View allAll Photos Tagged Cleanliness
Tide series, Yellow, Red, Black; 2003; 12.125"h x 11.5"w x 6.5"d, mixed media on abandoned Tide laundry detergent box.
About this series: TideYellow, TideRed and TideBlack.
I began noticing vagrant TIDE boxes all over the city (Montreal)... in the recycle bins and in garbages on Recycle Bin Day and/or Garbage Day. They stood out so vividly among the green plastic bin containers and the garbage bags thrown out on the streets of our neighborhoods. They were so compelling to me: "TAKE ME HOME", that I began stopping my car wherever I was and no matter where I was going and picking them up.
They were usually in perfect condition... empty. They are very sturdy, having to hold all our laundry detergent for generations... never changing its look very much... just an upgrading of graphics now and then over the years (first introduced in '46)
I fell in love with them... they spoke to me of wash day Mondays... motherhood, family... cleanliness (is next to godliness). Andy Warhol (with a twist)...
I held on to them for a long while, enjoying their beauty. I started to paint them.... giving them different personalities... different interiors.
Each Tide box contains a smaller box/bag inside.. way at the bottom... a precious gift.. a secret hiding place...
But... this is all a GREAT SEDUCTION.... Yes, making a "cultural icon" from something that is a destructive force, is alarming.... and so my vision of these tide boxes has evoked and touched something in all of us... beyond what was originally intended... This is art....
...And ART IS THE CONSCIENCE OF HUMANITY.
It is the responsibility of the artist to provoke... and engage.
If cleanliness is next to god-liness, Saint Patrick’s Cathedral just scored some points with the big man upstairs.
The venerable house of worship unveiled a brighter new pressure-washed Fifth Avenue facade this week — tearing down the scaffolding that masked it for more than two years.
It’s the first time the 135-year-old cathedral has undergone this type of restoration — which called for workers to spray its marble exterior with a mixture of water and glass beads to remove decades’ worth of dirt and gunk, according to St. Pat’s reps.
Church leaders ordered the $25 million top-to-bottom scrub-down, which began in May 2012, after golf-ball-sized chunks of stone began to fall off the Gothic cathedral. The restoration helped solve that problem by removing toxins from the marble that had caused it to crack and crumble. It’s part of a larger $180 million restoration that is roughly two-thirds done. The full restoration, which is expected to be complete by late 2015, also includes cleaning and -restoring the stain-glass windows.
GE's in ascending order of cleanliness (IC 2704, CN 2839 & CN 3036) lead CN 120 by MP 6 of CN's Montreal sub, passing the now closed Lachine spur at left.
UNESCO World heritage site:
"Bassari Country: Bassari, Fula and Bedik Cultural Landscapes" (ref 1407 whc.unesco.org/en/list/1407)
The site, located in south-east Senegal, includes three geographical areas: the Bassari–Salémata area, the Bedik–Bandafassi area and the Fula–Dindéfello area, each with its specific morphological traits. The Bassari, Fula and Bedik peoples settled from the 11th to the 19th centuries and developed specific cultures and habitats symbiotic with their surrounding natural environment. The Bassari landscape is marked by terraces and rice paddies, interspersed with villages, hamlets and archaeological sites. The Bedik villages are formed by dense groups of huts with steep thatched roofs. Their inhabitants’ cultural expressions are characterized by original traits of agro-pastoral, social, ritual and spiritual practices, which represent an original response to environmental constraints and human pressures. The site is a well-preserved multicultural landscape housing original and still vibrant local cultures.
Cleanliness, patterns etc. are very,very hard to come by in Bangladesh. We really don't care about beauty,patterns,cleanliness at all ( except for boasting in history books about culture-heritage blah blah...)
There is hardly any exception. This is one rare view of planned plantation on the side of road, which follows some sort of a pattern.
Tangail, 2015
FRANKLIN HYDE
Who caroused in the Dirt and was corrected by His Uncle
His Uncle came on Franklin Hyde
Carousing in the Dirt.
He Shook him hard from Side to Side
And Hit him till it Hurt,
Exclaiming with a Final Thud
"Take that! Abandoned Boy!
For playing with Disgusting Mud
As though it were a Toy!"
MORAL:
From Franklin Hyde’s adventure, learn
To pass your Leisure Time
In Cleanly Merriment, and turn
From Mud and Oose and Slime
And every form of Nastiness—
But, on the other Hand,
Children in ordinary Dress
May always play with Sand.
DSCF0238
Dhaka is not a clean city. People loves to make everything dirty, remain dirty. Only exception is perhaps Dhaka University and BUET campus, where cleaners regularly try their best to remove the dirty things from streets,shops,cafe and canteens.
BUET, Dhaka 2015
A snowy owl caught in the act of preening. Preening is a bird's way of taking care of its feathers. Birds preen to remove dirt, insects, and to keep their feathers in good orderly working condition. Most birds have a uropygial gland at the base of their tail that secretes an oily or waxy substance that can be applied to their feathers. Of course, there are some birds that don't have these glands, but owls are not one of them. There are some spurious reports on the internet to suggest otherwise, but these are false. There is one article suggesting that owls have down powder. Down powder is the result of a special down like feather that never molts but continues to grow. The ends of the feather turn to a powdery substance with a waxy keratin like composition. This takes the place of secretions from a uropygial gland in these birds. There are several bird species that have down powder feathers (pigeons, night herons, parrots, etc.) but owls are not one of them. I think I'll just stick to taking showers for now. As long as I still have hot water!
He was a neighborhood fixture back in the days before "keep Portland weird" was a bumper sticker motto.
Ragged clothes, pushing a shopping cart filled with garbage bags, he looked homeless--but wasn't. He was right at home, being and doing just what he wanted.
He seemed mute, but only because he didn't feel much like talking. Everwhere he went, he swept up. In his wake was cleanliness. Once, I saw a motorcyclist take a fall in the rain, and The Sweeper (the only name we had for him) was the first to jump in to help the biker get his Harley up again.
The cigarette butts he'd sweep off the sidewalk, he'd smoke those down to the filter. I offered him a pack of Marlboros once, and he shuffled by wordlessly. The guy who ran a coffee cart near the Art Museum earned his trust, and said he enjoyed his conversation. He called him "The Professor", and said he'd retired from teaching at the Colorado College of Mines. He warned me not to take his picture, or pay him too much interest--he was a bone fide "recluse", had a pension, and was happy just to be ignored and left to sweeping the streets he lived on.
The newspaper staff in the 80s--we all saw him a lot. My kids' St. James Day Care played at "Peace Park", where he'd often sit on a park bench and watch--they knew him, too. I got on his wrong side after a late night encounter where I noticed he had a huge .45 automatic pistol in his cart, and mentioned it to a cop friend. It turned out to be a pellet gun. Later, I tried to apologize to him, and he tossed his coffee on me. Yeh, good intentions aside, I'd earned a spot on his shit list.
Eventually Portland got too aware of him, his cloak of invisiblility frayed, and he left. I tried to keep tabs on him, and learned he'd relocated to Seattle, and then eventually I read an obituary. He'd remained inscrutable to the end. I thought about him the other day, when I saw a video about a high school kid who had found his place with his schoolmates, simply by holding doors open for everyone. He became "The Doorman", and was elected Prom King. It got me thinking about "right livelihood", the ease and value of picking out the little things that help and are appreciated. It made me think of "The Sweeper" and his broom. thedigitalnest.com/the-doorman-josh-yandt-how-he-overcame...
It resonated with me, and called to mind a passage I'd just read from Clyde Rice's "Night Freight" a conversation with an old man hobo (former Wyoming sheriff) who was hiding from his family, and enjoying life riding the rails: "They want me to quit living as I want to and live as they do. But I don't and by God I won't...Success seems to make men petulant about the founding things. Yeah, and I've found that there's more fire and eagerness in the eyes of transients and petty thieves and even killers than there is in the eyes of the successful middle class. I've come to it that when men cease to be savage and impulsive they soon convert even their integrity to suet."
So--it struck me, thinking on The Sweeper, and what he taught everyday. And how maybe that other name, "The Professor", suited him better. I tried to find some record of him on the internet, but without any luck, until I found a little-viewed locally written folksong eulogy to the man--it's worth a listen: Mr Sweeper Man (original)
"Being clean is a sign of spiritual purity or goodness, as in Don't forget to wash your ears--cleanliness is next to godliness. This phrase was first recorded in a sermon by John Wesley in 1778, but the idea is ancient, found in Babylonian and Hebrew religious tracts. It is still invoked, often as an admonition to wash or clean up."
Original Caption: Miners Just Surfacing on the Mine Elevator at the Virginia-Pocahontas Mine #4 near Richlands, Virginia. They Will Make Way for the 4 P.M. to Midnight Shift. The Mines Have to Work Shifts and a Midnight to Morning Or "Hoot-Owl" Shift for Cleanup Operations. Note the Variety of Safety Signs on the Elevator Gate and the Prohibition of Carrying Matches, Cigarettes Or an Open Light Into the Mines. Most of the Men Who Smoke Chew Tobacco While on the Job 04/1974
U.S. National Archives’ Local Identifier: 412-DA-13940
Photographer: Corn, Jack, 1929-
Subjects:
Richlands (Tazewell county, Virginia, United States) inhabited place
Environmental Protection Agency
Project DOCUMERICA
Persistent URL: catalog.archives.gov/id/556392
Repository: Still Picture Records Section, Special Media Archives Services Division (NWCS-S), National Archives at College Park, 8601 Adelphi Road, College Park, MD, 20740-6001.
For information about ordering reproductions of photographs held by the Still Picture Unit, visit: www.archives.gov/research/order/still-pictures.html
Reproductions may be ordered via an independent vendor. NARA maintains a list of vendors at www.archives.gov/research/order/vendors-photos-maps-dc.html
Access Restrictions: Unrestricted
Use Restrictions: Unrestricted
We keep these in the bathroom, cuz ya never know!
DIRECTIONS:
1. Remove moist towelette
2. Devoutly wipe away wrong-doing
3. Spot check for stubborn guilt
4. Wipe again as needed
5. Discard sins in waste receptacle
6. Go forth purified and moisturized
macro mondays challenge #54 - bathroom items
Nothing unusual about a photo of a big cat thoroughly grooming itself - what I did find amazing is the huge unsheathed claws on Shimbu - a magnificent 20 yo female Snow Leopard.
Cats have such a fearsome array of weapons that make them the apex predator.
Royal Melbourne Zoo, Parkville, Victoria, Australia
Ganges River/India (In Hinduism, water has the importance of physical and spiritual cleanliness and well-being, a striving to attain purity and avoid pollution. This widespread aspiration lends itself to a reverence for water as well as the integration of water into most Hindu rituals, as it is believed that water has spiritually cleansing powers.
• Holy places are usually located on the banks of rivers, coasts, seashores and mountains. Sites of convergence between land and two, or even better three, rivers, carry special significance and are especially sacred. Sacred rivers are thought to be a great equalizer. For example, in the Ganges, the pure are thought to be made even more pure, and the impure have their pollution removed if only temporarily. In these sacred waters, the distinctions imposed by castes are alleviated, as all sins fall away.
• Every spring, the Ganges River swells with water as snow melts in the Himalayas. The water brings life as trees and flowers bloom and crops grow. This cycle of life is seen as a metaphor for Hinduism.
• Water represents the "non-manifested substratum from which all manifestations derive" and is considered by Hindus to be a purifier, life-giver, and destroyer of evil.
• Water is a symbol of fertility, absence of which can cause barrenness, sterility leading to death....[quote: Nikhil Mundra, scienceofhinduism.blogspot.com]
Copyright © 2010 by inigolai/Photography
No part of this picture may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means (on websites, blogs) without prior permission.
captured a still scene inside the müller drug market, highlighting the neat aisles filled with an array of products. from food items to cleaning supplies, the store offers a diverse selection. the well-lit venue with shiny floors exudes cleanliness and order, typical of a commercial area in the vicinity of palma.
In the Swiss Alps near the Italian border is a small valley town called Lostallo. For the 5th summer in a row Shankra festival made this place its home for a goa-psytrance festival.
Video from 2017 youtu.be/sGJAhJp605k
Downloads on Flickr are free for fiends & followers but do tell the people where you got the picture.
This calf could have been no more than a day or two old judging by the cleanliness of it's nose and hooves. It made such a sweet sight
Supermarkets back home have a ready supply of bananas and coconuts, but the best tastes of mangos and these chôm chôm really go one step forward in taste and backwards in cleanliness. Planned for a picnic dinner on the grass later, a bunch of rambutan goes nicely.
ISO6400 f5.6 1/30 300mm LR
Chennai Central, erstwhile Madras Central, is the main railway terminus in the city of Chennai, formerly known as Madras. It lies adjacent to the current headquarters of the Southern Railway, as well as the Ripon Building, and is one of the most important railway hubs in South India. The other major railway hub stations in the city are Chennai Egmore and Tambaram. Chennai Central connects the city to New Delhi and prominent cities of India such as Ahmedabad, Bangalore, Bhopal, Coimbatore, Hyderabad, Jaipur, Kolkata, Lucknow, Mumbai, Patna, Varanasi, Thiruvananthapuram, Visakhapatnam and so forth. The 142-year-old building of the railway station, one of the most prominent landmarks of Chennai, was designed by architect George Harding. Along with Chennai Beach, the station is also a main hub for the Chennai Suburban Railway system.
Chennai Central serves as a symbolic landmark for people in South India as this station served as the main gateway for all people who travelled to South India during the British times. About 350,000 passengers use the terminus every day. Chennai Egmore, Coimbatore Junction and Chennai Central are the most profitable stations of Southern Railways. As per a report published in 2007 by the Indian Railways, Chennai Central and Secunderabad were awarded 183 points out of a maximum of 300 for cleanliness, the highest in the country.
HISTORY
Marking the initial days of the railways in the Indian Subcontinent, the Madras Railway Company began to network South India in 1856. The first station was built at Royapuram, which remained the main station at that time. Expansion of the Madras Railways network, particularly the completion of the Madras–Vyasarpadi line, called for a second station in Madras, resulting in Madras Central coming into being.
Madras Central was built in 1873 at Parktown as a second terminus to decongest the Royapuram harbour station, which was being utilised for port movements. The station was built on the open grounds that had once been called John Pereira's Gardens, belonging to Joao Pereira de Faria (John Pereira), a Portuguese merchant in the port town of Negapatam (present day Nagapattinam) who settled in Madras in 1660. The garden had a house used by Pereira for rest and recreation. Having fallen into disuse, the garden had become a gaming den, with cock-fighting being the favourite sport at that time, until when the Trinity Chapel was built nearby in 1831 and the Railways moved into the area in the 1870s.
In 1907, Madras Central was made the Madras Railway Company's main station. The station gained prominence after the beach line was extended further south in the same year, and Royapuram was no longer a terminus for Madras. All trains were then terminated at Madras Central instead. The Madras and Southern Mahratta Railway Company was formed in 1908 and took over the Central station from the Madras Railway Company. The station's position was further strengthened after the construction of the headquarters of the Madras and Southern Mahratta Railway (erstwhile Madras Railway and now known as the Southern Railway) adjacent to it in 1922.
Madras Central was part of South Indian Railway Company during the British rule. The company was established in 1890 and was initially headquartered in Trichinopoly. Egmore Railway Station was made its northern terminus in 1908. It was then shifted to Madurai and later to Madras Central. With the opening of the Egmore Railway Station, plans were first made of linking Madras Central and Egmore, which was later dropped. The company operated a suburban electric train service for Madras city from May 1931 onwards in the Madras Beach-Tambaram section. In 1959, additional changes were made to the station. Electrification of the lines at the station began in 1979, when the section up to Gummidipoondi was electrified on 13 April 1979. The lines up to Tiruvallur were electrified on 29 November 1979 while the tracks along Platforms 1 to 7 were electrified on 29 December 1979.
EXPANSION
In the 1980s, the Southern Railway required land for expansion of the terminus and was looking for the erstwhile Moore Market building located next to the terminus. In 1985, when the market building caught fire and was destroyed, the structure was transferred to the Railways by the government, and the Railways built a 13-storied complex to house the suburban terminus and railway reservation counter. The land in front of the building was made into a car park. Following the renaming of the city of Madras in 1996, the station became known as Chennai Central. Due to increasing passenger movement, the main building was extended in 1998 with the addition of a new building on the western side with a similar architecture to the original. After this duplication of the main building, the station had 12 platforms. Capacity at the station was further augmented when the multi-storeyed Moore Market Complex was made a dedicated terminus with three separate platforms for the Chennai Suburban Railway system. In the 1990s, when the IRCTC was formed, modular stalls came up and food plazas were set up.
In 2005, the buildings were painted a light brown colour, but concurring with the views of a campaign by the citizens of Chennai and also to retain the old nostalgic charm, they were repainted in their original brick-red color. The station is the first in India to be placed on the cyber map.
LOCATION
The terminus lies on the southern arm of the diamond junction of Chennai's railway network, where all the lines of the Chennai Suburban Railway meet. The terminus is located about 19 km from Chennai International Airport. The main entrance is located at Park Town at the intersection of the arterial Poonamallee High Road, Pallavan Salai, and Wall Tax Road between the People's Park and the Southern Railways headquarters. The station premises is located on either side of the Buckingham Canal, formerly known as Cochrane's Canal, which separates the main station and the suburban terminus. Wall Tax Road runs alongside the station on the eastern side. There are two other entrances on the eastern and western sides of the complex. The eastern entrance on Wall Tax Road leads to platform no. 1, and the western entrance lies at the entrance of the suburban terminus. The station is connected with the Park railway station and the Government General Hospital, both located across the road, by means of subways. During the building of the Chennai Metro the connection from Chennai Park to Chennai Central is by means of a steel footbridge.
LAYOUT
ARCHITECTURE
Built in the Gothic Revival style, the original station was designed by George Harding and consisted of four platforms and a capacity to accommodate 12-coach trains. It took another five years for the work to be completed, when the station was modified further by Robert Fellowes Chisholm with the addition of the central clock tower, Travancore 'caps' on the main towers, and other changes. The redesign was eventually completed in 1900. The main building, a combination of Gothic and Romanesque styles has been declared as a heritage building. The clock tower with the flagstaff, the tallest of the towers of the main building, has four faces and reaches a height of 136 ft. It is set to chime every quarter of an hour and every hour.
PLATFORMS
Chennai Central station is a terminal station with bay platforms. The average length of railway tracks in the station is 600 metres. The entire complex has 15 platforms to handle long-distance trains with 3 platforms exclusively for suburban trains. The total length of the station is about 950 m. The main building has 12 platforms and handles long distance trains. The complex for suburban trains is popularly known as the Moore Market complex. There is a platform 2A between platforms 2 and 3; it is used to handle relatively short length trains like the Chennai Rajdhani Express, Vijayawada Jan Shatabdi Express, Bangalore/Mysore Shatabdi Express and the Gudur Passenger. The 13-storied annex building, the Moore Market Complex Building, has 3 platforms and handles north- and westbound suburban trains.
Chennai Central used to have trains with special liveries until the early 1990s. The Brindavan Express used to have green livery with a yellow stripe running above and below the windows; Nilgiri Express (popularly known as the Blue Mountain Express) had blue livery. All trains now have the standard blue livery (denoting air-braked bogies). Notable exceptions include the Rajadhani, Shatabdi and the Jan Shatabdi expresses. The Saptagiri/Tirupati Express has a vivid green/cream livery combination with a matching WAM4 6PE loco from Arakkonam (AJJ) electric loco shed.
The Chennai Central Station, unlike many other major railway stations in India, is a terminus. The next station to Chennai Central, Basin Bridge Junction, is the railway junction where three different lines meet.
As of 2015, all platforms except 2A platforms, in the station were able to accommodate trains with 24 coaches. Platform 2A is the shortest of all platforms in the station and can accommodate trains with 18 coaches. Chennai Central is the only station that has a platform numbered 2A. Though it was built actually for delivering water and goods to the station staff, the Shatabdi Express now starts from here.
BRIDGE
Bridge No.7 across the Buckingham Canal connects the terminus with the railway yards and stations to the north. The bridge, measuring 33.02 m in length and carrying six tracks, acts as the gateway to the terminus. The bridge was originally resting on cast iron screw pile. Following the 2001 accident of Mangalore–Chennai express killing 52 passengers, Southern Railway started replacing all bridges resting on screw piles, and the bridge was replaced with a new RCC box bridge resting on well foundation in September 2010, with ancillary works getting completed by March 2011.
TRAFFIC
On an average, 19 trains are operated daily from the station of which 12 have 24 coaches. About 200 trains arrive and depart at the station daily, including about 46 pairs of mail/express trains, in addition to 257 suburban trains handled by the three platforms at the station's suburban terminus. About 400,000 passengers use the terminus every day, in addition to 20,000 visitors accompanying them to see-off or receive them, generating a revenue of ₹6,590,214,293 (US$98 million) as of 2012–2013, making it the top revenue-generating station of the Southern Railway. There is likely to be around 180,000 passengers in the station at a given point.
The terminus also faces traffic problems. Often, express trains and EMU services that arrive at the Basin Bridge Junction in time have to be detained for non-availability of platforms at Chennai Central. Blocking of lines is a daily challenge owing to the traffic.
SERVICES
Chennai Central is a major transit point for shipment of inland and sea fish in South India through trains. The terminus handles fish procured from Kasimedu which is sent to Kerala and sea fish from the West Coast which is brought to Chennai and ferried to West Bengal. As of 2012, on an average, the terminus handles transportation of 200 boxes of fish, each comprising 50 kilograms to 70 kilograms of consumable fish. The station also handles 5,000 postal bags daily.
FACILITIES
The station has bookshops, restaurants, accommodation facilities, Internet browsing centres, and a shopping mall. The main waiting hall can hold up to 1,000 people. In spite of being the most important terminus of the region, the station lacks several facilities such as drinking water facility, a medical unit and coach position display boards. The main concourses too have long exhausted their capacity to handle the increasing passenger crowd. There are passenger operated enquiry terminals and seven touch-screen PNR status machines in the station. The station has three split-flap timing boards, electronic display boards and Plasma TVs that mention train timings and platform number. A passenger information center in the station has been upgraded with "Spot your Train" live train display facility, information kiosks and passenger digital assistance booths. The terminus, however, has only 10 toilets, which is inadequate to its 350,000 passengers.
As of 2008, there were 607 licensed railway porters in Chennai Central. Four-seater battery operated vehicles are available to cater to the needs of the elderly and the physically impaired.
On 26 September 2014, Chennai Central station became the first in the country to get free Wi-Fi connectivity. The facility is being provided by RailTel, a public sector telecom infrastructure provider.
EMERGENCY MEDICAL CARE
In November 2012, a public interest writ petition was filed in the Madras High Court citing the lack of a full-fledged emergency medical care centre at the terminus. Further to this, the Southern Railway invited expression of interest from several hospitals in the city to establish a medical care centre.
On 15 April 2013, a new emergency medical care centre was opened. The centre has three beds, two doctors on duty and another on standby, four nurses, a paramedic team, and a round-the-clock ambulance. The centre is equipped with oxygen cylinders, an ECG, a defibrillator and resuscitation equipment. The terminus is the first railway station in the country to have facilities of an ambulance.
PARKING
The station has parking facilities for more than 1,000 two-wheelers. About 1,000 cars are parked in the standard car park every day. Since March 2008, a premium car park facility for 80 cars in addition to its regular car park is functioning at the station. The cement-concrete-paved premium parking is located between the Moore Market reservation complex and the station's main building. However, the station still faces parking problems. About 3,000 taxis arrives at the station every day.
MAINTENANCE
Chennai Central suffers from lack of enough maintenance crew, which lead to dirty and unhygienic trains. According to the Railway sources, as of July 2012, Chennai Central was 180 short of the sanctioned 405 maintenance employees, including mechanical, electrical and general maintenance, required for cleaning the interiors and exteriors of trains and undertaking routine mechanical and electrical maintenance of trains. Contracts for cleaning the station has been awarded for a period of three years from 2010 for a value of ₹ 43.1 million. In 2007, the number of dustbins in the station was 28.50 per 10,000 passengers.
On average, about 51 train units depart and arrive at the station from different parts of the country everyday. Of the 102 trains, a 12 are sent during the day and another 7 at night to the Basin Bridge Train Care Centre for primary maintenance, which involves complete exterior and interior cleaning and total mechanical and electrical overhaul. The rest of the trains go through secondary maintenance or 'other-end attention' at the depot or 'turn back train attention' at Chennai Central itself. Secondary maintenance includes filling water, while the third is the 'other-end attention', in which the train, especially the toilets, is cleaned. The fourth category of trains, such as Sapthagiri Express and Pallavan Express, are turn-back trains, which arrive and leave in a short time from Chennai Central after toilet-cleaning and water-filling is done right at the terminus platform.
The station has been divided into two zones for mechanised cleaning contracts. As of 2008, Chennai Central had about 30 sanitary workers employed on a contractual basis in Zone I (platforms 1 to 6). Zone II (platforms 7 to 12) was cleaned by close to 40 railway employees.
YARDS AND SHEDS
TRAIN CARE CENTRE
A broad-gauge coach maintenance depot, called the Basin Bridge Train Care Centre, is located at the northern side of the terminus, where trains of 18 to 24 coaches are checked, cleaned and readied for its next trip after they return from round trips. It is the largest train care centre under the Southern Railway where 30 pairs of trains are inspected every day. The yard has 14 pit lines, each 3-ft deep, to inspect undercarriage of trains, but only two lines can accommodate 24-coach trains. The rest are designed to park 18-coach trains. Five to six people are allotted to each train. As of 2012, the centre has 3,500 employees, a shortage of about 400.
Water accumulated in pit lines are let out into the Buckingham Canal by means of drainage channels. However, as the yard is located in a basin area, water does not drain quickly enough. In addition, the centre faces pests and other hygiene issues too.
ELECTRIC TRIP SHED
The terminus has an electric locomotive trip shed, the Basin Bridge electric loco trip shed, located north of the train care centre. It is one of the five loco trip sheds of the Southern Railway. To lessen load on the shed, an additional electric trip shed has been created at Tondiarpet, which also serves as a crew change point for freights.
GOODS SHED
The terminus has a goods shed attached to it at Salt Cotaurs.
RENOVATION
Chennai Central Station gets renovation after 2010, is undertaken by the building division of the Southern Railway with the technical assistance provided by the Chennai circle of Archaeological Survey of India. the work is carried out to ensure the original character of the building is maintained.The Station building has maroon colour since its inception in 1873.
CONNECTIVITY
Chennai Central railway station is a hub for suburban trains. Suburban lines originating from Chennai Central include West North Line, North Line, and West Line. Chennai Park suburban station is in proximity to the station, thus facilitating connectivity to Tambaram/Chengalpet/Tirumalpur routes through South Line and South West Line. Chennai Central can be directly reached from all suburban stations and MRTS stations in and around Chennai (except Washermanpet and Royapuram) either through its own MMC Complex for suburban trains or through the nearby Park suburban station or the Park Town MRTS station. Currently, there is only one direct suburban train that plies from Chennai Beach Junction to Chennai Central via Washermanpet and Royapuram, and hence there is no frequent direct connectivity for these two stations to Chennai Central. The Chennai Park Town MRTS station is close to Chennai Central station.
Chennai Central is connected to the Chennai Mofussil Bus Terminus and other parts of the city by buses operated by the Metropolitan Transport Corporation, by means of separate bus lanes near the main entrance, close to the concourse. There are prepaid auto and taxi stands at the station premises. However, only 30 autorickshaws are presently attached to the prepaid counter parking, as Chennai Metro Rail has acquired its parking area for station construction.
The terminus is connected to the Park railway station and the Government General Hospital by two subways on either side. The two subways, which are one of the first in the city, are used by thousands of commuters day round. Nevertheless, jaywalking prevails as a substantial number of commuters prefer crossing the road, at times resulting in accidents.
The terminus is connected with the Egmore station, the other most important terminus of the city, by a circuitous and congested route covering a distance of 11.2 km via Chennai Beach. There was initially a proposal to connect the two termini by means of an elevated section with double-line broad-gauge electrified track with two elevated platforms at Chennai Central, at the cost of ₹ 930 million, which would cut the distance to 2.5 km. The project, approved on 8 April 2003 and initially aimed to be completed by 2005, was later scrapped owing to the expected rate of return on the project being only 1 to 2 percent, poor soil conditions on the Poonamallee High Road, and other issues.
ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT
The portion of the Buckingham canal running near the terminus and beneath Pallavan Salai is covered for 250 m, which makes the task of maintaining the canal difficult. After being desilted in 1998, the covered stretch of the canal near the terminus was cleaned in September 2012. Garbage is dumped into the canal via the openings near the Chennai Central premises. An estimated 6,000 cubic meters of silt was removed from the 2-m-deep canal.
INCIDENTS
On 14 August 2006, a major fire broke out in Chennai Central station, completely destroying a bookshop.
On 29 April 2009, a suburban EMU train from Chennai Central Suburban terminal was hijacked by an unidentified man, who rammed it into a stationary goods train at the Vyasarpadi Jeeva railway station, 4 kilometres northwest of Chennai Central. 4 passengers were killed and 11 were injured. The train which was scheduled to depart at 5:15 am started at 4:50 am instead. The train was moving with a speed of 92 km per hour with 35 passengers on board at the time of collision.
On 6 August 2012, a man hailing from Nepal perched atop the clock tower of the station's main building, creating a commotion. He was later safely persuaded back down the tower by the City Police and Southern Railway officials.
On 1 May 2014, the station witnessed two low-intensity blasts in two coaches S4 and S5 of the stationary Bangalore-Guwahati express, killing one female passenger and injuring at least fourteen.
SECURITY
In a first of its kind for the railways, a bomb disposal squad of the railway protection force, equipped with state-of-the-art gadgets imported at a cost of over ₹ 2.5 million, was inaugurated at Chennai Central on May 2002. The squad functions round the clock and its personnel were trained at the National Security Guard Training Centre at Maneswar and the Tamil Nadu Commando School. In 2009, following the train accident at the Vyasarpadi Jeeva station, surveillance cameras were installed at the suburban terminus platforms. A security boundary wall 200 m long was erected along platform 14 to check unauthorised persons entering the station. Two security booths were planned, one each at the main terminus and the suburban terminus. A government railway police (GRP) station is located on the first floor at the western end, headed by a DSP and two inspectors.[86]
In 2009, 39 CCTV cameras were installed in the premises along with a control room. In 2012, about 120 CCTV cameras are to be installed in Chennai Central. In April 2012, the GRP and the Railway Protection Force (RPF) together launched a helpline known as Kaakum karangal (literally meaning 'Protecting hands'). This involved dividing the terminus into six sectors and deploying 24 police personnel for security.
On 15 November 2012, Integrated Security System (ISS) was launched at the station, which comprises sub-systems such as CCTV surveillance system with 54 IP-based cameras, under-vehicle scanning system (UVSS) for entries and exits, and personal and X-ray baggage screening system. In addition, explosive detection and disposal squad have been deployed. The sub-system will be integrated by networking and monitored at the centralised control rooms. Existing CCTV network of suburban platforms has also been integrated to this system.
FUTURE
In 2004, a second terminal was planned near the Moore Market Complex, with six platforms to be constructed in the first phase of the project and four platforms each in the second and third phases. For additional infrastructure, the goods yard at Salt Cotaurs will be closed to provide more pit line and stabling line facilities for the new terminal.
In 2007, the Railway Board declared a plan to develop the terminus into a world-class one at a cost of ₹200 million (US$3.0 million), along with two other stations (Thiruvananthapuram Central and Mangalore Central), and a high-level committee was formed in 2009 to expedite the project at a total cost of ₹1,000 million (US$15 million). The plan included creating multi-level platforms where express and suburban trains could arrive and depart from the same complex. However, the project is yet to begin.
An underground metro station of the ongoing Chennai Metro Rail project is under construction at the Chennai Central station. It is one of the two metro stations where Corridor I (Airport–Washermanpet) of the project will intersect with Corridor II (Chennai Central–St. Thomas Mount via Egmore, CMBT). The metro station, being constructed at a depth of 25 metres, will be the largest of all metro stations in the city with an area of over 70,000 square metres. The station will act as a transit point for passengers from the Central, Park Town, and Park railway stations. It is estimated that more than 100,000 commuters will utilise the station daily.
In June 2012, the first skywalk in Chennai connecting Chennai Central, Park Railway Station and Rajiv Gandhi Government General Hospital was planned at a cost of ₹200 million (US$3.0 million). It will be 1 kilometre long, linking the station with nine points, including Evening Bazaar, Government Medical College and Ripon Buildings on Poonamallee High Road.
In February 2013, as part of a national initiative to eliminate ballast tracks at major stations, washable aprons - ballastless tracks or tracks on a concrete bed - were installed along the entire length of tracks of platforms 3, 4 and 5 at the terminus. Washable aprons that are already present for a few metres in some of the platforms at the terminus will be extended, viz. 30 metres on platform 3, 200 metres on platform 4, and 50 metres on platform 5, while new ones will be built on platforms with ballast tracks.
IN POPULAR CULTURE
Chennai Central railway station is one of the most prominent landmarks in the city that is often featured in movies and other pop culture in the region. The station has been used in numerous Indian novels and film and television productions over the years. Many films and television programs have been filmed at the station, including:
The station has been poetized by Vijay Nambisan in his 1988 award-winning poem 'Madras Central' published in 1989. The poem is regarded as a modern classic.
In 2009, the Department of Posts featured Chennai Central in a postal stamp.
WIKIPEDIA
Cover of The Health and Cleanliness Council's booklet, 'Hints for the Busy Housewife', 5th edition. London. 1929. The Health and Cleanliness Council?!?!
Golden Eagle (Aquila chrysaetos) flying with a fresh clipped branch that it will take to its nest. They do this to add flooring to their nest, for cleanliness and to hold down insects and ticks. Image taken in Jackson County, Colorado.
...next to godliness, as some say...
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Strobist info: 1 canon 430exII through 60x60cm softbox from right over cam.
meine Besen-Sammlung - collection
Broom for the hand - Brosse à la main - Handfeger
Show me your broom and I'll tell you who you are ...
Montre-moi ton balai et je te dirai qui tu es ...
Zeige mir Deinen Besen und ich sage Dir, wer Du bist ...
One of the first tools of mankind is a broom. However, the street sweepers and cleaners are often despised in society, because they take care of dirt and waste. The housework is usually undervalued. However, order and cleanliness are part of the culture.
L'un des premiers outils de l'humanité est le balai. Toutefois, les balayeuses et les nettoyeurs sont souvent méprisés dans la société, car ils prennent soin de la saleté et les déchets. Le ménage est généralement sous-évalué. Cependant, l'ordre et la propreté font partie de la culture.
Eines der ersten Werkzeuge der Menschheit sind Besen. Allerdings sind die Straßenfeger und Putzfrauen häufig in der Gesellschaft verachtet, weil sie sich um Dreck und Abfall kümmern. Auch die Hausarbeit wird meist unterbewertet. Ordnung und Sauberkeit allerdings sind Errungenschaft der Kultur.
Cavendish Mews is a smart set of flats in Mayfair where flapper and modern woman, the Honourable Lettice Chetwynd has set up home after coming of age and gaining her allowance. To supplement her already generous allowance, and to break away from dependence upon her family, Lettice has established herself as a society interior designer, so her flat is decorated with a mixture of elegant antique Georgian pieces and modern Art Deco furnishings, using it as a showroom for what she can offer to her well heeled clients.
Today however we are not in Lettice’s flat, and whilst we have not travelled that far physically across London, the tough streets and blind alleys of Poplar in London’s East End is a world away from Lettice’s rarefied and privileged world. We have come to the home of Lettice’s charwoman*, Mrs. Boothby, where we find ourselves in the cheerful kitchen cum living room of her tenement in Merrybrook Place: by her own admission, a haven of cleanliness amidst the squalor of the surrounding neighbourhood. Edith, Lettice’s maid, is visiting her Cockney friend and co-worker on a rather impromptu visit, much to the surprise of the old char when she answered the timid knock on her door on a quiet Sunday morning in early January and found Edith standing on her stoop, wrapped up against the winter cold in her black three quarter length coat – a remodelled piece picked up cheaply by the young maid from a Petticoat Lane** second-hand clothes stall, improved with the addition of a black velvet collar.
“Edith dearie!” Mrs. Boothby exclaims in delight and one of her fruity smokers’ coughs, a lit hand rolled cigarette in her right hand releasing a thin trail of greyish white smoke into the atmosphere. “What a luverly surprise! Whatchoo doin’ ‘ere then?”
“I’m sorry to pay a call unannounced, Mrs. Boothby, and I know you said I shouldn’t come here unescorted.” Edith apologises sheepishly.
“Not at all, dearie!” the old Cockney assures her, stepping back and opening the door to grant Edith entry. “That were ‘bout comin’ ere when it’s getting’ dark. Nastiness lurks and dwells in the shadows round these parts, but durin’ the day, so long as you ‘old onto yer ‘andbag and are aware of pickpockets, you’re pretty safe.” She stuffs the nearly spent cigarette into her mouth. “Come on in wiv ya. Can’t ‘ave you standin’ on the stoop in the cold. Got a nice fire goin’ inside to warm you up.”
“Thank you Mrs. Boothby.” Edith says gratefully.
Mrs. Boothby gives a hard stare over Edith’s shoulder as she ushers her in, glancing at the dirty lace scrim curtains of Mrs. Friedmann’s lamplit front window opposite, where she knows instinctively the nosy Jewess stands in her usual spot in one of her paisley shawls, observing the goings on of the rookery*** with dark and watchful eyes. “Piss off, Mrs. Friedmann!” Mrs. Boothby yells out vehemently across the paved court to her neighbour. “My guests ain’t none of your business, you busybody old Yid****!” She spits the cigarette butt she holds between her gritted tea and nicotine stained teeth out into the courtyard, and watches with satisfaction as the grubby and tattered scrim flutters. She turns her attentions back to Edith and says kindly, “Come on in, dearie.”
It takes a moment for Edith’s eyes to adjust from the weak winter light outside to the darkness within. As they do, Edith discerns the familiar things within the tenement front room that she has come to know over her occasional visits since befriending the charwoman who does all the hard graft for her at Cavendish Mews: a kitchen table not too unlike her own at the Mayfair flat, a couple of sturdy ladderback chairs, an old fashioned black leaded stove, a rudimentary trough sink on bricks in the corner of the room and Mrs. Boothby’s pride and joy, her dresser covered in a collection of pretty ornamental knick-knacks she has collected over many years. The thick red velvet curtains hanging over the windows – doubtless a remnant discarded by one of her employers last century – are drawn against the cold, their thick material performing an excellent job in excluding the draughts coming in through the small gaps around the shoddy and worn wooden window frames.
Mrs. Boothby shivers. “It’s a bit cold out there this mornin’, but the ‘ouse is nice and warm. I got the range goin’, Edith dearie.” the old Cockney woman says as she pulls a heavy tapestry curtain along a brass rail over the front door. The eyelets***** make a sharp squeal as she does, startling Edith. Mistaking the reason for the young woman’s head turn, Mrs. Boothby remarks, “Luverly, ain’t it?” She holds the heavily hand embroidered fabric proudly. “Got it from old Lady Pembroke-Duttson, a lady I used to do for in Westminster, ‘till ‘er ‘ouse burnt dahwn in November that is. This ‘ere were one of ‘er old bed curtains from ‘er fancy four poster. Got it in the fire sale of ‘er leftovers.” When Ediths eyes grow wide, Mrs. Boothby adds, “Oh don’t worry dearie. She ain’t perished in ‘er own fire! She lives at Artillery Mansions****** nahw, but they’s got their own live in staff to maintain the flats, so I don’t do for ‘er no more. But bein’ as she moved somewhere new and smaller, and wiv so many fings from ‘er old ‘ouse damaged by the fire, she ‘ad a fire sale and sold orf a lot of stuff that was still serviceable that she didn’t want no more. It’s good at keepin’ the draughts out. Pity the matchin’ ‘angin’ was burned up by the fire. I rather fancy smart matchn’ curtains for the windas, but you can’t ‘ave everyfink, can ya? It did pong a bit of fire smoke at first, but my cookin’ and fags soon put short shrift ta that!” She nods curtly, lifting the curtain fabric to her nose and taking a loud sniff.
“Oh Mrs. Boothby!” Edith laughs heartily. “You are a one!”
“I know dearie, an’ it made you smile. I like it when youse smile, dearie.” The old woman joins in Edith’s laugh, releasing another of her fruity coughs as she bustles past Edith. “Nahw, you know where ta ‘ang up your coat ‘n ‘at. I’ll put the kettle on for a nice cup of Rosie-Lee*******, if this is a social call, that is.”
“Oh yes, thank you, Mrs. Boothby. That would be lovely.” Edith replies as she shucks herself out of her coat and hangs it on a peg by the front door. “Yes, I’ve been to services this morning already.”
Edith is comforted by the smells of soap and the lavender sachets Mrs. Boothby has hanging from the heavy velvet curtains to keep away the moths, the smells from the communal privy at the end of the rookery, and to a degree the cloying scent of tobacco smoke from her constant smoking.
“Good. Nahw, make yerself comfy at the table.”
“I’ll fetch down some cups.” Edith replies cheerfully.
“Oh you are a good girl, ‘elpin’ me out, dearie.” Mrs. Boothby says gratefully, emitting another couple of heavy coughs as she stretches and pulls down the fine blue and white antique porcelain teapot she reserves for when guest come to call from the tall mantle shelf of the old fireplace out of which the old Victorian black leaded stove protrudes.
“Miss Eadie!” Ken, Mrs. Boothby’s mature aged disabled son, gasps in surprised delight.
Edith looks affectionately across the room to the messy bed nestled in the corner of Mrs. Boothby’s kitchen cum living room upon which Ken sits. Not unlike a nest would be for a baby bird, Ken’s bed is his safe place, and he is surrounded on the crumpled bedclothes by his beloved worn teddy bear, floppy stuffed rabbit and a selection of Beatrix Potter books. A gormless grin spreads across his childlike innocent face as he stumbles quickly off the bed and brushes his trousers down.
“Yes, it’s Miss Eadie, Ken!” his mother says brightly. “She come visitin’ us all the way from Mayfair.”
“Miss Eadie!” Ken exclaims again as, still clutching his teddy bear, he lollops across the room, enveloping Edith in his big, warm embrace. He smells of a mixture of cigarette smoke and the carbolic soap Mrs. Boothby uses to wash him and his clothes. A tall and muscular man in his mid-forties, his embrace quickly starts to squeeze the air from Edith’s lungs as his grasp grows tighter, making the poor girl gasp.
“Nah! Nah!” Mrs. Boothby chides, turning away from the stove quickly and giving her son a gentle slap to the forearm. “What do I keep tellin’ you, Ken! You dunno ya own strengf, son. Let poor Miss Eadie go will ya. You’ll crush ‘er wiv your bear ‘ug.” She emits another fruity cough as she gives him a stern look.
“Oh! Sorry!” Ken apologises, immediately releasing Edith from his embrace and backing away as if he’d been burned, a sheepish look on his face.
“It’s alright, Ken.” Edith replies breathily. “They might be crushing… but I like… your hugs.”
“Good!” he says definitely, the gormless grin creeping back into his face and turning up the ends of his mouth.
“You want some tea too, Ken luv?” Mrs. Boothby asks her son.
“Yes please Ma!” he replies.
“Good lad. Nice to ‘ear your good manners bein’ used.” she acknowledges. “Then sit dahwn at the table wiv Miss Eadie and I’ll make you a cup.”
Obediently, Ken takes a seat at the deal pine table on a low stool, leaving the two chairs drawn up to it for his mother and Edith as their special guest. He holds his teddy bear in front of him and looks intently at Edith. “Present!”
“What?” Mrs. Boothby asks, turning again to look at her son.
“Present!” Ken repeats, bouncing excitedly in his seat and gesticulating to a neat parcel wrapped up in brown paper and tied with blue and white twine which Edith has placed on the surface of the table. “Present, Ma!”
“What I tell you ‘bout pointin’, Ken!” Mrs. Boothby scolds her son. Then turning her attentions to where Ken is indicating she adds. “Just ‘cos somefink’s wrapped up in brown paper an’ tied up wiv a string don’t mean it’s a present for ya, son.”
“Christmas present!” Ken says, now no longer pointing, but still bouncing excitedly on his stool.
Mrs. Boothby rolls her eyes and shakes her head, glancing first at Ken, then at Edith and then back to Ken. “Lawd love you son, Christmas is long past! Baby Jesus is sleepin’ and won’t be back ‘till next Christmas, I told you. And that’s a whole year away!”
“Christmas present, Ma!” Ken continues to repeat.
“You want brainin’ you do!” Mrs. Boothby chides Ken good naturedly. “Oh get on wiv ya, Ken!” She chuckles as she kindly tousles her son’s hair affectionately. “Youse fink ev’ry time Miss Eadie comes visitin’ us, she’s got a present for you.” She turns her attention to Edith. “I swear he finks every parcel wrapped up is for ‘im, Edith dearie, even when it’s the sausages I done picked up from the butcher on the cheap.”
“Sausages!” Ken gasps.
“Nah son!” Mrs. Boothby assures him. “Nah sausages today. Just bread ‘n drippin’********.” She eyes him and cocks an eyebrow, and Ken falls silent, although he continues to bounce up and down on the seat of the stool, albeit a little more calmly.
“Well as it turns out, Mrs. Boothby, Ken is right about this being a present for him.” Edith says, pushing the present slightly further across the table towards the disabled lad.
“See Ma!” Ken says triumphantly, leaping up from his seat and dancing around the stool, clutching his teddy bear in joy. “Christmas present. Christmas present for Ken! See Ma! See!”
“You what?” Mrs. Boothby asks sharply.
“Ken’s right, Mrs. Boothby,” Edith says loudly over Ken’s joyful cries. “It is a present for him.”
“Christmas present. Christmas present for Ken! “ Ken continues to chant excitedly.
“Yes! Yes!” the old Cockney woman says, trying to calm her son with softening hand movements. “Alright Ken!” she insists. “I ‘eard you the first time. Youse can open your present in a minute, but first,” She eyes him seriously. “Youse gotta calm dahwn an’ let Miss Eadie and I ‘ave a cup of Rosie-Lee. Right?”
“Right Ma!” Ken replies, stopping his galumphing around the stool.
“You want a cuppa too, don’t choo, son?”
“Yes Ma!”
“Right, well.” Mrs. Boothby continues. “Best you sit dahwn ‘ere on the stool then, and wait, like a good lad. Eh?”
“Yes Ma!” Ken says as he returns obediently to the stool and clutches his teddy bear, trembling with excitement as he beadily keeps his eye on the package in the middle of the table, tantalisingly close enough for him to snatch.
“Right!” Mrs. Boothby says, filling the elegant blue and white teapot with hot water from her kettle.
Mrs. Boothby busies herself in the relative temporary calm of her kitchen, placing the pot on the table next to the brown paper wrapped parcel. She fills a dainty non matching blue and white jug with a splash of milk from a bottle she keeps in the coolest corner of her tenement, underneath the trough sink. She places the jug on the table along with a small sugar bowl of blue and white porcelain of a different pattern again, its lid missing, which is probably the reason why the old Cockney charwoman even has it.
“Right.” Mrs. Boothby says again. “I reckon that’s ‘bout it then. Fancy a biscuit then, Edith dearie?”
“Oh, not for me, Mrs. Boothby!” Edith protests. “Thank you though. It’s too early, and I had a nice breakfast at Cavendish Mews before Sunday services and coming here.”
Edith remembers to carefully avoid the use of the words ‘chapel’ and ‘minister’, remembering that they upset Ken after some of the local Christian charities in Poplar tried to take him away from his mother at various times throughout his life. According to Mrs. Boothby, a Catholic priest in the district used to bother her to have Ken committed to an asylum quite regularly, until she gave him short shrift one day after he really upset Ken. Edith glances anxiously at Ken to make sure he isn’t getting upset now, but she sighs with relief as she sees him bobbing up and down on his stool, still eyeing his wrapped gift, as if expecting it to sprout wings and fly away any moment, it being his one and only focus.
“I tell you what Edith dearie, I’m dying for a fag!” Mrs Boothby says as she sinks into her seat. “Nuffink better than a fag to get the chatterin’ goin’.” She starts fossicking through her capacious blue beaded handbag on the table.
“You don’t need a cigarette to get you chatting, Mrs. Boothby.” Edith chuckles, shaking her head.
“Well, maybe not, but maybe I just want an excuse for a fag. Oh!” she then adds as she withdraws a rather smart looking box from her bag. “And to show orf my luverly new present from Ken.” She reaches over and rubs her son warmly on the back. “’E found it on ‘is rag’n’bone********* run wiv Mr. Pargiter’s boys, ain’t you Ken?”
“Yes Ma!” Ken says, momentarily distracted by his mother asking him a question, before returning his attention to his as of yet unwrapped present.
Mrs. Boothby proudly holds up an Ogden’s Juggler Tabacco********** box of thick card featuring the Union Jack in each corner, extolling its British patriotism. “Nice innit?”
“Very nice, Mrs. Boothby.” Edith opines.
“Just shows you that one man’s rubbish, is someone else’s treasure***********, don’t it?” Mrs. Boothby says, opening the box by its flappable lid and fetching out a pre-rolled cigarette from amongst the stash there, along with her matches. “You just gotta ‘ave a good eye, like my boy ‘ere.” She tousles Ken’s hair affectionately again.
Mrs. Boothby takes her cigarette and lights it with a match and utters a satisfied sigh as she drags on it, the thin cigarette papers and tobacco crackling as she does. Still holding it between her teeth, she emits one more of her fruity coughs, blowing out a tumbling billow of acrid cigarette smoke as she does. She drops the match into a black ashtray that sits on the table full of cigarette butts. Mrs. Boothby settles back happily in her ladderback chair and with her cigarette still between her thin lips, and blowing out plumes of blue smoke that tumbles through the air around her rather like a steam train, she pours tea for Ken, Edith and herself.
“Christmas present, Ma!” Ken pipes up as he accepts the cup of sweet and milky tea from his mother. “Christmas present for Ken, now?”
Mrs. Boothby’s face crinkles as she gives in. “Oh alright then!” She laughs and coughs again. “Miss Eadie ‘n I, ‘ll get no peace whilst that’s sittin’ there unopened!” She nods at the present.
Ken needs no second bidding as he leaps from his seat and pounces upon the gift, tearing at the paper and string.
“Careful nahw, Ken luv!” Mrs. Boothby mutters. “What if it’s a crystal chandelier youse openin’ there? You’ll break it.”
“Not a crystal chandelier, Ma!” Ken says joyfully with a child like chuckle as he tears at the paper.
“You wouldn’t know a crystal chandelier if it done ‘it you in the ‘ead.” the old Cockney woman opines. Then, thinking for a moment, she corrects herself. “Then again, maybe you would. Plenty ‘a uvver fancy bits ’n pieces land in Mr. Pargiter’s carts. Why not a crystal chandelier?”
As Ken tears the paper noisily asunder, the cover of a book, blue and ornately printed in black and red, appears. “A book Ma! Miss Eadie got me a book!” He drops the shreds of paper and blue and white twine on the tabletop and begins flipping through the book, skipping the black and white printing, but pouring with delight over the brightly coloured illustrations, running his fingers with careful and surprisingly delicate actions for such a bulking lad over the images of characters, houses, landscapes and ornate rooms. “Oh fank you, Miss Eadie!” he exclaims in awe.
“You’re welcome, Ken!” Edith purrs with delight, thrilled at how happy Ken is with his gift. “Merry Christmas.”
“Merry Christmas Miss Eadie!” he murmurs in reply, smiling broadly as he admires a double page illustration of a woman in a pink gown clutching a paper fan, draped across a blue upholstered gilt Regency style sofa with a creature with a warthog’s ears, snout and tusks sitting in an anthropomorphic************ way opposite her, rather like a gentleman.
“Oh Edith dearie!” Mrs. Boothby exclaims. “It’s luverly!” She admires the fine details of the illustration, running her own bony, careworn fingers over the image of an ornate Regency pianoforte************* with a large greenish blue vase containing a flowering tree atop it. She gazes at the anthropomorphic warthog who wears a monocle against his left eye. “This is Beauty ‘n the Beast, ain’t it?”
“Yes,” Edith says a little wistfully. “I thought Ken could do with some books that weren’t Beatrix Potter for a change, and maybe a story about the fact that even different people can still find happiness in life was appropriate.”
Mrs. Boothby looks across the table at Edith with a grateful smile. She turns back and watches Ken with delight as he continues to admire the details in the colourful illustration: a blue and white tea set on a gilt table between Beauty and the Beast, a leopard skin rug beneath their feet, a lute carefully leaning against a music Canterbury**************.
“You spoils us, Edith dearie.” Mrs. Boothby murmurs.
“Well, Ken deserves spoiling.” Edith counters with a satisfied sigh as she sips her tea. “He’s such a good boy. Anyway,” she goes on. “Think of it as a thank you to you, Mrs. Boothby.”
“Me dearie?” the Cockney woman queries. “What I ever do to deserve such a pretty book as this?”
“You helped me, Mrs. Boothby.” Edith replies. “With Frank, and all that business over moving to Metroland***************.”
“Ahh,” Mrs. Boothby says noncommittally as she turns her attentions away from her son and back to her guest. “So, you ‘ad a chat wiv young Frank ‘bout it then, did cha?” Another billowing and tumbling cloud of cascading cigarette smoke obscure her face, making her look all the more inscrutable.
Edith nods shallowly and smiles shyly as she sips her cup of tea again. “We spoke about it on New Year’s Eve.”
“Whatchoo say then?”
“Oh, I was such a fool when I came here that day before Christmas, Mrs. Boothby, crying and moaning about moving to the country, when in fact it hasn’t even happened yet,” Her face colours with embarrassment as she blushes. “And it isn’t really the country, even if it does happen. It’s just like moving to a new place: always fraught with worries, but not so terrible as to not go.”
Mrs. Boothby smiles and nods as she listens to her young friend, puffing smoke like a contented steam shovel**************** as she does.
“So you told ‘im you’d go?”
“If the situation arises.” Edith counters.
“Knowin’ young Frank and ‘is fancy ideas of betterment, and a better life for the workin’ man, I wouldn’t be surprised if it did.” Mrs. Boothby remarks sagely. “Sooner rather than later.”
“I think you might be right, Mrs. Boothby.” Edith says with a chuckle infused with trepidation. “But I guess that’s part of being in a partnership, isn’t it? If the dream is so important to him, I have to be prepared to support him, even if it is scary.”
“It’s ‘ow my Bill n’ I rolled, Edith dearie. We didn’t know what life‘d be like raisin’ a special angel like Ken.” She takes a final long and satisfying drag of her cigarette before stumping it out in the ashtray as she blows out another plume of cigarette smoke in front of her. She turns and looks at her son with loving eyes as he now looks at a picture of Beauty in an ornate gown surrounded by monkeys and baboons dressed as flunkies*****************, the allegory of Eve and the serpent appearing in a decorative panel in the background. “We didn’t know ‘ow it was gonna be, raisin’ a kiddie what them god bovverers told me was gonna ‘ave no more brain than a six year old. But Bill ‘n me, we did it.” The old woman nods and screws up her nose in determination. “I fink I told you what Lil Conway next door told me.”
“Tell me again, Mrs. Boothby.”
“Lil told me that all kiddies is a blessin’, and she was right. Bill ‘n I took our chances wiv Ken, and maybe we ain’t always done right, but all in all we didn’t do too bad by ‘im. We taught ‘im ‘ow ta defend ‘imself, ‘ow ta get on in the world and ‘ow ta make a livin’. It were scary, but we ‘ad each uvver, and as you say, that’s what a partnership involves: the smooth ‘n easy and the scary and unknowable, and it all works out.” She turns back and nods ad Edith knowingly. “It’ll work out for you and Frank too, Edith dearie. You’ll see. One day when youse old and grey like me, you’ll look back on this ‘ere conversation and say, ‘that Ida Boothby were right’.”
“Frank has to propose first.” Edith says a little glumly.
Mrs. Boothby reaches out her hand and places it around Edith’s, giving it a gentle and comforting squeeze. “Waitin’s the ‘ardest part of courtship, dearie.” She smiles broadly. “Just enjoy the moment. The weddin’ will come along soon ennuf, and it’ll ‘ave its own trials and tribulations that’ll make you wish youse was never getting’ married. I’m right ‘bout that too.”
Edith doesn’t reply, but looks at Ken and his few book as he points something important out to his teddy bear, his voice such a hushed and contented mumble now that even though he is just across the table, she cannot hear what it is he is sharing with his toy companion.
“You will read him the story, won’t you, Mrs. Boothby? Tell him that the Beast is kind and loving and worthy of Beauty’s love.”
“Well,” Mrs. Boothby looks back at the book. “I don’t really ‘old much wiv books, as you know, and they’s some pretty dense pages of writin’ in there: a bit too much for a busy soul like me wiv so much to do. But yes, I’ll tell ‘im, Edith dearie. Although,” she adds. “I might shorten it a bit. Nuffink better than a good quick story at bedtime, Eh?”
She winks at Edith, the folds of her pale skin hiding her sparkling left eye momentarily.
“You’ll learn that too when you have babies of your own. And,” She delves into her Ogden’s Juggler cigarette box again and takes out another hand rolled cigarette. “I’ll be right ‘bout that too.”
*A charwoman, chargirl, or char, jokingly charlady, is an old-fashioned occupational term, referring to a paid part-time worker who comes into a house or other building to clean it for a few hours of a day or week, as opposed to a maid, who usually lives as part of the household within the structure of domestic service. In the 1920s, chars usually did all the hard graft work that paid live-in domestics would no longer do as they looked for excuses to leave domestic service for better paying work in offices and factories.
**Petticoat Lane Market is a fashion and clothing market in Spitalfields, London. It consists of two adjacent street markets. Wentworth Street Market and Middlesex Street Market. Originally populated by Huguenots fleeing persecution in France, Spitalfields became a center for weaving, embroidery and dying. From 1882, a wave of Jewish immigrants fleeing persecution in eastern Europe settled in the area and Spitalfields then became the true heart of the clothing manufacturing district of London. 'The Lane' was always renowned for the 'patter' and showmanship of the market traders. It was also known for being a haven for the unsavoury characters of London’s underworld and was rife with prostitutes during the late Victorian era. Unpopular with the authorities, as it was largely unregulated and in some sense illegal, as recently as the 1930s, police cars and fire engines were driven down ‘The Lane’, with alarm bells ringing, to disrupt the market.
***A rookery is a dense collection of housing, especially in a slum area. The rookeries created in Victorian times in London’s East End were notorious for their cheapness, filth and for being overcrowded.
****The word Yid is a Jewish ethnonym of Yiddish origin. It is used as an autonym within the Ashkenazi Jewish community, and also used as slang. When pronounced in such a way that it rhymes with did by non-Jews, it is commonly intended as a pejorative term. It is used as a derogatory epithet, and as an alternative to, the English word 'Jew'. It is uncertain when the word began to be used in a pejorative sense by non-Jews, but some believe it started in the late Nineteenth or early Twentieth Century when there was a large population of Jews and Yiddish speakers concentrated in East London, gaining popularity in the 1930s when Oswald Mosley developed a strong following in the East End of London.
*****Eyelets, also known as grommets, are used to describe the open ring that is usually made from metal. These rings that are incorporated into the top of the curtain, enable the curtain to be open or closed.
******Built in Westminster, quite close to the Palace of Westminster and the Houses of Parliament Artillery Mansions was just one of the many fine Victorian mansion blocks to be built in Victoria Street around St James Underground Railway Station in the late 1800s. Constructed around open courtyards which served as carriageways and residential gardens, the mansion blocks were typically built of red brick in the fashionable Queen Anne style. The apartments were designed to appeal to young bachelors or MPs who often had late parliamentary sittings, with many of the apartments not having kitchens, providing instead communal dining areas, rather like a gentleman’s club. Artillery Mansions, like many large mansion blocks employed their own servants to maintain the flats and address the needs of residents. During the Second World War, Artillery Mansions was commandeered by the Secret Intelligence Service as a headquarters. After the war, the building reverted to private residences again, but with so many of its former inhabitants either dead, elderly or in changed circumstances owing to the war, it became a place to house many ex-servicemen. The Army and Navy Company, who ran the Army and Navy Stores just up Victoria Street registered ‘Army and Navy Ltd.’ at Artillery Mansions as a lettings management company. By the 1980s, Artillery Mansions was deserted and in a state of disrepair. It was taken over by a group of ideological squatters who were determined to bring homelessness and housing affordability to the government’s attention, but within ten years, with misaligned ideologies and infighting, the squatters had moved on, and in the 1990s, Artillery Mansions was bought by developers and turned into luxury apartments.
*******Rosie-Lee is Cockney slang for tea, and it is one of the most well-known of all Cockney rhyming slang.
********Dripping is the fat that has melted and dripped from roasting meat, used in cooking or eaten cold as a spread. Being cheap to buy, in poorer households, dripping was usually a staple and often a valuable source of nutrition for what would otherwise be a very plain and mean diet.
*********A rag-and-bone man is a person who goes from street to street in a vehicle or with a horse and cart buying things such as old clothes and furniture. He would then sell these items on to someone else for a small profit.
**********Ogden's Tobacco Company was an English company specialising in tobacco products. The company was founded in 1860 by Thomas Ogden who opened a small retail store in Park Lane, Liverpool. Within a small period of time, he established more branches throughout Liverpool and then a factory on St. James Street in 1866. By 1890, Thomas Ogden had six factories in Liverpool. Then in 1901, the American Tobacco Company bought Ogden's factory for £818,000. But in 1902, with the establishment of the Imperial Tobacco Company, Odgen's Tobacco was back in British hands. The company remained in business until the 1960's. Half of the main factory was demolished sometime around the 1980s to make way for a new building for the site's new owners Imperial Tobacco Limited. They closed the site's doors in 2007. In 2016 the factory was demolished to make way for housing while the iconic Clock Tower was converted into nineteen Apartments. It was completed in 2019.
***********The phrase "One man's trash is another man's treasure" is often attributed to the Nineteenth Century German social reformer and writer, Ferdinand August Bebel. However, the origin of this saying is not precisely documented, and similar expressions have been used in various forms by different people over time. The sentiment behind the phrase conveys the idea that something considered worthless by one person might be highly valued by someone else.
************Anthropomorphism, on the other hand, involves non-human things displaying literal human traits and being capable of human behaviour.
*************A pianoforte is the full name of a piano.
**************A music Canterbury is a low, open-topped stand with vertical slatted partitions that frequently was designed with a drawer beneath and sometimes, was built with short legs and occasionally on casters, intended for holding sheet music, plates, and serveware upright, now often used as a magazine rack.
***************Metroland is a name given to the suburban areas that were built to the north-west of London in the counties of Buckinghamshire, Hertfordshire and Middlesex in the early part of the Twentieth Century that were served by the Metropolitan Railway. The railway company was in the privileged position of being allowed to retain surplus land; from 1919 this was developed for housing by the nominally independent Metropolitan Railway Country Estates Limited (MRCE). The term "Metroland" was coined by the Met's marketing department in 1915 when the Guide to the Extension Line became the Metro-land guide. It promoted a dream of a modern home in beautiful countryside with a fast railway service to central London until the Met was absorbed into the London Passenger Transport Board in 1933.
****************A steam shovel is a large steam-powered excavating machine designed for lifting and moving material such as rock and soil. It is the earliest type of power shovel or excavator. Steam shovels played a major role in public works in the Nineteenth and early Twentieth Centuries, being key to the construction of railroads and the Panama Canal. The sight of them on building work sites was common. The development of simpler, cheaper diesel, gasoline and electric shovels caused steam shovels to fall out of favour in the 1930s.
*****************A funky is a liveried manservant or footman.
This cluttered, yet cheerful domestic scene is not all it seems to be at first glance, for it is made up of part of my 1:12 size dollhouse miniatures collection. Some pieces come from my own childhood. Other items I acquired as an adult through specialist online dealers and artists who specialise in 1:12 miniatures.
Fun things to look for in this tableau include:
Central to our story, the copy of Walter Crane’s Beauty and the Beast on display here is a 1:12 size miniature made by the British miniature artisan Ken Blythe. Most of the books I own that he has made may be opened to reveal authentic printed interiors. In some cases, you can even read the words, depending upon the size of the print! I have quite a large representation of Ken Blythe’s work in my collection, but so little of his real artistry is seen because the books that he specialised in making are usually closed, sitting on shelves or closed on desks and table surfaces. In this case, I bought this book and various others illustrated by Walter Crane on purpose because I have loved Walter Crane’s and his father Thomas Crane’s work ever since I was a child, and I have real life-size first editions of many of their books including, a first edition of Beauty and the Beast from 1874. What might amaze you is that all Ken Blythe’s opening books are authentically replicated 1:12 scale miniatures of real volumes. I can vouch that the double page spread illustration you see is an authentic replica of one from his Beauty and the Beast book, however if you wish to see it for yourself you can also see it here and judge for yourself: en.wikisource.org/wiki/Beauty_and_the_Beast_%281874,_Cran.... To create something so authentic to the original in such detail and so clearly, really does make them all miniature artisan pieces. Not only did Ken Blythe create books, he also created other 1:12 miniatures with paper and that includes the wonderfully detailed Ogden’s Juggler tobacco box and National Safety Match box, which have been produced with extreme authentic attention to detail. Ken Blythe’s work is highly sought after by miniaturists around the world today and command high prices at auction for such tiny pieces, particularly now that he is no longer alive. I was fortunate enough to acquire pieces from Ken Blythe prior to his death about four years ago, as well as through his estate via his daughter and son-in-law. His legacy will live on with me and in my photography which I hope will please his daughter.
The black ashtray is also an artisan piece, the bae of which is filled with “ash”. The tray as well as having grey ash in it, also has a 1:12 cigarette which rests on its lip (it is affixed there).
Mrs. Boothby’s beaded handbag on the table is also a 1:12 artisan miniature. Hand crocheted, it is interwoven with antique blue glass beads that are two millimetres in diameter. The beads of the handle are three millimetres in length. It came from Karen Ladybug Miniatures in the United Kingdom.
Edith’s handbag handmade from soft leather is part of a larger collection of hats and bags that I bought from an American miniature collector Marilyn Bickel.
The paper and blue and white twine are real pieces I have retained to use in my miniatures photography from real parcels wrapped up in brown paper and tied up with string.
The various bowls, cannisters and dishes and the kettle in the background I have acquired from various online miniatures stockists throughout the United Kingdom, America and Australia.
The ladderback chair drawn up to the table and the black lead stove in the background are all miniature pieces I have had since I was a child.
The grey marbleised fireplace behind the stove and the trough sink in the corner of the kitchen come from Kathleen Knight’s Doll House Miniatures in the United Kingdom.
The green wallpaper is an authentic replica of real Art Nouveau wallpaper from the first decade of the Twentieth Century which I have printed onto paper.
Cavendish Mews is a smart set of flats in Mayfair where flapper and modern woman, the Honourable Lettice Chetwynd has set up home after coming of age and gaining her allowance. To supplement her already generous allowance, and to break away from dependence upon her family, Lettice has established herself as a society interior designer, so her flat is decorated with a mixture of elegant antique Georgian pieces and modern Art Deco furnishings, using it as a showroom for what she can offer to her well heeled clients.
Tonight however we are not in Lettice’s flat, and whilst we have not travelled that far physically across London, the tough streets and blind alleys of Poplar in London’s East End is a world away from Lettice’s rarefied and privileged world. We have come to the home of Lettice’s charwoman*, Mrs. Boothby, where we find ourselves in the cheerful kitchen cum parlour of her tenement in Merrybrook Place: by her own admission, a haven of cleanliness amidst the squalor of the surrounding neighbourhood.
The sun is setting on the late autumnal, cold November day. The golden orb, which has been shrouded in clouds for most of the day is now barely a dull greenish yellow glow above the rooftops of the tenements opposite Mrs. Boothby’s own terrace as a thick fog, fed by all the coal and wood fires heating the houses of London, begins to settle in. As darkness envelops the streets, warm flickering lights begin to appear in the windows of Merrybrook Place as its citizens settle in for an evening at home.
Mrs. Boothby has just reached for her tobacco when she hears a pounding on her door. Looking up in surprise, she remains silent and unmoving, all her senses suddenly alert. The hammering comes again. She gets up and walks over to the corner of the room where she reaches for her broom. The knocking comes a third time.
“Hoo’s there?” Mrs. Boothby’s cockney voice calls out in a steely fashion, attempting to project a stronger persona than the wiry and older little charwoman that she is. “Whatchoo want?”
“It’s me, Mrs. Boothby.” Edith voice calls weakly from the other side of the door. “Edith.”
Mrs. Boothby gasps aloud, swiftly unbolts the door and flings it open, appearing in the doorway, still with her broom in her hand. “Ere! Whatchoo doin’ ‘ere, Edith dearie? You come ‘ere on your own did ya?”
Mrs. Boothby’s eyes grow wide as she sees Edith’s tear stained face in the golden light reflected from the paraffin lamp that illuminates her parlour.
“I’m sorry to call on you unannounced,” Edith snivels. “I just didn’t know where else to go.”
The old Cockney woman quickly puts the broom aside, next to the open door, and embraces Edith in a firm hug. “Come in in wiv you, Edith dearie!” As she draws Lettice’s young maid-of-all-work into her tenement, she glances over Edith’s shoulder with owl eyes at the darkened streetscape slowly being softened by the greenish fog outside. There is no-one else around, but down at the end of her rookery**, where the privies are, she notices a flash of a shadow as two mangy stray cats hiss and spit at one another in either play or in a territorial war. In the distance a dog barks. Then she notices the tatty lace curtains in one of her neighbours’ windows rustle and quiver. “Keep your big bloody Yid*** nose out of my business, Golda Friedman!” Mrs. Boothby calls out angrily across the way.
“Ahh shuddup!” a strident male voice from somewhere above and further down the terrace calls out. Whether directed at Mrs. Boothby or elsewhere, the old charwoman doesn’t care as she begins to close her door. The curtains at Golda Friedman’s windows flutter quickly once again and then stop.
“Cor! You didn’t ‘alf give me a turn!” Closing the door behind her, Mrs, Boothby heaves a sigh of relief. “Edith dearie, whatchoo doin’ ‘ere?” she asks again. “You’re takin’ your pretty young life in your own ‘ands comin’ dawhn ‘ere this time of day. Poplar’s like an old shape shifter**** as the London fogs settle in for the night, and streets you fought you knew well, are suddenly strangers, unless you’re a local like me, whoo can find their way through the fog.”
“I’m sorry Mrs. Boothby.” Edith apologises again, wiping her eyes with the back of her hand before opening her green leather handbag and fetching out a dainty lace handkerchief embroidered with a cursive letter E in pale blue cotton. “I… I just didn’t know where else to go. What with Miss Lettice being out with Mr. Bruton at the Café Royal***** this evening, I just couldn’t bear to be alone at Cavendish Mews with my thoughts.”
“There, there, Edith dearie!” Mrs. Boothby enfolds Edith in an all-embracing hug again, tightening her wiry arms around Edith’s trembling figure and patting her on the back with her gnarled and careworn hands. “It’s alright. You’re ‘ere nawh. No ‘arm done.” Then she releases her, steps back slightly and looks again at Edith’s blotched and reddened face. Grasping her by the shoulders she gasps, “Youse didn’t get attacked by a man on the way dawhn ‘ere, did cha? That ain’t why yer cryin’ is it?”
Edith releases a snuffly guffaw. “No, Mrs. Boothby.”
“Fank the lawd for that!” the old woman casts her eyes up to the oatmeal cigarette smoke stained ceiling. “A nice girl dressed like you is, is ripe for pickin’s on them streets out there. You should only be comin’ dahwn ‘ere wiv me by your side to guide you, Edith dearie!”
A soft, hurried tapping on the wall adjoining the tenement next door breaks into Mrs. Boothby’s speech. “You alright in there, Ida luv? I ‘eard bangin’!” the anxious muffled voice of Mrs. Boothby’s neighbour, Mrs. Conway, calls out.
“Yes Lil, dearie.” Mrs. Boothby assures her. “It’s alright. Just a surprise visitor, and that nosey gossip Mrs. Friedman not mindin’ ‘er own business like usual.”
“Bloody Yid! Alright Ada, luv.” Mrs. Conway’s voice replies with relief. “Night.”
“Night Lil, dearie.”
“Miss Eadie!” comes a booming voice from the room.
Edith and Mrs. Boothby both glance across the kitchen-cum-parlour to the clean deal kitchen table. Ken, Mrs. Boothby’s mature aged disabled son sits at the table, his beloved worn teddy bear, floppy stuffed rabbit and a few playing cards in front of him. A gormless grin spreads across his childlike innocent face, but it falls away quickly when he sees that Edith has been crying. He drops his bear, his precious toy forgotten, his face darkening as he leaps up from his seat and hurries over to Edith and his mother in a few galumphing steps.
“Oh lawd!” Mrs. Boothby hisses. “Ken’ll be beside ‘imself!”
“Hoo did this, Miss Eadie?” Ken asks anxiously, hopping up and down on the spot with agitation before the two women. “Who hurt my Miss Eadie?”
“Nahw, nahw, son. ‘Ush nahw.” Mrs. Boothby says soothingly, raising her hands up to her son in an effort to placate him. “We don’t know niffink yet, do we?”
Ken’s large, careworn, sausage like finger fly to his mouth. “’Ooo made my Miss Eadie, cry?” he seethes, the anger blazing in his eyes. “I’ll kill ‘im!”
“Nahw, youse won’t go killin’ no-one, Ken!” Mrs. Boothby replies. “What are you like?”
“It’s alright, Ken,” Edith replies a little shakily. “It’s just my beau. He said something that upset me, but…”
“I’ll kill him!” Ken interrupts, his voice rising in anger. “I’ll kill that bastard!”
“Ken!” Mrs. Boothby snaps. “Whatchoo fink Miss Eadie is gonna fink, you cussin’ like that in front of ‘er! Fink I raised you up a bad’n, she will! Miss Eadie is a lady!”
“Oh!” Ken gasps in apology. “Sorry Mum!”
“It’s not me you need to be apologising to, Ken!” Mrs. Boothby snaps. “It’s Miss Eadie, ‘ere.”
“Sorry Miss Eadie.” Ken apologises earnestly.
“A nice lady like Miss Eadie ain’t gonna be your friend, nor bring you nice presents like she does, if youse go cussin’ and fretenin’ to kill ‘er beau like that in front of ‘er!”
“I will! I will!” Ken insists. “I’ll kill ‘im if ‘e made my Miss Eadie cry!”
“Oh, he didn’t mean to, Ken.” Edith assures Ken, reaching out and placing a hand comfortingly upon his forearm. “It’s alright. He just said something… something nice, but it just didn’t seem that nice to me when he said it. It’s alright. Really it is.”
“I’ll kill him.” Ken affirms again, but in a calmer voice as his agitation begins to dissipate.
“You’d never kill anyone, Ken.” Edith soothes. “I know you wouldn’t. You’re far to gentle. That’s why I like you and why I bring you pretty books and toys, because you’re gentle with them.”
“Whatchoo like, Ken?” Mrs. Boothby goes on. “Miss Eadie is right. You’d nevva ‘urt a fly!”
“Of course I’m right, Mrs. Boothby.” Edith goes on. “Look how gentle Ken is with his toys.” She nods at the teddy and rabbit lying on the table.
“Anyways, ‘ooo would Miss Eadie marry if you went and dun ‘er young man, in, Ken? Tell me that!”
“Me Mum!” Ken smiles cheerfully, the anger of moments ago forgotten in an instant. “She can marry me, Mum.”
“Oh that’s sweet of you, Ken,” Edith’s blush goes unnoticed because of her already reddened face. “But I think we’re probably better being very good friends, rather than stepping out together. Don’t you think?”
“Yes, Miss Eadie.”
“And you don’t have to be my beau in order for me to bring you presents, Ken.”
Ken’s eyes light up, this time with excitement. “Did you bring me a present, Miss Eadie?”
“Ken!” Mrs. Boothby scolds again. “What kind of question is that to ask our guest, when she’s not even sat down yet!”
Kenn immediately moves back to the kitchen table and draws out the ladderback chair that he was sitting on, encouraging Edith to sit upon it.
“I’m sorry Ken.” Edith apologises sadly. “No presents today. Maybe next time.”
“Next time is Christmas, Miss Eadie!” Ken replies, clapping his hands.
“Yes. Why yes it is, Ken.” Edith replies distractedly. “I’ll bring you a nice Christmas present.”
“You’ll do nuffink of the sort,” Mrs. Boothby hisses. “You spoil my son with all those gifts you give ‘im!”
“I can if I choose, Mrs. Boothby.”
Ignoring Edith’s reply the old woman says, “Nahw Ken, do me a favour, son. Run ‘n get me bag will you?”
“Yes Mum!” Ken replies as he scurries off.
“You ‘ungry, Edith derie?” Mrs, Boothby quickly asks Edith.
“Well, I hadn’t really considered it, Mrs. Boothby.” Edith replies.
“Well, I’m goona distract Ken by sendin’ im on an errand to go get us somfink for tea, so then you and me can ‘ave a quick chat alone wivout bein’ disturbed, if you know what I mean.” Mrs. Boothby whispers, winking at Edith. Then raising her voice more loudly, she continues, “Could you stomach some chippies, Edith love?”
“Well,” Edith replies with equal loudness, “Frank did take me for afternoon tea at Lyon’s Corner House****** this afternoon for sandwiches, but I did lose most of my appetite, so I’m quite peckish now.”
“Then some chippies will do you the world a good then, dearie!” Mrs. Boothby replies.
Ken quickly returns with Mrs. Boothby’s capacious blue beaded bag and hands it to his mother. She opens it and fishes around inside before withdrawing a small beaten brown leather coin purse with a silver metal clasp. She opens it and withdraws a coin. “Nahw Ken, what’s this then?” she asks, holding up a shiny bronzed halfpenny******* featuring King George on one side and Britannia seated holding a trident******** on the other between her right thumb and index finger.
“It’s money, Mum!” Ken scoffs with a broad smile. “I’m not dumb you know!”
“Ahh lawd love ya, son,” Mrs. Boothby runs her left hand lovingly along her son’s cheek before pinching it, making him smile even more broadly. “I know you ain’t. Ain’t I be the one what always tells ya not to let anyone tell you that youse fick? Nah! I know youse got more brains than a lot of people out there.” She gesticulates to the world outside their front door. “But if youse so smart, Ken, ‘ow much is it, I’d ‘oldin’ ‘ere?”
“It’s an ‘a’penny, Mum.”
“Good lad!” Mrs. Boothby agrees. “It’s an ‘a’penny bit.” She smiles proudly. “Nawh, I want you to take this ‘a’penny bit wiv ya and go round to Mr. Cricklewood’s and buy us an ‘a’penny bit’s worf of ‘ot chips, right?”
“Ain’t Mr. ‘Eath’s chippe closer, Mum?” Ken asks, his face crumpling up questioningly.
“It is, son,” Mrs. Boothby agrees. “But you know as well as I do, that Mr. Cricklewood’s chippies is much nicer. That’s why ‘e’s always got a queue out tha door on a Sunday night, ain’t it?”
“Yes Mum! Evva so much nicer, Mum!”
Mrs. Boothby drops the halfpenny in the palm of his hand. “So orf you go!”
“Yes Mum! An ‘a’penny bit’s worf of ‘ot chips.” Ken repeats back.
“Good lad!” Mrs. Boothby says encouragingly. “And whilst youse gawn, I’ll pop the kettle on, and fry us up a couple a nice eggs to go wiv ‘em. Reckon you could eat a couple a eggies, Ken?”
“Yes Mum!” Ken agrees in delight, rubbing his burgeoning stomach to show her how hungry he is.
As the door closes behind him, and Ken steps out into the dark and fog filling street, Mrs. Boothby heaves a sigh of relief.
“Well, that’ll distract Ken for a while.” she says. She goes to the window and pulls back the red velvet curtain that excludes the cold of the night, and watches as Ken disappears into the darkness shrouded by the growing fog. “The queues outside Cricklewood’s Fish and Chippery are ever so long on a Sunday night, even a foggy one. That it’ll give you enuff time to dry you’re tears, and me enuff time to pop on the kettle, and for us to ‘ave a quick chat undisturbed an’ get to bottom of what’s got cha so upset, Edith dearie.”
“I’m sorry again for dropping in on you unannounced, Mrs. Boothby, and for upsetting Ken.” Edith says.
“Nawh, don’t you fret about that, Edith dearie.” Mrs. Boothby replies with a dismissive wave. “I’m just glad you made it ‘ere before it gets too dark. The streets round ‘ere ain’t too safe for young slips of girls like you at night – ‘specially when there’s a fog brewin’ like tonight. Ken ‘n I will take you back to Cavendish Mews after our tea. ‘Ere, give me your coat ‘n ‘at, dearie.”
“Will Ken be alright?” Edith asks in concern, looking to the closed door anxiously as Mrs. Boothby shucks her out of her three quarter length black coat, a piece she picked up cheaply as per Mrs. Boothby’s recommendation from a Petticoat Lane********* second-hand clothes stall not far from Mrs. Boothby’s tenement, and remodelled it.
“’E’ll be fine, dearie. Don’t worry.” Mrs. Boothby replies, taking Edith’s black straw cloche decorated with black feathers and lavender satin roses obtained from Mrs. Minkin’s haberdashery in Whitechapel, another place that Mrs. Boothby recommended Edith to. “’Ooose gonna take on a great big bulk of muscle like my Ken, dearie? E’ll give anyone what tries a right royal bollockin’ if they do.” She hangs up Edith’s coat and hat on a hook behind the door. “Anyway, unlike you, our Ken’s a local, and there’s a certain amount of respect for locals, even ‘mongst the thieves and pickpockets round this way. You don’t make a mess, or enemies, in your own patch, nahw do you?”
“I suppose not, Mrs. Boothby.” Edith replies.
“Sit yourself dahwn, while I pop the kettle on. Nahw Edith dearie,” Mrs. Boothby says with concern, walking the few paces across her parlour to the old blacklead stove. “What’s all the commotion then?” She turns back and looks the young maid squarely in the face, a kindly look on her worn and wrinkled face. “Tell me why youse come to see me outta the blue like this on a Sunday night, and cryin’ at that? Are you alright?” She gasps. “Well obviously you ain’t! What was I finkin’ askin’ that? You said somfink about it to do wiv your young Frank Leadbetter? ‘As ‘e wound up in some trouble?”
“No Mrs. Boothby. It’s nothing as bad as all that.” Edith sinks down into the ladderback chair at the kitchen table, not too dissimilar from her one at Cavendish Mews, where Ken had been sitting, and toys idly with the paw of his well loved teddy bear. “I should be embarrassed for coming here really, and bothering you like this. You’ll think I’m stupid, no doubt.”
“Nahw you let me worry ‘bout what I fink about yer, dearie.” Mrs. Boothby chides Edith with a wagging finger as she fills her battered kettle from the small trough sink in the corner of the room and carries it the two paces over to the stove. “But I can tell you right nahw that I won’t fink you’re stupid, no matter what. Nahw, I ‘ope ya don’t mind, but I’m dying for a fag! I was just about ta ‘ave one when you knocked on me door.” Without waiting for a reply, Mrs Boothby starts fossicking through her capacious beaded bag, which she cast carelessly onto the tabletop after taking out the money for Ken, before withdrawing her cigarette papers, Swan Vestas and tin of Player’s Navy Cut. Rolling herself a cigarette she lights it with a satisfied sigh and one of her fruity coughs, dropping the match into a black ashtray full of used cigarette butts that also sits in its usual place on the table. “Nahw, tell me what all the trouble is then, Edith dearie.” she says, blowing forth a plume of acrid smoke.
“I’m almost too ashamed to tell you, Mrs. Boothby.”
“’Ere! ‘E weren’t bein’ ‘andsy, were ‘e?” Mrs. Boothby gasps. “Under the table like at Lyon’s Corner ‘Ouse, takin’ liberties ‘e ain’t supposed to be?”
“Oh no, Mrs. Boothby, nothing like that.”
“That’s good! I didn’t ever take Frank Leadbetter as an ‘andsy sort of chap, or I’d nevva ‘ave tried settin’ you two up.”
“Oh, he’s a gentleman, Mrs. Boothby.”
“And you ‘aven’t ‘ad a fallin’ out, ‘ave you?” the older woman asks warily.
“Oh no, Mrs. Boothby.”
“Then what’s ‘e done that’s upset cha?” Mrs. Boothby asks, before coughing again, sending forth another few billows of smoke accompanying her throaty outbursts.
“He was only trying to be nice, Mrs. Boothby.” Edith goes on. “You see, we had a lovely tea at Lyon’s Corner House up in Tottenham Court Road today after we went to see ‘The Notorious Mrs. Carrick’********** at the Premier*********** in East Ham. I knew Frank was distracted. I could tell he was itching to talk to me about something.”
“What was it, dearie? What did ‘e say?”
“He wanted to talk about our future, Mrs. Boothby.”
“And that’s a bad fing?”
“Well no, but what he said has raised a lot of concerns for me, you see.”
“So, what was that then?”
“Well, you know how Frank has been spending time at these trade union meetings?” Edith begins. When Mrs. Boothby nods she goes on, “He went to a trade union meeting the other week and he met up with a chum of his who told him that he might have a position opening up Frank soon, as an assistant manager at a grocers.”
“Well what’s so bad about that, dearie?” Mrs. Boothby asks. She pulls a face. “Certainly nuffink to get upset about! I fought that’s whatchoo bowf wanted.”
“We do, Mrs. Boothby, but its where it may be that’s the problem.”
“Where is it then? The moon?” the old Cockney woman laughs light-heartedly. “It can’t be as bad as all that, can it?”
“It may just as well be the moon, Mrs. Boothby. The opening is for a grocers in one of those new estates being built north-west of London.”
“And where are they then?” Mrs. Boothby asks. “Pardon my hignorance.”
“Hertfordshire or Buckinghamshire!” Edith exclaims. “Miss Lettice’s sister lives in Buckinghamshire! It’s the country!”
“Ahh!” Mrs. Boothby sighs knowingly, placing her cigarette between her thin lips to free her hands so she can pick up her old Brown Betty************ and fill it with water from the now boiling kettle. “So, Frank wants you to move to the country then?”
“Yes.” Edith sighs. “I mean, Frank says that where he’s taking about isn’t really the country as such. It’s an estate built along the railway line, not far from Wembley Park, but it sounds like its all in the planning at the moment, and in my mind, its still very much the country.” She sighs again. “And I’ve never lived in the country, and having lived in the city all my life, I don’t think I much fancy country living, especially not after that awful time Hilda and I had in Alderley Edge when we visited our friend Queenie. Remember me telling you, Mrs. Boothby?”
“I do dearie.” She nods as places the pot on the table, huffing out cigarette smoke as she speaks. “Everyone in those little villages knows everyone else’s business, and I ‘ate people nosin’ in on mine.” She eyes the door and pictures Mrs. Friedman’s twitching lace curtains beyond it.
“I mean Frank says it won’t be like that. He says there won’t be uppity families living in these new suburbs, because everyone will be working class, like us, or maybe middle-class, but there will still be the people who have lived in those areas for generations, surely, and they’ll be the ones who’ll rule the roost.”
“Indeed they will, Edith dearie. Country folk don’t like town folk any more than we like them.”
“Have you been to the country before, Mrs. Boothby?”
“Good lawd no!” Mrs. Boothby cries before coughing again as she stubs her cigarette butt out in the ashtray. “But I’ve read about it, mark my words. I’d never give up my life in the city. I ‘ave ‘eard and know enuff ‘bout the country to know it’s far too quiet out there for someone like me! Nah! I ain’t for the country and the country ain’t for me nivver.”
“Frank says that the air out there is fresher and healthier, with none of the pea-soupers************* we get here in London, like tonight.”
“I fink that talk ‘bout fresh air’s overrated. They got cows in the country, ain’t they?”
“Yes, Mrs. Boothby.”
“Then you tell me, wiv all them cows out there, ‘ow can the air be fresh? It’d be full of cow farts and cow droppin’ smells, and we all know that horse droppin’s stink, and I don’t imagine the same from cows would smell any better!”
“I hadn’t actually thought about that, Mrs. Boothby. I can’t say that I noticed the smell of cow droppings in Alderley Edge.”
“Well, it sounds like they’s far too grand there to even ‘ave cow droppin’s, so they might not ‘ave any, Edith dearie.”
“What really concerns me, Mrs. Boothby, more than the quiet, or the cow droppings, is the fact that I won’t have my family nearby, or the people I love: no Mum, no Dad, no Hilda, no you, Mrs. Boothby, and that’s what really made me upset. The realisation of how isolated I might be didn’t really strike me until I got back to Cavendish Mews and I was on my own with Miss Lettice out. I listened to the silence and I suddenly started to cry, and that’s when…” Edith cannot finish her sentence as she starts to cry again. She quickly fishes out her handkerchief again.
“And that’s when you come to see me.” Mrs. Boothby concludes, once again wrapping her arms around Edith.
“Exactly.” Edith’s muffled voice from within her handkerchief agrees. “I wanted to be with a friend.”
“And do you are! Nahw let me pour you a nice cup of Rosie Lee**************, dearie.” Mrs. Boothby fetches a dainty floral cup from her large Welsh dresser and sets it in front of Edith. She then gathers her sugar bowl and fetches a small glass jug of milk from a poky cupboard in a dark corner of the room that serves as her larder. She lifts up the well worn Brown Betty pot and pours a slug of brackish, well steeped tea into Edith’s cup. “I’ll let ya add your own milk ‘n sugar, dearie.” She pauses for a moment and looks across at Edith with worry in her eyes. “Although considerin’ the state yer in, I fink you should add a couple of sugars, personally. Then dry your eyes again. Ken’ll be ‘ome soon wiv the chippies I sent ‘im out for an’ ‘ell be beside ‘imself all over again like before if ‘e sees you blubbin’. ‘E won’t know whevva to punch the lights out of Frank, or give you a big ‘ug to make you feel better.” She releases another few fruity coughs. “Finkin of which, I better get on wiv fryin’ the eggs before ‘e does get back. Nahw you just sit there and enjoy your nice cuppa Rosie Lee and compose yourself, while I get cookin’.”
“Thank you, Mrs. Boothby.” Edith says gratefully.
Mrs. Boothby walks quickly back to her larder and gasps as she withdraws some lard wrapped in foil and the eggs. “It’s Ken’s lucky day! I plumb forgot I ‘ad a rasher of bacon left over from breakfast! I’ll fry it up for ‘im to ‘ave wiv his chippie tea, and you and I‘ll ‘ave an egg each wiv ours.”
The old woman takes a battered old skillet and sets it on the stovetop after poking the coals to bring them to life and drive up the heat. She rolls herself another cigarette, and after lighting it, pops it between her lips and puffs away pleasurably, sending plumes and billows of acrid greyish white smoke about her like a steam locomotive. Using a wooden handled knife, she cuts some lard from the congealed square wrapped in foil and scrapes it into the skillet and leaves it to melt. Once it starts bubbling, she drops in the rasher of bacon and starts frying it.
“So you don’t think it would be advisable to go to the country then, Mrs. Boothby?” Edith asks.
“Well, that all depends.” she replies over the comforting sound of hissing fat, releasing another of her fruity coughs and a plume of smoke as she does.
“Depends? Depends on what?”
“On what the pros and cons of the circumstances are. You’ve said that you’re concerned about bein’ isolated. Fair enuff.”
“Well, Frank says that these estates won’t be in the country forever. He says that they are developing them all the time. He even said that places like Harlesden where Mum and Dad live and where I grew up, used to be the country.”
“’E’s got a fair point, Edith dearie. All of London was once countryside. Even ‘ere!” She shudders. “So, it may be a bit isolated to begin wiv, or it may not. Nahw, you’re worried that there may be some toffee-nosed people abaht.” Mrs. Boothby turns back and looks at Edith, who nods shallowly. “Well, I hate to tell you this, dearie, but there’s toffee-nosed people wherevva you go. Take that Golda Friedman from across the way.” She nods to the door again, a few pieces of ash falling from the burning end of her cigarette as she does and wafting gently through the air towards the ground. “She goes around wiv ‘er nose in the air wrapped up in that fancy paisley shawl of ‘ers, what needs a damn good wash, actin’ like she was the Queen of Russia ‘erself, lawdin’ it over us all. But she ain’t no better than the rest of us.”
“And Frank did say that there would be working-class people like us there too.”
“So, you could make some new friends there then?” Mrs. Boothby smiles as she shifts the bacon in the skillet, the aroma of cooked bacon starting to arise from the pan.
“Well,” Edith ponders. “I suppose so.”
“And youse concerned that you won’t ‘ave your mum ‘n’ dad round?”
“Or Hilda, or you, Mrs. Boothby.”
Mrs. Boothby smiles kindly as she moves the browning bacon to one side of the skillet and cracks two eggs from a small chipped white bowl into the space she has made. They hiss and fizzle as they hit the pool of bubbling fat. Smiling more broadly, she goes over to the dresser again and takes down four blue and white floral painted plates, placing three on the table, and the fourth on the edge of the stove next to the now cooling kettle.
“’Ere, ain’t that fancy Empire Stadium*************** what they built for the British Hempire Hexhibition**************** close to where your parents live, Edith dearie?”
“Well yes, I suppose.” Edith admits. “There’s even a big sign fastened to the Jubilee Clock***************** in High Street at the moment which says, ‘British Empire Exhibition, Wembley’ with a big arrow underneath it, so I guess it’s reasonably close by.”
“Nahw correct me if I’m wrong, but these new hestates what the’re buildin’ that your Frank is talkin’ ‘bout, they’s built along the railway line, yes?”
“Yes, Frank says it’s only a few stops on from Wembley Park to reach some of these estates he was thinking the openings might be in.”
“Well don’t that mean you’d be closer to your parents than where you are now, in Mayfair, Edith dearie?”
“Oh, I see what you’re doing, Mrs. Boothby.” Edith suddenly says with a smile.
“Hhhmmm?” Mrs. Boothby replies distractedly as she prods the edges of the eggs as they start to crisp. “What ‘m I doin’?”
“You’re trying to allay my concerns, aren’t you? You really think I should go to the country.”
“Well, just past Wembley Park ain’t the city, like ‘ere, but it ain’t the country neiver, and what I fink, don’t matter a jot. It’s what you and Frank fink, Edith dearie.”
“But I don’t know what to think Mrs. Boothby.” Edith replies, her face suddenly clouding over.
“Is Frank askin’ you to decide about movin’ wherever nahw?” Mrs. Boothby asks, coughing again between her gritted teeth holding onto the fast reducing remains of her cigarette as she speaks.
“Well, no, not exactly.” Edith replies. “This just came up in conversation this afternoon as a possibility for Frank when he was at the trade union meeting, and Frank wanted to tell me about it. He wanted me to consider whether I’d be happy to go.”
“Right.” Mrs. Boothby says. She sets the white metal flip she is using to move the eggs and bacon about aside and turns back to Edith. Lunging over, she takes her spent cigarette from between her lips and stubs it out in the ashtray. “Then I will tell you what I fink, because you’re in such a state over nuffink right nahw, that I fink you need to ‘ear it, dearie.” She places her hands firmly on her bony hips. “I fink you is lookin’ too closely at what ain’t even ‘appened yet, Edith dearie. Frank ain’t said youse movin’ anywhere yet. You ain’t even wed yet! ‘E’s just askin’ you to fink about the possibility in yer future is all. ‘E could get a new position in Clapham or Putney or somewhere, couldn’t ‘e?”
“Well, he could, Mrs. Boothby, although he says they may not be as advantageous as the ones he is talking about.”
“But ‘e could?”
“Well yes, of course, Mrs. Boothby. Anything could happen.”
“So, what youse goin’ to do is ‘ave a lovely slap-up tea of egg ‘n’ chips ‘ere, wiv Ken and me, and then Ken and me, we’s gonna take you ‘ome to Miss Lettice’s where you belong, and where you need to be before she gets ‘ome from dinner in the West End tonight at that fancy café, so you can take ‘er coat and ‘at ‘n’ all and tuck ‘er into bed.”
“Oh I don’t really tuck her in….” The words die on Edith’s lips as Mrs. Boothby holds up her palm in protest to stop her.
“And then you’re gonna go to bed and get a good night’s sleep. And then tomorra, when youse wake up, you’re gonna see this all in a much more sensible light. Right nahw, you’re in shock, see? Frank sprung this on you as a surprise, so of course it’s gonna get your mind to tickin’ over like an alarm clock. But dearie, there ain’t nuffink to be alarmed ‘bout.” Mrs. Boothby smiles at Edith, sitting at her table. “When, or if, Frank gets offered one of these fancy manager jobs ‘e’s talkin’ ‘bout, well you just need to sit dahwn wiv ‘im and talk about it - just the two of you, mind - and work out what the pros and cons are. Share your concerns wiv ‘im, just like you did wiv me, and work out togevva, whevva youse gonna be ‘appy or not.”
“Yes, you’re so right, Mrs. Boothby!” Edith exclaims.
“Yes, I am, dearie!” Mrs. Boothby agrees proudly. “You don’t get to be on this earth as long as I’ve been and not be right at least once or twice in your life. Nahw listen to me. Frank loves you. It’s as plain as the nose on your face******************, and that’s a fact. So, ‘e’s not gonna make you do anyfink that won’t make you ‘appy, and that includes movin to Timbuktu or wherever. So, if the time comes, just be ‘onest wiv ‘im, and then you can work it out togevva. It’ll be alright. Tell ‘im nahw, if ‘e wants an answer nahw, that you’ll consider it when the time comes and not before. That way you won’t lose any sleep over what might not ‘appen.”
A smile, gentle and warm, breaks across Edith’s face, and as she looks at her, Mrs. Boothby can see the anxiety and concerns that had her arrive at her door in a state of tears. Lift and melt away.
“That’s better, dearie!” The old Cockney char leans forward and gives Edith’s hand a friendly and comforting squeeze. “Nah more tears.”
“You’re such a good egg, Mrs. Boothby!” Edith exclaims. “And such a good friend to me!” She leaps from her seat and gives the old woman a kiss on the cheek as she throws her arms around her neck. “What would I do without you?”
Just at that moment, both Edith and Mrs. Boothby hear a happy whistle in the foggy rookery outside.
“And thinkin’ of eggs, ‘ere’s our Ken, back from Mr. Cricklewood wiv an a’penny’s worth of chippes I ‘ope!”
The door bursts open and Ken’s bulk appears in the doorway.
“Hot chippies Mum!” he says as he smiles his gormless smile at his mother and Edith.
*A charwoman, chargirl, or char, jokingly charlady, is an old-fashioned occupational term, referring to a paid part-time worker who comes into a house or other building to clean it for a few hours of a day or week, as opposed to a maid, who usually lives as part of the household within the structure of domestic service. In the 1920s, chars usually did all the hard graft work that paid live-in domestics would no longer do as they looked for excuses to leave domestic service for better paying work in offices and factories.
**A rookery is a dense collection of housing, especially in a slum area. The rookeries created in Victorian times in London’s East End were notorious for their cheapness, filth and for being overcrowded.
***The word Yid is a Jewish ethnonym of Yiddish origin. It is used as an autonym within the Ashkenazi Jewish community, and also used as slang. When pronounced in such a way that it rhymes with did by non-Jews, it is commonly intended as a pejorative term. It is used as a derogatory epithet, and as an alternative to, the English word 'Jew'. It is uncertain when the word began to be used in a pejorative sense by non-Jews, but some believe it started in the late Nineteenth or early Twentieth Century when there was a large population of Jews and Yiddish speakers concentrated in East London, gaining popularity in the 1930s when Oswald Mosley developed a strong following in the East End of London.
****A shape shifter is someone or something that seems able to change form or identity at will, especially a mythical figure such as a witch that can assume different forms (as of animals).
*****The Café Royal in Regent Street, Piccadilly was originally conceived and set up in 1865 by Daniel Nicholas Thévenon, who was a French wine merchant. He had to flee France due to bankruptcy, arriving in Britain in 1863 with his wife, Célestine, and just five pounds in cash. He changed his name to Daniel Nicols and under his management - and later that of his wife - the Café Royal flourished and was considered at one point to have the greatest wine cellar in the world. By the 1890s the Café Royal had become the place to see and be seen at. It remained as such into the Twenty-First Century when it finally closed its doors in 2008. Renovated over the subsequent four years, the Café Royal reopened as a luxury five star hotel.
******J. Lyons and Co. was a British restaurant chain, food manufacturing, and hotel conglomerate founded in 1884 by Joseph Lyons and his brothers in law, Isidore and Montague Gluckstein. Lyons’ first teashop opened in Piccadilly in 1894, and from 1909 they developed into a chain of teashops, with the firm becoming a staple of the High Street in the United Kingdom. At its peak the chain numbered around two hundred cafes. The teashops provided for tea and coffee, with food choices consisting of hot dishes and sweets, cold dishes and sweets, and buns, cakes and rolls. Lyons' Corner Houses, which first appeared in 1909 and remained until 1977, were noted for their Art Deco style. Situated on or near the corners of Coventry Street, Strand and Tottenham Court Road, they and the Maison Lyonses at Marble Arch and in Shaftesbury Avenue were large buildings on four or five floors, the ground floor of which was a food hall with counters for delicatessen, sweets and chocolates, cakes, fruit, flowers and other products. In addition, they possessed hairdressing salons, telephone booths, theatre booking agencies and at one period a twice-a-day food delivery service. On the other floors were several restaurants, each with a different theme and all with their own musicians. For a time, the Corner Houses were open twenty-four hours a day, and at their peak each branch employed around four hundred staff including their famous waitresses, commonly known as Nippies for the way they nipped in and out between the tables taking orders and serving meals. The tea houses featured window displays, and, in the post-war period, the Corner Houses were smarter and grander than the local tea shops. Between 1896 and 1965 Lyons owned the Trocadero, which was similar in size and style to the Corner Houses.
*******The British pre-decimal halfpenny, once abbreviated ob., is a discontinued denomination of sterling coinage worth 1/480 of one pound, 1/24 of one shilling, or 1/2 of one penny. Originally the halfpenny was minted in copper, but after 1860 it was minted in bronze.
********The original reverse of the bronze version of the coin, designed by Leonard Charles Wyon, is a seated Britannia, holding a trident, with the words HALF PENNY to either side. Issues before 1895 also feature a lighthouse to Britannia's left and a ship to her right. Various minor adjustments to the level of the sea depicted around Britannia, and the angle of her trident were also made over the years. Some issues feature toothed edges, while others feature beading.
*********Petticoat Lane Market is a fashion and clothing market in Spitalfields, London. It consists of two adjacent street markets. Wentworth Street Market and Middlesex Street Market. Originally populated by Huguenots fleeing persecution in France, Spitalfields became a center for weaving, embroidery and dying. From 1882, a wave of Jewish immigrants fleeing persecution in eastern Europe settled in the area and Spitalfields then became the true heart of the clothing manufacturing district of London. 'The Lane' was always renowned for the 'patter' and showmanship of the market traders. It was also known for being a haven for the unsavoury characters of London’s underworld and was rife with prostitutes during the late Victorian era. Unpopular with the authorities, as it was largely unregulated and in some sense illegal, as recently as the 1930s, police cars and fire engines were driven down ‘The Lane’, with alarm bells ringing, to disrupt the market.
**********”The Notorious Mrs. Carrick” is a 1924 British silent crime film directed by George Ridgwell and starring Cameron Carr, A.B. Imeson and Gordon Hopkirk. It was an adaptation of the novel Pools of the Past by Charles Proctor. The film was made by Britain's largest film company of the era Stoll Pictures. It was released in July 1924.
***********The Premier Super Cinema in East Ham was opened on the 12th of March, 1921, replacing the 800 seat capacity 1912 Premier Electric Theatre. The new cinema could seat 2,408 patrons. The Premier Super Cinema was taken over by Provincial Cinematograph Theatres who were taken over by Gaumont British in February 1929. It was renamed the Gaumont from 21st April 1952. The Gaumont was closed by the Rank Organisation on 6th April 1963. After that it became a bingo hall and remained so until 2005. Despite attempts to have it listed as a historic building due to its relatively intact 1921 interior, the Gaumont was demolished in 2009.
************A Brown Betty is a type of teapot, round and with a manganese brown glaze known as Rockingham glaze. In the Victorian era, when tea was at its peak of popularity, tea brewed in the Brown Betty was considered excellent. This was attributed to the design of the pot which allowed the tea leaves more freedom to swirl around as the water was poured into the pot, releasing more flavour with less bitterness.
*************A term originating in Nineteenth Century Britain, a pea soup fog is a very thick and often yellowish, greenish or blackish fog caused by air pollution that contains soot particulates and the poisonous gas sulphur dioxide. It refers to the thick, dense fog that is so thick that it appears to be the color and consistency of pea soup. Pea-soupers were particularly common in large industrial cities like Manchester and Liverpool and populous cities like London where there were lots of coal fires either for industry and manufacturing, or for household heating. The last really big pea-souper in London happened in December 1952. At least three and a half to four thousand people died of acute bronchitis. However, in cities like Manchester and Liverpool, where the concentration of manufacturing was higher, they continued well beyond that.
**************Rosie-Lee is Cockney slang for tea, and it is one of the most well-known of all Cockney rhyming slang.
***************A purpose-built "great national sports ground", called the Empire Stadium, was built for the Exhibition at Wembley. This became Wembley Stadium. Wembley Urban District Council was opposed to the idea, as was The Times, which considered Wembley too far from Central London. The first turf for this stadium was cut, on the site of the old tower, on the 10th of January 1922. 250,000 tons of earth were then removed, and the new structure constructed within ten months, opening well before the rest of the Exhibition was ready. Designed by John William Simpson and Maxwell Ayrton, and built by Sir Robert McAlpine, it could hold 125,000 people, 30,000 of them seated. The building was an unusual mix of Roman imperial and Mughal architecture. Although it incorporated a football pitch, it was not solely intended as a football stadium. Its quarter mile running track, incorporating a 220 yard straight track (the longest in the country) were seen as being at least equally important. The only standard gauge locomotive involved in the construction of the Stadium has survived, and still runs on Sir William McAlpine's private Fawley Hill railway near Henley.
****************The British Empire Exhibition was a colonial exhibition held at Wembley Park, London England from 23 April to 1 November 1924 and from 9 May to 31 October 1925. In 1920 the British Government decided to site the British Empire Exhibition at Wembley Park, on the site of the pleasure gardens created by Edward Watkin in the 1890s. A British Empire Exhibition had first been proposed in 1902, by the British Empire League, and again in 1913. The Russo-Japanese War had prevented the first plan from being developed and World War I put an end to the second, though there had been a Festival of Empire in 1911, held in part at Crystal Palace. One of the reasons for the suggestion was a sense that other powers, like America and Japan, were challenging Britain on the world stage. Despite victory in Great War, this was in some ways even truer in 1919. The country had economic problems and its naval supremacy was being challenged by two of its former allies, the United States and Japan. In 1917 Britain had committed itself eventually to leave India, which effectively signalled the end of the British Empire to anyone who thought about the consequences, while the Dominions had shown little interest in following British foreign policy since the war. It was hoped that the Exhibition would strengthen the bonds within the Empire, stimulate trade and demonstrate British greatness both abroad and at home, where the public was believed to be increasingly uninterested in Empire, preferring other distractions, such as the cinema.
****************The cast iron Jubilee Clock has remained a Harlesden landmark since its erection at Queen Victoria’s Golden Jubilee in 1887. It is ornate, decorated with dolphins, armorial bearings, a fluted circular column with spirals, shields of arms and swags. When it was built, it featured four ornate gas lit lamps sprouting from its column and two drinking fountains with taps and bowls at its base. It also featured a weathervane on its top. During the late Twentieth Century elements were removed, including the lanterns and the fountain bowls. In 1997 the clock was restored without these elements, but plans are underway to restore of the weathervane and recreation of the original four circular lanterns to the clock and the two fountains.
*****************A idiom used to describe something that is obvious and quite clear, “plain as the nose on your face” is attributed to Francois Rabelais in 1552 by Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations. It was also used by Shakespeare in England in 1594 in Act II, Scene I of Two Gentleman of Verona.
This cluttered, yet cheerful domestic scene is not all it seems to be at first glance, for it is made up of part of my 1:12 size dollhouse miniatures collection. Some pieces come from my own childhood. Other items I acquired as an adult through specialist online dealers and artists who specialise in 1:12 miniatures.
Fun things to look for in this tableau include:
The black skillet with the rasher of bacon and the two eggs frying in it are an artisan piece that I acquired from Kathleen Knight’s Dolls’ House Shop in the United Kingdom. The blue and white plate on the edge of the stove to the right of the photograph also comes from Kathleen Knight’s Dolls’ House Shop.
The square of lard wrapped up in silver foil is an artisan miniature piece that I acquired from former chef turned miniature artisan, Frances Knight. Frances Knight’s work is incredibly detailed and realistic, and she says that she draws her inspiration from her years as a chef and her imagination.
The small serrated knife with the wooden handle on the blue and white Cornish Ware plate comes from Doreen Jeffries’ Small Wonders Miniatures Shop in the United Kingdom.
Cornishware is a striped kitchenware brand trademarked to and manufactured by T.G. Green & Co Ltd. Originally introduced in the 1920s and manufactured in Church Gresley, Derbyshire, it was a huge success for the company and in the succeeding 30 years it was exported around the world. The company ceased production in June 2007 when the factory closed under the ownership of parent company, The Tableshop Group. The range was revived in 2009 after T.G. Green was bought by a trio of British investors.
The Box of Sunlight Soap standing on the edge of the trough sink and the jars of Coleman’s Mustard and tartaric acid on the shelf of the stove are 1:12 size artisan miniatures made by Little Things Dollhouse Miniatures in Lancashire, with great attention to detail paid to their labels and the shapes of their jars and cans.
Sunlight Soap was first introduced in 1884. It was produced at Port Sunlight in Wirrel, Merseyside, a model village built by Lever Brothers for the workers of their factories which produced the popular soap brands Lux, Lifebuoy and Sunlight.
Colman's is an English manufacturer of mustard and other sauces, formerly based and produced since 1814 for one hundred and sixty years at Carrow, in Norwich, Norfolk. Owned by Unilever since 1995, Colman's is one of the oldest existing food brands, famous for a limited range of products, almost all being varieties of mustard.
The various bowls, cannisters and dishes, the kettle and the Brown Betty teapot I have acquired from various online miniatures stockists throughout the United Kingdom, America and Australia.
The black Victorian era stove and the ladderback chair on the left of the table and the small table directly behind it are all miniature pieces I have had since I was a child. The ladderback chair on the right came from a deceased estate of a miniatures collector in Sydney.
The grey marbleised fireplace behind the stove and the trough sink in the corner of the kitchen come from Kathleen Knight’s Doll House Miniatures.