The beigel man, with his beigels tied up with a piece of string, [would hang] his customers’ regular orders on their door knobs. The coal man came round calling ‘Range’, which was the name of the company. The Wall’s ice-cream man on a box-fronted tricycle [advertised] his presence with a type of xylophone on the front which he banged with a little drumstick. There was ordinary ice cream and what were known as ‘Sno-Fruits’, which was flavoured water-ice in a triangular shape. Winkles, shrimps and whelks came round mostly on Sundays, and I used to try and get all my winkles out of the shell and make them into a sandwich, but mostly I couldn’t wait that long to eat them. There was nothing like a winkle and watercress sandwich for Sunday tea.
A useful caller to the street was the insurance man. Apart from the doctor and the teacher, he was the only contact with the educated classes you would have, and he would read out letters for you or give you advice.
No matter what could be supplied to your door or how wide the range of goods in the corner shop, there was nothing to compare with the experience of ‘going down the market’. Whether you favoured Chrisp Street, Roman Road, Whitechapel, the Mile End Waste, Hessel Street, Watney Street, the Lane or any of the other streets lined with stalls, going to the market was – and is – a favourite way of shopping for East Enders, a place to find bargains, certainly, but also as much an entertainment as a household chore.
The old Rathbone Market on Barking Road was a hive of activity. On Saturday night, Nan used to take me down there to do the shopping. She would park me by the hot sarsaparilla stall, while she went to the stall opposite and had her bowl of eels, then, to my horror, she’d shove all the jelly into me, which I hated! She said it was good for me. I used to love going to the button stall with all the scraps of material Mum had given us to match buttons for her dressmaking. There was a fortune-teller who told your future, and a ribbon stall, the delight of every girl going to the market.
We often went ‘up the Road’ – Bethnal Green Road – which was our main local shopping area, with its street-market stalls all along the pavements. Lots of things were on sale, and one could see the man making toffee and shaping it by hanging the semi-solid toffee on a pole and pulling it out and twisting it to make the shape. Sometimes the toffee would be two colours twisted together and when it had been pulled out to the right thickness it was then cut up into sweet-sized pieces ready for sale. There was the stall that sold horseradish and you could see the man grating the root into an enamel basin [and he had] barrels of soused herrings and haimisha [pickled] cucumbers on display. The stalls stayed out until late in the evening and when it was getting dark they would light up the pressurized gas lanterns. They couldn’t link up with the electricity in those days, and the market took on a lovely, warm feeling with all the people bustling about.
We always used the butcher in the market. On a Saturday night we would get there at about seven, in time for them to auction the joints of meat. We always got our Sunday joint that way. A nice shoulder of lamb for two shillings.
The Roman Road Market, especially at Christmas time, was a wonderland of bright, lamp-lit stalls open until ten p.m., and all the traders calling out their wares. We didn’t seem to mind the cold, and the smell of hot roasted chestnuts was mouth-watering.
We used to go down Watney Street Market, or Hessel Street. You could go down any of the side roads for beigels. In the markets you would strike up a conversation with somebody you didn’t know. They’d say, ‘Aw, yes, get that cut of meat, and do this or that with it.’ You thought somebody was taking an interest in you. You didn’t just hand your money over.
I loved going to Club Row on a Sunday morning with my dad. I think Mum used to get us out of the house so she could get on with the dinner. It was like a big production in those days, cooking a Sunday dinner. Anyway, I loved it. You could see all the animals and all the things for sale. I’d usually wind up with something – a little dolly or a jumping bean from a man with a big tray of them hanging round his neck, all wobbling up and down. There was this one time I remember when a man let me put this great big snake round my neck. I think you paid him to have a turn, but I don’t think you got your picture done or anything – you just got a chance to drape it round your neck. I don’t think Mum would have been very impressed if she’d known what Dad was letting me do – or that I’d sat outside the pub with a bottle of lemonade – with a paper straw, of course – and a bag of crisps, while he had a pint before we went home.
My sister, her late husband and I had pet stalls in Rathbone Street and Club Row – Sclater Street off Brick Lane. Club Row was a Sunday morning market only. We got there around seven a.m. and left around two p.m. Breakfast was a mug of tea and a roll, which we ate while serving bird seed, chicken and pigeon food, and birdcages. The tarpaulin sheets on the stalls were great green heavy things, not light plastic as they are now. The snow in the winter would need to be shovelled away to enable us to pitch the stalls. Customers came regularly and you got to know them well. They helped us girls – as we were then! – to lift anything heavy. Pets were also sold in the market then. Along with rabbits and chickens, all types of livestock. People lived in houses then and could keep animals.
Nothing like it, having a nose round the stalls of a Saturday afternoon with your mates, wage packet in your pocket and knowing you could buy something, a new blouse or a top, to go out in that night. You’d be broke by the middle of the week, but, with a bit of luck, your mum would sub you till the next weekend and you’d be after a new pair of shoes or a skirt again!
In the days before clothes had become something bought almost on whim and practically disposable, whether originating from a market stall, a clothes shop or even a posh gown store, they would, after years of wear, look more inherited than purchased. Older East Enders wore what could almost be described as a uniform.
You could see the elderly mums and grans wearing a long black shawl and a cap and a white apron. Button boots were worn then. Many wore skirts right down to the ground and, of course, they caught the mud and dirt from dragging along the pavement. Most hats had a long hatpin to fix them… hatpins that were used in fights between women.
I don’t think I can remember seeing my old nan without her cross-over apron on. And she’d have her thick stockings rolled down to below her knees with elastic garters and her hair in a net.
The men all looked the same: a cheese-cutter flat cap, moustache, shirt without a collar, muffler, waistcoat, jacket if it was cold and strong boots. Drab really.
In their childhood, men might be dressed more fancily.
I was shortened – my curls cut off, taken out of long petticoats and put into short trousers – well after I could walk. Can you imagine little boys in frills nowadays? They’d put the parents away!
Unlike young people in the post-war East End, with their teenage styles and clothes, after pre-war boys had been ‘shortened’ and had then passed through the age, or height, of wearing short trousers, and after girls had graduated from their baggy pinafore frocks, their clothing would not have been much different from that of their parents’.
I went into long trousers when I was eleven years of age.
I went to my first job, aged fourteen, in ankle socks. I must have still looked like a little schoolgirl, but that soon changed. Suddenly, you were a grown-up. No teenager stuff then. You went from school-type dresses to two-piece costumes.
Despite being short of money, mothers tried to keep their children respectable and to satisfy basic styling requirements.
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[We] were always dressed in our best on Sundays. If my mother wanted us to look special she would put rags in our hair at night. This, I must say, was very uncomfortable to sleep in. [But] the next morning she would take the rags out and comb our hair into beautiful ringlets.
I think my mum wanted me to look like Shirley Temple, but I had hair as straight as a poker, so she used to use these home-perm kits on me. They stunk! All these little curler things and lit
tle packs of tissue paper. I’ve no idea what was in the mixture but it smelt lethal, and, let’s face it, it didn’t exactly look natural when she’d finished with me.
My mum would drag my hair back in tight plaits – little girls had long hair then. She said it would keep me from picking up nits off the other children at school. I don’t see how, all I know is it bloody hurt and I had a constantly surprised expression on my face, like these women you see today who’ve had a face-lift.
We went to a children’s outfitters in Burdett Road, Mandor’s was the name – this is around 1955 – and I was fitted out with a new coat and matching hat for Christmas. The window had these posed, plaster models of boys and girls in smart-looking clothes. It all seemed so glamorous, really posh. Racks and racks of clothes. The woman took down things from the rails, took off the covering and held them out for my mum to consider. I loved this one cherry-red coat. It had a dark fake-fur collar and the hat had long ties with bobbles of the same fur on the end – to do up under your chin. I can still remember how scratchy that collar was on my neck and how the ties on the bonnet cut into me, but I didn’t say anything, as I loved having something new, I loved that coat – it was a real special event. When my mum agreed I could have it, the woman in the shop put it to one side for my mum to pay it off, so it would be mine for Christmas. I’m not sure why we had something new at Christmas, but we also got vests and pants as well. Perhaps it was because the Loan Club paid out then and there was a bit of extra money for once.
Little boys did not always support their mothers’ efforts to keep them looking decent – not when the streets were your playground and there were walls just begging to be climbed.
We used to get new clothes twice a year, Christmas and Whitsun, but if any of the good ones were too small for [my brothers], then I got them because I was always ripping my clothes or scuffing my boots. Dad would go potty if you didn’t put your boots on properly without treading the backs down. One day I was in the entrance to the woodyard, calling up to the backyard of my friend, Eddy. The woodyard gates were held closed by a long iron bar which pivoted at one end on a ring set in the wall and when the gates were open it could be hung on a hook in the wall. I had to climb up on the wall to be seen from the backyard of Eddy’s house. I was up there calling him when I saw Dad going past on the other side of the street. I quickly let loose of my grip on the top of the wall, but as I dropped down my jersey got caught on the hook. There I was, dangling on the wall, unable to quite reach the top of the wall to pull myself up, and too far from the ground for my feet to reach, desperately hoping that Dad wouldn’t look round and see me. Somehow he didn’t. I eventually managed to unhook myself, but my jersey was ripped and my toes were scuffed, so I was still in bother.
Having new clothes was a rare event in poorer households and ‘making do and mending’ were necessities.
Mothers were very good at keeping a garment wearable through their [different children’s] ages, as clothes had to be handed down from one child to the next. Tommy’s coat when he grew out of it was given to little Joe and patches on trousers were a sign of a caring mother.
Dad’s clothes, when they were past patching, would be cut up to make trousers for us. And Mum would always turn the cuffs of his shirt. Clever.
Forced to wear things they didn’t like, some children did not think their mothers’ skills were so impressive, although they can look back as adults and realize that their parents were probably as unhappy with the situation as they were.
It was horrible. I had this serge dress for school that I’d had passed on from someone and it was just too big. Enormous it was. But Mum seemed really pleased with it, said I’d grow into it and it would last me ages – and it bloody did. Couldn’t get rid of the rotten thing. But she took this hem up on it – well, half the length of the dress, this hem was, and all thick because it was a sort of flared style. I made such a fuss. But when you think back, it must have been hard for her, knowing how much I hated it but not being able to afford something pretty for me, and trying to be positive and saying, ‘It’s lovely’ but knowing it wasn’t. Kids don’t understand, do they?
But if you were lucky, as you grew older and found a job, you might be able to afford to buy something special to go out in, or even have something made especially for you.
I remember a lot of young women trotting off down the street with their high heels on [with] a fox fur draped round their shoulders. This fur would still have its head on! A lot of women worked in the rag trade at that time and my mother was one of them. Because of this, she used to make most of my and my sister’s clothes.
And there was another way to have something new: saving with the Cheque Clubs, Clothes Clubs and Shoe Clubs, a tradition which stretches back to the Hat Clubs of Victorian times, when employees of factories with large female workforces, such as the Bryant and May match factory, would pay in weekly and then take turns in receiving the collective fund to buy a new hat.
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My aunt used to run a club for Wickham’s in the Whitechapel Road. It was the main department store round about that area. Each week, one of the club had a turn of a cheque to spend in the store. So I always seemed to be walking with someone in the family through Wickham’s.
The club didn’t buy things, it was more of a savings club. We’d all want new things but didn’t have enough money, so we paid in an amount every week and once a month the next name on the list would get what had been paid in from all us girls to buy herself something. I always liked shoes, but you could buy what you wanted and, with the numbers of girls in the workshop, it was really worth it.
I’ve always liked to look nice. So, when I couldn’t afford to lay out for something all in one go, the club at work was an ideal way of getting some new gear for going out in.
Having something nice to go out in was an ambition for East Enders, who have always enjoyed ‘getting done up’ for an evening out. After taking your turn in the tin bath of a Friday night, ‘getting yourself booted and suited’ or ‘all cased up’ was just the thing before going off to enjoy yourself.
[ 14 ]
The Monkey Parade, that was like the Spanish do of a night, you’d stroll up and down and show off your outfit, your hair-do, with your boy- or girlfriend, or in a gang. It was a place where you sussed out who fancied who. There was this trick that some of them played – they’d come up to you and slap you on the back, ‘All right?’ and you’d smile, ‘Yeah, I’m fine.’ You wouldn’t know that they’d left a big, white, chalky hand-print on your back for everyone to laugh at. Right little sods, some of the boys. All harmless, but we thought it was fun. Our parents didn’t know!
Pleasures such as the Monkey Parade – the evening saunter along the East India Dock Road, between Burdett Road and Blackwell Tunnel, when girls strolled arm in arm with their friends, hoping for a bit of innocent flirting, picking out who they fancied from the similarly occupied gangs of boys, and hoping the ‘right’ one would show his interest with a wink or a whistle – were definitely considered worth getting dressed up for, but, like most other ways of passing a pleasurable few hours, it was, out of necessity, an unsophisticated pastime and did not cost very much money, if anything at all, to take part in.
With most of our waking hours taken up with duties [both paid and domestic work] we would have had no time for all the home amusements that are available today. [Before] the wireless was available for the masses, we made do with the old wind-up gramophone with the big horn. The simple pleasure of life was to take time off for an hour in fine weather and sit at the front window or on a chair at the front door and pass the time with whoever was doing the same, [enjoying] the neighbourliness.
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There was always a jigsaw on the go and everyone that called had a go at putting some pieces in. Nanny usually came round on Friday nights and always brought a bag of sweets – winter warmers – and, as she was going home, she would call out, ‘Goodnight, Kidlets.’ I said that when I grew up I would go ou
t singing in the streets and buy her a pair of blue bloomers.
Although most amusements for working people were as modest as those described above, some were quite startling, and maybe the little girl who was going to buy her grandmother some underwear got the idea for earning money by singing from some of the exotic street entertainers who took their acts around the streets of east London.
I suppose it was not many years after the Great War finished – during the 1920s and 1930s – and there was this musical turn. There was plenty of unemployment about and this group of men, young men I think they were, it was hard to tell, they came round with a barrel organ. One used to play it and the other five or six of them used to dance. They’d link arms and dance in the street. They was men, yes, but they was all dressed as women. They had the lot. Long dresses, shoes, faces rouged, beads all round their necks. Gawd blimey, how they was dressed up! They had better clothes than the women watching them. And everyone would come out to watch and all the kids’d sit along the kerb looking at them. Dressed up they were and they’d be dancing and kicking their legs up. And we’d be shouting out, ‘Show us your drawers, girls! Go on!’ We called them the Gaiety Girls. They earned a few bob going round dressed like that. They’d go all round the East End, collecting the pennies and tuppences we’d throw to ’em. They didn’t seem to mind. Least they was trying. And they were funny, they were. Used to be good and all. See, they’d come round and brighten up a dull place. I’m saying it was dull, but there was plenty of life to be had there. I realize now that I saw my first transvestites when I was a kid!
My East End Page 23
