Yes I knew Shirley (Shepherd) very well we all grew up together. We used to go Hop-picking in the school summer holidays, her mother and my mum where great friends and she had a large family.

I know she said that the flats had two & three bedrooms but that was a slight exaggeration, actually the flats where either two or three rooms, so your living room was also your kitchen and dining room and sometimes a bedroom and in that room was also a coal cupboard because don’t forget we had coal fires. In the early days the coal fires where black cooking ranges that when they where cleaned they had to be Black Leaded and on bath night that was where you had a bath, in a tin bath in front of the fire.  There was no inside water or toilet they where outside in what we called the Washouse, where there were three large sinks and a large tub (what we called a Copper) that you put wood under for a fire to boil the water in the tub so they could do the washing, there was also one toilet for two families to share. There was a second toilet on the landing for the other two families to share and you had to keep the toilets locked to stop vagrants sleeping in them over night.

The Buildings had flat roofs with large chimney stacks so when the weather was fine the women used to hang the washing up there to dry, and also a great place for us kids to play.

Growing up in the Buildings compared to nowadays was I supposed hard but we didn’t notice that as everyone was the same no one really had more than anyone else, I mean as kids we used make our own amusements, things like if we wanted to go to the pictures we would go down to Whitechapel market collect the old wooden fruit boxes etc. break them up and sell them to the residents of the Buildings for fire wood for there coal fires, and when we had enough for the pictures (6d old money) we would go.

Talking of St. Peters Hospital, as you are aware the hospital was right next to the Buildings. In fact although what we used to do was very dangerous. We would go up onto our roof and jump across the gap between the Buildings roof and the roof of the hospital, (I won’t say what we went over there for but at the time Lead was in great demand) but as I said it was very dangerous and unfortunately one year I can’t remember what year one young boy feel and died, his name was Lenny Shepherd who was a relative of Shirley (her nephew I think) but you can check this out with her.  Needless to say we never went over the roofs again.
(I told this to Shirley and she replied “yes derek is correct in what he says lennie was my oldest brothers son  he died on his 8th birthday what we used to do was play on a friends roof  and climb over and walk across to our own roof  and go down the stairs to our flat there was a german woman who lived around about the buildings not sure where derek might know she came to our door a week later to ask if the boy she took a photo of was lennie and it was i might still have that photo somewhere.” Guy)

I was born in number 41 where my mum & dad had a three room flat, but previously lived at number 40 which was only two rooms where my older brother(Tommy) was born in 1936.