The Museum Of Soho's Blog.

Charles Booth's Poverty Map and what it tells us about late 19th Century Soho.

noreply@blogger.com (Mo'soho) — Sat, 24 Apr 2021 15:16:00 +0000

As the London School of Economics revamps and expands its Charles Booth Poverty Map website, Sarah Wise reveals what the Booth survey tells us about late 19^th-century Soho.

On 15 May 1888, one year before publication of the first volume of his Life and Labour of the People in London survey, Charles Booth gave a lecture to the Royal Statistical Society, revealing his investigative team’s preliminary findings on the living conditions of the 909,000 inhabitants of East London. At the end, Booth expressed the desire that somebody would undertake the same investigation for the other areas of London.

Charles Booth's 1889 Poverty Map showing West Central London, including Soho.

In Booth’s audience was Robert Valpy – barrister and West End charity campaigner. He took up Booth’s challenge, and with a team of philanthropists and youth workers, Valpy spent the summer of 1888 creating a 27-page micro-survey of Soho and St Giles-in-the-Fields.

Valpy had a survey population of 113,000 – just one-eighth of Booth’s East End total. Keeping to Booth’s methodology, Valpy concluded that while there was a smaller percentage of people living in chronic poverty in West Central than in East London, nevertheless, those who were experiencing precarious employment or unemployment endured deeper poverty than their counterparts in East London.

Soho rents were significantly higher than those charged in the East End, he pointed out, with 6 shillings affording a three-room lodging in the East but just a single room in Soho.

Soho is a 1680s development, which had by the mid-18th century fallen on hard times and remained so throughout the 19th. Regent Street had been built in the second decade of the 19th century specifically to segregate Soho from wealthy Mayfair. A phenomenon that still frustrates today is that there are few access points into and out of Soho to Regent Street. But Mayfair has twice as many entrances, and broader ones. It was designed like that, to encourage Mayfair and discourage Soho!

Crosse & Blackwell pickle/sauce factory, Charing Cross Road.

The district was dominated by small-scale workshop manufacturing but there were also a number of large firms operating in ‘heavier’ industries, such as glassworking and gun-making, and big breweries and food-processing plants. One of the largest factories in the district was RW Wilson, a tin-plate works on a huge site between Wardour and Dean Streets. Soho was additionally noted for piano and organ manufacture.

Hat Factory, Hollen Street.

One of the reasons that, towards the end of the 19th century, people believed the East End was poorer than ‘Up West’ was that as well as being a hard-working part of town, Soho had become, as historian Judith Walkowitz has put it, ‘the bureaucratic centre of empire, the hub of communications, transportation, commercial display, entertainment and finance... A modern landscape constructed of office buildings, shops, department stores, museums, opera, concert halls, music halls, restaurants and hotels’.

Soho and St Giles also experienced the breaking up of concentrated communities of the working poor with the construction of Shaftesbury Avenue and widening of Charing Cross Road (these opened in 1886 and 1887 respectively); most notably the total loss of the Five Dials (where Cambridge Circus is today) and Newport Market (Charing Cross Road ploughs right through its site). Thousands of people were displaced as their small homes were demolished for the new roads.

Later, the population decline in Soho, between the Censuses of 1881 and 1891, was 20%, with Soho losing over 9,000 residents. This shrinkage was second only to the population fall in the Square Mile itself, which took place for broadly similar reasons.

One-quarter of the 42,000 residents of Soho and St James’s worked in the tailoring trade, and almost half of that one-quarter could be described as “poor” or “very poor”, according to the methodology used by Charles Booth and adopted by Robert Valpy. The fashion houses of Regent Street, Bond Street and Oxford Street, and the bespoke gentlemen’s outfitters of St James’s, had been shifting from in-house workshops to outsourcing manufacture via middlemen. This resulted in a drop in wages, as home-based workers undercut each other to secure orders. The brightly lit shopping streets of the West End were contiguous to slum streets where the produce was manufactured.

On Charles Booth’s Poverty Map, the two dominant colours within Soho are pink, which signified ‘working-class comfort – steady regular earnings’; but also purple – a funny old designation, which was a mixture of poverty and small businesses, being home to a broad range of incomes. One distinction Booth made was that purple streets featured ‘large houses that were no longer inhabited by the class they were built for.’ You see this mentioned a lot with regard to West Central London – that the working poor of the West were often to be found living and working in what had formerly been the most aristocratic part of town. In the late 19th century, certain houses had china plaques upon them commemorating that they were once the home of such luminaries as poet John Dryden (in Gerrard Street) and artist Joshua Reynolds (in Leicester Square). The Duke of Grafton’s Southampton House in Bloomsbury Square was now subdivided up and inhabited by the poor; the former library of Charles I, subsequently a prayer room in the time of Cromwell, was now an industrial school and night refuge. The ghostly presence of the Stuart and Georgian elite is more palpable in writings about Soho, Covent Garden and the Strand district in the late 19th century than it was in the East.

There are also smatterings of ‘black’ on the map: Soho was a place of ordinary street villainy, such as you would find more famously in the East. From the Booth police notebooks we have this snippet, from Constable Dunn, on Turner’s Court, just off St Martin’s Lane: ‘The worst spot in the sub-division... Has had many fights with the inhabitants; a policeman’s throat cut three months ago. A bad class of rough living here. Lower-class market porters and costers.... thieves but not prostitutes living here.’

In one of the last volumes of Life and Labour, this account of life in Soho in the 1890s is given – in highly coloured, not to say bigoted, language: ‘It is indeed a strange, outlandish population with which the churches and missions attempt to deal, and its social diseases are varied and numerous. Not only have we the criminal and outcast, the utterly vicious and the hopelessly drunken, the veriest refuse of London life, together with a low class of casual labour; not only have we the harlot and those who facilitate and live upon her trade; not only the unwholesome conditions of theatrical employment and the occupations which depend on the London season; but here are gathered together every kind and description of foreigner…so that Central London as a whole is in some ways as completely cosmopolitan as it is in others curiously insular and self-contained. We hear of instances in which five languages are spoken in one house, but as a rule the people of each nationality seem to select some particular street as their own… There is an army of hotel and restaurant waiters, shop assistants, theatrical employees and printers – the poorest are the odd-job men, market porters, hawkers, sandwich men, flower sellers and widows dependent on char-ring and office cleaning. There is a colony of Jewish tailors round Broad Street in Soho. Prostitution, pursued largely by non-residents, may also be considered a regular occupation in this district, both in the central parts and along the Euston Road in the neighbourhood of the large railway termini.’

You can explore Booth's Soho for yourself on the London School of Economics Booth website, which has high quality downloadable copies of the Poverty Map, as well as digitised versions of the original Booth notebooks on Soho:

https://booth.lse.ac.uk/notebooks/search?q=Soho&mode=any

Sarah Wise teaches a 6-week Iintroduction to Charles Booth course at The Bishopsgate Institute and the City Lit. She is the author of The Blackest Streets: The Life and Death of a Victorian Slum (Vintage)

Murray's Cabaret Club.

noreply@blogger.com (Mo'soho) — Sun, 29 Jul 2018 20:01:00 +0000

“Murray’s Cabaret Club…We star showgirls walked bare-breasted on to the stage, and the hostesses, all cleavage and chat, moved among the wealthy and aristocratic middle-aged [clientele]…It was only after I left Murray’s and returned to the real world that I realised the strange underground fantasy life I had been leading” – Christine Keeler.

Dancing girls entertain customers while they eat at Murray's Cabaret Club. Getty Images

In 1913 one of London’s first nightclubs opened on Beak Street.

Its American proprietor Jack May was alive to the tango craze then sweeping through the West End, and his exclusive venue was to host its wealthy enthusiasts. But scandal haunted the dance-floor and May was deported back home after allegations of opium trading and police bribery. In his place arrived nightclub aficionado Percival Murray (the surname was coincidental!) who revamped the Club in 1933.

Soho was then a hot-spot for the shabby and sleazy: for gambling dens, clip joints – anywhere that fuelled the demand for out-of-hours drinking. Not Murray’s Cabaret Club. Mr Murray was soon employing a 130-strong staff, amongst whom were classical choreographers, celebrated composers, lettered lyricists, and skilled seamstresses. And, of course, the dancers, showgirls and hostesses.

Together, they pioneered the art of the cabaret floor-show. Two shows a night comprised three glamorous numbers based on different themes, each illustrated by elaborate – albeit scanty – costumes. Their standard was superlative. Their precision was balletic. And their format was unique; no other West End venue offered such inventive floor-shows that dissolved the traditional stage/audience separation.

Percival Murray

The racy and respectable flocked nightly to Murray’s intimate basement venue. Royalty, film stars and leading politicians rubbed shoulders with notorious gangsters. Princess Margaret, King Hussein of Jordan, Jean Harlow: membership was eclectic, if exclusive. Even Winston Churchill attended, though his visits were apparently more discrete; allegedly, a screen would be erected to shield the Minister’s identity. Murray’s was where Gertrude Lawrence debuted as a chorus girl, where Kay Kendall worked before shooting to Hollywood fame, and where Ruth Ellis modelled before her hanging for murder. Society osteopath Stephen Ward was one of its best customers, and there would meet Murray’s showgirls Mandy Rice-Davies and Christine Keeler.

Ward took Keeler – a teenage runaway – under his wing, whisked her off to aristocratic parties at Cliveden, and introduced her to government Minister John Profumo. Her love triangle with both Profumo and a Soviet spy would soon spark a national scandal. It hailed the downfall of Harold Macmillan’s government, and the birth of the Swinging Sixties.

The Club could only struggle on though the opening of the Playboy Club in 1966 sounded the death knell; Murray’s recipe of mild titillation and sophisticated entertainment looked dated in comparison. Although the amazing costumes and floor-shows cost a fortune, Percival Murray refused to update the venue and offset the enormous overheads by opening a gambling floor.
Murray’s was forced to close in 1975. Though once the wealthy owner of a Rolls Royce collection, Central London flats, and hotel suites in Cannes, Mr Murray was now bankrupt and relegated to living in his chauffeur’s garage on what had been his country estate in Churt, Surrey. The chauffeur’s wife, Murray’s wardrobe mistress Elsie Burchmore, ended up with the Club’s costumes and designs.

Original costume design illustrations by Ronald Cobb.

“There’s nothing much left of [Murray’s] except the legend and the memories” wrote Christine Keeler years later. Little did she know that 380 costume designs by Ronald Cobb, Michael Bronze and Hilda Wetton were soon to come to light. For it was on a chance visit to an auction in Surrey that vintage poster dealer Charlie Jeffreys acquired the costume designs from the Burchmore family.

Staff entrance signage.

They date from the late Thirties to the mid Sixties and have been the nucleus of ‘G-Strings and Gin Slings: The Story of Murray’s Cabaret Club’, an exhibition that ran for a month at the Century Club, this year. Mounted by The Museum of Soho in collaboration with Jeffreys. It has also featured costumes and other ephemera, including the original Club signage, menus and pamphlets.

In the Fifties, these designs injected a rare sparkle into a West End blighted by austerity. Now, hidden away carefully for decades, this has been their first public display. An amusing assortment of naughty policewomen, French maid fantasies, demonic dancers and space-age headdresses…their sparkle has never dimmed…

Ben Levy - curator and historian previously with the V&A in their Theatre and Performance department.

With thanks to King of Soho Gin, Shaftesbury Plc and Yak El Droubie of Korero Press

Spiritus Soho

noreply@blogger.com (Mo'soho) — Fri, 12 May 2017 15:54:00 +0000

Robert Rubbish, photo by mary cigarettes

Robert Rubbish is an artist and filmmaker based in London He was a founding member of the Le Gun art collective.. Robert Rubbish presents a new body of artwork inspired by Soho.

Cathi Unsworth Photo Etienne Gilfillan.

Cathi Unsworth is the author of five pop-cultural crime fictions, The Not Knowing, The Singer, Bad Penny Blues, Weirdo and WIthout The Moon, all published by Serpent's Tail and many of which draw upon the history of Soho. She lives in London and is a member and regular host of events for The Sohemian Society, celebrating the characters that have populated both the geographical Soho and the Soho of the Mind. For more, please go to www.cathiunsworth.co.uk

Prelude is a new body of work that explores places and people in Soho’s rich history. Robert likes to think of his work as "drifting though Soho’s time and space fabric". It is the third exhibition in his ongoing project Spiritus Soho.

Spiritus Soho

Robert Rubbish takes Cathi Unsworth on A Drift through Soho…

CU Where do your Soho memories start – and what first drew you to the place?

RR My interest in Soho started when I was nine or ten and being into Mod music. Soho was name-checked in Lola by The Kinks, Pinball Wizard by The Who and A Bomb in Wardour Street by The Jam, so I think that’s how I first became aware of it as a place. My first visit was on a school trip in 1988, where we given an afternoon to do what we wanted to and me and a mate went for a wander into Soho… What I remember most is going into a shop on Carnaby Street and buying some smiley acid house badges – and booming out of the shop stereo was I Got A Big Dick by Maurice Joshua, which me and my friend found very funny as teenagers. So that was my first introduction to Soho!

The Drift starts at 33 Wardour Street, original home of the Flamingo Club (Black Bombers)…

CU The associations for me are all checked in your picture – snappy dressers, black bombers, underworld figures and GIs mixing with the Modernists. Georgie Fame and the Blue Flames, Johnny Edgecombe and Lucky Gordon, Jack the Hat dancing to Prince Buster in The Long Firm… Did you ever dip a pointed toe in there yourself?

RR I am too young to have visited The Flamingo, though I have been interested in it since I got more into all things Mod when I was 18 and bought the book Mods! by Richard Barnes. It had photos of Mods in The Flamingo and newspaper cuttings about purple hearts and drugs… The thing that has influenced me most in recent time is a photo of Andy Summers and Zoot Money taken by Jeremy Fletcher at The Flamingo. I love the vibe of this photo the fashion of the men and the look of the outside of the club.

…then to Meard Street and 69 Dean Street (Traces of the Night People)…

CU This is Gossips/Billy’s/The Batcave/The Gargoyle/Alice in Wonderland/The Comedy Store/Gaz’s Rockin’ Blues and the home of night club culture – a corner of Soho that has started many trends! You seem to have represented them all in this picture. Is it also Lord Longford with his camera in the corner? Is this referencing his 1971 enquiry into pornography that basically brought down the Dirty Squad who really ran all the Soho rackets, as told in Paul Willetts’ Paul Raymond biography Members Only/The Look of Love?

RR It’s amazing that so much stuff happened in that building! In my artwork I have featured King Charles II’s mistress, Nell Gwynne, who once lived in this building. Then all the history with David Tennant, who ran The Gargoyle Club. All the club people are represented from the Bowie night at Billy’s, The Batcave goths and Gaz Mayall from Gaz’s Rockin’ Blues. The man in the corner is actually based on a photo of the Soho photographer Harry Diamond – I liked the idea he is someone who took photos of Soho and jazz musicians. He is another ghost of the Soho night…

…then to Bar Bruno (Boys in the Cafés)…

CU A proper greasy spooner left in Soho! This picture makes me think of many classic London books where Soho cafés play a central role – James Curtis’ The Gilt Kid, Colin Wilson’s Adrift in Soho, Laura Del Rivo’s The Furnished Room, Roland Camberton’s Scamp, Terry Taylor’s Baron’s Court All Change and of course Colin MacInnes’ Absolute Beginners… Again you seem to have captured the characters of these books passing through…

RR Bar Bruno to me is one of the last links with the old cafés that Soho once had and have all sadly gone now. All of the books you have mentioned have influenced this artwork, and also Bernard Kops’ The World Is A Wedding and Frank Norman’s Stand On Me – I love how a lot of the action takes place in Soho cafés. The title of the artwork comes form The Pogues’ song The Old Main Drag, where Shane MacGowan tells the story of how a young boy ended up on his uppers on the old main drag (Old Compton Street). This song is like a novel in a song and the lyrics: ‘Where the boys in the cafés would give you cheap pills’ always made me think of one of these old cafés. So I went in to Bar Bruno and took some photos as reference.
…then to the Bateman Buildings (Skiny White Sailor)…

CU Well, we all want a homage to the sailors and working girls of the district that populate all the above books and, of course, the works of Patrick Hamilton, Julian MacLaren-Ross and Daniel Farson’s essential Soho in the Fifties… I believe this was once the site of The Duke of Monmouth’s stately home and was described in 1895 by William Le Queux as: “a short, paved court, lined on each side by grimy, squalid-looking houses, the court itself forming the playground of a hundred or so spirited juveniles of the unwashed class.”

RR I didn’t know it was the site of Duke of Monmouth’s stately home but I like this –another layer! I have used sailors a lot in my work for Spiritus Soho as the sailor represents the pleasure-seeker of the past looking for a good time. The working girls of Soho’s past I have read about in books like Barbara Tate’s West End Girls and Streetwalker: An Autobiographical Account of Prostitution 1960. There’s a great photo of working girls lined up on a Soho street in the daytime, prior to the Street Offences Act of 1959.

…then to Bateman Street (Lorelei mural)…

CU The Lorelei, like Bar Bruno, was an authentic family-run Italian Old Soho café that The Kid in Absolute Beginners would likely have frequented. The mural of the mermaid took up an entire wall – although strangely the legend of Lorelei is a German one. This perhaps sums up the fusion of cultures that has always been a Soho hallmark?

RR If there’s one place that I miss in Soho its the Lorelei – I had so many great times in there. The Lorelei was a time capsule, a place that connected Soho past and present. The mural was amazing and even though it was based on the German legend, it seemed to me to be about Soho the siren, beckoning the sailor to the rocks. Yes, the history of Soho is all about different cultures mixing and bringing their food culture and styles, and no more so than in the coffee shop boom of the 1950s.

…then to Archer Street, site Charlie Chester’s Casino (Caught in a Game of Chance)…

CU Named after (though not run or owned by) the popular 1940s-50s comedian, Charlie Chester’s casino was at 12 Archer Street and once had a laudably Pop Art exterior… The trainee dealers were called ‘Lumpies’ and debuted their skills at the 10p per stake ‘Lumpy Pit’. The place was described by a former of their number, Chris Moore as: “an incubation chamber for the London gaming industry,” that was: “aimed squarely at the bottom of the market”. Like The Flamingo, a melting pot of Soho sinners and no doubt a handy stop-off point for the Dirty Squad…

RR I like the fact that building still has the casino sign on it if you look up! This to me is another ghost of Soho’s past. This artwork was the meeting of three different influences. I read Francis Bacon in Your Blood by Michael Peppiatt and it was so good it really gave me the feel for Soho at that time, Bacon’s attitude to life and his gambler’s instinct that lead me to re-watch John Maybury’s Love is the Devil and I loved the film even more from reading Michael Peppiatt’s book – and they both use Charlie Chester’s. I like how John used the real outside of the building in his film, with all the neon and dice. At the same time, I have been in love with the song Madame George by Van Morrison – its other-worldly vibe made me riff a reworking of it as poem for this artwork:

Guided and wired by the pink moon
You slip into a trance intoxicated by a game of chance
And the sweet smell of men’s perfume fills the room
In a subterranean bar you take another drink
Just to see how far you may fall
And you fall
In love again

…then 8 Marshall Street, site of William Blake’s birthplace (Visions of William Blake)…

CU You have captured perfectly here the way I feel when I look up at that tower block and wonder what William ‘Nature Boy’ Blake would have made of it all…

RR I would like to think William Blake would like this Brutalist tower block. I like to think of it as an Obelisk to Blake’s memory. As I was wandering down Broadwick Street last year, there was a building hoarding in front of what was to be the site of The Ivy and on it was printed a reproduction of William Blake’s The Grave Personified artwork of a figure holding poppies. At the time, I was thinking of making a artwork about Blake and the tower block, so I took this as a gift from the Soho streets. A lot of my ideas come from walking around Soho.

…then 43 Carnaby Street (Lord John 1967)…

CU This wonderful homage to Swinging London and Warren and David Gold’s boutique brings to mind one of my favourite films, Smashing Time – written by top Soho swinger George Melly – in which Northern lasses Yvonne (Lynn Redgrave) and Brenda (Rita Tushingham) arrive in the capital in 1967 in search of paradise. Winding up in Camden Town instead, Yvonne instructs Brenda: “Give us ten bob and wait here while I got to Carnaby Street, get a job as a model and find us a flat. Then I’ll come back and get you.” Yvonne and Brenda were turned into Princess Margaret and The Queen by Private Eye and there is a song on the soundtrack about Carnaby Street that is playing in my head as I look at this…

RR George Melly is one of my all-time big influences and yes, Smashing Time is a great take on the Swinging Sixties. I’ve always loved photos of the Lord John shop in Soho and it has always interested me as a visual landmark of the point when the 1960s went psychedelic – the music changed, the style changed and the mindset changed. LSD was a big factor in this change and that’s what I wanted to get across in this artwork, that the mural on the building has come alive and is projecting beyond. One bit of music that I had in my mind when making this artwork was Nicky Hopkins’ 1967 instrumental version of the Rolling Stones’ She’s A Rainbow.

…ending at Walker’s Court (Red Light artwork and Sailor Minotaur and Twilight Daughters) relate to the death of Soho’s past walk ups.

CU The end of Walker’s Court is what sort of brought us together, isn’t it Robert? I had more responses to my FB outpouring of grief on this subject than anything else I have ever put on there… My own first entrée to Soho was listening to Soft Cell’s Non-Stop Erotic Cabaret, with its cover of Marc Almond and Dave Ball in a neon-lit doorway underneath The Bridge of Thighs that demarks the former territory of Paul Raymond’s Revue Bar and all those little shops and secret places… Remembered for posterity in Gallon Drunk’s Jake on the Make. Is this really the end of Soho?

RR Walker’s Court was an unique piece of London architecture and walking though it gave me a feeling, a vibe. I think it’s so short-slighted to knock down the old buildings and replace them with glass boxes. They call it progress, but why can’t we have a mix of both old and new? Non-Stop Erotic Cabaret has been a big influence on my work for Spiritus Soho, it evokes the seedy underbelly of the old place. Your post about Walker’s Court was interesting and people really care and are affected by what’s going on in Soho – once you knock it down it’s gone forever.

And thank you for bringing Gallon Drunk’s song Jake on the Make to my attention. Jake Vegas is part of the Soho I know and love and its good to see him leaning on a lamppost playing his stereo in plastic bag, sipping one can of lager and having a chat with him.

Soho will never die. It will keep changing, but maybe it’s the death of the Soho I feel in love with and still love. People are being priced out and that’s sad – and to think it will just become about who can afford to be there is very short-sighted and kills the community that Soho has always had.

"Prelude" the exhibition continues at We Are Cuts, 33a Dean Street. 11 May – 30 June 2017.

Piccadilly. My Stop.

noreply@blogger.com (Mo'soho) — Wed, 15 Feb 2017 01:08:00 +0000

Piccadilly. My Stop, by Clayton Littlewood.

I step off the train, onto the escalator, up the stairs, until I’m above ground, on the Dilly Boy ‘meat rack’ of old, on the outskirts of Soho. I walk down Brewer Street, past the ‘closing-down’ Vin Mag, the NCP Car Park, my mood lifting as I enter the village, following in the footsteps of my heroes; Wilde, Crisp, Almond and Horsley.

Walker's Ct. Soft Cell-Non Stop Erotic Cabaret.

I first came to Soho in the 80s, drawn by the Non Stop Erotic Cabaret world of seedy films and sex dwarves. I’d stand outside Madam JoJo’s, gazing up at Marc’s flat, or linger outside the Trident Studios on St Anne’s Court (home to Bolan, Bowie and Freddie), hoping to catch a glimpse of my hero. Then at night, high on speed, I’d climb a rickety staircase on Wardour Street to the The Pink Panther, mixing with rent boys and goth girls, East End crims and West End toffs, drag kings and scene queens, ‘dancing, laughing, living, loving’. That was my Soho, so long ago.

Old Compton St.

From the dying embers of the sex industry (on Walker's Court) I cross the film world of Wardour Street, turning into the gay world of Old Compton Street. On my right, Cafe Espana. On my left, St Quentin’s old haunt, The Black Cat (where he was beaten by ‘the roughs’). The street’s awash tonight, with tourists and hen nights, Hari Krishnas and socialites, a melting pot of London life, thrown together on one street, like a modern day Hogarth painting. I walk past the 2is (the birthplace of British rock and roll), a pack of bears outside Comptons (the new Coleherne clones), bowing my head in remembrance as I pass the Admiral Duncan, breathing in the rich aroma from the 125 year old Algerian Coffee Shop, until I’m standing on the Dean Street crossroads. It was these magical few yards that Daniel Farson captured when chronicling Bacon’s ‘gilded gutter life’, that 50s Love Is The Devil drunken period when he’d stagger from Gaston’s bohemian The French House, to Muriel’s ‘concentration of camp’ at The Colony, recovering over breakfast at number 50, Cafe Torino’s, where a ten foot marionette once perched above the door, and where ‘dark Italians and pale young artists and poets’ would search halfheartedly for jobs. I have a connection to this building. This is where my partner and I once lived, in the damp rat-infested basement, just feet away from Elizabethan plague pits (and where I too would chronicle life on this street).

The Gargoyle Club.

I turn into Dean Street, waving at Maggie, one of the madams from the ‘walk up’, heading for Meard Street, the little cobbled Georgian thoroughfare where the famous Soho clubs The Mandrake and The Gargoyle once stood; where Tallulah Bankhead danced, where Fred Astaire was entranced, where Farson took Josh Avery in the book Dog Days of Soho. The prettiest street in the village. Whenever I’m in Soho I make a point of coming here. I stand outside number seven, the house with the sign that reads,

This is not a brothel.

‘This is not a brothel. There are no prostitutes at this address,’ and I remember. For it was here that Sebastian Horsely, the Soho dandy, once lived. I would ring his bell, the shutters would open on the 1st floor and he’d lean out, in a black silk negligee with a marabou feather–lined neck, his face coated in a fine white powder, his eyes caked in last night’s mascara and he’d purr ‘Hello Romeo, Juliet here. Welcome to Horsley Towers.’ When he died his coffin was wrapped in blood-red tissue paper, draped in jewels and it was placed in a Victorian style horse drawn hearse. And the hearse went all round the streets of Soho. It was as if Sebastian was saying a last goodbye to the village that he loved.

Pam outside the French.

Now I’m back on Dean Street, looking toward The Golden Lion (a one time serial killer haunt). It was here I last saw Pam, the local homeless ‘celebrity’. Wherever I was in Soho, Pam was here too. If I was walking past the Coach and Horses, Pam would step out of a doorway. If I was having a coffee outside Maison Bertaux, her radar would home in on me, dressed in her usual attire; camouflage trousers, donkey jacket, ‘barn owl’ NHS glasses, sporting a number one haircut. ‘Gotta gold one for me?’ she’d mumble. I’d hand her a coin. She’d squint at it, not looking impressed. ‘It’s all I’ve got, Pam.’ Then she’d wrap her arms around me, snuffling into my jacket. ‘Thank you ... Luv you!’ And off she’d trundle, like something from Beatrix Potter. Pam the Fag Lady. The hardest worker on Old Compton Street.

I turn left into Old Compton Street, and look, there’s the woman with the striking eye makeup and the ‘bum length’ multi-coloured plaits. And over there, that’s Michele, the aging trans woman, shuffling past, in a moth-eaten fur. Like an ancient Romanov in exile. This street maybe predominately youth oriented, but the old return, often unnoticed, to remember, to reflect. They see a different Soho. The ghosts.

A minute later I’m at ‘Fruit Corner’, the proliferation of coffee shops on the corner of Frith Street, within sight of Kettners. It is said that Wilde and Lord Alfred Douglas entertained rent boys there. And a couple of decades before them, two other doomed lovers, Rimbaud and Verlaine, socialised in a public house on this street. And this is what I love about Soho - sitting in these coffee shops, by the window, writing in my notebook, watching the mayhem outside - I imagine the artists, the writers and the eccentrics that have flocked here over the centuries, attracted by the cosmopolitan feel, the lure of sex, and the hint of danger that lies within. You can’t transport this vibe. It’s in the brickwork. It’s in their footsteps. The High Street chains maybe moving in, but old Soho is still here if you care to look. There’s nowhere like it in the world. And one day it will rise again. It always does.

Blogger, newspaper columnist, clothes store owner and Soho scene veteran Clayton Littlewood's first book, Dirty White Boy: Tales of Soho, was published in 2008, with a book launch at the infamous The Colony Room Club. The book was named the GT book of the year in (2009).

Goodbye to Soho. is his follow-up. www.claytonlittlewood.

The Caravan Club.

A Call for Volunteers. Caravan Club Project. In 2017 organisations across the country mark the 50th anniversary of the 1967 Sexual Offences Act that partially decriminalised homosexuality and the signals it sent out about rights and freedoms. This spring, The National Archives and the National Trust are working with set designers to recreate the Caravan Club of 1934; an illegal gay club that was the subject of a sensational court case in 1934. The space will act as a focal point for a wider programme of volunteer led tours, debates, events, and a guidebook that celebrates the history of club culture c. from 1918 to now in the Soho, Covent Garden and Fitzrovia areas. There will also be a physical and online archival displays curated by The National Archives.We’re offering 25-35 volunteers the chance to be trained as National Trust tour guides as part of the project. In addition to meeting like-minded people and broadening your knowledge, you’ll be invited to a special ‘club night’ for volunteers to thank you for your time.If you’re passionate about LGBTQ+ heritage, love learning about London’s history and are a confident speaker in front of small groups, we’d love for you to get in touch. Click here for more info on volunteering.

MAYOR OF LONDON, TEAM LONDON.

In the Shadow of the Prince Edward Theatre.

noreply@blogger.com (Mo'soho) — Thu, 05 Jan 2017 08:40:00 +0000

The Prince Edward Theatre has been a familiar Soho landmark for generations of people to enjoy since opening its doors on the 3 April 1930. Its own illustrious history has seen the theatre go through many transformations over the past 86 years. In 1929 the buildings which stood on the corner of Old Compton Street and Greek Street were demolished to make way for the new theatre completely eliminating any trace of the people and business which occupied the address of 41 Greek Street and 53 Old Compton Street.

While the buildings were home to a diverse mix of inhabitants and occupations the silk and linen drapery business was the main trade which eventually spanned several buildings as the business grew from small shops to a wholesale warehouse business.
Here are just a few of the businesses which occupied the space along with Auctioneers, Candle makers and residents living in the rooms above the offices and shops.
1796, 41 Greek Street, Thomas Clarke, Silk Dyer
1807, 41 Greek Street, Stephen Callahan, Silk Dyer
1808, 53 Old Compton Street, William and Joseph Bryan, Linen Drapers

In April 1824 Andrews, Stobbs and Maggs opens at 41 Greek Street 1826, 41 Greek Street, John Jenner and Ambrose Boodle, Linen Drapers and Mercers
1826, The Examiner, 12 November reports

The Evening Standard, 16 October 1828 reports, new proprietors of the “Emporium” Messrs Wagner and Chapman, Greek Street Soho, The business closed in 1830 when William Chapman and George Wagner were declared bankrupt.

In 1862, the final chapter of the address at the corner of Greek Street and Old Compton Street commenced when William Taylor Reddan a butcher’s son from Parson Drove in Cambridgeshire opened his drapers business, William Reddan & Sons Ltd.

William’s empire spanned several buildings 51 to 54 Old Compton Street and 41 & 42 Greek Street with around 14 drapers’ assistants and staff living above the business. Reddan’s was renowned for its Victorian charm and its most discerning cliental on its books which included Winston Churchill and members of the Royal family.

Image of William Reddan & Sons Ltd Drapers shop in 1926, 3 years before the buildings were demolished to make way for the Prince Edward Theatre. In 1899 the building numbers changed to 22, 24 & 28 Old Compton Street.

Members of William’s own family worked within the business, his brother Charles set up his own drapers business in North London. William died in 1920 year after his Wife Emma and was survived by his four children; in 1928 his children Minnie and Charles wound up their fathers 66 year old business and sold the premises to the Hay Hill Syndicate to make way for the Prince Edward Theatre. Reddan’s loyal staff moved on and his trusted store managers were remembered in Williams will.

On Monday 3 September 1928 The Evening Telegraph reports on the close of Reddan’s, One landmark falls into the shadow of another.

Further reading at Arthur Lloyd Music Hall and Theatre History Website

The Prince Edward Theatre research by mosoho volunteer Sarah Buttery.
Sarah’s own family has a long history in Soho with Italian restaurants; Sarah worked for Kettner’s before its closure last January to make way for the next phase of its life and has researched the history of Kettner’s, the families and people involved in running the business and holds a private archive of information and artefacts which she has collected over the past few years. I hope Sarah will share this untold story with us in 2017.

We offer a bespoke research service to business and individuals. If you'd like to find out more please email: you@mosoho.org.uk

Not Fade Away – The Rolling Stones in Soho.

noreply@blogger.com (Mo'soho) — Sat, 06 Aug 2016 11:04:00 +0000

“The streets of Soho were reserved for characters, cappuccino action, nerve, real verve and chat, most of it about music. The streets reeked of chutzpah and skiffle was dead – long live pop.” Andrew Loog Oldham, Stoned.

Although legend has it that Keith Richards and Mick Jagger hooked up on a station platform in Dartford, the Rolling Stones as we know them were born above a pub in Soho.

The Bricklayers Arms in Edward Street (since renamed Broadwick Street) was where Brian Jones held auditions to form a rhythm and blues group in 1962. Some of the hopefuls replied to his ad in Jazz News, while others - including Mick and Keith - came from Alexis Korner’s Blues Incorporated sessions at the Marquee in Oxford Street.

The Rollin’ Stones played their first gig at the Marquee in July ’62, and rehearsed different line-ups until Brian, Mick and Keith were joined by Bill Wyman on bass and Ian Stewart on piano. Drummer Charlie Watts climbed aboard last in January 1963. Another regular gig for the Stones in this period was at Studio 51 in Great Newport Street, where Ken Colyer ran his jazz nights.

De Hems.

Meanwhile, down the road apiece, journalists from the music papers in Denmark Street and Shaftesbury Avenue did their quaffing in De Hems bar in Macclesfield Street. It was here, in April ’63, that New Record Mirror editor Peter Jones tipped off pop publicist Andrew Loog Oldham about a certain group playing sensational R&B at the Crawdaddy club in Richmond. Over a vodka & tonic, the suave Mr Jones told Oldham that his paper was running a big piece on the Rollin’ Stones in the forthcoming issue, predicting they will “soon be the leading performers of R&B in the country” – incredible for a group that didn’t yet have a record out.

Those heady early days are captured in the photographs of Terry O’Neill and Gered Mankowitz in the book Breaking Stones, 1963-1965, A Band on the Brink of Superstardom. O’Neill, who was then Fleet Street’s youngest photographer, walked the Rolling Stones around Soho carrying their brand new bags. They look every inch the travelling troubadours on their way to a recording session in Regent Sound studio (where the group cut their debut album and 1964 single Not Fade Away).

Breaking Stones, 1963-1965, A Band on the Brink of Superstardom.

The black-coated Stones lined up in front of Tin Pan Alley’s red and yellow Members’ Club is a quintessential snapshot of Soho in the early 60s, with the band already exuding locked-out cool.

O’Neill’s half of the book is a reportage-style account showing the life of a typical pop group – where the boys had to thank their lucky stars for plates of egg and chips in the BBC canteen, and the makeshift dressing rooms where Keith ran his shaver from a light fitting, while Mick wears a hair net with a fag on the go. The fateful New Record Mirror article, written by Norman Jopling and titled Genuine R&B, is also reprinted inside.

The second half of Breaking Stones features the work of Gered Mankowitz, the son of writer Wolf Mankowitz (author of Expresso Bongo, based on the 2i’s coffee bar scene in Old Compton Street). Gered’s portraits have a strong sense of creative direction and image building – from the band looking through a cage in Ormond Yard (they were dubbed ‘animals’ by the Daily Mirror) to the cover of 1965 album Out Of Our Heads. By the closing frames of the book, when Gered joins the band on their ’65 US tour, the Rolling Stones can no longer walk the streets unmolested.

The 2i's Coffee Bar. Now Poppie's Fish 'n' Chips.

Their view of the world is from the back of limousines, with cops struggling to control thousands of screaming teenagers causing pandemonium everywhere they go. One heart-stopping moment shows Keith out cold on stage, electrocuted by a microphone stand. We see the band taking control of their own destiny as Mick and Keith become songwriters. The irony is that, by writing their own hits, the Beatles and the Stones started a trend that took the shine off Tin Pan Alley’s song merchants and hastened the end of an era. But, when midnight comes around, the streets of Soho will always echo with the sound of pointy-booted footsteps. Claudia Elliott.

Claudia Elliott is a freelance journalist who has written for BBC's Sounds of the 60s, The Blues magazine and Classic Rock.
Website: https://claudiaelliott.contently.com/

Twitter: @Claudia_Elliott

Blogger for BBC Radio 2 Sounds Of The 60s http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b006wqlv

Terry O’Neill’s photograph of the Stones walking in Soho can be seen at Exhibitionism, a retrospective show of the band’s history. Other Soho-related pieces include guitars and amps bought from Ivor Arbiter’s Sound City shops and gear from John Stephen boutique in Carnaby Street. Exhibitionism runs until 4 September at the Saatchi Gallery.

Ghosts of Soho Restaurants.

noreply@blogger.com (Mo'soho) — Wed, 29 Jun 2016 12:45:00 +0000

Soho Restaurants.

Restaurants. Do we regret the loss of Tomato when it turned into Barrafino? No. L’Epicure when it turned into Waikkiki? Yes. Waikkiki when it turned into Bar Shu? An emphatic no! In Soho we see them come and we see them go. Very few are mourned to tell the truth. It’s a hard place both physically and financially to run a restaurant.

We lived in Old Compton Street for ten years and could never quite get away from the smell of cooking. We opened the window onto the street, and it was Opuz and Amalfi. We opened the bedroom window one story up and it was Margot Henderson making trotters at the French House. All of our household objects were covered in a very thin film of cooking oil.

A slice of Soho_Sunday Times Magazine 1968.

Below us then was Duke’s Bar, which changed hands several times before becoming Opuz Kitchen (now Pepe’s). I was then a film critic on The Independent. One evening I happened to see a Michael Winterbottom film called Wonderland (1999), and thought the location looked familiar. A large part of the film had been made twenty feet below us, without our ever noticing. Such is Soho.

By 2008 I had become a restaurant critic for the Zagat Guides, the US equivalent of the Michelin Guides, now owned by Google. Since then Soho has been reviving its foodie credentials, but there’s been a corresponding haemorrhage of good, cheap places to eat. The area may have gained two or three Michelin stars and won restaurant of the year two years running in the Tatler, but where to the waifs and strays eat these days? Especially now that Stockpot is destined for the stockpot?

Soho dining originally was quite grand. Casanova’s mistress Teresa Cornelys first brought Venetian small plates to 18th century Soho (revived again by Polpo in St James bailiwick centuries later). At the super exclusive and fashionable Carlisle House in Soho Square the food wasn’t just Venetian. She had Brunswick pastry-cook Louis Weltje working in the kitchens; he later went to feed up the Prince Regent. But cheap restaurants? The impoverished poets Rimbaud and Verlaine were able to dine cheaply on food that smelt of home in Old Compton St in the 1870’s.

This golden period of cheap dining was to last about 50 years. Here’s Thomas Burke in 1917 talking about Soho, bewailing to loss of bargain eateries. ‘Gone are the shilling tables-d’hote and their ravishing dishes…not in 1917 do you see Old Compton St as a line of warm and fragrant café-windows…gone are those exotic food which brought such zest to a jaded palate’.

Passport to Soho.

I rather miss L’Epicure with its fantastic gas-filled flaming torches, and its doddery waiters seemingly auditioning for a Victoria Wood sketch. But there again Bar Shu with its Sichuan Fuschia Dunlop menu, in the same site, is one of my favourite restaurants. I remember that old-school 1950’s Italian family restaurant in Green Court, but it’s now replaced by Yalla Yalla, which is better.

L’Epicure

A succession of awful restaurants on the site of Arbutus have been replaced by Arbutus (whose future is now sadly in doubt). One of the best new restaurants in London – Sri Lankan slice of happiness known as Hoppers – is on the site of the little-missed Alastair Little eaterie at 49 Frith St. Bao offers brilliant cheap food but you have to queue for 40 minutes to get it.

One of the Italian restaurants I remember with particular fondness was Presto on Old Compton St, which was beloved by Derek Jarman, who lived nearby, and Sebastian Horsley. You only ordered the ravioli, because that’s what Derek did.

Recently Young Cheung’s on Shaftesbury Avenue has closed, a particular sadness to me, not because it was the best restaurant in the world but because it was good and cheap and had the air of old Soho to it. But it did help that I have a Chinese partner who could read all the special menus only in Chinese.

Also vanished, ECapital was a superb Shanghainese mid-priced restaurant at 8 Gerrard St, where the overpraised Haozhan is now. Its chef David Tam is now at China Tang at the Dorchester – that’s how good it was. Delicacies included pressed pig's ears, filleted duck's feet with celery, Lion's Head meatballs, Beggar's Chicken. The actor Johnny Rhys Meyers was a regular after I took him there.

And we also loved China Experience on 118-120 Shaftesbury Avenue, and I remember the Swindon-based owner telling me he was spending £5,000 week in rent. They had paper-lantern shadow beef and golden fried prawns. The subsequent restaurant used the Zagat listed stickers for years afterwards, quite illegally. Royal Dragon is still in Gerard St, but was ruined like Kettners by a revamp, and we followed our friend who manages it next door to Golden Dragon (her name is Jackie and we’ve known her 25 years).

Soho is full of ghosts, most especially, the ghosts of restaurants.

©Roger Clarke 2016 Twitter
Roger Clarke @Skionar

The Soho Food Feast, Sat/Sun 2-3 July 2016

Supporting Soho Parish a small primary school situated in the heart of London on Great Windmill St.

Soho and the Cholera outbreak of 1854.

noreply@blogger.com (Mo'soho) — Sun, 26 Jun 2016 11:00:00 +0000

The Modern Myth of Soho’s Dr John Snow.

History often gets things wrong either because of the way in which events are initially reported or as a result of later re-interpretation.

Such is the story of Dr John Snow who persuaded the Board of Guardians to remove the handle of the water pump in Soho’s Broadwick Street at the height of the 1854 cholera epidemic. Memorialised by the John Snow pub and the replica water pump, which used to stand nearby on the corner of Poland Street, many today are of the mistaken belief that the Victorian doctor was the only scientist to discover cholera is a water-borne disease.

Water pump in Broadwick St. removed whilst building works carried out.

Snow’s work did not make national headlines and newspapers in the 1850s were not brimming over with reports of Snow’s discovery, or that the handle removal had saved lives.

Over 480 people died of cholera in and around Broadwick Street between late July and the middle of October 1854, but at the time the role played by Snow was not seen as particularly significant. Contrary to popular belief, the removal of the pump handle did not improve London’s sanitation overnight, and whilst Snow correctly concluded that cholera is contracted by ingesting tainted water, his work was overshadowed by others working in the tight-knit medical establishment and the widespread conviction that cholera was spread by foul-smelling air.

It is not all that surprising, therefore, that following his untimely death in 1858, Snow’s contribution to science was largely forgotten. In Bloomsbury when the new building to house the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine was opened in 1929, it incorporated a frieze around the top of its exterior into which was carved the names of those considered to be of outstanding importance in the field of hygiene. Snow’s name was not included.

Yet today the story of the removal of the pump handle is seen as a symbol for scientists working in the field who fight - as Snow did - for effective and swift action to prevent the spread of epidemic disease.

Snow’s story is remembered because it was re-told in the early twentieth century by the American public health expert, William T. Sedgwick who, in his 1902 textbook, Principles of Sanitary Science and the Public Health, called Snow’s work ‘a monument of sanitary research.’

Since 1902 science students in the United States have been taught the story of Snow and the pump handle removal and as a result many Americans who come to London are keen to visit Broadwick Street to see the replica pump. Until recently the replica was situated on the corner of Poland Street, unfortunately some distance from its original position, potentially contributing to a re-interpretation of historical events.

The John Snow Public House (1973).

Few realise the site of the original pump is to be found closer to the entrance of the John Snow pub. Its position is marked by a single red granite kerbstone and a discreet sign which incorrectly implies that Snow alone discovered cholera is a waterborne disease. Sadly little is known about Snow’s groundbreaking work on chloroform or his conviction that alcohol was a danger to health.

History has re-interpreted Snow’s story so that today the one lasting memorial to this visionary scientist - and one of the Victorian era’s greatest advocates of temperance - is a Soho pub.

Join us on Thursday, 6 Oct 2016, when author, linguist and historian, Amanda J Thomas, will be our guide on an historical journey through Soho in the time of cholera at Blacks Club, 67 Dean St. W1D 4QH.
Doors open at 7pm, talk begins 7.30pm. This is a Free event exclusive to mosoho followers and Blacks members.

Space is limited so please book early to reserve a seat.email: events@blacksclub.com

Amanda Thomas is the author of ‘Cholera: The Victorian Plague’ (Pen and Sword Books, http://www.pen-and-sword.co.uk/ ; ISBN 978-1783463503), and ‘The Lambeth Cholera Outbreak of 1848-1849’ (McFarland; ISBN 978-0786439898). Further information can be found at http://ajthomas.com/ and on Amanda’s Amazon Author’s Page: www.amazon.co.uk/Amanda-J.-Thomas/e/B002S9FA3I/ref=ntt_dp_epwbk_0

Remembering The First Gay Pride.

noreply@blogger.com (Mo'soho) — Sat, 25 Jun 2016 10:25:00 +0000

West End

Wednesday 23rd June 1971, age 35

My first attempt at Gay Pride.

I’m at a Gay Liberation Front meeting at All Saints Church Hall in Notting Hill listening to Micky Burbidge of the counter-psychiatry group describe ‘aversion therapy’ to several hundred outraged gay people. ‘In this so-called “treatment,”’ he says, ‘gay victims are restrained and stimulated with erotic photos while electric shocks are administered to their genitals.’ After the cries of shock and outrage have died down, he asks for volunteers to march down Harley Street and paint black crosses on the doors of the guilty psychiatrists. I’m one of the many volunteers who raise their hands.

Two days later, I enter Cavendish Square to see a tiny group with a banner: ‘NO TO AVERSION THERAPY’ but am ashamed to admit I don’t dare join them because they look so few and so vulnerable! I will myself to do it but fail. Nor can I walk away but instead pathetically follow them along a parallel street listening to them chanting:

‘Give us a G! … give us an A! … give us a Y!
What does that spell? – Gay!
What is gay? – Good!
What else is gay? – Angry!’

I silently mouth the replies but still can’t join them which, unfortunately, confirms another thing Micky said: ‘Self-oppression is the ultimate subjugation which only succeeds when gay people believe straight definitions of what is good and bad.’ Chastened but thoughtful, I stumble home alone.

Next morning I realise that yesterday was a watershed for me all the same because acknowledging my own self-oppression is the first step to overcoming it.

West End

Saturday 28th August 1971, age 35

Taking Pride

The GLF Youth Group have organised a protest march against the male age of consent and this time I’ve eliminated any chance of copping out by wearing my jumpsuit embroidered with ‘Alan’ and ‘Gay Love’ on the epaulets and a rainbow on the breast pocket, plus all my gay badges and a peaked cap also embroidered with ‘Gay Love’ and my name. So I already feel ‘Out and Proud’ as I set off for Marble Arch tube where I find more happy gay people than I’ve seen in my entire life – and also discover that just ‘being in the majority’ is a liberating experience in itself.

Now we’re ambling down Oxford Street past crowds of Saturday shoppers ‘protected’ by the police. It’s true that yesterday I thought people might throw stones at us but today I observe that most simply aren’t interested; a few look scared but many are cheering us on – so, by the time we reach Bond Street I’m so elated I go up to a gorgeous, curly-haired bearded onlooker and say: ‘You’re lovely! Can I kiss you?’

The Sexual Offences Act 1967 decriminalised ‘homosexual acts between two men over 21 years of age in private’ in England and Wales only’ excluding the police, the army, the air force and the navy.

‘Yes, if you want to,’ he says. So I do! Then I do it again with another! And again, for the rest of the day – till I’ve kissed more divine men than I knew existed! I spot two elderly women huffing and puffing at a bus stop, clearly outraged, but today we’re the majority and they’re the psychologically disturbed.

Photograph, Nigel Robinson.

Every now and again I step out to watch my fellow marchers go by and am struck by what a complete cross-section of humanity we represent. We could be a crowd from any railway station in the rush-hour, from ordinary to amazing – especially the dozen drag queens sashaying at the front – and from my onlooker’s vantage point I carefully note how many protesters pass each minute and so, once arrived in Trafalgar Square, am able to calculate that there are about 900 of us altogether.

At one point I spot a young policeman wistfully shaking his head as he hears us chanting: ‘Two, four six eight, is that copper really straight?’ and when he sees me looking he gives me a secret smile.

Next day every national newspaper has front page photos of our dozen drag queens but not one of our 888 ordinary gay women and men. Thus stereotypes are maintained and our struggle continues.

"Fragments of Joy and Sorrow - Memoir of a reluctant revolutionary" by the late Alan Wakeman.

Gemini Press June 2015 - an Imprint of Fantastic Books Company

www.fantasticbooksstore.com © ALAN WAKEMAN 2015

WHAT ARE THE MEMORIES AND THINGS THAT HAVE DEFINED YOUR LGBT+ LIFE?

In 2017 the BBC is marking 50 years since the partial decriminalisation of homosexuality. The BBC is crowdsourcing photos, memories, film footage, historic documents, club flyers, outfits, protest banners, posters, music, diary entries and much more to help tell the story of LGBT+ life in Britain from 1967 - 2016. Do you have photos of Soho of yesteryear? Footage of past Prides?
Memorabilia from past Soho clubs, pubs or cabarets? We will be making an interactive crowd sourced archive of LGBT+ life and a BBC television series based around some of the stories, objects and memories contributed. Is there something that has defined your life as an LGBT+ person over the last 50 years? Get in touch and let us know what you have at: history@7wonder.co.uk

Tweet: The BBC is crowdsourcing photos, posters & more to explore #LGBT+ life in Britain 1967-2016. Share what you have: history@7wonder.co.uk

Cinema and the West End. 1906-1930

noreply@blogger.com (Mo'soho) — Mon, 14 Mar 2016 16:26:00 +0000

Soho’s Silent Cinemas.

Because of his family’s health problems, the diarist George Thomas, whose tenement rooms overlooked Berwick Street Market, didn’t leave the house much. But, still, he managed to keep up with the latest film news from magazines and conversations with friends. Finally, in May 1930, he recorded a personal ‘high-spot’: a trip to see his first ‘talkie’, The Broadway Melody, probably at the nearby Empire Theatre, Leicester Square, which had recently been converted into MGM’s flagship London cinema. George was hooked. ‘From now on’, he wrote, ‘I am an ardent “talkie-fan,” in the sense that I will never refuse the chance of going again.’

The legacy of the West End’s gigantic movie palaces, most of them opened in the 1920s and 1930s, is still around us. As well as the Empire, the nearby Odeon Leicester Square and the recently closed Odeon West End have provided a link to a time when cinema was a large part of the glamour of a trip ‘Up West’. Less visible are the traces of the West End’s earlier film venues: the places that first introduced George Thomas’s fellow Soho-ites to the movies, and that helped make room for cinema in the busy West End entertainment scene.

Cinema and the West End, 1906-1930.

The National Bioscope.

The West End hosted film shows from the earliest days. In February 1896, a few months after the initial screenings in Paris, the Lumière brothers’ new Cinématographe device was given its first commercial demonstration anywhere in the UK at the Polytechnic Institute on Regent Street. Very quickly, the Cinématographe and other rival moving-picture technologies made their way onto the bills of the West End’s variety theatres, where they stayed (in some form or other) for the next two decades. Dedicated film venues took longer to emerge, although there were early experiments. In May 1896, the film pioneer Birt Acres chose ‘a pleasant little hall in Piccadilly Circus’ (at 2 Piccadilly Mansions) to open his short-lived Kineoptikon, arguably the West End’s first full-time cinema. More lasting was the venue opened in 1906 by Hale’s Tours of the World at 165 Oxford Street, which used films and special sound effects to give its visitors virtual trips to far-off locations inside a replica train carriage.

By the time Hale’s Tours closed in 1910, there were already several other cinemas in the West End. Soho proper got its first recorded cinema in 1908, when the French-born chemist Felix Haté opened the ElectricCinema Theatre at 6 Ingestre Place (later re-named the Jardin de Paris). Like many early cinemas, the Electric was a conversion, in this case from a ground-floor residence and an adjoining stable, which backed onto the narrow William and Mary Yard. This small cinema was popular with locals, especially working-class English, French and Jewish youngsters, who were charged rock-bottom prices to watch short programmes of films, accompanied by an electric piano. Also popular with Soho’s children was the National Bioscope at 20 Frith Street (a building best known for once being occupied by Mozart), which was opened by an Italian family in 1910.

Both these side-street cinemas closed before the end of World War I, unable to deal with the increasingly strict safety regulations imposed by the London Council Council, and also struggling in the face of competition from a new breed of purpose-built ‘picture palaces’. An early example was the Piccadilly Circus Cinematograph Theatre, at 43-44 Great Windmill Street, built on the site of a former motor garage. Backed by the cinema magnate Montagu Pyke, it boasted such genteel amenities as a ‘vestibule lounge’, decorated (according to one trade paper) to suggest ‘a drawing-room at a royal palace or ducal mansion’. Even more luxurious was the 700-seat West EndCinema (later the Rialto, and now the Grosvenor Casino), which opened in March 1913 at 3-4 Coventry Street, and soon became a favourite spot for film premieres and other gala events.

Palais de Luxe, Great Windmill St. Courtesy of Media History Digital Library.

The wartime ban on luxury building meant that no new cinemas were constructed in the West End until well into the 1920s. When building re-started, the trend was for even larger ‘super cinemas’, like the Astoria on CharingCross Road, opened in 1927. But small, more specialist film venues also found a home in the neighbourhood. At the very end of the 1920s, the Avenue Pavilion on Shaftesbury Avenue (on the spot of what is now the Curzon Soho) and the Palaisde Luxe at 17-18 Great Windmill Street (before it was the Windmill Theatre) were pioneers of the repertory cinema movement in London. Their eclectic programmes of ‘classic’ and rare films from Hollywood, Britain and around Europe brought people into Soho from across the city, and allowed the era of silent films in the West End to last a little longer.

With thanks to Dr Chris O'Rourke and Media History Digital Library.

About the author: Dr Chris O’Rourke teaches Film Studies at University College London. More of his research into the West End’s early cinema history can be found on the website London’s Silent Cinemas (www.londonssilentcinemas.com).

Edited extract from: Spitalfields: A history of London in a handful of streets.

noreply@blogger.com (Mo'soho) — Thu, 22 Oct 2015 13:21:00 +0000

The Huguenots: From ‘Poor Strangers’ to model citizens.

With Special Thanks to Dan Cruickshank/June 2015 and The Huguenots of Spitalfields

Edited extract from: Spitalfields: The history of London in a handful of streets. Soon to be published.

The arrival of French Calvinist Protestants – Huguenots – in the British Isles in large numbers from the 1670s to the early decades of the eighteenth century had a profound effect that, after nearly 350 years, continues to ripple through the nation. The Huguenots had a rapid – and very significant – influence on the social, artistic, religious and economic life of Britain and its colonies and provided, and still provides, an influential example of the mutual and ultimately creative benefits that can arise from mass and seemingly tragic forced immigration.

The story of the French Protestant diaspora started in earnest in the late sixteenth century following the St. Bartholomew’s Day massacre in Paris when the Roman Catholic authorities, in a spasm of uncontrolled and ferocious rage, turned on the Huguenot elite and within weeks somewhere in the region of 20,000 Huguenots were killed in France. Many fled, to protect their lives and to practice their religion, with a significant number settling on the south-east of England – notably in and around Canterbury.

Immigration slowed after 1598 when the Edict of Nantes was ratified in France and civil rights and freedom to worship were guaranteed for Protestants.

But in the 1670s life once again started to become hard for Protestants in France and, haunted by distant memories of Roman Catholic treachery and violence during the St. Bartholomew’s Day massacre, many started to consider leaving their homeland and the immigration to Britain started – at first a trickle but with a decade a torrent

In 1681 persecution of French Protestants in France was renewed in earnest when Louis XIV authorised the quartering of dragoons in Protestant communities.

The aim of these dragonnades was to suppress the Protestant faith through torment, terror and intimidation and induce conversion to Catholicism.

Initially –and most understandably – many French Protestants preferred to remain in their homeland, in the hope that the persecution would pass.

But it became clear to most that persecution would only cease if they renounced their faith.

This was something very few Huguenots would do.

So increasingly, risking their freedom and even their lives because flight abroad was illegal, tens of thousands fled to Protestant nations.

Between about 1670 and 1710 it is estimated that around 50,000 to 80,000 Huguenots fled France with more than half of these coming to England – and this could have been up to 50,000 if the high estimate of immigration is accepted.

More settled in London than in all other British locations combined so by 1700, it has been estimated that Huguenot’s formed 5% of London’s total population of around 575,000. (Robin Gwynn, The Number of Huguenot Immigrants in the late 17^th c, Journal of Historical Geography, vol. 9. No. 4, 1983, pp. 384-398.)

The arrival en masse of French fleeing France could only have been a great embarrassment for Charles II.

At the time he was embroiled in a complex political relationship with France veering from belligerence to securing financial-aid to free him from dependence on Parliament for funds and was reaching a personal reconciliation with Catholicism.

But although it could only hinder - and certainly not help - his maturing policies and private plans Charles II offered the arriving Huguenots a warm and public welcome.

It must be assumed that the king, despite the obvious personal advantages in not offending Louis XIV, felt empathy for refugees having himself spent nearly ten years in exile.

Also, given his tolerant nature and intelligence, it is probable that Charles simply didn’t like the notion of brutish persecution for reasons of religion and wanted to do all in his power to help.

As Robin Gwynne explains:

‘…the warmth and speed of [Charles’s] responses may indicate a genuine generosity of heart. In 1666, even as he was declaring war on France, Charles chose to welcome French Protestants into his country. And when the dragonnades began in 1681, he acted with speed and decisiveness in offering the Huguenots both a home and significant privileges, so that those who came to British shores were well treated for the four years before his death in 1685.’ (Robin Gwynne, Huguenot Heritage: The history and contribution of Huguenots in Britain, Sussex Academic Press, Brighton, 2001 edition p.166).

When history demanded that the self-indulgent Charles take action he was not – to the surprise of many – found wanting.

He retained the bravery and character that he had shown in his youth in 1651 in the second Civil War – fighting for a lost cause, a dead father and an inheritance that seemed beyond recovery.

As Gwynne observes, ‘Charles may have been lazy, Francophile and ultimately Catholic, but he obviously disliked persecution.’ (Gwynne, p. 167).

The king also, perhaps, perceived that the arrival of the Huguenots offered economic benefits outweighing possible political disadvantages.

What Charles had in his power was not only the offer of an official welcome, but also to help create an atmosphere of acceptance for the refugees by publicising the sacrifices they endured for their religious beliefs, and by launching a fund-raising campaign to relieve the more distressed of the newly arrived Huguenots.

All this Charles II did in the simplest and most direct manner by issuing a Brief in 1681 that was to be read in churches around the land.

In this the king made reference to the Huguenot’s persecution for their religious beliefs, to their ‘being forced to abandon their native abodes’ and called them ‘not only distressed strangers, but chiefly persecuted Protestants.’ (Robin Gwynne, Huguenot Heritage: The history and contribution of Huguenots in Britain. Sussex Academic Press, Brighton, 2001 edition, p. 170).

This was emotive stuff calculated to create sympathy within the native Protestant population and encouragement to individual acts of charity.

The poor and persecuted Huguenots were - by Royal approval - evidently worthy, indeed admirable - objects of charity and of national support.

The Huguenots who started to arrive in large numbers in London after 1681 were united by their devotion to their religion and, it would seem, by energy, determination and a dedication to what they perceived as the divine attribute of hard and honest work and to the God-ordained obligation to create a clean, comfortable secure family home.

For them the reasonable display of wealth amassed through honest labour was viewed ‘not as ostentation.’ (See Anne J. Kershen, Strangers, Aliens and Asians: Huguenots, Jews and Bangladeshis in Spitalfields 1660-2000. Routledge, London, 2005, p. 171; and M. Weber, The Protestant Work Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, London, Unwin, 1938).

Their years of experience as a hard pressed and finally a persecuted minority had also forged strong ties within the Huguenot communities and established powerful traditions of mutual support.

Family was all-important and survival mechanisms were clearly well honed. They were people with great natural intelligence and shrewdness and in London in the 1680s they soon discovered the means to survive, even flourish.

For the Huguenots, their arrival in London in large numbers in 1681 had its problems but, generally had been successful. But soon things were to become extremely difficult - both for those Huguenots still planning to flee to England and for those who had already arrived.

The French Protestant Church, Soho Square. photographed in 1973.mosoho

In October 1685 Louis XIV revoked the Edict of Nantes that had tolerated the practice of the Protestant religion in France.

Now, at the stroke of a pen, Louis outlawed the Protestant faith in France and initiated the closure and destruction of Protestant churches and the prosecution and punishment of all professing Protestants.

This, of course, increased the exodus of Protestants from France. But not to England in such numbers as before. The reason is straightforward. In February 1685 Charles II died and James II came to the throne and he for Huguenots, was to prove a deeply unsympathetic and untrustworthy monarch.

James II – who was soon to prove himself a stupid individual - was little more than a servile creature of France and a practicing Roman Catholic with a morbid obsession to reinstate Roman Catholics in Britain to power and to restore Roman Catholicism as the official faith of the country.

These, and other ill-considered aims, were to lead to James II’s dramatic downfall in 1688 and to the Glorious Revolution and the rise to power of the Protestant William III and his queen - and James’s daughter - Queen Mary.

So in early 1685 - with the accession of the pro-French and pro-Catholic James II to the throne - things looked bleak for the Huguenots in Britain and for those planning to arrive.

In addition, James saw the Huguenots as a threat - not only to him but also to the principle of monarchy since he was convinced that their Puritanical Christianity made them Republicans at heart

But James realised that to openly ignore the Huguenots plight would be to court trouble.

Despite some initial popular alarm at their arrival in large numbers, the Huguenots were, in the end, persecuted Protestants and Britain was an overwhelmingly Protestant nation.

And what was more, the Huguenots were the victims of an autocratic Catholic monarchy that many in Britain found particularly threatening, arrogant and repugnant.

So James II resolved to follow a two-faced policy, calculated to appease the Protestant sensibilities of the majority of his subjects who increasingly supported the Huguenot immigration while also satisfying his French masters.

To this end James, at the time of the Revocation of Nantes in October 1685, ‘prohibited the captains and officers of English ships from taking French subjects on board unless they had passports - which they could not obtain - and punished at least one captain for disobeying this injunction..’ (Gwynne, p. 169).

On coming to the throne James II promised foreign churches in London the same protection and support they had enjoyed during reign of Charles II. But for the Huguenots there were potential complications – indeed James intended that there should be.

In 1685 a Bill was put forward for the ‘general naturalization of French Protestants currently residing in England … and such others as shall come over within a limited time’, but the Court opposition to the Bill ensured that a clause was added that ordered all French churches and congregations to use only the Anglican liturgy translated into French.

This was obviously unacceptable to Calvinist Huguenots - and was evidently intended to be so. They had given up all in their native land for the freedom to worship in their own manner and would scarcely agree to a course of action that compromised this freedom.

The Anglican liturgy was not their liturgy and all knew they would not - could not - use it.

This Bill, if it became law un-amended, would have destroyed all foreign non-conformist churches in England and - perhaps more to the point - have stifled the flow of persecuted French into England.

But, due to the emergency of the unsuccessful Monmouth Rebellion of June and July 1685 the Bill lapsed and no more was heard of it.

However, as Gwynne points out, this legalistic attempt on their religious freedom ensured that Huguenot ‘elders were kept uneasy for rest of [James’s] reign,’ (Gwynne, p. 168).

Then in 1686 James II issued a Brief to be read in churches throughout the land – and it was much diluted in comparison with that of 1681.

In 1681 vivid reference had been made to the Huguenots persecution for their religious beliefs and to them ‘being forced to abandon their native abodes’ and called them ‘not only distressed strangers, but chiefly persecuted Protestants.’ (Robin Gwynne, Huguenot Heritage: The history and contribution of Huguenots in Britain. Sussex Academic Press, Brighton, 2001 edition, p. 170.)

The Brief of 1686 ‘said nothing about conditions in France, nor about persecutions, merely stating that the destitute French Protestants currently in England needed relief.’ (Gwynne, p. 170)

As with the 1681 Brief, that of 1686 called for a public collection on the Huguenots behalf.

But this promise of charitable money was used by James in an attempt to achieve political and religious aims.

The Brief stated that the money raised through donations was to be used to ‘benefit only those who lived in entire conformity and orderly submission to our government established both in church and state’ (Gwynne, p. 171).

No such phrase had been used in the 1681 Brief. How was it to be interpreted?

Were only those refugees who attended conformist French congregations or Anglican churches were to be offered relief? In effect it was taken to mean that all recipients had to produce a certificate to say they had received Communion according to the usage of the Church of England.

Ultimately this stipulation did not prove a significant stumbling block for the Huguenots and was not comparable to the stipulation in the earlier and abandoned Parliamentary Bill that they were to use Anglican liturgy.

As Gwynne explains, ‘since the continental Reformed churches accepted the Anglican Church as a true Protestant church, most refugees felt able to comply with this condition, but only after considerable heart-searching; they were, after all, refugees for the sake of religion, and had left their native land to be free to worship in their own way.’ (Gwynne, p. 171).

But it should be said, James continued to grant letters of denization, that is the granting of certain rights to foreigners residing in Britain.

Despite these apparent tokens of support the Huguenot community believed James to be ‘shifty and untrustworthy, his actions but a front to placate English public opinion.’ (Gwynne, p.168).

Despite the toned-down nature of the 1686 Brief and the lengthy delay between it being drafted and it actually being read in churches (a delay John Evelyn, the diarist and close observer of the political and social life of James’s court, blamed on ‘the interest of the French ambassador and cruel papists.’, Diary of John Evelyn, IV, pp. 506, 508), it still provoked a most generous response from the public.

By March 1687 over £42,000 had been raised.

On the 16^th April 1687 ‘an Order of Council prescribed a new general collection in England, Scotland and Ireland raised £200,000 which formed a fund known as the Royal Bounty.’ (The Victoria County History, The History of Middlesex, vol. 2 (general), edited by William Page, 1911, pp. 132-137).

A lay French committee was entrusted with an annual distribution of £16,000 amongst poor refugees and their descendants, while a second ecclesiastical committee distributed £1,718 annually to ‘distressed’ pastors.

This generosity on the part of the public was, says Gwynne, ‘little short of a slap in the royal face.’ (Gwynne, p. 172.)

The reason for the generous response is hinted at in an extraordinary set of contemporary documents compiled by Roger Morrice.

Morrice kept an Entering Book in which he recorded the word on the street - both gossip and informed opinion - from coffee houses and taverns for the edification of a small group of clients who evidently believed knowledge to be power. (The Entering Book of Roger Morrice: a journal of late seventeenth century London, ed. Mark Goldie, Boydell Press, Woodbridge, 2007).

According to Morrice the English in 1685 were appalled by the stories they heard.

As Morrice recorded on Saturday November 21 1685: ‘The persecutions and torments of the Protestants in France is still inexpressible, its wrot over by an eye witnesse that Dragoons are sent even into all Countreys, and that in one part of a Province 18,000 Protestants, when the Dragoons came did generally run to the Churches for feare of the Gallies, Torments or Death, and there offered to renounce the Protestant Religion. The Papists would not take their renounciations till they had made the Protestants solemly to sweare that they did not make that renunciation for feare of torment or for any such selfish reason, but out of the sence of the great dishonour they had done God, and the scandal they had cast upon Holy Church by living in such damnable Heresies so long &c.’

Morrice also documented gossip about cruel mutilations alleged to have been perpetrated by the Catholic authorities on apprehended fleeing Huguenots. True or not, such stories were well calculated to enrage English Protestant opinion.

On the public’s response to the Brief, Morrice recorded on Monday May 3^rd 1686: ‘In many Parishes in London and in the Suburbs they have given liberally to the Collection for the French Protestants, but very many persons are confidently reported to have given five or ten times more than they have upon an exact enquiry.’ (The Entering Book of Roger Morrice, vol. III, p. 114).

James’s action did, despite provoking public antipathy, achieve one of his aims -

fewer Huguenots crossed the channel in the early years of his reign than had in the years immediately after 1681.

There was another reason, besides James II pusillanimous behaviour, that reduced Huguenot immigration to England. In October 1685, in response to Louis XIV’s revocation of the Edict of Nantes, Frederick William, Elector of Brandenburg and Duke of Prussia, passed the extraordinarily enlightened and enterprising Edict of Potsdam. This encouraged Huguenots to emigrate to Prussia by offering safe passage, freedom of worship and tax-free status for ten years. In consequence Prussia – and Potsdam in particular – became a centre of Protestant European immigration, offering an attractive alternative to London for large numbers of Huguenots, but also Dutch, Russians and Bohemians. Prussia benefited – economically and culturally - from the energy and commercial initiative of these migrant communities.

In Britain Huguenot immigration no doubt increased once again after the 4^th April 1687 with the Declaration of Indulgence that guaranteed freedom of religious worship in the British Isles. By suspending penal laws enforcing conformity to the Anglican church James made it possible for Roman Catholics to worship openly and, by removing the obligation to swear allegiance to the Anglican church before assuming position in public offices, allowed them to start the move back into public life.

But, by the same token of indulgence, James made life easier all other Christian denominations that did not conform to Anglican doctrine or liturgy - including the Calvinistic Huguenots.

Despite this legislation - which almost by accident and certainly paradoxically improved the position of Calvinists while it paved the way for the return of Roman Catholics to power in Britain - James continued to be viewed by Huguenots as untrustworthy and at time directly aggressive. This perception explains why Huguenots fully supported William of Orange’s Protestant ‘invasion’ of 1688.

It was not just that he was a Protestant but that James had, in many ways, proved himself an enemy to the Huguenots and their interests. This distrust of the unreliable and Catholic-tainted Stuarts echoed through the following years, and helps explain why Britain’s Huguenot community opposed the Jacobites so forcefully in 1715 and 1745.

English attitudes to the arrival of the Huguenots

The Huguenot refugees, when they started to arrive in large numbers in London during 1681, quickly saw the opportunities offered by London and with astonishing speed, ability and success set about turning their unfortunate circumstances to great advantage.

But what did their hosts think?

Initially the attitude was ambivalent and divided by class and occupation.

The Protestant middle-class and aristocracy welcomed the arrival of their fellow Protestant and generally middle or merchant class French, and the Huguenots received a hearty welcome – reflecting the ‘official’ welcome of Charles II.

It was after all politically advantageous to offer refuge (the word refugee was coined at this time) to Protestant Frenchmen fleeing persecution in their own land, and much mileage was made out of a situation that appeared to show autocratic monarchy in Catholic France in such a poor light.

But working people, notably journeymen weavers - and merchants involved in the precious metal trade - saw the Huguenots as a potential or actual threat to their livelihoods.

Consequently, despite official and Royal support for the Huguenots, there was a degree of popular unrest – particularly amongst journeymen weavers in the areas in which many of the French initially settled, notably in the East End of London – in and around Spitalfields - and in Norwich in Norfolk.

Spitalfields and Silk.

The arriving Huguenots chose to settle in Spitalfields for a number of reasons: it was near a French Protestant Church in Threadneedle Street, in the City of London; the area was expanding with new homes and workshops being built, and because – for those Huguenots with silk weaving skill or ambitions – the Spitalfields area was home to London’s indigenous weaving industry, initially wool and then silk.

The transformation of the Artillery Ground into Spitalfields first large scale and coherent urban development was completed in 1684 under the control of the pioneering speculative house-builder Nicholas Barbon. These streets of new buildings made Spitalfields a most attractive area for Huguenot families with means or fair prospects.

Builders needed clients to take on their speculations and the Huguenots – ambitious and increasingly wealthy – were promising occupiers for the area’s new speculatively-built housing stock.

The newly arrived Huguenots spotted the opportunity to establish, with astonishing speed and success, a French-style silk industry in London. The Huguenots, through their religion, culture, their habits of hard work and self-reliance and ‘by their sheer numbers, changed the social and cultural dynamic of the neighbourhoods in which they lived.’ (Catherine Swindlehurst in ‘An unruly and presumptuous rabble’: the reaction of the Spitalfields weaving community to the settlement of the Huguenots, 1660-90, p. 388).

Some of the native discontent about the rapid transformation of newly expanded Spitalfield - like a New Town on the north-east edge of the City – into a French enclave dominated by Huguenot tradesmen and merchants, is catalogued by Catherine Swindlehurst in ‘An unruly and presumptuous rabble’: the reaction of the Spitalfields weaving community to the settlement of the Huguenots, 1660-90.

She notes that as early as 1681 one James Jeffries expressed fear of an uprising in Spitalfields against French refugees because some Spitalfields residents, he observed, had amassed weapons, and ‘…those that have them say that those weapons are to defend themselves against the Papists and a Popish successor…’ (PRO. SP29/417/78; Swindlehurst, p. 370).

The Popish reference is confusing but for many uneducated English working people being French was synonymous with being Catholic and some assumed that the Huguenots - arriving in large and sudden numbers - were nothing more than undercover French invasion force of ‘Papists’ and spies intent on causing mayhem in England.

It is now hard to overestimate the impact the sudden arrival of the French. Many were skilled workers and eager to thrive in their new homeland and full of initiative.

The native labouring community was clearly confused in its response. Its antiquated trade and manufacturing traditions and ingrained inferiority, when faced with competition from high quality French-made luxury artefacts of fashion, made London artisans fearful.

But some saw that the arrival of the French represented a great opportunity that could be grasped.

As Catherine Swindlehurst points out, ‘France and the French silk industry were both the nemesis and the spur towards development of the English silk weaving trade in the late 17^th century. For many London weavers, the French trade was something to be both revered and copied, as well as to be scorned and protected against. France was popularly viewed as a sort of vortex of Popish evil, but at the same time, it was respected as an economic power and a fashion centre. The arrival of the Huguenots in England presented new hope in the competition with France in the quality and design of various luxury goods.’ (Catherine Swindlehurst‘An unruly and presumptuous rabble’: the reaction of the Spitalfields weaving community to the settlement of the Huguenots, 1660-90, p. 368).

So the popular response to the arrival of the Huguenots was, to put is mildly, extremely mixed. Many saw them, and their skills, initiative, ambition and driving work ethic, as a threat to the practices of ‘fair trade’ - a notion that, among other things, promoted and protected established practices of production and scale of wages.

Evidently one of the immediate fears harboured by English weavers was that the French incomers would undercut them by accepting lower wages and charging less for their work.

Huguenots of Spitalfields Silk Dress.

This had been perceived as common practice in immigrant communities in the past as they strove to establish themselves. As one pamphlet poem, published in 1681, observed: ‘..weavers all may curse their fates/Because the French work under rates…’ (The Valient Weaver, London, 1681; Swindlehurst, pp 369-70).

The fear seems to have been felt keenly in the early 1680s in Spitalfields small community of English weavers.

Tensions grew rapidly, so by early August 1683 riots were feared. In the State Papers are preserved eyewitness reports: ‘the factious partt [of the weavers] thereabouts has been very bold and presumptuous this last week: and… they do cabal together oftener than has been usual.’

English weavers, it was observed, gathered in public houses ‘in opposition to the French weavers in their neighbourhood’ and it was feared that if the weavers ‘can get a sufficient number together, they will rise and knock [the French] on the head.’ (PRO, SP 29/431/ 21, Swindlehurst, p. 366).

Weavers gathered at local inns, where they brooded on the alleged trade abuses being practiced by the French and plotted protest. One informant told the authorities that he had ‘…found out the three houses of their meeting viz at the sign of the Poor Robin in Bishopsgate Street, at the sign of the Town of Hackney in the same street, and at the Cock in Whitegate Alley near the Fields’ (probably in what is now Widegate Street).

Some of the weavers attending these meetings were, warned the informant, ‘not sober and rationull.’ (PRO. SP29/431/21-20, Swindlehust, pp. 370-71).

The official response to this information was a controlled display of force. On 9^th August Charles II ordered horse guards to be ‘quartered about Islington, Hackney or Mile End to keep the weavers in order,’ (PRO, SP29/430/79, Swindlehurst, p. 371) and the City’s trained-bands were kept in Devonshire Square, just off Bishopsgate, and immediately to the south of Spitalfields.

This tactic seems to have worked, and certainly prevented violence against the Huguenots, but ill feeling simmered not far beneath the surface.

On the 25^th August an informant reported that ‘he was desiered by two journeymen weavers…to meet in Swan Fields one Monday morning and he doth conclude is in order to some bad designe, it being the same method they took when they burnt the ingin loombs.’ (PRO. SP29/431/3, Swindlehurst, p. 371).

The reference is to engine-loom riots of 1675 when Spitalfield silk ribbon weavers rioted against the introduction of machinery that heralded automation and consequently was seen as a threat to the local workforce.

But in London all proposed violent protest came to nothing, probably because the presence of armed troops was a sobering prospect and an effective deterrent.

But there were severe riots in Norwich in August and September 1683, where Huguenots had also settled. These were, observes Catherine Swindlehurst, ‘a grim reminder of the scale and intensity of popular disaffection felt for the French weavers.’

One of the ways in which the newly arrived Huguenots weavers (or Huguenots who desired to enter the weaving industry) were integrated with native weavers was through the offices of the long established Weavers’ Company. However in the 1680s its power was limited since it could exercise its jurisdiction only in the City of London and, until the second decade of the 18^th century, only with difficulty in ‘suburban’ areas such as Spitalfields, Shoreditch and Bethnal Green. (Swindlehurst, p. 370 ).

However the way in which the company attempted to reconcile Huguenot and English weavers is revealed in contemporary documents. For example, John Larguier of Nîmes was granted the status of master by the Weavers’ Company in 1684 when he not only proved that he was ‘fully inabled to weave and perfect lutestrings, alamodes and other fine silks as well as service and beauty in all respects as they are perfected in France’, but also agreed to the ‘condition that he imply himself, and others of the English nation, in making the said alamode and lutestring silks for one year from this day.’ (Guildhall Library, MS 4655/9, fos. 12, pp. 37-8, and Catherine Swindlehurst, 368-9).

This condition was obviously a response to the established fear that the newly arrived French weavers would keep their skills, new technologies and trade ‘secrets’ exclusively within their own community and employ only French apprentices and journeymen.

A powerful physical reminder of the issues and anxieties raised among English Protestants and the authorities is the monumental and majestic Anglican parish church of Christ Church Spitalfields – construction of which started in 1714 to the designs of Nicholas Hawksmoor.

In a key way the church is a direct response to the settlement of Huguenots in Spitalfields and its environs.

Being Calvinists the Huguenots desired to establish and worship in their own churches in their own way, and not attend Anglican parish churches.

In response the church authorities felt obliged to promote the interest - and presence - of the established state religion in areas of urban expansion with large dissenting populations.

The obvious - if expensive - way to do this was through the construction of new, architecturally impressive and strategically placed, Anglican churches in newly created and administratively important parishes.

Although the idea for new churches was discussed as early as the 1680s money was in short supply, with the revenue from the coal tax going towards the reconstruction of new parish churches and St. Paul’s cathedral in the fire ravaged City.

But after 1710, when this major construction project was nearly complete, coal tax money became available for new churches and in 1711 the Act for Building Fifty new Anglican parish churches in London was passed.

One of the target area of this Act was Spitalfields, where Christ Church was built and a new parish created in 1729 when the church was complete.

By the time the construction Christ Church started the Huguenots had been established in large numbers in Spitalfields for around thirty years and by the time the church was completed in 1729 the Huguenots were – essentially – Spitalfields.

Huguenot families were the families that mattered – they were the significant merchants and entrepreneurs, they ran the area, occupied many of its largest and grandest houses, were a respected part of London society with many rising high in the professions and the Weavers’ Company and had command of Spitalfields wealth and most of its wealth-generating industries.

The Huguenots also, even if they did not worship in the church, acted as parish officers and through the churches dual role as town hall were deeply involved in the government of Spitalfields Parish, as well as the adjoining Liberties of the Artillery Ground and Norton Folgate.

The respect with which the Huguenots were held in the early eighteenth century – and the reasons for this respect – is captured by John Strype in his 1720 edition of the Survey of London and Westminster:

‘The North west Parts of this Parish (Spittle Fields and Parts adjacent), of later Times became a great Harbour for Poor Protestant Strangers, Waloons and French; who as in former Days, so of late, have been forced to become Exiles from their own Country for their Religion, and for the avoiding cruel Persecution. Here they have found quiet and security, and settled themselves in their several Trades and Occupations; Weavers especially. Whereby God’s Blessing surely is not only brought upon the Parish, by receiving poor Strangers (Come ye Blessed of my Father, Etc, For I was a Stranger and ye took me in) but also a great Advantage hath accrued to the whole Nation, by the rich Manufactures of weaving Silks and Stuffs and Camlets: which Art they brought along with them. And this Benefit also to the Neighbourhood; that these Strangers may serve for Patterns of Thrift, Honesty, Industry, and Sobriety, as well.’ (Volume II. 1 Book Four, p. 48 - includes a map of Spittlefields and places Adjacent.)

Strype’s extremely positive view of the benefits of the Huguenot arrival and settlement in Spitalfields is fascinating since it records an opinion that was, presumably, commonly held in 1720.

But there were dissenting views, and one is offered by an extraordinary fellow called Jean Baptiste Denis.

He who was not only a French immigrant but also a Calvinist. Earlier in life he had been a Roman Catholic priest but he converted, gave up a respectable and secure life in France and in 1705 took refuge in London.

For reason unknown, although perhaps not without reason, this former Catholic loathed his fellow Frenchmen and Calvinists

He poured out his spleen in a book, with a long title that says it all: A Plot Discovered: wherein is set forth the insolence and ingratitude, of the greatest part of the French refugees, towards the English, their benefactors.

The faults Denis perceived, and to which he chose to draw attention, included the ‘general corruption that reigns among the refugees,’ their pride, ingratitude, and their injustice and ungenerosity towards proselytes. The Huguenot ‘Master-Weavers in Spittle-Fields’ were, he wrote, ‘a people stiff-neck’d and uncircumcis’d of heart …. Whose pride and ambition have tower’d to such a height, as to make their condition not only envy’d by the greatest merchants in the City, but have also made themselves formidable to the most antient and most powerful Companies of the nation.’

In sardonic vein Denis observed what ‘a glorious set of people indeed are these French master weavers … that ruin the body, of which they denominate themselves members, purely to enrich themselves by the ruin, the spoils of the unfortunate, not sparing their own countrymen…the greatest part of the refuges are a cast-out people, without honour or principle … a ridiculous concourse of vagabonds.’ (Information courtesty of Robin Gwynne)

These are presumably the exaggerated ravings of a disappointed man. But, they could offer a clue to a prevailing undercurrent of opinion. It Strype reflects the commonly held positive attitude to the Huguenots does Denis capture with accuracy the negative attitudes, prejudices and assumptions held by more xenophobic Londoners?

But even if widely held in the early years of the 18^th century, the views expressed by Denis did not prevail.

No doubt one of the main reasons for the eventual and fulsome acceptance of the Huguenots – by even journeymen weavers who once felt themselves threated – was the fact that the Huguenots had virtually invented a new and valuable industry in London.

The high quality silk they produced was unprecedented in Britain.

Huguenot weavers and masters, and the trade they created, clearly had not directly supplanted a native workforce or local trade but – on the contrary – had created new markets, employment, skills and wealth.

Soho and silver.

The precious metals industry became the most interesting and important of Soho’s trades.

From the late seventeenth century Huguenots established themselves, mostly in south Soho around Gerrard Street, Great Windmill Street and the Newport Market area and created a highly valuable trade.

Some of the Huguenot immigrants who settled in Soho brought their skills with them while others - as with many of the Huguenot silk weavers - identified and exploited the fact that in England there was a demand for high quality wares with a French sense of style and elegance.

The leading members of the Soho precious metals trade included Peter Archambo, Paul de Lamerie and Paul Crespin.

Archambo became an apprentice in 1710 to a fellow Huguenot silversmith named Jacob Margas who had a workshop in St. Martin’s Lane, which was then the south-east boundary of Soho.

Dan Cruickshank at Black's members club giving his talk ‘Silver and Silk’, which explored the fascinating life and trade of Huguenot London from c1681 to the mid-18th century.

The problems that Archambo faced were typical of those that beset Huguenot silver and goldsmiths in late seventeenth century London and were among the key reasons for the establishment of their silver trade in Soho.

The early experiences of Huguenot silk weavers and silver smiths were very different – indeed in stark contrast.

The Huguenots had from a early time succeeded in entering and rising high in the Weavers’ Company.

But initially Huguenot silver and gold smiths who tried to enter the English precious metal industry through the established means of the Goldsmith Company found their path blocked and their futures blighted

When Huguenots seeking to work with precious metals arrived in London in the late seventeenth century they settled near Goldsmiths’ Hall, in the City of London, which was the capital’s traditional centre for the silver and gold trade and -most conveniently - near a French Protestant church in Threadneedle Street.

But problems soon arose. Silver and gold smiths needed to gain the Freedom of the City of London through a livery company in order to trade in the city – and in London generally.

The obvious livery company to join was the Goldsmiths’ but this was controlled by London-born tradesmen who were suspicious of the talented Huguenot arrivals - jealous of their skills, daunted by their industrious nature and work-ethic, and so fearful that they would win many commissions.

So the London tradesmen closed ranks and kept the Huguenots out of the Goldsmiths’ Company and so deny them the chance to become Freemen of the City.

And this was a serious threat because quite simply, no Freedom of the City meant no work!

But the Huguenots were nothing if not canny and determined and would not to be stopped.

Their solution was to make jealousy their friend.

They played on traditional City rivalries and found that other livery companies were happy to accept them, even if only upset the arrogant Goldsmiths.

So in 1720 Archambo became free of the Butchers’ Company and Paul Crespin became free of the Longe Bowe String makers, and through these companies gained freedom of the City.

But establishing themselves amongst their London rivals near Goldsmiths’ Hall presented another problem so the Huguenots founded their own centre of trade in south Soho, and near the French Protestant church located in the Savoy, just south of the Strand.

One Huguenot tradesman who did manage to join the Goldsmiths’ Company was Paul de Lamerie. He became one of the most able and successful of the Huguenot tradesmen and has been called by the Victoria and Albert Museum ‘the greatest silversmith working in England in the eighteenth century.’

De Lamerie was born in April 1688 in ‘s-Hertogenbosch in the United Provinces (now The Netherlands) and came to London with his immigrant family - of minor aristocratic ancestry - when just one year old.

At the age of fourteen de Lamerie was apprenticed to a Huguenot goldsmith named Pierre Platel and in 1713 opened his own workshop, probably in Great Windmill Street, Soho, where his established his own mark.

But not, it seems, until after some difficulties with the Goldsmith’s Company.

In 1714 he was called before the court of the Company for failing to have his work hallmarked.

This was a serious charge. By the early eighteenth century silver ware possessed various hallmarks to establish the date and location of its manufacture and the quality of the silver from which it was made.

These marks could also include an emblem or initials to reveal the manufacturer of the piece - and only makers who traded under their own names and whose association with a piece could enhance its value were in the habit of signing their work.

But hallmarks that included a makers identifying mark could prove a problem. If a maker put his mark on a piece it was difficult for him to dodge paying duty, as they were obliged to do by law.

It would seem that the avoidance of duty was the main reason de Lamerie sought anonymity. Certainly the company took a stern view of his actions and fined him a hefty £20.

De Lamerie’s response seems to have been to mock the company and attempt to undermine its authority. He purchased a stock of second rate unmarked silver objects made by anonymous London smiths and had it hallmarked as his own. The company got wind of what was going on and accused de Lamerie of having bought ‘Foreigners work and got ye same toucht at ye Hall.’

The contest between de Lamerie and the Goldsmith Company was prolonged – but does not seem to have damaged him professionally - for example in 1716 he was appointed as gold and silversmith to George I

However in 1717 he was once again accused by the Company of with selling large quantities of plate that he had not brought to the Company to be marked ‘according to law.’

The eventual solution to the long-running dispute was to the company to admit de Lamerie as a Liveryman and to control him by making him part of the precious metal establishment. (Lucy Inglis, Georgian London: into the streets, 2013, p. 171).

From around this time – 1719 or so - de Lamerie seems to have regularly marked his products, with his initial mark being a capital LA with a crown and small star above and a fleur de lis below.

By the 1730s he was dominant in his field, supplying the rich, powerful and titled in Britain and abroad with artefacts of consummate beauty - characteristically reflecting the favoured rococo manner of the time - and of extraordinary expense.

In 1738 de Lamerie moved his home and probably his workshop to 40 Gerrard Street - then the best address in the heart of south Soho’s silver and gold district. Current number 40 Gerrard Street bears a plaque marking de Lamerie’s occupation – but the existing house is not his and dates only from the late eighteenth century.

When de Lamerie died in 1751 he was buried in St. Anne’s church, Soho. This was typical Huguenot practice. Although de Lamerie probably did not worship in St. Anne’s but in a Huguenot ‘temple’ he was happy to be buried in an Anglican church. This was partly because Huguenot temples - always built as cheaply as possible - tended not to have expensive or extensive burial grounds or vaults, but also because in Calvinist belief the final resting place of the earthly and mortal remains were relatively of little importance in comparison with the fate and value of the immortal soul.

And as far as Huguenots were concerned the value of the soul was enhanced by the pursuit of a vigorous work ethic. Honest trade and toil were seen as godly, and success and the massing of legitimate wealth and worldly goods as admirable.

The French Protestant Church Soho.

But of course the desire to achieve material success and amass wealth was perhaps not only in potential conflict with the building of spiritual grace but could also be one of Satan’s most successful snares. The desire for fame, glory and riches has always been one of man’s great temptations and so it was, in a most revealing way, for de Lamerie.

In 1722 - when still consolidating his position as one of Britain’s leading gold and silver smiths - de Lamerie became embroiled in an ultimately most embarrassing, if not utterly disastrous, court case which suggests his early misbehaviour with the Goldsmiths was the typical expression of a calculating and greedy character.

A chimney-sweep’s boy named Armory, who had found a jewel, took it to de Lamerie’s shop to have it valued. De Lamerie’s apprentice took the jewel and offered to pay only three halfpence for its setting. When the boy asked for the return of the jewel along with the setting the apprentice refused, presumably on the grounds that the jewel had been found and did not belong to the boy.

Friends of the boy advised a court action and the verdict of the King’s Bench set a legal benchmark. It ruled that although the boy did not have absolute title to the jewel he had the right to keep it until its true owner was established. In consequence de Lamerie was ordered to return the jewel or give the boy its value in money. To his credit de Lamerie did not pretend he had no jewel from the boy and even agreed to it be being valued by others, who declared it to be of the highest quality. (Armory v Delamirie EWHC KB J 94, 31 July 1722).

This action of de Lamerie and his apprentice – which was in effect an attempt at ‘legal’ robbery and exploitation of a humble youth - offers an insight, perhaps, into the ruthless practices employed by the Huguenot business community.

It also established a legal ruling that helped to establish personal property law and the notion of ‘finders, keepers’.

Dan Cruickshank.

Spitalfields: A history of London in a handful of streets.

The Huguenots Of Soho | Spitalfields Life.

Will Burns in conservation with Artist, Robert Rubbish.

noreply@blogger.com (Mo'soho) — Wed, 01 Jul 2015 15:57:00 +0000

Will Burns was born in London and raised in Buckinghamshire and was named as one of the 4 Faber & Faber New Poets for 2014 with his pamphlet in that series published in October 2014.

Born in 1973, Robert Rubbish Greene studied Communication Art & Design at Royal College of Art in London from 2003 – 2005.

Historic London is an especially inspirational place for his work which brings together his interests in curiosities, joke shops, facial hair, Victorian punk revivalism and gin.

I meet Robert Rubbish by the postbox on the corner of Dean St and Old Compton St. To Robert this is the centre of the centre of the universe. He is wearing a tweed jacket, white shirt, red tie and blue trousers. His sideburns extend into his moustache in what might have once been called whiskers, as opposed to a beard. His hair is tied back in a ponytail. We have met to talk about his forthcoming exhibition concerning the history and culture of Soho, a place we have both, and quite separately, grown attached to during our lives in London.

Will:

Let’s start with this idea you have talked a little about, the idea of Soho as a woman, where did that come from?

Robert Rubbish:

The start of that came from when we were at college, and this friend of ours (the Le Gun collective), Ben Brannigan, who was in the year above us, and there was some conversation, I don’t remember exactly where, a pub probably, but anyway Ben used this phrase, Soho can be an ugly woman on a Friday night, and we all laughed. But I thought deeper about that, about how Soho could be a woman and how ugly the place can appear on a Friday or Saturday night. And I always liked the idea of that. The phrase, the idea. It just stuck with me.

Will:

I’ve always felt that there was a real difference between the feeling of the place mid-week and at the weekend.

RR:

Yeah, and at different times of the day as well. Like, there are a few shifts, you know? In the morning, you know, the place doesn’t really come alive until eleven or something, and then midday, lunchtime there are people working round here who go out drinking, afternoon drinking, then the night time. And when the night time ends, if you’re here at three, four in the morning, it’s the drug addicts and just weird, random people. It’s a very weird vibe then. And they eventually all go and there’s nothing. Until it wakes up again. Bar Italia used to be open 24 hours a day, so you could go there, and in the 80s there were cafes that stayed open. But there are these shifts, like I say, where many different things are happening at different times of the day.

Will:

In that regard, to use your metaphor of the woman, Soho can come to represent all those facets of a person...

RR:

Yeah, and I suppose the metaphor also comes from that Shane MacGowan song London You’re a Lady, where his vision of the city is that she’s a lady. He talks about London as a real woman, you know? The city’s not cartographic or topographic, but an actual being. He sings, It was deep down in your womb, my love, I drank my quart of sin, While Chinamen played cards and draughts and knocked back Mickey Finns. And that’s obviously about Chinatown, Soho. So all these parts of the city become physical in a bodily sense. I also always liked the idea that ships were called ‘she’ and there’s a strange nautical aspect to Soho as well.

Will:

I wanted to ask about that actually, that image of the sailor runs through a fair bit of Le Gun’s work, yours and Neal’s particularly, so what have you learned about that aspect of Soho, and where does that part of the history of Soho sit in your version of the place?

RR:

Well one of the programmes I’ll be making (for Soho Radio), and one part of the show as well is called ‘Sailors in Soho’ and it’s that odd thing where I’ve not seen a sailor in Soho, I mean maybe at Gay Pride or something, but not in normal life. But it’s an image that somehow seems to stick with me.

Will:

I suppose where once upon a time though you would recognize a sailor by his clothes, how would you now?

RR:

Yeah, I mean in wartime, sailors or soldiers on leave would have money and come to Soho to binge. It’s just another image of binging really, and how Soho came to embody that. Like in Mac the Knife, the Kurt Weill lyrics mention Soho and spending money like a sailor. That sort of thing. A sailor off the boat wants booze, drugs, women, or men. They want a sort of hedonism I guess, and that whole idea becomes synonymous with Soho.

Will:

It’s the figure of the itinerant really, isn’t it? The writer, artist, sailor. The unemployed. Soho retains a real aura for those kinds of people, I think.

RR:

Yeah, I mean, it’s harder and harder to live like that here but... but you know it’s very important place for drug addicts at night because there’s a lot of people, a lot of money, but then also a real community of sort of hustlers, I guess. Outsiders, people getting away with living differently.

Will:

Right. And do you feel like Soho came to represent that idea of ‘getting away with’ living how you wanted to in contrast to a very mundane kind of suburban upbringing in Jersey. Did Soho come to be a kind of supreme London experience for you, in a way that nowhere else in the city could?

RR:

Yeah, for sure. I think it was in Jersey where I read Judith Summer’s history of Soho in the library and Dog Days in Soho which is about a sailor actually, a true account, about a guy who hung around that whole Francis Bacon set. So I read those two books before coming here to the Royal College and I was like, Ok, here we go... I mean, you knew about Soho but all of sudden the history opened up a bit. And there was also The Jam’s A-Bomb in Wardour St, The Kinks’ Lola. Pinball Wizard… I was into mod as well when I was a kid, and Soho was a bit mythical in that mod revival. I started to hear about places and wondered if they still existed, The Colony Room, The French House.

I think I might have even been to The Coach years before. So I was reading about things that happened here in the fifties, and asking if these places still exist. And then when I came here to study we found places like Centrale on Moor St, which was just unchanged, straight out of the fifties, a little Italian restaurant, cheap, where you could take your own booze. And the New Piccadilly cafe as well, place that were obviously still functioning, but hadn’t really changed, you know?

And then the pubs, like The Coach which was still run by Norman Balon, who’d run it since the sixties, the rudest landlord in England. And The French, which is run by Lesley, who’d taken it over from Gaston. The Colony still existed; Gerry’s, Trisha’s, which was newer, but still had that vibe.

Will:

So when did you move to London?

RR:

2003

Will:

And have you ever lived here, in Soho?

RR:

No, I lived in Hammersmith, so still West London.

Will:

You weren’t straight into that East London artistic Diaspora?

RR:

Haha. No, I was living in Hammersmith, going to college in Kensington, and we’d started going to The Spanish bar, because it was open late, we were kind of skirting around the edges of Soho, really, before we knew anyone.

Will:

Well, you tend to, don’t you? You dip your toe in, and you slowly find your feet in the place.

RR:

Yeah, you get a little bit braver, if that’s the right word.

Will:

Yeah, or happenstance, you meet someone who invites you to something, or takes you for a pint in the right place or whatever...

RR:

Yeah, exactly.

Will:

And who do you mean when you refer to ‘we’ in all of this?

RR:

The core of what would become Le Gun, Billy Bragg, Alex Wright, Neal Fox, who also had a fascination with the place because his Granddad used to drink around here and Bloomsbury. So we both had this interest. And Billy had gone to St Martin’s, so he was based in Long acre. And he knew the West End. He knew where you could get cheap food and a late drink. Places that have all gone actually. I think we started drinking in The Glasshouse actually. Maybe have a few in there and go to The French. But I didn’t like The French to begin with. Didn’t like the vibe. I preferred The Coach, we had better times in The Coach. There seemed to be more hedonists. It was quite different to how it is now.

Will:

We’re skipping around here a bit, sorry, but when you mentioned Jersey earlier, and the hedonists you came across in Soho, I thought of that recent interview with David Hockney where he talks about the search for a bohemian way of living as opposed to a suburban one. Have you been influenced by Hockney at all?

RR:

Yeah, I think he’s fascinating. You know, he’s the guy in his generation who moves forward all the time, in his work, in his thought, everything. He manages to be anti-whatever is going on at that moment in terms of a zeitgeist or whatever you call it, but without being reactionary. He embraces technology, changing times. In that BBC documentary he talks about the idea of bohemia.

Will:

Yeah, I thought about that when preparing this and reading about your ideas of Soho…

RR:

It’s like you could take Soho and Jersey and yes, they do seem opposites, but then there were small elements on Jersey, like The Haultians Club, which was an old school club, grammar school club, which had the feeling of a Soho club. Not as wild, but you know, painted green which was weird for a start, and then it had that vibey thing where you had to go down a little corridor to get to it, and at the end was this green door and an oasis in that cultural desert.

But there were similarities in that you could be here in a pub, and be talking to a transvestite who had maybe been a high end lawyer all his life and there he was talking to you and your girlfriend, or the guy who runs the spanking shop, but the thing was it was normal here, these people are just residents in their village.

Will:

But if you were to examine that kind of breadth of life in a suburban setting, you’d have to suspend so much of your disbelief. You’d have a setting like Midsomer Murders or whatever where there’s all this life, death, sex and murder in a small set of villages and part of you wants to say, ‘another bloody murder in that village?’ But in a city, and an area in a city like Soho it really does encompass all that expanse of human experience.

RR:

Yeah, quite. Or Bergerac, of course! I mean, it is, or was, really, a type of bohemia. A place where the normal rules of the city didn’t quite apply. There are rules here, but they’re a bit more open, or fluid. Like sexuality has always been ok. All sexual preferences have always been accepted here. Even before Old Compton St became what it is now. In the 50s.

If you read about Soho in the 50s, Robert McBride and Robert Cohoon who were two artists and lovers but they were accepted in a way here that they might not have been elsewhere. Everyone was accepted as part of a community. Outsiders again I guess. Soho has always had acceptance of black sheep. But then people are normal people as well. And there’s all the people who live here. I mean I’m just a blow-in. But the whole place is a real, vibrant community.

Will:

So you get that rubbing up of people and ideas?

RR:

Yeah, and people who take refuge in places that accept them. Like I was interviewing my mate Rodent, who was a roadie for The Sex Pistols, for the Jock Scott film, and he was saying that all that crowd had to drink in lesbian and gay clubs like Louisa’s, not always because they were interested in that culture, but because they were going to get beaten up in normal pubs or whatever because of how they dressed.

Will:

But then the cultures feed into each other.

RR:

Yes. Malcolm McLaren understood all that. He wanted to become a kind of tin-pan-alley svengali, and he knew he had to get to Soho, the dirty Soho with sex shops, but also that had been the place where you’d find existentialism, people in berets, sex, poetry, you know? The music, Denmark St, Chinatown, Wardour St and the film industry, fashion, boutiques in Carnarby St. Record shops, cafes, youth culture.

Everything happened here. Right through to Black Market and dance music, Cuts, the hairdressers. All of it. Maybe it’s that sense, and it’s losing it a little bit, but it’s still there, a feeling of it being Continental somehow. You know, it feels European.

Will:

Well again, that’s an idea that’s antithetical to suburbia in a way. The American modernists who moved here were aspiring to ideas of Europe as much as they were to England specifically. I’m thinking of Eliot, really. There’s a great Paris Review interview with Lawrence Durrell, to make a very loose Jersey connection, where he talks about the idea of Europe having an appeal to him as it was so un-suburban.

RR:

Yes, and there were always lots of nationalities around here as well. There were Italian food shops, the cafes. I found this book recently called Little Inns of Soho, a tiny little book. And it’s just a guy going round reviewing restaurants. And these little books, they’re like time machines, you know? You open them and it’s like, wow, that’s the way it was. In a lot of these places during rationing you had to bring your own egg, you know? But here in 1948 you could get Chinese food, Indian food, Spanish, French food. It might be the only place in London you could get those things. I think what I’m interested in though is layers, odd connections. Like in this book he talks about the Barcelona Restaurant in Beak St, where the British Surrealist group always met. It was where George Melly first encountered the surrealists, and it was run by a Spanish republican.

I like these funny places. They are a bit surreal themselves, because you’re in London, but not. It’s a kind of vision that someone’s got of Spain.

Their memories of the place, their ideas of it. And like the Colony Room, that always felt surreal in the true sense. A kind of zone of different realities, unlike anywhere else.

Will:

Right, I like that thought about the layers of a place. One of the things I wanted to talk about was this idea of how a sense of place builds up over time. Auden described it as topophilia in relation to Betjeman’s concern with place - an interest or obsession with place, and obviously there are powerful examples in the natural landscape, stone circles, cairns, barrows, ritual burial sites. Do you feel something similar here? An urban equivalent?

RR:

Absolutely. For example the postbox, I always thought of Soho as the centre of the universe, and the postbox is the centre of the centre. I only have to stand there and it seems that I’ll encounter something. There’s a certain magic to it. Just be there and something will happen. In the old days, I’d stand there with a beer and someone will come along, and say, I’ll take you somewhere, come drinking with us. That kind of thing. You can look back to a time when this part of the city was fields, and then as it builds up in layers. And you know, it almost feels walled in some ways. A city within a city.

Will:

That’s interesting, because if you think about what’s around it, it’s a strange set of neighbors really. Oxford St, Regents St, Leicester Square - emblematic of a very different experience of London.

RR:

Yeah, and it’s a bit disjointed now, because if you read about it, Chinatown used to be very like Soho, full of slightly dodgy places, strip clubs, night clubs, opium dens. More vibrant. But now it’s been dislodged a bit from Soho, and it’s under threat as well from rent rises and gentrification. Which is a real shame, I think.

Will:

So talking about that idea, the threat to Soho from the problems London faces everywhere as rents soar and people are shunted further and further out and nothing but chains can afford to rent property, what are your feelings on that?

RR:

Well I mean I’ve watched the passing of old Soho in real time. Anyone who’s hung around here in the last ten years or so. There were real remnants of the 50s here, small ones, but still remnants. Still remnants of the sex industry, but the internet killed that. Like Irvine Welsh predicted, everyone’s now a wanker. But all the small little places, the local, that was all here. The Colony Room, which had been here since ’48. All that made a strong hub. The Colony, The Groucho, The French, Blacks, Gerry’s. The Dean St shuffle, you know? I remember one summer when The French was open late. So you’d get kicked out of The Colony, into The French, out of there into The Groucho, and from there into Gerry’s. The strip, bar after bar. But they were interesting places as well, not just pubs full of tourists.

Will:

I always find that those places have this sense of an understanding that anyone in there is kind of fair game to talk to, to interact with. It’s another kind of suspension of the normal behavior in the city, if that makes sense?

RR:

Of course, it’s encouraged. Things are a little looser. You sort of pick people up here. You used to be in a pub in the afternoon or whatever and someone would say, Oh where you going now? The French, and they’d come along. And there was always someone still there at the end of the night, and you had no knowledge of who they were or where they came from. Days later they’d be with you. It’s very bad for you, this behavior! But all these places were very much about talking and mixing with people.

Will:

And therefore attractive to writers and artists or whatever.

RR:

Yeah, and people who maybe didn’t live in London anymore, moved out, maybe, but if they came into town, they’d head for Soho you know? So you’d head somewhere and there would be some musician out, holding court, or an old actor who’d come into London for the day… But it’s not just about the people who were there. I believe that there’s something about the feeling of a place. When The Colony Room closed, a lot of people were looking for where we were going to drink next. And there was a placed on Romilly St where Dick, who had been the head barman in The Colony, had a bar. And everyone tried as hard as they could to have a good time there, but it just wasn’t working. Whether that was the architecture, the shape of the room, who knows? It must be something more than just the size of the room, right? There’s a place around the corner and it’s been so many different bars or clubs since I’ve known the area and it just never sticks.

Will:

So do you think making this work, you’ve felt like there was some mourning for a passing of a period of your life, mirrored in the passing of a period in a place?

RR:

Yeah, for sure. It’s one of the reasons I want to do it, and to make the film I want to make about Soho, as cliché as it sounds, a love letter to the place. I might have missed the boat, because things are just changing so fast. Berwick St has been carved up, Wanker’s Court will go soon, Madame Jojo’s. I mean, who needs a helicopter pad on the top of Raymond’s Revuebar? Who does that benefit? But it’s not about nostalgia either, it’s the opposite, really because the architects developing that building are saying, oh well, we’ve re-installed the neon sign from Raymond’s Revuebar. That’s heritage. But it’s just an empty gesture. It’s like knocking down The French House and putting up a crap French restaurant but keeping the sign. It’s pointless.

Will:

Yeah, there’s a conservative, reactionary way of fetishizing the idea of a sense of place, but there’s also a radical, living equivalent idea that accepts change, because everything changes, but doesn’t want things to be reduced to a kind of sham version of themselves. I mean The French House was called The York Minster and that changed, for reasons that are central to the myth of the place, so it’s not change itself that is bad, it’s this artificial, reductive, homogenizing change that we’re seeing now that’s problematic.

RR:

And that’s an example of what people called the place, it became. I mean property developers just want to sell a version of place. They don’t care about it, except to market it. Like there’s a Mexican bar that’s got sex shop neon signs outside. What’s that saying? Nothing. It’s just an easy emblem of a very thin idea of the places history. That’s what we’ll be left with. I’m trying to document what it really is. To look at the real past of the place, in full. The first night clubs, Iron Foot Jack, King of the Bohemians, who’s interesting because he was so uncool. A chancer who nobody really liked. Mourning the past of a place is funny. The myth of places, like the Francis Bacon set, it is that, myth. But it’s still an important place. The West End.

If you turn this into Covent Garden, or whatever, what are we left with? What happens when the independent shops or the little pubs can’t afford to be here? But even collective purchasing or something here can’t be done because of the price of London property. It’s as if the wheels are in motion. A plan for London that’s been rolled out, allow people to live in a place, make it vibrant, and then move the developers in. And people are surprised, but it’s happened everywhere. It’s interesting what Grayson Perry was saying about rich people not creating culture.

He understands that he’s part of the whole issue as well, but he says interesting things about what opportunities were available. Now people from art school come out with all that debt, nowhere to live, and what work will they get? That punk rock DIY idea is over, because money prohibits these things. You have to accept that things will die, things will change. But what we have now is out of control. A housing crisis, the Tory party, that clown for a mayor. And I want this show, this work to highlight the real relevance of this area, or any area. It’s more than just real estate.

Interview: Will Burns, Summer 2015.

All clowns welcome.

Museums At Night 2014

noreply@blogger.com (Mo'soho) — Tue, 14 Jan 2014 17:21:00 +0000

Bellarmine Jar

Win Grayson Perry for Soho!

Yes, we are very proud to have been chosen as finalists in this years Connect 10/ Museums At Night Competition to Win artist Grayson Perry for Soho!

Our event on Thursday 16th May will centre around the museums oldest object a 16th/17th Century Bellarmine Jar, a magical artefact.

Our event "A Pot To Wishin' " Will bring together folk art, reinvent the time capsule and possibly break the mould for future generations. Surprises lie in store throughout the day.

The evening section of our programme will be held at Soho's newest members Club The House Of St Barnabas where Grayson will bring some of his own magic to the proceedings.

Above all it will include the Soho community.
We would like your support in bringing Grayson to Soho.
Thank you. The public vote is open until 5pm Tuesday 28th January.

Link To Vote Here

Follow us on twitter @TheMuseumOfSoho The twitter hashtag is #MatN2014: if you’re tweeting about this, we’ll do our best to retweet you.

The Museum of Soho, or mosoho as it is known locally, is a community based virtual museum with a small collection housed in the clock room of St Anne’s Tower and a touch screen in Sherwood Street. Museum volunteers are well known for assisting academics, authors, artists and researchers from all over the world with projects and questions about Soho’s history.

Museums at Night is the annual after-hours festival of arts, culture and heritage and takes place over the weekend of Thursday 15 –Saturday 17 May.

The Connect 10 competition gives organisations the chance to win a top artist for their Museums at Night event.

MUSEUMS AT NIGHT 2014 EVENT | "A POT TO WISHIN'" | MAY 17 2014. | The House Of St Barnabas.

Record Store Day 2013 Saturday April 20th

noreply@blogger.com (Mo'soho) — Fri, 26 Apr 2013 12:58:00 +0000

Record Store Day 2013

What A Great Day!

We had plenty of interest in Soho's rich, musical heritage, our poster on "The Sound History of Soho" was well received although we couldn't do it real justice as it would need a dozen posters to cover this area, but I think we gave people a flavour of the variety and longevity of music in Soho.

Setting Up Shop

mo's Chair

The Smoke Fairies Outside Ronnies

Berwick Street was vibrant and is still home to many Indie Record Stores, it was wonderful again to see the market packed with people on a sunny day, enjoying the beats and banter coming from the stores and stalls.Live music came courtesy of Berwick St London / Sister Ray record store and DJing at Sounds of The Universe. and Black Market Music

mosoho put on "The Fleas"

The Fleas

A fabulous Ukulele Troupe who wowed the audience with their own brand of urbanism and all round, smiles from a very happy crowd

We had veterans of " Dobells Record store Jazz, Blues and Folk" A legendary record shop That once existed at 77 Charing Cross Rd at our stall.

They currently have an exhibition on at CHELSEA space and is well worth a visit with talks and open decks continuing until 18.05.13

Robin Hitchcock not playing our theme tune @ Oliver Spencer Menswear Berwick St:

Robyn Hitchcock in Berwick Street

The whole point of the day is to celebrate music and the Indie record stores that have been such a big, part of peoples lives "They're more like clubs, where you can meet people with the same passion".

The Crowd

Frank Turner

mosoho would like to see more plaques highlighting our past or as BBC Radio 6 music, put it "middle class tagging" The Colony Room in Dean St, should certainly be considered and also Chanot's Violin Shop at 157 Wardour Street,there is certainly no shortage of contenders and we will continue to campaign for this.

Matthew E White

Colin Newman of Wire

Expect to see three more mosoho heritage, panels going up this Summer on the Crossrail hoardings in Soho Square to compliment our existing panel on Mrs Cornelys. PHOTOGRAPHS COURTESY OF SISTERIS

The Look Of Love Competition

noreply@blogger.com (Mo'soho) — Fri, 05 Apr 2013 11:37:00 +0000

Competition:Ahead Of Its UK Cinema Release On April 26th

We Have A Pair Of Tickets To A Special, Soho, Screening Of "The Look Of Love"

The much anticipated Paul Raymond Biopic.

Starring Steve Coogan, Directed By Michael Winterbottom (24 Hour Party People) Tells The Story Of The Man And The Three Women In His Life. View Trailer

With Plenty Of Familiar Local Faces And Shot On Location "Soho Is After-all England's Biggest Film Set" The Look Of Love, Captures That 60's Feeling For Shag Pile Carpets , Afghan Coats And Excess With Aplomb!

For Your Chance To Win A Pair And A Share Of The Glitz & Glamour

Just Answer This Question:

In Which Film Did The Burt Bacharach Song "The Look Of Love" First Appear?

Send Your Entry To:

competition@mosoho.org.uk Competition Closes April 18th.

The Sender Of The First Correct Answer Drawn At Random Will Be Notified On April 19th.

Special Soho Screening: Wednesday Evening, April 24th

Fond Memories Pt4

noreply@blogger.com (Mo'soho) — Tue, 24 Jul 2012 10:50:00 +0000

However, being young and carefree, we could be quite reckless at times.

On many trips to Soho during 1960, on our way from Tottenham Crt Rd Tube Stn to the Top Ten Club in Berwick St, we had to pass through Soho Sq. We passed many knocking shops in seedy (then) St Anne's Court which runs between Dean St and Wardour St. There would be signs pinned on the door of these establishments.

Next to the door bells were the words " YOUNG MODEL" followed by "FRENCH LESSIONS GIVEN" or "BIG CHEST FOR SALE" another one was "STERN MISTRESS HAS NICE CANE CHAIR FOR SALE". If a client fancied an older woman, he could use one of the adverts, which the pros would often place in local shop windows example "ANTIQUE CHEST FOR SALE" or ANTIQUE FURNITURE FOR SALE IN GOOD CONDITION" another "OLD CHEST NEEDS FRENCH POLISHING" For us kids, it was part of the fun reading this stuff, and trying to work out what it all meant.

St Anne's Court

We soon worked it out though!. Once you understood one, then all the others fell into place. Not every door had a bell to ring for a service. Some just said MODEL UPSTAIRS- FIRST FLOOR. For a laugh, what we would do, was ring the bell if there was, one and hide in the alley or, a doorway close by, to see what would happen. Usually a window would opened, and one of the girls, would look up and down the court and go back in. We were hoping one would come down, so we could see what she looked like, as they always appeared a strange exotic species and bit mysterious. "RING THE BELL FOR JIGGY JIG" what's that all about we thought? Well we soon worked that one out! Some of the prostitutes we had seen in Old Compton St, looked very horny indeed, to three hormonal 16yr olds.

In retrospect some were probably not much older than we were! On one occasion we almost got caught by a pimp who just happened to be coming up the street. As we rang the bell he shouted out "What the fuck you kids doing" Seeing him, we bottled out, panicked and legged it. As he chased us, I lost one of my shoes, and had to hang around to try to retrieve it.

Berwick St

As usual, "Spud" our mate, was always been teased, with us taking the piss out of him. We always wound him up at every opportunity. So when he told us he knew a girl on the game who worked from her gaff, in Berwick Street market near the fish and chip shop. I said "Leave it out you must be fucking joking" He claimed, she had told him, if he was up West anytime to give her a ring. We thought he was looking for a bit of credibility, pretending to be "˜One of the boys"

So we started to wind him up. "Okay" we said, we'll all go and say hello". Thinking he would bottle out, me and my other mate, gingerly, followed him along Broadwick St, turning left at the Blue Post Pub we passed the wine store to an open door, with the usual sign next to the bell, with the words "Young Model first floor" We said, "Go on then big boy, ring the bell" to our surprise! he rang it and stood there waiting! "COME ON!" we shouted! By now, me and my mate's bottle had gone. Leaving Spud, we legged it to the other side of the street, standing in the shadow of the old Post Office on the opposite corner of Berwick St and Broadwick St, shouting are you "FUCKING MAD RUN FOR IT!!".

Trenchard House

From past experience, we knew there were always lots of police nearby, as next door to the Post Office (now demolished) was Trenchard House a Police section house, where they would often take trouble makers, and drunks, before they got rolled for their spare cash. The coppers then wouldn't think twice of smacking you in the gob. I had been on the receiving end a few myself. There would often be, coppers in the fish shop buying their supper, when we had been in there on previous occasions. However Spud kept on shushing us. After a minute or so, this tasty bottle blond (peroxide) piece of crackling came down in a kinda negligee. He later told us she was about 25 yrs old.

To our amazement, she started talking to him, we could just about make out what was being said. "˜Hello Billy, what you doing up West? ", "going to the "˜Top Ten Club up the street, with me mates" he said. By now, feeling like a dog with two dicks, we both appeared out of the shadows and came over to greet him. Just then, after a brief chat, she went back upstairs. Our admiration for Spud was now sky high never mind "˜BIG CHEST FOR SALE".

By now, our hormones had kicked in, and our trousers started to get a bit tighter in a certain area. "˜I told you didn't I!" he said. "You doggy little git" I replied, "what's your game"?

Just then she came back down again, and gave him half a crown, ( I thought, you get change as well) and he aint done nothin.

She said, go next door, and get yourself and your mates some chips! 'awe lovely" I thought, as I was starving. I thought what the fuck's going on here then?. There should also be enough for 10 cigarettes as well! "˜Give my love to your Dad", she said, and "stay out of trouble", then trotted back upstairs. As we walked away, we were feeling a bit light headed, knowing that we too, also knew a brass just like Spud.

Comboco-- site of Sam Widges Coffee Hse and Top Ten Club in the late 1950's

By now, his credibility had been restored well above what it had been previously. We all felt like big shots, as we swaggered up Berwick St, stuffing ourselves with chips, and smoking our free fags. I said "How the fuck did you know that bird then"? He said, she used to work as a barmaid, in a pub, his step dad sang in, in the East End and ended up in Soho, on the game to earn extra dough, looking after her baby.

Still on the subject of brothels, there was an old girl and her husband that I used to have a drink with, who were neighbours of mine in Covent Garden. After a few pale ales, she would often reminisce about the old days, when she worked in Soho, in one of the brothels. She told me a bit about her time working as a prostitutes maid, which was what she did for pin money.

It was sometime, in the 1960s. "Weren't you scared" I said, "˜No!--dear! the girls always made sure I was well looked after. She must have been about late 40s or early fifties? at the time, she was now a grey haired old granny and wore those round John Lennon gold rimmed glasses. I said, "what did you have to do" ,"Well" she said, I use to do a few shifts in the afternoon in a place of Great Windmill St. I would answer the phone and put on my posh accent, change the towels and tidy up, and do a bit of shopping for the girls.

Her main job, was to let in the clients. When the bell rang she would open the door. Letting in the clients, she would try to cover up her strong cockney accent and try to speak in her best posh accent, "MADHUM is engaged at the MOE- MENT DEAH, (dear) with emphasis on the H, would you please sit down SERRH and MADHUM will be with you in just a MOE-MENT!"

"Laughing as she told me, as she was saying it, she was KNITTING a pair of woolly socks for her latest grandchild!

I nearly fell off the chair laughing! The funny thing was, she looked like a sweet old granny, that butter wouldn't melt in her mouth. Every time I saw her in the pub she would laugh as I pointed to a chair and say --- "˜sit down sir, madam will be with you in just a moment".

A while later about 1966/68, I was working in an ad agency in Soho Sq in Knightway House, where I would take their ads to Fleet St for inclusion in the national dailies, and the bring back voucher copies for their clients to see.

Cat Stevens

Being close to Tin Pan Alley we often received phone calls from the fans of Cat Stevens ( a big pop star at the time -whose family had a restaurant in New Oxford Street) who had got our Soho Square phone number by mistake. These fans would phone our number and ask if Cat was in, and could he come out and sign their autograph books. I would tell them to wait outside, the Spanish cafe' the "˜Battista"on the corner of Goslet Yard facing Tin Pan Alley.

It was in the Yard Freddie Mills the boxer had his club the "Nite Spot" and where he was found shot dead in his car in 1965. Today his death still remains a mystery. Anyhow I digress, what I would then do, was pretend to be Cats manager, and tell them to stay where they were, and Cat would come down to sign their autograph books. This had to be done during our lunch break between 1-2 O'clock. Being naughty, (right) me and my mate Rickie would then slip out, and casually walk to the cafe' where we saw, a handful of young girls all clutching their autograph books and waiting for their idol to turn up. We would then ask them,"˜are you waiting for Cat?" "Yes" they said, "do you know him"? "Oh yeah, we work with him, and he said he will be down in a minute or two to meet you, just hang on".

Leaving then in a highly excitable state, we would then nip into the Battista and get a sandwich, and then slowly, walk back to the agency, giggling and pissing ourselves, with laughter. We would just leave them waiting there!

The Astoria

Falconberg Mews

Later in the year, we spent some of our time hanging out of the agency windows watching the crowds queuing up to see Andy Warhol controversial film "˜Flesh" which was being shown at the Astoria Cinema (left) at the rear of the agency in Falconberg Mews now all demolished for Cross Rail, with crowds of mainly old men, (well they looked like old men to us youngsters,) queuing around Soho Square. We would shout out "Dirty old bastards".

It was finally closed down by the police for indecency. It was bit like D.H Lawrence's novel "˜Lady Chatterley's Lover" all over again. Same street different time. We have today's version (2012) a best seller by E.L. James "Fifty Shades of Grey" nothing changes!

Lady Chatterly's Lover

However, much later in the 1990s I would be paid back, but in the meantime,(1967) was there gold of sorts, in Soho?

One day there were about 100 fans, in Soho Sq who had come to greet and get Tony Blackburn autograph who had made a visit to agency to see a film being edited.

Knightway House

Anyhow, unbeknown to us, the Beatles were having their cartoon "The Yellow Submarine" made in a studio on the top floor of the agency in Knightway House, which is opposite MPL Paul McCartney's music publishing company in Soho Square.

After I found out, I would often take the lift, to the top floor studio to see what was going on. There was always bags of rubbish outside the studio door, which contained lots of outtakes, most of it was rubbish waiting to be disposed of by the cleaners.

One evening when I was riffling through one of these bags, I came across about dozen psychedelic 10x8 acetates of the Beatles, which had been either rejected or cut from the final film and thrown away.

MPL

There were more but to damaged for me to bother with. Anyway, not being aware of their historical significance, why would I? I just thought they were interesting to look at the time, and to good to throw away so I took them home. However, to my amazement during the 1990s, on the TV news, some of these acetates had come up for auction a Sotheby's in a Beatles Memorabilia sale.

Six of these acetates were identical to the ones I had of John, Paul, Ringo and George, and were sold for about Â£15,000!! I nearly fell of the sofa!!

I was shocked and excited at the same time. I immediately tried to find them, thinking I had £30,000 quid stashed away waiting to be rediscovered!! Panicking, I searched high and low, where were they? To my horror I was unable to located them.

Yellow Submarine

I had forgotten about them. It must have been almost 20yrs since I had last seen them, and most probably thrown out with the rubbish, when I had decorated my flat. It seemed ironic that this had been the second time they had been thrown away, but could I have literally, thrown away gold dust? I will never know! What a pension! what a Wally!!

In retrospect

One day during 1960 the same period "Lady Chatterley's lover" had sold out at Foyle's Bookshop, I was pulled over on my Vespa scooter by a copper on his motor bike outside Foyle's in Manette St.

I had a girl on the back at the time. Being surprised, I said what's up? All of a sudden he took out a tape measure from his top pocket, and then fell to his knees. I thought he was about to do three hail Mary's, or going to measure my inside leg for a new pair of strides!

He then started to measure my exhaust pipe which he claimed was illegal. It should have had a fish tail on the end of the pipe, but it wasn't there. To us Mods it made the scooters sound to girly, with its purring PUT-PUT- sound which was not very macho.

Scooter

You see, the first thing any self-respecting Modernist would have done after purchasing his scooter was to change the sound from a girly PUT-PUT to a roar, just as loud as a Rockers motor bike. In order to achieve this unique sound you would go and buy a 3 inch diameter Ford Consul chromium exhaust pipe, then take it to a mechanic with the right tools to do the job and have the modification wielded on while you waited.

You can imagine the noise this created when 20 machines came roaring up the street. By now the cops had cottoned on, and loved it. They already had the hump, and were never, to keen on us Mods anyway, and started to nick any body with a modification or any other so called infringement.

In a round about way, it spoilt, our image and put a big dent, into our macho egos as Mods, it took us down a peg or two which the cops loved. Anyway, he nicked me and my dented ego and I was fined at Bow Street Magistrates Court six quid. George Skeggs 2012

Fond Memories Of Soho Pt3

noreply@blogger.com (Mo'soho) — Mon, 23 Jul 2012 11:46:00 +0000

GEORGE SKEGGS

Soho memories part 3

In part one of this blog, I described how my mates and I had originally arrived in Soho, in 1957 and had found ourselves in an amusement arcade in Wardour Street.

The arcade was to become our starting point whenever we visited Soho. However, after one visit in the summer 1960 we ended up in this particular arcade as usual, tied and skint, or to be more precise, enough dough to have a couple of goes on one of the fruit machines, and also a bit more wiser!

Just next door was a drinking den called the Log Cabin. The Cabin faced the Swiss Tavern, on the corner of Leicester Sq.

We later found out it was a well known hangout for Soho villains, or the (Faces) or the (Chaps), names they liked to call themselves, It was just down the road from Great Windmill St and a snooker club, which had been managed by Tommy scar face Smithson at no 41-44. It was also a boxing gym owned by promoter Jack Solomon, and jazz club rehearsal space.

Great Windmill St

In 1953-4, I believe, Tommy had given the Kray twins refuge when they were on the trot from the army during their stint doing National Service, he would let them kip down on the snooker tables in the club overnight.

Tommy was finally gunned down by a Maltese villain in 1956 ( the word gangster is a fairly recent invention used to describe British villains and is an Americanism). According to news reports, Tommy, had been taking money from prostitutes in the Brewer St, and Berwick St area, who were being looked after by other gangs, of whom some, had moved into Soho, from the Brick Lane area, in the East End of London. Being born in Brick Lane, I new the Lane area very well.

It had a seedy reputation in the 1950s, and earlier, with lots of brothels and Spielers, like Soho had, and were being controlled, by local villains and, also the Maltese, who by then had started to make their homes in the area. They were either, referred to as Malts, or Maltesers, as a term of affection by local cockney and Jewish villains who were their main rivals.

Wardour St

I digress to set the scene, which as you will see, will not be quite so dramatic, but nerve racking for us young street urchins, up west for a night out in Soho. However, within a few moments of arriving in the Wardour St arcade, a rather dodgy looking blonde geezer came in, wearing what I would have called a DICK TRACY mackintosh with its collar up.

Me and me mates, stood there striking up a pose, like something out of a Bogart film, but in reality look more like a bunch of marshmallows straight out of a sweet factory!

After eye-balling the joint, and making himself heard above the general din. Dick (I'II call him Dick for now) sidled up to me and my two mates, "Like a fag boys"? (a cigarette ). As we had none, we eagerly accepted his offer.

However, it now started to look a bit strange, (never take sweets from a stranger, mum always said, mums always right! aint she?) But we were dying for a woodbine (cigarette brand) these had come from a full pack of twenty, so he had plenty to spare. We weren't that naive, but street wise, and soon, started to wonder what the bottom line was going to be?

Piccadilly Arches

A school friend of mine had ended up on the "meat rack"Which was a well known pick up point for male prostitutes, runaways, and drug addicts, looking to make some cash. It was situated on the corner of Piccadilly Circus under the arches.

I only found out when I meet him in Soho in 1980 in Berwick St. He'd just been to Oxford St buying clothes.

He claimed, he was on his way to visit a regular client who lived in Paris, someone he first meet, in Piccadilly Circus in 1969. I think it even had a reputation during times of Oscar Wilde.

At school, he was good at art like myself, and we got on very well. I was saddened to see him in such a precarious predicament, as he told me he was being beaten, and humiliated by his client. He said jokingly ( I think he meant it) "why don't you try it, you can earn lots of money", I said, "LEAVE IT OUT! YOU MUST BE JOKING!", maybe my sympathy towards him was misplaced?

After accepting, Dicks offer of a cigarettes, (could we end up in Morocco as white slaves?) I think Dick was about 24yrs old, he then asked, how old we were, and would we like to play for free, on any of the pinball machines including the jukebox in the arcade, which was opposite the Swiss Tavern. It was in the Tavern where, some of the performers at the 2 I's coffee bar would have a drink, in-between performing. "Okay" we said, as by now we had no dough left, just our fare back home.

He then started to wink at this goon who was wearing a white laboratory coat, like what a chemist wears. He appeared to be running the joint, dishing out change from a kiosk by the door to the punters playing on the machines. He then came over with a big bunch of keys, and proceeded to unlock the various machines, we were playing on, and by doing so he was able to give us as many free goes as we wanted.

Pinball

By now Dick had gone to the entrance, and being nosey, I followed to see what he was up to? Just then a black car drew up outside of the building, which contained three heavy looking geezers. The nearside window was wound down, and Dick said something to the driver, and turning round, he clocked me behind him.

He said "where do you boys live", I replied "East London" , "That's where we're going, will give you a lift". "Hold on a second, I'II tells my mates" Its arrived PAY BACK TIME! What he'd just given us was a bung, for services to be redeemed later on.

Now, my bottle went, I was smelling raticus crapitus big time, which reminds me to wear plus fours next time I'm up west, or a good pair, of bike clips!! After alerting my two mates, we proceeded to creep out of the side door, (and not dance the CREEP that had recently been a dance craze a couple years earlier) and creeping was something we were good at. Squeezing between the punters playing on the machines.

We legged it towards the neon lights of Leicester Sq, passing Dick, who was standing next to a hot dog stall, on the corner of Wardour St, stuffing his face with a hot dog. Spotting us, he shouted out "Where the fuck do you think your going" I was that close, I could even smell the fried onions on his breath.

Leicester Sq

With Dick in tow, we sprinted towards the twinkling lights of the square, passing the Swiss Tavern, and then onto Charing Cross Rd, but he soon gave up to our relief! I guess he, and his investors, were trying to get something for their investment, but they would never get it now!

Being out of breath, and laughing to ourselves, which was brought on by nervous tension, we speculated how we might have ended up in the north Africa, being traded in the casbar as white slaves. Indeed, reports in the press confirmed this kind of activity was taking place, but mainly with unsuspecting, young women and girls.

We found out later on, from people in the arcade, that Dick was part of a firm from east London, that had been in there that night when we were there, and warned us to be on our guard in future.

Much later we started to hear stories, about who they really were, but they were only stories. One way or the other our experience proved to us, Soho, could indeed be a dangerous place, if you weren't street wise as we were.

Naive kids, still runaway to Soho, looking for thrills and excitement, but soon become easy prey and are easily exploited, and fall straight into the honey trap. Our experience on the streets of the east end, came in very handy, being street wise, and knowing how to duck and dive, and spot bother, before it has a chance of getting out of hand!

PART 4 Coming soon...

Second-Hand Rose

noreply@blogger.com (Mo'soho) — Wed, 11 Jul 2012 09:30:00 +0000

Can you remember 'Second-Hand Rose'?

by Ian Stewart

A recently catalogued Museum of Soho artefact comprises a cardboard-mounted black & white photograph and its envelope.

The envelope has written on it: "'Second-Hand Rose' / A Soho character from the 60s / Funeral at R.C. Church Warwick St, c.1970. / (Donated by Peter Jewell)". Also written onto the back of the cardboard is "©1970 Gordon Sandle", with a Surrey address and phone number.

The mounting has a pinhole at the top, suggesting the picture was at some time displayed.

Second Hand Rose. A Soho Character. Berwick St. Market. 1960's.

The photographer has captured a portly, middle-aged man, disarmingly sat in the sun on a market cart. He’s confidently at ease amidst untroubled market traders and what's probably British produce. ‘Rose’ is tootling a penny whistle, lifting his play slightly turned to the camera. He has a necklace of several strands of beads pinned to his cardigan, and what looks like a colourful cravat. A white headband could be a bandage: given the flourish of pearl-like beads, it could as likely be adornment. His receding hair is neatly combed.

The older gents are dressed in working class clothing typical to the first half of the last century. By the time this picture was taken such attire would already be deemed old fashioned -- witness the younger fellow in his polo shirt (hitched-up whilst he's munching an apple, toying with a nipple through his vest). With people in jackets and layers, the apple; perhaps it's early autumn?

The spontaneous and rapidly shifting everyday scene is charged with sound and gentle movement. It was certainly snapped with a deft eye, undoubtedly upon swift engagement. The good fortune of a painterly composition has saved this bygone instant, and miraculously preserved into the present day that passing, sunny moment. Until otherwise disproven, we have to assume that this scratchy print is the sole surviving copy.

A former Soho-born resident, straightaway naming "Rose" from the picture, said that he was a "notorious gay man," associated with Berwick Street Market, and subject of "a running battle" with that informant's mother, as "a foul-mouthed alcoholic." Such resonant childhood testimony brings sweeping insight to the image.

Being gay had only just been partly decriminalised in 1967. British police aggressively hunted-out homosexuals, who endured organised social hatred and brutal prison terms. (Our laws from the period still apply in former colonies like Malawi, where in May 2010 two young gay men were sentenced to 14 years with hard labour, solely for vowing their love for one another).

Did the bottle offer refuge? Trifling with gender? Berwick Street Market?

The pet name 'Secondhand Rose' featured in musical theatre. 1962 and 1965 Barbra Streisand recordings gained widespread radio play. The song’s female character, shamed by her worn goods and cast-offs, rallies her pride on the boisterous urban milieu she’s a part of.

In the rare spells when time frees from assisting researchers, Museum of Soho volunteers continue diligently to catalogue artefacts, documents and images related to our neighbourhood.

Fond Memories of Soho then & now 1957-2012 Pt2

noreply@blogger.com (Mo'soho) — Wed, 20 Jun 2012 10:22:00 +0000

Fond Memories Of Soho Part 2

George Skeggs

The Soho area contained a cross section of different groups from different social backgrounds, working class Teddy Boys and their hated foe, also working class, the trend setting Mods.

On the other side of the street as it were, the beats or beatniks, middle class, the self-style intellectuals who’s counterculture was inspired by the works of Kerouac and Sartre of whom many were jazz freaks.

There was also a liberal sprinkling of skid row down and outs, journalists, art students from St Martins art school in Charing Cross rd, hack writers and some on the borders of sanity, (example- Iron Foot Jack) and a liberal sprinkling of villains’ (Jack Spot self styled king of the underworld and rival Billy Hill who was born in Seven Dials.

The intellectuals tended to congregate in the French (pub), or to give it’s proper moniker, The York Minister which is in Dean St, and still the main watering hole for artists and writers today or the old Colony Room, also in Dean St. which has since closed.

George as a Mod.

There were certain territorial tensions between these different groups be it real or imagined. This tension was picked up by Colin McInnes in his book ‘Absolute Beginners‘, and portrayed in the Julien Temple film of the same name. Temples film was slated by the critics of whom many came from Soho’s intellectual wing who, as I had been told, walked out of the the films preview claiming it was utter rubbish and made them all look like buffoons’ and promptly went off to Wheelers to sulk and get pissed. Having seen the film a few times, I thought it captured the feel and essence of Soho for me and my teenage friends on our first, and later visits, to Soho.

I thought McInnes book was a great read, and Julien Temple’s interpretation was spot on especially the racism at the time. By late 1959/60 I considered myself and my fellow cronies, Modernist’s and more into the new street style. Le Macabre coffee bar in Meard St was an interesting place to visit one guy I remember who held court there, was Bohemian Johnny, who had long blonde flowing hair and was dressed all in black with a black cape, held together with a silver pin, he look like something out of a Hammer Horror film. In the late 1970/80s my cousin owned Hammer Films whose address was Hammer house in Wardour St. However, as you descended into the semi darkness you were confronted by black walls, black tables, and black chairs.

In fact the tables were made to look like coffins with lighted candles in plastic skulls on top with skeletons hanging from the walls giving a subterranean atmosphere. Other places around Soho used old Chianti bottles for candle holders to give their premises’ a more Mediterranean feel. We would often go along to the 100 club on Oxford St to see the Humphrey Lyttelton’s band.

The place was always packed with beatnik’s and jazz fans it was a great place for dancing. Holding your partners hand you would do a kind of skip and shuffle to the beat. Some of the girls danced bare footed and some would wear long white granddad night shirts, all, of which was outrageous at the time On some weekends we would go by train from Victoria to Chislehurst Caves for the jazz and skiffle, which was in Kent to find it full of the Soho beats, who could also be seen at Ken Colyer’s studio 51 club in Grt Newport St.

The caves had been used as air raid shelter’s, during world war two, but was a great venue for live music plus it was all in candle light and felt even more subversive than ever.

A little later the ‘Greasers’ discovered our little secret club in the caves and it became a rendezvous for them and their motorbikes, which finally droves us Beats out. It soon got too heavy with punch-ups and other stuff which ruined the atmosphere, as we soon discovered when we all went back there as ‘ Modernist’s on our scooters in 1961 all sporting college boy haircuts.

However, by now the ’Greasers’ to us ‘Mods’ excuse the pun were ‘cavemen, and by then the Caves were not hip anymore. Carnaby St in Soho and the Kings Road Chelsea were the new scene, for aspiring fashionista’s, and peacocks, places which weren’t natural reservations for the greasers, who by then had been renamed ’Rockers.’ They found a new homes in north London on the A1 at the old transport ’Ace Café’ or the 59 club in east London which was originally both a mod and rockers club, of which I was one of the founder members.

It was officially opened by Cliff Richard who sang his hit record ‘Move it’, after which we all jived to ‘Good Golly Miss Molly’ by Little Richard, which was a much better number to dance to, at the time, as I was a big fan of a Little Richard. As ‘Modernist’s’ we would spend as much time as possible cruising Soho on our scooters, and posing down the Kings Road in our new gear.

Using our own designs, some of our clothes, and shoes, were made to measure at the local cobbler, and tailor shop, this was just before Carnaby St had appeared on the fashion map late 1958/59. Fred Perry tennis shirts became a fashion item, which we bought from his new store in Carnaby St. I also wore green snakeskin shoes with Cuban heels to my own design.

These were worn with a bottle green double breasted Italian style box jacket with cloth buttons in the same fabric. This style was known a bum freezer due to its short length. Later on in the mid-60s we started to wear two tone mohair suits. We, as the first wave of Mods, also carried the old plastic Paka-Macs in the panniers of our scooters to kept our smart clothes dry and clean on wet excursions to Brighton. Some of the lads later, would wear Parkas, or ex army service Ponchos and karki desert hats, some preferred the pork pie hat as I did.

Fortunately, from a fashion point of view It was still not illegal to have to wear a crash helmet, which would have spoilt the cut of our clothing. The ’Mod revivalists’ of today tend to look a bit to nerdy, wearing crash helmets. We had a choice which we excised in a rebellious way; you just had to look cool.

An item of footwear which never seems to get mentioned, when talking about Mod Styling, was the ‘moccasin’, which were made of soft leather, and bought on mail order or from a departmental store called Gamages, now gone which was in High Holborn.

They came in kit form which you made yourself using the simple instructions supplied. Another favourite were Swede Desert Chukka boots, which had crepe soles. I bought these in Charing Cross Rd, close to Tin Pan Alley (Denmark St) where I had previously bought my first pair of teddy boy brothel creepers. In the wintertime I would ride around on my Vespa wearing a Price of Wales check overcoat bought from Lord John boutique in Carnaby St. We were also keen on French casual styling as well, which was all the rage.

To look really cool we would smoke either Gauloises, Gitanes cigarettes, when hanging out in the Old Wimpey Bars on Shaftesbury Avenue, or down the Kings Road Chelsea. To impress and look super cool to impress the girls we would also smoke Sobranie, Russian blacks with gold tips. We also watched French films, the titles, all of which have now eluded me.

My best mate often wore a black French beret, and the blue and white striped matelot shirt, a kind of hip uniform common around the coffee bars of Soho. We both looked the business him on his Lambretta and me on my Paggio Vespa GS. We were in hipsville, cool cats that was the scene.

One character in the late 5Os and early 6Os Soho was Raye DuVal who billed himself as ‘Britain’s Ace Drummer’ and had the world record for playing the drums no stop, for so many days without a break, how many ? I can‘t remember now. He often appeared at the Top Ten Club in Berwick St and also at Chislehurst Caves.

On the corner of Berwick St and D’arblay St was the Freight Train coffee bar, A folksy hangout which was opened by Chas McDevitt on the strength of his hit record called ‘Freight Train’ which featured, Scots lass Nancy Whiskey singing vocals. Chas used to live on the corner of Old Compton St and Charing Cross Rd opposite Molly Moggs.

Part of the building was also being use for prostitution. Sam Widges Coffee bar in Berwick St was opposite the Freight Train and in the basement was the Top Ten Club which was run by Vince Taylor and the Playboys.

In 1960 I meet, and later married a local Covent Garden girl who appeared to be half beatnik and half Mod, whom I had meet in the ‘Farm’ Coffee bar a beatnik hang out on Monmouth St, Seven Dials, which was run by Brian & Susan Robins.

It reminded me of Le Macabre without the coffins. It was a arty place full of ethnic stuff. Opposite was the Nucleus Coffee Bar which had previously been run by Gary Winkler. Its clientele, Hank Marvin and Bruce Welch soon to be part of Cliff Richards backing group the Drifters, all 2is coffee bar protégés, and were amongst many others on the fringes of the music scene at that time.

Site of 2i's in Old Compton Street.

After Gary had left, it became a place which attracted all kinds of flotsam and jetsam, from prostitutes, drug dealers, and low life’s of all kinds, which also included artists and poets who would gyrate from the ‘Farm’ on the other side of the street for a change of atmosphere.

After a few visits we got friendly with a young prostitute, who was sporting a broken arm, in a sling, after she had been beat up by her pimp. We were planning to go to Brighton, and sleep under the pier for the weekend and asked her, to come with us for a break away from Soho, and to have a break away, from her pimp. Sadly, She declined, and that weekend ended up getting her throat cut, by one of her clients she had picked up on a Soho street. I found out after reading about her murder which was a headline story in the News Of The World.

Next door to the ‘Nucleus’ was Manns the picture framers who were, and still are, neighbours of mine. Their shop front was blasted by shotgun pellets after an altercation by drug dealers outside their premises from another group of dealers hanging out in the Nucleus. By now Beatle mania was sweeping the country, and a great place to buy made to measures shoes was Anello and David. Anello’s also had a shop on Oxford St and another in New Compton St, which was close to Gamba shoes on the corner of Old Compton St and Dean St.

Both shops provided ballet shoes to the theatrical trade in the West End. Anello’s being a big supplier to The Royal Opera House in Covent Garden and its ballet schools.

By 1961/2 my wife to be was working for the Boss Mr Ricco in their workshop and store in Drury Lane opposite the old Winter Garden Theatre, (which was rebuilt as New London Theatre) Anello’s became the Mecca for rock stars searching out the now famous Beatle Boots, These boots were also known as Chelsea boots which had elasticated sides with Cuban heels which the Beatles had adopted as a fashion statement.

She fitted out most of the big bands at the time including The Animals, Bob Dylan, Manfred Mann the Mersey Beats and many others. It was only after the Beatles had bought a pair they were christened ‘Beatle Boots’.

The Beatles in Soho

As Beatle mania was sweeping the nation, the Drury Lane outlet was swamped out every weekend with kids from all over the country queuing all the way up Drury Lane in search of this, latest fashion item, to add to their wardrobes. Having lived in Covent Garden since 1963, Soho and the surrounding West End, became my manor. In the 60s new clubs were opining in Soho to cater for the teen boom. Georgie Fame & the Blue Flames appeared at the basement club The Flamingo ( also known a the Mingo). It was here in the 1960s that Christine Keelers boyfriend threatened to shoot her.

Later the Whiskey A Go Go opened on the floor above the Mingo. The club was situated at the south end of Wardour St, and faced Gerrard St, now known as China town. The whiskey A Go Go used to be shoe shop, and is now part of the O’Neill chain of restaurants, and The Flamingo is now Ladbrokes the bookmakers.

Another place close by was the London Bullion Exchange which was next to the Log Cabin. The Cabin had a reputation for being the haunt of the (Faces) or (Chaps) of which the criminal fraternity like to call themselves I‘d been down there with a friend who had been meeting someone, it felt rather heavy, it was in the 1970s when it was still open. They also used the greasy spoon Harmony Café in Archer St next to the stage door of the Windmill Theatre, and opposite the Musicians Union.

Some of the shops and clubs have long since gone but some still survive. Now gone the French bakers ‘The Boulangerie’ (wonderful smell)which was situated next to ‘L’Escargot’ Greek St opposite Peter Cooks ‘Establishment Club’ (closed) which was at no 18.

Also gone ‘Pugh’s’ Welsh dairy in Frith St. I would often pop in for bread and milk when returning home after visits to the Marshall St clinic with my two young daughters after their regular health checks and vaccinations.

The Pugh Family leave Soho

Also gone ‘Gamba Shoes’ in Old Compton St and ‘Anello and David’ ballet shoes over the road on the corner of New Compton St. However, I did have a choice though, living on the edge of Soho, in Covent Garden.

Also gone are the wet fish shops I used to use in the 1960s. It was either ‘Richards’ fish shop on the corner of Drury Lane and Macklin St, which had a brothel above the shop. Or their sister shop on Brewer St. The Brewer St shop, was opposite ‘Lina Stores’ at no 18. Lina Stores are still in business today. Another Shop that needs a mention, is ‘The Algerian Coffee Store’, which gave Old Compton St then, and still does today, that wonderful prevailing aroma of fresh ground coffee.

Today (2012) I still shop at Camisa’s in Old Compton St for cheese and Pama ham. Now retied, I still manage to chill out in Soho, drinking cappuccinos and having tea at Patisserie Valerie, watching the changing scene after shopping trips to Berwick St market.

When passing ’Bar Italia’ I reminisce when I see another generation of ‘Mods’ posing with their scooters, but looking a bit nerdy having to wear crash helmets, since the law was changed. It wasn’t against law when I was a teenager, so we could look more cool than the revivalists do today.

I remember a few years back, going into ‘Maison Bertaux’ and without thinking, asked Michele for a cappuccino? The polite reply I got was ‘This is a French establishment! Not Italian‘.

Such is the ethnic mix of Soho, which is much the same as it has always been, which adds to it eccentric charm (although eccentricity seems to be on the decline, there’s not many left on the reservation these days) even so Soho’s reputation for being eclectic and different still remains, and long may it be so.

George with Jo Weir (OBE) at the Soho Festival 2011 (Winner of Best Dressed Man)

Thanks George. X mosoho 2012

Fond Memories of Soho then & now 1957-2012

noreply@blogger.com (Mo'soho) — Tue, 19 Jun 2012 11:01:00 +0000

Fond Memories of Soho then & now 1957-2012

Artist George Skeggs remembers Soho in the Fifties PART 1

Arriving in Soho in 1957 for the first time was like walking through the old east end docks where I was born, with its wonderful smells from the exotic herbs and spices that came from the many bonded warehouses in the area, but that’s where the difference ended.

Soho was another world of its own, bright lights, flashing neon signs, edgy, and full of colour and a bit dangerous.

This was in 1957, when I was an innocent (not quite so innocent) fourteen year old kid. It was the time when Skiffle, Trad Jazz, and Rock & Roll boom were sweeping the nation.

The previous year, a few friends and I, tried our luck at forming a Skiffle group. Why not? Anything seems possible when you’re young and full of youthful idealism. Tommy Steele had pulled it off, maybe we might too. However, we made a terrible din and soon packed it in, except for the clarinet player who really wanted to join a Trad Jazz Band and, had been having serious music lessons paid for by his keen parents.

Anyway, my future artistic abilities would lay elsewhere in painting (merlin two.com). Although Skiffle and the new rock & roll had a big influence on us as kids, the only place to get a real taste of it was in Soho and its coffee bars. We were all looking for excitement, away from the local caffs and amusement arcades in East London. Soho was the place to be, its where I would meet my future wife.

Before you arrived in Soho, you could follow its aroma of pungent food and fresh ground coffee, along the Charing Cross Rd, from Tottenham Court Rd tube station to the corner of Old Compton St. Indeed, it was at no 59 Old Compton St near the corner of Wardour St that would become the birthplace of the British Rock & Roll Scene. It was here, that I and a few friends, had arrived one summers evening, after hanging around in one of the amusement arcades in Wardour St wasting our money playing on the slot machines and listening to Frankie Lymon & the Teenagers on the juke box.

I thought I looked rather hip, in black Ray-Ban style sunglasses (at night what a poser!!) and a bright yellow black 3 inch check shirt with dogtooth patterned drainpipe jeans, these would be classed as skinny jeans today. My shoes were black with 2inch crepe soles commonly called brothel creepers and my hair style was a ’Tony Curtis’ with a ducks arse at the back. This was a style favoured by the Teddy Boys of which I considered myself to be in 1957.

We were a breath of fresh air, but appeared a bit subversive to the older generation who wanted us to conform and get our hair cut and have a boring military style, short back and sides like our fathers had during the 1940s. But we were rebelling, image wise and gyrating to the new music coming from America.

The most outrageous person, I saw around Old Compton St in the late 50s, was would be, rock star Wee Willie Harris, a man with stars in his eyes a singer, and - (above George in the Soho Brassiere 1980s Old Compton St) -piano player, who had a minor hit ’Rockin at the 2 I’s which was played on the 2 I’s jukebox by the door. He often wore a Zoot Suit a had his hair dyed bright orange (remember this was in 1957, and before the pink pound) his outfit was finished of with a giant spotted bow tie, all the girls loved him. Willie was also the resident piano player in the I’s. Anyhow, as we got closer to Camisa’s Deli, which is still in business today, we could hear the sound of music coming from the basement next door. A sign above the entrance read 2 I’s-- between two symbols advertising Coke surrounded by musical notes with -- Coffee Bar--- beneath all picked out in neon lights. This sign I believe was changed for a more boring utility sign without the neon sometime in the 1960s.

The coffee bar had a plate glass window, in a chromium frame. Hanging on the door was a sign advertising 7up. Inside on the left was a Juke box, the place was buzzing with lots of people, and it felt very hot indeed, that was just upstairs! We ordered frothy coffee (plenty of froth and not much coffee which was a common complaint which, the press eagerly pounced upon, suggesting we were all being ripped of at the time) I think Sohoite Daniel Farson coined the expression in one of his documentaries for television, in a warts and all look, at life, in Soho in the late 1950s.

The machine used to create this new exotic beverage was called a Gaggia coffee machine which looked like something out of a science fiction film, and first used in the Moka coffee bar in Frith St in Soho in 1953. We drank its brew from one of those rather small Pyrex cup and saucers. I thought it was quite expensive. Being a new and exotic drink, having never tasted before, we simply had to try it. It was very nice indeed, and turned out to be a rather sophisticated tipple for us young East End urchins, who were more used to drinking large mugs of tea from the local caff for 3 pence. I think it cost 1 shilling and sixpence.

You could’ve had a cheaper drink of squash out of the tank on the bar, which had one of those plastic oranges floating about in it, and would have been a lot cooler, like the coke and Pepsi which was also being sold, but no alcohol. A sign in the window with a photo read- Home of the Stars- TO-NITE Terry Dene-. Dene look like a Elvis clone, more so than stable mate 2 i’s protégé, Tommy Steele did, but all the same not that convincing.

The best looking Elvis clone was a guy named Vince Taylor. Taylor and his band The Playboys, later opened their own place below Sam Widges Coffee Bar on Berwick St called The Top Ten Club of which I and a few friends became a members, all soft drinks no booze this was either 1959/60 and well before al fresco eating had taken hold on Soho Streets. However, they never quite made it big in Britain as Vince didn’t have much of a voice, but he did look the business, mean, dressed all in black and looking subversive and edgy, for that time. Anyhow they did find fame in France, where they became more successful than in the UK. However, It was Dene’s voice we could hear coming from the cellar of the 2 I’s.

As luck would have it ( by now we had no dough left to pay to go downstairs) the doors to the cellar, were being opened onto the street for ventilation, and the small stage could be seen if you craned your neck. So we spent the next 45 minutes outside in Old Compton St in the cool pungent night air, mesmerized, listing to the music coming from the basement.

This was heady stuff, the aroma of exotic cooking everywhere and the sounds, we drank it all in we were young empty vessels. Not wanting to go home, but reluctantly we had to leave.

But we were hooked and would soon be back for more, and to see what other delights Soho had to offer. Hanging around Soho in those days was an experience just watching the street girls plying their trade, even after the law was changed to stop them working the streets in 1956. However, being inquisitive young males, we would often hang around and try to work out who were on the game and those that weren’t, or leer into suspect looking alleyways. Anyhow, you could still find a girl in most doorways in Old Compton St looking for trade and still flaunting the law.

On later visits to Soho we soon found other places of interest, one such place was The Heaven & Hell coffee lounge which was next door to the 2i’s which we never went into. But more fascinating, was Le Macabre Coffee Bar in Meard St just around the corner of Wardour St. It appears, thinly disguised in Julien Temple 1986 film ‘Absolute Beginners’ based on a book of the same name, by Sohoite Colin McInnis. This was more of a beatnik joint, and appealed a bit more to my gothic sensibilities.

At first, it felt strange going in there dressed as a young Teddy boy with a Tony Curtis haircut and crepe soled brothel creepers, as most of the beats in there, seemed to be dressed in black, well at least the hip ones did. Some looked very unhip, indeed a bit old fogey and more like the cultural tourists that visit Brick Lane on Sunday mornings in order to mix with the local natives.

The scene in Le Macabre was more folksy, than rock & roll, or to be precise, more Jean Paul Satre than Wee Willie Harris. Nothing like the 2i’s, but I still enjoyed it just as much, as it felt even more subversive. Anyway, the next year or so, I was wearing a black polo neck with matching drainpipe trousers and green handmade crocodile winkle pickers, and by 1960 was riding a Paggio 150 GS Vepsa scooter.

PART 2 MOD'S AND TED'S TOMORROW

Knocked On Heaven's Door Part 2

noreply@blogger.com (Mo'soho) — Mon, 18 Jun 2012 12:17:00 +0000

Continuing Nigel Robinson's interview with Sebastian Horsley.

To me art is failed music: music takes the innermost part of you and puts it outside and succeeds in a way that all the other art forms fail.

But the dandy's enough for me. It's a success to be one and so difficult to do it properly. It's a kind of martyrdom-you have to give up all the things that other people have like careers and money and happiness and children and marriage, all the things that incidentally don't matter.

You're known for having spent over £100,000 on prostitutes. What's the attraction?

I just love prostitutes and everything about them, and I've been seeing them since I was sixteen. The brothel is the home of spirituality because in order to enter the holy of the holies you have to take off your clothes and there you find that virtue and sin exist in everything.

Everything I know about love, everything I know about morality, everything I know about faith, I owe to prostitution. Consorting with prostitutes is a legitimate route to enlightenment and I'm here to tell you that it works.

Whores are the most open and honest people on God's earth, the flowers of the earth.

I regard any whore, however low, as superior to any lady however noble.

What's so good about living in Soho?

Living in Soho is like coming all the time. It shows society in the process of commit-ting suicide and I like that. lt's full of freaks and odd balls and misfits, men impersonating women, women impersonating men, human beings impersonating human beings.

In many ways it's the loneliest part of the loneliest city and that excites me. For a dandy the only city he should ever live in is auda-city, and Soho comes close to that. I don't want to live in a posh flashy area. In a beautiful area I'd be superfluous, but in an ugly area I'm a narcotic.

Now that the Colony's closed Soho has completely lost its heart. The music has gone, the whores are being moved out, the drinking places are being moved out and the crack dealers and the smack dealers are being pushed off the street. Once you get rid of those types of people the place starts to lose its humanity.

On a good night here ten years ago you could get your throat cut. Now it's full of weave-your-own-yoghurt shops and hair-dressers. There's a gym at the end of that street -a gym in Soho is like having a brothel in a church. Soho's finished. I think that in ten years' time it will become like Covent Garden. I stay here because there's nowhere else to go.

Once you've lived in Soho where could you possibly go? You can't move out to the country. Satan made Soho and God made the country so of course I'm not interested in the country.

Your book has been variously described as "beautiful" and "perverted". Do you pay any attention to the critics?

Of course they hurt a little bit but you have to understand that, once you've announced yourself as a stylist, then really marked personalities cannot be universally liked. Individuality is feared by those that don't have it. You have to be who you are bravely and boldly. If you get the right people to hate you then the people who like you will then love you.

Milo Twomey is playing you in the theatrical adaptation of your book. Did you ever consider playing yourself on stage?

I'd be completely miscast. God knows how he's going do it; even I have problems being myself. Milo Twomey is very handsome and charismatic -he models himself on me.

He came to my flat to do the photo shoot and it was strange. I had to give him my clothes and do his makeup and paint his nails. He had all my airs and graces. I knew my personality was a fraud but I was quite insulted that my personality could be taken and inhabited so quickly.

They say that to see your Doppelgänger is a premonition of your death and I got quite excited about that. I thought, "Oh, goody, I'll get my coat." So I felt both threatened and sexually excited by it.

With the play I'm in this position where it's like being on a first-class luxury air-line. When it slams into the side of a mountain I can just point to the captain and say it's his fault. But if it lands safely then of course I shall claim all the credit.

I shall be the captain of my pain and my fame. In a way it's quite nice: the caterpillar does all the work and the butterfly gets all the publicity But l hate the theatre. I will drink and I will take drugs and in my weaker moments l will eat but one will never ever set foot in inside a theatre.

Why would I go to the theatre to see rape, sodomy, drug addiction, and alcoholism? I might as well stay at home.

On one hand I'm very honoured that a play is being based on my life but there are other days when I just think this is too bizarre.

SEBASTIAN HORSLEY | THE WHORESLEY SHOW

Artists: Sebastian Horsley
Location: The Outsiders London 8 Greek Street | Soho | London | W1D 4DG |
Dates: Thursday 8th of August 2013 to Saturday 14th of September 2013 IRRESISTIBLE

Dandy in the Underworld by Sebastian Horsley is published by Sceptre Books Sebastian Horsley 1962-2010

Knocked On Heaven's Door: Sebastian Horsley- 8 August 1962 – 17 June 2010

noreply@blogger.com (Mo'soho) — Sat, 16 Jun 2012 21:32:00 +0000

Sebastian Horsley-Part 1
8 August 1962 – 17 June 2010

SEBASTIAN HORSLEY, who died on 17th June 2010 aged 47, was an artist, dandy and author whose outrageous memoirs "Dandy in the Underworld" were dramatised at the Soho Theatre.

He is perhaps most famous for submitting himself to a genuine crucifixion in the name of art, and being refused entry to America on grounds of "moral turpitude".

Sebastian and Babette at The Colony Room Club Image Carla Borel.

In what would sadly tum out to be one of his Iast interviews, Nigel Robinson caught up with him over a nice pot of tea at Maison Bertaux.

The publicity for the play describes you as "Thomas de Quincey mixed with Lord Rochester, a dash of Oscar Wilde and a twist of Quentin Crisp". Are they your heroes?

I do have people I admire but I was never a Wilde fan. I always felt that he was a believer and I think the best art has been given to us by non-believers who are the most interesting people. Wilde was also Litigious: how can you invoke the laws of a society you confess to despise? Ultimately he was a conformist. I was always much more of a Crisp fan.

What was it about Crisp you liked?
Crisp seemed to embody vitality and vulnerability.

He was a complex intersection: he had narcissism and negation, and grandiosity and humility. His book took you straight up to heaven without losing your breath and then it took you straight down to hell with the same passion and I loved that.

Your book's title is taken from a T-Rex album. Were you a fan of Marc Bolan?
Oh yes. Bolan was transcendent trash, a dandy with one foot in heaven and the other one in Woolworth's. I saw Bolan when I was ten- it's very difficult to
explain the impact that people like Bolan and Bowie had on a young boy living in Hull. They were like meteorites hitting the planet and I just loved their philosophy of turning themselves into works of art.

The thing about a shooting star is when it comes to earth it's just a stone: the key is to turn the stone into a shooting star on earth and they did that. They took what it was that made them interesting and manufactured it into something greater than themselves. I like people whose attempts to be something other than they are are epic. Of course they fail but all the great thing fail.

How would you define a dandy?

Dandyism is a form of self-worship that dispense with the need to find happiness from others. It's a way of taking up a position of ironic detachment from the world and living it out in scrupulous detail.

It's a performance, a kind of a ghost dance in the face of defeat. Given that life is completely pointless and meaningless and absurd, then to mirror it with an absurdist dance is in many ways taking up a real position. Who cares if people think you're insane- they can't hear the music. Yes, it's a dance.

Are you born a dandy or can you become one?

You can no sooner make yourself a dandy than you could make your self a sheep. lt's a vocation. I started very young when I was about eight or nine, getting dressed up and the Bolan influence.

Then there comes a time when you have to do deliberately what you used to do by accident. It's a protection against vulnerability but it's also a celebration of life.

Of course, dandyism come from broken people most of our masterpieces come from things that are damaged. And where there's a lot of light there' a lot of shade - there's a deep melancholia to it, but there is to everything, isn't there?

You were refused entry to the USA for "moral turpitude". I there any place for a dandy in America?

I'm a dandy snob. Dandies have to be English and they have to be male too: I don't think Americans have the complexity. What was interesting about being thrown out of America was that it was essentially a very dandy thing.

I took America by failing and them throwing me out. The public pay no interest in a work of art until they are told it's immoral.

They threw me out and in doing so I was on the front page of the New York Times three times, there was an editorial in the Washington Post and CNN led on it -all this from one man sitting in one room in Soho.

There's nothing worse than not being allowed into a county you wouldn't be seen dead in. When they threw me out I turned and said, "I am the only thing of value in your country and I'm removing it immediately."

When you were doing a series of works on crucifixion, you went to the Philippines and were filmed literally being nailed to a cross. Why did you do that?

Art is just a shadow and sometimes stage blood isn't enough. I was always interested in turning life into a line of poetry written with a splash of blood. And that's what really interested me- to do something dangerous with style is art. And it interested me as a dandy because, of course, Christ was a dandy. He came to this world and he was able to persuade people with the force of personality.

In many ways I would say that Christ was the first dandy, apart from those awful clothes he had to wear.

Of course, the tabloid press called you an "Art Freak"

It would have been better if it had just said "Freak". ! don't really want to be an artist. In an ideal world I would probably have been a musician. I did originally make records. They were so bad l can't understand why they weren't so successful.

Many thanks to Nigel Robinson for allowing reproduction of his interview from the Soho Clarion.

PART 2

SEBASTIAN HORSLEY | THE WHORESLEY SHOW

Artists: Sebastian Horsley

Location: The Outsiders London 8 Greek Street | Soho | London | W1D 4DG |

Dates: Thursday 8th of August 2013 to Saturday 14th of September 2013. Join us on twitter for news and updates.

OHSO SHORT! A Brief History of the Small Film given by Film Historian Thomas Hamilton.

noreply@blogger.com (Mo'soho) — Sun, 29 Apr 2012 20:23:00 +0000

Sunday May 20th
"Future Shorts" The Biggest pop -up Film Festival in the World at The Soho Hotel "The most Glamorous Hotel in the World" TATLER.

We had a fabulous evening at the Soho Hotel and would like to thank Culture 24/Museums at Night, Future Shorts and Voss Water for supporting the event.

Thank you to Tom Hamilton for providing us with some fascinating, background as to why the short is still so important and congratulate him on his forthcoming documentary.

FUTURE SHORTS: Great choice of films for the Spring programme!

We hope your evening in Cannes was a great success.

And thank you to "Our Audience" for being here.
We hope you enjoyed your evening and look forward to meeting you again soon.

As part of the Museums at Night An annual UK-wide festival which seeks to encourage visitors into museums, galleries and heritage sites by throwing their doors open after hours and putting on special evening events.

NEXT EVENT:SUNDAY JULY 15th 2012

THE 38TH SOHO FESTIVAL:

Bellarmine Jars

noreply@blogger.com (Mo'soho) — Tue, 10 Apr 2012 12:05:00 +0000

Bellarmine jars

It is probably the oldest item in our collection.
Our jar dates from around 1680 and was discovered underneath the cellar of "The Ship" public house in Wardour St. in the mid 1980's.

Church Tower Holds Secrets Of Soho's Crushed Artisans

Bellarmine jars transported wine from north Germany to England in the 16th/17th century and were often reused as 'witches bottles' where they were filled with urine, hair, fingernails and iron nails and buried to protect against the witches curse.
A rare insight into the folk beliefs of 17th-century Britons has been gleaned from the analysis of a sealed "witch bottle" unearthed in Greenwich, London, in 2004.

Witch bottles were commonly buried to ward off spells during the late 16th and 17th centuries, but it is very rare to find one still sealed.

"So many have been dug up and their contents washed away down the sink," says Alan Massey, a retired chemist formerly at the University of Loughborough, UK, who has examined so-called "magical" artifacts and was asked to analyse the contents of the bottle.

"This is the first one that has been opened scientifically."

During the 17th century, British people often blamed witches for any ill health or misfortune they suffered, says Massey.

"The idea of the witch bottle was to throw the spell back on the witch," he says. "The urine and the bulb of the bottle represented the waterworks of the witch, and the theory was that the nails and the bent pins would aggravate the witch when she passed water and torment her so badly that she would take the spell back off you."

The salt-glazed jar was discovered 1.5 metres below ground by archaeologists from The Maritime Trust, a Greenwich-based charity that preserves historic sailing vessels. When it was shaken, the bottle splashed and rattled, and an X-ray showed pins and nails stuck in the neck, suggesting that it had been buried upside down.

Further computed tomography scans showed it to be half-filled with liquid, which later analysis showed to be human urine.
The bottle also contained bent nails and pins, a nail-pierced leather "heart", fingernail clippings, navel fluff and hair. The presence of iron sulphide in the mixture also suggests that sulphur or brimstone had been added.

"Prior to this point, all we really knew about what was in witch bottles was what we read from documents from the 17th century," says Brian Hoggard <http://www.apotropaios.co.uk> , an independent expert on British witchcraft who helped analyse the bottle. These texts suggest "recipes" for filling a witch bottle, but don't tell us what actually went into them.

Sulphur is not mentioned in any recipe Massey has seen, although a previously discovered bottle seemed to contain the remains of some matches, he says. "If you think about where sulphur came from in those days, it spewed out of volcanic fumaroles from the underworld.

It would have been the ideal thing to [kill] your witch, if you wished to."

Further analysis of the urine showed that it also contained cotinine, a metabolite of nicotine, suggesting that it came from a smoker, while the nail clippings appear quite manicured, suggesting that a person of some social standing created the bottle.

"It's confirming what 17th-century documents tell us about these bottles, how they were used and how you make them," says Owen Davies, a witchcraft expert at the University of Hertfordshire in Hatfield, UK.

"The whole rationale for these bottles was sympathetic magic – so you put something intimate to the bewitched person in the bottle and then you put in bent pins and other unpleasant objects which are going to poison and cause great pain to the witch."

Many thanks to Mike Janulewicz for finding information on this object.

Soho "Unbombed"?

noreply@blogger.com (Mo'soho) — Tue, 10 Apr 2012 11:50:00 +0000

In this picture you can see what was left of St Anne's Church.

(out of shot to the left would be the York Minster Public House now known to all as "The French" General Charles de Gaulle who formed The Free French Forces is said to have written his speech rallying the French people, "À tous les Français" in the pub.

I have read Miranda Seymour's book review in the Culture Supplement of The Sunday Times Magazine 08.04.12 (The Seedy Heart Of London) of "NIGHTS OUT": Life in Cosmopolitan London by Judith R Walkowitz.
Ms Seymour asserts that Soho was "Unbombed throughout the War".

I can assure you Soho's residents did not go unscathed by Nazi Bombs during the Second World War and include pictorial proof of the almost destroyed St Anne's church in Dean Street Soho.

During the war it wasn't just explosive bombs that were dropped on London but also secondary, incendiary devices aimed to lower moral and drain manpower.

Maps are available at Westminster Archives that not only plot where these devices fell but also the scale of the impact. An Android App is now available at Bomb Sight a project sponsored by The University Of Portsmouth, The National Archives and JISC where you can you can look at the night time bombs that fell on London during the Blitz for the period 7th October 1940 to 14th October 1941.

These are not the only places in Soho to have been bombed but I hope serve to illustrate my point. More info is available here at The West End At War.

I do hope that Ms Seymour did not get her information from Ms Walkowitz's book!

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