Traditionally, the East End, the area that lies to the east of “the City of London,” was one of the poorest parts of the capital. Dramatic population growth in the 19th century created overcrowding and poverty. Conditions improved in the 20th century, but it was still a pretty rough place.
hipsters In recent years, however, the East End has changed beyond recognition. Today areas like Shoreditch and Brick Lane are synonymous with “hipsters,” affluent young people who often run their own businesses. The long “hipster” beard is a symbol of this new trendiness and wealth. So where did all the poor people go? Well, actually, they’re still around, and if you go to Petticoat Lane Market on a Sunday, you can see them. This street market, which is a short walk from Liverpool Street station, is where locals gather to buy the latest bargains : usually cheap clothes, but also shoes, handbags and other accessories. The ethnic mix is interesting; the market is popular with Muslim women who shop for shoes. After all, we aren’t far from Brick Lane, which is still known as “Bangla Town.”
As Rachel Lichtenstein, author of the book On Brick Lane , explains (see interview), Petticoat Lane wasn’t always a market for the poor. When she was a child in the 1970s, it was “THE place” to go in order to find the latest fashions. It has constantly changed character and that could easily happen again.
(Play the audio) Interview: A dedicated follower of fashion If you go to the East End of London you will find three famous markets, namely Spitalfields, Brick Lane and Petticoat Lane. The old Spitalfields Market is a covered market that now sells chic clothing, while Brick Lane Market still retains some of its old, cheap character, in spite of the recent gentrification of the area. Petticoat Lane, on the other hand, has often changed personality over the years. To get an idea of its evolution, we went to see Rachel Lichtenstein, an artist and author with a great love of the East End:
Rachel Lichtenstein: Petticoat Lane and Brick Lane became these really important centres for street markets because they’re located just outside the City walls, so people could trade there without belonging to a guild . It was where migrants settled because of that specific location. So this is why these areas have developed.
And then Brick Lane and Petticoat Lane Markets were one of the first places where you could actually legally trade on a Sunday, and that was because of the Jewish communities there not being able to open on Saturdays because of that being their sabbath, so that’s how those kind of markets developed and they were places where you could buy anything and everything.
in the ghetto Petticoat Lane doesn’t actually exist on the map. It officially consists of two separate markets, Middlesex Street Market and Wentworth Street Market:
Rachel Lichtenstein: Petticoat Lane was the absolute heart of the Jewish East End and there was a particular period of time, probably up to the 1940s, between about the 1880s and the 1940s, where Yiddish would have been pretty much the only language that you heard there for the most part. And I’m just going to read you something, actually, by the great chronicler of the Jewish East End, the Victorian writer Israel Zangwill, and this is from his book, Children of the Ghetto , and this is him talking about Petticoat Lane: “The great marketplace, and every insalubrious street and alley abutting onto it was covered with the overflowings of its commerce and its mud . Wentworth Street and Goulston Street were the chief branches and in festival times the latter was a pandemonium of cage poultry , clucking and quacking and cackling and screaming, thousand geese and ducks were bought alive and taken to have their throats cut for a fee by the official slaughterer .” And I love that quote because I think it gives something of the kind of chaos and madness of Petticoat Lane Market kind of during that period.
swinging london But later Petticoat Lane became a very cool place:
Rachel Lichtenstein: And Petticoat Lane, when I was growing up in Essex as a child, was THE place to go to , to get your new London fashions because Petticoat Lane, I would say probably from the ‘60s, ‘70s, ‘80s onwards, it became like the fashion market, so when it kind of stopped being a Jewish market, then for a long period of time, it was the market where you’d have people, they’d go to the fashion shows and they’d copy the kind of like latest designs. And then, if you lived in Essex, like I do, you’d go up to Petticoat Lane and you’d get the hippest outfits outfits, you know, really cheap, from the market traders. But now, again, it’s become more of a local market, predominantly. It’s not a fashionable market, and there’s a lot of African market stalls and sellers but, again, it’s become the kind of place for kind of knock-off cheap clothing and cheap this and that.
