The Victorians scrounged the streets for scraps of food and clothes, battling for every rag
and trinket. We fill our empty voids with consumerism until we are plump with adornments. The
extremes used to lie close together in this place, the rich and poor could tell each other apart. The only
extremes at this juncture are the fake eccentrics that prance by. The rich dress like tramps if the kids
of Shoreditch say it’s cool. The frenzied market is heaving with people, yet they are bodies of the
same class. The leering thin-handed thieves are still here – disguised in jewels. The crowd clutch onto
their bags fervently, darting the invisible Artful Dodger.
Confusion dwells in every part of Spitalfields, from society to architecture. The facade is a
drape of Victorian brickwork; a sepulchre of the rotten greed that lurks inside. The glass roof is held
up by soaring beams – their lumbering presence throbs throughout the delicate market. The old is
mixed with the new. Boxy glassed restaurants pile up on one side whilst sash windowed shops look
intact on the other. This market is a time machine – you stand in a whirlwind of contradicting eras.
Colours are flying, smells are rising, and noises are stifling. An Indonesian buffet thrives next to a booth of antique toy horses; their painted eyes silently scream for new tastes.
Sundays at Spitalfields are the busiest. The buzz of Brick Lane seeps through the streets of Shoreditch; tourists get snubbed by fashion students with their flaky falafels. The crowd crawls and rubbernecks each stall, dribbling over the simmering saffron laden pots. The Churches are empty; religion has become our mall. We scavenge the junk of Spitalfields Hall when they used to dress in their Sunday best. We are dry of morals on these Sundays; stuffing our beefy roasts without prayers.
I catch my breath as the Shoreditch chill hits my lungs. A cupcake seller smiles at the coins
running through her fingertips. The Ten Bells public house is in my line of view; the Victorian ghost
of Commercial Street. I wonder of the horrors and brawls it has encountered. Prostitutes paraded
on this corner, their breasts bruised from zealous grips. The Ripper’s girls would swig their cheap
wine here; it stained Whitechapel’s backstreets with dishevelled guts. They still linger when night
falls and the market is stripped of life, leaving behind a skeleton of metal frames. The ladies of the
night drain the dregs of their bottles of LSD, waiting to cheekily seduce the hounds of lascivious and
foolish men. Black makeup runs down their pallid cheeks whilst they offer themselves with tortured
eyes. Their souls are as entangled as their matted hair, lice infested like the fur of vermin. They didn’t
have a choice back then, when men paid a good price to ravish little girls. When this market was
swarming with children in the Victorian sunlight, Mary Jefferies awaited their abducted arrival in the
foyer of her brothel. If you listen closely you can still hear the screams; their pain will never be a faint
memory. Child trafficking is still alive, but old girls give massages in the Great Eastern street parlour
till they die.
I leave the market day with the stench of spices and vintage clothing in my hair; the sun falls unconscious as the keen moon greets the sky. A few faces peer out of the glass caged cafes but the chaotic crowd is no more. I walk out through the steel gates and walk down Brushfield Street, the eateries almost pretentious with their Victorian appearances. What is now was never before; the clean paved roads cover up the grimy cobbles as if they never existed. Polluted vehicles have taken over the horse and carts; the homeless children have dispersed into the clouds. What remains is unclear; the market is still here but the essence has changed. It was a place of raw truths; children growled with hunger and now they squeal in podgy delight. Poverty oozed through rotting apples; riches seep out of heaps of raisons in their place. The business men race back home; the newspaper stands are as empty as their hearts. The next day it all starts again.
