As Roman Catholics, [St Patrick’s] was a big day in our calendar. Not all the family went to mass but they all joined in the fun. This was very much a big drinking occasion. Sometimes the drinking would go on all night and on till the next night.
Always a good excuse for a do, St Patrick’s. We’d have a right old knees-up. Lovely parties in them days, all in together, didn’t matter if you was Catholic or Irish or not. Most of us had a bit of Irish in us round there anyway.
The street party was another celebration in which all the neighbours would take part, doing their bit to make the day – and the evening – a success for everyone concerned.
We had street parties for very special occasions, such as the Silver Jubilee of King George V or the Coronation of King George VI. The people in the street would join in to supply the food, and the children all got a Coronation cup, saucer and plate, and a tin box with the royal family on it filled with chocolate. Tables were borrowed and laid out down the middle of the street with Union Jacks as tablecloths and bunting all across the street. Everyone had a great time.
Even the most organized of days didn’t always run to plan.
I was eleven years old at the time of King George’s Jubilee, which was the highlight of 1935. Our parents were putting up bunting and flags, and setting up tables for the street party, and the food was all ready. On the Saturday, King George and Queen Mary were driving in an open coach so that all the crowds could see them and cheer them on their way. Our school had been chosen to be in the Mall, where we were in the stands. We had been there waiting for some hours with our sandwiches, taking in all that was going on in the Mall. About an hour before the cavalcade was due to arrive, we were told to line up for a drink of water which was being supplied from some containers. By this time we were very hot and eager for a drink, but just as I was going to take my turn I fainted! When I came round one of the teachers was delegated to take me home, which she did without a word about having to miss the parade. Of course, when we arrived home I wasn’t allowed to go to the street party, but was put straight to bed. Wonderful day!
A frequent outing was to the cinema. Popular with all ages – as recalled in the stories of children’s Saturday morning shows – adults would attend during afternoons and evenings, with the keenest film-goers sitting through two and three showings a week.
We would go to the flicks with a few pennies’ worth of sweets, sit on old wooden benches and be transported to wonderland.
There were so many cinemas, La Bohème – the Labo – the Coliseum, the Palladium, the Tivoli. Live shows would be put on before the films. Jolly good ones, too.
The Odeon had wall-to-wall carpeting and they had big settees upstairs. A beautiful place. Carpeted, settees and all beautiful pictures on the walls. You’d get a box of chocolates, sit down and wait for the show to start.
The highlight of our existence was on Friday night going to the Seabright cinema in Hackney Road. Oranges and peanuts were sold outside. I used to get a headache every time from sitting at the front near the screen and having to look up all the time. [But] it was the high spot of the week for us.
I used to work as a waitress in the posh restaurant at the cinema. I was all in black and white. It was a lovely atmosphere. You walked in and there was an usherette at the door with a torch, and you had the [double] back seats when you was courting and the front ones when you weren’t. The screen was one whole wall, the stage and curtains. You used to have turns and an organist. If you was posh enough and could afford it, you went upstairs. It was an atmosphere you could lose yourself in. When I worked in the restaurant it was all carpeted, all fitted out by whoever owned the cinema. We had to wear black and a little white frilly apron and that. I loved it. [The food] was all dished up posh – but if you went behind the scenes and saw what went on you wouldn’t say it was posh. You hoped you were going to get a tip, because the wages were terrible.
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Cinema-going could prove to be a far more rowdy affair than it is now.
All you could hear was the sound of people cracking peanuts, noshing on sweets and fish and chips, talking to the screen – ‘He’s got a gun!’ That sort of thing – and reading out the writing [the captions] to one another. That was without the row from the piano.
The crowd would get so noisy when the projector went wrong – which used to happen just about every film. And some of the more devilish ones would throw things at the screen.
But it was a more formal business in another way.
When you’d seen the films, you’d always show respect. You’d stand up at the end for the national anthem.
Despite the rapid spread of cinema-going and radio-listening, the music hall and the variety theatre still enjoyed wide popularity both before and during the war.
I used to go to the Hackney Empire a lot on a Monday, because our [family owned] coffee shops and used to display the showbills and would get free tickets for Monday nights. You got them for Monday nights because they reckoned they hadn’t rehearsed anything and they were doing it for the first time. Six days a week it was on, they didn’t do it on Sundays. I saw Max Miller many times, saw a lot of the famous music-hall artistes, G. H. Elliott, Monsewer Eddie Grey, Jewel and Warris. I saw the Crazy Gang many times. Big bands, even dog acts, it was true variety. They used to have these high-wire acts, paper-tearing, someone playing a one-string fiddle, things that these days people would take the mickey out of. The thing that interested me most, being wartime, each time the alert went up, nobody would budge. I always remember that the conductor, Paul Clifford, would raise his baton and, instead of them all coming in together, they used to come in one after the other. It was a wartime orchestra!
Even the lining up to go in was amusing, with street buskers who would entertain the queue from the gutter for whatever odd coppers you might give.
My dad, a good, loving man, was a London City Missionary of the evangelical persuasion, so we didn’t go to music halls or cinemas, as they were ‘worldly places’. However, we did go to Christmas pantomimes at the People’s Palace, because he saw that as family entertainment, though I wasn’t very old before I understood the double entendre of the jokes. Some of my earliest memories are of sitting in the dark, entranced by the atmosphere, totally involved in the story, shouting louder than any of the other kids. ‘He’s behind you!’ I thought it was magical. I was so impressed by the glamour of the fairy godmother, startled by the flash of light and plume of smoke with which the baddie appeared and disappeared with a flourish of his cape or twirl of his devil’s tail. I loved it.
And, as this memory shows, even post-war the enthusiasm hadn’t waned.
I must have been about five, so it was in the mid-1950s, and I can remember the excitement of being taken to see a variety show. The Hackney Empire, I think it must have been. I was only little and the place seemed really posh. I can’t remember all of it, but I know there was Tony the Wonder Horse, a beautiful palomino that did sums and counted out the answers with hoof beats; a woman who just tore up newspapers and made these fantastic, intricate patterns, and ladders and palm trees, all from newspaper; and a bloke with a musical saw. I wasn’t so impressed with that, and nor were most other people. A lot of them were laughing, but I’m not sure it was meant to be funny. And then these men came round, little tiny men with big papier-mâché heads. They scared the wits out of me. Big grinning faces. But the fact I was so young and remember so much of it, it must have made a big impression on me. They should have that sort of thing now.
Another very popular pastime in east London was speedway racing.
We lived in Custom House, right down by the docks, and we were at the speedway one night, when the Graf Zeppelin came over West Ham Stadium. This was about 1928. It came so low, you could see the people looking out of the windows. A hundred thousand people used to come down that stadium, and on special nights they used to put up £100 for a trophy. If we couldn’t afford to pay to go in, we used to go round the corner and jump ove
r the fence.
A little less spirited than speedway, but just as appreciated, was the practice of hiring bicycles.
This would be the 1920s I’m talking about now. We used to go to this old boy who had a load of old bikes that you could have out for a penny or so. Right old bone-shakers they were. And the saddles were so hard. But we used to think they were lovely. Go for miles on the bloody old things. Down to Essex, to Hadleigh Castle and that.
We used to go to Grimshaw’s in the Beckton Road and hire a bike out for a couple of hours and then say to a boy, ‘Do you want to take that back for me?’ Sometimes we would go as far as Southend.
An even more tranquil leisuretime activity was fishing, although the concept of how to actually catch a fish escaped some would-be anglers.
They used to be lined right alone the Lea and the canal, sit there all day fishing. It was relaxing, and you didn’t need expensive gear, just the basics, and it was a bit of fresh air, a chance to be out and relax. Didn’t matter that you weren’t on some posh river-bank, that you didn’t have a motor to take you out into the country, it was a working man’s pleasure, and plenty of us used to enjoy it.
We were quite young – good excuse! – but my friend’s dad told us that if we went down to the canal - the Regent’s Canal ran along the bottom of our turning – and sprinkled salt on a fish’s tail, then we could catch it. We sat nearly all afternoon on that canal bank chucking a whole box of Saxa salt we’d ‘borrowed’ from Mum’s scullery. And, no, before you ask, we didn’t catch anything.
Gambling as a pastime could be taken quite seriously, especially when money, rather than matchsticks, cigarettes or cherry stones, was at stake.
Puk-a-pu was this gambling game they played round Pennyfields – Chinatown, Limehouse, you know – it was full of gambling round there. And we’d go there if we was feeling flush and a bit lucky, but you wouldn’t take any liberties, wouldn’t try and cheat or not pay your debts.
Pitch and toss was a popular way of trying to win a few shillings. You’d see men out of work, admittedly with nothing better to do, but just standing there in the street playing until they’d lost everything, thinking they’d win. Nearly as bad as the mugs who believed you could win Chase the Lady, and the pea under the cup game. You never win them things. Only the stooge who’s working with the bloke with the cards wins, the one who draws in the mugs. They think, ‘If he’s won, then I’ve got a chance.’ Mugs.
There was big money involved in flapping. That was, let’s say, private dog racing. Used to go on over the Marshes. Remember, this was when gambling away from the official tracks was illegal. Lot of money in it, there was. A lot of money.
It was a Christmas morning pigeon race run from the pub. All of us who had entered took our baskets of birds to the station the afternoon before, so they could be sent that night out to a station in Essex, where they were going to fly from the next morning when the stationmaster released them. But one bloke thought he was clever and crept round to the station Christmas Eve night, before they were sent out to Essex, and nicked one of his birds back. The next morning, Christmas Day, he worked out the flying time and run round the pub with the pigeon to say he’d won and to claim the winner’s prize money. What he hadn’t worked out was that it was winter, it was snowing out in the Essex countryside and the stationmaster hadn’t been able to liberate the birds yet! He hadn’t thought to phone through first to check. All the birds were still sitting on the station platform. Silly sod. And that was your uncle!
As with children’s gambling games, not all racing bets were placed in money – especially when cash was in short supply.
Because unemployment was rife in the 1920s and work, when available, was by no means permanent, it left a lot of men idle at times, resulting in them finding something to do. A number of men might group together to form a pigeon-racing syndicate. A relative of mine was captain of one of these and had sufficient space to build a sizeable loft. Many times, my cousins and I would take a basket of birds on the train to Epping Forest and release them to fly back home, while the men would have cigarette bets on who would be first and second home.
Parks provided a more local opportunity for adults to enjoy a flavour of the countryside experienced by the pigeons and their young couriers out at Epping Forest.
The attractions of Vicky Park were many. The really hot hothouse that contained many tropical plants that very few in the East End would see themselves, unless they were sent abroad to fight a war. A super attraction, especially in the winter, for the hundreds anxious to inspect those strange plants. Just round the corner was the parrot house, with Polly, an exotic visitor from the Far East to the East End of London. Then we could visit the deer and peacocks, and cross over one of the bridges which spanned the lake. Only one thing spoiled this wonderful park and that was the soccer pitches. [They] were laid with gravel and it was quite common to see dozens of lads with their legs in a terrible state [after] they took a tumble. A more peaceful sight was the young men in the summer playing cricket, and the older generation enjoying their bowls. There was netball galore for the girls and tennis too had its devotees, and many folk loved the Saturday evening and Sunday [events at] the bandstand. Also supervised were the children’s swings and a well-kept running track. Also the two swimming pools, which were later replaced by the super modern, well-supervised lido. It seemed there was no end to the joys of the park: the wonderful Chinese pagoda, the fabulous work of art that was the fountain. [Then] there was also a little gem tucked away in the north of the park, the truly super ‘old English’ garden, tended by highly skilled gardeners, an area of true tranquillity. The park was really the great asset of the area, the green lung of the grey East End.
We would get a number 56 bus to the Isle of Dogs. It was exciting. If you were lucky, all the lock gates would be shut. It made the journey longer, but very interesting watching all the boats and so on. Then we would walk through the tunnel [the foot tunnel under the Thames] under the river to Greenwich and go to the park.
It didn’t matter that we weren’t little kids any more, as we went through the foot tunnel, we’d always shout to each other and run along all excited. We were going over to Greenwich! It was a beautiful place, but a bloody climb up that hill. And I was fit in them days!
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Even work, when it involved a sojourn in the hop gardens for the annual harvest, could count as leisure for East Enders keen to get away from the foggy, overcrowded London streets to the fresh, autumn countryside of Kent.
Hopping was a paid treat, a way of earning a few bob – to pay off the tallyman, to make a few extra pounds for Christmas, or just to make already overstretched ends meet, But it was also a holiday, a break from the fog and the dirt, the overcrowding and even from the old man!
My [family] used to go hop-picking in Wateringbury in Kent. A lot of people used to do this as it was a way of having a holiday while earning money. Every family was given a hut to use and you were paid by the basketload of hops that were picked. My mother and sister and I used to go, and thoroughly enjoyed it. We would all pile in the back of one of my uncle’s lorries and off we would go. We had straw beds to sleep on which were supplied by the farmers. But my grandparents used to take their own feather mattress with them! The women worked all week and the men would join them at the weekends.
Hop-picking, that was our holiday. A paid, working holiday, and we all loved it. Looked forward to it from one year to the next. I’d still go if I could. Wouldn’t even mind using them horrible lavs, though I’m used to a bit better nowadays!
But, as the memories in the next chapter show, not all work was as pleasurable as the annual trip ‘down hopping’.
[ 15 ]
You had to work a twelve-hour day, six days a week, one o’clock on Saturday, for a small wage, perhaps a pound per week, less in some cases. You have no conception of life as it was lived in those days – I was born in 1903 – but we endured and enjoyed ourselves in our own fashion. No tea breaks
, no days off unless you were sick, no holidays except the statutory holidays. You were lucky if you could keep a job then… you worked, and you earned your wages.
Formal working life began early for the labouring classes, when even a young person’s miserly wage was a welcome, sometimes vital, addition to a tight family budget. Regardless of whether a child was bright and had maybe won a scholarship that might have opened up opportunities beyond the dead-end jobs for which they would otherwise be destined, there was little choice but for them to leave school and go out to work.
Once a youngster had found a job in a local factory or workshop, there was little security. When they reached the age to warrant being paid a few shillings more per week, it was not uncommon to be sacked and replaced by another, cheap, grateful and undemanding school-leaver, who in turn would stay for a year or two until it was their turn to be supplanted.
My childhood, I think, ended when I was thirteen. Knowing that it would not be long before you were leaving school and working alongside people like your mum and dad, life took on a new meaning. For months before leaving school you had to be thinking of what job you could get, and childish games began to get less interesting. I was waiting for my first long trousers and stopped playing in the street so much. By the time I reached my teens, I had already, like most of my friends, found several part-time jobs, [such as] helping the local baker on Saturdays. As our needs for money grew with age, parents soon found where there was a need for likely lads.
In 1930 I left school as a fourteen-year-old and started work. There were a number of jobs available, most of them dead-end – short-term cheap labour for a couple of years, after which they would expect an increase in wages to cover the few pence they now had to pay for the 1924 Insurance Act. So it was cheaper to employ another school-leaver in your place. These jobs with no future included errand boy; tea boy and general cleaner; van boy, to stay at the back of the van to stop joy riders and help with the delivery; telegraph boys, to deliver telegrams on a bicycle – they never did seem to make the job of postman; [and] even those employed by building firms were usually put off before they were twenty-one, when they had to be paid a man’s wage.
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