Christmas through history in Southwark – and the people who ended up on Santa’s naughty list

It's here again. Christmas. Tesco's, Toys R Us and telly! After all the hectic shopping, office parties and nativity plays you can finally sit down and relax over the Christmas holiday.

You can't manage another sprout, but still find room for just one more mince pie before collapsing in an alcoholic haze in front of The Great Escape. Lovely.

Keeping in the festive spirit, paper hat on head, let's conga down memory lane to see how previous Southwark folk celebrated....

Christmas pudding originated in the fourteenth century when it was a sort of porridge made out of boiled beef, mutton, raisins and prunes with spiced wine - a far cry from Mrs Peek's version!

In the Middle Ages the holly that was later stuck on the pudding was thought to have healing powers and was planted near houses to ward off fevers and colds.

People living around Bermondsey Abbey at that time would have gone 'wassailing', or walking, in the fields gathering holly and wood for the Christmas period.

As they tramped around in the cold they would stop off for a warming gulp of mulled wine which was drunk out of special wassail cups. Could this have been the forerunner of the Christmas pub-crawl?

The people of Southwark have always had their own Christmas customs. They worked hard and played hard and made sure that their Christmas was full of fun, food and Christmas cheer.

The markets down the Blue, Tower Bridge Road and East Street would be packed with shoppers buying their pints of prawns, whelks and cockles for Christmas tea.

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Kids would stand in the heat from the hot chestnut stall drinking steaming sarsaparilla while the barrel organ played a selection of Christmas melodies.

One Grange Road resident recalls: “There used to be stalls along both sides of the Blue. The gaslights flickered on the tinsel and toys on the stalls and it looked like fairyland.

“All the fruit stalls used to be done up with silver foil that sparkled and showed up all the oranges and tangerines”.

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Besides the stalls there were plenty of shops selling cheery Christmas fare. Shaw and Sparks were stationers in Parker's Row. In the 1880s they were famous for their artistic Christmas cards - you could choose from feathered, fringed or hand painted versions to send to your nearest and dearest.

A few yards away in Jamaica Road was Davies' stores who advertised their vast range of fruit, tea, wine and cheese for the festive table.

They boasted they had a better quality range of poultry than on the market stalls and the best York hams. Women struggled back home weighed down with bags of oranges, potatoes, pineapples, walnuts and apples.

Some families lived in just one room and didn't have a cooker, so on Christmas morning the turkey would be taken to the local bakehouse for roasting. Other more fortunate families would go off to the pub while Mother slaved over a hot oven to magically produce the Christmas feast upon their return. It's rumoured that more than one Bermondsey mum had a bottle of sherry secreted under the sink to help her along...

Unlike today, kids weren't inundated with presents and had to be happy with what they got. Even in the 1920s many of the borough's children were poverty-stricken with ragged clothes and no shoes. Their thin Christmas stockings would hold a tangerine wrapped in foil (oranges were expensive), some walnuts, sweets and an apple.

Girls would get a rag doll or a ludo card and dice while boys received a pop-gun or a catapult to terrorise the street with on Boxing Day. Sometimes if they were really lucky they'd get a football, but more often than not had to be content with a football bladder; this was just the inside bit that they'd inflate and kick around.

Before television people had to make their own amusement over Christmas. There were sing-songs around the piano, board games, cards, skittles or a night out in one of the halls or theatres across the borough. Many went to church while others went to that other sacred place: the pub.

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As can be expected there were some that couldn't hold their drink and would end up in the nick on Christmas Day. One such reveller was a man called Ephraim Clay who got done for being drunk in charge of a horse and cart. On Christmas Eve 1886, thirty-two-year old Ephraim had been celebrating in a pub in Borough High Street.

Staggering out of the pub door, he jumped up onto his cart that he'd parked outside and set off for home along the Old Kent Road. Being the worse for drink, his co-ordination was pretty bad and he ended up colliding with a horse-drawn tram, causing ten shillings worth of damage.

He then put his horse into first gear and sped away from the scene but was chased by Alfred Ross, the damaged tram's conductor. When he was finally stopped he was too drunk to get down from the cart and instead of exchanging names and addresses Clay walloped the conductor.

Needless to say, the local bobby appeared and Clay ended up spending the festive season doing fourteen days of hard labour. For him it was breaking rocks, not scotch on the rocks!

As ever at Christmas the good and the great of Bermondsey did their best to help the poor of the district. During the Christmas of 1886 there was a host of charity events for people to attend. In the Abbey Street Chapel Professor Andre's alpine choir gave a grand concert for music lovers.

On their billboard the slogan was 'feeding and clothing the fatherless poor of the neighbourhood'. At St James' Hall the friends of Jamaica Row church presented the Alpine Village Bazaar (alpines must have been particularly fashionable that year).

Little Swiss chalets were constructed in the hall that sold all manner of festive goodies. One stall was selling pincushions made from the offcuts from royal dresses and lace from the mayor's ceremonial scraps. Just outside was an illuminated fairy grotto with fountains and ballet dancers. There was also a huge Swiss milk churn that held prizes for a lucky dip.

The vicar of Christchurch gave free dinners for Bermondsey's destitute children. Local businessmen such as coal dealer Mr Naylor and the ever-generous Colonel Bevington contributed to the cost of the event so the kids could have a meal of roast beef and plum pudding.

Around the corner in Spa Road was the Marlborough House Dancing Academy who gave their rendition of Cinderella. Admission was a hefty one-shilling but the entertainment went on from eight in the evening until two in the morning.

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Even during the sadness and loss of the First World War Bermondsey refused to be downhearted. Bermondsey church put on a Christmas church parade, which started in Southwark Park and proceeded through Rotherhithe and Bermondsey. It stopped at Bermondsey church for a service dedicated to all the borough's sons who were out in the fields of Flanders. Afterwards, the Bermondsey Volunteers Band played and marched along the streets with Red Cross nurses and finally disbanded at Millpond Bridge.

As late as the thirties Christmas charity events were still big business in Southwark. At the Dock Offices in Lower Road the Docks Police entertained two hundred deprived kids. They were given a huge spread, which they hungrily devoured, before being entertained with a pantomime where they sung their hearts out.

Afterwards, a dock constable dressed up as Santa Claus distributed not just sweets and toys but also boots and socks to the ragged little waifs in his charge. Not one went home empty-handed.

In 1931 shoppers in Great Dover Street really did think their Christmases had all come at once when they found diamond rings scattered across the pavements.

A branch of Tree's jewellers had just been raided by some desperate individual who snatched a tray of rings and ran from the shop. Staff ran after him and managed to grab at his coat but he wriggled free and disappeared into an alley, leaving a trail of sparklers behind him.

Shop owner Mr Mead said 'a number of rings fell among the people in the street and have been returned, but I believe about fifteen are still missing'. Someone had a good Christmas.

Eliza Wales however, didn't have a good time at all that year. The fifty-two-year-old from the Old Kent Road found herself up before the beak when she was caught stealing from Jones and Higgins store in Peckham. She was seen by the store detective at the perfume counter with two shopping bags over her arm. She then picked up a tablet of soap and a powder compact and slipped them into her bag.

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The magistrate, having no idea of feminine frippery, asked what a compact was whereupon he was told by an equally uninformed prosecutor 'it's a sort of powder puff, sir'. The court then heard that Mrs Wales had six children and was of previous good character.

No doubt the poor woman never had any spare cash for the niceties of life and thought she'd treat herself at Christmas. The judge obviously didn't think the same as he fined her twenty shillings with costs of one guinea.

By the 1950's the way people celebrated Christmas began to change with the advent of television. The old joanna got used for firewood and the markets began to be replaced by supermarkets, chain stores and catalogue shopping.

Now you can even avoid the shops altogether and use the Internet instead. So why are the shops still packed, the markets still busy and the pubs heaving with happy revellers?

Because everyone loves the old Christmas habits and just like that other ancient Christmas tradition, in the words of Slade, 'Merry Christmas, Everybody'!