The Chorlton mysteries …….. which stubbornly keep their secrets

Sometimes despite a heap of research the stories just don’t come together.

Bomb damage, Manchester, 1941

And so, it is with a family of four who “were killed by enemy action in March 1941” and the mysterious link between a house in Chorltonville and the Nazi propagandist, Lord Haw Haw.

Both stories emerged from conversations during the week and in their different ways both seemed promising avenues of research.

The Smith family are buried in Southern Cemetery in the consecrated section T close to Barlow Moor Road, and a search of the City Council’s burial records list them as Eliza, Joseph, Ada and May.

I haven’t seen the grave yet, but Ed passed over the details and wondered where they may have lived.

I thought the bomb maps might offer up a location for their home, but that does depend to some extent on knowing where to look.

Barrage Balloon, 1940, Chorlton

Alas so far, I can’t find them on the 1921 census or the 1939 Register and while there is a reference to an Eliza Smith born in 1866, I can’t be sure this is her.

Nor do they appear in the list of dead killed on March 11th or the following day in one data base.*

Now given the confusion of war I fully accept that some records went missing, but it just ads to my failure.

And in the same way I haven’t been able to make a link between a house in North Meade and Lord Haw Haw, which was the was the “nickname applied to William Joyce, who broadcast Nazi propaganda to the UK from Germany during the Second World War. 

The broadcasts opened with "Germany calling, Germany calling", spoken in an affected upper-class English accent”. **

The possible link was suggested by one of our guests at the recent book launch, who said her mother had maintained that there was a connection between the house and the Nazi who had been an active Fascist in the 1930s before fleeing to Germany just before the outbreak of the war. ***

The census returns for 1921 and the 1939 Register threw up different people living at the property but as yet I can’t trace a connection to either the British Union of Fascists or to William Joyce.

The Meade, circa 1930

Nor so far I have come across a reference to Joyce in Manchester, despite trawling the Manchester Guardian, but then he was “Director of Propaganda for the British Union Of Fascists” and as such spoke at meetings around the country, so it is possible he appeared at a BUF meeting in the city or the surrounding area. ****

Now I not arrogant enough to suppose that just because I failed someone else will not be more successful, which lays down a sort of challenge.

But for now that is it, other than to record that Chorltonville appears unvisited by Goggle Maps which would have been a quick way of refreshing my memory of the said house on North Meade.

Chairs as weapons, Rotherham, 1936

So, we have all learnt something, apart from those residents of Chorltonville who already knew that Goggle Maps has not wandered down its leafy ways.

The Meade, 1913

Location; Manchester

Pictures; Blitz bomb damage, 1941, m08608, Fight at fascist Meeting, 1936courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council,  http://images.manchester.gov.uk/index.php?session=pass barrage balloon on the Rec circa 1941 from the collection of Allan Brown, and the Meade, 1913, and circa 1930s from the Lloyd Collection

*Luftwaffe Over Manchester, The Blitz Years 1940-1944, Peter J C Smith, 2003, Neil Richardson

**Lord Haw Haw, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lord_Haw-Haw

*** The book …. some poems … a cake and the mystery of Lord Haw Haw in Chorltonville, https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.com/2022/11/the-book-some-poems-cake-and-mystery-of.html

****Fight at Fascist Meeting Chairs as Weapons, Manchester Guardian February 14th 1936