Hospital visiting in Whitechapel
My neighbour is in the Royal London Hospital having gallstones removed, so I have been running back and forth to Whitechapel visiting him this week, delivering magazines and charging his mobile phone. One day I had to wait half an hour to see him, so I decided to explore the hospital museum.
To my alarm, the first thing I saw was a collection of conker-sized lumpy gallstones that had been removed from patients and arranged like rare birds’ eggs in a wooden case. Immediately, I began to wonder if my visit to the museum was perhaps a trifle ill-advised in the circumstances. Once I had been told that the skeleton of Joseph Merrick (known popularly as The Elephant Man) is preserved here, but I was relieved to discover that it was not on display.
In fact, the museum is not at all the ghoulish collection I had feared, although the story it witnesses of sickness as a result of poverty and deprivation is enough to dispel any romantic notion of “colourful” East End history that anyone might ever be ill-informed enough to harbour.
Conversely, there is the inspiring story of the hospital itself which, since its foundation as The London Infirmary in 1757 on the present site, is one of real progress in overcoming suffering and disease through the application of medical science. This is where Joseph Merrick found sanctuary in 1886 from those who saw him merely as a freak. Thanks to the humane foresight of the surgeon Frederick Treves, he was able to live out his days here with dignity. I was intrigued to see the hat and hood (pictured above) that is reputed to have been worn by him.
Also, I was touched by the pathos of this painting by Sir John Lavery of the first injured soldier of World War One to be treated at the Royal London Hospital in 1914. I could not help noticing how, in spite of some updating, the ward I where was visiting my neighbour was similar to the one pictured.
After my visit to the museum, I delivered the magazine and the charged mobile to my neighbour, but I never told him about the gallstones.
Labour & Wait, connoisseurs of hardware
It all began with this brush. When Rachel Wythe-Moran and Simon Watkins opened Labour & Wait in 2001, this was the first item that arrived in stock – and you can still buy it there. With natural bristle and a dip-painted wooden handle that fits naturally into the hand, it is the ideal brush for its purpose.
From their shop in Cheshire Street, Rachel and Simon pursue their quest to find the very best of traditional hardware and sell the things you can’t get anywhere else. These brushes which have been steady sellers over the years, were made by a company in Edinburgh that only this year has ended production. L&W bought out the stock and then there will be no more.
And so it is a constant juggling process of finding new suppliers, just as existing manufacturers close down. Recent discoveries have been spotted handkerchiefs in a range of jaunty colours, Brown Betty teapots, Winchcombe bowls and leather school satchels. I had exactly this satchel (below) when I was sent off to prep school one September, and although they ceased manufacture years ago, the original makers have now started producing them all over again for L&W.
Taking its name from the original motto of the Co-operative movement, Labour & Wait has become a phenomenon, with another shop inside Dover Street Market and franchises in Japan. I love the romance of their flawless displays of aesthetic functional artifacts that would not look out of place in a Joseph Beuys vitrine. Always, in this arcane cabinet of delights, I discover either a new curiosity to relish or something familiar I haven’t seen for years.
What a seductive feeling it was to inhale the long-forgotten smell of the new leather of that satchel – I almost expected to open it and discover inside my new pencil case and tin of crayons sandwiched between coloured exercise books and my own homework notebook for the Autumn term.
Youthquake in Spitalfields
There has always been a significant transient population in Spitalfields and it is the presence of these people, in part, that has created the complex history of our neighbourhood as a shifting ground, an intermediary space at the City boundary.
First there were the sick and needy who inhabited the Hospital of St Mary (St Mary Spital), founded in 1197 next to the Roman road out of the City. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, there were the itinerant workers who found employment as weavers and in the market, while dossing in the seedy lodging houses that surrounded the market. In the last century, I think of the dispossessed who took refuge in the Sisters of Mercy Hostel in Artillery Lane.
In our own century, something new and on an entirely different scale is about to arrive within close vicinity of these locations. This picture shows the thirty five storey Nido building currently under construction in Middlesex Street. From winter 2010, this will provide accommodation to 12o4 students with rents starting at £720 a month for a single bedroom studio. The complex will have its own cinema and shops in a cashless environment where residents use their Nido card to pay. Students who are anxious at being away from home for the first time will be consoled by technology that promises an SMS to tell them when their laundry is done.
Maybe we shall find ourselves living in the student quarter next, when Spitalfields becomes London’s Rive Gauche?
St John, the Tart with the Heart of Custard
As usual, I went into St John Bread and Wine in Commercial Street at the weekend to buy my loaf of bread. Out of the blue, I discovered that Mr Gellatly has been making Custard Tarts.
When I was a child, my mother used to buy me custard tarts at the bakers, but in recent years I’ve switched over to the squishy Portuguese variety that I discovered in Lisbon and which you can now find all over London. In my childhood, custard tarts came in tinfoil cases with stiff pastry, the consistency of damp cardboard, that contained sweet livid yellow egg custard topped with nutmeg – I loved them.
So it was with huge expectation, that I bit into my first St John custard tart, and I was not disappointed. No tinfoil case here, but soft, melting buttery pastry containing the palest creamy egg custard betraying only a hint of vanilla sweetness and leaving a tangy exotic aftertaste of nutmeg.
On Saturday afternoon, I settled down in the garden to enjoy my tart with a cup of tea in the sun. Then I found myself doing it again on Sunday, because although I always thought I knew custard tarts, I never knew them at all, until now.
Burly pearlies in Brick Lane
This fine gentleman is the Pearly king of Upminster and the chap behind is the king of Highgate. On the first Sunday of every month, the Pearly monarchy gather at the corner of Cheshire Street and Brick Lane, between the oriental slipper stall and the men chanting “Cigarettes, tobacco” under their breaths.
Carole Jolly, Pearly queen of Crystal Palace, told me how it began in the nineteenth century with one Henry Croft (pictured below on the right) who was brought up in an orphanage. Adopting the style of the Costermongers who sewed pearl buttons on their bellbottomed trousers, jackets, waistcoats and caps, Henry made himself an entire suit covered in pearl buttons as a means to collect money for charity.
Over time, others joined Henry’s enterprise and many Costermongers (who already had a charitable code of looking after their own) became Pearlies, until there was one family for each London borough. Thus began the dynasty of Pearly kings and queens still in existence today and still collecting money for charity. The big event of the Pearly year is the gathering of all the London Pearlies for the Harvest Festival at St Paul’s Church, Covent Garden, coming up next week on 12th October.
27 Fournier St, all reasonable offers considered
One of the neighbours is moving on, and consequently 27 Fournier Street is now for sale. Built by Peter Bourdon in 1725, this is one of the few double-fronted houses in the street, with a side entrance leading formerly to a carriage house. In 1724, Mr Bourdon had been elected “Headborough” and by 1744 was included in a list of “eminent merchants and traders” in London – this elegant house suited his status. His initials PBM remain to this day, just visible on the rainwater head (see below). But by 1759, Mr Bourdon was gone from his beautiful house and it was occupied by Obadiah Agace, trading as Agace and Sons, weavers of silk mixed with worsted.
From 1829 until 1946 and the passing of the National Health Act, it was used as the London Dispensary for the charitable provision of free medical attention and medicines to all. This institution provided a vital service and in November 1866 they raised £1,600 to buy the freehold. Until 1955 there was a large panel in stucco across the front, proclaiming its function as “LONDON DISPENSARY” and you can distinguish the mark of this above the first floor windows.
In spite of changes of use over the years, the house has retained many of its features, including the original irregularly shaped staircase, panelled rooms, fireplaces, curved-top sash windows, shutters and weavers’ garret. Fifty years ago, it might have been condemned as a slum, but thanks to the Spitalfields Historic Buildings Trust it was saved. Now described by our namesake Country Life as “probably the most important house in Spitalfields”, offers within the region of three million pounds will be considered by Jackson Stops and Staff. As a shrewd business man, Peter Bourdon would be delighted to see how his investment has gone up and equally curious to discover, given the current market conditions, what price the old house will fetch.
Columbia Road Market 6
Sometimes, at this time of year, my father would return from work with a mysterious parcel wrapped in newspaper and, to this day, I feel the allure of anything wrapped in newspaper, whether fish and chips, old china from a car boot sale, or wallflowers. It was Wallflowers that my father bought wrapped in newspaper each autumn and today I bought a bunch to plant in my garden from Columbia Road for just £1.50. These are the most egalitarian of plants because they are so cheap yet come in such rich colours and have one of the most attractive scents.
Thinking back, I remember walking through an old passageway into a tiny medieval stone courtyard at Merton College, Oxford, one spring, and the soft breeze blowing through the passage carried the scent of the wallflowers that grew in the yard beyond and it stopped me in my path with its beauty. I like to think it was the contradiction of that austere yard paved with its ancient stones and the ephemeral moment of the lush wallflowers in bloom that overwhelmed me, but maybe it was simply the pure sensuous thrall of their scent.
What more could you ask for a mere £1.50?
