Esoteric London

Newman Passage, London, W1. Photo © Roger Dean 2013

In Strange Company, Being the Experiences of a Roving Correspondent – James Greenwood, 1874:

Onions are eaten with tripe, and tripe is an esteemed article of food in Birmingham. Tripe-shops – not shops for the sale of raw tripe, but establishments where it may be obtained all hot and well done – are as common as penny pie shops are in London.

[ Pies have long been a staple food of the people of the East End of London. Traditionally way they would be eaten with mashed potato and a vivid green parsley sauce, known as liquor, and sometimes with a side dish of jellied eels. With modern tastes changing the trade is in decline, but a few pie and mash shops can still be found scattered around the East End particularly in the market streets.

Unfortunately the the little alley way in the West End in the photograph above is not really called Pie and Mash Passage but Newman Passage. R.D.]