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On the trail of East End anti-hero, Peter the Painter

1/2/2022

This is Peter the Painter - fashionably dressed and with a splendid moustache. He looks like a pillar of the establishment. In fact, he was quite the opposite and part of a long line of anti-heroes in the East End of London.

Peter was a Latvian anarchist and nationalist who was believed to be a central figure in two sensational incidents of violence. The first was in December 1910, when a group of Latvian emigres were interrupted while trying to break through a party wall into a jeweller's shop in Houndsditch in the City of London. Three unarmed policemen were shot dead - and one of the gang died from shots fired by an accomplice.

A couple of weeks later - in January 1911 - two of the suspected gunmen were tracked down to a room at 100 Sidney Street in Stepney. A shoot-out lasting six hours ensued, and ended only when the house caught fire. Both gunmen died at the scene.

It's probable that Peter the Painter was neither at Houndsditch at the time of the shoot-out nor involved in the 'Siege of Sidney Street', but helped by his alliterative nom de guerre and the wanted posters put out by the police, he became something of a legend: the criminal mastermind who managed to get away.

The conventional account of Peter the Painter is that his identity has never been ascertained. In fact, the City of London police were confident that they could put a name to him by the close of 1912. But he wasn't in Britain and they had no evidence sufficient to secure extradition, so they kept quiet.

The anarchist and historian Phil Ruff has told the story of the afterlife of Peter the Painter, in as much as it can be retrieved, in his book A Towering Flame.

At the weekend, I strolled round the City and adjoining East End in the footsteps of Peter the Painter.

HOUNDSDITCH

Harris's jewellers was on the north side of Houndsditch just beyond the junction with Cutler Street. Nowadays there's not a single building within 100 yards of the spot that was there back in 1910. But the street layout is much the same. (And there at the eastern end of Houndsditch you can see St Botolph's, Aldgate - often regarded as the entry point to the East End.)

The gang sought to burrow in from the back of the shop, having taken a tenancy on a tiny house in 11 Exchange Buildings, the outside loo of which shared a wall with the jeweller's. Those buildings are long gone - but what was Exchange Buildings remains a yard with an entrance on Cutler Street.

HEADING HOME

The shoot out left three police officers dead, and one of the gang - who went by the name George Gardstein as well as having several other aliases - badly (it transpires fatally) wounded. His colleagues propped him up, a bit as if he was a drunk - it was late Saturday night after all - and sought to find refuge fior him.

Goldstein's room in Gold Street in Stepney was too far away - so they made for 59 Grove Street, where two of the gang, Fritz Svaars and Peter the Painter, had rooms. Both these streets have disappeared. Gold Street has been covered by Stepney Green Park, while Grove Street once stood close to Ropemaker's Walk, on the south side of Commercial Road.

When the group got Gardstein into the rooms in Grove Street, there were two women there, Luba Milstein, the partner of Fritz Svaars, and her friend Rosa Trassjonsky. The men dumped Gardstein there, and it was the women - Rosa in particular - who cared for the dying man.

Rosa lived nearby at 10 Settle (now Settles) Street on the other side of Commercial Road, and that's one of the very few places connected to the Sidney Street drama still standing.

10 Settle Street, where Rosa rented a back room on the third floor, is at the end of a short row of five-storey houses which must then have been fairly new. The police searched her room and confiscated her letters and photos - many of which are now in the holdings of the London Metropolitan Archive.

Fritz Svaars' cousin, Jacob Peters (who was NOT Peter the Painter), was also caught up in the police investigation of the Houndsditch killings and was eventually put on trial. He lived nearby on Turner Street, and while his house is not standing some others of that era are.

SIDNEY STREET

The site of 100 Sidney Street was cleared many years ago. Social housing now stands on the spot. But other sections of Sidney Street still have nineteenth century terrace housing ...

and slightly later red brick tenements:

And at the south end of Sidney Street, close to the junction with Commercial Road, there are some reminders of the event that made the street renowned, indeed notorious -

- including two fairly recent blocks which, unlikely as it seems, honour the man on whose trail we have been!

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Rudolf Rocker and 'A Night with the Anarchists'

10/1/2022

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This charming drawing of the anarchist Rudolf Rocker addressing a meeting is by his son, Fermin Rocker.

Rudolf Rocker was the key figure in the flourishing anarchist movement in the East End of London in the years immediately before the outbreak of the First World War in 1914. He was German and a gentile, but mastered Yiddish and was the editor of a remarkable Yiddish weekly newspaper, the Arbeter Fraint (or Workers' Friend).

In the aftermath of two notorious shoot-outs - at Houndsditch in the City and at Sidney Street in Stepney - press attention focussed on the mainly Jewish anarchist movement in the East End. Those incidents involved Latvian political refugees, probably with anarchist synmpathies. In December 1910, a group were interrupted at Houndsditch while trying to break through a wall and rob a jeweller's shop - three police men were shot dead and two more police suffered bullet wounds.

The following month, two alleged members of the gang were tracked down to a first floor room in Sidney Street. The house was surrounded by police, troops were brought in, and shots were exchanged over several hours. The two gunmen died.

Rocker and most of his comrades deeply disapproved of this violence, and the 'expropriations' - armed robberies to fund the movement - which occasioned them.

The Worker's Friend was published from an address in Jubilee Street, a stone's throw from Sidney Street. Next door was the anarchist Jubilee Street Club. Many of the Latvians involved in the Houndsditch incident had certainly visited the club. Journalists descended on the area, Some of their reporting was crude, inaccurate and sensationalist but a few among the reporters delivered vivid and well-informed accounts of East End anarchism. I'm posting a few of those pieces of journalism on this blog.

Philip Gibbs and J.P. Eddy, in the immediate aftermath of the Siege of Sidney Street, moved into the East End and wrote a series of articles for the Daily Chronicle - this article, 'A Night with the Anarchists', appeared on 10 January 1911 and includes accounts of conversations with both Rudolf Rocker and his partner Milly Witcop:

Philip Gibbs made productive use of his sojourn in the East End - as well as his three co-authored articles for the Daily Chronicle, he also wrote two bylined pieces for the weekly Graphic, notably this account below of 'An Evening in an Anarchists' Club'.

Again, Rocker is clearly the man that Gibbs heard speak. And the article's conclusion became renowned: 'These alien anarchists were as tame as rabbits. I am convinced they had not a revolver among them. And yet, looking back upon this adventure and remembering the words I heard, I am sure that this intellectual anarchy, this philosophy of revolution, is more dangerous to the state of Europe than pistols and nitro-glycerine. For out of that anarchist club in the East End come ideas more powerful in destruction than dynamite.'

And I'm posting the columns of text individually here so it is more easily legible:

One at least of the mainstream papers took the trouble to talk at length to this prominent anarchist with 'sledge-hammer eloquence'. Rudolf Rocker expressed satisfaction with the write up of this interview he gave to the establishment minded Morning Post published in its issue of 7 January 1911 - here's the article with the title 'The Anarchist Leader':

And let's close as we began, with one of Fermin Rocker's drawings of his father on the platform:

And a codicil, many years ago I interviewed Fermin Rocker (who was born in 1907) about his childhood memories of his father and the anarchist movement in the London of his childhood. Here it is:

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Remembering Houndsditch and Sidney Street

29/10/2021

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I'm doing some research into the spate of Latvian revolutionary 'expropriation' in London 110 years ago and I've come across some marvellous pieces of ephemera. The Latvian anarchists probably got away with a few robberies and wages snatches. But two robberies failed spectacularly - and tragically.

One was the Tottenham Outrage of January 1909, when two heavily armed robbers stole the money being brought to pay the wages at a rubber factory. They got the cash - but were pursued over six miles by police, passers-by, local kids, the lot. The two robbers died or suffered fatal injuries. And two others were shot dead - a policeman and a ten-year-old boy.

In December 1910, another group of armed Latvian emigres staged a much more sophisticated attempt to rob a jewellery shop in Houndsditch in the City of London. They were interrupted by local police, Three police officers were shot dead, and one of the robbers suffered fatal gunshot wounds at the hands of a comrade.

There was a national sense of shock and anger. This folding mourning card paid tribute to the three murdered policemen.

A few weeks later, two of the suspected Houndsditch gang were tracked down to a first-floor room at 100 Sidney Street in Stepney. Overnight the police surrounded the house and managed to get the other occupants out. The two men were well armed. The first shots rang out at 7:30 in the morning of 3rd January 1911- and the shoot-out continued for another six hours.

The police were comprehensively outgunned, and Scots Guards were called in to help meet the volley of shots fired by the two men. Eventually the house caught fire. The fire brigade were not allowed to douse the flames. In the embers of the house, the bodies of the two gunmen were found - one had been shot and other died from suffocation.

The Siege of Sidney Street was a sensation. This dramatic, illustrated account of the event was on sale within days.

And here's another wonderful artefact - a few days after the Siege, some of those allegedly involved were required to appear in court in committal proceedings relating to the Houndsditch shootings.

This news photo shows the two women who appeared - Sara Trassjonsky and Luba Milstein - flanked by a warder and a prison matron. What a telling image!

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A New Year's Ramble ... to Rinkoffs

4/1/2019

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My New Year ramble has become an annual custom - this time (new camera in hand) there was a touch less serendipity about the route. I wanted to walk along Jubilee Street in Stepney, and visit one of the last surviving Jewish institutions in the old East End.

The walk began at Aldgate tube station and took me along Commercial Road, the distinctly shabby main road heading east towards Canary Wharf. There are a few old mansion blocks still lining the street, but most of the businesses are given over to wholesale garment shops - and the cheap end of the business. Almost all are South Asian-run, but it's a continuation of what was the defining industry of the Jewish East End. Coincidence perhaps, but a curious and heartwarming one.

There's still a synagogue on Commercial Road - one of, I think, only three surviving in the East End where once were were 150 or more. The Congregation of Jacob dates back to 1903 though this building was consecrated only in 1921. It has an imposing frontage and by all accounts the interior is even more splendid - but this morning it was firmly shut.

Jubilee Street runs from Commercial Road several hundred yards north to Whitechapel Road, and at the northern end is Rinkoff Bakeries. I'd never been there before. I'll certainly be going again. I had a coffee and a smoked salmon and cream cheese beigel. Excellent! And I brought back pastries for the family.

The baking is done on the premises, and it's been run by the same family ever since 1911. Hyman Rinkoff came to London from Kiev and his bakery was intially in Old Montague Street - that's Whitechapel. Rinkoffs moved to Jubilee Street in the 1970s.

Ray Rinkoff - Hyman's grandson - now runs the business. He was himself a baker; his daughter works there as a baker; his wife runs 'walk, talk, bake' strolls through the East End. Tasty!

The place does good business. There are a few tables - both inside and out (and even on a nippy January morning most of the outside tables were taken) - and a steady stream of customers ... tourists, 'pilgrims', but mainly locals who want a take away cake, beigel or coffee.

That's Ray above, with a model of himself in his days as a master baker. He trades a lot on tradition, but there's quality in the mix too. I had never heard of Rinkoffs until I started thinking about this walk - if you haven't been, do go!

Jubilee Street has been knocked around a lot. There's only a short stretch towards the north end that looks a little as it would have done a century ago, when this area was overwhelmingly Jewish.

The street has a special place in the history of the East End - it was the epicentre of of the once formidable anarchist movement in this part of London.

The Jubilee Street Club was established in 1906 and for eight years was both a social and educational centre. Rudolf Rocker was closely associated with the club, and such anarchist luminaries as Kropotkin and Malatesta spoke here. I once interviewed Nellie Dick (born Naomi Ploschansky) who as a young woman was active in the Jubilee Street Club and helped to organise a 'Modern School' here.

There's a wonderful account of this and other London anarchist clubs, including a rather grainy photograph, in this research paper by the historian Jonathan Moses. It's worth a read. The old club building was demolished many decades ago and Jarman House, with its distinctive sky blue balconies, now stands on the site.

A little to the east lies Stepney Green, a wonderfully peaceful and historic spot. Rudolf Rocker and his family - including his younger son Fermin, an artist - once lived in a top floor flat here. By chance a few year ago, I had the opportunity to visit that same flat in Dunstan House when my friend Bill Schwarz was putting up here. Fermin's drawing of the building graced the cover of his memoir of his East End childhood, and you can see how little it has changed.

Just to the south is the church of St Dunstan and All Saints, Stepney - one of the few London churches which is genuinely medieval. In origin it is Anglo-Saxon and houses a tenth century rood, a representation of the crucifixion (the photo is from the church's website), which is believed to be a remnant of the church that St Dunstan himself may have founded here.

And as so often with old London churches, its memorials are testament to the human cost of Britain's Imperial ambitions.

Just east of the church and its grounds, there's the sort of street that I just love - Durham Row, tiny post-war bungalows on one side, and (at a guess) mid-nineteenth century buildings on the other, several of which seem once to have been shops. And above one of these one-time shop windows, it's just possible to make out an inscription: E, Andrews, FLORIST.

Another couple of hundred yards, and I reached the Regent's Canal - the end of my walk. Thanks for making the journey with me.

And as I looked back, there was the City looming over the East End, looking almost enticing ... from a distance.

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Going, going, gone ...

16/8/2017

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Another of the tenuous links with the days when the End End was a Jewish enclave is about to be lost. S. Reiss (it's pronounced Rees) is just about the last Jewish-run business left at the heart of what was once the Jewish East End. It's an old-fashioned men's outfitters on Whitechapel High Street, near the junction with Goulston Street where - until not all that long ago - another old East End institution, Tubby Isaacs' seafood stall, had its pitch.

I got a shock when I saw the 'closing down' posters today as I passed by. I popped in and had a brief chat with Stuart behind the counter. Yes, he said, it's still a Jewish-run concern. No, it's not moving. It's shutting down altogether at the end of September.

I'm tempted to buy a memento - not sure what. Perhaps a trilby, which somehow seems to be a suitable purchase from the last Jewish menswear shop in this part of the city. The trilby I discover got its name from George du Maurier's 1894 novel Trilby - which featured a heroine so named. In the initial stage production, a narrow brimmed hat of this sort was worn - and the term stuck.

If I get one, I'll be sure to post a photo!

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Bill Fishman, "anarcho-conformist"

25/4/2015

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Bill Fishman, foremost historian and champion of the Jewish East End, was remembered at a warm and well attended memorial meeting in London's East End this afternoon. Bill knew he was part of a vanishing tribe, those who grew up in the Jewish East End as well as chronicled it - he described himself with his customary mischief, recalled colleague Nadia Valman, as "the last of the Mohicans".

Bill's great work was East End Jewish Radicals - retrieving the world just before the First World War when many poor Jewish immigrants in Whitechapel, Stepney and Spitalfields looked to anarchism as an ideology of self-respect and hope.There was a bit of the anarchist about Bill - and he was certainly in some ways anarchic. But Lord Trevor Smith, speaking this afternoon, caught the ambiguity about Bill when he described him as "an anarcho-conformist".

He found romance and valour in the tales of East End anarchists - and it was wonderful that among those present today was the grandson of Rudolf Rocker, the German goy who was the key figure in the Yiddish-speaking movement in the East End in the twenty years before twin events, World War and then the Russian Revolution, utterly changed the political landscape.

Bill also relished his army service during the Second World War, serving in India and Burma and picking up a smattering of Urdu which he used to theatrical effect in later life. And while of working class roots, the life his family led - as one of his sons pointed out - was determinedly middle-class, not in Whitechapel or Bethnal Green but first in North Kensington and later in the suburbs of Kenton.

I remember going on one of Bill Fishman's flamboyant guided walks round the East End back in 1981. A few years later, he was a key part of two radio documentaries I made - one for Radio 4 about Arthur Morrison's 'Jago' and the other for the World Service about Rudolf Rocker (the audio of both is here). He was warm and enthusiastic, and incredibly generous - he gave me two rare old socialist pamphlets, an act of great kindness ... though I found it disconcerting to be addressed in my late twenties as "boy", meant kindly of course but also putting me in my place.

The last time I saw Bill was at the 75th anniversary celebrations of the Battle of Cable Street - an event he witnessed on 4th October 1936. He was very frail, but proud to be present to mark a defining political moment in the East End, when left-wing opponents of fascism made common cause to stop Oswald Mosley and his followers marching through the Jewish East End.

The venue for today's memorial meeting was so appropriate - Queen Mary in the East End, the academic institution with which Bill was most closely linked .... and surely the only university anywhere which is built around a Jewish cemetery, where today the harebells put on a marvellous display.

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Sanchita Islam, 'The Rebel Within' updated

22/11/2012

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Sanchita Islam and her art

I first met Sanchita Islam quite a few years back in the lobby of what was then the Whitechapel Library. Arnold Wesker was there too. For a radio programme, I was taking them through the streets just to the north, their East Ends, and looking at the different meanings and memories tied up with the buildings on and around Brick Lane. I wasn't sure they were going to get on. But after a tricky moment early on, they hit it off just fine, and it was one of the more memorable pieces of radio I've pulled off.

Sanchita's style of art is eclectic. This is an oil painting entitled 'Dadu' - the Bengali word for paternal grandmother. I find it wonderfully evocative and affectionate. Sanchita is British of Bangaldeshi heritage, and has taken an unconventional route to being a well known and regarded artist, writer and film-maker. Don't take my word, here's her own account:

'Her path towards becoming an artist has been an unconventional one.
A former model, a former Miss Bengali beauty queen, a double graduate from the
London School of Economics, the recipient of a Channel 4 bursary to attend Film
School, and a Chelsea School of art school drop out, her education has been eclectic
to say the least. She has always been somewhat of a maverick, eschewing the gallery
system, Sanchita set up her own Pigment Explosion Gallery, off Brick Lane, in 1999,
engaging in international art projects and showing her work in both galleries and
unconventional spaces in London and abroad.'

You can find out more here about pigmentexplosion - and in March, she's going to have a mid-career retrospective entitled 'The Rebel Within'. It will be at Rich Mix on Bethnal Green Road. Thanks to Sanchita for allowing me to post these images of her art - and see you there!

LATER- Sanchita Islam comments: The painting of Dadu is based on a very poor quality digital photo I took of my step-grandmother in Barisal Bangladesh. The bed on which she sits, where we see her absorbed in the Koran, was as hard as wood, but she didn't seem to mind. The house is over one hundred years old - relatively untouched with its crumbling, cracked walls - and very charming. I am a great admirer of Vermeer, his use of light and the elevation of the ordinary folk into something monumental. I was trying to create a modern day Vermeer in a Bangladeshi setting, a subject we see rarely in contemporary modern art. I'm not saying I am anyway near Vermeer, but that was my point of reference and inspiration.

The other piece is the beginning of a 30-foot scroll of the panoramic view of East London executed from the top of Shoreditch House, which I completed during my residency there. I've been drawing the East End of London from rooftops for many years and am constantly fascinated by the rapid state of change of urban landscapes. The view was quite dramatically different by the time of completion with the fat concrete arm of the new train line brutally obscuring everything in its path. The landscape has altered irrevocably as a result.

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'Cohen the Crooner, the Crosby from Mile End'

7/1/2012

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What a remarkable film clip! This is Max Bacon - a radio and music hall comedian - performing 'Cohen the Crooner, the Crosby from Mile End' in a 1936 movie: 'Soft Lights and Sweet Music'. Part of it was filmed on location at Mile End market.

I owe this to Alan Dein. He's just bought a 78 rpm copy of this number at his local charity shop. And scouring around the internet to find out more, he came across the wonderful YouTube clip posted above.

As you can see, the sleeve of the disc Alan bought (thanks Alan for screening it and sending the image on) shows that it originally came from a shop in - yes - Mile End!

There's a brief biography of Max Bacon here. He was a drummer with the renowned Ambrose orchestra, and did occasional comedy songs, before later going into variety and making radio appearances.

He is on the left on the accompanying photo of two Jewish comedians - an image I came across on a site I warmly recommend, run by Phil Walker and devoted to the Jewish East End http://www.jewisheastend.com/london.html

Doing my own digging about the song and the singer, I found another YouTube clip - which said it was Adele performing 'Cohen the Crooner'. Really?!!! Well, yes and no - not that Adele, but worth watching all the same:

And the lyrics of the song, courtesy of mudcat ... all together now!

As I push my barrow along
You'll hear me sing the latest song
I'm Cohen the crooner
The Crosby from Mile End.

I sell peanuts penny a bag
To the tune of Tiger Rag
I'm Cohen the crooner
The Crosby from Mile End.

I sing jazz or [h]opera
My customers to suit,
But I don't give a hoot
So long I sell my fruit.

Radio singers may be swell
But they can't sell you fruits as well
Like Cohen the crooner
The Crosby from Mile End.

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On the trail of East End anti-hero, Peter the Painter

HOUNDSDITCH

HEADING HOME

SIDNEY STREET

Rudolf Rocker and 'A Night with the Anarchists'

Remembering Houndsditch and Sidney Street

A New Year's Ramble ... to Rinkoffs

Going, going, gone ...

Bill Fishman, "anarcho-conformist"

Sanchita Islam, 'The Rebel Within' updated

'Cohen the Crooner, the Crosby from Mile End'

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