The mat weaver,the tea packer and the corned beef inspector

 Occupations which have gone  from British industrial life, like the wheel tappers and the saggar maker's bottom knocker also include common occupations  in 19th century east end of London like the mat weavers and the tea packers.

There were numerous mat weaving factories in the east end in the late nineteenth century.  coconut fibre was imported in large quantities to be made into mats which were an almost staple floor covering on working class houses, particularly those with stone floors.  Coconut fibre was hard wearing and popular up to the 1950s but is almost lost as a material for the larger mats used in those days but is still popular for the small doormats.  Hard-wearing and able to withstand years of use where front doors of houses come straight in off the street and dirt and wet being brought in on the shoes of every visitor.

In December 1906 the newspapers headlined a mat carpet made to cover the great arena at Olympia in London, It was 83,000 square feet in areas and was claimed to be the largest ever made in the world. It was sent to London by rail, and it is reported that it filled 37 of Harrod's pantechnicons and the procession of vans through the London streets was more than a mile in length. It was manufactured in Glemsford in Essex and the London "Express" called it a triumph of British manufacture, but this industry, like many others came at a price. My Grand Aunt, Rebecca Worsfold worked at the Glemsford factory and died a few years later from Carcinoma of oesophagus at the age of 52.

My mother was a tea packer when she married in 1918.  The biggest tea company in the area at the time was Mazawattee who had a large factory at Tower Hill, quite a walk from Cable street, Stepney but not an unusually long distance for folk to walk to work then. Tea came into the country, mainly from India and Ceylon and was blended in the factory mainly by hand as the machinery for packaging was still rudimentary. The dust from the packing process was everywhere and and the hours were long and the work ardous affecting the health of all the workers. My mother only lived to the age of 60.

The corned beef inspector had a much safer job as of course he did not exist!  Corned beef came into the country already canned so could not be inspected.  The epithet "corned beef inspector" was given to anyone standing around with nothing to do.

From surgical boot to a stage clog

My cousin Tommy Harrington contracted polio as a child. He survived the illness but,like many others he ended with one leg shorter than the other.  The only remedy then was the surgical boot, a contraption consisting of a brace on the longer leg and a heavy boot with a thick sole on the shorter.  Like most children fitted with the boot Tommy hated it. He knew that it helped with his walking but it made him stand out from the other children. Also at this time in the early 1900s children whose limbs had been damaged by polio were "cripples" and rarely got beyond that either in description or aspiration.

Tommy Harrington would not accept that. He developed a liking for music possibly derived and perhaps learned from his grandfather Alphons Eder, a street musician,  how  to play the accordion and concertina. As well as being a natural musician, never learning to read music, he began writing comic songs and performing them for anyone who would listen.

Later he decided to go on the stage, developing a yodelling style of singing and dressed in his own version of a Dutch costume. He later said that the costume was inspired by wanting to cover his surgical boot so baggy trousers did that well.. Eventually he was able to have some special boots made which resembled wooden clogs, which he wore to the end of his stage career.

He appeared on the Music Halls which were still popular and numerous in those days, recorded many of his songs and even had hits, such as they were then.  I told much of this in a previous blog. I am reminded that he died twenty-five years ago but you will still find mention of him on the internet.  By today's standards a "celebrity".

September,Hop-picking,blackberries and scrumping

First week of September, a little cooler and mostly damper, a whiff of wood smoke in the air, blackberries in the hedgerows apples on the trees.  All this makes an old eastender remember  the  days gone by when September was hopping time. Our family made regular visits to the Kent hopfields from the East End of London between the wars.

  Up early when it was only just beginning to get light to be in the fields to start work at seven oclock. The bines were nearly always wet either from the rain or early morning dew, so the pickers were showered when pulling the first few bines.  Even the kids went early to the fields  despite the damp and the cold.  English autumns are rarely warm until the day is nearly over so it was a question of being wrapped up and wellies every day.

For those who dont know it,  hops used to part of the making of beer.  Hops then were picked by hand before the invention of machinery for doing it.  There was not a sufficient population in the Kent countryside to gather in the harvest so workers were recruited mostly from the East End of London who regarded it as a kind of working holiday in the country.

It was certainly a big change from the council flats and small terraced houses of the east end.  All that fresh air!  Living in a wooden hut for two weeks sleeping on mattress covers filled with straw. 
It was mostly fun for the kids even though most were given a target of hops to be picked or buckets of water to be collected for the washing and cooking before they could go and play.  And play we did.  Whilst at home we were not all that restricted, it was still different though to roam the fields, paddling in ditches, finding stuff to eat in the hedges and so on. 
Food was different too.  Lunch was cheese sandwiches almost every day and the evening meal was cooked on a camp fire.  Quite a lot of stews because they were easy but there was always roast dinners on Sunday followed by spotted dick or jam pudding, all cooked on the fire.
Evenings for the kids was spent sitting around the camp fire, roasting potatoes or apples scrumped form an adjacent orchard.  All good clean fun.