I know there is dirty money because I hear and read about money laundering and you only go to the laundry if you have something dirty that needs to be washed and made clean. The most obvious dirty money, obvious to me that is, is money acquired criminally like from robbing a bank. Or from robbing anybody. It’s dirty because it’s not legally yours.

Then there’s the money gained in other countries by dubious methods by our standards here in the UK. This needs to be laundered so that it can be used or invested here and so can become legal and clean. I gather that’s one of the reasons oligarchs want to buy property here.

The Cambridge English Dictionary defines dirty money as ‘money that someone gets in an unfair, illegal, or dishonest way’.

So I understand the illegal or dishonestly acquired money. But what about that which is gained ‘unfairly’.

I grew up on a farm, sheep and cattle. The sheep bred either for their wool or for lamb or mutton for the table. The cattle bred either for breeding stock or for their meat. The wonderful thing about growing up on a farm is that you can believe that the money that keeps you and your family going is from something that obviously contributes to the wider community. You are providing food and clothing. The money made is most surely clean. 

But not to animal rights activists or even perhaps to vegetarians. It is most certainly ‘dirty money’ as it’s unfair to the animals that are slaughtered.  And anyway is it ‘fair’ that the land that is farmed is privately owned? It may be legal but is it fair? 

Is the money earned by someone who worked for Wonga, the loan company exposed by the Church of England and now out of business, is the money that was earned by an employee of Wonga, dirty? They may have needed the job but they must have known what they were doing. Until the government changed the law it may have been legal but it certainly was unfair.

I now feel nervous when I buy any item of clothing that has on the label, ‘Made in Bangladesh’, or Vietnam or China, where we know there are people working for very little money, under terrible, by our standards, conditions. Of course there are the directors of the companies and the shareholders who must bear the main  responsibility for decisions made. But is the money the shop assistant is paid for handling and selling that clothing, unfairly gained?

People who have money invested are asked if they wish only to have ‘ethical’ investments. But who decides what is ‘ethical’? Of course ultimately it must be the investor. While I realise tobacco companies are a big no no for the ethical investor I gather there are funds that are of such complexity that it’s very difficult to sort them out. I think the Archbishop of Canterbury had difficulty over that with the Church of England’s investments. 

As we look back at money made by dealing in the slave trade I do wonder what future generations will look back on, with amazement, when they see what we have invested in without a thought about fairness. Deciding what is acquired ‘unfairly’ seems to me to change from generation to generation and from culture to culture. 

I would not like the job of watching as the collection plate is passed around in church, when of course lockdown allows collection plates to be passed, I would not like the job of deciding which 50p piece, has been unfairly gained. And then, having made my judgement, of handing it back to the giver with my, ‘I can’t accept that. It’s dirty money.’

There is a statue of which I am particularly fond. It’s in Waterloo Place, that’s at the bottom end of Regent Street, below Piccadilly Circus, in London. I hope they don’t remove it. It’s of Field Marshall John Fox Burgoyne and he’s a sort of forbear of mine. His sister was my paternal grandmother’s great grandmother. 

The brother and sister were the illegitimate children of one John Burgoyne, known as Gentleman Johnny. He was, I was told by my grandmother, the first British general ever to surrender to an enemy, which he did at Saratoga, and so lost the American War of Independence. He is also a character in Shaw’s Play, ‘The Devil’s Disciple’. I inherited his portrait. But none of that is the reason I’m fond of the statue of his son.

When I was in London in the 1960s, having arrived in 1962 at the age of twenty, my father used to come to London regularly representing New Zealand wool growers. His office was just off Lower Regent Street. He would invite me to breakfast at his hotel nearby and then I would go with him as he went to his office making a small detour to say ‘good morning’, to the statue of Burgoyne. It was a father son thing we did. Incidentally my Grandmother told me that he, Burgoyne, having been Constable of the Tower of London, is buried in the chapel there, between two headless queens.

Now I’m not greatly into statues as such. The Victorians were. There’s a great swathe of them around Waterloo Gardens. I don’t know if John Fox Burgoyne was a good man or not. His statue was erected by his fellow officers of Royal Engineers. It says so on the base. I assume his fellow officers liked him or they wouldn’t have put up the statue.

I do know that his statue is one of a pair of statues by the same sculptor, the Viennese born Sir Joseph Boehm. The other, of Lord Lawrence is the other side of Waterloo Gardens. Lord Lawrence could be more of a problem than my forbear. He was Viceroy of India from 1864 to 1869. Therefore he was, by definition, an imperialist. And that word is now set alongside racist and sexist. Being ageist, discriminating against the over 70s ie me, is not being opposed with quite the same vigour but I will deal with another time.

Lawrence was a civil servant in India and became Chief Commissioner of the Punjab before becoming Viceroy. He was fluent in Urdu and Farsi and he is recorded as being harsh with tribal leaders who feared him not least because, as one of his assistants wrote,

“John Lawrence was full of energy – his coat off, his sleeves turned up above his elbows and impressing upon his subjects his principles of a just state demand…thou shall not burn thy widow, thou shall not kill thy daughters; thou shall not bury alive thy lepers.”

He had some successes and made many mistakes. Some of my Indian friends regard the time of British rule in India as a time of political oppression and to be deplored. Others regard it as a time of liberation in education, health and justice, for which to be thankful. Some, no doubt, would want to see the statues of all imperialists removed, others would be content to leave them be as positive reminders of what the then Princess Elizabeth described in her twenty first birthday broadcast as, ‘our great imperial family’.

None of the statues of which I am aware were put up by the subject themselves. Almost all, and certainly those of Burgoyne and Lawrence were sculpted and put in place after they were dead. The inscription on each of these two statues includes the same quotation from Shakespeare’s Coriolanus. ‘How youngly he began to serve his country, how long continued.’ 

And the statues of the very rich that were erected, after the subject had died, were not put up because they were rich but because they gave away much of that wealth, because they were benefactors. But it was ‘dirty money’. And there is a subject for more thought.

Incidentally Sir Joseph Boehm was often commissioned by Queen Victoria and did a statue for her of John Brown.  This stood in front of Balmoral Castle on the lawn until, on becoming king, King Edward vii removed it into a small dark wood between Craig Gowan and the Castle. John Brown was not popular with the royal family. The 

The statue wasn’t thrown into the Dee in the new reign, only removed to obscurity as it is a very fine statue.  So there is royal precedent for, at least,  moving statues from prominence to obscurity.

What a joy it has been for me this week to go into open churches, St George’s, Roman Catholic Cathedral and my own local, St Agnes, Kennington Park. In each the Blessed Sacrament was there, in a monstrance on the altar with lighted candles on either side. In each place of worship there were clear signs of what to do and also in each there was hand sanitiser to be used on coming in and going out. I could use the hand  sanitiser for a quick prayer, ‘Make me a clean heart O God, And renew a right spirit within me,’ instead of the usual making the baptismal sign from the holy water stoup.

That’s enough theology but it’s not the end of religion. When I last went to Tesco there were no baskets near the door and and I said to one of the staff there, 

‘Sorry,’ I must have become more English than I realised, beginning with ‘sorry’, 

‘Sorry, are there any baskets?’

And he said, ‘No problem Sir,’ he was older man, hence the ‘sir’, 

‘No problem, Sir. I’ll get some.’ And he did. And he passed me one.

We are allowed to got into church for private prayer. A priest is not permitted to say,

‘The Lord be with you’. 

And we are not permitted to respond,

‘And with your spirit.’

The world, or this bit of it, has gone mad.

Any local council in the British Isles will tell you that after a religious gathering of practically any kind there is almost no rubbish to clear up, no policing necessary and few ‘incidents’. The same councils will inform you that during and after a secular gathering or rave the complaints of noise and disorder pour in, the ambulances are called out and they have to send in the rubbish trucks and teams of workers to do the clean up.

The people who attend religious events, such as going to church, are, on the whole, thoughtful, considerate of others’ well being, and inclined to obey the rules – be the rules of social distancing or whatever. They’re inclined to be older too. It seems to me quite barmy for whichever authority, civil or ecclesiastical, to prevent this group from joining together in the worship of God. 

My thinking about street names, or more particularly about changing street names, has changed. My initial reaction to the intention of Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, to review London’s statues and street names was to groan inwardly, and possibly audibly. 

‘Yet more party political interference in my life?’ I thought. And I still think it’s tricky territory. But as I’ve explored some of the history of my own local streets I do see that their names have an evolutionary life of their own.

My address is Kennington Park Road however my front door is in Braganza Street. Braganza Street was New Street until the 1930’s. It says so on the street sign attached to my house, 

BOROUGH OF SOUTHWARK

BRAGANZA STREET SE17

LATE       NEW STREET

(By the way my postal address is SE11 so don’t be fooled by the sign.)

So why the change and why Braganza? I think the change was simply because the street was far from new and there were already too many New Streets around. As for why Braganza? There’s the mystery – at least for me.

On the wall of the house next door but one from mine, high up, there is a plaque. It’s not one of those smart blue plaques put up by English Heritage to show who lived there like the one on number thirty nine Methley Street where Charlie Chaplin lived from 1898-1899. I pass that one often when I’ve done enough turns around Cleaver Square. Charlie Chaplin has a second plaque on a block of flats in the Brixton Road. He lived there from 1908 – 1910. His family were very poor and, locals tell me, they ‘flitted’ frequently, that is, moved on without paying the rent. I’m told they also lived in Kennington Road but there’s no plaque there.

The plaque on the next door house but one to me is a serious plaque. It’s either brass or bronze, like those on headstones, and it’s on the side of the house in de Laune Street. The house is the corner house. The front is in Braganza Street. The plaque reads

Braganzas

This two-dimensional form is a braganza, a Cognate word which can be crudely translated as ‘spirit door’ or ‘tombshadow,’ but really meant something a bit more playful and mischievous. The Sharaara Tlar, the people of this area which was an island before it was a river’s side, believed that you shared your home with the spirits of the children you didn’t have by the person you didn’t marry. In fact, in some sects, you did not exist but they did.

Discover Endless Kymhuir

PLAQUE PLACED BY KYMAERICAPROJECT.CO.UK

As you will have realised it was definitely not placed by English Heritage. 

From what I can discover the plaque and it’s placing is the work of an American, Eames Demetrios who is, amongst other things, a ‘geographer-at-large’, an artist and film maker. This plaque is part of  current large-scale project, Kcymaerxthaere, which, according to his website 

‘is a multi-pronged and ongoing work of 3 dimensional fiction and has been underway for 11 years.  The project can be found in stories set in bronze markers and historic sites-like a novel where every page is in a different city.’  

It’s a sort of mythical history, I think, set in bronze, and I’m not going to explore the history of the Sharaara Tlar people.  And I live alone.  

I find much more fascinating the actual history I discover on every one of my walks. Why Braganza Street? My guess, and it’s only a guess, is that it has something to do with Catherine of Braganza wife of King Charles the second. But why? Did someone want to make a link between Kennington and Elephant and Castle, Portugal and Spain? The Spanish La ‘Infanta de Castillia’, is thought by some to have been corrupted to become the English ‘Elephant and Castle’. The Elephant and Castle was an Inn, a significant pub which certainly existed in 1765. By the way the Elephant Lodgings are mentioned by Shakespeare in Twelfth Night Act 3 Scene3.

But none of that really helps me with Braganza Street and I’m only just out my front door. I’m disappointed to discover that the street can’t have been named after Operation Braganza that was part of the desert campaign in the Second World War because the street was renamed before the war. Perhaps there was, living locally, or on the Council, a Mr or Mrs Braganza. More research needed.

I’ve already discovered a little about the family Faunce de Laune who owned land hereabouts and were generous benefactors of local community projects. I don’t know where their money came from. I walk down Faunce Street and have friends living in de Laune Street. I haven’t been able to find out whether or not there were orchards in what is now Berryfield Road that I walked along this morning having turned off Manor Place. The original manor being Walworth Manor.

There are of course lots of ‘Manors’. When I lived in Chelsea we used to buy our pizzas from an excellent Pizzeria in Chelsea Manor Street. I lived in Flood Street – named, of course, because it regularly flooded until the Embankment was begun in 1854 and opened in 1874. The various manors were the medieval areas of land that sometimes had a manor house. Walworth manor house was at the corner of what is now Penton Place and Manor Place. Also on my walk.

My much walked around Cleaver Square, three times round is one thousand steps, was called Prince’s Square when it was laid out in 1788. The Prince of Wales is an excellent pub in the corner of the square. But the square wasn’t named for any royal prince but for Mr Joseph Prince who owned the two houses on Kennington Park Road which were at that end of the square. The name was changed in 1937 to that of Mary Cleaver who had owned the land in the eighteenth century. And, while I’m across the road in that direction, the White Bear Pub and Theatre in Kennington Park Road, where, incidentally, I have performed, is named for White Bear Field which was the name of the land that Mary Cleaver inherited. It seems the 1930’s must have been a time for name changes around here.

But the name change I enjoy most is in New Zealand. The first parish I worked in was St Silas, Redwood. But the suburb wasn’t Redwood when I was at school in the 1950s, it was Styx, and it wasn’t Styx when it was first named in the 1850s. It was Sticks. 

It happened like this. North of Christchurch there was a stream and marshy land. There was one good place to cross the stream without getting bogged down so one of the early settlers put some sticks in the ground to mark the crossing. It became known, of course, as the place of the sticks, then Sticks. Later in the century a well educated English gent thought, 

‘Oh dear. These ignorant colonials. They don’t know their mythology at all. It is clearly the river Styx.’ 

Actually I don’t know whether he thought that at all but the spelling was changed and the name remained until the locals discovered that the Styx was not a good place to be so there was a vote in the 1960s and the locals chose the name Redwood. There was a handsome Sequoia redwood tree in one of the streets so Redwood it became. 

Clearly street names evolve and change and I hope they will always give us some history to discover. Much as I love trees and plants to have the local streets named, Plane Road, Oak Street or even Kangaroo Apple Place, (I bought a Kangaroo Apple plant from the Walworth Garden Centre in  Manor Place this morning), to have streets named botanically might be safe but would not give much room for education and the enjoyment of historical discovery.

My friend John Shepherd is into the third week of his hunger strike. You can find out more about it on Linked In or through his email johnshepherd@asia.com . He has been strongly influenced in taking this particular course of action by his life in Asia and his knowledge of Buddhism. His protest, to death, and I think that is where it will take him, is against the behaviour of Multi National Corporations world wide and the Marriott Hotel Group in particular.  The details are complicated and probably too complicated to attract much media attention which is what action like this needs if it is going to change anything. 

John is a friend, and will probably die, and I will miss him.