West End Girls: The Real Lives, Loves and Friendships of 1940s Soho and Its Working Girls

by Barbara Tate

  Sadie the Sadist was another of my Sunday stand-ins. She was dark and slim, with a certain natural aggressiveness about her that must have come in useful. Her flat was a veritable temple to ‘Chastisement, Punishment and Correction’. Had the Spanish Inquisition employed women, Sadie would have been first past the selection panel. There were manacles fixed to the walls; there were stocks and pillories – one to take the head and wrists between two planks and one that fastened the prisoner to a vertical stake with rings; there was a rack, a cage and an enormous, sombre black oak cross that she frequently threatened to nail men to.

  As well as these items of furniture, she kept whips of every description – tawses, cats-o’-nine-tails, birches and a range of canes. The first time I saw Sadie’s flat, I marvelled at the things men would pay for. But if you like that sort of thing, I had to admit that it was a beautiful set-up.

  The Sundays I spent with sweet, innocent Cindy were like days spent with a younger sister. She was only eighteen and Scottish, with that lovely, soft ‘D’ye no ken?’ sort of accent. She was coltish and pretty and I was very fond of her.

  On those long, quiet Sundays, she told me many things about herself. Not so very long before, when she was a kid in Scotland, she had belonged to the Salvation Army and had to sing in the streets with them – ‘Wi’ one o’ the bliddy bonnets on me haid.’ She’d been brought up in an ordinary working-class home, but longed for the gorgeous clothes she saw in magazines. She’d come to London with the sole purpose of acquiring them by whatever means was quickest, and prostitution was exactly what she’d been looking for.

  She had no regrets – none of the girls I knew had – and her ambition to own a dress shop was looking attainable. Her ponce was a real rarity: a young Maltese who was fond of her, a nice man who made sure she was happy all the time. He always left her with more than enough money and she always looked like a fashion plate. That, and her youth, ensured she had plenty of clients, without making much effort – if any at all.

  In contrast to Lou, Cindy was undersexed and told me that she didn’t get anything at all out of ‘this sex lark’. Sometimes, when she had a young, good-looking client, she let him stay longer in the hope he might give her some sort of thrill, but it was never any good. She knew sex was supposed to be exciting, and she felt deficient. She acted her part well, the mask only slipping when those same handsome young men came again and, thinking they’d made a hit with her, expected to pay less. They were sent packing, wondering what they’d done to inspire her rage.

  Her sharp temper was typical of those demure people who flare up only when necessary. I saw it in action when she bundled one client out through the bedroom door. He had arrived looking very smart but was now the stuff of Whitehall farce: he was trying to rescue his trousers from below his knees with one hand, while the other made quick, nervous snatches at the jacket she thrust at him. His crime? He had apparently ‘tekked off his trews and felt ma titties’ before he’d paid her. He wasn’t allowed back.

  There was a modesty to Cindy that I found touching. Once, there was a particularly risqué film on at one of the West End’s more notorious cinemas. It caused a furore, though today it might be the stuff of Saturday-afternoon TV. I asked Cindy if she’d seen it. ‘No,’ she said, utterly seriously, ‘my boyfriend says it’s not fit for me to see.’

  One late Sunday in December, business was extremely quiet. The run-up to Christmas had led men to suppose they should be spending money on their families rather than on Soho prostitutes. Cindy said that she’d like to try out the efficacy of an old whores’ superstition: scatter salt, pepper and mustard on the stairs and it would magically draw customers. We each mixed half a cupful and, like flower maidens strewing petals, gleefully threw little handfuls about. To our astonishment, it worked! No sooner had we done it than we heard footsteps. We were slightly nervous about our success, but we continued to flavour our stairs till they got quite gritty and nasty – and each time we did it, it worked.

  Cindy’s boyfriend didn’t have to spend an awful lot on her clothes. Of those she actually purchased, most were bought on impulse and usually weren’t very expensive things. The really snazzy section of her wardrobe was built up in quite a different way. She got on extremely well with a contingent of gay men who, apart from adoring her, also happened to be proficient shoplifters.

  She spent part of each day browsing round her beloved dress shops, noting the details of a dress here and a coat there . . . All she needed to do was describe these garments, and in virtually no time at all they would be laid at her feet. She usually gave her shoplifters a small fraction of the actual price to keep them happy, and in this way she acquired the most fabulous wardrobe

  Working for so many different girls on Sundays made life even more of a variety show. I must have run the gamut of every type of girl there was and every sort of working place that had a roof over it. The next act was more suited to the Grand Guignol than cheery music hall.

  Ladies and gentlemen, let me present Tearaway Tina!

  If there was anyone more outrageous than Mae, it was Tina. To say she was an undesirable acquaintance is no exaggeration, but I did not know how undesirable until she had become fascinating to me and it was too late to avoid her. Every bad character trait it is possible to have – venality, mendacity, malevolence – Tina had. Any therapist trying to rehabilitate her would have had to go back a long way before he found any signs of bedrock to start building upon.

  Tina seemed to be larger and taller than she really was; her figure was better in appearance than reality and her looks were deceptively attractive. Behind this impression there was nothing more than a lot of black hair and a gigantic, drug-induced personality. She loved false eyelashes to the extent that she always wore three pairs at a time. As a result, her eyelids were so heavy she had to tilt her head back to see. This gave her a challenging, aggressive appearance that was at least in keeping with her challenging, aggressive personality.

  She loved wigs and hairpieces as long as they were black. Assisted by these, she built her hair into massive edifices set off with huge rococo gilt earrings. Her offstage self was disconcertingly different: in dowdy clothes, she turned into a sallow, sharp-faced, suspicion-ridden mouse to whom no one would have given a second glance. This was probably necessary, because, like Cindy’s gay friends, most of her mornings were spent in shoplifting.

  She came from a perfectly respectable family, and it was from one of her sisters that I gleaned facts about her background. Tina had begun life in a large family in the north of England. Her father was immensely respected in his neighbourhood and her brothers and sisters all grew up to be solid citizens with responsible jobs. By the time I got to know Tina, her sister was the only member of her family still speaking to her. The sister was a nicely spoken, intelligent woman who regarded Tina with awed puzzlement, no doubt wondering whether it was totally wise to remain on friendly terms with her.

  Pretty early on, Tina upset the domestic scene by stealing from members of her family and playing truant from school. She graduated to petty theft, terrorising her teachers and getting into trouble with boys. The theft resulted in reform school, but when she had finished her time there, she was welcomed back home with open arms.

  Just for the heck of it, she took to burgling. During one of her maraudings, she was disturbed by the elderly lady who owned the house. Tina beat her up and left her unconscious. She used what she had stolen to get to London. Once there, she borrowed a bit, thieved a lot, lived with several men, produced four children – all placed in various homes – and gravitated into prostitution.

  Tina made her own fantasy world up as she went along. The stories she told her clients about her past and present life were amazing. Her mother’s nationality was never fixed. Sometimes she was Spanish:

  ‘You can see where I get my looks from, can’t you?’ she would say, swaying and clicking imaginary castanets.

  Or again:

  ‘My mother was Mexican, you know
. I take after her.’ Here, she would grasp a plastic flower from a vase and place it between her teeth.

  Another time:

  ‘Would you ever guess my mother was Egyptian? You can see now, can’t you?’ She hurriedly pencilled her eyes into black slants to prove her point.

  Though her mother’s history varied, her father’s was more consistent. She was, when I first knew her, the illegitimate daughter of a duke. Though his title varied from day to day, he always remained true blue-blooded English.

  By the time I met her, she was in her late thirties and had been on the game for a number of years. In time, she was to tell me she trusted and loved me as she had never trusted or loved anyone. I replied that I would just as soon befriend a viper. Her good opinion of me remained undiminished. Had I allowed it, she would have overwhelmed me with stolen gifts, and my principled refusal puzzled her. When she finally realised it was genuine, she said, ‘Ah well, I suppose I admire you really.’ Others were not so chary about receiving her ‘shopping’, and she was able to walk out of a store concealing anything from coats to cosmetics. She didn’t necessarily limit herself to things she wanted or needed – she had the largest collection of sunglasses I have ever seen.

  Once, she gave away a jumper that she’d nicked and made the mistake of telling her friend which shop she’d taken it from. Finding that she could do with a size larger, the ‘daft cow’ – as the friend in question was later described – took it back to change it. Tina’s name was mentioned and the police turned up. Somehow, in a flat crammed with ill-gotten gains and confronted with damning evidence and a witness statement, Tina managed to emerge from the interview without charge. She was unrepentant and took her friend’s betrayal in her stride, though she admitted it was ‘a bloody close thing’.

  Tina worked from a house containing two ‘gaffs’, and she had the better one on the second floor. She made the life of the girl above a perpetual misery, and the house was a permanent battleground, with the laurels mostly going to Tina. She was never really happy unless someone was annoying her. She was forever running upstairs to accuse the cowering occupant of some domestic misdemeanour or hurling verbal abuse up at her from below.

  Her vocabulary and turn of phrase were quite fantastic – and not something I’d be brave enough to repeat here!

  The other girl alleged – probably justifiably – that Tina was intercepting some of her regular clients on their way up and stealing their custom. The accusations continued as private grumbles until, at last, a client said he was willing to state that Tina had tried to ensnare him.

  Still in a state of undress from her latest client, Tina clenched her fists and shrieked something to the effect that the man was a ‘fucking liar’ and demanded to know where he was so she could ‘get my fucking hands on him’. She hurled herself up the stairs like a troop of commandos. I managed to get out a few words, but Tina wasn’t taking any notice. Fascinated, I listened to the sounds coming from above. Finally Tina reappeared on the landing, clutching one hand to her bosom.

  ‘I think I’ve done my fist in!’ she said. ‘I’d just got him propped up nice when the little bastard ducked and I hit the wall instead.’

  Her hand was a ghastly sight, swelling like a purple melon. I hated to think what would have happened to the man’s face if he hadn’t ducked. Needless to say, the girl upstairs ceased to press her client-rights after that.

  Tina had no real need to steal other people’s clients; she could pick them up herself when she needed to and would work hard if she had to. Her ponce was called Paul, a mild, nice, long-suffering man who was virtually on the retired list.

  ‘My old man makes me die,’ she told me once. ‘Do you know, yesterday I had forty quickies – forty! By the time I got home I was fit to drop. I told my old man what the take was – ’cos I was ever so pleased with myself – and collapsed into bed. Then bugger me, he got in, all pleased with me too, and by heck, he starts getting randy! I told him to give over and let me get some sleep. Do you know what the stupid bugger said?’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘What?’

  ‘He gets up on one elbow and switches the light on. Then he stares at me and says, “What’s the matter? Have you got another fella, then?” ’

  Tina’s uninhibited way of hustling was to go into a café or milk bar, position herself next to a likely man at the counter, touch him up for long enough to hook him and then simply walk away. The men never failed to follow.

  It wasn’t always plain-sailing, though. Tina’s second-floor flat was one room converted into two: the bedroom and a kitchen-cum-sitting-room. The bedroom door had a lock for which there was only one key, and Tina was always locking herself out. When she came back one day with a punter called Edward, she realised she was shut out. After a few minutes of effing and blinding about it, she was struck by sudden inspiration. In a gesture worthy of church hall dramatics, she banged her forehead with the heel of her hand and exclaimed, ‘Madonna mia!’

  Edward was led to the kitchen window. Tina pointed out a ‘good ledge’ connecting them to the bedroom window. Edward saw a very narrow strip of ornamental corbelling and vehemently refused to have anything to do with it. He began to back off, but Tina took his hand and led him back to the window.

  ‘Oh, love, not even for me?’ she cooed. Her hand strayed caressingly over his framework. ‘If you do that, you and me could have such a lovely time in there.’

  His continued protestations might have been more convincing had he removed himself from the questing hand. He didn’t, and she knew she’d already won. She brought her other hand into play and nibbled his ear, winking at me over his shoulder.

  Once Edward was performing his acrobatic feat and was out of earshot, Tina turned to me and said:

  ‘He must be mad. Don’t forget, if he falls, we’ve never seen him before in our lives.’

  She had quite a big S&M clientele and relished her role as a dominatrix. There was, for instance, a headmaster who, ironically, visited during the school holidays to allow enough time for the weals on his hands to fade. There was also a fair sprinkling of judo and wrestling devotees whose punishments caused the floor to shudder with bangs and crashes.

  Hidden amongst Tina’s toughness, brutality and general indifference, there were tender spots – if you could find them. She was very upset about a girlfriend of hers who had committed suicide. It was a sad but not unfamiliar story. The girl had married one of her wealthy regulars and then fallen for his cook. The cook – happily married himself – had rejected her, and unable to deal with her feelings, she had taken a massive quantity of sleeping pills.

  Tina could also weep buckets over her absent children and over the plight of the poor, old or sick. These were not crocodile tears; she would help where she could. There was one old man who used to visit her who needed a lot of help to reach her room, let alone an orgasm. She never charged him, but as if to lessen his obligation, he always brought his own rubber, carefully enclosed in his wallet.

  ‘I have to help him on me and I have to help him off me,’ she said. ‘And I’m dead scared all the time he’s going to peg out on the job, but you can’t let him go without it, can you?’

  For all her sharp-tongued comments and quick wits, it came as no surprise for me to discover me that Tina was illiterate, though she thought no one would ever suspect.

  ‘I don’t mind telling you,’ she said darkly. ‘Because I know you’ll not take advantage of me. But there’s a lot as would.’

  From then on, she took to bringing me documents and letters that had hitherto gone unread, and I was able to sort out a few of her problems. She was, like all the girls, keen to start a bank account, but had not known how to go about it. She didn’t want to look silly at the bank, but neither did she want to ask any of her friends to help her.

  ‘I don’t want them to know where my hoard is,’ she said. ‘It’d be nice to know I’ve got something behind me for a rainy day, though, and anyway, having a bank account sounds posh.’


  So I went with her and helped her open an account with the ten pounds she had to spare at that moment.

  ‘I wonder how long that’ll stay in there,’ I said to her.

  She was adamant:

  ‘Oh, it’s going to stay there, and I’ll add to it all the time, you’ll see.’

  Having joined the ranks of the banking classes, she was as pleased as Punch. She kept flapping her new chequebook around, riffling through its pages from time to time. After that, she often showed me a bank statement to prove she’d kept her word and never drawn the ten pounds out. I also noticed that she’d never put any more in.

  ‘It’s lovely to have someone I can really trust,’ she told me.

  I didn’t pay much heed to this – I knew she would stab me in the back at any given moment if it suited her. However, in my way, I loved her, because I understood her. After all, there are not many people you can know that well and who are so open about their darker nature: nastiness is usually snuggled under a thick eiderdown of culture and politeness. If nothing else, Tina was always herself.

  She was – but was I? In the early months of 1949, I was a very different being from the one who had left my grandmother’s house with her curses reddening the air behind me, a very different being from the one who had taken up with Mae on that fateful evening in The Mousehole that third summer after the war. I had a job, I had friends, I had money. But my sense of vocation had dwindled into invisibility and the Soho that had liberated me was now, in some ways, also a prison. I could leave it at any time, of course, but showed no sign of doing so. It was as though I had become a working girl and Soho had become my ponce. I was drifting on a tide, and somewhere deep inside, I wasn’t sure if I liked where it was taking me.

  Twenty-Five

  It was late spring, 1949. Mae was still working too hard, still borrowing money, still experimenting, off and on, with the Benzedrine. The Rabbits Regime was long gone, and life was the same glorious confusion I had come to expect and require.