Wanted: the pupils who penned their dreams
In 1920, a class of mainly Jewish boys were asked to write down their aspirations. One woman is trying to find out what really became of them
ONE WANTED to live in the countryside; another dreamed of entering the “glamorous” jewellery trade.
The hopes of a class of East London pupils 100 years ago have a power that cannot be replicated, as an exhibition at the London Metropolitan Archives (LMA) has shown.
But even more poignant is the question of whether those children ever achieved what they dreamed of — and one curator is determined to find out.
“What Ever Happened to the Blakesley School Lads?” is a detailed study of the lives of 27 schoolchildren — at least 22 of whom were Jewish — originating from nothing more than a collection of essays they wrote between the ages of 11 and 14.
Beyond what they tell us about the lives of Jews in the old East End, each boys’ assignment — titled ‘My Future Life’ — illustrates “how much and how little has changed” in the lives of the community’s young men in a century, curator Jenny Douglas told the JC.
She recovered the letters from the LMA, which held a file on her great-uncle, who was also the boys’ teacher at Blakesley School, in Stepney.
As well as the aforementioned essays, the file on Joseph Baxter included “half a dozen photographs” and paperwork relating to his teaching career.
One of the boys — known only as “M Jacobs” — wrote of his dream of being picked from the crowd at Wembley to play in a cup final for his favourite team, most likely West Ham United.
Others spoke of a desire to follow in the footsteps of the likes of the famed Jewish boxers of the early 20th century, such as Ted “Kid” Lewis.
Another, Sam Clapper, dreamed of becoming the inventor of automated street sweepers, a boot-cleaning device and an amphibious car.
Most of the boys spoke of a wish to travel abroad, most typically in the jewellery trade, which would have been seen as a “glamorous trade”, Mrs Douglas said. A few harboured aspirations of living comfortably in the countryside — a world away from the impoverished, overcrowded East London.
But more striking, she said, was the degree to which “they said they were going to follow their dad into his profession — because they were good jobs”. She added: “Of the households, of the 27 boys, at least 12 had at least one parent working in the rag trade, in some shape or form. Others were in tailoring, or as rag merchants or as drapers. “They’re not jobs that nowadays children would regard as good jobs. Let alone, most kids nowadays don’t want to follow their parents into anything, do they?
“The thing that struck me was the youthfulness and the naivety and the uncomplicatedness of their aspirations and their dreams.”
The schoolchildren, all of whom were born in the UK, were the sons of immigrants fleeing from religious persecution in Russia, Poland and Germany.
Some of their families still have ties to the East End. The sign for Glickmann’s Hardware shop is still visible in the Watney Street Market. Michael Glickmann, however, never completed the 1919/1920 school year. He passed away after his bicycle skidded on motor oil, sending him under the wheels of a lorry.
A similar fate befell his classmate, Charles Pein, two years later. He was killed by a bus outside Hackney Town Hall in 1922. The greatest success story belonged to Woolf Cohen, who travelled to the United States with his mother and sisters after leaving Blakesley School. Peterkofsky wanted to work for his father
There he was reunited with his father and grandfather in Cleveland, Ohio – later becoming a successful entrepreneur, owning a string of bars and motor garages.
None seem to have perished during the Second World War, despite being of the age to serve. As a wartime firefighter, Alf Noble found himself at the centre of the Bethnal Green tube disaster of 1943 – a crush which occurred as almost 200 people fled from a suspected air raid, flocking underground. Claiming the lives of 173, it was the biggest single loss of civilian life during the war.
Barnett Peterkofsky, whose father owned a clothing firm and who wrote in his essay that he wanted to join the business, died of tuberculosis three years later.
Ten of the 27 boys feature in the exhibition, after Mrs Douglas was able to track down their families and piece together fragments of their lives. A number of their descendants travelled to London from the US and Croatia to hear her present a talk on the subject on May 17, with a contingent coming from New Zealand later in the year.
She is still waiting to uncover what happened to the remaining 16: Sam Clapper, Harry Cohen, Sam Cohen, Gershon Crystal, Charles Davidson, Hyman Finegritz, Henry Goldberg, Louis Golding, S Goodman, M Jacobs, Henry Kalikman, Hyman Kalisky, Hyman Kaufman, Henry Linchis, Arthur Palmer and M Weintrop.
She said: “Their ancestors are now spread across the world. If you want, each of the boys escaped in the end, one way or another – either in this country or elsewhere. For some, of course, things got in the way, or the war got in the way. We all have dreams when we’re children, and sometimes life gets in the way.”