eastlondonhistory.com

During the Victorian era and after, it was a tradition for the well-heeled to enter the East End to do good works. And though for many one visit was enough, many stayed to leave a lasting legacy - their institutions outliving them and even growing far beyond the boundaries of Tower Hamlets. The names of Samuel and Henrietta Barnett and Thomas Barnardo come to mind, Angela Burdett-Coutts and the ‘East End Squires’ who started Oxford House.

All had entered the East End and been appalled at what they saw - the poverty, disease, drunkenness and exploitation. This was a world of high infant mortality and low life expectancy. But Maria Dickin was different. Visiting Whitechapel in the early years of the last century she saw plenty of pain and suffering, but it was the animals that caught her eye. She found goats and rabbits huddling sick and injured in backyards. There were the costermongers’ and coal delivery men’s donkeys and horses, often crippled and lamed by heavy loads and overwork. It was a horror her sheltered Victorian childhood had ill prepared her for, as she would describe in her book ‘The Cry of the Animal’. The suffering and misery of these poor, uncared-for creatures in our overcrowded areas was a revelation to me. I had no idea it existed, and it made me indescribably miserable.’

The eldest of eight children of a Free Church minister, Mia (as she was known) was born in 1870, and showed a fierce independence from the start. Women of her class weren’t expected to work in the 1890s, but Mia opened a sucessful voice production studio in Wimpole Street - one of her customers was the famed singer Clara Butt. But at 28 she married her cousin, Arnold Dickin and was encouraged to give up work to run the house. It wasn’t enough, and like many bright and industrious women of the time, Maria had turned to charity work as a conduit for her energies. So in the early years of the 20th century she found herself in Whitechapel.

Mia had been forced to have her own sick Yorkshire terrier put down. Bad enough, she thought. But how much worse for those whol couldn’t afford vets’ bills. The response of those she spoke to was derisory. The poor don’t have any sick animals and if they did they would not bring them for treatment,’ was one comment. But after a long struggle for funds, Mia finally opened her first ‘People’s Dispensary for Sick Animals of the Poor’. Outside the dimly lit cellar in the Whitechapel district of London, a notice read:

Bring your sick animals.
Do not let them suffer.
All animals treated.
All treatment free.

The shop was mobbed, with police called to control the crowd. More than 100 animals a day were now coming in, and there was a rush to find larger premises. And Mia was ambitious, writing: ‘I must have dispensaries throughout the whole of East of London … no, throughout the whole of London, then I became very bold - why not - throughout England - then the British Isles, the British Empire?’

In 1921 she took a gypsy caravan and, accompanied by a vet, travelled the length and breadth of Britain treating animals and setting up clinics along the way. By 1923 there were 16 PDSA dispensaries and a motor caravan dispensary. By 1935 there were PDSA hospitals, 71 dispensaries and 11 motor caravan dispensaries, and the PDSA was spreading abroad.

In 1943, Maria endowed the Dickin Medal to honour animals’ war work, and it became popularly known as ‘the animals’ Victoria Cross’. By February 2008, the medal had been awared 62 times, often posthumously. The first award of the medallion, bearing the words ‘For Gallantry’ and ‘We Also Serve’, was to Winkie, a messenger pigeon who flew 120 miles to deliver an SOS from a crashed bomber. Messenger pigeons were big winners in the early days. In 1949, Simon became the only cat to win the medal having survived the shelling of the HMS Amethyst during the Yangtze Incident. In modern times, sniffer dogs from the Royal Army Veterinary Corps have won a lion’s share of Dickin Medals. In 2003 in Iraq, Buster nosed out a cache of weapons and explosives, while in 2007, Sadie uncovered a bomb planted outside the UN HQ in Kabul.

But the medal is not without its controversies, most famous among them the medal awarded to Rob, the SAS dog who supposedly completed 20 successful parachute jumps into Italy and North Africa during World War II. On the ground, the enterprising collie would lick the cheeks of sleeping commandoes to waken them at first scent of danger. An oil painting of the fearless hound would later accompany his medal at the centre of the Imperial War Museum’s ‘Animals War’ exhibition. The only problem was, it never happened. It was all a scheme cooked up by the SAS barracks’ quartermaster, who had grown attached to Rob and didn’t want to send him back to his owners. Ex SAS man Quentin Hughes helped devise the story, and laughingly remarked years later that “Nobody survived 20 parachute drops, let alone a dog. You were lucky to survive three!”

By the time Mia died in 1951, aged 81, she had been made both OBE and CBE. She had established a huge and lasting legacy, but as ever, she was looking ahead. Writing for children toward the end of her life she said: ‘oday we are all thinking about what each of us can do towards making the world a better place for every man, woman and child to live in. We must not forget to include the animals in our programme, they too must have a better world to live in.’

Read more on Rob the SAS Dog and the PDSA Dickins Medal.

Robin Hood Gardens likely to be demolished: The decision by culture minister Margaret Hodge not to list Poplar’s Robin Hood Gardens as ‘a building of special architectural signficance’ brings the demolition of the 1970s’ Brutalist block a stage closer. Alison and Peter Smithson’s housing estate, completed in 1972, is a masterpiece to some, with its ’streets in the air’ concept. Alan Powers, Chairman of the 20th Century Society, calling it a “unique place”. It’s a bit tougher to find fans among people who actually live there - I did an admittedly brief vox pop of locals a few years back and comments ranged from ‘horrible’ to ‘really horrible’ to ‘we’re trying to be rehoused to somewhere with a garden’. There is a campaignto get Robin Hood Gardens listed as a historical landmark in order to save it from destruction. However, English Heritage has failed to back the proposal.

You can read more about Robin Hood Gardens here, and there are some great pictures of Robin Hood Gardens on flickr. See what you think. Robin Hood Gardens likely to be demolished … good idea or bad?

A frustratingly brief piece pops up on the radar courtesy of the Press Association, saying that seven paintings by the late East End gangster Ronnie Kray are set to be auctioned. However there’s very little in the way of what, where and by who, so if anybody knows anything, please post a comment to this story.

The works, which date from the early 1970s, in the early years of Ronnie’s life sentence, will be auctioned in Sudbury, Suffolk, on 26 July. Ronnie, who died aged 61 in 1995, and his identical twin Reggie (who died a few years later, as did older brother Charlie), was a terrifyingly violent man who used his years of incarceration to explore the other side of his character, through books, writing, art and a deal of spiritual self examination. I don’t know if the paintings are any good, but they should be interesting to see.

I stumbled across a terrific documentary on BBC1 last night, covering the work of the doughty officers who work out of Wapping’s River Police station. The programme, which the BBC in an admirable lack of hype had simply called River Police followed them over the course of a day, with handheld cameras. The work, unsurprisingly, largely seems to consist of talking people down off bridges or fishing them out of the water if they’ve already jumped.

Superb footage of the Thames by day and especially by night - this was a lovely little film, quite old fashioned in feel, and touching on a part of the city that all of us are aware of but rarely see. If you missed it, don’t worry. Courtesy of the magic of the internet and digital media you can watch River Police on your computer screen or download it to watch later. Just click the following link:

River Police on BBC 1

On 28 December 1911 a man stumbled into Leman Street Police Station and announced he had come to help the police with their enquiries into a particularly gruesome double murder … that of Hanbury Street restauranteurs Solomon and Annie Milstein.

Even the rudimentary policing standards of the day couldn’t miss the clues in this case. For as the officers searched Myer Abramovitch they found that beneath his top set of clothes was a second. Covered with blood the garments were identified as those of Solomon Milstein. Within three months, the hapless Abramovich would be dead, executed at Pentonville gaol.

The downfall of the Milsteins came about through a (relatively) honest attempt to boost their restaurant’s takings. The eaterie, at 62 Hanbury Street, never really got going, and just a few months after it opened, the takings were failing fast. So it was, in November 1911, that Solomon suggested setting up a gambling den in the basement. The game of choice was Faro.

Although it has died out now, Faro was one of England’s most popular card games during the 18^th and 19^th centuries. The game was popular with the punters because it was easy to learn and offered good odds to the player. That was when it was played fairly at least. But Faro was notorious because it was so easy for the banker to rig, and games were invariably crooked. Similar to baccarat, it was banned in France but hugely popular in the Wild West; watch those Westerns and the guys in the saloon are probably playing Faro, with Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday famed Faro dealers. Famous conman, card sharp and riverboat gambler Canada Bill Jones was once asked why he bothered playing at a notoriously crooked Faro game in Cairo, Illinois and replied ‘Yeah, but it’s the only game in town!’

The Milsteins’ was far from the only game in Spitalfields but it was proving mighty profitable. Every deal of the cards meant thrupence profit for the house and there was more. People started to lose of course, and then pledged their rings, watches and jewellery – which Milstein could then sell on. But Annie Milstein was unhappy. Cards she didn’t mind, but gambling was immoral. She put her foot down and Solomon and his partner Joe Goldstein reluctantly closed the school. On Boxing Day 1911, a Tuesday, they cleared out the gamblers and divvied up the last pot. Solomon, Annie and Joe took 4s 6d each (23p). A man called Hermann Leferron handed over a watch, for which he got £2 10s and he left, with the stragglers, at 12.45 on Wednesday morning, the 27^th of December.

But around 2.30am, one Marks Verbloot, who lived in the flat above the restaurant heard groans and began to smell burning. The place was on fire, with the Milsteins still inside. The police forced the door and found the pair, battered to death in their bed, with a strong smell of paraffin pervading the apartment.

Tracking down the card school wasn’t hard. Everyone came forward and every name was soon accounted for – except for 28–year-old Myer Abramovitch. But Abramovitch had barely covered his tracks. The police interviewed Lazarus Rickman, a gambler at the club, who identified a distinctive neckerchief found after the blaze as belonging to the errant Myer. And if Abramovitch had failed to come forward, he was hardly doing a good job of hiding himself. Another of the gamblers, Henry Seychur, was on the corner of Commercial Road and Leman Street on the 28^th when he spotted Myer enjoying a coffee at a stall across the road. Seychur strode over and demanded to know why Abramovitch hadn’t been to see the police, and promptly marched him to the nearby nick.

Abramovitch wasn’t happy, but made no attempt to escape. Yes the neckerchief was his, he confirmed to the detectives. They searched him and found pledged watches belonging to Leferron and Rickman. They then peeled off his suit to reveal Solomon’s blood-soaked garments beneath. It was a gruesome find – perhaps Myer had been hoping to pawn the clothes later.

The trial was a brief affair, opening at the Old Bailey on 7 February 1912 and closing just two days later. The defence claimed Abramovitch was insane, but to no avail. Mr Justice Ridley sentenced him to hang. An appeal failed too, and on Wednesday, 6 March, Myer took the drop at Pentonville, hanged by John Ellis and Albert Lumb.

Row over East End’s secret skyscrapers: Shoreditch residents and architecture experts have attacked the ‘astonishing secrecy’ surrounding plans to build a cluster of skyscrapers on Bishopsgate Goods Yard. Developers Hammerson and Ballymore are understood to be behind two tower blocks planned for the largely derelict Bishopsgate Goods Yard, while another is on the drawing board for the next door Norton Folgate site.

Critics, including historian and long-time Spitalfields resident Dan Cruickshank (you’ll have seen him on TV) and Save Shoreditch secretary William Palin have expressed horror at the plan … and also at the fact that both Tower Hamlets and Hackney Councils are keeping quiet about the skyscrapers in their discussions of the plans for the sites. They claim that two public drop-in sessions last week on plans for the Goods Yard site made no reference to the towers.

‘The level of secrecy is astonishing,’ said Cruickshank. ‘These towers will create monumental shadows. People want to know what is going on. It will so fundamentally change the experience of living in that area that people’s views need to be gathered and responded to.’ Palin described the blocks at ‘tentacles … these proposals are a monstrous assault on the special character of this district and the skyline of the capital. We call on the mayor to stop this madness.’

A spokeswoman from Tower Hamlets confirmed it had not yet received any planning applications for the Goods Yard. ‘Tower Hamlets Council is not engaged in any formal pre-application discussions,’ she added. Robert Allan, assistant director for developers Hammerson, said: ‘Hammerson and Ballymore [another developer] are in the early stages of preparing proposals for the Bishopsgate Goods Yard site. The local authority is preparing and consulting on the draft supplementary planning document, and following its consultation, we will develop our options for the scheme further.’

The Save Shoreditch campaign numbers artists Tracy Emin and Rachel Whiteread among its members.

When Scotland met Poplar: Two hundred years ago, the area east of the City was still farmland and market gardens, with villages such as Bow and Bethnal Green, Stepney and Limehouse among the fields. Ribbon developments were snaking out along the main highways, such as the Whitechapel and East India Dock Roads, and soon the green would be engulfed by a tide of concrete, mortar and brick.

To the people living there in rural Middlesex, soon to become ‘East Enders’ it must have seemed like a new street was thrown up every week. Perhaps it was a little quicker than that - in 1801 there were 900,000 Londoners, by 1901 more than six million. There was just one problem for the builders racing to erect terraces to house the new workers - finding unused names for all their new streets. Sometimes it was children’s names, famous poets, sometimes places from far flung corners of the Empire, and sometimes towns from across the British Isles. Dictionaries, encyclopedias and atlases were plucked from the shelf and pored over in a desperate search for new names. Take a trip out along the Romford Road to Ilford and you see one estate where the builders appear to have given up in despair. You drive past 1st Avenue, 2nd Avenue and all the way through to 8th … hardly names to stir the imagination.

When Scotland met Poplar: And one little part of Poplar, delimited by the Docklands Light Railway to the west, the Limehouse Cut to the north, the River Lea to the east and the East India Dock Road to the south, became forever Caledonia. For the many Scots who headed south to work in the docks, it must have been strange to see names of rural Scottish villages, rivers and valleys cut and pasted onto the templated rows of east London streets. This area had been the Bromley Marsh, but with the development of the riverside, and particular the construction of the East India Docks at Blackwall in 1802, the scrubby land suddenly had potential … though it was a long time before it was realised.

In 1813, the whole area was bought by ‘contractor and excavator’ Hugh McIntosh from the East India Company, his main employer. It was still rural for a long while, with maps of the time showing ‘McIntosh’s Farm’ at the northern end of McIntosh’s Lane. By 1849, his son David seemed to have had an eye on the future sprawl of London east towards and then beyond the River Lea, having a clause on road widening inserted in the Commercial Roads Continuation Act, which was working its way through Parliament.

But it was only with Hugh McIntosh’s grandson, another David, that the streets started going up. By now, the docks and factories of Canning Town were creating a demand for workers’ housing, and Bromley Marsh was an island of green amid the new building. Perhaps the McIntosh’s took their Scottish antecedents as inspiration for the naming, though the estate proved too big for one firm. In 1873, McIntosh sold the land east of 375 East India Dock Road to a manufacturing chemist called John Abbott, of Forbes & Abbott. That firm had its base at the Iceland Wharf Works in Old Ford Road.

Abbott continued the naming convention begun by McIntosh, with a web of streets bearing Scottish place names from A to Z. It wasn’t quite as neat as that - there weren’t 26 streets, and the letter ‘Z’ proved a problem, as detailed below. But within a few years the streets were up, and the two developers were happily sold out and collecting ground rent. Mr Abbott, in an expression of ego, had named the longest road in the development after himself. The area was radically changed in the 1890s with the construction of the Blackwall Tunnel, and the Approach Road would later slice right through this little Caledonia. And to latterday residents of the Aberfeldy Estate, the green fields of Perthshire must have
seemed very far away.

When Scotland met Poplar: those street names … and where they come from

Aberfeldy
Lying on the River Tay in Perthshire, the town features in Robert Burns’s poem ‘The Birks of Aberfeldy’. With a population of less than 2000 people, it has an 18-hole golf course and the Black Watch Memorial.

Ailsa
From Ailsa Craig, an island formed by the plug of an extinct volcano, lying 10 miles west of Girvan in the River Clyde. Ailsa is uninhabited though it has a lighthouse.

Blair
From Blair Atholl, a little town in Perthshire, a rare flat area in the midst of the Grampian Mountains, and recently incorporated into the Cairngorms National Park. The town’s most famous feature is Blair Castle.

Culloden
A village three miles east of Inverness and site of the Battle of Culloden in 1746 - the final meeting of the French-backed Jacobites and the Hanoverian British Government during the Jacobite Rising. Protected by the National Trust for Scotland.

Dee
The River Dee rises in the Cairngorms and flows to the North Sea at Aberdeen, via Braemar, Ballater, Aboyne and Banchory. A stunningly beautiful area of the Highlands.

Ettrick
In the county of Selkirk, in the Scottish borders. Once covered by the Royal Ettrick Forest, now farming country.

Findhorn
A village in Morayshire and on the southern side of the Moray Firth. Traditionally a fishing village, it’s now arguably most famous to outsiders for the Findhorn Foundation spiritual community.

Leven
A seaside town in Fife, which has suffered badly from the closure first of the coal mines then the docks. Has two golf courses.

Lochnagar
A mountain in the Grampians range, Beinn Chiochan in Gaelic. Setting for the story ‘The Old Man of Lochnagar’ written by Prince Charles for his little brothers Andrew and Edward. The area produces Lochnagar malt whisky.

Oban
Seaside resort on the Firth of Lorn, on Scotland’s west coast. Flanked by the mountains of Morvern and Ardgour. Attractions include the Cathedral of St Columba, a brace of castles and the Oban Distillery.

Spey
The fastest flowing river in Scotland, and the second longest. Famed for salmon fishing and the number of whisky distilleries along its banks.

Teviot
A river in the Scottish Borders, flanking Dumfries and Galloway and then flowing north past Hawick and Roxburth to Join the River Tweed near Kelso.

Zetland
Arguably, our builder cheated a little here. After all, you try to find a place in Scotland beginning with the letter ‘Z’. ‘Zetland’ is the archaic spelling of ‘Shetland’, the far flung archipelago way off the north east coast of Britain.

Tags: East End of London

It’s one of the most iconic moments in British film. A large, muscular man in shorts swings a huge hammer to ring a bigger gong and another Rank movie begins. There were four ‘gongmen’ down the years, and the second was a true East End boxing hero, the first man to win a Lonsdale Belt, and the victim of a misconceived colour bar that denied him a sizeable slice of fame and fortune. Bombardier Billy Wells could have put his first through that Rank Gong - it was only made of papier mache, sprayed with metallic looking paint. The familiar chime was provided by percussionist James Blades, hitting a 30-inch Chinese tam tam drum.

William Thomas Wells was born at 250 Cable Street on 31 August 1889, the eldest of five brothers and one of nine altogether. His father, also William Thomas Wells, as a musician, mother Emily a laundress. After Broad Street elementary school in Shadwell, Billy headed for the nearby City where, at 12, he started work as a messenger boy. Boxing had become enormously popular in the boys clubs and East End missions of the day, and in his spare time Billy proved himself a useful fighter.

Joining the Royal Artillery at 18, Billy found a natural home for his skills. He was posted to Rawalpindi and boxed successfully in divisional and All-India competitions. Promoted from Private to Bombardier (the equivalent of Corporal in infantry regiments) Billy had his fighting nickname. The army also assigned him a full time civilian coach. There would be no more square bashing and bull - Billy was a professional boxer in all but name. He was quick to see the possibilites. With boxing becoming hugely popular as a spectator sport around Europe and in the United States, Billy bought himself out of the army, headed home and launched his pro career.

First up, on 8 June 1910 came a points win over six rounds against Gunner Joe Mills. The 6ft 3in Wells, who fought at between 182 and 192lbs, moved straight on to fight Iron William Hague for the British Heavyweight title at the National Sporting Club in Covent Garden. Winning by a knockout in six, Billy became the first heavyweight to win the Lonsdale Belt. He was immediately slated to fight world heavyweight champion Jack Johnson, in October 1911. It was a meteoric assent but one to be swiftly halted.

Boxing was enormously racially loaded at the time. When the black Johnson beat the white Tommy Burns to win the World Heavyweight crown in December 1908, the newspapers went in search of a ‘great white hope’ to wrest back the title. Writer Jack London, had a notorious colum in the New York Herald. His column on 27 December that year preached divisiveness if not any arguments of racial superiority, but it was typical of the tenor of the times:

“I was with Burns all the way. He was a white man and so am I. Naturally I wanted to see the white man win. Put the case to Johnson and ask him if he were the spectator at a fight between a white man and a black man which he would like to see win. Johnson’s black skin will dictate a desire parallel to the one dictated by my white skin. . . . But one thing remains. Jeffries must emerge from his alfalfa farm and remove the smile from Johnson’s face.”

And so East Ender Billy Wells emerged as a Great White Hope, put up to fight Johnson in London, in October 1911. But he had fierce opponents outside the ring as well as in. One of the main obstacles was the Rev FB Meyer, a Baptist pastor and evangelist, a mainstay of the Higher Life movement and a vociferous preacher against the evils of the saloon bar, the brothel and the boxing ring, with its attendant rowdiness and betting for cash.

One of Mayer’s main beefs was the immoral amount of money boxers were getting paid - though what is a reasonable sum to allow the world heavyweight champion to punch you in the face for half an hour? Opposing those who wanted a black-white scrap were those who abhorred fighting between the races. This curious coalition of naysayers won the day, and home secretary Winston Churchill banned the fight. nstead, in December 1911, Billy fought Fred Storbeck at Covent Garden for the British Empire Heavyweight Title, putting him down in the 11th. That same year, he published ‘Modern Boxing: A Practical Guide to Present Day Methods’ and a year later he would marry Ellen Kilroy. Together the couple would have five children.

And there was fight after fight. In 1913, Wells twice fought Frenchman Georges Caprentier for the European title, and was twice knocked down. And Wells would repeatedly and successfully defend his British Heavyweight title, some 14 times in total.

Taking a break from boxing to enlist again during the First World War, Billy won a promotion from Bombardier to Sergeant, and was sent to France to organise PT for the troops. Returning to Civvy Street, Billy re-entered the ring, but as he approached 30 it was clear that his best days were behind him. He eventually lost his British crown in 1919, when he was knocked down by Joe Beckett in a bout at Holborn. Beckett thus scooped all Billy’s titles. Five more wins in the space of a year (a workrate no pro would attempt today) convinced Billy he could come back. But a rematch at Kensington Olympia in May 1920 saw Billy stopped in the third. There were eight more bouts, with the win rate steeply dropping, before Billy called it a day in 1925.

And unlike so many boxers, Billy managed to make a career for himself after his days in the ring. He put his name to another book, Physical energy: Showing how physical and mental energy may be developed by means of the practice of boxing. And there were bit parts in movies from as early as 1916 (when he featured as himself in Kent, the Fighting Man, led to … well more bit parts, but a steady flow of them, right up to a not very good version of The Beggar’s Opera in 1953. Laurence Olivier was Captain MacHeath, Hugh Griffith the Beggar, and Billy was the hangman. A face knocked about in the ring made him perfect for minor character parts - a publican in We’ll Smile Again (1942), a commissionaire in Concerning Mr Martin (1937), a boxing referree in Broken Blossoms (1936), a detective in Old Mother Riley (1943).
And when Billy died in Ealing in 1967, at the age of 77, he left a remarkable record behind him. 52 fights, 41 wins and 34 of them by knockout.