To the memory of my late wife, Linda.
CONTENTS
Note: A sketch map of the Tenterground, Spitalfields, as it was in 1925 appears on page 100.
1 TITLE PAGE
2 DEDICATION
3 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
4 FOREWORD
5 PREFACE
6 CHAPTER ONE JACK THE RIPPER AND JACK JACOBS, 1888–1915
7 CHAPTER TWO THE TENTERGROUND AND PULLOCKS, 1915–26
8 CHAPTER THREE HUMPTY LOGIE, DOLL-DOLL AND JULIE BOTTLES, 1919–26
9 CHAPTER FOUR LOKSHEN SOUP, JAM JARS AND KEATING’S POWDER, 1919–26
10 CHAPTER FIVE STALE BREAD, CRACKED EGGS AND THE BUN HOUSE, 1919–26
11 CHAPTER SIX CIGARETTE CARDS, HORSE DUNG AND A TEN-BOB NOTE, 1919–26
12 CHAPTER SEVEN CATS’ MEAT, CATCH ’EM ALIVE AND PERCY THE HOOK, 1919–26
13 CHAPTER EIGHT MALT, HENNY PENNY AND SWEET STUFF SHOPS, 1920–6
14 CHAPTER NINE FIRST WEMBLEY FINAL, ITCHY PARK AND PLATZELS, 1923–6
15 CHAPTER TEN FUMIGATION, BUSSING UP AND EX-LAX, 1926–9
16 CHAPTER ELEVEN FIZZY DRINKS, POETRY AND EMPIRE DAY, 1926–9
17 CHAPTER TWELVE MILK CANS, BAGWASH AND MECHANICAL CLOWNS, 1926–9
18 CHAPTER THIRTEEN COWS, FRIED FISH AND PIERROTS, 1926–9
19 CHAPTER FOURTEEN CLICKY-BA, NOAH’S ARK AND THE MUSIC HALL, 1926–9
20 CHAPTER FIFTEEN SHEEP’S HEADS AND PIG’S TROTTERS, 1926–9
21 CHAPTER SIXTEEN TWO-VALVE RADIO, THE CHAVRA MAN AND APPLE CAKE, 1926–9
22 CHAPTER SEVENTEEN THE TALLYMAN, PROVIDENT CHEQUES AND GEFILTE FISH, 1928–30
23 CHAPTER EIGHTEEN WORK, APPRENTICESHIP AND THE BOY, 1929–30
24 CHAPTER NINETEEN OPERA, BODYLINE AND BEANOS, 1929–36
25 CHAPTER TWENTY HAMPSTEAD HEATH, LORD BOND STREET AND THE CHESTERFIELD, 1931–6
26 CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE THE WOODEN TOE AND LAW BREAKING, 1935–6
27 CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO DEPRESSION, BATTLE OF CABLE STREET AND ABDICATION, 1935–6
28 CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE LOVE AND MARRIAGE, 1937–9
29 CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR FEAR, WAR AND BIRTH OF FIRST CHILD, 1938–40
30 AFTERWORD
31 GLOSSARY OF YIDDISH TERMS
32 PLATES
33 ABOUT THE AUTHOR
34 COPYRIGHT
As well as my father I should also like to acknowledge the help I was given by others in bringing his story to life. Firstly, my mum, who wrote down her own life story back in the 1990s and from which I was able to confirm and fill in some details of their early relationship. Secondly, my brother, John, who related a few memories of things Dad had told him over the years. Thirdly, other members of our wider family, especially my Uncle Joe, the only member of the Palmer Street and Boundary Estate Jacobs family still living, now in his ninety-fourth year, and still as alert and active as ever. He was also able to confirm and fill in a few details of life between the wars for the Jacobses. Lastly, David, Bobby, Helen and Brian, my Uncle Davy’s children, and David, Uncle Abie’s son, who all added a few anecdotes they had heard from their respective fathers.
My thanks to them all.
BY NORMAN JACOBS
Some years ago my father, then in his late seventies, decided to take a nostalgic trip back to the East End of London from his retirement bungalow in Clacton-on-Sea so that he could visit, for the last time as it turned out, the places he grew up in. The visit back in time to the days of his youth brought back many memories of his young days between the wars. It seemed to unlock a whole flood of memories that, although obviously always in the back of his mind somewhere, came to the fore and for days and weeks afterwards he could talk of nothing else but the memories his trip had reawakened in him. I sat there enthralled listening to him talking about those days, and for the first time I began to understand much more about what life was like for him and his family in that period between the two great conflicts of the twentieth century. Although there is no doubt that the term ‘the good old days’ would certainly be a misnomer of monumental proportions, they weren’t all bad either and loving families like his made the best of what they had.
In talking about his own life he spoke of things that not only affected him and his family but revealed a large slice of social history concerning the lives of all ordinary working-class people struggling to live in the slums of the East End of London in those pre-Welfare State days, the overcrowded houses with families of anything up to eight children living, as his own had, in just two or three rooms with outside WC and water tap, and the reliance on charity and the soup kitchen for food or families trying to eke out what little income they had by buying stale bread and cracked eggs or other cheap food from the many itinerant street-sellers that came round.
But in the midst of the sheer bloody hard grind of this reality of everyday life, there was the resilience shown, particularly by the children, playing homemade games and making their own entertainment and amusement as best as they could – and probably having just as much fun with a homemade wooden toy or a ball made of screwed-up paper as today’s youngsters with their Play Stations and iPads. There were indeed many laughs amongst the tears and deprivation.
In fact, as my father spoke to me, what stood out was the great affection and longing my father had for this period as the ‘best days of his life’. As he said to me several times while relating his story he knew no different and thought all families lived like his did. That all families had just two rooms, ate stale bread and went to the soup kitchen. Looking back with the hindsight of history and knowing what we know now, we would quite rightly criticise the harshness of those days, but from the standpoint of someone at the time actually living through them that’s not how it seemed at all.
What follows in this book is basically what my father told me in those days and weeks following his nostalgic visit to his roots. As a writer, I wanted to capture his story so people today can learn a little about how families like his lived. As I sat down to write this book, I could hear my father’s voice guiding me through it all. His inflection, the odd Yiddisher word and the slang, particularly rhyming slang, were all there and when I demurred about using a slang word maybe, I would hear him saying if it was the right word for the passage I was writing and if it’s what he said when he was telling me all this in the first place, I should bloody well use it!
I make no claims that my father’s family was anything out of the ordinary for its time and place, but that, I think, is what makes it so important that the story is written down and made available for future generations to understand what life was like for the majority of people in the 1920s and 1930s from someone who was there.
This then, in his own words, is my father Isaac Jacobs’s, story …
NORMAN JACOBS,
London
I’m an old man these days, living out my retirement in a little council house by the sea. Life is content,