I remember Maurice Raff very well as a kid. In the Open Market before they "modernised" it Maurice had a stall near to the Level end. After the modernisation he and my dad shared a stall together. I sometimes got Mr Raff's tea for him. The older market was colder and sort of ramshackle but it had a lot more of a homely feel about it. Mr Raff was a very nice man and despite his blindness his hearing and other senses were as sharp as a razor. Very memoriable times. Mike Peirson.

I certainly remember the market as I started life, 1946, just a couple of streets away from the market in Shaftesbury Road till I was three. After that we moved to Hollingbury but the Open Market bus stop was our regular stop for shopping, going to the Co-op bank in London Road, or visiting grandparents etc. I also remember taking lunch sometimes with my mother at a cafe round the corner from the market in Baker Street. My favourite was the steak and kidney pie with mash and veg. It was a very popular and delightful cafe with, I believe, Italian owners. Lucy serving, her husband cooking and one of their parents helping out in the kitchen. The whole atmosphere was cosy, warm, busy and charming. Like something out of an old movie. I have no recall what the cafe was called but there regularly came a blind gent for his meal. Lucy would deliver his plate and explain, pie 12 o'clock, veg 3 o'clock, potatoes 6 o'clock. Or similar to that. I am assuming it was the famous stall man catching a warm meal in the day. I could be wrong but maybe someone else remembers more to add on from this. Thanks for the article.

I've mentioned Maurice Raff a couple of times in other posts on MyB&H, but would like to pay my respects to him and to his family here on Sara's excellent post. I recall the first version of his stall when the Market still looked like the picture above, early to mid-fifties. Mother would occasionally buy me a plastic toy of some sort with the legend "Made in Japan" on it - something we viewed with some derision then, not anticipating the conquest of plastics as the predominant industrial raw material and the rise of Honda, Sony, Yamaha, Panasonic et al! I too preferred the comfortable Victorian scruffiness of the old Market to the ordered neatness of the new. Encouragingly though, on my most recent visit from here in the West Country about two years ago I had cause to use the public convenience at the London Road end of the Market and found it reassuringly unchanged from the fifties. Even the attendant chappie leaning against the doorframe of the Gents looked - and sounded - like the man who looked after the lavs half a century ago! Any relation, I wonder?

I remember the blind man, he had excellent hearing and would know if you touched anything on his stall. Does anyone remember Mr. Peirson who had a little costume jewellery stall in the Open Market around 1954? He had a daughter Geraldine. I would love to make contact with her again.

I must have seen Maurice Raff on frequent vists to the market in the 40s and 50s. I went to the same school as the late Jack Raff who lived at the end of a row of council houses (I think). Their house was next to a twitten that ran all the way across Patcham and faced on to Winfield Avenue. I think the Raffs' were a Jewish family but please correct me if I'm wrong. John C Snelling.

In reply to two of the earlier, interesting comments - yes, my Grandfather often went to the cafe in Baker Street, where the waitress would describe what was on his plate as "meat at 12 o'clock" etc, and my sister and I have happy memories of being allowed to go their by ourselves when we were children and visited him with our Mother (his daughter Dorothy). John Snelling, who remembered my Uncle Jack was right as well - we are a Jewish family and they lived in Patchdean at the end house, next to the twitten that ran up the hill alongside the school grounds. Jack and his Sisters, Barbara and my Mother went to School there during the War. Sometimes the school-children had to go into the air-raid shelters under the School when enemy planes were flying over Brighton on their way to a bombing-raid on London, and wait in there (still doing their lessons) until the planes had returned from their mission and the 'all-clear' sounded. Not such 'good old days'. Sadly. Uncle Jack died a few years ago and my Mother, Dorothy, died in January 2013, so the only remaining 'child' of Maurice Raff and his wife, Rose, is Barbara, who has lived in New Zealand for many years, though she has come back to visit, most recently in Summer 2012. I would be interested to hear if anyone else remembers the family from those days.

Sara, Very sorry to hear of the death of your Uncle Jack. I'm sure we both went to Patcham from age 5 until ?. He was a lovely lad. My mother Celia and dad Charles knew Maurice who had quite a long life. My mum died at 102 in 2006 and is buried with my dad (died 1964) at Old Patcham Church.