THE LOST VILLAGE

Evening Post, Volume CXII, Issue 82, 3 October 1931, Page 22

THE LOST VILLAGE

Described as "London's Lost Village," a. queer region existing on the banks of Bow Creek has been discovered by a special correspondent of the "Morning Post."; It was * only after, much misdirected exploration, he writes,'.. that I came upon this obsolete, one-street village marooned on the . edge of tho East India Docks, sometimes, and not inappropriately known as Bog Island, and formed by the last U-shaped wriggle of the River Lea before it dribbles jinto London River. No regular police i beat recognises its existence. The dreary greyness of the housefrontage of the"High street""is but twice relieved: by .the cheerful colour of a shop window, and it possesses no baker, no butcher, no greengrocer, no milk shop, no churchy and no post office. Apart from its two venerable publichouses, the "Steam Packet" and the "Crown," the solitary custodian of civilisation in this, time-forgotten village is its school. I learned from the, headmaster of

the London City Council School, Mr. F. W. Engledow, something of the history and sociology of the place. It has its own standard of values, its manners and customs have set into a bizarre mould, stiffly unsymmetrical. The clan has inter-married so persistently that on the school roll of 160, at least 100 are Lainmins, and most of the rest Scanlans or Jeffries. For centuries a staple industry of Bow Creek has been a somewhat dubious calling, known in their, own argot as "toshiug," and euphemistically defined as dragging the river for odds and ends —flotsam and jetsam, coal, coke, wood, vegetables, and. other useful or merchantable commodities. A source of.revenue to'sqme'of the children is an occupation called "scurfing," reminiscent of chimney-sweeping days. Boys are employed to crawl into ships' boilers which have become encrusted, arid they chip away the deposit with a special hammer. ' For- long years, too, the inhabitants of Bow Creek have been renowned for their shrimpinjj.