Street Directory of Commercial Road, south side, 1921

Commercial Road was laid out in 1802-06 to provide a direct route between the City and the new docks on the Isle of Dogs; the western end, previously known as White Horse Lane, was added in 1869-70 to join Whitechapel Road. It forms the northern boundary of the present and its former constituent parishes, from the junction with Whitechapel High Street in the east, so only the south side of the street is included here. However, this list goes further east than the parish boundary, up to Albert Square, to include a number of places of relevance to our parish story, such as the SPCK college and St John's Vicarage. Underlining denotes names and/or trades at the same premises in the 1899 Directory, and *asterisks* those in the 1956 Directory: apart from the pubs and beer-selling premises, some tobacconists and doctors' surgeries, the continuity is limited. Trades and businesses are predominantly Jewish-run [see this 1894 trade directory], with some Irish presence further east. The number of bankruptcies is high, though most appear to have bounced back.
In the 19th century, some stretches of the street were numbered as short terraces: from west to east along the south side, King's Place, Princes Place, Nassau Place, Waterloo Place, Evaline Place, Devonshire Place and Colet Place. (On the north side were Langley Place, Hereford Place, Northumberland Place, Bedford Place, Upton Place and Crombies Row.) Hence some of the changes of address below.
See this 1932 article by Sydney Maddocks. The transcription is partly based on this excellent website.

[1] Public houses and beer sellers (see this list of all licensed premises in the St George-in-the-East district, and an early 20th century map by the London  London United Temperance Council of all pubs in the area). Some premises had no name. Extant buildings are numbered in these pictures:

2 Wheatsheaf Tavern, demolished for road widening; Edwin Sable died in 1932 and his widow Alice Elizabeth took over the licence.
44 Castle - one of the few to survive; fingerboards on the exterior point towards, and give distanes to, places in Ireland.
62 Boundary Tavern - previous address 1 King's Place, now demolished
104 previous address 9 King's Place
128 King's Head, previous address 21 King's Place; David Bloom, a Russian subject from Poland, was the tenant from 1900 until his death in 1926, and he and his wife, five children and mother, plus several nieces and nephews, lived above. It closed in 2000 and now houses a clothes shop and a business school.
140 Dagmar Arms - named to mark the wedding of Danish Princess Marie Dagmar to future Tsar Alexander III. Frederick Charles Ivermee had served as a corporal in the War and received the Silver War badge (also known as the 'discharge', 'wound' or 'services rendered' badge - right) to mark his honourable discharge due to wounds or sickness. One purpose for issuing them was to prevent women giving white feathers to apparently able-bodied civilians.

158 Mackworth Arms, previous address 10 Princes Place: Simon Koski [Kosky] was the landlord in 1921, with his wife Nancy; his successor from 1923 was Nathan(n) Dubosky, whose wife always had a plentiful supply of latkes on the counter, so it was known as 'Latke House'. It later became a Watney's house, and closed in 1984. The ground floor is now a clothing shop. Left  - an interior view.

3 Waterloo Place; rebuilt 1892 [right in 1963], closed 2005, now restaurant East is East
240 Hungerford Arms - right in 1963, also showing Glickmans at 238
250

[3] There were three listed as teeth makers (and dentists) in this stretch of the road (and several others earlier in the century):
Louis Jackson and Isadore Ellis were in partnership as Jackson & Ellis, dentists at no.6 until Ellis its dissolution in 1923, Jackson continuing the business.
Woolf Krause at no.178 was born around 1866 in Russia; he lived over the shop with Helen, Isidore and Myer. Working as a dentist, in 1892 he began to make gumshields for boxers, made from stips of gutta percha, a natural rubber resin. His son Phillip, an amateur boxer, is said to have made the first reusable gumshield; his schoolfriend Ted 'King' Lewis was the first professional to use it.
Samuel Chutner at no.330, possibly né Šams Cetnor, died in 1936 at Wentworth Road, Golders Green.

• The name 'coffee room'  is a link with the 18th century coffee houses of the City; today they'd be 'tea rooms'.  No.8 was part of a chain; no 30b was one of several run by Eliza Elizabeth Young's family, from Bethnal Green; she married Joseph Liggins, from Coventry, in 1887, and they lived at 364 Bethnal Green Road. William Leonard, born 1894, their second child, married Alice Forrest in 1915 and six months later enlisted (described as a waiter) in the 2/25th London Regiment, but after home service was discharged as medically unfit in 1917; he is listed as the proprietor of 30b in 1956.
• Nos.114 and 148 were restaurants (Sylvia Wolfryd was still living at 148 in the 1950s)
• No.352 were 'dining rooms'.

[5] The Capital & Labour Clothing Association sounds like a Co-op related venture, but it was the business of clothier Joseph Edwin Halliday, begun around 1880. The main branch was in Waterloo [left]; others followed, in Croydon, Holloway, Tottenham Court Road and Commercial Road.  Its 1892 Christmas annual included a short story, The Rajah's Diamond, by Robert Louis Stevenson, and a poem by Kipling. It made the extravagant claim of being the largest firm of manufacturing clothiers in the world. Halliday evidently recovered from a bankruptcy in 1911; branches had opened in other towns, including Sheffield, and Southampton, where they advertised as merchant tailors, yacht outfitters, school and college clothing of reliable quality at keenest prices; in the 1920s they won a clothing contract for its tramway staff.

[6] The Gunmakers' Company Proof House [left & right] at 46-50 Commercial Road, remains a working institution. Gunmaking had long been a major local trade, centred in the area east of the Tower and in Saltpetre Bank [now Dock Street], with many specialist workshops throughout the area. The Office of Ordnance (based near the Minories) regulated the supply of arms and gunpowder to the Army, and ran its own foundry. The Blacksmiths' and Carpenters' Companies both tried to dominate the trade, but in 1638 the Worshipful Company of Gunmakers was given a charter, naming 125 local gunmakers. Although a city livery company, it was banished from the City because of its hazardous work. The original proof house, for testing shotguns, was near Tower Hill but relocated to its present site in 1675, where it was rebuilt after damage caused by explosions in 1757 (and continues in use for testing and marking small arms gun barrels). More detail in Derek Morris & Ken Cozens Wapping 1600-1800 (East London History Society 2009), which also includes concerns voiced about the storage of gunpowder in the area in the late 17th century. The Company's Archivist, Derek Stimpson, edited the Company's official history as The Worshipful Company of Gunmakers: A History (London 2008), and there is a history of its buildings in issue 18 of its newsletter Lock, Stock & Barrel. The Hall to the right of the Proof House was built in 1870 at a cost of £2,143 plus £1,377 for furniture and fittings [original interior right], but in the harsh climate of the 1920s it was sold to Israel Eichenbaum and Pinkus Segalov and was used for various purposes until the Gunmakers managed to buy it back for £1.1m; it is leased to a church charity until 2015.

Israel Eichenbaum (1874-1935, married to Fanny) had a warehouse along the road at no 20 (he registered its freehold in 1927). He dealt in towels, curtains and bedding.

[7] Confectioners, bakers & caterers
Confectioners tended to be German - like sugar-baking, it was a trade they brought to the East End, and there had been many more at the end of the previous century. Some, like nos.72, 144 (Gabriel Bomzer, 1873-1926, married to Annie - presumably related to Barnett Bomzer of Cable Street), 218 and 282, were small sweet or cake shops; S. Lewis at no.22 was a wholesale supplier. There were bakers at nos.192 - Lewis Newsbaum (previously run by Joseph Himpfen) and 336 - James Walker & Sons (long-established).
At no.136 was Joseph Goide (1866-1946) who came from Russia in the 1880s and set up a grocer's shop in Brady Street in 1889, and baker's shops in Commercial Road (previously run by Jacob Kutchinsky) and Spitalfields, and also Wardour Street in the West End. In 1938 (when he was living at Seven Sisters, and described as restaurant proprietor and confectioner) a receiving order was made on 'J Goide Caterers' at 54 Whitechapel High Street, where they had a banqueting hall for weddings and bar mitzvahs, but it recovered, and his grandsons Richard and Alan took it on after his death, moving catering to the Royal Majestic Suite in Willesden. Right are their 1955-84 Commercial Street [sic] premises.

[9] There were three tobacco manufacturers with premises locally as well as elsewhere.
Julius Wix (1860-1933), born in Russia, worked in a tobacco factory from the age of 10, and came to London in 1889, working as a cutter and blender for various firms - he was the original blender of 'Pick-me-ups' and 'De Reske Tenor' -  and became a partner in Major Drakin & Co before selling his intrest and setting up his own company, J. Wix & Sons, in 1901, initially in Buckle Street, Whitechapel and then at Commercial Road (with a branch in Piccadilly); later the head office was at various addresses in Old Street, with factories at Livingstone Road E15 and Hurst Green.  His most famous brand, still in production (marketed by Gallaher since 1961), was Kensitas, which controversially was for a time marketed as a 'healthy' cigarette [far right]. He retired in 1927, selling up to the American Tobacco Company. In 1933 his son Abraham, who had been managing director, attempted to register 'Wix' as a trademark in the USA, but this was rejected as it was held to be a name rather than a product. 

Their cigarette cards and silks are 'collectibles' - including the 1932 set of 'Love Scenes from Silent Movies', the 1934 set of 60 national flags, and five sets of 'Henry's Adventures' 1935-37 by cartoonist Carl Anderson (50 in each), issued in Britain and the USA, plus (later) the flower silks. There are many websites showing these!

These strange words come in a letter Kenneth Tynan wrote to Elly Hotovitz in 1948:

Cohen Weenan & Co was established in 1864, originally in Browns Lane, Spitalfields. It was relatively small - in 1897 they had three commercial travellers, against Wills of Bristol's thirty. In 1874 they took their staff on a road excursion to Rye House: A substantial dinner was provided by the firm, who furnished a band for the enjoyment of the excursionists. A display of fireworks terminated the day's enjoyment. One of their brands was Afrikander - images of its registered trademark right - they were in court over such issues on several occasions, e.g. R. v. Cohen, Weenan & Co, Times 3 May 1899]. 

They produced cigarette cards from 1891-1923, including football players (the first a set of 60 in 1907) and 'Wonders of the World' cards in 1923), but also 'Beauties', 'Actresses', 'Home & Colonial Regiments', 'Heroes of Sport', 'Famous Boxers' and 'Nations (Descriptive)'; again, many websites show these. It became a limited company in 1927, but (with a paid-up capital of £700,000) was taken over in 1931 by Godfrey Phillips. That same year in the USA the Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals, in the case Southern Railway Co. v. Cohen Weenan, held that rainfall damage, in the storms of 1927, to stored tobacco was an Act of God, defined thus: An act of God, as the term is known to the law, is such an unusual and extraordinary manifestation of the forces of nature that it could not under normal conditions have been anticipated or expected. However, the occurrence need not be unprecedented. If it could not have been anticipated or expected under normal conditions, that is sufficient. The question of precedent, therefore, relates to the matter of reasonable anticipation and opportunity to avert the consequences, and it is in that sense that the term 'unprecedented' is used with regard to the nature of the catastrophe. The company went into voluntary liquidation in 1962.

(At the turn of the century, though not listed above, Joseph Michael Sullivan had been active as a wholesale tobacconist at nos.76-78 - in partnership with Walter Clark until 1885 - and the area behind their premises, known as Sullivan's Yard, was used during the Second World War for fireguard exercises. William J Harris & Son were listed as tobacco manufacturers at 84-86; and at no.426 Simon Garber was a cigar manufacturer.)

[10] A Manchester warehouseman bought and sold cotton goods. (See here for an example of a 'Birmingham and Sheffield warehouseman.)

[11] Local provision for horses was needed even in the 1920s, so there was a hay dealer at no.30, and a farrier at no.42. Willis & Willis was originally a partnership between William Lerwill, Frederic Harvey and Arthur Willis, dissolved in 1904 by 'effluxion of time' as laid down by their deed of partnership. They had operated from no.36 and from the Whitechapel Hay Market as hay and straw merchants, and in 1899 shared the premises with a corn dealer. In 1902 Arthur Willis' other partnership also ended: he worked with Herbert Havet Smith as 'J Gunn & Co (late Whitmore)' at Florida Street, Bethnal Green as hay, straw, corn and seed merchants. William Watson, farrier, occupied premises which in 1899 had housed Thomas Watson (presumably a relative), veterinary surgeon. As the picture left from further along Commercial Road shows, at that time the two trades ran hand-in-hand. There were also still dairies and cows in the area - hence Peter Dennison, cowkeeper, at no.408 (though another, at no.218 earlier in the century, had gone). Right is a cowshed at 18 Fairclough Street in 1947.

[12] The firm of James Jabez and Seymour William Chalk, timber merchants and exporters, was established in 1882 with premises at 32 Commercial Road (Riga House) and Finland House/Wharf, Church Row [now Newell Street] Limehouse. James Jabez died in 1899, at his home in Leytonstone, and a succession of Seymour Chalks continued to run the business until 1974 (others Chalks were solicitors). The premises are now gated residential flats. known as Riga Mews.

[13] The London Salvage Corps, copying a body formed in Liverpool in 1842, was set up by John Brookes Johnston of the Royal Insurance Comapny in 1865. Its purpose was to reduce the loss and damage caused by fires, to mitigate the effects of fire and fire-fighting and to salvage fire-damaged premises and goods. Its staff of 64 increased to over 100 by the early 20th century; many were ex-naval men, including David Jacob Blazer, a weightlifter dubbed 'Britain's Best-Developed Man'. The headquarters were strategically placed around the capital: no.1 station, the headquarters, at Watling Street, to cover the City and the Thames (B district); no.2, at Commercial Road, to cover east and north-east London (C district); no.3, on Southwark Bridge Road, opposite the fire station, to cover south London (D district); no.4, at Shaftesbury Avenue, to cover the West End and Kensington (A district); and no.5 in Upper Street Islington. In 1934 the service was accused of participating in a criminal arson scandal which took £½m in false insurance claims; Leopold Harris at his trial testified that he had had nearly every Salvage Corps officer 'in his pocket'. The Corps was disbanded in 1984: more of its history here. Left is one of their vehicles in 1928, and their badge, and right the 1938 demolition of the Commercial Road premises.

Cave Johnson & Co, originally of 8 Lime Street in the City, sold tea and coffee. In 1883 Health - A weekly journey of Sanitary Health advertised 'Bonne-Bouche' coffee (used once, used always) as an agreeable beverage ... of pure and wholesome character. It consists of an admixture of Bruges chicory and pure coffee only, and may, therefore, be relied upon as a safe and and nutritious article of dietary. The coffee has a highly agreeable taste and pleasant aroma, and will well repay a trial. It was sold in tin canisters at 1s. and 1s. 4d.  per lb. In 1887 'Spring Blossom' Ceylon Tea was promoted as effectively labelled, but not bearing the name of the firm, is an excellent article for chemists' sale. It is a tea of remarkably fine flavour, likely to secure a lasting reputation, and in and in these air-tight tins will neither deteriorate nor absorb other flavours, considerations of no small importance to chemists and druggists. Two tins, with 'Shakespeare's Venice' motif, shown left. The fact that in 1921 they shared premises with Tetley's suggests that they were working together, or perhaps this small firm had been taken over.

[16] The story of Faircloughs is told here. By 1921 their description as wheelwrights was distinctly anachronistic!

[19] Arthur Bentley Murray and Arthur John Laker traded as Murray & Laker, shipping and custom house agents and licensed carriers, with premises here (where William James Murray had previously operated as a carman) - in 1920 they registered the freehold on dwelling houses, stabling, cart sheds, buildings, yard and gardens at 68 Commercial Road and 1 Sander Street (the road behind) - and at 26-27 Tower Hill. Murray retired in 1934 (he was also a director of Arnold & Murray, merchants of 139 Cannon Street EC4, and of several rubber companies); he lived in Streatham. Laker, who lived in Reigate, retired in 1952, aged 80. He was a freemason (Master of Walthamstow Lodge in 1919) and Master for 1938 of the Worshipful Company of Carmen (founded 1577), for whom that year a new badge was designed by the Lancaster Herald, Archibald G.B. Russell MVO. His sons Arthur Edward and John Frederick continued the business, moving to 90 and later 57 Minories, where in 1970 they advertised Oak Vats for wines, spirits, cider, etc., improved design to minimise evaporation.

[20] Photographers
Henry Shaw called his premises, at 76-78, the Rembrandt Studio; there are various extant photos of bar mitzvahs (including Benjamin, son of Isaac Frankel ('Reb Itchele'), beadle of Artillery Lane synagogue), family groups and recent immigrants (including Sophie and Nathan Ornstein from Rumania).

Oscar Baumgart's studio, established in 1896, was The Empire Day and Electric Light Studios. (Otto Baumgart was based nearby, at 12 Little Alie Street, from 1897-98.) John Woodeson in Mark Gertler: biography of a painter, 1891-1939 (Sidgwick & Jackson 1972), describes Gertler's bar mitzvah when he was 13: At the little party later he made the customary speech thanking his parents for all they had done. His speech pleased everyone and and its unusual eloquence made a deep impression on his brothers and sisters. Afterwards they trooped off to Oscar Baumgart's photographic studio in Commercial Road ...  [Right is Gertler's self-portrait of 1920; other artists of the group known as the 'Whitechapel Boys' were Isaac Rosenberg and David Bomberg].

[21] Abraham and Morris Hildebrand, trading as A. & M. Hildebrand, woollen merchants of 80 Commercial Road (to which they registered freehold title of a shop and dwelling house in 1920) and 4 Redcross Street, went bankrupt in 1930 but were released the following year. Today the site is occupied by the Skyline Plaza [right].

[22] Printers
Here and elsewhere in the parish there was a good number of printers at work. Pomerantz & Duransky were at no.82, and Joseph Morris (with his wife Polly) at no.154.
At no.208 was Simon Tolovinsky who printed this menu for the 25th anniversary banquet and ball of the Manasseh ben Israel Friendly Society (of which he was a brother), at the Devonshire Hall, Hackney. In 1930 Newspaper World described him as a master printer, reporting a judgement against him of £28 8s. By 1956 it had become The Tolvin Press, and by 1970 it had moved to Leytonstone.
Wedding stationery was also printed at the junction with White Church Lane, by Kirsteins who moved into the property market and built this 'mansion' there in 1911- right.

[23] Wine & spirit merchants
Joseph Wodislawsky was born in Russia, and naturalized in 1900 (living at 33 Walden Street, Stepney). In 1921 he registered the freehold of 88, 90 and 92 Commercial Road East and Coopers Hall at the back of 88 and 90 and was in business as a wine & spirit merchant, trading with his sons Simon Elkan and Isaac Harry as the National Wine & Spirit Company, and also as J Wodislawski & Sons; he retired in 1933. The premises, adjacent to the synagogue (above) are now demolished.

At 162-164, on the corner with Cannon Street Road, was Frumkins, 'The House for Weddings' - a wholesale and retail wine, spirit and liquor merchants [right, in ??, 1914 and c1947]. Its story, with more pictures, is told here and here. The proprietor was the grandmother of Chief Rabbi (Lord) Jonathan Sacks, who in his 2013 Passover message recalls how she would give needy Jews a bottle of wine so that their families could have the four cups for Seder night (in accordance with the custom of ma'ot chittim, giving help to those who needed it to get the requisites for the meal). In 1921, Elias and Rachael Frumkin lived at 46a Upper Clapton Road, and Zachariah and Rachel Dimson on the premises.

Mendel Chaikin was born in Russia in 1871, as was his wife and her mother; their first two children were born in Jerusalem and others in London. From the 1890s his firm Mendel Chaikin & Co imported Israeli wine (they were the first to import from the cellars of Petach Tikvah, founded in 1903), and produced their own kosher wine and spirits, using dried fruit instead of grapes, in the basement of Brick Lane Great Synagogue, with a shop at 72-74; they expanded to 228 Commercial Road and Sandringham Road, Dalston. Pictured are various items from their premises, now at the Museum of London - a pressing vat, a carboy, a barrel, a corking machine, a stamp and some mead labels. Their trademark was 'Bozwin' (Beauty of Zion Wine). In 1933 they were awarded a Diploma of Merit for their display at the Anglo-Palestine Exhibition in London. At that stage Bernard Lewis Deichowsky (c1874-1945) headed the firm;  he was President of the Synagogue for 37 years, and his father-in-law Abraham Werner was the rabbi. They ceased trading in 1976.

[24] Medics
The doctors and physicians of Commercial Road were mainly Jewish (or, further east, Irish). But antisemitism was rampant in some medical schools - notably, and surprisingly, at the London Hospital (though not at the Middlesex) - see John Cooper Pride versus Prejudice: Jewish Doctors and Lawyers in England 1890-1990 (Littman Library of Jewish Civilisation 2003). Yet there were Jewish wards at the London, described by Montagu Williams QC in ch.6 of Round London: Down East and Up West (1894):

• Dr Gustave Michael (1863-1924) was probably the first Jewish medic to settle in the East End; he had previously worked at Craiglockhart Poorhouse in Scotland. He had practised at no.188 (where Bochenek was later based) and was a community leader. He was followed by men such as Nathaniel Benoly, Bakhshi Isaac Rahim (at no.284 - he died in 1924), George Hessenauer and George William Sequira, some of whom worked in the Christian medical missions of the East End.
• Dr Bernhard Morris, at no.170, graduated from Dorpat in Germany in 1888 and requalified in Edinburgh in 1893. Cooper says Described by one former patient as 'a socialist, a Jewish saint', he was a bachelor, slightly awkward in manner, of whom it used to be said that he did not take money from patients who could not afford to pay, but actually left them with some cash from his own pocket. Dr William Moses Feldman, later a Harley Street paediatric consultant in paediatrics in Harley Street, started out as his assistant. In 1921 Jehangir Masters lived with him at no.170 - was he an Indian doctor?
• Dr Samuel Spigner (1880-1946) registered the freehold of 100 Commercial Road and 1 & 1a Batty Street in 1921, and practised there. In 1888 Dr Frederick William Blackwell, at this address, had been the first doctor to be summoned by the police to the body of Elizabeth Stride nearby (Dr Marcus Cohen shared the practice around 1907). Right is a doorway from the side of this house.
• Dr Moshek (Morris, Maurice) Zelman(ovitch) Bochenek was at nos.188 and 416; he was admitted a member of the Royal College of Surgeons in 1918. Larry Aaron Lewis lived at no.188.
• Dr Jerome Reidy, at no.314 (near the RC church) was a doctor's son, and practised there for a number of years; he was Mayor of Stepney in 1917-18, and received the newly-raised Jewish Battalion on their march through Whitechapel, detailed here and here. (Clement Attlee was Mayor in 1919; the first Jewish Mayor was in 1922.) He had four sons and three daughters; one of his sons, Joseph Patrick Irwin (Pete) Reidy, born 1907, was also a doctor.
• Dr John William Lynch had practised in the area for many years at no.372. In 1891 he gave evidence at the Old Bailey trial of Michael O'Mara who was convicted of a death certificate fraud - attempting to make a false insurance claim in relation to one Daisy Emily Lumley (still alive) based on a certificate purportedly signed by F. Scott MRCS of 372 Commercial Road;  there is no medical man named Scott there—I had nothing to do with giving this death certificate. O'Mara, who had a previous fraud conviction, was sentenced to five years' penal servitude. Again at the Old Bailey in 1903, when Timothy Donovan was tried for the killing of his wife Mary, he gave evidence that the accused came to my surgery and said, "I want you to come round with me to Lucas Street, as I have assaulted my wife; she is losing a great deal of blood." I said, "I cannot come with you, as I have three other cases that I am going to now, if it is anything urgent you had better go for someone else".—he said, "You mean you won't come"—I said, "It is not a matter of won't come, it is a matter of can't come. It is impossible for me to come with you"—he then went away. In cross-examination, he said I considered him to be sober—I did not notice that his breath smelt of drink—he pressed me very hard to go and see his wife—I had never attended her. In the event Donovan went to Dr Frederick Spurr at 427 Commercial Road. He had 21 previous convictions, several for assaults, and was convicted of manslaughter and given twelve years' penal servitude.
• Dr Joseph Hugh Arthur at no.404 qualified in 1897 and shared a practice with Rogers; in the 1940s he lived in retirement at Brockham, near Dorking.
  

(In 1899 there was also Drs Sargent & Sargent at no.300, William Grandy at no.314 and Alex Grant at no.370.)

[25] Morris Petrikoski, also known as Isaac Patrokowsky, was naturalized in 1925 and changed his name by deed poll to Maurice Petrie. The butcher's shop was previously run by John Henry Tirrell, at a time when there were several more butchers, both kosher and non-kosher, along the road.

[26] Isaac Kahan first set up here as a money changer, with John Zaussman as his assistant. Then he was in partnership with sons Boris, Louis Moses and Leon Kahan as I. Kahan & Co, shipping, banking & commission agents (working particularly with White Star & Cunard) until Louis and Leon left it in 1910. The family lived at 6 Clapton Square, Hackney.  Jews were well-represented among the various socialist, communist and anarchist parties of this period, as right-wing antisemitic commentators are quick to point out, and although Isaac was probably not politically active, three of his children certainly were:

• Boris (1877-1951), born in Kiev, was the Secretary of the East London (Jewish) branch of the Social Democratic Federation (SDF), and met Lenin on his first visit to the East End in 1903. In the previous year he had produced a leaflet in Yiddish (right; translation here) for James Connolly who ran as a Socialist candidate for Dublin Corporation in the Wood Quay Ward, which included a large Jewish population in the Iveagh Trust Buildings and parts of Portobello; thanks to Boris' efforts, he came third with 431 votes. Connolly was executed for his part in leading the 1916 rising: see Donal Nevin James Connolly: a full life (Gill & Macmillan 2005)
• Zelda (1883-1969), born in Lithuania, was also active in the SDF and strongly anti-militarist (see this letter of 1908). In 1912 she was elected, against the wishes of the leadership, to the executive of the British Socialist Party (the successor of the SDF), representing Hackney Central. She worked with her brother-in-law Theodore Rothstein (below) in opposing the First World War, and in establishing the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB).  In 1915 she married William Peyton Coates, Irish-born railway clerk who was a member of the SDF in Sheffield. He returned to Ireland during the war and was organiser of the Irish Transport & General Workers Union in 1918-19 and a delegate to the Special Conference of the Irish TUC and Labour Party in 1918. Back in London, he became national organiser of the British Socialist Party. Together they set up the Anglo-Russian Parliamentary Committee, and from their home in Hornsey wrote several books, including Soviets in Central Asia and Why Russia Will Win. In the 1930s Zelda publicly justified Stalin's collectivization policies, and denied that the terrible Ukranian 'terror-famine' (Holodomor) of 1932-33 was a deliberate political act.
• Anna married Theodore Rothstein, the first Russian emigrant to become a leader SDF which he joined in 1895, serving on its executive from 1901-05. After the Russian Revolution he succeeded Maxim Litvinov (deported to Russia in September 1919, later becoming foreign minister until 1939) as the unofficial Bolshevik representative in Britain. In 1920, ten days after the foundation of the CPGB, he went to Moscow to report on his activities, and was barred from re-entering Britain; he died in Moscow in 1953.

Boris Kahan and Theodore Rothstein were key figures in bringing the BSP / CPGB into the fold of the Leninist Third International. There is an extensive literature on whether or not they and others propelled the British socialist cause in a direction which the majority did not want, reviewed in this thesis on Rothstein. 

[27] John Walker Bland established J.W. Bland & Sons, wholesale stationers; John Percival Bland and Horace Streachan Bland ran the firm in partnership until Horace retired in 1932.

[28] Furniture makers & dealers
In the mid-19th century, 'garret masters' entered the furniture-making trade to supply the growing needs of the capital, with several thousand working from small rooms and attics, buying wood for one piece at a time, with their many children providing labour. Jewish immigrants came to dominate this trade. By the turn of the century, firms had got bigger (Lebus relocated from Tabernacle Street to Tottenham Hale in 1903, employing 1,000 people), and well-known emporia resulted, such as Lobovitch, Hyman, Galinsky and Dolnisky on the Whitechapel Road, or Wickhams, 'the Harrods of East London', at Mile End. Israel Metz, traded from no.124, living there with his sons Hyman Harris and Solomon, and Percy Young from larger premises at no.196-8, living with his Annie in Westcliff-on-Sea. The coming of utility furniture during the Second World War ended this pattern: firms went under, both small and large (including Lebus and Beautility). See here for a picture of 196-200 Commercial Road in 1967, after demolition.
(At the turn of the century there was also Grosman & Pinsky at no.238 and Levene Margolinski at no.264.)

[29] Abraham Rosnick shortened his name to Ross.

[30] from nos.138-148 there are no names on the 1921 electoral roll (except for the pub), indicating that none of these traders lived 'over the shop'.

[31] Sidney Stebbings, who lived at Dunsmore Road, Stoke Newington, was in partnership with Harris Rosenberg, who lived at 61 Berner Street. His original surname was Stebbinski - there are archive photos of Becky Stebbinski/Stebbings with her sister Fanny (both née Yulitsky, from Suwałki in north-eastern Poland) and later with her son Michael Stebbings at his 1920 bar mitzvah. Sidney was still trading here in the 1950s.

[32] Harris Krayer was from Russia, naturalised in 1903. He was a member of the New Synagogue (between Crosby Place and St Helen's Square in the City) and worked as a draper, originally with one Greenberg. He had financial difficulties in 1907 but these were resolved three years later.  S Krayer was wife Sarah; by this time they were living at Walm Lane in Cricklewood, while Gustave and Bella Churcher were resident at the Commercial Road address.

[33] Alick Brass, né Aleck Moruse, was born in Warsaw in 1883 and naturalized in 1923, described as a costumier.

[34] Joseph Oseas Rosenfeld was born in Roumania in 1878 and naturalized in 1946, known then as Joe Oseas Rose, and a confectioner, toboacconist and newsagent in Bedford Road, Clapham. In 1921 Bella Berliner occupied the Commercial Road premises.

[35] Banks
Lloyds Bank began in Birmingham in 1765, with its first branch office at Oldbury in 1864, becoming incorporated as a joint-stock company, Lloyds Banking Company Ltd., the following year. (It is unconnected with the activities that began at Lloyd's Coffee House in the City - the List and the Register.) The black horse became its symbol in 1884, taken from a bank absorbed into the company one of whose founders had used it as a sign for his goldsmith's shop. Further takeovers followed (including Cunliffe, Brooks in 1900, the Wilts and Dorset Bank in 1914 and Capital & Counties Bank in 1918) - by 1923 there had been 50, including the last private firm to issue its own banknotes (Fox, Fowler & Co of Wellington, Somerset). Its later and complex story can be read here.

Barclays Bank began in Lombard Street in 1690, as goldsmith bankers, at 54 Lombard Street from 1728 (at the sign of the black spread eagle); James Barclay became a partner in 1736. In 1896 it became Barclays & Co, a joint-stock bank, and over the next few years acquired a number of smaller banks, including in 1918 the London, Provincial and South Western Bank, which as the London and South Western Bank Ltd from 1862-1917 had run the Commercial Road branch. See here for Barclays' later history. These premises later housed the London Trustee Savings Bank.

[36] Thomas Rose Crouch was the superintendent chaplain of the Mariners' Friend Society for over 50 years until his death, at Bank House, 210 Commercial Road in 1921; its head office was in Old Gravel [now Wapping] Lane - more about him and the Society here.

[37] Feinman's Yiddish Theatre, named after Sigmund Feinman, a popular Yiddish actor, was built as a 'Temple of Arts' in Moorish style (originally with three domes), seating 1,000. It opened in 1912 with productions of King Ahab and Rigoletto; but six months later it was screening films and was renamed the Palaseum Cinema.  A series of takeovers followed: United Picture Theatres in 1928 [left], Gaumont British Theatres in 1930, Associated British Cinemas in 1934/5, Southan Morris Super Cinemas (Essoldo Circuit) in 1954, closing in 1960 only to re-open as the Essoldo from 1961-66, then reverting to its original name and screening Bollywood films until
1985 [second left, shortly after closure]. The 2008 building on the site [right] includes a Tesco Express.

[38] In 1899 John Byford, born in 1860 in Canning Town, took his young son John into partnership as John Byford & Son, lime, cement and brick merchants, manufacturing and dealing in bricks and building requisites of all kinds at Moody Wharf, Poplar and Commercial Road. It became a limited company in 1911, with £25,000 capital in £1 shares. John senior was also the chairman of the oddly-named British & Colonial Horse Shoe and Machine Company (actually hauliers, and still active during World War II). He was a member of West Ham Council from 1898 and Mayor in 1904-5, a Justice of the Peace, and vice-president of Queen Mary's Hospital for the East End, in West Ham [right]. He had served in the Royal Naval Volunteers and held a commission in the 3rd Essex Battalion Volunteers, and during World War I was active in local recruiting committees; he was knighted in 1925, by when he was living at Wedderburn Road in Hampstead; he died in 1931. Who was Who gives his recreations as yachting and swimming, and his club the Constitutional. The firm were agents for Griffin Brand Portland cement, and continued to supply local councils and others for some years.  The National Maritime Museum has their 'house flag' - a rectangular blue flag, with a white triangle placed near the hoist bearing a red Welsh dragon.

[40] The partnership between Morris (born in Russia in 1857) and Harris Glickman, trading as M & H Glickman, ironmongers, and as 'H Glickman' at 4 Broadway Market, Ilford was dissolved in 1921. By the 1960s their shop was at 238, shown here; it is now in Watney Market [right], and Muslim-run.

[45] The Little Company of Mary is a Roman Catholic community of sisters founded by Mary Potter [right] in Nottingham to nurse and pray for the sick and dying; it established houses elsewhere in this country and overseas, including Commercial Road from 1896-1933. (Mother Ethelreda was the first superior here.) Mary Potter died in 1913, and in 1988 was declared 'Venerable' - the first stage towards canonisation as a saint.

[47

[49] In 1861, at an Old Bailey case where James Briggs was acquitted of receiving stolen goods (glass paper, emery cloth, glue, paper and labels), Edmund Richard Goodrich described himself as an oilman [a supplier of oil for lamps] in business at 64 Church Lane, Whitechapel. In 1853 he had been appointed an Alderman of Christ's Hospital. By the time of his death in 1897, living at a villa which he named 'Stebenheath' [the old name for Stepney!] in Vanburgh Park Road West, Blackheath, he was described as a wholesale & retail oil and colourman [one who mixed and provided textile dyes] and had shops in Whitechapel, Old Kent Road, Kennington, New Cross, Hackney, Mile End Old Town, Bow Road as well as Commercial Road (27 & 354). These were in effect grocer's shops - the business was so described in 1914 when it was incorporated as Edmund R Goodrich Ltd - but locals near his Bermondsey shop [right] apparently still referred to it as 'the oil shop'. His son Alfred Ordway Goodrich (1862-1936) continued the business as a wholesale oilman and produce merchant, and was a local politician, elected to the London County Council for the Municipal Reform Party at by-elections in 1902 and 1905 (the peak of their influence: the party existed from 1894-1963), and serving as a councillor until 1928, for Stepney, then Mile End, then as an alderman; he lived in Bow before moving to Buckhurst Hill. The company continues, but in name only, from a trading address in Forest Gate.

[50] Charles Crawley, lighterman, barge owner and contractor, of no.370 and of 285 Burdett Road, Limehouse (formerly at 32 Old Gravel Lane), founded his business in 1893, working out of Gravesend and elsewhere; he died in 1916. Thomas Metcalf was the manager, and after World War I bought 'X lighter' ships which had been used as landing craft. In 1923 the company was registered as C Crawley Ltd with £4,000 capital in £1 shares; Mrs E. Metcalf was the chairman, and Thomas the managing director. In 1929 they bought the Frank M, a coastal tanker. By 1943 Metcalf Motor Coasters Ltd had ten vessels, and in 1952 purchased two Glasgow companies, increasing their fleet to 7 tankers and 14 coasters [house flag - at the National Maritine Museum - left]. It became Coe Metcalf Shipping by merger in the 1970s and was later acquired by James Fisher.

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