Category: History

Jun 20

Old Timey Music Time!

People who follow me on twitter will know that I’ve recently developed a bit of an obsession with 1920s and 30s popular music, and I’ve been quoting some of the most bizarre and charming lyrics all over the place. ‘The Cream in My Coffee’ being one of my favourites:

Annette Hanshaw

Annette Hanshaw

“You are the cream in my coffee
and you are the salt in my stew
You will always be
my necessity
I’d be lost without you.

You are the starch in my collar
and you are the lace in my shoe
You will always be
my necessity
Oh I’m wild about you!

You give life savour
bring out its flavour
so this is clear, dear
you’re my worcestershire dear.”

 

And ‘You Couldn’t Be Cuter’ (there’s a lovely version by Al Bowlly) being another:

Ivie Anderson

Ivie Anderson

“You couldn’t be cuter
Plus that you couldn’t be smarter
Plus that intelligent face
You have disgraceful charm, for me.

You couldn’t be keener
You look so fresh from the cleaner
You are the little grand slam
I’ll bring to my family.”

Plus all those wonderful Fred Astaire numbers. And some Noel Cowards. And Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Ivie Anderson, Mildred Bailey… Oh man it was a great time for popular music! And I haven’t even mentioned all the blues, that deserves its own post, clearly.

Just watch out for the creepy over-in-love lyrics from some quarters (guilty: ‘If I Had A Talking Picture of You’, ‘You’re Getting To Be A Habit With Me’ and many many others…)

Also brace yourself for the occasional racist lyric. Ivie Anderson and Duke Ellington’s ‘Delta Bound’ is magnificent, but the throwaway mention of “darkies” in one line instantly transports me back to 1990s Cornwall and conversations with my gran. Ack.

But yes. Lots of people have been asking me where I found all the songs – I got most of them from a 3 CD set called ‘Top Hits of the 1930s’ which is available on Spotify. I’ve made a playlist of my favourites, with a few extra by Ivie Anderson and Annette Hanshaw thrown in. Incidentally, if you like Annette Hanshaw’s voice (I do, but it does start to grate after a little while) then you should definitely check out the superb Sita Sings The Blues. (Tiny niggle: if you’re talking about BLUES don’t go to Annette Hanshaw, you want Bessie Smith and Ma Rainey for that.)

There are also some *very* old phonograph recordings available on the utterly brilliant Free Music Archive. As you’d expect for recordings from 1917 there’s a lot of hiss in the background, but I just put it on loud in the next room and pretend I have a gramophone. Anyway, here are some of my favourites from the FMA:

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Posted in History, Music

Jan 08

Dalston Rio and ‘It Always Rains On Sunday’

[This post has been restored following Website Death in 2009, I think it was posted in 2008 originally. Sadly the 'Silver Screen' matinees seem to no longer exist, but I did find a clip of the film which wasn't online back then.]

Last weekend I paid a visit to the rather gorgeous Dalston Rio Cinema, to watch It Always Rains On Sunday, which was showing as part of the East End Film Festival. It was one of their ‘Silver Screen’ matinees, which are free for the over 60s and include tea and cake in the ticket price. And let me tell you, the home-made victoria sponge was DELICIOUS, and not just because it was free.

Rio Cinema is very lovely inside, with a huge pale blue arching ceiling and a proper thick red velvet curtain across the screen. It has been a cinema for nearly a century, and there’s a detailed history page on their site, including pictures of it in some of its former incarnations, as the Kingsland Empire, the Dalston Classic, and the racy Tatler.

The film was ostensibly about a Bethnal Green housewife sheltering her escaped convict ex-lover, but actually the star of the film was Ealing Studios version of East London in the 1940s (including the line “Oh, I wish there was no such place as Bethnal Green!” which got a big laugh). There was a lot of detail about the daily life of the family, with their tin bath and their Anderson shelter and cheese ration. Plus a trio of Cockney crooks, a Jewish market wheeler-dealer and a philandering saxophonist. My favourite bit, however, was the switch to a film of a toy train set for the long-view action shot when the fugitive is escaping across a railway yard :-)

The only thing that slightly spoiled it was the commentary coming from some of the more elderly members of the audience, along the lines of: “Ooh, what’s this? He knows, he knows! Ah, blackmail yes. Yes. Oh no, don’t run! He’s coming home!” etc… But hey, I was crashing their performance, so I can’t complain.

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Posted in Bethnal Green, Film, Hackney, History, London

Jan 07

A visit to G Kelly Noted Eel & Pie Shop

[This post has been restored following Website Death in 2009. It was originally posted in 2008 I think]

G Kelly Pie and Mash Shop on Roman Road - FrontageYesterday I went back to Roman Road market for the first time in a while and thought it was high time to post about G Kelly’s Noted Eel & Pie Shop.

It’s not up to me to tell you why pie and why mash and dear god why jellied eels. I’ll leave that up to the wonderful and terrifying www.eelhouse.co.uk, who offer a mail order pie service, and even pie and mash gift vouchers (‘the perfect gift!’)

Trying the pie and mash at G Kelly’s esteemed establishment was one of the first things I did when I moved to Bow, and although I did think that it was pretty bland (that’s obviously what the chilli vinegar is for…) it was hearty and cheap and peculiar. The interior of G Kelly seems to have been left mostly unchanged since the 1930s, all white tiles and mirrors and long wooden benches. On their website they have some fantastic history and a slideshow of old photographs.

They have a much more varied menu than other p&m shops I have visited, offering eels both stewed and jellied, soya mince vegetarian pies, mushy peas and even sweet pies and apple crumble with custard. The staff were friendly, and clearly amused at my confusion when offered ‘liquor’ on my pie – liquor is a thin green sauce made of parsley, rather than the bottle of gin I was momentarily expecting. (“Bargain!”, I thought.)

G Kelly gets busy at lunchtime on market days (Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday) often with queues out the door, as traders come in and put in incomprehensible orders like “one, two and peas, please love” (I think that’s one pie, two scoops of mash, and mushy peas). Saturday afternoons it’s a bit quieter.

My friend tries the eels

Jen and the eels

I think over the years I’ve had all kinds of their pies, but I have never gone near an eel. I am simply not brave enough. Have you seen what jellied eels look like?

Seriously. Step in my much braver friend Jen, who gamely tried some stewed eels with her mash. Apparently they were ok – fishy, squidgey, and yet full of bones. Yum.

There are quite a few pie and mash shops still dotted around East London, including one just down the road from me on Leytonstone High Road opposite Harrow Green. Writing this post is making me hungry, so perhaps I’ll stop in. Hm.

Before I sign off though, photographer Chris Clunn has a great collection of black and white photos of the exteriors, staff and customers in a selection of pie and mash shops.

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Posted in Bow, Eating, History, Leytonstone, London

Feb 23

The Southwark Mysteries

Ten years since these modern mystery plays were first performed, John Constable’s raucous mystical caravan will be returning to Southwark Cathedral this April. Website sez:

Inspired by the medieval mystery plays, this modern drama is rooted in the history of Bankside – London’s “outlaw borough” – mixing Bible stories with local folklore and contemporary humour.

Crossbones Graveyard Gates

Crossbones Graveyard Gates

It’s not Shakespeare (although he is in it, and Chaucer too – both had strong ties to the area) but it should be an entertaining performance.

The play stitches together symbols from across the centuries, from high art and street scurf, and it’s full of church spires and rags, goddesses, whores, history and magic.

It was inspired by the discovery of the Crossbones Graveyard in Borough. The play was written partly to restore a voice and a memory to the 15,000 nameless people buried there outside consecrated ground – prostitutes and criminals, the sick and the mad.

The whole project is an amazing example of modern myth-making, of a community of misfits and an urban space reclaimed for the non-specific spiritual. One day I’m going to tie a ribbon to the gate and commemorate one of the thousands of born-forgotten women who are buried there.

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Posted in Art, Drama, Folklore, History, London, Magic n that, Myths, Southwark, Stories

Apr 29

London lore

Bishopsgate InstituteLast week  I left the sunny, comfy, biscuit-and-teaness of a normal Saturday morning behind to head down to the London Lore conference at the beautiful Bishopsgate Institute near Liverpool St.

Organised by the Folklore Society and the South East London Folklore Society (SELFS), it sold out weeks beforehand, so there were about 200 of us there in the Institute’s modestly ornate pale green great hall. The amateur enthusiasts, middle-aged men with thick glasses and shirts tucked into their jeans were out in force, as were a number of wild-eyed men sporting exciting hairstyles of both scalp and face. However, I was pleased to discover the audience also contained large numbers of pale bookish girls (that’s me), elderly women in strange purple garments, and goth couples, one half of whom sitting behind me was sporting a fantastic skeletal hand hairclip (like this one).

I won’t write up the whole event, as Bad Witch has already done a good summary of the speakers and topics, but overall I was very very impressed with the quality of talks and speakers. Everyone was clear, engaging, entertaining and kept to time. There was a good variety of topics, my favourites being a talk by Noel Rooney about the way the traditional character of the fox has been adapted for an urban setting and John Constable’s introduction to the Southwark Mysteries although the Chair pressed him into singing a song which I’m not sure the quiet audience really wanted.

There were also intriguing glimpses of two London museums from a folklore perspective – one, the Wellcome Collection, is already on my list of badass places, but the other – the Cuming Museum – was new to me.  Everyone seemed good-natured and lightly eccentric and the whole event had a lovely atmosphere.

The Newham Bookshop were running a stall at the back where all the speaker’s books were available and I very nearly spent a fortune. I did get quite a few copies of 21st century ‘penny dreadful’ One Eye Grey, but haven’t read many of the stories yet.

SELFS hold monthly talks at the King’s Head pub on Borough High Street, which is very near my office, so I shall go along and see what they’re like. Encouraged by the quality of the conference, less so by the fact that the second message I received after joining their email list was a lame sexist joke. Sigh.

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Posted in Folklore, History, London, Stories

Mar 09

Suffragettery in Bow

In honour of International Women’s Day yesterday, and the fact that 2008 marks 90 years since UK women won the vote, I thought I’d post a little bit about Sylvia Pankhurst and the suffragettes of East London. There is suffragettery all over the place around here. As you walk out of the station you’ll see a fairly unremarkable-looking corner shop on the other side of the road opposite you. There are in fact two special things here:

  1. They have racks of fruit and veg outside which they light up with strange, appetite-killing blue and violet light at night.
  2. Above the shop is a box-shaped clock attached to the building by some spindly bits of metal.

The clock is a memorial to one of the East London suffragettes, Minnie Lansbury, who was elected to Poplar’s first Labour council in 1919. Minnie, along with other council members, spent 6 weeks in prison for failing to collect the full rates owed by the people of Poplar (Poplarians?) Bow police station is a little way down the road, where lots of the suffragettes were held after being arrested at demonstrations for breaching the peace, often in nearby Victoria Park. At one protest in 1914, Sylvia Pankhurst and 20 other women were marching to the park, linked to each other with chains, when they were ambushed by police who dragged them to the boating enclosure and smashed the padlocks, twisting the arms and tearing the hair of any women who tried to stop them.

Sylvia Pankhurst was dispatched to Canning Town by her formidable mother, Emmeline Pankhurst, in 1906, to win the support of the working women in the East. She set up the East London Federation of the Suffragettes, working from No. 400 Old Ford Road. The group didn’t just campaign and protest (and support pro-women’s suffrage MP George Lansbury, Minnie’s father-in-law and grandfather of Angela, yes, that Angela, a.k.a Jessica Fletcher) they also ran a hall for meetings and lectures, a cost-price restaurant, a mother and baby clinic, a day nursery, and a toy factory, as an early sort of fairtrade initiative. I find this tremendously impressive.

Emmeline (and her other daughter, Christabel) eventually became estranged from Sylvia, her East London suffragettes and her socialist, pacifist ideals. She stayed in the East, moving to Essex where she continued to campaign on a number of issues for the rest of her long life, much to the discomfort of the rest of Woodford. My grandparents lived in Woodford, and I can imagine them disapproving thoroughly. But then, they were terribly good at it.

Here’s a bit more Sylvia-lore for interested folks. You can also read some excerpts from her own record of her time in Bow on Home Made Jam. I also recommend Rosemary Taylor’s book Walks Through History: Exploring the East End (Amazon) which has a walk dedicated to the suffragettes. The wonderful Women’s Library in Aldgate also has a lot of walks featuring many of the kickass women of East London.

And finally, if you feel like thanking the women that fought so hard to win the vote, you can join the Fawcett Society, which was founded by suffragist Millicent Fawcett, and has been working for women and equality since 1866.

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Posted in Activism, Bow, Feminism, History, Human Rights, London, Politics