In Search Of The Yiddish East End
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Writer & biographer M. Syd Rosen is on a quest to discover his family’s past and explore the significance of Yiddish culture today
My grandfather’s cousins’ butcher’s shop in Wentworth St photographed by Shloimy Alman
I live in a former hat factory opposite the school that Emanuel Litvinoff writes about in his memoir Journey Through a Small Planet. I moved back to Bethnal Green and into this building about eight years ago and Aleph, my partner, joined me here about two years ago. I say ‘moved back’ but I should not. I am not from Bethnal Green, no matter how long I live in the shadow of Litvinoff.
I use the word ‘shadow’ almost literally because a new yoga studio nearby has recently painted the author’s face on the side of their building in Cheshire St. Now, every day, as I head back from a walk or a visit to the shops, Litvinoff’s great bespectacled face looks down at me.
You have to go back two or three generations to find my family’s roots in Stepney, Whitechapel, and Spitalfields. This, I was always told, was a nowhere land, a place abandoned to the whims of the Luftwaffe. By the time I got here the Bethnal Green my family knew had long gone, the residents deceased or otherwise departed, taking with them as much of their language and culture as they could. To many, Yiddish meant little more than either tired humour or the unfamiliar world of Hasidism. In isolation, it was hard to argue otherwise. 2011 saw the end of Friends of Yiddish, a literary club for native Yiddish speakers that had been meeting at Toynbee Hall for the best part of a century. Nothing ever took its place because nothing ever could.
My grandfather on my mother’s side was the only member of my family—myself included—with an inkling of why it was that the East End remained important to us. Nudged into recollection by my imminent move east, my grandfather recalled teenage summers spent helping out at his cousin’s butchers shop on Petticoat Lane Market. My mind flashed to white coats speckled with blood and the rhythmic plucking of dead chickens before Litvinoff’s oversized face leapt into view and reminded me to keep the nostalgia in check. Nevertheless, here was something for me to grab ahold of, a marker so visceral that even a vegetarian such as myself wanted to just reach out and grab it.
Once, Wentworth St had fourteen butchers. Tired with time, my grandfather could not recall the location of his family’s shop nor quite what it looked like, only that it stood on a corner. Resigned to the fact that the area had long since changed, I hoped at least to be able to identify the right address.
My grandfather is decidedly English, a fact that obscures how close he was to the mass migration of Jews into East London from Eastern Europe—how close we are still, despite it all. Some of my family came from Czernowitz (Chernivtsi), a city in what is now Ukraine. Czernowitz is best remembered by Yiddishists for having played host to a hugely influential conference on the state of the language in 1908. Today the city is a common stopping-off point for those seeking refuge in nearby Romania.
There would be no mass Yiddish tomorrow as dreamed of by the linguists of Czernowitz. But still Yiddish thrived in London, as it did all over the world, leaving in its wake a voluminous and varied cultural output to which my generation have next to no recourse, whatever our backgrounds.
Aleph and I wanted to try to do something about this. We set up a project dedicated to exploring the past, present, and future of Yiddish culture, particularly how it relates to contemporary struggles over memory and power. We wanted to learn more about where Yiddish culture came from and where it still might be able to take us.
In preparation, I decided to rewatch a number of films with an eye to what we could screen, including Carol Reed’s A Kid for Two Farthings (1955). Written by Wolf Mankowitz, the film takes its name and structure from ‘Chad Gadya’, a Jewish song dating back to the sixteenth century. Traditionally sung at Passover, ‘Chad Gadya’ concerns the fate of a poor little goat who is eaten by a cat who is in turn bitten by a dog who is then beaten by a stick. On it goes, in familiar shaggy-dog fashion.
In A Kid for Two Farthings our hero Joe is an imaginative little boy living in a bustling but deprived East End street market. Joe dreams not of a goat but of a unicorn magical enough to grant his friends and family their wishes. Filmed in the summer of 1954, A Kid for Two Farthings showed Petticoat Lane at both its heyday and its swansong. Amidst establishing shots of hawkers and housewives and spinsters and spivs, Joe spies a pigeon and decides he must have it. As I watched Joe hunt his prey in vain I suddenly spotted a blurry blue butcher’s shop in the background. If you squint hard enough, ‘Frankel’ comes into view, the surname of my grandfather’s London relatives. Like Joe, my unicorn was flickering into technicolour life.
A Kid for Two Farthings was mostly shot on location, so I knew there was a high chance this was a real building. For the sake of convenience, though, Reed stitched together his make-believe market out of several different streets, making use of sets and dressing real buildings when necessary. Checking a commercial directory, I learned that L. Frankel was indeed located at 30 Wentworth St, sharing a corner with Goulston St, just as it appeared to do in Reed’s film.
Though the entire film revolves around Wentworth St, the only glimpses of L. Frankel are to be had in these two brief shots. Happily, the building still stands today. The attractive green tiles and hand-painted sign are gone, but the capitals on either side of the shopfront remain.
Families like mine stopped speaking Yiddish around the time Reed’s cameras arrived in Spitalfields. By that stage it had long been derided as zhargon, ‘jargon’, one of those ‘miserable [and] stunted’ half-languages better suited to the ‘stealthy tongues of prisoners.’ These words belonged to no less influential a figure than Theodore Herzl, whose determination to crush Yiddish meant abandoning not just a way of speaking but a deep link to our collective past. Herzl was, of course, wrong. It gave Aleph and I no small pleasure to call our new project Jargon, in celebration of a language and a culture all too readily dismissed.
London is still home to tens of thousands for whom Yiddish is their mother tongue. Many others continue to learn it, for either sentimental reasons, out of alignment with the values of diasporic life, or to work their way through a vast and largely untapped cultural heritage. Our project is not just for Yiddish speakers though. We are setting up a book club for Yiddish literature in translation, organising film screenings that consider the meaning of ‘Jewish cinema’, hosting artists’ talks and authors in conversation, and running book sales. We want to find a way to talk about this world without romanticising it, to critique it without isolating it.
Jargon is launched next Sunday 25th May at House of Annetta, 25 Princelet St, E1 6QH. For a full programme and to purchase tickets, visit jargon.org.uk.
The corner of Wentworth St and Goulston St today
L. Frankel’s butcher shop at the corner of Wentworth St and Goulston St in the background of this still from A Kid for Two Farthings in 1954
L. Frankel’s butcher shop in the background of another still from A Kid for Two Farthings in 1954
Emmanuel Litvinoff gazes down onto Cheshire St
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Crowdfund Report
Thanks to the generosity of 230 readers who contributed to our crowdfund and some other donors, we have raised the budget for Tessa Hunkin’s Hackney Mosaic Project which will be published on Thursday 2nd October.
I am especially pleased to publish this book because I believe Hackney Mosaic Project is an inspirational model of how local people can come together and collaborate to beautify their neighbourhood and celebrate community. In such troubled times, we surely need hopeful and positive examples of human creativity dedicated to the common good.
Thank you Carl Adamak, Rose Ades, Karen Alexander, Kate Amis, Elizabeth Aumeer, Michael Babcock, Joan Bailey, Gaynor Baldwin, Madeleine Ball, Rosie Barker, C. M. Barlow, Gillian Baron, Karen Beesley, Hilary Blackstock, Bookartbookshop, Richard & Jenni Bowley, Lindsay Bown, Iain Boyd, Christopher Brown, Michael Jake Brown, James Buchan, Claire Burkhalter, Sarah Campbell, Helen Carpenter, Patricia Carroll, Lynne Casey, Janet Cheffings, Christine Chinnery, Shirley Collier, Wendy Cook, J. A, Cooper, Valerie Cottle, Eleanor Crow, John Curno, Rachel Darnley-Smith, Rosie Dastgir, Victoria Diggle, Catherine Howard-Dobson, Clare Edwards, Josephine Eglin, Marion Elliot, Janet Ellis, Sian Evans, Susan Fine, Simon Foley, Sue Grayson Ford, Doreen Fletcher, Susie Freedman, Nancy Frankin, Vivian French, John Furlong, Chris Gad, John Gillman, Gillygrannyruth, Dorothy Twining Globus, Michael Gornall, Sophie Green, Nina Grunfeld, Melanie Hamill, Jayne Hamilton, Catherine Harris, Julia Harrison, Claire Hayward, Patricia Haupt, David Heath, Lesley Hemming, Lubaina Himid, Tony Hollington, Tim Hunkin, Barbara R. Jones, Matthew Kay, Hilda Kean, Michael Keating, Patricia Kelly, Sara Kermond, Colette Khan, Deirdre Lacey, L Langmead, Oliver Lazarus, David Lester, Howard Lewis, Jenny Linford, Pauline Lord, John Patrick Lowe, Sarah Ludford, Stephen Makepeace, Tim Mainstone, Anne Manion, Fiona Marlow, Hellen Martin, Sara Mason, Rachel Matthews, Ava Mayer, Phil Mayer, Frances Mayhew, Jill Mead, Julia Meadows, Jennifer, Michael, Helen Miles, Janet H. Mohler, Iain Monaghan, Annie Moreton, Matilda Moreton, Isabel Morris, Zoë Mulcare, Angus Murray, Margaret Nairne, Jennifer Newbold, Ros Niblett, Geoff Nicholls, Bernadette Nolan, Gilbert O’Brien, Jan O’Brien, Sharon O’Connor, Vivienne Palmer, Enrico Panizzo, Peter Parker, Pamela Percy, Lynne Perrella, Fiona Pettitt, Andrea Petochi, Dame Siân Phillips Stoodley Pike, Alison Pilkington, Kate Pocock, Kay Porter, Molly Porter, Alice Patullo, Jeffrey Ian Press, Deb Rindl, Gaby Robertshaw, Corvin Roman, Anne Sally, Tim Sayer, Julia Scaping, Elizabeth Scott, Kate Scott, Mary Scott, Janet Sharples, Silvervanwoman, Ellen R. Sippel, Charles Saumarez Smith, Mary Smith, Roderick Smith, A. Sparks, Alexander Spray, Lawrence P. Stevenson, Lexy Stones, Harriet Storey, Christine Swan, Amanda Talsma-Willians, Catherine Thomas, Penelope Thompson, Sophie Thompson, E. G. Timlin, Penny Tunbridge, Cathey Unwin, Sarah Vaughan, Jonty Wareing, E. Walker, Arabella Warner, C. C. C. Waspie, Lianne Weidmann, Karen Wesley, Robert Whitney, Hilary White, James White, Carol Whitman, Margaret Willes, Jane Williamson, Jill Wilson, Mary Winch, Julian Woodford, Michael Zilka and many others who choose to be anonymous.
The Docks Of Old London
Within living memory, the busiest port in the world was here in the East End but now the docks of old London have all gone. Yet when I walk through the colossal new developments that occupy these locations today, I cannot resist a sense they are merely contingent and that those monumental earlier structures, above and below the surface, still define the nature of these places. And these glass slides, created a century ago by the London & Middlesex Archaeological Society for magic lantern shows at the Bishopsgate Institute, evoke the potent reality of that former world vividly for me.
Two centuries ago, the docks which had existed east of the City of London since Roman times, began an ambitious expansion to accommodate the vast deliveries of raw materials from the colonies. Those resources supplied the growing appetite of manufacturing industry, transforming them into finished products that were exported back to the world, fuelling an ascendant spiral of affluence for Britain.
Despite this infinite wealth of Empire, many lived and worked in poor conditions without any benefit of the riches that their labour served to create and, in the nineteenth century, the docks became the arena within which the drama of organised labour first made its impact upon the national consciousness – winning the sympathy of the wider population for those working in a dangerous occupation for a meagre reward.
Eventually, after generations of struggle, the entire industry was swept away to be replaced by Rupert Murdoch’s Fortress Wapping and a new centre for the financial centre at Canary Wharf. Yet everyone that I have spoken with who worked in the Docks carries a sense of pride at participating in this collective endeavour upon such a gargantuan scale, and of delight at encountering other cultures, and of romance at savouring rare produce – all delivered upon the rising waters of the Thames.
Deptford Dock Yard, c. 1920
Atlantic Transport Liner “Minnewaska” – The Blue Star Liner “Almeda” in the entrance lock to King George V Dock on the completion of her maiden voyage with passengers from the Argentine, April 6th, 1927.
Timber in London Docks, c. 1920
Wool in London Docks, c. 1920
Ivory Floor at London Dock, c. 1920
Crescent wine vaults at London Dock – note curious fungoid growths, c. 1920
Unloading grain – London Docks, c. 1920
Tobacco in London Docks, c. 1920
Royal Albert Dock, c. 1920
Cold Store at the Royal Albert Dock showing covered conveyors, c. 1920
Quayside at Royal Albert Dock, c. 1920
Surrey Commercial Dock, c. 1920
Barring Creek, c. 1920
Wapping Pier Head, c. 1920
Pool of London, c. 1920
Mammoth crane, c. 1920
Greenwich School – Training ship, c. 1910
The Hougoumont on the Thames, c. 1920
Images courtesy Bishopsgate Institute
You may like to read these other stories about the London Docks
Views from a Dinghy by John Claridge
Along the Thames With Tony Bock
Whistler in Limehouse & Wapping
Dickens in Shadwell & Limehouse
Sarah Ainslie In Covent Garden
In the eighties, Contributing Photographer Sarah Ainslie photographed the street performers of Covent Garden and her pictures are currently being exhibited at Paul Smith, 40-43 Floral St, WC2E 9TB until 11th June as part of the 50th Anniversary of Covent Garden Street Theatre.
The square outside St Paul’s Covent Garden, designed by Inigo Jones, has offered a space for street performers since the seventeenth century. In 1975, after the fruit and vegetable market closed, this became the Covent Garden Street Theatre created by Alternative Arts led by Maggie Pinhorn.
The community was able to preserve it as a public space through resistance from the local residents, traders and activists who came together to halt the plans to demolish the old market buildings. It was an inspiring example of people working collaboratively to manage their own spaces and the importance of public art as a living experience, in a place where street entertainers have been part of the history and culture of the area for over three hundred years.
Photographs copyright © Sarah Ainslie
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William Morris’ East End
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If you spotted someone hauling an old wooden Spitalfields Market orange crate around the East End, that was me undertaking a pilgrimage to some of the places William Morris spoke in the hope he might return for one last oration
William Morris spoke at Speakers’ Corner in Victoria Park on 26th July & 11th October 1885, 8th August 1886, 27th March & 21st May 1888
The presence of William Morris in the East End is almost forgotten today. Yet he took the District Line from his home in Hammersmith regularly to speak here through the last years of his life, despite persistent ill-health. Ultimately disappointed that the production of his own designs had catered only to the rich, Morris dedicated himself increasingly to politics and in 1884 he became editor of The Commonweal, newspaper of the Socialist League, using the coach house at Kelsmcott House in Hammersmith as its headquarters.
As an activist, Morris spoke at the funeral of Alfred Linnell, who was killed by police during a free speech rally in Trafalgar Sq in 1887, on behalf of the Match Girls’ Strike in 1888 and in the Dock Strike of 1889. His final appearance in the East End was on Mile End Waste on 1st November 1890, on which occasion he spoke at a protest against the brutal treatment of Jewish people in Russia.
When William Morris died of tuberculosis in 1896, his doctor said, ‘he died a victim to his enthusiasm for spreading the principles of Socialism.’ Morris deserves to be remembered for his commitment to the people of the East End in those years of political turmoil as for the first time unions struggled to assert the right to seek justice for their workers.
8th April 1884, St Jude’s Church, Commercial St – Morris gave a speech at the opening of the annual art exhibition on behalf of Vicar Samuel Barnett who subsequently founded Toynbee Hall and the Whitechapel Gallery.
During 1885, volunteers distributed William Morris’ What Socialists Want outside the Salmon & Ball in Bethnal Green
1st September 1885, 103 Mile End Rd
20th September 1885, Dod St, Limehouse – When police launched a violent attack on speakers of the Socialist League who defended the right to free speech at this traditional spot for open air meetings, William Morris spoke on their behalf in court on 22nd September in Stepney.
10th November 1886 & 3rd July 1887, Broadway, London Fields
November 20th 1887, Bow Cemetery – Morris spoke at the burial of Alfred Linnell, a clerk who was killed by police during a free speech rally in Trafalgar Sq. ‘Our friend who lies here has had a hard life and met with a hard death, and if our society had been constituted differently his life might have been a delightful one. We are engaged in a most holy war, trying to prevent our rulers making this great town of London into nothing more than a prison.’
9th April 1889, Toynbee Hall, Commercial St – Morris gave a magic lantern show on the subject of ‘Gothic Architecture’
1st November 1890, Mile End Waste – Morris spoke in protest against the persecution of Jews in Russia
William Morris in the East End
3rd January & 27th April 1884, Tee-To-Tum Coffee House, 166 Bethnal Green Rd
8th April 1884, St Jude’s Church, Commercial St
29th October 1884, Dod St, Limehouse
9th November 1884, 13 Redman’s Row
11th January & 12th April 1885, Hoxton Academy Schools
29th March 24th May 1885, Stepney Socialist League, 110 White Horse St
26th July & 11th October 1885, Victoria Park
8th August 1885, Socialist League Stratford
16th August 1885, Exchange Coffee House, Pitfield St, Hoxton
1st September 1885, Swaby’s Coffee House, 103 Mile End Rd
22nd September 1885, Thames Police court, Stepney (Before Magistrate Sanders)
24th January 1886, Hackney Branch Rooms, 21 Audrey St, Hackney Rd
2nd February 1886, International Working Men’s Educational Club, 40 Berners St
5th June 1886, Socialist League Stratford
11th July 1886, Hoxton Branch of the Socialist League, 2 Crondel St
24th August 1886, Socialist League Mile End Branch, 108 Bridge St
13th October 1886, Congregational Schools, Swanscombe St, Barking Rd
10th November 1886, Broadway, London Fields
6th March 1887, Hoxton Branch of the Socialist League, 2 Crondel St
13th March & 12th June 1887, Hackney Branch Rooms, 21 Audrey St, Hackney Rd
27th March 1887, Borough of Hackney Club, Haggerston
27th March, 21st May, 23rd July, 21st August & 11th September, 1887 Victoria Park
24th April 1887, Morley Coffee Tavern Lecture Hall, Mare St
3rd July 1887, Broadway, London Fields
21st August 1887, Globe Coffee House, High St, Hoxton
25th September 1887, Hoxton Church
27th September 1887, Mile End Waste
18th December 1887, Bow Cemetery, Southern Grove
17th April 1888, Mile End Socialist Hall, 95 Boston St
17th April 1888, Working Men’s Radical Club, 108 Bridge St, Burdett Rd
16th June 1888, International Club, 23 Princes Sq, Cable St
17th June 1888, Victoria Park
30th June 1888, Epping Forest Picnic
22nd September 1888, International Working Men’s Education Club, 40 Berners St
9th April 1889, Toynbee Hall, Commercial St
27th June 1889, New Labour Club, 5 Victoria Park Sq, Bethnal Green
8th June 1889, International Working Men’s Education Club, 40 Berners St
1st November 1890, Mile End Waste
This feature draws upon the research of Rosemary Taylor as published in her article in The Journal of William Morris Studies. Click here to join the William Morris Society
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At Kelmscott House, Hammersmith
I have walked past William Morris’ former house on the river bank in Hammersmith many times and always wondered what it was like inside but, since it is now a private dwelling, I never expected to visit. However, the residents kindly open their doors to members of the William Morris Society once every two years and thus I was permitted the privilege of joining the tour.
William Morris was forty-three years old when he came to live here. It was to be his last house in a succession that began with his childhood home in Walthamstow and included the Red House in Bexleyheath, designed for him and Jane as their marital home by Philip Webb, and the sixteenth century Kelmscott Manor by the Thames in Lechlade. The rural idyll which William Morris hoped for at Kelmscott Manor had been sullied by the overbearing presence of Dante Gabriel Rossetti whose obsession with Jane Morris had led him to take up permanent residence.
“If you could be content to live no nearer London than that, I cannot help thinking we should do very well there and certainly the open river and the garden at the back are a great advantage,” William wrote tactfully to Jane in February 1877. “If the matter lay with me only, I should be setting about taking the house, for already I have become conscious of the difficulty of getting anything decent. As to such localities as Knightsbridge or Kensington Sq, they are quite beyond our means.”
Built in the seventeen-eighties, the house was known as The Retreat and had once been the home of Sir Francis Ronalds, inventor of the electric telegraph, who had filled the long garden, which stretched all the way back to King St then, with buried cables as part of his experiments. When William Morris came here and renamed it Kelmscott House, it had been the home of the novelist George MacDonald for a decade. However – somewhat ominously for Morris – they chose to leave since MacDonald believed that the proximity to the polluted river was responsible for his family’s ill-health. In those days, the riverfront at Hammersmith was heavily industrialised with factories and wharfs.
I realised that, in my imagination, I felt I had already visited Kelmscott House. Long ago, when I read Morris’ novel News From Nowhere, I was seduced by his vision of a homespun Utopia that had turned its back on industrialism. In my memory, as if in the moonlight of a dream, I joined the characters as they departed Kelmscott House and undertook the journey up the Thames from Hammersmith to Kelmscott Manor in Oxfordshire, travelling a hundred years into the future.
When I paid my visit to Kelmscott House, there were compelling details which evoked that faraway world, even if time and change had wiped away almost all of the evidence of Morris’ occupation of the house. “Let us hope that we shall all grow younger there,” he wrote to Jane with forced optimism in October 1878, just before they moved in.
Walking through the narrow passage beside The Dove, you discover the wide expanse of the Thames on the left and Kelmscott House rising up on your right, presenting an implacable frontage to the river. You enter through the area stairs on the left of the house, leading down to the kitchen, and immediately you notice a wall of original trellis wallpaper, designed by Morris with birds drawn by Philip Webb. If no-one told you, you would assume it was a recent reprint since these papers remain in production today. The low-ceilinged basement rooms are now the headquarters of the William Morris Society, where you may admire his Albion Press before climbing stairs again into the former coach house. This long narrow room was employed by Morris as a workshop for knotting carpets, also lectures and meetings of the Hammersmith Socialist League were held here. During his final years at Kelmscott, Morris became increasingly involved with politics and the Socialist cause.
The garden no longer stretches to King St, just as far as M4, yet it is impressively generous for a London garden, with well-kept herbaceous borders and a wide lawn. Most fascinating to me, though, was the strawberry patch – since William Morris’ Strawberry Thief is one of his most celebrated textile designs, inspired by his experiences at Kelmscott Manor where the thrushes raided his soft fruit.
Approaching the house from the rear, it presents quite a different aspect than from the front, with assymetric projections and a bowed turret. The high-ceilinged dining room at the back was especially offensive to Morris with its Adam detailing and Venetian window. This seems a curious prejudice to the modern sensibility. Perhaps our equivalent might be those eighties post-modern buildings which have not aged well. Fortunately, Morris suspended a vast sixteenth century Islamic carpet across one wall and part of the ceiling, drawing the eye from the Georgian elements which he found so hideous.
Emery Walker photographed the interiors, capturing Morris’ personal sense of interior design, employing lush textiles and extravagant antiques, mixed with furniture painted by Philip Webb and fine oriental ceramics. Architecturally, the most impressive space is the first floor drawing room which spans the width of the house, created by George MacDonald by knocking two bedrooms into one. In this south-facing room, the views over Chiswick Reach are breathtaking. Morris lined it with a rich, bluish tapestry of birds in foliage that he designed for this location. A huge settle painted with sunflowers by Philip Webb once sat beside the fireplace, lined with blue and white tiles manufactured by Morris & Co and still in situ.
In 1881, seeing children from the nearby slum known as Little Wapping swinging on his garden gate, Morris recognised, “It was my good luck only of being born respectable and rich, that has put me on this side of the window among delightful books and lovely works of art, and not on the other side, in the empty street, the drink-steeped liquor shops, the foul and degraded lodgings.”
Overlooking the garden at the back was Jane Morris’ room, somewhat detached from the rest of the house, granting her the independence she required as she withdrew from her marriage during the years at Hammersmith. The two front rooms on the ground floor, overlooking the river, comprised William Morris’ workroom and bedroom. It was in the workroom to the left of the front door that he supervised the creation of the Kelmscott Press, publishing fifty-two titles in five years. In his bedroom to the right, he installed a loom to undertake tapestry through the long hours of the night when he could not sleep. Here he died from tuberculosis on 3rd October 1896, aged just sixty-two, nursed by Emery Walker as his breath failed him. His last words were, “I want to get mumbo jumbo out of the world.”
I walked back along King St to the tube, past the Lyric Sq Market where William Morris once spoke. I thought about him taking the District Line back and forth to visit East London for public speaking, and I decided I should trace his footsteps in the East End next.
Basement stairs with original Morris ‘Trellis’ wallpaper
William Morris’ design for ‘Trellis’ wallpaper with birds drawn by Philip Webb
William Morris’ Albion Press
Hammersmith Socialist League gathering on the back lawn at Kelmscott House, 1885
William Morris’ workroom from which he ran the Kelmscott Press, with stairs leading up to the coach house where Hammersmith Socialist League meetings were held (Photograph by Emery Walker)
Strawberry patch in the garden at Kelmscott
William Morris’ ‘Strawberry Thief’ design
Sixteenth century Islamic carpet displayed by Morris in the dining room at Kelmscott (Photograph by Emery Walker)
William Morris’ Islamic carpet was acquired by the Victoria & Albert Museum where it is on permanent display (courtesy Victoria & Albert Museum)
‘William Morris’ rose blooms at Kelmscott
The drawing room at Kelmscott (Photograph by Emery Walker)
Tapestry designed for the drawing room at Kelmscott
The drawing room at Kelmscott (Photograph by Emery Walker)
William Morris spoke here – Lyric Sq Market, Hammersmith
Archive photographs courtesy William Morris Society
The lower floor and coach house of Kelmscott House are open on Thursday and Saturday afternoons. Visit the William Morris Society website for further details
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Dorothy Bishop, Artist & Teacher
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Looking towards the City of London from Morpeth School, 1961
This painting shows the view from the art room at the top of the school in Bethnal Green where Dorothy Bishop taught for twenty years. It was a formative experience that Dorothy treasured and this painting – which her friend Ruth Richardson kindly brought to my attention – is one of only a few pictures of hers that are known to exist. Although she painted throughout her life, she did not consider herself a professional artist.
Born in Brockley, Dorothy lived with her parents, her elder sister and younger brother for most of her life. After training as an Art teacher, she taught at a school in the north west of England for the duration of the war, returning south to live in Harefield, Uxbridge with her parents afterwards. In 1947, Dorothy took a job teaching evening classes Stewart Headlam Recreational Evening Institute in Morpeth St, an employment which was to occupy her until 1968. Recording her memory of these years, Dorothy wrote a diary of her impressions of the people and the place from which we include these excerpts.
“I was there for twenty-one years and it was one of the best things in my life. Now I am old and I must lead a quiet life, I would give much to be back at Stewart Headlam School. I really loved the cockney boys and girls, especially the wit and vitality of the boys. The whole atmosphere was full of life and rough kindness. I loved the wildness of the boys, once it had snowed and they made for me with snowballs and I saw their dark eyes dancing with joy, shining in the lamplight. They did enjoy things. The layabout boys tended to come to Art as in football training you had to do something, whereas in Art you could just sit and exercise your wit on the teacher and thus show off to your friends. The girls then were almost a different tribe and provided me often with members of the class who would work and were also friendly. They always supported me in any trouble with the boys and, on the whole, sex solidarity was more powerful than class solidarity.”
“The class was from 7:30pm to 9:30pm with a quarter of an hour’s break to go to the canteen for a cup of tea. The second half of the class was the most difficult as the boys would become restless, even to throw pencils. Sometimes I was utterly exhausted at the end and thought, ‘Why am I doing this?’ but then I thought, ‘Why should they drive me out?’ also I really loved them and there were some gentle quiet boys and girls who would talk to me. The next week they would be quite different and ask, ‘Did we upset you, Miss? We was only having a bit of a giggle.’”
“I was not approved of by the L.C.C. inspectors. Once they found my class copying Mickey Mouse and painting him in bright colours. I told them I could not change the taste of Bethnal Green for such things, but did not add – as I thought – that it would be impertinent to try to do so. In their report they said I was ‘defeatist’. I got a letter which said, ‘While your qualifications remain at their present level you are not suitable for employment by the L.C.C.” I was devastated. I was not terrific but I had had a full art training. As to drawing Mickey Mouse, the Pop Artists were doing this a few years later.”
Dorothy Bishop (1913-2005)
Painting copyright © Estate of Dorothy Bishop
(With thanks to Esther North, Dorothy’s niece)
