{"id":10141,"date":"2012-11-13T14:48:54","date_gmt":"2012-11-13T14:48:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.urban75.org\/blog\/?p=10141"},"modified":"2012-11-13T14:52:41","modified_gmt":"2012-11-13T14:52:41","slug":"pearly-queens-and-pie-mash-roman-rd-market-east-london","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.urban75.org\/blog\/pearly-queens-and-pie-mash-roman-rd-market-east-london\/","title":{"rendered":"Pearly Queens and Pie & Mash, Roman Rd Market, East London"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Pearly<\/p>\n

I snapped these three, rather dapper, young pearlies on Roman Road Market in Bow, East London, E3 last Saturday.<\/p>\n

Pearly Kings and Queens (aka\u00a0pearlies)\u00a0are an organised charitable tradition of working class culture in London, and can be\u00a0recognised\u00a0by their distinctive clothes, which are covered in\u00a0pearl buttons.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\"Pearly<\/p>\n

[Detail\u00a0from the jackets. The really sharp-eyed might spot a badge for The Severed Limb, some good friends of mine who play excellent skiffle music]<\/em><\/p>\n

The practice originated in the 19th century, and was first\u00a0associated with Henry Croft, an orphan street sweeper who collected money for charity.<\/p>\n

\"Pearly<\/p>\n

Croft noted that\u00a0London costermongers (street traders) were in the habit of wearing trousers decorated at the seams with pearl buttons found by market traders, so took it a step further to create a pearly suit to draw attention to himself and his fund-raising activities.<\/p>\n

\"Pearly<\/p>\n

Here’s the Wikipedia entry<\/a> on Croft’s death in January 1930:<\/p>\n

[…his funeral was attended by 400 followers from all over London,[1] receiving national media coverage.[4] In 1934 a memorial was unveiled to him in St Pancras Cemetery and at a speech to mark the occasion he was said to have raised \u00a35,000 for those suffering in London’s hospitals. The statue was later moved to the crypt of St Martin-in-the-Fields, Westminster.<\/p>\n

The inscription reads:
\nIn memory of Henry Croft who died March 16th 1930 aged 68 years. The original Pearly King.]<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\"Pearly<\/p>\n

Situated on the oldest known trade route in Britain, Roman Road is the road to Colchester famously taken by Boudicea on her way to\u00a0kick Roman ass<\/a>\u00a0in London.<\/p>\n

It hosts a street market every\u00a0Tuesday, Thursday & Saturday, and one of London’s last Pie & Mash shops can be found there.<\/p>\n

\"Pearly<\/p>\n

G Kelly<\/a> has been\u00a0serving \u00a0Pie and Mash with parsley liquor, along with stewed and jellied eels in \u00a0for over 70 years, and is\u00a0definitely\u00a0worth a visit if you want to soak up a bit of real East End culture.<\/p>\n

The last Pie and Mash shop in\u00a0Brixton – J Young’s\u00a0\u00a0on Coldharbour Lane closed in the mid 1990s. See photo feature here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I snapped these three, rather dapper, young pearlies on Roman Road Market in Bow, East London, E3 last Saturday. Pearly Kings and Queens (aka\u00a0pearlies)\u00a0are an organised charitable tradition of working … <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":10142,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[194,193],"tags":[1191,482,366,221,10,135,481,480],"class_list":["post-10141","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-london-features","category-places","tag-brixton","tag-cockney","tag-east-end","tag-food","tag-london","tag-market","tag-pearly-queens","tag-pie-and-mash"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.urban75.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/11\/pearly-queens-pie-and-mash-01.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pQI7P-2Dz","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.urban75.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10141","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.urban75.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.urban75.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.urban75.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.urban75.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10141"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.urban75.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10141\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10152,"href":"https:\/\/www.urban75.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10141\/revisions\/10152"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.urban75.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10142"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.urban75.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10141"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.urban75.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10141"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.urban75.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10141"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}