I’m not sure I will go to see the pictures by C A Mathew which will be on show at the Sandys Row Synagogue in Spitalfields from 20th September 2012, although it looks as if a visit to this synagogue, the oldest Ashkenazi synagogue in London, and the last remaining synagogue in Spitalfields would be very interesting. But I think you can see the photographs well enough on-line.
Like the nearby mosque in Brick Lane, the synagogue has moved through several religious re-orientations. It was built on the site of an older chapel, l’Eglise de l’Artillerie, and opened on 23 November 1766 under the same title, serving the French Huguenot community of the area. A few years later they combined with other churches in the area and leased this building. From 1792 it was home to a Baptist congregation, most of whom left in 1801 when their minister made it Unitarian. When the Unitarians moved to Finsbury in 1824 it was leased to Scottish Baptists. In 1867 it was leased to Dutch Ashkenazi Jews, who were allowed to block up the previous entrance on Parliament Court and build the current entrance on Sandys Row and it was consecrated as a synagogue on 6 November 1870. The congregation bought the freehold of the building in 1923 and continues to worship there.
I first saw these pictures published on Spitalfields Life in 2010, and they have since been republished there on the 100th anniversary of their taking, along with a set of ‘then and now’ pictures, taken by the author of Spitalfields Life, who goes under the soubriquet ‘the gentle author‘ (TGA). The pictures are in the collection of the Bishopsgate Institute, which in 1974 published a bound 28 page pamphlet, The Eastern Fringe of the City, described as A Photographic Tour of the Bishopsgate Area in 1912 with around 20 photographs taken by Mathew on Saturday April 20 1912, his only known visit to the area.
C A Mathew began as a photographer in 1911, setting up a studio in in Tower St, Brightlingsea, Essex and is thought to have died shortly after his wife at the end of 1916. There doesn’t seem to be a great deal more known about him and the only other picture by him I’ve seen is a routine image by him included in a history of the town.
One theory, which I doubt, is that these pictures are the result of a delayed or cancelled train from Liverpool St back to his home in Brightlingsea on the Essex coast, just over 50 miles away (the station fell under Beeching’s axe in 1964.) TGA writes that perhaps he “simply walked out of the station, taking these pictures to pass the time.”
I think this is more than unlikely. While we might do such a thing now, photography back in 1911 was a rather more serious business, and although I can’t know exactly what equipment Mathew was using, I think it likely that it was rather cumbersome and heavy – not the kind of thing you would just take a walk while you were waiting with.
From the pictures I think the camera he used had a rising front and will have been used on a substantial tripod. Almost certainly it will have been a camera that used either sheet film or glass plates rather than roll film. So as well as the camera he will have needed a number of plate or film holders loaded with unexposed material. And of course a large dark-cloth and loupe.
I suppose it is just possible to envisage circumstances where a photographer travelling home would have all these things available – perhaps a commission elsewhere that for some reason he had been unable to carry out. Though it is hard to think why anyone would commission a photographer from Brightlingsea to do a job in London.
Normally on the way home the plates would have all have been exposed. Had their just been one or two pictures, it might perhaps be possible that Mathew, on his way back from a job in the city might have paused on his way to expose a couple of unused plates, but the number of pictures rules that out. It seems almost certain that he had travelled up to Bishopsgate with the express purpose of making a set of pictures of the area.
Since he was a professional photographer the most likely reason for this is that he was being paid to do so. Since his studio was in Brightlingsea, his client was most likely to be there also, although possibly a visitor to the town; perhaps one of those wealthy gentlemen who came for the yachting at Brightlingsea Sailing Club had started his life in the area.
One of the most intriguing things about the pictures are the captions on the original mounts, which I think could also be a clue to the actual reasons for the pictures, although it isn’t a mystery I can solve. Not only does Mathew carefully describe the locations but he also gives the widths of most of the streets in feet and inches. Brushfield St (width 29′.3″) is the caption on one mount – either the photographer has taken measurements with some precision or has gone to the trouble of looking them up somewhere. Why?
Possibly also the choice a Saturday is significant, a day when businesses in this Jewish area were closed. As the Bishopsgate curator noted, it meant the children were all in their Sabbath best, but it also made it possible for the photographer to place his tripod in places where heavy horse drawn traffic would have made it difficult on a working day.
Although working with a digital camera, or even a 35mm or 120 film camera we might now make similar images in perhaps an hour, probably the pictures here represent the best part of a day’s work. Since a number of the images include shadows, it would be possible for a more dedicated sleuth than myself to work out the exact time of day these were taken.
I’ve walked into Spitalfields a few times over the years, and taken a few pictures there, and once published a little article on the area. They don’t have the same interest that Mathew’s have, partly because the times had changed when I first went there in the late 1970s, and particularly because there were far fewer children on the streets. Here is a street corner from my first visit there in 1978.
Samuel Stores, 1978, Peter Marshall
Spitalfields Life has quite a few other articles about the photographers of the area, and among the most recent is John Claridges Cafe Society. I have also photographed several of the cafés featured here, in particular the Victory Café, though it was on the Hackney Road in Bethnal Green rather than in Whitechapel when I found it, 23 years after him.
Victory Café, 431 Hackney Rd, Bethnal Green, Peter Marshall
Although I admire many Claridge’s images, I find the style of his printing, with its high-contrast lith effect, annoying. There are a few of his images it really suits, but more of the time I think it detracts from his work.
You can see more of my café pictures – in colour – in Café Ideal, Cool Blondes, & Paradise, a work I first put together as a book dummy in the mid-1990s and which I intend to revise again and publish as a book before too long.
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My London Diary : Buildings of London : River Lea/Lee Valley : London’s Industrial Heritage
All photographs on this and my other sites, unless otherwise stated are by Peter Marshall and are available for reproduction or can be bought as prints.
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