The last two episodes of the 2011 series of Who do you think you are gems. Len Goodman communicates as a kind fatherly chairman of the Come Dancing Panel in which celebrities dance with established champions and teachers from around the world just as they do with Torvil and Dean in Ice dancing series, demonstrating courage and hard work as well as no mean skill in some instances.
Goodman has always come across as an ordinary East London lad made good but in fact he was born in Bromley and now runs his dance school in Depford. When he left school he became an engineering apprentice and only took up dancing after injuring a leg playing football. He became a professional competitive dancer and won the British Championship in his late 20’s and then turned his attention to teaching. He looks older than me but in fact is
five years younger. Perhaps I kid myself
There were two aspects to his story which in fact fitted nicely with the two discoveries of Tracey Emin in the last programme. The first is that he found one relative on his father’s side whose background was in Bethnal Green and whose great great grandfather had 11 children and lived in the most deprived part of the local community. He committed suicide in 1899, a widower, living alone and whose circumstances were such as to lead him to the Workhouse. The fear of the workhouse was intense until well into the twentieth century and in his instance his father in law had died in the workhouse and who had been an established silk weaver, a member of the City Guild and a Freeman who worked in Brick Lane.
His father had also been a weaver and a man of property with two establishments in Bethnal Green. The trade declined and moved from Spitalfields because of range of laws called the Spitalfield’s Acts which governed the industry within a 40 mile radius of London. The industry then moved out and with further competition from Europe he was forced to sell his properties and he became a docker to earn a living. His circumstances deteriorated and he moved into a doss house with ten others and from there into the workhouse where he died.
In contrast the background of his grandmother proved a very different story with the surname of Sosnowski and his quickly discovers that his great great grandfather on his mother’s was one of 212 former solders who became the first Polish migrants to the UK. He was born in southern Poland in 1803, that is the year before the battle of Trafalgar in a country controlled by Russia. He become a member of a crack regiment of horsemen who rebelled seeking a free Poland and during one battle he was given the highest award if bravery. After Russia regained control the army was given sanctuary in Prussia and when an amnesty was declared for those who accepted Russian rule, he was one of a minority who refused. Prussia massacred many who stayed, detained others including the great grandfather who was then expelled and put on a ship to the USA but because of bad weather put into Portsmouth where he settled and married but also continue to press for a free Poland, became a Communist and would have known Karl Marx when he was in London due to his role in the émigré organisation. Len was rightly proud of his ancestors.
My interest in the life of Tracey Emin commenced after viewing two of her creations as part of the Saatchi 101 exhibition in London at the former building of the Greater London County Council in 2003. There was her exhibit The Bed, together with a tapestry creation above which I found very moving and which was part of a number of other revelations that day, going on to the Tate Modern for the time that same afternoon. It was on the return journey home that I worked out what I was going to do and have been doing it since some ten years.
I have a copy of one her notebooks and a commercial video and wish I was able to afford one of her works contenting myself by following her life and progress as one of the small group of creative artists whose work I continue appreciate and who influence what I do.
Tracey like me was born in Croydon although I was about to leave Ruskin Oxford for Manchester prior to going to Birmingham University at the time of her birth with an English and Turkish Cypriot background. Another time I will to review her extraordinary artistic experience which led to becoming one of the few contemporaries to become a Royal Academician.
She and I her knew nothing of the background beyond that of her grandmother and grandfather who was known as a kindly old man. What she found out about him shocked more saddened it is fair to comment. Like Len Goodman the background was in the East End of London when she now has her studio. However she soon found out that as a boy he had been to Reform School for theft for a three year period after an earlier offence which led to a birching. She visited was in effect a farm school saw evidence that during the period his behaviour had not led to entry into the punishment book. Like many of those in Reform Schools at the time upon discharge they were given the opportunity to go to Canada but although this was under consideration the after care reports that he was persuaded to return home by friends and then within a comparatively short while he ended up in prison. The programme provided information on life in the Reform School and in secure prisons at that time. After than he married and worked until retirement without further conflicts with society and the law.
What the programme found out for Tracey are two factors which would have led the authorities today to take a different view of his needs for care rather than punishment when he showed first signs of anti social behaviour. His mother had died from childbirth just beforehand and his father had been to prison. However it what was then found out about the father fitted brilliantly into how Tracey sees herself.
The first clue came when in the prison recorded the place of birth as a village about twenty miles in the countryside from Stratford on Avon. The next step was to learn that his trade had originally been that of a Besom maker, brooms made with a wooden handle and twigs ideal for sweeping leaves from lawns and which I have owned in the past.
In this instance study of church records revealed that he was part of a family of Romany Gypsies whose children were born in different places throughout the area, living in wigwam type tents which would be set up at the roadside outside of communities where they would sell the brooms as their main means of livelihood. The unanswered question was why the man suddenly left his community and moved to London. It was good to see that there are sometimes important loose ends as I found out in my genealogical searchers. However this was set aside in the instance of Tracey Emin by someone who is making a study of British Romany families and was able to provide her with a long scroll beautifully hand written that showed that she was related to three centuries of gypsy families including some of the most well known.
The concept led Tracey to be speechless. She remains wonderfully child like in her appreciation of life with volatile emotionality and the discovery was decidedly WoW. What her more conventional and traditional mother will make of this or her grandmother if she had become aware of the background is another unanswered story. I was tickled pink.
Goodman has always come across as an ordinary East London lad made good but in fact he was born in Bromley and now runs his dance school in Depford. When he left school he became an engineering apprentice and only took up dancing after injuring a leg playing football. He became a professional competitive dancer and won the British Championship in his late 20’s and then turned his attention to teaching. He looks older than me but in fact is
five years younger. Perhaps I kid myself
There were two aspects to his story which in fact fitted nicely with the two discoveries of Tracey Emin in the last programme. The first is that he found one relative on his father’s side whose background was in Bethnal Green and whose great great grandfather had 11 children and lived in the most deprived part of the local community. He committed suicide in 1899, a widower, living alone and whose circumstances were such as to lead him to the Workhouse. The fear of the workhouse was intense until well into the twentieth century and in his instance his father in law had died in the workhouse and who had been an established silk weaver, a member of the City Guild and a Freeman who worked in Brick Lane.
His father had also been a weaver and a man of property with two establishments in Bethnal Green. The trade declined and moved from Spitalfields because of range of laws called the Spitalfield’s Acts which governed the industry within a 40 mile radius of London. The industry then moved out and with further competition from Europe he was forced to sell his properties and he became a docker to earn a living. His circumstances deteriorated and he moved into a doss house with ten others and from there into the workhouse where he died.
In contrast the background of his grandmother proved a very different story with the surname of Sosnowski and his quickly discovers that his great great grandfather on his mother’s was one of 212 former solders who became the first Polish migrants to the UK. He was born in southern Poland in 1803, that is the year before the battle of Trafalgar in a country controlled by Russia. He become a member of a crack regiment of horsemen who rebelled seeking a free Poland and during one battle he was given the highest award if bravery. After Russia regained control the army was given sanctuary in Prussia and when an amnesty was declared for those who accepted Russian rule, he was one of a minority who refused. Prussia massacred many who stayed, detained others including the great grandfather who was then expelled and put on a ship to the USA but because of bad weather put into Portsmouth where he settled and married but also continue to press for a free Poland, became a Communist and would have known Karl Marx when he was in London due to his role in the émigré organisation. Len was rightly proud of his ancestors.
My interest in the life of Tracey Emin commenced after viewing two of her creations as part of the Saatchi 101 exhibition in London at the former building of the Greater London County Council in 2003. There was her exhibit The Bed, together with a tapestry creation above which I found very moving and which was part of a number of other revelations that day, going on to the Tate Modern for the time that same afternoon. It was on the return journey home that I worked out what I was going to do and have been doing it since some ten years.
I have a copy of one her notebooks and a commercial video and wish I was able to afford one of her works contenting myself by following her life and progress as one of the small group of creative artists whose work I continue appreciate and who influence what I do.
Tracey like me was born in Croydon although I was about to leave Ruskin Oxford for Manchester prior to going to Birmingham University at the time of her birth with an English and Turkish Cypriot background. Another time I will to review her extraordinary artistic experience which led to becoming one of the few contemporaries to become a Royal Academician.
She and I her knew nothing of the background beyond that of her grandmother and grandfather who was known as a kindly old man. What she found out about him shocked more saddened it is fair to comment. Like Len Goodman the background was in the East End of London when she now has her studio. However she soon found out that as a boy he had been to Reform School for theft for a three year period after an earlier offence which led to a birching. She visited was in effect a farm school saw evidence that during the period his behaviour had not led to entry into the punishment book. Like many of those in Reform Schools at the time upon discharge they were given the opportunity to go to Canada but although this was under consideration the after care reports that he was persuaded to return home by friends and then within a comparatively short while he ended up in prison. The programme provided information on life in the Reform School and in secure prisons at that time. After than he married and worked until retirement without further conflicts with society and the law.
What the programme found out for Tracey are two factors which would have led the authorities today to take a different view of his needs for care rather than punishment when he showed first signs of anti social behaviour. His mother had died from childbirth just beforehand and his father had been to prison. However it what was then found out about the father fitted brilliantly into how Tracey sees herself.
The first clue came when in the prison recorded the place of birth as a village about twenty miles in the countryside from Stratford on Avon. The next step was to learn that his trade had originally been that of a Besom maker, brooms made with a wooden handle and twigs ideal for sweeping leaves from lawns and which I have owned in the past.
In this instance study of church records revealed that he was part of a family of Romany Gypsies whose children were born in different places throughout the area, living in wigwam type tents which would be set up at the roadside outside of communities where they would sell the brooms as their main means of livelihood. The unanswered question was why the man suddenly left his community and moved to London. It was good to see that there are sometimes important loose ends as I found out in my genealogical searchers. However this was set aside in the instance of Tracey Emin by someone who is making a study of British Romany families and was able to provide her with a long scroll beautifully hand written that showed that she was related to three centuries of gypsy families including some of the most well known.
The concept led Tracey to be speechless. She remains wonderfully child like in her appreciation of life with volatile emotionality and the discovery was decidedly WoW. What her more conventional and traditional mother will make of this or her grandmother if she had become aware of the background is another unanswered story. I was tickled pink.
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