West Hampstead Life

Category: History

  • Safe blowers in West Hampstead


    What are the chances of finding two safe blowers in West Hampstead? Even more unlikely is the fact that they were both living there in 1955. But surprisingly, there is no obvious link between the men. 

    At the end of the story you will find out all you need to know about blowing up a safe and how to make your sex life go with a bang! Read on.


    At the beginning of February 1955 two separate gelignite raids took place.
    The First Raid at Stanstead
    On the night of 3-4 February thieves blew open the safe in the wages office of Skyways Ltd at Stansted Airport, and stole cash and National Health stamps. Leading from the safe to the door were two strands of wire, and in the passage the police found a live unused detonator.
    The next day, presumably acting on a tip-off, detectives went to a house in West End Lane. The number was not given in the newspaper reports and it was rather oddly called a bungalow, but there’s no obvious house like this in the road. Edward Rice, aged 34, opened the door and said, ‘I have been expecting this. You are lucky because I was going to leave here tomorrow. Things were getting too hot.’One hundred and twelve one pound notes were found on Rice, together with other stolen goods. When charged, Rice simply said ‘I plead guilty.’
    Edward Thomas Rice was a professional criminal, born in 1921 in Shoreditch. His father, Thomas Edward Rice, a printer, was an associate of criminals and Edward lived in a slum area for many years. In 1932 the family were at 45 Falkirk Street, Shoreditch, sharing a house with at least 13 adults. His mother, Mary Ann, died when Edward was 17 and soon after this his father turned him out of their home. Rice had several minor convictions before being sent to Wandsworth prison in 1940, where he wasn’t segregated as a first offender but mixed up with hardened criminals. On his release he was called up for the Royal Navy, but this did not suit him and he went AWOL on a number of occasions.
    In March 1954 Rice was sentenced in Manchester to ten years imprisonment for housebreaking, wounding and conspiracy. In November he managed to escape from Strangeways prison with five other men. They’d been making coal bags in a workshop outside the main wall and escaped through the skylight, having previously sawn through one of the bars. Over the next few months a nationwide search was carried out, and all the men were caught apart from Rice, who remained on the run. That December on Boxing Day, four detectives were sure they’d found Rice when they arrested a man who was doing an old-time music hall act in a Nottingham pub. They said, ‘You resemble Edward Rice the escaped convict.’ The man replied, ‘Don’t be silly, I’m Henry Green.’ They found a revolver and four rounds of ammunition in his pocket. Asked about the gun, the man said, ‘I have a lot of enemies, but I am not Rice.’ This was true, he wasn’t Rice, but neither was he Henry Green. His real name was Leslie MaxleyEpstein, aged 32, a musician of no fixed abode.
    On the night of 26-27 January 1955 a garage, belonging to Louis Alfred Yull, a land clearance contractor in Edmonton, had been broken into and gelignite and detonators, which he was legally using, were stolen. When the police searched the garden of the house in West End Lane they found five sticks of gelignite buried there. Rice later said ‘I got the jelly and dets off some fellows. Some of it came from the job in Edmonton.’ He had been renting the house under the name of Smith.
    In March 1955 Rice appeared at the Old Bailey where he pleaded guilty to charges of receiving gelignite and detonators, and receiving tobacco and cigarettes stolen from British Railways while in transit. Rice admitted his guilt but refused to name the other men involved. He was sentenced to 13 years imprisonment, to serve concurrently with his previous 10 years.
    The Second Raid in Piccadilly: The Ferret and the Monkey
    On Sunday night 6th February 1955, thieves broke into the strong room of Martins Bank at their prestigious branch in 23 St James Street. When the manager opened up on Monday morning he found the robbers had blown a hole through the 22 inch reinforced wall and used gelignite to blow open the safe, stealing over £20,600, (worth around £425,000 today). This was the first time gelignite had been used to blow open both a bank’s safe and its strong room which was covered in brick and plaster dust from the explosion. Two of Scotland Yard’s top detectives were put in charge of the case: Chief Superintendent Edward Greeno and Superintendent Herbert Sparks. It was evident the thieves had entered from the adjoining building, then squeezed through a window of the women’s toilet opposite the strong room. An iron bar across the window had been bent back using a crowbar allowing a small opening. Herbert Sparks thought that Alfred Fraser, known as ‘The Ferret’, had the expertise but more important, he was small enough to have got through the narrow gap. Fraser had just been released after serving a sentence for attempted safe-blowing at the Hounslow Labour Exchange. His address in Fordwych Road was put under observation.
    Over the following weeks, Fraser bought a Daimler limousine and began negotiations for a greengrocer’s shop in Paddington. He was seen in the company of known criminal Howard Lewis, 29, nicknamed ‘The Monkey’, who’d also bought a new car and was spending a lot of money. When the police arrested 43 years old Fraser it was alleged that he said, ‘That bastard Lewis has been talking. Have the others been tumbled?’ Cash from the bank was found in his pockets and at his house. More banknotes were discovered when Lewis’s home was searched, some stuffed inside a gramophone horn. While the police were there the phone rang and after Lewis had answered, the police took the phone from him and heard Fraser’s wife saying, ‘What shall I do with the money?’ Forensic evidence showed that brick dust and glass shards from the bank were present in the homes of both men. A third suspect, Percy Horne, a scrap metal dealer, was charged with receiving stolen money.
    The three men appeared at the Old Bailey in May 1955. They all pleaded ‘Not Guilty’ and gave alibis, claiming the forensic evidence had been planted by the police. The jury found Fraser and Lewis guilty, and they received sentences of ten years and seven years respectively. The jury could not agree about Horne and he was released. Fraser who was born in Marylebone in 1912, was a persistent criminal with seventeen previous convictions since 1927. During his wartime military service he had deserted four times.
    Two years later Martins Bank took the unusual step of suing Fraser for the missing money. He defended himself at court in July 1957, again claiming the money found on him was a loan from Percy Horne to buy the greengrocery business and that the police had framed him because of his criminal past as a jewel thief. The jury did not believe Fraser and found in favour of Martins Bank, saying that he owed them £19,602. He had no money to pay but the costs of the trial were awarded against him.
    Safe Blowing
    Dynamite was invented by Alfred Nobel in 1867. Then in 1875 he found that a more stable form called gelignite could be made by mixing gun cotton with wood pulp and saltpetre or sodium nitrate. This putty-like explosive was widely used in WWII and became a particular favourite of criminals after the War.  In 1950 even school children in Dorset were playing with sticks of it which they had stolen from a quarry.
    A website called the Peterman run by a Scottish safeman provides interesting information about gelignite and safe blowing. http://www.peterman.org.uk/

    This photograph of a complete safe-blowers kit shows a stick of gelignite and two different types detonator: an aluminium one with a fuse attached, and a copper one which has two wires extending about 6 feet to a longer shot firing cable. A pen-light torch battery is all that is required to fire the detonator. The lolly stick is commonly used to tamp and shape the jelly. The other item really is a condom. A ‘packet of three’ was a common sight on the prosecution table in the High Court. They were pushed into the gap between the back of the safe door plate and the front of the lock cap. Through this is packed the charge with a detonator, and everything is then held in place with some plasticine.

  • Gerry Anderson in West Hampstead


    You may have heard that Gerry Anderson, the creator of Thunderbirds, died on the 26 December 2012. What is less well-known is that he grew up in West Hampstead, in a ‘squalid house’ off West End Lane, according to his biography. When Dick spoke to him a few years ago, Gerry said he couldn’t remember exactly where he’d lived but it was at the top of a large house on West End Lane, with a tent-shaped glass roof over the front door. There was a garage with a driveway at the side. The family of four lived in poverty in one room, with a blanket hung up to separate the cooking area from the sleeping area. They shared a bathroom with the other tenants who included: a rather sinister ex-convict, an eccentric artist, and a woman who later Gerry realised was probably a prostitute.
    Gerry went to Kingsgate Infants School. His mother would see him across West End Lane, then he walked by himself down Cotleigh Road to the school. He said he hated the afternoon rest period when the children were forced to sleep, resting their heads on the sloping desks. He was only five, but thought it was a ridiculous waste of time. After school he would climb back up the hill and wait at the main road. His mother would be watching at the window across West End Lane, then she would wave and come down to collect him. Gerry remembered the excitement of going to the cinema each week at the Kilburn State or The Grange. He and his mother would sit in the six penny front row stalls. Movietone News and The March of Time were followed by a couple of cartoons and two feature films – lavish Hollywood films and British B movies.
    Using the Electoral Registers, Marianne and Dick have worked out for the first time exactly where Gerry lived in West Hampstead. His parents Joseph and Deborah Abrahams are shown at 50 West End Lane from 1929 to 1935. This was a large detached house on the corner of Woodchurch Road.
    50 West End Lane, 1890s OS Map
    Gerry Anderson was born Gerald Alexander Abrahams, on 14 April 1929, in the Elizabeth Garrett Anderson Hospital. His parents, Joseph Abrahams and Deborah Leonoff, were married in the Rochford area of Essex, which includes Westcliff-on-sea and Southend, in 1921.
    His grandparents, the Bielogovski family who came from Russia, took the name of Abrahams on their arrival in London’s East India dock in 1895. The family settled in Westcliff-on-sea. Their son Joseph worked as the manager of a clothing company for his brother Michael. At the company he met an attractive clerical assistant called Deborah Leonoff, who lived in Hackney, and she agreed to marry him. They moved to Willesden Green, but theirs was a stormy relationship with lots of rows. Joseph, an ardent socialist, argued with his brother about business and wealth. He left the clothing company and worked installing tobacco dispensing machines in private homes. A packet of 20 cigarettes cost one shilling and Joseph visited the customers on his bicycle, to fill the machines and collect the cash. But money was tight and the family had to move into the single room at the top of 50 West End Lane. Joseph was a classical pianist and they found space for an upright piano. The woman in the room below would complain about the noise, banging on the ceiling with her broomstick. When the ex-convict opposite moved, Deborah pleaded with Joseph to rent the vacant flat. He reluctantly agreed and they moved into three rooms and a small kitchen. But Gerry believed his father couldn’t really afford the higher rent. When Gerry was five he suffered from German measles and like many children at the time he was hospitalized for six weeks, followed by four weeks in a convalescent home. He was surprised when he came home to find some brightly painted lead cars and a set of traffic lights arranged in a street scene on a green baize card table. Deborah had bought them, with help from the prostitute neighbour.
    In 1936 the family moved to 50A Clifford Way, Neasden. Three years later they moved again, to 198 Neasden Lane where they stayed for many years. In the years before WW2, Gerry and his mother experienced anti-Semitism. Gerry remembers being circled by boys in the Braincroft school playground who ridiculed him chanting ‘Jew Boy,’ until a teacher came to his rescue. When a laundry boy came to the house to collect the weekly washing and saw the name Abrahams on the bundle, he threw it back at Gerry’s mother shouting, ‘We don’t collect laundry from Jews.’ Gerry and hismother pleaded with Joseph to change their name and in November 1939 it was changed from Abrahams to Anderson. This was just a name that Deborah liked, but later it led some people to believe that Gerry had Scottish roots! When he became successful, Gerry spent over £3,000 on a new bungalow for his parents in Maidenhead, allowing them to leave their rented flat in Neasden Lane. Joseph Anderson died in Maidenhead Hospital in 1965. His mother Deborah died in Wrexham Park Hospital, Slough in the 1970s.
    Gerry’s older brother Lionel was born in 1922 in the Westcliff-on-sea area. When War was declared, he joined the RAF aged just seventeen, and went to Arizona for training. Gerry remembered one of his brother’s letters talked about flying over an air base called ‘Thunderbird Field.’ This stuck in his memory and he used it for the title of his puppet series. Gerry was impressed when Lionel came home as a uniformed Flight Sergeant flying Mosquitoes with 515 Squadron. One day when he flew very low over the house, Gerry jumped up and down with pride and excitement. Lionel successfully flew 38 missions but he died on 27 April 1944, when his plane was shot down during an attack over Holland. He was 22 years old.
    Gerry worked in the film industry and became famous for his TV puppet films, but he said he always wanted to make films with real actors.
    50 West End Lane
    Before Gerry Anderson lived there, the large corner house was built in 1881 for wealthy professionals. It was occupied until 1883 by William John Vereker Bindon, a doctor who called it ‘Appin’. He was born in the Cape of Good Hope, South Africa, and did his medical training in Edinburgh. He married Jemima Downie in 1874. They came to London where he practised in Kilburn, living first at Elm Villas, Willesden Lane. Then in 1881 they moved to the newly built 50 West End Lane. In October 1882 William had an affair with one of his patients, Hannah Smith, the wife of the composer Edward Sydney Smith who lived at 28 Birchington Road. In 1883 Jemima sued William for divorce on the grounds of cruelty and adultery and was granted a divorce. At the trial Blanche Augustine Pinget, a French maid working for Mrs Smith said she’d seen Dr Bindon kissing Mrs Smith in her bedroom. There were two unhappy marriages, as Sydney Smith was having an affair with Blanche whom he married after Hannah died in 1886. Dr Bindon went to Australia where he died in 1891. 
    50 West End Lane was put up for sale in 1883. The sale details give us a good description of the house:
    For sale by auction. ‘Appin’, West End Lane, a superior family residence conveniently situated a few minutes walk from West Hampstead Station, on the Harrow branch of the Metropolitan Railway and the West End Station on the Midland Railway. The house, which is of pleasing elevation, is approached through a front garden, and has a spacious garden with a tennis court in the rear; it contains, on the two upper floors, nine principal and secondary bedchambers, a large studio, a bath room with hot and cold bath, a box room, housemaid’s closet etc; on the ground floor, entrance and inner halls, excellent lofty drawing room, dinning room, and library, a surgery, with separate side entrance from Woodchurch Road, lavatory, etc, also kitchen scullery, and pantry with serving hatch, and spacious cellarage in the basement.
    It was bought by Albert Joseph Altman who changed the name of the house to ‘Elmira’. Altman was a wealthy sports and games manufacturer at Aldersgate Street who made croquet and cricket equipment. In 1876 as a City Alderman he became the Chairman of a Special Committee set up to consider the fifty designs for a new bridge over the Thames. When Tower Bridge was finally opened in 1894 he was knighted for his services. Altman was at the West End Lanehouse until 1890.
    Other owners of the house were doctors and merchants. In December 1927, 50 West End Lane was sold at auction by Leopold Farmer and Sons for £3,150. At this point it became a lodging house let out in nine small flats or single rooms. It remained like this until mid-June 1944 when the first of ten V1 doodlebugs to hit Hampstead, exploded behind 42 West End Lane and destroyed the neighbouring houses. Seventeen people died and others were badly wounded. One woman was rescued alive after being buried for 48 hours. 
    1944 Bomb damage, looking across West End Lane towards Gascony Avenue (Camden Local History Archives)
    Michael Alpert, who lived just off West End Lane, remembers the day the VI fell and has written the following account:


    When very early on a Monday morning in June 1944 that the VI crashed on West End Lane, I was awakened by the sound of breaking glass caused by the blast. My father was in the army and I was asleep with my mother in Smyrna Mansions, just off Gascony Avenue, which can be seen in the centre of the photograph above. I was eight years old.

    My mother gathered me up and we went down to the street shelter opposite the Mansions. After a time we went back to the flat. My mother’s calm was amazing. She made up a bed for me in the large front room which looks over Smyrna Road and had been less affected by the bomb blast than the rooms at the back of the flat, while she sat doing the accounts for the milk bar which she ran in Kilburn High Road. 

    It was mid-summer and the early morning was very mild and light. As soon as possible my mother got me ready to go to the weekly boarding school which I attended and to which I used to return on Monday mornings. Since we had no gas and probably no water from the bomb blast, my mother could not give me breakfast, so when we arrived she asked the matron to give me something to eat and drink. At morning assembly that day I said, with some exaggeration, that we had been ‘bombed out’, which was the expression used then.

    I went to school by train in East Sheen, via Richmond, on what is now the Overground. I remember only one delay in all the years I travelled on that line, and once being held outside Willesden Junction during an air raid, when all trains had to stop lest they fall into a bomb crater.

    From summer 1944 onwards as soon as you heard the ominous buzz of the flying bomb, followed by the motor cutting-out, you knew that the doodlebug would crash in about twenty seconds, so you made a dash for the street shelter, which was said to be proof against everything but a direct hit. At school we slept in a shelter covered with corrugated iron and earth in the garden. The smell of damp earth always brings the memory back. In the street shelter, of which there were two in Smyrna Road, each household had a little sort of cell with bunks. I think we continued to sleep in shelters until early January 1945. For a few weeks a more powerful and faster rocket, the V2, fell and caused immense destruction and loss of life. There was no warning of its arrival. Luckily the launching pads were overrun before life in Britain was nearly paralysed.

    For many years afterwards we played in the bombed buildings, including those on West End Lane. It was, I suppose, dangerous to do so, because floors and stairs could easily give way, but it was great fun for a young boy.

    The frontage of West End Lane between Acol and Woodchurch Roads remained a bomb site until the Council completed the 80 flats in Sidney Boyd Court in 1953. 
    Sidney Boyd Court Today
    Corner of Sidney Boyd Court, site of 50 West End Lane

  • The Magnificent Marquis!


    Most people reading this blog will have heard of Kilburn Grange Park, but not everyone will know there once was a large house called ‘The Grange’, facing Kilburn High Road. The present Park covers what remains of its grounds. Dick and Marianne have been researching the history of Kilburn and West Hampstead for over thirty years, and a chance discovery of a book in a second-hand store revealed a reference in the index to ‘Mrs Peters of Kilburn’. They knew she was a very wealthy widow who lived at The Grange. But why was she included in a history of the Romano’s Café on the Strand? It turned out Romano’s was a favourite hangout of her lover, the Marquis de Leuville.

    Many books and articles refer to this property’s great age and past glories, but all these claims are wrong. The Grange was a purpose built mansion, completed by January 1831 on a site never before used for building. 1843 saw the arrival of the Peters family, who owned and added to the house over sixty years. Thomas Peters was a wealthy coachbuilder who made coaches for Queen Victoria. Following his death in 1862, his eldest son, John Winpenny Peters took over and married Ada Britannia Beckers the following year. Ada was much younger than her husband and inherited the property when John died in 1882.
    The Grange, Kilburn (Camden Local Studies Archive)

    The Marquis and Mrs Peters met for the first time in August 1885. She was holding a garden party at The Grange, and he wasn’t a guest, but hired for the occasion to help entertain the many people who came to enjoy her hospitality. During the evening he recited two poems: Robert Browning’s ‘How they brought the good news from Ghent’ and some lines written by one of the guests. Ada entertained the guests and played the harp.
    The Kilburn Times reported on the event:
    Favoured by splendid weather, Mrs Peters had a delightful garden party on Saturday afternoon. Nearly 300 invitations had been sent out. There was the best opportunity for enjoyment by all, whether in the exercise of the lawn tennis ground, or in promenading within sight of Dan Godfrey and his band of Grenadier Guards, or in roaming about the ample and beautiful grounds, or in quietly sitting within the shelter of the numerous umbrella tents that skirted the lawn. Many of the company took the opportunity of viewing the choice collection of works of art and mementoes of visits to Italy and other parts of the Continent. In the evening, a concert was given under the able direction of Mr Sidney Smith, (another Kilburn resident). 
    Ada Peters at her harp

    The Marquis was a tall, good looking, charismatic man and Ada was very attracted by him and they began a long affair. The Marquis didn’t get involved in many local events, other than playing an increasingly prominent role in social events at The Grange. He also supported Ada’s campaign to prevent the Kingsgate Road School being built on the edge of her property.
    Why didn’t the Marquis marry his Kilburn widow? To under stand this, it’s necessary to back track to 1870, when John and Ada’s daughter Pauline fell ill with scarlet fever. This was highly contagious and at the time, usually fatal. Children were kept isolated, and their toys burned for fear of spreading the infection. Pauline was nursed at The Grange where she died on the 26th April, only six days after contracting the disease. Pauline was destined to be the couple’s only child and John was particularly affected by her death. When Ada was widowed, she inherited a small fortune, along with a large empty house and nothing to do with her time. But under the terms of John’s will (quite common among wealthy families), Ada occupied the property as a ‘tenant for life.’ This meant she could enjoy it so long as she didn’t remarry. If she did, almost everything reverted to the Peters family. So she took the Marquis as her lover.
    The more we researched de Leuville, the more we wanted to write his life story. We found out he was a Victorian poet, adventurer and lover of women. Given half a chance he’d issue a challenge to a duel over an insult to a lady. Chivalric values informed his life. Interesting conversationalist or pompous fool, fascinating companion or opinionated dandy, it all depended on who you were, and what you wanted from the Marquis. But he was never, never boring. Famous during his lifetime, he took the secret of his identity to his grave.

     After many years of research our biography, ‘The Marquis de Leuville; a Victorian Fraud?’ is now published as an ebook by The History Press, and we can reveal his fascinating story and who he really was.
    The ebook can be downloaded to Kindle and the I-Pad. With a free Kindle Ap or Mobi Reader it can also be read on a PC or other computer. The ebook is available now from Amazon and other ebook sites.

  • ‘Dick Barton’ in West Hampstead

    On 7 October 1946 ‘Dick Barton: special agent’ began broadcasting on the BBC Light Programme. The first review which appeared in The Daily Worker said: ‘It is so bad as to be almost beyond belief.’But despite this, the audience for the show with its famous signature tune ‘The Devil’s Galop’, grew to an astonishing 15 million listeners who eagerly turned on their radio sets at 6.45pm every week day. Dick and his chums Snowey and Jock thrilled their fans by solving crimes, escaping from dangerous situations and saving the nation from disaster. The series ended after 711 programmes on Friday 30 March 1951 to be replaced by ‘The Daring Dexters’ a daily show about circus life, and then ‘The Archers’.

    In the first episode Captain Richard Barton MC, ex-wartime commando, introduced himself by saying: 
    ‘Six years of battle, murder and sudden death just spoil you completely for a nice, peaceful office job. Don’t you agree, Snowey?’

    From left to right, Dick, Snowey and Jock

    Dick Barton was played by Noel Johnson, Snowey was played by John Mann and Jock was Alex McCrindle.

    It’s not widely known that Noel Johnson was a local, living in a flat at 1 Woodchurch Road, West Hampstead, from 1948 to 1958.

    Johnson was born in Birmingham in 1916, and after leaving school he took up acting in local repertory. At the outbreak of War he volunteered for the Royal Army Service Corps. Injured and evacuated from Dunkirk, he spent a year in hospital before being invalided out of the Forces in 1941. He returned to local rep and married Leonora Peacock, a theatrical scenery artist, in 1942. He joined the BBC Drama Repertory Company in 1945.

    Norman Collins, the controller of the new Light Programme, asked his assistant John McMillan to research the idea of a daily ‘cloak and dagger’ soap opera. McMillan wrote the synopsis and biographies of the main characters. Noel Johnson was paid £18 a week and given a trial run of six programmes. The anticipated adult audience never materialised. Instead, ‘Dick Barton’ became essential listening for school boys. The BBC bowed to pressure and released a code of conduct which the hero – and the writers – had to abide by. This was published in the Daily Telegraph in January 1948.

    The 12 rules of Dick Barton

    • Barton is intelligent as well as hard hitting. He relies as much upon brains as upon brawn.

    • He only uses force when normal, peaceful means of reaching a legitimate goal have failed.

    • Barton never commits an offence in the criminal code, no matter how desirable the means may be argued to justify the end.

    • In reasonable circumstances, he may deceive but he never lies.

    • Barton’s violence is restricted to clean socks on the jaw.

    • Barton’s enemies have more latitude in their behaviour but they may not indulge in actually giving any injury or punishment that is basically sadistic.

    • Barton and his friends do not wittingly involve innocent members of the public in situations that would cause them to be distressed.

    • Barton has now given up drink altogether. Drunken scenes are barred.

    • Sex, in the active sense, plays no part in the Barton adventures.

    • Horrific effects in general must be closely watched. Supernatural or pseudo-supernatural sequences are to be avoided – ghosts, night-prowling, gorillas or vampires.

    • Swearing and bad language generally may not be used by any character.

    • Political themes are unpopular as well as being occasionally embarrassing.

    (The inclusion of ‘gorillas’ in rule 10 seems a bit bizarre – perhaps this was a throwback to the movie ‘King Kong’?)

    In a later interview Johnson commented; ‘Barton was a proper character at first. He drank; he smoked and had a girl friend. As soon as the producers cottoned on to the fact we had a youth audience, they felt they had to become moral guardians.’

    Adults criticised the show. Miss Marion Seddon informed readers of The Illustrated London News that; ‘children have no business listening at the homework hour to the exploits of Dick Barton and other characters leading abnormal lives.’
     
    A letter to The Times said: ‘The BBC seems bent on turning children into a new kind of drug addict. They grow more concerned from day to day about what Dick Barton may do next than about their futures or the future of England.’

    Despite what some adults said the popularity grew. On one occasion, when the show was not broadcast because of technical problems, all telephone lines to the BBC were jammed and large numbers of children traveled to Broadcasting House to see if Dick was in trouble and needed help.

    Rather oddly, at first people did not know who was playing the part. Only when the omnibus edition was introduced on 4 January 1947, did the world discover that Noel Johnson was Dick Barton. The huge audience made Noel Johnson a star. His son Gareth said: ‘Dad was being asked to open fetes, to do things left, right and centre, which were all to do with Dick Barton. In kind of a way it coloured his career, for better and for worse.’ 

    But Johnson felt type-cast and some producers refused to hire him. In 1949 at the height of his fame, when the BBC refused to give him a rise, he resigned. He went straight into a West End play, but as he said; ‘needless to say it flopped.’ The BBC tried to get him to change his mind and asked him how much he wanted. ‘They asked me to name my price. I said, 100 pounds a week.’  They said, ‘it sounds like you want danger money.’  Johnson replied, ‘that’s precisely what I want – and that was the end of it.’

    So the BBC had to find a new Dick Barton. Over 1,000 people applied for the role, from policemen to dance band managers. A seven-year-old boy wrote on a postcard,‘I want to be Dick Barton, I have a gruff voice and I can shout.’ The role was eventually given to explorer Duncan Carse and then to Gordon Davies. 

    1950s book from the BBC
    Within two years Noel Johnson was staring as ‘Dan Dare’ in Radio Luxembourg’s adaptation of the Eagle comic character. This was a series which ran for five days a week from 2 July 1951for five years.

    Johnson had a very long acting career in films and then TV, playing over 100 parts. Rather oddly, in a 1982 BBC2 play ‘The Combination’ he played a magistrate who admonishes two ten year old boys in court: ‘If I had to point the finger at any single responsible body, it would be the BBC for churning out Dick Barton every solitary night of the week. If anything was guaranteed to warp the spirit of the young, it’s that perverted rubbish!’

    Towards the end of his career he appeared in the radio adaptation of ‘A Dance to the Music of Time’ by Anthony Powell. His numerous films included ‘Withnail and I’ (1986) and on TV ‘Rumpole of the Bailey’, ‘Inspector Morse’, ‘Doctor Who’ and ‘A Touch of Frost’. He died aged 82 in a small village outside Cardiff on 1 October 1999.

    There is a short interview with Noel Johnson and his wife Leonora, at his home in Woodchurch Road on Pathe News in 1948. This appears from 2.00 mins to 3.00 mins into the clip.

    You can hear all of the famous ‘Devil’s Galop’ signature tune by Charles Williams at:

    There are several episodes of the original Dick Barton on YouTube, including:

    Dick Barton has been most recently parodied by Mitchell and Webb’s Sir Digby Chicken Caesar. There are lots of episodes on YouTube

  • When a Zeppelin flew over Kilburn

    When a Zeppelin flew over Kilburn

    The Germans began Zeppelin airship attacks in 1915. At first people came out to stare in wonder at these huge flying machines, but became more cautious as the bombs started to fall.
    1917 Zeppelin raid

    On the 19 October 1917 a group of 13 airships left Germany to attack the Northern industrial cities of Liverpool, Manchester and Sheffield. Climbing to 16,000 feet they encountered extremely strong winds which forced them off course and made it very difficult for the commanders to establish their position. Lt. Waldemar Kolle was in L.45 aiming for Sheffield, but he found he was being blown rapidly south. He dropped a number of bombs on Northampton, but around 23.30 the crew became aware of a large number of lights and realised they were over London. Kolle dropped several bombs which damaged the Grahame-White Aviation Company in Hendon. Continuing south-east, he dropped further bombs which landed near Cricklewood Station.

    These Zeppelin were a new class of airship which flew so high that British fighters and anti aircraft guns couldn’t reach them. Some of the crew got frostbite and others suffered from altitude sickness. The height and the thin cloud cover also meant that people on the ground couldn’t see or hear the airship and this attack became known as ‘the silent raid’.
    Flying over the Kilburn High Road and St Johns Wood towards central London, the Zeppelin crew dropped bombs at random: but the effects were devastating. The first fell close to Piccadilly Circus where a huge 660lb bomb smashed the front of department store Swan and Edgar’s and caused further damage in Regents Street, Jermyn Street and Shaftesbury Avenue. Flying glass and shrapnel cut down 25 people and seven died. L.45 continued over South London bombing Camberwell and Hither Green, killing another 20 people.

    Despite the strong winds, Lt. Kolle flew his Zeppelin across the Channel to France and with only two engines working and short of fuel, landed in Southern France. He set the ship on fire before surrendering to a group of French soldiers. This proved to be last Zeppelin attack on London; subsequent raids were carried out by Gotha and Staaken Giant bombers.

    The Staaken Giant Bomber which took over from the Zeppelin airships at the end of the War
    The Staaken Giant Bomber which took over from the Zeppelin airships at the end of the War

    The map and information come from an excellent book by Ian Castle, London 1914-17: The Zeppelin Menace, Osprey Publishing, 2008. ISBN 978-1-84603-245-5

    Marianne owns a postcard, which will have been printed in thousands. An inky black sky is pierced by the beams of search lights which light up a small, elongated white oval, meant to be a Zeppelin. The date ‘Wednesday 8 September 1915’ is printed bottom right, when London experienced its most severe Zeppelin raid, almost all the damage inflicted by just one Zeppelin, the L13. Bombs were dropped on Golders Green and Central London as far as Liverpool Street Station. So it was an event to remember. The legend ‘Zeppelin Raid as seen at …’ (blank) appears bottom left. So anyone buying the card as a souvenir could send it to a friend or relative, filling in the blank with their chosen location.

  • Child stealing in Kilburn


    Exactly a hundred and five years ago today, on the 29 October 1907, five week old Violet Mabel Gibbons was abducted. Mrs Maud Gibbons and her husband lived in Larch Road, Cricklewood. On the 25th, Maud got on an omnibus with baby Violet who she was taking to be christened. When the bus reached Kilburn, a well dressed young woman got on and sat next to Maud. They got talking. The young woman, whose name was Lily Clowes, told Maud she was an actress. She admired and kissed the baby, and Maud said proudly that everybody took notice of the beautiful child. Lily warned Maud to be careful as several children had been stolen recently. Before she got off at Chapel Street Lily got Mrs Gibbons’ address. On 29 October she turned up unannounced at Larch Road with some eggs and sweets for the baby and the Gibbons’ other children. She had striking ginger hair, was fashionably dressed in a ‘Gibson’ coat with long tails and seemed very respectable. So when Lily asked if she could show the baby to her mother in Kilburn, Mrs Gibbons agreed. When she was later asked why she let a stranger take her child, Maud simply said, ‘I never gave it a thought. She seemed fond of the child.’ Lily promised to return in an hour. But she didn’t. Maud became concerned, particularly when she discovered the address she had been given for Lily’s mother was a false one. In a desperate state she went to the police. Four days later Maud was called to the Willesden Infirmary where she found baby Violet in a filthy condition.
    18 year old Lily had taken the baby to the house of Mrs Akeham in Brondesbury Road and spent the night there. At first she said the baby was her’s but then said it belonged to a friend. Her boy friend Frederick Plumb called the next day and they left, with Plumb holding the baby. He said they should keep the baby as they would be able to get lodgings more easily. But when the baby cried all night, Plumb said they should get rid of it. On 1 November they met a little girl called Mary Adams in College Road, Kensal Rise. They asked her to hold the baby, promised to give her some sweets and a penny and walked off. After an hour and a half Mary took the baby to the police. Several days later Detective Andrews saw Lily buying milk from a barrow outside her mother’s house at 14 Messina Avenue and arrested her. Andrews knew Lily as a prostitute and he also knew Plumb, who had been under restraint ‘owing to a weak state of mind’. Plumb was later arrested in Barnet.
    This was not the first time that Lily had taken a child. On the 8 July 1907she called at the house of George Grocott, a plumber, at Harlesden. She asked if she could buy the six month old child a frock and took the baby with her. Two days later the baby was found in a house off Regent Square Euston, where Lily and a man had taken a room. Lily had left a note with the baby asking the landlady to return it to the Grocotts.
    After Lily was arrested, she agreed to stay in a missionary home, St Alban’s in Regent’s Park, but after only two hours she ran away. She was found and arrested in Oxford Street with a group of prostitutes.
    On 23 February 1908Lily now with dark rather than ginger hair, appeared at the Guildhall Middlesex Sessions and pleaded guilt to stealing a silver watch and other items from George Grocott. She and 23 year old Plumb denied taking the two babies. Surprisingly, Plumb was acquitted, but Lily was sentenced to 12 months imprisonment.
    Lily was born on 23 June 1890 and in 1902 she had attended Netherwood School near Grange Park, Kilburn. (Opened in 1881, the school has since been converted into private flats).
    On 23 May 1907 Lily married Harry William Driver, a cycle fitter of 5 Narcissus Road, at Hampstead Town Hall. But they never lived together. Lily said on her wedding day she ran off with Plumb, who she met when she was fifteen. Plumb had ‘ruined’ her and promised her marriage. Several times they had been to a registry office but he didn’t have enough money for a license. Lily said that Plumb had deserted her, leaving her penniless. She’d protected him many times but wouldn’t any longer. A policeman was put between them in the court.
    On 30 September 1910 Lily’s widowed mother, Martha Clowes, died at 14 Messina Avenue. She was a spiritualist and had given her occupation in the previous census as a ‘meadium,’ which had been crossed out.
    In 1911 Plumb was living and helping his widowed mother run a pub at 24 Great Marlborough Street, Westminster. But unfortunately, we couldn’t find what happened to Lily after her time in goal.

  • Music and record Shops in Kilburn and West Hampstead


    A recent conversation with Mel Wright, a ‘Kilburn Older Voices Exchange’ worker and blues drummer with bands such as Shakey Vic, brought back memories that we had both gone to Foxley’s Record shop near Kilburn Station. This is the history of all the record and music shops in Kilburn and West Hampstead that we’ve been able to trace, from Victorian times to the present day. Considering the main roads developed into busy shopping streets, it is surprising there were only a few music shops.
    Alfred Phillips
    The first music shop in Kilburn was opened by Alfred Phillips about 1874 as ‘The Musical Box’ at 1 Bridge Crescent, near Oxford Road. In 1877 he had moved a short way up the High Road to 2 Manor Terrace, which was re-numbered as 43 Kilburn High Road. Alfred William Phillips was born in Whitechapel in 1844, the son of a grocer. Initially apprenticed to a linen draper, aged about 20 he got the job of manager at his grandfather Morley’s music shop in Clapham. He learned piano tuning there and started his own firm in 1868 as pianoforte and musical dealers in Greville Place. In the 1871 census he was living at 128 Boundary Road; ten years later he and his family were above the shop at Manor Terrace. Alfred married twice and had eleven children, several of whom went into the family music business. He was supplying an expanding market: the piano was a focus for entertainment in many Victorian households, and sheet music of the latest popular song was eagerly purchased.

    43 Kilburn High Road, site of Phillips first shop, 2012

    An 1879 advert said his Kilburn shop had 15,000 items of sheet music in stock. It also pointed out:

    Visitors from Town will see the shop on the left side of the road between the ‘Queen’s Arms’ and the L.N.W.R Kilburn station on the right. It is, however, only necessary to mention the name of the Establishment to the Conductor and the Omnibus will be stopped at the door.
    Locals could rent a piano for 10 shillings a month. Alfred worked extremely hard and would visit homes and tune 5-6 pianos, even ten in a day, then return to run other parts of his business. One Xmas Eve he tuned 13!
    In 1883, Alfred expanded into the music publishing firm of Phillips & Page in conjunction with Sydney Hubert Page, who like his partner, had previously worked as a piano tuner. The same year Alfred wrote to the composer Charles Gounod (most famous for his 1859 opera ‘Faust’), and obtained the copyright on several of his songs. This established the publishing company and when Gounod died in 1893, Phillips and Page traveled to Paris to secure the rights to Gounod’s remaining songs from his widow. Phillips was a successful composer and musical arranger and wrote a large number of hymns. He used many noms de plume, including ‘Sarakowski,’ for piano compositions and ‘Leigh Kingsmill’ for songs. 
    70 Kilburn High, corner of West End Lane, site of Phillips shop, 2012

    Business did well and in 1890 Phillips bought Number 70 and 72 Kilburn High Road on the opposite side of the road, at the corner of West End Lane. He demolished the two existing shops and built one large warehouse with room for 70 pianos on the ground floor. The architect was E.A. Heffer and the builder H.B. Oldrey of Kilburn. Four composer’s heads (Bach, Handel, Mozart and Beethoven), are still visible at first floor level. At one time Phillips also had branches in Ealing, Harlesden and Harrow. 

    Alfred retired from the business in 1898. In ‘Who’s Who in Music’ he gave his recreations as; gardening, woodcarving, bowls, tennis, chess, sketching, fishing, swimming, and sailing. His partner Sydney Page continued the music publishing firm.
    In a 1904 advert the Kilburn shop advertised it stocked the ‘Nicole Record’. Nicole Freres established a record company in 1903 at Great Saffron Hill. Their records had a cardboard base coated with celluloid. The weakness in construction compared with shellac records, led to bankruptcy in 1906. The company also made the Nicolephone talking machine, which Phillips also sold.
    The Kilburn music shop, run by his sons continued under the name of Phillips until 1931. Alfred died in Bognor Regis in 1936, and left an estate of £19, 756, worth about a million pounds today.
    Unknown record shop
    My old friend, Dan Shackell’s mother, Violet Kray, recalls a shop which sold records in the 1930s and 1940s. This was near 182 Kilburn High Road, almost opposite the State Cinema. She remembers that her brother bought their first record there, a dance band version of ‘Moonlight and Roses’ for their windup gramophone. 
    All Clear
    ‘All Clear’ was a small shop which sold gramophones and records at 270 Belsize Road just before the War. But the shop does not seem to have been there very long, and the company was dissolved in April 1939.

    Blanks
    Blanks Music Stores Ltd opened at 281 Kilburn High Road in 1951. A second shop was opened at 9 Kilburn Bridge in 1955, this closed about 1970, but by 1978 Blanks still had two shops at Numbers 281 and 273. The main double fronted shop was at 271 and 273 and sold musical instruments until it closed about 2012. Over the years many budding rock stars bought their first guitar or set of drums at this well-known Kilburn landmark. 

    Cocoa, next to the Tricycle Theatre, 2012. Site of Blanks Music Store

     Foxley’s

    This shop in Exeter Parade, next to Kilburn Station, was run by Ray ‘Professor’ Foxley, a New Orleans style pianist who played with Ken Colyer and Chris Barber. Born in Birmingham in 1928, Ray learned straight piano when he was aged 14. Two years later he discovered boogie woogie, and he developed his style by listening to Fats Waller and Jelly Roll Morton records. 
    Exeter Parade, site of Foxley’s 2012
    Paul Vernon, a rare record dealer and blues expert, who had lived in Cricklewood and Maygrove Road, wrote about Foxley’s. He said that in the 1950s it was very hard to get R&B records. Ray Foxley responding to numerous requests, privately pressed 25 copies of an Amos Milburn record that he happened to have.
    It sold out in one morning. Realising the potential, he contacted a friend who worked on the passenger ships sailing from Southampton and arranged to have him buy a regular selection of new R&B records in New York. These would then be copied and pressed on metal acetate singles, which Foxley sold across the counter. News quickly spread and Saturdays at Foxley’s became famous. An affable man, Foxley presided over what became, to all intents and purposes, a regular scheduled party. People came from all over London and as far afield as Birmingham, Bristol, Liverpool and Manchester. Friends would meet, talk, listen and buy – the session finished only when the last record had been sold – it served as a meeting place for musicians and fans at a time when there was little else to be had.
    You can hear Amos Milburn’s ‘Chicken Shack Boogie’ and other tracks on You Tube:
    The shop was there from 1955 to 1968. Dan Shackell remembers the perforated fiber board walls of the listening booths in Foxley’s where he bought his first 78, Gene Vincent’s ‘Lotta Lovin’ in 1957. You can hear it on:
    Unknown name
    Les Smith says he bought ‘Jailhouse Rock’ on the day it was released in 1957, from a record shop which opened for a short period on the Kilburn High Road between Netherwood Street and Palmerston Road.

    Kilburn Record Centre, later Harlequin
    163 Kilburn High Road, next to The Terrace. Paul Vernon remembers that it had racks of records outside. The small shop had opened by 1961, but was gone by 1968. It was taken over by the Harlequin Records and an advert for the Kilburn shop appeared in the ‘International Times’ 17 July 1970. The Harlequin chain of over 70 stores became part of Our Price Records, started by Gary Nesbitt in a shop called ‘Tape Revolution’ in Swiss Cottage in 1971. Our Price did not keep the Kilburn shop, so it probably closed in the early 1970s. 

    163 Kilburn High Road, site of Kilburn Record Centre, 2012
    Folkies
    John Leslie came to 358 Kilburn High Road in 1977. He is a well known accordion player who has appeared on TV programmes such as, ‘Educating Archie,’ and worked with Max Bygraves and Tommy Cooper. He has played on backing tracks for films such as ‘Indiana Jones’ and written music for the Guildhall accordion examination. John teaches and runs London Accordions from the Kilburn shop. You can hear his opinions about Kilburn on an excellent short film by Mark James, ‘Kilburn High Road – The street where you live.’ John Leslie plays his accordion on the soundtrack of this film on You Tube:
     http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8t2HrQUUujk

    Folkies, 2012
    Ethnic Records
    249 Kilburn High Road
    Record producer, Clifton ‘Larry’ Lawrence, opened his first shop in 1973 in Kensal Green selling reggae records on his own Ethnic label. Then he moved to Kilburn High Road from 1974 to 1976, before going to Coldharbour Lane in Brixton from 1976 to 1983. While in Kilburn he released his album, ‘Out of One Man Many Dubs’ which included a track called ‘Kilburn High Rock Dub.’ Larry was born in Jamaica and recorded there before coming to the UK in 1966. He worked as a lorry driver and produced records for Trojan. He also acted as an unofficial road manager for touring Jamaican performers, including Bob Marley and the Wailers. This led him to become the in-house producer for Bruce White and Tony Cousins, Creole Records. Larry died in 2008 from cancer.
    249 Kilburn High Road, site of Ethnic Records, 2012
    Ritz Records
    1 Grangeway, next to the Grange Park
    Mick Clerkin started Ritz Records in 1981 and produced Irish records. They had an office in Garrick Street, Covent Garden.
     
    Just Discs
    A small shop at 1a Cambridge Avenue, on the corner with Kilburn High Road, which closed in 2012. This might have been the site where Leon Parker found the debut ‘Climax Chicago Blues Band’ album he was looking for in the 1970s. He describes it on his blog,
    Bassline Records
    Recently there was a record shop at 333 Kilburn High Road, but nothing further is known about it.
    Sounds II
    In the basement of 256 Kilburn High Road. This seems to be the only remaining record shop in Kilburn today. It sells CDs and tapes. ‘Sounds I’ are in the Portobello Road.
    West Hampstead Shops
    Helga’s Record Shop
    235 West End Lane, on the corner on Sandwell Crescent.
    The site was redeveloped in the early 1970s, but until then the tiny corner premise, Helga’s Record Shop, drew youngsters like a magnet to buy the latest hit. It opened in 1958 and was so small that only a couple of customers could fit in the shop at any one time. The lady who ran the shop – presumably Helga herself – sat behind her narrow counter. There were one or two cramped racks of records. Marianne Colloms remembers buying all her earliest pop singles there for just over six shillings; EPs and LPs were too expensive for her. ‘I don’t think I ever ‘browsed’, just placed an order and collected it’. The shops occupying Numbers 235 and 239 were shoe-horned into what had served (many years previously), as the entry lodge for Sandwell House, a mansion that stood between West End Lane and Sumatra Road.

    Helga’s Records in the 1960s
    Banana Tree Resturant, site of Helga’s, 2012

     Shirley’s Record Shop

    In November 1962 the singer Shirley Bassey came to West Hampstead and autographed the sleeve of one of her own records when she opened a shop at 172 West End Lane. It was part of her first husband, Kenneth Hume’s shop, ‘Books Unlimited’, which he’d opened in 1962. He was a gay film producer, whom Shirley Bassey married in 1961. The couple separated in 1964 and divorced in 1965, in the wake of the Shirley’s affair with actor Peter Finch. In 1967 Kenneth committed suicide. The shop closed about this time.
    Shirley Bassey signs her album. 
    Looking on are, left to right, pop singers Danny Williams, Shane Fenton and Jess Conrad.
    Art 4 Fun, 172 West End Lane, site of Shirley’s Records, 2012

    Joe Palmer’s record shop (name not known)

    250 West End Lane, where Roni’s Bagels are today. In the 1970s, Joe Palmer, a professional musician, opened a shoe shop called ‘In Step’, in Midland Parade, a run of small shops (since demolished), on the railway bridge over the present Thameslink line. He was one of the founders of the successful ‘Peelers’ folk club in 1968, and from that grew ‘Peelers,’ a popular folk group led by Joe, with Tom Madden, and Jim Younger. Their 1972 album ‘Banish Misfortune’ used old acoustic instruments such as the dulcimer, banjo, tin whistle, guitar and concertina.
    Joe soon abandoned shoes for records: his shop wasn’t quite as small as Helga’s, but it came close. He expanded to larger premises nearer to West End Green but maintained his interest in folk music, reforming the Peelers in 1982. His shop at 250 West End Lane had previously been a furniture and carpet shop. Marianne Colloms remembers the record shop – which became a video rental store still run by Joe – as very dark, maybe dark painted walls. Today Joe Palmer lives in Spain and runs Sunshine FM on the Costa Blanca.

    Roni’s Bagels, 250 West End Lane, 2012. Site of Joe Palmer’s

  • Kilburn and Cricklewood book of old photos

    If you would like to see over 200 pictures of old Kilburn and Cricklewood, the History Press have just published a second edition of our book.

    Copies are available from the West End Lane Bookshop or online.

  • ‘Rescuing friendless girls’

    For many years 141 West End Lane was a mother and babies home run by the Paddington and Marylebone Ladies Association. This charitable foundation was established about 1882 by Joanna Frances (Joan) Bonham Carter to ‘rescue friendless girls’ who were unmarried mothers. They originally had a refuge in Lisson Grove, open all night, with their ‘Main Memorial Home’ at 40 Cartwright Gardens, Bloomsbury. The Association employed at least one ‘outdoor rescue worker’ and a live-in superintendent at West End Lane.

    Joan’s father was Henry ‘Harry’ Bonham Carter, a cousin of Florence Nightingale. On her return from the Crimea, he was closely involved with her in setting up training schemes for nurses. Harry was a wealthy barrister and Director of the Guardian Assurance Company. He married Sibella Norman and they had twelve children, eleven sons and one daughter, Joan. The family home was at 5 Hyde Park Square.

    The actress Helena Bonham Carter is distantly related to the family.

    ‘Lancaster House’, the name given to the property by a previous owner, can still be seen on the gate pillar.

    About 1935 the Association took over 141 West End Lane as their main Home. Unmarried women had their babies at local hospitals such as New End in Hampstead, and then stayed at the Home few several weeks. The babies were often baptised at St James Church and usually the father was not named in the register. The numbers of baptisms increased during the War. Often the mothers had to give up their babies for adoption. Electoral registers show that in 1948 there were 19 women at 141 West End Lane, including the superintendent Miss Agnes A. Nicholson, who was still at the Home in 1970.

    Today, several heart rending messages have been posted on the Internet from people trying to trace their relatives:

    ‘I was born in New End Hospital 1943. My birth mother had been in the WAAF. She was sent to 141 West End Lane. She kept me there for six weeks during which time I was baptised at St James Church. She went with someone from the home to hand me over to an adoption agency. This seemed to be routine for all the mothers’.

    ‘I spent eight weeks at the mother and baby home in 1964. It was run by a Miss Nicholson, my baby was adopted in October 1964 by a Church of England adoption society. I am still trying to trace her without success’.

  • New book: Camden Town and Kentish Town, Then and Now

    The Ham and High review of our new book.