Traders | Untold Stories

Max and Fanny Finer were among the many immigrants who had stalls on Chapel Market in the early 20th century. They began selling fruit and vegetables and then rented a shop at 17 Chapel Market. They were killed in 1945 by V-2 rockets. Their son, Samuel, became one of the giants of British political science.

Jacobs appears to have been the founder of the butcher’s shop at 24 Liverpool Road that survived until about the 1980s. He and his wife were born in Poland. Their eldest son, Joseph (presumably the ‘J Jacobs’ on the shopfront in later years), was born in Leeds and their other children in Whitechapel. The family appears to have arrived in Islington in the early 1900s.

Israel was a master butcher and poulterer, born in Whitechapel. His business, inherited from his parents, was based in Middlesex Street (Petticoat Lane), with the family living above the shop until the 1870s, when they moved to a spacious home at 14 Canonbury Square. Seeing a lack of shops in the borough, he started running daily deliveries to Islington, presumably using a horse-drawn van.

A pharmacists who mysteriously was in possession of the two pineapples from Bevis Marks Synagogue, cut from stone, that sit atop his gateposts in Petherton Road to this day.

A French boot and shoe manufacturer with two stone lions guarding the steps up to his front door.

Alfred began supplying from 195-197 Caledonian Road the coal that went down his many customers’ coal chutes. The cover, made of cast iron, was often quite a work of art. In Islington, there are still quite a few of them to be found, many of them naming the coal supplier.