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.

Pure at London Bridge

Pure at London bridge

There is an eating place near London Bridge station with name "Pure".  I dont know who owns this chain of eateries but I wonder at their choice of location for a food shop with name Pure.  It may well be that they are not aware that in this part of south London that "pure" previously had a connotation far removed from food.

Many will know that this part of Bermondsey was originally the location of a large number of tanneries. 

I am an old pure-finder, yes pure is the word 

 What I find, me and my kind, you might find absurd 

 I searches out what lurchers left, it’s a strange kind of job

 Picking up a job or two, to pick up just two bob.

Yes dog poo as it is now almost quaintly called was used extensively in the curing of animal hides in the tanning industry.   Dog feces contain enzymes that break down collagen in hides, part of the tanning process called “bating.”  Skins arrived at a tannery bloody and wet with whatever animal remains still clung to them. First, they were soaked in water to clean them. Then came urine to help make them pliable enough that the hair could be removed with knives.

And that’s where the poo came in. It may sound wholly unappetizing now, but at a time when there were no ready-to-use chemicals, the lovely sheen of fine leather goods was achieved by soaking the hides in a mixture of water and dog poo.

The trade is barely remembered now except in the names of some of the Bermondsey streets , like Leather Market, Bevington street and so on.  The strong smells that pervaded this part of the borough probably still pervade the fabric of some of the yuppified flats in places like Snowfields.

Christmas has gone. Again

Christmas seems to last a long time these days and suddenly its over.  Last Christmas was like no other and for many is best forgotten.

 I can't say that I have many memories of the Christmases of my childhood. Just a snapshot here and there. My earliest is perhaps not a particularly happy one. I was quite young and was given a chocolate policeman. What I do remember is that were always taught to share so when my Dad asked for a taste of my chocolate policeman I offered it to him not expecting him to actually taste it. I burst into tears when he bit the head off tthe policeman. I never forgave him for that

I appeared in the Christmas pantomime at primary school . Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs was the panto you have to guess which dwarf I was. I won't go into any further detail except to say that I left the stage part of the way through as in those days and for a long time after I had difficulty in controlling my bladder

At the Infant School in Wapping the children were given a Christmas present which were all laid out on the table and the children could walk around and choose something.

I chose a toy cowboy cap gun which was immediately confiscated as soon as I got home as my dad was a pacifist and did not approve of guns as toys

Midnight mass  everyone went to midnight mass in Wapping. I don't know the proportions but most of people near where we lived were Catholics and so there was always a big crowd and even the children went and on one occasion my older brother Tom rushed home and played practical joke by dangling a lighted skull from the roof of the block of flats where we lived .

 In our house Christmas dinner was one o'clock sharp and everyone had to be there. The main thing I remember about those dinners was the overcooked Brussels sprouts and cabbage..

My first Christmas away from home, apart from the evacuee years was the first one of national service When I finished my Military Police training we were just given a short home leave but had to return to Barracks the day before Christmas Eve. Christmas was spent in the barracks and there was some kind of silly tradition there that the sergeant brought round cups of coffee laced with rum which I found quite disgusting

My second Army Christmas was in Moascar in the Suez Canal Zone. It was free booze all day long and then there was an evening meal. The cook Sergeant fancied himself as something of a chef and laid out a really tremendous feed. However in the middle of the table there was this enormous salmon which he had decorated with coloured piping of some kind, possibly mashed potato.

I took one look and went straight outside and brought back up all the free beer I  had drunk during the course of the day. 

The A.F.S in Wapping

 The AFS in Wapping

My brother Tom joined the Auxiliary Fire service in 1938 soon after it was established.  The AFS was a volunteer service set up to supplement the London Fire Brigade in anticipation of the forthcoming war. Tom' was 18 at the time and probably thought that being a fireman would be a bit more exciting than his day job as a typewriter mechanic . 

Although the London Fire Brigade estimated that they needed 28000 volunteers there are no statistics about how many men, young and old, signed up to be trained as firemen.  In Wapping there is a kind of snapshot of some of men and women who had volunteered to become a part-time firefighters .

There were 18 men listed on the National Register on the 29th September as being on duty at the substation and two young women.  Their ages ranged from a 55 year old taxi driver to a 26 year old warehouse packer.  Most of the men were married and generally older than many would have expected. 

The occupations were also disparate including a shipping clerk and a barristers clerk as well as a tailor and a meat Packer, a lorry driver and a hardware salesman There was of course a couple of wharf labourers as well as a rubber stamp maker and a painter and decorator.  There was just  one full-time fireman on duty that night who  was no doubt responsible for the training of these volunteers.. The  two young women at that time would have been learning the control room duties: one was a typist  during the day and the  other a dressmaker. 

Tom learned the hard way about the dangers of firefighting.  Whilst he was at the top of a ladder with a hose a colleague, No doubt with insufficient training, increased the water pressure without warning with the result that Tom was thrown to the ground  damaging his knee.  That ended his firefighting career but of course it did not prevent him being called up into the RAF when the war started. 

The valiant work carried out by the firefighters both the full time men of the London Fire Brigade and their part-time colleagues in the AFS during the Blitz of the following years is well known but it doesn't hurt to be reminded of this from time to time and realise that firefighters today face equal dangers.

Two Wapping Gardens

There are two gardens in Wapping in London's East End which were not there when I was a boy before WW2.

The Rose Garden is alongside Vancouver House on Green Bank.  Before the war it was a derelict yard full of rubble and surrounded by a brick wall and cast iron gates.  The security of course was not sufficient to deter small boys who regarded brick walls and gates as a challenge rather than a deterrent.   Even the warnings of our parents about the enormous rats which were supposed to inhabit the rubble kept us out.  A clip round the ear from a parent rarely materialised as we were safe out

before father came home from work.

Of course there was the playground just across the road but swings and the roundabout and so on supervised by a dragon playground lady were no competition in terms of adventure.

The Waterside gardens on Wapping High Street are opposite the end of what is now called Reardon's Path but which used to be Dundee Street. This area was open storage for the huge rolls of newsprint which used to be offloaded there before being carted up to Fleet Street where most of the national daily newspapers were printed.

More water in number three

Back when the average home did not have a built in bathroom,which is a lot less than a century ago, for having a bath there was a few options.  A strip wash in the kitchen, a tin bath in front of the fire in the living room or a visit to the municipal baths.

Most towns had what were called slipper baths, often in the same building as the swimming pool.  The cost of the bath included the use of a towel and as much hot water as you liked, except the water was controlled from outside the cubicle.

We lived in a relatively modern block of flats in Wapping built between the wars, which had a bathroom so naturally that was all I knew and assumed that everyone had a bath.  When the war came and we were evacuated to Brighton, we were billeted with a family who did not have a bath so we had to go to the public baths.

Every Saturday morning off we went and it was an occasion not just for getting clean but for having a laugh as well. The baths in Brighton was quite a jolly friendly place and it didn't take long to learn the rules.  You paid for the bath, were given a towel and told which cubicle to go to.  The bath already had water in it but if it wasn't to your liking then you could call out to the attendant "More hot water in "Number three please" and the attendant would turn the tap on the outside of the cubicle for a while.  Of course if your mate was in Cubicle four then for a laugh you could call out "more hot water in cubicle four please"  Cant remember why we though that was funny!!

The guardian and observer

I stopped buying the Guardian and the Observer a while ago. I don't fit their reader demographic in anyway that makes any sense to me.  Despite their green credentials, they are still wasting acres of paper on full page adverts and celebrity photographs.

The ads are not for me, supposing I could afford it or even wanted to ride a bike I wouldn't spend two thousand pounds on buying one, nor would I spend one hundreds a fifty quid on a jumper or over four hundred on an overcoat.  And then they have got the nerve to print hand-wringing articles about the disparity of wealth in the country!

By the time I had cast aside the sports , travel and foodie pages there is not much left for me to read.  OK the news pages contain more background information than the other papers, but there is a lot of stuff that doesn't appeal to me.  

The magazines are full of overpriced clothes worn for the most part by models who also don't read the foodie pages either.  And what's with all those girls standing around with their toes pointing inwards ?  Was there an outbreak of rickets 20 years ago that didn't get reported?

The only regular columns I read was Katherine Whitehorn and Clive James  who are both older than me and still makes sense.   When these stopped being regulars, then I gave up.

I can't go back to the News Chronicle, the Daily Herald or Reynolds News and these days I only understand every third and fifth word in the  New Statesman.  So it will have to be the Beano instead