Jean Fullerton

Josie's House in Stepney Green

'With her hand on the polished banister, Josephine O’Casey, known as Josie ever since she could remember, lifted her skirts and made her way down the uncarpeted stairs from the main part of the house, to the kitchen. The heat from the room burst over her as she opened the door. Tucking a stray lock of her auburn hair back behind her ears, she stepped down to the flagstone floor.
           The kitchen of twenty-four, Stepney Green was half below street level. The range, with its two ovens, roasting spit and six hotplates, dominated the entire space. Daisy, their maid, lit it at five in the morning and it supplied the household with both food and, thanks to the copper incorporated into its design, a constant stream of hot water.
        Standing with her back to Josie was Mrs Woodall, the Munroe family’s cook. Her wide hips shook as she furiously stirred the contents of one of the large saucepans. 

I used this house that I used to walk past as a child, as Josie's home when she and her family returned from America.  It is just off the Mile-End road and only a short walk from the London Hospital where Josie’s step-father works.  In the 1840s it would have been owned by a merchant or banker who would have employed the same amounts of servants as the Josie’s parents.  

A typical riverside pub

The boatman was set a few streets back from the river and tucked up the side of low well Alley. It wasn’t frequented by the watermen with wages burning a hole in their pockets as the Prospect or the Town were, but then it didn’t have the peelers from Wapping police office passing through its doors either.’  

The public house here is The Bunch of  Grapes at the Limehouse end of Narrow Street.  Although, as far as I know it’s never been owned by the head of a criminal gang I used the image of it when I described Ma Tugman’s pub the Boatman, which I tucked away in Coleman Street. 

Ma Tugman's Bar

Patrick ran his gaze slowly around the dingy interior of the Boatman and wondered why anyone, after breaking his back all day for a few pennies, would want to drown their sorrows in a place like this. Even the trollops selling themselves for six pennyworth in the alley alongside were a repellent collection of crones. Ma’s pub must be the last stop before the grave or the pox ward at the London Hospital. With his hand in his pockets, Patrick mentally counted Ma’s men draped over the bar.
        Twelve, he thought with a rue smile. I might just get out alive.

The river as Patrick would have known it.

'As the sun dipped behind the wharves that lined the Thames waterfront at Wapping, Patrick Nolan leapt nimbly onto the quayside, looped the rope in his hand around the squat iron mooring then pressed the coil firmly with his studded boot. From Ratcliffe Cross to the Regency Canal basin the sail barges, like the one Patrick captained, were being tied up and made trim for the next day.'

Although the waterfront Patrick tied up the Mermaid now has expensive appartments rather than warehouses full of goods it would have looked much the same as this picture.   

River Mud

'Patrick and Iggy Bonny stood on the stone quayside and surveyed Roy MacManus’s barge, the Mary Ann, lying half submerged in the ebbing tide. Inside its hull, Roy stood up to his knees in slurry desperately packing cork into the damaged timber.'

It's easy to forget that the Thames is a tidal river and this picture of the mud at low tide taken from Wapping Old Stairs would be the scene Patrick and Iggy were looking down on. If you look closely you can see the old stone runway where the rivercraft would have been hauled out of the river for repair.   

Patrick's local. the Town of Ramsgate

'Inside, the narrow bar was packed. The Town did a brisk trade from all those who worked on the river. As it was Saturday, those men paid at the end of the week stopped in at any one of the hundreds of public houses in the area for a swift pint before the more reliable headed for home to give their wives the weekly housekeeping. The first customers in that evening had found themselves a seat on one of the benches against the wall. Most stood elbow to elbow while they sank their foaming pints.

Inside the Town of Ramsgate

The Town of Ramsgate is still just where I placed it in A Glimpse at Happiness. It was Patrick’s Local after a long day hauling coal and it’s mine, too. I can’t walk to it as Patrick could but I’m there once a week and often take visitors to London there so they can see a authentic riverside pub.     

Typical alley way to the river

This is Wapping Old Stairs which runs along side the Town of Ramsgate and is typical of the alley that ran down to the river between the warehouses 

Patrick's boat

This is an image of what Patrick Boat might have looked like. Although we think of Thames Barges as being a particular type of craft there were small boat builders along both sides of the river and each produced their own particular design of river craft.

'Josie hurried on, into the winding thoroughfare that an alongside the river to Limehouse pier, where Patrick moored his boat. As she neared the river the wisps of mist thickened and, as her feet clattered along the wooden boards, upright moorings and crates seemed to loom out at her.'

Where Patrick would have sailed the Mermaid

This is the entrance to Limehouse basin the main area for the off loading of the thousands of tons of coal London needed every day. Although, Patrick’s barge was moored at Limehouse pier he would have sail through the lock daily to pick up the black gold and ferry it up river.    

The type of charity school Annie and Micky would have attended

'Straightening up again Annie retraced her steps but Mickey was nowhere to be seen. Normally she would have thought he had slipped away from her to bunk off but since Miss Josie had been helping him with his letters he had been eager to go to school and had even talked about getting the form reading prize. She couldn’t understand why he wasn’t waiting for her with his retrieved satchel.'

Although compulsory education wasn’t introduced until 1870 there were a great number of charitable schools in East London including, Raines Foundation (which my brother went to) , St Paul’s Bluecoat in Shadwell, Redcoat School, for Mariners Children and attached to St Dunstan’s church in Stepney, and Sir John Cass Foundation, just inside the city boundaries at Aldgate, which I attended.   Children were often sponsored by the local church and parents were sometimes expected to provide books and a uniform both of which were very expensive.  

St Mary's and St Micheal's Church

'The Virginia Street Mission had been a coffee warehouse not so long ago but the aroma of roasted beans had now been replaced by the heady scent of incense. With its whitewashed interior, draped high altar and brightly coloured figures of the saints lining its walls, St Mary’s was the main place of worship for Knockfergus’s Catholic population.'