Penny Sweets and Cobbled Streets: My East End Childhood

By Nanny Pat

Nanny Pat has always been the heart of her family, and her children and grandchildren regularly pitch up at her house for a cup of tea, a slice of her famous sausage plait and some wise advice.

Now, with her trademark warmth and humour, she evokes the colourful East End world of her childhood. Pat was born in 1935 and, apart from a brief period when she was evacuated during the Second World War, she lived in Bow, part of a poor but close-knit community. Her mother died when Pat was only eleven, leaving her heartbroken. As young as she was, she was soon running the household, washing, cleaning and cooking for her father and brother - as well as working in a cork factory upon leaving school. It was a lonely life at times, as her strict father refused to let her go courting. But then she met a handsome young man called Charlie . . . and, against all opposition, she was determined to marry him.

Full of great characters, from her deaf Nan to Auntie Alice, who would dress in all her furs to pop out to buy a pork chop, and packed with wonderful anecdotes, this delightful memoir vividly captures a lost way of life.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Pan Macmillan
• Release date: Aug 16, 2012
• ISBN: 9781447218777

Nanny Pat

Patricia Brooker grew up in East London, where she married husband Charlie and had five children. After working in various East End factories, she became landlady of the Rising Sun before moving to Essex and working as a newsagent and then a dinner lady. She was catapulted to fame in ITV's The Only Way is Essex, where as matriarch of the Wright clan she quickly became one of the most popular characters. She has fourteen grandchildren and six great grandchildren.

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Acknowledgements

PROLOGUE

I was seventy-five years old the first time someone asked for my autograph.

Fame was not something I went looking for, nor was it something I ever expected. But somehow it happened to little ol’ me! So at the age when most people are retiring, and heading off to their caravans by the sea to watch the world go by in peace, I was whizzing about here, there and everywhere, from filming for The Only Way is Essex, to TV interview, to launch party.

I got pulled into the show by chance, when my grandson Mark Wright started filming, and I had a bit of a cameo when I called round his flat with some homemade food for him. I felt daft, but it was just a laugh, until my weekly food drops for him, especially the sausage plaits, suddenly got popular with the TOWIE audience. Then before I knew it, my TV career took off. I am sure if my husband Charlie was still here, he’d be saying to me, ‘What the bleedin’ hell you doing, you daft woman?!’, but I tell you what, exhausting though it has been, I’ve loved (mostly) every minute of it.

But this book is not about any of that really. It is about the first half of my life, a normal childhood, far away from anything I am living now. My life growing up and falling in love in the East End of London – Devons Road and Canning Town to be exact.

It’s about a bit of London and a way of life that still exists on some levels, but that has completely disappeared on another. What you’ll probably see as you read, is that that’s awful when it comes to some things – and a right blessing when it comes to others!

There are some characters and ways of behaving that were so true to the old East End, especially around the time of the war, that have sadly, gone now for ever. But that’s why I am writing this book. I want to give people a glimpse of a piece of London that to me just seems normal, but one I know, from talking to my kids and grandkids seems completely strange yet fascinating to other people.

So whether you will be seeing all this through new eyes, or you are an East End old-timer and are reading this for the memories, please do this the proper way. By that I mean you should be settled back by now, with a plateful of jellied eels on your lap, a takeaway pint from the local pub, and the wireless crackling away next to you . . .

ONE

The Ol’ Bow Bells

When I was a little ’un, you didn’t talk to your parents. Least not about anything outside of the situation you were in at that time, or the life you were living then and there. So it was all about school, work, food, housework, and . . . well, really, that was it.

‘Come on, get yourself ready for school,’ Mum would say. Or, ‘Move it, get cleaned and the table set for dinner.’ Then, ‘Hurry up, get yourself ready for bed.’ It definitely wasn’t the thing to sit and talk about stuff like the past, or feelings, or anything like that.

Besides that, my mum and dad were always working, so even if you wanted to, you didn’t get a chance to sit down and exchange words about events that didn’t have anything to do with your day-to-day needs. My mum would go to work of a morning, and I just had to go to school. Then after school, depending on what shifts she was working, I would go home, or stay with an auntie until she had finished, then in the evening there wasn’t much time together before bed. I was young then, of course, while she was still alive.

So now you can see why, although a lot of people start their memoirs with a chapter on their parents’, even their grandparents’ lives before they were born themselves, well, if I did it, with the little I know, it’d be a pretty sorry looking chapter.

Although there is one thing about my mum’s family that I do know and think is worth a mention. Her surname before she married my dad was Chipperfield, and she was part of the family who ran Chipperfield Circus, which is that world-famous circus you might have heard of.

She and her sister Violet, who was about four years older and her only sister, came from the circus family. I don’t know if Mum ever actually had to perform – I like to think she might have, though. Trapeze artist, shot out of a cannon, a horseback ballerina . . . I’d settle for her having done any of it. We used to go and watch that circus when we were young and it was in town. They would set up every year on Blackheath, and we went along a couple of times as a family. It was quite a way from Devons Road – about five or six miles – and we didn’t have a car then, but we’d get the bus. It was a great day out, and a really big deal for me and my brother Tommy. We’d be talking about it for weeks afterwards.

Chipperfield Circus still exists today, but they have had to stop using animals. Then, though, it was full of tigers and elephants and zebras, as well as the clowns and trapeze artists and that. It was amazing to go to as a kid. Quite another world. Maybe I had some circus blood in me, for I’d sometimes watch them and think how I’d quite like to be living their life!

It’s one of my regrets that I didn’t ever take the time to ask my mum about all of that, then again I don’t suppose she’d have wanted to talk about it. The only time she mentioned it she went quiet after, and that was the end of it.

My dad’s family meantime were all East End through and through, and had been running the fish trade in the area for years. He was one of thirteen children, not to mention all his cousins and other relatives, so wherever you went in the area you were sure to bump into a Spicer!

So anyway, Winifred Chipperfield – known to her friends as Win – and Thomas John Spicer – known as Tom – were both born around 1912. They met and fell in love and married in their late teens.

My dad was a tall, handsome man with mousey brown hair, while my mum was slim and quiet, and really lovely looking.

They started their married life in a flat in Watts Grove, near Devons Road in Bow, and hadn’t been married long when they decided to start a family. Along came their first screaming bundle – my brother – in 1931. In true East End tradition, he was named after my dad, although to tell the difference between Thomas senior and junior my dad’s name was shortened to Tom, while we mostly called my brother Tommy.

Then just as my mum was about to send him off to school and get some peace to herself again during the day, I came along four and a half years later, on 21 November 1935. I’ve no idea what time of day and get amazed when people ask me – funnily enough I don’t remember, and that kind of sentimental thinking didn’t really exist then, so it wasn’t written in a baby book for me to pore over years later or anything. You were just more than happy the baby was born healthy, and that the mother had survived the birth.

I was born in hospital, St Andrew’s Hospital in Bromley-by-Bow to be precise. Not that it’s there anymore, it’s been knocked down and modern housing has been built where it was. A lot of the hospitals have been knocked down in East London – I could list off plenty of others that used to be around. I don’t understand why myself. Surely the more people there are, the more hospitals you need, but it seems to be going in reverse!

Anyway, from what I have been told, that definitely makes me a proper cockney as it’s within earshot of the ol’ Bow Bells at St Mary-le-Bow church in the city, although I’m sure that must be true for most of the East End. Everyone who comes from the East End likes to consider themselves cockney – it’s kind of the ultimate Londoner title!

Now my parents must have been a bit shocked when I popped out ’cause I had a shock of ginger hair – and they both have brown hair! But two of my dad’s brothers were right ginger, so I guess it came from his side of the family. No milkman-style scandal or anything like that there, thank you very much, despite the on-going jokes.

Anyway, my mum and dad took me home from hospital to the flat, number 12 Bilberry House. I can remember that address like anything, as it became my home for the next twenty years.

Bow is in the heart of the East End of London, just north of the Thames River. At that time it was an area mostly made up of council houses and flats, mixed in amongst factories. It was quite built up, with not many green areas – it was more about industry back then.

Our flat was off a road called Devons Road, which was where most of the local shops were. It was a main road, but there was never much traffic – you didn’t get many cars around there in them days.

To get to our flat you came off Devons Road into a cobbled street called Watts Grove. Looking back, I wonder why they bothered with cobbles, but it seemed like loads of the roads were done that way. They weren’t always so easy to walk on, though, and you were forever twisting your ankle. I remember running up Watts Grove when I was late for school and nearly taking a fall dozens of times. Running and cobbles are never a good combination. But that was a common way for the roads to be done in them days, so you got kind of used to it. Now cobbles are just for decoration really, aren’t they?

Our flat was on the second floor of a four-storey block, built in the 1920s or 30s. To get to it you went up some stairs and along a balcony walkway – the landing, as we always used to call it. Our flat was the one at the end, in the corner. It’s years since I’ve been there, but I’d have no problem finding it at all now.

We had a front door that I suppose had a lock on it, not that we ever used it – you just didn’t get people breaking into each other’s houses then. And the reality was there was nothing in there worth stealing anyway.

So you’d go through the door, and there was a little bit of a passageway. Then there was a front room, a kitchen, a bigger bedroom for my parents, and a smaller bedroom with two little single beds in it that me and my brother shared, until he left. Then we got rid of one bed, and I had it all to myself. Bliss! Oh, and there was a toilet – a tiny little room that just about fitted a toilet and a small circular wash basin. All the rooms were small, and basic, I suppose you’d say, but my mum had done her best to make it homely and nice. Besides, you didn’t have anything like the amount of furniture or belongings what you do today. So like we hardly needed many wardrobes ’cause we hardly owned any clothes, and what we had we were busy looking after and mending.

The front room was where we spent most of our time. It was where the fireplace was, so in the winter it was the only place you wanted to be. And there was a settee and you would go in there to listen to the radio or do needlework, or it was where my dad would bring his friends.

My mum was mostly found in the kitchen, which was also the bathroom – sounds strange today, but that’s often how it was back then – the bath was in here so it could be by the boiler to get hot water. But ’cause there wasn’t much space, it also had to double up as something else, so had a wooden top you pulled down over it to turn it into the kitchen table. All very practical, I can tell you!

Unlike the hospital, the flats are still there today, but they’ve changed a lot. All modernized and with baths in the bathroom and everything.

As for our block of flats, they were all council-owned flats ’cause no one round our area would have been rich enough to own their own place. But it was a great selection of people who lived in them. I think I liked all of them mostly, except one scary old lady who lived in the building opposite. She used to sit and look out the window all the time and bang on the window for no reason. So we’d pull faces at her and run off. I think we decided she was a witch!

Apart from her, maybe it was the fact that people weren’t well off, or maybe it was just how things were in them days, but it was a really friendly area. I know it sounds like a stereotype, but everyone really did know each other, and helped each other out when they could. Everybody knew everybody’s business, partly out of nosiness, of course, but mostly ’cause they were looking out for each other.

Also people hardly ever moved. Why would you? So people had lived in the same flat all their lives, and people were next to others they had grown up with. Friends were as much your family as your family was, half the time. And while it was clear who your parents were, everyone chipped in with looking after each other’s children where they could – they were more like aunts and uncles than neighbours, and that’s exactly what they ended up being called.

So I had a lot of women I called ‘Auntie’, but they weren’t actually aunties in the sense that they were related to me by blood. At least some of them were, and some of them may have been, but mostly it was just a term we used for any woman we were talking to or about. It meant half the time I didn’t even know people’s actual Christian names! They were just ‘Auntie over the road’ or ‘Auntie in number twenty-one’ and somehow people knew who you were talking about. It might sound odd now, but it was totally normal then.

It was the same when you were talking about men, they were always ‘Uncle’ and their kids were mostly called my cousins.

To people who didn’t live in that time and place I know it sounds strange. I don’t think my grandkids can believe that I didn’t know who were my blood relatives and who were not, but in a way I don’t suppose it really mattered. The community had an overall family feel.

So I suppose because of that, no one kept themselves separate. Everybody would be constantly going between homes and popping in for a gossip, or to swap some tips, or to keep an eye on someone’s kids, or just to be plain nosey.

My best friend from when I was as small as I can remember was a girl called Winnie Armitage. She lived in our flats on the next landing and we were pretty much always together. We’d walk to and from school together, we were in the same class, and we played together.

She was from a great big family – there were thirteen children in her family. Can you imagine that?! They had two flats to share as a family, and I remember her parents lived in one with half the kids, and her grandma in the other with the rest of the children, and they both sort of oversaw running both flats. Big families were pretty common, but this one was big even by those days’ standards. But it didn’t seem to do them any harm. They were well brought-up kids.

She had a sister a couple of years older than us, called Gracie. She was a nice girl too, and was the oldest of the thirteen kids, so knew a lot about the ways of the world. It seemed like the age gap between us was much bigger than two years, and she taught me a few things as I was growing up.

The rent we paid on our flat was 12 shillings and 6 pence a week, which seemed a lot of money at the time. A man from the council used to come around and knock on the door every Monday to collect it. You’d see people pulling their curtains and not answering the door if they didn’t have the money. But my mum and dad must have been good at keeping the rent aside ’cause I always remember them paying on time.

The majority of the area was poor, but that doesn’t mean anything really – no one was rich in them days as far as I could see, least not in East London, and definitely no one I came across.

You never had expensive toys, or holidays, or cars parked up outside your door or anything like that. Cars could just be borrowed from the odd well-off person for special occasions like weddings or funerals. And you earned your way in life. Sitting around was never an option. If you were out of work you swept the roads to get a couple of coppers if that’s what it took. People weren’t too proud in them days – it was a fool who sat home rather than getting out and providing for his family. I guess that’s where the saying ‘working class’ came from, and we were a working-class family, no doubt about that. My parents were real hard-working people. So hard working, in fact, that I don’t remember seeing much of my dad for the first nine years of my life – because he was never around. Then he was called up to serve in the Navy during the Second World War. I’m not sure that he liked it ’cause it wasn’t as if he was there out of choice, I don’t suppose. Either way, he was away most of the time for as much as I can remember of my early years.

As for my mum, it seemed like she was always working. My early memories of her revolve around her leaving for work. She worked five days a week, and as many hours as she could, in some factory or another.

The main job I remember her doing was in a factory called Morton’s over at Millwall. Morton’s was a great big food-production factory. They did lots of canned food, jams, tea, meat. . . anything and everything, as far as I could tell. Then much of it was put on to the ships and taken to other countries from the nearby Royal Victoria Dock. But more importantly, as far as I was concerned, they made sweets! Everything from candied fruit to boiled sweets, and luckily for me, that was where my mum’s job was.

It was like temptation was being put in front of the workers every day, and my crafty mum soon found a way to give in to that temptation without getting in trouble, thanks to her trusty turban!

A turban was what we called a scarf that she would wear over her head. It was made of cotton. To do it, she’d fold a scarf into a triangle by putting two of the corners together, put it over her head with the point of the triangle dangling over her nose – I always remember she’d hold it in her teeth to keep it there. Then she’d loop the other two corners down under her neck and back up to the top and tie it in a bow. Then the dangling bit of the triangle would be tucked back and over and there you go, it was all neat and finished, very simple to do. My mum could do her turban quick as a jiffy of a morning, mostly while she was trying to do ten other jobs as well.

If you remember any of the typical images of women from the forties with a scarf on their head, such as one of those land army girls in dungarees, no doubt it will be a turban they are wearing. They were all the fashion then, but the original reasons for it were about practicality. First, of course, it was to keep your hair out of the way so you wouldn’t have to spend time styling it in the morning. It was just hidden. If you did want to style it, though, you’d put your hair in rollers at night, and then put the scarf over it to keep it in place, and sleep that way. It also acted as a good hair protector in the rain – we had no need for brollies in them days, the turbans made sure our hair stayed dry. But it soon turned out there was a much better use for it, as my mum discovered – smuggling sweets out of the factory and home to us!

Each day as they clocked out and left the factory, the workers would be searched to check that they hadn’t taken anything. Mum was so lovely looking, and slim and quiet and innocent, that I am sure they didn’t look too closely with her. Either way, they might have searched all her pockets and wherever else, but they never thought to check inside my clever mum’s turban. At some point near the end of each day, a few of these little sweets would be slipped up the side of her turban and underneath it when no one was looking. Then she’d bring these sweets home and put them into this bowl in a cupboard in the sideboard, and now and again it would be pulled out as a treat for us all. It doubled our excitement each day at seeing her get home, especially me, as