The Monkey Parade, that was like the Spanish do of a night, you’d stroll up and down and show off your outfit, your hair-do, with your boy- or girlfriend, or in a gang. It was a place where you sussed out who fancied who. There was this trick that some of them played – they’d come up to you and slap you on the back, ‘All right?’ and you’d smile, ‘Yeah, I’m fine.’ You wouldn’t know that they’d left a big, white, chalky hand-print on your back for everyone to laugh at. Right little sods, some of the boys. All harmless, but we thought it was fun. Our parents didn’t know!
Pleasures such as the Monkey Parade – the evening saunter along the East India Dock Road, between Burdett Road and Blackwell Tunnel, when girls strolled arm in arm with their friends, hoping for a bit of innocent flirting, picking out who they fancied from the similarly occupied gangs of boys, and hoping the ‘right’ one would show his interest with a wink or a whistle – were definitely considered worth getting dressed up for, but, like most other ways of passing a pleasurable few hours, it was, out of necessity, an unsophisticated pastime and did not cost very much money, if anything at all, to take part in.
With most of our waking hours taken up with duties [both paid and domestic work] we would have had no time for all the home amusements that are available today. [Before] the wireless was available for the masses, we made do with the old wind-up gramophone with the big horn. The simple pleasure of life was to take time off for an hour in fine weather and sit at the front window or on a chair at the front door and pass the time with whoever was doing the same, [enjoying] the neighbourliness.
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There was always a jigsaw on the go and everyone that called had a go at putting some pieces in. Nanny usually came round on Friday nights and always brought a bag of sweets – winter warmers – and, as she was going home, she would call out, ‘Goodnight, Kidlets.’ I said that when I grew up I would go out singing in the streets and buy her a pair of blue bloomers.
Although most amusements for working people were as modest as those described above, some were quite startling, and maybe the little girl who was going to buy her grandmother some underwear got the idea for earning money by singing from some of the exotic street entertainers who took their acts around the streets of east London.
I suppose it was not many years after the Great War finished – during the 1920s and 1930s – and there was this musical turn. There was plenty of unemployment about and this group of men, young men I think they were, it was hard to tell, they came round with a barrel organ. One used to play it and the other five or six of them used to dance. They’d link arms and dance in the street. They was men, yes, but they was all dressed as women. They had the lot. Long dresses, shoes, faces rouged, beads all round their necks. Gawd blimey, how they was dressed up! They had better clothes than the women watching them. And everyone would come out to watch and all the kids’d sit along the kerb looking at them. Dressed up they were and they’d be dancing and kicking their legs up. And we’d be shouting out, ‘Show us your drawers, girls! Go on!’ We called them the Gaiety Girls. They earned a few bob going round dressed like that. They’d go all round the East End, collecting the pennies and tuppences we’d throw to ’em. They didn’t seem to mind. Least they was trying. And they were funny, they were. Used to be good and all. See, they’d come round and brighten up a dull place. I’m saying it was dull, but there was plenty of life to be had there. I realize now that I saw my first transvestites when I was a kid!
In those pre-politically correct times, others recalled the street dancers as going by the name of the Nancy Boys, or, more prosaically, as the Jazzers. Not everyone was agreed about the virtue of such talents, not liking the fact that they were ‘posh’ or from ‘snooty’ backgrounds, and one person actually expressed vehement opposition to their behaviour.
After the 1914–18 war ended, jobs were virtually non-existent. Looking back, I recall with loathing the number of exservicemen who, in order to survive, dressed themselves up in outlandish women’s clothing and, with the help of a barrel organ, sang and danced in the streets for the odd coins [that] others, in not dissimilar situations, were able to spare.
But during times of high unemployment, such as the inter-war years, many performers were eager to take their talents round the East End streets and even further afield, knowing that it was probably the only way they could manage to earn those vital few shillings that would keep the wolf from the door.
There was plenty of street entertainment such as the barrel organ, which some of the children danced along to, though one man who came round would chase the kids with a stick if they started singing or dancing. Then there was the one-man band, who had a drum on his back, with the stick connected to his arms with string and cymbals on his knees, a mouth organ, a guitar and various other instruments around his body. Another group would take over a section of the road and perform an Egyptian sand dance or do a routine similar to snake-charming, but instead of a snake there would be a string of sausages coming up out of a tin can. All the audience would sit on the kerbstones at the side of the road and traffic would just about cease while the performance was on. Accordion players often went round playing outside the pubs in the evening, and I remember one artiste who played what he called a nose harp.
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One or two artistic types would set up a stand in the street – usually in the market – with a board and a big wodge of putty or clay. You’d pay them a penny and they’d do your face, make your likeness out of it. It would amuse us. It might not seem that special now, but we loved it.
My dad was a boxer. Not a professional [but] he used to go to different parts of the country for these exhibitions. They didn’t get money because they weren’t allowed to pay amateurs then. But he used to bring home different gifts and things that were worth money and that made things a lot easier for Mum.
Even though the majority of the people were not well off, and there were not today’s commercial pressures inducing them to spend money, Christmas was still a special season when every effort was made to have a particularly good time. There were the same feelings of anticipation as the big day approached and of excitement when the morning itself eventually dawned.
We used to know it was Christmas in the East End when we used to start making paper chains in school out of bits of paper. Glueing them together – what a job that was. I don’t remember seeing a Christmas tree then [in the 1920s] but you’d also know Christmas was coming because of the smell of the oranges and the fruit being brought up the river in the boats, and when the dockers unloaded them.
Christmas morning, [laughing] we’d wake up to a big old army grey sock hanging on the bottom of the bed, with an apple, orange and a couple of nuts. Maybe a few sweets. And that was Christmas. But the one thing I remember, always, even now, at seventy-six years of age, there wasn’t one Christmas, not one, that I went without a toy. I don’t know how Dad done it, but he did. I had a tank one year. I remember that tank – bloody thing was made in Germany and all! Still, I had Christmas. I got a train set, clockwork. Couldn’t have been electric then anyway, it was all gas in our house with pennies in the meter. My parents never let us go without. Dad used to just have his pint. And Mum… I don’t know what Mum had, she never had a lot. But we never went without. We would sit round the fire and Dad would have his jug, warm the poker up and stick it in the beer. ‘Have a drop of that, boy,’ he’d say. [Laughing] Oh, God, we used to sit round that fire and we’d sing some old song me mother knew!
Do you remember the paper that oranges used to come wrapped in? We’d have orange tortoises made out of them at Christmas time. Dad would screw the four corners of the paper into little legs so it made the tortoise’s shell, then put it over the orange and roll it, scuttling on its way, across the lino.
The spending might have been modest compared with our present frenzied seasonal consumption, but just providing a few simple toys and putting a decent spread on the table still entailed a big outlay. To help spread the cost of the celebrations, Christmas savings schemes and Loan Clubs were set up in church halls, pubs and corner shops. A few pennies a week, more if you could afford it, would make all the difference.
We had a neighbour who used to come round on a Sunday morning selling sixpenny savings stamps so at the end of the year you had a few bob for Christmas.
The Loan Club was an ideal way of saving as you could take a sub out during the year, pay it back and you’d get interest. It worked out well, as it wasn’t someone earning out of you, you were making money for yourself. The couple who ran it made a bit, but that was only fair.
But sometimes Loan Club administrators weren’t always so fair and were not satisfied with making just ‘a bit’.
Just before the Christmas pay-out, my friend’s dad ran off with the Loan Club money. The whole lot. And all those families that had been saving with him all year so they’d have a bit extra for Christmas… It was awful. Her family were so ashamed. But people got by somehow.
And they did, some of them on very little. The idea that pleasures were simpler ‘back then’ is well illustrated by this childhood memory.
We didn’t live far from Spitalfields Market and I’d go with Dad with a sack. He’d have just a few bob and we’d mooch about the stalls, get a bit of cheap fruit, a few nuts, apples, tangerines and that, or a few oranges. Used to make a bag up, you know. For three or four bob you could get a decent bit of fruit then. Then we used to come away from the market and cross over the road to this big pub. I used to sit outside on the step with an arrowroot biscuit and a glass of lemonade. [Laughing] Dad used to be in there knocking it back, his couple of pints. Why not? Five o’clock every morning except Sunday he’d get up. He earned it. Why shouldn’t he have a drink?
Drinking has always been an East End leisure activity, although not all drinking was done in the pub.
As a kid, your mum or dad would send you down the Bottle and Jug – that was like the off-licence bar – to get a jug of beer for them to have indoors. We used to call it the four ale bar as well. Seems strange now, letting a kid go in a pub and buy beer. We used to run errands for cigarettes as well. [Laughing] ‘Dad said can he have twenty Players, please?’ Nothing was said, it wasn’t thought strange then. My friend who went to school over Canning Town way used to go out at dinner time to get her teacher a jug of mild from the pub over the road! The mothers’d all be up the school complaining if they tried that today.
If you wanted to go out for a drink, with a pub on almost every street corner you were always in walking distance of somewhere you could go in for a pint of mild and bitter or a glass of port and lemon, as well as some entertaining company.
I spent many hours waiting outside for my parents. This was not as bad as it sounds. We actually used to enjoy it. The doors were always opening and you could see and hear all the fun going on inside. There was live music, [with] some relative or other who would get up and sing. Every few minutes we would call a family member to get us some crisps or a drink of lemonade. Outside the pub there was a stall selling jellied eels and cockles.
Pubs, or beer shops as we termed them, [were] divided into several bars, each one with a name. There was the private bar, the public bar, saloon or lounge, and a snug used mostly by the women. There was also a Jug and Bottle, for take-away beer. The different bars would tend to classify its drinkers: workers and labourers in the public; shopkeepers and council workers in the private; bosses and councillors in the lounge or saloon.
There was always the chance of a hand of cards or some other game of chance you could take part in, then, at chucking-out time, there was the opportunity to go on to a do – a knees-up – with your neighbours.
You could always have a game of cards, darts, shove ha’penny, or a game of crib – that was always popular with the old boys. Didn’t matter if you had no money, you’d play for matchsticks, but you’d take it just as seriously.
Many homes had a piano, and most women and many men could knock out a tune on the old joanna. These parties were never prearranged, they mostly erupted from a Saturday night meeting of friends and relations in a pub. [At closing time] they were in the mood to carry on, so, off to the nearest home for a sing-song.
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You didn’t even have to go to the pub first, or at least the women didn’t. They might stay at home, getting things ready, while the chaps nipped out for a ‘swift half.
I remember being in the front room of my nan’s house. The radiogram was on and Kay Starr was singing ‘Wheel of Fortune’. All the adults were dancing, and us kids were sitting out in the passage on the stairs, peeping in at them. We were supposed to be up in bed with all the coats, but I don’t think they’d have minded. The men had been up the corner to the pub for a few pints and had brought back crates of ale, while the women were in the kitchen making sandwiches, all laughing. It was lovely to see them dancing. Not in pairs, but in a big circle, with all their arms around one another’s shoulders, heads back, singing at the tops of their voices.
It wasn’t sort of private then. We all got involved. You wouldn’t think your neighbour was a nuisance cos they were having a party – you’d be in there with them. You’d be part of it. It was your party as much as it was theirs.
But drinking alcohol wasn’t to everyone’s taste.
[My dad] was a strict teetotaller. Having seen the damage caused by alcohol in his own family, he took the pledge early on. So, although he was my mother’s parents’ first son-in-law, he wasn’t the most popular one. Everyone else brought a bottle of spirits or some beer for Grandad when they visited, but my dad, of course, did not. I think Mum’s family found it a little difficult to relate to this gentle, serious young man who was uncomfortable at an East End knees-up and who didn’t enjoy a drink.
Parties were not the only indoor entertainment, there was plenty of other fun to be had in the home, some of it with the latest innovation – the wireless set.
We got a wireless. My uncle was a nutter on anything like that; he had what they called a Cat’s Whisker. You would touch something and you’d hear it: ‘Two, hello. Two, hello.’ Gawd knows what they was on about, but I was a kid and it was all a wonder to me. Like going up in a bloody rocket now, I suppose. Then we bought a wireless. Where the hell Dad got the money to buy a wireless from I don’t know, still, that was his business. I’ll never forget, it was called a Cosser. And it run off a battery, an accumulator. He had it on a shelf in the corner of the room and he messed and fiddled and buggered about with it for hours and couldn’t get a bloody thing on it! In the finish he sent over for my uncle – he was the mechanic in the family, the old ‘Two, hello’ man with the Cat’s Whisker. If he don’t know, who do? Anyway, over he come. And they was still messing about, both going at it now. And we’re all sitting here waiting. And waiting. And waiting. All that bloody night. All of a sudden – bang! – ‘Here it is! Got it! Got it!’ What was it? They was playing ‘God Save Our Gracious King’! It was bloody twelve o’clock, it was going off! Me uncle shot out of the room. He knew what was going to happen. He done his nut, the old man. Messing about all night and the bloody thing’s gone off! [Laughing] They was the days eh? Bloody accumulators!
We were fortunate that Dad had managed to afford a radio set. It was a Cosser which had to have an accumulator and two batteries to make it work. One battery was a Winner 120 volt, the other was a Grid Bias, and the accumulator had to be taken to Glickman’s when it ran down, to be exchanged for a fully charged one. One evening [my brother] and I wanted to listen to Monday Night at Eight but as we were living in the kitchen at the time and the radio was in the front room, Mum said we would have to sit and listen in the dark, because she couldn’t afford to light the gas in another room. The first item on the programme was ‘Sid Walker’, a character who was a rag and bone man who was always solving crimes. They first played his signature tune: ‘Day after day, I’m on my way, singing, rags, bottles and bones.’ Then there was a crash of glass and a scream, which sounded as though it was just outside the window, and we both rushed for the door back to the kitchen, scared out of our wits, deciding that it was better to be in the warm and the light and with Mum.
At a time when you usually ‘made your own fun’, even a potential disaster could provide a few hours’ free, and highly memorable, entertainment.
Me and a few friends, mates, you know, we got on top of this big building, where you could see right over the top of the railway. And we stood there and we watched the Crystal Palace burning. In the 1930s, it was. We could see from where we were in the East End of London across the river to Crystal Palace, right across on the other side. Blimey, what a fire that was.
The night of the Crystal Palace fire, my father and I went to watch with lots of other people. I was in tears, remembering a wonderful day there earlier in the year, when I was among hundreds of schoolchildren who were there for ‘A Festival of Song’. We were all dressed in white, and it was marvellous, singing our hearts out, ending with ‘Jerusalem’, which has remained my favourite even to this day.
Annual outings and beanos – for which you would pay in every week at your local pub or social club and which involved taking a charabanc to the coast or the countryside, with crates of ale on board to provide refreshment for all the stops you would make on the way – might have been less spectacular than watching burning buildings but were just as diverting, and not only for those who were privileged enough to be going on the trip.
Holidays, for the people of the East End, were something to look forward to with great enjoyment [even though] the majority could only enjoy the odd day’s outing to the nearest coast, like Southend. They were charabanc outings run by the local pub, usually either all women or all men. These were a great time for the kids of the neighbourhood to gather round and shout, ‘Chuck out your mouldies!’ when a shower of halfpennies and farthings would be thrown from the charabanc. The children had a chance to visit the countryside with the Country Holiday Fund. Mother would pay what she could afford, but I think there was some kind of means test involved. People living in the country would offer to take one or two London children for a week.
Another annual event which was recalled with enthusiasm was a visit to the funfair, which would pitch up and stay for a week of gaudy diversion and entertainment. With its exotic travelling fairground people, running their hoop-la stalls and rifle ranges, boxing booths and the Wall of Death, brightly painted steam gallopers and reckless dodgem drivers, the fair was a wonderland of twinkling lights and danger.
It seems horrible when you think about it now, but at the fair we used to go to of a Bank Holiday there’d be these booths. They would have, well, freak shows. Bearded ladies. Two-headed animals. Mermaids. All that sort of thing. All made up, I suppose, but when you think about paying money to see people just because they’re really ugly or they look nasty… Makes you ashamed of yourself. But we would queue up to see them. Same with the bare-knuckle boxing booths. Not very nice at all, really. But we loved it all. It was sort of magical at night, with all the lights and the smell of all the food and the oil on the machinery.
These were places of free fun. Even if you had no money, as was often the case, there was no entrance fee, so you could get enjoyment watching the people taking part in the amusements, and wander around the roundabouts and carousels, all being driven by a great big steam engine that played pipe music at the same time.
There were more solemn annual events in which people took an equally enthusiastic part. These were celebrations for St Patrick’s Day and the huge Catholic parades held on your local church’s saint’s day which wound round the streets of the east London parishes, drawing crowds of many thousands of spectators.
The processions went all round the streets, carrying the statue from the church, and with all the kids from the Catholic school dressed in white, with coloured sashes, and carrying flowers and wreaths with banners across them, and holding on to ribbons tied to the statue. All the women from the Catholic families would set a shrine up outside their street doors. They’d cover a table in a nice lace cloth and then put a crucifix, any religious pictures they had of Mary or the saints or the Sacred Heart and that sort of thing, their rosaries, and a nice bunch of flowers, and the priest would bless it and their home as the procession passed through their street. It was a bit of a competition between the women. Who made the best shrine, had the whitest lace cloth, that sort of business. But it was a marvellous thing to see, all those little children. The mothers must have saved hard to buy their outfits. Thousands of people, and I mean thousands, lined the streets to watch them. It was a really big do, you know.
St Patrick’s Day was celebrated, very enthusiastically according to my dad, by my Irish paternal grandmother. She was a clever woman, but unable to read or write, and did not know her date of birth, so she had, a bit eccentrically, picked on the movable feast of ‘Pancake Day’ to commemorate it. Apparently, her annual birthday merrymaking was just as exuberant as that which marked her homeland’s saint’s day.
As Roman Catholics, [St Patrick’s] was a big day in our calendar. Not all the family went to mass but they all joined in the fun. This was very much a big drinking occasion. Sometimes the drinking would go on all night and on till the next night.
Always a good excuse for a do, St Patrick’s. We’d have a right old knees-up. Lovely parties in them days, all in together, didn’t matter if you was Catholic or Irish or not. Most of us had a bit of Irish in us round there anyway.
The street party was another celebration in which all the neighbours would take part, doing their bit to make the day – and the evening – a success for everyone concerned.
We had street parties for very special occasions, such as the Silver Jubilee of King George V or the Coronation of King George VI. The people in the street would join in to supply the food, and the children all got a Coronation cup, saucer and plate, and a tin box with the royal family on it filled with chocolate. Tables were borrowed and laid out down the middle of the street with Union Jacks as tablecloths and bunting all across the street. Everyone had a great time.
Even the most organized of days didn’t always run to plan.
I was eleven years old at the time of King George’s Jubilee, which was the highlight of 1935. Our parents were putting up bunting and flags, and setting up tables for the street party, and the food was all ready. On the Saturday, King George and Queen Mary were driving in an open coach so that all the crowds could see them and cheer them on their way. Our school had been chosen to be in the Mall, where we were in the stands. We had been there waiting for some hours with our sandwiches, taking in all that was going on in the Mall. About an hour before the cavalcade was due to arrive, we were told to line up for a drink of water which was being supplied from some containers. By this time we were very hot and eager for a drink, but just as I was going to take my turn I fainted! When I came round one of the teachers was delegated to take me home, which she did without a word about having to miss the parade. Of course, when we arrived home I wasn’t allowed to go to the street party, but was put straight to bed. Wonderful day!
A frequent outing was to the cinema. Popular with all ages – as recalled in the stories of children’s Saturday morning shows – adults would attend during afternoons and evenings, with the keenest film-goers sitting through two and three showings a week.
We would go to the flicks with a few pennies’ worth of sweets, sit on old wooden benches and be transported to wonderland.
There were so many cinemas, La Bohème – the Labo – the Coliseum, the Palladium, the Tivoli. Live shows would be put on before the films. Jolly good ones, too.
The Odeon had wall-to-wall carpeting and they had big settees upstairs. A beautiful place. Carpeted, settees and all beautiful pictures on the walls. You’d get a box of chocolates, sit down and wait for the show to start.
The highlight of our existence was on Friday night going to the Seabright cinema in Hackney Road. Oranges and peanuts were sold outside. I used to get a headache every time from sitting at the front near the screen and having to look up all the time. [But] it was the high spot of the week for us.
I used to work as a waitress in the posh restaurant at the cinema. I was all in black and white. It was a lovely atmosphere. You walked in and there was an usherette at the door with a torch, and you had the [double] back seats when you was courting and the front ones when you weren’t. The screen was one whole wall, the stage and curtains. You used to have turns and an organist. If you was posh enough and could afford it, you went upstairs. It was an atmosphere you could lose yourself in. When I worked in the restaurant it was all carpeted, all fitted out by whoever owned the cinema. We had to wear black and a little white frilly apron and that. I loved it. [The food] was all dished up posh – but if you went behind the scenes and saw what went on you wouldn’t say it was posh. You hoped you were going to get a tip, because the wages were terrible.
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Cinema-going could prove to be a far more rowdy affair than it is now.
All you could hear was the sound of people cracking peanuts, noshing on sweets and fish and chips, talking to the screen – ‘He’s got a gun!’ That sort of thing – and reading out the writing [the captions] to one another. That was without the row from the piano.
The crowd would get so noisy when the projector went wrong – which used to happen just about every film. And some of the more devilish ones would throw things at the screen.
But it was a more formal business in another way.
When you’d seen the films, you’d always show respect. You’d stand up at the end for the national anthem.
Despite the rapid spread of cinema-going and radio-listening, the music hall and the variety theatre still enjoyed wide popularity both before and during the war.
I used to go to the Hackney Empire a lot on a Monday, because our [family owned] coffee shops and used to display the showbills and would get free tickets for Monday nights. You got them for Monday nights because they reckoned they hadn’t rehearsed anything and they were doing it for the first time. Six days a week it was on, they didn’t do it on Sundays. I saw Max Miller many times, saw a lot of the famous music-hall artistes, G. H. Elliott, Monsewer Eddie Grey, Jewel and Warris. I saw the Crazy Gang many times. Big bands, even dog acts, it was true variety. They used to have these high-wire acts, paper-tearing, someone playing a one-string fiddle, things that these days people would take the mickey out of. The thing that interested me most, being wartime, each time the alert went up, nobody would budge. I always remember that the conductor, Paul Clifford, would raise his baton and, instead of them all coming in together, they used to come in one after the other. It was a wartime orchestra!
Even the lining up to go in was amusing, with street buskers who would entertain the queue from the gutter for whatever odd coppers you might give.
My dad, a good, loving man, was a London City Missionary of the evangelical persuasion, so we didn’t go to music halls or cinemas, as they were ‘worldly places’. However, we did go to Christmas pantomimes at the People’s Palace, because he saw that as family entertainment, though I wasn’t very old before I understood the double entendre of the jokes. Some of my earliest memories are of sitting in the dark, entranced by the atmosphere, totally involved in the story, shouting louder than any of the other kids. ‘He’s behind you!’ I thought it was magical. I was so impressed by the glamour of the fairy godmother, startled by the flash of light and plume of smoke with which the baddie appeared and disappeared with a flourish of his cape or twirl of his devil’s tail. I loved it.
And, as this memory shows, even post-war the enthusiasm hadn’t waned.
I must have been about five, so it was in the mid-1950s, and I can remember the excitement of being taken to see a variety show. The Hackney Empire, I think it must have been. I was only little and the place seemed really posh. I can’t remember all of it, but I know there was Tony the Wonder Horse, a beautiful palomino that did sums and counted out the answers with hoof beats; a woman who just tore up newspapers and made these fantastic, intricate patterns, and ladders and palm trees, all from newspaper; and a bloke with a musical saw. I wasn’t so impressed with that, and nor were most other people. A lot of them were laughing, but I’m not sure it was meant to be funny. And then these men came round, little tiny men with big papier-mâché heads. They scared the wits out of me. Big grinning faces. But the fact I was so young and remember so much of it, it must have made a big impression on me. They should have that sort of thing now.
Another very popular pastime in east London was speedway racing.
We lived in Custom House, right down by the docks, and we were at the speedway one night, when the Graf Zeppelin came over West Ham Stadium. This was about 1928. It came so low, you could see the people looking out of the windows. A hundred thousand people used to come down that stadium, and on special nights they used to put up £100 for a trophy. If we couldn’t afford to pay to go in, we used to go round the corner and jump over the fence.
A little less spirited than speedway, but just as appreciated, was the practice of hiring bicycles.
This would be the 1920s I’m talking about now. We used to go to this old boy who had a load of old bikes that you could have out for a penny or so. Right old bone-shakers they were. And the saddles were so hard. But we used to think they were lovely. Go for miles on the bloody old things. Down to Essex, to Hadleigh Castle and that.
We used to go to Grimshaw’s in the Beckton Road and hire a bike out for a couple of hours and then say to a boy, ‘Do you want to take that back for me?’ Sometimes we would go as far as Southend.
An even more tranquil leisuretime activity was fishing, although the concept of how to actually catch a fish escaped some would-be anglers.
They used to be lined right alone the Lea and the canal, sit there all day fishing. It was relaxing, and you didn’t need expensive gear, just the basics, and it was a bit of fresh air, a chance to be out and relax. Didn’t matter that you weren’t on some posh river-bank, that you didn’t have a motor to take you out into the country, it was a working man’s pleasure, and plenty of us used to enjoy it.
We were quite young – good excuse! – but my friend’s dad told us that if we went down to the canal - the Regent’s Canal ran along the bottom of our turning – and sprinkled salt on a fish’s tail, then we could catch it. We sat nearly all afternoon on that canal bank chucking a whole box of Saxa salt we’d ‘borrowed’ from Mum’s scullery. And, no, before you ask, we didn’t catch anything.
Gambling as a pastime could be taken quite seriously, especially when money, rather than matchsticks, cigarettes or cherry stones, was at stake.
Puk-a-pu was this gambling game they played round Pennyfields – Chinatown, Limehouse, you know – it was full of gambling round there. And we’d go there if we was feeling flush and a bit lucky, but you wouldn’t take any liberties, wouldn’t try and cheat or not pay your debts.
Pitch and toss was a popular way of trying to win a few shillings. You’d see men out of work, admittedly with nothing better to do, but just standing there in the street playing until they’d lost everything, thinking they’d win. Nearly as bad as the mugs who believed you could win Chase the Lady, and the pea under the cup game. You never win them things. Only the stooge who’s working with the bloke with the cards wins, the one who draws in the mugs. They think, ‘If he’s won, then I’ve got a chance.’ Mugs.
There was big money involved in flapping. That was, let’s say, private dog racing. Used to go on over the Marshes. Remember, this was when gambling away from the official tracks was illegal. Lot of money in it, there was. A lot of money.
It was a Christmas morning pigeon race run from the pub. All of us who had entered took our baskets of birds to the station the afternoon before, so they could be sent that night out to a station in Essex, where they were going to fly from the next morning when the stationmaster released them. But one bloke thought he was clever and crept round to the station Christmas Eve night, before they were sent out to Essex, and nicked one of his birds back. The next morning, Christmas Day, he worked out the flying time and run round the pub with the pigeon to say he’d won and to claim the winner’s prize money. What he hadn’t worked out was that it was winter, it was snowing out in the Essex countryside and the stationmaster hadn’t been able to liberate the birds yet! He hadn’t thought to phone through first to check. All the birds were still sitting on the station platform. Silly sod. And that was your uncle!
As with children’s gambling games, not all racing bets were placed in money – especially when cash was in short supply.
Because unemployment was rife in the 1920s and work, when available, was by no means permanent, it left a lot of men idle at times, resulting in them finding something to do. A number of men might group together to form a pigeon-racing syndicate. A relative of mine was captain of one of these and had sufficient space to build a sizeable loft. Many times, my cousins and I would take a basket of birds on the train to Epping Forest and release them to fly back home, while the men would have cigarette bets on who would be first and second home.
Parks provided a more local opportunity for adults to enjoy a flavour of the countryside experienced by the pigeons and their young couriers out at Epping Forest.
The attractions of Vicky Park were many. The really hot hothouse that contained many tropical plants that very few in the East End would see themselves, unless they were sent abroad to fight a war. A super attraction, especially in the winter, for the hundreds anxious to inspect those strange plants. Just round the corner was the parrot house, with Polly, an exotic visitor from the Far East to the East End of London. Then we could visit the deer and peacocks, and cross over one of the bridges which spanned the lake. Only one thing spoiled this wonderful park and that was the soccer pitches. [They] were laid with gravel and it was quite common to see dozens of lads with their legs in a terrible state [after] they took a tumble. A more peaceful sight was the young men in the summer playing cricket, and the older generation enjoying their bowls. There was netball galore for the girls and tennis too had its devotees, and many folk loved the Saturday evening and Sunday [events at] the bandstand. Also supervised were the children’s swings and a well-kept running track. Also the two swimming pools, which were later replaced by the super modern, well-supervised lido. It seemed there was no end to the joys of the park: the wonderful Chinese pagoda, the fabulous work of art that was the fountain. [Then] there was also a little gem tucked away in the north of the park, the truly super ‘old English’ garden, tended by highly skilled gardeners, an area of true tranquillity. The park was really the great asset of the area, the green lung of the grey East End.
We would get a number 56 bus to the Isle of Dogs. It was exciting. If you were lucky, all the lock gates would be shut. It made the journey longer, but very interesting watching all the boats and so on. Then we would walk through the tunnel [the foot tunnel under the Thames] under the river to Greenwich and go to the park.
It didn’t matter that we weren’t little kids any more, as we went through the foot tunnel, we’d always shout to each other and run along all excited. We were going over to Greenwich! It was a beautiful place, but a bloody climb up that hill. And I was fit in them days!
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Even work, when it involved a sojourn in the hop gardens for the annual harvest, could count as leisure for East Enders keen to get away from the foggy, overcrowded London streets to the fresh, autumn countryside of Kent.
Hopping was a paid treat, a way of earning a few bob – to pay off the tallyman, to make a few extra pounds for Christmas, or just to make already overstretched ends meet, But it was also a holiday, a break from the fog and the dirt, the overcrowding and even from the old man!
My [family] used to go hop-picking in Wateringbury in Kent. A lot of people used to do this as it was a way of having a holiday while earning money. Every family was given a hut to use and you were paid by the basketload of hops that were picked. My mother and sister and I used to go, and thoroughly enjoyed it. We would all pile in the back of one of my uncle’s lorries and off we would go. We had straw beds to sleep on which were supplied by the farmers. But my grandparents used to take their own feather mattress with them! The women worked all week and the men would join them at the weekends.
Hop-picking, that was our holiday. A paid, working holiday, and we all loved it. Looked forward to it from one year to the next. I’d still go if I could. Wouldn’t even mind using them horrible lavs, though I’m used to a bit better nowadays!
But, as the memories in the next chapter show, not all work was as pleasurable as the annual trip ‘down hopping’.