Human Life – Spitalfields Life

Last week, when Gerry Cottle’s Circus passed through the East End, Spitalfields Life Contributing Photographer Colin O’Brien went along to watch them set up the big top on Hackney Downs and took these portraits of some leading performers. Gerry Cottle’s Circus is currently performing at Alexandra Palace and you have until Sunday 6th October to catch one of their famous shows.

Chelsea Buckley

Gareth Ellis, performing as Bippo the Clown

Olympia Enos-Knox

Ezra Tidman

Ellen Ramsay

Fikiri

Bori Hegyi

Charlie Jenkins

Lucy Fraser

Laci Hegyi

Laci & Adam Hegyi

Dallas

Yasmin Jonez

Gerry Cottle

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Gerry Cottle, Circus Showman

Anna Carter, Carters Steam Fair

Colin O’Brien at the Fair

Don Keen, machine engraving with a pantograph

In Clerkenwell – an area of London where the engraving trade has been established for centuries, where Hogarth, Blake, Caslon and Cruikshank once practised their art – you may still find engravers at work today. Derry Keen & Co are a busy company who supply engraved trophies and undertake almost any manner of graving upon metal.

Don Keen will greet you from behind the front desk at this family business, started by his father Derek Keen and still trading under his pet name of ‘Derry.’ The shop is lined with glass cases displaying every kind of glitzy trophy you could imagine – from traditional silver cups, to statues, crests, plaques and medals, to those futuristic crystal awards that high-flyers stick on their shelves. Pass behind the desk into the ramshackle workshop at the rear and you immediately realise you are in a nineteenth century building. This is industry on a domestic scale, and the arrangement and contents of this cosy crowded space have evolved over the last thirty years to reach the optimal efficiency and comfort of working.

“Originally, my father started the business as ‘Rose & Keen’ in the fifties, they used to make copper trays and candlesticks in our front room in Navarino Rd, Hackney. My dad’s partner, Peter Rose, was a gun engraver and one day he shot and killed himself accidentally with one of the guns he had just engraved,” admitted Don gravely, revealing an unexpected danger of the trade, “In 1954, they had a shop in Grays Inn Rd and dad’s speciality was ‘bright’ cutting on silver cutlery, he was probably the best in this country. He and his brother Michael had a workshop off St John St and they opened this shop in 1977, with a hand-engraving workshop, a machine-engraving workshop and a small display of trophies.”

At this point, Don indicated a sturdy machine at the centre of the workshop, explaining that this was his cherished Taylor Hobson Model K Mark II. “My career had been lined up elsewhere, but dad said, ‘Why don’t you come and work for us? We need someone to do machine engraving,” he revealed, positioning himself on a stool in front of the device, “I had played upon this machine in my school holidays, and I remember the first job I was let loose on, it was engraving the text of Paul Revere on these Liberty Bowls to celebrate the Bicentenary of the American Declaration of Independence in 1976. There were 1976 silver punch bowls of which I had to do the bulk and I did it very slowly and very carefully. I was eighteen years old.”

Then Don took the black round base of a silver cup and clamped it in place, before slotting a long panel etched with the alphabet into the top of the machine. With his right hand, he guided a pantograph over the etched letters while moving the engraving tool over the base with his left hand, cutting the letterforms into it. Then he removed the base and rubbed a ball of white wax over the words he had incised and they appeared, as if by magic, crisp and regular upon the dark surface.

“We have to be confidential about some of our customers and the work we do,” Don informed me, lowering his voice for dramatic effect, “Often, we know the recipients of awards, so we have to agree not to go out and place bets before they win. We do a lot of sport, we do Crufts and work for the Royal Family, we do Number 10 – regardless of who’s in power – and we do a lot of military and corporate trophies. We do all the Formula One trophies and we supplied them in a sixties style for the film ‘Rush.’” Behind this modest shopfront and unassuming showroom, I had unwittingly discovered a glamorous power house, where the rewards for many of life’s big achievements are minted.

Once I had grasped the essentials of machine engraving, Don led me into the shop next door which can only be reached through the workshop connecting the two premises. Here Don’s brother Michael and his partner Frida Wezel sat peacefully at desks, intent upon their meticulous work as hand engravers.

Michael looked up from the stack of old silver plates that he was engraving with a crest and launched into a monologue about evolving techniques and styles through recent centuries, “In the seventeenth century, if you make a slip, you leave it – whereas in the nineteenth century it has to be clear and regular, and then there is Mr Bateman’s ‘bright’-cutting in the eighteenth century, made to catch your eye.” And he passed me a fork decorated with a border of lozenges that glittered, serving both to illustrate his point and as an example of the work at which his father excelled. Yet on that day, Michael was working in the seventeenth century style, matching the quality of line in an existing motif with one of his own that possessed a subtle irregularity, almost like a pen script.

Across the room, Frida looked up from the silver goblet she was engraving with initials. “It takes ten years to learn,” she assured me, “four years to learn how to do it and another four years to learn to do it well.”

“Four to eight years,” interposed Michael, correcting her.

“Ten years to get your lines straight,” proposed Frida, growing excited and gesturing with her graver, “to get the steadiness of hand and get all your letters.”

“At college, I learnt how to hold a graver but here I learnt how to do engraving,” Michael asserted to me, “I learnt by doing it and by working alongside my dad.”

“Lettering is the most challenging part of engraving,” Don announced, halting the dialogue and bringing everyone to accord, “It is not just a question of engraving the letters but of getting the spacing even. We do a Classic Roman and a Classic Script. Lettering is what we specialise in.”

This drew nods of approval from both engravers, as they nodded sagely, returning to the absorbed silence that is their customary mode.

“We’re all going to retire in ten or fifteen years but there’s nobody coming into the trade to run the business in future,” Don confided to me, crossing his arms fatalistically as he watched the engravers at work, “We’ve tried – we’ve had three apprentices and it takes years to teach them but as soon as they’ve learnt how to do hand engraving, they are off to do it from their own front room.”

“There’s always going to be hand engraving,” added Michael, reassuringly, in an unexpected burst of romanticism, “People are always going to want their names engraved inside their wedding rings.”

“We do engraving as it has been done for ever, since steel tools were made,” confirmed Don in agreement, “Hand engraving hasn’t changed, there’s still lot that a computer cannot do accurately.”

“In corners of Clerkenwell and Spitalfields, there are small workshops that keep these crafts going,” Frida informed me confidently and I could not doubt her – because here was the evidence before my eyes.

Frida Wezel & Michael Keen, Hand Engravers

Frida Wezel engraves initials upon a presentation goblet

Michael Keen engraves a new crest upon an old silver plate

“Ten years to get your lines straight, to get the steadiness of hand and get all your letters.”

“At college, I learnt how to hold a graver and here I learnt how to do engraving. I learnt by doing it and by working alongside my dad.”

Derry Keen & Co, 65 Compton St. EC1V 0BN

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At Baddeley Brothers

At Watson Bros

At James Ince & Sons

At Freed of London

At the Algha Works

“Edward Bawden taught me how important it is to sharpen your pencil properly!”

Alfred Daniels, the celebrated painter from Bow known as ‘the Lowry of the East End,’ is eighty-nine years old today and still painting with undiminished passion. I went over yesterday to take this birthday portrait and I found him in the throes of preparing his new exhibition that opens at the Russell Gallery next week, including all the paintings shown below.

“I saw a film of myself walking and I thought, ‘Who’s that bloody old man?’ Because I don’t feel old, even though I look like my grandfather – the one from Plotsk,” Alfred admitted with a weary grin, contemplating his venerable age. Alfred confided to me that he is astonished to be alive, having cheated death three times.

“My brother Sid & I were walking down the Whitechapel Rd trying to pick up girls. We only had a bit of bombing in Bow, it wasn’t intensive like in Whitechapel and Stepney,” Alfred remembered, “Sid wanted to take the underground from Stepney Green but I had a funny feeling about it, so we walked home instead and I learnt next day that Stepney Green station had been hit.”

“My father was an air raid warden and my mother was a nurse, so they told us both to sleep in the shelter while they went to work at night,” Albert told me, recounting his second brush with mortality, “And when next door got bombed, the blast blew the wardrobe on top of the bed in our room and would have killed us.”

“Then I got a mastoid at the base of my skull when I was in the RAF and it had to be removed, so I dropped out of my squadron,” revealed Alfred, “and they were all killed, except for my friend who was invalided out, and me.”

We sat in silent gratitude in Alfred’s first-floor kitchen, admiring the autumn leaves in the neighbouring gardens and considering Alfred’s near misses of so long ago, that had permitted him to survive to see this annual spectacle on the eve of his eighty-ninth birthday.

And, taking this moment to look back over such a prolific career, he recalled how it all started.

“I began my career at the age of fourteen and a half, in 1939, by working in Commercial Art Studios. One in Chancery Lane, then at Clement Dane Studio and finally at my Uncle Charles’ studio in Fetter Lane which got bombed in the big raid on the city in December 1940.

The value of working in a studio was that nobody taught you anything, so you taught yourself by observing how the other artists worked and tried it for yourself. You were told what to do but not how to do it. Working in a studio was a unique experience for a fifteen-year-old: the atmosphere, the bright light, the smells of paint and cow gum – and learning the use of soft and hard brushes, coloured inks, poster paint, pencils and crayons, ruling pens, set squares and T squares, Bristol board and fashion card. Quite different from my Grammar School, which my Uncle had persuaded my parents to let me leave.

At the Clement Dane Studio in the Strand, I had to file the work of the illustrators and poster designers they represented, and I was greatly impressed by the way they told stories. Alas, they closed after Dunkirk and I went to work for my Uncle Charles in Fetter Lane, on the top floor of the Vogue magazine photographic studio. I was his only assistant and I did lettering, layouts, paste-ups and various illustrations both comic and serious, and when photographic retouching was needed I did that too, all for one pound a week.

It helped me to draw better and so I went to Life Classes at Woolwich Polytechnic Art Department at weekends, since all the London Art Schools were closed at night because of the intense bombing. The Head of the Department, Mr Buckley, was so impressed by my efforts he suggested I apply for a Scholarship to Art School and I was given one at ten shillings a week which upset my mother because it was less than the pound I was earning from Uncle Charles.

During the war, I served as a wireless operator and gunner in the RAF and in 1947, after I was demobbed, I went to the Royal College of Art where I received a first class degree and stayed on for a year to study mural design. The college was crowded with demob students like myself and I indulged in inactivity in the Student Common Room and was elected Social Secretary. I looked after the theatre group, the film society and the weekly dances. For my efforts, I was rewarded fifty pounds which I spent on a student visit to Italy and what I saw there made me want to become a mural painter.

Over the years, I have carried out many public commissions including paintings, murals for Hammersmith Town Hall, calendars for Oxford University Press and posters for the General Post Office. But my future career grew from what I learnt working in those Commercial Art Studios. To do things on your own initiative, to stick to your objective, and to work to a deadline and deliver to the client on time.”

Billingsgate Market

Gramophone man on Brick Lane

London Coal Exchange with St Mary-at-Hill and St Margaret Pattens

The Yellow Cello in the Portobello Rd

Vanishing London

Religious Revivalists

St Paul’s from Bankside

Southwark Cathedral and London Bridge

Tower of London

Boat Race at Hammersmith Bridge

Old Shepherd’s Bush Station

On Hastings’ Beach

Alfred’s cat, Flinty, who died on July 2nd

Flinty’s successor, Pushkin, who arrived on July 4th

In Alfred’s studio

Happy Birthday Alfred Daniels!

Read my other stories about Alfred Daniels

Alfred Daniels, Artist

A Return Visit to Alfred Daniels

John Dolan and his thoughtful dog, George, have become an East End landmark in recent years, sitting patiently day after day in the same spot opposite the petrol station on Shoreditch High St while the world and the traffic passed by. Yet, all this time, John was watching and, after a year of looking at the same view each day, he picked up a pen and began to draw what he saw before him. Soon after, John’s drawings were published in a local magazine and it proved to be a life-changing moment.

“That’s when I knew in life what I should do,” he assured me, standing in the Howard Griffin gallery where he has his first exhibition. It is just across the road from the spot where John used to sit and has been a sell-out success, leaving him inundated with commissions and a book deal. Yet George takes it all in his stride even if John is rather startled by the attention, gratefully embracing this opportunity to forge a new identity for himself as a artist. ‘None of this could have happened without the support of Roa, the street artist,” John admitted to me, in relief at the current twist of fate, “It’s got me away from breaking into shops to steal money.”

When you meet John, you are aware of a restless man with a strong internal life and he looks at you warily, his eyes constantly darting and moving, as if he might leave or take flight at any moment. But although John may have only one foot on the ground, George plants himself down and surveys the world peacefully – as the natural counterpoint to his master’s nature.

“I’m from King’s Sq, Goswell Rd, and I could walk from my door to St Paul’s in five minutes when I was a kid,” John revealed, speaking with affection for this neighbourhood in which he has spent his life, “From my window I could see the three towers of the Barbican and the dome of St Paul’s. At fourteen, I climbed up the to the top of St James Clerkenwell when it was covered in scaffolding.” John’s minutely detailed urban drawings are equally the result of an observant sensibility and an intimate knowledge of the streets and street life of Shoreditch.

A few years ago, a series of misadventures and spells in Pentonville Prison led to a low point when John found himself bereft. “I was spending my days in day centres and only mixing with homeless people and I couldn’t relate to my family at that time,” he confessed, “but having this exhibition has been a way of getting back to them – when they came on the opening night, they were very impressed. It’s been called ‘a successful debut show’ and you can’t get much better than that.”

The exhibition has been the unexpected outcome of a series of events that coalesced to permit John to regain control of his life. “I got rehoused in a flat in Arnold Circus after I had been living in temporary accommodation on Royal Mint St and before that I was homeless,” he explained, “In the recent benefits shake-up, I had my benefit cut to £36 a week and, each time I appealed, they cut it down more until I had nothing. I’ve got arthritis in my legs and I can’t walk very far, so I came down here to Shoreditch High St and started begging to get some money. But I’m no good at it, so I put a cup in front of George like he was begging and people gave him money. Then I got bored and I started drawing the two buildings on the opposite site of the road.”

John outlined to me how he acquired George, the dog that gave him a new focus. “When I was living in Tower Hill, I used to let homeless people come and live with me and there was this couple – and one of them, Sue, she was offered the chance to buy George for the price of a can of lager by a Scottish fellow, so she gave him £2o.” John recalled, speaking in almost a whisper, underscored by an emotional intensity, “He was a pretty violent guy who would go round robbing homeless people.”

“George is my first dog in a very long time, I had a dog from the age of ten until I was twenty-three – Butch. He was named after a dog that my grandfather had that was legendary. It was so painful when Butch died, I said I would never have another – but George was such a lovely dog and needed a home. When the Scottish fellow came back and told people he was going to take the dog off me and expecting money every time he saw me, I had to have serious words with him.”

John gave me a significant look that indicated he and George are never to be separated now. “I went to Old St Central Foundation School and the only thing I was good at was Art,” he informed me proudly, puffing on his cigarette in excitement, “The teacher said I was so bad at Geography it was a wonder I could find my way home.”

Howard Griffin Gallery, 189-190 Shoreditch High St, E1 6HU

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An Afternoon With Roa

Ben Eine, Street Artist

Yesterday, I took a trip down to Rochester to deliver an advance copy of my London Album to illustrator Joe McLaren in person, as a gesture of thanks for drawing the pair of dogs that are the symbol of Spitalfields Life Books.

Joe McLaren at Rochester Castle

“When I realised I was an illustrator and not an artist, it was such a relief because I didn’t have to philosophise any more,” admitted Joe McLaren with a self-effacing smile,“now I do what people pay me to do to earn the butter for my bread.” Yet, in spite of his modest demeanour, Joe’s distinctive graphic illustrations are to be found on book covers in every bookshop in the land.

Joe and I were standing on top of Rochester Castle with panoramic views across the Medway and he explained that this part of the country has strong family connections for him. “My grandfather, Bernard Long, joined the Merchant Navy in Chatham at fourteen in 1925 and retired at sixteen to join the Royal Navy. By the end of World War II, he was Captain of a minesweeper and then he retired to Leyton where he became a police detective,” Joe revealed, “My mother remembers visiting them in their small house in Vicarage Rd.”

After graduating from Brighton College of Art and a spell in London, Joe and his girlfriend moved to a remote house in Lower Higham, upon the dramatic landscape of the Kent Marshes, where she had family and he found himself caring for the abandoned church of St Mary’s which Dickens featured in ‘Great Expectations.’ “I used to ring the bells once a year on New Year’s Eve,” Joe informed me fondly, “and we turned it into a cinema and showed David Lean’s film there. ‘Great Expectations’ was my first Dickens novel and I loved it, even though I had to read it at school.” Subsequently, Joe featured the church of St Mary’s in his cover design for a new edition of the novel.

While in London, David worked in the basement of Smythson in Bond St, applying the gold letters to monogrammed leather cases. “In 2008, I saved up enough money to live for three months and left to become a freelance illustrator,” he recalled, “If I ran out of money, I would have gone back to my old job but, after a couple of weeks, David Pearson rang up to commission me and it went from there. We’ve been friends ever since.” Book designer David Pearson compares Joe McLaren’s work to that of Reynolds Stone, the celebrated wood engraver who supplied vignettes for the covers of early Penguin Books, and Joe has created motifs in a comparable vein for David’s contemporary reinventions of Penguin designs.

“I have been influenced by Edward Bawden and he was influenced by heraldry,” Joe confessed, “Everything I do is in a flat space, so it doesn’t matter where the light’s coming from, you are portraying the thing itself.” There is a certain unique clarity of line and an intensity of image which characterises Joe’s work, making it instantly recognisable, catching the eye and then holding its focus.

Yesterday, Joe was working on a scraperboard view of Rochester Castle when I interrupted him. Few use scraperboard anymore, it has become a degraded technique that is consigned to children’s kits in craft stores, yet Joe excels in exploiting its unique graphic potential. Invented a hundred years ago, it was an innovation for engravers when images could be reproduced for printing using photographic technology and there was no longer any need to engrave onto metal plates.

Standing there upon the outcrop over the Medway on that bright autumn day, the sunlight imparted a crisp edge to the buildings, highlighting the lively textures and contrasted forms of the diverse architecture in Rochester and giving everything the appearance of a Joe McLaren illustration. In this inspiring environment, with family history and literary association enriching a landscape full of visual drama, Joe has found his home.

Selected Poems of John Betjeman, commissioned by Miri Rosenbloom for Faber & Faber

Secret Lives of Buildings by Edward Hollis, commissioned by David Pearson for Portobello Books

We, The Drowned by Carsten Jensen, commissioned by Suzanne Dean for Vintage

Some Thoughts on the Common Toad by George Orwell, commissioned by David Pearson for Penguin

Why Look at Animals? by John Berger, commissioned by David Pearson for Penguin

Memory Place by Edward Hollis, commissioned by David Pearson for Portobello Books

The Once and Future King by T.H. White, commissioned by Clare Skeats for Voyager Classics

Silver by Andrew Motion, commissioned by Suzanne Dean for Vintage

The Christmas Books by Charles Dickens, commissioned by David Pearson for Whites Books

Great Expectations by Charles Dickens, commissioned by David Pearson for Whites Books

Logo for the Owl Bookshop, commissioned by David Pearson

Illustrations for Alice in Wonderland for Whites Books

Illustrations for Potty! a cookery book by Clarissa Dickson Wright, for Hodder & Stoughton

Symbol for Spitalfields Life Books, commissioned by David Pearson

Illustrations courtesy of Joe McLaren

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David Pearson, Designer

Here follow some snaps from my Rochester trip

Eastgate House in Rochester High St

Lodging House for Poor Travellers, founded 1579 in Rochester High St

Old wooden house in the Cathedral Close, Rochester

Charles Dickens’ writing cottage transplanted from his garden to a park in Rochester.

Old yard off Rochester High St

You may recall my stories following the progress of Crescent Trading, Spitalfields’ last cloth warehouse, and today it is my pleasure to introduce the tale of Philip Pittack who runs the business in partnership with Martin White – together constituting the most celebrated comedy double-act in London textiles.

“Even though my parents didn’t have a lot, they always made sure we were properly turned out”

There are very few who can say – as Philip Pittack can – that they are a third generation rag merchant. In fact, Philip’s grandfather Mendell was a weaver in Poland before he came to this country, which means the family involvement with textiles might go back even further through preceding generations.

Although the work of a rag merchant may seem arcane now, it was the praecursor of recycling. Today, with characteristic panache, Philip has found an ingenious way to embody the past and present of his profession. He has carved a cosy niche for himself – working with Martin White, a cloth merchant of equal pedigree, at Crescent Trading – selling high quality remnants, ends of runs and surplus fabric, to fashion students, young designers and film and theatre costumiers.

Few can match Philip encyclopaedic knowledge of cloth, its qualities and manufacture, yet he is generous with his inheritance – delighting in passing on his textile wisdom, acquired over generations, to young people starting in the industry.

“My grandfather Mendell came over from Poland more than a hundred years ago, before the First World War. ‘Ptack’ means ‘little bird’ in Polish but, when he arrived at the Port of London as an immigrant, it got written incorrectly down as Pittack, and that was what it became. He lived in Stamford Hill and had a warehouse at 102/104 Mare St. He went around the textile factories in the East End, collecting the waste which got shredded up and made back into cloth, but he was a lazy bugger who liked whisky and women. My grandmother, she was a tough nut, she worked at the Cally selling rags. It was a free-for-all, and she barged her way in and always made sure she got a good pitch.

My father David, he went to school in Mile End and went into the family business as a kid. He learnt the rag business with his brother Joe. They were tough guys brought up the hard way. When Mosley and his cronies came around, they were in the front row – you didn’t argue with them. They moved into buying surplus rolls of cloth as well as rags and opened a shop too. He did that until he died in February 1977, aged sixty-six. He smoked Churchman’s No 1 like a chimney. He was big fellow with hands like bunches of bananas but he wasted away to a twig.

I used to have a Saturday job, when I was ten years old, to get my pocket money, at a shop selling electrical goods and records, Bardens. I went out with the guys installing televisions and fridges. Eventually, they offered me a job at fourteen years old and were training me to be TV engineer. But, one day, my dad bought a large pile of remnants which took three days to sort and he said, ‘You’re not going to work tomorrow, you’re going to come and help me schlep!’ I lost my job at Bardens and that’s how I started as a rag merchant at fourteen and a half.

After three days of carrying sacks of rags, my father said to me, ‘This is what you are going to do, and you are also a rag sorter.” And that’s what I did, night and bloody day. And if I did anything wrong, my grandfather would come up and thump me on the head. You had either wools, cottons or rayons in those days. There were over a hundred grades of rags, both in quality and material, and I could tell you hundreds of names of different grades of rags but they wouldn’t mean anything to you.

Then eventually, when I was eighteen, my father said, ‘Here’s a hundred pounds, go out and buy rags, and if you don’t buy any and I don’t sell any, then you don’t earn anything.’ There were hundreds of clothing factories in the East End in those days and you had to go cold-calling to buy the textile waste. There used to be twenty other chaps doing the same thing, so it was very competitive. You climbed under the sewing tables and filled up sacks, then weighed them on a hand-held butchers’ scale with a hook on one end. If they were looking, they got the correct weigh. But the art of the exercise was balancing the sack on your toe while you were weighing it and you could get several pounds off like that. My father taught me how to do it. You’d say, ‘Do you want the correct weight or the correct price?’ and if they said, ‘The correct price,’ then you cut down the weight. They’d have to have paid the dustman to take it away, if we didn’t, but they got greedy.

Over several years, I built up my own round and went round in the truck. But then, my uncle got caught stealing off my dad. By that time, we had a shop in Barnet, so my father turned round – he’d had enough of my uncle thieving – and he said, ‘Give him the shop.’ We had to give up that side of the business. After my father got sick, and I got married and became a parent, he took a back seat. It was very hard work, packing up three or four tons of rags into sacks. Each sack weighed between fifty and one hundred and fifty pounds, and I used to carry them on my back. I can’t believe I used to do it now!

We carried with the business until I walked away. I’d had enough of my brother, I found he was doing things behind my back with the money. I signed away all the merchandise and suppliers to him in June 1978. I had nothing, they cut off my gas and electricity, and I had my kids at private school. I borrowed five hundred pounds from my sister-in-law to do a little deal. It was the first deal I did on my own. I bought all this cloth for a gentleman who operated twenty-four hours a day out of Great Titchfield St, but when I got there I discovered he already had a warehouse full of the same stuff and I was stuck with a rented van containing five hundred pounds worth of it.

I was almost crying as I was sitting in the truck, waiting for the light to change, until this guy who I knew through business walked up and said, ‘Why don’t you sell it to me?’ I opened up the truck to show him and he said, ‘We’ll buy that.’ But he had a reputation for not paying, so I said, ‘I’ve got to have the money now. As long as you can give me the five hundred pounds, I can come have the rest tomorrow.’ I went and paid back my sister-in-law, and the next day I came back and he gave me the rest. It all came out in the wash! I made four hundred pounds on the deal, and I was jumping up and down on the pavement. Then I went off, and paid the gas and electricity bills and everything else.

I built up my own round with my own people and, eventually, I went to Prouts and bought my own truck. I knew which one I wanted and ex-wife loaned me the money. I went out and filled it up with diesel and it was only me – I’d arrived as a rag merchant.”

At a family wedding, 1946. Philip is three years old. On the left is Barnet Smulevich, Philip’s grandfather. Mendell Pittack, Philip’s other grandfather stands on the right. Philip’a parents, Tilley & David stand behind him and his elder brother Stanley and their cousin, Rosalind Ferguson.

Philip holds his mother’s hand at Cailley St Clapton, shortly after the war, surrounded by other family members.

Riding Muffin the Mule on the beach at Cliftonville, aged six in 1949

Philip with his parents, David and Tilley

Aged fourteen

Bar mitvah, 1956

David Pittack sorting rags at his warehouse in Mare St in the sixties

Skylarking after hours at the Copper Grill in Wigmore St in the sixties

Philip on bongos, enjoying high jinks with pals in Mallorca

In a silver mohair suit, at a Waste Trades Dinner at the Connaught Rooms in Great Queen St

Posing with a pal’s Mustang at Great Fosters country house hotel

passport photo, seventies

Best man at a wedding in the seventies

In the eighties

Martin White & Philip Pittack, Winter 2010

Crescent Trading, Quaker Court/Pindoria Mews, Quaker St, E1 6SN. Open Sunday-Friday.

You may like to read my earlier stories about Crescent Trading

The Return of Crescent Trading

Fire at Crescent Trading

Philip Pittack & Martin White, Cloth Merchants

All Change at Crescent Trading

Observe these two handsome portraits of Joginder Singh taken in Bethnal Green in January 1968 and note his contrasted demeanour and clothing. In one, he wears western garb and is accompanied by the accoutrements of the modern business man, a telephone and an umbrella, while in the other he wears traditional clothing and is accompanied by a bamboo screen, a plant and a decorative table with a book. These pictures speak eloquently of the different worlds that Joginder inhabited simultaneously, as a Sikh living in Princelet St.

Nearly thirty years after Joginder’s death, his son Suresh spoke to me recently about his father’s life. In spite of the poor living conditions that his family endured in Princelet St and the racism he suffered, Suresh recalls the experience of growing up there affectionately and the family photographs which accompany this interview confirm his fond memories of a happy childhood in a crowded house in Spitalfields.

“My dad came to this country in 1949 from Nangal Kalan Hashiarpur in the Punjab. He came to Princelet St in Spitalfields and we’ve lived there ever since. He couldn’t read or write. He was a shoe shine at Liverpool St Station for twenty-one years and then he became labourer until he dropped dead in 1986 at fifty-six. My dad was tall and strong and, when they lined them all up in the village, it was decided he should be the one to go to Britain. They all said to dad, ‘Come on, let’s go!’ and he was one of the first over. All the men came first, so mum didn’t came over until 1952. My dad came by plane but she came by boat from Bombay and it took six months. She couldn’t read or write either.

My dad was a Pacificist, so he didn’t want to go in the army like my uncles who were in the Bombay Engineers. He was of the old school, he was influenced by the Naxolites, Trotskyites who came in to the Punjab from Communist China, and my dad used to hide them in the field. He didn’t like the religion or the materialism of Sikhism.

He was a shoe maker. He knew how to kill a cow, strip the hide, dry it and make shoes. He was of the lowest caste, an untouchable – because the cow was a sacred creature. He came to Spitalfields with just a satchel with shoe polish in it. When dad got here, he wore a turban and couldn’t get a job. So he went to a friend in Glasgow who said, ‘I’ll tell you how to get a job.’ He took off my dad’s turban and shaved his head, and my dad came straight back to Spitalfields and got a job at once.

My dad was not selfish, he was good to everybody. He brought lots of people over, nephews and cousins, and he’d pick people up in the street and bring them home. The Environment Health tried to close our house down because we had fifty people living in it. The Council said, ‘We’ll close this place, it’s full of bedbugs and fleas and you piss in a bucket. How can you live like this? It’s a slum.’ I was born in Mile End Hospital and I had TB at the age of ten because of the number of people that lived in our house. It’s a four storey house and, eventually, he bought it for two grand and I still live there today.

A lot of my friends at school were in the National Front but they thought I was OK because I spoke Cockney. In 1972, the National Front sold their newspapers in Brick Lane and, in 1977, when punk happened I became the first Pakistani Punk, so I attracted a lot of racist attention. I played drums for Spiz Energy on their single ‘Where’s Captain Kirk?’ that made it to number sixty in the Rough Trade vinyl chart. I was so bullied at Daneford School, I got a lot of ‘Paki-bashing’ abuse. I wasn’t terribly macho, I was a quiet boy who was interested in architecture and I went on to study it at University College London. Then I became a NEET (Not in Education, Employment or Training) and now I am principal of a school in Southwark that teaches NEETs.

Eddie Stride, Rector of Christ Church was my best mate. I remember Mary Whitehouse, Cliff Richard, Malcolm Muggeridge and Lord Longford all popping in to the Rectory at 2 Fournier St. My elder sister Tejwant married Eddie Stride’s son Derek and she was disowned by my family for seven years.

Other Sikhs moved out to Ilford, East Ham and Southall, but my father wanted to stay here in Spitalfields, he didn’t want to go. They said to him, ‘How can you live among Muslims and Jews?’ and he said, ‘At least they don’t gossip!’ I don’t know why my dad stayed in Spitalfields. He lived next to the synagogue and the church – Spitalfields was multicultural and I think that’s what he loved.

We still go to the Punjab every year, dad bought so much land over there, he lived in a slum here so he could send every penny back to buy fields and farms in the Punjab.”

Joginder’s photographs of his trip home to the Punjab in 1972

Joginder’s brothers were in the Bombay Engineers

In Princelet St, 1972 - “Sometimes my father got the urge to dress up and be a Sikh”

Giano, Suresh and Tejwant, 1963

Joginder with nephews Gurmit and Narincer and family members, 1972

Suresh, Tejwant and friends, 1968

Suresh and his cousin Sarwan Singh, 1968

Tejwant, 1970

Giano and Bhakisa in the yard in Princelet St

Suresh and Naresh, 1968

Tejwant and Suresh, 1968

Suresh, 1972

Christ Church Youth Club football team with Naresh Singh, in the front on the right

Naresh Singh (in blue) on a Christ Church Youth Club summer trip, 1970

Christmas 1979, Bhakisa, Tejwant and Bilber

Chinnee Kaulder

Chinnee Kaulder & Joginder Singh, 1968

Bob Paice, in his livery as Warden of the Jewel House at the Tower of London

Bob Paice, in his suit as a Pearly Pride

On Friday, Bob Paice’s last day as Warden of the Jewel House at the Tower of London after seventeen years, Contributing Photographer Sarah Ainslie & I went down to witness Bob’s transformation as he swapped the livery of his former employment for the attire of his new identity as a Pearly Pride. Yet, although the metamorphosis was seemingly accomplished by the simple matter of a change of clothing, we discovered that this was actually the culmination of an evolutionary process which began years ago.

Overseeing Bob’s emergence as a Pearly were Larry & Doreen Golding. “We’re his mentoress and his mentor,” explained Doreen proudly, “We’re the Pearly King & Queen of Bow Bells and we’re Freemen of the City of London.” Larry & Doreen revealed that ,throughout his years at the Tower, Bob organised social events for the residents – discos, barbecues and Christmas parties – raising hundreds of thousands for St Joseph’s Hospice and so, when the Pearlies came to collect the cheques as patrons of the hospice, they recognised Bob’s potential.

“People ask us why do you dress up like this?” Doreen queried rhetorically, “The reason is, ‘We’re charity workers.’” Originating in the nineteenth century as a self-help organisation for deprived families of costermongers, these days the Pearlies devote themselves to fundraising for a wide range of charities.

“When Larry invited me to the Pearly Harvest Festival, I did the parade in my Jewel House Warden livery,” Bob recalled fondly, “After the service, we always have something to eat and drink at the pub, and I was having a cigarette outside when he said, ‘It’s about time you joined us.’ So I said, ‘Once I’ve finished this, I’ll be in,’ but he said, ‘No, I meant become a Pearly.’ That was about three years ago and then, at last year’s Pearly Parade, he said, ‘You’ve got no excuse because you’re retiring.’ I said, ‘Where do I get the buttons?’”

“People like the idea of dressing up as a Pearly , but you can be standing outside for hours in the cold and you can’t put on a coat, it’s not glamorous,” admitted Larry, speaking as the voice of experience at eighty-six years old, “You can’t clean the suit either and it can get quite sweaty and smelly in the summer. You have to sponge it down, dry it with a hair dryer and hang it out.”

“I bought this suit in Stratford for a hundred quid,” confessed Bob, “And it has four thousand, three hundred and fifty buttons. It took me six months to get this far and already it weighs eight pounds. I sewed them all on myself with a little bit of help.”

Yet, in spite of Bob’s eager anticipation of his new role, it was also a moment to look back. “I was born and bred in Stratford, and I’ve lived my whole life there,” he confided to me, “My first job at fifteen years old was at Clarnico Sweets in Waterden Rd. When you started you got free bags of sweets but then you got sick of them. I don’t have a sweet tooth. I remember my first pay packet, I got one pound and fifty pence a week. So I gave a pound to mum and had fifty pence spending money, but I always had to ask her for a sub on Wednesday to get me through ’til Friday. Then I worked for the Bass Brewery in Silvertown, I worked on the vat floor and I went out as a van boy until I was made redundant after sixteen years.

I applied for this job when I saw an advert in the evening paper. I remember the interview, there were five of them on one side of a long table and an empty chair on the other side with a glass of water, so I thought, ’That’s where I’m sitting.’ I got the job and, over the last seventeen years, it has become a way of life – so this is a day of mixed feelings for me.”

By now, it was time to photograph Bob wearing his Jewel House Warden’s livery for the last time and then in his Pearly outfit. I could not avoid noticing a certain melancholy in Bob’s visage as he posed in his former working outfit, an emotion that was dispelled once he donned his new suit bespangled with buttons. Within moments, tourists were requesting pictures with Bob, Doreen & Larry. “There’s no retiring when you’re a Pearly King,” Larry whispered to Bob with a grin, offering good humoured reassurance as they posed for another photograph, “you don’t retire, you just die!”

Friday was Bob’s last day as Warden at the Jewel House

Bob relaxes with his Pearly pals

Bob with Doreen Golding, Pearly Queen of Bow Bells

Cap of Larry Golding, Pearly KIng of Bow Bells

Bob with Larry & Doreen Golding, Pearly King & Queen of Bow Bells

Larry, Doreen & Bob giving the Cockney salute outside the Tower

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At the Pearly Kings & Queens Harvest Festival

Pearly Portraits

A Pearly Remembrance

Today it is my pleasure to publish the story of Martin White, one half of the charismatic partnership with Philip Pittack that is Crescent Trading, operators of Spitalfields’ last cloth warehouse.

Martin White, aged two in 1933

“That’s the difference between Philip & me,” explained Martin White, articulating the precise distinction between himself and his business partner Philip Pittack, “He’s a Rag Merchant, whereas I am a Textile Consultant. I understand textiles, I know about suitings and have been dealing in them since 1946. Our different specialities complement each other.”

Famous for his monocle and pearl tiepin, as well as his unrivalled knowledge, Martin White is one half of the duo known as Crescent Trading, possessing more than one hundred and twenty years of experience in the business between them. While their continuous comedy repartee has won them a reputation as the Mike & Bernie Winters of the textile trade.

In particular, Martin is known for his ability to make an offer on a parcel of textiles on sight. “Very few people know how to do it,” he admitted to me. “These days, Philip & I go on a buying trip twice a year, but in the past I used to go buying every day.” Martin’s story reveals how he acquired his remarkable knowledge of textiles, developing an expertise that permits him obtain the quality fabrics for which Crescent Trading is renowned.

“My father, William White, was a leather merchant but he also had some boot repair shops and, because he was a bit of mechanic, he rebuilt boot repairing machines. And that’s what he wanted me to go into. We lived in a very nice house in Shepherd’s Hill, Highgate, but unfortunately my father was diabetic who didn’t believe in conventional medicine. He was a herbalist and he became very ill in his forties and died at forty-six.

I started work at fourteen for my two uncles, Joe Barnet & Mark Bass (known as Johnny,) at their shop in Noel St off Berwick St in 1946. I was a little boy who didn’t know anything and in those days fabric was rationed and very hard to come by. Joe used to go up north and he had contacts in Manchester who used to get him stuff from the mills. It was a tiny shop and everything we got we sold immediately. They were making thousands every week and I was getting two pounds a week for carrying the fabric in and out. I used to like touching the fabric and that’s how I learnt about it.

While I was there, my father died and another of my uncles, David Bass, came to see my mother and he said he would take me to work for him and give me a wage, so she wouldn’t have to worry about me. But when the two uncles I was already working for heard this, Joe Barnet sent his wife Zelda to my mother to say that, if I worked for David, I would take all their customers from Noel St and it would ruin their business. So Joe Barnet told my mother he would look after me. He had just formed an association with a government supply business in Bethnal Green and he asked me to go down there and watch because he didn’t trust them, and that was my job.

So the first Friday came and he gave me five pounds, that was my wages. The following week, I found a parcel of cloth for sale in Brick Lane and I bought three thousand yards at a shilling a yard and I sold it for three shillings and sixpence a yard. The next Friday, Joe gave me fifteen pounds but I realised I had no chance of furthering myself with him, so I left and started working with another boy of my own age, Daniel Secunda. We were fifteen years old. We had no premises. We used to stand by the post at the corner of Berwick St, and people came to us with samples and goods to sell. We took the samples and sold them, and we made a good living between the two of us. We were young and we were carefree.All the money we earned, we spent it. We were happy. We went out every night. And that lasted for about three years, before the business got hard when rationing ended.

Then I met a guy who wanted to go into business properly with us, Pip Kingsley. He took premises in Berwick St and formed P. Kingsley & Co. After a while, it became apparent that while Danny was a very good-looking and likeable fellow, I was the worker out of the two of us. So Kingsley got rid of Danny and rehired an old job buyer who had retired, Myer King, and we started working together. He was an Eastern European, a very big man who couldn’t read or write. He had the knack of job buying ‘by the look.’ He’d go into a factory and make an offer for everything on the spot. This method of buying was different to anything I had ever seen but it worked. By working with him, I learnt what to do and what not do. And that knowledge was the basis of how I did business from then on.

I was happy working with Kingsley & Myer, but then I met my wife to be, Sheila, and I decided that I wanted my share of the money that my father had left in trust for my younger brother Adrian and me when we were twenty-one. I wanted to get married, and Sheila had been married before and she had a little boy. She was very beautiful. She’s eighty-five and she’s still beautiful.

My brother Adrian was known as Eddie and, at the age of eleven while my father was dying, he contracted sugar diabetes, so they were both in hospital. In the next bed to him was George Hackenschmidt, a boxer who had done body-building and my brother became interested in this. It was a very sad thing, my dad died when they were both in hospital and an uncle said to Eddie, ‘When you get out, I’ll buy you anything you want,’ to make him feel better. So Eddie said, ‘I want a set of weights.’

It was back in 1945, Eddie was twelve and he got one hundred pounds worth of weights and equipped a gym in our garage, and he started doing these workouts in the American magazines that George Hackenschmidt had given him. Eventually, he became Charles Atlas’ body. They would take the head of Charles Atlas and put it on a photo of my brother in the adverts for body-building.

When we broke my father’s trust fund, Eddie was twenty-one and we each received eight hundred pounds. My brother only lifted weights and sat in the sun, so I said to him, ‘What are you going to do with this? Give it to me and we’ll be partners, and I’ll do all the work and you can sit in the sun.’

Now, I wanted to get married to Sheila and her father was a textile merchant but her family didn’t like who I was. One of them was A. Kramer who happened to be Dave Bass’ solicitor and he phoned me up to warn me off her. So I told him what he could do, and Sheila and I got married in a registry office in 1955. Sheila’s little boy was four and her father, Lou Mason, didn’t want him to suffer, so he came to see me at my business and I showed him what I was buying.

Then he approached me one day and asked if I was interested in looking at a parcel of goods he had found in Wardour St at a lingerie company called Row G. So I went to see the parcel and made an offer of seven hundred pounds on sight. Lou said, ‘We don’t do business that way,’ and I said, ‘I’ll do it how I want to do it.’

The owner said, ‘No,’ but two weeks later I went back. He took the seven hundred pounds and it was all sold within two weeks for eighteen hundred pounds. My father-in-law said, ‘I’ve never seen anything like this. It’s wonderful, why don’t you come and work with me?’ I couldn’t say, ‘No,’ to my father-in-law. There was no option. I said to my brother, ‘We’ll have to part company and I’ll give you your money back.’ He never forgave me.

The very first deal that came along was Cooper & Keyward, they had a lot of rolls of suiting and it came to two thousand pounds. But when I asked my father-in-law for the money to buy it, he said, ‘I’m a bit short this week.’ I just about had the two thousand pounds so I laid out the money myself and took the goods, and my father-in-law was able to sell it to his customers. On Friday, I said to him, ‘I need forty pounds to take my wife out,’ and he said, ‘We don’t spend money that way!’ So I fell out with my father-in-law. It turned out, he didn’t have the money to pay me because his business was going bankrupt.

I went round to get my goods which were in the basement of a shop in Berwick St and my mother-in-law was in the shop. A cousin came out and said, ‘You’re going to kill her, can’t we meet at the weekend and sort this out?’ At the meeting, my father-in-law accused me of being a liar but my wife’s aunt, Joyce, knew him and said to me, ‘I believe you.’ I never was a liar. She said to me, ‘If I lend you a thousand pounds, can you make a living?’

In Berwick St, Johnny Bass was trying to sell his stock at the shop where I had started work. The Noel St shop was full of fabric and he’d offered it to several people but no-one could assess what was there. He wanted four thousand pounds yet, because of my knowledge, I was able to cut a deal for two thousand four hundred pounds. It was Friday night and he said, ‘Give me some money.’ He’d just come of out of the bookmakers and he was penniless. I had a hundred pounds on me, so I gave him that and I had to find the rest of the money.

I went to get it from Joyce but she was in hospital. So I visited her and she said, ‘My husband Bert will get the money for you,’ and on the Monday he came with me to pay Johnny. Joyce had a property in Mansell St and I filled it up with the fabric and started selling it every day from there. Joyce was coming over to collect money from me in her handbag. She was charging me one hundred pounds a week rent plus interest, so I realised she thought I was working for her now but it wasn’t a partnership in my eyes and I wouldn’t go along with it.

I told her I wanted premises in Great Portland St and I needed money for that. It was agreed and that’s what we did. It was called the Robert Martin Company – Sheila’s son was called Robert. I got Daniel Secunda back to work with me. It was 1956, I had my own shop at last. And that’s how I became a textile merchant.”

Aged two, 1933

Aged three, 1934

Aged five in 1936

At school in Highgate, 1936

At a family wedding in September 1939. On the left are William & Muriel White, Martin’s parents. Beside them is Joe Barnet, Martin’s first employer, and his wife Zelda.

Martin’s brother Adrian (known as Eddie) who became the body of Charles Atlas

Martin White & Danny Secunda, his first working partner in 1956

Martin White & Philip Pittack, Crescent Trading Winter 2010

Crescent Trading, Quaker Court/Pindoria Mews, Quaker St, E1 6SN. Open Sunday-Friday.

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Romilly Saumarez Smith & Lucie Gledhill

Sequestered in a cavernous old house in Stepney, two women work together to make jewellery under the name of Savage & Chong, combining their mothers’ maiden names to create a new identity for themselves. “We chose the names because they sound good together and it’s a bit of both of us.” revealed Lucie modestly, yet I discovered that the nature of their work reflects their different life histories in complex and unexpected ways.

“I used to make jewellery but I was no longer able to do it when I became paralysed,” confided Romilly with startling candour, “Yet, after a four or five year break, I was persuaded I should try to find someone I could work with closely and make jewellery again.”

We were sitting in an eighteenth century panelled room, painted in tones of red sandstone, as the Winter sunlight streamed in at a low angle and I realised I had entered a private world in which these two women pursued their activities with a quiet intensity, forged from a unique working relationship.

“We met two years ago,” continued Lucie helpfully, explaining how she began by remaking pieces of jewellery that Romilly had made as a way to advance their shared understanding.“What was exciting was that when Lucie made something and showed it to me, it felt like I had made it,” interposed Romilly, widening her eyes in wonder at this revelation. “We do things in the same way,” admitted Lucie simply, confirming the intimate rapport they discovered as jewellery makers and, consequently, as human beings.

“I still go through the process of making it in my head,” outlined Romilly, justifying her title as a jewellery maker,“Because I’ve done it myself, I understand a lot of techniques – but Lucie has refined my work and made it better.”

Lucie trained as a jewellery maker and graduated from the Royal College of Art in 2009, whereas, for Romilly, the journey was more circuitous. “I never trained as a jeweller, I spent most of my life as a bookbinder, so I didn’t have any formal idea of how things should be done, I made it up,” Romilly confessed to me, “I was bookbinder for twenty-five years, then I started using metal as bosses and clasps, and I really enjoyed it. I learnt to solder and made a pair of copper earrings, and I was so excited, I decided to take a sabbatical from bookbinding – but once I started making jewellery, I didn’t want to go back.”

“We’ve set ourselves rules,” announced Lucie, introducing the jewellery they have created as Savage & Chong, “everything we do is handmade and everything we do is made here. Everything is silver or gold and it is not plated or cast.”

There is a subtle undemonstrative beauty to this work, which plays upon varied tones of silver and gold enhanced by oxidising or heat-treatment – while the forms evoke both the natural world, of seedpods and shells, and the paraphernalia of textiles, threads, buttons and lace bobbins. Rather than jewellery for display, these are pieces designed to give enduring pleasure to the wearer, discreet keepsakes to cherish.

Neither Lucie or Romilly would have made this work alone, it is the outcome of their combined sensibilities, abilities, judgement and experience. “I felt a great determination not to give up my life which I loved, and I still do,” Romilly assured me. Yet, in winning back her art, she has boldly ventured into a new creative territory with Lucie and it gives their work a distinctive quality that is unique and compelling.

Woven Ring

Lucie Gledhill

Buttoned-up ring

Cluster pendant

Tattoo Ring

Romilly Saumarez Smith

James Parkinson delivers an alehouse sermon (Image courtesy of Wellcome Library)

Eighteenth century maps show Hoxton – like Tottenham Court – as a small village surrounded by fields. To the south, only a few houses stood between it and Moor Fields, while open fields lay north and west, and to the east beyond Shoreditch, all the way to Bethnal Green.

James Parkinson, the man who would describe the disease which was posthumously given his name, was born in this hamlet in 1755. He grew up in Hoxton and, like his father before him, worked there as a Surgeon and Apothecary. Subsequently, Parkinson was followed in the same calling by his son and grandson.

He practised as a General Practitioner from his family home on the south-west corner of Hoxton Sq, which survived until the early twentieth century. Its successor on the same corner bears a plaque commemorating the Square’s most famous inhabitant. Occupied by a busy restaurant today, 1 Hoxton Sq, the site of his surgery and the house where he and his wife Mary had their six children, is no longer recognisable.

Parkinson lived all his life in Hoxton but he was far from parochial. He trained at the London Hospital and became an early member of the Medical Society of London, then housed near Fleet St – an important forum which spanned disciplinary boundaries, with members drawn from the fields of surgery, physic and pharmacy. He was also an early member of the Humane Society, devoted to the resuscitation of people injured in accidents and drownings, and a founder member of the Geological Society.

In those days, a good doctor might be called far and wide. Parkinson’s professional catchment area had a wide radius, focused on Hoxton but perhaps extending as far west as Charterhouse, as far south as the City’s edge, and as far east as Whitechapel and the scattered farms and market gardens of Hackney and Mile End. His home patch probably included most of the neighbourhood of Shoreditch and Spitalfields, including the neighbourhood that would later become famous from Arthur Morrison’s novel as ‘The Jago’ – the great slum which once existed around New and Old Nichol Streets, now buried underneath the Boundary Estate.

Doctors see and learn a great deal about their patients’ predicaments as well as their illnesses. Like many in his profession, before and since, Parkinson was exercised by the politics of the day which favoured the rich and left the poor to suffer. Politically, he was a reformer and a member of the London Corresponding Society, an organisation which pressed for social improvement at a time when criticism of the government was a dangerous endeavour.

The British government was jittery for a generation after the French Revolution and their informers infiltrated every political meeting. Parkinson got caught up in the ‘Pop-Gun Plot’, a non-existent conspiracy to kill the King dreamed up by a spy to implicate a number of London Corresponding Society members. For a time, several of them were under threat of execution if convicted, but Parkinson gave evidence to the Privy Council and it became clear, during the legal process, that the spy had fabricated the story.

The inhabitants of streets like Shoreditch High St, Pitfield St, Elder St and Fournier St would have seen Parkinson’s familiar figure passing to and fro, visiting the sick in their homes. Historically, the area was clustered with City almshouses and madhouses, some of which Parkinson served. But of those people whose disease he described, and which bears his name, we know little other than they lived in the vicinity of his surgery at 1 Hoxton Sq.

Parkinson saw enormous changes in his lifetime. Before he died in 1824, he witnessed the disappearance of the fields surrounding Hoxton and the retreat of the open country northwards. Very little now survives of the Hoxton he knew. In present-day Old St, which has encroached upon the ancient road bearing the lovely name of St Agnes le Clare, it is difficult to visualise the rural nature of the area as it was then. But vestiges of his time do survive. One house still standing on the opposite side of Hoxton Sq was among those built when the square was laid out in the sixteen-eighties and the old parish pump still stands in St Leonard’s churchyard, while the eighteenth century girls’ school rebuilt in 1802 still boasts its presence on the facade of a building at the junction of Kingsland Rd and Old St.

Among the monuments in the lovely church of St Leonard’s Shoreditch, many commemorating those who were likely patients of Parkinson, is a modern stone commemorating his life. It was erected by nursing staff at the former St Leonard’s Hospital on the Kingsland Rd, which originated as the Shoreditch Workhouse where Parkinson once served as Parish Surgeon, Apothecary and Midwife. His tombstone in the churchyard has disappeared and the site of his grave is unknown, yet Parkinson was a Church Warden at St Leonard’s and he knew its stones well.

Hoxton of 1747 from John Roque’s Map

1 Hoxton Sq, today

1 Hoxton Sq, c. 1900 (courtesy of the Wellcome Library, London)

Parkinson’s memorial stone

St Leonard’s Shoreditch

Title page of James Parkinson’s ’Villager’s Friend & Physician’ 1804 (courtesy of the Wellcome Library)

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Irene Stride

Irene Stride and her husband, Rev Eddy Stride, expected to be missionaries in Africa – but fate intervened. “At that time, all the Christian missionaries were being thrown out of China by the Communists and they were going to Africa, so the Missionary Society told us to ‘Seek home ministry!’ and we ended up in Spitalfields instead,” Irene recalled fondly and without regret, when I visited her recently in her home on the Isle of Dogs.

“It was a very poor area and people said to us, ‘What are you doing taking children to a place like that?’ because it was grim, but my husband said he couldn’t live with himself if we didn’t take what was offered,” she admitted to me, “We felt there was a need in those days. We went there in 1970 and stayed until 1989, when we retired.”

In spite of their reservations, Irene and her family quickly found themselves at home in Spitalfields. “After a few weeks, my family really loved it there, because they found they could go cycling everywhere, around the City and up to the West End,” Irene told me, growing enthusiastic in recollection.“When we came, the Jewish people and the Cockneys were moving out and the Bengalis were moving in,” she added, “now the Bengalis are moving out and people from the West End are moving in.”

“The church was shut up and was dangerous inside, so we used the hall in Hanbury St for services and the crypt was a shelter for alcoholics,” Irene explained, outlining the challenges she and her husband faced, “Dennis Downham was there before us, he had cleared out the crypt and put in a dormitory and a day room. It was run by a warden and men came into the crypt if he thought they had a chance of getting off alcoholism and some did, and some didn’t. My boys used to play snooker with the men, but they got upset when they saw them next day lying passed out in the street. The men used to come and knock on the Rectory door if they thought I would give them something – a cup of tea or a sandwich – so we did get to know them quite well.”

Spitalfields became the location that defined her husband’s ministry and, even today, it is the place for which Irene holds the strongest connection. “When I was twenty-three, Eddy and I were planning to be missionaries in Algeria, because Eddy had been there for three years during the war and he felt that he should go back as a missionary,” she confided to me, “So I went to the Mount Herman Missionary Training College in Ealing while he studied Theology in Bristol. His sister was one of my best friends and I knew him before he went to Africa. Then, while he was an engineer in Algeria, his sister kept talking about him. When Eddy came home, we clicked and it went from there.”

“After college in Bristol, we went to Christ Church, West Croydon, from there we moved to West Thurrock, South Purfleet and to St Mary’s Dagenham, and we were there for eight and a half years. That was where Eddy got his instruction to go to Spitalfields and off we went. I’m very glad I went there and my two boys met wonderful wives there. It was a very interesting place with all these characters and some real gems. My son Derek thinks it is the centre of the world for him!”

“Afterwards, we retired to Lincolnshire where we had friends and the family came for weekends but, once Eddy went to be with the Lord, I thought I had better move to be with the family, so I came back to London. I came here to the Isle of Dogs and I’m very happy here. I’ve got Stephen round the corner and Derek in Spitalfields, he takes me to Rainham Marshes and we go birdwatching every Monday.”

Irene Stride outside the Rectory, 2 Fournier St, summer 1975

The Stride family in the Rectory garden

Eddy Stride outside Christ Church, Spitalfields

Collecting the children at the school gates, Christ Church School, Brick Lane

From the Christ Church Crypt brochure of 1972 – “Outside a man is faced with vast impersonal hostels, sleeping rough, or seeking the shelter of the crypt”

Sandys Row, 1972

Brick Lane, 1972

Davenant House, the ‘new’ Spitalfields, 1972

The crypt passageway

A corner of the crypt

The sleeping area

Relaxing in the crypt, the snooker table

The crypt – sitting area

The crypt – kitchen

The crypt – dining room

The crypt – staff room

A resident of the crypt

Irene’s Daily Mirror cutting tells the story of a family who took refuge in the crypt during World War II

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A View of Christ Church, Spitalfields

The Secrets of Christ Church, Spitalfields

Andy Rider, Rector of Christ Church, Spitalfields

Hosten Garraway, Verger of Christ Church Spitalfields

Polly Hope, long-term resident of Heneage St, died last week and I am republishing my profile of her today as a tribute to a spirited woman who will be fondly remembered in Spitalfields for years to come.

Polly Hope did not go out too much. And why should she, when she had her own dreamlike world to inhabit at the heart of Spitalfields? Stepping off Brick Lane, going through the tall gate, across the courtyard, past the hen house, through the studio, up the stairs and into the brewery – you would find Polly attended by the huge dogs and small cats, and a menagerie of other creatures that shared the complex of old buildings which had been her home for more than forty years.

Here, Polly had her sculpture workshop, her painting studio, her kiln, her print room, her library and her office. It went on and on. At every turn, there were myriad examples of Polly’s lifetime of boundless creativity – statues, paintings, quilts, ceramics and more. And, possessing extravagant flowing blonde hair and the statuesque physique of a dancer, Polly was a goddess to behold. One who knew who she was and what she thought, and one who did not suffer fools gladly.

So, while I was on my mettle when I visited Polly’s extraordinary dominion, equally I was intoxicated to be in the presence of one so wholly her own woman, capable of articulating all manner of surprising truths, and always speaking with unmediated candour from her rich experience of life.

“I don’t know where it comes from. My father was a general in the British Army with generations of soldiers behind him. There were no artists on the family, and I have never found any great grandmother’s tapestry or grandfather’s watercolours.

I went to Chelsea and the Slade, and hated it. They wanted to teach you how to express yourself, but I wanted to learn how to make things. So I went to live in a tiny village in Greece because it was cheap, and I supported myself and my family by writing novels under a pseudonym. That was where I discovered textiles because they still make quilts there, and I was looking for a way to make large works of art which I could transport in my car. So I used the quiltmaker to help with the sewing. Today there’s various wall hangings of mine in different places around the world.

My second husband, Theo Crosby, and I liked East London, and Mark Girouard – who was a friend – showed us this place and we bought it for tuppence ha-penny in the early seventies. At that point, the professional classes hadn’t realised Spitalfields was five minutes walk from the City, but we cottoned onto it. This was one of the little breweries put up in the eighteen forties to get the rookeries off gin and onto beer, and make a few pounds into the bargain. Brick Lane was not the area of play it is now, it was a working place then with drycleaners, ironmongers, chemists, all the usual High St shops – and I could buy everything I needed for my textiles.

I decided it was time to do some community work, so I got everyone involved. Even those who couldn’t sew for toffee apples counted sequins for me. I did all the design and oversaw the work. The plan was to make a series of tableaux to hang down either side of Christ Church but we only completed the first two – the Creation of the World and the Garden of Eden – and they hang in the crypt now. I’ve done a lot for churches, I was asked to design a reredos for St Augustine’s at Scaynes Hill, but when I saw it – it was a perfect Arts & Crafts church – I said, “What you need is a Byzantine mosaic,” and they said, ‘”Yes.” And it took six years – we offered to include people’s pets in the design in return for five hundred pounds donation and that paid for the materials.

I am jack of all trades, tapestry, embroidery, painting, ceramics, stained glass windows, illustration, graphics, pots, candlesticks and bronzes. My ambition is to be a small town artist, so if you need decorations for the street party, or an inn sign painted, or a wedding dress designed, I could do it. I can understand techniques easily. When I worked with craftsmen in Sri Lanka, or with Ikat weavers, I learnt not to go into the workshop and ask them to make what you want, instead you get them to show you their techniques and you find a way to work with that. Techniques that have been refined over hundreds of years fascinate me. I don’t see any line between craft and art, I think it’s a mistake that crept in during the nineteenth century – high art and low craft.

I’m a countrywoman and I grew up on a mountain in Wales where there were always animals around. Living here, I play Marie Antoinette with my pets which all have opera names. My step-daughter Dido even brought her geese once to stay for Christmas. I have a mixed bag of chickens which give me four or five eggs a day – one’s not pulling her weight at the moment but I don’t know which it is. When they grow old, they retire to my niece in Kent. She takes my geriatric ones. I used to have more lurchers but one died and went to the big dog in the sky, now I have a new poodle I got six months ago and a yorkie who always takes a siesta with the au pair, as well as two cats. And I always had parrots, but the last one died. I got the original one, Figaro, from the Club Row animal market. One day I found him dead at the bottom of his cage. I just like living with animals, always have done all my life. A house is not a home without creatures in it.”

Once we had emptied Polly’s teapot, we set out on a tour of the premises with a small procession of four legged creatures behind us. Polly showed me her merry-go-round horse from Jones Beach, and her hen house designed after the foundling Hospital in Florence, and her case of Staffordshire figures with some of her own slipped in among them, and the ceramic zodiac she made for Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre, complementing the building designed by her husband Theo Crosby. And then we came upon the portraits of Polly’s military ancestors in bearskins and plaid trousers, in images dating back into the nineteenth century, and then we opened the cupboard of postcards of her work, and then we pulled box files of photographs off the shelf to rummage.

We lost track of time as it grew dark outside, and I thought – if I created a private world as absorbing as Polly Hope’s, I do not think I would ever go out either.

Monty & Fred, deer hound brothers, 2009.

Oscar, golden retriever.

Portrait of Theo Crosby, with one of the Club Row parrots and a lurcher.

Portrait of Roy Strong and his cat.

Portrait of Laura Williams depicted as Ariel.

Wall hanging at St Augustine’s, Scaynes Hill, West Sussex.

The Marriage at Canaa.

The Feeding of the Five Thousand.

The Red Flower, applique and quilting.

Archaeological Dig, applique and quilting.

This is a sad week in Spitalfields as I must report to you the tragic death of Abdul Mukthadir – known as Muktha – who was hit by a train at Stepney Green Station. In recent years, Herb & Spice Curry Restaurant in White’s Row, where Muktha worked as a waiter, became a popular destination with people coming to be regaled by his famous storytelling abilities. He always waved to me as I passed and I shall not be able to walk down White’s Row without thinking of him there.

The charismatic Abdul Mukthadir – widely known as Muktha – was a born storyteller, blessed with a natural eloquence. As I quickly discovered when I sat down with him in the brief stillness of the afternoon, while the last diners emptied out of Herb & Spice Indian Restaurant in Whites Row. The businessmen were still finishing off their curry in the other half of the restaurant, whilst in a quiet corner Muktha produced a handful of old photographs and discreetly spread them out on the table to begin. Our only interruption was a request for the bill and once it had been settled, in the silence of the empty restaurant, Muktha’s story took flight.

“I came to Spitalfields in 1975 when I was ten years old. My father got married one day when he went back home to Bangladesh, it was an arranged marriage. At the time I was born, he was working in this country. He didn’t see me until two years later when he came back again and stayed for three months. I have another two sisters, and a brother born here.

My father missed his family, so once he got his British citizenship and he had the right to stay in this country, he made a declaration to bring us over and my mother had a big interview at the British consul in Dhaka. When we came we had nowhere to stay, my father shared a room with three others in Wentworth St. The other gentlemen moved into the sitting room and gave one room for us all to live there. After three weeks my father went to the GLC office in Whitechapel (where we used to go to pay the rent), and they gave us a one bedroom flat in the same street without a bathroom, and a loo in the passageway shared by two households, for £1.50 a week. My father earned £55 as a presser in the tailoring industry, and supporting a family on it was really difficult. On Saturday, he gave us each 10p and we used to go to the Goulston St Public Baths. They gave you a towel, a bar of soap and a bottle of moisturiser, and you could change the bath water was often as you liked. Six hundred people used to line up. It was very embarrassing for the Asian ladies, so one day my mother called all the ladies in the building into our flat. She said, “We can buy a tin tub so we can bath ourselves at home.” Everyone contributed, and they bought a long tin bath and took it in turns. But there was no hot water, so they worked out a rota, eight ladies put their kettles on at the same time. They put the bath up on the flat roof, and sent the smallest boys round to collect all the kettles and fill the bath. Only the women could do this.

We were not allowed to play outside alone, because of the racist movement. The skinheads used to prowl around the area. We could not go out to play football in the Goulston St playground until after the English boys had gone home, but even then we had to watch out for their return – because anyone might come and snatch our ball or beat us up. One day, my mum came out swearing at them in Bengali, “Leave my boy alone! Let them play!” We had that sort of problem every week, and for us that was the only playground we had. Although we were not allowed out after dark, we used to go to Evening Classes in Bengali on Saturday and Arabic on Sunday. At that time, there was a man who went round with a sack and if he found anyone, he would capture them and ask for a ransom. There were one or two incidents. One day he pounced upon our neighbour’s daughter as she was coming from Arabic. He caught her and tried to put her in the sack and carry her away. She was screaming and we were all at home, everyone came outside and I saw. We saw this three or four times. Between the English kids and the man following us to rape or take us, fourteen was very tough. My people were scared in those days. At that time you couldn’t even go out, it wasn’t safe.

We had to move because they were expanding the Petticoat Lane Market, it was really famous then. So the GLC offered my dad a flat in Limehouse but my father thought it wasn’t safe because there were no other Bangladeshis. Then he refused Mile End, even worse for a Bangladeshi family. Finally, he was offered a flat in Christian St off Commercial Rd. It had four bedrooms and a bathroom, and he fell in love with it. This was in 1979, after the six of us had lived in a one bedroom flat for four years. He was over the moon. I can remember the day we moved. He moved all the furniture in an estate car in five or six trips.

That was how we lived in England in those days. It was tough but it was fun and everyone was more sincere, people spoke to each other. No-one worked on Saturday and everyone used to invite each other round, saying “Come to my home next Saturday, my wife will cook!”

I have hundreds of stories because this is my playground. I belong here, I have so many memories, where I played and where I practised football. If I see a mess in this street, I clear it up because it matters to me. I am a poor man, if I was a millionaire I would do something here - but I am just a waiter, working to pay my mortgage.”

The first of Muktha’s family came to Britain in the nineteen-forties to work in the Yorkshire cotton mills and he married an English woman, a sailor lured by tales of Tower Bridge, the miraculous bridge that rose up to let the ships pass through. And when he returned to East Pakistan, crowds followed him shouting, “He comes from England. Wow!” They nicknamed him “Ekush Pound” because he earned £21 a week as a foreman at a cotton mill in Keighley, and at the request of the mill owner he sponsored eight men to return with him. Thus Muktha’s father and uncle came to Britain, setting in train the sequence of events that led to Muktha working in Herb & Spice Indian Restaurant in Spitalfields serving curry to City businessmen.

A waiter from the age of fifteen, Muktha was distinguished by a brightness of spirit that made him a popular figure among his regular customers, who all hoped that he might join their table at the end of service and enchant them with his open-hearted stories. He became enraptured to speak of Spitalfields, because the emotional intensity of his childhood experiences bound him to this place forever, it was his spiritual home.

Muktha with his beloved teacher Miss Dixon, “She was like a mother to me.”

Muktha (centre) with his class at the Canon Barnett School in Commercial Road, 1976.

Muktha at the Goulston St playground, with his friend Sukure who became a pop singer and is currently one of the judges of the Bangladeshi X Factor.

Muktha recalls that the winter of 1979 brought thirteen weeks of snow. (He stands to the left of the tree.)

Three friends sitting in the rose garden in Christian St – from left Akthar, Hussein and Mukthar.

On a day trip to France from the Montifiore School, Vallance Rd in 1980. (Mukthar is in the pale jacket)

Abdul Mukthadir in Goulston St outside the flat where he grew up

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A Walk With Abdul Mukthadir

Today, Martin Usborne launches Hoxton Minipress to publish collectable art books about East London and it is my pleasure to preview his first volume – the ultimate edition of his collaboration with Joseph Markovitch entitled I’ve Lived In East London For Eighty-Six & A Half Years.

Words by Joseph Markovitch & Photographs by Martin Usborne

“This is where I was born, right by Old St roundabout on January 1st, 1927. In those days it wasn’t called a hospital, it was just called a door number, number four or maybe number three. The place where I was born, it was a charity you see. Things were a bit different back then.”

“In the old days, when a man went to see the opera he had on a bowler hat. If you were a man and you walked in the street without a hat on your head you were a lost soul. People don’t wear hats any more … but they wear everything else, don’t they?”

“I worked two years as a cabinet maker in Hemsworth St, just off Hoxton Market. But when my sinuses got bad I went to Hackney Rd, putting rivets on luggage cases. For about twenty years I did that job. My foreman was a bastard. I got paid a pittance. The job was alright apart from that. If I was clever, very clever, I mean very very clever, then I would like to have been an accountant. It’s a very good job. If I was less heavy, you know what I’d like to be? My dream job, I’d like to be a ballet dancer. That would be my dream.”

“A lot of young kids do graffiti around Hoxton. It’s nice. It adds a bit of colour, don’t you think?”

“When I was a kid everyone was a Cockney. Now it’s a real mix. I think it’s a good thing, makes it more interesting. Did you know that I stand still when I get trouble with my chest? Last Saturday, a woman come up to me and said “Are you OK?” and I said, “Why?” She said, “Because you are standing still.” I said, “Oh.” She said she comes from Italy and she is Scots-Canadian, and do you know what? She wanted to help me. Then I dropped a twenty pound note on the bus. A foreign man – I think he was Dutch or French – said, “Mate, you’ve dropped a twenty pound note.” English people don’t do that because they have got betting habits.”

“My mother was a good cook. She made bread pudding. It was the best bread pudding you could have. She was called Janie and I lived with her until she died. I wasn’t going to let her into a home. Your mother should be your best friend. Our best memories were going on a Sunday to Hampstead Heath Fair”

“I like to go to the library on Monday, Tuesday and … Well, I can’t always promise what days I go. I like to read about all the places in the world. I also go to the section on the cinema and I read a book called “The life of the stars.” But I only spend thirty per cent of my time reading. The rest of the time, I like to sit on the sofa and sit quite a long way back so I am almost flat. Did you know that Paul Newman’s father was German-Jewish and that his mother was Hungarian-Catholic? You know Nicholas Cage? He is half-German and half-Italian. What about Joe Pesce? Where are his parents from? I should look it up.”

“I’ve never had a girlfriend. It’s better that way. I have always had very bad catarrh, so it wasn’t possible. And I had to care for my mother. Anyway, if I was married, I might be dead by now. I probably would be, if you think about it. I would have been domineered all my life by a girl and that ain’t good for nobody’s health. I’m too old for that now. I would like to have had a girlfriend but it’s OK. You know what? I’ve had a happy life. That’s the main thing, it’s been a good life.”

“If I try to imagine the future. It’s like watching a film. Pavements will move, nurses will be robots and cars will grow wings…

…you’ve just got to wait. There won’t be any cinemas, just computers in people’s homes. They will make photographs that talk. You will look at a picture of me and you will hear, “Hello, I’m Joseph Markovitch.” and then it will be me telling you about things. Imagine that!”

“I’ve seen the horse and cart, I’ve seen the camera invented, I’ve seen the projector. I never starved.”

“Lots of things make me laugh. Fruit makes me laugh. To see a dog talking makes me laugh. I like to see monkeys throwing coconuts on men’s heads, that’s funny. When you see a man going on to a desert island and he is stranded the monkeys are always friendly. You think the monkey is throwing things at your head but really he is throwing the coconuts for you to eat.”

Click here to get your copy of I’VE LIVED IN EAST LONDON FOR EIGHTY-SIX & A HALF YEARS direct from Hoxton Minipress

“When the cat can’t decide whether to go out, I say ‘Make up your Smithfield mind!’”

At ninety-three years old, Joan Brown is not given to protest. In fifty-seven years working as a Secretary at Smithfield Market, she mastered the art of operating through diplomacy and accommodation. Yet earlier this year, Joan was driven to write a letter of objection to the City of London Corporation when she learned of the proposed demolition of the General Market. “The bustle and excitement of Smithfield became part of my life until I finally retired at the age of seventy-four,” she wrote, “You will appreciate my feelings at the thought of even part of those lovely buildings being destroyed.”

The General Market of 1868, where Joan first began her career in West Smithfield, contains one of Europe’s grandest market parades beneath a vast glass dome, designed by Sir Horace Jones who was also responsible for Tower Bridge. Although proposals exist to refurbish the historic building and reopen it as a retail market, revitalising this part of London, the City Corporation has granted planning permission for the structure to be replaced by three tower blocks, retaining only the facade of the original edifice.

On 11th February next year, a David & Goliath battle commences at the Guildhall when SAVE Britain’s Heritage and The Victorian Society face the Corporation of the City of London, Henderson Global Investments and the Greater London Authority. Although, regrettably, Joan will not be attending due to her advanced years, the Enquiry is open to the Public and she hopes some readers might like to go along on her behalf.

Last week, I visited Joan in her tiny bucolic cottage situated among overgrown gardens in a quiet cul-de-sac in Peckham. Of sprightly demeanour and impeccable manners, Joan has good claim to be the first woman to work in Smithfield Market. Yet, even though she was conscientious not to absorb the colourful vocabulary for which which the Market is famous,“When the cat can’t decide whether to go out, I say ‘Make up your Smithfield mind!’” she confessed to me.

“I went to work at Smithfield Market in 1937 when I was seventeen years old. I was studying at a school for commercial typists and, at that time, there was a recession so it was hard to find work, but my shorthand teacher was asked by a neighbour who worked at Smithfield if he knew of anyone reliable – so I was offered the job.

My mum was horrified – all those men and that bad language! But my dad said, ‘We’ll sort this out,’ and he went to take a look and discovered the office was in West Smithfield, not in the Market itself. So I took the job. It was a family business and I worked for John Jenkins, the son, as his Private Secretary. We were agents for Argentine Frigorifico and we had a stall in the market selling Argentine Chilled Beef, it was not ‘refrigerated’ but ‘chilled.’

It was very well organised, a number of Argentine famers formed a group and a ship of their meat arrived in the London Docks once a week. It opened up on a Monday and so much beef – only beef – was brought over to the market in time for the five o’clock opening. That went on each day until the ship was emptied at the end of the week. Then another one arrived and it happened all over again.

I worked there until the war came, when everything changed and I was employed by the Ministry of Food. We were evacuated to North Wales and the Ministry organised these Buffer Depots in every village in the country and my job was to keep a record of it all. I had to co-ordinate the corned beef supplies. It was incredibly complicated and there were no computers, I had a large sheet of paper – we called them ‘B*gger Depots.’

After the war, I came back to my old employer but I discovered we didn’t have an office anymore, it had been bombed. So I said, ‘John, why don’t we use one of the spaces over the shop in the Central Market?’ He said, ‘But we can’t expect customers to walk through the Market to get to our office.’ Then I reminded him that there was a door onto Charterhouse St, so they didn’t have to walk through the Market. We moved into an octagonal office in one of the rotundas above the Market and that was when I became part of Smithfield proper.

Before the War, women couldn’t go into the Market but afterwards we were allowed in. I always remember walking through the Market for the first time, the Bummarees were perfectly respectful. I walked down Grand Avenue and they all moved out of the way, calling ‘Mind the Lady!’ The Bummarees delivered the meat, they wore long overalls and they used absolutely appalling language and were famous for that. But it wasn’t real, they didn’t mean anything by it.

I worked for John for more than fifty years and sometimes we had visitors from the Argentine. After John died, the business was sold and I was taken on by the new owners, Anglo-Dutch Meats. I became Private Secretary to their Director, Mohammed El Maggot. He was Egyptian though he had been to school in England. He was known as ‘Hamdi’ in the Market and I worked for him for several years. He was a very polite young man and his father was determined that he was going to work, that’s why he bought the company to occupy his son. Mohammed came to work every day at five o’clock in the morning and he settled in to work.

One day, he walked into the office and announced, ‘I want you to come to my wedding – in Cairo!’ When we came back, he and his wife took a flat in the Barbican and he said, ‘I want you to come over and teach Imam how to make a proper cup of tea.’

As far as I was concerned, that was the end of my life in Smithfield – I was seventy-four and it was time to retire. Mohammed was terribly upset but I said, ‘It’s no good Hamdi, I have to go!’ I thought, ‘That’s where I cut my connections, otherwise it will be, ‘Can you go to Harrods to buy the baby a bottle?” So I cut myself off completely from Smithfield Market in 1994. I never married, I was always working in the Market. When I was sent to North Wales, I left all my boyfriends behind in London and I was surrounded by a lot of middle-aged men.

I was always happy to be in the Market, I was part of the Market. To look down from my office window upon the Grand Avenue and see everything going on. That was my life.”

On Holborn Viaduct, the winged lion watches protectively over the Smithfield General Market currently under threat of demolition.

Smithfield Market as Joan Brown first knew it in the nineteen-thirties

Entrance to the General Market on Charterhouse St, completed 1881

Entrance to the underground store at the General Market

South-east corner of the General Market

North- east corner of the General Market

War Memorial in Grand Avenue in Central Market

The Central Meat Market

Joan Brown worked in an office in one of the rotundas at Smithfield’s Central Market

The Central Meat Market at Smithfield

Archive images courtesy Bishopsgate Institute

This Wednesday 11th December, SAVE Britain’s Heritage have organised a live theatre event at Smithfield from 5-7pm, telling the story of the Market. Locations will be on Holborn Viaduct, outside The Hope on Cowcross St and in the Market Grand Avenue.

Julian Rothenstein, The Redstone Press

Observe this man’s placid smile – from his composed demeanour no-one would believe that he has run his own publishing company for nearly thirty years. Yet Julian Rothenstein is the man responsible for Redstone Press, producing over a quarter century of Redstone Diaries and a whole string of inspirational and eclectic art books that no-one else would ever have dreamed of.

As I made my own first steps in publishing this year, Julian was the man I went to for advice. And he proved to be a generous mentor, which makes it a pleasure to welcome him to Spitalfields this week, bringing his celebrated Annual Christmas Bookshop to the East of London for the first time – opening today at Townhouse, 5 Fournier St, and running every day until 22nd December.

Operating from a modest office in his basement home, Julian edits, designs and supervises the production, promotion and distribution of all his books himself. And he does it with such apparent ease that you might not readily appreciate the feat of mental dexterity required to bring it off with bravura and grace, as he does. Yet this flexibility also allows him to pursue personal passions and produce books that surpass people’s expectations by their ingenuity and wit – such as his current bestseller ‘Inside the Rainbow,’ exploring the forgotten flowering of Russian Children’s books in the early Soviet era and his forthcoming project, a compendium of work by blind photographers.

I shall never forget the first time I came across a Redstone Diary, it was unlike anything else I had seen and it is this distinctive personality which makes these books so appealing. Julian’s vibrant designs, with strong colour, bold type and plenty of white space, give his titles a unity of appearance that is in contrast to their diverse form and subject matter. Obviously not the product of a corporation, they are the outcome of one man’s love of books – as Julian admitted to me when I dropped into his office this week with Contributing Photographer Patricia Niven.

“After I left school, I worked at a publisher called Peter Owen as an alternative to going to art school, which I couldn’t do because my father was well-known in that world – so I opted for being an office boy instead. I must have picked up the rudiments of publishing there.

I was a lost soul for a while after that, until I went to work with Emma Tennant on ‘Bananas’ – she was the editor and I was the art director and designer. It was a large format literary and art magazine, printed on newsprint up in Norfolk, that published the work of famous figures like J.G.Ballard, Bruce Chatwin, Angela Carter and Ted Hughes alongside unknown writers. And it was there I met my wife Hiang Kee who was very much involved with the beginnings of Bananas and Redstone Press.

My first Redstone Press book was of drawings by my father Michael, who was a child prodigy, and my grandfather William Rothenstein had kept everything he ever drew. I made all the mistakes with that first publication – it was far too big, no-one is interested in children’s drawings and I printed too many copies. Bookshops hated it, I printed fifteen hundred copies and sold only fifty or sixty.

But, shortly after that, I discovered these visual novels in woodcuts by Frans Mazereel and the first one sold out in three weeks. I published six of those and they all were very popular. I thought, ‘Publishing is really easy!’ And then I was unstoppable. Another big success was publishing boxes of ephemera from the Mexican Day of the Dead – I literally had my whole family sitting around sticking tin skeletons into boxes at one point. Then the diaries started in 1987 and I have just sent 2015 off to the printers – so that’s twenty-eight so far. The theme of 2015 is The Art of Simplicity and it includes a portrait of Barn the Spoon. Sometimes people write to say they have used my diaries year after year and cannot use anything else.

Redstone Press has become a family business with my wife Hiang Kee and my daughter Ella involved and, over the years, I have done a lot of books in partnership with my friend Mel Gooding. I had the good luck to work with David Shrigley too, one of the most productive people you could hope to meet – doing one book a year.

Yet, my whole thing has been to stay deliberately small and I can say that I have made a living out of it. People will always love to have something to read and, as the world goes more digital, they’ll be more demand for tactile things – like my books.”

Copies of Redstone Press titles adorn the shelves in Julian Rothenstein’s office

Bananas, the seventies literary magazine, edited by Emma Tennant & designed by Julian Rothenstein

One of Julian Rothenstein’s first big successes, a novel in pictures by Frans Masereel, 1988

Alfred Wallis Paintings introduced by George Melly, 1990

Redstone Diary 1992, Drawings by Writers

J. G. Posada, Messengeer of Mortality, 1989

Redstone Diary, The Lucky Diary, 1996

Ants Have Sex In Your Beer by David Shrigley, 2007

Surrealist Games compiled by Alistair Brotchie, edited by Mel Gooding, 1991

The Redstone Psychological Diary, 2005 – edited by Julian Rothenstein and Mel Gooding

Kill Your Pets by David Shrigley, 2004

The Redstone Diary – The Artist’s World, 2011 – edited by Julian Rothenstein and Mel Gooding

Julian Rothenstein, publisher of The Redstone Press

Redstone Press Books, Diaries & Prints are for sale from today at reduced prices at Townhouse, 5 Fournier St, Spitalfields. 11-6pm daily until 22nd December.

Fred Wright in his workshop

Around Arbour Sq in Stepney, there is a web of streets leading down to Albert Sq that have retained their nineteenth century terraces. It is among the best-preserved corners of the old East End and Fred Wright is one of the few of the generation born before the war who have stayed, passing his entire life among these familiar streets.

Today, Fred carries the history of the place through his life’s experience and has come to embody the generous ethos of the long-standing community that persists in this forgotten corner. Last week, Fred welcomed me to his immaculately-organised terrace house and showed me the lean-to workshop at the rear where he delights to restore broken furniture and give it away to anyone that wants it.

Yet, although he stayed in Stepney all his life, I discovered Fred is far from parochial in outlook, and the pain and suffering that he witnessed as an ambulance driver in his youth instilled a desire to serve his community through the Scouts and St John’s Ambulance. In a place where there has been so much movement of people, it was my privilege to meet a man who is proud to call himself one of the original residents.

“I’ve lived in this house for thirty years and before that I lived in Dunelm St which is the next street, so I have lived my whole life within four hundred yards here in Stepney. At first, I lived in Rule St on the other side of Arbour Sq, until it got bombed. My wife lived there before we got married, she was bombed out of her home and went to stay on Rule St. So I met her over the garden wall and the rest was history and we were married for sixty years.

It was a Jewish neighbourhood then, everyone was making shoes or doing tailoring in their front room. Savile Row made the jackets but the trousers and waistcoats were made here. You’d go round to a neighbour’s house and they’d be sewing buttonholes for waistcoats by hand. My mother, Maud, used to do ‘filling,’ stitching the lining of the sleeves to the jacket, that all used to be done by hand as well.

My father, Fred, died at an early age – thirty-eight years old – he worked for his father who was a furniture remover in Brixton. I was his only child and my mother worked hard to keep me. She was employed by Calmasses, a tailor opposite St Dunstan’s church, and she worked from eight in the morning until midnight. When she came home, she’d thread and wax a thousand needles ready for the next day. Her fingers would get septic cuts from the needles and, instead of sleeping, she’d be up soaking her swollen fingers in salt water all night so she could get the thimble on next day and go to work.

In my street, there was a taxi driver who had a taxi, no-one else had a car. We had only gaslight and there was no electricity or telephone. The dustman used to come right in through the house to empty the bin and put pink disinfectant in it afterwards. People used to work so hard yet they were all poor. I remember seeing improvised furniture made out of orange boxes with a curtain across the front. It was all rented property here in those days and if someone was ill, everybody else rallied round.

I was five when my father died but I had a happy childhood. We used to get wheels and make scooters from a plank of wood. My first job was at a foundry in Osborn St at the end of Brick Lane, round the back of Elfe’s the funerary masons. It was all right there – you learned quite a lot about how things are made. At eighteen, in 1944, I was conscripted and called up to serve in the war. I drove an ambulance based in Canterbury, and my job was to pick up casualties from the docks at Dover and take them to a hospital at in Kent. It was a trauma at first but you got used to it.

I had only just got married at eighteen at St Dunstan’s. Kathleen worked as a sample pattern-cutter at Laura Lee in Alie St. My father-in-law was a policeman based at the station in Arbour Sq and we lived with him in Rule St before we moved into our own place in Dunelm St. Thirty years ago, that was condemned and we bought this house for fifteen thousand pounds.

After the war, I went to work for Anthony Gibbs, Merchant Bankers, in Gracechurch St in the City of London. I worked my way up to the top job and became Head Messenger with thirty people under me. I’d walk around the City and all the other Messengers knew me. The Partners wore high hats and we got extra for brushing them. We all had privileges, such as putting out the fresh blotting paper in the boardroom or filling the inkwells, so everyone got a little extra. I worked there for thirty-five years until I retired at sixty-three. Two days later, I got a phone call, saying they’d opened up a place on the Isle of Dogs and ‘Could I supervise it for two weeks?’ and I was there for another two years. All the people I worked for treated me very nicely and I loved that work, and I still have a pension from them.

I was in the Scouts and the St John’s Ambulance for donkeys’ years. I was a Scout as a youngster and I wanted to give a little bit back. I went to the Buckingham Palace Garden Party three times with the St John’s Ambulance and, before it started, the Queen popped round in a head scarf and coat to ask us how we were, just like an ordinary person.

My wife Kathleen died eight years ago and now I go to the lunch club in Club Row three times a week. My son, Brian, lives in the Isle of Dogs and he comes every day to visit me. I’m eighty-seven and I know all the neighbours round here. I wouldn’t want to leave Stepney for anything, I’ve got all of my memories here. This is my sanctuary.”

Fred Wright (far left) Head Messenger at Anthony Gibbs, Merchant Bank, in the seventies

Fred’s father in law worked at Arbour Sq Police Station

Fred & Kathleen with their son Brian in the garden of their house in Dunelm St in the fifties.

Fred & Kathleen with Brian on holiday in the sixties.

High jinks on a scout camp

Fred’s cat Molly

Fred Wright

“This is my sanctuary”

You may like to read my other stories of Stepney

Vera Hullyer, Parishioner of St Dunstan’s

Norman Riley, Metalworker

Fred Iles, Meter Fixer

Marie Iles, Machinist

Contributing Photographer Chris Kelly sent me this glorious collection of her pictures of older women, some from the East End and many from elsewhere – entitled In Praise Of Older Women after the book by the Hungarian writer Stephen Vizinczey.

“Iʼve taken many pictures of inspirational women over the years but these are among the ones that make me smile the most,” Chris told me, “I know nothing about the private lives of the people in these photographs, I only know that the characters were strong, determined and fun to be with.”

Peggy Metaxas & Rosie, Whitechapel, 2013

Members of All Saints Dance Club, Poplar, 2003

Older people from France on an exchange visit to Kent, 1993

Kazia Cander, farmer, Northern Poland, 1984

Community Centre, Southwick, East Sussex, 1985

Members of Maidstone CND at Greenham Common, 1983

Irene Livermore & Mary Christmas, Wapping Pensionersʼ Group, St Peterʼs Centre, 2003

Spectator at National Carriage Driving Championships, Windsor, 1983

Queenie Baxter, Connors House, Canterbury, 1993

Sheffield Pensioners Action Group at a rally in Manchester, 1988

Sheffield Pensioners Action Group member sells copies of Senior Citizen

Sheffield Pensioners Action Group members dress up to commemorate eighty years of Old Age Pensions

Spectators at Ascot Races, 1983

Fernande Bressy, wine producer, Rhône Valley, 1991

Irish Emma leading the bingo at St. Patrickʼs, Wapping

Methodist Centre, Bethnal Green, 2003

Bridie Murphy and Warden Anne Baine, Twinbrook Estate, Belfast, 1989

Anwara Begum, Cable St Community Gardens, 2012

Balkis Karim, Cable St Community Gardens, 2012

Administrator at North London Community Centre, 1998

You may like to take a look at these other photographs by Chris Kelly

Chris Kelly’s Columbia School Portraits 1996

Chris Kelly’s Cable St Gardeners

Chris Kelly’s Cable St Gardeners in Colour

Chris Kelly & Dan Jones in the Playground

East End Cats (Part One)

East End Cats (Part Two)

The Cats of Spitalfields (Part One)

The Cats of Spitalfields (Part Two)

Occasionally, people write correspondence addressed simply to “The Gentle Author, Spitalfields” and it is to the credit of the East End postal service that these letters arrive on my doormat. So today I return the favour with this interview of Whitechapel Postman, Stephen Armstrong – and Contributing Photographer Colin O’Brien accompanied him on his round yesterday to take these pictures.

Stephen Armstrong

Stephen Armstrong and I met in the early afternoon in Whitechapel, once the day’s round was done, and he ate mince pies with hot chocolate to revive his flagging spirits, after being awake since before dawn.

We were just across the road from sorting office which is only five minutes walk away from where he lives to the south and ten minutes walk from his round, which is to the north.

Steve spends a lot of time pounding the pavements of Whitechapel and it is unlikely that anyone knows the minutiae of these streets better than he. Reserved in manners yet resilient in spirit, Stephen has found his metier in delivering letters and becoming the spiritual guardian of his particular corner of the East End.

“I’ve been up since five this morning, that’s late for me! It gives me a little time to myself, to get ready and pootle around – because six o’ clock is when I start.

I always remember when I joined the Post Office, because it was the the day after the Poll Tax Riot, 1st April 1990. I got myself sacked from an oil refinery for edible oils for not working hard enough, then I did thirteen months training to be be a Dispensing Optician. That was all because I had mucked up my A Levels and was a general under-acheiver all round. Then I failed my Optician exams, so I needed a way out and the Post Office seemed like the ideal place to get my head together. It started as a temporary job but I’ve been here ever since.

I grew up in Dartford and worked in Dartford, until they more or less shut down the sorting office there. By then, I had met my wife Karen and moved to Whitechapel and I’d been trying to get a job in the Whitechapel Sorting Office for years. It was very difficult for me to get from Whitechapel to Dartford to start work at five in the morning, so they offered me the possibility of a transfer to Rochester. Eventually they said, ‘We might be able to transfer you to Whitechapel but you’ve said you don’t like going out doing deliveries.’ I said, ‘I don’t know because I’ve never tried it,’ and when I did it was a baptism of fire, but I absolutely loved it. That was just last year, 2012.

I like being outdoors and walking across the same piece of ground everyday, you see the changes that people in the city are normally cut off from, the flowers opening and leaves falling. You are in touch with time passing.

I walk five minutes from my home in Adelina Grove and kick off at Whitechapel Sorting Office at six each morning. The machine will have sorted everything from yesterday in order, there is a slot for every letterbox in the frame. Then it’s ‘walk sorted’ and you sort whatever mail has come in during the night – that’s about an hour’s work. At nine o’clock, it is breakfast time. You go off and have breakfast, by which time anything from the other East End districts will come in and we sort that.

Once you have got all your work, you make it into bundles with those elastic bands – the notorious ones that we drop all over the place. You pack your bag with the first bundle of work, it cannot be more than sixteen kilos. Some postmen have a trolley but I don’t, instead I have dropboxes where the rest of the mail is dropped off to me at each end of my area. Generally, it takes about two and a half to three hours walking to make my deliveries. There are lots of streets where no-one notices you, you become part of the street furniture. A few old ladies ask you to do this and that and I don’t mind. I’m not a friend, I’m an acquaintance – but I like to think I can be trusted.

I don’t mind the weather, though I can’t really handle the heat because you can’t take off any more than the minimum. I’ve got a collection of silly hats – a sou’wester for rain and a sunhat for summer. I love dogs though there are a couple who jump up to take the letters out of your hands but, if you are careful, you can save your fingers. I desperately try to make friends with all the dogs on my route. I had a dog of my own, Laika, for seven years and I miss her a lot, so I’m borrowing other people’s dogs briefly.

I think there’s going to be more post in future but it’ll be more parcels not letters. A lot more comes through mail order these days, but all business is done by emails so there’s fewer letters. It would be a sad thing if the regular post goes, yet nobody writes anymore they just send texts and emails. Even I don’t receive any mail anymore.”