What a Pearly King taught me about Cockney rhyming slang and East London history

George Major, known as the Pearly King of Peckham, wears his blinged-out suit in 2024. He died in August at age 88. Tony Kershaw/Getty Images hide caption

LONDON — He was one of my most memorable interviews. Even though we were both speaking English, I could barely understand a word he was saying.

"The costermongers, wheeze used to fly-pitch, on this frog and toad," he said — at least I think, after listening to my tape several times again, none the wiser.

Our interview was back in 2016, on one of my first NPR reporting trips to London. George Major, then 78, was a local celebrity. We walked together through the East End, where the factories and docklands that Major grew up around during World War II have given way to glass skyscrapers. A vendor ran out into the street to slap him high-five. Tourists snapped photos.

Major had turned up in bling: A black suit and flat cap, both festooned with sequins, sparkles and mother-of-pearl buttons. His title — Pearly King of Peckham — was spelled out in shimmering buttons across the back of his jacket.

He was a charming wheeler-dealer. But his language — a mix of what he called "backspeak" and Cockney rhyming slang — was impossible for this hapless American visitor to understand.

At one point in our video interview, I glanced at the camera and exclaimed, "We might need a translator here!"

Ten years later, I chuckle whenever I land at Heathrow Airport, where a portrait of Major covers an entire wall. But this summer, a former colleague alerted me to an item in the local press, which hit me harder than I expected: The Pearly King of Peckham died Aug. 1, aged 88.

He was buried Sept. 14 in a cemetery not far from the Cockney Museum he founded. A horse-drawn cart carried his casket into a little chapel, whose walls shook with mourners singing raucous pub songs. One of the gardeners outside looked bewildered.

At the gravesite, I approached the Major family, offered condolences, and hesitantly shared the story of my brief, confusing 2016 encounter with their loved one.

A horde of pearly kings, queens, princes and princesses — four generations of Major's family, all in matching pearly suits — turned and looked at me, some through tears, then threw back their heads and laughed.

"A real Cockney cheeky chappy!" his daughter Janet Major said, hugging me.

Pearly kings and queens, wearing clothes decorated with mother-of-pearl buttons, are committed to raising money for charities. Laura Chiesa/LightRocket viz Getty Images hide caption

In the 1870s, an orphaned street sweeper named Henry Croft began decorating his suit with mother-of-pearl buttons scavenged from the streets outside textile factories that used to dot London's East End.

His pearly garb infused menial work with dignity — a royal air, even — and launched what would become a working-class East London institution: The pearly kings and queens.

"These pearly suits are now cultural artifacts with fantastic designs, telling a profound story about London and Cockneys, what we call the non-posh Londoners," says Andy Green, co-founder of the Modern Cockney Festival, an annual celebration of diverse, working-class communities in London.

Some of the so-called pearlies were street hawkers, market vendors or fly-pitchers — unlicensed traders. Others canvassed for charity. Many were immigrants, their slang peppered with words from Yiddish or Bengali. They became neighborhood fixtures, in mother-of-pearl finery.

"You had what are called costermongers, which is a posh word for street hawkers, street sellers," Green says. "Imagine you're a newly arrived immigrant in the country. One of the first jobs you could possibly do might be to hustle, sell goods on the street."

That's what George Major did. Born in 1938 inside a military barracks in Peckham, southeast London, he was abandoned as a child, grew up in a workhouse, and found odd jobs in the local market as a teenager, his daughter Janet explains.

"Dad eventually became one of the costermonger kings that used to run market stalls," she says. "It was not an easy childhood, but he followed the ideals of Henry Croft. That was before the welfare state, when you had to help your friends, your neighbors, your community."

Janet Major describes the weekends of her childhood, with her father leading all seven of his children, walking door to door in matching pearly suits, asking for money for charity.

Nowadays, a dwindling number of pearlies still canvass for charities like children's hospitals, women's shelters and veterans groups. They appear at summertime street festivals and march in parades.

George Major later trained as a plumber and ran a plumbing supply shop, she says.

Onscreen, the pearly kings inspired the streetwise, heart-of-gold chimney sweep character of Bert in Walt Disney's Mary Poppins film — played by Dick Van Dyke, an American who later owned up to what he called "the most atrocious Cockney accent in the history of cinema."

The Major family and others believe George Major himself inspired another fictional character: Del Boy, the happy-go-lucky East London huckster in the long-running British sitcom Only Fools and Horses. He's a cheeky salesman, always scheming to get rich quick, with the catchphrase, "This time next year, we'll be millionaires!"

At his funeral, Major's eulogy was riddled with Del Boy quotes.

But like the TV protagonist, Major also broke the law. In 2012 he was sentenced to six months in prison, after pleading guilty to benefits fraud. He was released early.

"If he could avoid the tax man, he would!" his daughter laughs. "He used to say, 'Discount for cash!' He'd love a bargain."

His fame overshadowed his legal troubles. Major was one of dozens of pearly royals who marched in the opening ceremony of the 2012 London Olympics.

George Major, seen here in 1975, was born in 1938 inside a military barracks in Peckham, southeast London, and grew up in a workhouse before he became the best-known pearly king of his generation. Chris Moorhouss/Hulton Archive via Getty Images hide caption

Years later, I finally figured out what Major meant back in 2016 when he told me he was a "costermonger" (street hawker) who used to "fly-pitch" (sell stuff without a license) on the "frog and toad" where we did our interview.

In Cockney rhyming slang, "frog and toad" means road. "Porky pies" means lies. "Apples and pears" means stairs. "Whistle and flute" means suit. "Ruby Murray" means curry. The vocabulary is extensive, and bewildering to outsiders — which is precisely the point. Green, the Cockney expert, says this type of slang likely originated as a code to confuse the police, or to secretly rig prices among street vendors.

To complicate things, Major also spoke in what he called "backspeak," sometimes also called backslang, which is even more confusing. One example that's crept into mainstream British slang is the word "yob" for boy. Take any word at all, and simply spell it backwards.

One of the only parts of that 2016 interview I could understand at the time was when Major waxed poetic about his family's unique pearly suit pattern. He pointed to a row of buttons on his sleeve, calling them "the line of life."

Ten years later, at his funeral, I found myself examining the same pattern on a pearly outfit worn by his great-granddaughter.

"There's a straight line, which is your life line," Aleisha Gordon, 19, said, pointing to a row of shimmering buttons. "The triangles are the ups and downs in life, and the flowers are the friends and family that help you along the way."

After the funeral, children threw handfuls of earth as George Major's coffin was lowered into the ground. The undertaker brought out four caged doves for Major's descendants to release skyward. The birds circled twice overhead, then disappeared.

People shared anecdotes about a "real rascal" and "the most hilarious person" who was nevertheless "very particular" about who made his tea. Someone turned on a boombox, and mourners began kicking their legs like the can-can, singing along to 1950s songs.

They paraded out of the cemetery toward a nearby nuclear sub — what Cockneys call the pub — for a cool pint of pig's ear, or King Lear.

At least that's what the Pearly King of Peckham would have called it. Now I finally understand.

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