From the wonderful blog Spitalfields Life...
The first I noticed was G.GOLDSTEIN 1950 AGED 12 and I halted in surprise, although the graffiti had been there sixty years it looked spontaneous and fragile. Immediately I wondered, where is G.Goldstein – now aged 72?
Quickly, more caught my eye, all at child height and some incised deeply into the bricks. As I took out my camera and began snapping, I became aware of two workmen with brushes touching up the bricks, they were a few yards to my right and edging towards me as I was taking my pictures. With a flash of emotion, I thought, is this the last moment to capture these inscriptions before they are erased forever? But once the first workman arrived, I showed him the graffiti and he lit up with delight, bringing his pal over to see the names, written before any of us were born. We shared a reverential moment of silent awe, before the guys reassured me that they were simply tinting some of the bricks to restore the tone of the wall and the inscriptions would not be affected.
So then the three of us set to work, conveniently sheltered from the rain by the scaffolding, the workmen tinting the bricks and me recording the dozens of names on the wall. You can see a few of my pictures below. Some people just left their surname and initial, some their full name, some the date, some the date and time, and a few their date of birth. I was interested by those who had chosen to give the day of the week and exact time, commonly 3:30pm, because I assume they had just come out of Virginia Rd or the Rochelle School. These timed inscriptions serve to pinpoint a single moment, whereas those where the age is given record a time of life and those with the date of birth simply declare “I exist.”
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