Hannah Billig (The Angel of Cable Street)

Towards the end of the 19th century Russia began a series of anti-Semitic attacks known as pogroms, pogrom is a Russian word meaning devastation, and for the Jewish families who had lived there for generations it was devastation indeed. So given the choice between fleeing thecountry or death the exodus began.

Jews had always been discriminated against, there is a belief that each generation will have a new enemy, but what made the situation in Russia different was that it wasn' just a series of random attacks, this was officially sanctioned just as would occur on a more horrific scale in the middle of the next century.

One Jewish family, among the thousands, who escaped were the Billigs. They settled in Hanbury Street which was close to the Jewish community in Brick Lane it was here their daughter Hannah was born in 1901.

Barnet Billig worked as a newsagent and cigarette/cigar maker while his wife Millie took care of their six children, having settled in England the Billigs were determined the children would succeed at their studies and turned one of their rooms into a library where they would all study after school, and it says something for that determination that of their six children four of them qualified to become doctors, among them Hannah which was almost unheard of in the 1920's when women weren't expected to have a career.

Hannah had attended Myrtle Street School where she won a scholarship which gave her a place at the University of London to read Medicine, she trained at the Royal Free and London Hospitals before qualifying in 1925 after qualification she worked at the Jewish Maternity Hospital in Underwood Street for two years before opening her own practice in Watney Street.

The N.H.S was still over a decade away by the time Hannah moved her practice to Cable Street in 1935 so at this time if you needed to see a doctor you would have to pay, but payment or not Hannah was never known to turn a patient away and earned the title of ˜The Angel of Cable Street'' today a blue plaque marks the spot.

She reminds me of a doctor we had in Poplar, who at a time when most other doctors charged half a crown per visit Dr Goldie charged sixpence, and only then if the person could afford it. She was remembered with affection as 'The Sixpenny Doctor'

A year after Hannah moved to Cable Street she would probably have witnessed the day Moseley and his British Union of Facists tried to march through the area, the local people mobilised to stop them and it has since became known asthe 'Battle of Cable Street', there were many injuries that day and no-one should be surprised if Hannah was there to treat them.

Once in her own practice she worked endless hours, and remembering her own childhood she would encourage her child patients to study, even having them bring their books to her so she could help them with their reading. At this time Hannah was also called on as a police doctor, and duringWorld War Two was the doctor in charge of air raid shelters at Wapping, Hannah took to this extra responsibility with her usual energy, going from shelter to shelter even though the bombs were dropping around her.

One night during the Blitz she was attending to residents at Orient Wharf in Wapping when an explosion blew her down the shelters steps, typically of Hannah she merely picked herself up and bandaged her painful ankle and continued treating her patients, it was only when she had finished four hours later that it was discovered she had broken her ankle. As well as treating those in shelters Hannah worked alongside the ARP wardens in freeing those trapped by the fallen buildings, for her work she received the George Medal.

In 1942 Hannah moved on once again by enlisting Indian Army Medical Corps where she was known as Captain H Billing, she soon arrived in Assam where she treated the sick and wounded British soldier fighting in the steamy heat of the Burmese jungle, and here she accounted the two diseases of Malaria and typhus. In 1944 a grain shortage meant starvation for thousands who poured into Calcutta where her work among the thousands of starving mothers and children earned her an MBE, but Hannah was too busy to leave India to collect it at Buckingham Palace, instead she asked that it be posted to her.

When Hannah returned to England the NHS had been established, so she returned to Watney Street and worked within the NHS for the next twenty years. In 1964 she decided to retired and parties all over the eastend were held in her honour by the people she called the salt of the earth. She had decided to retire to Israel, and although the people were sad to see her leave they agree that she had earned a well deserved rest, but they really should have known that wasn't Hannah's style.

Once in Israel and settled in her new home in Caesarea Hannah couldn't rest and she began working in the Israeli and Arab villages, where she continued to do so for the next twenty years.

Hannah died in 1987 and 'The Angel of Cable Street' finally folded her wings and rested, However her memory remains close to Cable Street where you can find Angel Mews.
The inscription on her grave in Hadera Cemetery Israel reads: 'In loving memory of Hannah, who devoted her life to healing the sick in England and in Israel'.