Although Soho, a central district, was widely known as a French enclave in the later nineteenth century, there was also a vibrant Italian community that relied on work in the London hospitality sector. These workers were fearfully exploited: Miserably low wages and poor working conditions eventually led to the formation of a society aimed at relieving these hardships. However, its headquarters – first in Gerrard Street, then Soho Square and finally Greek Street – saw rather more than just support for impoverished waiters.
Founded in 1886 by Cavaliere P. Morighetti, the Italian Hotel and Restaurant Employees Benefit Society was the first organisation in London to promote the welfare of Italian cooks and waiters. It also acted as an employment agency, by maintaining a register of members seeking work, focusing particularly on those newly arrived in “the cold and fogs of London town to pick up some of the gold with which its streets are paved” as the clergymen of St. Anne’s Soho, led by the Rev. Cardwell, would write so poetically in their parish history. It even pro-actively sought employers: Typical was an advertisement in the Daily Telegraph in 1902, stating that the society could recommend “good, experienced Cooks, Waiters and Indoor Servants … provided with best testimonials”. It was initially based at 28 Gerrard Street, in a building that still stands today.
By 1896, the society was in a sufficiently strong position to purchase the lease of larger premises conveniently located at 27 Soho Square, at the corner of Greek Street. Originally built in the late seventeenth century, and rebuilt a hundred years later, this address is more famous as a place where Thomas De Quincey (1785-1859), author of Confessions of an English Opium-Eater, once stayed. By 1881 it had become a coffee tavern, but this ran into financial problems and the society bought its fixtures and furniture along with the lease.
← 27 Soho Square, when serving as a home for Brown’s, the pianoforte manufacturer. Images of the building are rare; this is from John Tallis’ London Street Views 1838-1840.
A strong society could offer impressive benefits: Along with its employment service, members could receive medical advice, 14/- a week sick pay for six months, and £8 death benefit. There were only two paid officials, and members were “always ready to give generous help to any parochial undertaking needing their assistance.” No wonder the Protestant Cardwell took a benevolent view of the society, despite most members being Catholic. He noted that the “conditions of membership are strict, and admission to the club presents a striking contrast to the ease with which some Soho clubs welcome strangers.” He went on to say that he hoped it would “become the pioneer of a healthier public opinion amongst foreign clubs in Soho.” Improvement was certainly needed. Shops in and around Brewer Street and Greek Street could supply almost everything a homesick Italian could want, but the clubs among them were at the very least disreputable, and often criminal, providing the drinking and gambling that the shops could not.
→ Rev. Cardwell: Historian, Soho biographer, admirer of the Italian Hotel and Restaurant Employees Benefit Society
Take the Romano Club on Frith Street, raided by police in 1901. In court it was described as a “resort of Italian waiters.” Eight customers were prosecuted for being drunk and disorderly, while the club secretary, billiard-marker and cook, all Italian and living locally, were charged with keeping a “common, ill-governed, disorderly house.” The Romano wasn’t alone. The Unione Piemontise, Umberto, International Italian, and other clubs unnamed by the press featured in criminal prosecutions in the decades between 1880 and 1910. In 1906 a police inspector stated of Greek Street that it was the worst street in the West End, and that “some of the vilest reptiles live there or frequent it.” The society sat on the edge of this thoroughly disreputable thoroughfare, and tried its best to make things better.
Cardwell was probably also fearful of subversive political activity, known to take place in such clubs. It has been suggested that London-based Italian waiting staff were more politically-minded than other nationalities in hospitality, and included several exiled anarchists. In 1890, ambassador Count Tornielli wrote to the Italian Prime Minister suggesting that anarchist propaganda was being directed particularly at chefs and waiters. The source was obvious: The hundreds-strong anarchist group the Circolo Mazzini-Garibaldi. One of the key meeting places of Italian subversives was an Italian-run pub with a licensee named Bendi on Greek Street itself, uncomfortably close to the society. Although unnamed in reports I take this to be the still-extant and infamous Coach and Horses, as this was run by one Antonio Bendi in the 1870s and 1880s. He appeared in newspaper reports as a witness in ‘drunk and disorderly’ cases as pub landlords often do, but avoided any public link to extremists. It is said that if discussions of a subversive nature were taking place in a back room Bendi’s wife, serving in the bar, would drop a pewter bowl or tankard to alert her husband if she saw a spy enter the pub.
The society certainly wasn’t extremist at this time, and must have had a calming influence on the community with its support for the poorest. It had more than 450 members by 1898. Cardwell explains that these were able to “enjoy games and music in the congenial society of their own countrymen to their hearts’ content.” Newspapers reported that it was a place where members might often drop in for a nightcap after a hard evening’s work, but Cardwell noted that “… members who indulge too freely in intoxicants are firmly compelled to enjoy the fresh breezes of Soho Square.” This may explain the report of a journalist who saw one afternoon “… a sort of undress bicycle gymkhana, composed of waiters off duty. The air is full of the language of Tasso, spoken with a Central London accent. One rider … is tearing round the square, having wagered to drink en route, in two rounds, a quart bottle of Whitbread’s ale. Verily a merry, laughter-loving people, these sons of Italy.” These days there is an annual Soho waiters’ race – not on bicycles – that passes through Soho Square. The first was in 1955; despite a proliferation of Italian names appearing in the heats, victory in the final went to the very English-sounding Robert Taylor, 17.
But I digress. The Soho Square building also provided food and shelter at a cheap rate for the worst-off. In the census of 1901, eight Italian men were in residence, ranging in age from 16 to 60: Three waiters, three cooks and a baker, while the youngest was a barman. The facility was badly needed. The lot of such workers was not improving, with the society claiming the year before that waiters were paid very little, sometimes nothing, sometimes even themselves paying between 1/6d and 4s per day just for the privilege of working at certain restaurants – simply because of the potential for large tips. One such was the Italian-owned Café Monico on Piccadilly Circus, which I describe here. To be fair, the high-quality Monico was so popular it was almost inevitable that a good waiter would receive decent tips, as well as one guaranteed meal a day gratis.
As well as the campaigning and financial support, the society organised recreational activities. The Gravesend Journal reported that the society’s fifth annual excursion took place on the 10th July 1901. The group numbered an impressive 220 persons, including Signori Belotti and Pertellini, respectively president and secretary. They took a steamer from Charing Cross pier to Gravesend, had lunch at the Clarendon Hotel, then travelled by Waggonettes to Meopham Green where the group’s band provided the entertainment.
← A poor-quality image of the society’s high-quality band
There were banquets: One was hosted on the 22nd of September 1901 to celebrate the thirty-first anniversary of Italian troops entering Rome to complete the unification of Italy. There was fund-raising for urgent causes: The 1905 earthquake in Calabria brought in donations of £80 13s 6d from members. Annual charity balls in aid of the society’s ‘Sick and Old Age Pension Fund’ continued for decades. The twenty-second was held in 1908 under the patronage of the Italian Ambassador, the Marquis Di San Guiliano, at the Hotel Cecil. The next year the society moved its HQ to 15 Greek Street, just a stone’s throw from 27 Soho Square.
Before I continue the story of the society at its new location, I should mention that Italian catering wasn’t done with the building on Soho Square; indeed there is a tragic postscript. From 1929, the premises was occupied by Bellometti’s, a popular restaurant intime run by Fausto Bellometti. Business was good, and the restaurant expanding, but one day in May 1933 Varnavas Antorka, a Cypriot silver washer, was fired by chef Boleslav Pankowski; later the same day he returned with a gun and fatally shot Pankowski on the back staircase, wounding a waiter in the process. Antorka was found guilty of murder and despite the Jury recommending mercy he was executed on the 10th of August, just three months after the shooting.
It seems the public does not like dining at the scene of a murder, and by October the restaurant’s creditors were in control of the business. It was soon trading as Café Marguerite, but the name change didn’t work. It was bankrupt just a year after the murder.
→ The crime scene. By this time the building was in a poor state, and redevelopment was on the horizon.
The site has been redeveloped twice, first in 1937 and then again in the 1990s. Rumour has it that the current post-modern block, which even its architect must find difficult to love, is likely to undergo a thorough refresh in the near-future, radically altering its appearance. One can but hope.
→ The current 27 Soho Square. It’s so hideous I’ve kept the size of this image to a minimum.
Nation-specific benevolent societies in London seem to have declined in the early years of the twentieth century. There are good reasons for this: Larger organisations with more power had more appeal – the Amalgamated Waiters’ Society for one would have tempted Italian waiters; also the trade unions were growing in influence. But the Italian Mutual Aid Society, as the benefit society was now more commonly called, seemed to buck the trend.
In fact, Cav. Morighetti at 15 Greek Street was cooking on napalm: He had been busy creating another organisation, the Italian Cooperative Club, which became the dominant force at the address. Founded in 1910, it took over running what became known as the Culinary Exchange, one of the best institutions for securing jobs in London restaurants, and in April 1913 was also one of the workers’ organisations that struck a deal with employers to improve waiters’ wages and employment rights after a series of strikes had crippled the industry. But 15 Greek Street was much more than this; it seemed to act as the heart of the Italian community in Soho. It contained a ballroom, café and bar on the ground floor, with a concert and supper room above. The building welcomed other Italian organisations: By 1936 it was also home to: Italia Nostra, a weekly publication with a circulation of 5,000; the Blue Ribbon Society; the Association of Wounded ex-Soldiers; the Italian School; the Italian Society of Painting; the Association of ex-Service Men; the National Association of Italian Grenadiers; the Italian Alpini, the Italian lodge of the Ancient Order of Druids, and the Association of Natives of Fubine (an Italian village with a population of just 1,500). There was also a library of 5,000 books, a gymnasium, and a dramatic society. As the Sphere put it in that year, the building seemed elastic beyond words, “but then Italian head-waiters have always had a gift for getting more people into a small space than anybody else in the world.” Quite.
But I’m getting ahead of myself. The Italian Mutual Aid Society donated £5 5s to the Mansion House Titanic Disaster Relief Fund. Hardly a surprise as all 43 Italians on board died; of these 11 were passengers and 32 restaurant staff. A huge Italian flag was raised on the front of the building in 1915 when Italy entered the First World War on the allied side, and the society donated £41 4s 10d to a fund aiding Italian soldiers and sailors. The twenty-eighth annual ball in aid of the society (the last I find mention of in newspapers) was held in 1920. More flags covered 15 Greek Street when King Victor Emmanuel III visited London in 1924, although many who greeted the monarch were wearing black shirts: The anarchist groups had never really made much headway, and now the influence of Musssolini’s fascists over the Soho community was clear, contrasting with the Italian colony centred on Hatton Garden, which was predominantly anti-fascist and pro-British. The club’s founder Morighetti died in 1925 on a visit to Italy, but at his request his body was interred at Kensal Green in London.
The fascist influence was all too obvious in October 1935, when the club collected contributions to a fund aiding Italy’s invasion of Ethiopia, and a ‘test mobilisation’ timed to coincide with a Rome speech by Mussolini produced a crowd estimated at 500, many in fascist uniform, outside 15 Greek Street. The Italian ambassador gave a speech. By 1936, every room was dominated by a portrait of Il Duce, and the club found space to host the London branch of the Italian National Fascists.
The day after Italy declared war on Britain and France (10th of June 1940) Italian males aged between 17 and 70 resident for less than twenty years were interned, as were Italians on an MI5 suspects list, and riots – admittedly quite minor in London – targeted Italian businesses. These events must have paralyzed activity at the Cooperative Club. Quite when it shut its doors is unclear. Home Secretary Sir John Anderson stated in Parliament on the 22nd of August that the “Roma Italian Fascist Club” on Greek Street was being watched and he expected a report from the Commissioner of Police shortly. I’m uncertain if this was referring to no.15, but wherever it was it must have closed soon after, as there were no more questions in Parliament.
The building was taken by a British medical equipment business with a Spanish name, I. Calvete Ltd., but by 1943 it was available to let. In 1946 the ground floor was taken by auctioneers Frank G. Bowen with, ironically, the Communist Party two floors above organising squats. It remains standing to this day.
→ The closed Calvete store in 1943, with attractive ironwork windows.
The Italian community in Soho experienced a moderate postwar recovery, but never reached the vibrant heights of the early 20th century, and it is now a shadow of its former self. I can find no benevolent or friendly society dedicated to Italian waiters; it seems unlikely Morighetti’s creation survived the events of 1940. Of the organisations’ addresses, 28 Gerrard Street is now in the heart of Chinatown and is thus a Chinese restaurant, the offensively ugly modern 27 Soho Square is used as offices and 15 Greek Street is a Thai restaurant. All things must pass.
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