Standing outside Charing Cross Railway Station in 1904 .......the one with the hotel

 This is one of those places instantly recognizable to anyone who lives south of the river.

And despite the fact that the image and the picture postcard were made at the beginning of the last century there is much that is still the same.

Of course, I am well aware that on the platform side there has been a huge transformation, but as I have never seen the new Embankment Place which sits above the platforms, and my memories of walking through the redesigned concourse are vague, I cannot comment.

But as an old duffer, I was saddened to read that most of the 1906 iron and glass roof above the platforms has gone, but looking at pictures of the concourse it seems cleaner than I remember it.

And it is nice to see the large clock beside the exit is still there, leaving me to hope someone will post pictures of the station as it is today.

The station dates from 1864, and the hotel from a year later.  

At its opening the hotel had 250 rooms spread out over 7 floors, and was so popular that an extension with 90 rooms was a added thirteen years later.

It is a place I have never visited, and a bit of me wishes I had.

The postcard was marketed by Tuck and Sons, with the note that it was from their Christmas and New Year catalogue of 1904/05 under the series titles of London Town and City and London View.

And yes I am well aware that many railway stations had a hotel.

Location; London

Picture; Charing Cross Railway Station, circa 1905, marketed by Tuck and Sons,, courtesy of Tuck DB, https://tuckdbpostcards.org/about

Looking deeper into the people who supported a children’s charity ........ Miss Malvey and social reform

Now as I dig deeper into the story of the Manchester children’s charity I have become fascinated by the people who toiled tirelessly to improve the lives of the young people they encountered.*

And in particular have been struck by what motivated them to give up their time and money which in many cases stretched over decades.

The conventional assumption is that for most it was either down to strong religious beliefs or that vague term “humanitarian concerns”.

Neither on their own is very satisfactory as an explanation, and obscures the subtle differences in why people supported the charity.

In most cases it started with that most basic concern that in what many called the second city of the Empire where conspicuous wealth and great commercial success were everywhere to be seen, just yards away children were hawking goods for a pittance and some were sleeping rough while others were in families which had toppled over into real and abject poverty.

The response as ever was mixed but for those who didn’t cross the road the challenge was not just the short term one of “rescue” but the longer and more positive one of offering care and vocational training to enable young people to lift themselves towards a better life.

Of course even the most respectable and hard working were at the mercy of unforeseen events ranging from a trade depression and unemployment to sickness or the death of the breadwinner which could pitch a family into the workhouse.

For some like Olive Christian Malvey that understanding of the reality of working class life appears to be what brought her to the Manchester and Salford Boys’ and Girls’ Refuges.

Until recently she was just a name on one of the charity’s annual reports and a face on a page from one of their publications. **

But I was intrigued by the reference to her as the author of Soul Market “who, in such an intensely practical way has done much for the homeless girl and woman in London.  

The first shelter she provided for this class of needy ones was opened by Her Royal Highness the Duchess of Albany.  Those who have read that striking book ‘The Soul Market’ will know that [she] speaks on the subject from personal experience.”***

The book was one of a number Miss Malvey wrote in the early years of the 20th century and arose from a series of articles she wrote for Pearson’s Magazine about the lives of working class women in one of the poorer parts of London.

Soul Market was published in 1907 and was followed by Baby Toilers, and White Slavery.

All in their way deal with the issues of poverty, and appalling work practices.

Soul Market consisted of twenty chapters ranging from ‘Up and down the Social Ladder – From a Society Crush to the Spike,’ ‘Gliding the Gutter’, ‘In the Sweating Dens of West and East London’, and ‘Women who Work and Babes who Weep.’

There are a number of useful biographies about Miss Malvey of which Olive Christian Malvey: journalist, ‘lecturer, reciter, and social worker’, by Sarah Jackson is particularly informative.****

And for anyone interested in the migration of young people by the charities Miss Malvey struck an interesting position.

During the annual meeting of the Manchester and Salford Boy’s and Girl’s Refuges, she said “She was sorry that so many had to be sent away to Canada.  It would be better if they could have homes and parents in England, but since they had not it was a good thing that that could be sent to such a beautiful wide land as Canada.”****

Some might jib at what still seems an abrogation on the part of a British social reformer to criticise the policy but it fits well with that general view held by some that the migration of young people to Canada was wrong, and when I have delved deeper into her writings we may find confirmation that that was so.

In the meantime, Soul Market, Baby Toilers, and White Slavery are all available as down loads.

Location; Manchester & London







Pictures; Miss Malvey and other scenes from her book Soul Market, 1907 and Miss Malvey in 1912, from the Children’s Haven page 14

*A new book on the Together Trust, https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/A%20new%20book%20on%20the%20Together%20Trust

**The Children’s Haven, April 1912

*** The Children’s Haven, April 1912, page 13

****Olive Christian Malvey: journalist, ‘lecturer, reciter, and social worker’, by Sarah Jackson in particularly informative, http://eastendwomensmuseum.org/olive-christian-malvery-journalist/

**** Saving the Children, Work of the Boys ‘and Girls’ Refuges, Manchester Guardian, April 12 1912

At the unfashionable end of the Tower of London

I am back with the Tower of London.*

And this is one of those picture postcards which I can’t see having sold very well.

After all it is unlikely to appeal to the tourist who wanted to share the grandeur and the magic of the old fortress by the Thames with family and friends.

Nor I suspect would it capture the interest of to the average Londoner who might well have such a scene everyday on their way to work.

That said it is a wonderful record of a busy day on Tower Hill  and is another of those Fred Judge postcards dating from sometime before the Great War.

Picture; London on Tower Hill, Judge, courtesy of Mark Flynn Postcards, http://www.markfynn.com/london-postcards.htm


*Mark Flynn Postcards, http://www.markfynn.com/london-postcards.htm

Round About A Pound A Week ......... London life and London Poor ..... 1913

Round About A Pound A Week,

Now back in 1893 when Charles Booth made his London poverty maps our house on Lausanne Road in Peckham was shown as “fairly comfortable, good ordinary earnings” while behind on St Mary’s Road the residents were “middle class, well to do”  all of which is there to see in the houses a century and a bit later.

And digging through the history of the people who lived there that is pretty much what they were.

But head a little north and just twenty years later and Mrs Maude Pember revealed searing poverty and the opening paragraphs of her book published in 1913 say it all.*

“Take a tram from Victoria to Vauxhall Station.

Get out under the railway arch which faces Vauxhall Bridge, and there you will find Kennington Lane.

The railway arch roofs in a din which reduces the roar of the trains continually passing overhead to a vibrating muffled rumble.”

And with those opening lines Mrs Maud Pember Reeves plunged into a detailed account of the lives of families struggling to make ends meet in the Lambeth of 1913.

Lambeth, 1876

She was a social reformer and feminist who served on the Executive Committees of the Women’s Trade Union League, the National Anti Sweating League, and the Central Committee for Women’s Suffrage along with the Committee of the Fabian Society.

And it was after a lecture given to the Fabian Women’s’ Group on the Economic Disintegration of the Family in 1908 that she and other members of the group set about recording the daily budgets and lives of working class families in Lambeth.

The book details everything from the area where they lived to the daily battle to bring up a family in damp and lousy properties, while balancing a household budget and the ever present threat of unemployment.

It is a book which compliments that of Robert Roberts’s description of life in Salford at much the same time. **

So given that I will no doubt be returning to the book I shall conclude with a little more from the opening chapter

Lambeth circa 1900

“From either end of the arch comes a close procession of trams, motor-buses, brewers’ drays, coal lorries, carts filled with unspeakable material for glue factory and tannery, motor cars, coster-barrows, and people.

It is a stopping-place for tramcars and motorbuses; therefore little knots of agitated persons continually collect on both pathways, and dive between the vehicles and descending passengers in order to board the particular bus or tram they desire.

At rhythmic intervals all traffic through the arch is suspended to allow a flood of trams, buses, drays and vans, to surge and rattle and bang across the opening of the archway which faces the river.

At the opposite end there is the cross current.  The trams slide away to the right towards the Oval. In front is Kennington Lane and to the left at right angles, a narrow street connects with Vauxhall Walk leading further on into Lambeth Walk, both locally known as the Walk.


Such is the western gateway to the districts stretching north to Lambeth Road, south to Lansdowne Road, east to Walworth Road, where live the people whose lives this book is about.

They are not the poorest people of the district.  Far from it!

They are, putting aside the tradesmen, whose shops line the big thoroughfares such as Kennington Road, or Kennington Park Road, some of the most enviable and settled inhabitants of this part of the world.

The poorest people- the river-side casual, the workhouse in-and-out, the bar room loafer – anxiously ignored by these respectable persons whose work is permanent, as permanency goes in Lambeth and whose wages range from 18s. to 30s a week."

Picture; cover Round About A Pound A Week, , Virago ed 1979 featuring an image from the Greater London Council Photograph Library and detail of the area in the 1870s from the 1872 OS for London, courtesy of Digital Archives Association, http://www.digitalarchives.co.uk/

* Charles Booth Online Poverty Map https://booth.lse.ac.uk/

** Round About A Pound A Week, Maud Pember Reeves, 1913, Virago ed 1979

***The Classic Slum, Robert Roberts, 1971

When the Thames was a working river nu 1 ........... looking north towards the Tower of London in 1911

It is just one of those simple things that as you get older there are more and more things you can use as a bench mark marking the passage of time.

And this is one of them for while the painting dates from 1911 I can still remember the river as a working highway where all manner of ships and boats plied their business.

As a child in the 1950s crossing London Bridge there was plenty to see from the cranes and warehouses to tramps steamers and lightermen.

Picture; The Tower, 1911, W.L. Wyllie, from the series FATHER THAMES SERIES 11 Tuck and Sons, courtesy of Tuck DB, https://tuckdb.org/

When the Thames was still a working river nu 2 ............. across to St Paul's

It is just one of those simple things that as you get older there are more and more things you can use as a bench mark marking the passage of time.

And this is one of them for while the painting dates from 1907 I can still remember the river as a working highway where all manner of ships and boats plied their business.

As a child in the 1950s crossing London Bridge there was plenty to see from the cranes and warehouses to tramp steamers and lightermen.

Picture; the River and St Paul's from the Shot Tower, in the series LONDON SERIES V Tuck and Sons, courtesy of Tuck DB, https://tuckdb.org/

Flowers to Forest Hill ………. from the Western Front

At first glance there is nothing unusual about Kemble Road, in Forest Hill.

The houses have that distinctive soft yellow colour which will be familiar to anyone who grew up in south east London.

Our house on Lausanne Road was made of the same London stock brick with the addition of decades of sooty deposits but still recognizably yellow, which is in direct contrast to the red brick properties of the North where I long ago ended up.

And so, despite having lived in Manchester for over 50 years, that soft yellow brick makes me homesick, and of course is a signal that I have come home.

I guess the same feelings will have been present in the soldier who sent this card from the Western Front in the January of 1918.

It was addressed to a Mrs. E. Cooper who lived in a house on Kemble Road.

The property is still there and is one a handful of semi-detached houses which mark it of from the rest which are grouped in terraces.

Walk down the road today and you can see the work of several builders whose designs differ slightly from each other.

I don’t suppose the scene is that very different from what it would have looked like in the last year of the Great War.  

Each property had a small front garden and a bigger and longer garden to the rear.

Only today many of the fronts have lost their grass to accommodate off road car parking, while a few houses have added roof extensions, and of course the wheelie bin has replaced the round steel dustbin.

I went looking for Mrs. E Cooper but failed to find her.  

At the beginning of 1918 the house along with its neighbour is not listed in the Post Office Directory suggesting that both were unoccupied.

Nor could I find her in any other official listings for  Forest Hill.

But I will still go looking, if only to bring the two of them out of the shadows, and offer up a story on what happened to them before and after the Great War.

Location; Forest Hill

Pictures; Flowers of France, 1918, from the collection of David Harrop

Stories from the Great War ............ the Shaw family and their loss of five sons ..... no. 2 the Western Front

Even from the distance of a century the impact of the Great War continues to reverberate through most families.

The five brothers

Few I suspect cannot account for one family member who either joined the Colours or was engaged on essential war work.  In our case we can count seven from our immediate family and in the course of the book I wrote many of those I interviewed had stories of grandfathers and great grandfather’s who had fought on all the battle fronts, including the Italian one, and of grandmothers who had done their bit in the munitions factories, as Red Cross nurses, or working on the land and on the trams.*

In the case of Pam it was her five great uncles.  She told me, “We grew up with their memories as part of our lives. “

And she also passed over an account written by one of her relatives of the five men, all of whom died during the conflict.

The article written by the son of Thomas Shaw is undated and there is no clue where it was published, but it must post date 1986 because there is a reference to the Queen’s birthday of that year.

Thomas Shaw

The piece is short but details the fate of all five. Two had left for Australia before 1914 and they both enlisted in the Australian army.

Of these Jessie died at Gallipoli in 1915 and his brother John who was a Lieutenant in the 20th Battalion, 9th Brigade of the Australian Force was on May 3 1917.**

On the same, day, the eldest son, Rifleman Thomas Samuel Shaw, aged 32 of the 8th King’s Royal Rifles was killed during an attack on German positions in a wood.

His body was never recovered.

Thomas was the father of the author of the article, who added, “With Uncle Jessie at Gallipoli, three brothers were killed on May 3; Private James Friend Shaw was to be the third brother to be killed in 1917, overstating his age to enlist.  

He was with the 20th Battalion London Regiment which was in Ypres area.  Uncle James was killed in action on August 3 1917 aged 20.”

Jessie Shaw

In the previous year Lance Corporal Henry James Shaw was killed during the Battle of the Somme.  He was 29.

By any measure the loss of five sons must have been very difficult and it underlines the sacrifice that was made by so many.

Their father lived in New Cross.

In time I will devote some time to researching the five men, their families and the life of their father, mother and sister.

All of whom will have stories that should be told.

Location; London, Gallipoli and the Western Front

Pictures; from an article written by the son of Thomas Shaw, and kindly supplied by Pam White Prosser

*Manchester Remembering 1914-18, https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/2017/02/today-new-book-on-manchester-and-great.html

**The Shaw family and the Great War, https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/2017/07/stories-from-great-war-shaw-family-and.html

Celebrating all things French and British ...... the Exhibition of 1908

It’s curious how you come to uncover little bits of our history.

A souvenir of the event, 1908

Now I was well aware of the 1904 Entente Cordial between Britain and France, which cemented good relations between the two countries, while at the same time settling possible disputes over our Imperialist designs on Egypt and France’s in Morocco.

The Machinery Hall, 1908

But what I knew nothing about was the joint exhibition held in London four years later.  It lasted from May to the end of October, attracted 8 million visitors, and covered an area some 140 acres including a lake and a series of buildings al painted white.

These included two colonial villages, one of which was Irish and the other Senegalese.

What drew me to the story was another of those crested pieces of china from the collection of Fred Page.  I have become quite a fan of these, mass produced porcelain models which often carried the name and coat of arms of British towns and cities.

Palace of French Applied Art

I first came across the “war ones” sold as souvenirs during the Great War, but I knew they had an earlier history and ranged from models of Blackpool Tower to Ann Hathaway’s cottage.

And here is one from the collection of Fed Page.

In 1908 the china companies would have been working overtime turning souvenirs as was the picture postcard industry.

The rest is for you to find out.

Location; London


Pictures; crested china souvenir of the Franco British Exhibition, 1908, from the collection of Fred Page and the Palace of Applied French Arts, produced by Tuck 8 Sons, 1908, courtesy of Tuck DB Postcards,  https://tuckdb.org/history

When the Thames was a working river nu 3

It is just one of those simple things that as you get older there are more and more things you can use as a bench mark marking the passage of time.

And this is one of them for while the painting dates from 1913 I can still remember the river as a working highway where all manner of ships and boats plied their business.

As a child in the 1950s crossing London Bridge there was plenty to see from the cranes and warehouses to tramps steamers and lightermen.

Picture; River Thames from Tower Bridge, 1913, from the series LONDON SERIES 1 Tuck and Sons, courtesy of Tuck DB, https://tuckdb.org/

Beware a challenge ...... the story behind the Fatal Wedding

I am on a quest to find the most boring picture post card ever seen, bought, or sent.

I can’t claim this was an original idea.  It came from my friend Jean who laid down the challenge.

“In the 70's when I was working in the National Postal Museum we did an exhibition of postcards.

As part of this, we did a small display which we called "Boring Postcards."

One I recall was the public lavatories at Huddersfield which to add to the gloom was not even in colour.

But it proved to be the most-looked at part of the Exhibition! “

So off I began with the collection of Tuck and Sons and the site, Tuck DB which offers 133,745 postcards, 29,023 sets and 309,326 uploaded pictures.*

Now this is a site I have plundered over the last year because of the sheer number and variety of images covering the late 19th and a big chunk of the 20th century and it has given up plenty of fascinating stories.**

And sure enough with just a little effort I came across this card from the series The Fatal Wedding from the Princess’s Theatre, London.

I thought I had struck gold and while it does not rival the public lavatories at Huddersfield it seemed a close contender.

But then as you do I went in search of Mr Bert Coote’s big production of the Fatal Wedding and discovered a story.

The Fatal Wedding was written by Theodore Kremer who was born around 1871 and died in 1923.  He wrote a number of melodramas including The Slaves of the Orient, The Great Automobile Mystery and Bertha the Sewing Machine Girl which focused on a sweatshop worker who is victimised by her father’s murderer.***

The Fatal Wedding falls into the same category mixing drama, danger and forbidden love.  In this case Cora Williams destroys the happy marriage of Howard and Mabel Wilson and drives them to divorce. Howard gets custody of their children Jessie and Frankie but Mabel winds up abducting them.

Five years later Cora discovers Mabel living in poverty with the children. She tries to poison Mabel and frame Jessie on a charge of theft but is unsuccessful. Howard and Mabel eventually reconcile and live with their children.****

It was first staged in New York in 1902, before going to London and went on to tour Australia where in 1911 it became a film under the same name.  Like its stage predecessor it proved very popular but sadly is one of those lost films.

Nor is that quite all. For the Princess’s Theatre, London also has a history.

It was on Oxford Street and opened in 1828 as the Queen’s Bazaar before adopting the name the Princess’s Theatre in 1836.

Over the next seventy years it specialized in operas, light entertainment and pantomimes and for a while staged Shakespeare productions by Charles Kean before concentrating on melodramas.

And it was our play, the Fatal Wedding which was the last ever to be acted out on its stage.
In 1902 it closed and became a warehouse before being demolished and replaced by a Woolworth store and has since been home to a number of big retail chains.

All of which leaves me to concede defeat with the most boring postcard, so I leave it open to suggestions and retire from the competition leaving Jean at present the winner.








Picture; from the series, “The Fatal Weeding from the Princess’s Theatre, London, Tuck & Sons Ltd, 1902, courtesy of Tuck DB, http://tuckdb.org/



*Tuck DB, http://tuckdb.org/

**Raphael Tuck and Sons Ltd, http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/Raphael%20Tuck%20and%20Sons%20Ltd

*** Daniel S. Burt, The Chronology of American Literature: America's Literary Achievements from the Colonial Era to Modern Times, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2004 p314 quoted in Theodore Kremer, Wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theodore_Kremer

**** The Fatal Wedding, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fatal_Wedding

Stories from the Great War ............ the Shaw family and their loss of five sons ..... no. 1. Gallopli

Now I always count it a prviledge when I get to share the stories of other people’s families and so I was very pleased that Pam chose to share hers with me.

The article

Just yesterday she contacted me through social media.

“I found your blogs regarding WW1 extremely interesting and I thought you may find this article interesting.  

These five brothers were my Nans brothers.  

We grew up with their memories as part of our lives.  

My grandmother was the loveliest lady and I have so much regard for her as she lived a hard life, she was actually raising her own 8 children when WW1 broke out.  

The youngest my father being born in 1912.  

As mentioned in the article her Mother passed away in 1910, so she was also helping her father with her young brothers.  

From the Kentish Mercury, May 2, 1919

The other interesting fact was that three of the brothers were in the British army and two were Anzacs.   

My Nan bought her family up in Collins Street, Blackheath, along side the rail line, she lived next door to the widow and son of the eldest of the five brothers.   Hope you find the article of interest. Also the significance of 3rd May.   

They also had a younger brother John, too young for service .He lost his only son in WW2, he was a fighter pilot.  Uncle John and his wife Alice had their home bombed in London and were buried under rubble for 3 days.  Aunt Alice lost her sight, Uncle John lost his hearing.  I realise there are so many stories like these.   

The loss in WW1 was unbelievable.  Hope you don't mind me sending this. Regards,  Pam"

Well of course I was over the moon at receiving it and very happy that it could be included in the blog along with extracts from an  article  and the page from the Kentish Times, dated May 2 1919.

Private Jessie Shaw 1915

The article was written by the son of the eldest of the five brothers.

At present his identity and the date the article was written is unknown, but perhaps reprinting this short extract might stir the pot and someone will come forward with a name.

So for now here is that extract. “My grandfather, Thomas Shaw was born T 9 Upper Grange Walk Bermondsey on November 20, 1847 ..... and was married at St John’s Walworth in 1877 to Harriet Bray of 30 East Street.  

She died 1910; mercifully, it can be said with hindsight.

By 1914, of the five sons who were to go on active service, two had emigrated to Australia, a springboard in 1915 for an Australian Expeditionary Force to land on Gallipoli.  

The landing was made on April 25 1915, and Private Jesse Shaw, aged 23 was one of the 13th Battalion of the 4th Brigade who landed .  His grave at Lone Pine Memorial, Gallipoli 39 MR 6 reads that Private Jesse Shaw died of wounds at sea on May 3, 1915."


Next; the story of four more brothers and the full significance of May 3

Location, London Gallipoli

Pictures; from the collection of Pam White Prosser

The church I just missed on Peckham Road, opened in 1797 .......... closed 1952

Cambden Church, 1904

Now I missed the Camden Church on Peckham Road by less than a decade, although it is just possible that I might have visited what was left of this 18th century building because services continued in what was really just a ruin until 1951.

It had stood on a plot of land just west of what is now Oliver Goldsmith Primary School and has one of those fascinating histories which just make you wish you had been there when a group of evangelical Christians frustrated at the new vicar of St Giles decided to break away and build their own church.

Camden Church, 1872

This they did and work began in1775 and was finished two years later and according to the County Victoria Histories was  "built of stock brick with stone dressings in the Renaissance classic style of the period; it has a chancel and nave with short transepts.

The west front towards the road contains the three principal entrances and has a horizontal parapet. Camden chapel, built in 1795, and subsequently enlarged, is a handsome edifice of brick, with a campanile turret."*

But in the way these things work within just 50 years St Giles just up the road would have the satisfaction of seeing the secessionist usurper become an Anglican chapel of ease and in another fifteen years a parish church.

The message sent on December 5, 1904

It went on to serve the community for almost another full century until the church hall was destroyed in 1940 followed by further bomb damage the following year.

Despite this the vestry and crypt were repaired and services continued until 1952 with baptisms and marriages continuing until 1951.

So it is possible that I could have gone there, but only just.  The church finally closed in the spring of 1952 and was demolished that year.

All of that was a long way into the future when E sent Miss B Strong of Lewes in Sussex this picture postcard with the message that “as far as I know the funeral is to on Saturday,” and an offer to get a wreath for Beatrice.  Adding that “I saw him yesterday, he is quite natural.”

Detail of the church, 1904

I doubt we will ever be able to know exactly who “He” was or the identity of “E” but she sent the postcard in the December of 1904 so just possibly a search of the census returns will lead us to Miss Strong and a a connection with some whose initial began with E.

It’s a long shot but I think I shall go looking and in time I am also minded to find out a bit more about Mr Flint who took the picture and marketed it from his offices at Church Street which was just round the corner.

Just a decade later he was no longer at nu 68 Church Street and his were being sold by Tuck & Son.

All of which begs lots of questions and opens up avenues of research.

Picture; Camden Church Peckham Road, circa 1904, Albert Flint Photographer and Publisher, 68 Church Street, Camberwell in the series Camberwell, marked by Tuck and Sons, and reproduced courtesy of Tuck DB, https://tuckdb.org/ and Peckham Road, 1872, from the OS for London 1872, courtesy of Digital Archives Association, http://www.digitalarchives.co.uk/ 

* Victoria County History, History of the County of  Surrey: Volume 4  H.E. Malden (editor), 1912

**Camden Church, Parish Churches - Church of England, http://www.peckhamhistory.org.uk/churchesCofE.htm