by Rule, Fiona
‘One day I was in the trench and we’d been under attack for days. Well, two blokes with me shot themselves on purpose to try and get sent home and out of the war. One said to me “Chas, I am going home to my wife and kids. I’ll be some use to them as a cripple, but none at all dead! I am starving here and they are at home, so we may as well starve together.” With that, he fired a shot through his boot. When the medics got his boot off, two of his toes and a lot of his foot had gone. But injuring oneself to get out of it was quite common’.
While self-inflicted injuries were not unusual, some men took an even greater risk – that of desertion. Deserting the Army during World War 1 was dangerous to the point of being foolhardy. Firstly, most men were in a foreign land where they did not speak the language, know the geography or understand the culture. Secondly, they not only had to escape from their army, but also from the enemy. Finally, if they got caught, they would most likely be court-martialled and shot. Despite these risks, some men did run away and a few actually managed to get away for good, although the fact that they had left their mates in the trenches must have severely played on their conscience for many years afterwards. In total, 304 British soldiers were caught and, after a court martial, were executed by firing squad.
Henry Morris, a bookmaker’s clerk from Spitalfields, had a lucky escape from the death penalty. At some time during the course of the war, Morris had deserted and found his way back to London where he probably would never have been discovered had it not been for his failure to resist his criminal tendencies. Late in 1918, Morris attempted to steal a pocket book from Walter Stacey while riding on an omnibus down Kingsway in Holborn. Unfortunately for him, he was caught red-handed and promptly arrested. Had Morris been arrested one year previously, it is highly likely he would have faced the firing squad. However he was extraordinarily lucky and despite being found guilty, was only sentenced to three months hard labour.
Desertion was not the only offence punishable by death. As the war became more hellish, officers became less tolerant of their subordinates. Seventeen men were shot for cowardice, four for disobedience and two were executed for falling asleep at their posts. Some men escaped the death penalty only to suffer Field Punishment Number One, a terrifying ordeal whereby the offender was tied to a post or tree for up to two hours a day, sometimes for months on end. Often, the post to which they were tied was within range of enemy fire.
Horror stories from the battlefield made their way back to Britain and by the early months of 1918, soldiers and civilians alike were desperate to find an end to the conflict. Little did they know that a new horror was on the horizon that would do more damage to civilians than the Germans and their allies could ever have hoped to achieve.
In spring 1918, large numbers of soldiers serving in France started to suffer from headaches, sore throats and high fever. This virus was extremely infectious but only lasted about three days. Doctors decided the soldiers had flu and the illness became known throughout the trenches in France as Spanish Flu (although it probably originated in the US).
For a few months, this new strain of influenza did not make much of an impact on the battlefield. However, as summer approached, the symptoms suddenly got a lot worse and victims began to develop pneumonia, septicaemia and heliotrope cyanosis; a condition where the face turns blue. Nearly all the men that developed heliotrope cyanosis died within a few days.
Of course, soldiers carrying the influenza bug returned to Britain and in May 1918, the virus appeared in Glasgow. It soon spread south and in the next few months, it killed more people than the cholera epidemic of 1849. The poorer areas of the country were particularly affected by the flu epidemic and Spitalfields was no exception. Panic spread among an already exhausted population as the Government took preventative measures in an attempt to halt the virus. Streets were sprayed with chemicals designed to kill the bug and people began wearing masks outside. Some factories waived their no-smoking rules as they thought that tobacco smoke might kill the virus. The newspapers offered bizarre advice on how to avoid catching it. On 3 November 1918, the News of the World told its readers: ‘Wash inside nose with soap and water each night and morning; force yourself to sneeze night and morning, then breathe deeply; do not wear a muffler; take sharp walks regularly and walk home from work; eat plenty of porridge.’
Unsurprisingly, the newspaper’s advice had no effect on the spread of the disease and 228,000 people throughout the UK died.
As Britain was in the grip of the flu epidemic, some hopeful news arrived via Woodrow Wilson, the President of the United States. On 4 October, the German government appealed to Wilson for a ceasefire. In response, Wilson produced the ‘Fourteen Points Peace Plan’, which set out the conditions under which the Allies would accept a surrender from the Central Powers (namely Germany, Austro-Hungary, Bulgaria and Turkey). An agreement was finally reached on 11 November 1918 and all territories occupied by the Central Powers were abandoned.
News of the war’s end was received in London with huge relief. Crowds danced in the streets and families eagerly awaited the return of their boys. However, the servicemen would return to a very different place to the one they had left. London had changed forever. In some streets, one whole generation of men had been wiped out by war. In others, soldiers returned to find their wives and children dead from the flu epidemic. Many ex-soldiers found that although they had left the battlefield, the battlefield refused to leave them. They suffered from anxiety attacks, mood swings and nightmares. In total, 908,371 British soldiers were killed or injured during World War 1. Far more bore psychological scars that would haunt them for the rest of their lives.
Chapter 26
The Redevelopment of Spitalfields Market
Back in Spitalfields, the residents and landlords of Duval Street had known their days were numbered ever since the LCC saw the benefits of widening the roads around Spitalfields Market. World War 1 brought a temporary halt to any development works but it didn’t stop council inspectors from slapping condemned notices on the derelict cottages in Miller’s Court in 1914. As the war progressed, these notices became largely ignored as no one from the council was around to enforce them. However, as Britain began to recover after the end of the war in 1918, the redevelopment of the market streets resumed.
Just before Christmas 1921, notices concerning the redevelopment of Spitalfields Market were sent to all owners, lessees and occupiers of properties in Duval Street. As part of the redevelopment programme, the Corporation of London proposed that Duval Street be widened so lorries and carts could have better access. In order to do this, the whole of the north side of the street (including Miller’s Court) would be demolished and Little Paternoster Row (a narrow alley leading to Brushfield Street) would, in the words of the Corporation, be ‘stopped up’. Time passed by as the Corporation of London and the LCC discussed how best to approach the proposed redevelopment. As meeting after meeting was arranged, the common lodging houses and furnished rooms in Duval Street continued to attract the same class of people they always had. This did not escape the notice of the council officials who were keen not to make the same mistakes as their predecessors. They wanted to change the identity of the area surrounding Spitalfields market for good, not just move the undesirable residents across the road to the south side.
Finally, after much deliberation, the Corporation of London began work on a western extension of the market in 1926. For Jack McCarthy, the writing was on the wall and it was only a matter of time before he would have to vacate the mean, vicious little street in which he had made his fortune, brought up his family and become a truly powerful influence. Despite its dreadful reputation, Duval Street was Jack McCarthy’s home and it held as many good memories as bad. In addition to this, McCarthy was now an old man and it was with a heavy heart that, in 1927, he locked the doors of his properties, loaded his belongings into a van and headed for a new home near his son in Clapham, South London.
Since his encounter with mustard gas, S
teve McCarthy had experienced chronic problems with his health. His marriage to Marie Kendall had been destroyed through a combination of Steve’s liking for members of the fairer sex and several violent assaults on his wife; on more than one occasion, he had threatened to kill her. Consequently, the couple had lived apart on a semi-permanent basis since around 1910. Jack McCarthy’s arrival in Clapham meant that father and son could care for one another, which is precisely what they did until Jack’s death in 1934.
Virtually as soon as Jack McCarthy had left Duval Street, the demolition crew moved in and the north side of the little street that had gone through so such a long decline finally felt its death throes. The once-proud eighteenth-century silk weavers’ houses had their hearts torn out as workmen ripped away the ornate fire surrounds, flagstone floors and slate roofs. The fine oak panelling that lined their rooms was dismantled and carted away. The elegant front doors were removed and the sash windows, some of which contained the original glass were taken out. The bloodstained walls of Mary Kelly’s old room were reduced to rubble as were the walls within which poor Kitty Ronan’s body was discovered.
As the demolition crew worked their way through they destroyed the last remaining evidence of generations – the hard-working, optimistic Huguenot silk weavers’ homes; the grounds of Thomas Wedgwood’s china showroom; the shop belonging to Miller the butcher, who had built the fated court; The Blue Coat Boy Pub, which had provided refreshment and warmth for over 100 years; William Crossingham’s huge lodging house at number 35 from which Annie Chapman had made her last fatal journey and Mary Ann Austin met her fate. All were razed to the ground. So much history and so many memories reduced to rubble.
Although only one side of Duval Street was actually demolished, the Corporation of London saw to it that the entire street was changed. Out of the rubble on the north side rose a huge structure housing auction rooms, offices and fruit stores. On the south side, the ancient furnished rooms and many of the remaining lodging houses were closed down and cold stores, offices, warehouses and factories took their place. Duval Street had come full circle. It had started life as a place of industry, had slowly declined into a resort of loafers and now resembled its industrious past as market and office workers walked in and out of the street that, just a few years previously, policemen had been scared to visit.
The demolition of the north side of Duval Street also marked the end of an era for the underworld that inhabited its dilapidated buildings. As half the street disappeared to make way for new business and property, so many of the landlords that had controlled life on Spitalfields’ streets over the previous fifty years retired from active service, thus clearing the way for more organised individuals to take over. After World War 1, the entire social landscape of Duval Street and Spitalfields began to change. Large numbers of Eastern European Jews continued to settle in the area throughout the first years of the twentieth century and by the 1920s, evidence of the Ashkenazi culture could be seen on virtually every street.
In November 1928, a journalist from The Times ventured into the neighbourhood and noted that ‘There are foreign names over three shops out of five... here and there a poster, across which run those strangely picturesque Hebrew characters which one instinctively associates with astrologers, magicians and other mysterious people.’ The reporter was also fascinated with the unfamiliar languages he heard while exploring the area. ‘Stand at [Aldgate East] station entrance and watch and listen. You may hear Russian or Polish spoken. You may hear that strange language of the Jewish proletariat of Eastern Europe, a corruption of the German of Frankfurt, half drawled, half chanted mingled with Hebrew words and written in Hebrew characters, which some call “Jargon” and others “Yiddish”.’
By the 1920s, the local street markets were run almost exclusively by Jews, their Irish and English predecessors having either moved out of the area or switched to alternative employment. The costermongers and hawkers who once made up a huge proportion of Duval Street residents had also disappeared, much to the regret of the markets that once supplied them. An article in The Times in 1930 mourned the loss of street selling in East London with a salesman at Billingsgate lamenting ‘before the War the hawkers came with their barrows about 9 o’clock in the morning, when the main business of the day at Billingsgate was finished, and bought up surplus consignments at prices that enabled them to sell cheaply in a street and house-to-house trade. Today the hawkers have been reduced to a small number and the wholesale salesmen are often at a loss to dispose of the occasional gluts which keep them standing at their stalls.’
The demand for fruit and vegetables by hawkers had not diminished quite as much as fish, although the once flourishing weekend trade had all but disappeared by 1930. The Times reporter noted ‘in the case of fruit and vegetables... there was the casual hawker, who took out his barrow only on Saturdays and Sunday mornings... They no longer present themselves at Spitalfields [Market] to look around for cheap lines.’
The main reason behind the sharp decline in hawking in the first quarter of the twentieth century was almost certainly the establishment of unemployment benefit in 1911. Prior to its introduction, the out-of-work poor were largely left to fend for themselves. Consequently, hawking became a popular temporary means of income until more steady employment could be found. Setting up as a hawker was cheap and easy. The only piece of equipment needed was a barrow and set-up costs comprised just a small amount of cash to buy stock. In many ways, hawking benefited everyone. The wholesale markets got rid of unwanted goods, the poor got the opportunity to purchase food at knockdown prices and the hawkers earned themselves a living.
Indeed, the salesmen at Billingsgate wished for a return to the old days. ‘Billingsgate would like to see the hawker come back with his barrow... a resumption of street sales would benefit the fisherman, the poorer class of consumers, and the hawker himself.’ Regrettably, this was not to be. The concept of ‘signing on’ to receive state money gradually increased in both popularity and social acceptability. The economic downturn that resulted from expenditure during World War 1 pushed more workers onto the benefit system and by 1921, over two million people in Britain were receiving ‘dole’.
It wasn’t just the hawkers who were disappearing from the streets of Spitalfields. Casual labour and home-working schemes were beginning to be abandoned in favour of steadier work in the manufacturing, construction and service sectors. In 1928, the London Advisory Council for Juvenile Employment analysed the employment pattern of young people living in the capital. One in three of the female working population were employed in either hotels, restaurants or as domestic servants while the largest proportion of men were employed in either the manufacturing or construction industries.
For the men of Spitalfields, the biggest local employers were the furriers in Stepney, the furniture factories in Bethnal Green and the new electric cable, wire and lamp manufacturers slightly further north in once rural districts such as Leytonstone. The communication industry was also making its mark; Spitalfields got its own automatic telephone exchange with capacity for 5,000 lines in 1928.
For Jack McCarthy, things were never quite the same again. While the council had destroyed half of Duval Street, a combination of the war and the increasing prevalence of Eastern European Jews in the area effectively destroyed his trade in lodgings for the destitute. Many young men who may have used his rooms were now lying dead on the battlefields of France. In their place came the Jews who, being enthusiastic proponents of the extended family, saw little need for the isolation and loneliness of a single bed in a common lodging house. Jack McCarthy’s reign as one of the most influential and powerful men in Spitalfields was over.
Jack McCarthy died on 16 June 1934, having suffered for some years with heart problems. He was 83 years old. He was buried alongside his wife Elizabeth, in St Patrick’s Cemetery, Leytonstone, a few yards away from the grave of his most tragic and notorious tenant – Mary Kelly. Prior to his death, he had asked that his funeral cor
tege pass down Duval Street one last time. His funeral was well attended by family, friends and the few colleagues that survived him. The East London Observer published a lengthy obituary, giving much emphasis to the deceased’s charitable donations and ignoring the less salubrious aspects of his life. Thus, Jack McCarthy – a child of the ghetto, slum property magnate and landlord to the most infamous murder victim of all time – departed this life for the hereafter taking his secrets, stories and memories of a truly extraordinary life to his grave.
But what a legacy he left behind. Following Jack McCarthy’s death, his two eldest daughters and their husbands continued to run lodging houses, overseen by Steve (who was by now in failing health) and his son, John. Steve’s other son took up a career on the stage, forming an act with his younger sister Patricia. While performing, he met a dancer named Gladys Drewery and the couple wed in 1923. Soon after, a son (Terry) was born, followed by a daughter (Patricia Kim) in 1925. Two years later, Terry and Gladys McCarthy’s third and final child was born. The baby was a girl and the couple decided to name her Justine (in reference to Terry’s real name of Justin) Kay. Justine developed the family flair for entertaining and in her adult life found massive fame under the stage name of Kay Kendall, starring in several Hollywood films and marrying the actor Rex Harrison before succumbing to cancer at the tragically young age of just 32.
Jack McCarthy’s son Steve died in 1944 of pneumonia. His now ex-wife, Marie Kendall (they were divorced in the 1920s) continued to work until well past retirement age, and is one of the few music hall stars to be recorded on film. After Steve’s death, her eldest son John invited her to take one of the family properties overlooking Clapham Common and it was here that she died in 1964, a few days before her ninety-first birthday.