The Real East End. Burke Thomas

      

      THE REAL EAST END

       The Text by

      THOMAS BURKE

       The Lithographs by

      PEARL BINDER

      Copyright © 2013 Read Books Ltd.

      This book is copyright and may not be

      reproduced or copied in any way without

      the express permission of the publisher in writing

      British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

      A catalogue record for this book is available from the

      British Library

       Thomas Burke

      Thomas Burke was born in Clapham, London in 1886. His father died when he was very young, and at the age of ten he was removed to a home for middle-class boys who were “respectably descended but without adequate means to their support.” Burke published his first piece of writing – a short story entitled 'The Bellamy Diamonds' – in 1901, when he was just fifteen. However, proper recognition came in 1916, with the publication of Limehouse Nights, a collection of melodramatic short stories set amongst the immigrant population of London's Chinatown. Limehouse Nights was serialized in three British periodicals, The English Review, Colour and The New Witness, and received positive attention from reviewers and a number of authors, including H. G. Wells. It also sparked something of a controversy, however, and was initially banned by libraries due to the scandalous interracial relationships it portrayed between Chinese men and white women.

      It was these portrayals of London's Chinatown that Burke is best-remembered for. However, there is some degree of confusion over how much of Burke's writing was based in fact; as literary critic Anne Witchard states, most of what we know about Burke's life is based on works that “purport to be autobiographical, yet contain far more invention than truth.” Whatever the truth, there is no doubt that, in his day, Burke was regarded as the foremost chronicler of London's Chinatown at the turn-of-the-century. Burke told newspaper journalists that he had “sat at the feet of Chinese philosophers who kept opium dens to learn from the lips that could frame only broken English, the secrets, good and evil, of the mysterious East,” and these journalists almost uniformly took him at his word.

      Burke continued to use descriptions of urban London life as a focus of his writing throughout his life. Off the back of Limehouse Nights, Burke published the thematically similar Twinkletoes in 1918, and More Limehouse Nights in 1921. However, he was a prolific author who tried his hand at a number of different genres. He semi-regularly published essays on the London environment, including pieces such as 'The Real East End' and 'London in My Times', and during the thirties even tried his hand at horror fiction. Indeed, in 1949, shortly after his death, Burke's short story 'The Hands of Ottermole' was voted the best mystery of all time by critics. Burke also influenced the burgeoning film industry in Hollywood; D W Griffith, for example, used the short story ‘The Chink and the Child’ from Limehouse Nights (1917) as basis for his silent movie, Broken Blossoms (1919), and Charlie Chaplin derived ‘A Dog’s Life’ (1918) from the same book.

      WATNEY STREET MARKET

       BOOKS BY THOMAS BURKE

      CITY OF ENCOUNTERS

      THE FLOWER OF LIFE

      THE SUN IN SPLENDOUR

      PLEASANTRIES OF OLD QUONG

      THE WIND AND THE RAIN

      LIMEHOUSE NIGHTS

      THE ENGLISH INN

      NIGHTS IN TOWN

      THE BOOK OF THE INN

      CONTENTS

       ITS COLOUR

       ITS PEOPLE

       ITS RIVER

       ITS COMMERCE

       TAIL-PIECE

      ILLUSTRATIONS

       WATNEY STREET MARKET

       MIDNIGHT IN LIMEHOUSE CAUSEWAY

       SPREAD EAGLE YARD, 1931 (from my studio window)

       SPREAD EAGLE YARD, 1932

       ALDGATE, EVENING

       JEWISH BURIAL GROUND, BRADY STREET

       JEWISH BOOKSHOP IN WENTWORTH STREET

       WEST INDIA DOCK ROAD

       BLACKWALL TUNNEL

       ALDERMAN’S STEPS, WAPPING

       VAULTS (London Docks)

       THE CIRCUS, ALDGATE (by the Tower)

       ST. KATHERINE’S WAY, WAPPING

       BRICK LANE, BEGEL-SELLER

       JEWISH RESTAURANT IN BRICK LANE

       MY LANDLORD, SPREAD EAGLE YARD

       ITS COLOUR

      EAST END! . . . Visions in the public mind of slums, vice, crime, sin, and unnameable horrors.

      East End! . . . Dregs of humanity. Beggars and thieves. Bare-footed waifs. Outcasts. Drunkards. Jack the Ripper. Crimping dens. Dangerous streets. Policemen walk in twos and threes. Something worse than Chicago. Sidney Street. Limehouse. Opium dens.

      East End! . . . Hooligans. Diseased harlots. Public-houses at every corner. Thugs lurking in every alley. Sudden death.

      Well, legends are like old soldiers. But old soldiers do eventually fade away, and that is more than legends do. Fact, set beside legend, is a poor, pale thing, apathetic and incompetent to hold its own. Facts fade away and die, but legends are invulnerable and immortal; and the East End legend, I suppose, will last as long as there is any East End. Because the East End did misbehave itself in the forties and fifties of last century, the decent and kindly East End of the twentieth must go on paying for misbehaviour with which it was never concerned. The People are like that; they will cherish their traditions against all truth and all disproof. They will speak of singers as great singers long after the singers’ voices have gone to rags. They will applaud once-fine actors who have lost all ability to act. If a man has once had a term of prison he is for ever after an ex-convict. If a man is once charged with a crime and proved innocent, he is remembered for ever as “the man who was charged with——” They love labels and will keep their faith in them long after the print of the label has