interview followed directly from Dickens’ account of the ostentatious affluence of the silk buyer and the immense financial turnover of the silk warehouse, upon the previous pages. By strategically placing these accounts of the different components of the silk industry side by side, Dickens presents his readers with the impoverished weavers, who actually produce the cloth, uneasily contrasted with those who profit handsomely through trading the fruit of their labours. The reader is invited to draw their own conclusion upon the inequalities of the textile industry, a trade in which injustice persists. Except today, rather than being on the other side of the city from the privileged customer, the workers are likely to be on the other side of the world.
Next time, in the final installment of Dickens’ article, we shall accompany him on a visit to the studio of a young British artist in Spitalfields.
The rare photograph at the top shows a Spitalfields weaver’s workshop, taken in June 1885. Both illustrations were kindly provided by the Tower Hamlets Local History Collection.
Kitty Valentine, artist
Kitty Valentine invited me round to Worship St for tea on Saturday afternoon to visit her tiny apartment in the terrace designed by the pre-eminent Arts & Crafts’ architect Philip Webb in 1862. These buildings were conceived as living and working spaces, with a workshop in the basement, a shop on the ground floor and dwelling for the family on the floors above. Designed in a handsome neo-medieval style with modest proportions yet providing decent living conditions for the artisans, they represent an admirable social ideal – though, disappointingly, the terrace was later divided up into offices and now each floor is let out as a separate dwelling. Kitty’s flat occupies a space that was previously a shop and we enjoyed a lively conversation as we drank our tea upon the raised platform in front of the window, originally used to display items for sale.
Kitty was attracted to the building when she first saw a little picture on the letting agents’ website and, two years ago, she persuaded the sceptical landlord to let it to her when he was suspicious of artists, preferring City workers whom he believed were more responsible. A presumption that we hope he has revised in the light of recent events. It was an inspiring discovery for Kitty to learn of the noble origins of the building, once she had moved in, especially as was she studying screen-printing at the Working Men’s College in Camden, which had been founded by William Morris and where Dante Gabriel Rossetti taught.
Although history may have taken Philip Webb’s building away from its conception and purpose, in her part Kitty has brought it back to its origin as a creative space. Lining every corner of her flat with her wonderful market finds, clothes and artwork (all lovingly organised, arranged, displayed and cared for), Kitty has fashioned an exquisite bower. A nest woven by an ingenious magpie with a million glittery, flowery, feathery things to create the charismatic living space of a woman with with a rich self-confident imagination. I was spellbound by this secret feminine enclave at the base of the vast steel Broadgate Tower.
Kitty studied Fine Art at St Martins School of Art where, like so many talented artists of the younger generation, she came up against the stultifying hegemony of conceptualism. “They weren’t interested in your inspiration, because they thought you weren’t trying hard enough to be modern,” she revealed with a doleful grin. Adding derisively, “They even thought using colour was frivolous,” before looking me in the eye to declare light-heartedly, “but I am glad I stuck with painting because it has given me so much joy.”
There is a brave side to Kitty that is not at first apparent. She is her own woman, who through hard work and directed intelligence has found a way to support herself as an artist. She has won an independent life, making her work here in the living place that she has established. It is a room of her own, which even today can be elusive for many to achieve, but remains essential for anyone pursuing creative work, as a private imaginative space. Somewhere to discover who you are and work out what you are capable of.
Kitty showed me her recent work, a series of miniature paintings, embellishments upon nineteenth century portrait photographs, which she titles “Victorian Mischief”. Kitty’s work is an entirely personal and darkly humorous vision of the Victorians, in which prim and proper worthies and nobility, encased in their uniforms and corsets, acquire animal heads and skulls, with horns or antlers. It is a curious perspective, Lytton Strachey undermined in the spirit of Max Ernst’s collage novel “Une Semaine de Bonte”. But more than this, Kitty’s works are superb paintings, executed with the skill of a miniaturist and revealing an acute ability to express the paradoxes of the human personality. “I look at them and I know what animal they are going to be,” says Kitty describing her response on the discovery of new examples of these small unloved anonymous cabinet photos. Produced in millions by nineteenth century photographers, they were made in addition to the sitters’ prints as disposable advertising material.
I think Kitty’s work has a captivating poetry, proposing images of the hidden emotions and imaginative life of the unknown subjects, while also enriching their mystery by masking their faces with bizarre yet strangely appropriate replacements. And it is a measure of the power of her imagination that you cannot envisage these pictures anymore with mere human faces. This is serious work that explores the tensions and contradictions of our relationship with photography, and with the past, but it is the tenderness of these pieces that touches me most. In the strange world of contemporary art, it takes courage to be tender and, in my opinion, courage is Kitty Valentine’s defining quality.
You can see more of Kitty Valentine’s work by clicking on her name at the top of this story which will take you to her blog, where you may also click on her Etsy shop. Prints of the “Victorian Mischief” series are currently also available at the Two Magpies Emporium in the Tea Room Market in Brick Lane each weekend.
If you look closely at the nineteenth century engraving of Philip Webb’s building below you can see the niche where I photographed Kitty Valentine on Saturday.
A Valentine from Spitalfields
Not so long ago, I used to go out and buy my daily loaf from St John and walk home again, and the only person I knew in Spitalfields to speak to was Sandra Esqulant, the landlady of the Golden Heart. Just six months later, all that has changed entirely, now I cannot walk anywhere here in Spitalfields without meeting someone I know! My life has been transformed.
For several years, I nursed my mother Valerie at home through the Dementia that afflicted her. It was an isolated existence, caring for her, feeding her and reading her stories until eventually she died. Throughout these years, I lived constantly in the presence of death. At almost any point in the final two years, she might have died. Whenever I came upon her sleeping deeply (as I did most days when I came to feed her), there was always a moment when I had to ask myself if she had died and I would observe her breathing to confirm whether she lived, before I woke her.
Years later, it has become apparent that this experience has filled me with the compulsion to write about life. By “life”, I mean all the aspects of existence you see in the categories on the right hand side of this page. In particular, my passion is to explore human life through examining the different qualities of people. I want to use my writing to draw me closer to life. When I began to write Spitalfields Life, I had no idea where it would lead. For over a year, I had been sending pictures daily to my friends from my phone and so it was a natural progress to transfer this process to the internet. But at the moment of commencement, in envoking the name of Spitalfields, I recognised a responsibility to undertake the project with the greatest of care, endowing it with a dignity that reflects my affection for this corner of London. Though equally, I am personally vividly aware that “life” is no less an operative word in the title for me.
Kierkegaard compared the experience of being a writer to that of constantly running through a burning house snatching whatever can be rescued. I think this describes something of my feeling, as I walk through the streets here, because I have this drive to record all the stories of the people and the place, as many as I can, at the rate of one a day, before I meet my own demise. Spitalfields has always been in flux, on account of its position at the boundary of the City of London and so it is in the nature of this place that it is always changing. My pursuit is to record as much as possible, especially the experiences of the people here, in midst of this constant transformation and reconfiguration, as it happens.
Once I began to write posts, something wonderful happened. People began to read them, more and more people. It was an extraordinarily uplifting experience to discover that there was an appetite for my stories of Spitalfields and it confirmed what I had always hoped, that if you strive to do something to the best of your abilities, people will seek it out. All the generous responses I have received from you, my readers, have touched my heart, filled me with humility and given me confidence too – inspiring me to raise the bar, trying to write better and better stories to delight and intrigue you. And you have obviously been talking to your friends, because each week there has been an increase, as more have come to read.
Above all, I cannot disappoint you. The presence of you reading has inspired me with courage to go out and talk to people, seeking stories to write – and the outcome of this is that I have met so many diverse people here in Spitalfields and each one of these people has become fascinating to me in a different way. It has enriched my life far more than I ever expected. I have learnt so much and Spitalfields has become even more intriguing to me. I count my own good luck to live somewhere with an exceptionally long and interesting history, inhabited by a phenomenal range of people. The more I learn, the more I want to know, and every person I meet suggests someone else for me to talk to. And so it goes on. Over the last harsh winter (in what was previously always the most dejected season for me), there has been this rising chord as the stories have become more compelling and the readership has grown too.
At first, I assumed the role of a journalist undertaking an interview but almost immediately this boundary dissolved – because everyone I met treated me with unexpected kindness and because these are the people who inhabit the place I live. Many of the subjects of these interviews have become friends and so what began as a project entitled Spitalfields Life has quite simply become my life. Transforming my life, it has made me look at people differently as I grow to understand their motives better and the result is that the city has become a more human place for me.
I owe it all to you. All this happened because you came along. I sacrificed my career to be a full-time nurse for my mother, then afterwards I could not go back, but Spitalfields Life has permitted me a new direction. Now, because of you, I find myself in this situation where I shall be writing to you every day for the next twenty seven years and I cannot think of a more beautiful way to spend the rest of my life.
The gentle author loves the gentle reader. You are my Spitalfields valentine.
The splendid Valentine at the top is the work of Rob Ryan and I am grateful to him for permitting me to reproduce it here. If you are reading this on Sunday morning, Valentine’s Day, there is still time to go to Ryantown in Columbia Rd and get one for your beloved.
The picture below is my mother Valerie aged seven, taken by my grandfather Leslie.
Maria Pellicci, cook
The weather was unremitting and my shoes were leaking, so I went round to E.Pellicci, the Italian café at 332 Bethnal Green Rd where Maria Pellicci, the head cook, proprietor, and beloved matriarch, cooked me a generous dish of steaming hot spaghetti with freshly made Bolognese sauce which Salvatore, Maria’s nephew, topped off with some Parmesan and ground black pepper. As I wolfed down the delicious spaghetti, I could feel my spirits reviving. Overcome with the intense culinary experience afforded by the tangy tomato sauce and the sweet spaghetti that was of perfect consistency, I was barely aware of the enthusiastic lunch crowd arriving and filling every seat in this historic, perfectly-proportioned, supercosy café, lined with exquisite Italian marquetry by Achille Cappoci in 1946.
As the multiple conversations around me accumulated symphonically, it was like sitting in the centre of an orchestra and hearing all the different instruments playing at once. Yet I felt quite comfortable enjoying my solitary meal peacefully in the midst of this gregarious friendly crowd of locals and regulars, some of whom, Nevio, Maria’s son, told me, have been coming for lunch for more than four generations now, ever since Pellicci’s opened in 1900. Justifiably, this café is a legend in its own lunchtime – a lunch service that has now extended over one hundred and ten years. There is room for thirty customers and there are five waiting staff, which means that everyone gets respectful attention paid to them, and Anna (Maria’s daughter), Nevio, Salvatore and their colleagues have time to enjoy relaxed animated conversations with their guests, whilst keeping the service running efficiently with deceptive ease.
Peering out through the graceful ballet of customers coming and going, and drinks and meals being served, all accomplished through the ingenious collective manoeuvres that have evolved in this confined space over a century of use, I could just make out the sleet falling in the blue light outside and took great comfort in being inside among this happy community of diners. There is a constant debate about whether the East End spirit still exists but all that is required is a visit to Pellicci’s to experience the egalitarian human spirit for yourself.
In that moment when you have finished eating, peek back through the hatch at the rear of the café and you will see Maria busy in the kitchen where she has worked six days a week since 1961, from six in the morning until seven at night (from four in the morning originally), ever since she first came to Bethnal Green leaving the small Tuscan village of Casclana that was her birthplace. Taking a glance through from the café into the kitchen, you will not be ignored, you will not be met with disinterest, Maria will raise her Sophia Loren brows to meet your gaze with her glittering eyes and the gentle smile that you recognise from all those Tuscan paintings of the early Renaissance.
Consequently, it was with some humility that I accepted the honour of Maria’s invitation to visit her there in her kitchen, whence she presides upon her entire domain. “Mama Maria” the children call her, when their parents bring them to the café, where they also came to eat as children once upon a time. If these children can show themselves well behaved throughout their meal, as a reward, they are sometimes permitted to visit Mama Maria in the kitchen, who might dispense a sweet treat if they are especially good.
With her strong features, deep chestnut eyes and exuberant nature, I was immediately under Mama Maria’s spell. She showed me her hands with which she has been cooking her whole life, beautiful working hands, nimble and strong and graceful. She wears the gold ring that her husband, Nevio senior, gave her. It was Nevio’s senior’s father, Priamo Pellicci, who began here in 1900, but he died young and left his wife Elide to run the business and bring up seven children, which she did with great success. Elide Pellicci was the E.Pellicci whose name is still upon the grade II listed facade today. Her son Nevio, who was born above the cafe in 1927, took over from her until his death just a year ago, which leaves Maria as the head of the family business now, supported in the cafe by Nevio junior, her son, Anna, her daughter, and Salvatore, her nephew.
Maria Pellicci cooks every dish on the menu herself, all the meat pies, speciality pasta dishes and traditional desserts, prepared from scratch using fresh ingredients each day. Maria even cuts every chip personally by hand, a feat that recently won her an award for the best in London. She is keen to emphasise that she takes exceptional pride in her cooking and is always eager to respond to the requests of her customers. Scrupulous, Maria orders her meat from the nearby butcher, making regular small orders so that food never hangs around and she has rigorous cleaning regime too, everything is left spotless at the end of each day.
“There is no secret here,” declared Maria, gesturing playfully around her immaculate kitchen, once she had authoritatively outlined the nature of her work. The fact is the Pelliccis love their café and their loyal customers reciprocate the affection, inspiring a passionate human tradition that thrives today as it has always done over so many years. It is a rare haven of kindness, appreciated as it deserves.
I kissed Maria’s hand as I left the kitchen and I was just shaking hands with Nevio before I stepped outside, when Maria appeared unexpectedly through the stained glass door that leads to the kitchen and flashed her huge eyes, holding up a tinfoil parcel for me. It was my sweet treat.
As I walked along the Bethnal Green Rd and crossed Weavers’ Fields in the dark, on my way back to Spitalfields in the gathering blizzard, I could not resist opening the parcel, discovering two slices of bread pudding in there. Let me confess, I ate them both before I got home. My shoes were still leaking but I was warm inside thanks to Mama Maria.
The catkins of Clerkenwell
We have all lived through this worst Winter together, following what we had believed was the worst Winter ever last year. So you may share my delight to see these hazel catkins dancing flamboyantly in the churchyard of St James, Clerkenwell, where they stopped me in my tracks. Another of those familiar rural sights that acquire an exotic poetry, displaced here in the heart of the city.
I was walking home to Spitalfields when I saw the catkins, as I was taking a detour through Clerkenwell to avoid the bitter East wind that numbs my face and pinches my nose, blowing directly along Old St. In Summer, the churchyard is a pleasant shady place to sit, in Winter the buildings and surrounding trees create a shelter from the Arctic blast. At this time of year, I avoid Old St entirely, walking instead along the smaller parallel roads. Closer to home, in Spitalfields, I am familiar with which streets channel the wind and which exclude it. Hanbury St, for example, is a wind tunnel whereas Princelet St is always sheltered from the traffic of air currents, while Commercial St and Great Eastern St are especially prone to raging winds that cause pedestrians to walk with their heads down, bent double against the furious blast.
Being a perennial optimist, whenever I have woken to sunshine over recent weeks, I have briefly convinced myself it is Spring. A self-deception exposed each time that notorious East wind brings another whirling blizzard across the North Sea to engulf us. In fact, the pot of fresh green mint that I bought at Columbia Rd Market on Sunday to brighten my kitchen window sill had to be hauled inside on Wednesday when the snow fell again.
Yet I cannot relinquish the wishful thinking engendered by my longing for Spring and every day I cast my eyes upon the garden searching for signs of growth. There are points of green poking from the dark earth where Spring bulbs declare their first intentions but, however many times I check, they appear reluctant to reveal themselves and make a further commitment to new life. They have a more prudent appreciation than I do of the potential for bad weather still ahead.
As I continued on my way beyond Clerkenwell Green, I acquired a spring to my step because of my discovery. At last, the catkins were positive proof, botanical evidence that life advances ceaselessly and this stasis at Winter’s end cannot be interminable. If your wishful thinking is directed towards something that you know will come, I think it can be dignified with the name of hope, I told myself. And then, even as these thoughts were crossing my mind, I realised my newly fleet feet were carrying me quickly eastwards and I found myself in Allen Gardens, next to Brick Lane, where I looked down to discover these first snowdrops here in the Spring sunshine.
My path led from the catkins of Clerkenwell to the snowdrops of Spitalfields.
Alf Morris, tube disaster survivor
Yesterday, I met with Alf Morris at Nico’s Cafe next to Bethnal Green Tube Station. Alf is one of the few remaining survivors of the Bethnal Green Tube Disaster, when one hundred and seventy-three people died in the single worst civilian calamity of World War II in Britain. No bombs fell, the casualties were the result of a series of tragic circumstances, when a crowd of three hundred people mistook the sound of anti-aircraft rockets for bombs dropping and stampeded into the narrow stairwell at the tube entrance, falling over each other in panic like helpless human dominos.
For over fifty years, Alf carried his story without even telling his wife or children, but in 2007, when he was approached by the people who want to create a memorial to this forgotten calamity, Alf broke his silence. The result is an extraordinary eye witness testimony which he dictated to me and it is my privilege to publish Alf’s compelling story here in his own words.
“On 3rd March 1943 at a quarter to eight, in our home at 106 Old Ford Rd, the radio went off, as it did every time there was an air raid. My father, Alfred George Morris, insisted that me and my aunt, Lilian Hall, go to the tube to shelter. As we crossed Victoria Park Sq, the air-raid siren sounded. In Bethnal Green Gardens, between the Toy Museum and St John’s Church, there was a radio controlled searchlight that came on. This meant the searchlight had found an aircraft, me and my aunt knew this from other nights. So we ran across Victoria Park Sq to reach Roman Rd (which was then called Green St), then across the road to the entrance to Bethnal Green Tube and started down the steps.
There was a wooden hoarding and a narrow entrance with just a twenty-five watt bulb, but we knew where we were going because we had been there many times and there were handrails at each side. Me and Lilian, we started walking down the centre of the staircase and everything was as normal. The air-raid had stopped. We continued on down and as we got halfway down, the rocket guns in Victoria Park fired at the aircraft above. There was a deafening noise as they flew over. At that time, two buses arrived at the number eight bus stop and they were full of people. Above the noise, somebody shouted ‘There’s bombs! There’s bombs! There’s bombs! They’re bombing us!’ And as they did everybody ran to the entrance.
The rush of people separated me and my aunt. I was pushed to the left and my aunt was pushed to the right. I was thirteen years old. As I was pushed downwards, I was carried down. I got to the third step from the bottom and I was pushed up against the rail with people falling from above. They fell on top of one another. They were all screaming for their mothers and fathers. I couldn’t see my aunt and I couldn’t move my legs because the people were all pushed up against them. I was calling for my aunt but she had her own problems, she was stuck too.
And then, on the landing at the bottom of the staircase, there was a lady air raid warden, her name was Mrs Chumbley. She could see me calling and crying. She put her arms across the people who were down and the first thing she did was grab my hair, and I screamed because the pain was tremendous, but she could not move me. So she reached further over the people and put her hands under my arms and pulled me out like I was a bag of rubbish, and I started to move and I came out.
When she pulled me, I must have stepped on several of the bodies, she pulled me over these people. Then she stood me on the landing, grabbed my collar and said, ‘You go downstairs and you say nothing of what has happened here.’ She had a very dominating voice. Then I walked away from her and descended the escalator, which was not working because the station was still under construction and when the war began they ceased working on it.
At the bottom of the escalator, there was a big steel door. They pulled the door open and as I went in they asked why I was crying but I said nothing. I walked down to my bunk, and I sat there and cried. Ten minutes later, my aunt came down. They pulled her out, and she had left her coat and shoes in the crush. Her stockings were torn, and she was black and blue down one side. We got some tea in the canteen and settled down but we were worried about my mum, who had gone to another shelter with my sister who was a babe in arms at the time.
Around nine thirty, three people came walking along the tunnel, a policeman, an air raid warden and a fireman who had climbed down the shaft at Carpenters Sq next to Bancroft Rd. You could hear their footsteps approaching and people were asking why they came through the tunnel. But no-one said anything because there were fifteen hundred people in the shelter and we didn’t want panic. It quietened down at ten thirty when we went to bed but I didn’t sleep much because I was so worried.
The next morning I came up around seven o’ clock and when I walked up the stairs there were piles of shoes and all the steps had been washed down. I got home at seven thirty but no-one knew how bad the tragedy was at this time. I was very pleased to see my mum and sister, my mum told me when she heard the guns she thought it was bombs so she ran into the shelter under the catholic church and when the all clear sounded at eight thirty in the evening she went home.
Just before I went to school, Lilian Trotter used to bring her seven year old daughter Vera round and Vera and me would go to school together. But that morning Lilian Trotter didn’t show. I waited till nine before I left for school. At school, there were so many children missing out of the class. The teachers asked, ‘Where are they?’ I said, ‘There’s been something happened at Bethnal Green Tube.’ When school finished at four, I went home but Lilian and Vera had still not arrived. Their uncle asked my dad where they were. They’d all heard rumours. You wasn’t allowed to talk about what happened.
My dad was very level-headed. I thought a lot of my dad. He said to my mother, ‘I’m going to look round the hospitals.’ He went to the Bethnal Green Hospital, then the Hackney Rd Children’s Hospital and the Marmaid Hospital. They was all laid in the different mortuaries. So then he realised there had been a terrible tragedy. He found Lilian and Vera. Vera could not be recognised she was so mutilated, her face was crushed. The way he recognised her was because he had taken a nail out of her shoe two weeks before the accident. She was unrecognisable. That went for most of the bodies that were pulled out from there. All those people I heard crying for their mothers and fathers, gradually getting less and less and no-one could help them. It was terrible.
When my father came home and told my mother Elizabeth, he sat on the kitchen steps and cried like a baby. That was the only time I ever saw my father break down. We accepted that Lil and Vera were dead, and then we carried on as best we could because we thought there might be another raid that night. When we went to line up for the shelter, newspaper reporters were asking us what happened but we were instructed to say nothing. This is how it was covered up.
And we went down into the shelter and gradually it got around that one hundred and seventy-three people had died, sixty-two of whom were children.”
As Alf dictated to me in Nico’s Cafe, one sentence at a time, I could see he was reliving the events and describing what he saw precisely. Paradoxically, since Alf never spoke of it for over fifty years, the story retains absolute clarity in his telling. He has carried the experience itself and it has not become supplanted in his mind by the repeated narrative of the events. I was touched to be there with him having our private conversation (learning of these big events that once happened so close at hand in Bethnal Green), amid the banal public clamour of the steamy cafe. I found it impossible not to warm to this open-hearted man still struggling with the experience today. Time breeds indifference amongst the general populace yet brings Alf no solace. He is the solitary guardian of his story, lucky to survive but deeply unlucky to become part of a tragedy he can never escape. Watching him bring the events into the present tense, as we sat with our faces just inches apart, I could see the thirteen year old boy of 1943 still present in Alf today.
Now he has unburdened his lonely secret, the troubled emotions Alf carried all these years have come to the surface, “Inside me I am bitter because all these people died and no-one recognises it even after all this time.” he reveals. Alf wants a memorial to those who were killed that night in those unforgettable minutes while he was trapped under the bodies before he was rescued, this is the moral cause he has embraced to channel his grief. He is a passionate man, carrying raw feelings, yet although he describes himself as bitter, Alf revealed a warm human nature to me. Telling me how a recent newspaper feature brought him to meet Suzanne Lane, the grand-daughter of his saviour (who knew nothing of her grandmother’s heroism until she learnt it from Alf ), he remembers Mrs Chumbley, the air raid warden, with great respect and affection.
“She stood at the top of the escalator in a blue smock. She was a tall woman and she’d point at you and say ‘Stop running!’ or ‘Shut Up!’ and you’d do it. She scared everyone but when it came to this incident, she was a true godsend.”
Mrs Chumbley, heroine of the Bethnal Green Tube Disaster.
Lilian Trotter and her daughter Vera.
Alf is one of the prime movers in the Stairway to Heaven project to raise money for the memorial to the victims of the Bethnal Green Tube Disaster. In the next month, there is the launch of a book of survivors’ testimonies, a play reading and service of remembrance on 3rd March in Bethnal Green. Alf asked me to publish his phone number here, so anyone who would like to help may call him direct 07767402781
Paul Gardner’s collection
You will recall that I wrote about Paul Gardner, the fourth generation paper bag seller, recently. Gardners’ Market Sundriesmen is the longest established family business in Spitalfields, trading in the same building for one hundred and forty years. Yesterday, I went back to Paul’s shop at 149 Commercial St to photograph some of the unique collection of artifacts that have accumulated there since his great-grandfather James Gardner first opened in 1870, trading as scalemakers. We took down some things from the walls and photographed them on the floor, we arranged other items on the worn counter-top and I stood upon Paul’s chair to take my pictures. Let me say, both Paul and his customers were extremely gracious, continuing their transactions and buying their bags as usual, politely disregarding the morning’s photographic mayhem.
Paul told me that if he were a paper bag, he would be a brown paper bag because they are his bestsellers – multi-purpose bags, and the ones he has made most money out of over the years. So it is entirely appropriate that when Lucinda Rogers drew this portrait of Paul in his shop a few years back, she drew it on brown paper. Now it hangs in pride of place high up on the wall behind the counter.
Coming upon the artifacts pictured below in a museum would be intriguing but not surprising. In a museum they would be removed from life and arranged. But the only arrangement you see below was created for these photos. Discovering these items still remaining in the living working place where they belong is enthralling in a different way. In Paul’s shop they retain their full functional quality as objects that were once in use here (the coin tray and Oxo tin are still in use), now acquiring an intoxicating poetic meaning as the relics of the three antecedents who pursued the same trade in this place where Paul works today. Quite simply, these are the things that James, Bertie and Roy left behind, and their presence lingers in these everyday possessions as the evidence of their working lives and as evocations of the world they knew. Today, Paul is his predecessors’ unselfconscious living representative and the custodian of their stuff. I do not think Paul thinks twice about his wooden coin tray that is worn by four generations of use, unless someone points it out to him. And there is something profoundly beautiful about this.
You will recognise the style of the price labels from the one which Paul was holding up in my portrait of him. I love the varieties of apples and pears specified here, Comice, Ripe Williams, Dunn’s Seedlings, Choice Worcesters and Ellison’s Orange, names as lyrical as a Betjeman verse. Equally, there is a powerful magic to the simple phrase “morning gathered” that fills my mind with images of dawn in the orchards, though I do wonder what kind of world it was that could be enticed by the pale allure of “Worthing grown”.
Most fascinating to me was the Day Book begun by James Gardner on 1st January 1892 with some bold calligraphic flourishes. We all recognise that auspicious sense of possibility when you write your name to inaugurate a new book, revealing the future as a sequence of blank pages, ripe with potential. James used this sturdy book with fine marbled endpapers to record all the different East End greengrocers where he serviced the scales on a regular basis. James’ elegant italic hand can readily be deciphered to read many familiar addresses in Spitalfields. It is remarkable that he could maintain such poised handwriting when you consider how many customers James visited in a single day sometimes, though as business increased through the life of this ledger, his handwriting becomes hastier and more excited.
There was so much more I could show you, the family bible “Won by the Bugler James Gardner of the 1st Tower Hamlets rifle Brigade for shooting. Presented by Lady Jane Taylor, December 21st 1882”, with the entire family tree over five generations (revealing James’ year of birth as 1847 and his origin as Thaxted in Essex), the catalogues of scales, the insurance certificates, various family military cards from the different wars, and the modern receipt books with their blue carbon pages that end in 1968 on the day Paul’s father Roy Gardner died – all the pamphlets and pieces of paper that add up to four generations of trading for Gardners.
As you know, Paul Gardner’s business is now under threat as the landlord threatens to raise his annual rent from £15000 to £25000 in June. For a business with a small turnover, this is an untenable increase. Meanwhile, hundreds of the smallest businesses and market traders, that are the basis of the economy in East London, rely upon Paul – because no-one else is prepared to sell such small quantities of bags at a time. I am relieved to report that he has commenced renegotiation of the increase and we have to hope that Messrs Tarn & Tarn, the managing agents, recognise their wider social responsibility to the neighbourhood in their handling of Gardners, because I am sure they would not wish to become responsible for sending Spitalfields’ oldest family business to the wall.
I never want to see Paul Gardner’s collection in a museum, I want to see it stay where it belongs in his shop, scattered among all the different stacks of coloured paper bags, and hidden among the tapes and tags, to be discovered on shelves and racks, behind the modest green facade of this celebrated business in Commercial St.
