Jamal Khalique of the Taj Stores is giving an illustrated talk telling the tale of ninety years of trading in Spitalfields at 7pm on Thursday November 12th in the Hanbury Hall, Hanbury St, E1 6QR
Please note that tickets are free on the door to all Taj Stores customers
The gentleman on the right is Abdul Khalique, standing with his shop assistant, in the early nineteen-fifties outside the very first Taj Stores in Hunton St (now Buxton St). Abdul Khalique's brother Abdul Jabbar, the founder of the grocery store, commonly known then as 'Jabber's Shop', was a seaman who came here from Bengal to Spitalfields in 1934 after leaving the navy. He worked in textile sweatshops for two years before opening his store, which he ran with his Irish wife Cathleen.
These sparse facts, which I learnt from Abdul Jabbar's nephew Jamal - who never met his uncle - are all that is known of this brave man who travelled across the world and undertook the risky venture of starting a business in another continent, working so hard to build it up until his death in 1969. He would be amazed to visit the Taj Stores today and see how his modest enterprise has blossomed.
I enjoyed the privilege of a tour of the aisles in the company of Jamal (Abdul Quayum), who has been involved in the family business since he was seventeen years old, and now runs the store jointly with his elder brother Junel (Abdul Hai) and younger brother Joynal (Abdul Muhith).
It is a wonderful experience simply to explore here and savour the rich selection of produce on offer from all over the world in the Taj Stores. I love to study the beautifully organised displays of exotic fruit and vegetables, printed sacks of rice, tall stacks of brightly coloured cardboard packages, cans, bottles and jars - each with their distinctive fragrances. Then there is the cooking equipment, towers of plastic jugs and bowls, steel pots and pans, and scourers. There is a vast intricate diversity of attractive things collected here and it is a phenomenal feat of organisation that the brothers have pulled off, bringing this huge range of supplies together from the different corners of the globe.
Jamal explained to me how the business is run nowadays between the three brothers. Jamal does the hiring and the paperwork, while Joynal takes care of the day-to-day buying and selling, and Junel runs the catering supply and wholesale side of the business.'The beauty of it is, we have different responsibilities. We are a modern muslim family and we treat each other like friends,' said Jamal proudly.
Their father Alhaj Abdul Khalique first came to the United Kingdom in 1952 as a student before becoming involved in running the business with his brother. In 1956, the grocery shop moved to larger premises at 109 Brick Lane and then when Abdul Jabbar died in 1969, Abdul Khalique ran it with his brother Abdul Rahman. The pair were photographed looking every bit the sharp business men they were, in a handsome studio portrait taken at that time.
As the Taj Stores prospered, they moved again in 1979 to 112 Brick Lane and an era ended in 1994 when Abdul Khalique died. Then the family business passed from the brothers who had emigrated to this country, into the stewardship of the current generation born in East London.
This year, Joynal, Junel & Jamal - the brothers who run the shop today - moved the shop out of Brick Lane into their former warehouse premises at 26 Princelet Street. They explained to me that they now look back to their roots and, in the tradition of nineteenth century businessmen turned benefactors, they are funding a school and a mosque, building social housing, investing in irrigation and two cancer clinics back in Moulvibazar, Sylhet, Bangladesh - the home town where Abdul Jabbar set out from all those years ago when this story began.
Abdul Jabbar, the founder of Taj Stores
Abdul Khalique and his brother Abdul Rahman who ran the Taj Stores in the fifties
Taj Stores, 109 Brick Lane in 1977 (Photograph by Homer Sykes)
Taj Stores, 1980
Taj Stores, 109 Brick Lane (photograph by Phil Maxwell)
Taj Stores, 109 Brick Lane (photograph by Phil Maxwell)
Demolition of 109 Brick Lane, early eighties (photograph by Phil Maxwell)
Outside Taj Stores, 112 Brick Lane, c.1987 (photograph by Phil Maxwell)
Komor Uddin, Taj Stores, 7th December 1990 (photograph by Clive Murphy)
Joan Lauder the cat lady, buying cat food at Taj Stores, Brick Lane, 3rd August 1992 (photograph by Clive Murphy)
Taj Stores, 112 Brick Lane 2012 (photograph by Phil Maxwell)
Delivering cooking oil to Taj Stores, 112 Brick Lane 2002 (photograph by Phil Maxwell)
St. Martin, Ludgate with St. Paul's Cathedral, c. 1900
At this time of year, when dusk gathers in the mid-afternoon, a certain fog drifts into my brain and the city itself grows mutable as the looming buildings outside my window merge into a dark labyrinth of shadows beyond. Yet this is as nothing compared with the smog of old London - in the days before anyone dreamed of the Ultra Low Emission Zone - when a million coal fires polluted the atmosphere with clouds of filthy black smoke carrying noxious fumes, infections and lung diseases. In old London, the city resounded with a symphony of fog horns on the river and thousands of people coughing in the street.
Looking at these glass slides of a century ago, once used for magic lantern shows by the London & Middlesex Archaeological Society at the Bishopsgate Institute, the fogs and smogs of old London take on quite another meaning. They manifest the proverbial mythic "mists of time," the miasma wherein is lost all of human history, save the sketchy outline that some idle writer or other jotted down. Just as gauzes at the pantomime conjure the romance of fairyland, the hazes in these pictures filter and soften the images as if they were faded memories, receding into the past.
The closer I examine these views, the more I wonder whether the fog is, in some cases, an apparition called forth by the photographic process itself - the result of a smeary lens or grime on the glass plate, or simply an accident of exposure. Even so, this photographic fogging is no less evocative of old London than the actual meteorological phenomenon. As long as there is atmosphere, the pictures are irresistibly atmospheric. And old London is a city eternally swathed in mist.
St Paul's Cathedral from the north-west, c. 1920
Pump at Bedford Row, 1911
Cenotaph, 1919
Upper Thames view, c. 1920
Greenwich Hospital from the Park, c. 1920
City roadworks, 1910
Looking north across the City of London, c. 1920
Old General Post Office, c. 1910
View eastwards from St Paul's, c. 1910
Hertford House, c. 1910
New River Head, c. 1910
The Running Footman public house, c. 1900
Unidentified building, c 1910
Church Row, Hampstead, c. 1910
Danish Ambassador's residence, Wellclose Square, Wapping c. 1910
Church of All Hallows, London Wall, c. 1890
Drapers' Almshouses, Bromley Street, c. 1910
Battersea Bridge, c. 1910
32 Smith Grove, Highgate, in the snow, 1906
Unknown public building, c. 1910
Training ship at Greenwich, c. 1910
Flooded moat at the Tower of London, c. 1910
The Woodman, 1900
Bangor St, North Kensington, c. 1910
Terrace of the Houses of Parliament, c.1910
Statue of Boudicca on Westminster Bridge, c. 1910
Glass slides courtesy Bishopsgate Institute
You may also like to take a look at
Click here to book for The Gentle Author's Tours
Maurice Evans collected fireworks since childhood and at over eighty years old, he had accumulated the most comprehensive collection in the country - so you can imagine both my excitement and my trepidation upon stepping through the threshold of his house in Shoreham. My concern about potential explosion was relieved when Maurice confirmed that he had removed the gunpowder from his fireworks, only to be re-ignited when his wife Kit helpfully revealed that Catherine Wheels and Bangers were excepted because you cannot extract the gunpowder without ruining them.
This statement prompted Maurice to remember with visible pleasure that he still had a collection of World War II shells in the cellar and, of course, the reinforced steel shed in the garden full of live fireworks. "Let's just say, if there's a big bang in the neighbourhood, the police always come here first to see if it's me," admitted Maurice with a playful smirk. "Which it often isn't," added Kit, backing Maurice up with a complicit demonstration of knowing innocence.
"It all started with my father who was in munitions in the First World War," explained Maurice proudly, "He had a big trunk with little drawers, and in those drawers I found diagrams explaining how to work with explosives and it intrigued me. Then came World War II and the South Downs were used as a training ground and, as boys, we went where we shouldn't and there were loads of shells lying around, so we used to let them off."
Maurice's radiant smile revealed to me the unassailable joy of his teenage years, running around the downs at Shoreham playing with bombs. "We used to set off detonators outside each other's houses to announce we'd arrived!" he bragged, waving his left hand to reveal the missing index finger, blown off when the explosive in a slow fuse unexpectedly fired upon lighting. "That's the worst thing that happened," Maurice declared with a grimace of alacrity, "We were worldly wise with explosives!"
Even before his teens, the love of pyrotechnics had taken grip upon Maurice's psyche. It was a passion born of denial. "I used to suffer from bronchitis and asthma as a child, so when November 5th came round, I had to stay indoors." he confided with a frown, "Every shop had a club and you put your pennies and ha'pennies in to save for fireworks and that's what I did, but then my father let them off and I had to watch through the window."
After the war, Maurice teamed up with a pyrotechnician from London and they travelled the country giving displays which Maurice devised, achieving delights that transcended his childhood hunger for explosions. "In my mind, I could envisage the sequence of fireworks and colours, and that was what I used to enjoy. You've got all the colours to start with, smoke, smoke colours, ground explosions, aerial explosions - it's endless the amount of different things you can do. The art of it is knowing how to choose." explained Maurice, his face illuminated by the images flickering in his mind. Adding, "I used to be quite big in fireworks at one time." with calculated understatement.
Yet all this personal history was the mere pre-amble before Maurice led me through his house, immaculately clean, lined with patterned carpets and papers and witty curios of every description. Then in the kitchen, overlooking the garden lined with old trees, he opened an unexpected cupboard door to reveal a narrow red staircase going down. We descended to enter the burrow where Maurice has his rifle range, his collections, model aeroplanes, bombs and fireworks - all sharing the properties of flight and explosiveness. Once they were within reach, Maurice could not restrain his delight in picking up the shells and mortars of his childhood, explaining their explosive qualities and functions.
But my eyes were drawn by all the fireworks that lined the walls and glass cases, and the deep blues, lemon yellows and scarlets of their wrappers and casings. Such evocative colours and intricate designs which in their distinctive style of type and motif, draw upon the excitement and anticipation of magic we all share as children, feelings that compose into a lifelong love of fireworks. Rockets, Roman Candles, Catherine Wheels, Bangers, and Sparklers - amounting to thousands in boxes and crates, Maurice's extraordinary collection is the history of fireworks in this country.
"I wouldn't say its made my life, but its certainly livened it up," confided Maurice, seeing my wonder at his overwhelming display. Because no-one (except Maurice) keeps fireworks, there is something extraordinary in seeing so many old ones and it sets your imagination racing to envisage the potential spectacle that these small cardboard parcels propose.
Maurice outgrew the bronchitis and asthma to have a beautiful life filled with fireworks, to visit firework factories around Britain, in China, Australia, New Zealand and all over Europe, and to scour Britain for collections of old fireworks, accumulating his priceless collection. Like an old dragon in a cave, surrounded by gold, Maurice guarded his cellar hoard protectively and was concerned about the future. "It needs to be seen," he said, contemplating it all and speaking his thoughts out loud, "I would like to put this whole collection into a museum. I don't want any money. I want everyone to see what happened from pre-war times up until the present day in the progression of fireworks."
"My father used to bring me the used ones to keep," confessed Maurice quietly with an affectionate gleam in his eye, as he revealed the emotional origin of his collection, once that we were alone together in the cellar. With touching selflessness, having derived so much joy from collecting his fireworks, Maurice wanted to share them with everybody else and he gave his collection to the Museum of British Folklore.
Maurice with his exploding fruit.
Maurice with his barrel of gunpowder
Maurice with his grenades.
Maurice with two favourite rockets.
Firework photographs copyright © Simon Costin
Read my story about Simon Costin, The Museum of British Folklore
Today I publish these edited extracts from Sarah Ainslie's introduction. The book includes Sarah's extensive commentary throughout.
CLICK HERE TO BUY A SIGNED COPY FOR £20
'Women at Work, East End Portraits 1992-2025 brings together the many working women I have encountered and photographed since coming to the East End of London.
My fascination with photography began whilst studying at Derby Art College in the late 1960s. It was a male-dominated course with only three of us young women, sharing a darkroom. For us, this was a time not only for exploring alternative ways of photography but also for seeking different approaches to telling our stories.
I came to London in the late 1970s, and I remember walking through the streets of the East End and finding myself beside the Thames at Wapping. I fell in love with the area and moved into a studio that was part of a working warehouse at New Crane Wharf. I lived and worked there for seven years alongside an eclectic group of around seventy artists and filmmakers until our eviction in 1985 to make way for the redevelopment of the Docklands.
Every Sunday, I wandered through the streets to take pictures in Brick Lane and I still feel the excitement of walking through the chaos, energy and humanity of the market, where people laid out their personal possessions on the pavements to sell and be recycled into a new life. It was a theatre of the streets. And I was captivated, not only by this community but also by the urban landscape it inhabited.
In 1992, I was commissioned by Hackney Museum to make portraits documenting the working lives of women in the borough. It was fascinating to search for a diverse range of occupations to photograph.
By this time, I had moved my studio to Shoreditch and I was shooting mainly with black and white film. I would process my film and print contact sheets in my darkroom before selecting the images, so captivating as they slowly emerged in the developer.
Alongside photographing the East End, I was also working for fringe theatre companies documenting rehearsals as well as capturing the action of performance. Photographing in the theatre informed the way I worked outside in the streets. Becoming embedded in and committing time to projects has always been important for me, allowing my relationships with people and places to grow. In the mid-1990s, I was drawn to exploring the night-time economy of Smithfield Market in the City of London. It was a dramatic, subterranean and mysterious world where glowing lights illuminated rows of hanging carcasses reminiscent of paintings by Rembrandt or Soutine. There was a camaraderie there between the traders who were mainly men and the few female cashiers. As dawn rose over the city, these night workers returned home to sleep and the daytime working world began.
In 2010, I became a contributing photographer to Spitalfields Life, which tells the stories of the people, the culture and the history of the East End. Sometimes we would visit a particular person and other times we would explore the streets, making surveys of launderettes, chicken shops, barbers and other vital parts of our community.
We found that everyone's life experience was distinct, always interesting, sometimes dramatic and sometimes joyous, whilst at other times it was the simplicity of an individual's life that was inspiring. At the same time there were many housing campaigns, the threat of eviction is an all too familiar story in the East End, and photographs and stories became an important tool in raising awareness against injustice.
It has been both an honour and an adventure to meet and photograph women from across numerous community, many of whom have found new ways of working within the structure of society, setting up businesses and organisations, individually and collectively. Some have created spaces for music, dance and the arts. Others have become political activists fighting for better conditions and equal rights. All are vital contributors to the East End cultural landscape. And it is the spirit of these women who have shared their lives with dignity, integrity and strength that have enriched and inspired me through all these years.
This book is a tribute to these women.'
SARAH AINSLIE
Sue Venning, Owner G Kelly Pie & Mash, Roman Rd, 2011
Sarah Ainslie will be giving an illustrated lecture, showing her pictures and telling the stories behind her WOMEN AT WORK project at this year's Bloomsbury Jamboree on Saturday 14th November at the Art Workers' Guild, 6 Queen Sq, London WC1N 3AT.
CLICK HERE TO BOOK FOR SARAH'S LECTURE
We invite you to join us at the book launch and exhibition opening for WOMEN AT WORK on Thursday 19th November 6:30-9pm at Four Corners Gallery, 121 Roman Road, London, E2 OQN.
CLICK HERE TO REGISTER FOR THE LAUNCH PARTY & EXHIBITION OPENING
We are overjoyed to announce that - after many months of work and thanks to you - copies of Sarah Ainslie's WOMEN AT WORK are now available and we are sending them out.
CLICK HERE TO BUY A SIGNED COPY FOR £20
Sarah Ainslie will be giving an illustrated lecture, showing her pictures and telling the stories behind her WOMEN AT WORK project at this year's Bloomsbury Jamboree on Saturday 14th November at the Art Workers' Guild, 6 Queen Sq, London WC1N 3AT.
CLICK HERE TO BOOK FOR SARAH'S LECTURE
We invite you to join us at the book launch and exhibition opening for WOMEN AT WORK on Thursday 19th November 6:30-9pm at Four Corners Gallery, 121 Roman Road, London, E2 OQN.
CLICK HERE TO REGISTER FOR THE LAUNCH PARTY & EXHIBITION OPENING
WOMEN AT WORK celebrates the women whose work shapes the fabric of our lives, sustaining communities with their labour, warmth & fellowship
SARAH AINSLIE documents the contribution of female labour in exuberant photographs that capture the passion and struggle of the working life, forming a panoramic survey of social change over four decades.
"My pictures are a testament to the indomitable spirit of women whose work is often unrecognised, whether in factories, working from home or caring for the vulnerable - tradeswomen, community organisers, garment workers, faith leaders, artists, firefighters, shopkeepers, transport workers, cleaners and NHS staff, women who are catering, and many more who sustain and bind together communities with their warmth, labour and fellowship."
Sarah Ainslie
THANK YOU Carol Addis, Liz Aitken, The Alcove Library, Fatima Ali, Monica Allen, Deborah Andrews, Geraldine Anslow, Alice Audsley, Elizabeth Aumeer, Kate Bacon, Stephen Ball, Betsy Barker, Graham Barker, Sarah Bates, Roxy Beaujolais, Niamh Bermingham, Millie Bird, Catherine Burd, Karolina Brodnicka, Jill Browne, Yvonne Cheyney, Karen Chung, Jackie Connor, Esther Conway, Wendy Cook, Sarah Correia, Clarice Corell, Valerie Cottle, Mary Dalton, Rachel Darnley-Smith, Rosie Dastgir, Jill Day, Lucinda De Jasay, Luke Dixon, James Douglas, Josephine Eglin, Marion Elliot, Rachel Ferriman, Linda Florio, Jillian Foley, Lisa Forkas, Gillian Forrester, Nancy Franklin, Emma Grace, Carol Grantham, Judy Greenway, Karen Greenwood, Polly Grylls, Stephen Guy, Keith Hagan, Jayne Hamilton, Mark Hamsher, Siri Hansen, Julia Harrison, David Heath, Carolyn Hirst, David Hoffman, Anne Holland, Melissa Horn, Emma Howard Boyd, Susan Hoyal, Robin Huffman, Richard Humm, Diana Fawcett, Lisa Ferguson, Doreen Fletcher, Jane James, Annie Johns, Andrew Jones, Barbara Jones, Rachel Jowitt, Tom Kavanagh, Hilda Kean, Michael Keating, Colette Khan, Mark King, Lin Lee, Martin Ling, Pauline Lord, John Patrick Lowe, Jaime Rory Lucy, Sarah Ludford, Alison Lynch, Mirela Mardare, Anabel Marsh, Sarah Mason, Frances Mayhew, Jill Mead, Julia Meadows, Carolyn Meunier, Jennifer Michael, Susan Miles, Janet Mohler, Stephen Moran, Annie Moreton, Robert Moye, Lee Murphy, Jeremy Musson, Ros Niblett, Krissie Nicolson, Thomas Nowacki, Sarah Nuttall, Frances Oakley, Janet O'Brien, Vivienne Palmer, Peter Parker, Tanya Peixoto, Pamela Percy, Fiona Pettitt, Caroline Pick, Alison Pilkington, Jeffrey Press, Elizabeth Prochaska, Tony Quinn, Alice Rawsthorn, Caz Richards, Ruth Richardson, Madeleine Ruggi, Anne Sally, Sir Charles Saumarez Smith, Tim Sayer, Christine Sibley, Marie Sleigh, Robert Small, Annie Sparks, Henrietta M Startup, Carrie Supple, Gilane Tawadros, Pen Thompson, Sophie Thompson, Jane Trethewey, Olivia Horsfall Turner, Sukhin Tye, Roel Van Der List, Nicola Von Velsen, Elizabeth Walker, Arabella Warner, Nicky Webb, Lianne Weidmann, Patricia Wenz, Gilda Williams, Jane Williamson, Jill Wilson, Sarah Winman, Jenny Wiseman, Robert Zeigler and many others who choose to be anonymous.
I believe I was born with a medieval imagination. It is the only way I can explain the explicit gothic terrors of my childhood. Even lying in my cradle, I recall observing the monstrous face that emerged from the ceiling lampshade once the light was turned out. This all-seeing creature, peering at me from above, grew more pervasive as years passed, occupying the shadows at the edges of my vision and assuming more concrete manifestations. An unexpected sound in my dark room revealed its presence, causing me to lie still and hold my breath, as if through my petrified silence I could avert the attention of the devil leaning over my bedside.
When I first became aware of gargoyles carved upon churches and illustrated in manuscripts, I recognised these creatures from my own imagination and I made my own paintings of these scaled, clawed, horned, winged beasts, which were as familiar as animals in the natural world. I interpreted any indeterminate sound or movement from the dark as indicating their physical presence in my temporal existence. Consequently, darkness, shadow and gloom were an inescapable source of fear to me on account of the nameless threat they harboured, always lurking there just waiting to pounce. At this time of year, when the dusk glimmers earlier in the day, their power grew as if these creatures of the shades might overrun the earth.
Nothing could have persuaded me to walk into a dark house alone. One teenage summer, I looked after an old cottage while the residents were on their holiday and, returning after work at night, I had to walk a long road that led through a deep wood without street lighting. As I wheeled my bicycle up the steep hill among the trees in dread, it seemed to me they were alive with monsters and any movement of the branches confirmed their teeming presence.
Yet I discovered a love of ghost stories and collected anthologies of tales of the supernatural, which I accepted as real because they extended and explained the uncanny notions of my own imagination. In an attempt to normalise my fears, I made a study of mythical beasts and learnt to distinguish between a griffin and a wyvern. When I discovered the paintings of Hieronymous Bosch and Pieter Breughel, I grew fascinated and strangely reassured that they had seen the apocalyptic visions which haunted the recesses of my own mind.
I made the mistake of going to see Ridley Scott's The Alien alone and experienced ninety minutes transfixed with terror, unable to move, because - unlike the characters in the drama - I was already familiar with this beast who had been pursuing me my whole life. In retrospect, I recognise the equivocal nature of this experience, because I also sought a screening of The Exorcist with similar results. Perhaps I sought consolation in having my worst fears realised, even if I regretted it too?
Once, walking through a side street at night, I peered into the window of an empty printshop and leapt six feet back when a dark figure rose up from among the machines to confront my face in the glass. My companions found this reaction to my own shadow highly amusing and it was a troubling reminder of the degree to which I was at the mercy of these irrational fears even as an adult.
I woke in the night sometimes, shaking with fear and convinced there were venomous snakes in the foot of my bed. The only solution was to unmake the bed and remake it again before I could climb back in. Imagine my surprise when I visited the aquarium in Berlin and decided to explore the upper floor where I was confronted with glass cases of live tropical snakes. Even as I sprinted away down the street, I felt the need to keep a distance from cars in case a serpent might be lurking underneath. This particular terror reached its nadir when I was walking in the Pyrenees, and stood to bathe beneath a waterfall and cool myself on a hot day. A green snake of several feet in length fell wriggling from above, hit me, bounced off into the pool and swam away, leaving me frozen in shock.
Somewhere all these fears dissolved. I do not know where or when exactly. I no longer read ghost stories or watch horror films and equally I do not seek out dark places or reptile houses. None of these things have purchase upon my psyche or even hold any interest anymore. Those scaly beasts have retreated from the world. For me, the shadows are not inhabited by the spectral and the unfathomable darkness is empty.
Bereavement entered my life and it dispelled these fears which haunted me for so long. My mother and father who used to turn out the light and leave me to sleep in my childhood room at the mercy of medieval phantasms are gone, and I have to live in the knowledge that they can no longer protect me. Once I witnessed the moment of death with my own eyes, it held no mystery for me. The demons became redundant and fled. Now they have lost their power over me, I miss them - or rather, perhaps, I miss the person I used to be - yet I am happy to live a life without supernatural agency.
Fourteenth century carvings from St Katherine's Chapel, Limehouse
You might also like to read about
This is the face of the dead man in Clerkenwell. He does not look perturbed by the change in the weather. Once winters wore him out, but now he rests beneath the streets of the modern city he will never see, oblivious both to the weather and the wonders of our age, entirely oblivious to everything in fact.
Let me admit, although some might consider it poor company, I consider death to be my friend - because without mortality our time upon this earth would be worthless. So I do not fear death, but rather I hope I shall have enough life first. My fear is that death might come too soon or unexpectedly in some pernicious form. In this respect, I envy my father who always took a nap on the sofa each Sunday after gardening and one day at the age of seventy nine - when he had completed trimming the privet hedge - he never woke up again.
It was many years ago that I first made the acquaintance of the dead man in Clerkenwell, when I had an office in the Close where I used to go each day and write. I was fascinated to discover a twelfth century crypt in the heart of London, the oldest remnant of the medieval priory of the Knights of St John that once stood in Clerkenwell until it was destroyed by Henry VIII, and it was this memento mori, a sixteenth century stone figure of an emaciated corpse, which embodied the spirit of the place for me.
Thanks to the curator at the Museum of the Order of St John, I went back to look up my old friend after all these years. They lent me their key and, leaving the bright October sunshine behind me, I let myself into the crypt, switching on the lights and walking to the furthest underground recess of the building where the dead man was waiting. I walked up to the tomb where he lay and cast my eyes upon him, recumbent with his shroud gathered across his groin to protect a modesty that was no longer required. He did not remonstrate with me for letting twenty years go by. He did not even look surprised. He did not appear to recognise me at all. Yet he looked different than before, because I had changed, and it was the transformative events of the intervening years that had awakened my curiosity to return.
There is a veracity in this sculpture which I could not recognise upon my previous visit, when - in my innocence - I had never seen a dead person. Standing over the figure this time, as if at a bedside, I observed the distended limbs, the sunken eyes and the tilt of the head that are distinctive to the dead. When my mother lost her mental and then her physical faculties too, I continued to feed her until she could no longer even swallow liquid, becoming as emaciated as the stone figure before me. It was at dusk on the 31st December that I came into her room and discovered her inanimate, recognising that through some inexplicable prescience the life had gone from her at the ending of the year. I understood the literal meaning of "remains," because everything distinctive of the living person had departed to leave mere skin and bone. And I know now that the sculptor who made this effigy had seen that too, because his observation of the dead is apparent in his work, even if the bizarre number of ribs in his figure bears no relation to human anatomy.
There is a polished area on the brow, upon which I instinctively placed my hand, where my predecessors over the past five centuries had worn it smooth. This gesture, which you make as if to check his temperature, is an unconscious blessing in recognition of the commonality we share with the dead who have gone before us and whose ranks we shall all join eventually. The paradox of this sculpture is that because it is a man-made artifact it has emotional presence, whereas the actual dead have only absence. It is the tender details - the hair carefully pulled back behind the ears, and the protective arms with their workmanlike repairs - that endear me to this soulful relic.
Time has not been kind to this figure, which originally lay upon the elaborate tomb of Sir William Weston inside the old church of St James Clerkenwell, until the edifice was demolished and the current church was built in the eighteenth century, when the effigy was resigned to this crypt like an old pram slung in the cellar. Today a modern facade reveals no hint of what lies below ground. Sir William Weston, the last Prior, died in April 1540 on the day that Henry VIII issued the instruction to dissolve the Order, and the nature of his death was unrecorded. Thus, my friend the dead man is loss incarnate - the damaged relic of the tomb of the last Prior of the monastery destroyed five hundred years ago - yet he still has his human dignity and he speaks to me.
Walking back from Clerkenwell, through the City to Spitalfields on this bright afternoon in late October, I recognised a similar instinct as I did after my mother's death. I cooked myself a meal because I craved the familiar task and the event of the day renewed my desire to live more life.
The Museum of the Order of St John, St John's Gate, Clerkenwell, EC1M 4DA
Click here to book for The Gentle Author's Tours
.
Monument to Lady Elizabeth Nightingale, Westminster Abbey, c.1910
What could be more appropriate to the season of spooks and spirits than a virtual tour of the tombs of old London, courtesy of these glass slides once used by the London & Middlesex Archaeological Society for magic lantern shows at the Bishopsgate Institute?
We can admire the aesthetic wonders of statuary and architecture in these magnificent designs, and receive an education in the history and achievements of our illustrious forbears as a bonus.
In my childhood, no festival or national occasion was complete without a visit to some ancient abbey or cathedral. Yet while ostensibly we went to pay our respects, my interest was always drawn by the stone tombs and ancient monuments.
It is a human impulse to challenge the ephemeral nature of existence by striving to create monuments, even if the paradox is that these attempts to render tenderness in granite will always be poignant failures, reminding us of death rather than life. Yet there is soulful beauty in these overwrought confections and a certain liberating consolation to be drawn, setting our personal grief against the wider perspective of history.
Tomb of Sir Francis Vere, Westminster Abbey, c. 1910
Monument to William Wilberforce, Westminster Abbey, c.1910
Memorial to Admiral Sir Peter Warren, Westminster Abbey, c.1910
Monument to William Wordsworth in Baptistery, Westminster Abbey, c.1910
St Benedict's Chapel, Westminster Abbey, c.1910
Chapel of St Edmund, Westminster Abbey, c.1910
Tombstone of Laurence Sterne, St George's Hanover Sq, c.1910 - Buried, grave-robbed and reburied in 1768, subsequently removed to Coxwold in 1969 due to redevelopment of the churchyard.
Hogarth's tomb, St Nicholas' Churchyard, Chiswick, c.1910
Sir Hans Sloane and Miller Monuments in Old Chelsea Churchyard, c. 1910
Stanley's Monument in Chelsea Church, c. 1910
Sanctuary at All Saint's Church, Chelsea, c. 1910
Shakespeare's memorial, Westminster Abbey, c. 1910
Colville Monument in All Saint's Church, Chelsea, c. 1910
Tomb of Daniel Defoe at Bunhill Fields Burial Ground, c. 1910
At the gates of Bunhill Fields, c. 1910
Tomb of John Bunyan, Bunhill Fields Burial Ground, c. 1910
North Transept of Westminster Abbey, c. 1910
North Ambulatory, Westminster Abbey, c. 1910
Ambulatory, Westminster Abbey, c. 1910
Monument to John Milton, St Giles, Cripplegate, c. 1910
Offley Monument, St Andrew Undershaft, c. 1910
Pickering Monument, St Helen's Bishopsgate, c. 1920
Plaque, Christ Church, Newgate, 1921
Tombs in Temple churchyard, c. 1910
King Sebert's Tomb, Westminster Abbey, c. 1910
Monument to Historian John Stow in St.Andrew Undershaft, c. 1910
Tomb of Edward III, Westminster Abbey, c. 1910
Queen Elizabeth I's Tomb, Westminster Abbey, c. 1910
Tomb of Henry VII and Elizabeth of York, Westminster Abbey, c. 1910
Monument to Charles James Fox, Westminster Abbey, c. 1910
Poets' Corner with David Garrick's Memorial, Westminster Abbey, c. 1910
Memorial to George Frederick Handel, Westminster Abbey, c. 1910
Monument to Francis Holles, Westminster Abbey, c. 1910
Tombstone of the Kidney family, c. 1910
Cradle monument to Sophia, Daughter of James I, Henry VII's Lady Chapel, Westminster Abbey, c. 1910
Tomb of Sir Francis Vere, Chapel of St John the Evangelist, Westminster Abbey, c. 1910
Tomb of John Dryden, Westminster Abbey, c. 1910
Wellington's Funeral Carriage, St Paul's Cathedral,c. 1910
Robert Preston's grave stone, St Magnus, c. 1910
Tomb of Henry VII, Westminster Abbey, c. 1910
Glass slides courtesy Bishopsgate Institute
You may also like to take a look at
We remember the late and much-loved Malcolm Johnson, author of Crypts of London, who wrote this brief history of crypts. Malcolm was formerly Rector of St Botolph's, Aldgate, where he ran a homeless shelter in the crypt.
At St Clement, King Sq
After the Great Fire of 1666, it was decided not to replace thirty-two out of those churches destroyed in the Square Mile. Yet St Paul's Cathedral and fifty-one churches were rebuilt by Sir Christopher Wren, Robert Hooke and others, and almost all of these new buildings were given a crypt of the same extent as the ground floor. This was also true for churches in Westminster and those on the edges of the City such as in Spitalfields, Shoreditch and St Clement, King's Sq.
What were these spaces intended for? Charity schools? Storage? Meeting rooms? There was no chance of any of these, because the clergy and their vestries soon realised that good money was to be made by charging wealthy parishioners to stack coffins containing their dead family members under the church.
In doing so, they went against the advice and opinions of both architects and others, who doubted the wisdom of burying the dead among the living. In 1552, Bishop Hugh Latimer thought it "an unwholesome thing to bury within the city," considering that "it is the occasion of great sickness and disease." Mainly for architectural reasons, Wren and Vanbrugh were also opposed to burial in or close to a church, although when Wren was interred beneath St Paul's when he died.
In my research, I found that in the eighteenth century most parishes received around seven per cent of their income from interments, although at St James Garlickhythe the average was nearly twenty-seven per cent. All five Westminster parishes had a high burial income by the end of the eighteenth century - around thirty-five per cent of the wardens' income at St Martin-in-the-Fields and twenty-five per cent at St James Piccadilly.
After the Reformation, burial within a church was seen as a mark of social distinction - the nobility regarding it as their right - but by the mid-seventeenth century the professional classes were also seeing it as a sign of a successful career. Over the next century, doctors, solicitors, high-ranking soldiers and 'gentlefolk' frequently left instructions in their wills for intra-mural burial, although some cautioned prudence and economy in arranging it, because fees could be high. Coffins of the clergy were placed in the vault below the altar and the vicar of St Martin-in-the-Fields allowed Nell Gwyn to be interred in his space there.
Why were families willing to pay large sums for a crypt burial when churchyard fees were much cheaper? Some hoped for an 'eternal bedchamber' because they knew that bodies in the churchyard would be dug up after thirty or so years and the bones placed in a charnel house when the space was needed for new burials. Others hoped the congregation worshipping above the crypt would continue to pray for them and many more were apprehensive that body-snatchers might plunder the churchyard. Yet, in crypts, bodies were sometimes tipped out of their coffins so that the lead could be sold together with the metal handles.
Rarely do published histories of our churches mention these undercrofts. Obviously it is possible to visit those churches that have survived and establish precise details of their crypts - where it is not possible to enter, burial registers can give details of size and layout. For the churches that have not survived, the best descriptions of their crypts are often found in the faculties which authorised their destruction, and in the Vestry minutes recording the process of emptying the remains and transferring them to a cemetery. Written accounts are rare, because few people visited these dark, dismal places apart from the sexton.
The lucrative burial income ended abruptly in 1852 when sanitation legislation forbade further interments in crypts and churchyards. Joint-stock cemeteries such as Kensal Green were opened to receive London's dead and the clergy lost the links with parishioners although they were still financially recompensed, even if the vestries and sextons lost their burial dues. The removal of human remains from crypts began for a variety of reasons - such as demolition of the building, its sale to raise funds or road widening. If the building remained and a new use for the crypt was found, then an appeal for funds was made, such as at St Bride Fleet St in the nineteen-fifties when its museum was equipped from gifts of nearby publishing firms. Other churches have attracted grants from the Lottery fund, statutory bodies, charitable foundations, businesses and individual donors.
The first crypt to be cleared of human remains for use other than storage was in 1915 when the vicar of St Martin-in-the-Fields, Dick Sheppard, set up a canteen to welcome men returning from the Front. Two learned reports of the Council for British Archaeology describe the clearance of coffins and remains from the crypt of Christ Church, Spitalfields in 1984/5. Nearly one thousand bodies were carefully examined and researched. Interment in a crypt obviously preserves a corpse and coffin longer than if it was buried in a churchyard but the state of preservation of those in coffins in Spitalfields'crypt varied from virtually complete, including skin, hair and internal organs to a just sediment of crystal debris being all that remained of the bones. When lead was used, as it was in this crypt after 1813, this preserved the cadaver longer, but if air or water was allowed to penetrate then decomposition was much quicker.
Where were coffins and remains from crypts taken? A minority went to the East London Cemetery, Plaistow, or to the Great Northern London (now New Southgate) Cemetery. Some relatives were allowed to transfer the coffin of a family member to a burial ground of their choice, but most went to Brookwood or the City of London Cemetery, Ilford.
Some two thousand two hundred acres of land owned by Lord Onslow on Woking Common at Brookwood were purchased by the newly-formed London Necropolis & National Mausoleum Company. Despite opposition, Royal Assent was given to the London Necropolis Bill on 30th June 1852, but the first funeral was not held until 13th November 1854. Soon afterwards, several Westminster parishes, including St Anne Soho, St Giles-in-the-Fields and St Margaret Westminster, reserved plots there. Coffins and mourners were transported by special trains from a private terminus near Waterloo to the cemetery's two stations, one for Anglicans and one for others. The Bishop of London was apprehensive that the coffin of 'some profligate spendthrift' might be in the same compartment as a respectable member of the Church. A notice in the station refreshment room at Brookwood reads 'Spirits served here.'
The City of London Cemetery, used by nearly all the City parishes, opened in 1856 and is approximately eight miles north-east of the City. Since then, over forty City parishes have removed their crypt remains to Ilford, which is today one of the most beautiful cemeteries in the country.
Today, around half of London's crypts have been emptied. Some, such as that of St Martin-in-the-Fields house a restaurant, bookshop and meeting rooms which contribute a very large sum to the Parish Church Council. Others are chapels and columbaria, yet others are museums while - sadly - two which were once homeless centres are now empty. Those with coffins still in place await a use - as at St Clement, King Sq, where David Hoffman took the photographs which accompany this article.
Coffin plates from Holy Trinity, Minories - now demolished
At St Clement, King Sq
The entrance to the family vault of Mr Thomas Gall of King Sq
Crypts of London by Malcolm Johnson is published by the History Press
Photographs copyright © David Hoffman
You may also like to take a look at
More than twenty years have passed since my father died at this time of year and thoughts of mortality always enter my mind as the nights begin to draw in, as I prepare to face the spiritual challenge of another long dark winter ahead. So Luke Clennell's splendid DANCE OF DEATH engravings inspired by Hans Holbein suit my mordant sensibility at this season.
First published in 1825 as the work of 'Mr Bewick', they have recently been identified for me as the work of Thomas Bewick's apprentice Luke Clennell by historian Dr Ruth Richardson.
The Desolation
The Queen
The Pope
The Cardinal
The Elector
The Canon
The Canoness
The Priest
The Mendicant Friar
The Councillor or Magistrate
The Astrologer
The Physician
The Merchant
The Wreck
The Swiss Soldier
The Charioteer or Waggoner
The Porter
The Fool
The Miser
The Gamesters
The Drunkards
The Beggar
The Thief
The Newly Married Pair
The Husband
The Wife
The Child
The Old Man
The Old Woman
You may also like to take a look at
Click here to book for The Gentle Author's Tours
Roger Clarke tells the tale of Georgiana Eagle, Wizard Queen and Mesmerist, and Curse of Vicky's Ticker
Once I held it in my hand, I was aware of the weight of it. I was standing in a small downstairs room at Bonhams in South Kensington holding a Victorian gold pocket watch. Yet the weight I felt was not that of the precious metal or the intricate mechanics of its system, but of the significance of those whose hands through which the watch had passed: Queen Victoria, two celebrated psychics, a newspaper editor who went down in the Titanic and the thief who stole it fifty years ago.
Here is the entry in Bonham's catalogue:
LOT 19: AN 18K GOLD KEY WIND OPEN FACE POCKET WATCH, Circa 1840 (£500-700)
Two engraved inscriptions: 'Presented by Her Majesty to Miss Georgiana Eagle for her Meritorious & Extraordinary Clairvoyance produced at Osborn House, Isle of Wight, July 15th 1846′ and 'Presented by W.T Stead to Mrs Etta Wriedt through whose mediumship Queen Victoria's direct voice was heard in London in July 1911.'
I first came across the name of Georgiana Eagle, Wizard Queen & Mesmerist, while researching my book A Natural History of Ghosts - and as a Shoreditch resident myself - I was naturally intrigued by her. Dalston was a Victorian nexus of young female psychics, including the infamous Florence Cook in the eighteen seventies, and there was a very famous Dalston spiritualist group at the time many of whose members worked on the railways - two recently-built spurs (now the overground) had opened up the area and were instrumental in making Dalston popular for séances. It was a new territory, opening new doors into the other world. However it seems an even younger East London psychic proceeded Miss Cook by several decades amongst the furniture-making factories and leather-working rooms of Shoreditch.
Georgiana Eagle was born on November 28th 1834 and baptised at St Leonard's Church. Her grandfather owned a pub in the parish and the family were of Huguenot descent. She lived with her father Barnardo Eagle in Holywell Place. He was a professional stage magician and the family led a nomadic existence as travelling players. In 1839, he was describing himself as 'The Royal Wizard of the South' and in the Birmingham Journal of November 23rd of that year claimed he had performed for 'His late Majesty and Queen Adelaide, Duchess of Saxe-Weimar, Her Majesty Queen Victoria, The Duchess of Kent and numbers of the nobility.'
After the death of her mother, eight-year-old Georgiana stayed with her father while the rest of her siblings were packed off to live with their grandparents in 36 Coleman St. She was a willing participant in her father's stage act of 'Hundred feats of mighty magic'. He was a sceptic who revealed deception and his show, The Mysterious Lady, which was devoted to exposing the clairvoyance claims of mesmerists - proved immensely popular. Little Georgiana was the star and she performed for Queen Victoria at Osborne House when Prince Albert was still alive, receiving the gift of the gold watch from the monarch. Victoria's journals show she gave similar watches to other children of Georgiana's age and I believe Georgiana had it engraved after that event at Osborne House in 1846. This is the ill-fated watch that was subsequently stolen from the College of Psychic Studies in September 1962.
One morning last year, I received a call from a relative in the antiques business who was monitoring sales of objects connected to the Isle of Wight where we both grew up. He had learnt about the sale of a watch. I went in one day in January for a viewing and sat in a small windowless, fortified room as a young man brought it in. There was absolutely no doubt about it. This was Vicky's Ticker - the watch given to Georgiana by Queen Victoria which has not been seen or heard of since 1962. It had been discovered among the effects of a jeweller from Manchester at his decease by his relatives, who had no idea of its tainted provenance.
There is a contemporary mention of Victoria's gift of the watch to Georgiana in the Northampton Mercury in 1849. 'On Monday last, a theatre suddenly upreared its tawdry head in the market square, decorated with pictures representing Miss Georgiana Eagle in trunk hose and flesh tights, in the act of receiving a splendid gold watch from Her Majesty Queen Victoria.'
A remarkable thing happened. In 1850, Barnardo Eagle advertised private clairvoyance sessions 'to the nobility and gentry' in Brighton. At a meeting in Edinburgh in November 1852, around sixty people were invited to experience Georgiana's powers of mediumship and mesmerism. Whether this conversion was heartfelt or genuine, we will probably never know. It could have been simply that Barnardo was commercially savvy and he saw the wind was blowing in favour of psychics. Yet his journey from sceptic to believer is the reason that the watch is so precious to the College of Psychic Studies.
Those who were shocked by Barnardo's apparent betrayal of his rational beliefs blamed him for dragging his eighteen year-old daughter along with him. It did not go well for either of them. By 1853, he had abandoned the profession and reverted to the family occupation, buying the licence to the Brown Bear Tavern near the British Museum. His infant daughter Rosabel died and was buried in a public grave, indicating the family's reduced state at this time. Yet by 1855 they were back on the road, offering clairvoyance once again.
There was a late resurgence in their fame. The hiatus appears to have restored their public reputation now belief in psychic phenomena had became widespread. Then tragedy struck when Barnardo died onstage during his act. A few weeks later - while her father was barely cold in the ground - Georgiana married a Drury Lane scene-painter. She was now performing as Madame Card, Wizard Queen and Mesmerist and living happily with her husband in Cheltenham, until he was committed to a lunatic asylum in Sussex where he died seven months later.
She married a music professor from Islington and they toured together. He accompanying her act with musical numbers and they were reviewed quite favourably by the Evening Standard. Georgiana was by now an accomplished hypnotist and 'performed with a dexterity that is scarcely surpassed by any other male conjurer' Unfortunately, the music professor - a volatile character who got in trouble with the law over his temper - also died young and Georgiana was widowed for a second time by the age of forty-seven. She married a draper twenty-five years her junior, and eventually died in Muswell Hill of 'senile decay' in March 1911.
Within months of Georgiana's death, the watch fell into the hands of the newspaper editor W.T. Stead who gave it to Etta Wriedt, a medium who used it to channel the spirit and voice of Queen Victoria in London in July 1911. When Stead drowned on the Titanic, Wriedt presented the watch to the London College of Psychic Studies.
The colourful history of this little timepiece might tempt the credulous to believe it has a curse attached to it - though why that should be, I have no explanation. I attended the ceremony marking the return of the watch at the College of Psychic Studies and afterwards talked with a throng of interested parties. 'We think you were guided,' suggested a couple of mediums but naturally I could not say. Yet it is very strange that I should write on the subject for Spitalfields Life and then find it.
I do not feel my business with Georgiana Eagle has quite finished yet.
.
Georgiana Eagle, Wizard Queen & Mersmerist of Shoreditch
Inscription of July 1846
Inscription of July 1911
St Leonard's Church where Georgiana Eagle, Wizard Queen & Clairvoyant Mesmerist, was baptised
Dalston became a nexus for female psychics in the eighteen seventies due to improved transport links
Barnardo Eagle, the Royal Wizard of the South (Courtesy of Senate House Library)
Advertisement for a performance by Barnardo and Georgiana Eagle in Plymouth
Georgiana Eagle commonly performed under the stage name of Madame Gilliland Card (Poster courtesy of British Museum)
Etta Wriedt used Vicky's Ticker to channel the spirit and voice of Queen Victoria in London in 1911
Journal of Spiritualism, Psychical, Occult & Mystical Research (Courtesy London College of Psychic Studies)
Roger Clarke wishes to thank Vivienne Roberts, College Curator & Archivist at the London College of Psychic Studies for her research
Click here to book for The Gentle Author's Tours
The temperature is plunging and I can feel the velvet darkness falling upon London. As dusk gathers in the ancient churches and the dusty old museums in the late afternoon, the distinction between past and present becomes almost permeable at this time of year. Then, once the daylight fades and the streetlights flicker into life, I feel the desire to go walking out in search of the dark nights of old London.
Examining hundreds of glass plates - many more than a century old - once used by the London & Middlesex Archaeological Society for magic lantern shows at the Bishopsgate Institute, I am in thrall to these images of night long ago in London. They set my imagination racing with nocturnal visions of the gloom and the glamour of our city in darkness, where mist hangs in the air eternally, casting an aura round each lamp, where the full moon is always breaking through the clouds and where the recent downpour glistens upon every pavement - where old London has become an apparition that coalesced out of the fog.
Somewhere out there, they are loading the mail onto trains, and the presses are rolling in Fleet St, and the lorries are setting out with the early editions, and the barrows are rolling into Spitalfields and Covent Garden, and the Billingsgate porters are running helter-skelter down St Mary at Hill with crates of fish on their heads, and the horns are blaring along the river as Tower Bridge opens in the moonlight to admit another cargo vessel into the crowded pool of London. Meanwhile, across the empty city, Londoners slumber and dream while footsteps of lonely policemen on the beat echo in the dark deserted streets.
Glass slides courtesy Bishopsgate Institute
Read my other nocturnal stories
Click here to book for The Gentle Author's Tours
East End Riverside
As you will have realised by now, I am a night bird. In the mornings, I stumble around in a bleary-eyed stupor of incomprehension and in the afternoons I wince at the sun. But as darkness falls my brain begins to focus and, by the time others are heading to their beds, then I am growing alert and settling down to write.
Once I used to go on night rambles - to the railway stations to watch them loading the mail, to the markets to gawp at the hullabaloo and to Fleet St to see the newspaper trucks rolling out with the early editions. These days, such nocturnal excursions are rare unless for the sake of writing a story, yet I still feel the magnetic pull of the dark city streets beckoning, and so it was with a deep pleasure of recognition that I first gazed upon this magnificent series of inky photogravures of "London Night" by Harold Burdekin from 1934 in the Bishopsgate Library.
For many years, it was a subject of wonder for me - as I lay awake in the small hours - to puzzle over the notion of whether the colours which the eye perceives in the night might be rendered in paint. This mystery was resolved when I saw Rembrandt's "Rest on the Flight into Egypt" in the National Gallery of Ireland, perhaps finest nightscape in Western art.
Almost from the beginning of the medium, night became a subject for photography with John Adams Whipple taking a daguerrotype of the moon through a telescope in 1839, but it was not until the invention of the dry plate negative process in the eighteen eighties that night photography really became possible. Alfred Stieglitz was the first to attempt this in New York in the eighteen nineties, producing atmospheric nocturnal scenes of the city streets under snow.
In Europe, night photography as an idiom in its own right begins with George Brassaï who depicted the sleazy after-hours life of the Paris streets, publishing "Paris de Nuit" in 1932. These pictures influenced British photographers Harold Burdekin and Bill Brandt, creating "London Night" in 1934 and "A Night in London" in 1938, respectively. Harold Burdekin's work is almost unknown today, though his total eclipse by Bill Brandt may in part be explained by the fact that Burdekin was killed by a flying bomb in Reigate in 1944 and never survived to contribute to the post-war movement in photography.
More painterly and romantic than Brandt, Burdekin's nightscapes propose an irresistibly soulful vision of the mythic city enfolded within an eternal indigo night. How I long to wander into the frame and lose myself in these ravishing blue nocturnes.
Black Raven Alley, Upper Thames St
Street Corner
Temple Gardens
London Docks
From Villiers St
General Post Office, King Edward St
Leicester Sq
Middle Temple Hall
Regent St
St Helen's Place, Bishopsgate
George St, Strand
St Botolph's and the City
St Bartholomew's Hospital, Smithfield
Images courtesy Bishopsgate Institute
You might like to read these other nocturnal stories
Night at the Brick Lane Beigel Bakery
Night at The Spitalfields Market, 1991
Click here to book for The Gentle Author's Tours
The rain is falling on Spitalfields, upon the church and the market, and on the streets, yards and gardens. Dripping off the roofs and splashing onto the pavements, filling the gutters and coursing down the pipes, it overflows the culverts and drains to restore the flow of the Black Ditch, the notorious lost river of Spitalfields that once flowed from here to Limehouse Dock. This was the watercourse that transmitted the cholera in 1832. An open sewer piped off in the nineteenth century, the Black Ditch has been co-opted into the drainage system today, but it is still running unknown beneath our feet in Spitalfields - the underground river with the bad reputation.
The shades of autumn encourage such dark thoughts, especially when the clouds hang over the City and the Indian Summer has unravelled to leave us with incessant rain bringing the leaves down. In Spitalfields, curry touts shiver in the chill and smokers stand in doorways, peering at the downpour. The balance of the season has shifted and sunny days have become exceptions, to be appreciated as the last vestiges of the long summer.
On such a day recently, I could not resist collecting these conkers that were lying neglected on the grass in the sunshine. And when I got home I photographed them in that same autumn sunlight to capture their perfect lustre for you. Let me confess, ever since I came to live in the city, it has always amazed me to see conkers scattered and ignored. I cannot understand why city children do not pick them up, when even as an adult I cannot resist the temptation to fill a bag. In Devon, we raced from the school gates and down the lane to be the first to collect the fresh specimens. Their glistening beauty declared their value even if, like gold, their use was limited. I did not bore holes in them with a meat skewer and string them, to fight with them as others do, because it meant spoiling their glossy perfection. Instead I filled a leather suitcase under my bed with conkers and felt secure in my wealth, until one day I opened the case to discover they had all dried out, shrivelled up and gone mouldy.
Let me admit I regret the tender loss of summer, just as I revel in the fruit of the season and the excuse to retreat to bed with a hot water bottle that autumn provides. I lie under the quilt I sewed and I feel protected like a child, though I know I am not a child. I cannot resist dark thoughts, I have a sense of dread at the winter to come and the nights closing in. Yet in the city, there is the drama of the coloured lights gleaming in wet streets. As the nights draw in, people put on the light earlier at home, creating my favourite spectacle of city life, that of the lit room viewed from the street. Every chamber becomes a lantern or a theatre to the lonely stranger on the gloomy street, glimpsing the commonplace ritual of domestic life. Even a mundane scene touches my heart when I hesitate to gaze upon it in passing, like an anonymous ghost in the shadow.
Here in Spitalfields, I have no opportunity to walk through beech woods to admire the copper leaves, instead I must do it in memory. I shall not search birch woods for chanterelles this year either, but I will seek them out to admire in the market, even if I do not buy any. Instead I shall get a box of cooking apples and look forward to eating baked apples by the fire. I am looking forward to lighting the fire. And I always look forward to writing to you every day.
An exhibition, Black Limehouse Lives, The Black Experience and Parish Life through the Lens of St Anne's Records (1730-1830), runs at St Anne's Limehouse on Thursday, Fridays and Saturdays from 10am-4pm until 20th February. Below, Wink Lorch, curator, introduces the project.
'Our newly launched exhibition has been curated by a volunteer team of writers and editors from Care for St Anne's working with the Mapping Black London team of students led by Professor Olly Ayers at Northeastern University London who assisted with research, writing and design.
The exhibition explores the lives of Black people who arrived in Limehouse in Georgian times and were baptised at St Anne's, during the first hundred years of the church. It examines why and how they arrived here, why they were baptised, where they lived, and who they worked for, plus importantly whether they were still enslaved or free. These individuals include servants of ships' captains and other wealthy people, as well as black people who most likely fought in the American Revolutionary War and were given freedom and a passage to London at the end of the war. Old Bailey records extended our research to further individuals located in Limehouse at the time. The exhibition also explores briefly the Lascars in Limehouse, two of whom were recorded on the first page of the burial register for St Anne's.
We decided to put the lives of these Black individuals into context by focussing on the early years of St Anne's church and its new Limehouse parish. We have unearthed information never displayed before, including the church's ancient connections with Brasenose College, Oxford. With help from the Northeastern students, we also included information discovered from archives at Lambeth Palace Library. This includes indentures (property contracts) relating to the church, a 'visitation return' from 1787, which documents numbers residing in the parish, those adhering to other faiths, and how the poor were looked after. We also reveal a case of brawling between a Curate of St Anne's and a Churchwarden.' Wink Lorch
In my imagination, Joan Lauder (1924-2011) was a mysterious feline spirit in human form who prowled the alleys and back streets, a self-appointed guardian of the stray cats and a lonely sentinel embodying the melancholy soul of the place.
Here are Rodney Archer's memories with Phil Maxwell's black and white photos from the eighties and Clive Murphy's colour pictures from the nineties.
One day, when I went round to enjoy a cup of tea and shot of rum with Rodney in his cosy basement kitchen in Fournier St, he told me about Joan, the Cat Lady, who made it her business to befriend all the felines in Spitalfields during the nineteen eighties.
Rodney: Joan went all around the neighbourhood feeding the cats regularly and she had names for them. You'd see her crouching, looking through the corrugated iron surrounding Truman's Brewery, waiting for the cats to come and then they suddenly all appeared. I think once I saw her there and I asked her what she was doing, and she said 'I'm waiting for the cats to appear.'
'My darlings,' she really did call them, 'My darlings,' and it was wonderful in a way that she had this love of cats and spent her life encouraging them and feeding them and keeping them alive. I could never quite work it out, but she had a bag, like one of those trolleys you carry, full of cat food. Now, either she'd taken the tops off the tins or something, since I noticed - because she had a kind of witchlike aspect - that although she put her hands right into the tin to feed them and then just threw it down, I never saw any cat food on her hands. It was like something out of Grimm's Fairy Tales.
Over the years, I would chat to her but she was someone that you had to have some time for, because once she began she went on and on. The Cat Lady was strange - she spent all her money on the cats - she was like a character out of Dickens. She was almost a street person, except she had a place to live. And she did get benefits and she wasn't an alcoholic or anything, she was very doughty, she had a bit of a moustache.
She was the kind of woman that, a hundred years ago, people would have been fearful of in a way. There was something awesome about her, because she had her own aura and she was there to feed the cats, and the cats were much more important to her than people. I'd talk about my cat to her and I think once she stopped by my door, and I opened it, and my cat sat looking at her.
The Gentle Author: I've heard she had this mantra, "Cats are better than rats." Were there a lot of rats at that time?
Rodney: I think there were. When the market was still going and you had all the fruit and vegetables, the rats would come out to feed. I never saw that myself, but you might see a rat running along the curb. A lot of people said they were looking forward to the market closing because the area would be cleaner and neater, but I regretted that the market left and there weren't cabbages everywhere.
The Gentle Author: Can you remember when you first saw the Cat Lady?
Rodney: I think I first saw her on the corner of Fournier St and Brick Lane. She had a huge physical endurance, but I think she must have been exhausted by her journey every day, because she would often stop for quite a long time, and she'd just be there looking around. I suppose she might have been looking for the cats. That's why you could catch up with her and ask her how she was doing.
One day I just spoke to her, maybe I'd seen her around, and I said, 'Are you feeding the cats?' And she told me, and I said had a cat and so we talked about cats and the wisdom of cats and that kind of thing. And afterwards, I'd see her quite often. She didn't talk much to me about her life - but she was the Great Mother of all the cats in Spitalfields.
Phil Maxwell photographed Joan, the Cat Lady, in the eighties
The cat lady on Brick Lane in the late nineteen eighties.
Phil: The woman in this photograph was always dressed in a head scarf and large coat. Usually she would pull a shopping bag on wheels behind her. She was the Cat Lady of Spitalfields. She knew where every cat and kitten lived in the wild and made it her task to feed them every day. Her bag was full of cat food which she would serve on newspaper at designated spots around Spitalfields.
Phil: The Cat Lady pauses for a second beside the Seven Stars pub on Brick Lane. She has just left some food in the 'private road' for some cats.
Phil: The Cat Lady floats past Christchurch School on Brick Lane - with her eyes closed, she contemplates the next cat awaiting a delivery.
Phil: The Cat Lady waits outside her favourite cafe in Cheshire St. Now a trendy boutique, in the nineteen-eighties you could buy a cup of tea and a sandwich for less than a pound at this establishment.
Phil: The Cat Lady 'kept herself to herself' and avoided the company of others
Phil: It must be about twenty years since I last saw the Cat Lady of Spitalfields. She devoted her life to feeding the stray cats of the area. I have no idea where she lived and I never saw her talking to another person. She seemed to live in her own separate cat world. Even though I was sitting opposite her when I took this photograph, I felt that she had created a barrier and would be reluctant to engage in conversation. It was impossible to make eye contact. I'm pleased I photographed her on the streets and in her Cheshire St cafe. She would not recognise Cheshire St and Brick Lane today.
Clive Murphy's portrait of Joan Lauder
At Angel Alley, Whitechapel, 5th March 1992
Feeding the cat from The White Hart in Angel Alley, 5th March 1992
In Gunthorpe St, 5th March 1992
Buying cat food at Taj Stores, Brick Lane, 3rd August 1992
In Wentworth St, 3rd August 1992
Calling a cat, Bacon St, 3rd August 1992
The cat arrives, Bacon St, 3rd August 1992
Alley off Hanbury St, 2nd August 1992
Hanbury St, 26th November 1995
At Aldgate East, 3rd August 1992
At Lloyds, Leadenhall St, 3rd August 1992
Walking from Angel Alley into Whitechapel High St, 3rd August 1992
Beware Of The Pussy, 132 Brick Lane, 26th November 1995
Clive visits Joan in her Nursing Home, 1995
Clive: The women I have loved you could count upon the digits of one hand - my mother, her mother, our loyal companion Maureen McDonnell, the poet Patricia Doubell and the demented, incontinent Joan Lauder, the Cat Lady of Spitalfields who, in 1991, when I first spoke to her was already my heroine, a day-and-night-in-all-weathers Trojan, doggedly devoting herself to cats because human beings had for too long failed her.
She looked at me with suspicion when I suggested we tape record a book. Only my bribe that half of any proceeds of publication would fall to her or her favoured charities and enable the purchase of extra tins of cat food persuaded her at least to humour me. I could swear I saw those azure eyes, set in that pretty face, dilate.
I had entrapped her with the best of intentions as she, I was to learn, often entrapped, also with the best of intentions, the denizens of the feral world to have them spayed or neutered in the interests of control. But to the end, her end, I don't think she ever trusted or respected me. I once found her surreptitiously laying down Whiskas in my hallway for my own newly-adopted cat which I named Joan in her honour. And she once spat the expletive 't***' at me in a tone of total dismissal. To be called a foolish and obnoxious person was hardly comforting, given that I believe my own adage 'in dementia veritas' holds all too often true.
Black & white photographs copyright © Phil Maxwell
Colour photographs copyright © Estate of Clive Murphy
Click here to book for The Gentle Author's Tours
G.Kelly in happier days
This week, I was so saddened to confront the long-closed-up premises of G. Kelly at 444 Bethnal Green Rd - which shut in 2018 never to reopen - that I realised I needed to publish a belated elegy for this beloved institution which served pie and mash to loyal East End customers for over a century.
Sue Venning of G.Kelly pie and mash (still open and flourishing at 526 Roman Rd) kindly outlined the genealogy. "Samuel Robert Kelly opened up originally in Bethnal Green in 1915 - he had three sons, Samuel who took over in Bethnal Green, Joe who opened in Bonner St and George who came here to the Roman Rd. My father Bill (George Kelly's brother-in-law) ran this with my mother Bea, until he died in 1969, and then I took over from her in 1990."
Years have passed now since contributing Photographer Sarah Ainslie and I hit the lunchtime rush at G. Kelly, Bethnal Green Rd, (connected only genealogically to G. Kelly, Roman Rd) where Matt Kelly, proprietor, baker and third generation pie man, had his work cut out in the kitchen to meet the demand for pie and mash and liquor at £2.65. Diners ate off elegant cast iron tables beneath framed portraits of local boxing heroes of yesteryear and everyone was at home in one of the neighbourhood's cosiest destinations.
At the head of the lunch queue was Mrs Julia Richards. "I'm going to be ninety-eight," she bragged with a winsome grin, the picture of exuberance and vitality as she carried off her plate of pie and mash hungrily to her favourite corner table, pursued by her sprightly seventy-year-old daughter Patricia - both superlative living exemplars for the sustaining qualities of traditional East End meat pies. "I've been coming here over fifty years," revealed Patricia proudly. "I've been coming here since before it opened!" teased Julia, her eyes shining with excitement as she cut into her steaming meat pie."They used to have live eels outside in a bucket," she continued, enraptured by memory, "And you could pick which one you wanted to eat." We left them absorbed in their pies, the very epitome of human contentment, beneath a hand-lettered advertising placard, proclaiming "Kelly for Jelly."
S. & R. Kelly & Sons (connected only genealogically to G. Kelly) remains open at 284 Bethnal Green Rd.
At G.Kelly, Bethnal Green
The prizefighters of yesteryear fondly remembered at G.Kelly in Bethnal Green
Julia Richards, nearly ninety-eight - "They used to have live eels outside and you could pick your own."
Regulars, Julia Richards and her sprightly daughter Patricia Wootton aged seventy, at the favoured corner table at G.Kelly
G. Kelly in Bethnal Green, 1915-2018
Photographs copyright © Sarah Ainslie
I am proud to publish these excerpts from THE SILVER LOCKET by a graduate of my writing course. The author says 'A lifetime of reading and book collecting leads me to share stories of literary life: books old and new which inspire and comfort me and the people I meet.'
I am taking bookings for the next writing course, HOW TO WRITE A BLOG THAT PEOPLE WILL WANT TO READ on February 6th & 7th. Come to Spitalfields and spend a winter weekend in an eighteenth century weaver's house in Fournier St, enjoy delicious lunches and eat cakes baked to historic recipes, and learn how to write your own blog.
If you are graduate of my course and you would like me to feature your blog, please drop me a line.
Illustrator Joan Beales holds a very special place in my heart. Her first picture book Pip and the Six Cooks, published in 1964, was one of my very first books, which I read over and over again.
Turning the pages, all my childhood delight comes rushing back - the generous size, the exquisite line drawings, the vibrant colours which evoke the sunny atmosphere of the mediterranean, the joy to be had in all the characters depicted in the book's endpapers, including the head chef with his wind-up gramophone, Poppoff who was born in a circus, and not forgetting the terrible kitchen cats. I think it is my desert island book because it would bring me comfort and joy, and I would never tire of looking at all the details.
When I had a lot of time on my hands during the pandemic, I did some research into Joan Beales' life and work. Keen to find out more about her I contacted Professor Martin Salisbury, founder of the MA in children's book illustration at the Cambridge School of Art. I knew he was an admirer of Joan Beales' work and he told me:
'Joan Beales is something of a mystery. Her charming poster designs and illustrations for children's books are greatly admired by practitioners and students alike for their inventive graphic fusion of flat shape, pattern and line drawing.'
Despite all my enquiries I have discovered very little. I believe she was born in 1926, lived in Manchester and studied at the Royal College of Art just after the War. She was a graphic artist and illustrator, designing posters for London Transport and the Science Museum between 1954 and 1956. Two other books besides Pip stand out for her illustrations: The Seasons by Derek Jervis, published in 1962, and Travel by Land which she wrote and illustrated, published in 1966.
Although she went on to illustrate many early readers in the seventies including Leila Berg's Nippers, it is her early work which enchants me. In the London Transport Museum online archive online, I found a letter from Joan Beales in which she mentions a mural she was working on for a London hotel. Further investigation reveals that she designed a mural for the Tavistock Hotel in 1957.
Imagine my surprise when, on posting my piece, I was contacted by Lynda Saul who wrote:
'We bought some panels from an auction a few years ago and all we knew were that they came from a hotel….and I think they could be the ones Joan mentions in her letter! We have looked at her style and think they could be by her! Would love to try and work out which hotel it was! They're huge!'
More recently I received this from Doug Wilmott-Swanney
'I was a close friend of Joan Beales and I love she is getting the recognition she deserves. I may be the only person alive that knew her and her family.'
I am now fully embarked on detective work to try to piece some of this jigsaw together. Lynda has kindly given me permission to post her snapshots of the murals, which she subsequently sold, being too big to display. She told me:
'They caught our eye as we love mid-century illustration and just had to have them! We didn't at the time know who they were by, but they encapsulated the style we love perfectly (and we love a mystery!). Plus we had moved from London to Brighton (although since left!) and we liked that one depicted the same journey.'
Maybe, just maybe, whoever bought Joan's murals from a dealer in Brighton might read this and get in touch? It would be such a joy to know they are loved and even pay them a visit maybe. What a dream that would be!
Double page spread from Pip and the Six Cooks, 1964
Double page spread from Pip and the Six Cooks, 1964
Double page spread from Pip and the Six Cooks, 1964
Double page spread from Pip and the Six Cooks, 1964
Double page spread from Pip and the Six Cooks, 1964
Endpapers from Pip and the Six Cooks, 1964
Letter from Joan Beales in which she mentions her murals for the Tavistock Hotel. (Courtesy of London Transport Museum)
One of the panels designed by Joan Beales for the Tavistock Hotel in 1957 which is now believed to be in Brighton
Detail from one of the panels depicting the London to Brighton Veteran Car Run
Click here to book for The Gentle Author's Tours
If you are looking for TV repair in the East End, I recommend you visit Master Tech in Heneage St off Brick Lane - where, not only will the job be done expertly and at a fair price, but most importantly you will have the opportunity to meet Javed Iqbal, one of Spitalfields' most engaging raconteurs.
Although I do not even possess a TV, I was happy to spend my Saturday morning in Javed's shop beside his workbench and surrounded by TV spare parts, as he topped up my tea cup from his thermos flask, while I perched listening to his extraordinary monologues, covering so many areas of existence with appealing levity. There is an indomitable good humour that underscores Javed's conversation. A buoyancy which I found especially heroic when he revealed the years of overt antipathy and threats of physical violence he has withstood - just to create a modest life for himself.
One huge window gives onto Heneage St, and Javed sits upon a tall stool, level with his work bench at the centre of his shop, while the wall behind him is lined with shelves stacked with televisions waiting his attention. Upon the bench sits a large flat screen monitor with the back removed and - while exploring this labyrinth of wires and components - Javed is in his element, talking as he works.
"I came to Brick Lane from Pakistan with my father in 1960, and I went to Christ Church School across the road. On the first day, I went into the playground and I had my arm broken. I was the first Asian boy at the school.
I was seven. I came with my five year old brother Tasleem. We came in February and it was very cold indeed. It was strange, because I had never seen snow before and there was deep snow. We travelled BOAC. It was a beautiful experience. Forget the wonder of an aeroplane, I had never been in a car.
My father came in 1958. First he went to Liverpool and then came here and ran the Star Cafe on the corner, 66 Brick Lane. Once he was established, he came to fetch us. My father was very rich man thanks to the restaurant business, but he gambled it all away playing poker with Gregory Peck. He had the talent as a gambler and in those days there were few Asians, so it was a novelty for them to have one at the table.
The first house I lived in was 22 Princelet St where my father had a basement. Jews were the only people that would rents rooms to us. In those days, Irish, Jews, Blacks and Asians were known as 'dogs.' When I was a little boy, the Seven Stars across the road was dominated by the Kray Brothers. Every Friday night, somebody would go out from there round all the businesses in Brick Lane and whatever you did, you had to pay.
I was allowed to watch television from four until five thirty and then my step-mother would down sticks, she had the temper of a gorilla. After school, I went to help in my father's cafe. The Pakistanis were all coming here to Brick Lane. It was a mixed area then, the gateway for everybody basically.
When I started at the Robert Montefiore Secondary School in Deal St, it was a different headache. The pupils were divided between Christians and Jews, with two lunch sittings, kosher and non-kosher. One week the Jews ate first and the next week the Christians ate first. There was no halal in this country then, but Muslims can eat kosher so I ate with the Jews. I had one friend, Janel Singh, we were the only two Asians in the school, a Pakistani and an Indian. People looked at us in a different way.
On the first day, we were told to take our clothes off and they thought we must have TB because we were both so skinny. When we went to school, the white people used to hit us. The Turkish people were scared as well, so we got together. When we went to school, we had to go four or five of us together to be safe. The headmaster was Rhodes Boyson who became education minister for Margaret Thatcher, and he said, 'What happens outside the school is not my responsibility.'
When I left school, I worked as a porter at the Royal London Hospital and I was learning TV repair after hours with a man from Mauritius who had a shop in the Roman Rd. One night, I was beaten up there by skinheads - it was sixteen to one. They beat me unconscious and, after I came round and stopped a taxi to take me to the hospital, the driver refused when he saw all the blood. He said he didn't want to get blood on the inside of his taxi. I had a broken jaw. Later, I joined an anti-racist march here in Brick Lane after the death of Blair Peach and I was beaten up again. This time, by the police with truncheons.
Thanks to a Jewish doctor, Dr Wootliff, a good friend of my father's, I got the biggest break of my life. He wrote me a reference and I got a job at Alba TV manufacturers in Tabernacle St. I was fitting radiograms together and I got a penny, ha'penny for each one. I thought,'Bloody Hell! This is a production line.' Most of my friends were white and they had already broken into skilled trades. I really wanted to be a TV repair man.
I went to an interview in Dagenham. They said, 'Forget about the job, this area is not good for black people. Just leave now before somebody puts a knife in you.' I got a job in Canning Town for Multibroadcast where I found it bloody hard. There were many customers when they answered the door and saw you, they wouldn't let you in the house. It was the worst place I could imagine working. The people were all dockers and they didn't like my face. I'd park my car and when I'd return there'd be shit on it. After six months, I quit.
In the late seventies, I was working for a TV repair company called Derwent in Streatham. There was this great guy called George, an English guy. If you brought in a broken TV and put it on the bench, he'd say, 'Put the kettle on!' and light a fag. Before the kettle boiled and he'd smoked the fag, the TV would be repaired. He inspired me. TV repairs were in big demand. One day I went to repair a TV and the customer's brother was there who was also TV repairman, he worked for Visionhire. He asked me how much I earned a week, and when I told him £16, he offered me £50 a week to join his company.
I opened up my own shop here in Heneage St, Spitalfields in 1976. It used to be a sweets and paraffin shop belonging to a Mr Lewis, and I came here as a child with my father to buy sweets. It took me a year to clear out the rubbish and fix it up. I am the only Pakistani here surrounded by Bengalis. I said to them, 'Fair enough, the country is divided but it's nothing to do with me!' If God don't give me, then the Devil will give me, and I will serve the mixed community. I started with ten shillings and I have worked here for thirty-eight years. And I am grateful to the Bengalis because I am still working and it is all through word of mouth.
I believe no country gives you anything, it's what you can give and make that counts. I bought a house out of working in this shop. If you look back at the past, all the immigrants that made money started their own businesses. Even Marks & Spencer started here in Spitalfields in Old Montague St.
I have struggled quite a bit but with Allah's help I have got through. I am not an Asian anymore, I am more British than the bloody British."
'People looked at us in a different way'
'In those days, Irish, Jews, Blacks and Asians were known as 'dogs"
'If God don't give me, then the Devil will give me …'
'With Allah's help, I have got through …'
Master Tech, 1 Heneage St, Spitalfields, E1 5LJ
You may also like to read about
Click here to book for The Gentle Author's Tours
Click to enlarge
Sometimes in London, I think I hear a lone dog barking in the distance and I wonder if it is an echo from another street or a yard. Sometimes in London, I wake late in the night and hear a dog calling out to me on the wind, in the dark silent city of my dreaming. What is this yelp I believe I hear in London, dis-embodied and far away? Is it the sound of the dogs of old London - the guard dogs, the lap dogs, the stray dogs, the police dogs, the performing dogs, the dogs of the blind, the dogs of the ratcatchers, the dogs of the watermen, the cadaver dogs, the mutts, the mongrels, the curs, the hounds and the puppies?
Libby Hall, who gathered possibly the largest collection of dog photography ever made by any single individual, helped me select the dogs of old London from her personal archive. We pulled out those from London photographic studios and those labelled as London. Then, Libby also picked out those that she believed were London. And here you see the photographs we chose. How eager and yet how soulful are these metropolitan dogs of yesteryear. They were not camera shy.
The complete social range is present in this selection, from the dogs of the workplace to the dogs of the boudoir, although inevitably the majority are those whose owners had the disposable income for studio portraits. These pictures reveal that while human fashions change according to the era and the class, dogs exist in an eternal universal present. Even if they are the dogs of old London and even if in our own age we pay more attention to breeds, any of these dogs could have been photographed yesterday. And the quality of emotion these creatures drew from their owners is such that the people in the pictures are brought closer to us. They might otherwise withhold their feelings or retreat behind studio poses but, because of their relationships with their dogs, we can can recognise our common humanity more readily.
These pictures were once cherished by the owners after their dogs had died but now all the owners have died too, long ago. For the most part, we do not know the names of the subjects, either canine or human. All we are left with are these poignant records of tender emotion, intimate lost moments in the history of our city.
The dogs of old London no longer cock their legs at the trees, lamps and street corners of our ancient capital, no longer pull their owners along the pavement, no longer stretch out in front of the fire, no longer keep the neighbours awake barking all night, no longer doze in the sun, no longer sit up and beg, no longer bury bones, no longer fetch sticks, no longer gobble their dinners, no longer piss in the clean laundry, no longer play dead or jump for a treats. The dogs of old London are silent now.
Arthur Lee, Muswell Hill, inscribed "To Ruby with love from Crystal."
Ellen Terry was renowned for her love of dogs as much as for her acting.
W.Pearce, 422 Lewisham High St.
This girl and her dog were photographed many times for cards and are believed to be the photographer's daughter and her pet.
Emberson - Wimbledon, Surbiton & Tooting.
Edward VII's dog Caesar that followed the funeral procession and became a national hero.
A prizewinner, surrounded by trophies and dripping with awards.
The Vicar of Leyton and his dog.
The first dog to be buried here was run over outside the gatekeeper's lodge, setting a fashionable precedent, and within twenty-five years the gatekeeper's garden was filled with over three hundred upper class pets.
Libby Hall, collector of dog photographs.
Photographs courtesy The Libby Hall Collection at the Bishopsgate Institute
You may like to read my original profile
Click here to book for The Gentle Author's Tours
Favourite illustrator Alice Pattullo has just completed two projects on the subjects of fire and ice in the history of the City of London. One is a series of coloured drawings for an exhibition of the history of fire insurance after the Great Fire of 1666 and the other is an advent calendar illustrating the Frost Fayre that took place on the frozen Thames centuries ago.
AFTER THE FIRE is a free exhibition that runs until 27th November at the Bank of England Museum. This major new exhibition from the Insurance Museum looks at the year 1702, when early fire insurance companies were booming and Edward Lloyd's Coffee House was packed full of insurers, brokers and investors.
Lloyd's Coffee House
Edward & Elizabeth Lloyd
At Lloyd's Coffee House
Firemarks
Queen Anne
These three panels show the rebuilding of London after the fire, thanks to insurance
Orlando skating on the Thames
Alice Pattullo's Frost Fayre advent calendar
Click here to buy a Frost Fayre advent calendar from Tinsmiths
Click here to book for The Gentle Author's Tours
Now that Whitechapel Station has been completely rebuilt and the new Elizabeth Line is fully operational, few remember how it used to be half a century ago but photographer Philip Cunningham recorded the vanished streets and yards that once occupied this lost corner
Winthrop St
"I first started taking photographs of Winthrop St and Woods Buildings in Whitechapel in the mid-seventies. I remember the first time I went to Winthrop St on a cold frosty morning with a bright blue sky. A woman came out of one of the houses and asked what I was doing. 'Photographing the streets,' I said. 'You'd better hurry up they're coming down!' she replied. She was right, within a few months they were gone.
'Comprehensive Development' was the only philosophy pursued by the London County Council and Greater London Council for rebuilding London after the war. Their planners complained that too much pre-war building was left, making comprehensive planning really difficult. Yet it would not have taken much imagination to have incorporated streets like these within any new development, creating a richer and more diverse urban landscape.
Even Mile End Place, where I lived in my grandfather's house, was designated for demolition in 1968 to become a car park for Queen Mary College. Fortunately, the council did not have enough money to build flats for us to be decanted into so our street was saved."
Winthrop St
Durward St School was built in 1876 and eventually restored by the Spitalfields Trust in 1990
Winthrop St
Winthrop St
Winthrop St
Winthrop St
Woods Buildings looking towards Whitechapel Market
"Woods Buildings was a subject I photographed over and over, it always held that feeling for me of Dickens' London. To the left, as you approached the arch under the buildings, was a urinal and when I climbed the wall to take a look, it appeared to be for public use but had been bricked up. It must have been quite intimidating to pass through that passage at night."
'We live here, it's not a toilet'
Entrance to Woods Buildings in Whitechapel Market
"By 1984, the land opposite Woods Buildings on the north side comprised a combination of wasteland and sheds where a boot fair would be held every Sunday. It was licensed by the Council and very popular. One Sunday, I observed a group of Romanians selling secondhand clothes just outside the compound which did not go down well with the gatekeepers as they had not paid a fee. There followed a quite violent fracas, although fortunately no one was seriously hurt and only a little blood spilt. I felt sorry for the children, it must have been frightening for them. Those were desperate days!"
Durward St
Photographs copyright © Philip Cunningham
You may also like to take a look at
Philip Cunningham's East End Portraits
I am proud to publish these excerpts from GRAVE STORIES by a graduate of my writing course. The author, known as 'Gravedigger' invites you to visit the graveyard with the promise that 'all of human life is here' and tells the stories of the inhabitants.
I am taking bookings for the next writing course, HOW TO WRITE A BLOG THAT PEOPLE WILL WANT TO READ on February 6th & 7th. Come to Spitalfields and spend a winter weekend with me in an eighteenth century weaver's house in Fournier St, enjoy delicious lunches and eat cakes baked to historic recipes, and learn how to write your own blog.
If you are graduate of my course and you would like me to feature your blog, please drop me a line.
SARAH SIDDONS (1755-1831)
Eighteenth century London's best-known tragedienne, Sarah was the daughter of Roger Kemble, an actor-manager and at eighteen she married William Siddons, an actor in the touring theatre company. Sarah inspired 'Siddons Mania,' an extraordinary celebrity culture and allegedly left her audience in tears and some in hysterics.
Click here to read the full story of Sarah Siddons
JEREMY BENTHAM (1745-1832)
Born in Spitalfields, Jeremy Bentham advocated changes in the law to give women equal rights including suffrage, the right to public office and the right to divorce on the same terms as men, also to decriminalise homosexuality, to make slavery a crime and to protect animals from unnecessary suffering.
Click here to read the full story of Jeremy Bentham
ALFRED (1873-1945) & ADA SALTER (1866-1942)
Alfred became known as 'the poor man's doctor' by charging sixpence for consultations, waiving his fee if people were unable to pay and introducing a mutual health insurance scheme in Bermondsey, described as the 'NHS before the NHS.' Ada was elected as Mayor, replacing the union jack with a red flag at the town hall. She campaigned against air pollution, through the establishment of a green belt and urban gardening, and in two years nine thousand trees were planted in Bermondsey.
Click here to read the full story of Alfred & Ada Salter
CAPTAIN THOMAS CORAM (1668-1751)
Thomas Coram was a ship builder and sea captain. Born in Lyme Regis, he went to sea at the age of eleven, building successful businesses in America and in London, before establishing the Foundling Hospital in Bloomsbury that bears his name today.
Click here to read the full story of Captain Thomas Coram
JOHN BETJEMAN (1906-1984)
John Betjeman's passions encompassed Victorian gothic architecture, steam trains, the English countryside and seaside, provincial towns and country churches, and the cosy, banal miscellany of buttered toast, Balkan Sobranie cigarettes, Liberty lampshades and Hillman Imps.
Click to book for The Gentle Author's Tours
I decided to take advantage of the October sunshine by enjoying an excursion to Chiswick House. I have to confess that it is thirty years since I visited, in the footsteps of the writer Denton Welch who came here in the thirties with a picnic including a hardboiled egg and a piece of fruitcake. It was a great consolation to encounter these gardens again, like a old friend that has not been changed by the years.
William Kent's garden was inspired by the paintings of Claude Lorrain and Nicolas Poussin, and seeing it illuminated by the perfectly crystalline autumn sunlight this week, I could not resist the feeling I was exploring an eternal landscape that was outside time. I half expected to turn a corner of a box hedge and discover Denton with his blanket spread out upon the grass, waiting for me with a picnic for two of hardboiled eggs and fruitcake.
I can think of no better place to lose an afternoon in London than these gardens, why did I take thirty years to go back?
.
The Doric Column with Venus on the top at the centre of the Rosary
Sculpture of a lioness by Pieter Scheemakers, 1733
The Ionic Temple and Obelisk, 1722
In the Excedra
Herm in the Excedra
A Sphinx beneath the Lebanon Cedar
Classical villa designed by Richard Boyle, third Earl of Burlington
Designed by Inigo Jones for Beaufort House in Chelsea in 1621, this gateway was acquired by Lord Burlington in 1738 from his friend Hans Sloan
Bust of Caesar Augustus
The Corinthian capitals on the portico were carved by John Boson
Andreas Palladio by by John Michael Rysbrack
Inigo Jones by John Michael Rysbrack
In the Italian Garden
The Conservatory was designed by Samuel Ware and completed in 1813
Geraniums overwintering
The Classic Bridge, attributed to James Wyatt, was built for the 5th Duke of Devonshire in 1774
The Ionic Temple
Bust of Napoleon in the Rustic House designed by Lord Burlington about 1719
The Eye Catcher installed in 1970
The Cascade by William Kent
You may also like to take a look at
Click here to book for The Gentle Author's Tours
In my opinion, Jim Howett is the best dressed man in Spitalfields. Here he is with a characteristically shy smile, sitting on a seventeen-twenties staircase in a houses in Fournier St he was restoring for the Spitalfields Trust. Jim was entirely at home in this shabby yet elegantly proportioned old house, a specifically localised environment that over time has become his natural habitat and is now the place you are most likely to find him.
For years, I admired Jim's artisan clothing whenever I caught glimpses of him, always crossing Commercial St and disappearing through the market or off down Folgate St preoccupied with some enigmatic intent. When we were introduced, I discovered that Jim sleeps each night in the attic at Dennis Severs' House and crosses the market every day to work in Fournier St with Marianna Kennedy, designing the furniture and lamps that have become ubiquitous in the houses around Spitalfields. I also learnt Jim is responsible for a significant number of the most appealing shopfronts in the neighbourhood.
At first, I assumed Jim was Irish on account of his soft vowels and quietly spoken manner, almost whispering sometimes, even swallowing his words before he utters them, and thereby drawing your attention to listen, concentrating to gather both what is said and what is unspoken. Such is the nature of his mind that Jim will begin a sentence and then pursue a digression that leads to another and yet another - though such is the intelligence of the man, that when he leads you back to the resolution of the original thought, it acquires a more precise import on account of all the qualifications and counter arguments. Without a doubt, Jim is a consummate prose talker.
Jim's origins lie in Ohio in the foothills of the Appalachians, where he grew up in Salem. But Jim's father worked in international development and in the nineteen-sixties the family moved to the Congo and then his father was transferred Vietnam, with the family ending up in London in 1967. Jim studied at the Architectural Association under the tutelage of Dan Cruickshank, subsequently working for a few years in prehistoric archaeology, before deciding to study at the London College of Furniture which was then in Commercial Rd.
Renting a room on Brick Lane, Jim dropped a card to his former tutor who wrote back to say he had just bought a house in Elder St full of broken furniture, so Jim set up a workbench in Dan's basement to undertake the repairs.
"Dennis Severs knocked upon the door one day, looking for Dan," Jim told me. "He said he'd just bought a house round the corner and wanted to do tours, and we thought he was crazy but we helped him set it up. I made the shutters, the partition with the arch in the dining room and I copied the fireplace from one in Princelet St." he added, revealing the origin of his own involvement with 18 Folgate St, where today he is the sole resident. Before long, Jim was sharing a workshop with Marianna Kennedy and ceramicist Simon Pettet in Gibraltar Walk, sharing aspirations to create new work inspired by historical models by applying traditional craft skills. They found themselves amidst a community centred around the restoration of the eighteenth century houses, dubbed 'Neo-Georgians' by the media - a moment recorded today in the collection of magazines and photo features, illustrating the renaissance of Spitalfields, that Jim keeps in a box in his workshop.
Jim taught himself furniture making by copying a Hepplewhite chair - constructing four versions until he could get the proportion right - before he discovered that there was no market for them because dealers considered them too dangerously close to the originals as to approach fakes. Yet this irony, which was to hamper Jim's early career as a furniture maker, served as a lesson in the significance of proportion in engaging with historical designs.
When Jim won a commission to design an armoire for Julie Christie, he thought he had found the path to success. "She gave me tip of half the value of my commission fee and I thought 'This is as good as it gets', but she remains the best client I ever had." admits Jim, wistfully recognising the severely limited market for custom-built new furniture in antique styles. "I used to make these pieces and have no money left over to buy coffee afterwards," he declared with a shrug.
The renovation of Spitalfields gave Jim the opportunity to become one of those who has created the visual language of our streets, through his subtle approach to restoring the integrity of old shopfronts that have been damaged or altered. Perhaps the most famous are A.Gold and Verdes in Brushfields St, 1 & 3 Fournier St and 86 Commercial St. In these and numerous other examples, through conscientious research, Jim has been responsible for retaining the quality of vernacular detail and proportion that makes this Spitalfields, rather than any other place. The beauty of Jim's work is that these buildings now look as if they had always been like they are today.
Yet Jim is quick to emphasise that he is not an architect, explaining that his work requires both more detailed knowledge of traditional building techniques and less ego, resisting the urge to add personal embellishments. "The difference between me and architects, working on historic buildings is that I restrict myself to organising the space. I believe if a building has survived for two hundred years, it has survived because it has certain qualities. The reason, I don't put my finger in the pie is because I can express myself in other things."
While Jim spoke, he produced file after file of photographs, plans and maps, spreading them out upon the table in his workshop to create a huge collage, whilst maintaining an extraordinary monologue of interwoven stories about the people, the place and the buildings. I was fascinated by Jim's collection of maps, spanning the last five hundred years in Spitalfields and I realised that he carries in his mind a concrete picture of how the place has evolved. When I have seen him walking around, he is walking in awareness of all the incarnations of this small parish, the buildings that have come and gone through past centuries.
It fired my imagination when Jim took me into the cellar of 15 Fournier St and pointed out the path across the yard belonging to the sixteenth century building that stood there before the eighteenth century house was built, telling me about the pieces of charred wood they found, because this was where debris was dumped after the Fire of London in 1666.
Simon Pettet portrayed Jim on one of his tiles as a fly on the wall, reflecting Jim's omnipresence in Spitalfields. "I think if my father had not taken us to the Congo, I should still be there in Salem, Ohio," confessed Jim with a weary smile, "because at heart I am a localist." Jim showed me the missing finger on his left hand, sliced off while cutting a mitre from left to right, a mark that today he regards as the proud badge of his carpenter's trade. In his work and through his modest personal presence, Jim has become an inextricable part of the identity of Spitalfields - after more than forty years, I hope we may now describe him as a local.
Jim at Jocasta Innes' house in Heneage St, 1990
Jim with Dennis Severs and Simon Pettet, pictured in a magazine feature of 1991
Jim modelling his calfskin apron, 1991
Jim pictured in the penurious weavers' garret at Dennis Severs' House that today is his bedroom
In the Victorian Parlour at Dennis Severs' House
Hoisting up the new cornice in Commercial St
You may also like to read about
Readers may recall that I visited Brunswick House in Vauxhall to interview Adrian Amos, the founder of London Architectural Salvage & Supply Company (LASSCO), earlier this year. It was my pleasure to return later in the summer to write a feature about his secret garret in the roof of this astonishing eighteenth-century Palladian mansion, marooned today amidst the forest of towers that have sprung up, for The World of Interiors with photographs by Rachel Ferriman.
Click here to read my feature about Brunswick House in The World of Interiors
Adrian Amos
You may also like to read
Click here to book for The Gentle Author's Tours
Years ago, I became enraptured by a hundred-year-old collection of four thousand lantern slides. They were once used for educational lectures by the London & Middlesex Archaeological Society at the Bishopsgate Institute in Spitalfields. When Stefan Dickers became archivist there, he discovered the slides in dusty old boxes - abandoned and forgotten since they became obselete. Yet over the last decade, it has become apparent that these slides, which were ignored for so long, are one of the greatest treasures in the collection.
When I was first offered the opportunity of publishing these lantern slides which have been unseen for generations, I was overwhelmed by the number of pictures and did not know where to start. The first to catch my fancy were the ancient signs and symbols, dating from an era before street numbering located addresses and lettered signs advertised trades to Londoners.
Before long, I grew spellbound by the slide collection because, alongside the famous landmarks and grand occasions of state, there were pictures of forgotten corners and of ordinary people going about their business. It was a delight to discover hundreds of images of things that people do not usually photograph and I was charmed to realise that the anonymous photographers of the London & Middlesex Archaeological Society were as interested in pubs as they were in churches.
The more I studied the glass slides, the more joy I found in these arcane pictures, since every one contained the rich potential of hidden stories, seducing the imagination to flights of fancy regarding the ever-interesting subject of Old London. Once I had published The Signs of Old London, I realised there were many other such sets to be found among the slides, as a result of the systematic recording of London which underscored the original project by the London & Middlesex Archaeological Society, a hundred years ago.
I do not chose not to clean them up or remove imperfections and dirt, or standardise the colour to black or a uniform sepia, either. Instead, I cherish the subtle variations of hues present in these slides and savour the beautiful colour contrasts between them, when laid side by side. There is a melancholic poetry in these shabby images, in which their damage and their imperfections speak of their history, and I have come to glory in the patina and murk.
In the Inns of Court
At Eltham Palace
At Euston Station
The Anchor at Bankside
Crocodiles at the Natural History Museum
Reading Room at the British Museum
Chelsea Pensioner
In Fleet St
In Fleet St
St John's Gate, Clerkenwell
Between the inner & outer dome of St Paul's
Along the Embankment
The Old Dick Whittington, Clothfair, Smithfield
Firemen take a tea break
Lightermen on the Thames
Flood in Water St, Tower of London
The White Tower, London's oldest building
Glass slides courtesy of Bishopsgate Institute
Take a look at these sets of the glass slides of Old London
I am delighted to publish these photos from A London Inheritance - written by a graduate of my blog course.
A few places are available for my course HOW TO WRITE A BLOG THAT PEOPLE WILL WANT TO READ on February 6th & 7th. Come to Spitalfields and spend a weekend with me in an eighteenth century weaver's house in Fournier St, enjoy delicious lunches from Leila's Cafe, eat cakes baked to historic recipes by Townhouse and learn how to write your own blog. Click here for details
My course is suitable for writers of all levels of experience - from complete beginners to those who have already created a blog and want to advance or refresh their approach. .
Dennis Gents Hair Stylist, note the razor blade sign
Ron's Gents Hairdressers, Three Colts Lane, Bethnal Green, is still there but has changed from 'Hairdresser' to 'Barber.'
His & Hers, 'Executive Mood' and 'Avant Garde Mood' hairstyles offered
June's Ladies Hair Stylist. STE was the code for Stepney Green, letters were replaced by numbers around 1966.
Dave & Syd Strong, Gent's Hairdresser
Gent's Hairdresser moving into Ladies' Hairdressing
Gent's Hair Stylist, Puma Court, Spitalfields, run by Kyriacos Cleovoulou from 1962 until 2005.
Apples, Hair Stylist
Peter, Individual Gents Hair Stylist
The Saloon, customers peering out from the left of the window
Gentlemen's Hairdressing Salon, Carter Lane, City of London
Mario's Men's Hairstylist
Hairdresser at 10 Laystall Street, Clerkenwell, with a plaque commemorating Giuseppe Mazzini as 'the apostle of modern democracy inspired young Italy with the ideal of independence, unity and regeneration of his country.'
The Pleasant Gent's Hairdresser is still going in Rosebery Avenue, Clerkenwell
Photographs copyright © A London Inheritance
Follow A LONDON INHERITANCE, A Private History of a Public City
You may also like to read about
.
This course will examine the essential questions which need to be addressed if you wish to write a blog that people will want to read.
"Like those writers in fourteenth century Florence who discovered the sonnet but did not quite know what to do with it, we are presented with the new literary medium of the blog - which has quickly become omnipresent, with many millions writing online. For my own part, I respect this nascent literary form by seeking to explore its own unique qualities and potential." - The Gentle Author
.COURSE STRUCTURE
1. How to find a voice - When you write, who are you writing to and what is your relationship with the reader?
2. How to find a subject - Why is it necessary to write and what do you have to tell?
3. How to find the form - What is the ideal manifestation of your material and how can a good structure give you momentum?
4. The relationship of pictures and words - Which comes first, the pictures or the words? Creating a dynamic relationship between your text and images.
5. How to write a pen portrait - Drawing on The Gentle Author's experience, different strategies in transforming a conversation into an effective written evocation of a personality.
6. What a blog can do - A consideration of how telling stories on the internet can affect the temporal world.
SALIENT DETAILS
The course will be held at 5 Fournier St, Spitalfields on 6-7th February, running from 10am-5pm on Saturday and 11am-5pm on Sunday.
Lunch will be catered by Richard Fuest and tea, coffee & cakes by the Townhouse are included within the course fee of £350.
Email spitalfieldslife@gmail.com to book a place on the course.
.
Click here to book for The Gentle Author's Tours
The poet Andy Stroman sent me these reminiscences of his childhood in Whitechapel in the nineteen-fifties
Andy Stroman aged four on the doorstep in Milward St
My brothers Paul, Howard and myself occupied one bedroom at 17 Milward St, Whitechapel, behind the London Hospital. We had three single beds and Paul was the furthest away from the door while Howard was in the middle. I was nearest to the door.
On Saturday, we would have a lie-in while Howard went to work at Burlington Cameras in Burlington Arcade up in the West End. Paul used to sleep with his head almost upside down so his nose was pointing in the air. I would wake up and lob a pillow at Paul shouting, 'Wake up coconut shy!' Paul's head was pointing just like a coconut at the fairground. By this time it was half past twelve in the afternoon. Then we would both get up and have our cereal and make our way to the municipal public baths on the Mile End Rd not far from Stepney Green Station.
I used to look forward to our once-a-week hot bath where I could have a sing-song and talk to Paul who was in the next cubicle. As you might have gathered we had no bath at home just a little sink in the scullery, and our only source of heating was one coal fire in the television room. The latter was our main source of evening entertainment and, if cowboy films were on and the cowboys shooting their guns off, the large mice would come out of their holes and frantically dance round the room. In that little telly room on a Friday night we used to each have our little tray of five or six monkey nuts in the shells.
There was my Mum, Auntie Rae, Paul and myself. My dad being a cab driver was out working and my oldest brother Howard out having fun up in the West End. An outside toilet in the backyard was a haven for peace, although I got frightened going out there at night so used to run out the back door and into the toilet and vice versa.
I kept getting repeated sickness, particularly in the chest, and you can guess how cold our house was in the wintertime. It used to be freezing in our bedroom and we had a bucket in the centre of the room to catch the drips that came from the ceiling.
Once, my Uncle Davey came to visit us when I was in bed. He entered with my Mum, looked concerned and said something in a quiet voice to my Mum. I heard a little bit of it. He said, 'His feet are sticking out towards the door and the angel will come along and pull him out towards Heaven. We need to move his bed so his feet don't point out like this.' All three beds in the room were rearranged so my feet were pointing inwards and my head was near the window so I could breathe fresh air.
I do remember my Baba (my grandmother Milka from Vilna in Lithuania) singing to me before sleep when I was nervous. Sadly, she died before I was two and my mother took the death very badly, as all of us did. Milka was a social worker for women of the street who came to see her with their problems.
I used to wake up in winter to see ice had formed on the window panes and in summer I heard the fights coming from the pub on the corner, the Oxford Arms. My favourite was hearing 'I'm a better man than you are, Paddy.' Bang! 'Oh no, you're not.' Bang! It was to there my Mum would send me as a boy with an empty bottle and some money to get a full bottle of Guinness. A man would lift me up in the air, and I would pass the money and the empty bottle to the barmaid, and in return be given a new bottle and then run home.
When I used to visit my grandmother's best friend Byla at 15 Milward St at the behest of my Mum, it felt even colder in there, though I loved to go and listen to her stories about Poland. How she washed clothes in the river for her grandparents and herself. There were many poor peasants in the village.
We used to sit in the scullery, the same type of scullery we all had. When Byla had finished talking she would slowly open a drawer and give me a Cadbury's bar of Dairy Milk chocolate. I still remember the sound of her Big Ben clock with its black face and yellow numbers and hands, loudly ticking on the mantelpiece.
Byla was so thin but so clever. She lived alone and walked with a stick. She spoke with a wobbly voice and both her eyes were bloodshot. Her house was the last house in Milward St to be demolished. The social worker came from the Jewish Hospital in Stepney Green to make her sign the papers so she ended up in care. She was put in a North London care home where I pleaded with the manager to return her to Whitechapel. Byla was not pleased with me and made me say 'sorry' to the manager, which I did, though I only saw her one more time because after six weeks she had died.
Mum and Dad, Howard, Paul and myself on holiday. I am the baby.
With Mrs Gerson at Alice Model Nursery, Stepney Green 1956. I am holding the flowers which I presented to the Queen Mother.
My elder brother Howard took this of me when he grew obsessed with photography and developing pictures at home
My Auntie Rae on the left and my Mum on the left
My dear Baba - May she rest in peace - Milka Cohen, one of the cleverest and kindest women I ever met. She was a social worker for women of the street who came to see her with their problems.
You may also like to read about
