On rediscovering where you were born ............. The General Lying in Hospital at Lambeth

My hospital, 2007

We all have little bits of our past which we stumble across.

Most are too personal to warrant even a sentence in a history book but sometimes you know that there is a story and it is story which will pretty much touch lots of people.

I had never bothered looking up where I was born after all given that it happened on an October day in 1949 I just assumed like so many places in my life the hospital would long ago have vanished replaced by a dreary 1950’s office block or worse a car park.

But the General Lying in Hospital at Lambeth on York Road is still there although it closed for business in 1971.

Now if I am to be strictly accurate the building that saw me enter the world was the second Lying in Hospital.

The first opened on Westminster Bridge Road was replaced by my hospital in 1828 and in its time according to one source 150,000 babies were born there.*

All of which puts me in good company and no doubt once the story hits the web there will be some who come forward with their own stories.

Not that there is much to mine and until I began digging I had even got the name wrong believing that it was the Royal Lying in Hospital.

Nor do I have any memory of this grand building or whether I visited it when my four sisters were born.

I know that after its closure it fell into disrepair, went on to the Buildings at Risk Register and finally a shed load of money was spent on its restoration only for it to be sold to a hotel chain.

Perhaps it’s time for me to book a room there although I hardly think I will end up anywhere near where I resided 69 years ago.***

Picture; the General Lying in Hospital, August 27 2007, © Elliot Simpson

* The General Lying in Hospital, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Lying-In_Hospital

**York Road, BHO British History on line http://www.british-history.ac.uk/survey-london/vol23/pp40-44 

***London, http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/search/label/London

The London of 1949

The Pool of London in 1909

This is the Pool of London in 1909.

Fifty years later given a few changes and a bit of bomb damage and it is pretty much as I remember it.

Fast forward another half century and I doubt that  either me or the photographer would recognise much beyond the bridge and the Tower.

All of which is not so much a trip down memory lane, but an introduction to some of the films I got for Christmas.

Of these it is Train of Events and Pool of London I want to write about.  Both were made in 1949 and are very much of the period.

The Thames, the cranes, ships and the Tower, 1909

Train of Events starred Jack Warner and was one of those disaster morality movies, where a collection of little dramas are acted out in advance of a train crash and yes the murderer and the thief do not survive the crash.

In Pool of London a fairly ordinary crime story is given bite with the exploration of one of the first inter racial relationships in a British film.

Both reveal a wonderful slice of London life on the edge of the 1950s.  Here are trams, bomb sites, the rather shabby side of a post war London and plenty of scenes now lost forever.

In that respect they are fascinating social commentaries and perfectly capture the period I grew up in.

The river was still a working river, Tower Bridge opened and closed regularly during the course of a day, the trains were all pulled by steam locomotives and there were references to rationing, shortages and the last war.

Trafalgar Square, 1955

Not that this is some rosy, cosy nostalgic trip.

The interiors of the houses remind me of how little there was in terms of affluence for most people, and there is that prevailing sense that this is still the era of make and mend.

It was also a time of blatant racial prejudice and intolerance towards “living over the brush” and one where some at least had not yet managed to forgive our former enemies.

So watching the two as I did yesterday was both a pleasure and a lesson in history.  I am too young to remember the old trams but here they were, along with some old 1949 television programmes and some fine scenes of the river, the city as well as Blackheath and Greenwich.

Now for a historian and a Londoner that can’t be bad.

Pictures; The Pool of London, 1909, from the series London, and Trafalgar Square, 1955 from the series London, both marketed by Tuck and Sons, courtesy of Tuck DB, http://tuckdb.org/

The 43 Group ......... confronting the Blackshirts just months after the defeat of Fascism

 I once thought that antisemitism was defeated in the ruins of Berlin in 1945, but that was naive as events across Europe and beyond continue to hammer home, and pretty much ignored the experiences of Jewish people before and after that defeat.

Anti fascist demonstrations, Bell Vue, Manchester, 1962

Taking the long view given its history over the last 2000 years, I shouldn’t have been surprised, nor that even after the defeat of fascism at the end of the last world war fascist groups would be emboldened to come out of the shadows just months after the end of that conflict.

And the account of their emergence is the subject of“The 43 Group Battling with Mosley’s Blackshirts”, by Maurice Beckham, which tells the story of the 43 Group which was an English anti-fascist group set up by Jewish ex-servicemen and women after the Second World War. 

They did this when upon returning to London, they encountered British fascist organisations staging meetings in public places, and perpetuating violent attacks on Jewish individuals and property in London.

The 43 Group broke up far-right meetings, infiltrated fascist groups, and confronted the fascists in street fighting. 

Some of the ex servicemen involved in the group had been awarded medals for victory in the field, or like Maurice Beckham had served in the Merchant Navy during the war, living through through two torpedo attacks. 

The group voluntarily disbanded in 1950, after its members considered that the immediate threat had passed. 

But just sixteen years later, Group 62 was established which was largely in response to the resurgence of fascism in Britain at the time, and particularly the creation of Colin Jordan's National Socialist Movement, and modeled itself on the earlier group.**

Picture; demonstration at Belle Vue, Demonstration against Oswald Mosley, 1962, m07971, courtesy of Manchester Libraries, Information and Archives, Manchester City Council, http://images.manchester.gov.uk/index.php?session=pass

* The 43 Group Battling with Mosley’s Blackshirts”, by Maurice Beckham, 2013

** 43 Group, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/43_Group

Tracing the bombs that fell on Eltham .............. the online bomb maps

Now I am following up on the story I posted yesterday featuring eight short films about London, and Manchester during the Blitz with a link to a fascinating interactive map from the National Archives.*

London Can Take It is a collection of documentary films made by the GPO, the Ministry of Information and the Co-op recording the experiences of people during the Blitz.

And after reading the post my friend Debbie introduced me to BOMB SIGHT ..... Exploring the London Blitz during October 7 to June 6 1941.*

Now I have only looked at Eltham and Peckham but it covers all of London and allows you to see where the bombs fell, switch from a modern map and satellite picture to the original maps of 1940 and much more.

I started with Peckham where I spent the early years of my life and the map confirmed some of what I knew about the damage to our road but also threw up new mysteries which in time I will try to solve.

And in the same way the map of Well Hall offered a bomb on the corner of Rochester Way and Well Hall Road but not the site of the church along with a spread of hits near the station.

I reckon it will be fascinating for anyone wanting to know more about their bit of Eltham and of course the rest of London.  Not that it ends there other cities will have their bomb maps, including those for  Manchester.***

Pictures; barrage balloon on the Rec from the collection of Alan Brown

* Living through the Blitz ........... Manchester and London and eight short films, http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/2015/04/living-through-blitz-manchester-and.html

**BOMB SIGHTS, http://bombsight.org/#16/51.4708/-0.0539

***Manchester bomb maps, http://enriqueta.man.ac.uk/luna/servlet/view/all/who/Manchester%20City%20Council%20City%20Architect's%20Department%20(Building%20Surveyor's%20Division)?sort=Reference_Number,Page,Current_Repository

Tracing the bombs that fell on Peckham .............. the online bomb maps

Now I have been watching eight short films about London, and Manchester during the Blitz with a link to a fascinating interactive map from the National Archives.*

London Can Take It is a collection of documentary films made by the GPO, the Ministry of Information and the Co-op recording the experiences of people during the Blitz.

And after reading the post my friend Debbie introduced me to BOMB SIGHT ..... Exploring the London Blitz during October 7 to June 6 1941.*

Now I have only looked at Eltham and Peckham but it covers all of London and allows you to see where the bombs fell, switch from a modern map and satellite picture to the original maps of 1940 and much more.

I started with Peckham where I spent the early years of my life and the map confirmed some of what I knew about the damage to our road but also threw up new mysteries which in time I will try to solve.

I reckon it will be fascinating for anyone wanting to know more about their bit of Peckham and of course the rest of London.  Not that it ends there other cities will have their bomb maps, including those for  Manchester.***

Pictures; barrage balloon on the Rec from the collection of Alan Brown

* London Can It ........... Manchester and London and eight short films, http://chorltonhistory.blogspot.co.uk/2015/04/living-through-blitz-manchester-and.html

**BOMB SIGHTS, http://bombsight.org/#16/51.4708/-0.0539

***Manchester bomb maps, http://enriqueta.man.ac.uk/luna/servlet/view/all/who/Manchester%20City%20Council%20City%20Architect's%20Department%20(Building%20Surveyor's%20Division)?sort=Reference_Number,Page,Current_Repository

Living through the Blitz ........... Manchester and London and eight short films

I cannot really imagine living through the Blitz, those nightly ordeals of making preparations to spend a night in the shelters, waiting for the wail of the siren and then that night of broken sleep listening to the whistle and crump of bombs mixed with the fear of a direct hit.

So London Can take It which is a collection of short films made during the last world war are a vivid record of what was once a nightly experience for people across the country.

And despite the title and the emphasis on London there is a brilliant short from the Co-op on the Manchester Blitz.

All of the eight were of course made as propaganda and the thing about propaganda films from the last world war is that you can take them in many different ways.

On the surface they present an insight into how we got on with the war which despite the fact that they are propaganda show real people in real situations.

But looking at them from a distance of three quarters of a century they show how the British Government wanted the war and its prosecution to be seen by both the home population and countries around the world.

And layered on top of that were how the film makers play writers and documentary makers saw their role and went about their work in telling the story of Britain at war.

Sometimes their perception of what should be made and showed ran counter to that of the Governments of which the best example is the film The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp by Powell and Pressburger which Churchill didn’t like and wanted suppressed but which was a strong film about British values.

I still enjoy watching it and count it alongside a handful of others which in their different ways portrayed a nation at war.

All of them focused on that powerful idea that this was the Peoples’ War.  Now I am not naive enough to think that everyone thought so, there were still much snobbery, a degree of corruption and a practical cynicism of some of what we told.

But that said remembering conversations with my mother and others there was a degree of purpose and ideal which these short films convey.

So I reckon they are well watching.  The collection which starts with London Can take it and finishes with that Co-op film on Manchester are available on a DVD from the Imperial war Museum.

Pictures; cover and rear of London Can Take It, IWM, Design by Simple Design