by Pip Granger
Virtually the whole of London smelt of coal. When the Victorian tenements were built, coal was the only fuel for heating and cooking, and the estates and the industrial buildings would belch out smoke and soot, winter and summer. It blackened the buildings, and in the winter mixed with the river mist and fog to form sulphurous smogs. These ‘pea-soupers’ were so thick at times that you literally could not see your hand in front of your face. Buses took wrong turnings and got lost; Alberto Camisa remembers a double-decker chugging along Wardour Street, although buses normally ran only along Soho’s boundary streets. Dark tendrils of smog would find their way in to houses through cracks and air-bricks, so that you could quietly choke in your own sitting room. Cinemas had to cancel showings because the punters could not see the screens. Literally thousands of people with vulnerable lungs were killed by the ‘Great Smog’ of 1952, which lasted for five days.
The Clean Air Act of 1956 was a direct response to the smog, and made much of central London a smokeless zone. Londoners could still use their hearths, but had to fill them with more expensive smokeless fuels, and a general switch-over to gas and electric cookers and heaters began later in the fifties.
Coal may have been the dominant characteristic scent of London in the fifties, but it wasn’t the only one. My father was a fastidious man. Although there was always a strong note of booze and smoke around him, he made use of his bijou bathroom on a daily basis. The majority of the population did not have this resource, however. They relied instead on a tin bath in front of the fire, with the whole family using the same water, topped up with a hot kettle, in sequence; or they would visit the local public baths, usually on a weekly basis. Ronnie Mann reminded me of the results. ‘I might be 100 per cent wrong, but I think all of us smelt. I don’t mean you stunk, but you’re smelling. Mr Murphy, who lived above us, was an old Irish labourer, and he was up early and used to come home late, and I can’t imagine Mr Murphy having a bath every night. Certainly, when I was a kid at the ’Bury there was no bath. We went to the public baths in Endell Street, every Friday night. Me and my dad used to go in one, my two brothers in another and my two sisters in another. My mum never went to the baths, just had a wash behind the coal box, and basically that was it, that was our only way of washing and cleaning.
‘Nowadays, if I wear a shirt two days running my wife does her nut, but we’d wear stuff for a week. If everybody has a bath on a Friday, if everybody wears the same shirt for a week – ’cause you can only do your washing once a week as well – then basically everybody smells the same. Some might stink a bit more than others, but in the main you all smelt at a general level, so you didn’t really notice that things were different.
‘I don’t recall, ridiculous as this may sound, ever cleaning my teeth until I was about thirteen, when I started getting interested in girls, and suddenly realized that washing my hair was a good thing. Before, I used to remember putting water in, or grease, but I don’t remember washing it. Certainly it was a different concept of cleanliness than we have today.’
It was not until the late fifties that baths came to the tenements, and even then, many preferred to continue at the public baths. Ann Lee remembers the washing arrangements at the Wild Street tenements. ‘My mum and dad had a living room and a bedroom, and toilet and a big wash house out on the landing. There were big butler sinks and copper boilers, and everybody shared that and had their one set day a week. There were four or five flats on each landing, and everybody took a day.
‘They had to boil kettles for a strip-down wash, or a tin bath in front of the fire in the flat. My mum had this massive great black kettle for boiling water for washing and baths. Outside the door of our flat there was a sink with a cold tap. That’s where you got your water from. My dad used to wash at that butler sink in cold water every morning. My dad was tough.
‘When I was about ten [in 1956], they put baths in the wash house, and partitioned it, put a lock on the door and an Ascot in it. You’re talking about a big stone room, with this bath in it. There were two entrances, one on each side of it. Even though you had this sort of solid screen, you had to make sure both doors were locked, as you didn’t really want anyone coming in the wash house when you was in the bath. It was really weird. You’d put your two pennies in and you’d get a nice hot bath. It was lovely in the summer, but in the winter, you got in, you washed, you got out. It was absolutely freezing, but it was still a luxury. But we still had to go out to the toilet on the landing in the freezing flipping cold. We didn’t get our own bathroom and constant hot water until I was fourteen, in 1960.’
Things were different at the ’Bury. ‘When they first put the baths in the wash houses, they didn’t screen them off,’ Ronnie Mann explains. ‘When my brother came home from work, he’d want a bath before he went out, and it used to be threepence for a bath full of hot water, but you were right in that bloody wash house. You had a good few years where you had your bath stuck in that rotten corner, and it was freezing. Great big stone things, and you had no double glazing or heating in there. It really was cold. You didn’t hang around, I can tell you that. I don’t think my mum ever used the bath in the wash house. I don’t know if she ever had a bath in her life! [laughs]’.
Getting your own bathroom fitted could change your life. Until he was fourteen, John Carnera used to make the weekly trek from his home above Gennaro’s to the Marshall Street baths. ‘I remember 1954 was a seminal year for us, because not only did we get our first television, a 14-inch one, but we had the bathroom built; we didn’t have to go downstairs to the restaurant! I’ll never forget that year. Television, and a bathroom and toilet! Luxury!’
As the Superintendent’s son, Peter Jenkins had access to the only private bathroom in the Wild Street Estate, as well as hot water and electricity. His family also had somewhere to do their laundry. ‘We had what we called a scullery with a great big bath in it and a copper* – that’s a smell of childhood you cannot get rid of, coppers and the smell of washing powder in your house on a Monday – always Mondays. I was asthmatic as a kid, and associate that smell with fighting for breath and reading Charles Buchan’s football annuals, in bed. Washing was mangled first, then hung up on a rack on the pulley in the ceiling to dry. Things came out of the mangle in strange shapes. A sheet, especially if it had been starched, you might well have been able to cut bread with it. Everybody else had to use the public laundry places.’ In those days before running hot water or washing machines, let alone launderettes, there were laundries for public use in most of Central London’s public baths.
Father’s bathroom meant I never used the West End baths for anything other than swimming. Like most people in the area, including the Covent Gardeners, I chose to swim in the Marshall Street baths, not far from Oxford Circus, rather than the ones in Endell Street. Marshall Street was not only closer, but its choice of heated indoor pools gave it a natural edge over the open-air unheated pool at Endell Street, commonly known as the Oasis. The temperatures were rarely conducive to outdoor bathing in any case. People did flock to the Oasis in rare heatwaves, but these hot busy spells could be dangerous in the fifties, as Janet Vance remembered: ‘A little girl from Peter Street, another Janet, went to the Oasis, and came out with polio, so people from Soho didn’t go to the Oasis after that.’
As far as using the public baths was concerned, people tended to choose according to which side of the Charing Cross Road they lived. ‘There were baths at Marshall Street, and I sometimes used to swim there,’ says Ronnie Mann, ‘but Endell Street was probably closer, and I fell in to a routine of going there. Met all my mates there, too, of a Friday night.’ People used to go as a family, and meet up with their friends, schoolmates, workmates and neighbours. The baths, and especially the queues for the baths, were a good place for a natter, somewhere to plan the evening ahead and catch up with what had been happening all week.
‘You always had to queue,’ Ronnie continued. ‘When you got in you’d shout, “More in number 5” or whate
ver, and the old boy would come round, and top up the bath. Later, he’d come along, bang on the door, and say, “Come on, other people waiting.” You’d have to get out pretty quick. You couldn’t stay in there. I had no real concept of time as a kid. It seemed I was in there an eternity, but it was probably only ten minutes – I doubt you got much more than that.’
Saturday morning was bath time for Janet Vance at Marshall Street. ‘We had to queue up. They’d give you a towel but you had to take your own soap and flannel. I went in first, then waited outside while my mum went in. It was boiling hot. I think that’s why my mother used to chuck me in first! We used the same water to save money. There was quite a few cubicles, with brown tiling things on the floors. They were big enamel baths, not sitting baths, just right for a soak, except there wasn’t enough time for lying down.’
* * *
Marshall Street was not just about baths. There was a public laundry too, and a children’s clinic. The clinic took a pro-active role in public health. ‘The nurses from there were the nit nurses,’ remembers Janet. ‘My hair was curly. They came to school with those bloody combs and pulled my head to pieces.’
Ronnie Mann tells a story about the visiting nurses. ‘When I was at secondary school, the nurse used to come round for the nits, and also sometimes give you the once-over, top to toe. By that age, I was aware that you had to wash more regularly than I was used to. Once you’d gone to secondary school, you was aware that there was a slight difference between that close community and some of the kids that lived in houses with electricity, and hot water you could turn on.
‘One kid in my class was from the Peabody Buildings in Abbey Orchard Street, by the Houses of Parliament, and I don’t suppose he’d changed his socks or washed his feet for some time. When he took his shoes off, his feet were black, and mouldy, and the stench was huge.
‘I couldn’t remember when I’d last washed mine, either, and I’m thinking, “You’re next,” just one person in front of me, and now it’s, “Please God, let my feet be clean!” They were, actually – well, not by today’s standards: they were filthy, but they were cleaner than his.’
By the fifties, public health initiatives had become more widespread and had started to tackle the needs of those people who lived on the streets. Graham and Olga Jackson told me about the cleansing house in the same building as the mortuary in Macklin Street. ‘People who lived on the streets and in the hostels used to get scruffy and lousy. What they used to do was take them in off the streets, take them to the cleansing house, bath them and delouse them, feed them and shave them, then let them go. It wasn’t like they were just rounded up: they were quite happy about it, happy to go along for the free grub, if nothing else.’
In 1948, all of these health initiatives had come under the umbrella of the National Health Service. Some of my contacts remember a time before this, when going to the doctor was as much a financial as a medical decision. Pat and Barbara Jones told me they went to the doctor in Bow Street, when Mum could find the necessary 7s. 6d., a lot of money in those days.* Then, after 1948, when it was free, I could afford to go to the dentist. It was in William IV Street. I saw either Mr Palmer or his partner, Mr Moss – who was the father of Stirling Moss.’
There was a GP at 42 Montpelier Square, between the two addresses where Anne Payne lived. Her grandmother took her there occasionally, ‘but she preferred to go to the pharmacist, Mr Giles in Montpelier Street’. Mr Giles was an old-fashioned chemist, who dispensed advice as well as medicines to many on the Montpelier Estate. Before the National Health Service came in, local chemists’ shops were often regarded in the same light as tribal societies would see the wise woman’s hut, as a first recourse in times of trouble. The pharmacist was a more affordable alternative to the doctor as both a diagnoser and a treater of minor ailments. Several of my husband’s legions of uncles and aunts remember that in the pre-NHS years the local GP was often resented by the poorer people, while the chemist was sometimes looked up to as a father figure (it was always a man) in the community.
An alternative to finding the money for a visit to the GP – let alone for any medicines – was to use the medical services of a charitable institution. Some only offered rudimentary treatment, but others had exacting standards. When Olga Jackson was growing up in Shorts Gardens in Covent Garden, she used to spend a lot of time at the Medical Mission just down the street. ‘I think the Medical Mission was set up by a husband and wife. The idea was that, if you couldn’t afford to pay to see a doctor, you could go to the Medical Mission and see a missionary doctor home on furlough. When the National Health came in, it wasn’t needed any more. There used to be a pharmacy, too, run by a lady called Miss Morton. She helped run the clubs. There was a girls’ club, where you could go and play table tennis, even do keep-fit in those days. She used to take us out on Saturdays; we used to go on holiday together.
‘In some ways it was very much a religious Mission. They didn’t have services, but they did hold these meetings, spreading the Christian message. I can remember a photo I saw from the thirties: it was all men, lots and lots of them, assembled in the Mission for this meeting. Not down-and-outs, just local people – although of course everyone there was fairly poor in those days.
‘On the other hand, we used to have Sunday School outings, and there were Italians, Greeks, Jews, Chinese, Indians, you name it, all off to Christian Sunday School – although the Catholics could not go any more after the age of seven, because they took communion.’
Religious faith never touched me personally. My parents were fervent atheists and I found no reason to rebel against them. For those West Enders with religious faith, though, there were ample opportunities to indulge it, in synagogues, churches and temples from Brompton Oratory to St Clement Danes. Some places of worship were in decidedly secular buildings. Myra James, who grew up in a Welsh-speaking home above her parents’ café in Pollen Street, remembers how she and her family ‘attended a Welsh chapel which met on Sunday mornings in Studio One, the cinema in Oxford Street, because the original chapel in the City had been bombed in the war’.
Another diligent, if apparently reluctant, churchgoer was Owen Gardner. ‘Our local parish church was St Martin-in-the-Fields, but you could never get in there, because it was always full of visitors, so my mother hooked up with St Paul’s, Covent Garden, the actors’ church. It wasn’t well attended. An old Shakespearean actor was the vicar, and he couldn’t get anybody in the church, so my mother volunteered me – I had been a choirboy in Somerset – to go there on a Sunday morning, unlock it, take the collections at the Communion first thing and at the eleven o’clock service and put the money in the safe.’ After that, he and the vicar would go to the hospital at the back of the market to give Communion to anyone who wanted it, before returning to the twelve o’clock service, where Owen again took the collection before going home to his well-earned lunch. In those days, in most of Britain, everything closed on Sundays.
Some establishments opened seven days a week in the West End, but for most of those who lived and worked there, it was a welcome day of rest. ‘My father worked six days a week, sixteen hours a day,’ John Carnera remembers. ‘He was up and gone by seven, pushing a barrow down to Covent Garden to get the day’s fruit and veg. He’d work at the restaurant all day, until five or half-past, then have a break for an hour or so, come up and have dinner with my mother, and then start at seven in the evening as a barman at Les Caves de France, a club two doors up from us. He worked there until about eleven. Sunday was his day off. We saw our dad really only on Sunday.’
John’s father was not unique in this. The struggle to make ends meet forced many family breadwinners in the West End to take several jobs. As Sonia Boulter recalls, ‘My dad worked behind the bar at Maxim’s for quite long hours. Bar work was his trade, and he could tell you anything about it, but he wouldn’t drink himself. My mum worked with him, occasionally, in the cloakroom. It was just a bit of money for her. And when she did that, I had
to look after my younger brothers. I was only young myself, so it was quite a lot on me, but I had to do it.
‘I remember at one stage my dad had two or three jobs, because he wasn’t very well. He’d had TB and couldn’t settle in to a permanent job and money was very short. I can remember him doing night work, coming home for a couple of hours’ sleep, then going to work at another job. It was very hard going. He worked at a cartoon cinema in Windmill Street a couple of days in the evenings to earn extra money, just letting people in, taking tickets, taking money occasionally. He did lots of things to earn extra money. When I was about fourteen, he got a job with Wall’s, selling ice cream from trays on the trains. I did that with him to earn a bit of pocket money. Going to Southend, walking up and down on the train selling ice creams from the icebox in the guard’s car.’
Ronnie Mann learned to double up on jobs at an early age. Eventually he would work in the family business, a picture-framer’s in Monmouth Street, but he had wide experience before then. ‘When I was at school, I worked in the late afternoons and Saturdays half-past nine to about half-past three in the butcher’s, or delivering for the greengrocer or the dairy. Saturday morning I did a paper round from seven o’clock to about half-past eight. I think a lot of the kids did them jobs. Some stayed on when they left school. Littlewoods – an iron-monger’s and paint place in Drury Lane – supplied the whole area with paraffin and all that. I can remember two blokes working there from while they were in school to in to their twenties and thirties.’