E7 Now & Then

This article looks at the way in which World War 11 air raids in Forest Gate have been approached and described from three very different perspectives. They are from the local fire chief of the time, a school boy, recollecting later in life and from the fictional work of an author born in West Ham.

The Fire Chief was Cyril Demarne and we have quoted from his work about Forest Gate before, here. The school boy was actor and film director Bryan Forbes, who spent his childhood in Cranmer Road and the novelist is Mike Hollow, who has authored three books about the Blitz Detective, DI Jago. Full details of the books can be found in the footnotes.

We have covered air raids in Forest Gate in previous articles, here and here, but not directly in the words of victims/witnesses.

Bryan Forbes' autobiography - Notes for a Life

We covered Bryan Forbes' recollections of Forest Gate life in the 1930's in a previous blog (see here). Part of his childhood recollections focussed on his experiences of air-raids experienced from his Cranmer Road house, in 1940 - before the family moved from the area.

What follows is a graphic and direct quote of recollections of youth, from his first autobiography.

The early nights of the Blitz were not all that frightening. I felt curiously, irrationally secure in the fetid darkness of the small shelter and devolved a method of determining the distance from our own house of the bomb blasts. I would put my cheek against the sweating concrete walls and calculate by the intensity of the vibration carried in the earth.

We listened to Lord Haw Haw in the Anderson, searching the dial of the wireless until that arrogant, rasping voice filled the small enclosure. 'We shan't be dropping bombs on Earlham Grove tonight' he said once, in a reference to the Jewish Quarter of Forest Gate, 'We shall be dropping Keating's Powder.' Keating's was a brand of dustbin disinfectant. In repeating the remark here I am not trying to perpetrate that distant vicious smear, I merely wish to record the absolute amazement and fear I felt at hearing my own locality mentioned by the remote voice of the enemy

On the Saturday afternoon, when the second phase of the Blitz began in earnest I was inside the Odeon, Forest Gate, watching a matinee of Gaslight. Half way through the performance the audience became conscious of what seemed to be a hailstorm beating on the roof. The projector lamp died and the house lights came up. The limp manager, in black tie, came on to the stage and announced that the audience should disperse in the interest of safety.

We trooped without undue haste into the bright sunshine outside and stood in groups on the pavement watching pattern after pattern of sun-silvered Dorniers winging high overhead. Urged on by the police and wardens I ran the length of Woodgrange Road and along Godwin Road straight into the arms of my distraught mother.

We went immediately into the Anderson and except for hurried forays into the house for food and the use of the toilet during the rare lulls in the bombardment, we stayed in the garden shelter for the best part of two whole days and nights. During the night hours the sky was swollen red enough by the monstrous Dockland fires to make the regulation blackouts meaningless.

Sticks of bombs fell across Wanstead Flats, cutting a path through Cranmer Road at the top end, but the Anderson never shifted.

Our experience was nothing out of the ordinary and we were far luckier than most, for when the last bomb with our number on it found its target the Anderson shelter still held, but our life in Cranmer Road was over forever.

Cyril Demarne's Fireman's Tale

This short memoir was published almost 40 years ago. Cyril joined the West Ham Fire Brigade in 1925 and spent the much of the war serving in the district. He was later appointed Chief Fire Officer for West Ham and was made an OBE in 1952.

The book describes life as a fireman in the area during the war. Below we reproduce two extracts about places very familiar to Forest Gaters.

Writing of July 1944, Cyril says he got a radio call:

"V1 explosion in Blake Hall Crescent, Wanstead, sir. Your car has been ordered"

Oh, God: here we go again. What frightful scenes should we encounter this time? We had become accustomed to rows of shattered houses and shops and the back street factory with a dozen girls entombed; to the heart-rendering cries of the bereaved and to children screaming for their parents; to the torn and hideously mangled bodies to be recovered from the debris; and to the little corner shop, a heap of ruins, with customers slashed by flying glass, laying amid bundles of firewood and tins of corned beef.

I asked my driver if she knew where we were going. Yes, she knew, and we were there in a few minutes. All the trees in the vicinity had been defoliated by the explosion and the pungent smell of chlorophyll mingled with the musty odour of mortar and other dusts. Only the stench of blood was missing, something, at least, to be thankful for. A number of houses had been demolished and women and children were being removed from the debris.

As we toiled, several V1's roared across the sky and there came a chorus of "Seig Heil, Seig Heil," from hundreds of German throats in the POW camp a few hundred yards along the road. How I prayed for one to come down smack in the centre of that compound, but my prayer went unanswered and the bombs flew on, to crash in Poplar or Stepney, or points west.

The houses in Blake Hall Crescent lay in a hollow which restricted the area of the blast. Casualties, relatively, were light and we were able to clear up rather more quickly than usual and make our way home. There was no knowing where or when the next buzz-bomb would dive.

The POW camp came near to disaster about a week later, when a flying bomb crashed on the anti-aircraft rocket installation on the opposite side of Woodford Road (ed: near the current Esso garage, on Aldersbrook Road), killing a number of gunners and ATS girls. The blast set fire to dry grass on the site and it was by a narrow margin only that the NFS (National Fires Service) stopped the fire before it reached the magazines, crude corrugated iron sheds, with openings screened with hessian curtains protecting the rockets laid out on racks.

It was a close shave.

Cyril Demarne

And the second extract, describing events a little later that month:

It was during the scalded cat raids, when fast flying aircraft roared over London, dropped a load of bombs and hared away as fast as possible. A number of isolated fires had been started in Manor Park - Forest Gate area - and I found myself in a temporary fire station, manned by part-time fire crew, at midnight. The firewoman on duty reported that her crew had been ordered out to a fire at the Manor Park Cemetery and had been gone for three hours. I could not imagine a fire in a cemetery occupying a crew for anything like that time and I passed the place twice during the evening, observing no sign of fire. However, I had better investigate: it was not unknown for a fire pump to have become engulfed in a bomb crater.

The cemetery gates were wide open and we drove in, following the main drive until it narrowed into a single width road and terminated in a sort of roundabout, with four or five paths leading in different directions.. The glow of the distant fire was the only light we could see as we stopped. I got out and had a look around and there was no sign of a fire or the crew. ...

I was soon out of sight of the car and I started to hear a voice out of the silence of the night.

"I wouldn't go down there", it said, "something has come down" It was the cemetery keeper. I shone my torch ahead and saw a number of shining incendiary bombs, none of which appeared to have fired, lying scattered over graves and paths. I picked up two of the bombs, and walked back towards the car. The keeper told me that firemen had been in the cemetery some hours ago to deal with a fire in a heap of discarded wreath frames but had left before the second fall of incendiaries. ...

The missing pump turned up, eventually. It was manned by a crew of part-time firemen, who attended for duty one night per week. ... After dealing with the cemetery fire they chased after another showing a light at Manor Park; then to another, arriving home at their station about 1 a.m., tired out, but happy with their evening's performance."

The Blitz Detective series of novels, a review by Sandra Walker

I found this series enjoyable and very surprisingly, rather compelling. I can happily recommend it to anyone interested in WW2 east end, ‘popular’ social history (especially local Newham people) who likes an ‘easy, undemanding, lightweight’ read. Mike Hollow, the author, was born in West Ham.

Mike Hollow

The stories are full of local interest, with housing and historic building references and descriptions including car journeys along roads that no longer exist - during some of the bombing raids of the Blitz which actually destroyed them. Descriptions, venues and events are based on Mike Hollow’s family oral histories and local and national topical news at the time. The author successfully conveys a sense of the hardship, stoicism, humour, disruption, trauma, community and ‘stiff upper lip’ attitude with which we have become familiar and associate with the events of the time.

Conscientious objectors, fifth columnists, local council corruption, inequality, early feminism, the evacuation of children, poor quality housing and healthcare, food shortages, harsh living conditions, lack of sleep, trauma of witnessing dead bodies and the impact on local communities as they are disrupted and fractured forever are just a few of the issues the reader is confronted with – this in addition to ‘murder most foul’. Yet this is skilfully woven into stories of day to day life (and murders) which continue in spite of and add to the difficulties and horrors.

I found myself quickly comfortable and easily able to relate to the somewhat familiar stereotype principal characters of the ‘Old Bill’ of the time. The emotionally repressed bachelor, DI Jago with WW1 baggage who is our principal character is immediately likeable because he is so sensible, rational, fair minded and indeed forward thinking for his time (for example regarding women’s inequality and what the post war future holds for them).

Jago’s trusty, novice, sidekick DC Cradock is uncomplicated and keen. The awful pompous, bumbling DC Superintendent ‘Soper of the yard’ and the faithful old Victorian Cockney Copper Tomkins, hauled out of retirement for desk sergeant duties are all stereotype characters readers of a certain age will immediately recognise.

The plots were credible however some of the relationships and links which assisted in discovering clues and gaining information were frankly rather ‘incredible’ or unlikely –very lucky strikes!

There is, of course, the potential for romance - provided by attractive, exiting, confident, worldly wise, female American journalist, go getter Dorothy and dependable, maternal, East Ender cafe owner, Rita. Both likeable ladies!

Originality? Well, dare I mention two similar series here; Anthony Horowitz’ Foyle’s War for characters and plots and Barbara Nadel’s local Newham based WW2 amateur sleuthing by troubled undertaker Francis Hancock for local interest?

All said and done, I liked the series and I will certainly be reading the next book scheduled for release in 2018.

Footnote The books reviewed are The London Blitz - a Fireman's Tale, by Cyril Demarne, now out of print, but originally published by the Newham Parents' Centre (now Newham Bookshop - who may still have copies buried away) in 1980. Bryan Forbes' autobiography Notes for a Life, was published by Collins in 1974. The Three Blitz Detective novels by Mike Hollow are: Direct Hit, Fifth Column and Enemy Action, they are published by Lion Hudson

We have covered cycling in Forest Gate at the end of the nineteenth century on this site a number of times before. Notably, when we traced 14 cycle building workshops in the area, here; when we described, in detail, life inside one of them, here; and when we looked at some of the events taking place around cycling at the time, here.

This post, unapologetically, returns to the subject. It puts the Forest Gate cycling boom of the time into a bit of historical context and dips, briefly, into the life of the Forest Gate Cycling Club of the time.

Forest Gate Cycling Club sign - c1897

We are immensely grateful to vintage cycling enthusiast, Tim Dawson, and his excellent blog, here for the inspiration for much of this, and to the indefatigable Mark Gorman for some of the sleuthing that makes the account possible.

The second half of this article consists of extracts from the Forest Gate Weekly News (FGWN) of 1896, at the peak of the cycling boom. The editor of the paper was a cycling enthusiast and wrote a weekly column of snippets about life in the saddle locally, with some side cycling-related glances at wider social issues.

The extracts are, by turn, informative, amusing and frankly sexist (hardly surprising for the period). Some of them suggests that a number of modern problems on the road go back rather a long time. Comments on the perils of Centre Road may seem very apposite today, given recent issues on that road.

Much of this article focuses on 1896, which is, fortuitously, the year for which we have the FGWT snippets, below. It was a boom year for cycling - possibly the height of its popularity in the Victorian era.

Woodford Meet 1903 (Photo: Harry Gulliver)

The pneumatic tyre was invented in 1888, but wasn’t widely available until the early 90’s. It was a few years before the tyres became reliable, easy to fit and repair ( see FGWT snippet 14 August, below). Forest Gate had its role to play here, too. John Allen, another cycling enthusiast follower of this website, some while ago wrote to say, that at a later date:

One particular well-respected and still sought-after parts manufacturer was 'The Constrictor Tyre Company' that was housed in Nursery Lane, off Upton Lane, approx behind the Odeon Cinema, which, of course fronted on Romford Road.

With the widening popularity of pneumatic tyres in the mid 1890's, bicycles began to be easier to ride, and popularity increased greatly. Many realised the health benefits of cycling.

A big factor in 1896 was that society circles began to ride bicycles, including the royals. Parading along Rotten Row in carriages was replaced by riding a gleaming bicycle sedately around Battersea Park. The peak year for this was 1896.

Cycle manufacturers increased their capacity and the market was saturated as early as mid 1897. Prices had to be drastically reduced to clear stocks as cycling fell out of fashion, and many companies went over the next few years. Not long afterwards the motorcycle and motor car became the thing of fashion - not that you would guess it from the FGWNextract of 11 September 1896, below.

Forest Gate Cycling Club

Tim Dawson, a keen collector of early cycling mementoes, wrote to us a couple of months ago to say that he had picked up a most unusual sign (see below), for the Forest Gate Cycling Club. He continued:

Over 25+ years of collecting, I have never seen a cycling club sign, other than the usual CTC (Cycling Touring Club?), Clarion etc.. About as rare as rare can be, it must be a one-off, and was probably attached to the front of a pub or hotel in the area, where the club had their headquarters. It measures 32 x 24 inches.

It transpires that the club met at the Forest Glen Hotel on Dames Road - now the site of a controversial music "venue". The club itself is referred to under its previous incarnation, as the Glen Cycling Club in the extract from FGWN 19 June 1896, below. The pub's location - at the entrance to Wanstead Flats and then Epping Common - made complete sense, as a starting point for ride outs.

The club changed its name in 1897, to the Forest Gate Cycling Club (FGCC), and appears under that name in a number of programmes for the Woodford Meet (see below) and in some press articles (also below).

The Forest Glen on Dames Road - home
in the early 20th century to Forest Gate
Cycling Club. Home in the early 21st
century to a rather dubious "music venue"

The first press cutting suggests that by 1904, the FGCC seems to have established a number of branches, but all farther out into the (then) countryside than Forest Gate. This may have been for the same reason that the Essex Beagles athletics (now Newham and Essex Beagles) club moved its HQ from Mile End to Forest Gate, and then further out into Essex as housing development progressed in the 1890s-1900s.

The FGCC and the Woodford Meet

We covered the Woodford Meet- a large local meeting of cycling clubs at the end of the nineteenth century - in a previous post, here. Tim and Mark have unearthed more fascinating details about some of the apparently strange activities and games they embraced and encouraged, as seen in the programme extracts and press cuttings below - with particular reference to the FGCC.

Woodford Meet programme June 1900

The 1912 article (from the Preston Herald) shows the club still in existence and attending the Woodford meet, but by now under a slightly different name. It is unclear what "St James" refers to - could the club have become attached to St James' church in Forest Gate or moved HQ to Walthamstow?

Preston Herald 20 June 1912 showing
expansion or relocation of Forest Gate Cycling Club

The members of the FGCC provided some amusing sounding entertainments at the Meet. For example, in 1902, they provided a "Ping-Pong" tableau. Quite what that may have been sets the mind racing! They also appear to have participated in a concert and other entertainments opposite the Royal Forest Hotel, in Chingford.

Woodford Meet programme 1902, with
Forest Gate Cycling Club and Ping-Pong tableau

In 1904 they provided the "Forest Gate Non-Slipping Band" - more mind boggling, here - with some members being mounted on a "Quad" (a four seat cycle), others on a "Trip" (a triplet, or three seater), playing such musical instruments as the Cyclophone, Piccalooloo and Kazoone!

Woodford Meet programme 1904 with
Forest Gate Non-Slipping Band Tableau

Tim's blog covering the FGCC and Woodford Meet can be found here . We are most grateful to him for allowing us to share it with you.

Victorian cycling in Forest Gate, from FGWN June - September 1896

The editor of this short-lived publication was clearly a keen cyclist and wrote a weekly column of snippets on his views, on a whole range of local cycle-related activities. Below we provide a sample of them - without comment - which appeared under the column title Hum of the Wheel, and written under the nom de plume: The Skipper.

Enjoy!

5 June 1896

I wish the tryo would confine himself (or herself) to the side roads for practice. On the Flats road (ed: today's Centre Road) the learners are a danger to themselves and everyone else.

Never pass a lady cyclist on the near side if it can be avoided. It is a bad practice at any time, and eminently distressing for the fair sex.

Elston, Forest Gate cycle maker, catalogue 1899

12 June 1896

The ordinary pedestrian still retains his antipathy to cyclists. We are a long-suffering race, and so long as the cyclist-hater confines himself to bad language, we pass him by in silent contempt, but really should, for his own sake, stop there. I hear a bit of a "dust-up" with some of these "road hogs" Aldborough way, in which our friends at the wheel acquitted themselves like men, and effectively silenced the foul-mouthed fraternity.

The cycling constable, or, as our American friends would say "the bike cop" must surely be a journalistic joke. We are seriously told, in a London morning daily, that "on many of the roads leading out of London, plain clothes policemen, mounted on machines, are stationed. These men give chase to any trouble-some cyclists, and are of great use in maintaining order on the public highways" It's too comic! Fancy the joy of the young scorcher at being "taken on" by one of these heavy fliers, and then the denouement of them both being summoned in another district for road racing.

The Woodford Meet, seen through
the eyes of FGWN in 1897

19 June 1896

The Glen CC is one of the wheel clubs of the district, for although it has only been established about three months, it has a roll of some 63 members. Dr Collier of Manor Park is the President and Mr E Davies of The Forest Glen Hotel and Mr W Maggs of Woodgrange Road are among the vice-Presidents. ...

Glen Cycling Club, predecessor
of Forest Gate Cycling Club
(Essex Herald 18 August 1896)

A very pleasant run is taken by the Glen Cycling Club on Saturday afternoon to Keston Lakes, or as they are known locally, "The Fishponds" (ed: these are on the edge of three commons: Hayes, West Wickham and Keston).

10 July 1896

I notice with much satisfaction the increasing growth in the popularity of the tricycle. There was an age when this type of machine seemed positively doomed; and what few were in use appeared to be ridden chiefly by old gentlemen, who dared not risk a single track.

Things have somewhat changed since those days; no longer is the tricycle confined to the ranks of the aged and the feeble, but we find both the young and the old, the strong and the infirm, the robust and the dyspeptic taking to the three tracker; and little wonder, for only those who have thoroughly mattered the tricycle can really appreciate to the fullest all the delightful sensations experienced in the riding of it. Then here's to the further success of the tricycle!

One of the fancy dress tableau on show
at Woodford Meet in 1903 (Photo: Harry Gulliver)

17 July 1896

I had the recent report of the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, which states that a new form of cruelty has recently been brought to light, under the action of the Society, consisting of over-taxing the strength of dogs, when running with bicycles over long distances at high speed. Some dogs will rather die than stop when following their masters, and this has actually happened without the knowledge at the time of the owners. It has already come to the knowledge of the Societythat hundreds of dogs have been lost in country places, consequent on bicycle riders out-running them on roads where no trace of the course they had taken been left.

24 July 1896

I would advise that the new riders who contemplate taking their machines with them for the summer holiday to make sure that the roads in the vicinity of their chosen resort are sufficiently good to make it worth their while doing so. This applies more especially to the fair sex, who, after having been mulcted heavily by railway company porters and cabbies, at last arrive with their beloved bike at a sea-side town only to find that the hobbly, flinty roads in the immediate neighbourhood render the pastime anything but an enjoyable one, and their trusty mount a veritable "white elephant".

31 July 1896

The gross incompetency displayed by some of our local authorities over the simplest matters makes one long for the power to regulate the salaries of these gentlemen. The Flats road, for instance, was such a purgatory for cyclists a few years ago that most men went round by Dames (or as it was then called the Leyton) Road to avoid it, and until the Wanstead Board took it over in compassion, and made up the road properly, the standard plan of pitching down granite periodically, and leaving it to work in or out as it pleased was very regularly pursued. Now, one is inclined to wish that they would dismiss the new Road Surveyor and his staff and hand us over en bloc to the Wanstead parish. Then perhaps Woodgrange Road would be attended to properly.

Advert for Clark Bros cycles, FGWN 1896, the
largest of the area's 14 cycle manufacturers, 1896

7 August 1896

The carriage of bicycles by rail is becoming so general that before long the railway companies will be compelled to provide increased accommodation. I would suggest that a special van, with supports for cycles, be attached to all long-distance trains in the summer season as a means of overcoming the existing difficulty. Considering the way we are mulcted in fares we are surely entitled to some additional measures of safety to ordinary passengers' luggage - and milk cans.

The lady rider is more in evidence than ever, and it is interesting to notice the civilizing influence she exerts over her masculine attendants. Their handle bars go up, and their coats are buttoned and some of them are actually deluded into wearing a collar and tie. In time, maybe, the influence of the "cock and hen" parties may even regenerate for the "bounder", but that, perhaps, is too much to hope for.

Cycle built for "a lady" by Forest Gate
cycle manufacturer, Elston, c 1899

14 August 1896

The modern cyclist is of a very effeminate, luxurious disposition. He complains of his saddle, the roads, his gear, and what not, so often that I am sometimes lost in wonder as to what this tender individual would have done in the good old days of 60lb ordinaries, with their iron seats, short cranks and "trawl" brakes. It is interesting, by the way, to recall the advent of the "Spider" as we named it, and the days of the BTC (ed: British Touring Club?) and its Lincoln green uniform. There was a Spartan-like severity about "learning to ride" then, which puts to shame the age of air tyres and riding schools.

21 August 1896

Despite all statements to the contrary, I adhere to the opinion I have before advanced, that a brake is quite unnecessary on the machine of an experienced rider. Any hill that you cannot hold a light machine on is much better walked down, as the surface is sure to be bad for the tyres. For the full roadster type, of course, a brake may well go with the mud-guards, pump, cyclometer etc, that some riders load themselves up with. 30lbs may be within a rider's control, whilst 45lbs, may, perhaps, be beyond it.

28 August 1896

Many of my readers may like to know of the foreign cycling tours which have been successfully organised of late. A week can be spent in Normandy for £5, 15 days in Brittany for 9 guineas and other parts of the Continent are catered for on a like scale. Sewell and Crowther of 41 Gracechurch Street will supply all details to anyone desiring fresh fields and pastures new.

I am glad to see that the absurd charge of "furiously riding a bicycle" brought against Miss Mildred Clark of East Ham was unsubstantiated. Perhaps the public will begin to realise that the bicycle is a vehicle in the eye of the law, and perfectly entitled to a use of the road, when a few more of these frivolous charges are dismissed.

4 September 1896

There is only one real safeguard against having your bicycle stolen, and that is to look after it. So many thefts have occurred lately that it seems necessary to remind riders that nowadays when the "man in the street" can ride, it is unsafe to let your machine go out of sight except placed under lock and key.

Vaseline, and plenty of it, is the one and only preservative from rust. It is a good plan to carry a small tin in one's satchel, and then if one iscaught in a shower, the worst effects, at any rate, can be avoided.

Edmund Hussey, another of the
contemporary Forest Gate
cycle builders, 1896

11 September 1896

After 14 November the various auto-car, motor-car, horseless carriage companies will have no excuse for delay in showing the British public generally, and their shareholders in particular, what they can do. I doubt, myself, if they will succeed in placing upon the road a machine capable of maintaining a speed of 14 miles per hour, with credit to themselves and comfort to the public, for some considerable time to come. The specimens at work at the Crystal Palace do not favourably impress me at all.

Then we shall have to find them a new name for general use. The essays in this general direction have been rather clumsy up to the present, "auto-car" being the most euphonious, though not etymologically correct.

I am constantly being asked what I think of this or that make of American cycle. I cannot understand why riders want to go outside the large range of choice they have in the English manufacturers, who are, after all, the oldest makers and the best judges of what is most suitable for English roads and climate. It must be to that craze for "something new" which lies dormant in human breasts that the Yankee manufacturer appeals.

St Bonaventure's school celebrated its 140th anniversary on 27 August this year. In this, the first of two posts on the school, we take a brief look at its history, We are grateful for Di Halliwell, the school's head of PR for the contents of this post - taken largely from the summer edition of the school's magazine, which featured the text here.

Origins

In the autumn of 1872 the Franciscan order opened a "middle class school for boys" beneath St Francis' church in Crescent Grove, Stratford, with 25 students. It was called St Francis' Day school, but closed a year later.

St Antony's church, next to the school,
and host to many St Bon's occasions

On 27 August 1877 St Bonaventure's school, Upton, was founded under the supervision of Father Germain Verleyen, and the numbers began to rise rapidly. Mr McVey was the first headteacher, under the direction of Franciscan monks and the active patronage of Cardinal Henry Manning.

Cardinal Manning, an early
and active patron of St Bon's

The school was a preparatory and junior school in its early days, which is why some of the pupils in the early photos look so young.

An early class photos, showing
young - prep school - pupils

Early 20th century

Following the 1902 and 1904 Education Acts, St Bonaventure's became a secondary school, known as West Ham Grammar School (St Bonaventure's), and was fee paying. By 1910, the initial roll of 6 boys had risen to 100, with five masters.

A photo showing the first year football team in 1915.

The First World War was difficult for the school. Many of the boys were left fatherless, as surviving records show "killed in action" in the "father's name and occupation" sections of the registration forms.

A busy World War 2

The school had 150 boys on the roll during the 1920's and just over 200 at the outbreak of World War 2, in 1939. The school was initially evacuated to Felixstowe, in Suffolk, and was based at the county secondary school, Felixstowe Grammar - which was co-educational - while retaining its own identity.

The boys were billeted at the nearby villages of Trimley St Mary and Trimley St Martin. They were not there long, however, as the German occupation of Norway and Denmark in the spring of 1940 meant that Felixstowe was no longer considered a safe town.

The school returned briefly to Forest Gate, before re-locating to the Rhondda Valley in South Wales, at the Pentre Secondary school. The students lived in a village - Treherbert - but arrangements were not satisfactory, as there was no nearby Catholic church. Plans were set in motion to return to Forest Gate, but the Blitz of 1940 put an end to them.

A temporary home was found in Raunds, a small market town in Northamptonshire, but there was no accommodation available, and the students had to settle in Wellingborough - a few miles away. Here, the students alternated between public and grammar schools. This arrangements lasted until January 1943.

Evacuation was voluntary for the boys, and as numbers on the roll declined rapidly. So, the longer term future of the school was in some doubt. But, the school bounced back.

.. and after

In response to the Education Act 1944, St Bonaventure's became a voluntary aided, multi-lateral school - the first and one of the most successful in the country. The school no longer existed to serve a small body of highly selective boys. It now became open to all boys aged 11 to 14 from East London, and embraced the whole range of abilities.

The school - in its guise as West Ham
Grammar school, before reverting
to the St Bonaventure's name in 1949

The school roll soon tripled in number. The school reverted to the name St Bonaventure's in 1949. Its frontage and address was Khedive Road, which was later changed to St Antony's Road.

A plaque to "The glory of God and the memory of old Bonaventurains who gave their lives in 1914 - 1918 and 1939 - 1945" was erected in St Antony's church, next door to the school, to remember those who were killed during the World Wars.

The school and accompanying friary, from the air

In the years since, the school has advanced by leaps and bounds and is currently an "outstanding school", as designated by Ofsted.

Just what an impact the school has had on so many of its past and current pupils can be ascertained by a glance at its impressive list of alumni. A selection of some of the high achievers in the fields of industry, public service, entertainment and sport will feature in a future post on this website.

St Bon's - today

Happy Birthday, St Bons!

We have written before about the Doodlebug bombing of Dames Road in July 1944, here and here.

The local Labour Party held an event outside the Holly Tree on 27 July this year, to commemorate the 73rd anniversary of the bombing and to remember the dead (see photo, below).

The Labour party 73rd anniversary commemoration
event (photo: courtesy of Newham Recorder)

Our earlier reports expressed a frustration in getting accurate numbers of those killed and injured by the bomb. We are now able to bring fuller details of the carnage, including the names and addresses of 34 killed at the time and to usefully speculate on what could have happened on the day.

We are grateful to local resident, Shirley Hartley and the Waltham Forest archives at Vestry House and, in particular, the assistance of archivist Jo Parker, for much of what follows.

Our previous coverage relied on the report from the Stratford Express from the week following the hit (below) - which only identified four dead - and the West Ham borough post war list of the WW11 civilian dead - which only identified a different four. We knew, however, that these were serious underestimations of the carnage the bomb brought.

Stratford Express 4 August 1944

The Stratford Express reproduction may be difficult to read. The relevant sections says:

When a number of dwellings were damaged close to a public house (ed note: Holly Tree) and the edge of open land (ed note: Wanstead Flats); early on Thursday evening last, listening apparatus was employed by members of the rescue parties with a view to finding how many victims were trapped. It was a demanding voice, heard through a loud speaker demanding: "Quiet, please, everyone" which brought a strange silence on the scene. A moment before there had been all the noise inseparable from the aftermath of any "incident"; but the voice that came out the loud speaker altered that.

Men perched precariously on debris were listening for sounds which would indicate the presence of survivors. The hush was a weird one, but it told the listeners all that they wanted to know, and in a minute came the voice again. This time it said "Thank you, carry on" and the resources were soon rapidly in progress. A passing vehicle (ed: the trolley bus) was wrecked by the blast and there was loss of life amongst those travelling on it. The dead included William Winter, Dennis Barfield, Thomas Driscoll and Reginald Hillman.

This account is dramatic, suggesting that far more than four were killed.

A V1 rocket of the kind that struck Dames
Road. See footnote for details.

A confirmation of its serious nature and scale came from the biography of Cyril Demarne, who later became West Ham's Chief Fire Officer (see footnote for details). He said:

A particularly nasty, gory, situation confronted us, following a V1 explosion in Dames Road, Forest Gate. A trolley bus, crammed with home going workers had caught the full blast and the whole area was a sickening sight. Dismembered bodies littered the roadway; others were splattered over the brickwork of the houses across the way and the wreckage of the trolley bus was simply too ghastly to describe.

The roof and upper deck, together with the passengers, were blasted away. Standing passengers on the lower deck were also flung against the fronts of houses on the other side of the road. The lower deck seated passengers were all dead. Although many of the victims had been decapitated, they were still sitting down, as if waiting to have their fares collected.

Demarne described the Dames Road bomb as "the most horrific thing I ever witnessed." Given the position he rose to in the Fire Service, and the number of incidents he must have witnessed in a long and distinguished career, that is some testimony to the horror of the event.

Cyril Demarne, who attended the Dames
Road attack, who described it as "The most
horrific thing I ever witnessed. Cyril rose
to become West Ham's fire chief after the war.

So, eight civilian deaths was clearly a serious underestimation of the scale of the horror.

There was almost no, recognisable, national press coverage of the Dames Road disaster in the days that followed, other than in a rather strange item in the Belfast Newsletter of 1 August, which in a round-up of Flying bombs over Southern England, including the London area, stated:

At least eight persons were killed and 10 injured when a bomb fell in a residential area. Italian prisoners helped fire-fighters in the rescue work.

Given the proximity of Dames Road to the Italian Prisoner of War camp on Wanstead Flats (see here), this oblique reference almost certainly describes the incident. There was no reference to the precise location in the account, as there rarely was in contemporary press reports, as censorship was in force and details that could have been deemed to be useful to the enemy were omitted from press reports.

Rescue crew assisting with the aftermath
of a V1 bomb, elsewhere in London

The explanation is that the bomb actually landed in what was then Leyton, just the other side of the borough boundary on Dames Road. Local resident, Shirley Hartley pointed us in the direction of a Leytonstone paper of the time that offered a more accurate assessment of the carnage inflicted.

This account, however, in the Leytonstone Independent was dated 15 September 1944 - 7 weeks after the event (see below).

Leytonstone Independent
15 September 1944

The relevant section read:

34 killed in trolleybus

Leyton's most disastrous incident which took a heavy toll in lives was when a bomb crashed in Dames Road near the corner of Pevensey Road, Leytonstone.

A trolleybus laden with home coming workers and shoppers was wrecked. The top of the bus was blown away and seats inside the lower deck twisted and mangled. Rescue workers recovered 34 bodies, among them the driver. Others died in hospital.

Another trolleybus was involved. Military Civil Defence and NFS (ed: National Fire Service) personnel worked together clearing away debris. Within two hours, other buses were passing through.

Details of major war incidents were collated centrally, by the government information service, and released to the press some while afterward the events, again as part of the censorship and enemy frustration process. This report was the first mention in the Leytonstone press of the incident - 7 weeks after its occurrence.

The Walthamstow Guardian of the same week, presumably using the same Government Information Service briefing, also covered the incident - see cutting below, but provided different numbers.

Walthamstow Guardian, 15 September 1944

The relevant section of the report reads:

At Dames Road, when a bomb fell within a few yards of a trolleybus, 41 people were killed and 24 taken to hospital.

And, that was it - for probably the area's worst bombing incident of World War 11 - 24 words!

But, still no agreed numbers of killed or injured, and certainly 34 or more.

The Commonwealth War Graves Commission (CWGC) was given the job, by the government, of drawing up details of the country's civilian war dead, and publishing it, borough by borough, at the end of the war.

We used the West Ham list in our previous account of the bomb, and could only identify four people (Gladys Blackman (aged 39), Wendy Blackman (aged 4), Abraham Ince (aged 76) and Edith Tilley (aged 41) killed in Dames Road on the day of the bomb.

Four, different, people, were identified by the Stratford Express on 4 August (Denis Barfield, Thomas Driscoll, Reginald Harold Hillman and William James Winter). Neither the Leytonstone nor the Walthamstow papers' news reports named anybody.

The Leyton Civilian War dead register, however, identified 28 deaths caused by the bomb. We provide an aggregated list of the 34 names we have been able to discover from these three sources, below. This, incidentally, is the number of dead identified by the Leytonstone Independent (see above).

Piecing together the story

According to local people, the bomb fell pretty close to the bus stop, on Dames Road, just the northern side of the Pevensey Road junction, and as can be shown in the photo, just inside what is, today, Waltham Forest.

It fell approximately where 127, Dames Road - now called Dames Road House - is located. Clearly all the houses surrounding this spot are post war, and built on the bomb site. New houses were built very soon after the war, and at least one local resident moved into her house in 1949, and has been there since!

Site of the V1 attack on Dames Road, today

As the accounts tell, the bomb fell in the early evening, as people were returning from work and the buses were busy.

Within minutes the war-time rescue services were at the site and at least some of their members may have been killed, in the rescue of the bomb victims, either cutting them out from the trolleybus or digging people out of the demolished houses.

Italian Prisoners of War from the near-by camp on Wanstead Flats were also soon on the scene bailing out victims of their own country's allies' bombings.

Within two hours the majority of the dead were dug and moved out and upto 40 injured were transported to Whipps Cross hospital.

The death toll was minimally 34, as reported by the Leytonstone Independent and verified by the details below. But may have risen to 41, as reported by the Walthamstow Guardian - or more.

The injury list is almost impossible to calculated, 73 years on, but press reports suggest that it was at least a further 24. So -upwards of 65 victims in this one night of horror on Dames Road, in July 1944.

The work of the rescue services was so efficient that Dames Road was cleared enough to allow a continuation of bus services along its length.

A quite remarkable story and feat!

Among the dead were four people whose houses probably took a direct hit, Dorothy and June Jarvis of 124 Dames Road and Reuben and Leah Newhouse of 117 Dames Road - see list below for full details.

There were seven other people killed who had lived in the immediate vicinity - presumably either waiting at the bus stop, waiting to alight, or just going about their daily business: Florence White, 109 Pevensey Road, Sarah Wightman, 68 Huddlestone Road, Alan John Neale, 61 Huddlestone Road, William Alfred Barton 69, Huddlestone Road, Herbert Smith, 107 Vansittart Road, Mary Mclaughlin 173 Dames Road and Frederick Ernest Wright, 211 Dames Road.

Four of those killed could well have been rescue workers, judging by the descriptions in the Civilian Dead lists (George Neal, an air raid warden, Reginald Hillman and air raid ambulance driver, Horace Presland from the Heavy Rescue Service and Bertie Sabine from the Home Guard).

So, of the 34 identified dead, 11 were from the immediate vicinity of the where the bomb dropped, four could well have been rescue workers, one was the driver (we do not know his name) and the other 18 were probably passengers, returning from work.

One family appears in both the Leyton and West Ham books - it is not clear why. The Blackman family lost three people - the most from any one family, as far as it is possible to see. Mother Gladys and daughter Wendy appear in the West Ham book, and daughter Jean in the Leyton book.

Of the four dead mentioned by the Stratford Express, only two, Thomas Driscoll and Dennis Barfield appear in one of the lists of civilian dead.

The identified dead from the Dames Road disaster

Cover of the CWGC publication listing
West Ham's WW11 civilian dead

Margaret Ball, aged 24 of 48 Albert Road, Silvertown. Daughter of Eugene and Elizabeth Hilda Gray of the same address and wife of L'Cpl Arthur John Ball, Royal Armoured Corps.

Dennis Barfield - no further details, but mentioned in Stratford Express Report - see above.

John Alfred Barnicoat, aged 39. Son of Mrs Barnicoat, 14 Clacton Road, Walthamstow.

William Alfred Barton, aged 36, of 69 Huddlestone Road, Forest Gate. Son of Mr WA Barton of 132 Sebert Road, Forest Gate.

William Albert Bell, aged 17. Son of Mr and Mrs WWF Bell of 183 Harrow Road, Leytonstone. Died in Whipps Cross Hospital of wounds suffered at Dames Road.

Gladys Blackman, aged 39, of 323 Billet Rd, Walthamstow. wife of AC1 William Blackman, RAF. Gladys, unlike her daughter, Jean, appears in the West Ham list and not the Leyton one.

Jean Edith Blackman, aged 10 of 323 Billet Rd, Walthamstow. Daughter of AC1 William Blackman, RAF, and of Gladys Blackman. Unlike her mother, Gladys, above, and her sister Wendy, below, Jean appeared in the Leyton list and not the West Ham one. The Leyton list mentions this.

Wendy Blackman (aged 4), of 323 Billet Rd, Walthamstow. Daughter of AC1 William Blackman, RAF and of Gladys Blackman. Wendy, unlike her sister, Jean, appears in the West Ham list and not the Leyton one.

Alan Bunt, aged 15. Son of Winifred M Bunt of 24 Kingsdown Road, Leytonstone and the late John Payne Bunt.

Dennis Butfield, aged 17. Son of Mr and Mrs CJ Butfield of 31 Pretoria Avenue, Walthamstow.

Ernest Edward Harry Chapman, aged 37. Son of Mr and Mrs Chapman of 76 Lynmouth Rd, husband of Laura Chapman of 91 Harrington Road, Walthamstow.

Thomas Driscoll - no further details, but mentioned in Stratford Express Report - see above.

William Albert Heard, aged 40, of 28 Tavistock Road, Forest Gate. Husband of May Lavinia Heard.

Reginald Harold Hillman, aged 37, ARP, Ambulance Driver. Son of the late Mr and Mrs SA Hillman; husband of EL Hillman of 79 South Esk Road, Forest Gate. (also mentioned in Stratford Express report - see below).

Abraham Ince, aged 76. Appears in West Ham but not on Leyton list.

Harry James Jackson, aged 43. Son of William Jackson of 124 Westfield Road, Caversham, Reading; husband of Anne Jackson of 20 Well Street, Hackney.

Evelyn Dorothy Jarvis, aged 14 of 124 Dames Road. Daughter of Mr and Mrs Robert H Jarvis, at 124 Dames Road.

June Irene Jarvis, aged 17, of 124 Dames Road. Daughter of Mr and Mrs Robert H Jarvis, at 124 Dames Road.

Mary Agnes Mclaughlin, aged 18, of 173 Dames Road. Daughter of Andrew and Agnes Mclaughlin.

George Stanley Thomas Neal, aged 51, ARP, of 47 South Esk Road, Forest Gate. Son of the late Mrs Hillman (formerly Neal) and the late I Neal.

Alan John Neale, aged 14. Son of Henry Nicholas and Lily E Neale, of 61 Huddlestone Road, Forest Gate.

Leah Rachel Newhouse, aged 51, of 117 Dames Road. Daughter of the late S and F Harris; wife of Maurice Newhouse, at 117 Dames Road.

Reuben Newhouse, aged 29, of 117 Dames Road. Son of Maurice and of Leah Rachel Newhouse, at 117 Dames Road.

William Henry Penfold, aged 63. Husband of Caroline Penfold of 67 Malvern Road, Leytonstone.

Horace Victor Presland, aged 27; Heavy Rescue Service. Son of Ernest and Elizabeth Presland of 79 Chester Road, Seven Kings; husband of Elizabeth Presland of 9 Manby Road.

Bertie William Sabine, aged 50, Home Guard, of 162 Chandos Road, West Ham.

Herbert Smith, aged 55. Husband of Mrs Smith of 107 Vansittart Road, Forest Gate.

Frederick Henry Stevens, aged 40. Husband of EM Stevens of 15a Priory Place, Well Street, Hackney.

Muriel Bertha Tampion, aged 15. Daughter of Mr and Mrs John Edward Tampion of 62 Cheney's Road, Leytonstone.

Edith Tilley, aged 41. Appears in West Ham but not on Leyton list.

Florence White, aged 40 of 109 Pevensey Road. Daughter of Joseph White. Died in Pevensey Road.

Sarah Wightman, aged 47, wife of Ernest Wightman of 68 Huddlestone Road, Forest Gate.

William James Winter, aged 48. Husband of Florence May Winter of 43 Dongola Road, Plaistow. (also mentioned in Stratford Express report - see below).

Frederick Ernest Wright, aged 32. Son of Frederick Edwin and Lillian Alice Wright of 211 Dames Road.

Footnotes. 1. The V! - flying bomb (Vergultungswaff) was also know a a buzz bomb or doodlebug. It was first launched in London in June 1944, in response to the Allied invasion of the European mainland. They were directed mainly at south-east England. The last one was launched in October 1944, when the Allies captured their last launching pad in Europe.

2. Cyril Demarne's book is entitled The London Blitz: A Fireman's Tale and was published by Newham Parent's Centre in 1980.

Copies may still be available from the Newham Bookshop.

Charles Mowbray (1856 - 1910) can lay claim to fame to be one of Forest Gate's most controversial political figures. He was an anarchist, who mixed with the Who's Who of the British political left in the last two decades of the nineteenth century and married the daughter of a Paris communard.

He was imprisoned for inciting riots and spent some time politically agitating in America, from where he was deported. He ended up in Forest Gate, with his third wife and children, working on Tariff Reform for the Tory party. This is his story.

Charles Wilfred Mowbray was born at Bishop Auckland, Co. Durham in late 1856 and as a young man served in the Durham Light Infantry. He worked most of his life as a tailor. He married Mary, with whom he had five children (Charles, John, Richard, Grace and Frederick) in 1878. Mary Mowbray turns out to be a minor political celebrity, being the daughter of the French Communist Joseph Benoit, who'd been active in both the 1848 revolution and the 1871 Paris Commune. She ended up with a huge funeral, locally at Manor Park cemetery - see later.

Charles Mowbray didn't leave much record of his first contacts with revolutionary ideas, although his obituary in the Shoreditch Observer in December 1910 sheds some light. It described him as:

Once a sinewy, athletic black-haired determined man with the blazing eyes of a fanatic and a tempestuous eloquence that stirred many an open-air meeting. He became a socialist nearly thirty years ago, and joined the Socialist League.

He read widely and moved to London, living in the notorious Boundary Street (the Old Nicol) slum in Whitechapel, in the 1880's. It is there his revolutionary politics began to flourish, as he came into contact with socialists, anarchists and communists living in the area, greatly politicised by many of the Jewish immigrants who had fled the pogroms in Russia and were determined to organise politically - from afar.

As his obituary mentions, he joined the Socialist League at its foundation in 1884 - the organisation most closely associated with Walthamstow-born William Morris - and he described himself as an "anarchist/communist". He became a prominent street corner speaker/political agitator, calling for rent strikes and fairer treatment of workers. He was popular with fellow tailors in the area, and has been called: "One of the greatest working class orators who ever spoke in public".

Walthamstow's William Morris, with
whom Mowbray joined political
forces with in the 1880's

When the police began to harass open-air meetings in 1885, he was one of those involved in a major agitation in Dod Street and Burdett Road in Limehouse in September of that year.

On 20 September, following this meeting, he was beaten by the police there and arrested for obstruction along with other speakers.

William Morris felt that Mowbray "had done the most" but he was set free. The publicity and outrage created by the arrests meant that 50,000 people turned out in support at Dod Street the following Sunday.

A court sketch of Mowbray,
at one of his trials

He was again arrested at a free speech rally in Trafalgar Square on 14 June 1886 and was fined £1 with costs.

Mowbray upped the rhetoric of his message. A poster advertising one of his meetings later that year had the following message:

MURDER! Workmen, why allow yourselves, your wives and children to be daily murdered by the foulness of the dens in which you are forced to live?

It is time the slow murder of the poor, who are poisoned by thousands in the foul unhealthy slums, from which robber landlords extract monstrous rents, was stopped.

You have paid rent the value over and over again of the rotten dens in which you are forced to dwell. Government has failed to help you.The time has come to help yourselves. PAY NO RENT. to land-thieves and house-farmers who flourish on your misery, starvation and degradation.

In 1886 he moved, briefly, to East Anglia, as Britain's first self-styled "anarchist-communist"

He organised a number of unemployed meetings in Norwich in 1886 and became secretary of the local Socialist League branch. He was arrested again on 14 January 1887 after the "Battle of Ham Run", when a bank was damaged and shops looted. For his part in this, he received nine months on the treadmill in Norwich Castle prison, for "riot with force, injuring buildings and assault".

1887 Norwich court records, showing
Mowbray sentenced to 9 months
hard labour for "Riot with force,
injuring buildings and assault"

Before the sentence he had been a passionate opponent of capitalism, but now he was consumed with hatred against it. He emerged from jail "gaunt, emaciated and embittered", talking wildly of dynamite and urging "Gatlings, hand grenades, strychnine and lead ... everywhere there are signs of bloody conflict which is about to take place between workers and their masters."

He took part in annual Paris Commune and Chicago Martyrs meetings, speaking with famous anarchists such as Peter Kropotkin, and Louise Michel.

In 1889 he was elected onto a tailors' strike committee of 17 in London. The three-week strike brought out both West End and East End tailors and was successful. Mowbray developed warm relations with Jewish workers in the East End, and often spoke at the anarchist Club in Berner Street, off of the Commercial Road.

Prince Peter Kropotkin, the famous Russian
anarchist - one of the many late 19th
century political radicals that
Mowbray shared a platform with.

Mowbray was now talking about dynamite and individual propaganda by deed.

In an 1890 article in Commonweal (the paper founded by William Morris) he wrote:

I feel confident that a few determined men…who are prepared to do or die in the attempt could paralyse the forces of our masters providing they were acquainted with the power which nineteenth century science has placed within their reach.

This sort of talk had been the final straw for Morris, who subsequently left the Socialist League, most associated with him and abandoned the Commonweal, which he had, to date largely funded and which most famously had first published his News from Nowhere, in serial form. Mowbray began to take a more active editorial role in the paper, which increasingly came to display anarchist leanings.

Mast head for The Commonweal, founded
and financed by William Morris, in which
Mowbray was to play a key role

In 1891 Mowbray was involved in intensive anti-militarist propaganda. His son, also Charles, had been imprisoned and discharged from the army for carrying out anti-militarist propaganda. Mowbray visited the barracks at Rochester, Colchester and Chatham, distributing thousands of leaflets and copies of Commonweal containing an Address to the Army.

Morris's News from Nowhere,
first published in the Commonweal

They reminded soldiers of their working class origins and urged them to refuse to fire on the people if ordered to do so. A No-Rent agitation was also carried on in the Boundary Street slum where Mowbray lived. He spoke alongside Louise Michel at the August tea party to keep the Jewish anarchist paper Arbeiter Fraint (Workers' Friend) going in 1892.

Later, after the Walsall Anarchist trial in 1892, the Commonweal editorialised Are These Men Fit To Live? referring to the Home Secretary and the policemen and judge who had been involved in arresting and sentencing the martyrs. Mowbray was not present at the editorial meeting where the article was written (he was nursing his dying wife) and would have vetoed its inclusion.

Nonetheless, he was arrested and charged with incitement to murder.
When the police came to arrest him, his wife Mary was dead of consumption, or TB, a few hours before, in a room upstairs. He was taken away and children left alone in the house with their dead mother. Mowbray was remanded in custody, and the judge reluctantly let him attend his wife's funeral he was put on bail, with surety of £500, provided by William Morris.

Annie Besant, the woman most associated with organising and publicising the plight of the Bryant and May Matchgirls/women of Bow in 1888 is said to have offered to take care of Mowbray's children after he was widowed. She may have done briefly, but In the event, he soon remarried (see below) and he and his second wife continued to bring them up.

Annie Besant, best known as
publicist/organiser for 1888 Matchgirls/women's
strike, offered to foster Mowbary's children
after the death of his first wife, Mary

Anarchists at the Berners Street Club took charge of the funeral and it became a show of defiance, with thousands marching in the cortege and 20 anarchist banners flying. It was a huge demonstration, complete with a brass band and anarchist songs sung in Yiddish, in the company of a single policeman.

One of the principal mourners was ex-Paris Communard Louise Michel (a station in the Paris Metro was named after here in 1937!), who, according to Wikipedia was an:

Important figure in the Paris Commune. She often used the pseudonym Clémence and was also known as the red virgin of Montmartre. Journalist, Brian Doherty has called her the "French grande dame of anarchy." Yale historian John Merriman said: "She embraced the cause of women's rights, proclaiming that one could not separate 'the caste of women from humanity".

Ex Paris Communard/anarchist,
Louise Michel, prominent in the
funeral procession of Mary
Mowbray, Charles' first wife.

The burial (with no religious ceremony) took place in Manor Park cemetery. The grave, sadly, has been subsequently built over.

The Commonweal's report on the funeral said, that for some years:

No such sight has been in East London as that which was witnessed last Saturday afternoon. Long before the time named for the procession to start large crowds of people lined Commercial Road and literally packed Berners Street from end to end.

Mowbray was finally acquitted at the Central Criminal Court on 2 May of "encouraging people to murder". In summer 1893 he and other anarchists were excluded from the Zurich Congress of the socialist Second International. They then held their own congress of protest.

Old Bailey records, showing Mowbray's
acquittal of "encouraging people to murder"

As a result, anarchists turned to agitation in the workplace. Mowbray wrote an article Trades Unionism and the Unemployed where he called for unity of employed and unemployed, an overtime ban, an eight hour day, the abolition of piecework, and a rejection of political lobbying.

In 1894 he, with others, attended scores of meetings in the East End, attended, according to the anarchist Freedom newspaper: "both Trade Union and unemployed, at which they have done a remarkable amount of good".

The Socialist League had finally disappeared in 1894. At around this time, Mowbray married for a second time, to Charlotte Smith, of Shadwell.

Mowbray then went on a speaking tour of the United States, and addressed many meetings on the East Coast, denouncing reformist trade unionism and calling for revolutionary action. The tour was highly successful, pulling in large crowds. But he was arrested in Philadelphia, charged with incitement to riot and sedition against the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.

Mowbray moved to Boston, where he started work as a tailor and he brought his family over in April 1895. He and Charlotte soon had a daughter, Mabel, in New York. He went on another speaking tour in summer 1895, speaking in St. Louis and Chicago, where police attacked the meetings.

He continued his intensive activity on the East Coast and was involved with the establishment of an anarchist-communist group in Boston. Mowbray became secretary of the Union Cooperative Society of Journeymen Tailors and orientated it in an anarchist direction. In 1895 Mowbray and Harry Kelly set up the paper The Rebel – a Monthly Journal devoted to the exposition of anarchist communism.

He continued his speaking tours, and brought out another anarchist paper with Kelly called The Match, only two issues of which appeared. A few months later he moved back to New York and then Hoboken (very much later, home to both Frank Sinatra and Bruce Springsteen!), on the opposite bank of the Hudson River, in New Jersey. Here he opened a saloon and developed a taste for heavy drinking.

He returned from the USA, arriving in Liverpool on 25 February 1900, on the Etruria, allegedly expelled because of his anarchist agitation in the country. By the time of the census, a year later, he was living, with his wife Charlotte and their children, inexplicably at 31 Eve Road Plaistow.

Eve Road, Plaistow today - no 31
was towards the end of the street and
has subsequently been demolished

In 1904 Mowbray was involved in the general strike activity propagated by Arbeter Fraint. He chaired a mass meeting at The Wonderland, Whitechapel where all 5,000 seats were taken and many had to be turned away. The Jewish Bakers Union came out for improved hours and working conditions.

Mowbray reappeared on the very local political scene in 1905, as the unemployment crisis in West Ham reached its height. Poverty in West Ham grew rapidly with the expanding population at the turn of the twentieth century, for a number of reasons.

Not only the docks, but also many of the increasing number of factories, particularly in and around Stratford, employed large number of casual workers, and any downturn in the economy had an immediate impact. The expansion of housing in West Ham also involved large numbers of casual workers, and as house-building began to tail off in the 1900s, many of these lost work.

The numbers receiving “indoor relief” (that is, in the workhouse) rose from just over 1,800 to over 3,500 in the decade between 1895 and 1905, while in the same period outdoor relief went up from 7,600 to over 16,000. After 1905 the numbers tailed off, partly because of a slight economic recovery, and partly because rules were tightened over who could receive poor relief.

Mowbray became chairman of the West Ham Unemployed Committee, with G.W. Shreeve as secretary. Throughout that summer Mowbray campaigned on behalf of the unemployed in the borough. In August he presented a petition to the chairman of the local magistrates, asking for sympathy in dealing with potential evictions of those who fell behind with their rent. The magistrate expressed sympathy, but declared that he ‘had no power to interfere with the ordinary course of the law’.

Mowbray’s own approach was ambivalent; to the police he declared that the unemployed would confine themselves to peaceful protest, but at a meeting of the unemployed at Stratford Town Hall his tone was rather different. ‘They had been told that if they used violence they would lose sympathy’ he declared. ‘They had been quiet – where was the sympathy?’ A voice called out, ‘there is none’, to which Mowbray replied, ‘they were nearly tired of begging for something’. (Essex Newsman 26 August 1905).

A heavy police presence at this and other meetings and demonstrations indicated that the nervousness of the authorities. Awareness of the revolutionary outbreak in Russia was strong, and one news report of a demonstration outside Stratford town hall in October 1905 described how ‘the brilliantly lit Broadway presented a strange spectacle, suggestive almost of an unquiet Russian town’. (Essex Newsman 8 April 1905).

Again there was a heavy police presence, but, despite the failure of Mowbray to persuade the Council to accept a petition for the initiation of public works, there was no trouble.

Mowbray was also active in local politics, and stood for election on at least two occasions. In April 1905 he and Shreeve stood for election to the Board of Guardians, who oversaw the operations of the local workhouse. Neither was elected for the Tidal Basin and Custom House ward, the poorest area among the parishes of the West Ham Poor Law Union.

One of those elected for the ward (representing the Independent Labour Party) was Minnie Baldock, the women’s suffrage activist who lived in Canning Town (see here for details of Minnie, who became organiser for Forest Gate suffragettes).

Minnie Baldock in 1908, two years
after defeating Mowbray in West
Ham Poor Law Union election

Already active amongst out-of–work women, in January 1906 Minnie Baldock was to become the first chairwoman of the newly-formed Unemployed Women of South West Ham, convened to put pressure on the local Distress Committee regarding the plight of local women without work. This division in the ranks of those representing the unemployed in the borough may indicate differing political goals, especially as the unemployed women were being urged at the time to join the campaign for the vote.

Unemployment was not a problem limited to east London, and in 1905 the Liberal government renewed the Unemployed Workmen Act, first passed by the Conservatives in 1903. The Act enabled Councils to establish Distress Committees to give grants to businesses or local authorities to enable them to hire more workers.

At a lively West Ham Council meeting in September 1905 it was agreed to establish a Distress Committee, though Labour members protested that the Act was simply a means of shelving government responsibility. Mowbray attended and spoke of the need for government action rather than continued charity handouts, and a motion was put forward for immediate cash for public works.

However, not all agreed that the unemployment problem in the borough was severe; a letter from the Forest Gate Ratepayers’ Association declared that there was an epidemic of spongers in West Ham, to which a Labour councillor responded by calling the Association’s members ‘a set of lying reptiles’. (Chelmsford Chronicle 22 September 1909) His refusal to withdraw the remark led to the meeting’s adjournment in confusion.

Mowbray continued to keep up the pressure on the Council and the workhouse Guardians with meetings and marches. In October 1905 he led a march of 1,000 to the West Ham Union workhouse (which was actually in Leytonstone, just north of Cann Hall Road). On arrival Mowbray pointed out that the Unemployed Workmen’s Act excluded from assistance any man who had received Poor Relief in the previous 12 months.

There were over 2,500 such cases in West Ham, and Mowbray asked for support for them from the parish, either in the workhouse or ‘outdoor relief’.

Confusion then arose when some of the men who had admittance orders for the workhouse went in, expecting the others to demand admittance also.

When nobody followed them it seemed that there would be trouble between the protestors, but Mowbray managed to persuade all of the marchers to leave peacefully.

Mowbray was right to draw attention to the shortcomings of the Act, which local officials also admitted meant that many in need were not being helped.

Discontent continued to grow in West Ham, and the following summer Mowbray was involved in a short-lived attempt by local unemployed to occupy and cultivate a piece of waste ground in Plaistow, an occupation which ended as quickly as it began.

His wife, Charlotte died in 1906, aged just 37. Mowbray very soon afterwards married, for a third time -to Eliza, who already had a Forest Gate-born daughter. The family then moved to Forest Gate - the reasons aren't clear, but it may have been to be closer to Eliza's family.

The address given for them is 15 Chestnut Grove. The street no longer exists under that name, but survives, renamed as Curwen Avenue, just off Woodgrange Road. Its name was changed, presumably to distinguish it from the much larger Chestnut Avenue, at the behest of either the Post Office or Fire Brigade. The new name is, of course, associated with the Forest Gate music teacher and innovator John Curwen (see here, for details).

Chestnut Grove in 1897 OS map,
where Curwen Avenue is today

In November 1906 Mowbray tried again to get elected, this time for the Council. He stood in Broadway ward, Stratford, but was again defeated. His lack of party affiliation may have worked against him, in a borough already dominated by two political coalitions, the Municipal Alliance, made up of ratepayers’ representatives, and the Labour party and their allies.

These failures to make any headway on behalf of the poor and unemployed in east London may have contributed to a shift in Mowbray’s political perspective from 1907. By the end of that year, Mowbray was travelling the country campaigning on behalf of a shadowy organisation called the ‘National Freedom Defence League’ against the government’s Licensing Bill.

The League claimed widespread trade union support, but socialist newspapers declared it a front for brewery companies.

A photo of Mowbray in his latter days (?).
This photo is from Ancestry, but there
is no independent verification of its provenance

Sarah Wise, in her book The Blackest Streets, describes Mowbray's Forest Gate days as:

Still active, still inflammatory, but seemingly to have abandoned anarchism altogether. Affected by the jingoism of these years, Mowbray embraced "Fair Trade", or "Tariff Reform" as a way of protecting the Englishman's income and employment prospects.

Tariff Reform was called Protectionism by its opponents and sought to limit .... Britain from the increasingly successful producers around the world."

Mowbray had come a long way from 'Workers of the World Unite'; the internationalism and fraternalism of his earlier political life had given way to fear of the foreigner and romanticism of the English labouring man. The speaking tours he undertook in his final years were funded by the Conservative Party enthusiasts of Tariff Reform.

He died in a hotel bedroom in Bridlington on Friday 9 December 1910, the night before he was due to urge locals to vote for the anti-socialist, anti-Irish Home Rule candidate at that week's general election. The sitting MP, Sir Luke White of the Liberal Party was also the local coroner and oversaw Mowbray's autopsy.

The strange journey of Charles Mowbray was one not unfamiliar for a number of radicals of the left over the years. Indeed, in reporting his death the Shoreditch Observer noted that a number of Socialists had joined the Tariff Reform movement; perhaps Mowbray believed that by ‘denouncing the causes he once advocated’, he could better protect the jobs of British workers.

Whatever the reason, it was an ignominious end for one of east London’s great firebrand leaders of the late nineteenth century.

15 Chestnut Grove/Curwen
Avenue, today

He was buried in West Ham cemetery. His grave, like his first wife, Mary's, has been subsequently been built over.

Footnote. This lengthy post was inspired by a casual question posed to the Twitter account of this blog. It set local historian, Mark Gorman, and this site's editor on an exciting journey to answer the simple question: Who was Charles Mowbray, and what of his local connection?

We publish this article as images of Arnold Schwarzenegger are about to feature prominently in a major UK government advertising campaign to persuade people to take up their rights for compensation for mis-sold PPI insurance.

To reach the top of your chosen profession - particularly in the USA - is some achievement. To do it in three very different disciplines (body-building, the movies and politics) is almost unheard of. To do it, with your professional and social skills being honed in Forest Gate, is unique.

We have written before about Arnold (the name by which he and those closest to him prefer him to be known as - we'll follow suit)Schwarzenegger and his Forest Gate connections: his training and stay with Dianne and Wag Bennett on Romford Road (here) and his gratitude to them and the area, expressed in his autobiography - see footnote for details (here).

Arnold and Wag Bennett, outside
the Bennett's home, at 353
Romford Road, in the late 1960's

This article looks at his on-going relationship and influence with the Bennett family who did so much to launch his careers.

It was a two-way street. Wag Bennett
used AS to promote his gym, products and
techniques, after his rise to fame, as illustrated
in the adverts, above and below -
taken from the Liberty Clinic

Arnold's journey is an interesting one - with very little formal education, he propelled himself from a small town in Austria to the world stage, driven by self-belief and hard work. These - and a capacity to innovate and inspire people - are characteristics he learned and developed in the home of the Bennetts of Forest Gate.

Arnold and Wag - after Schwarzenegger
had moved on to his second career

Arnold was effusive in his autobiography for the help Wag and Dianne Bennett gave him, in the mid 1960's, when he slept on their couches and floors as he honed his body-building skills.

He expressed his gratitude to the family not only for training him as a body-builder - but for providing the social skills that were to become so important in his two subsequent professional careers.

Wag Bennett (the unusual first name was an inherited, family one) was born in Canning Town in 1930 and brought up in the district during the war years. He used building rubble caused by German bombers as some of his first weight-lifting equipment.

He developed as a body builder, and had a business head on him. He married Dianne, who was from a Portsmouth, gym-owning, body-building family. She was famous in he own right, and trained and managed a troop called "Dianne Bennett's Glamour Girls", who performed as body-builders.

Wag opened his gym, originally in the house of the recently restored 335 Romford Road, before acquiring the Emmanuel church hall, next door, and using that as his operating base.

The pair spotted AS in 1966, as a rather gauche, poor, non-English speaking, recently demobbed Austrian army conscript. He was a 19-year old body builder who entered (and came second in) the Mr Universe competition. Wag was a judge, and the couple recognised his potential. They took him under their wings and became what Arnold calls "my English parents".

They brought him back to 335 Romford Road and looked after him - and their six children - for a couple of years - during which he achieved his then goal, of becoming Mr Universe, in 1967.

Dianne Bennett with three of her children
(Luke in the middle), in part of the world
the family introduced Arnold to, in 1966

Wag - who had already achieved fame in the weight-lifting/body-building world (he was the first man in England to bench-press 500lbs), introduced Arnold to some of the sport's finest - including AS's hero, Reg Park.

Part of Wag Bennett's board of fame (now in the
Liberty Clinic), of body-building characters
he introduced Schwarzenegger to.
NB - mis-spelling of Park

Reg, as Arnold was to do himself, had moved on from international championship winning body-building to movie stardom - in a string of movies based around Hercules. Reg then established a series of gyms, from which he was to make a good living. Schwarzenegger saw himself as following suit, but his career took another turning.

AS, with another of his body-building
role models - Reg Park

Having moved to the USA in the late 60's and picked up more body-building accolades, Arnold switched to the movies and became Hollywood's biggest box office star with his portrayal of The Terminator, in the 1980's.

Reg Park in a Hercules movie role:
an inspiration that took Arnie to Hollywood

It was about this time his thoughts turned to politics - and he married a Kennedy (they have subsequently divorced). But his politics were not that of the famous family. In the 1990's he began to work with the first President Bush and by the millennium was ready to make his own pitch for political power.

He was Republican governor of California from 2003 - 2011, but in many ways his politics sat equally comfortably with the Democrats. It was, perhaps, only the USA's constitutional insistence that its presidents had to be US-born that prevented AS from entering the White House in the top job (as fellow Hollywood actor, Ronald Regan had done before him).

AS wins the California governorship,
for a second time

Although the man reached giddy heights, he never forgot the part that the Bennett family and Forest Gate played in his rise to fame - and both proudly reciprocate the admiration.

For example, he recalls, in his memoirs, that the Bennetts made him improve his bodybuilding moves to music - mainly the film track from the movie, Exodus. Dianne Bennett, who meets with Arnold regularly (annual visits to California and meet-ups in London whenever he is in town), recently dug up her original copy of the long-player record and sent it to him, as a reminder, for his 70th birthday (at the end of this July).

A recent photo of Dianne, in her Southsea gym
- note image of Arnold from his Pumping
Iron film, behind her (Photo: Stefani Gratz)

Schwarzenegger also expressed gratitude in his autobiography to Dianne for reminding him of the importance of recognising and acknowledging the help given by supporters and well-wishers in his body-building career - social skills, so important in his second and third careers.

Dianne - now in her 80's - still runs her family's gym in Southsea, having separated from Wag in the 1990's (he died in 2008). It is, in many ways, a shrine to her former protégé, as shown by some of the photographs in this article.

A tribute to Schwarzenegger, in Dianne Bennett's
Southsea gym (photo: Stefani Gratz)

The AS connection is still maintained more locally, however, at the Liberty Clinic, 394 Romford Road, barely 300 metres from the former Bennett gym.

Luke Bennett's base, today -
The Liberty Clinic, 394 Romford Road

This has been run there for 30 years by Luke, the Bennett's fourth child, who has spent almost all of his life living and working on the road of his upbringing.

Luke is an osteopath, and is dedicated, as his parents were - to the care of the human body. His osteopathy works with damaged human tissue, and the small gym in the clinic is used to help people work on some of their physical and bodily needs.

Luke, lifting weights in his gym -
with more an eye to a healthy
body, than a "beautiful" one.

He was equally well at ease with a couple of older women who were using the gym, when we visited, as he was with a couple of former Forest Gate Community school youngsters (he has worked at the school as a personal trainer), in the relaxed, but disciplined environment of the clinic.

A motto for Luke's gym

It would be entirely wrong to describe his clinic/gym as a shrine to Wag and Arnold, but their presence and influence is there for all to see.

The Schwarzenegger memories linger,
in the Liberty Clinic - this and the images, below

A major difference between Luke and his parents' style and approach - perhaps - is that their efforts were dedicated to the body beautiful, while his is to the body healthy.

Luke's mission is to work with the body and its tissues to improve and repair themselves. So, no health supplements and additives here, but more than a passing endorsement of Voltaire's observations that:

The art of medicine consists in amusing the patient, while nature cures the disease

Footnote: Arnold's autobiography is: Total Recall - my unbelievably true story, by Arnold Schwarzenegger, with Peter Petre, published by Simon and Schuster, 2012.

London’s famous blue plaques link the people of the past with the buildings of the present. The scheme is now run by English Heritage (EH) and was started in 1866. It is thought to be the oldest of its kind in the world.

Before EH took over responsibility, it was run by three bodies in succession – the (Royal) Society of Arts, the London County Council and the Greater London Council.

To be awarded an official English Heritage plaque, the proposed recipient must have died at least twenty years previously. EH look to place the plaques on buildings that have survived and are associated with the person commemorated.

There are currently over 900 plaques across London, but only two in Newham (on a pro rata basis, it would be nearer 30).

Two existing, English Heritage Blue plaques in Newham

The Newham two are to: Stanley Holloway - the actor and humorist (1890 - 1982) - at 25 Albany Road, Manor Park, for Wiki entry, see here and Will Thorne - the trade union leader and former MP (1857 - 1946) - at 1 Lawrence Road, Plaistow, for wiki entry, see here.

Stanley Holloway
(1857 - 1946)

Stanley Holloway -
25 Albany Road, Manor Park

Will Thorne
(1857 - 1946)

Will Thorne - 1 Lawrence Road, Plaistow

Many local authorities, in London and outside, operate their own schemes to complement the English Heritage scheme.

Newham's own scheme

Newham Council launched its own heritage plaque scheme - with some panache - in October 2016, as part of the borough's inaugural Heritage Awareness Week.

The council announced its intention to erect "blue plaques for places that commemorate a link with people or a green one that highlights places and events of historical value". The scheme is designed to be less restrictive about how long the person it remembers lived there, or how long since they have died (if at all), than the national scheme.

Unfortunately, the Council only appears to have identified two appropriate locations in the year since - one in Ladysmith Avenue, East Ham, for former West Ham United manager Charlie Paynter (see here, for details), and the second in Montpelier Gardens - also East Ham - to commemorate Alan Beckett, who played a key engineering role in making the 1944 Normandy Landings a success (see here). None has been erected in the last nine months.

In the spirit of raising heritage awareness and a desire to see the scheme succeed, we hereby nominate 30 plaquesfor the Forest Gate area, to celebrate people and places in the area.

Below we provide details of 30 locations - split between the council's definitions of buildings suitable for blue plaques and those suitable for green ones. In the list that follows, we provide a photograph of the location, a brief description of the person or event associated with the building and a hyperlink to a more detailed article about the person or building, on this website.

Nominations will be considered by a heritage panel. If you have a suggestion for one in the Forest Gate area, contact:020 3373 0856 or email CN.Forestgate@newham.gov.uk

The list below has been sent to the heritage panel, and we will keep you posted on their deliberations!

Proposed Blue Plaques

Music

Imamia Mission, 328 Romford Road - home of John Curwen (1816 - 1890), founder and populariser of Tonic Sol Fa music teaching system. See here, for details.

John Curwen (1816 - 1890)

John Curwen -
328 Romford Road

385 Romford Road - childhood home of Ronnie Lane (1946 - 1997), bass guitarists of the Small Faces and Faces. See here, for details.

Ronnie Lane (1946 - 1997)

Ronnie Lane -
385 Romford Road

Gate by Percy Ingles, Woodgrange Road - Upper Cut Club - Jimi Hendrix (1942 - 1970) wrote Rolling Stone magazine's '4th greatest rock song of all time', Purple Haze while waiting to appear at the Upper Cut club, on 26 December 1966. See here, for details.

Jimi Hendrix, who
wrote Purple Haze
on Boxing Day 1966,
while waiting to appear
at the Woodgrange
Road, Upper Cut venue

Site of Upper Cut Club today,
on Woodgrange Road

Sport

335 Romford Road - Wag Bennett's gym and house . Temporary home (1966) to 'Mr Universe' , actor and American politician, Arnold Schwarzenegger (1947- ). See here, for details.

Arnold Schwarzenegger ( 1947 - ??)

Arnold Schwarzenegger
- 335 Romford Road

Clapton FC ground Upton Lane, (home of Clapton FC since 1888). Walter Tull (1888 - 1918), one of Britain's earliest and most successful footballers and later first black-British born army officer launched his football career here. See here, for details.

Clapton FC, Upton Lane,
where Walter Tull first
rose to football prominence

Walter Tull (1888 - 1918)
one of Britain's most
successful, early black
footballers and first black
commissioned officer
in British Army

Military

14 Sherrard Road - birthplace and childhood home of William Walter Busby (1891 - 1916), awarded the Military Cross for gallantry on the first day of the Battle of the Somme 1 July 1916, when he was killed. See here, for details.

William Walter
Busby MC
(1891 - 1916)

William Walter Busby
- 14 Sherrard Road

58 Claremont Road - birthplace of Lieutenant George Drewry (1884 - 1918) Awarded Victoria Cross for conspicuous acts of bravery during the Gallipoli landings, 1915. See here, for details.

George Drewry
(1884 - 1918)

George Drewry - 58 Claremont Road

Literature and entertainment

43 Cranmer Road - childhood home of British cinema great, Bryan Forbes (1926 - 2013). See here, for details.

Bryan Forbes (1926 - 2013)

Bryan Forbes -
43 Cranmer Road

Dacre Lodge, 49 Plashet Road- childhood home of celebrated lesbian author, Mary Renault (1905 - 1983). See here, for details.

Mary Renault (1905 - 1983)

Mary Renault - 49 Plashet Road

287 Upton Lane - childhood home of Dame Anna Neagle (1904 - 1984) - born Florence Marjorie Robertson. See here, for details.

Anna Neagle (1904 - 1984)

Anna Neagle - 287 Upton Lane

Politics

7 Sprowston Road - Home of Newham North West MP Tony Banks (1942 - 2006), later Lord Banks of Stratford. See here, for details.

Tony Banks (1942 - 2006)

Tony Banks -
7 Sprowston Road

15 Curwen Avenue- Home of Charles Mowbray, "anarchist-communist" and organiser of West Ham's unemployed in first decade of 20th century. See here, for details.

Charles Mowbray
(1857 - 1910)

Charles Mowbray -
15 Curwen Avenue

Misc

198 Romford- former home of Jane Yorke (1872 - 1953?), the last person convicted in England under the 1735 Witchcraft Act. See here, for details.

Jane Yorke (1872 - 1953?)
198 Romford Road

Red House, Upton Lane - Grade 11 Listed building and former home of George Tutill (1817 - 1887), Britain's most prominent trade union banner manufacturer. See here for details.

George Tutill's house - The Red
House, Upton Lane, today
a Catholic social club

George Tutill (1817 - 1887),
Britain's most prominent
trade union banner manufacturer

Cedar House, The Portway - residence of prisoner reformer, Elizabeth Fry (1780 -1845). See here, for details.

Elizabeth Fry (1780 - 1840)

Army House, the Portway -
on the site of Elizabeth Fry's
Cedar House residence

206 The Portway, site of home of Gustav Pagenstecher (1829 - 1916), the driving force behind the establishment of West Ham Park. See here, for details.

Gustav Pagenstecher -
206 The Portway

Gustav Pagenstecher
(1829 - 1916)

Gates of West Ham Park, Upton Lane - formerly Ham House and grounds and home to celebrated botanist John Forthergill (1712 - 1780) and philanthropist and local landowner, banker and philanthropist, Samuel Gurney (1766 - 1856). We will provide short biographies of these two men in future posts on this website.

John Fothergill - 1712 - 1780

Samuel Gurney - 1766 - 1856

John Fothergill and Samuel Gurney
- West Ham Park gates

Joseph Lister Court, Upton Lane - formerly Upton House and home of Lord Joseph Lister (1827 - 1912), father of modern antiseptic. See here, for details.

Joseph Lister (1827 - 1912)

Joseph Lister Court -
303 Upton Lane, on the site
of Joseph Lister's former home

Proposed Green Plaques

Music and entertainment

Cherubim and Seraphim church, Earlham Grove - site of Earlham Hall, home of Tonic Sol Fa music system (1897 - 1940's). See here, for details.

Tonic Sol Fa music system (1897 - 1940's)

Tonic Sol Fa music
system - Cherabim
and Seraphim church,
Earlham Grove

Poundland, Woodgrange Road - site of Lotus club (1962 - 2001). See here, for details.

A 1967 advert for
a Lotus Club gig

Poundland, Woodgrange Road
- site of Lotus Club

Superdrug, Romford Road - formerly Princess Alice pub, site of first ever Rock Against Racism (1976 - 1982) gig, 12 November 1976. See here, for details.

Rock Against Racism
(1976 - 1982)

Superdrug, Romford/
Woodgrange Road
junction - birthplace of
Rock Against Racism

302 Romford Road, today - site of Queen's Cinema, (According to Bryan Forbes : "The Westminster Abbey" - of local cinemas) Forest Gate, bombed 21 April 1941. See here, for details.

Queen's cinema, 'The
Westminster Abbey' of
local cinemas, Romford Road

302 Romford Road, today
- site of the former Queen's cinema

Historic buildings

Old Spotted Dog - Upton Lane, Newham's oldest secular building, dating back to c 1500. See here, for details.

Old Spotted Dog, today - site of
Newham's oldest secular building
- in a very poor, semi-derelict state

Pawnbrokers' Almshouses, Woodgrange Road (1849 - 1897). See here, for details.

Pawnbrokers' Almshouses
(1849 - 1897), Woodgrange Road

By co-incidence, a
pawnbroker's shop partially occupies the old almshouses, today, on Woodgrange Road

Adler Court, Earlham Grove - site of West Ham synagogue (1911 - 2004), once the largest in Essex. See here, for details.

West Ham synagogue (1911 - 2004),
Earlham Grove

Adler Court, Earlham
Grove, today - on
the site of the former
West Ham synagogue

Gladys Dimson House, Forest Lane - site of Forest Gate Industrial school, scene of tragic death of 26 pupils on 1 January 1890, and later Newham Maternity hospital. See here, for details.

Gladys Dimson House today - site of 1890 fire
at Forest Gate Industrial school, killing 26 pupils

Trebor Factory, Katherine Road, Confectionery maker - Forest Gate's most successful factory, (1907 - 1981). See here, for details.

311 Katherine Road, site of the old
Trebor confectionery factory (1907 - 1981)
- now loft apartments

Woodgrange Pharmacy, Woodgrange Road - site of Eagle and Child pub and approximate location of the Forest Gate, from which the area takes its name. See here, for details.

Woodgrange Pharmacy on
site of the old Eagle and
Child pub, which itself
was close to the old Forest Gate

The Forest Gate, from which the
area takes its name, c 1850

E&S Superstore, Woodgrange Road - site of Forest Gate's first chapel and school (1830 - 1874), and later Reform club, cinema and a range of retail outlets. See here, for details.

Forest Gate's first chapel and
school (1830 - 1874) at junction
of Woodgrange Road and
Forest Lane

Modern use of the former chapel
and school on Woodgrange Road, today

Forest Glen pub - Dames Road. Early 20th century headquarters of Forest Gate Cycling Club, active at a peak time in the history of recreational cycling, and when Forest Gate boasted 14 bike manufacturers. See here and here for details.

Forest Glen pub - home of
early 20th century Forest
Gate Cycling Club

Forest Gate Cycling Club,
sign from approx 1897

This is the second of two posts, celebrating St Bonaventure's school 140th anniversary. The first, here, looks at the first 75 years of the school's history.

This article features some of the school's prominent former pupils. We are entirely dependent on the school's website for the list of names (see here), although have supplemented these by other details, and in a number of cases, photos from other sources.

The list is selective, but impressive - a testimony to the fine work done by the school.

Sport

Peter Bakare

B 1989. British Olympian. Represented Team GB in Men's Volleyball team in London 2012.

John Chiedozie

b 1960. Footballer. Born in Nigeria. Played for Leyton Orient and signed for a massive £600k for then English First Division team Notts County. Played 110 times and scored 15 goals. Moved to Spurs in 1984, where he spent 4 years, played 53 times and scored 12 goals. Replaced in the team by Chris Waddle.

Patrick Diai

B 1990. Twice university boxing champion - 2010 and 2012. Graduated in Electronic and Computing engineering from Brunel University.

Jermain Defoe

B 1982. Footballer. Started with Charlton; later played for West Ham, Spurs, Portsmouth, Toronto and Sunderland. Currently with Bournemouth. Played 57 times for England, for whom he has scored 20 goals. Currently well known for befriending terminally ill and recently deceased Sunderland fan Bradley Lowery.

Anthony Edgar

B 1990. Footballer. Cousin of Jermain Defoe. Spent youth at West Ham and has played for Dagenham and Redbridge, Yeovil, Bournemouth and Barnet.

Clayton Fortune

B 1982. Footballer. Played for Spurs, Bristol City, Port Vale and Leyton Orient.

Chris Hughton

B 1958. Footballer/Manager. Full back with Spurs, winning FA Cup twice and Uefa Cup once. International career with Irish Republic with 53 caps. Latterly manager, with spells with Newcastle, Birmingham, and Norwich. Currently Manage of Brighton HA.

Terry Lawless

B 1933, d 2009. Boxing trainer and manager. Based at Royal Oak in Canning Town and responsible for careers of Frank Bruno, Charlie Magri, Jim Watt, Joe Clazaghe and Gary Mason.

Martin Ling

B 1966. Football player and manager. Played for, among others, Brighton and Leyton Orient. Has managed Leyton Orient, Torquay and Swindon Town.

Andre Thomas

B 1989. Until very recently, assistant manager at Clapton FC.

Entertainment

Lance Agyepong - 'Gracious K'

B 1988. Local Grime artist, best known for 'Migraine Skank'. Cousin of Dizzee Rascal.

Charles Babalola

B 1990. Actor. Graduated from London Academy of Music and Dramatic Arts. Best known for appearances in The Legend of Tarzan (2016), State Zero (2015), and Mission Impossible - Rogue Nation (2015).

Junior Busia

B 1993. Music producer. Known as Jay Vade.

Nana-Kofi Busia

B 1989. Music producer. Known as Dr Kane. With younger brother, junior (above) - they form the Dr Vades.

Ted Childs OBE

B 1934. TV and film producer. Between 1970's and 1990's responsible for a host of hit TV programmes, including: The Sweeny, Minder, Sharpe, Soldier, Soldier, Inspector Morse, Lewis and Kavanagh QC.

Kwasi Danquah

B 1986. Musician. Better known as Tinchy Stryder.

Darren Hart

Theatre, TV and film actor. A regular on CBeebies and at local theatres, Hackney Empire and Theatre Royal Stratford.

John Junkin

B 1930, d 2006. Actor, playwright, comedian. Started career with Joan Littlewood's Theatre Workshop in Stratford. TV regular from 1960's - 1990's.

Denis King

B 1939. Musician and composer. Part of 50's favourites, The King Brothers. Latterly responsible for many iconic TV theme tunes. Double Ivor Novello winning composer, for themes for Black Beauty and Privates on Parade.

Gregor Mapfumo

B 1988. Songwriter/performer. Known as Terry Trill.

Stephen Mulhern

B 1977. Magician, performer, presenter. Youngest person to be admitted to Magic Circle. Now TV performer and presenter on shows such as Catchphrase and Britain's Got More Talent.

Glen Murphy MBE

B 1957. Actor and charity worker. Throughout the 1980's and 1990's was a regular on many British TV shows and films, including - most famously - London's Burning. Awarded MBE in 2010 for charity work.

Steve-John Shepherd

B 1973. Actor. A wide range of TV and film roles. Best known for his part in East Enders.

Johnathan Woodhouse

B 1987. Actor, director, producer. Starred in The Lady, in which he played the son of Burmese freedom fighter and current First State Counsellor of the country, Aung Sun Suu Kyi.

Science and industry

Dr Steve Acquah

B 1980. Scientist. Established Geosat (Global Education Outreach for Science Engineering and Technology) with Nobel prize winner Sir Harry Kroto.

Tim Campbell MBE

B 1979. Businessman and entrepreneur. First winner of TV's The Apprentice. Chair of board of St Bon's governors.

Sir Edward Fennessy

B 1912, d 2009. Electronic innovator. Influential figure in development of RADAR, to detect WW2 German bombers. Post war became deputy chair of the GPO, with responsibility for encouraging the development of telephones in the home.

Dr Behrad Gholipour

B 1986. Nanotechnologist. Led a team that created new glass materials that have greatly increased the speed of computers.

Gordon Tucker

B 1968. Solicitor. Founder and managing director of GT Law.

Public service

Sir David Amess

B 1952. Conservative MP for Southend West. Knighted in 2015.

Gareth Bebb

B 1985. BBC news producer.

Voltaire Taiwo De Campos

B 1996. Peace campaigner. Presented Compassion Award by the Dalai Lama.

David Christie

B 1984. Labour councillor for Beckton, LBN.

Sit Peter Fahy

B 1959. Chief Constable Greater Manchester.

Desmond FitzGerald

B1888, d1947. Irish nationalist and father of former Irish PM, Garret FitzGerald. For more on his Forest Gate connection, see here.

Greg Kelly

B 1975. Sinn Fein councillor, Dublin city.

Terry Paul

Newham Councillor - Startford and Newtown. Mayoral advisor on Housing.

This article is by Peter Williams who did empty property work for Newham Council in the mid 1980s, bringing private homes back into use, often through threatening Compulsory Purchase Orders (CPOs). It provides fascinating insight into one small part of the housing crisis this country, and Newham in particular is facing - and the huge hurdles to be overcome in bringing neglected, but basically sound, empty housing back into use.

Much of the information above is drawn from public sources such as London Fire Brigade reports, the Newham planning website, Newham's landlord licensing public register, High Court law reports, the Land Registry, Newham FOI disclosure log 2015 and council committee reports. Neighbours also assisted. The photos were taken by the author as part of the monitoring of the building work.

One of the mysteries of the housing crisis is why people who own houses in expensive areas leave them empty for years and years.

There are many different reasons no doubt: disputes within families over inheritance, people developing mental health conditions. Some speculators who know that even if a house is derelict and deteriorating it is still making money is a buoyant market, some landlords fear what their tenants might do to a property. Some properties in a larger portfolio just seem to get lost and forgotten about among them.

This article tells the story of one such house in Forest Gate, 23 Earlham Grove.

Those who have lived in the area for years may remember a house painted blue in very poor condition with an old car in the front garden rotting away over years and years. The house was occupied by an elderly Afro Caribbean man called Mr Pearson for many years.

When he died the authorities discovered that he hadn't paid an electricity bill since 1971 and had wired his house to the grid via the street lamp outside! He was a loner and kept himself to himself, not answering the door for anyone. He died alone in the mid 2000s and the house then lay empty for years.

On 20th December 2011 there was a serious fire attended by four fire engines and around 20 firefighters. The ground floor, as well as the staircase leading to the first floor, were completely gutted by the fire. The first floor and the roof were also badly damaged. There were no reports of any injuries. The Fire Brigade was called at 03.47 a.m. and the fire was probably stared by a set of squatters the sleeping rough in the property.

23 Earlham Grove November 2013.
The damage caused to the roof by the
fire two years before is obvious, and the
fire brigade had it partially boarded up.
However the front is completely unfenced
and the front garden is full of rubbish.
The council eventually cleared some of this.

It may come as a surprise to learn that Newham Council had one of largest programmes in the country of pursuing CPOs against empty private sector homes. In the 2000's Newham won some funding from Ken Livingstone’s GLA to begin a systematic programme of tackling private sector empty homes.

A dedicated Empty Property officer was employed and eventually about 100 separate properties were subject to CPO action. The council used powers in s17 of the 1985 Housing Act to seek to acquire a house that could be returned to residential use and meet local housing need.

Contrary to public myth, vacancy levels are far higher in private sector properties than in public sector. It is estimated in total there are 60,000 dwellings vacant in London and 600,000 in England.

The council is able to use various databases such as the Land Registry (which is a public document) to identify absent owners and in the case of 23 Earlham the owner was located and contacted. However, he seemed very reluctant to do anything and said he did not have the money to refurbish it.

The council pursued the CPO further and a public local inquiry was held on 8 January 2014 before of a government inspector. He was convinced by the council’s case and approved the CPO. Still little happened at the property until eventually the owner agreed, after much hassling by the council, to start work.

In mid 2014 contractors appeared on site and there was a skip outside, as shown below:

June 2014 note skip when
rubbish was being cleared away.

The council monitored the activity, but the work proceeded terribly slowly, with the builder disappearing for long periods. The council continued with the CPO proceedings and eventually the owner made a promise that he would finish the work.

In September 2014 there was a planning application: “for reinstatement of fire damaged dwelling and conversion into 2 x 3-bedroom apartments and a proposed light-well to the front to provide a separate entrance into flat A”.

The applicant was a Mr T Peart, a company director of Leighton Buzzard in Bedfordshire. The following drawing is taken from the planning documents which are online and public:

October 2014 no work in progress just
fenced presumably waiting for planning approval

Work went on slowly during 2015 and all work was eventually completed in spring 2016.

Occupants finally moved in later in 2016 and the council had achieved its objective. It had not had to take the property into public ownership but the owner had done the work but only after considerable pressure exerted through the CPO process over several years. There was one fewer derelict property blighting the borough.

Mid 2017. The property now has a licence
as a private rented dwelling licencee
Mr Terry Peart. In Newham every private
landlord must have a licence to operate
and there is a public register online.

It transpires that this is not the first Forest Gate property owned by Mr Peart that the council has made a CPO against. There was another one in the early 2000's but in that case the CPO went through to completion, the council acquiring the house and it ended up sold to a not for profit housing association who refurbished it.

At the public enquiry Mr Peart admitted he was using the proceeds from the forced sale to the council of this first property to fund works to Earlham Grove.

With shifting priorities and cuts to public expenditure since 2010 there is no longer a programme in Newham to tackle empty private sector homes. The very last Newham CPO property on Capel Road remains partly derelict and scaffolded with, again, the owners being very slow to carry out work - having made a start. Presumably pressure will have to be continually exerted on the owner as at Earlham Grove, or else the CPO completed and the property purchased by the council.

References: http://www.emptyhomes.com/

This is the first article in an occasional series about how significant members of various immigrant groups first found their way to Forest Gate, and made an impact here, for both the newcomers and the host community.

Forest Gate has been significantly defined by various waves of immigration and major figures within those communities have played a huge part in shaping the local district and its culture.

Often the early pioneers of the incoming communities have remarkable stories to tell of their journey to Forest Gate. The determination and single-mindedness that brought them here has frequently been maintained as they helped their compatriot incomers establish their roots and contribute to the local community.

Danuta, proudly in uniform, at a
recent Remembrance Day ceremony

The now-92 year-old Danuta Gradosielska was a leading light in the immediate post WW2 wave of Polish immigration to Forest Gate. This is her story.

She was born Danuta Maczka on 21 March 1925 in Wolyn, Poland, in a large settlement given to and shared with ex-WW1 Polish soldiers. About 130 soldiers were awarded plots of land and encouraged to develop their own settlement and make a living for their families there.

Danuta, bottom right, c 1930,
with her parents and siblings

Danuta says: "Life was very difficult and primitive in the first years, but the settlers worked hard together and the settlement developed and prospered."

The family built its own house - with help from friends in the settlement - and kept a range of farm animals and grew crops, like sugar and tobacco.

By 1937 the Gradosielska family of two adults and four children had prospered well enough to move into a new, large brick-built house (see photo). Later - during WW2 - this was to become the only building in the community that was not destroyed in the conflict - and still survives today (see below).

Danuta's house in Wolyn - still standing today -
as it was in 1985, during her visit there

Danuta learned the community-building skills that she and her husband deployed in Forest Gate in this Wolyn district. The settlers there built a community centre and a huge catholic church, a school, a post office and various buildings for the co-op farmers, youth and other social organisations - so the inhabitants could enjoy a full life.

When war broke out in September 1939, the Germans attacked Poland from the west and 17 days later the Soviet Union moved in from the east, supposedly to help the Poles defend themselves. Danuta remembers Russian tanks passing through their settlement (osada) on the first day of Soviet mobilisation.

The Russian invasion came as a shock. There was no communication with the local community, and the Russian police took over the administration of the district. Wolyn was soon annexed into the Soviet republic of the Ukraine - where it remains today.

The police held families in the community at gun point, while they search all properties and took what they wanted "for re-distribution".

Danuta was now aged 14 and her school was taken over by the Russians, who also stripped the area of religious icons and symbols.

The family was ordered out of their home the following month, with only the most limited of possessions. The house was commandeered by the Russians. They were then forced to rent accommodation in near-by Tuczn.

In February 1940 they were deported to Siberia, 72 people in an over-crowded freight railway - with no window or seats - in what would generally be described now as a cattle truck. The journey took almost three weeks. They encountered temperatures of -40 C, when they arrived, and were packed into a barrack room with almost 200 other deportees.

The men were set to work as lumberjacks in the forest and women were expected to undertake ancillary jobs. Soon after Danuta's 15th birthday, the family was decanted into a smaller, much better, hut with only 16 occupants. They shared bunk beds, no longer having to sleep on the floor.

As a 15-year old, Danuta was sent to the back-breaking work of clearing snow from railway lines, in massively sub-zero temperatures, for poor rates of pay. The family moved work camp once more, into slightly better accommodation, with a small plot of land on which they grew much-needed vegetables, for their own consumption.

When the Soviet/German war began in June 1941, the deportees were give "an amnesty", but were unable to leave Siberia for three months, and given minimal food rations and provisions during that time. Danuta then began a six-week journey to freedom in Uzbekistan.

As a 16-year old, she lied about her age and joined the newly-forming Polish Army - lead by General Anders. She was initially deployed on guard duties, but was to spend much of the next four years on the move, as part of the army's transport company - delivering supplies, food and ammunition to Polish troops, in different theatres of war, mostly during the Italian Campaign.

Danuta's war time journey
- then onwards to Britain

At her first major stop - Teheran, she contracted a bad case of typhoid and was out of action, and near death's door for almost four months. On recovery, she was on the move again, with the Transport company, to Baghdad, then Palestine and Cairo.

Danuta in Teheran, 1942,
recovering from typhoid

By May 1944 she was participating in the Italian campaign, aged 18, supplying food and ammunition to the allies. She stayed in the country for over two years. Three months after the conclusion of the war, she married Lt Jerzy Gradosielska whom she had met in the final days of the conflict, in Italy.

Danuta in Jerusalem in 1945

Two years later she was in Wales as a refugee at a re-settlement camp, where she learned English, and completed her war-interrupted education. Once again she experience community building in practice, as the Polish refugees set to work building a chapel and other social institutions in the camp in which she lived with her husband.

The newly-weds, Danuta and Jerzy

Elizabeth (who has transcribed and edited Danuta's story - upon which this post is based) was the Gradosielska's first child, born in Wrexham in 1948. A year later the family moved to London. Their first house was in Dames Road, Forest Gate, which had few amenities when they moved in. They set about refurbishing and modernising the house, until a decade later when the expanding family moved to near-by Spowston Road, where Danuta still lives today.

Danuta's house in Spowston Road today

In that decade Danuta improved her English and understanding of local culture via the BBC radio's Home Service. She and her husband Jerzy combined these newly acquired skills and combined them with the community-building experiences they had encountered at earlier periods of their lives. And so, they began to help establish sustainable Polish organisations for their fellow country folk, in Forest Gate (see here for an article on the first Polish community in Forest Gate).

The couple helped to establish a Saturday-morning Polish school, at St Anthony's church, to teach the language and help preserve and promote the culture for the ex-pats in East London. Danuta helped organise a large number of other community-supporting activities and was even a member of the Polish Government-in-exile for a number of years.

She worked for the British Refugee Council in helping the second wave of Polish immigrants to settle into East London in the 1990's and for over a decade was employed as a translator/interpreter by Newham Council.

Danuta with ex-Polish Prime Minister
and now President of the European Union,
Donald Tusk (far right), and Prince Harry,
immediately behind her at a remembrance
ceremony in Monte Cassino, Italy in 2012

In her "spare time", Danuta has brought up six children in England and had an opportunity to visit the former family home - still in the Ukraine. She has represented the Polish women's auxiliary armed forces in delegations to Poland, Italy and Iran and featured in an Italian exhibition about the role of women drivers in WW2.

Danuta's visit, as part of a delegation to
Tehran in 2012, recalling her time
there as part of the Polish army

Aged 92, Danuta continues to live in Sprowston Road. She has been a member of the Conservative Party for many years, having stood - unsuccessfully - as a candidate for the council on four occasions. Her husband Jerzy died in 1989, but she continues to be comforted by her large family of six children, 11 grandchildren and four great grandchildren.

Danuta's has, indeed, been a full and varied life. Her contribution towards "capacity building" within the local Polish community is legendary - much learned from her earlier experiences in her home settlement and in the various "deportee" and "refugee" camps within which she has lived.

Danuta, surrounded by her large family,
in 2009

Her role has been invaluable within the local Polish community, which has helped many of its members with both assimilation into UK society and preserving and celebrating their own Polish national culture. There are other significant characters, like Danuta, from other migrant communities in Forest Gate, whose stories we will endeavour to record in future posts.

Footnote: This article is a summary based on a great autobiography, prepared by Danuta's daughter, Elzunia Gradosielska Olsson, to celebrate Danuta's 90th birthday, to whom we are most grateful for its content, including photographs.

Meticulous work by Private Eye and friends has tracked down over 100,000 properties in the UK owned by companies based in overseas tax havens - usually for tax avoidance purposes.

This pattern of property ownership is, of course, well-known in such up market areas as Mayfair and Knightsbridge.

More surprisingly, perhaps, the tentacles of the trend are beginning to stretch into Forest Gate.

Using Private Eye's detailed, inter-active map (see here) we have located more than 20 such properties in E7, and provide details of them and their "owners" in the article and photos, below. We would put a conservative estimate of their collective value today of around £20 million.

Readers may be able to offer further details about these properties and the people behind them, about which, we and Private Eye would be delighted to hear.

Below is a list of all local properties registered in overseas tax havens between 2005 and 2014, with, in some cases, details of the purchase price recorded at the time of registration.

The tax advantages gained by foreign registered company ownership include the avoidance of Capital Gains Tax (usually 28%, after allowances) and Stamp Duty (rates varies according to price) on their sale and purchase (though there has been a recent attempt to tighten up on the latter) and the ability to pass the properties on, without incurring Inheritance Tax (40% after allowances), on death.

The sums saved can, of course, be huge, depending on the values of the properties in question.

The fact that the companies owning the properties listed below are registered overseas means that little can be established about their ultimate owners, or beneficiaries. They may be UK citizens who prefer to spend their money on hiring the services of expensive lawyers and accountants to arrange their tax avoidance affairs, than to pay tax, and thus contribute to public services.

They may be genuine foreign nationals, with diverse assets portfolios, or they could be people with dubious records to hide (money launderers, drugs dealers, criminals or kleptocrats).

The British exchequer looses £ billions, annually, by the kind of tax avoidance practiced by many of the foreign companies listed below, and their ilk. It is unlikely that the present government will do too much to curtail the practices for as long as the Conservative party is recipient of donations from many of the beneficiaries of such schemes.

About half the properties listed are simple domestic houses. Given property inflation, tax savings from foreign registration could exceed £30,000 p.a. per property - as shown in a couple of examples.

There are a second set of properties which are, broadly, obviously commercial.

They constitute a mixed bunch, from a fairly prestigious office block, through some industrial property to some rather strange clusters of land, which could, at some stage, be used for a lucrative residential or commercial development.

The final property, to which we draw attention is a former pub, which has been converted into nine flats, with a supermarket attached. According to the "owning" company's declaration, that has probably increased in value by about £2,000,000 since registered - saving the owner (depriving public services) of about £500,000 should it be sold, today.

The fate of that former pub is becoming increasingly common these days, and the money to be saved from tax-haven registration of the developments are considerable.

Iconic office building - City Gate

City Gate - Romford Road

The City Gate building (above) on Romford Road (246 - 250) was registered as being owned by BCP City Gate, based in the Isle of Man, on 8 July 2005, with a value of £3,658,840.

Residential property

These are listed in alphabetical order of the names of their streets.

50 - 50d Avenue Road

Five separate properties
registered here - at
50 - 50d Avenue Road

Five properties, all at this address were registered as being owned by Dominion Ltd, Isle of Man in May and June 2012. They were number 50 (no price recorded), 50a (£192,000), 50b (£158,900), 50c (£204,275) and 50d (£122,650).

45 Chaucer Road

45 Chaucer Road

This house was registered to the ownership of Yaas Investments, in the Isle of Man, in September 2012, with a value of £285,000. This company was also registered as owner of nearby 314 Cann Hall Road, in July 2013, with a value of £800,000.

10 Crosby Road

10 Crosby Road

This terraced house was registered as being owned by Balinara, incorporated in Guernsey, with a value of £247,750, in June 2011.

113 Earlham Grove

113 Earlham Grove

This property was registered as owned by Gibraltar based Northern Trading in August 2004, for a value of £750,000.

27 Knighton Road

27 Knighton Road

This house was registered as owned by Tarleton Investments, based in the British Virgin Islands in April 2005. No details of the purchase price are logged with the Land Registry.

1 - 12 Sycamore Court - Romford Road

1 - 12 Sycamore Court, Romford Road

This is a small 12-unit residential block, which was registered as being owned by Almond Land, in Guernsey. For reasons that are not altogether clear, it was listeded as costing £20,648 - which represents less than 1% of its current value. If it were sold today, the Capital Gains Tax saved would be in excess of £500,000.

23b South Esk Road

23b South Esk Road

This flat was registered as being owned by Exel Venture in Guernsey in November 2013, with a value of £134,500. It is worth nearer £200,000 today - meaning a potential Capital Gains Tax saving of approximately £25,000.

115 Trumpington Road

115 Trumpington Road

This two-bedroom property has recently been sold for £400,000, after a major refurbishment. It was previously registered, in September 2007, as being owned by Charming Properties, based in Jersey. A considerable capital gain will have been made - and no tax paid on it.

133 and 137 Upton Lane

133 Upton Lane

137 Upton Lane

These two neighbouring properties have been listed as being owned by British Virgin Islands based compan, DAS Properties. 133 was registered in March 2005, with a value of £165,00 and 137 in 2007, with a value of £250,000.

Commercial and industrial properties

Land

There are three plots of land in and around Romford Road, almost adjacent to the City Gate office block (see above), all owned by a St Vincent and Grenadines company called Loesch.

One is described as "land adjoining 286 Romford Road", and was registered to the company in March 2007.

Land adjoining
286 Romford Road

A second property is described as "land adjoining 8 Nursery Lane". Nursery Lane is a long and uninviting alleyway, just behind Romford Road, off Upton Lane. The land value was registered with a value of £110,000 in 2008.

Land adjoining 8 Nursery Lane

The third piece in that area is 10 Nursery Lane, registered with the company to a value of £75,000 in 2007.

10 Nursery Lane

These three pieces of land will probably be joined up and form the footprint of a significant commercial or residential development at some time in the future. The capital gain from these seemingly valueless chunks of land will, then, be considerable - all tax free, of course.

Restaurant - 99 Green Street

99 Green Street

This Asian restaurant was registered to Cranbrook Properties in the British Virgin Islands in 2012, to a value of £500,000.

Sherrard Works

Two views of Sherrard Works

This is a large, antiquated industrial property, running behind the restaurant, above, with a side entrance into Sherrard Road. It, too, was registered to a British Virgin Islands Company, in 2012 - Sherrard Works Ltd - with a value of £1,500,000.

The footprint of these two properties is very large and could form the basis, planning permission dependent, of a considerable residential development - with a large value and consequential tax-free capital gain.

The big one: 326 - 330 Katherine Road

326 - 330 Katherine Road

This former pub site has been developed into a unit of 9 flats, with a Tesco Local occupying the ground floor. It is typical of the fate of many former large, corner, Victorian pubs.

It was registered to the ownership of a British Virgin Islands based company in 2013, with a value of £870,000.

The nine flats could now be sold for in the region of £2.5m, and the Tesco's could probably command an annual rent of £30,000.

Not a bad, tax-free, return for those behind the company with its very British sounding name - Irlam Properties Ltd.

The facts relating to the tax-haven ownership of each of the properties highlighted above is indisputable. Some of the speculation about levels of tax-free capital gains and tax avoidance may be challenged by the overseas owners. If so, we would be delighted to hear from them, and would welcome the opportunity to set the record straight.

As it is, in the absence of information about the beneficial owners, it has been difficult to contact them for clarification about their motives and financial benefits.

The Land Registry has recently made public details of foreign-owned UK properties - many of them held by companies in tax havens, where the ultimate owners can hide behind the anonymity that looser company registration regulations in those territories permit.

An interrogation of the Registry data base has thrown up details of 22 sets of properties in Forest Gate. In September 2015 we covered a number of them covered in a data base put together on behalf of Private Eye - now relocated immediately under this article..

The Land Registry records have thrown up 14 new sets of properties in E7, listed below. These include The Gate library, the Iceland supermarket, a care home, a private school and a number of premises sub-divided into flats.

This article also updates details of nine property portfolios covered in our previous article. Seven additional properties from the earlier article are not detailed in the Land Registry list - suggesting that they may have been sold over the last two years - these too are also referred to. The company owning the most significant one - City Gate House on Romford Road - has fallen into liquidation since the earlier blog - see below.

It should be said at the outset that it is not illegal for a UK citizen to transfer property to an overseas company, and there is probably nothing unlawful about anything that is covered below. But, this simply illustrates how weak British company and taxation laws are - as highlighted by many of the revelations emerging from the recent so called 'Paradise Papers' leaks.

While successive governments have claimed to be clamping down on tax avoidance, in order to collect sufficient funds to pay for much needed public services, almost nothing has been done to close this huge loophole. People with substantial assets, or property holdings, are able to set up companies in tax havens and transfer their assets to them. In doing so, they can easily avoid paying the level of taxes to the UK government that they would need to, were they registered in the UK.

And herein lies a basic hypocrisy. These companies, depending on how they are structured, can save their arms-length UK owners huge amounts in taxes; income or corporation taxes from rents and/or Capital Gains Tax (CGT) from profits made on the sale on the properties. The cost to the exchequer nationally of this avoidance runs to many billions of pounds per year. It is difficult to estimate how big a "saving" for the proprietor, or "loss" to public services, the companies listed below account for, but it must run to tens of millions annually.

At the same time, some of the companies below will be more than happy to pick up public funds from the properties held in these tax havens: from Housing Benefit from the tenants in flats and houses, from rents for libraries and civic premises, from fees on behalf of care home residents, or from tax exemptions around private school fees, without being willing to contribute to the public funds that enable the services to be provided.

The result: public services are deprived of much needed funds by some people who are significant beneficiaries of them.

Illegal? - no. Immoral - absolutely.

Public and political debates about tax levels in the UK are rendered almost meaningless until "loopholes" such as these are closed and that wealthy people pay their taxes on an equitable basis with the rest of us.

The details outlined below throw up another angle on the "convenience" made of overseas property ownership. We have cross-referenced many of the properties below to Newham Council's planning website, and on the residential property licensing details the site provides.

Several of the properties have been subject to changes of use, or extensions being built since they were registered as being owned abroad. In no cases are details of the overseas ownership declared on the publicly available documents on the council's website. Planners and the like, when considering correspondence and plans relating to these properties, end up dealing with agents, and what appear to be smokescreen UK-based companies, blissfully unaware of the tax haven-based ownership of the buildings.

Again - nothing illegal; but an indication that foreign based ownership is used as a convenience for tax avoidance purposes, but is not declared when dealing with other arms of the state. Perhaps if the council were aware of the tax-avoiding ownership of the properties they are considering, they would be in a stronger position to extract concessions (known as Section 106 agreements) from the property owners, to compensate for income denied to the exchequer by tax avoidance, when determining planning or change of use proposals for them.

The residential property licensing aspect of the site, however, throws up another, intriguing factor.

According to Newham Council's website:

You must have a license for every home that you rent out privately in Newham. If you don't, you could face a fine of upto £20,000.

We have run all the properties, below, against Newham's publicly available register of licensed residential rented properties. Some have been registered - but only one, as far as we can ascertain, in the name of the tax-haven ownership company. There are however, up to a dozen other properties that are almost certainly rented out, but have not been registered under the local licensing scheme.

Wouldn't it just be a little satisfying, if they were brought to book by Newham and forced to pay that £20,000 - to show the ultimate owners that they are not entirely our of the jurisdiction of British law - and thereby have to contribute a little to public coffers - by way of a fine - of what they have tried to avoid by hiding in a tax haven?

Properties new-to-this-site

Flat D, 87 Idmiston Road - registered as owned by Laneside properties in the Isle of Man (IoM) on 8 March 2001. There are a total of 17 properties registered as owned by this company, across North and North-East London. There is no Newham council licence to let this property for residential accommodation.

87 Idmiston Road

69a Pevensey Road - registered as owned by Sunrise Capital Services, in the British Virgin Islands (BVI). There are a total of 22 properties registered as owned by this company in Hackney, Waltham Forest and Newham. See 65 Dames Road, another local property by Sunrise, immediately below. There is no Newham council licence to rent this property as residential accommodation.

69 Pevensey Road

65 Dames Road - registered as owned by Sunrise Capital Services, BVI on 21 October 2016. Another property in the Sunrise portfolio is 69a Pevensey Road - see above. There is currently a Newham council licence, granted to Arshad Shahed - no address given - to rent this property as residential accommodation.

65 Dames Road

4-20 Woodgrange Road (Donald Hunter House) - registered as owned by Stratos Holdings, in Guernsey, on 15 October 2014. This is the only property owned by the company, in the UK. It includes both The Gate library and Iceland stores. So, Newham Council will be paying rent to Stratos in order to run a library there, but Stratos will skip a major obligation to help fund public services, like - libraries!

Part of 4 - 20 Woodgrange Road

29 Upton Lane - registered as owned by Sunshine Investment Devices Ltd, in the BVI on 17 January 2017. There are 8 properties owned by this company in London. Three months after this property was registered in the BVI, Mr Shahed of Queen's Road Walthamstow was "the applicant" for planning permission, which was granted, for building a garage at its rear. The premises is licensed by Newham council to be property letting agents.

29 Upton Lane

362 Romford Road - registered as owned by Orellan properties Ltd, in the BVI on 2 November 1998, when valued at £116,000 - probably worth in excess of £1,000,000 today. Think of the Capital Gains Tax (CGT) to be "saved"/tax lost to the exchequer when it is sold. This is only property owned by the company. In 2002, at least three years after the property was registered in the BVI, a UK-based applicant, Mr Baulackey of Highbury submitted, and was granted planning permission, to turn it into a care home. No mention was made in the application of its BVI- based ownership.

362 Romford Road

45 Glenparke Road - registered as owned by Tranmorne Properties, in the Seychelles on 6 April 2003. This property has a Newham council licence granted to Home Connect Ltd to let it as residential accommodation.

45 Glenparke Road

115 Dorset Road - also registered as owned by Tranmorne Properties, in the Seychelles, on 25 June 2003. See 45 Glenparke Rd, above - these are the only two properties whose ownership is registered to this company. This property has been granted a licence by Newham council, to Nazir Hanif, to be let as residential accommodation.

115 Dorset Road

21 Studley Road - registered as owned by Felixstow Ltd, in the BVI, on 24 May 1999. There are two properties registered as owned by this company, the other one is in Croydon. There is no Newham council licence to let this property as residential accommodation.

21 Studley Road

478 Katherine Road - registered as owned by Glenhalgh Australia, in Australia on 6 April 2017. There are seven properties registered as owned by this company - the other six are also in Newham: 371-373 Green Street; 284 Barking Road; 65 Plashet Grove; 131 The Grove and 1a Manbey Park Road.

478 Katherine Road

179 Monega Road - registered as owned by VRP Holdings, in Jersey on 20 April 2016, when valued at £440,000. This is the only property registered to VRP. There are two flats at this address licenced by Newham council to be let as residential accommodation, to Mohammad Waqas and RG Properties Ltd, respectively.

179 Monega Road

Grangewood Independent School, Chester Road - owned by, Associate Properties, in the IoM, valued at £2,300,000 when the company was registered. Associate Properties own seven bundles of properties, including 128-130 High Street North, East Ham (see photo), plus high street properties in Croydon, the White Swan pub in Greenwich and property in Hoxton St, Hackney.

Grangewood School

128 - 130 High Street North, East Ham.
This Iceland, like the one of Woodgrange Road
has tax-haven owners - see above.

Flats 66, 67, 69, 68, 70, 71 Lumiere Building, 544 Romford Road - registered as owned by Xanthe Ltd, in Cyprus. Each flat was valued at £78,000 (probably worth £280k plus, today. Think of the CGT savings/loss to the exchequer on sale when sold (i.e. gross capital gain of £1,000,000). In addition to the Lumiere buildings, Xanthe owns property in Portsmouth, including the Allders car park and land and buildings in Surrey Street and Commercial Road. Newham council has granted no licences to let any flats at this address. This seems worthy of an investigation by the licencers!

Lumiere Building

44 Thorpe Road - registered as owned by Long Smart (China) Ltd in Hong Kong. It was valued at £90,000 when registered. Probably worth c £500,000 today - think of CGT savings/loss to the exchequer. The Thorpe Road property is the only one owned by Long Smart, and is in Waltham Forest.

Properties previously covered by this site

27 Knighton Road - registered as owned by Tarleton Holdings International, BVI, on 7 April 2005 at a value of £170,000. Tarleton owns three other properties, all in Ilford. Newham council has granted no licences to let any accommodation at this address.

27 Knighton Road

99 Green Street - this Asian restaurant was registered as owned by Cranbrook Property Investment, BVI, with a book value of £500,000. In addition to the Green St address, the company owns property in Cranbrook Road, Ilford. Newham council has granted no licences to let any accommodation at this address.

99 Green Street

50, 50a, 50b, 50c, 50d Avenue Road - registered as owned by Dominion Ltd, IoM on 18 May 2012 These are the only 5 properties registered as owned by the company. This collection of flats was formerly a hostel owned by London and Quadrant Housing Association. Persistent, unresolved dampness problems with the premises, however, lead to the HA to sell it on and move the residents elsewhere. This explains the reasons for the sale of the properties, but not why they went to a tax-haven company, with a registered value of around £600,000. Newham council has granted licences to Zahur Ahmed Chaudry with a business address in Romford to let three flats at this address for residential accommodation.

50 Avenue Road

113 Earlham Grove - registered as owned by Northern Trading, Gibraltar on 6 August 2007, valued at £750,000. There are two properties owned by the company in London, the other is in Hounslow. About the time the property was registered in Gibraltar, it owners, through agents in the UK, applied to Newham's planners to have it converted into four separate dwellings. No reference was made to its Gibraltar ownership in the publicly available files on the Newham website. The application was approved. Newham council has granted 3 licences to Urban Spectrum Property Management Ltd and one to Hassan Yassin to let residential accommodation at this address.

113 Earlham Grove

10 Crosby Road - registered as owned by Balinara Ltd Guernsey on 10 June 2011. This is only property registered as owned by the company. Newham council has granted a licence to Balinara to let the property for residential accommodation.

10 Crosby Road

Sherrard Works - registered as owned by Sherrard Road, Sherrard Works Ltd, IoM on 29 October 2012, with a book value of £1.5m. This is the only property owned by the company. It is a large, antiquated industrial site, behind the restaurant at 99 Green Street (see above), bought, presumably with housing development in mind.

It is difficult to establish its value today - and that will be determined by any planning permission may be given for its re-development. Whatever proposals are accepted by the planners, the tax-free profits accruing to the tax-haven based company will be considerable.

Sherrard Works

It would be highly appropriate if any S106 agreement Newham council could extract from the tax exiles could be large enough to help compensate for the tax loss to the exchequer, brought about by the tax-haven ownership arrangements

1 - 12 Sycamore Court, Romford Road, registered to Abacus Land4 Ltd, Guernsey on 6 June 2017. AbacusLand4, as its name suggests, is a land, rather than buildings-owning company. So, it owns the freehold of the land on which these flats sit, rather than the flats, themselves - which are frequently up for sale or let, as individual units. The company's income will come from the annual ground rent of the flats, and full ownership of the flats and land on which they are built will revert to Abacus on the expiry of the lease. The company owns 1214 plots of land in the UK, including in the south of Newham, on Gallions Road and Woolwich Manor Way.

Sycamore Court, Romford Road

326-330 Katherine Road - Tesco's local store and 9 flats - registered as owned by Irlam Properties Ltd, in the BVI on 8 September 2013, with a book value of £870,000. This is the only property listed as owned by Irlam Properties.

The new flats alone could be sold for over three times the registered price today, and the Tesco shop will bring in a rental income of at least £50,000 per year. Not a bad tax-free saving and investment for the anonymous faces behind Irlam! Newham council has not issues licences to let any flat in this block, for residential purposes.

326-330 Katherine Road

Properties listed in earlier article but not on current Land Registry database

These properties have, presumably, been subsequently sold to UK owners, but the previous tax haven-based owners will have sold them - depending on how the ownership has been structured - without the inconvenience of paying CGT on the profits made from the sale or Inheritance Tax, if passed on to another person, on the death of the earlier owner.

The first five of the properties listed below are houses. The fifth is the landmark City Gate House building, on Romford Road, and the last one, land and a cluster of buildings near-by it..

23b South Esk Road. This property was registered to the ownership of Excel Venture in Guernsey in November 2013, at a value of £134,500. It would have been worth in the region of £300,00 in late 2015, bringing a potential GCT savings/exchequer loss of around £70,000, when sold.

27 South Esk Road

115 Trumpington Rd. This was sold in the autumn of 2015 for £400,000, having previously been owned by Charming Properties Ltd, in Jersey, since 2007 - bringing a potential CGT avoidance/exchequer loss of around £100,000.

115 Trumpington Road

133 and 137 Upton Lane. These two properties were registered to DAS Properties in the BVI for a little over £400,000 in the mid 2000's. They appear to have been sold a decade later for twice the price, bringing a potential CGT savings/tax loss of around £125,000.

133 Upton Lane

45 Chaucer Road. The house was registered to the ownership of YAAS Investments in the IoM in September 2012, for £285,000. If sold recently, it will have doubled in value, bringing a CGT savings/tax loss of over £125,000.

45 Chaucer Road

City Gate House, Romford Road. This iconic local property was registered in the name of BCP City Gate in the IoM in July 2015, with a book value of £3,658,840. It was, however, put in the hands of liquidators on 10 April 2015. It is difficult to know how this could have occurred - dreadful mismanagement, or another sleight of hand, designed to avoid even more tax.

City Gate House, Romford Road

Land property in and around 286 Romford Road and Nursery Lane. This was mainly low-quality commercial or industrial premises and unbuilt-on land. It no longer features on the register of properties held by overseas-based companies. Some of it was subject to a recent "unfortunate" fire. Much of it is now within the footprint of a proposal for housing redevelopment, currently with the Newham planning process for consideration.

Land at Nursery Lane

The details in this article are all based on Land Registry files, some Newham Council files and the database created for Private Eye in 2015. If any of the information is incorrect, we invite the property owners to correct any errors, and we will happily amend the details above.

We have written, in passing, frequently about Samuel Gurney - who has probably been Forest Gate's most influential (both locally and nationally) resident. And here we touched on his literal and metaphorical monumental legacy.

This article presents a biography of the man, himself.

He was born on 18 October 1786 in Earlham Hall, Norfolk. The buildings - see photo - now constitute part of the University of East Anglia.

Earlham Hall - the family seat - today,
as part of the University of East Anglia

The Gurney family can be traced back to the Norman Conquest, when ancestors were given areas of Norfolk as part of William 1's English control and pacification process.

The family had lived in Earlham Hall, as tenants, for over half a century before Samuel was born. Sixteen years before his birth, they established a local Norfolk bank - Gurney's.

As Quakers, the family were denied access to many of the traditional routes of the sons of the rich and famous - university, the army, some professions etc - but not banking. Like the Jewish community, many members were almost forced into the looked-down upon (by the upper class) fields of commerce and banking in order to make a living.

In 1800, aged 14, the young Gurney was placed in the counting house of his brother-in-law, Joseph Fry, in St Mildred's Court, Poultry in the City. Joseph was married to Samuel's older sister, Elizabeth - the prison reformer. The "favour" by Joseph to Samuel was later returned - see later.

Samuel Gurney (1786 - 1856)

In 1807 Gurney joined the firm of Richardson and Overend, which, over the course of the next few years, became the most significant retail bank in England.

The following year, Samuel married Elizabeth, daughter of James Sheppard of Ham House (which was to become the family seat and provide the grounds 65 years later for West Ham Park - see here). Samuel inherited and moved in to the property on the death of his father-in-law (in the days before the Married Women's Property Act) in 1812.

Samuel and Elizabeth had two children by the time they took possession of Ham House and set about making alterations to it, that made it a Georgian house of distinction. At the time it had about a dozen live-in servants.

Ham House, pre- destruction

In 1809 he borrowed money from his father and father-in-law and bought into the bank in which he was working and had it re-branded as Overend, Gurney and Co.

During the financial crisis of 1825 his bank lent money to a number of other London banks in temporary financial difficulties. For the next 30 years it was to be the largest discounting house in the world. Thus, Gurney became known as 'the bankers' banker' and many firms began to deposit money with his institution in preference to the Bank of England.

Having impressively stamped his mark on the banking world, Gurney devoted much of the rest of his life to his two main passions - land acquisition and disposal in Forest Gate and a variety of (even today) impressively liberal philanthropic endeavours.

Philanthropy

Chronologically, the philanthropic endeavours came first. They are worthy of - and have been recorded in - many histories. For brevity's sake, the more significant of them were:

Supporting, financially, his sister Elizabeth, the prison reformer and brother-in-law Joseph Fry - who had kick started his career. The Frys were hit in the financial crises of the mid 1820's and were forced to sell their grand house in Plashet - now host to Plashet Park and the borough's registration offices. Gurney rented them Cedar House, next to his own home of Ham House, in Portway. (This later became home to the Territorial Army - ironically for a property owned by pacifist Quakers).

Elizabeth Fry - reading to
prisoners in Newgate Prison

Supported another brother-in-law, Edward Buxton and his father Fowell Buxton - in the anti-slavery movement. He attended the 1840 World Anti-Slavery Convention in 1840 - see picture (in National Portrait Gallery) - below, and was for a while chairman of the organisation.

Gurney, front row, far left at the 1840
World Anti-Slavery Convention

Played a significant part in helping to established the African state of Liberia, as a home for slaves freed from Europe and America. Such was his contribution to the establishment to the country, that he had a town named after him there.

Was a staunch opponent of capital punishment; and was threatened with prosecution himself for refusing to prosecute a man who forged his signature, knowing that the result would be capital punishment for the offender.

Was patron of two non-conformist British and Foreign Society Schools (see here for details) in Stratford: one for boys and another for girls. He left an annuity of £150 - c£15,000 today - for the future development of the two schools in his will. This passed to West Ham School Board, on its formation - and now rests with Newham Council.

Was the national treasurer for the non- conformist British and Foreign Schools Society from 1843, until his death in 1856. He left the Society £5,000 (c £500,000 today), on his death.

Samuel Gurney in 1840

Although a Quaker, he was non-sectarian in his approach to education. So, he also supported Church of England schools. In 1853 he donated land on the corner of Woodgrange Road and Forest Street to build Emmanuel (later St Saviours) National School.

Toured Ireland in 1849 and made many donations to those affected by the Potato HUnger of that decade.

Established the Poplar Hospital for Accidents in 1853, to look after injured dock workers, in the first instant.

In 1856, his will gifted £800 - c £78,000 today - for the "maintenance and winding up of clocks in public places" in Forest Gate, including one to be erected on Forest Gate Congregational Church. Since 1860 the income has been given to West Ham, now Newham, Council.

Local land acquisition and disposal

Having inherited the area of what is now West Ham Park from his father-in-law in 1812, Gurney was quiet on the local land acquisition front until his effective retirement from his successful banking career.

His transactions and their subsequent disposals, however, have shaped the area, making what is recognisably Forest Gate, today.

in 1851 he bought the 131 acres of Hamfrith Farm/estate for £17,710 - c £2,250,000, at today's prices - from the Greenhill estate. This was roughly the area between Romford Road and Wanstead Flats, to the east of Woodgrange Road, as far as Station Road, Manor Park.

Two years later he bought the 200 acres of the Woodgrange farm - most of the Forest Gate area to the west of Woodgrange Road.

He also acquired about 250 acres in what was then Little Ilford (now Manor Park) and acquired the Lordship of the manors of Woodgrange and Hamfrith.

He promptly resold much of the land he had acquired, to become the West Ham and Jewish cemeteries, as well as the Industrial School on Forest Lane (see here and here, for details).

Ever the astute businessman, he clearly saw the development opportunities with the arrival of the railways into Forest Gate (see here); and in the short period remaining in his life, began to package some of the land up, with a view to housing development resale.

So, from 1855, development started on the Gurney and Dames estates - to the west and north of Forest Gate station (see here, for details).

He died on 5 June 1856 and was buried in the Friends' burial grounds in Barking. He was survived by 9 children and 40 grandchildren. His oldest son died soon after and the estate subsequently transferred to his grandson, John.

Within 10 years, however, the bank that Samuel Gurney established and built became mired in severe financial difficulties, by diversifying into greedy, risky projects (sound familiar?) and faced bankruptcy. Many shareholders, including members of the Gurney family, lost fortunes and faced financial ruin.

It was this crash that spurred the rapid building boom in Forest Gate, as grandson John disposed of land and property in order to stabilise family finances.

Most notable among the disposals was the sale of the family home, in 1872, to become West Ham Park (see here), for a knocked down price of £15,000 - c £1.5 million, today.

The grounds of Ham House, before being
turned into West Ham Park, in 1874

Also, in 1872, he sold most of the north side of what had been the Hamfrithestate to the British Land Company, which, in turn sold some to the Manor Park Cemetery Company (see here) and enabled the development of much of which in estate agents-speak is now known as "The Forest Gate Village".

Thomas Corbett acquired much of the south side of the Hamfrith estate and developed it into what is now the Woodgrange estate, between 1877 and 1892 (see here).

The period 1870 - 1890 saw the development of the western end of Forest Gate, from lands that had been part of the Gurney estate. This lead to the construction of Hamfrith, Atherton, Sprowston (see here), Norwich and Clova Roads,. as well as Earlham Grove (see here).

So, Quaker, banker, philanthropist, land-owner, Samuel Gurney stands as the man whose property dealings lay the foundations of Forest Gate, as we know it today.

He is most visibly remembered locally not in Forest Gate, but by the obelisk and drinking fountain in the grounds of St John's church, in Stratford. It is interesting that there should be a monument to a Quaker in the grounds of a prominent CofE church - but such was the regard in which he was held locally.

An 1861 drawing of the Gurney
memorial, soon after its erection

The monument is 40 feet high and made of granite. It was unveiled in 1861, having been designed by Gurney's fellow Norfolk-man, John Bell.

The inscription reads:

In remembrance of Samuel Gurney, who died on 5th of June 1856. Erected by his fellow parishioners and Friends (Quakers) 1861.

When the ear heard him, then it blessed him.

(ed: this is a paraphrase from the Book of Job)

One final point. Although the bank that Gurney turned into such a success bombed a decade after his death, its entrails survive as part of what is now Barclays Bank. If only he had been around in 2008 to offer them his counsel, prior to the banking crash of 2008.

We have just acquired a fascinating, captioned, photo from e.bay which helps illustrate a tragic story and raises interesting questions about the circumstances surrounding it.

Photo showing the damage done by V2
rocket on Earlham Grove on 6 March 1945 -
click photo, to enlarge it and see the detail.

This post examines the photo, the story it tells, those affected by it and addresses perturbing questions it poses. You should be able to enlarge the high-quality photo easily enough, in order to see some of the points raised, below.

The photo

The ariel photo - at its simplest - is of a WW2 bomb site. The caption on the back (illustrated, below) makes it of particular interest to this website. The relevant section reads:

Associated Press Photo (caution: use credit). From: New York.

V-2 Rocket Bomb Damage in London.

Fifteen people were killed, 73 injured and a large number of houses were demolished, or damaged in March 1945 when a German V-2 bomb fell on Earlham Grove, Forest Gate, London. This is a British official photo taken in April 1945 and just released.

Associated Press Photo 5-31-45 (ed: 31 May 1945) etc.

The photo caption
- see transcript, above

It is, in fact, a photo of a bomb which completely destroyed, and killed the residents of nos 56 - 64 Earlham Grove on 6 March 1945. The subsequent bomb site is now the location of Earlham school (see photo below) and it is diagonally opposite what was then the Synagogue on the road - see top right hand corner of the photo for a partial view of the Synagogue.

The West Ham Synagogue, Earlham Grove

Final photo of the former Synagogue -
prior to its sale for housing development in 2004

The caption indicates that the photo was taken in April 1945 - the month following the damage. In the intervening period, the crater was clearly filled in, probably by the rubble (also not apparent)created by the rocket. It is interesting that the photo was not released until 31 May - 8 weeks after the bomb fell and over three weeks after the war in Europe was over.

Earlham Grove school, today - on the
site of the V2 rocket hit in question

The "bomb site" looks remarkably tidy - far more so than those I, as a boy, remember playing in a decade later, elsewhere in Greater London.

The fact that it was an "official photograph", released in the United States after the end of the war, begs the suggestion whether it was a propaganda plant, aimed at encouraging American post war economic support. I.e. 'Although we've been bombed, we are doing our best to clear up - now help us rebuild?'

A very close examination of the photo shows a number of points of interest.

Firstly, trees in the road were still standing, some in leaf, even very close to the centre of the blast - which is a testimony to their resilience.

Second, close examination of a number of the roofs on houses close to the bomb damaged area show what look like tarpaulin coverings, providing temporary respite for those still living in them from rain and other weather damage, pending repairs to them.

Third, there are clearly a number of people in the centre of the bombed area, which begs the question as to whether they were scavenging for objects from the destroyed properties - not an unusual feature of the period, following bomb destruction.

Fourth, at the very top right hand corner of the photo, there is the suggestion of another bomb site. Below, we speculate on what that might have been and who those killed by the bomb probably were.

The caption identified the exact number of people killed (see below for details), so there is a good chance that its stated 73 injured was also accurate.

Adler Court, today - on the site of the
former Synagogue on Earlham Grove

For totally understandable reasons, the caption did not, and probably could not, describe the nature of the area, or speculate on the reasons it was targeted.

The circumstances

There is only one, publicly available, contemporary account of the incident, from the Stratford Express of 9 March 1945, just three days after the rocket strike - see below.

It is fascinating from at least two respects. Firstly, it was careful to adhere to government censorship regulations in that it did not give any close direct clue as to the whereabouts of the bomb - for fear of aiding enemy intelligence - simply referring to the location as being "in a Southern England district".

Second, it clearly relied on local witness statements for the story, published in the very next edition following the bomb hit, unlike, for example, the Dames Road Doodlebug hit that we covered recently (see here), whose definitive account was equally vague on location but came almost 2 months after the bomb, from government information sources. Any local readers would know exactly what and where the article was referring to.

Hence, genuine local news was provided, without giving succour to German military intelligence.

The extract of the press report, below, should be legible, but in case not, here is a transcript:

V Bomb Stories

Jewish minister had lucky escape.

The minister of a synagogue in a Southern England District probably owes his life to the fact that he was away when a V-bomb fell almost directly opposite the site where he lived. Upon returning, he discovered that several members of his congregation were among those who lost their lives and their homes.

Mr Woolf, with whom the minister resided, found that his wife and son, Murray, had had a lucky escape, and were unscathed, although the front of their house had caught the full impact of the blast.

The missile, which fell on some double-fronted houses, killed elderly Mr Owen and an 18-month baby B Adams (ed: Beryl, see below) and four members of a family named Golding (ed: all listed below).

(Ed: the reported death of Mr Owen is interesting. His is not a name that appears on the West Ham book of the WW2 civilian dead. The title of that book is, however, Residents of West Ham who were killed or died as a result of enemy air attack. The article - below - states that Mr Owen had been bombed out of his own home "in another district" and so was, temporarily, staying with his daughter - see below. West Ham may not have been his normal place of residence, which could be an explanation for his non appearance in the book - though other non-West Ham residents do appear in it. But, the numbers of dead recorded in that memorial book from this bomb blast is exactly the same number as that indicated on the caption of the press photo - above - issues many months before the list of the dead was published.)

Back to the press report:

Three other members of the (Golding) family, including a soldier recently returned from the Middle East, where during the fighting he was ambushed and the only one of his party to remain alive (ed: this could well have been Jack Golding, aged 23 - he fits the age profile - as indicated in the list of the dead, below), were among those at first accounted for. Digging operations for these and three other people continued after the bomb fell.

Octogenarian rescued

Mr J Francis, the caretaker of a nearby synagogue, which owning to its sturdy build took the blast well, immediately rushed over to an opposite house and stared searching for the occupants. After a short while, with the aid of some A.R.P. personnel, they recovered from the wreckage, Mrs Lunt and her 86-year-old mother, Mrs Owen, both only slightly injured.

A further search found Mrs Owen's husband dead. Mr and Mrs Owens, the parents of Mrs Lunt, had recently been bombed out of their own home in another district and went to live with their daughter. Two cranes and dogs were employed in the rescue operations.

Howard Bloch, Newham's late archivist and local history librarian, wrote an intriguing book on the Earlham Grove Synagogue twenty years ago (Earlham Grove Shul) - see footnote for details.

In the book, he describes the impact the rocket had on the overwhelmingly Jewish community into which it fell:

The worst incident which affected the Synagogue occurred on (Tuesday) 6 March 1945 at 7.45pm, when a V2 fell opposite the building in Earlham Grove between Norwich Road and Atherton Road. This caused widespread devastation. Murray Woolfe (sic - note difference in spelling from press report, above), who lived at 97 Earlham Grove - the house adjoining the Synagogue - remembers the tragedy:

"The front of our house was taken off at an angle. The blast was almost directly opposite. I was in the back of the house.

Fortunately, it's a very long narrow house and I was with my mother, and I was also with one of the shul (ed: shul = Synagogue, from the old German word meaning school) members because this landed round about the time we were expected to go in ....

There was this enormous vibration and noise and the whole house shook and I opened the door from our living room which opened on to a passageway. The front door had been blown right in and all my stuff (dental equipment) for starting at Guy's (Hospital)in the autumn of 1944 had been upstairs front room and it had just gone - disappeared.

Half the furniture in the front room had gone and we found curtains from our upstairs front room and had been sucked out as a result, and we found them hanging on trees on the other side of Earlham Grove. Most of the windows had gone. The roof of our house was badly damaged. Opposite there were three or four houses which were just a mass of rubble ...

I could not get out because the door was in the wrong place, so I went out through the side, through the shul grounds, across the road ... The phone was still working ... and I was able to phone through to the post and get through. The light rescue and heavy rescue both came. I wanted to go into the bomb site, but they would not let me in ... Father was allowed to go and assist. The whole thing was absolutely shocking, terrible ...

The Rev Einhorn was away at the time when the V2 fell, but on his return he discovered that several members of the congregation had lost their lives. Murray's story continued:

The Synagogue had been damaged but the Communal Hall at the front had limited the extent of the blast and temporary repairs were subsequently carried out. The extent of the damage to the building was reported at the meeting of the District Synagogue Council on 7 June 1945:

The Synagogue's
Communal Hall (see above and below)

Here again considerable damage was sustained to roofs, ceilings and windows of the Synagogue and Hall, and general damage throughout. The Minister's residence at 91 Earlham Grove was partially demolished and the caretaker's residence extensively damaged - these residences are being repaired by the local authorities.

Fortunately, the officers concerned and their respective families - though shaken - escaped un-injured. Services are being held temporarily in the lower portion of the Communal Hall.

The condition of the house in Earlham Grove made it uninhabitable and the minister was offered alternative accommodation ... in Romford Road and subsequently moved there.

The victims

Fifteen people were killed and 73 injured by the rocket. The West Ham book of the civilian dead (see copy of cover) identifies those killed. All bar three of them would appear to have been members of the local Jewish community - hardly surprising, given how close they lived to the Synagogue, and Jewish traditions of only walking to the place of worship on the sabbath.

West Ham book of
WW2 civilian dead

We have searched Ancestryfor details of those killed by the bomb and supplemented the War Dead register with details from it. We provide details of those killed, house by house below.

The one apparently gentile household - the Adams' family of number 56 - stands out not only because of its apparent non-Jewish nature, but also because Ancestry provides considerable details about the head of household - Edgar. We share the information about him below the main section on the deceased.

Earlham Grove - 15 killed, 73 injured

Number 56 - 3 deaths

Joyce Mable Adams, aged 25, husband Edgar Henry Adams, aged 50 and their daughter Beryl Joyce Adams, aged 18 months. These were, perhaps, the only gentiles killed by this bomb, and Edgar has an interesting story - as outlined by the press cutting, below.

Edgar Henry Adams - source Ancestry

Number 58 - 2 deaths

Bernard Carl Marcovitch, aged 16 and his mother Rachel Marcovitch, aged 38. Rachel was the widow of Lazarus Marcovitch and, according to probate records, left £636 in her will.

Number 60 - 6 deaths

Marks Golding aged 63 and his wife Sarah Golding, aged 61. They were both Russian - Polish nationals. According to census records, Marks had been a cap maker. In addition Hilda Golding, aged 30, the daughter of Mark and Sarah was killed by the blast. She was described as a spinster, and according to probate records left £100 in her will, administered by two of her brothers - Tony Solomon Golding, and audit clerk and Barnett Ben Golding, a tailor.

Intriguingly, official records indicate that her body was not found until 8 May - two days after the bomb blast - unlike all the other victims who were found on the 6th. This suggests that she was buried under rubble - and found later by the rescue workers, dog and equipment referred to, above - which had obviously been cleared by the time the blast photograph had been taken.

Also killed were her brother Jack Golding, aged 23, and his wife Sadie, aged 22, together with Geoffrey Golding, their two year-old son. According to probate records, Jack left £50 in his will, administered by the same two brothers as Hilda's. Jack, as suggested in the Stratford Express report, above appears to have been on leave from military service, having escaped death in a recent incident in the Middle East.

Some of the Goldings were buried in East Ham Jewish cemetery and others in Rainham Jewish cemetery.

East Ham Jewish Cemetery - resting
place of some of the Goldings family

Rainham Jewish Cemetery, resting
place of others of the Goldings family

Number 62 - 3 deaths

Rose Schector, a 62-year old Polish national and widow of Jacob Schector. She appears to have been visited by Hetty (31) and her husband Nathan Bogansky (29), of Hoe St, Walthamstow on that day, as they were also reported as having been killed at this address by this missile hit.

Number 64 - 1 death

Samuel Henry Hoinville, aged 84, a former boot repairer. He would appear to have been visiting from his home address in Holms Street, Hackney.

Edgar Henry Adams of 56 Earlham Grove

Below is an obituary of Edgar, from The Distributive Trades Journal, the newspaper of the National Union of Distributive and Allied Workers, the forerunner of USDAW (Union of Shop, Distributive and Allied Workers).

In brief, he became an official of the union in 1936 and prior to that had been a member of West Ham Borough council, "when the borough (perhaps more than any other) passed through a period of want and misery unsurpassed in the annals of this country". He specialised in housing, hospitals (at at time when it was a local authority responsibility) and unemployment.

He joined the Co-op, as a 16-year old shop worker in Silvertown and spent four years in France during WW1, as a volunteer.

Edgar Henry Adams' obituary in
Distributive Trades Journal - source Ancestry

He became active in the union on his return from the war, and soon became a shop steward (no pun intended). He later became chair of his union branch and subsequently a full-time paid organiser.

The questions

Earlham Grove was struck by a V2 rocket. These were the world's first long range ballistic missiles, the first artificial objects to fly into outer space. They were deployed in late 1944, for the first time. The British government initially tried to conceal their effectiveness, by describing the explosions they created as being caused by "defective gas mains".

V2 rocket, prior to launch

A total of 1358 were launched on London, over a six month period, resulting in an estimated 2,754 deaths and 6,523 casualties.

The Earlham Grove rocket was one of the more destructive, with over seven times the average number of deaths and almost twenty times the average number of causalities. It was also one of the final strikes. The last two were launched exactly three weeks later - on 27 March - less than seven weeks before the official end of the war in Europe.

We do not know whether the technology was getting more sophisticated and its accuracy was getting greater as more were deployed. The fact is, however, that the rocket struck incredibly close (less than 10 metres) to the Synagogue, which was, for a while at least, the largest in Essex.

Pin point accuracy from the descending V2?

Was that missile deliberately aimed at the Synagogue, in a last desperate act of trying to address Hitler's "Final Solution" - the total destruction of the Jewish people?

Fanciful thinking? Well, the Third Reich, and their cheerleaders, were certainly aware of the existence of the Synagogue. As we have mentioned on this blog before (see here), Bryan Forbes wrote in his autobiography of listening to a broadcast by the German wartime propagandist Lord Haw Haw (William Joyce) during the Blitz in which he made derogatory comments about the Jewish population of Forest Gate. Forbes said:

We listened to Lord Haw Haw in the Anderson, searching the dial of the wireless until the arrogant rasping voice filled the small enclosure. 'We shan't be dropping bombs on Earlham Grove tonight, we shall be dropping Keating's Powder' (ed: a brand of disinfectant).

William Joyce - Lord Haw-Haw,
German WW2 propagandist

Was Earlham Grove deliberately targeted because of the presence of the Synagogue?

Given what Howard Bloch has reported on how busy the place of worship would have been at the time of the hit, was its timing aimed to have a maximum destructive impact on a Synagogue and its worshippers?

The Keating's Powder, of which Joyce ranted

We will never know the answers to these questions. Put at their simplest, however, these issues provoke the question: was this V2 deliberately aimed at one of Hitler's key targets, or did those launching this particular missile, just "get lucky", from their perverted perspective?

The second bomb site identified in the photo

A close inspection of the main photo in this article suggests that the blotch at the very top left hand corner of it could well have been the site of another hit, in which case, it was probably the bomb that fell on Earlham Grove on 30 October 1944,killing 10.

The deceased were of that hit were listed in the West Ham book of civilian dead as:

Number 3 - 4 deaths

Agnes Turner (aged 55) - nee Sullivan. She was the widow of Ernest Turner. In addition to Agnes, her two children, Agnes Frances Turner (aged 24) and William Turner (aged 13) were also killed. Charles William Hazell, (aged 14), the son of M.E. Hazell and the late Alfred Ernest James Hazell, was also killed at number 3.

Number 5 - 2 deaths

Edith Lillian Read (aged 42) - nee Barrett, husband of Henry Herbert Read (1901 - 1972) and Terence Read (aged 7), her son.

Number 7 - 4 deaths

All four were members of the Everitt family, whose father had earlier been a well-known local stone mason. The four were: Clara Hall (69) nee Everitt- she had been an elementary school teacher in East Ham. Between 1911 and 1944 she had married Alfred Hall, who died before the bomb had struck. Clara had subsequently returned to, or continued to live at, the old Everitt family home. Also killed were three of her sisters, none of whom had married. They were: Alice Everitt (aged 66), Annie Everitt (aged 56) and Ellen Everitt (aged 64). At the time of the 1911 census all three (as well as Clara) were living at 7 Earlham Grove with their parents, Robert and Annie Everitt. Alice appears to have been a children's costumier in 1911 and employed her younger two sisters in the same trade.

Footnote 1.Earlham Grove Shul - One Hundred Years of West Ham Synagogue and Community, by Howard Bloch, 1997 pub by the Synagogue. Now out of print, but copies can occasionally be found on Amazon. See here, for this blog'ssummary of Howard's excellent book.

Footnote 2. For a wider account of V1 and V2 bombs falling on Forest Gate in 1944-45, see here.

Forest Gate Arts' stalwart, Paul Romane, recently curated an excellent exhibition on the Upper Cut club, fifty years after its brief sojourn in Forest Gate, as part of the second council Heritage Week programme.

Above and below left, some of the exhibits curated for the exhibition. Below right - also in the exhibition - a Forest Gate 'mod' of the era - a typical Upper Cut patron

The exhibition was held in the temporary headquarters of Forest Gate Arts, in Upton Lane, and this post is an on-line record of the fine show. Paul, a long time devotee of the club, and in particular some of the Soul acts that played there, had spent a great deal of energy drawing together exhibits for the week-long show.

The Upper Cut club on Woodgrange Road later
became the Ace of Clubs (above)
and an outside shot of the gallery
hosting the exhibition (below)

A poster advertising the club, preserved
from the era and on display in the exhibition.

Paul collected mementos and memorabilia from a wide range of sources - including Small Faces roadie and brother of band member Ronnie - Stan Lane, and this website, together with many of his own souvenirs, to provide a fascinating, evocative and inspiring exhibition.

Left one of the display boards in the exhibition showing adverts for the gigs appearing at the Upper Cut (loaned by this website). Right, some modern posters in 60's psychedelic style by Forest Gate artist, and sister of modern singer, Plan B, Lauren Drew.

This post is being published to mark the 50th anniversary of the closure of the club - to make way for a bingo hall - in the last week of 1967. The artifacts embraced in many of the photos here are reproduced for the first time on this site, and add to the considerable collection already here. See below for details of other blog articles on the club.

An original poster, featuring acts
appearing during the club's opening
week (note mis-spelling of Jimi Hendrix's
name - he was little known in the UK at
the time, hence the Boxing Day
matinee gig).

A flyer for one week's
shows at the club,
on display in the
exhibition

The curator - Paul Romane

Paul is a Newham boy; born in Plaistow in 1960, he has spent his whole life - bar the decade of the 1970's - in the borough. He moved to Forest Gate in 1981 and has developed a fascination with the briefly existing Upper Cut Club ever since. Such is his love for the music it featured, that he named his only son Otis after one of the venue's greatest performers.

He has spent most of his working life in and around the arts, as a singer, musician, video maker, recording studio owner, poet and local music archivist.

The club

We have written extensively about the club, which lasted for only a year - from December 1966 until New Year's Eve the following year. (see footnote for details of previous articles ).

Insignificant-looking, but historic,
scrap of paper. Kenny and Eddie
Johnson (who ran the Lotus Club
and Stratford's Two Puddings) had
negotiated with Aronsohn to take
over the empty building that was
to become the Upper Cut, and
shared with him their business
plans.They feel that he duped
them, when the club opened with
an identical set of objectives, run
by Walker Brothers, Billy and George.

The Upper Cut was located in a building on land next to Percy Ingle's, on Woodgrange Road. The building was originally opened in 1902 as Forest Gate Public Hall, and served a variety of roles over the next century - hosting a theatre, cinema, skating rink, the Upper Cut Club (briefly), a bingo hall, The Ace of Clubs club, and an electrical warehouse, until its demolition, in the early years of this century, to make way for a ventilation shaft for the Eurotunnel rail link, which remains today.

Left - adverts for gigs at Upper Cut club, right - coverage of the club - all from the New Musical Express, at the time.

The location was awarded a plaque by Newham Council five or six years ago, in recognition of the fact that it was there that Jimi Hendrix wrote and first performed Purple Haze - widely regarded as being one of the greatest rock numbers of all time - on Boxing Day 1966. The sign has subsequently been removed, as developers Mura have taken over much of the surrounding land.

The owner - Billy Walker

The club was owned and named after British boxer, Billy Walker, seen as a 'glamour' figure at the time of 'Swinging Britain'. Billy was very much the front man for the club, with his brother, George, the brains and businessman behind it. See here for details of Billy's local associations and views on the club, based on a personal interview with this website.

Above, programmes and Boxing magazines featuring Upper Cut owner, Billy Walker's boxing career, and the corner devoted to him in the exhibition.

Entrance and cloakroom of Upper Cut on
night of Stax performance, March 1967,
with large poster of Billy featured
in the reception area.

Billy, in a staged photo, surrounded
by "adoring fans" at the club, in the
midst of the 'Swinging Sixties' .
(photo: copyright Getty Images)

Billy (right) with Lord Bath previewing an
exhibition of his lordship's controversial artwork
on the walls of the club.
(photo copyright of Getty Images)

The performers

Although the club was opened for just one year, it attracted almost all the prominent UK bands of the day (excluding, notably, the Beatles) and some American black acts who were struggling to get recognition at home.

Most notable among them was Jimi Hendrix, who appeared at the club twice.

Possibly the biggest night in the club's short life was on 18 March 1967, when the so called Stax tour appeared. They performed one of their four UK gigs at the club, as part of a European tour. The star of the show was Otis Redding - who was dead months later following a plane crash. He was supported on the bill by Sam and Dave, The Mar-Keys, Booker T and the MG's, Arthur Conley and Eddie Floyd.

Left - waiting outside the club for the Stax gig, Right - poster advertising the gig

Above and below, the programme
for the night for the Stax gig

New Musical Express coverage of the Stax night at the Upper Cut club

Ronnie Lane

One of the biggest UK acts to perform at the club was local band, The Small Faces. The lead, Steve Marriott, was brought up in Manor Park, while bass guitarist, Ronnie Lane, spent his youth in Forest Gate's Romford Road. See here for this site's biography of Ronnie.

Left - a cut-out of Ronnie Lane, with guitar - loaned to the exhibition by his brother, Stan. Right - a poster advertising one of Ronnie's later projects - Slim Chance

Left - one of Ronnie's jackets, right the label inside from 60's famed 'pop culture' retailer, King's Road's 'Granny Takes a Trip' - loaned to the exhibition by Stan Lane. Below - one of Ronnie's "country jackets", as Stan calls them.

Paul was able to track down Stan Lane, Ronnie's brother, who was for a while the band's roadie. He now lives in Essex and has a considerable collection of Ronnie's possessions and artefacts. He kindly lent some of these to Paul, and they formed a central part of the exhibition.

What's next?

It is a great pity that at the end of the carefully curated exhibition, its contents had to be returned to their original owners, as there is no location on which to house a longer show in Newham - the borough being one of only seven in London without its own museum.

Newham has a very rich musical heritage - particularly at the popular end of the spectrum. Other venues in Forest Gate alone worthy of public exhibition and recognition include: the Lotus Club (see here for details), The Princess Alice, as host to the first Rock against Racism (see here), The Tonic Sol-Fa college in Earlham Grove (see here).

Beyond these narrow geographic boundaries is Canning Town's former Bridge House (see here) and pubs such as the Ruskin Arms in Manor Park (another venues for the Small Faces), Stratford's former Two Puddings pub (along with the Forest Gate's Jive Dive, home to perhaps Britain's first disco), Maryland's Cart and Horses (home, as the poster outside proclaims, of Iron Maiden) and Stratford Angel Lane's Railway Tavern (home of a sixties blues club).

Posters advertising events at Kenny Johnson's Forest Gate's Jive Dive (Earlham Grove) and Lotus Club (Woodgrange Road)

In addition to the Small Faces band members, other prominent musical performers with significant Newham connections include: Dame Vera Lynn, Lonnie Donegan, Joe Brown, David Essex, Forest Gate's Plan B (Ben Drew), and a very lively current Grime scene.

Future shows and dedicated exhibition space devoted to the rich history and locations outlined above would make a significant statement about Newham's pride in its musical heritage. But will the council be prepared to recognise this and facilitate the celebration?

This site's back catalogue

Previous articles on this site related to the history of the Upper Cut club can be found here:

When Otis played Forest Gate (March 1967) May 2013

Upper Cut (1) - a summary of the emergence of the first six months of the club (December 1966 - July 1967) July 2013

Upper Cut (2) - a brief survey of the second, and final half year of the club's existence (August 1967 - December 1967) July 2013

Georgie Fame, The Tremeloes and Unit 4 + 2 - (September 1967 at the Upper Cut) October 2013

When Stevie Wonder played Forest Gate - (October 1967) November 2013

Mouthwatering musical fayre on Woodgrange Road - (November 1967) December 2013

Club bills for the Upper Cut's two Decembers - (Decembers 1966 and 1967) January 2014

The Upper Cut beds down - (January 1967) February 2014

Essex comes to Forest Gate - (February 1967) March 2014

Stax comes to town - (March 1967) April 2014

A mixed bunch at the Upper Cut in April (April 1967) May 2014

Upper Cut - May 1967 (June 1967) June 2014

Summer of Love in Forest Gate (Summer 1967) August 2014

Golden Boy, Billy Walker's Forest Gate memories September 2014

Thanks

To Paul Romane for curating the exhibition and to Sophie Rigg from Forest Gate Arts for allowing us to use some of her photos of it.

It is always a great delight to get feedback on articles that appear on this website - particularly from families of people whose stories are affected. It is even more so, when the responses move the story on a little and add further detail to it.

What follows below is an account by one of the great-grandchildren of a resident of the Industrial School on Forest Lane, who was a hero on the night of the tragic fire that killed the 26 boys on the night of New Year's Eve, 1889.

We have written of that fire before, see here, here and here.

The Industrial school ablaze, New Year's eve 1889

Reader, Peter Norton, contacted this website, and said:

Below is an excerpt from a short essay I wrote about my great-grandfather, for my great grandmother, who mourned his death from 1918, until she died in the mid 1960's.

"Charles George Hipkins was born in 1877 in Poplar, to Joseph Hipkins and Sarah Creamer. Joseph was born in the Midlands and by the time Charles was born, he was a boiler maker in London.

Unfortunately, he died when Charles was 10 and the family fell apart, with no money and ended up in workhouses and schools for the poor.

At the age of 12 Charles Hipkins was a boarder at the Forest Gate District School, – the parish charity school for the poor of the Whitechapel and Poplar Union. He was there when a fire burnt the building down on the night of the 31 Dec 1889.

Fire in the dormitory - source
Illustrated London News

According to the Illustrated London News 26 boys aged between 7 and 12 died and 58 were rescued from 2 locked dormitories. There were 636 children in the school that night.

Memorial to the 26 fire victims,
West Ham cemetery

Charles was awarded a Silver Medal from The Royal Society for the Saving of Life from Fire and was given 5 guineas. Only 4 others got this highest award for that incident and they were all adult workers at the school. Already Charles was proving his bravery!

The silver medal Charles was awarded
for his bravery on the night of the fire

The fire in Forest Gate lead to the government taking urgent action.

It issued a binding circular to all Boards of Guardians urging the importance of leaving dormitory doors unlocked at night, conducting fire drills and establishing voluntary workhouse fire brigades, maintaining telephonic communications with fire stations wherever possible and providing fire escapes.

A second illustration of destruction in the
dormitories - from the Illustrated London News

By the 1891 census Charles Hipkins was a Houseboy at ‘The Brigade Institution’, 147-153 Ebury Street, St Georges Square – another charity school.

He worked as a coachman and aged 17 he joined the Army Service Corps working as a driver in the 5^th Battalion East Surrey ‘Queens’ Regiment. He married Edith Croxson in 1899 in West Ham. How they met, as she was from Kirton in Suffolk, I do not know.

They then lived in South Wimbledon and had a son Charles William George Hipkins, in 1900. Just one month before his son was born Charles senior went to South Africa with his Regiment for two years for the 2^nd Boer War (where was awarded the South African campaign medal). When he returned Charles and Edith had their second and final child Edith Hipkins (ed: author, Paul Norton's grandmother) in 1903.

Charles was working as a house painter when the Great War started and voluntarily re-enlisted ‘for the duration of the war’ on the 29 September 1915. The attached photo shows him in the East Surrey’s uniform proudly showing his Forest Gate and South African Medals. On the back of the photo, he wrote ‘ for mum’.

Charles, proudly wearing the medal,
twenty five years later, when he
re-enlisted into the army, to fight in WW1

I (ed: Paul Norton) have also researched the others who won awards that night but still cannot find out exactly what Charles did. He was certainly the only boy to be awarded the highest award - the silver medal.

The London papers listed all the awardees, they, their status and award are listed, below.

Distraught parents at the inquest into the
Industrial School fire-deaths - source: The Graphic

The lists shows: Name of recipient (details about the person) - nature of award:

Charles Hipkins (12 year old pupil) - Silver Medal

Thomas Jones Oakley (Neighbour to school, who helped in the rescue) - Silver Medal

Henry Elliot (Yardman* , staff) - Silver Medal

George Hare (Assistant yardman*, staff, aged 22) - Silver Medal

Charles Duncan (Superintendant of school) - Illuminated Testimonial

Miss Maria Julia Bloomfield (Wardrobe woman) - Illuminated Testimonial

Herbert John Roe (Staff?) - Illuminated Testimonial

Miss Laura Terry (Head sewing mistress) - Certificate

Mrs Eliza Roe (Staff ?) - Certificate

John Malcolm (Neighbour to school, who helped in the rescue) - Certificate

Walter Edmond Crisp (Unknown) - Certificate

Frederick William Roe (Staff ?) - Certificate

John Blagdon (Police constable) - Certificate

* N.B., Yardsmen slept in the dormitories, with the boys." We would like to thank Peter for his contribution, and as ever, would be delighted to hear from other descendants of survivors who could provide further details to the tragic story of the fire and its aftermath for the individuals concerned.

We would be delighted to hear other stories of survivors from the fire that night, or indeed any details of any residents of the Industrial School.

The Mayor of London and London Assembly have recently published a list of private sector housing landlords and agents convicted of crimes related to the management of properties they own and rent, and their failure to comply with legislation aimed at protecting tenants' rights (see here).

This website has often been critical of Newham Council about the way it behaves over a number of matters locally. But in this instance, it emerges with considerable credit in being at the forefront of prosecuting rogue landlords.

Using the Mayor of London's database, we give details of 17 Forest Gate properties, whose owners/agents have been prosecuted 45 times for offences related to the management of those properties over the last year, bringing a total yield of a little under £135,000.

Newham has, in total, achieved 128 successful prosecutions against rogue landlords and their agents over the last twelve months - almost a third of the total of only 296 achieved London-wide. The council is to be congratulated for its vigilance. The great pity is that other councils are not as pro-active, in defence of private sector tenants and that the fines available to the courts are not stiffer.

The reality for many rogue landlords, however, is that the fines they receive are little more than minor financial inconveniences to their business and amount, often, to little more than a month's rent from the properties that they benefit from mismanaging. There is little real incentive- via large fines and company suspensions - for bad landlords to change their anti-social practices.

Below, we list the Forest Gate properties at the centre of the criminal offences committed by the landlords/agents and give details of the successful prosecutions and those convicted of the offences. Some patterns emerge in this analysis and details are given at the end of the blog.

The properties are listed in alphabetical order of street names.

124 Capel Road

An interesting property! Its owners/controllers/agents received a total of five fines on 17 March 2017 in relation to its management. A company called Rentify, of Long Lane, London EC1 was fined £1,500 for failing to obtain a Houses in Multiple Occupation (HMO) licence, as required by Newham Council, and was fined a further £250 for each of two offences for failing to provide the council with documentation related to the property, as required.

124 Capel Road

A second firm of estate agents, Life Work Study, London was also fined £1,000 for failing to apply for an HMO licence. That company's sole director, Omar Patel was fined £750 on that day for the same offence.

Life Work Study throws an interesting light on a complex web of local property ownership/management arrangements, which are considered towards the end of this article. It was previously (2013-2015) known as YLR (Whitechapel), see below for similar sounding named companies, and trades out of the offices of another estate agent appearing in this article, Filton's, at 190 High Street Stratford.

Any would-be tenant considering using Filton's is advised to search its Facebook presence. Its services are rated by 10 people - seven of them giving the firm only one star out of five.

51 Clova Road

Mohammed Jawad Hussain of West Ham Lane Stratford was convicted of three offences in relation to this property on 24 January 2017. They were: failure to carry out improvements, as instructed by the council (fined £2,000); failure to provide documentation in relation to the property when requested to do so by the council (fined £1,000) and failure to comply with licence conditions, to ensure that the property is in a safe and good condition (fined £1,000).

51 Clova Road

51b Clova Road

The same landlord was also convicted of three similar offences relating to this property, on the ground floor and at the rear of number 51. The fines were £1,800, £1,000 and £1,000, respectively.

4 Dunbar Road

A company called YLR Ltd of High Street Stratford ( see Life Work Study - above) was fined £1,500 on 17 March 2017 for failure to apply for an HMO licence for this property.

4 Dunbar Road

Barclay Estates, letting agents of 86 Upton Lane (see photo) was fined on two accounts of offences of failing to provide Newham Council with details relating to this property, as required by law, on the same day. They were fined £500 for each offence.

Barclay Estates, Katherine Road

Fiaz Mahud Khan also of Upton Lane was also fined £500 on each of two counts of failing to provide Newham Council details of the property, as required, on the same day.

SM Property, 468 Katherine Road

This estate agent was fined £4,000 on 13 September 2017 for a failure to display its letting fees appropriately, within its premises, in a separate piece of consumer protection legislation.

SM Property, Katherine Road

36 Osborne Road

YLR Ltd (see 4 Dunbar Road, above) , but this time operating via Filton's of 190 High Street Stratford, was fined £1,500 for failure to apply for an HMO licence relation to this property on 17 March 2017.

36 Osborne Road

Filton's is an estate agent, which is currently advertising 20 properties on its website - the vast majority in Newham. The company clearly has a cavalier attitude to its business and social responsibilities. To quote its website:

We are an estate and property management group run by some of the most disruptive minds in the industry ... We .. play hard, without the bureaucracy (ed: like abiding by Housing legislation, apparently). ... We don't do uppity suits and fake smiles. That's why we're turning the industry upside down ... And we're pushing boundaries for clients with new revenue streams, managed short lets and award winning marketing .

Filton's of High Street, Stratford - cavalier

The company's intolerance of the niceties of the law got them into further trouble on 7 June 2017, when they were fined £5,000 for a failure to display accurately display their letting fees on their premises, as required by consumer protection law.

117 Osborne Road

YLR Ltd, operating via Filton's of 190 High Street Stratford, was given two fines in relation to this property on 17 March 2017, one of £1,500 for failure to apply for an HMO licence, and one of £800 for failure to ensure that the property is in a safe and good condition (for company details, see 4 Dunbar Road, above).

117 Osborne Road

168 Osborne Road

This innocuous looking property on the Woodgrange estate has a complex ownership/management arrangement, whose principals were subject to four, separate, prosecutions last year. Azher Iqbal of near-by Windsor Road was fined £3,250 on 11 May 2017 for a failure to comply with a property licence, to ensure that the property is kept in a safe and good condition. He was also fined £1,100 on the same day for a failure to apply for a licence to run the property as an HMO.

168 Osborne Road

A company called City Lord Ltd, of 25 Burdett Road, Tower Hamlets was fined £1,000 for a failure to register the property as an HMO on the same day, and Sidra Butt, also of Burdett Road, was fined £500 that day on an identical charge.

City Lord Real Estate, Burdett Road

McCreadie Hotel, 357-363, Romford Road

This large, four triple-fronted house, hotel is used as bed and breakfast accommodation for homeless families by boroughs outside of Newham; for a while, certainly Tower Hamlets was a major customer. It is in a poor state of repair and the landlords have clearly done well over the years from the public purse.

McCreadie Hotel, Romford Road

It is a sign of how profitable this business has been that they have chosen not to cash in and sell the property for the £5m plus it could get on the current property market from a developer wishing to turn it into 20+ flats.

The hotel currently looks very run down and under-used, perhaps change is on the cards, accelerated by the prosecutions, below?

Osman Ahmed Dakri of Holcombe Road, Ilford was fined £14,500 on 2 August 2017 on two charges, for a failure to comply with the rules for large private rented properties, which ensure the property is in a safe and good condition.

A company, which looks as if he controls, bearing the name, A Dakri Ltd of Romford Road (the hotel's address), was fined £38,000 for similar offences, on the same day.

5 Sandringham Road

Abdul Malik of Shrubland Road, E8 received two fines relating to this property on 2 March 2017, one of £1,000 for failing to apply for an HMO licence and one of £2,000 for failing to comply with licensing conditions.

5 Sandringham Road

32 Sandringham Road

Faizul Hoque of Osborne Road, Forest Gate, was fined £210 on 3 August 2017 for failing to comply with licence conditions in ensuring that this property was in a safe and good condition.

32 Sandringham Road

269 Sprowston Mews

Tariq Khan of Halley Road Manor Park was fined £500 on 3 November 2017, for failing to take action to control pests, after instructed to do so by the council, on the first floor flat of this property.

269 Sprowston Mews

9 Sprowston Road

An interesting property, to say the least. Six different people and bodies have been found guilty of criminal offences about its letting status. See at the end of this article for some analysis.

Firstly, Barclay Estates of 86 Upton Lane (see 4 Dunbar Road, above) was fined £3,000 on 17 March 2017 for a failure to apply for an HMO licence. Faiz Mahmud Khan, also of Upton Lane was fined a similar amount on the same day for the same offence, as was Maqhood Khan, also of Upton Lane. They were both also fined £500 on the same day for failing to provide details about the property to Newham Council, when asked to do so.

9 Sprowston Road

Shahid Khan of London Road E13 was fined £3,000 for failing to apply for an HMO licence on 17 March 2017, and Life Work Study of 190 High Street Stratford (see 124 Capel Road, above) was fined £1,000 for the same offence on the same day. Making a total of £13,500 fines on the day, although probably only representing 4/5 months rent for the property.

22 Sprowston Road

Rameschander Patel of Ashburton Avenue, Ilford was fined a total of £25,000 for three offences in relation to this property on 5 January 2017. They were: a failure to comply with licence conditions to keep it safe and in good condition (£9,000), failure to comply with HMO regulations (£14,000) and a failure to provide Newham Council with documentation relating to the property, when requested to do so (£2,000).

22 Sprowston Road

29 Tenbury Close

Ahmedl Khan of 84 Romford Road was fined £1,050 on 3 August 2017 for failing to comply with a property licence condition, that this property was in a safe and good condition.

Tenbury Close

98b Upton Park Road

Mechella Fiona Jones, also of Upton Park Road was fined £1,500 on 22 June 2017 for a failure to comply with licensing conditions that ensure the property is in a safe and good condition.

98b Upton Park Road

43b Woodgrange Road

This property is one of the flats behind the now defunct NUR takeaway on Woodgrange Road. Its owner Mohamed Sadfar of Cecil Road, E13 was fined £5,000 on 2 March 2017 for his failure to carry out improvements on the property, as instructed to do so, by the council.

43b Woodgrange Road

Inter-relationships

Some of the same companies and individuals appear on a number of occasions in the listings above, showing how a tight knit, close web of associations plays a significant part in the criminal activity listed above.

So, for example, Faiz Mahmud Khan, of Upton Lane has been fined for two offences in relation to 4 Dunbar Road and one in relation to 9 Sprowston Road. Other organisations also fined for offences in relation to these two properties include Barclay Estates (three offences) and Lifework Study (one offence), with an additional offence in relation to 124 Capel Road - see above for details.

YLR Ltd has also been successfully prosecuted for offences concerning 4 Dunbar Road - and in addition has convictions in connection with 117 Osborne (two) and 36 Osborne (one). YLR, itself, operates from the premises of Filton's in Stratford, which prides itself on its cavalier operating style and has been fined £5,000 for failure to comply with regulations relating to estate agency.

As we said at the start of this piece, Newham Council is to be commended for the way in which it has proactively prosecuted the rogue landlords and agents featured in this article. It has had to fight hard to obtain the right to defend private sector tenants via this legislation. The government wishes to reduce the powers of local authorities such as Newham, in this regard.

For the sake of the many thousands of private sector tenants in Newham and elsewhere, these powers need extending and strengthening, not weakening to the benefit of rogue landlords and agents, who are able to exploit their position at a time of chronic shortages in the housing market.

During research for a book on West Ham Fire Brigade, it emerged that a temporary WW2 fire station had been constructed on Claremont Road, Forest Gate. The book's author and E7-NowAndThen stalwart, Peter Williams, writes:

The station was designated 36 D15 (station D15 of fire force 36), National Fire Service - see later. This is shown on the plan below -

The diagram clearly locates it between the Methodist church, Woodgrange Road, destroyed in a bomb blast on 17 April 1941, (see photo, below) and No. 23 Claremont Road which survives - as the first house on the road, after the Kebbell Terrace flats. The bomb was clearly a large one, which not only destroyed the church, but also killed 5 people, living at numbers 3, 5 and 6 Claremont Road - thus creating a substantial bomb site.

Above and below, Woodgrange Methodist
church after 17 April 1941 bomb

It seems there was a originally a plan to put an allotment next to the station and 23, no doubt as part of the huge ‘Dig for Victory’ campaign to boost wartime food production (see poster used during the era).

One can see on the plan the (fire) engine room, a separate dormitory, and office /store and a watch room, where telephone calls were received about incidents and a fireman or firewoman was on duty or watch.

These buildings were temporary and could have been quite flimsy huts made of corrugated iron, or they may have been brick built. EWS on the plan means ‘emergency water supply’ and that would have been some kind of tank, possibly in the cellars of the bombed out buildings.

There were many of these kinds of temporary fire stations in huts, or evacuated schools, or empty garages. After the Blitz on London, from September 1940, preparations had to be made for further mass aerial attacks on cities. Local fire services were struggling to cope so in spring 1941 the fire service was nationalised by the wartime coalition government, on a promise that it would return to local authority control post war.

Many of these temporary stations were commissioned by the National Fire Service (NFS), or, prior to that being formed, the Auxiliary Fire Service (AFS). The AFS was created in the late 1930's by all local authorities. Volunteers joined up and were trained by professional fire-fighters. They had little to do in 1939-40 (the so called phoney war) and many left the service.

The AFS was issued with all kinds of rather improvised equipment – rather like Dad’s Army – and one can see in the photo below that taxis were commandeered to tow what were known as trailer pumps.

These were more effective that they might seem, and many serious wartime fires in the West Ham blitz were fought by multiple trailer pumps towed by a wide variety of cars and lorries commandeered by the government.

Sadly no known photograph of Claremont Road fire station survives, but it would have looked like this.

A similar scene Brockley, South London,
note the hut like temporary fire station
to the rear. Source, here

To get a very good view of this kind of fire station, see the wonderful wartime documentary, ‘Fires were started’ by Humphrey Jennings. See here:

Cyril Demarne, a West Ham fire officer, assisted the film director, as technical adviser, during his NFS days in Whitechapel 1942-1943. Cyril later became chief of the post war West Ham Fire Brigade.

From Fires were started.

Below is a photograph of the former station's location today, on the entrance land between 23 Claremont Road and Kebbell Terrace.

The flats, themselves, were built post war by the council to occupy the space between the church and 23 Claremont Road. Below is an architect's model, dated July 1954, for the area discussed in this article.

Footnotes

1. Source for plan: NFS/AFS file number/box 7984 titled ‘fire service’ kept in the basement archive, Newham council archives, Stratford library.

2. Fire Force 36 covered West Ham and neighbouring boroughs. Its HQ was in Gants Hill Ilford.

Local historian and housing specialist, Peter Williams, relates the interesting story behind one of Forest Gate's most prominent land marks: Donald Hunter House.

Introduction

Most Forest Gate residents will be familiar with the tall building at the corner of Woodgrange Road and Romford Road above the Iceland store. Older residents will know it as Telephone House. Newcomers may know it as Donald Hunter House, and it has quite an interesting history.

That corner of Forest Gate suffered substantial damage in the Blitz, with the original Victorian Methodist church destroyed by bombs on 17 April 1941. It was replaced in the post war period by the current church. The Princess Alice pub was also destroyed and had to be replaced in 1950s.

Council flats were built to replace the Victorian villas of the Woodgrange estate. The council took the opportunity to provide a new public library for Forest gate. This was at first floor level above the council built shops with an entrance in Claremont Road. This was replaced in the last 15 years or so and the old library became a training centre run by a local charity.

The architects model below commissioned by Newham Council shows the vision for the area from Osborne Road to Romford Road. Not all of this was built but Telephone House can be seen to the right, and the low rise shops with library above to the left.

The current Forest Gate library occupies the ground floor of what was Telephone House. The library was originally branded The Gate, but has been recently rebranded the CNC or Community Neighbourhood Centre, reflecting the new role libraries have assumed in Newham. The book stock has been reduced and space created for a wide variety of community activities and events.

Telephone House, Woodgrange Road, was built in 1958 by what was then the Post Office, that ran both what we think of as post offices, but also Post Office Telephones, the forerunner of what became BT (British Telecommunications) when privatised by Mrs Thatcher.

The building was the headquarters of Post Office Telephones for the eastern area of the London. On the ground floor was a Post Office, which later moved across the road into a private shop. There was also a showroom on the ground floor of Telephone House displaying the latest telephone equipment for sale when you could only by your phone (landline) from BT. There was no choice in those days!

BT leave

Around about the year 2000 BT declared the whole building including the tower block redundant as they rationalised their offices. In recent years it has become commonplace to convert old offices into residential (not least because the Cameron government liberalised planning laws to help this happen, developers often no longer need planning permission). But in 2000 it was still relatively rare to convert office to residential.

The old Telephone House was bought by a company called Peabody Unite plc with the intention of converting it into housing for keyworkers. There was already a housing crisis in London and people like trainee nurses, social workers and teachers had a desperate need but cheap but accessible accommodation.

Donald Hunter House, today

In the 1980s Newham Council in fact had made some hard to let council flats available for teachers, social workers and other young professionals who they found hard to recruit into the borough to work for them and other public bodies, but by the late 1990s these schemes had come to an end as homeless pressures increased and the council could not spare flats. The Metropolitan Police also had small tower blocks of its own to accommodate young constables at Selsdon Road, Upton Park and another one behind East Ham police station, but these were sold off many years ago.

Peabody Unite plc was itself an interesting organisation, a joint venture between the famous Peabody Housing Association, founded in Victorian times by the great American philanthropist George Peabody, and Unite Group plc, then a small private company specialising in key worker housing. As the press release put it:

London NHS workers gain new affordable homes with Peabody Unite's £33 million investment

2 August 2000

The UNITE Group plc, the UK's leading specialist provider of accommodation services for students and key workers, has today announced that its joint venture operation with the Peabody Trust, Peabody Unite, is developing two schemes in London, which will be worth £33.3 million on completion, and will create more than 500 quality, affordable bed spaces for Barts and the London NHS Trust homes workers in Whitechapel and Forest Gate, East London.

On completion the building was renamed Donald Hunter House after a well known doctor and according to the company “provided quality Peabody UNITEhomes for 256 key workers.”

In 2013 the owners applied to vary their original planning permission which had said that they could only house ‘economically active’ people i.e. keyworkers in the dwellings but Newham Council refused to agree this change to the planning rules for the block. In 204 a different planning application allowed the building for the first time to be used as a hostel. (see below)

Quality was always an issue in the building as the faculties were fairly basic with small rooms and shared facilities such as communal kitchens. It was never hugely popular with the NHS staff it was targeted at and Peabody Unite began to market it to a wider audience of keyworkers, and by late 2013 when it closed in that form they were housing some students there.

Unite plc (not with Peabody) went on to be a major provider of private sector student housing in London building many new blocks all over central London. Their rents are not cheap, and now they attract a huge number of foreign students with rich parents who can afford their market rents.

They have massive new-build schemes in Stratford, notably the thousand home red building with a stepped profile that towers at 28 floors over the Olympic Park behind John Lewis, (called Stratford One and opened in 2014) and the 750 room scheme at the corner of Angel Lane by Stratford tube station opened 2015. East London has been a success story for them.

Donald Hunter House was less of a success and was put up for sale around 2014. On 15^thOctober that year 4-20 Woodgrange Road was acquired by an offshore company Stratos Holdings, Martello Court, Admiral Park, St Peter Port, Guernsey. It is the only property owned by the company in the UK and the holding includes both The Gate library and Iceland stores. So, Newham Council are paying rent to Stratos in order to run a library there.

This information is drawn from public Land Registry data that has featured on this site before in an article showing links of Forest Gate properties to tax havens (see here).

Stratos was specially created offshore to hold the building but the actual owner are Saudi Arabian oil interests. When it became clear that Forest Gate was to become a beneficiary of the opening of a Crossrail station, Donald Hunter House was snapped by this Saudi company, sensing a good return on the investment would be pretty much guaranteed.

The Saudis decided they did not want to demolish and redevelop straight away so they looked round for an interim use. They got in touch with one of a number of private sector companies that have developed over the last decade or so specialising in providing homeless temporary accommodation to London boroughs.

Homeless accommodation

London councils have always wanted to try to avoid the use of so called Bed and Breakfast hotels, which in reality are simply another form of private rented accommodation where the council is paying a premium for its immediate availability. Central Government introduced a target a few years ago saying councils must not leave families in B&B for more than 6 weeks, and this forced councils into the hands of a different kind of private landlord, offering short term lets in the private sector at a price below a hotel price but normally above rents for ordinary self contained private accommodation. Often it was the same businessmen involved in both kinds of accommodation.

Nevertheless this new style of homeless temporary accommodation was often of a slightly better standard than the traditional B&B with a higher degree of self containment, some being small flats or studios. Councils entered into longer term contracts to secure a better overall price.

One such private property company was TANDO who did business with Newham council in Canning Town to put back into use some empty council flats that were awaiting a more comprehensive redevelopment. However they ran into some difficulties there outlined in a story in the Newham Recorder early in 2017.

This story was also covered in the Guardian. Another of these specialist companies was Theori:

A Freedom of information Act (FOI) request to Newham in 2015 sought to tease out the relationship between Newham Council and the following companies:

· Tando Homes Ltd and associated companies

· Theori Investments

· Omega Lettings - and associated companies; and

· Mears Group

All these companies have links. Tando in fact is a shortened form of Theori AND Omega, T and O. To quote from a council report online in the context of Canning Town and Custom House:

Theori Property Services Ltd has a stated environmental policy that demonstrates a commitment, wherever practical to use environmentally friendly products (such as condensing boilers). They have a waste management strategy designed to deal with refurbishment and build waste. Both the environment policy and waste management strategy will be adopted by TANDO Property Services Ltd.

Donald Hunter House was under the Omega lettings brand and in recent period has been block booked by Tower Hamlets Council for their homeless families. Newham Council had used it briefly in 2014/15 but Tower Hamlets were able to pay a better price due to the quirks of the Housing Benefit system – the rent allowance is higher in Tower Hamlets than Newham. Many of the social care and education costs of these families of course fall on Newham, though some families travel back to their home borough for schooling. Omega operates as a Registered Provider, regulated by a government bod,y but unlike a housing association it makes profits for its shareholders.

Conclusion

When it comes to homelessness there is a ‘dog eat dog’ attitude amongst London boroughs as they are all competing for scarce housing resources, and landlords are able to profit from this lack of cooperation in London. London has 32 housing authorities; New York is just 5 boroughs and with a Mayor across the whole city with stronger strategic powers than London’s. In London councils have been forced into the hands of highly profitable property businesses specialising in homeless temporary accommodation due to the lack of affordable supply. Donald Hunter House is held offshore in a tax haven pending re-development by Saudi oil money.

References

This article uses publicly available sources: here, here, here, here and here

Planning applications can be seen online at Newham planning portal. FOIs are here:

We've written, here, before about the inhabitants of Claremont Road in 1881 - the first census taken after the start of construction of the Woodgrange estate. This post takes a look at the census a decade later, in an effort to see how the composition of the road had changed over the first full decade of its existence.

In 1881 there were just 66 houses on the road (nos. 1-67 and 2-64). Ten percent of those were unoccupied. The road - only partially constructed - had a large proportion of youngish residents and householders, so 60% of households had children under the age of 10.

Original deed to number 44,
dated 1879. Purchased for £530,
with annual ground rent of £8.80p

The road was, of course, predominantly middle class and 83% of households had live-in servants, others may have employed daily labour. Thirteen of the houses (22%) had two live-in servants - usually a general "maid of all works" and a child care worker (nursemaid, nanny etc).

Only four of the heads of household were women - three of them were widows and described as "living on means" (pensions, rents share dividends etc.). T he only economically active female head was Elizabeth Lollard of number 48. She was the owner/head of a "ladies' college" - run from the house (see advert).

Number 48 today - a girls academy in 1891

A decade later

The Woodgrange estate was still under construction - and not to be completed for at least three years. But house building progress had been slow in the intervening decade. There were only 98 houses registered in the census - a 50% increase.

The relatively small rise in completed houses (32) over a decade can largely be explained by a slump in the construction industry in the middle of the decade, that halted building for some while.

All of the 98 houses were occupied - in contrast to the 10% vacancy rate 10 years earlier. Presumably the road was beginning to look a bit less like a building site than it had done a decade previously, and doubts about the viability or desirability of the street and estate as a residency had been dispelled.

Sixty per cent of households had children of school age, or lower - a slightly lower percentage than a decade previously.

Archibald Cameron Corbett - the Woodgrange estate's
developer, and the drinking fountain bearing his
name, outside Forest Gate station at the turn
of the twentieth century

Eighty per cent of households had servants, and 11 houses had two servants; these figures - particularly the second are down on the 1881 figures.

Half of the houses without servants, interestingly were among the even houses 2 - 22 on the road. In 1881 these same houses had a high level of unoccupancy and a relatively low level of servant employment.

The end of Claremont Road c 1908.The
apparently "less desirable" houses on the left
hand side behind the tall trees and a little further down

They were bombed during WW2, and so no longer survive. It can only be concluded that these were perhaps of inferior construction or desirability and so were more difficult to sell - or at least to attract the more prosperous householders.

Who lived in road in 1891

The short and obvious description is that they were overwhelmingly middle class. Fifteen of the heads of household were described as employers and twelve as "living on means".

Shipping and related activities accounted for six of the heads - Claremont Road providing easy access to the docks for ships' officers and those involved in the then-thriving shipbuilding trade in the southern part of West Ham.

There were also three heads with occupational designations such as "colonial traveller" - indicating the importance of the colonies at the time. There were at least four other heads who were described as "commercial traveller" - or similar.

With so many people associated with travel, or shipping, it is perhaps not surprising that in five of the households the head was not present on the day of the census - presumably they, too, would have been in similar occupations, but away from home on the day of the count.

Forest Gate Weekly News, February 1899, offering
free adverts for female domestic servants looking
for work in streets, like Claremont Road. Interesting
that wages sought are from £14 - £22 - per year, that is!

Number 18 is interesting, in this respect. There were only servants living in the house at the time of the 1891 census - as there were in 1881. Conceivably the house was owned by people who lived abroad (in the empire, or army?) and kept a servant at home, to look after it until their return.

Nine (10%) of households were headed by a woman - all but one was a widow - and described as "living on means". The exceptional woman - once again - was Elizabeth Lollard, of number 48, whose daughter, this time, was described as owning the Ladies' College, run from the address - see advert from 1899.

Woodgrange Academy for Girls,
number 48 Claremont - sold 1899

The cases of numbers 18 and 48 point to some continuity of ownership in the road. Seventeen of the 66 heads of household (25%) in 1881 were still running the house a decade later.

All 84 of the live-in servants were described as "single" - two of that number being older and designated as "widows".

West Ham - and perhaps Forest Gate in particular - has always been a home to migrants and the 1891 census shows this quite dramatically.

Only one of the 98 heads of households - Henry Bennett of number 94 - was born in West Ham. This is largely a consequence of the rapid population growth of the area. The population of Forest Gate, at the time most of the heads were born, was around 500 - it was fifty times that number by this census. So - in comers overwhelmingly populated this rapidly growing suburb.

Claremont Road, dated 1912

Twenty six heads of household gave their place of birth as being London, ten Middlesex (most of which then, is what would now be described as London), seven came from Essex, four from Surrey and three Kent.

Interestingly, quite a few came from much further afield - five from Scotland, four Germany and two from each of Ireland and Holland and one from France.

The "servants" were, perhaps unsurprisingly more likely to be local. Thus seven gave West Ham as their place of birth and 28 either London or Middlesex. Two thirds came from what we now call the London and the home counties. Only two were from very far afield - one from each of Ireland and Scotland.

Notably, 21 came from Essex and five from Suffolk - bearing continued testimony of the pull of London to the displaced rural poor. It is almost as if the householders moved east to Forest Gate (country retreat?) and the servants moved west (secure employment?).

'A maid of all works' - illustration taken
from Mrs Beeton's Book of Household
Management, 1879

The Forest Gate News five years later offered free advertisements for "female domestic servants requiring situations". The opportunity was taken up largely by young women from Essex, who sought positions as "domestic servants" or "maids of all works", for an average of £16 per year. They would have received full board and lodging, in addition, for their six day, twelve hours labour.

Household composition in 1891

We have tried, as far as possible to summarise the census data for each household and present it in a similar way for each house in the list below. So, for each house we have identified the person described as "Head of household". These are invariably are men - see above for details and explanations of variations.

This is followed by the age given in the census for that person, followed by the description of occupation listed in the census. An "E" after an occupancy designation indicates that, according to the census, that the person was an employer.

The birthplace of the head is then given, in an abbreviated fashion. The total number of people in the household (excluding servants) is then given and the number of children of school age or below is then cited.

Details of servants are listed, by name, age and place of birth. Some conclusions to some of these features is presented in the analysis, above.

NB. - and genealogists will be very familiar with this - the census details are hand written and in this case by enumerators with very hard-to-decipher handwriting. So, there may be some misreading of the handwriting, particular with the exact spelling of some of the people's names.

Claremont Road, dated 1913

Households - odd numbers

1. Head: John Gray (50), occ: Examiner, Board of Trade, b: Scot. # in household: 1, # of child: 0 . Servant: Margaret McEwan (29), b: Ire.

3. Head: Heskens Baker (31), occ: Collector , b: Warks . #in household: 3, # of child:0 . Servant: Florence Till (31), b:Worcs.

5. Head: Sidney Tarrant (32), occ: Glove merchant (E) , b: Lond. #in household:4 , # of child:1 . Servant: Jane Woodward (19), b:Kent.

7. Head: Sarah Calman (widow) (72), occ:Living on means , b:Ches . #in household: 2, # of child:0 . Servant: Minnie Kelty (22), b: Essex.

9. Head: John Forecourt (44), occ: Clerk at Bank of England , b: Worcs. #in household: 4, # of child:1 . Servant: Hepzibah Bougham (23), b: M'sex.

11. Head: Thomas Etherington (50), occ: Inspector, GPO , b: Herts . #in household: 2, # of child: 0. Servant: Florence Matthews (16), b: W Ham.

13. Head: Thomas Todd (36), occ: Marine engineer, b: Durham . #in household:4 , # of child:2 . Servant: Mary Langdale (16), b: Kent.

15. Head: Jeffery Stewart (26), occ Manager, sugar refinery: , b: Scot . #in household: 2, # of child: 0 . Servant: Rosetta Beaumont (widow) (38), b: Lond.

17. Head Marion Moss (widow): (66), occ:Living on means , b: Kent . #in household: 3, # of child: 2. Servant: Mary Harris (27), b: Lond.

19. Head: Henry Bishop (49), occ: Furrier (E), b:M'sex . #in household: 4, # of child:1 . Servant: Sarah Binden (28), b: W Ham.

21. Head: William Ferres (70), occ: Brewer's traveller , b: Berks . #in household:3 , # of child: 0. Servant: Mary Thomas (32), b: Lond.

23. Head: Henry Pearce (46), occ: Commercial traveller, b: Lond. #in household:9 , # of child: 5 . Servant Ellen Squires: (22), b: Norfolk.

25. Head: William Browning (48), occ: Commercial clerk , b:M'sex . #in household:9 , # of child: 7. Two servants: Sarah Raven and Grace Raven (21 and 12), b: Essex.

27. Head: John Radcliffe (43), occ: Colonial broker clerk, b: Surrey. #in household: 4, # of child: 2 . Servant: Mary Song (20), b: Suffolk.

29. Head: Jules Barly (44), occ: Civil engineer , b: France . #in household: 2, # of child: 2 . No servants.

31. Head: Charles Randall (46), occ: Railway superintendent , b: Suffolk. #in household:12 , # of child: 4. Servant: Harriet Jewerson (20), b: Suffolk.

33. Head: Mary Greenhill (widow) (71), occ: No details, b: Lond . #in household: 4, # of child:0 . Servant: Emily Burbege (20), b: M'sex.

35. Head: David Thomas (46), occ: Draper's commercial traveller, b: Wales. #in household: 6, # of child: 4. Servant: Sarah Moore (35), b: Suffolk.

37. Head: George Thorogood (64), occ:Living on means , b: Essex . #in household: 5, # of child: 0. Servant Millicent Roost (16), b: Essex.

39. Head: George Booth (48), occ: Insurance clerk , b Lond: . #in household: 3, # of child: 0. Servant: Emily Clarke (35), b: Essex.

41. Head: John Atkins (51), occ: Surveyor of customs , b: Yorks. #in household: 4, # of child: 0 . Servant: Sarah Humphries (46), b: M'sex.

43. Head: Hamilton Guernsey (43), occ: Insurance clerk , b: Surrey. #in household: 4, # of child:2 . Servant: Ella Hart (21), b: M'sex.

45. Head: James Everett (42), occ: Commercial traveller, b: Essex . #in household:4 , # of child: 2 . Two servants: Kate Layer (21), b: Surrey and Harriet Lucking (15), b: W Ham.

47. Head: Thomas Spencer (78), occ: Retired master mariner, b: Yorks. #in household: 2 , # of child: 0. No servants.

49. Head: William Later (46), occ: Elementary school master (it would appear that he and his wife owned/ran an elementary school), b: Lond. #in household: 7, # of child: 3. Servant: Emma Banes (19), b: Lond.

51. Head: Edward Finkensstadt (58), occ: Living on means, b: Germany (naturalised British. #in household: 7(inc 2 journalist sons), # of child: 1. Servant: Mary Crompton (16), b: Derbys.

53. Head: Andrew Scheerbohm (29), occ: Fur salesman, b: Holland. #in household:3 , # of child: 1. Servant: Kate Standen (28), b: Lond.

55. Head: William Turner (50), occ: Living on means, b: M'sex. #in household: 5, # of child: 0. No servants.

57. Head: Charles Palmer (51), occ: Agent, woollen manufacturer, b: Lond. #in household: 5, # of child: 0. No servants.

59. Head: Julian Jacobi (48), occ Mercantile clerk: , b: Prussia . #in household: 5 , # of child: 3. Servant: Sarah Bishop (28), b: Lond.

61. Head: Mary Scobie (head not present) (41), occ: None given, b: Scot. #in household: 4, # of child: 3 . Servant: Alice Prudence (20), b: Essex.

63. Head: Robert Wyatt (39), occ: Brokers' clerk , b: M'sex . #in household: 7, # of child: 4. Two servants: Annie Northcott (18), b:Cornwall and Emily Witham (18), b: Essex.

65. Head: William Bewers (39), occ: Clerk, b: Essex. #in household: 4, # of child: 2. Servant: Jessie Smith (17), b: Essex.

67. Head: Henry Hollingsworth (32), occ: Architect, b: Lond. #in household: 7, # of child: 4. Servant: Margaret Lake (22), b: Lond.

69. Head: HJ Hogg (widow) (55), occ: None given, b: Lond. #in household: 6, # of child:0 . Servant: A Parks(14), b: Essex.

71. Head: Mark Townsly (27), occ: None given , b: Ire . #in household: 2 , # of child: 0 . Servant: Martha Williams (25), b: Hants.

73. Head: Martha Ingold (head not present)(34), occ: Schoolmistress, b: Surrey. #in household: 5, # of child: 0. Servant: Emma White (21), b: Unknown.

75. Head: Charles Hill (35), occ: Clerk, b: M'sex . #in household: 6 , # of child: 1. Two servants: Annie Tallock (26), b: Cornwall and Clara Davies (16), b: M'sex.

77. Head: John Templeton (49), occ: Master mariner, b: Scot. #in household: 6, # of child: 2 . Servant: Rose Stokes (22), b: Essex.

79. Head: George Koster (60), occ: Colonial traveller , b: Ger. #in household:9 , # of child: 7. Two servants: Clara Edgar (Mother's helper) (19), b: Lond and Isabella Annandale (17), b: Scot.

81. Head: Frederick Wells (45), occ: Commercial traveller, b: Northants. #in household: 5, # of child: 2. Servant: Kate Hills (20), b: Lond.

83. Head: Joseph Townsend (49), occ: Cashier , b: Warks . #in household:6 , # of child: 1. Servants: Sarah Dean (21), b: Essex.

85. Head: Wentworth Scott (54), occ: Journalist, b: Lond. #in household: 2, # of child: 0. Servant: Annie Turner (22), b: Lond.

87. Head: John Graham (48), occ: Agent for patentees, b: Scot. #in household: 10, # of child: 4. No servants.

89. Head: Francis Parker (34), occ: Factory manager, b: Somerset. #in household: 5, # of child: 2. No servants.

91. Head: James Pollock (56), occ: Consulting engineer, b: Lond. #in household: 10, # of child: 4. Servant: Annie Freedman (20), b: W Ham.

93. Head: W Tipson (46), occ: Rope maker (E), b: Warks. #in household: 6, # of child: 2. Servant: Kate Mitchell (21), b: M'sex.

95. Head: Edward Shallis (42), occ: Warehouseman buyer, b: M'sex. #in household: 6, # of child: 4. Servant: Alice Hall (19), b: Essex.

97. Head: Martha Mosely (widow) (67), occ: Living on means, b: Lond. #in household: 3, # of child: 1. Servant: Elizabeth Flynn (31), b: Lond.

Households - even numbers

2. Head: Frank Edenborough (47), occ: Traveller , b: Lond. #in household: 4, # of child:0 . No servants.

4. Head: Peter Sharp (61), occ: Marine insurance accountant, b: Lond . #in household:4 , # of child:0 . No servants.

6. Head: Herbert Pate (33), occ: Merchant (E) , b: Cams . #in household: 5, # of child:3 . No servants.

8. Head: Matthew Summer (53), occ: Director, b: Lancs . #in household: 8, # of child: 3. No servants.

10. Head: Elizabeth Grealey (widow) (40), occ: Living on means, b: Hants . #in household: 2, # of child: 0. No servants.

12. Head: William Culaye (44), occ: Colonial merchant, b: Ire. #in household: 6, # of child: 3. No servants.

14. Head: Thomas Marriott (70), occ: Retired Inland Revenue , b: Warks . #in household: 6, # of child: 3. No servants.

16. Head: Henry Cooper (55), occ: None given, b: ??. #in household: 4, # of child: 1. Servant: Louisa Randall (19), b: Essex.

18. Head: Head not present , occ: ??, b: ??. #in household: 2, # of child: 0. Servant: Louise Wilton (25), b: W Ham.

20. Head: William Dyer (33), occ: Silk warehouseman, b: Lond. #in household: 7, # of child: 3. No servants.

22. Head: Elizabeth Fardell (43), occ: , b: Living on means. #in household: 5, # of child: 4. No servants.

24. Head: Frances Lucas (widow) (57), occ:Living on means, b: Oxon. #in household: 3, # of child: 0. Servant: Jane Quelch (38), b: Essex.

26. Head: Edward Blower (49), occ: Architect, b: M'sex . #in household: 5, # of child: 0. Servant: Susanna Colby (17), b: Essex.

28. Head: Albert Jones (widower) (47), occ: Advertising contractor (E), b: Surrey. #in household: 3, # of child: 1. Servant: Sarah Harman - housekeeper - (widow) (65), b: M'sex.

30. Head: John King (34), occ: , Civil engineer b: Lancs. #in household: 4, # of child: 2. Two servants: Ellen Hadden (25), M'sex; Frances Conistake (16) (nursemaid), b: M'sex.

32. Head: Elizabeth Harris (head not present) (37), occ: No details, b: Devon. #in household: 6, # of child: 2. Servant: Mary Crabb (19), b: Essex.

34. Head: Frederick Machon (29), occ: Living on means, b: Lond. #in household: 2, # of child: 0. Servant: Kate Fuller (21), b: Suffolk.

36. Head: Michael Brady (46), occ: Warehouseman, b: Ire. #in household: 6, # of child: 0. No servants.

38. Head: John Lussinger (46), occ: Secretary, public company, b: Lond. #in household: 6, # of child: 3. No servants.

40. Head: William Cowell (28), occ: Oil Manufacturer (E), b: Essex. #in household: 5, # of child: 3. Two servants: Fanny Allen (19), Bucks and Emily Allen (17), b: Bucks.

42. Head: William Burrough (42), occ: Manager, brass works, b: Lond. #in household: 3, # of child: 0. Servant: Frances Hawke (22), b: Yorks.

44. Head: Henry Kitchen (60), occ: Clerk, b: Lond. #in household: 7, # of child: 1. Servant: Florence Hart (14), b: Lond.

46. Head: Frederick Clarke (28), occ: Boot and shoe manufacturer, b: Lond. #in household: 2, # of child: 0. Servant: Martha Groves (19), b: Berks.

48. Head: (54), Elizabeth Lollard occ: None given, but her daughter, living with her, was principal of Ladies' College, b: Essex . #in household: 4, # of child: 1. Servant: Gertrude Corby (17), b: Lond.

50. Head: Alfred Bays (55), occ: Commissioning agent, b: Cambs. #in household: 4, # of child: 0. No servants.

52. Head: Frederick Bliss (36), occ: Clerk, b: Lond. #in household: 5, # of child: 3. Two servants: Annie Cameron - mother's help - (18) W Ham; Fanny Barron (20), b: Surrey.

54. Head: Adriannus Stuart (42), occ: Commissioning agent (E), b: Holland. #in household: 7, # of child: 4. Servant: Annie Madam (15), b: Lond.

56. Head: Henry Cunningham (32), occ: Clerk - GPO, b: Lond. #in household: 2, # of child: 0. Servant: Mary Street (20), b: Yorks.

58. Head: Michael Huth (38), occ: Tailor (E), b: Bavaria. #in household: 7, # of child: 5. Servant: Emma Harris (16), b: Lond.

60. Head: Thomas Dowby (widower) (75),occ: Civil servant (retired), b: Kent. #in household: 4, # of child: 0. Servant: Emma Clarke (17), b: Essex.

62. Head: Richard Beal (36), occ: Merchant (E), b: Kent. #in household: 8, # of child: 5. Servant: Emily Potter (18), b: Essex.

64. Head: Isaac Collino (49), occ: Managing Director, Lamp manufacturer (E) , b: Lond. #in household: 7, # of child: 5. Servant: Sarah Plews (nursemaid) (15), b: Lancs.

66. Head: Stewart Russell (32), occ: Civil engineer, b: Lond. #in household: 3, # of child: 1. Two servants: Mary Searle - widow(40), Lond; Sophia Golding (19), b: Lond.

68. Head: Joseph Preistley (46), occ: Accountant , b: Lincoln. #in household:7 , # of child: 5. No servants.

70. Head: Charles Gray (35), occ: Inspector of agents, b: Sussex. #in household: 3, # of child: 0. Servant: Ada Castor (31), b: Lond.

72. Head: William Stewart (62), occ: Engineer's agent, b: Yorks. #in household: 3, # of child: 0. No servants.

74. Head: William Beal (50), occ: Optician (E), b: Essex. #in household: 7, # of child: 1. Servant: Elizabeth Pamplin (35), b: Essex.

76. Head: William la Rivrene (44), occ: , Surveyor b: M'sex. #in household: 6, # of child: 4. Two servants: Elizabeth Root (22) W Ham; Beatrice Tuffield(17), b: Surrey.

78. Head: William Knight (49), occ: Linoleum manufacturer (E)3 of his employees seem to have been living with him, b: Berks. #in household: 10, # of child: 2. No servants.

80. Head: James Fife (60), occ: Accountant, b: Lond. #in household: 11, # of child: 6. No servants.

82. Head: Ellen Nade - head not present (39), occ: None given, b: Yorks. #in household: 4, # of child: 3. Servant: Jeanette Johnson (22), b: W Ham.

84. Head: Henry Rice (64), occ: Schoolmaster (E), b: Cumberland. #in household: 2, # of child: 0. No servants.

86. Head: Harry Jowett (39), occ: Income tax assessor, b: M'sex. #in household: 10, # of child: 6. Servant: Emily Farley (18), b: Hants.

88. Head: Mary Stapleton - widow and head (36), occ: Living on means, b: LOnd. #in household: 4, # of child: 2. No servants.

90. Head: John Page (36), occ: Clothing manufacturer (E), b: Norfolk. #in household: 6, # of child: 4. Servant: Eliza Constable (25), b: Essex.

92. Head: Eliza Burnett - widow and head (58), occ: No occupation: two sons, both button dealers , b: M'sex. #in household: 6, # of child: 0. Servant: Annie Ratcliffe (17), b: Kent.

94. Head: Henry Bennett (29), occ: Living on means, b: W Ham. #in household: 2, # of child: 0. Servant: Alice Maycock (30), b: M'sex.

96. Head: Joseph Owen (36), occ: Steamship agent (E), b: Lond. #in household: 5, # of child: 3. Two servants: Elizabeth Vigis (22), Essex; Phoebe Felton (20), b: Warks.

98. Head: Sarah Thompson - head not present (44), occ: ??, b: Lond. #in household: 5, # of child: 3. Servants: Edith Persuits (15), b: Suffolk.

Piecing together the story

The identified dead from the Dames Road disaster

Two existing, English Heritage Blue plaques in Newham

Newham's own scheme

Proposed Blue Plaques

Music

Gate by Percy Ingles, Woodgrange Road - Upper Cut Club - Jimi Hendrix (1942 - 1970) wrote Rolling Stone magazine's '4th greatest rock song of all time', Purple Haze while waiting to appear at the Upper Cut club, on 26 December 1966. See here, for details.

Jimi Hendrix, who wrote Purple Haze on Boxing Day 1966, while waiting to appear at the Woodgrange Road, Upper Cut venueSite of Upper Cut Club today, on Woodgrange Road

Sport

Military

Literature and entertainment

Politics

Misc

Joseph Lister Court, Upton Lane - formerly Upton House and home of Lord Joseph Lister (1827 - 1912), father of modern antiseptic. See here, for details.Joseph Lister (1827 - 1912)Joseph Lister Court -303 Upton Lane, on the siteof Joseph Lister's former home

Proposed Green Plaques

Music and entertainment

Historic buildings

Sport

Entertainment

Science and industry

Public service

Iconic office building - City Gate

Residential property

50 - 50d Avenue Road

45 Chaucer Road

10 Crosby Road

113 Earlham Grove

27 Knighton Road

1 - 12 Sycamore Court - Romford Road

23b South Esk Road

115 Trumpington Road

133 and 137 Upton Lane

Commercial and industrial properties

Land

Restaurant - 99 Green Street

Sherrard Works

The big one: 326 - 330 Katherine Road

Philanthropy

Local land acquisition and disposal

The second bomb site identified in the photo

The curator - Paul Romane

The owner - Billy Walker

Ronnie Lane

This site's back catalogue

A decade later

Who lived in road in 1891

Household composition in 1891

Households - odd numbers

Households - even numbers

Jimi Hendrix, who
wrote Purple Haze
on Boxing Day 1966,
while waiting to appear
at the Woodgrange
Road, Upper Cut venue

Site of Upper Cut Club today,
on Woodgrange Road

Joseph Lister Court, Upton Lane - formerly Upton House and home of Lord Joseph Lister (1827 - 1912), father of modern antiseptic. See here, for details.

Joseph Lister (1827 - 1912)

Joseph Lister Court -
303 Upton Lane, on the site
of Joseph Lister's former home