Published: 19 August, 2010
by ILLTYD HARRINGTON 

CASTING off her suburban shackles, Barbara Tate witnessed the greatest excesses of decadent post-war Britain

IT was a grey, austere time – Soho in 1948  was the nearest thing to Sodom and Gomorrah – grubby, loose and menacing. Spivs fronted the black market, flogging rare sugar and butter, and they lived cheek by jowl with the oldest profession. 

The News of the World flourished with graphic or imaginary detail, exposing evil doings at the heart of the capital and, of course, the men behind it, were foreigners, generally Maltese or Italians. 

There was a sexual famine: baby booming was, well, just booming. But the real and pleasant and secret sex was in Soho. 

This is what makes Barbara Tate’s account of her quitting her grandmother’s version  of Bleak House in Uxbridge, where the motto seems to have been “Thou Shalt Not”, and arriving not unlike a zealous Salvation Army lass in that sink of iniquity bounded by Tottenham Court Road, and Oxford, Regent and Coventry streets. 

But as a novice “maid” to Mae, a very ardent and successful street prostitute, Barbara, later an acclaimed artist, writes in a straightforward, uncluttered hand. 

At their first meeting in a basement drinking club, where Barbara is the barmaid, Mae gives the eager-eyed and curious 19-year-old her business card, on which is written “Mr E Powell, Plumber, second floor”. 

This simple contractual agreement was preceded by Mae having a spectacular fist fight in the street with her previous maid.

In those days politicians spoke up about the problem of prostitution. It was a recurring theme. They only thought of it in a punitive way. There was a great demand for extra-marital sex. 

There was, of course, no mention of the shadow of Oscar Wilde and his sexual preferences. That was to come in 1957 through the Wolfenden report on homosexuality and prostitution.

Meanwhile Mae and her sisters in Soho walked their pitch, taking punters up the rickety stairs, always taking care to stand behind in case he had second thoughts. An inadequate law was in force which was a nuisance to the police and to the girls. A rota for appearances at Bow Street was worked out. The girls paid their two pounds, then came back to the streets to earn it.

On a slow day, according to Soho folklore, prostitutes played salt, pepper and mustard skipping games outside the door. Tate said that it worked wonders on one particular day, attracting tons of clients. 

The role of the maids, according to Tate, is threefold – bodyguard, companion and housekeeper. One day Mae brought 72 men back and earned £84 and 10 shillings. 

Tate’s sharp eye and acute intelligence, eventually accepted the squalid and essential role as the ponce, and its counterpart the pimp. Mae is, for Tate, a whore with a heart of gold, and well regarded as a member of the sisterhood who paraded the dingy streets of W1. 

An old cabin opposite a theatre is where they socialised, a zone of neutrality for them, and a country of ostracism for strangers. There was Tina the tearaway, a woman of “venality, mendacity, and malevolence and a black heart”, and crotchety Nelly Kelly, charging 25 per cent interest, and a mean collector of the cash. 

Tate’s animated narrative and warm humanity is unputdownable. These two, Mae and Tate, are a couple of highly intelligent women, a coupling of the streetwise and one who aspires to an art exhibition. Tate went on to become the president of the Society of Women Artists. 

They eventually parted, Mae expending her facilities to care for kinky sex. Barbara became a wife and a mother and a respected figure in the art world. Mae was burned to death in a suspicious fire – but don’t toll the bell in St Anne’s Church, for Soho has proven its power to regenerate with surprising resilience. 

After the Street Offences Act in the late 1950s came in I was amazed to see Big Cath,  a long-term brass, standing in her regular corner, opposite Leicester Square Tube, wearing an obvious, ill-fitting wig. I mischievously and gallantly complimented her on her appearance, before entering Horne Brothers to buy a shirt.

“Yes Taffy, the Law won’t recognise me now,” she said. 

She was as much a fixture as Big Ben. That was the unquestionable spirit of Soho, however degrading and unpleasant some of it was. Barbara Tate has caught the rich garlic essence of the place before “things ain’t what they used to be” arrived. 

In later life Barbara got it down on paper. Her husband wrote it out in longhand, then put in a drawer. 

She died in 1997 leaving this marvellous account of the West End’s history. 

This is the “blood, work and tears” of women who practise their profession consistently. Unlike some of our Royal lineage, whose genetic pedigree goes back to King Charles’s golden days, not for Mae was the accolade of courtesan or companion. 

Mae justified her plumber’s card, when she said: “Whorecraft does your pipes in.”

• Illtyd Harrington is literary editor of the Camden New Journal

• West End Girls. 
By Barbara Tate. 
Orion, £12.99