When Mrs. Jane Knapman of New Cross made the Manchester Guardian ……

Mrs Jane Knapman lived on Dennett’s Road, just off Queens Road at number 64.

Breaking news, 1885

I will have passed it most days during the 1950s and early 60s as I made my way from Lausanne Road down Mona Road, and on first to Edmund Waller School and then Samuel Pepys.

And it would have been on the route to call on John Cox who lived on the other side of Dennett’s Road.

All of which is an introduction to a story of a fire in 1885, which appeared in the Manchester Guardian later the same day.

I suppose some might murmur that it must have been a slow news day in Manchester for the paper to report the incident and even more so for people to read of a “Destructive Fire in London …. Narrow Escape”*

Equally there will be those in London who see the news story as confirmation that even a minor fire in a small road in southeast London proves the pre-eminence of the city.

The full story, 1885

But not so, this was still the first big period of mass news when papers across the country fell on stories and events from John O’Groats to Land End to feed the insatiable curiosity of the public.

Go back into the early decades of the 19^th century and murky stories of murders, sensational robberies and cases of infanticide were regularly picked up by all the regional press and passed on.

The Dennett’s Road fire was no different.  It had begun in the early hours of Tuesday was “an alarming and destructive character, by which two aged and infirm persons nearly lost their lives.”

And the story included great heroism as two policemen and a neighbour repeatedly went back into the blazing property to rescue two of the occupants.  “Constable Thursday rushed in through the suffocating smoke and found Mrs. Knapman in her bed almost unconscious … [and taking] her in his arms with some difficulty succeeded in carrying her safely into the street”

And while Constable Simpson tried to rescue Mrs. Mary Ann Saunders “who is almost bedridden” she was saved by a “neighbour James Jacobs of no.60 Dennett’s Road who twice ran into the burning building before successfully reaching Mrs. Saunders and carried the woman to the window where police constable Simpson received her”.

Dennett's Road, 1872

No sooner had Mr. Jacobs made his escape than the flames burst through the floor, and all seven rooms including the contents “were reduced to ashes”.

Along with the two elderly woman, Mr Knapman and a young woman Annie Cole escaped.

On the surface it is a pretty humdrum story despite the drama, but there is more.

I know that Mrs. Knapman who had been born in 1795 and her son were living in the house in 1881, and were still there a decade later, suggesting that despite the devastation to the house it was rebuilt.

In time I will go looking for the stories of all four, along with Albert Sanderson and his widowed mother who were lodgers in the house in 1881, and the five people who were squeezed into no. 64 a decade later.

Their occupations offer up a snapshot of the area in the 1890s.  So while John Knapman was a wheelwright working for the railways, two of the lodgers described themselves as “Railway Carriage cleaners”, Emily Hodge and her daughter were “needlewoman on shirts” and the youngest resident was a labourer.

And here there is the hint of tragedy, because Emily Hodge was a widow at 38, which replicated the story of Marian Sanderson who lived with the Knapman’s ten years earlier who was widowed by the age of 44.

Lausanne Road, 2007

Nor can I walk away without mentioning James Jacobs who was 30 years old, married to Sarah and worked as a “Leather Bag Maker”.

Together they had four children aged between 8 and just 6 months, and who had spent the early years of their marriage in the City of London and later in Surrey and had only recently settled in New Cross.

So it’s all a twisty turny story made more so because I had originally been trawling the Manchester Guardian for a piece on a Mrs. Wild who officiated at the introduction of street gas lamps in Chorlton-cum-Hardy.

What caught my eye was the breaking news that in 1885 the “Madras municipality in India had extended the suffrage to women”.  There was no more just the statement that the news had come from “Madras states by telegram”.

And below that was story of the destructive fire in Dennett’s Road.

Just shows what random history can throw up.  And yes in the absence of a picture of no.64 Dennett's Road which has vanished, I include our house on Lausanne Road .... because I can.

Location; New Cross & Manchester

Picture; the news story from the Manchester Guardian, 1885, Lausanne Road, 2007 from the collection of Liz and Colin Fitzpatrick, and Dennett’s Road in 1872, courtesy of Digital Archives Association, https://digitalarchives.co.uk/

*“Destructive Fire in London Narrow Escape”. Manchester Guardian, September 28^th, 1885