Published in The Daily Mirror (Tuesday 6th October 1931)
Pip, Squeak and Wilfred was a long running cartoon strip, appearing in the Daily Mirror newspaper, UK. You can find out more on my related blogs here:
Researched by Philip Battle
Stories of child screevers go back as far as the mid 1700’s, but in Britain, it peeked around the mid 1800’s. Newspapers were reporting gangs of young waifs & strays, pickpockets and thieves in the industrial metropolises.
Immortalised by Charles Dickens in his 1838 book, OLIVER TWIST. The orphans and street kids of London, led by the Artful Dodger and their elderly criminal trainer Fagin. This was not far from the truth, and indeed Dickens book of sarcasm and dark humour was a serious social novel, the sordid lives and cruel treatment of the street Arabs of London and other British cities was real.
Driven by poverty, children would roam the streets barefoot, looking for food or ‘browns’ (coppers), A hand to mouth existence, looking for their next meal. Some families where so poor, that the children would go out en-mass; brothers, cousins and sisters as young as three years of age would roam the streets, begging, stealing and doing anything to make ends meet.
Pavement art was just an extension of begging, another way to extract alms from the pavement foot passengers. The older children would learn it from their older siblings, and would pass it down to their brothers and sisters, and before long, children as young as three or four, where plying their trade as professional screevers. It was not unusual for the talented child artist with a good pitch to go home at the end of the day with pockets filled with pennies. Given to mother, it wasn’t too long before the family realised, this was a nice little earner.
Cutting from the Evening Telegraph, Scotland (27th December 1897)
Some of the younger children would also act as ‘look-outs’ for older screevers, making sure they don’t get caught by the Peelers (Policemen) as this report from Dundee, Scotland, 1897 confirms:
“At present there are some 300 children engaged on Dundee streets, their chief employment being the sale of matches, newspapers and studs. A number also act as “watchers” to street artists”
Life was not easy for the child screevers, they were seen as beggars and a blight on society. Treated as adults by the police; stories of children being beaten up, and thrown into prison for chalking on the pavements where not uncommon.
In 1885, Liverpool, Father Nugent gave a lecture on Street Arabs and “Nobody’s Children” talking of child pavement artists he said “if they could take such children by the hand, and put them into grooves where they might rise and develop those talents which God had largely blessed them with, no one could tell to what heights in the realm of art they might attain.”
Father Nugent was not new to child poverty, indeed he was a pioneer in child welfare, poverty relief and social reform. In 1850, he opened the Middle School for Boys in Rodney Street, Liverpool. It was this very same school that offered life changing opportunities to one of Liverpool’s best known child screevers JAMES WILLIAM CARLING.
James Carling (colourised) as a boy with his bag of chalks: Liverpool, circ 1869
Of course, in some cases, child exploitation was common. With parents ‘encouraging’ their children to ‘work’ on the streets.
In court in Glasgow (1902) A labourer, named Matthew Cannon, and his wife, were charged with contravening the act for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, by allowing their son Matthew, nine years of age, to beg, under the pretence of drawing on the pavement. An officer of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children stated that the boy drew on the pavement a figure resembling a human head, under which he wrote “This is Baden Powell.” To which there was laughter in court.
There was also interruption by asking the charitably inclined public to “Help a poor wee boy, who had his arm taken off by a car.” The boy was barefooted and poorly clothed, and the stump of his left arm was exposed for the purposes of exciting sympathy. The boy could make 8 shillings on a Saturday, spending the money on theatres, pastry, and ice-cream. The accused were dismissed with an admonition on promising that the boy would be kept at school and give up art.
Source: Edinburgh Evening News (24th October 1902)
The NEW and revised Cruelty to Children act of 1904, made it increasingly more difficult for parents to exploit children into street begging, and it became a rarity to see child pavement artists on the streets. When they did appear, they made headline news.
1904: The youngest street artist in London is George Ward, a bright little fellow 12 years of age, who has only taken to pavement art to help his mother to keep body and soul together. A press representative saw a crowd of passers-by tiptoeing round the youthful artist in Clapham-rise, where he was busy making his lightening sketches in coloured chalk. He is still a schoolboy, and when he is not poring over his lessons he is earning a few shillings for his mother.
Cutting from The Daily Mirror (Monday 5th Sept. 1904)
His pictures have already attracted a good deal of attention among the residents, who are getting up a subscription list in order to have the boys artistic faculties properly developed. “Sometimes I feel inclined to cry,” he said to the newspaper man. “When they won’t believe I’ve drawn the pictures. A few minutes ago an old gentleman laughed at them, and said something about them being done by another man, but I drew a seascape while he waited and he was so pleased he showered all the coppers he had on me.” The lad carefully selects his studies. He can turn out realistic landscapes and seascapes in a few minutes, and he knows how to colour fruits, flowers, and birds.
Once he drew a salmon so true to nature that a dog came and sniffed at it. The boy’s remarkable talent was accidentally discovered by a teacher at Priory Grove School, Clapham, about six months ago, and he expects soon to be transferred to the LCC art classes. He began street work a few months ago without any tuition, but his mother hopes, with a proper art training, he will be able to earn a decent livelihood as a professional.
Source: Barrier Miner (Australia) Saturday 3rd December 1904
Written & researched by Philip Battle
Providing a unique snapshot of the lives of people living in the United Kingdom over 100 years ago; the full census was taken on the night of April 2nd 1911, and, for the first time in history, was completed by the householder; in that sense, it’s a unique opportunity to view the actual handwriting of our ancestors.
Since its release into the public domain in 2012, it’s proved an invaluable tool for family research historians. I’ve enjoyed using it so much, that I thought it would be a good idea to browse the records and find some of England’s forgotten pavement artists. The ones who were proud enough to list their occupation as “PAVEMENT ARTIST” on the 1911 census
Screeving of a different kind, in their own hand, it gives a statistical record of age, sex, marital status and the places where these pavement artists actually lived and where born. It puts a name to this often forgotten and anonymous art-form.
In 1911, it was estimated, that in London alone, over 1000 pavement artists where making a FULL-TIME living in the nation’s capital.
Here are just a few of them, but there are many, many more, proud to go under the occupation of Pavement Artist!
Census record for George Smith, scribed by his own hand 1911
George Smith: born 1883 (Age 28 in 1911) – single.
Occupation: Street Pavement Artist; born in Ipswich, Suffolk.
In 1911; living at 98, George Street, Great Yarmouth (Lodging house)
Census record for Elsie & George Stead: Written in their own hand, 1911
Husband and wife George Stead (age 24, born 1887) & Elsie Stead (age 20, born 1891) both registered as “street pavement artists” from Yorkshire.
In 1911, they were living at 1/6 Kelham Street, Sheffield.
Census record for William Woodlock: written by workhouse administrator. 1911
William Woodlock: born 1877 (age 34) – married.
Born in Wigan, Lancashire and living as a “patient” at Manchester Workhouse
Occupation “pavement Artist”
Census record for William Miller: written by Workhouse administrator. 1911
William Miller: born 1839 (age 72) Windowed.
In 1911, he was living as an inmate at Islington Workhouse, St John’s Road, North London.
Registered as “pavement Artist”
Census record for Arthur Jones: Scribed by his own hand. 1911
Arthur Jones: born 1871 (age 40) Married
Born in Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk. Living at 20 North Howard Street, Great Yarmouth in 1911.
Occupation: Street Pavement Artist
Census record for George Jeffery: Scribed by his own hand. 1911
George Jeffery: born 1871 (age 40) Married
From Portsmouth, Hampshire. In 1911, living at 7 Atwell Street, Peckham, London.
Registered as “Pavement Artist”
Census record for Walter Harrison: written by his own hand. 1911
Walter Harrison: born 1868 (age 43) Married
Birth place: Southwark, London. In 1911, living at 2 Queen Square, Islington, London.
Occupation: Pavement Artist
Census record for Fredrick John Harding: Scribed by her own hand. 1911
Fredrick John Harding: born 1869 (age 42) Female & married
Birth place: Stokes of New Brunswick. In 1911, living at 4 Edith Road, Tottenham.
Registered as “Street Artist (Pavement)”
Census record for Henry Hales: Written by his own hand. 1911
Henry Hales: born 1887 (age 24) Married
From Oxton, Wirral. In 1911, living at 9 Sylvester Road, Hackney, London.
Occupation: Pavement Artist
Census record of Harry Eastern: Scribed by his own hand. 1911
Harry Eastern: born 1878 (age 33) Married
From Hornsey, Middlesex. Living at 5, Charles Street, Derby in 1911.
Occupation: Pavement Artist
Census record for James Colman: written by his wife EMILY. 1911
James Colman: born 1862 (age 49) Married from Taunton, Somerset.
In 1911, living at 427 Portobello Road, Kensington, London.
James Colman was the brother-in-law of ALICE G COLMAN, Britain’s first Lady Pavement Artist.
Researched by Philip Battle
Queen magazine focused on British “high society” and the lives of socialites and the British aristocracy from 1862 onwards.
Queen, originally called “The Queen” magazine was a British society publication established by Samuel Beeton in 1861. In 1958, the magazine was sold to Jocelyn Stevens, who dropped the prefix “The” and used it as his vehicle to represent the younger side of the British Establishment, sometimes referred to as the “Chelsea Set” under the editorial direction of Beatrix Miller. In 1964 the magazine gave birth to Radio Caroline, the first daytime commercial pirate radio station serving London, England. Stevens sold Queen in 1968 to the publisher of its rival U.K. publication, Harper’s Bazaar. From 1970 the new publication became known as Harper’s & Queen until the name Queen was dropped from the masthead.
Cover of Queen Magazine (21st June 1967)
In June 1967, the magazine broke from tradition and entered into “a unique experiment in magazine journalism” by devoting the entire edition to the Royal College of Art. The publication came under the editorial control of the college professor of graphic design Richard Guyatt. So, for the first time in British society publishing history, a piece of pavement art was to feature on the front cover.
The art was designed and executed somewhere in London by 3rd year Graphic Design student Rod Springett, who attended the Royal College of Art between 1964 and 1967.
Editorial (page 7) of Queen Magazine 1967.
The work was then photographed by Dick Swayne, a tutor in the photographic department.
The college had an entirely free hand in both editorial content and design, so it was a brave and unusual decision to feature a piece of screevin on the cover, but after all, this was “swinging London” guv’ner!
I’ll try and track down Rod Springett, and see if he can add any further details to this story.
Written and researched by Philip Battle.
The summer of 1927 was described as “Dull, wet and rather cold”; a very poor summer indeed with an “abnormal growth of weeds.” It was one of the worst on record, but, there was nothing they could do; pavement artists still had to go out a make a living; But how?
London’s army of pavement artists are experiencing one of the worst seasons on record. Owing to the almost continuous rainy weather, scores of them are starving and many are being driven to seek other means of supporting themselves and their wives and families.
Apart from the effects of being exposed to all kinds of bad weather, they are suffering severe losses by the rain which washes out their drawings almost as fast as they can make them. It is a common sight nowadays in the streets of the Metropolis to see a dejected-looking figure squatting by the kerb, guarding a row of boards or old coats that ineffectually protects his efforts from the pitiless downpour.
Evening Telegraph article illustration (Aug 23rd 1927)
Gifted Painters: Many of these ‘artists’ possess real skill with their crayons, and indeed, among the motley crowd of London’s street artists to-day, are some gifted painters who have studied in famous schools and studios, but who have fallen upon hard times and are reduced to sketching with a paving stone as a canvas.
In most cases these men, many of whom come of very good families, some even being ‘Varsity men, could easily secure well paid employment in other spheres, but are so devoted to their art that they are willing to live beggarly lives rather than give it up. They struggle on, sitting cap in hand at their pitches all day, and returning to some miserable garret at night, hoping that one day life will take a turn for the better and fortune will smile upon them once more.
And instances have been known where talent of a very high standard has been found among London’s street artists. Indeed, several of our most successful painters to-day began their careers as pavement artists.
A young lad who was discovered painting some wonderful pictures with ordinary chalks on the pavement outside the National Gallery in Trafalgar Square some years ago is now a fashionable portrait painter for whom some of the highest society people have sat.
And not so long ago there was a case of an obviously well-bred young man, who was hailed as a genius, and who was discovered earning coppers by pictures on the pavement. He was offered commissions by some well-known people and given free facilities to provide himself with a proper artistic education, but refused them all, preferring, as he stated, to remain in obscurity, an unknown genius earning a frugal living by his own efforts on a flagstone.
First World War veteran Bill Stubbs (1927) cutting from Daily Mirror
Imposters: In every trade or profession there are always some men, who are willing to gain by somebody else’s efforts, and that of the pavement artist is no exception.
There are men who make a good living by letting out pictures to others who sit by them and, representing them as their own, reap the benefits thereof. They are not artists and never could be.
Members of the public who feel inclined to give a copper or two to a pavement artist, however, may very soon find out whether he is a genuine painter or not. Any pavement artist who is worthy of the name is willing for a small consideration to draw a little picture whilst the patron waits, and so prove that the public is not being imposed upon.
The presence of these impostors is in no small measure responsible for the misfortunes of those who are genuine artists, for it is a hard matter to extract charity out of a suspicious public.
An example of pluck: But there is no greater enemy of the street artist than the rain.
Only the other day I passed a man who was engaged on a large portrait of the Duchess of York. The man possessed real talent, and his picture was gradually assuming a striking likeness to the “little Duchess,” when to his visible chagrin rain began to fall heavily, and his really beautiful picture began to run and fade in a startling manner. Hastily the artist erected a little tent over his picture, but it was too late; the damage was done, and he was compelled to give up his unequal struggle with the elements.
I stood under a nearby arch and watched this man, who composed himself patiently to await the stoppage of the rain. When at last it stopped, he began his work all over again on a pitch that he dried carefully with a rag.
As I walked away I reflected on that man’s pluck, and when shortly it began to rain again my thoughts went back to him and his second unfinished picture of the Duchess. I hoped that this time his tent was more useful to him.
The lot of a pavement artist is a hard one, but there is no denying that he possesses pluck and grit second to none.
Published in The London Evening Telegraph (Tuesday 23rd August 1927)
Researched and transcribed by Philip Battle
Screevers have often acted as a muse for well-known society artists. Over the years there have been many paintings, drawings and prints made with the humble pavement artist as subject; so now is the time to blog about my own personal favourites.
Lithography: Victorian scrap illustration by George Cruikshank (1829)
In 1829, George Cruikshank made this charming little drawing of a London pavement artist, as part of his Victorian scraps collection for print. From the early 1800s publishers produced picture sheets that were uncoloured or, at extra cost, hand coloured and sold by stationers and booksellers. “Scrap-booking” was one of the popular Victorian pastimes for women and children, in England and in the United States. Fancy stationery stores of the day carried beautiful scrap albums with intricate cover designs and guilt-edged pages, as well as a dazzling array of bright, embossed and die-cut sheets of scraps on many subjects, from religious to educational to romantic. An elaborately complied scrapbook was meant to be admired; in addition to pretty scraps, the book’s owner displayed those items that indicated his or her accomplishments, popularity and taste, such rewards of merit, calling cards, poetry, paintings and drawings.
Hand-coloured scrap sheet by George Cruikshank 1829
GEORGE CRUIKSHANK was best known for his illustrations of the books of Charles Dickens. He was also known as the Hogarth of his day. This illustration represents one of the earliest printed representation of a pavement artist.
A WAS AN ARTIST: Book lithograph by William Nicholson (1898)
A was an Artist, was part of a commissioned set of lithographs by British painter William Nicholson. Released to the public as a series of fine art books in 1898, the Alphabet series of lithographs were originally commissioned through a contract with Nicholson’s publisher William Heinemann in 1896. This first one is special, in that it represents a self-portrait of the artist William Nicholson as a pavement artist.
Nicolson was an English painter of still-life, landscape and portraits, also known for his work as a wood-engraver, illustrator, author of children’s books and designer for the theatre. From about 1900 Nicholson concentrated on painting, encouraged by James McNeal Whistler. He first exhibited as a painter at the International Society, of which Whistler was President.
The Little Screever: by Frank Lewis Emanuel (1906)
The Little Screever; a charming little etching (measuring about 5 inches by 3 inches) and done by Frank Lewis Emanuel around 1906; and now, proudly, in my own personal collection.
Frank L. Emanuel was deeply occupied with art; he worked as painter, illustrator, printer and art critic. He studied in London at the Slade School under Legros and later at the Academie Julian in Paris. He exhibited from 1881 at the Royal Academy in London and in the Salons of Paris. He travelled widely in Europe, South Africa and Ceylon. He staged watercolour exhibitions and published articles on topographical subjects in the Architectural Review and Manchester Guardian, and Illustrations de Montmartre. He taught etching at the Central School between 1918 and 1930 and one of his paintings can be found in the Tate Gallery.
The Pavement Artist by RUSKIN SPEAR (1929)
THE PAVEMENT ARTIST was painted by British expressionist painter, Ruskin Spear, around 1929. Born in Hammersmith, London, Spear was the son of a coach-painter. He studied at Hammersmith School of Art, 1926–30, and the *Royal College of Art, 1931–4, and subsequently taught at various art schools, notably the RCA, where he was a tutor from 1948 to 1977. During the Second World War (when he was exempt from military service because of the after-effects of childhood polio) he took part in the ‘Recording Britain’ scheme (at this time he also played in various bands—he was an accomplished jazz pianist). Spear was best known for his portraits (including many of celebrities) and landscapes, especially views of Hammersmith: in the introduction to the catalogue of Spear’s retrospective exhibition at the Royal Academy in 1980, his friend the painter Robert Buhler (1916–89) remarked that ‘one could say that Ruskin Spear has done for Hammersmith what *Sickert did for Camden Town’. Characteristically his pictures are broadly brushed, with a spontaneous, improvisatory look.
Less typical works include an altarpiece (the Annunciation) for the church of St Clement Danes, London (1958), replacing one destroyed in the Second World War, and murals for the liner Canberra (1959). Like Sickert, he sometimes worked from news photographs.
Written and researched by Philip Battle
I am often asked; how do you find out all this wonderful information on a forgotten art-form. so here’s a little insight:
Whilst researching, I often come across original press photos, most of which have very little detail on the subject matter. The identity and location of the artist is often a mystery, so it takes painstaking research to discover exactly who these people where. I started this blog with the intention of trying to put the flesh on the bones of these otherwise forgotten souls. It was not enough for me to just present you with a carousel of images from the past. Each one is of a person who lived, in a place and time. I wanted to know more about their lives; how did they live, and what motivated them to do what they did?
It’s been two years since I started this award nominated blog; back then I barely had enough material for two weeks of writing. I now have enough for several tombs of books on the subject, and people have even suggested that I publish a book based upon this blog!! A nice thought that hasn’t gone unnoticed!
The ancient Egyptians used to have a saying that “to speak the name of the dead was to make them live again”
Unnamed pavement artist: 1st April 1953 (Getty Image)
Shortly after I started, I came across this photo of a pavement artist and his dog. It was an original press photo and the only information attached to it was “UNITED KINGDOM: Pavement Artist Drawing In London on April 1953 Photo by Keystone France, via Getty Images” and that was it. But what an intriguing photo, and what did it all mean?; so, I started researching the relationships between pavement artists and their dogs, and found out some wonderful stuff that I have since blogged about here. But I could find nothing more to be added to this photo.
So imagine my joy, this week, on the second anniversary of my research, I acquired this second press photo of the same artist, (a few years apart) it had a typed write-up stuck on the back, naming both the artist and the dog!!
John Newberry & Freckles: United Press image (17th Sept. 1958)
It read: THE SILENT PARTNER - LONDON: There’s no artistic criticism intended as Freckles the pooch takes it easy above his master, John Newberry, who creates some pavement art in London. The dog and the artist have been familiar sights on the same Trafalgar Square pavement for the last ten years.
A once forgotten pavement artist (and his dog!) now have a name!
And that’s it, that’s my starting point; as soon as you discover a name and a context, it’s enough to start the research ball rolling.
Then the questions start: So John had been on the same pavement since 1948. I wonder whatever happened to John Newberry and Freckles. Perhaps that’s the subject for a future blog!
Research should always start with a question: Knowledge and discovery is a wonderful thing.
I sincerely hope you will continue to enjoy reading about my discoveries into the forgotten world and lives of the humble pavement artist.
Written and researched by Philip Battle
I recently came in possession of around 30 photographic negatives and press photos, of what I assume, is the first large-scale use of street pavement art as a promotional tool. Certainly the first I’ve come across.
Press Photo: Chicago Daily News (1977) Don Bierman
Press Photo: Chicago Daily News (1977) Don Bierman
The romance and reality of Italy, was the theme of Carson, Pirie, Scott & Company’s 17th annual import fair. It ran between the 31st October and the 12th November 1977. It took over thirty artists from the Milan Bulovic Art Company, Chicago USA, to create this massive Italianate walkway. The floor painting wrapped around the company’s main store building on the State Street and Madison Street sidewalks. It was designed to resemble a marbleised Italian walkway, reminiscent of those found in 15th Century Italy.
Press Photo (unpublished from Negative): Chicago Daily News (1977) Don Bierman
Press Photo (unpublished from Negative): Chicago Daily News (1977) Don Bierman
Artists, (all from Chicago) used sign-writing and decorating techniques to create marbling effects on the pavement. Mostly done using acrylic paints, it was designed to last no more than a month or so.
Press Photo (unpublished from Negative): Chicago Daily News (1977) Don Bierman
Press Photo (unpublished from Negative): Chicago Daily News (1977) Don Bierman
Most of the photos here where never published, they were taken by the Chicago Daily News photographer, Don Bierman, on the 27th October 1977, a few days before the trade fair launch.
Carson, Pirie, Scott Store, Chicago USA Cir. 1960
The historic Carson, Pirie, Scott and Company Building was designed by Louis Sullivan, built in 1899 for the retail firm Schlesinger & Mayer, and expanded and sold to Carson Pirie Scott in 1904. The building, located on State Street in Chicago’s Loop, housed the chain’s flagship store for more than a century before closing for good on February 21, 2007.
Researched and written by Philip Battle
Any man who sees himself described as a sad sight is entitled to feel annoyed; and Trafalgar Square pavement artist Harlice Hyrne Worley (christened Charles Henry, but his father had a weakness for anagrams) was very annoyed indeed, when he read about a Moscow Radio talk by two Russian students just returned from Britain.
Said Georgi Ostroumov and Igor Kobsev: “In Trafalgar Square, a sad sight struck our hearts. On the pavement where the walker throws the butt of his cigar, a human figure was crouching—a workless artist…we asked him to tell us something about himself. There came a sullen and unwilling retort: ‘What is there to tell? I have no work…..’”
Harlice Worley: Outside The National Gallery 1955.
What Harlice Worley said on reading this was enough to start World War III there and then. What he did was to send a cable to Radio Moscow: Pavement artists of London take pride in their profession, and do it from choice, not necessity. We are free, independent artists, and regret the misleading impression given in your broadcast.
He then hurried down the Strand to the BBC European Service studios, and dictated a 600 word counter-blast which went on the air that night in Russian and English.
Harlice still simmers when he thinks of Kobsev and Ostroumov, earnest little men armed with notebooks and cameras, who questioned him through an interpreter.
“Contemptuous nonsense,” he snorts. “Workless? I ask you. I work all day. This”—waving a hand at the chalked portraits on the pavement—“this is my work.”
Harlice Worley: Photo from Everybody’s Magazine 1955.
A slight, stooped character of fifty-three, with a sardonic, furrowed face, he sits on an upturned box beside his pitch by the railings of the National Gallery, and stabs a finger at the crowds hurrying past.
“I know twenty yards before anyone gets near me whether they’re going to part with a penny. Most of them think we’re rolling in money. ‘Ah,’ they say, ‘that bloke’s probably making more than I am.’ Well, yesterday I made just four shillings.”
His work is better than most. Disdaining the blurry landscape and the bilious still life, he draws personalities in the news. Cary Grant (with the chalked caption, ‘in the Royal Command Performance film, To Catch a Thief’), Edmund Purdom, Kim Novak. A horse’s head. A Laughing Cavalier. Severn people stand looking at them. One puts a penny in the upturned brimless straw hat, another adds a threepenny bit; the others walk on. After four hours, the mound of coppers in the hat totals one and fourpence halfpenny and a ten centime piece.
Not even a Russian in search of decadence in a capitalist society could call Harlice an underdog. He is a fiercely independent individualist. Son of an architect, he was trained at art school, served in the Navy in the 1914-18 War, and spent the next twenty years knocking around the world as merchant seaman, trawler hand, labourer, farmer, sign-writer. During the last war he was a radio instructor in the R.A.F.; in 1945 he started a commercial art studio in the north, and within five years had an annual turnover of £4,000. Then he went down with arthritis, and lost everything.
Harlice Worley at the London Screever Competition: Photo by Ron Burton (1953)
It was in Festival of Britain Year, 1951 that he walked along the Thames Embankment and saw a ‘screever’ at work on the pavement. (The word derives, he believes, from ‘scribe’; certainly it dates back to the time of Charles I.) Convinced that he could do better himself, he picked a pitch by Charing Cross Bridge. On his first day, he took £6—“three times as much as I was getting from national assistance in a week; I’ve never had a day like that since.”
But the Embankment was a bad pitch in winter, when the tourists had gone. And there was trouble from thugs demanding protection money. He refused to pay: so they poured crude oil over his pitch every night. So he moved to Trafalgar Square.
His day begins at nine o’clock, when he cleans the trampled remains of the previous day’s work from the pavement and prepares the stone flags—covering them with size, filling the pockmarks with scouring powder, and smoothing down with sandpaper. His materials are powdered chalks mixed and bound with milk or beer; his subjects are taken from the morning’s newspaper, or maybe from the National Gallery—a Rubens or Gainsborough for preference. “Fashions change: once it was cats, then dogs, then landscapes. Now it’s all portraits.”
Next, he chalks in bold capitals a brisk admonition to his public: “I appreciate your compliments ladies and gentlemen, but I cannot persuade my landlady to accept them….” “Will photographers please remember I am a human being, not an animal in the zoo, and kindly refrain from poking cameras down my neck.” Finally, he puts a hat at each end of the pitch, each with a few coppers in—screevers think it unlucky to have an empty hat—and hopes for a fine day.
Rain is the screever’s worst enemy; a shower can ruin hours of laborious work. On a Saturday, the most profitable day, Harlice may take as much as £3 in summer; but a wet Saturday can mean hardship for the rest of the week.
Harlice Worley in Trafalgar Square: Original press photo (Keystone Press 1955)
Understandably, Harlice takes a pretty cynical view of human nature. “It’s marvellous the lengths people will go just to avoid putting anything in the hat. About one in four hundred does. We see some nice types here—like the ones who deliberately walk on the pictures and say they’ve a right to, it’s a public highway; like the Yank who put a bob in the hat, picked up a framed pastel of Anthony Eden and started to walk off with it, saying ‘this picture is going to New York.’ I told him the picture wasn’t leaving Trafalgar Square, and the bob wasn’t leaving the hat.”
“You get to be philosophical. At night, drunks annoy you; old ladies tell you their troubles; people come up and say they’ve lost their fare home and can you just lend it to them till tomorrow. And I’ve had a whole day’s take pinched while I’ve been away for a moment. There’s one old lady who comes along quite often, puts a penny in the hat and takes sixpence out. But I know she’s really hard up, so I pretend not to notice. Sometimes I put sixpence in for her when I see her coming.”
He becomes eloquent in talking of the freemasonry among screevers: “I’ve vivid memories of fellows sharing their last copper, fag end or piece of chalk; and they’ll never see each other without a bed. Most of us towards the end of the day let someone who’s down on his luck take over the pitch and keep whatever lands in the hat.”
MANY of London’s odd characters drift through the Square during the day, and Harlice knows them all. The seedy-looking citizen who makes some £20 a week collecting fag ends from cinema ash trays, rolling them into cigarettes, and selling them in doss houses. The pathetic old lady who goes from pub to pub scrounging a drink, but owns a sizable piece of property in the East End; the busker in top hat and frock coat who dances to a wheezing gramophone.
In four years of screeving, Harlice has pigeon-holed his public. “Children are the most generous, and if they haven’t any money of their own they’ll pester their parents to put something in the hat. Colonials are next best: they’ll give you cigars and cigarettes, and I’ve had a quid to pose for a photograph. Londoners? Well, they’re not over-generous, except maybe on Saturday nights when they’ve had a few drinks. I suppose they’re so used to seeing us.”
“Funny things happen. The other day a City type leaned against the railings and took his bowler off to mop his forehead, and a lady came by and dropped tuppence in. He added sixpence to it and put the lot in my hat. Then there was the Election. I’d done some portraits with what you might call a Conservative bias, and a chap came up and gave me a black eye…”
Arthritis and damp pavements have left him with a limp; he leans on a stick and dreads the winter. “I’m trying to get out of this game, but I haven’t been offered a day’s work in four years.
“I do this because I’m a free man; there’s nobody to push me around. I work when I want, play when I want, and earn enough for a theatre gallery seat now and again. My L.C.C. hostel has every comfort for a working man for two bob a night. I’ve never crawled to anyone in my life, and I’m not starting now.”
A sixpence chinks in the upturned hat, and Harlice nods his thanks as he buttons his coat against the autumn wind scurrying round the Square. A policeman stops and congratulates him on the Moscow cable. He takes a piece of white chalk and with a flourish writes on the grubby pavement:
“Please don’t get the idea that we street artists are a crowd of illiterate non-entities. I can assure you we are not! If you purchase or order any work from me, you have got it from someone who is somebody in his own particular sphere…”
Harlice Worley’s rebuff to the Russians: Photo by John Firth 1955
NO COLD WAR AT MY EXPENSE!
Harlice Worley’s pavement rebuff to Radio Moscow & the Russian Students:
“Why I sent a cable to Moscow—and why I broadcast to Russia & Europe last night—Because my remarks to the Russian students were distorted to make political propaganda—because I am British—because I want NO man’s pity. Only practical appreciation of what I consider a job well done. Incidentally I have received no payment for this!”
Additional information on Harlice Worley
Harlice prided himself in drawing ALL his pavement art pieces from memory; he never used photographs or reference material of any kind. This wasn’t unusual, many of the better pavement artists worked from memory, following years of repeatedly drawing the same painting hundreds of times.
Written and researched from various sources by Philip Battle
Hampstead’s leading exponent of pavement art, at work in Swiss Cottage—to attract attention, David Burton must be topical. He is now, below, drawing a Japanese ship under fire.
David Burton at work at Swiss Cottage, London (photo by K. Hutton 1945)
THERE is no need to defend the work of David Burton. Child Art and every form of Primitivism have been so much in vogue in recent years that it is rather the more sophisticated output of an adult mind that need justification. Perhaps it is a sign of the times. It may mean that our civilisation feels overburdened with the responsibilities that come with age and knowledge. The load must be shaken off. And you can do it, as in Germany, by a return to savagery, or else, on a spiritual plane, by taking an unashamed delight in literary and artistic primitivism.
David Burton holding up one of his tigers which he draws again and again (1945)
But that is a matter for historians of the future. What concerns us here is the fact that David Burton’s work seems good to look at. It’s good fun. It is exuberant and joyous like the work of Rubens, who would paint you the martyrdom of a saint having his tongue torn out by a pair of red-hot tongs, and all you feel is a bouncing joy at the gay crimson of the glowing steel. You get the same sensation from a “Burton.”
The Prince of her Dreams by David Burton (1945)
His “Horrors of War,” or “Horrible Japanese Atrocities,” flaunting a wholesome, primeval gaudiness, witness to the infinite fun of this life, no less than his sporting events and royal weddings.
Rogues of the Turf by David Burton (1945)
Not that David Burton has more reason than most of us to feel pleased with the world. Some 20 years ago, in the days of the great slump, he lost his job on the railways, to walk the streets as one of Britain’s million unemployed. A fellow-waif, seeing him draw, suggested pavement-art as a source of income and Burton, after some fears and hesitations, took it up.
The Horrors of War by David Burton (1945)
He chose a pitch in Finchley Road, North West London, and now, at the age of 60, averages as much as 10 shillings on a sunny day. He is in fact earning his living as a professional artist. Which is a good deal more than you can say about most of our masters.
The Arrival at Gretna by David Burton (1945)
It would be wrong to suppose that Mr Burton has attained his present skill without effort. He had drawn continuously in his boyhood, and it was not until the age of 30 that he could paint a horse to satisfy his father, who was the driver of a hansom cab. Even now, his aeroplanes draw heavy criticism from little boys in Finchley Road. But it is safe to say that he has won his recognition. His latest one-man-show, given by the Artists International Association at the Charlotte Street Centre, was only the last of over half-a-dozen similar exhibitions. And he has a wide circle of permanent admirers, which includes busmen, artists, news-vendors and critics.
David Burton Exhibition (PICTURE POST 1945)
PHOTO ABOVE: The self-taught cockney artist looks after his one-man-show at the Charlotte Street Centre, Bloomsbury. The war, the life of London, the tales and superstitions of old England, all are interpreted along these walls. Robin Hood hobnobs with AA Gunners, Dick Whittington with Cossack horsemen. This is genuine folk-art, like the ballad sheets that used to be sold in the streets of London.
Originally published in THE PICTURE POST magazine (3rd February 1945)
Photos by K Hutton
Researched and edited by Philip Battle
Today, original paintings by David Burton can fetch anything between £600 and £3000 at auction!
For more information on the life of David Burton, you can read my research blog from November 2011 – The lady and the tramp (1883-1945)
Once an everyday sight, the crouched artist chalking his pictures at the feet of passers-by is vanishing from London’s pavements, squeezed out by such hazards as harassment by “protection” racketeers and inflation. But a few still remain on the city’s traditional plum sites.
DIANA WINSOR talked to the best-known of them and caught a glimpse of the picturesque world of the “screever”
Bob Hanley as featured on the cover of The Daily Telegraph Magazine 1976
“We used to draw a folded pound note on the pavement outside the National Gallery. People would come and put a foot on it, and then bend down and pretend to tie their shoelace, and try to pick it up. But mostly I do the head of Christ.”
Bob Hanley is a thin whippet of a man who has been drawing the head of Christ, along with Che Guevara, Harold Wilson and a small Scotsman called The Wembley Haggis, on London pavements for the past 15 years. At 39 he is one of the youngest, and one of the last, of the uneasy fraternity of pavement artists who survive on the Embankment, at Marble Arch and along the Bayswater Road, and on the best pitch in London – under the statue of Henry Irving behind the National Portrait Gallery. “I did the Wembley Haggis for the Scots when they came down for the football – they’re some of the most generous, the Scots. And that landscape there—that’s really three profiles of Christ, hidden in the mountains and the rocks, because although he must have been like a pop star in a way, he was an earthy man and part of nature. I’ve done him as a candle, too, with rocks, clouds, people, Crucifixion, all melting into each other.”
Screever: Bob Hanley on Bayswater Road, London
Pavement artists are disappearing from London. Chancers, the summer students earning a few quid, will always come and go, but the true screevers—like the one George Orwell met when he was Down and Out in London—have almost all gone. Henry Mayhew first mentioned the word “screever” for a pavement artist in his book London Labour and the London Poor in 1851—also meaning one who wrote begging letters for a living.
GARDEN: Bob Hanley pavement drawing 1976
Some have died, some have gone on to better things, like Bob Hanley: his small hairy cartoon tramps and trolls became Carnaby Street motifs a couple of years ago and began to decorate ashtrays and polythene bags from here to San Francisco. At one time, drawing various cartoons under different names for several entrepreneurs from Lord Kitchener’s Valet et al, he found himself asked to sue himself for plagiarism. But despite a continuing income from cartoons, he still works on the pavement, sending his wife or friends out to sell drawings of London. The entanglements of business he finds as threatening as prison bars. He is still acknowledged as the best screever around by those that remain. But of those, some are too old, like “Old Jock”, Peter Bassett, who can only rarely do his animals and rivers at the Irving statue.
Peter Bassett (OLD JOCK) outside The National Gallery, London
Others, like Raoul de Parrys, bearded like a prophet, with visionary blue eyes, and Brian Mitchell, who has been doing A Winter Scene so often he does it automatically now, are finding times hard. Money is tight, the small-scale protection rackets run by winos around Leicester Square are tougher, and there is less pity for an old screever in a welfare state.
“You could earn £50 a week in the 1960’s,” remembers Bob Hanley. “Now it’s hard to average £20. And the materials are more expensive, chalks and pastels as much as 20p a stick, maybe £2 a picture. And you have to prepare the pavement, to make the colours really rich. I used to pinch the sugar from Lyons Corner House and mix it with water, but that wasn’t much good, so I bought decorators’ size and rubbed that on. People try to pick the pictures off the pavement sometimes thinking they’re stuck on, because you work the chalk into the paving, stroking it into the cracks, using the wrinkles.”
COTTAGE: Pavement drawing by Peter Bassett (OLD JOCK)
Paving stones have never been exploited by the Greater London Council; but at Glenrothes, in Scotland, 20th-century Scots poems have been cast into slabs and set into the pavements beside bus stops, telephone kiosks and park benches by the town artist David Harding. Not, however in London.
London Screever: Raoul de Parrys at work 1976
Bob Handley is married; few screevers are. He is passively unresisting against his determined young Irish wife, Marie, who succeeded in getting the family rehoused by the GLC in a flat off the Kennington Road. They have two small children. It was Marie who found Bob a studio at the International Art Centre near the Elephant and Castle, and who sells his drawings for him because he hates selling his own work, cajoling him into respectability. But he is as out of place among the uncut moquette and toddlers’ toys of domesticity as the painted wooden figure of Sir Thomas More which stands in a corner, one of his few possessions.
“I would like to be free,” he muses; he was born in Belfast and his accent is still faintly Northern Irish, a bony dreamer from the back-streets from which he ran away when he was nine. “With pavement work, you can be alone, not selling anything, joining the crowd if you want to.”
Like all of them, he started working on the pavement because it was the simplest way of earning money. “I’d left the RAF and met up with a group of people at a bar in the Tottenham Court Road—people like Donovan and Long John Baldry were around then, in 1960. We were living around derelict houses, sharing money. An old Jew, a pavement artist, wanted to do my portrait, so I said I’d have a go at him for half-a-crown—he had that kind of nose, I did it in one line. He had a pitch, so I started off with him, and made about 15 shillings a day.”
Brian Mitchell at work outside the Tate Gallery, London
When his cartoons were noticed by entrepreneurs from Carnaby Street, he began to depend less on pavement work. But he is still part of the world of those that remain, like Brian Mitchell, who lived with him then, and now works on his old pitch under the Irving statue.
“We were all together in the Sixties, Bob and me and the rest—about eight of us used to work around the National Gallery, graded, from the best downwards. It was good then. But later the competition got cut-throat.”
Brian Mitchell is 45, but looks older: the archetypal screever, ferociously unkempt, bearded and pigtailed, although his watery eyes and small red mouth gives a glimpse of a smile as mild and elusive as a mouse in a hedge. An American leans forward to drop 10p in the box. In his clean transatlantic face is some perplexity; is this some free Bohemian to whom passports mean nothing, or a squalid anachronism from Victorian London thrown in with the package tour? To what Orwellian doss house does he go at night?
Brian Mitchell goes to a room near the Oval at night. Once he was in advertising, and went home to a wife and two children in Peckham.
A Country Scene: Pavement drawing by Brian Mitchell
“I was born in Gillingham, and my father was the manager of a shop there. I went into advertising from school.” He is chalking A Country Scene; he has not been back to the country for seven years. “It was a worrying job, advertising, pressure and harassment. Then after five years my wife walked out and left me with the children.”
When his parents died, the children were taken into care. The house in Peckham became a burden; he took to walking round the West End and Soho, met Bob Handley, and shared a room with him in Berwick Street. He began working on the pavement, the bounds of his life set in anonymity from the Embankment to Marble Arch, from the Sussex pub in St Martin’s Lane to a room near the Oval.
“A lot of people look down on me—think I’m a tramp. But some people are envious. The future can take care of itself for me, and I have given up worrying. I average £5 a day, working all through the winter—more at weekends. Unless it rains; I can work when I like, some mornings you get on the pitch early, in the summer, and work all day, but in the winter I often don’t start till around lunchtime. There’s always more trade in the afternoons. I read a lot; I haven’t got television, but I’ve got sufficient for my needs. I don’t need to go to social security. I drink, but I stick to beer—rum, maybe, in the winter if it’s cold. And I’ve got friends.”
THANK-YOU: Bob Hanley pavement drawing 1976
Originally published in The Daily Telegraph Magazine (21st May 1976)
Written by Diana Winsor / Photos by Pat Keene
Researched and edited by Philip Battle
Read my related blog: Buskers & Screevers (1968)
In this silent film; the social spaces of 1920s London (parks, pubs and shops) play an important role in Anthony Asquith's working-class love story.
A love story set in and around the London Underground of the 1920s. Two men - gentle Bill and brash Bert - meet and are attracted to the same woman on the same day at the same Underground station.
The hunting of the “Snark” must have been a simple affair compared with the running to earth of the “pavement artist.” The former was to by snared by a generous application of “cabbages and kings,” articles easy to obtain in these luxurious days, whatever they might have been when the Snark was in its prime.
But even a judicious use of the coin of the realm failed to call from the “vastly deep” of London’s mysteries the hitherto ubiquitous “screever,” as he is familiarly called upon his native heath, the East End.
It had seemed simple enough in the beginning. One had positively stepped upon pavement artists at work—when one didn’t require them. But when one among their number was desired all had, apparently, taken the alarm and disappeared.
Various specimens of the genus “screever” were tracked to their very lairs in an area extending from St. John’s Wood to Newington Causeway. But the nearest policeman on his beat, or bootblack on his “pitch,” had ever the depressing information that the quarry had been on the spot regularly for a month until the day before, though it would now be difficult to say when he might return.
The marks of coloured chalks were even aggravatingly en évidence, but the artist had vanished into that rarefied atmosphere where it would, seemingly, be easy for gentlemen in reduced circumstances to maintain themselves and families.
At length, having worn out several pairs of boots, and taken to a nerve tonic through the fruitlessness of the search, an ancient proverb was verified, and “What was long sought came when unsought.”
The unnamed Artist: photograph published in The Quiver 1898
There he sat, in the Uxbridge Road—a piece of sacking for a cushion—among the trophies of his art. He was a nice man—a man with a mild, kindly face, which beamed with becoming pride over paintings somewhat superior to those of his fraternity. He looked piteously cold, and his hand shook slightly as he sketched in a few details, obliterated in his very masterpiece by a flurry of rain.
There was but a scanty showing of coppers in the hat, suggestively placed on the pavement at his side, and when he glanced up to return thanks for a slight plenishment of his exchequer I saw that he was blind in one eye.
He was a trifle suspicious at first over the idea of being “interviewed for a paper,” evidently suspecting me of mysterious designs upon his future happiness and well-being; while as for having his portrait done, he would not hear of anything so contrary to modesty. However, he was won over at last, and even warmed to the undertaking.
“Well, yer see,” he informed me, with a soft, rich Warwickshire accent, which, as I learned later, had lasted him twenty years, and which I dare not try to express on paper; “it ain’t so queer you shouldn’t o’ found one on us afore. Thur’s on’y about thutty men does pavement-paintin’, an’ we’re all moved off to new pitches purty often by the bobbies. Some on ‘em’s nice chaps an’ lets us alone, if we don’t take up much room wi’ our bits o’ things; but, agin, some on ‘em jist waits till we gets our work done, an’ then orders us to go. It’s ‘ard, that is, fur chalks come expensive w’en yer ain’t got much capital to buy ‘em with.”
“Have you more or less acquaintance with your twenty-nine brother artists?” I inquired.
“Bless yer, no; I don’t hold no communication wi’ ‘em whatever”—with rather a haughty air of denial; “but I know wot ‘appens ter me, an’ I ‘ears talk o’ the rest. Besides, our lives runs about the same, from one end o’ Lunnon t’ the other. I’ve ‘ad a goodish lot o’ pitches in my day; but I’m mostly ‘ere, or up Kensington Gardens way.”
1890 Glass lantern slide: London Screever on the Thames
“Have you been at this sort of thing long?” I questioned, pointing to the moonlit views of lighthouses on unsalable rocks and gorgeous sunsets, after Turner (a long way after!), in streaks of red and yellow.
“Seventeen year,” he replied, sighing a little—but it was not a sigh intended as a bid for sympathy. “I ain’t a Lunnon man, ter begin with. I was a Warwichshire lad, an’ used ter drive flour to mill, with so many as three horses. But w’en I’d grown up, nothin’ would do but I must see Lunnon, so I come, an’ soon got a job carrin’ a hod. I seed a young ‘ooman about that time as I wanted to marry, but she ‘and’t no more ‘n’ said ‘Yes’ when I falls off a scaffoldin’, an’, beside breakin’ m’self up considerable, puts hout one eye. I was tuk to an’ ‘ospital in Warwik Lane, an’ they was very good t’ me there, but fur six months I was helpless. W’en I could crawl about I tried t’ git work, but thur wasn’t many things I could do anymore; an’ w’en I was gittin’ discouraged I used ter see fellers paintin’ on the pavement, their own bosses. I’d never drawn none, but I practised up, and by-‘n’-by I could do as well as the other chaps, if not a bit better ‘n some.
“My gal was willin’ ter risk marryin’ me, an’ the vicar o’ our parish, as good a gent as ever lived, guv me five shillin’ fur m’ license, an’ six more ter set up stock wi’, ‘E’s dead an’ gone now, so I shouldn’t loike yer t’ put his name in print. It might look irrev’rent, y’ see.”
“Have you any children?” I ventured.
He looked down wistfully at his work-grimed hands. “They ‘m done wi’ me,” he said. And then we changed the subject.
“You must find it cold, sitting all day on the pavement in this weather?” I hastily said.
“That it is!” he responded. “but I wouldn’t mind if it weren’t for th’ rheumatics, w’ich I ‘ave had. The rain was n’ cold, though it rubs off the chalks, an’ nobody ain’t goin’ ter stop an’ look at my work w’en they’re hurryin’ home out o’ the wet. Now, th’ snow’s diff’runt; it makes folks good-natured, but it ain’t, so ter say, comfortable for me.”
London Screever Lantern Slide cir. 1888
“Do you manage to make a fair living out of your—er—profession?” I asked.
Mr John Tanswell, of 4, St. Clement’s Road, shrugged his bent shoulders.
“Well, ‘taint’t a life o’ luxury fur none on us,” he rejoined. “The best days—jest two or t’ree a year, in fine weather—never fetch more ‘n half-a-crown. Some days I sits here from morin’ till dark, an’ don’t git a penny. I ‘as plenty o’ time to think, an’ I bets ter myself on th’ people, as I sees ‘em comin’ torrards me, w’ether they’ll have a copper fur m’ work of no. Times, they’ll stop an’ make fun o’ m’ picters, an’ go on wi’ their pockets shut up. But they don’t t’ink what a penny or two ‘d be ter me, tain’t loikely.”
“If everybody who passed thought your exhibition worthy of a halfpenny, you’d do very well, I suppose,” said I.
“Bless you, of every tenth one did I’d t’ink m’self rich!” he exclaimed. “But it’s a bad day w’en I don’t take in leastways a sixpence,” he added.
“And you support yourself and wife on what you earn?”
“I does me best. But th’ wife had a stroke fourteen months ago, an’ can’t do no more ‘n move about th’ room—th’ on’y one we ‘as, of course. We pays t’ree-an’-six a week fur that, an’ we don’t ‘ave nothin’ left fur theatres. We don’t see no coals all winter long, but we keeps from freezin’, an’ does our cookin’ wi’ a bit o’ wood.”
I proceeded to ask Mr Tanswell if in his life there had occurred one “red-letter” day which he would tell me about.
“Th’ day I marred,” he returned, when I had made him understand. “An’ thur was another, w’en a queer thing ‘appened, which I ain’t never forgot. ‘Twas a windfall in my pocket, yer can bet.
“Once, w’en I’d come early to work, a gent comes by, lookin’ as though ‘e’d be’n out all night, an’ was goin’ home by daylight. I was workin’ away wi’ my chalks, he watchin’ me, an’ givin’ me a bit o’ advice, laughtin’ loike. “’Ere, yer ain’t done this right!’ ses he, quite out o’ patience. ‘I’ll show yer!’ So he grabs th’ chalks, squats down, an’ afore long ef he don’t turn out th’ finist thing yer ever seed—yer wouldn’t o’ thought could be done with common chalk on th’ stone. ‘There! That’s wi’ my compliments,’ ses he, an’ was hoff, jest as I was hofferin’ ter pay ‘im fur ‘is work.
“Everybody that come by stopped that day, an’ some asked ef I done the Pieter, I ses ‘No,’ like a man, but they gav’ me money jest the same—more shillings than I’d seed in six months, an’ one ole feller swore a big artist, whose name I can’t remember, must o’ drawed it. He wanted to buy th’ pavin’ stone and ‘ave it up, but it couldn’t be worked, an’ afore night the rain ‘ad washed it out. It did seem cruel shame ter see it go.
“My wife an’ I ‘ad a fire ter sit by, an’ bacon an’ eggs t’ our supper that evening’, I ree’lect.” And Mr Tanswell appeared to drift into some happy visions of the past, and I felt it would be tactful to steal away, and leave him to his meditations.
Originally published in THE SKETCH (24th October 1894)
Reseached and edited by Philip Battle
Additional information on pavement artist, John Tanswell:
John was born in Coventry, Warwickshire in 1853; he would have been 41 years of age when this interview was published. In the 1891 English census, he was described as a “Hawker”. At that time he was living with his family at 4 Hunt Street, Hammersmith. His wife Ellen (age 41) and sons Thomas (aged 19) and John (aged 16)
John Tanswell & Family (described as HAWKER) 1891 Census
If anybody has any further information or even photos of John Tanswell, then I would be delighted to hear from you.
The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2013 annual report for this blog.
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The concert hall at the Sydney Opera House holds 2,700 people. This blog was viewed about 21,000 times in 2013. If it were a concert at Sydney Opera House, it would take about 8 sold-out performances for that many people to see it.
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AGED BIRD’S NEW ROLE:
My DEAR BOYS AND GIRLS,—Auntie’s attempt to earn an “honest penny” as a pavement artist reminds me that I haven’t seen many of these interesting people during the last few years. Are pavement artists dying out? Is it because the police are not allowing them to decorate our pavements or because, as a business, it doesn’t pay?
It may be that the true pavement artist—the man who actually draws things with coloured chalks on the pavement and not the impostor who just sticks a number of weird “canvases” against the railings—is really dying out and may eventually disappear altogether.
There used to be a man whose pitch was near Charing Cross Station—he may be there still—who could draw the most lifelike fish and joints of beef on the pavement you ever saw.
His fish looked so real that many a short-sighted old lady walking past thought some-body had really dropped a herring, and became really concerned about it!
The ordinary pavement artist, however, has very little enterprise and even less skill. Day after day he draws “A Storm at Sea” or ”House on Fire” or “Bunch of Flowers” and then sits down beside the notice “All my own work” and waits for the pennies.
Why don’t they draw topical things—a few golden sovereigns, for instance, or a pile of pound notes, or some person or politician prominent in the day’s news?
A very bright suggestion to pavement artists has just been made by a certain humorous weekly—why shouldn’t they have miniature flood-lights for their pictures?
Something will have to be done by pavement artists if they wish to exist in the busy world of to-day, otherwise they will gradually disappear like the street juggler, the organ-grinder, the muffin man, and other characters of the London of old times.
Yours affectionately UNCLE DICK
Published in the children’s section of THE DAILY MIRROR, UK (Friday, 2nd October 1931)
Related blogs: PIP, SQUEAK & WILFRED (1919) / Pip, Squeak and Wilfred (1938)
Researched by Philip Battle
Apart from the odd itinerant foreign pavement artist, or home-grown pioneers like Sidewalk Sam, America had never developed the depth of cultural street art as experienced in other European countries. A combination of state laws and the fact that many places remained without pavements for well beyond the turn of the century, meant that pavement art was a non-starter. Of course, places like New York City saw itinerant English artists trying their hand from the mid 1800’s. Liverpool’s own boy screever James Carling, travelled to America in 1872, and there were reports of Italian artist/scam merchants from around 1886
In 1932, New York, a local newspaper announced “An eagle-eyed reporter discovers New York’s only screever in a block of West 57th street. In London, the screever or sidewalk artist is common, especially near Trafalgar Square and London Bridge approaches.” The paper even had to offer an explanation to its readers “The screever draws pictures with colored chalks and depends upon pitched coins for his livelihood.”
It wasn’t until the 1960’s that pavement art started to make a real impact, with student led demonstrations against the Vietnam War and ‘Flower-Power’ sit-ins. Pavement art became an expression of peaceful protest, and the communal “chalk-in” became a symbol and rallying call for the disillusioned youth.
It wasn’t all political: In San Francisco, 1967; the city’s Recreation and Parks Department sponsored an official “chalk-in for all ages.” It staged it in an area where the “hippies” congregate—the rendezvous of the philosophic college dropouts and other young people. As the local paper reported “over 200 eager entrants, claimed the 200 packages of colored chalk which the Park Department had ready to distribute, some had brought their own.” The paper continued—soon the chalk artists had covered with their sketches the four-foot squares of asphalt assigned to each. Many bright, original designs appeared. Spectators crowded in.
The first rain was expected to wash away the entire exhibition. But its lessons will remain. It indicates that cities should find more outlets for the creative abilities of their youth. The San Francisco Recreation and Parks Department is on the right track in setting up its chalk-in for people of all ages and stations.
On the other side of the country, was the famous PIED PIPER OF HARLEM. British expatriate and painter John Rudge, who in 1966, started to organise his own brand of chalk-in; with the aid of a small salary from the Police Athletic League, an unofficial arm of the police department, he would go out every morning and sit on the pavement drawing pictures. During the summer, seven streets were blocked off around Harlem; children who didn’t live near a park would now have somewhere to play and make art on the pavements.
Before long, organised chalk-ins where popping up all over the US.
SKY BLUE-Original Press Photo: University of Chicago CHALK-IN, May 1971
In 1971, the University of Chicago marked its 17th annual Festival of Arts with a “chalk-in.” The Chicago Sun-Times reported (8th May 1971)—Students (and some young campus visitors, including a dog!) participated in the Chalk-In. Participation wasn’t limited to just drawing with colored chalks, but eating al fresco, music from two bands, watching, and hopscotch games—just what comes naturally on a spring day when you’re handed a piece of chalk and there’s a handy sidewalk.
HARD WORLD-Original Press Photo: University of Chicago CHALK-IN May 1971
Graffiti art forms and hopscotch layouts were but a few forms that evolved in Hutchinson Court, on the Chicago University campus
In 1973, and at the Florida State University of Tallahassee, they decided to mark ‘GREEK WEEK’ with a Chalk-In. The local newspaper reported (25th April 1973)—this is Greek Week at Florida State University in Tallahassee and these sorority and fraternity members are decorating the sidewalk at the university union with the many various Greek symbols in chalk.
GREEK WEEK-Original Press Photo: University of Tallahassee CHALK-IN April 1973
Working on the decorations here are—from left are Lynne Zaritzky of Hollywood, Fla, Larry Lynch of Fort Lauderdale, Karin Mayo of Charlotte, North Carolina, and Marc Campbell of the Panama Canal Zone.
Back over at Chicago, and the University was celebrating its 19th annual arts festival with another chalk-in.
GREENSLEEVES-Original Press Photo: University of Chicago CHALK-IN May 1973
The Chicago Sun-Times reported (9th May 1973)—BJ Crigger and Bob Esty draw the song, ‘Greensleeves’ during the sidewalk chalk-in at the University of Chicago, and to make sure the notes are right, Bob plays the music using a ‘Recorder’ they brought along.
The most beguiling thing about these chalk-ins is the lack of a commercial agenda; no desire to “increase footfall” or promote business interests. These where community led initiatives based on educational and social values. Long before the “Madonnari cults” and the promotion of Italian business & religious interests, something that the modern US festivals seem to have developed into.
The All American CHALK-IN represents a time of innocence born out of the peace movement, and sometimes, we just need to “get ourselves back to the garden.”
Written & researched by Philip Battle
In years gone by, pavement artists and romance seem to be things as far apart as the poles, but Joseph Blacow of Trowbridge, who followed that humble calling, was as deeply in love as a man could be. He was 44 years of age, and the object of his devotion was his wife, Elizabeth. She died suddenly in the first week of August 1933. He buried her on the following Thursday, and afterwards passers-by noticed that he was missing from his pitch.
Attracted by a man calling “I am coming, Lizzie” cemetery keepers found Joseph lying on his wife’s grave with wounds to his throat. A razor was found nearby. He was dying from his wounds as was heard to mumble the words “I am joining my wife”
Earlier that day, he had sent a letter addressed to the Trowbridge coroner. It read as follows:
Extract from Joseph Blacow’s letter (11th August 1933)
Joseph was rushed to Trowbridge hospital, but died soon after he arrived. At the coroner’s inquest, evidence showed that Joseph committed suicide. A verdict was returned of “Death from wounds in the throat, self-inflicted, when overcome by grief through his wife’s death.”
Written and researched by Philip Battle
Looking at old photos can be totally fascinating and absorbing, but often clues to the past can go unnoticed.
Here I have presented two photos of REM (Thomas Reynolds) both photos were taken around 1930, and show REM at his usual pitch, outside the National Gallery in London.
What We Wore 1930 (click on image to enlarge)
The photo above was published recently in WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE magazine.
Unravelling the past is like assembling a jigsaw puzzle; things like period clothing can tell us a lot about social status.
It’s easy to look back on old photos and imagine we’ve come a long way since then, but have we really? Sure things have changed, and we wear different clothes etc. but the main thing is that we are essentially the same.
Location, Location, Location: REM outside the National Gallery 1930
There was a very good reason why pavement artists produced relatively small works, in comparison to the massive chalking’s of today; also, unlike today’s artists most were self-taught, with little or no formal art education. Pavement art was a folk art invented by poor people as a means to make a living, or keep their families out of the workhouse.
Pavement artists where often only one drawing away from the poor-house.
Related blog: Ruined by War (1935)
Written & Researched by Philip Battle
Colin and his Collie was a popular weekly cartoon strip published in the North East of England during the 1920’s.
Mostly published in the Hull Daily Mail, it featured Colin and his Collie dog, WOBBLES; told in pictures by Cousin Ken.
Cartoonist is as yet unknown, but signed his work, KEN!
Colin & his Collie cartoon strip 1925
DEAR BOYS AND GIRLS—Yesterday afternoon I saw Colin coming out of the hospital, and he said the reason he was bandaged was because Wobbles had taken to art. At least, that’s what caused most of the bother. I couldn’t understand Colin at first, until he explained all about WOBBLES AS AN ARTIST. As a matter of fact, Colin only thought Wobbles was one, and it turned out he wasn’t.
It appears he’d missed Wobbles, and suddenly found him sitting on the pavement surrounded by chalk pictures, and the pennies were rolling in. So Colin thought he ought to share in the good luck and made Wobbles give up his place. Then Wobbles waited until the real pavement artist came back from his dinner, and told him Colin was taking the pennies the artist ought to have had himself—and there you are! Wobbles said afterwards he was only resting, and it wasn’t his fault if Colin thought the pictures had been done by his puppy!
Yours Merrily, Cousin Ken.
Published in the Hull Daily Mail (Monday 19th January 1925)
Researched by Philip Battle
It was the year of the Queen’s Coronation, and the PICTURE POST published a “Special Coronation Souvenir” of their popular magazine. Published on the 6th June and costing 1 shilling, (the normal cost was 4d) this was set to become a collector’s edition.
For the first time a pavement artist was featured as “Portrait of the Day”
Portrait of the Day: PICTURE POST; June 1953
Joseph Lee will be up all night on Coronation Eve—he expects business to be good. For 37 years this artist has covered his stretch of pavement, at the top end of Knightsbridge, with royal portraits and copies of the Old Masters. He was there at the Coronation of George VI. And he remembers the days before 1937 when the late King was Duke of York; when he lived “just up the road” at 145 Piccadilly—and would bring the two Princesses along to drop a few coins into his hat.
pavement artist Joseph Lee. Original PICTURE POST photo: 1953
Joseph Lee was known as “Rembrandt Lee.” He wore a large, soft beret, which he spread on the pavement for contributions from tourists. In his beret, he bore a striking resemblance to the painter, Rembrandt van Rijn. In the 1950s he was invited to Amsterdam, where he was feted as talented curiosity.
Screever Cartoon. Published in the PICTURE POST; April 1953
The Picture Post was a prominent photo-journalistic magazine published in the United Kingdom from 1938 to 1957. It was considered a pioneering example of photojournalism and was an immediate success, selling 1,700,000 copies a week after only two months. It has been called the Life magazine of the United Kingdom.
If you are related to, or have any more information on Joseph Lee, I’d love to hear from you.
Researched and written by Philip Battle
