I have hitherto resisted my wife’s frequent recommendations that I should read a daily blog about the life of the denizens of Spitalfields, but, now that they have been published in book form, I can see why she is such an enthusiast.
The Gentle Author is deliberately anonymous and bases his style on a combination of John Gay and Henry Mayhew, a pseudo-18th-century faux naïf, who wanders round his local neighbourhood collecting the tales of ordinary folk, including the last of the so-called swagmen who has a market stall in Spitalfields, the waiter in an Indian restaurant just off Brick Lane, Fred, who sells chestnuts at the corner of Bell Lane and Wentworth Street, and Paul Gardner, the fourth generation in his family to sell paper bags.
It is astonishing how many small traders survive through several generations and what stories they have to tell, like Maria Pellicci who works a 13-hour shift running her family’s café in the Roman Road, having left Tuscany in 1961.
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