Can you imagine your world without Christmas and New Year festivities and rituals? THE WORLD WAS TURNED UPSIDE DOWN in the age my Great Grandparents x 11 were alive.
IT started with the King refusing to accept any criticism from the members of the House of Commons eg over the war in Spain costing a fortune(some things never change) and deciding to rule without Parliament. It lasted 11 years until all natural and supernatural forces combined to chop off the King's head! The hands that signed the regicide paper saw it as an inevitable conclusion to a civil war the King had provoked and stubbornly persisted with no thought to the people. Even so, for the Londoners who were used to seeing executions of all kinds of people, King Charles 1 was novel and thousands came to watch...
Execution of King Charles 1
Jan 1649
Life goes on - Midwives like Jane Sharp were called on to assist at the births of babies or family and neighbours. It was women's business. They relied on each other in these vulnerable life and death situations.
Even though John Clark was born into the chaotic warren of mariners and shipwrights housing at Wapping, the area was semi-rural.
The Midwife and/or the community of women would have participated in the 'churching' of the Mother and child - a formal cleansing of the sin of sex, then welcome baptism into the Christian Church.
John Clark junior christened at the 'Sailor's chapel' of Saint John of Baptist Church, Wapping on 5th April 1629. Parents John and Margaret Clark(nee Lloyd).
A DIFFERENT KIND OF THRONE - A BIRTHING CHAIR A HANDY HUSBAND COULD MAKE FOR HIS WIFES COMFORT.....MANY WOMEN WOULD BE HAVING BABIES ON AVERAGE EVERY TWO YEARS.
Meanwhile the Royal Sovereign was enjoying his life with hunting activities in the neigbourhood:
"Friday, 24 July 1629. King Charles having hunted a stag or hart from Wanstead in Essex, killed him in Nightingale Lane in the hamlet of Wapping in a garden belonging to one who had some damage among his herbs by reason of the multitude of people there assembled suddenly."
After the chase, which may reasonably be supposed to have been through Leyton, Old Ford and across Stepney Fields - only six or seven miles - tradition has it that the King, in his saddle, took a refreshing draught of ale at the Red Lion Inn at Wapping. Tower Hamlets local history articles
Along the tidal defensive WAPPING WALL HIGH STREET were 36 taverns to cater for the sailors and shipwrights, and warehouse labourers and carters. To provide for the needs of these men were the prostitutes.
Growing up in such an environment of excess would have been extraordinary but no more so than the kids growing up in the port city of Bombay today.
The Established Church of England was responsible for the religious and administrative requirements of the parish for the poor and sick, records of birth, deaths and marriages, but Wapping and other Tower Hamlets were known for it's Dissenters and Non-Conformist congregations.
The culture of exchange of ideas about religion and politics was stimulating the minds and spirit of many.
It was usual that a son would follow in his father's occupation, often because they were learning the ropes from a young age; working at Wapping usually meant as a Mariner or Shipwright. For John Clark we know that with the English Civil War turning into a Republic led by Oliver Cromwell, John Clark became a soldier in the New Model Army with his wife Thomasine.
This was Englands first professionally trained army instead of local militia.
Credit to the learned blogger of the 1640's picture book http://goodwyfe.wordpress.com
Before Doctors could print out prescriptions from the computer they were renowned for their illegible writing, though the Pharmacist would be able to telephone for clarity and overtime get to know the medical professionals style.....Church clergy-men had a similar issue in recording the administrations of the parish, some have beautiful script and some like this Preacher of Saint Giles without Cripplegate (outside the London Wall) is hard to decipher. Can you help? click on the picture below... It is 2nd ........1631. This day approval of John Clark of Parish of St Giles - (click the photo and magnify). Aged about 28......to marry Margaret Lloyd of St Giles in East Cripplegate..... .
Saint Giles without Cripplegate Parish Church
Register of Marriage
Bonds and Allegations. 1631 (via www.ancestry.com.au)
I've always been "nosey" - as a kid I'd walk by the terraced houses of Selly Oak in Birmingham(before it catered for University students, then on tip-toes get a glance of people's front rooms if they hadn't put up net curtains. Nosey as...
Now on the other side of the world I have a sense that peering into the private lives of my Clark ancestors in virtual London, I might get caught! I can't resist knowing and finding out what we have in common all this way down the 350 years!
Thanks to the democracy of technology and knowledge sharing in this 21st century it is marvellous to discover internet technology and their revolutionary printing press enabled and emboldened the proliferation of news and opinion, art and balladry to a wider audience as our blogging does today.
The Gospel According to Church, State and those who can read.
King James 1
A new translation of the Bible 1611
for the Established Church of England.
The Tower Hamlets folk who survived in the the English multi-cultural city of London around the wharfs and warehouses, taverns and coffee-houses, and the power bases of Royalty and Parliament, the words and The Word would have been absorbed into their skin.
I told my mother I was researching her history from her mother born CLARKE. It didn't take long before I was in Cockey, whoops! Cockney East London.
I was from the second city of England and London was far away. My Nan hadn't even been to the Capital of London in all her life. She'd rather go to Broadstairs!
Travel and broadening the mind and life experience has been a modern advent for the labouring classes with basic writing and reading not achieved across my family tree until the Edwardian age (1910)
I was stirred to write a novel when reaching the parish register of St. Botolph without Algate in July 1655, which presented me with a not so anonymous Grandparent, with an extraordinary narrative:
St. Botolph without Aldgate Parish Register
My first layperson translation being: Transcription of text in document
17 July 1655. 'William Clark, son of John Clark, a soldier and Thomasine his wife who herself went for a souldier and was billeted at the Three Hammers in East Smithfield about seven months and after was delivered of this child, the 16th day of this July, and was baptized the 17th in her lodging, being one Mr.Hubber's house. She had been a souldier by her own confession about five years and was sometime drummer to the company.'
Laurence Price was a prolific writer of ballads and known Parliamentarian, so perhaps he had access to interview John and Thomasine Clark in "The Famous Woman Drummer" .
FROM THE ROXBURGH COLLECTION AT English Broadside Archive:
www.ebba.english.uscb.edu
Being NOSEY, I had to find out some background on the love of her life, John Clark who triggered her compulsive desire to participate in the bloody murderous savagery of civil war, to find that for a mere grand-daughter of Eve she could do anything.
By pretending to be a man she was a liberated woman!
One of the first professional soldiers in a national New Model Army, Thomasine Clark is a lesson in the capabilities of some women to be on the front-line(if they wish). She and many of the women of this period show the gender battles instigated by patriarchs were being challenged way before the conscious memory of our mothers and great-grandmothers like the Suffragettes and Feminist activists.
It is highly probable the Cripplegate parish register above is recording John Clark's parents, my 12 generation grand-parents.
The next step is to decipher the bad writing of the Preacher and explore the Post-Reformation contest of ideas and interpretations of the period by this post-modern descendent.
EARLY MODERN CLARK Great Grand-folks x 8 TOWER HAMLETS - March 4 - 1718
ST. BOTOLPH ALDGATE PARISH
Birth and Christening Parish register ST BOTOLPH, ALDGATE
WILLIAM CLARK, SON TO WILLIAM & ANN OF NEW COURT, GRAVEL LANE.
William and Ann Clark and their children would live for many years on the edge of the busy Thames River at Ratcliffe and
Limehouse. This was quite a feat of survival considering the notorious nature of dock side sailors and pirates and gangs of robbers and smugglers as their pedestrians! The environment alsoattracted artists of all kinds, generating a large cultural expression over the years.
With no identifiable Clarks charged with drunken fights or robberies in the Old Bailey records, my old ancestors got on with their honest days work (or they were good at not getting caught).
1746 painting by Canalletto: the new Westminster Bridge over to Lambeth.
and thanks to www.mprobb.wordpress.com for this and other illustrations.
The Clark's shared the Limehouse Causeway and Narrow Street with waves of immigrant arrivals including the southern Chinese sailors who had worked for the East India Company in the 1790's.
I've found me Greats in my mind; skating, sailing, forging iron on the Thames in the Eighteenth Century when the powerful of Westminster put Great before Britain, and built new bridges and docks.
My direct CLARK ancestors were witness and workers to a Time of booming trade in Slaves and Sugar, Coal and Tobacco. Tea had become highly valued, as much as the glut of Gin made from the over-abundant corn harvest resulting in low prices. There were thousands of struggling troops returning from Imperial battles and thousands of pauper peasants displaced from their ancestral homes, evicted from their self-sustaining common land by the authority of the Enclosure Act(s). Britain had a long tradition of dealing and disposing of surplus and desperate characters caught with stolen property or distributing ideas to change the system that created such injustices...Transportation - offshore! Narrow Street/Fore St. Limehouse.
William and Ann Clark must have repeated to their children if they didn't stop thievin' or answering back and speaking ill of their betters - whether they were hungry or not, they'd be put on one of the ships in convict chains and sent to the ends of the earth! for example Between 1650 and 1775 , some tens of thousands of prisoners were sent to the British colony of America, to be sold as labour in Virginia, Maryland, or Georgia - perhaps as many as 120,000.(The Commonwealth of Thieves by Tom Keneally) The Dignity of Labour
Sometimes there was fun and novelty to be had: From the Elizabethan to the Georgian era the Winters were worse than usual, but if you happened to be an Anchor Maker you wouldn't be feeling the cold...with muscle and blasting furnace. The locals made use of a River frozen deep enough to have a party on!
1740 - GIN & GINGERBREAD
1740 sketch from the British Library online gallery. The Punch & Judy Puppet Show is playing safe by setting up in a boat!
Mum's paternal Clark tree has come ashore in the freezing Tower Hamlets borough. She would approve of her ancestors keeping warm and jolly by drinking what they liked followed by singing sea shanties and telling stories in Cockney swagger! The Author of this sketch claims Gin and Gingerbread is on the menu.
This was the cheap drink of the working and malnourished lower-classes of London whom William Hogarth depicted in his famous Gin and Beer Lane pictures published in 1751.
Great Grandparents x 8, William and Anne reside at the end of Lime-Kiln dock on the Limehouse Causeway when their son William is born in 1742 - little brother to Anne Rachel Clark b.1738. who would be apprenticed to a Bethnal Green Weaver. In 1744 they have moved to Narrow Street(this map it's Fore St).
St Anne's Limehouse parish church 1730. Christopher Wren's student, Nigel Hawksmoore was a very busy man in the early 18th century when he was commissioned to design this church and more, including the Parish work/poor-houses.
William Turner the Romantic painter lived on Narrow Street, and Whistler also lived at Limehouse.
LIMEHOUSE - A MULTICULTURAL MARITIME COMMUNITY -TAVERNS/PIRATES/PROSTITUTES/SMUGGLERS/DISEASE/HIGHWAYMEN/MUSICIANS/PAINTERS/WRITERS
THE CLARK'S seem to have kept their head down and out of trouble - following the smugglers advice to 'watch the wall' when they saw sly carrying of goods off the ships, (so they couldn't tell 'the Law'), keeping free of the hangman's noose and the Prison Hulks on the River Thames. Living was an achievement! Infant mortality was high. Getting through life without suffering greatly from an array of man-made abuses was a victory, discounting the horrible weather. Considering one could receive the death penalty for stealing a sheep, living in obscurity was a real-life survival strategy! www.oldbaileyonline.org
BOROUGH OF TOWER HAMLETS, MIDDLESEX. 21st NOVEMBER 1742WILLIAM CLARK was baptised at St. Anne's Limehouse, son of WILLAM CLARK an ANCHOR SMITH and mother ANNE, residents of LIMEHOUSE CAUSEWAY. His siblings, Ann(1739) and John(1744) are also in the Parish register as being christened there.
PEACE BE UPON YOU
St. Anne's Parish Register William junior 21/11/1742 A baby was baptised within days of being born (usually 3), in case they died and thus would not be able to enter the Christian Kingdom of Heaven. For my Grandson's first Christmas
And for Grandmother - Sting singing!
2011
HIS SON'S FIRST CHRISTMAS - There is another London link in the family now, with the birth of a grandson who was the centre of our delight and attention in our sub-tropical Queensland festivities.
Captain James Cook on a Scientific mission, Left England aboard The Endeavour 1768 .
When he reads this virtual note in the blogger-sphere future he will learn his ancestors may have seen the great Yorkshire-man, Captain James Cook walking or drinking alongside them on the East London riverside.
The Endeavour(replica)
When Cook wasn't laying claim to Queensland in 1770 and other marvelous discoveries for the British sovereign, King George third,the brilliant Navigator lived on a mediocre seaman's wages on Mile End Road with his family, waiting for his ships to be serviced and fixed at the Royal Dockyard, Deptford.
As I write the bustling shipping Port of London in the East End is undergoing another transformation as site of the 2012 Olympics, but there are a handful of houses which have survived the centuries where our Limehouse kin would have frequented.
photo 1924. In the 1780's Chinese sailors employed by the East India Company settled here to become London's first China Town.
I'll be home soon Anne - just gonna WET THE BABY'S HEAD...
old photos and history also at http://spitalfieldslife.com/2010/08/09/at-the-grapes-limehouse/
Since this article Sir Ian McKellan(Gandalf) and Co. have bought this old public house, and as it was a place where Charles Dickens frequented, have a special program for his 200
In William Clark Snr and Jnr's time it was called "The Bunch of Grapes" 76 Narrow Street Lime house www.thegrapes.co.uk
One discovers that the Georgian Era of Great Britain covered the reigns of the first four Hanoverian Kings from 1714 with German George 1st, then George's 2, 3 and 4, ending in the short reign of William in 1837.
This page is about my maternal Clark subjects - Henry's 1, 2, 3 and 4 - also ending with a William, but in descending order!
11 April 1858 Great Great Henry Edward Clarkwas baptised in this marble font, created by colleague of Christopher Wren - Grinling Gibbon in1686. They were part of the Restoration team rebuilding London after the Great Fire of London in 1666. Architect Sir Christopher Wren designed this Anglican Church of St. James, Piccadilly.
The Font of Knowledge - St.James Piccadilly
Baby Henry was first son of 22 year old Coal dealer/Grocer HENRY WILLIAM CLARK of 45 CARNABY STREET SOHO, and his Irish born wife Margaret Clark nee Murphy (My Great Grandparents x 3)The other shops along Carnaby Street housed TAILOR's and is probably why Henry grew up and got an apprenticeship to train as a Tailor Journeyman.
His father had been baptised on 17 Jan 1836 at St John of Jerusalem, South Hackney. He also was the first child and son named Henry.
Grocer Henry Clark's father had been christened in the same Church as his son, Henry the West End Tailor on
10 Dec 1815 - Henry, first son of Henry and Rebecca Clark nee Martin, at ST. JAMES PICCADILLY was born in a momentous year.
His father was a returned SOLDIER from the Battle of Waterloo and recorded in the parish register as residing at the "Horse Barracks".
Fine figure of the noble Horse/Guard
of the Household Cavalry 2010
Once I went home I discovered the Clark connection .
I can imagine future Clark sons would have been told about Henry Clark the WAR HERO who helped to defeat Napoleon and received a medal. Somewhere in the mists of time the medal is in a mystery location...
With 21st century technology the disconnected descendents can discover their past family obscure histories.
St. James Horse Barracks, Westminster.
Little Henry would grow up to be a FOOTMAN(son's christening record). Perhaps he wanted to look as good as his father did in uniform!
His father was christened at the ancient St.Botolph's Aldgate, nr Shoreditch, Islington on
28 Sept 1794.
The Parish register notes the Clark family were
Renters - Nightingale Lane(East Smithfield).
St Anne Limehouse
AND his father was Henry Clark baptised at ST. ANNE'S LIMEHOUSE - 29th June 1766
A Mariner's son -
WILLIAM & ANNE CLARK.
1751 view from the East End of London.
As the Hanoverian monarchs expanded their Empire, the Clarks would achieve their vision of working in the West End - with slow and steady progress into the the nineteenth century.
It was very likely that the family experienced the odd hiccup to drink, loss of a good shirt and an STD along the way, but that's Life!
THEN YOU DIE.
One of many Favourite children's action songs. Oranges and Lemons - now has a personal note.
Holiday snap of our Georgian London Summer residence 2009.
Our room is in the renovated attic at the very top of the very narrow flights of servants stairs.
I can recall crying out in the middle of the day, bent over, kneeling in enormous emotional and physical pain - symptoms of acute mental illness:
How long has this been going on - this, this... mother-daughter thing?
G.Klimt 1904
This absence at our core?
A pattern is emerging; regular holes in the thread-bare social fabric of a Man-made-world. Forced to fend for yourself because the legal, religious and social apparatus was and is always resistant to the needs of women. They said it was the Natural Order. God's Plan for Us......
Being first daughters, (Alice&Kath&Kath&I), the instruction comes earlier - of you having to be responsible for others - the siblings. We had to rely on our wits to survive - be resourceful - getting out of sticky situations. The church primary schooled women before me didn't need to do tertiary women's studies to know they relied on the good heart of a man to provide, protect and prosper.
Certainly a resilience imprint has enabled us girls to persevere, be creative and not lack the courage to go on the journey to uncertain terrain (as previous chapters attest).
1979 At 16yrs I became independent. Home was too chaotic. My peace and growth came when writing poetry and going to school, determined to find a way not to become factory fodder.
1956 Mum sailed to the shores of her birth country which had tried to get rid of her. She would return and strive to be her own person.
1939 Nan left the wee Scottish village when a call to arms gave her the incentive to travel to the big smoke over the border.
1879 Then their was our Alice Clark nee Woolley, 21years with no chaperon, waiting for the train at Tattenhall station in Cheshire.
I identify with this Victorian portrait on behalf of us all, for the time we spent homeless, poor, alone but strong at the core.
Great Great Grandmother.
The train would take her into a dangerous world...from Farndon Village near Chester to the big seaside resort of Brighton, Sussex.
There was likely to be plenty of work at the numerous Hotels and Tea Rooms for a young woman like Alice.
She had said goodbye to her siblings: Emma, William, Catherine and James. They all had been contributing to the household income with domestic service positions since they were 12.
Once Grandfather Woolley, the Village Blacksmith had died, they had to shut up shop...and move on.
The children had been without their Mother since she died when James was born in 1867. Their Father, Sam was dead 6 years later at the age of 38years so their care was in the hands of Grandparents who were in their seventieth year (Retirement was not a term people were familiar with).
Alice had been without her Mother since she was nine years old - the ninth year of endings and new beginnings... (9 when my Mum and Dad had separated and 9 when Mum was shipped away from the Motherland)
The Woolley family in 1861& 1871 Farndon-near-Chester, Cheshire.
For Victorian girls and women it must have seemed like they were forever in mourning. Death was a constant shadow until it became a shroud . Everybody knew the Church graveyard as well as the font.
Alice's mother, Elizabeth Hughes of nearby Tattenhall was 30years when she was buried leaving behind her baby son who would have to suvive and thrive on somebody elses milk.
Husband Samuel Woolley would have been thankful his parents were still alive, helping the family stay together. However it was only 6 years later when the Grim Reaper came to collect him too.
Day by Day
Grandparents Samuel Woolley and Elizabeth (nee Eyton) tried to provide for their parentless grand-children after seventy years of labouring at the forge and family, but then the old woman died three years after her son. Three years later the old man passed away.
Is it any wonder that the Welsh border, Cheshire folk created rituals around the memory of their kith and kin. As the season cycled and the air grew crisp, leaves lay crunchy underfoot, that one imagined hungry ghosts....
STING AND SOUL - CAKE SONG
Soul Cakes for the dead! No there are the living who want to eat! The poor and the children went knocking on the village doors begging for at treat of a cake, and the dead would be released out of Purgatory with one bite!
The words to this traditional song were sung by a local girl of Tattenhall school and written down in October 1891. Maybe she was a cousin of our Alice Woolley(mother Elizabeth Hughes farming kin).
MISS ALICE WOOLLEY ARRIVES IN BRIGHTON
Lantern slide of Brighton beach 1890
I imagine Alice Woolley finding a 12 hour job waitressing, sharing an attic room with a work-mate and the one thing saving her from madness, making sure she took a work-break on the West Pier. A new, grander one was being built, and it was here she first experienced a German oompa oompa band!
Perhaps she was delighted by the brass humour of the German musicians and she would go there every day to have her spirits lifted.
One of the Musicians was 61year old Caspar Lemmer. He had been going backwards and forwards across the channel every Summer season since he was 18years old.
What charisma Caspar must have had to woo and wed a woman like Alice; single, no family, and ripe for the pickin'! More vulnerable to kindness and temptations with no mother or grandmother to ask her why this foreigner didn't want to grow old in his own country or what kind of future could a strolling musician provide, the couple married.
When it came to her wedding day she had no Patriarch to give her away but the Brighton Registrar would have noticed the 40year age difference and the fact she was due to give birth in about a months time.
Whether in September 1880 or 2011 people's eyebrows would be raised...
Not to worry, Alice was a respectable married woman. She had found happiness with a worldly husband, who was creative and a Master of his occupation.
No doubt Alice had probably fallen for a father(or grandfather) figure, and Caspar had made an honest woman of her in the end; their son Caspar was born legitimate - a month after their marriage. Phew!
1881 CENSUS - The Lemmer family resides at 44 Grosvenor Street but then something must have happened - did Caspar have a falling out with the other band members? Maybe got the sack for being drunk when playing his brass instrument in a posh hotel?
Alice Lemmer was now a Bandsman's wife with 3 year old Caspar, and baby Prince Carl journeying to the biggest city in the world, London.
1883 Alice arrives in Westminster: the Capital of Power, Pleasure, and Majestic marvels.
Caspar would have been confident in finding digs and gigs with the social network of German immigrant community in London - but first they had to get baby Prince Carl baptised as insurance...High Infant mortality meant the newborn were quickly blessed at the font to assure safe-passage to the after-life.
and the sounds of their father's oompah brass band
Fulham 2007 could be 1887 and Caspar would have been hoping to get a gig!
Mr and Mrs Caspar Lemmer would attend their local parish church, a short walk away. Not hard to miss!
Below REGENT'S PARK
1883 29 Great Barlow Street next to Manchester St. Marylebone is now a CARPARK
for the Farmers Markets and is called Cramer Street. 188592 East Street (off Paddington St.) is Very Close to the facilities of the Marylebone Workhouse.
1887 baby ALICE is born. Her father was 69years old and her mother 28years.
If Alice could read she might have also received the birth of a fictional hero who lived just around the corner from them in Baker Street.
Caspar may have been showing signs of the lung cancer he was to die from: fatigue, coughing, shortness of breath - and thus struggled with looking and finding work as a musician.
THREAD BARE
Alice must have worried what would become of them. This could have been the time when she became the main breadwinner as a seamstress in one of the many tailoring workshops around London.
Caspar and/or a kindly neighbour could keep an eye on the children, but in many situations the older kids would be left holding the pram.
If there wasn't enough money to feed and shelter the family they would be forced to go to the Paupers Workhouse or live on the streets, stealing what they could.
In earlier Hard Times Charles Dickens who had also lived in the neighbourhood created his famous Artful Dodger.
Conan Doyle's contemporary detective character would enlist the Baker Street Irregulars to gather information for his cases, for a shilling a day plus expenses.
Around 1889 Alice was pregnant by another man, Henry Edward Clark (my Great Great Grandfather). He was a forty year old Bachelor and Tailor Journeyman.
Self-preservation must have been Alice's template. Henry might have looked very dapper in his bespoke suits but he didn't have room to fit in her children from another man.
He wanted to settle-down with Alice though and have a son of his own. It was now, or never.
Caspar would be dead soon and Alice would be free to marry again.
When their mum left home to go and live in sin with Henry Clark (and his father) in Carnaby Street, Caspar junior was 9, Carl was 6 and Alice, 2years.
Little Alice was 5years when her father died in 1892 and her mother was very busy with her other family and pregnant with my Great Grandfather Thomas Clark.
Would her daughter Alice Lemmer be an added complication in her life? It wouldn't be the first or last time a woman like Alice had to make a heart-breaking but pragmatic decision to give her child away to the authorities and hope she would be okay, leave her to God's good Providence?
The only mention of an Alice Lemmer is in the 1891 Census where there is a little girl "inmate" at the Chase Farm School(in the old Enfield Workhouse).
Luckily there was room because the previous year many girls had been sent as immigrants to Canada. Perhaps Alice would be in the next contingent of child migrants?
Did Alice Woolley born and bred by the River Dee, who married a German brass bandsman in Brighton-by-the-Sea and became Alice Lemmer, a London working mother with a dying husband, kiss her 5 year old daughter Alice goodbye in the uniform and shoulder badge for paupers?
Waiting for the London train she may have envisioned her little girl playing in the fresh air of the outer London playground, thinking that her giving up her child she would avoid the degradation that girls faced at an early age around the streets of Soho - where she lived with Henry.
1891 Infant school, Chase Farm, Enfield
1893 Oscar Wilde's Play being advertised at the Haymarket Theatre, near where Alice and Henry live in the West End with their Clark kiddies, making clothes for the Hoity-Toity!
Another literary figure of this era was GEORGE BERNARD SHAW who wrote the play, PYGMALION in 1912. As a self-taught Fabian Socialist this play on the theme of the superficial British Class System was entertaining with a bite for its mainly UPPER CRUST audience! FILM and T.V. would bring it to the masses with memorable songs.
MY FAIR LADY - starring Audrey Hepburn 1964
The day our English teacher gave us the play of Pygmalion to read in turns, sitting around the library tables of Selly Park Girls Secondary School in Birmingham 1977 I understood the power of the written word to cross media forms - bringing joy and learning at once and into the future. I was passionate. I felt liberated!
Rebel without a school tie. Ready for Selly Park Girls 1977
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The Endeavour(replica) 
