eastlondonhistory.com

The East End is, sadly, as famous for its disappeared industries as its existing ones. The dockyards are gone and the shipbuilders of Blackwall are a distant memory.
And of course Tower Hamlets once boasted the biggest ‘manufactory’ in Europe – Bryant and May’s colossal Fairfield Works, now transformed into luxury flats as the Bow Quarter.
But it is matchboxes of a quite different kind that provided one of the East End’s greatest manufacturing success stories – a name that will bring back happy memories to generations of kids but, sadly, lasted less than half this century.
Take a walk north along the River Lea and, just before you hit Hackney Wick, you will see the name ‘Lesney’ emblazoned on the wall of a decaying blue building. Now the Lesney factory is just another industrial relic, but once it produced the Matchbox cars, trucks, buses and more which enchanted post-War British schoolchildren. And it all happened by accident.
Leslie and Rodney Smith were unrelated schoolchums who, in one of those quirks of fate which often spark great events, were reunited during their WW2 service in the Royal Navy. Both were engineers and both dreamed of running their own companies once the fighting was over – so they decided they would go into business together.
On 19 June 1947 they sealed their partnership, taking an amalgam of Leslie and Rodney to form Lesney Products – the vague word product was chosen because, for all their ambitions, the pair had yet to decide what they would be making!
With £600 of combined funds, the two bought an old pub, The Rifleman, further up-river at Edmonton, and kitted it out with Government surplus die-casting machinery. And, joined by expert die-caster Jack Odell, the company joined the scores of other post-War start-ups, as Britain rebuilt its economy and industry for peacetime.
The company would take on any and every job, subcontracting their skills to the major engineering firms who needed precision die-cast pieces. But, as the Christmas of 1948 approached, orders dropped off, and the Smiths decided to cast around for a way to keep the machines busy and the revenue rolling in.
And so the firm decided to produce miniatures of the vehicles Britons saw around them everyday, on the thousands of building sites which were reconstructing the country. A traction engine, cement mixer, tractor and bulldozer were the first off the production line, and Lesney set about selling them to local shops.
Fired by their success, the Smiths decided to pitch the bigger toy stores. They weren’t enthusiastic. The tiny cars were described as “Christmas cracker trash” by one buyer. But children loved them. Lesney, in fact, had difficulty meeting demand and soon 13 Woolworths stores placed orders.

Manufacturing was still tough in the austerity of post-War Britain. From 1950 to 1952, during the Korean War, the Government limited the use of zinc to essential purposes, and Lesney made only the tin Jumbo the Elephant toy.
But as the ’50s wore on, business took off. The company dumped the bigger toys it had experimented with and concentrated all its manufacturing on miniatures. Rather than an offshoot of the business it became the core, and Lesney went into business with an East End firm called Moko. The two firms registered the name Matchbox, and concentrated on building the range.
The idea of a matchbox to put toys in didn’t start with Lesney. Moko’s boss Moses Kohnstam had moved to Britain in 1900 from Germany, where the idea had long been popular. It proved a popular gimmick in Britain, with the first cars in plain boxes with tuck-in ends, with simple printing on the cover. And generations of kids will also remember playing with the firm’s Dinky toys.
Through the ’60s and ’70s, exports grew to the United States and the Far East, and Matchbox became a worldwide name. But the recession of the early ’70s, plus a rash of unsuccessful ventures into dolls and Far East production, took their toll.
After huge losses, Lesney was declared bankrupt on 11 June 1992. The brand names were bought and distribution switched to companies in the US, Macau, anywhere but the East End in fact. The irony today is that the ‘Christmas cracker trash’ is hugely collectable – toys bought 40 years ago with pocket money pennies now change hands for hundreds of pounds.

You may know him as the suavely evil gangland boss Victor Maitland, who torments Eddie Murphy in the 1980s smash movie Beverly Hills Cop. Or the villainous Russian General Orlov, Roger Moore’s adversary in Octopussy.
You may know him better for his own plays, drawing deep on his childhood and teenage memories of East End life, to write and produce East and West. Or maybe as the producer and director of 30-odd years of pedigree avant-garde theatre, adapting and bringing new life to the plays and books of literary heavies like Kafka, with The Trial and Metamorphosis.
Steven Berkoff is a tough talent to pin down – which is probably just how he’d want it – but his road to becoming an international movie star and successful producer and director starts back in the 1930s enclave of East End Jewish immigrants, and an endless succession of dead-end jobs.
Berkoff was born in Stepney in 1937. Berkoff’s father Abraham (Al) ran a tailor’s shop in Leman Street, from which the talented cutter would turn out lavishly-made zoot suits for the West Indians who were already settling in London.
He also catered for East End boxers who were making a name for themselves – Jewish fighters like Ted Kid Lewis and Kid Berg, both world champions.
After the war, the Berkoffs returned to the East End following an ill-fated attempt to settle in the US. Home now was two rooms and an outside loo in Anthony Street, off the Commercial Road.
With chickens in the back yard, it was a far cry from the glamour of New York, but there was plenty to entertain the young Steven.
The Troxy Cinema in Poplar was the local venue for Saturday morning films, and there was the Palaseum at the end of the road for the Sunday afternoon film.
Steven was enrolled at Raine’s Foundation in Arbour Square – a first-rate school – where he was a near-contemporary of fellow playwright Harold Pinter.
And his physical welfare was taken care of by regular dips in the lido at Victoria Park in summer, and at Betts Street Baths, off Cable Street, in the winter.

The East End was a fascinating playground, and the young Berkoff would spend hours in Petticoat Lane market, transfixed by the wares at the stamp collectors’ corner and examining the animals in the now-defunct Club Row livestock market for signs of ill-treatment.
It was a world Berkoff would dip into time and again in his later work.
After a succession of aimless jobs in the fabric and garment trades, miserable stints in West End clothes shops, and a spell working in the US Army PX’s in Germany, Berkoff studied drama in London and Paris.
He worked in rep, appearing on TV in 1960s favourites like The Avengers, before forming his own company, the London Theatre Group, in 1968.
Drawing on his East End memories, Berkoff penned his first original stage play, East, first presented at the Edinburgh Festival in 1975.
West, Decadence, Greek, Kvetch, Acapulco, Harry’s Christmas, Lunch, Sink the Belgrano, Massage, Sturm und Drang and Brighton Beach Scumbags followed from the writer’s prolific pen.
Meanwhile, the energetic Berkoff was mounting plays and adaptations in Japan, Germany and Los Angeles – Richard II and Coriolanus for the New York Shakespeare Festival, and touring with his one-man show in Britain, the US, South Africa, Finland, Italy, Singapore and Australia.
But to many he was better known for his film portrayals of sinister heavies, revisiting the East End for his role as murder victim George Cornell in the film of The Krays.
And, at 61, the former East End boy is still busy, with his new book of short stories, Graft, now in the shops, and a run at the Theatre Royal, Haymarket, in Shakespeare’s Villains.
Graft – Tales of an Actor,
by Steven Berkoff,
ISBN:1 84002 040 7, £12.
Free Association:
An Autobiography,
by Steven Berkoff,
ISBN: 0 571 19629 6, £7.99.

We are always hearing how much of an influence the United States has on the way we live. From nylons and chewing gum, through to rock ‘n’ roll, rap and McDonald’s, the American way of life is here to stay. Dig a little deeper and you’ll find that much of what made America great not only started in the UK, but right here in the East End.

The story starts back on December 19, 1606 when 105 souls set sail from Blackwall Stairs, aboard the ships Discovery, Godspeed and Susan Constant. The voyage was led by Captain John Smith, who is remembered as the lover of Pocohontas.

On April 26, 1607, the three craft made land in what is now Virginia. Only 38 of the settlers survived the harsh first six months in their new home, among them hardy Cockney settler John Laydon. His daughter, Virginia, became the first child born of a Protestant wedding in the territory.

Mayflower leaves Wapping for Virginia

During the 18th Century, the trickle of settlers became a flood. The famed Mayflower set sail from Wapping Stairs with a complement of East Enders, including Stephen Hopkins, whose wedding on February 19, 1617 is listed in the parish register of St Mary’s in Whitechapel.

William Penn, the founder of Pennsylvania, left for the New World in 1667. He had been born on Tower Hill in 1644 and was just the first of many East Enders who went on to make their political mark on America – among them two presidents. If you ever visit Virginia, you will find a town called Shadwell, and the name is no coincidence. In 1735, Jane Rogers, christened in St Paul’s in Shadwell, set sail with her parents to the New World. There she met and married Peter Jefferson. On their land, named Shadwell in honour of Jane’s birthplace, they raised ten children, among them Thomas Jefferson, one the greatest ever US presidents who drafted the Declaration of Independence.

John Quincy Adams of London

Nowadays, you have to be born in the USA to rise to the rank of president. But John Quincy Adams, the country’s sixth president, was East End born and bred. And, in 1797, he was wed in All Hallows by the Tower, the same church where Pennsylvania founder Penn had been baptised more than a century before.
But if the men who sailed to settle in America quickly battled for independence from the motherland, they didn’t forget their roots.

The settlers didn’t get their independence until 1776, but 15 years before they decided they needed a rallying symbol. The Liberty Bell, with its inscription “Proclaim liberty throughout all the land unto all the inhabitants thereof” was commissioned from the Whitechapel Bell Foundry in 1751. The bell still hangs in the Philadelphia State House steeple today.
The East End influence continued, as the New World welcomed bold, adventurous settlers into the next century.

Jacob Adler leaves Brick Lane

Jacob Adler left Brick Lane for New York in 1885. He had started in the East End, with a 600-seat Yiddish theatre specially built for him – the building still stands in Princelet Street. But 17 people were crushed to death during a performance, and the heartbroken Adler fled Britain, and he went on to become one of the greatest stars of the American stage.

When he died in 1926, 500,000 people came to see him lying in state in New York. But through his successful career, Jacob never forgot the East End, returning frequently to play at the Standard Theatre in Shoreditch, and the Pavilion in Whitechapel Road.
As Adler said: “My tenderest, most youthful memories of my life are bound with London.”

In 1905, the Saperstein family left Flower and Dean Walk in Whitechapel for Chicago. In 1927, Abe Saperstein, who had left Brick Lane as a five-year-old, founded the Harlem Globetrotters, the most famous basketball team ever to strut the planet. So when Americans celebrate Independence Day with a ring on that Liberty Bell, remember where it all began…

For more information, see “East End, the American Connection”, produced by Bethnal Green City Challenge. Or contact the British American Arts Association, 116 Commercial Street, Whitechapel, on 0171 247 5385.

Antiques dealer, best-selling author, playwright, screenwriter and entrepreneur – Wolf Mankewitz, who has died aged 73, was a man of many parts.
But his twin loves – of literature and turning a profit on a deal – were forged in his childhood memories of his dad selling books from a barrow in Brick Lane.
In the 1950s and 60s, Mankewitz would gain fame and fortune as the writer of the hit musical Expresso Bongo, the best-selling novel Make Me An Offer and the science fiction thriller movie The Day The Earth Caught Fire. But as a boy, money was always hard to come by.
His parents were Russian Jews, just one couple out of the thousands of immigrants who poured into Whitechapel in the late 1800s and early 20th century, escaping the pogroms of Eastern Europe.
Like many others, his dad struggled to make a living. But what he did have was industry and the thing he knew well was books. And it was a book on his father’s stall that persuaded a young Wolf where his destiny lay. He picked up a copy of Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress and was hooked – he decided to be a writer.
His parents were determined their son should get the chances they had not had. And when Wolf won a scholarship to Cambridge University his father sold all the stock from his barrow to pay his way.
The £90 allowed Wolf to take up his course. But seeing the sacrifices his parents had to make made him determined never to suffer such privations again. For the rest of his life he would combine the vocation of writer with a buying-and-selling dealer’s brain that owed a lot to his father’s example.

Graduating from Cambridge at the precociously early age of 19, his first move was to set himself up as an antiques dealer. It quickly made him a good living, especially as he could combine it with his love of writing.
His expert knowledge of Wedgewood china allowed him to pen the book Wedgewood, an informed guide to judging and buying pieces.
But as the 1950s drew on, Wolf was to find fame not as a dealer, but as a successful writer. The best authors always write about what they know, they say, and he next turned to a fictionalised account of the antiques trade.
The very title of Make Me An Offer paints a picture of the deal-making stall traders Mankewitz would have been surrounded by as a boy, and it described the wrinkles, tricks and occasional dodgy dealings of the trade.
Writing of his roots
Many cinemagoers of the time will remember the movie of his hit story A Kid For Two Farthings, a poignant tale of a lad who is conned into buying a one-horned goat on the pretext that it is a unicorn.
And The Bespoke Overcoat again drew on his roots, telling the tale of an East End Jewish tailor.
He found notoriety, too, disrupting an edition of famed 1960s satire programme That Was The Week That Was with a verbal attack on critic Bernard Levin, who had had the temerity to attack his work. Mankewitz hammered home his point by having a tiny coffin – tailormade for the diminutive critic – delivered to his Daily Express office.
It was a colourful life – toward the end of it he became the honorary Panamian Consul to Dublin!
But as far as he travelled, his hallmark was always the eye for a deal, a razor sharp eye developed at his street trader dad’s barrow in the Whitechapel of the 1920s and 30s.

Tens of thousands of people flocked to the Isle of Dogs to see the biggest ship in the world being built.
She was the pride of Britain until, just before completion in the 1850s things began to go horribly wrong.
Because so much money had been poured into building the gigantic Great Eastern, cuts were made and risks taken. Several men died during the final stages of her construction. It was rumoured they included a riveter and his mate entombed between her twin hulls.
From then on, thoughts of the two trapped workmen made many of the crew nervous. Hollow knocking sounds were heard below decks at night and the ship was dogged by ill-fortune throughout her life.
It was a complete turnaround from the fortune that smiled on the ship when she was first designed by the golden boy of Victorian engineering, Isambard Kingdom Brunel.
Brunel had already built a tunnel under the Thames, constructed railways and designed the Clifton suspension bridge. Everything in his working life was big. Even his railway stations, like Paddington, were the size of cathedrals.
But he went a feat too far in creating an enormous steamship which could carry her own coals on a voyage to Australia and back. He needed a partner to bring the idea to reality and, in choosing John Scott Russell who owned a shipyard at Millwall, he chose the wrong man.
Russell was a braggart who could not live up to promises he made to Brunel. He failed, for instance, to find suitable land on which to build the huge ship.

As a result she was built in a far from ideal spot and had to be launched sideways into the Thames at Millwall.
The launching was a disaster. Huge crowds turned out on the appointed day when Miss Hope, daughter of a shipping company director, smashed a bottle of Champagne against the hull.
Chains took the strain of moving the 19,000-ton vessel but could not cope. They snapped, hurling workmen into the air. Brunel called a halt but, by then, one man was dead and four others badly hurt.
The launching ceremony was postponed with the ship having moved only four feet.
It took four months to drag the Great Eastern inch by tortuous inch to the water. By now the national press was hooting with derision and Brunel became ill with worry.
Even when the ship steamed out into the Channel, disaster was at hand. The skipper allowed too much steam to build up and there was an explosion.
Scalded seamen groped their way up on deck. One flung himself overboard in agony only to be mangled in the ship’s paddlewheel. Three more died before the day was out.
The Great Eastern limped back to port, her splendid Victorian fittings ripped to shreds, and did not re-emerge for a year.
Brunel died a broken man aged only 53 and, although the Great Eastern lived on for 30 years, she seemed jinxed.
She lost money as a transatlantic passenger steamer and was converted to the ignominious job of laying ocean cables.
Brunel’s dream, of using her on the Australia run, was never realised and eventually she was broken up for scrap.
Not much remains today of the Great Eastern apart from photos and souvenirs.
But visitors to Millwall today can, at low tide, still see the launching ways and piles that were built for Britain’s ill-starred queen of the seas.
For further reading: The Big Ship by Patrick Beaver; Brunel and his World by John Pudney.

Basketball is, today, one of the world’s most popular sports. Michael Jordan, Glen Rice and Shaq are household names and, from their London Arena base, the Leopards are winning games and fans as one of the fastest growing teams in Britain. But 70 years ago the game was very different. It was American, it was small time – and it was white. The reason basketball evolved into the billion-dollar business of today was a young Jewish lad from Whitechapel with a big cigar and bigger ideas.

Abe Saperstein’s parents left Whitechapel in the early 1900s looking for a new life and fortune in the New World, taking their four-year-old boy with them. But it was Abe who was to make the fortune. In 1927 Abe was 24 and living in Chicago when he noticed the opportunity he’d been waiting for. In those days, black players weren’t allowed in the professional basketball leagues, they had to play in separate “junior” leagues. When Abe’s local black team, the Savoy Fives, broke up, he took them over. Abe’s idea was that the team wouldn’t play the small leagues, with their limited market, but go out on the road, play one-off exhibition matches followed by a challenge match against a local amateur white team. It was a winning formula – each match was a novelty that would pull big crowds, and the black-white clash added an extra edge in the often segregated American towns. The Harlem Globetrotters were on their way.

Of course they weren’t from Harlem, but that was the black centre of New York, and added to the image. The band travelled in a Stars and Stripes painted bus, they adopted the theme song Sweet Georgia Brown and, playing exhibition matches between their own two teams, they had plenty of opportunity to develop their jokey style and trick shots. The last part of the mix was a happy accident. During a game a player managed to set his vest on fire and, grabbing a bucket of water, he put it out. The crowd loved it, and Abe ensured clowning was worked into the act. By the 1960s the Globetrotters were literally that and were hugely popular all over the world. They went on to have two audiences with the Pope and visited the White House to be made “Ambassadors of Goodwill” by President Ford.

The Globetrotters were huge in Britain, filling Wembley again and again. And before his death in 1966, Abe returned to his native Whitechapel and, ever the showman, was photographed leaning on a Rolls Royce and toting his trademark Havana. The monster he had created rolled on without him – 250 shows a year at its peak, but the game had changed. By the late 1970s the pro leagues, no longer segregated thanks to Abe, were fast catching the traditional American sports of gridiron and baseball in popularity. TV was making the teams world famous and the biggest stars – thanks to Abe – were black. The Globetrotters had become a novelty act and no longer lured the best players. All the tricks they had pioneered were being outdone in the regular leagues, where stars like Michael Jordan would soon command salaries of 20million dollars a year.

They last visited London in 1991. It was a fitting tribute to Abe that their last game should be in the East End. – and they said goodbye to English basketball at the London Arena, soon to be home to the Leopards. The ‘Trotters day was over, but another chapter was just beginning.

Since this piece was written in 1997, the Globetrotters have been reborn! Visit the official website of the Harlem Globetrotters.