Jean Fullerton

Warehouses in Wapping High Street 

Old Warehouses in Wapping High Street.

' Her legs seemed to be frozen, but Ellen managed to get them working sufficiently  to escape from the bar room. Hugging the cloak tight around her Ellen dashed along Wapping High Street towards her home.'

This is a picture of one of the old warehouses that lined Wapping high street.  Ships would draw up along side and offload their cargo straight into the warehouse.  As you can see, they have been converted into smart apartments but when Ellen and Josie O'Casey walked home passed these wharfs they wouldn't have been able to see the river other than through the narrow alley ways that ran between the buildings.  The air too would have been full of the smells, of spices, fresh cut timber and tea brought from all around the world.  I remember as a child that as you walked down the High Street you could still smell the spices that must have impregnated themselves into the joist and beams of the old warehouses.

The type of shops that would have lined Ratcliffe Highway  

The type of shops that would have lined Ratcliffe Highway

' As she started down Cannon Street Road Ellen’s attention was caught by a large pool of black smoke rising above the closely packed houses.'

This picture I actually took in Spitalfield some two miles north of the dock area but it shows the type of houses and shops  that lined the notorious Radcliffe Highway. Ellen and Josie would have shop here, Watney Street or maybe up by ‘the Waste’, an old open market on the main road into London, for their daily food. The Greek style porticos of the London hospital stood just to the east of the old market and Robert would have walked under it when he met Ellen buying vegetables in the market.  

The London Hospital 

The Front of the London Hospital

'Stepping out of the hospital, Robert stood under the clasic portico for a moment and surveyed the scene.  He tucked the package under his arm and drew a deep breath, and made his way down the white steps to the market. The noon stage coach to Colchester passed just as he reached the bottom, its driver whipping the horses into a steady trot towards the open expance of Bow Common and the Old Ford across the Lea River.' 

This is the front of the London Hospital it appears much the same today as it would have done to Robert as he approached the hospital. The London Hospital sat on the main road to Essex that ran right past the front of the hospital now the A11.   

What's left of Anthony Street.

What's left of Anthony Street.

'On an April evening in 1832, with her shawl wrapped tightly over her abundant auban hair, Ellen O'Casey ducked out of the cold on the Whitechaple Road in East London and into the tradesman's entrance of the Angle and Crown. 

Thank goodness she had bought a half-hundreadweight of coal from the merchant. Even now, in lat spring, the two rooms in Anthony Street she shared with her mother and daughter, Josie, could be cold and her mother was still low from the last bout of chest ague.' 

In No Cure for Love, Ellen, Josie and Bridget live at 2 Anthony Street. This is the actual house where I was born and it is just as I described it, a one up and one down, corner cottage with a minute back yard. I'm sad to say that, as you can see from the picture to the right, this is all that is left of Anthony Street, it hasn't even got it's name on the wall now and it is now cut across as are the adjoining street by an new development.

The Site of Paddy's Goose.

The Site of Paddy's Goose.

'Ellen gritted her teeth and stepped out onto the rickety stage. As the lights glared on her, Paddy Flanagan struck up a chord on the badly-tuned piano at the side of the stage.

              The commotion in the public bar continued and Ellen had to raise her voice to be heard over the guttural voices of sailors and the shrill giggles of the women. After the first verse a drunk in the front of the stage lurched forward and grabbed for the hem of her gown but fell short and ended up kneeling against the stage. He gabbled something, then slumped unconscious on the floor.'

From studying old maps and accounts this is as near as I can get to the place where the White Swan, Paddy’s Goose stood.  It is no more, although ironically, a large off license trades there now.  This was a notorious public house and Henry Mayhew mentions it in his London Labour and The Labouring Poor. In No Cure for Love, Paddy’s Goose is owned and frequented by Danny Donavan. 

One of the Old Alleyways

One of the Old Alleyways

'Although the day was bright the narrow alley, the sides of which could be touched by a man with outstretched arms standing in its centre, was in almost total shadow. The houses had been built a century ago as fine, three storey terraces, but had long since lapsed into crumbling dosshouses.' 

This is an example of the narrow alleyways that threaded their way across the whole area. Just wide enough for a cart to pass through. This one is just off the Mile End Road at Stepney Green. Although it looks quite airy now, in Robert's day, when he was inspecting it for the water supplies and sewage it would have had houses rising on both sides.

Not all of the East London residents lived in poverty.

No all of the East London residents lived in poverty.

' Robert tried to respond, but realised he couldn’t.  People, not only in London but in Edinburgh and other large towns, lived like animals, in filth, starvation and poverty and all she could do was propose a ball to raise charity money.'

Finally, in contrast to where Ellen and her family lived, these are the large, four and five story family houses in Stepney Green. It was to these houses that Ellen and Bridget trudged each day to collect dirty laundry. They will also feature in the sequel to No Cure for Love, A Glimpse at Happiness.