16 Quaker Street, Spitalfields, London

Basketmaker and Professor of Italian

This object, a wickerwork bed bug trap, was donated in 1925 by Thomas Okey (1852–1935), first Serena Professor of Italian in the University of Cambridge. Okey had made it himself as he was formerly a basket maker. He states: ‘I believe that I, having as a young man, nearly 60 years ago, worked as a basket maker at Spitalfields, am the sole survivor of the journeyman basket makers who made for sale the bug-traps in wicker used by our grandfathers and grandmothers.’

Thomas Okey (1842-1935)

He was born at 16 Quaker Street, Spitalfields, an area that was described by Charles Booth in 1898 as ‘Rough, Irish. Brothels on the south side of the street past the Court called New Square. Also a Salvation Army “Lighthouse” which encourages the disreputable to come this way…’

Okey’s father Thomas was also basket-maker; the young Thomas took after his father but he was also a passionate student, studying languages as he ate his breakfast before starting work at 6 a.m., and attending classes in the evening at Toynbee Hall.

He organised trips to Italy for adult language learners, and eventually he became a teacher in in adult education, and published of translations from Italian and books on Italy and France.

Okey continued his basketry: he was a member the Art Workers’ Guild (founded in 1884), and was made its Master in 1914.

During the First World War, Okey worked for the Foreign Office, and in 1919 was offered the first Serena chair at Cambridge, and a fellowship at Gonville and Caius College. (Apart from his Cambridge posts, his only academic award was an honorary doctorate from the university of Padua in 1922.)

The online resource ‘Cornucopia’ has the note: ‘This ingenious wicker-work trap was used to catch bed bugs which infested beds in the past. It would be placed behind the pillow, encouraging the bugs to crawl inside. Before you went to sleep, your maid [!!??] would remove the trap, take it outside and shake.’

Thanks to https://professorhedgehogsjournal.uk/2015/07/21/the-professor-of-basket-making/

See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Okey