Spiegelhalter’s

A recent walk around Mile End uncovered a well-known East End landmark – the vast former premises of Wickhams department store… and, on the same site, what is left of a tiny jeweller’s shop, Spiegelhalter’s. Anyone with an interest in architectural oddities, or who has ever nursed a sneaking appreciation for stories of the small man winning out over ‘the big guys’, should find this post curiously satisfying!

Thomas Wickham began trading as a linen draper in the 1850s selling his wares from 69, 71 and 73 Mile End Road. 

No. 75 was occupied by the Spiegelhalter family who owned a jewellery and watchmaking business and had moved from the Black Forest to set up in Whitechapel in 1828. They moved to Mile End Road in 1880 where the business was run by the three Spiegelhalter brothers who had been born on the premises.

As the Wickhams enterprise began to grow, the Spiegelhalters agreed (c.1892) to move from 75 to 81 Mile End Road to allow for expansion of the emporium into no. 75.

Spiegelhalter's shop front c.1900

Thirty-five years later the Wickham family had further plans for expansion and acquired the entire block, buying up and demolishing a whole row of smaller shops to make way for new, much-enlarged premises. Originally designed to upstage Selfridges, the new Wickhams store was to have a colonnaded front (like the West End store) but also a tower and a clock, which Selfridges could not boast.

But, famously, the Spiegelhalter family at no. 81 refused to part with their business at any price and their refusal left Wickhams with no other choice but to build their new grand emporium around the little family jeweller’s, which continued to trade when the new Wickhams opened on both sides of it in 1927. By this time the Spiegelhalter family had changed their name by deed poll to Salter (due to anti-German sentiment following the Great War), but the shop always retained its original 

Shop front in 1925 around the time of the Wickhams dispute

name.

The resulting gap in Wickhams frontage looked (and still looks!) a bit like a missing tooth and the tower is slightly off-centre, with 7 bays to the left and 9 to the right, rather than 9 on either side.

 Both businesses traded happily side by side for many years. But Spiegelhalter was eventually to have the last laugh. While Wickhams closed its doors in the 1960s, having never achieved anything like the kudos of Selfridges, the German family’s jewellery and clock-making business continues to flourish, albeit in later years away from London’s East End.

Wickhams towards the end of its days in 1956

The Spiegelhalter’s shop relocated to Loughton in Essex in the late 1970s but that has now closed. The family name and business live on, however, through BJ Spiegelhalter and Son, distant cousins of the original settlers from Baden who today run a business in Penzance, managed by Mark Spiegelhalter.

BJ Spiegelhalter & Son in Penzance

Wickhams building as it looks today (2019)

And what of the Mile End Road building? Until 2005 Spiegelhalter’s shop front, with its curved glass window and mosaic entrance floor spelling out “Spiegelhalters” was still visible (albeit through metal shutters), but the owners of the building have now removed it,  leaving just the front wall of the building. Future plans for it are still uncertain. In the meantime, passers-by along the Mile End Road are still treated to the gap-toothed smile offered by one of this area’s most eccentric landmarks. In his classic 1966 topographical study “Nairn’s London”, Ian Nairn described the Spiegelhalter story as "a perennial triumph for the little man, the blokes who won't conform. May he stay there till the bomb falls." 
Well, after a fashion, he has!*

*Postscript! There may be a part two to this blogpost as I was excited during my research to come across an article called “Spiegelhalters and Fehrenbachs – a Black Forest clockmaker dynasty in London and Neukirch”. As my great grandfather’s name was Alois Fehrenbach and he (like Spiegelhalter) was a clockmaker from Baden, I think that’s got to be worth investigating. Hold this page!

References:

Website: https://www.yorkbeach.co.uk/family_history/spiegelhalter/shop.html

Website: http://spitalfieldslife.com/2015/01/09/save-spiegelhalters/

Tottenham Fever Hospital

With much discussion in recent weeks about the issues surrounding parents’ failure to have their children vaccinated against measles, I thought it would be interesting to pen a short piece about my mum’s own experience of serious childhood illness in the 1940s, and of being admitted twice to what was in those days the Tottenham Fever Hospital.

 Serious infectious diseases such as measles, polio, scarlet fever and diphtheria were for centuries an ever-present threat, especially to young children. Diphtheria was particularly dreaded.  First reported in the early 1600s, and soon nicknamed the “strangling angel”, it is a bacterial infection transmitted through close contact with an infected person, usually via respiratory secretions in the air. As the disease advances, the toxin produced by the bacteria causes a thick film to develop in the throat making it increasingly difficult to breathe. The spread of the toxin in the blood can seriously damage the heart and other organs.

Diphtheria spread significantly during late 19^th century with industrialisation and urban overcrowding and soon took its place as one of the main causes of child death. Class and privilege were no barrier to its ravages. Queen Victoria’s daughter, Princess Alice, died of the disease in 1878, aged 35.

The North Eastern Fever Hospital was opened by the Metropolitan Asylums Board on 8 October 1892 in St Ann’s Road, Tottenham to treat patients suffering from fever and diphtheria. Built in just seven weeks on land once owned by Clerkenwell Abbey and later the Knights of St John, the hospital originally had 50 buildings housing 500 beds.

Admin building of the Tottenham Fever Hospital

It was to have been the last of a series to be built for the Board, covering the geographical points of London - the first being the North Western in Hampstead (1870), followed by the South Western (1871), the Eastern (1871), the Western (1877), the South Eastern (1877) and the Northern (1887).

At first, however, the Local Government Board vetoed its £12,000 purchase price. But then two years later London experienced a huge outbreak of scarlet fever and existing fever hospitals were unable to cope, despite the erection of temporary huts in their grounds. To avoid sick patients having to be turned away, the Board relented and agreed to financing of the new hospital. Local residents were vehemently opposed to the building, fearing that the infectious diseases would spread outside the hospital precincts, but building went ahead and the hospital opened in October 1892.

View of a new ward added in 1935

The complex comprised 50 temporary wooden huts connected by a covered walkway, with 24 of these buildings used as wards.  Each ward hut contained a sanitary room, a bathroom, a scullery and pantry, and a linen closet. Another 13 huts provided staff accommodation and the remaining 13 were used for administrative offices and the utilities - the kitchens, laundry and storerooms. More huts were added in 1893 and the boundary wall was built in 1896.

During the First World War, the hospital was placed at the disposal of the US military authorities and became the American Expeditionary Force Base Hospital No.29. The names of patients, along with their ship names or battalion troop numbers, can still be seen on the walls of the blocks.

Following the liquidation of The Metropolitan Asylum Board in 1929, the Tottenham hospital then came under the administration of London County Council before becoming an NHS institution in 1946. In the immediate post war period the fever hospital was redeveloped, including the construction of an ambulance station and a row of prefabricated bungalows. By 1950, the hospital had been renamed St Ann’s General Hospital and treated patients with chest disorders of all kinds as well as infectious diseases.

Londoner Pat August recalls her experiences of being an in-patient at the Tottenham Fever Hospital (for children only), once in 1941 at the age of seven with measles, and again aged twelve (1946) suffering from diphtheria.

Pat August aged 12

During her first stay, she remembers lying in bed listening to the bombing raids over the city and the nurses moving the children to lie on mattresses underneath their beds when things got really bad. “There was lots of screaming, as we hated this”, she remembers. Pat always remembers the date as 1941 because she remembers a nurse running onto the ward screaming “the Balkans have fallen”, a fact of particular personal relevance as she was herself from the Balkan region. To Pat, however, the mystery of what a Balkan was remained unsolved for many a year – she was, after all, only a small child! She spent two weeks in the hospital on that first occasion, it being essential during wartime to prevent a measles epidemic which would have been the consequence of infected patients being allowed down into packed air-raid shelters (in Pat’s case Leicester Square tube).

Pat was admitted to the hospital again in 1946 (at age 12), suffering this time from diphtheria. Her memories of that time are still vivid: “I remember that I had to sleep bolt upright, we weren’t allowed to lie flat for a good few weeks. We were kept in strict isolation from the outside world, so my mum couldn’t visit.” Pat also recalls the nurses being quite brusque with the children, and the regime on the ward very strict – there were no toys or other comforts to make life more tolerable. The seriousness of the disease meant that inevitably some children on the ward died. “I remember thinking it might be my turn next...” recalls Pat,“...my prognosis must have been pretty grim because the Reverend Mother at my convent school (St Aloysius, Somers Town) arranged for a mass to be said for me!”

Pat was never immunised. In common with many other parents at time, her father was extremely resistant to the idea. When a mass immunisation programme was introduced in 1942 the authorities recognised the suspicions some parents held about the procedure by making it voluntary. When coverage remained below expectations, however, they embarked on a massive advertising campaign. By the end of the war, rates of killer childhood diseases had dropped dramatically (by 1949 mortality had fallen more than tenfold from pre-war levels) and the profile of vaccination had received a significant boost. By the 1950s, whooping cough and polio vaccines were introduced. By the 70s, measles and tetanus jabs were routine.

St Ann’s Hospital is still operational today and, despite the disadvantages of the site (its origins as a fever hospital mean the buildings are spread out, with patients having to navigate over a wide area), a variety of medical services are located there, including mental health in-patient and day-care services provided by the Barnet Enfield and Haringey Mental Health NHS Trust. Some of the buildings from 1901 survive. The outside wall is original Victorian as are the two gabled lodges either side of the gates, and the porter’s lodge.

References:

https://tottenhamcommunitypress.co.uk/history/in-sickness-and-in-health-the-story-behind-st-anns/

https://ezitis.myzen.co.uk/stanns.html