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Bud Flanagan

Posted by The Ripper on July 21, 2023
Posted in: Characters, TV & Films.

As the familiar refrain of what was to effectively become their ‘theme tune’ began, the dapper gentleman in the double breasted suit and trilby hat followed his partner to the cart. Chesney Allen put his hands on the shoulder of Bud Flanagan, dressed in his signature moth eaten beaver coat and crownless, broken brimmed straw boater, and the two began to sing ‘Underneath the Arches’…

Bud Flanagan’s parents, Wolf and Yetta (Kitty) Weintrop were Polish Jews who were married in the city of Radom, Poland, and fled the country on the day of their wedding to avoid a pogrom – ethnic cleansing that was sweeping the country at the time. They had intended to flee to America and had in fact paid for a ticket to New York, but an unscrupulous agent gave them a ticket to London, instead. Settling in Whitechapel, Wolf opened a Barbers Shop and Tobacconists to support his growing family of ten children, and Bud Flanagan was born at 12, Hanbury Street, Whitechapel, in the East End of London on the 14th October 1896, and named Chaim Rueben Weintrop.

Young Chaim Rueben Weintrop with his brother Simon

Young Chaim had got a taste for performing, and realised that at Saturday matinees, the Music Hall had a period where the acts worked for nothing. He had already developed a few magic tricks and was good at sleight of hand work, so one afternoon; he turned up, announced himself as ‘Fargo’ – the Boy Wizard, and went on stage.  His first show was a disaster, and he was hauled away by his father, getting a thick ear for working on the Sabbath!

He went to school in Petticoat Lane, a short distance away, but by the time he was just 10 years old, he had found himself a job as a runner or ‘call boy’ at the Cambridge Music Hall in Commercial Street, just around the corner. He quickly cottoned on that the acts in the Music Hall liked a bit of Fish and Chips at the end of the show, so Bud would nip back to his father’s shop and return laden with food. He admits that he received no wages, but the tips he collected for his ‘errands’ made up for it…

In 1910, aged 14, undeterred and full of a sense of adventure, he left home and walked all the way from London  to Southampton where he lied about his age (he said he was aged 17), claimed he was an electrician and blagged his way on board the SS Majestic , bound for New York with a friend. As soon as they arrived in the United States, they immediately jumped ship, dressed as stewards! They tracked down the friend’s cousin, who welcomed them and allowed them to stay.

Needing work, he got various menial jobs selling newspapers, delivering telegrams for Western Union, and harvesting wheat in Fargo, North Dakota. He longed to become a performer and joined a vaudeville show that toured across the US. He admits that he couldn’t save a bean on his paltry wages but that money just couldn’t buy the valuable experience he was getting.  By October 1914, aged just 18, he sailed with a show to perform in New Zealand and Australia, and then travelled to perform on stage in South Africa, where he met his brother Alec, who was living there at the time.

By the time he returned to San Francisco, the rumblings of War had started over Europe, and he decided to return to the United Kingdom to enlist to fight for Britain. He arrived in 1915 and enlisted as “Robert” Weintrop; joined the Royal Field Artillery, and was sent with his unit to fight in France.

In the Army, he worked as a driver but also entertained the troops with his singing and impersonations. It was during his time in the Army that he met the anti-Semitic Sergeant-Major Flanagan, on whom Reuben later had his revenge when he adopted the name “Flanagan” as his stage name. (Once, arrested by the NCO when he was just a Sergeant, he was accused of ‘swearing at him with his eyes’. Unable to contain himself, Weintrop burst out laughing, and the Commanding Officer rapidly dismissed the charges).

After the war ended, (and having been temporarily blinded in a gas attack) he returned back to Britain and on 19th February 1919 he was demobbed.  

One day, walking across Piccadilly Circus, he bumped into a soldier he had met in Poperighe in the West Flanders region of Belgium, a year or two before. This dapper looking former actor was called Chesney Allen. Together, they decided to form a comedy double act, Flanagan and Roy, with (now) Flanagan reprising a ‘black faced’ act he had perfected in the States, but it wasn’t until 1926, while touring with a Florrie Forde show called “Here’s to You”, that they established a reputation and were eventually booked by Val Parnell for a spot at the Holborn Empire.

During the previous year (1925) Bud had married Ann Quinn (who he called ‘Curly’) who was the daughter of Irish comedian Johnny Quinn. Tragically, although their son Buddy was born in 1926, he was to die of Leukaemia in Los Angeles on 29th February 1955 with Bud by his bedside. He was cremated and brought back to England.  Most sources state Buddy died in 1956 – indeed, that is what is written on the gravestone – (see right) – but the date differs from that in Bud’s own 1961 autobiography ‘My Crazy Life’…

Throughout their career, Flanagan and Allen became renowned for gentle, humorous songs, which often reflected the experiences of ordinary folk during the War, such as ‘Underneath the Arches’ (which effectively became their signature theme tune), ‘Dreaming’, ‘Run, Rabbit’, ‘Down Forget-Me-Not Lane’ and ‘Any Umbrellas’. Bud Flanagan had a reasonable singing voice and could hold a melody while Chesney Allen used a more ‘spoken’ style which complimented the harmonies.

The Crazy Gang

Both Flanagan and Allen were members of The Crazy Gang, a revue group consisting of six (occasionally seven) performers – Jimmy Nervo, Teddy Knox, Charlie Naughton and Jimmy Gold with ‘Monsewer’ Eddie Gray joining them on occasions. They appeared in the first show at the London Palladium in 1931, and the pair continued to work with the revue group, concurrently with their double-act career.

As the Second World War ended, Chesney Allen decided to retire and became a Theatrical Agent, but Bud Flanagan worked on. In 1951, he was elected as King Rat in the Grand Order of Water Rats, a charity originally started in 1889 by Joe Elvin and Jack Lotto to raise money to ‘assist members of the Theatrical Profession, or their dependants, who, due to illness or old age are in need’. Additional funds go to such causes as hospitals, health charities and benevolent funds. The Water Rats had the honour of making Queen Elizabeth’s husband, The Duke of Edinburgh a Companion of the Order at a special luncheon. Spurred on by an idea suggested to him by his wife Curly, Bud approached the Duke with the Order’s tiny gold badge, gripped the Duke’s lapel and announce to the assembled guests. ‘That’s a smashing bit of material’!

In 1959, in recognition of his services to the entertainment industry, Bud was awarded the Officer of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire Medal – the OBE

In 1968, Bud Flanagan’s final recording was to be Jimmy Perry and Derek Taverner’s familiar theme tune for the British sitcom Dad’s Army. Bud supposedly recorded “Who Do You Think You Are Kidding, Mr Hitler?” in one take, at the Riverside Studios in London and was paid the princely sum of a Hundred Guineas (£105) for his trouble…

Sadly, a few months after recording the theme tune, Bud was to die of a heart attack on October 20th 1968, aged 72, and he was cremated at the Golders Green Crematorium. He was so popular, it is said that over 100,000 people lined the streets to view his funeral procession.

Following his death, Bud’s will instructed executors to set up the ‘Bud Flanagan Leukaemia Fund’ for further research into the disease that had taken his son, and the Royal Marsden Hospital in Sutton, Surrey now has a ‘Bud Flanagan Leukaemia Ward’ and has become one of the leading treatment centres for this illness…

Marty Feldman

Posted by The Ripper on June 20, 2023
Posted in: Characters. Tagged: , , .

The diminutive figure of Dr Frankenstein’s assistant, Igor, approached the scientist, his eyes swiveling wildly and bent double with his hunched back. The Doctor looked at him with pity in his eyes and said “You know, I’m a rather brilliant surgeon. Perhaps I can help you with that hump”. Igor spun round a few times trying to catch a glimpse of his back before replying “Hump? What hump?”

Martin Alan Feldman, born on 8 July 1934 in East London’s Canning Town, was a British actor, a comedian and a prolific comedy writer. His mother Cecilia Crook had married Myer Feldman, a gown manufacturer, who was a Jewish immigrant from Kyiv in Ukraine. Marty (as the young Martin came to be called) once described his childhood as being of a solitary existence, particularly when he had been sent into the countryside like so many other children who were evacuated during World War II.

Marty suffered from thyroid disease and as a result, developed a condition known as ‘Graves Ophthalmopathy’ which caused his eyes to become misaligned and to protrude.

Rather than consider this a disadvantage, he was to later describe his unusual appearance as a help to his successful acting career saying “If I aspired to be Robert Redford, I’d have my eyes straightened and my nose fixed and end up like every other lousy actor, with two lines on ‘Kojak’  But this way I’m a novelty.”

Marty left school aged just 15 (by which time he had been expelled from school no fewer than 12 times over his disruptive behaviour) and began working at the Dreamland Funfair in Margate (a location much beloved by Only Fools and Horses fans!). However, Marty had aspirations of being a serious musician, playing jazz with a group which had tenor saxophonist Tubby Hayes as a member, but he eventually joked that he was the “world’s worst trumpet player”. His later teenage years were spent travelling – he was deported from France on three occasions, he worked as a fairground barker, and (allegedly) even worked as a getaway driver for an East End villain.

Eventually, Marty decided to change direction and pursue a career in comedy. He had just turned 20. Writing a sketch for the radio show ‘Take It From Here’ gave him the chance to meet another comedy writer – the great Barry Took. They discovered a like sense of humour and they struck up a friendship.

Further comedy writing opportunities led to him contributing to such shows as ‘Educating Archie’, ‘The Glums’ and ‘The Army Game’, before creating some of radio’s most memorable characters such as Ramblin Syd Rumpo (played by Kenneth Williams) and Julian and Sandy – two flamboyant camp characters who spoke in Polari (which Feldman had heard during his time on the streets of Soho) – both for the hit radio show ‘Round The Horne’.

As 1966 dawned, Marty became the principal writer for the satirical TV show ‘The Frost Report’ hosted by David Frost. This show was to boast such comedy writers as Barry Cryer and Frank Muir, as well as introducing him to such performers as John Cleese, Ronnie Barker and Ronnie Corbett.

He was responsible for writing two of the most memorable sketches seen on TV – the ‘Class’ sketch with Cleese, Barker and Corbett explaining to the audience how they ‘looked up and down’ to each other, and the ‘Yorkshiremen’ sketch where each protagonist berates the next over how hard his life had been – usually before the next utters the word ‘LUXURY’…

Marty was given his own show, ‘Marty’ by the BBC in 1968, and this gave him the freedom to emulate his own personal hero – silent screen’s Buster Keaton. He soon began to look towards roles in film, and starred in ‘The Bed Sitting Room’ in 1969 followed quickly by ‘Every Home Should Have One’.

Marty Feldman’s presence was also being felt in America, where he appeared on the ‘Dean Martin Show’. This brought him to the attention of Hollywood, and in particular, Director Mel Brooks and Actor Gene Wilder. Having seen his antics, Marty was offered the part of Igor, the hunchback in Brooks’ ‘Young Frankenstein’, a role that earned him the first Saturn Award winner for Best Supporting Actor. This was followed by another Mel Brooks comedy, ‘Sherlock Holmes Smarter Brother’ in 1975 and ‘Silent Movie’ in 1976. He went on to perform in another 4 movies up until 1982.

It was during the filming of the movie ‘Yellowbeard’ that Marty suffered a fatal heart attack. He had been a very heavy smoker throughout his life, consuming up to 100 cigarettes a day and it is thought this contributed to his death in a hotel room in Mexico City on 2 December 1982.

Marty had been married to his wife Lauretta Sullivan from January 1959 until his death aged just 49 – she was to live on until 2010, dying aged 74.

Marty Feldman is buried in the Garden of Heritage at Forest Lawn, Hollywood Hills – right next the his own comedy hero – Buster Keaton…

Bernard Bresslaw

Posted by The Ripper on October 15, 2020
Posted in: Characters. Tagged: , , , , .

‘Blimey, Bernard’, said the petite blonde standing next to him – ‘Ow tall are you?’ Bernard Bresslaw towered over Barbara Windsor, his co-star in the latest Carry On film. Bernard stared down for a moment before his voice boomed out – ‘I’m 6ft 7″ Barbara – How about you?’ The blond actress giggled. ‘Bloomin’ Hell – I’m only 4ft 10″…

Bernard Bresslaw was born in Stepney on 25th February 1932, the youngest of three boys. His father was an East End tailor’s cutter, and like many families in the area, his mother was forced to take in sewing in order to help pay the bills. He was educated at the Coopers’ Company’s School in Tredegar Square in Bow where, thanks to encouragement from his English Teacher, he won two of the annual LCC awards to RADA. In 1953, he won the Emile Littler Award for the Most Promising Actor.

Bresslaw in ‘The Army Game’

He began his acting career touring Army camps, prisons and hospitals, playing the lead in ‘The Hasty Heart’.

Bernard Bresslaw thought that his height would be a disadvantage in acting, but he was proven wrong when Laurence Olivier picked him for his first stage role as an Irish wrestler in ‘The MacRoary Whirl’ at the Duchess Theatre.

He did some work on the radio and TV in ‘Educating Archie’ and ‘The Army Game’ before landing a role in ‘Carry on Cowboy’ in 1965. Curiously, although officially credited with 14 starring roles in this immensely popular series of films, Bernard Bresslaw did actually appear in one other. As fellow actor Terence Longdon’s legs were deemed to be too skinny and scrawny looking for the scene in which Joan Sims gives him a bath, it is actually Bernard’s that appear in the final film!

Bernard Bresslaw and Barbara Windsor

Other TV roles followed, including a stint in 1967 where he was to play Varga, the lead villain in a Dr Who story called ‘The Ice Warriors’.

Bresslaw was also the author of a privately published volume of poetry ‘Ode to the Dead Sea Scrolls’

Bernard Bresslaw died of a sudden heart attack on 11th June 1993. He was about to play the part of Grumio in the New Shakespeare Company’s production of ‘The Taming of the Shrew’

He had collapsed in his dressing room at the Open Air Theatre in Regents Park. His body was cremated at Golders Green Crematorium in North London where his ashes were buried on 17th June 1993.

Tommy Flowers

Posted by The Ripper on May 24, 2015
Posted in: Characters. Tagged: , , , .

Tommy Flowers Header
The young German sat in the communication hut in Athens at the end of October 1941, and took out a complicated machine of wheels and cogs. Plugging in his coding machine, he began to transmit a message of around 4000 characters to a secret Army location in Vienna. Annoyingly, after a few minutes, he received an uncoded message back from the recipient asking for retransmission as his message had not been received correctly. He shook his head in frustration and with a degree of irritation began to transmit the entire message again forgetting, in doing so, to alter the key settings for the machine. It was the break the staff at the code breaking HQ at Bletchley Park in the UK had been waiting for. The details that needed to be broken were fed into Colossus, the huge electronic computer, designed and built by Tommy Flowers – one of the East End’s – and the world’s unsung heroes.

Tommy Flowers was born a few days before Christmas on 22nd December 1905 at 160, Abbott Road, Poplar. He was always a practical child – indeed, when told about the imminent arrival of a baby sister, he declared a preference for a box of Meccano!

Tommy Flowers

Tommy Flowers

His father was a bricklayer by trade, but young Tommy decided to pursue a career in Mechanical Engineering. He began a four year apprenticeship at Woolwich Arsenal, and subsequently enrolled in evening classes at the University of London where he obtained a degree in Electrical Engineering.

In 1926, Tommy Flowers joined the telecommunication branch of the General Post Office – the GPO – and he took up a post at their Dollis Hill Research Station in 1930. He was still just 25 years old.

The outbreak of the Second World War shocked the nation and in February 1941, Flowers’ Director, W Gordon Radley approached the studious young engineer, explaining that he had been contacted by Alan Turing, from the Government’s code-breaking Station X at Bletchley Park in Buckinghamshire. He explained that he had received a request for Flowers to build a decoder for the Bombe Machines that Turing had developed to help break the German’s Enigma Codes.

Looking at the problems Bletchley Park were having with their existing machine, Flowers proposed an electronic system – a massive machine using 1800 vacuum tubes (commonly referred to as valves) which took up a huge amount of space. Flowers christened his creation ‘Colossus’.

Previous versions had used only 150 valves, and some at Bletchley Park were sceptical about the use of valve technology at all. Famously, Flowers used much of his own funds to purchase his requirements for the new machine. It was reported that when he first told the military top brass it would take a year to build, they laughed at him and said ‘the war will be well and truly over by then – it’s not worth the effort’…

Alan-Turing

Alan-Turing

Colossus MK 1 proved that Flowers knew his craft. Whilst valves were prone to being notoriously temperamental and were constantly breaking down, Tommy Flowers recognised from his work as a GPO Engineer that things usually went wrong when machines were being continuously switched on and off. As a result, Colossus was left switched on in what Flowers described as a ‘stable environment’, and the problems that had plagued previous machines were averted.

By now, the Germans had begun to develop an updated and even more difficult coding machine, Lorenz, which pushed Colossus to its limits.

Undaunted, Flowers began work on a Mark 2 Colossus which came into service on 1st June 1944 and immediately provided vital information of Hitler’s thoughts prior to the D-Day landings that were planned for a few days later.

Tommy Flowers contribution to shortening WWII cannot be overstated. After the war, the government granted him £1000 (the payment of which did not even cover Flowers’ personal investment in purchasing the equipment he needed to build Colossus.) It is a testament to the character of the man that he shared the amount with his co-workers, keeping just £350 for himself – a decent sum for 1945 but a tiny amount for the man credited with building the first modern computer.

Perhaps ironically, Tommy Flowers applied for a bank loan to build another machine just like his prototypes, but was turned down as the bank refused to believe such a machine could be constructed. Adherence to the Official Secrets Act meant he could not tell the bank that he had already built several…

Colossus-Computer

The Colossus Computer

After years of being unable to discuss his work with the world, restrictions were finally lifted in the 1970’s and his story was able to be told. He was awarded an MBE and a Doctorate from Newcastle University. Many still consider this ‘too little, too late’.

Tommy Flowers eventually died of heart failure on 28th October 1998, leaving a wife, Eileen and two sons.

Des O’Connor

Posted by The Ripper on April 26, 2015
Posted in: Characters. Tagged: , , , .

Des-O'Connor-header
The 43 year old singer walked on to rapturous applause, apparently unseen by the two comedians at the front of the stage. ‘That’ said Ernie Wise to his taller, bespectacled companion ‘is the best record Des has ever made’. ‘Why?’ Eric Morecambe said in reply, ‘Is there nothing on it?’

Des O’Connor walked to between the comics with a smile on his face – and little wonder. He had been the butt of Eric and Ernie’s jokes for years, and it had helped to cement his position in British light entertainment. Often referred to as ‘Des – short for desperate’, or ‘Death O’Connor’ by these two stalwarts of British comedy, it kept this East End singer’s name in front of millions of TV viewers.

Des (his full name was Desmond Bernard O’Connor) was born on the 12th January 1932 in Stepney in the East End of London to father Harry O’Connor and mother Maude. During WW2 he was evacuated to Northampton (he even went on to play, briefly, as a professional footballer for Northampton Town) and worked for Church’s, the famous Northampton Shoe Makers before entering the Royal Air Force for a stint in National Service.

It was during his time in the RAF that Des was asked to take part in a talent contest, which he subsequently won. It was the start of a career in show business that continued virtually to his death.

Des-O'Connor

Des O’Connor

For an eight year period, from 1963 to 1971, he hosted his own variety show on ITV which was closely followed by ‘Des O’Connor Entertains’ – a show that featured a wide variety of singing, dancing and comedy sketches.

His singing career had seen him record 36 albums, and he has had four singles that entered the top ten, including ‘I Pretend’ which reached number one with world-wide sales that exceeded 10 million records.

Ever popular on the stage as well as TV, Des appeared over 1280 times at the London Palladium, (a British record) and recalled “They gave me a plaque to commemorate my first 1,000 solo performances there in 1972”

In addition to his performing career, Des hosted a number of game shows and chat shows of his own. He presented a revival of ‘Take Your Pick’ from 1992 to 1998, and took over from Des Lynam as co-presenter (with Carol Vorderman) of the popular Channel 4 game show ‘Countdown’. He also co-hosted the light entertainment programme ‘Today with Des and Mel’ opposite Melanie Sykes, the pair famously ‘corpsing’ on stage when risqué double-entendres crept into the script.

Des was been married four times; the first in 1953 to Phyllis Gill, then Gillian Vaughan in 1960, Jay Rufer in 1985 and finally to Jodie Brooke Wilson who he married in September 2011. He has a total of five children between the four women, the last being a son Adam who was born in September 2004.

He was somewhat criticised in the press as being selfish for fathering his last child when he himself was 80 years old, but hit back, stating ‘I’ve had people saying I was selfish. But what’s selfish about that? How can you say to a woman you’ve been with for 15-odd years, ‘No, I’ve got four and we’re not having any more? That would be selfish’…

Des O'Conner with Eric Morecambe

Des O’Conner with Eric Morecambe

Des O’Connor went on to win a number of awards – in 2001 he was presented with a Special Recognition Award at the National TV Awards for his contribution to television and was appointed a CBE – Commander of the British Empire – in the Queen’s 2008 Birthday Honours List.

But, ironically, it is probably his work as a willing stooge working with Morecambe and Wise that Des is most fondly remembered. He joked that it has got him cabs (‘provided I didn’t sing’) and he even had an opportunity to get his own back on the two comedians in the Morecambe and Wise Christmas Special of 1975 – when he was revealed as a member of the Firing Squad at the end of the main sketch…

Sadly, Des O’Connor died on 14th November, 2020 at the age of 88 following a fall at his home in Buckinghamshire.

He will always be remembered as one of the best all-round entertainers ever to come out of the East End…

Wapping Police Station and Museum

Posted by The Ripper on February 28, 2015
Posted in: Places of Note. Tagged: , , , , , , , .

Wapping-Police-Museum-Header
When you approach Wapping Police Station from Wapping High Street, the modest building looks fairly innocuous. Almost dwarfed by the buildings of Aberdeen Wharf on the right and St John’s Wharf on the left, it is perhaps difficult to imagine that this is the birthplace of the oldest police force in the world.

In the East End of eighteenth century London, importers were losing £500,000 of goods (that is a staggering £46 million at today’s rates) each year to theft. Estimates are not available for the theft of exports…

A way was sought to prevent or at the very least reduce the level of crime, and a proposal was put forward in 1797 to create a body of men who could patrol the Thames by John Harriot, an Essex Justice of the Peace. Following his plans being put before the West India Merchants and Planters Committees, funding was obtained and the creation of the Marine Police began on 2nd July 1798 in the building that still houses the Marine Support Unit of the Metropolitan Police.

An initial force of around 50 river officers were trained and armed. They needed to be. It was estimated that almost 11,000 of the 33.000 people who worked the river trades were known criminals. The reaction to the new force was understandably hostile as the river thieves found that were losing an easy living.

Wapping-Police-Museum

Wapping Police Museum

A riot took place outside the station when around 2,000 men arrived with every intention of torching the place with the magistrates and some police officers inside. Whilst Harriot was able (and brave enough) to successfully disperse the riot, one of his officers, Gabriel Franks, was shot and died later in hospital. He became the first recorded police death.

The government became convinced of the benefits of the Marine Force (particularly after receiving letters confirming that the deterrent of a regular, patrolling force was working) and in July 1800 moved the force from private to public control. The force flourished, and became well established in the East End. In 1811, it was a Marine Police Force Officer who was first on the scene of the dreadful Ratcliffe Highway Murders. Eventually in 1839, the control of the Marine Force (together with other independent law enforcement groups like the Bow Street Runners) passed to the newly formed Metropolitan Police Force.

Nowadays, the station is home to the Marine Police Unit who continue to patrol the Thames – but the building also houses the wonderful Thames River Police Museum. This is to be found in what used to be the old carpenters workshop, and gives a fascinating glimpse into the origins of the world’s oldest police force.

Visits can be made to the Museum, on a strictly appointment only basis, and the request must be made in writing. Tours are run by two retired members of the River Police who guide you around the various exhibits, and upon entering the museum visitors are confronted with a wide range of historical artefacts. Many models exist of the type of vessels that they’ve used in the past, together with old nautical uniforms, weapons, trophies and such like.

Wapping-Police-Museum-Exhibits

Wapping Police Museum Exhibits

One item that takes pride of place is the ensign of the ill-fated paddle steamer Princess Alice. This steamer, returning from an evening trip to Gravesend on 3rd September 1878 was struck by the coal carrier Bywell Castle and split in two. She sank within four minutes and over 650 people perished in the cold and polluted water of the Thames.

It was recommended at the enquiry into the Princess Alice disaster that the Thames Division should have steam launches to enable them to respond quicker to emergencies rather than the rowing boats that had been previously used…

 

 

 

 

Should you wish to visit the museum, please send your enquiries to:

Thames Police Museum
Wapping Police Station
Wapping High Street
Wapping, London, E1W 2NE

And enclose a stamped self-addressed envelope.

Clara Ellen Grant

Posted by The Ripper on January 6, 2015
Posted in: Characters. Tagged: , , .

Farthing-Bundles-Header
The young blond girl in the queue shifted around to see how near she was to the arch. There were only three more children to go. The lady at the head of the queue was handing out small bundles wrapped in newspaper to each child that passed under the wooden arch in exchange for a single coin. The girl glanced down to look at the farthing she held tightly in her hand and looked up at the arch again. It bore the legend “Enter All Ye Children Small, None Can Come Who Are Too Tall” and she stepped forward, her hair just brushing the underside of the archway. She handed her coin to the lady who accepted it with a smile and gave the girl a loosely wrapped parcel of her own.

This practice of handing out the ‘Farthing Bundles’ to children started in 1905, (although the little arch was introduced in 1913) by Clara Ellen Grant.

Clara Ellen Grant

Clara Ellen Grant – The Bundle Lady of Bow

Born in 1867, Clara was one of nine children from a reasonably well to do family who grew up in Wiltshire village. She always wanted to teach, but initially, she began working with the Universities Mission in Central Africa. Following the death there of her fiancé, she returned to England, completed her teacher training at Salisbury Training College and moved to London. After a couple of teaching posts, Clara Grant became Head Teacher at the Devons Road Infant School on Bow Common, in the East End of London in 1900. The area already had a reputation for destitution, and Clara was shocked at the level of local poverty around her, particularly of the young children who attended the school.

As a highly motivated and determined Victorian Englishwoman, she felt duty bound to do something about the situation.

Clara set about looking at the whole structure of class room technique, eschewing the ‘children should be seen and not heard’ philosophy that had preceded her. She provided a hot breakfast for those children in her care – for many, the only hot meal of the day – and looked to her friends to help supply the infants with clothing and shoes. She even turned her home into a settlement house, which came to be known as the Fern Street Settlement, and which is still active to this day, providing pensioners with a day centre, a lunch club and a place for adult education classes. The Settlement also runs summer holiday camps for young people and gives out presents for children at Christmas.

But it is by her affectionately given nickname of the ‘Bundle Woman of Bow’ That Clara Grant may be best remembered.

Farthing-Bundles-Arch

The Farthing Bundles Arch

As Clara explained herself, “Farthing bundles are full of very human things such as children love. Tiny toys of wood, or tin, whole or broken, little balls, doll-less heads or head-less dolls, whistles, shells, beads, reels, marbles, fancy boxes, decorated pill boxes, scraps of patchwork, odds and ends of silk or wool, coloured paper for dressing up, cigarette cards and scraps.”

Children who had a farthing and could walk under the forty eight inch wooden arch, with its painted motto, exchanged their coin for a parcel. Sitting on the kerbstones by the side of the school, children would excitedly unwrap their bundle and compare the pencils, small toys, bits of string, note pads etc. contained within.

The practice of the Farthing Bundles proved so popular that children would often queue up from six forty five each Saturday morning, even though the bundles went on ‘sale’ at eight o’clock.

Clara Ellen Grant was awarded the OBE in 1949, but in October of that same year, she passed away. The practice she set in place of passing out bundles to underprivileged children continued until its demise in 1984, and in 1993, the school she had such an influence on was renamed the Clara Grant Primary School in her honour.

The London Burkers

Posted by The Ripper on December 30, 2014
Posted in: Crime. Tagged: , , , , , .

London-Burkers-Header
A couple of days before Guy Fawkes night in 1831, 10 year old John King and his 11 year old sister Martha were hanging out the washing to help their invalided mother at their home in Crabtree Road, at the northern end of Bethnal Green. Looking across the road to the Bird Cage public house in Nova Scotia Gardens, they noticed a boy, slightly older than themselves, who waved before uttering something in a foreign language that the two children couldn’t understand. It was the last time they were to see 14 year old Italian Carlo Ferrier alive – The London Burkers had struck again…

Nova Scotia Gardens was an area of the East End, just to the north-east of St Leonard’s Church in Shoreditch that had been extensively used to extract clay for brick making. Once the clay field had been exhausted the area begun to be filled in with ‘leystall’ waste, quite literally excrement. Some dwellings, mainly small cottages, were built in the area, but were largely undesirable as, being built on the lower ground of the clay pits, they were prone to flooding. The properties were to attract the lowest, most desperate kind of tenants…

The-London-Burkers

The London Burkers – Bishop, Williams and May

Four such individuals were Thomas Williams, John Bishop, a Covent Garden porter called Michael Shields and an unemployed butcher called James May.

In the 18th century, demand for anatomical cadavers was high – around 500 were needed each year to meet demands, and the bodies of convicted and hanged criminals met that requirement. However, whilst hundreds were executed during the 18th century, the mid 19th century saw just 55 being hanged each year. Demand clearly outstripped supply and it was into this lucrative market that Williams, Bishop, Shields and May were drawn.

Modelling their activities on the notorious Burke and Hare, two grave robbers in Scotland, these ‘London Burkers’, bodysnatchers or so called ‘resurrectionists’ would dig up and sell fresh cadavers to the anatomists and surgeons at St Bartholomew’s Hospital, St Thomas’ Hospital and Kings College. Bishop, in a subsequent confession, admitted to stealing between 500 and 1000 bodies in this manner over a twelve year period. However, the Burkers needed even more bodies…

On Saturday 5th November 1831, May and Bishop delivered the suspiciously fresh body of a young boy to William Hill, the porter of the dissecting room at King’s College, Somerset House and demanded twelve guineas for the corpse. May and Bishop tipped the corpse out of a hamper and pointed out to a startled Hill how fresh the body was. When questioned how the boy had died, both May and Bishop claimed they didn’t know, and that it was ‘no business of theirs’. Hill called Richard Partridge, the Demonstrator of Anatomy at the college to examine to body, and he alerted the Professor of Anatomy, Herbert Mayo. Mayo immediately called the police and the resurrectionists were duly arrested and remanded in custody…

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The London Burkers in the Dock

Two weeks later, Joseph Sadler, a Superintendent with F division of the Metropolitan Police searched the cottage at Nova Scotia Gardens. He found numerous items of clothing in the gardens and in a well at the property, all of which suggested multiple murders. Williams and Shields were duly arrested and placed with May and Bishop. Upon questioning, it became apparent that the men had been complicit in the murder of a woman, Frances Pigburn and another boy named Cunningham who they had found sleeping rough in a pig market in Smithfield. Both had been taken back to Nova Scotia Gardens, drugged with a mixture of warm beer, sugar, rum and laudanum. They were then hung upside down and drowned in the well at the property.

The men were tried collectively, but the testimony of Bishop and Williams cleared the remaining two members of the gang, who appeared to have been mere ‘delivery men’ in the affair. Bishop, aged 33 and Williams, aged 26 were found guilty and both were hanged at Newgate on 5th December 1831 in front of a crowd of 30,000 onlookers. Their bodies were subsequently cut down and dispatched to anatomical establishments – for dissection…

The Silvertown Explosion

Posted by The Ripper on November 23, 2014
Posted in: Culture. Tagged: , , , , , .

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Just before 7pm on the evening of Friday the 19 January 1917, with Britain firmly in the grip of WWI, the people of Silvertown were settling down to their evening meals. Suddenly, the winter’s night lit up and the howl and roar of an enormous explosion rent the East London sky apart. Debris was strewn across much of London: a gasholder across the river in Greenwich exploded, igniting over 7 million cubic feet of gas, and windows were reportedly blown out of the Savoy Hotel on the Strand. Red hot lumps of rubble fell from the sky and began to cause numerous fires in the surrounding areas. What on earth had happened?

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The Silvertown explosion wrecked the docks

Silvertown is an area of London just to the south of the Royal Victoria Docks, on the far eastern fringes of the East End. It has long been an area of industry and was named after Samuel Winkworth Silver who established a factory there in the 1850’s and who went on to make some of the first of Alexander Graham Bell’s telephones there in the 1880’s.

As Silvertown just fell outside the boundary of the 1843 Metropolitan Building Act, many factories were built there that dealt with products that were unpleasant, noxious or even downright dangerous. Chemical factories abounded and manufactured or processed petroleum, caustic soda, creosote and even sulphuric acid. All this on the outskirts of the busiest metropolis on earth. Small terraced properties filled the gaps between the docks and these housed the factory workers.

As the First World War progressed, a caustic soda factory owned by Brunner, Mond and Co was ordered by the government to begin the manufacture of trinitrotoluene, commonly known as TNT, used in a wide range of munitions for the British troops fighting in the trenches. The company protested at the time, as the effects of handling TNT were well known. A large number of workers found that their skin would begin to turn yellow and they began to suffer from chest pains and nausea. However in September 1915 the company surrendered to growing government pressure and their factory began turning out TNT at the rate of nine tons a day…

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A house wrecked in the Silvertown Explosion

On the evening of the 19 January, it seems that a fire broke out in the melt-pot room. Despite frantic efforts to put it out, some 50 tons of TNT ignited – with devastating consequences. The resultant explosion completely destroyed a large part of the factory and the properties in the surrounding streets, sending up a massive fireball and starting fires in the capital that could be seen as far away as Kent and Surrey. The sound of the blast was reportedly heard as far away as Norfolk. Flour mills on the southern side of the Royal Victoria Docks were flattened and other parts of the dock and warehouses were torn apart.

Those people who could, responded rapidly, but the unusual geography of this part of East London hampered rescue attempts. Seventy three people lost their lives and close to four hundred were injured, many seriously. Around seventy thousand buildings were damaged and the financial cost was estimated at £250,000 (an enormous amount at the time). Ironically, the death toll could have been so much more, given the level of devastation. Because of the time of day, many workers had left the factory, but had not yet retired for the night. This action may have saved hundreds as it was the upper floors of the properties that bore the brunt of the damage.­ A number of firemen lost their lives as their station was one of the properties brought crashing to the ground by the explosion.

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Silvertown Fire Station after the explosion

The day following the explosion, the local authority took steps to oversee the rescue work and begin rebuilding their shattered community. Within two weeks, over 1700 men in the area were employed in repairing housing and as a result, by August of 1917, much of their work was complete.

An enquiry into the incident was set up and reached the conclusion that Silvertown was a totally unsuitable place to build a TNT manufacturing plant, and went on to criticise Brunner, Mond & Co for negligence in the running of the factory and for failure in looking after the welfare of their workers. The Government report remained secret until 1950…

Rip – the Blitz dog

Posted by The Ripper on October 10, 2014
Posted in: Characters. Tagged: , , , , , .

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The air raid on the East End had been particularly fierce that night, and as Air Raid Warden Mr E King made his way across the rubble of  what had once been a residential street on the outskirts of Poplar, he paused for a second. By his side stood Rip, a mixed terrier dog who stood stock still for a moment, nose and ears twitching, before heading unerringly towards a pile of still smoking bricks. Scrabbling his way over the broken masonry, Rip began scratching furiously at the shattered ruins and started to bark.

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Rip – The Blitz Dog

The Warden called over some colleagues and they began the delicate task of removing the bricks and mortar. Rip wagged his tail, waiting patiently while the men dug down, before barking excitedly as they carried a dust covered and unconscious child to safety. Rip, the original search and rescue dog had saved another life.

Rip had been an air raid victim himself. It was in 1940 that Mr King, seeing the small dog in the debris left by a previous air raid, had thrown him a few scraps of food. Rip gobbled them down, and cautiously walked across to the man in the ARP uniform. Expecting the dog to leave, ARP Warden King began to walk back to his post, ARP Station B132 in Southill Street, Poplar. To his surprise, the little dog tagged along and a mutual friendship sprang up. The remainder of the ARP Station were delighted and adopted Rip as their mascot.

It soon became apparent that Rip had a talent for locating people trapped in bomb damaged houses. With no formal training, Rip took to his new role instinctively and he became the ARP Service’s first Search and Rescue dog.

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Rip with owner Mr E King

Rip the dog has been credited in prompting the authorities to train further Search and Rescue dogs as the war progressed.

In just twelve months between 1940 and 1941 Rip, the original rescue dog located over 100 victims of the Luftwaffe’s air raids.

At the end of the war, in 1945, Rip became a recipient of the Dickin Medal (often referred to as ‘The Animal’s Victoria Cross’). The citation that accompanied the medal read: “For locating many air raid victims during the blitz of 1940”.

He wore his medal on his collar until he died in October 1946. Rip is buried in the PDSA Cemetery in Ilford, Essex and his gravestone bears the inscription: “In memory of Rip, D.M., served with Civil Defence London. Awarded PDSA Dickin Medal July 1945. For bravery in locating victims trapped under blitzed buildings.”

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The gravestone of Rip

His body was the first of twelve Dickin Medal winners to be buried in the cemetery.

As a footnote, Rip’s Dickin Medal was sold by auction in Bloomsbury, London in 2009. Many commentators, including medal specialists, Spink Auctioneers of London, expected the medal to fetch around £10,000. However, as the auction progressed, it became apparent that Rip’s heroics had added much to the value, and by the time the auction closed, the little dog’s Dickin Medal had sold for a record £24,250