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Top Trumps in Brick Lane

28/7/2017

Brick Lane is a great place for polemical street art - especially the yard at the back of the now deserted Seven Stars, once a pub which put on strippers at lunchtime. I was there recently with two groups of Oregon students. It's a handy place to pause as you eat your veg pakoras. And for an American, it's a bit like being back home ...

Not that Trump is the only political leader to be traduced -

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Finding Toyah Sofaer (UPDATED)

15/7/2017

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This is the post I never expected to be able to write - the one with a photo of Toyah Sofaer. But for those of you coming new to the story, let me recap:

Earlier this year, I came across the grave of Victoria 'Toyah' Sofaer in the tiny Jewish cemetery in Chennai in south India. She died in October 1943 aged just 22. Through the magic of the internet, and with the generous encouragement and support of Toyah's family, I pieced together a tragic and deeply affecting story which I've blogged about. She was born into a prosperous trading family in Baghdad - embarked on a transgressive romance with an Armenian man from another trading family - was taken to India by her parents to end the relationship - and died in Chennai 'from a broken heart', in the words of her half-brother Abe, though in what circumstances remains unclear.

More than that, the family had a photograph of Toyah's three brothers and half-brothers taken when she would have been seven. She was in the photograph. But after her death, it was retouched to remove her likeness - and so obliterate any visual reminder of a scandal and tragedy. No one talked about Toyah. No other photographs came to light which the family was confident included Toyah. It was as if any testimony to her life, and death, had been carefully excised. An injustice which Abe in particular, now in his mid-nineties and once close to Toyah, was keen to see rectified.

Last month, a short item I recorded about Toyah for the BBC radio programme 'From Our Own Correspondent' was also posted on the BBC website. It's been viewed more than a million times. The response has been remarkable - one reader tracked down Toyah's death certificate in the Chennai municipal records, another wrote a poem about Toyah, and I'm now in contact with the very small Jewish community in Chennai today.

And as Toyah's relatives scoured their collections of family photographs, these two wedding photos from the mid-1930s have come to light. And, yes, this is Toyah Sofaer.

I owe these photographs, and permission to post them here, to the kindness of Lisette Shashoua. They were taken at the wedding of her parents, Mouzli and Menashy. Mouzli, the bride, was Toyah's first cousin. Lisette, who has taken a great interest in the history of her extended family, was fairly sure this was Toyah. Lydia Saleh, my main point of contact with the family, took the photo to show her father, Abe, and - without prompting - he recognised his half-sister, Toyah, who was two years older than him. He's quite certain it's her.

It doesn't bring her back to life - it doesn't right the wrong done to her - but it does help to honour her memory. I'm very pleased to be part of that.

Lisette has identified those in the photographs. In the one above, standing from left to right: Bertha Haim (Bekhor); the groom, Menashy Shashoua; the bride, Mouzli Haim (Sheshoua); Daisy Shamash. The young girl in the middle of the group is believed to be Dorine Shashoua. Sitting from left to right: Toyah Sofaer; Bertine Shashoua (Khazzam); Violette Haim (Barzel); Marcelle Bekhor (Shamash). Lisette believes the photo was taken in about 1935. There are more details about the family in the wonderful Sephardic diaspora genealogy site run by Alain Farhi, Les Fleurs de L'Orient.

The photo below features the same people but in different positions. Toyah is standing and, as we look, is to the right of the bride.

There may be more to say about Toyah, who knows. But it's so good to look into her eyes.

LATER: updated with photos of Toyah's brother

This is Toyah's half-brother Abraham (or Abe) who was two years younger than her, and probably the closest to her in the family. This photograph was taken in Bombay in 1943, when Abe was 21 - at almost exactly the time that Toyah died.

Abe has taken particular pleasure in the discovery of Toyah's grave and the retelling of her story. This photo was taken in July 2017 - it shows Abe, now in a nursing home in Toronto, looking at a photo of his sister.

Many thanks to Lydia and Lisette for these magnificent photos and for their permission to post them here.

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In the back streets of Bloomsbury

4/7/2017

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Hidden away amid the back streets of Bloomsbury is one of the most charming green spaces in central London. It's pocket size, but lovely.

St George's Gardens is a former graveyard - and there are still a few of the more commanding gravestones and memorials. But it doesn't have the sombre, dank feel of a cemetery. On a sunny day, it is simply enchanting.

As the excellent Friends of St George's Gardens website explains, this was one of the first burial grounds to be established away from a church. It dates back to 1713, and was closed for new interments because of overcrowding in 1855.

St George's Gardens has been an open space and public amenity since the 1880s. It's one of several Camden parks to receive lottery funding and the ensuing refurbishment was completed in 2001. The Gardens are wonderfully well kept and welcoming and quite a treasure.

And those buried here? To be honest, not a terribly distinguished bunch - though they include some Jacobites executed after the failure of the 1745 rebellion led by Bonnie Prince Charlie.

If you haven't worked out where the gardens are, this map should help -

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A Carnegie library in Morley ... and it's a dazzler!

2/7/2017

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This is the view looking out of Morley library - it has a wonderful art house aspect, not often I capture an image which has something special about it.

And Morley? Well, as this photo suggests, it's an old mill town. Morley, just south of Leeds, is where I was born. I've not lived here for more than forty years, but of late - perhaps age, my father's death, all sorts of stuff - I've been drawn back. The other day, I stopped here for an hour and discovered - perhaps rediscovered, but if I did know once I had forgotten - the majesty of Morley library.

It's a Carnegie library - built with the financial support of Andrew Carnegie, a Scottish businessman and philanthropist. He funded the construction of approaching 2,000 libraries in the United States and more than 600 in Britain and Ireland. And judging from this wonderful building - with a striking tiled lobby (Burmantofts tiles, I was told) - which stretches over three floors, these were substantial libraries befitting the ambition than underlay his generosity.

Hall Caine was one of the most popular novelists and dramatists of the era. According to Wikipedia: 'Writing fifteen novels on subjects of adultery, divorce, domestic violence, illegitimacy, infanticide, religious bigotry and women’s rights he became an international literary celebrity, selling ten million books. Caine was the most highly paid novelist of his day. The Eternal City is the first novel to sell over a million copies worldwide.' So it sounds like he was quite a catch to open the library - and Morley was on a roll at this time ... Morley-born Herbert Henry Asquith was Chancellor of the Exchequer and became Prime Minister two years later.

Morley achieved borough status in 1886, and a few years later its remarkable - and magnificent - town hall was built. It still stands, just a stone's throw from the library, though Morley was absorbed into Leeds back in 1974.

The library lobby has a wonderful mosaic floor featuring Morley's coat of arms, devised when it became a borough. The legend 'Industria Omnia Vincit' translates as industry conquers all - you can see why that might appeal to the millocrats who were the dominant political force in late Victorian Morley.

And the emblem - well, top row a couple of cannon balls to represent the civil war battles of the 1640s fought in and around the town, and in the middle a cotton boll (this puzzles me, Morley was part of the heavy woollen district - Lancashire was cotton). Then a shuttle representing textiles which at this time was Morley's defining industry. And below a shove and pick to reflect the small coal mines which dotted the town and adjoining villages, and which by this date were starting to peter out.

This same splendid coat of army features on stained glass in the doors on the library's first floor. A classy touch! And that floor is also now home to the community archive and local history collection. On this version you can see more clearly the ram's head representing the woollen industry - alas now all gone (though a few of the mills, and rather more of the chapels, remain). Below is an aerial view of the town from 1922 from an excellent history and planning document.

Morley Town Hall with its clock tower is in the centre of the photo towards the top. The library is probably the building with the light coloured roof about 100 yards to its right.

Once upon a time, E.P. Thompson taught extra-mural classes at the library and made good use of a stout oval wooden table in the reading room. I asked if it was still around. There's a solid wooden table in the computer room upstairs, but it doesn't quite fit the bill.

In 1964, Thompson commented of his Morley classes: 'Within living memory ... it seems, miners have worked lying down in eighteen-inch seams, children have been in the mills at the age of nine, urine has been collected from pub urinals for scouring, while the brother of one of the students still uses teazles to raise the 'nap'. It is difficult to believe that the industrial revolution has yet occurred in Morley, and next year's syllabus (in the later 19th century) will seem like a tour through the space age'.

There are wonderful design touches to the library - no wonder it's a listed building (and, happily, well used). What a bobby dazzler!