My East End

by Gilda O'Neill

  With the presence of so many different cultures, cockneys were able to try ‘foreign’ food before doing so became a widespread habit. My father can still surprise waiters by asking for certain dishes in a Chinese dialect he picked up many years ago in Ching’s Café in Limehouse.

  East Enders also became skilled at adapting and adopting the various culinary traditions brought into the area by immigrants, and some types of food – from simple poultry to exotic fruits – once considered unaffordable luxuries, became generally available.

  I was born just after the war and my dad was brought up around Chinatown. I can remember eating Chinese food he brought home from a café he knew there, and Indian curries that a friend of his made. When I was really little this was. Before it was popular like it is today.

  Chicken used to be so expensive it was only for Christmas [but] there used to be a little Jewish shop, down a side turning, that sold chickens. If the chicken had a stone in the neck, in the gizzard, the rabbi never passed it. It was good chicken, but Jewish chicken had to be perfect; they’d put a little mark on the leg to say it had been passed by the rabbi. This chicken [that wasn’t passed], there was nothing wrong with it, and they used to sell it to me for half a crown. This Jewish woman showed me how to do it with the lokshen.

  But despite these memories of enjoyment and pleasure, many of the strongest recollections are of food being in short supply and of genuine hunger.

  We had a bit of bread and jam, or brown sauce on bread for a bit of relish. I used to watch my dad eat his herrings and he used to look at me and break me a bit off. They were hungry times, very hard times.

  It was a big worry for the parents, how to feed their hungry brood. It was, without doubt, a live-from-day-to-day existence, because the amount of money available was never stable and there was no convenient stock of food like we can enjoy today. No fridge, freezer or pre-wrapped, not a great variety of tinned food. I can only remember condensed milk and corned beef in tins. So most food was bought and used the same day.

  Food was as filling as possible that Mum gave us. Mostly bread and marge [in the day]. Occasionally we used to have jam. We used to make it with rhubarb. Didn’t wait for it to set, you just put it on your bread as you cooked it. It was always bread and marge for [breakfast] and to take to school wrapped in newspaper. And a bit to eat along the way – that was put on the top. There was five little newspaper packets, because five of us were all at school together. [At night] it might have been chips from the fish shop and a piece of bread. That was filling.

  And when you were used to food being scarce, what you had, you valued.

  My husband never bothered with drink, he was never a drinker. But he was a nosher. He loved all his food.

  In them days we had all sorts of puddings and stews, and made them last for three or four days. You kept your own chickens and rabbits in the backyard, to kill to eat. We might not have had so much to eat, but what we had was wholesome.

  We were not well off, so it was fish and chips or stew for dinner. I used to go to Oxford Hall for a school dinner sometimes, when we would get toad in the hole or stew. We also had breakfast, consisting of cocoa and bread and dripping. In those days – I was born in 1903 – if you were unemployed, you had to go to the workhouse and get bread and tea in kind. At the corner of [the] street there was a fish shop run by One-eyed Annie. The counter was too high for me to see over. To get the crackling and the chips was a nice occasion as I always seemed to be hungry. When we bought a loaf I used to get the ‘make weight’, a slice, crusty and hot, given to make the weight of the loaf up to two pounds, the legal limit. [You could buy] a cup of jam for a penny [and] white bread was twopence a loaf.

  Even fruit peelings could be considered a delicacy.

  We used to go scrumping as kids… Well, nicking, if you like to call it that. You know the stalls in Stratford market, well, when it was getting near the end of the night we used to get under the stalls for all the specky apples. They’d only have been thrown out. We’d bring them home, cut all the specks out and eat them. On Sunday, if Mum made an apple pie… I can see it now, us kids used to have to stay in bed till Dad and all the older ones got ready to go out – there wasn’t room for us all to get down the stairs – she’d peel the cooking apples for the pie, then she’d put all the peel in an empty sugar bag. There’d be a few grains left in the bottom. She’d shake it and send it up to us children. We’d eat them as a real treat. Cooking-apple peels! We didn’t care about the bellyache. Even now, when I’m peeling apples, I always have an empty sugar bag. I think to myself, ‘Here we are, take them up to the kids.’ We used to fight over them. ‘Oi, you’ve got more than me!’ And how about the condensed milk? When they used to open the tin with them jagged openers, the milk all used to collect along that jagged edge and you used to put your finger round it. Goat Brand it was.

  Scarce or not, food was not always that appetizing, but it was usually still devoured.

  [My brother] was in the Scouts and at one camp he learned to make damper, which was dough rolled out into a strip and then wrapped around a stick and cooked over the camp fire. Well, one evening he decided to make some at home and cook it over the fire in the kitchen. It may have been the difference between the camp fire and our coal fire, but it came out black on the outside and just about raw on the inside. But I ate it anyway.

  Sometimes, though, it was simply too repulsive to contemplate.

  There was a street running parallel to Hessel Street. They called it Chicken Hill. It’s where they killed the chickens. The stink! Put you right off.

  *

  Food – tasty, unpleasant or indifferent but filling – had to be bought from somewhere, and whether it came from the market, a passing street trader or the corner shop, in the days before domestic fridges and freezers, buying it was another daily task.

  [ 13 ]

  All shops were handy, most were at the top of the street. We children were used to run errands, to get Dad’s fags, or a penny ha’penny bloater, or a loaf from the baker, which had to be weighed – if it was under two pounds it was made up with an extra slice or a bit of cake.

  There were many affectionate memories of the small traders who served their local communities, valued as much for the meeting place they furnished as for the goods they supplied. People spoke of the human contact which going shopping gave them – the chance for a chat, a laugh and a bit of gossip – and the passing of these businesses seems to be genuinely regretted, especially when the service they gave is contrasted with the impersonal experience that shopping has become today in the large supermarkets and chain stores.

  When every street had a shop or a market within easy walking distance, and homes had a meat safe, a cupboard and maybe a larder, rather than having a refrigerator as a matter of course, doing the shopping was just another part of the daily routine, but it is remembered as a pleasurable one.

  Corner shops were ever so friendly. They would have a chair by the counter for the older people to have a sit-down – and a good old chat, of course. Like a social centre as much as a place to get your provisions. A lovely white cloth over the cheese, there’d be. Fly-papers dangling down over the counter. And glass-topped biscuit tins. Children would put their heads round the shop door and shout out, ‘Got any broken biscuits?’ If the shopkeeper said yes, then they’d say, ‘Well, why don’t you mend ’em?’ You could buy the broken biscuits cheaper than the others, but you’d be fussy and try and get the cream ones.

  We did most of our shopping from the corner shop as there were no supermarkets. Most things were wrapped up for you. And you could get three pennyworth of stales. This was stale cakes or biscuits. You could also buy yesterday’s bread cheap.

  These little East End businesses catered for just about every need, offering a full range of goods and skilled services for their communities.

  A shop with smells was the oil shop. It used to sell hardware, and many kinds of oil. Paraffin [heaters] were used by a lot of people. T
he oil shop was also the supplier of bundles of wood for starting coal fires, and most household hardware like kettles, saucepans, buckets, brooms and brushes.

  The oil shop was wonderful. Lovely smell. And the corn chandler’s, that was another one. I’m nearly fifty now, but I can remember this shop like I’d just been in there. We used to sneak in there cos it was where we bought split peas and corn for our peashooters. They were kept in big hessian sacks on the wooden floor, leaning against the counter, with the tops of the sacks rolled down and all the seed and grains full right up to the top. My brother would make me go in, because I was an innocent-looking little girl, and I’d get served. ‘It’s for me dad’s chickens,’ I’d say if the shopkeeper was a bit suspicious. There’d be a craze for peashooters, you see, once a year or something, and suddenly all the kids had them, and all the old girls would complain to the man in the corn chandler’s: ‘Don’t you go selling none of that to them rotten kids, they’re driving us barmy.’

  On the corner of our road was the shoe mender’s. He was a nice man and I used to sit on the windowsill at the side of his shop and watch him fill his mouth with nails and tacks and mend the shoes. The shop always smelled lovely and he never minded us watching. At the top of the road was the grocer’s, a real over-the-counter, old-fashioned lovely shop.

  Alf’s the barber’s was along by us. He was a charaaer. He did about two haircuts and would say he’d done enough for the day and let his assistant do the rest of the customers. One of Alf’s regulars was another Alf, Alf the local undertaker. He would come and chat to us every morning after his daily shave and trim. If you thought undertakers were solemn people, Alf would prove you wrong. All my family went to him.

  Miss S. had a little grocer’s and sweet shop. If I had a ha’penny, I would go there and get a ha’p’orth of pickled cabbage. Miss S. would say, ‘Does your mother know you’re having this?’ I would lie and say, ‘Yes.’ We both knew my mother wouldn’t approve. It was like liquorice dabs, tiger nuts, sweet tobacco and sweet cigarettes. [My parents] were fussy about what you ate between meals.

  From the shop that sold sweets and things, we bought Everlasting Sticks, long thin strips of toffee, and Chinese Coconuts, which looked like stones but were supposed to taste of milk when you kept them in your mouth and sucked them. I think they really were stones, because they never wore away.

  Joyce’s the baker’s was just a few doors from our house in Stepney. By the smell, we knew when the bread was out of the ovens. Mum bought cottage loaves, crusty rolls and pies for just a few pennies. Sweets were bought at Balernie’s. I can still see the women sitting there on lemonade crates talking to Mrs Balernie.

  The women would take their Sunday meat and potatoes in a roasting tin to the baker’s, and he’d stick it in his oven that was still hot from his baking and cook it for you.

  As well as the friendliness and convenience of the small shops, they also offered an informal credit system for regular customers, who could balance their restricted budgets with the help of a ‘slate’, which allowed them to buy things ‘on tick’.

  *

  We had a corner shop where my mother would pay weekly. Her account being written on the counter, if you know what I mean.

  Across the road was this shop [run] by this dear lady. The people were so poor round there, they used to run up bills and she never got paid. ‘Mum said could she have so-and-so.’ I mean, it was a list this long. ‘Well, she hasn’t paid off last week’s yet.’ ‘Well, when Dad gets some work…’ That was how we lived. That woman, I don’t know how she kept in business. Everybody owed her money. She was so obliging, everybody took advantage of her. ‘Go to so-an-so’s. She’ll give you so much off the list.’ You’d eat it as soon as you got it. You had nowhere to store it, [but] you never had it long enough to go bad or anything.

  Mum would send me up every day with a slip of paper with the day on it and the things she wanted. [He] would give me the items and attach the slip to the others on a bit of string. At the end of the week Mum would go and settle her bill.

  Not all shops in the East End were small, local businesses. Main thoroughfares had big parades of shops lining either side of the road, with stalls set out in front of them on market days.

  In Old Bethnal Green Road were a lot of shops. Faulkner’s the chemist, where Mum got her pink ointment, which stank, but she reckoned cured everything. Atkins’s the newsagent, a cobbler’s, a bagwash shop, a wet fish shop, Odden’s the fruiterer and greengrocer, and the grocer’s, where I used to watch them take a portion of butter from the large block and then, with the aid of two wooden paddles, pat it into a half-pound block and then wrap it in greaseproof paper.

  On the [main road] there were all the shops you could want. The butcher’s, greengrocer’s, the barber, a corn chandler, the baker’s, a fishmonger. Everything. They were friendly people who loved to chat and have a cheery word. One shop I hated was M.’s, the cat’s-meat shop. Horrid. Sights you wouldn’t see at a slaughterhouse. Animal lights strung up on the wall with a notice ‘3d a bag’. The smell was terrible. But I had to go there for a neighbour who had a cat and dog.

  There were shops you don’t hear of now: Home and Colonial, Pearks and Cater Brothers. Benise’s sold loose vinegar from a wooden barrel, blue dolly bags for getting the washing white, and bars of Sunlight soap. A stall outside sold block salt – a penny would buy a good-sized piece.

  And there were even grander businesses to be found in the East End, with big department stores such as those in Whitechapel, Stratford and Leytonstone offering a very different experience from that of the corner shop.

  The way they used to handle the money fascinated me. You would pay your money over the counter and the assistant would put it with the receipt in this little cylinder sort of a thing, which she then hooked on to this overhead rail and – whoosh! – it would take off across the shop like a rocket to the cashier’s booth, where it was dealt with, and the change sorted out, before being sent – whoosh! – back across to the assistant, who would hand over the change and receipt to you. Stopped the assistants fiddling, I suppose.

  In the 1930s I would go to Boardman’s department store in Stratford with my sister. They had what were called mannequin parades as an inducement to buy what was on offer in the store. It was where my mother, after leaving school – this is in the Edwardian period – learned to trim hats.

  Far less opulent than the big stores, or even the corner shops, were the street traders and hawkers who once used to thrive in the East End, and were still doing good business during the 1940s and 1950s, the time this next woman is describing. I believe the first trader she talks about is actually my father, as he used his horse and cart for collecting scrap iron from the bomb and demolition sites during the week, and for selling shellfish at the weekends – shellfish being a traditional East End Sunday tea – and his round had included the street in which she lived.

  There was the man selling shrimps and winkles. Then the cat’s-meat man. And the fresh-herring man – he used to call out, ‘Fresh Herring!’ and we used to shout out, ‘What d’you feed your donkey on?’ And we used to have Indians come round off the boats. They used to come to the door with their suitcase with all ties and scarves draped round their neck. Knock at the door, open their suitcase and you’d sort out what you wanted. The Indians were a bit of a rarity. It was a novelty for us to see them.

  We had a rag and bone man that used to come round with his horse and cart. He would buy most old things from you. If it was worth money he would give you a little, otherwise he would give you a goldfish or, if you would prefer, a cup and saucer. The goldfish went down well with the children. A horse and cart would come round selling jellied eels and so on. There was also a man that used to come around on a bike with knife-sharpening equipment and people would pay him to sharpen their knives. All this would interest the children, [and] we would get a lot of canvassers knocking on the door selling all sorts of things, from clothes to kitchenware. This would be
bought on the ‘tally’ – very often the only way of acquiring new things.

  For some reason, our rag and bone man was always keen on getting jam jars. Maybe he took them back to the factory, but whatever he did with them he’d give us kids a goldfish for them. Smashing, that was.

  There was a cart with a roundabout on the back pulled by a horse. To get a ride you had to give some old clothes.

  There was a constant stream of street vendors. A few had special days, like the coal man, baker and fishmonger. I had to sit at the door and wait for the baker and the coal man – miss the coal delivery and you were in trouble.

  A lady used to make toffee apples. I used to love them, especially when you got the small ones with two on a stick.

  I remember the muffin man with the tray on his head and his hand-bell ringing. The beigel man. The salt man – you bought chunks off a large [conical] lump. Hot chestnuts baking away in that oven thing on the trolley on wheels. The Neapolitan ice-cream man on his stall, cutting lumps off a long slab and giving it to you in a bit of paper. Fresh roasted peanuts in their shells. [And] our milkman, bringing the milk twice a day on a hand-cart; the milk in a highly polished churn. He used to ladle it out on a long ladle thing into your pewter cans, which were supplied, and you gave them back when you poured it out into your jug, so you saw you had the right measure.

  The cat’s-meat man came round with a wooden barrow that had a chopping block fixed across the handles and large chunks of horse meat that he sliced and put on wooden skewers. He came round calling, ‘Meaty meat!’ and I tried to wheel his barrow, but it was much too big and heavy for me, so all the meat got tipped over the pavement. The salt and vinegar man came with a horse and cart carrying big blocks of salt that he sawed lumps off with an ordinary saw, and barrels of vinegar [from which he filled] your own bottle. He also sold blocks of harsh yellow soap and washing-soda crystals, which were wrapped in strong blue-paper bags.