East London | Living in the East End of London | Cockney Rhyming Slang | 1980s London | 1988

London Cockney Singer and entertainer Joe Brown takes speaks to some locals about what it was like living in the East End of London in days gone by - as well as speaking to an expert on the origins of cockney rhyming slang
First shown: 02/12/1988
If you would like to license a clip from this video please e mail:
[e-mail]
Quote: VT45629

[@davelowe1977]

30 years later the place is literally unrecognisable.

[@spidyman8853]

The whole East End has changed in the last 40 years Even Soap Operas like Eastenders used to be great to watch. I stopped watching it in early 2000s as it began to go down hill. But yea, life changes, people move on and we yearn for the good ole days aye

[@irishcountryman4866]

Too many foreigners

[@crazyfishmonster459]

@@irishcountryman4866 Nothing to do with foreigners per se. Everything to do with culture. The East End has seen endless groups immigrate to its neck of the woods but it's the parent culture: the muck-in communitarian culture, that people were adopted by, which has disappeared.

[@agfagaevart]

@@crazyfishmonster459 It hasn't disappeared. Because other cultures "muck-in" and help each other out. The English don't do that anymore.

[@th8257]

@@irishcountryman4866 said an Irishman. Who's foreign.

[@chegeny]

Everything comes and goes with people's lives. It's universal, not just the East End. That wonderful neighbour dies and then another; kids move away. Strangers move in. The lovely familiar vibe you once had's gone. It's easier now to feel lonely as I get older because it's all gone away.

[@michaelharrison3602]

In fifty years time today's kids will be saying the same thing 😂

[@michaelharrison3602]

Gor blimey guvnor apples and pears jellied eels no wot R mean geezer geezer 😅

[@welshlad6427]

Oh the best times. Community spirit. Local cockney accents. All gone. Miss these times.

[@welshlad6427]

@Deesar Thafaks only Romford now. It used to be in far more places than just there. Cockney will be extinct in 30 years.

[@robwood8331]

@Deesar Thafaks no it isn't. Romford has now pretty much eradicated the cockney or cockney culture too. Romford is more like Pakistan or Bangladesh these days.

[@mauriceosullivan6832]

@@welshlad6427 how are you Welsh lad? I'm Cardiff.

[@sofnaji]

@Deesar Thafaks good luck reasoning with the racist

[@sofnaji]

Says Welsh lad lmao

[@London1064]

Proper decent people speaking a lot of sense. Sad times now.

[@thomasgoodisson8877]

London is gone now, it’s not the place l grew up in.

[@themadplotter]

@@thomasgoodisson8877 when it was all krays and skinheads?

[@mrdarcy9379]

Time's when people actually cared about their neighbours and there was true community spirit. It was the same in those days here in Australia. But so sadly, that's all but gone nowadays. I really miss the 60's & 70's . I think in Australia we lived so very much like they did in the UK.

[@richardt3041]

My East End has gone but im so happy to be able to remember it at its best when London was for Londoners !!

[@robwood8331]

We have been eradicated in London pretty much now. Our culture is gone in London. Its ery saddening that the community and way of life is no longer.

[@SwissCheese112]

what irks me is that they say "london has always been a city of immigrants" and that is true, but the level of immigration was never too the point in which it pushed out the natural culture and population. yeah they had a few jewish shops, an Italian ice cream parlour, etc but not like now. entire areas of the city.

[@alfredroyal3473]

@@SwissCheese112 That’s their schtik, spouting a modicum of truth but not quantifying numbers or changes. They’re all at it, Tories, Labour, Lib Dems, SNP, every major party. Lying and selling us out wholesale.

[@jasonantigua6825]

@TTFPouyii cultures are so similar? That’s completely false!

[@josoapification]

I asked someone from east London.what happened to all the cockneys in the east end ? He said they all moved out to Essex. I lived in north London for ten years and I only met a proper old cockney once. In all that time.

[@MienemLeben]

Cultural Enrichment is to blame.

[@catmadwoman6317]

Well the nearest county was Essex. I was born and bred in NW London but moved to Essex in 1968, so now I consider myself an Essex girl (and proud of it). Essex is great (and so is Kent).

[@siofra3819]

@@MienemLeben was it not the Irish dock workers who created the rhythm slang. As far as I was aware cockneys were a great mix of everything look at the krays they were everything but English

[@MienemLeben]

@@siofra3819 demographically speaking, the east end is no longer Cockney. The people living there don't look it or sound it.

[@FINDINGFITNESS101]

@@MienemLeben Cockney has completely gonefrom London. The working class all have "rude boi" accents now.

[@acefire6422]

In the decades post WW2 East London was a shithole, largely bombed out slums. In the 70’s and 80’s what you would call traditional Eastenders gradually started moving out to nicer areas such as Essex and Kent, especially when Right to Buy was introduced by Thatchers government. They were steadily replaced by immigrants, largely Bangladeshi etc as at the time those people populated the poorest areas and as such those communities became the dominant ones in the area. In the 90’s there started to be a sway toward regeneration with the building of Canary Wharf and general redevelopment of the docks. This has expanded massively in the 21st century with the whole Canary Wharf area plus Stratford post Olympics 2012. The area now is a mixture of latter generation immigrant communities born and bred there and city workers + hipster communities. It’s gone from being dirt poor to prohibitively expensive. Areas where those original east end communities moved to such as Dagenham and Romford are now the shitholes, swallowed up as part of Greater London and with communities that have been decimated by enforced ‘cultural integration’ by Blair’s Labour Party resulting in disenfranchisement and higher levels of violent crime. My whole family is from east London and I grew up there and in Dagenham, so have witnessed these changes over the decades.

[@donlogan83]

This is what people who over-romanticise the past forget - as late as the 80s there was surplus housing in East London because it was an absolute dump. Once many of the cockneys realised they could move to Essex and upgrade their council flat on a rough estate to a nice house they jumped at the chance. Now it’s the 20th century immigrant communities who are finding themselves displaced by gentrification. There’s definitely more white people living in East London now compared to 10 years ago.

[@neilr4867]

Careful mate, the cops will be all over that

[@citizen1163]

@Ace 💯

[@lloyds053]

A mixture of gentrification and the KALERGI PLAN

[@derin111]

So true. There often a temptation to look back with too much rose-tinted glasses of nostalgia. A lot of the East End was a hard shit hole.

[@michaelcarlos8686]

Who could have predicted, even when this film was made , the gorgeous diversity that enriches our glorious lives.😂

[@Venus29]

Bless em, they thought it was bad then, they wouldn’t recognise it now.

[@th8257]

Don't think anybody in their right mind would want to go back to the conditions many of them had then - if it was so great, thousand upon thousand of them wouldn't have moved out. My great grandmother was noticeably under 5' tall. She grew up in the east end. She was that small because of malnutrition in her childhood. She often used to tell me what a hell hole it was. The east end now certainly isn't perfect, but it's no longer known as "the abyss" like it was in their day.

[@NoName-jq7tj]

@@th8257 This is a good comment. The living standards were awful. The malnutrition was real. Your comment reminds of what life was like for the poor in Naples. A lot of these people who say it’s worse now mean that traditional East End is no longer English & white. It’s more Pakistani or people who are non white. These people moved into very poor housing left behind white East Enders.

[@Cp_9900]

@@NoName-jq7tj the people in the video are talking about losing their sense of community, people not taking care of each other, tower blocks etc. If you think that’s gotten better I don’t know what to say.

[@shazash1]

They certainly wouldn't recognize it today, it's not full of dirty horrible slums that they used to have with even worse looking pubs with drunks pissed out the minds throwing up on their way home. London was made better by the ethnic people who worked hard and made it vibrant and prosperous after the whites left it a dirty horrible state and moved to good ol'Essex, which is still a shit hole where nobody goes

[@MaSoNGaMeR115]

@@th8257 repeating the same lies on every comment lol they moved out the moment non white people moved into their neighbourhoods

[@London_Native]

I was brought up speaking Cockney and I still speak it.

[@1mikefrost]

All the best Joe Brown. A real geezer !

[@anthonycullen]

Mustard

[@AmyWinehouse.914]

The eastend now looks like Bangladesh and has been for decades.

[@jamiefuller5081]

I love the cockney accent and the people was in London a couple weeks ago and bumped into 2 proper east end lady’s down Columbia road Bethnal Green. Salt off the earth 👌

[@robwood8331]

There are few of our people and culture still about but very very very few nowadays in London or the east end. My nan refused to call herself a cockney although she spoke like one lol. She always referred to herself as a Londoner as she was not born within the sound of the bow bells.

[@donhanlon7121]

Same here Jamie is there anything more cockney than the term " salt of the earth"👍

[@jtproducer4629]

Aussie here. You can hear where the Australian accent came from, definitely Cockney/South Eastern England. We still use Cockney rhyming slang in Aus, “on your Pat Malone”, “apples and pears” etc… sadly from what I hear it’s now long gone from east London.

[@robmcrob2091]

Naaah it's not gone there are still loads of cockneys in London and even more in Essex. Estuarine is 'cockney lite'. Even MLE the accent which has displaced cockney in some places is still obviously derived from cockney.

[@bushwhackeddos.2703]

@@robmcrob2091 You’d have to have fcking good hearing to hear the bells at Cheapside in Essex, metaphorically speaking,

[@Warrior20245]

My great grandfather was born and bred in Bethnal green,East London.In 1956 he left for Australia never to return again.He told my grandad to never ever go back to England because the conditions he lived in was nothing but a slum.There was a lot of violence, crime,poverty and illness in the area.Hilarious how reading other peoples comments on here about the place it still remains true till this day.Others are saying immigrants have now taken over the area,I guess thats the only change that occurred over 60+ years.

[@catmadwoman6317]

The older man at the end was brilliant.

[@johnrafter8870]

He was a member of SPGB, a tiny socialist group and the oldest Marxist group in the UK.

[@imposs-up1hg]

He wrote a good biography of Jack London in the 1970s.

[@kissedbyfireskye8428]

My stepdad (who’s my dad since 11) he’s from Stepney Green builder proper cockney and I love it. I’m from SE London originally and my mum is North London x

[@hoopster68]

I'm from Stepney, alas now in Essex

[@sianprior5316]

My Father In Law is from Stepney Green, born & bred, lived on Commerical Road. My Husband’s Nan always said “I was born in Stepney & I’ll die in Stepney” - and that’s exactly what she did. Once My Husband & his parents moved out to Essex in the 90’s, they tried to persuade her to move with them but she refused blank point no as it’s all she’d ever known

[@sarahjrobinson9792]

It's not the same.. My Dad would tell me about the East End. He was born in East Ham in 1941. We've lost our community spirit in London, It's all in Essex now lol

[@bendennis7730]

Love these Thames TV vignettes - I went out of London to work in the Midlands for a few years in the early 2000s and it was actually a relief to get back to London because everybody got my sense of humour and we had a shared ‘language’ (piss taking mainly!) that I didn’t get North of Watford! Times change of course and in the last 20 years they have certainly done that - we’re getting out of London now too much ag (aggravation 😉) Mayor Khan has made my business unviable so good luck you folks who are still there looking for reasonably priced top quality plumbing 👍

[@bendennis7730]

Don’t get me started on Charlie Mullins btw - strike a match near the geezers face good grief ! Plenty of good tradesmen in London still away from Pimlico - I’m just moving on 👍

[@donhanlon7121]

Love these East End clips, the wit the humour, remember an old window cleaner called Fred in Islington used to push his cart like trolley right up to the '80's, told me he had started after Second world war collecting wool/ clothes and selling it on for a small profit, then finally window round, a funny and hard working man, used to have a pint with him in the BP Garage New North Rd/ East Rd where I worked '75 to '80 as a forecourt attendant, great times Fred RIP

[@rolfvaughan4085]

When the East End was still the East End. Now government's past and present have destroyed the place. Spotting a cockney is as rare as West ham winning the champions League.

[@spidyman8853]

LOL

[@agfagaevart]

"Spotting a cockney is as rare" Because they made their choices to move out! There is always some idiot that has to make an inane comment on EVERY video like this. They expect things to never ever change. Suppose it hadn't? What a boring stagnant country this would be. And you would not have your widescreen telly or iphone.

[@josephomalley1526]

@@agfagaevart Total bollocks

[@agfagaevart]

@@josephomalley1526 :-0 Idiot! :-)

[@th8257]

Mate. The world is always changing. The east end you grew up in was nothing like the east end 50 years before that. Nobody "destroyed" anything. Older generations die and are replaced by younger, different ones. New technology changes everything. It happens to us all sooner or later. You sound like a grumpy old man who's shocked to find out that just like every other human ever, he's grown old and the world of his youth has gone.

[@Tmuk2]

Any chance of someone at Thames TV posting the whole programme?

[@Backs4more]

All my family were dockers, living in Wanstead, Manor Park and East and West Ham. They have all passed away or moved away and the accents are gone or going. My Nan on my mums side was “proper Cockney” and her funeral was full of “characters”, many you would not mess with. My Grandfather earned a bit of extra money on the side as a bare knuckle fighter at the fair that used to be on Wanstead flats. He also did a bit of debt collecting for one of the East End gangs. But they would not hurt a fly and would help anyone.

[@jasonantigua6825]

What East End gang was that?

[@louiem2]

@@jasonantigua6825 The Krays

[@jasonantigua6825]

What was his name?

[@jasonantigua6825]

@@louiem2 nice

[@louiem2]

@@jasonantigua6825 Ronnie and Reggie

[@buddha1736]

A lot of the cockneys like myself moved further down the south coast it was cheaper rent etc.

[@spidyman8853]

Na mate, most moved Essex way

[@th8257]

@@spidyman8853 most did go to Essex. He's not disagreeing with you. He's just saying a lot also moved out to other places too. Crawley for example was redeveloped and took a lot of people from the East End.

[@pabloalvez915]

I think there must be some sort of connection between Cockney and East Anglian with Australian English, due to massive migration from East Anglian and , to a lesser extent, East London families to Australia. I remember talking to an Australian about this subject and he told me precisely that his accent was closely related to the Suffolk/Norfolk ones mainly, and that his ancestry originated from Suffolk.

[@sheprekker9188]

Exactly right. The Aussie word 'cobber' comes from the old Suffolk verb 'to cob' which meant to like something or someone.

[@gettinhungrig8806]

The early convicts were mostly Cockney. That's the start of the Aussie accent.

[@Bella-fz9fy]

I think the American accent comes from the softer country accent and Australian from more cockney.

[@coathangermidwife]

The most used word in aussie and cockeny (im original cockney) is c*nt and mate. Loads of aussie slang we dont understand in england is old slang from various parts of the uk

[@Bella-fz9fy]

@@coathangermidwife A bit like 'fall' in America was what we used to call Autumn and then it died out and was replaced solely by Autumn here and not there.I can really hear the cockney in the Australian accent!

[@ggss1176]

2:25 "there is this sense of getting in the front door and closing it & leaving the world behind"

[@kevphillips02]

Back in the day i had a lot of china plates and we would go to the battle cruiser on a friday night and there was so much jack & danny with some luverly thrupenny bits . We would all sign on the rock n roll . Happy days

[@butch907]

Cockney and scouse accents came about from the Pollution everywhere in the inner cites ,blocked noses thus sounding so different.

[@blin483]

Lol

[@cockneykev6532]

I had to go. Moved to Surrey. Brakes my heart, driving through the east end now.. the whole atmosphere has changed and definitely not for the better.

[@freetheweed4202]

It could be Somalia or Baghdad, not just the east end, all of London. Just think what happens when to many outsiders/white folk, are in their land. They start an uprising. When they enter ours? We stick them on benefits give them a new build and send there kids on the local schools. Which are already hard enough to get into. Let’s be honest that’s why there’s so much knife crime for they run the streets then there’s their treatment of women to. Endless problems.

[@jasonantigua6825]

Surrey? Very nice! Bought a big house from all that drug money?

[@cockneykev6532]

@@jasonantigua6825 yes, thank you.

[@jasonantigua6825]

@@cockneykev6532 Well done.

[@thec5875]

and why do you think your presence had a massive impact on London, goodbye your not miss or felt

[@christopher-ke9nj]

Hi Joe, how's it all going , damn those were the days mate

[@MrDanielfff777]

I used to live in Canning Town

[@parklane8315]

Thank **** for south london !

[@anthonycullen]

Southhhhhhh london

[@sharonkay8638]

God I feel homesick now…..⚒⚒

[@taffytop]

Beckton is now Bangladesh

[@loganlouie9822]

From Dagenham Heathway to Becton and onwards it’s a different world now . We use to play on the green out the front in Dagenham when we was kids u till the street lamps came on . Can’t let our kids do that now .shame

[@zoefroon4269]

Bring back these days.

[@th8257]

Because malnutrition, TB and crushing poverty were such a tonic weren't they?

[@welshlad6427]

@@th8257 I’d take that over what we’ve got now all day long.

[@silviopozza8413]

Thatcher times, are you sure?

[@welshlad6427]

@@silviopozza8413 that’s one downside. It wasnt perfect but take those days all day long over todays……Covid…..Wokeness……Free Speech being diminished……..social media…..the list goes on. Life not perfect but was far better then.

[@silviopozza8413]

@@welshlad6427 Isn't that a bit of romanticising the past? Pandemics are somehow cyclic, wokeness is revolutionary (potentially intrinsic to some working classes since Marx/Engels), and the "free speech diminishing" is a shady area where despicable people of all kinds disguise their prejudices as "opinion".

[@richardbaker2701]

Listening to these guys you can definitely see where the Australian accent came from

[@thilsiktonix]

True

[@jamesfitzgerald6636]

Mostly Irish sent to Australia

[@shazanali692]

Yes the London criminals were the first to be sent there, this is why Australians when speaking English like to get to the point, also use slang, this is where it came from

[@MairyHinge]

​@@jamesfitzgerald6636 Mostly English.

[@MarkBrennan]

Beckton Dumps and the slag heap from the gasworks which later became Beckton Alps are two different things. Less than a mile apart but for some reason people get them confused. Also, off-topic, but around the time this was filmed around 1988/89, I was at Heathrow Airport waiting for a friend arriving from Brussels. I noticed Joe Brown was standing next to me. After a while, 3 women came over to chat with him (I think they were The Ladybirds) One of the women asked him what he was doing there. He said he was waiting for his daughter Sam arriving on a flight from Amsterdam where she had been recording an album.

[@themadplotter]

Connie Hunt talking about rhyming slang.

[@3zObafouzr]

It's funny how this comments section is saying basically the same thing as what the participants in the video were saying, just displaced 30 years.

[@daveconyard8946]

Look at it now a right ol 2&8

[@Jeffybonbon]

very different now

[@James_BAlert]

Presenters jacket at the start of the program was fairly loud, trying to think would l of considered it a bit bonkers back then even!?🤔🙃

[@stefanofalcone960]

Does anyone know where I can watch the full documentary

[@kf5541]

Is that bricktop?

[@missmuffet3874]

So sad to watch these old films. It makes me pine for the old days.

[@debbywilliams9172]

You poor thing if that was great look at it now worse dump than then 😂😂

[@davidbrooks187]

Bethnal Green & PROUD 👍

[@sharynkhan1104]

Bethnal green is a up and coming place

[@T1CHE14]

Theres still a few of us left. Not many, though. Around the pubs manly 😂

[@adailydaughter6196]

Unfortunately, this is true of most places in many countries. EVERY community is being broken down... Every culture, every race. How else do the powers that be keep everyone blaming everyone else for their troubles.

[@robwood8331]

It's all judaism. The zio isn't cartel within it want Amalek and Amalekites destroyed and they want Edom / Esau destroyed. The USA the west and do forth. They want their noahide world order and the return of their Mosshiach Ben David. Everything in this world is being engineered by them. They are engineering prophecy. This is fact. Wake yourself up x

[@northernking2604]

Globalisation in a nutshell

[@adambritain5774]

This is demonstrable drive. It's only white people who are under attack Andrew who aren't allowed to collectivise as a race. Every other race is not only allowed to do that, but is positively encouraged to do so. At white peoples expense.

[@adambritain5774]

Drivel* fucking auto correct.

[@thilsiktonix]

Sux 4 u

[@saborfrancias]

Limehouse was kept in a time machine

[@marthasheilds2446]

Beckton is full of regeneration and lots of flat or shall i say apartments and its expensive to live in the docklands now it's being gentrified and all the locals have moved out to Essex long time ago.

[@MrSstiel]

Has anyone understood how regional/national accents come about? It's fascinating because people move around within an area or country of course. National ones too because places like the U.S, Canada, Australia, South Africa etc experienced large influxes of immigrants from Europe etc. Several generations later how did their distinct accents come into being?

[@th8257]

Depends on the influences and culture they had. The east end was always subject to waves of immigration for hundreds of years, and each nationality that came will have influenced the accent and dialect. There are still for example a lot of Yiddish words in cockney slang owing the Jewish emigration from Eastern Europe in the 1800s.

[@AckSnus]

@@th8257 Like Alfie Solomon, ive found the cockney variant i like the most and it is: ”Charles Bronson Easter 2020” It has a positive feel all of that video, a great deal of motivational speech there. The closest ive heard anyone sound like that is when Tom Hardy does his own version of it.

[@simonyip5978]

@@AckSnus Charles Bronson the criminal was from Luton Bedfordshire not London

[@MaSoNGaMeR115]

@@th8257 not a single one of those entirely white (except jews) waves of immigration ever changed the ethnic majority of the area, at the height of the fictionalised 'jewish east end' the area was less than 15% jewish

[@MaSoNGaMeR115]

@@AckSnus charles bronson isn't a cockney he's from luton, a muslim majority city today

[@doonewatts7155]

Every community changes with every generation and every olds lament the change not realising that their community was different to what the olds of their days remembered

[@CableWrestler]

I like that you cut him off 😂

[@CableWrestler]

Why did you blur the screen?

[@jasonayres]

Maybe Joe was like me (- according to my family, neighbours.. etc.) "Could talk the leg off an iron pot." (-alternatively ".. Off a kitchen chair.")

[@harryfaber]

@@jasonayres Our family would have said 'Jaw the hind leg off a donkey'.

[@jasonayres]

@@harryfaber ".. Talked until the cows came home."

[@goldencabbage45]

“sliding down on a piece of Anderson shelter”

[@danielfreeley5217]

ha yeh nothing bad ever happened in the olden days, no violence, no hatred. Everyone was brilliant and everything was perfect, i never get this whole idea that the old days were completely perfect & without flaws. Whats even weirder is the comments which echo that sentiment

[@bushwhackeddos.2703]

Per capita stats don’t seem to be your strong point.

[@danielfreeley5217]

@@bushwhackeddos.2703 explain how per capita stats show how everything was brilliant in the older days then smart man

[@seanmwh]

It seems to me people always say the same things this was 30 odd years ago and people say it now they said it in the 70s.

[@narcher91]

Connie Hunt is a cracking name.

[@SuperAna1954]

Why subtitles are not available 😢??

[@pundlik9012]

The face of it has completely changed now.

[@pantera29palms]

Where’s brick top..

[@dennispatten5669]

Beckton is East London NOT THE EAST END...Bethnal Green, Poplar and Stepney are the East End !!!

[@biddyearly9262]

RIP my condolonces.

[@jonathansteadman7935]

Joe Brown, the first real rock n roll guitarist England had.

[@robwood8331]

Really you think? I mean I like him and all but first real rnr guitarist ?

[@anthonycullen]

Your having a George Raft

[@Bennyboy12]

@jonathan steadman, you mean he was that bad as a guitarist. He was on the rock n roll, (dole) more like 😂

[@anthonycullen]

@@Bennyboy12 Oh he wasn't that bad but i know what you mean

[@jasonantigua6825]

You having a bobble hat?

[@user-yu7ud9yb2l]

It's culture that's changed London!! Sad but true.

[@rhythmictiger]

Bit of a tealeaf 🤣🤣🤣

[@jk1362]

And now we are absolutely “Cattle trucked”

[@FSCforal]

thank-god for cultural enrichment !! so much better today than those boring crime free days!!!

[@th8257]

Crime free days??? You're joking? The east end was always a byword for crime and violence. I take it you're not familiar with the Krays or other gangland murderers from the east end? Or the jack the ripper murders before that? The east end used to be known as "The Abyss" because it was so full of crime, poverty and squalor.

[@dominospizza4386]

Crime free?! Are you fucking delusional?

[@welshlad6427]

Cultural enrichment 🤣🤣 I can think of far better description and certainly not as complimentary.

[@timmolloy7574]

@@th8257 What about Wayne the ripper?

[@scratchy1704]

We have been taken over and told we can't hang out our own flag and can't be British because it's racist.

[@rhythmictiger]

Love these ladies but did ppl really wheel their pianos out onto the street. Must've taken a bit of brawn every other night, not to mention the good old fashioned English downpour!

[@harryfaber]

From what I am told, no. Maybe for the coronation or a jubilee, but then my grandparents & great grandparents lived in East Ham and were 'in trade'.

[@harryfaber]

@@Takeawayinataxi My grandmother could play, she had an upright, but her brother married a lady who thought they were a bit posh, so they had a grand, but had to ask other people to play it as they couldn't. Wanstead people would not be seen dead lugging a piano into the street and knocking out a tune, they were for the front room, and for refined music! I do have to smile at the way folk thought back then. That side of my family came from East Ham, my grandfather and grandmother bought a house in Gants Hill, and were accused of thinking they were above the rest of the family, until Arthur and Florence got their place in Wanstead. My Grandma was Flo, her sister in law was Florence and never just Flo.

[@katieoliver2469]

My Grandma was from Bethnal Green, my grandpa from Stepney. They married in the 50’s and from my grandpas stories, I can say that this sometimes happened. Not too often mind, but more people played back then I reckon, so if you had a piano you’d either invite people in around Christmas for a carol, or bring it out in summer for the locals. Again, can’t vouch for all, just what I’ve been told.

[@keithdawson4804]

Much of these current views are romanticised fable (albeit THIS clip is already 40 years old, so THEIR memories go Back further than 40 years from today). East Ham was.. is never part of the East End.. the East End is West of River Lea. Stratford, Plaistow, East Ham, Forest Gate.. Newham, its development from late 1800s was made up of single-occupier owner-occupied housing.. these were already East Enders escaping to the countryside, for something better. That racing your front door open, singing around the piano on the street might have happened pre -WW2, but after the Blitz most damaged housing in the was replaced by tower blocks and/or other social housing.. so circumstances had already changed. We moved from rented rooms in Dalston to own house in East Ham in 62.. that was definitely not moving to the same environment. IIRC all my school friends lived in their own owner-occupied housing. My best friend "cousin" when I started school was Pakistani. My best friend "brother" when I started work was born in Hackney same as me, parents from Carribean. I worked in Spitalfields in early 80s, where my dad's relatives had lived in a new tenament (Brune House) from the 20s. Then it was full of Jews, when I worked there it was full of Bengalis. Now it's gentrified (like much of the real East End, and Stratford! Times change, problems stay the same. And places like Ilford and Barking, ESSEX would have been another step up.. not more East End.

[@robwood8331]

Yes they did the upright pianos yes indeed they did. For all sorts of occasions.

[@SteabhanMac3]

3:15 That is sad. We hear about the countries abroad that had their cultures and languages stamped out, it was no different back in Britain.

[@elephanthuntinvesting1613]

I was born and raised in Essex but all my family were from Bow. I remember my grandad and my grandads sister talking about times like this, I never *truly* fully believed the community spirit they spoke of - I thought it was rose tinted nostalgia. Not so now. It makes me yearn for a bygone era which I will never feel the warmth of or be a part of. And if I went back to try and reconnect to my roots I’d have to learn Bengali. It really is such a shame that London has been taken over by the world’s scum.

[@useraaaaaaaaaa-yn2hx]

So it’s everyone else’s fault u lot are greedy 😂😂and can’t form communities lol if immigrants can come here a form communities why can’t u

[@regplasma7906]

That last guy was a complete Gareth.

[@maxfrasier]

Bit harsh !

[@williamlane9844]

The good old days

[@th8257]

You knew where you stood with the Krays, jack the ripper, poverty, gangland crime, disease and malnutrition didn't you?

[@timmolloy7574]

@@th8257 Pretty much everything you said still applies, except now instead of the Krays you have about 100 different individual gangs. At least the Krays didn't deal drugs or harm innocents.

[@silviopozza8413]

Romanticising poverty...?

[@trevormcdonald385]

@@timmolloy7574 😂 illegal protection rackets are worse than drug dealing not to mention murder, arson, robbery, hijacking also Charlie Kray the lesser known Kray was dealing drugs.

[@shepshep4213]

Most cockneys were descended from emigrants that came over in the Victorian era. Even cockney words like Chav Pukka Cushy Cushty Ream Gavvers And so many more…. They’re all Romany words which have there roots in a northern Punjabi dialect. So ironically enough, if it wasn’t for Victorian immigration there would be no cockneys of the variety familiar to us.

[@thec5875]

exactly

[@londongirl1733]

What a load of bo@@ox

[@catherinesummers5057]

I understood those words to have come from the British Empire stationed in India actually

[@colinpiper4386]

There was no Victorian immigration, other than Jewish. Words with Indian origin came back to Britain via the British Army.

[@disappointedenglishman98]

How can you return to the community spirit if the original community has been replaced? Does this broadcaster not know that Plaistow is almost entirely non-English?

[@LiveFromLondon2]

the cockney "sound" likely comes from Dutch, when those sailors/traders would come up the Thames, going back hundreds of years. The same people also went to Liverpool, and quite possibly influenced the scouse sound. Cockney and scouse, very different to nearby peoples. So the theory is that the spoken word was more likely to be influenced by people coming in - and there was always plenty of skullduggery going on in those businesses - hence the need for slang. And if you listen to scouse, cockney and dutch, you can hear distinct similarities. Words may have evolved but the sound is there. You can listin to a dutch speaking and it sounds familiar even i f you have no idea what they are talking about.

[@ramadamming8498]

It is not just that because Dutch and Flemish were all up the east coast, including Norfolk and Suffolk where they left behind some dialect words 'dwile' for mop and in earlier times bought lots of weavings skills and canary breeding as a hobby from the 1600s - but the core accent of Anglia is probaly still more related to older Engish isnt it ? A lot of Anglians also moved to industry in London ( and many people from the south East must have moved to London for the same reason, which also then helped shape the 1700s/ 1800s accents of the east of London. Prior to this period, London accents would have sounded more like a west country accent.

[@FreddyFnafbear5]

i live in london

[@TB-sj8gc]

Eastendistan

[@Ste2023]

Londonistan.. Sold out By North London Lawyers /MPs ...Keir starmer mates .. see Tony Blair for details .

[@buckbumble]

11 days before I was born this. The place is unrecognisable. Very sad

[@buckbumble]

@TTFPouyii by the maths yes

[@michaelcollins6976]

I was born within 200 miles of Bow Bells. Pwoper Cockerny.

[@richardwager283]

I used to ski there. I used to think it was full of posh people 😂

[@keithdawson4804]

For sure, in Beckton ONLY the posh ones went skiing. What ski equipment the poor would have?

[@TacoCat8891]

So pretty much the Louisiana of England

[@williamparker1085]

the England i was lucky enough to be born into and sadly needed to leave to find somewhere better......sad

[@dd185]

Ain’t that bricktop????? From snatch????!

[@jaybee2402]

Sounds almost the same, but no.

[@anthonycullen]

@@jaybee2402 How do you know you asked him

[@devinalvarez2454]

Tea Leaf = thief. i get it

[@CARLIN4737]

Jesus Joe Brown not heard from him since 1988?

[@PaulWalshp-wx4in]

Can't say Brown it's Wacist 😂👌👌👌

[@londongirl1733]

All gone all erased, we few are the last 😮😢😢😢😢 now it’s happening all over Britain while people en mass do nothing! What would our young soldiers that made the ultimate sacrifice to avoid invasion say to see such as this!

[@spookybaba]

There's something very fishy about Joe Brown, having the same amount of hairs on his head as he did when he was 16 years old.

[@ilSaponara]

Wonder what they'd think of London nowadays?

[@gilesl]

that accent the women have you never hear anymore

[@flip1sba]

Accents do change. The usual accent that you will hear around London back in the 1400s will change as centuries passes by. Now, Multicultural London English is a rising accent.

[@sharynkhan1104]

My mother was a cockney my dad wasn't, thankfully I didn't have her accent.

[@lmusima3275]

East London is the part the city I avoided when I was young

[@stevelinnen4971]

Sad to see it !

[@starrider529]

Nevermind Cockney slang, hardly any English is spoken in certain areas here in the east end

[@handsome_jay_]

Narrator is brick top lol

[@cjm-nd2mn]

I fort that lol

[@anthonycullen]

Enough of him jawing

[@Digibeatle09]

“Connie Hunt” - one of those interviewed - try getting someone with a “touch of the ol’ dyslexia” to spell her name 🤭 !!!!

[@teresasmith7391]

I am from surrey never understand the cockney rhyming slang my nan could she was born around there she say something to me I could never understand what she was saying Dannt dyer says something in Eastenders never understands what he is ssying

[@sentimentalbloke185]

Cockneys all gone now. That was quick.

[@coryparni3620]

😂 connie hunt 😅

[@jap7384]

It ain't the same, I grew up in the Strand Workhouse, wouldn't recognise it now, it's all gastropubs and flamboyant haircuts, can't even pick a pocket now, cargo trousers, now thems were halcyon days