Aug-Sep 2017

East End Vernacular
Reproduced courtesy of Tower Hamlets Archives & Local History Library
Above: Snow in Rounton Road, Bow and , below, Old
Above, The Jolly Butcher's Yard, Brick Lane; right,
Houses, Bow, by Henry Silk
the artist, Albert Turpin and, below, Belleview Place,
Whitechapel
Albert Turpin
A window cleaner by trade, Turpin was born
in Columbia Road, Bethnal Green in 1900. His
father earned what he could as a tea-cooper,
feather sorter and casual docker, and when
Turpin left Globe Road School at 14, he tried a bit
of everything to earn a crust, until at 15 he was
conscripted for the First World War.
me forget all
about my
art class and join
up with the
organised workers
right there,”
he wrote in his autobiography. As well as joining
the Labour Party, Albert Turpin became an anti-
Fascist protestor and was unanimously elected
Mayor of Bethnal Green in 1946.
Continued on next page...
Like Henry Silk, he began painting while in the
forces and returned to take up the job of window
cleaner, but in a later interview he revealed his
motives as an artist. He admitted a wish to show
others “the beauty in the East End and to record
the old streets before they go.”
Several of his paintings were included in the East
London Art show at the Whitechapel Gallery in
1928 and were transferred to the Tate Gallery. In
1926, the year of the General Strike, on the way to
his art group, Turpin heard a speech by Bill Gee,
a working class activist. “What he did was to make
LOVEEAST AUGUST-SEPTEMBER 2017 21