UNIVERSITY of GLASGOW

children, people, shop, street.

There are many small variations in spelling and punctuation, as follows:


'St. James' Place Houndsditch' (1886/1887, Whistler). 2
'St - James' Place - Houndsditch' (1886/1887, Whistler). 3
'St. James's Place, Houndsditch' (1886, Frederick Wedmore (1844-1921)). 4
'St James Square Houndsditch' or 'Market Place Tobacco Shop' (1887/1888, Whistler). 5
'St James Place Houndsditch' (1889, Whistler). 6
'St James Place Hounsditch' (1890/1892, Beatrice Whistler (1857-1896)). 7
'St. James's Place, Hounsditch' (1910, Edward Guthrie Kennedy (1849-1932)). 8


'St James's Place, Houndsditch' is the preferred version, based on Whistler's original title and the correct form of the address. The scene does show a tobacco shop but it is not absolutely certain that it was the 'Market Place Tobacco Shop' listed in 1887/1888. In any case it is clear that 'St James's Place, Houndsditch' was the title that Whistler preferred.

In the foreground, to left of centre, in the square, is a child carrying a baby. At left is a street of small shops, with figures on the pavement, running diagonally behind a row of shops at right drawn almost parallel to the plate edge. There is a street lamp high on the wall of the corner shop, and then another shop to right, and the start of a third. The first shop is shaded with a deep awning, and seems to have foliage at the top of the awning; it has large shop-windows each side of a central door, and a table or trough in front. To right of this is an open door and large shop window under the sign 'M. & E. LEVY'. The doorway is crowded with seated and standing figures, and several more are looking at the window display. Above this, on the first floor, are the lower sections of two windows.

St James's Place, Houndsditch, London E.C., is off Aldgate and Duke Street. Whistler etched another view there, Nut Shop, St James's Place, Houndsditch [356]. It was at the heart of the Jewish section, and was the site of the great Synagogue, the Fishmonger's Arms, and a number of fruit and vegetable shops.

Wedmore described the scene as: 'A sketch of squalid shops, one of which, at the street corner, has a trough in front of it. A half-dressed man, with legs parted, stands looking deliberately at M. & E. Levy's, next door.' 9 However this was not a 'squalid' street but a close-knit respectable Jewish working-class area.

Moss Levy (b. 1853) and his brother Eleazor Levy (b. 1856) ran the fruiterer's shop at 2 St James's Place. According to the 1881 census, they lived with their older sister Esther, two younger sisters, Sarah and Dinah, and another brother, Abraham. Abraham was a carman, Sarah a 'Feather Cleaner' and Dinah, a tailoress. 10

Their neighbours at 1 St James's Place were recorded, in the same census, as Hannah Samuels, 'Wifes Sister', aged 33, a tailoress, head of the household, and Esther Samuels 'daughter', a cigar maker, aged 14; the proprietor appears to have been absent at the time of the census. On the other side, at 2 1/2 St James's Place lived Samuel Levy, a Commercial Traveller and his wife Sarah, two sons, George and Michael, who were cigar makers, and five daughters.