Inside the Old Nichol: One of Victorian London’s Most Notorious Slums

Inside the Old Nichol: One of Victorian London’s Most Notorious Slums

In the Old Nichol, some families lived, ate, slept and worked in the same room.

The district lay around the boundary of Bethnal Green and Shoreditch in London’s East End. Its streets and courts were densely packed, and by the late 19th century it had become known for severe overcrowding and poor housing.

Work was often carried out inside the home. Social reformer Clementina Black investigated home workers in the area and recorded matchbox making among the trades she found. Women and children could spend long hours making boxes for very little money.

Victorian accounts also gave the Old Nichol a reputation for crime and disorder. Some of those descriptions were exaggerated, but the poor condition of much of the housing and the level of poverty in the area were well recorded.

Charles Booth’s investigations into London poverty during the 1880s included this part of the East End. His work showed just how concentrated poverty had become in some London neighbourhoods.

The London County Council was created in 1889. The following year it proposed the Boundary Street improvement scheme, covering about six hectares and involving the displacement of 5,719 people.

A revised scheme was approved in 1893 and demolition began. Hundreds of houses were eventually cleared.

The Boundary Estate was built on the site. Red-brick blocks surrounded the raised garden at Arnold Circus, with wider streets running out from the centre. The redevelopment was completed by the end of 1900.

Former Old Nichol residents were not necessarily moved into the new buildings. The rents were too high for many of them, so they were forced to find cheaper rooms elsewhere in the East End. Some moved into areas where overcrowding was already common.

By 1900, the streets of the Old Nichol had largely disappeared under a completely different development. For the people who had lived there, however, demolition did not necessarily mean better housing.

Had you heard of the Old Nichol before?

Image: Boundary Street, Old Nichol, c.1890. Photographer unknown. Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

The Children Who Left Guernsey - And the Parents Who Stayed Behind

The Children Who Left Guernsey - And the Parents Who Stayed Behind

Thousands of Guernsey parents said goodbye to their children without knowing when - or whether - they would see them again.

In my previous post, I looked at what happened in Guernsey in June 1940, when families learned that the island was to be demilitarised and parents had to decide whether their children should be evacuated to Britain.

Around four-fifths of Guernsey’s children left.

Most schoolchildren travelled with their teachers and classmates, and some mothers went as helpers. Once they arrived in England, many were sent north and billeted with local families. Several Guernsey schools were re-established there, which meant some of the children continued to be taught by teachers they already knew.

Five-year-old Brenda de Moulpied was one of the children who left.

Brenda travelled aboard the SS Viking with her school. Her mother remained in Guernsey for another two days before leaving with Brenda’s brother, but Brenda had already been moved on by the time she reached England. She was at an evacuation reception centre in Bury, and her mother did not know where she had been sent.

They were eventually reunited at Stockport railway station on the 16th of September 1940.

They had both left Guernsey, but Brenda had still spent almost three months separated from her mother.

For children whose parents remained on the island, the separation could last years. German forces occupied Guernsey on the 30th of June 1940, only days after the evacuation had begun.

The children remained in Britain, living with host families and continuing their schooling. Some spent a large part of the war there while their parents and relatives remained in occupied Guernsey.

What had initially been expected to be a fairly short evacuation had become something nobody could put an end date on.

Some of the children who left Guernsey in June 1940 would not return until after liberation in May 1945.

Do you know of anyone whose family was affected by the evacuation from Guernsey?

Channel Island evacuees in Marple, Cheshire, 1940. Ministry of Information Photo Division / Imperial War Museums. Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons.

Six Hours Before Her Execution, Mary, Queen of Scots Was Still Writing

Six Hours Before Her Execution, Mary, Queen of Scots Was Still Writing

At two o’clock in the morning on the 8th of February 1587, Mary, Queen of Scots wrote to Henri III of France from Fotheringhay Castle.

She had been told after dinner the previous evening that she would be executed at eight o’clock in the morning.

Letters connected with the Babington Plot were produced as evidence against her, and she had been tried at Fotheringhay in October 1586. Elizabeth I signed the warrant for her execution on the 1st of February 1587.

She asked Henri to see that money owed to her servants was paid. She wanted prayers and masses said for her and wrote about the difficulties she faced in arranging her affairs. Her papers had been taken from her and she complained that she had been prevented from seeing her chaplain.

In the letter, Mary wrote that she believed her Catholic faith and her claim to the English throne lay behind her condemnation.

The execution took place later that morning in the Great Hall at Fotheringhay Castle. Mary was forty-four years old.

She had first come to England in 1568 after fleeing Scotland following her defeat at the Battle of Langside. She had hoped Elizabeth might help restore her to the Scottish throne, but she would spend almost nineteen years in English custody.

Mary was buried at Peterborough Cathedral. Her son, James VI of Scotland, succeeded Elizabeth in 1603 and became James I of England. In 1612, he ordered his mother’s remains to be brought from Peterborough and reburied in Westminster Abbey.

I had read about Mary’s execution before, but I had never really looked closely at the letter she wrote that night. Knowing how close she was to the execution changes it for me. She was still writing about wages owed to her servants, prayers and her wish for her body to be taken to France, with only hours remaining.

Have you ever read Mary’s final letter?

The execution of Mary, Queen of Scots at Fotheringhay Castle, 1587, drawing attributed to Robert Beale. British Library, Add MS 48027. Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

The Raid Was Over -But One Bomb Could Keep a Whole Street Out of Its Homes

The Raid Was Over -But One Bomb Could Keep a Whole Street Out of Its Homes

An air raid could finish without every bomb exploding.

Some disappeared into roads, gardens or patches of open ground. Others buried themselves beneath damaged buildings. Sometimes the first clue was simply a crater that did not quite match the damage around it.

These were the unexploded bombs - the UXBs.

A British Army training film made in 1941 shows just how seriously reports of them were treated. Air-raid wardens were taught to examine the scene carefully before drawing conclusions. A crater, pieces of a bomb, surrounding blast damage and even apparently undamaged windows could all help establish what had happened.

Once a UXB was reported, the information passed through Civil Defence and military channels. The bomb was assessed and given a priority. One shown in the training film threatened Post Office cables; another lay near a railway shunting yard.

For the people living nearby, that often meant evacuation.

Police, wardens and Civil Defence workers kept people away while bomb disposal specialists took over. Residents who had only recently emerged from shelters sometimes found themselves leaving home again, carrying a few belongings and not knowing when they would be allowed back.

Bomb disposal was the responsibility of specialist Royal Engineers units. The work involved locating buried bombs, identifying them and, where possible, making them safe or removing them.

It was exceptionally dangerous.

On the 13th of December 1940, Acting Captain Michael Flood Blaney of the Royal Engineers was working on an unexploded bomb at Romford Road, Manor Park. The bomb had fallen on the 5th of December and was causing serious disruption to an important road out of London.

While Blaney was attempting to remove its fuze, it exploded. Blaney, eight other Royal Engineers and Metropolitan Police Inspector Henry Lane were killed.

So when the aircraft disappeared and the all-clear sounded, life did not always return to normal.

For one street, a single bomb buried beneath the ground could mean barriers, evacuation and an anxious wait for the men sent in to deal with it.

Had you ever thought about what happened to a neighbourhood after an unexploded bomb was discovered?

 

A Bomb Disposal Squad Digging Out an Unexploded Bomb, Philip Hutton, 1945. Imperial War Museums collection. Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons.

Harold Had Won in the North. Now William Was Waiting in the South.

Harold Had Won in the North. Now William Was Waiting in the South.

On the 25th of September 1066, Harold Godwinson won a crushing victory at Stamford Bridge. Harald Hardrada and Harold’s own brother Tostig were both killed, and the Norwegian invasion was effectively broken. But within days, another threat had appeared more than 200 miles away.

William, Duke of Normandy, had landed at Pevensey on the 28th of September and soon moved his army towards Hastings. The earliest Harold is likely to have heard of William’s landing was around the 2nd of October, giving him very little time to recover from the campaign in Yorkshire before turning south again.

Harold headed back towards London, although we do not know exactly how many of the men who had fought at Stamford Bridge travelled south with him, or precisely how they made the journey. It is tempting to imagine the same exhausted army simply marching all the way from Stamford Bridge to Hastings, but the evidence does not allow us to say that.

What we can say is that Harold moved quickly. He reached London, where he paused to gather more troops before continuing towards Sussex. Even allowing for a short stay in the capital, those travelling overland may have covered roughly 200 miles from Yorkshire to London in about seven days. Another journey of around 50 miles still remained before they would meet William.

Meanwhile, William was strengthening his position around Hastings. His men constructed a wooden fortification, gathered supplies and raided the surrounding countryside. The Bayeux Tapestry shows a fortification being prepared at Hastings and later depicts a house being burned.

The raids brought in supplies and may also have helped draw Harold into battle before he had time to gather a larger army.

By the evening of the 13th of October, Harold’s army had reached the area near what is now Battle.

The following morning, the two armies would meet.

Would Harold have been better waiting for more men, or did he have little choice but to face William quickly?

For subscribers, I’ve gone into this story in much more depth, including Harold’s journey south, what William was doing around Hastings, and the difficult decisions facing Harold before the battle.

If you’d like to read the full extended post, you can subscribe by tapping the Subscribe button at the top of my Facebook page.

Bayeux Tapestry, Scene 48, showing Norman knights leaving Hastings and moving towards battle. Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

When the Air-Raid Sirens Sounded, These Workers Couldn’t Just Run for Cover

When the Air-Raid Sirens Sounded, These Workers Couldn’t Just Run for Cover

The ‘Key Men’ Who Had Their Own Tiny Air-Raid Shelters

While Thousands Took Cover, Some Workers Had to Stay Close to Their Posts

When the air-raid sirens sounded during the Second World War, most people knew what they were supposed to do: get under cover. But there were also people whose work meant they could not move very far from the place they were responsible for.

That created an obvious problem. How could somebody take shelter while still remaining close to machinery, equipment or an area that might need their attention?

One answer was something called a “Shelter for Key Men”.

I came across an example preserved by Imperial War Museums, and it is remarkably small compared with the shelters we usually associate with wartime Britain. IWM describes its surviving example as a Wardens’ Look Out Shelter. There were three standard sizes of these shelters, and the example preserved by IWM is the middle size, intended to hold no more than three people.

Air-raid wardens could be provided with these small all-steel shelters while carrying out their duties. These shelters gave wardens somewhere to take cover while remaining close to the area they were responsible for.

Factories faced a similar problem.

A contemporary edition of The Architects’ Journal from May 1940 discussed shelters specifically for “key men and fire watchers”. The Ministry of Home Security generally recommended brick shelters built against an existing wall, but that was not always practical inside a large factory.

Long rows of machinery might stretch across a workshop, and some workers needed to remain close to particular pieces of equipment or important parts of the building.

Portable steel shelters offered another possibility.

One manufacturer, Cooke and Ferguson, produced remarkably compact versions for two, three or four people. Some were fitted with viewing slots so that those inside were not completely cut off from what was happening around them. Their small size also meant that they could be positioned much closer to machinery than a large communal shelter.

It must have been an extraordinary experience. While hundreds or even thousands of other people might be heading towards larger shelters, a worker or fire watcher could instead be climbing into a small steel enclosure only a short distance from their normal place of work.

Air-raid wardens also had good reason to remain nearby.

IWM records the experiences of Jo Oakman, a part-time ARP warden in Chelsea who was on duty during the first night of the Blitz and on many nights afterwards. On the 14th of September 1940 she was called to a shelter which had received a direct hit.

While cycling there, bomb blasts twice knocked her from her bike. She continued on and later helped deal with fires and casualties.

Her story also shows why the wartime term “key men” can be slightly misleading to modern ears. Women were carrying out dangerous civil-defence work too, including serving as air-raid wardens and fire watchers.

The Civil Defence Act 1939 also placed new legal responsibilities on many employers for air-raid precautions and workplace shelter provision. Wartime Britain produced an enormous range of shelters for different situations. Some were large enough for hundreds of people. Others were built for families in gardens or houses.

And then there were these.

Tiny steel shelters for just a few people, placed close to the work that could not be abandoned.

I had seen plenty of photographs of Anderson shelters, communal shelters and Underground stations being used during raids, but I had never really thought about the people who needed protection without being able to move far from their posts.

Had you ever come across a “Shelter for Key Men” before?

‘Igloo’ steel shelter in use by a military policeman on traffic duty, November 1940. War Office Second World War Official Collection / Imperial War Museums. Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons.

The Huskar Pit Disaster: 26 Children Drowned Underground in 1838

The Huskar Pit Disaster: 26 Children Drowned Underground in 1838

On the 4th of July 1838, a violent thunderstorm hit Silkstone in Yorkshire. At the local colliery, people were already underground working when the rain began causing problems.

Among those below were a large number of children.

The steam machinery used to bring workers back up the Moorend shaft stopped working properly, leaving them waiting underground. After a while, around 40 children decided to try another way out through the Huskar Day-Hole.

This was a route they knew. It came out at the surface further away and involved climbing through the workings rather than being brought up the shaft.

The children put out their lights before setting off. Accounts differ slightly over exactly why, although fear of danger underground appears to have played a part.

They were making their way towards the surface in darkness while the storm continued above.

The rain had caused a nearby stream to overflow. Water began finding its way into the mine and eventually came rushing down the passage the children were using.

They were caught on a steep section of the workings.

The water rushed down the drift, swept the children backwards and trapped many of them at a ventilation door lower down.

Fourteen children survived. Some had managed to get farther along the day-hole, while surviving accounts also describe children escaping into a narrow slit or passage away from the main rush of water.

Twenty-six children died.

Fifteen were boys and eleven were girls. Their ages ranged from seven to seventeen.

James Burkinshaw was seven. His brother George was ten. Both were killed.

There are several very young children among the names recorded after Huskar, and that is probably the part of the story I find hardest to get past. Not because child labour itself is surprising -most of us know children worked in Victorian factories and mines- but because seven is so young.

Children could be given jobs such as opening and closing ventilation doors as tubs moved through the mine. Others helped move coal or worked alongside older members of their family. In mining communities, several people from one household could be earning wages from the same colliery.

Huskar attracted attention outside the local area, particularly because of the number and ages of the children who had died.

Concern about conditions in mines was already growing, and in 1840 a Royal Commission was set up to investigate the employment of children underground.

The investigation went well beyond simply asking mine owners what conditions were like. Investigators visited mining districts, went into pits and spoke to the people doing the work.

J. C. Symons, who investigated Yorkshire, visited around 200 pits and went underground in about 70 of them.

The report published in 1842 included evidence from children themselves. It described long working days, very young workers and jobs carried out in difficult conditions far below ground.

Later that year, Parliament passed the Mines and Collieries Act.

Women and girls were no longer allowed to work underground. Boys under ten were also banned.

That age is worth keeping in mind. The law stopped a nine-year-old working underground, but a ten-year-old could still legally be sent down a mine.

Huskar had happened four years earlier.

By the time the Act was passed, there was already a memorial to the children in the churchyard at All Saints’ in Silkstone. It had been erected in 1841.

Their names are still recorded there today.

I had heard about children working in mines many times before, but Huskar is one of those stories where the individual ages make it much harder to think of child labour as just another feature of Victorian Britain.

Had you heard of the Huskar Pit Disaster before?

 

Image info:

Child trapper in a British coal mine, 1842. From the Royal Commission of Inquiry into Children’s Employment. Public Domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

 

 

During WW2, Even Your Farm Wasn’t Entirely Your Own

During WW2, Even Your Farm Wasn’t Entirely Your Own

When Britain went to war in 1939, increasing the amount of food being produced at home became very important. Britain had relied heavily on food coming from abroad, and the danger to shipping meant that more use had to be made of farmland at home. This brought the government much further into the everyday running of farms than I had appreciated before looking at the records.

County War Agricultural Executive Committees were established across England and Wales and usually became known simply as the County War Ags. Many of the people serving on them had farming experience themselves, and their work covered everything from finding tractors and machinery to dealing with shortages of labour. They were also involved in deciding which land ought to be cultivated. A farmer who had kept a field as pasture, for example, might be required to plough it and use it for crops.

These committees were not limited to offering advice. They had wartime powers to issue directions where land was considered to be badly cultivated. Farms could be inspected and changes required, and the powers available eventually extended to taking possession of land or ending the tenancy of a tenant farmer.

One case reached the House of Commons in June 1944. It concerned Wyndham Hartnell, an owner-occupier who farmed about 200 acres in East Sussex. The MP who brought up his case argued that Hartnell had already been through difficult years before the war and had lost cattle following sewage pollution on his land. He maintained that improvements had been made to the farm, but Hartnell had eventually been dispossessed.

The government gave a rather different account of how these cases were dealt with. The parliamentary secretary explained that representatives of the county committee would normally visit a farm first. Advice might be given, followed by directions concerning such things as machinery or fertilisers, and further approval was required before possession was taken. Hartnell’s case was disputed, but the debate shows that these powers were actually being used while the war was still being fought.

The National Farm Survey of 1941–43 collected an extraordinary amount of information about individual holdings, including land, buildings, machinery, labour and water supplies. An inspector also visited the farm and completed a Primary Farm Survey, recording the condition of the holding and giving an assessment of its management.

The grades were A for well managed, B for fairly well managed and C for badly managed.

I was particularly interested in the section dealing with the reasons behind a poorer assessment. Where a B or C grade could not be explained by old age or lack of capital, the inspector was required to give details of the farmer’s “personal failings.” It seems remarkably personal when you imagine that judgement being written down as part of an official wartime survey.

Around 14,500 holdings of five acres or more, covering about 1.21 million acres, were classified C. This did not mean that all of those farmers were removed. Advice, assistance, directions and closer supervision were among the measures available before possession was considered.

Between 1940 and 1944, possession was taken in 5,350 cases covering 344,413 acres. During the same years, 2,695 agricultural tenancies were terminated, covering 225,939 acres.

It is quite a long way from the wartime farming story I first knew, which was mostly Land Girls, tractors and Dig for Victory. Farmers were also dealing with inspections, official assessments and instructions about the way their land was being used. In a relatively small number of cases, those decisions ended with somebody else taking control of the farm.

Had you heard of the County War Ags before?

Image info:

Barley harvesting at Hills Farm, Kingston Blount, Oxfordshire, 1941. Ministry of Information Photo Division / Imperial War Museums. Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons.

Elizabeth Signed Mary’s Death Warrant. Then Her Secretary Was Sent to the Tower

Elizabeth Signed Mary’s Death Warrant. Then Her Secretary Was Sent to the Tower.

On the 1st of February 1587, Elizabeth I signed the warrant that would send Mary, Queen of Scots to the scaffold. Within weeks, William Davison, the secretary who handled it, would be imprisoned in the Tower.

Mary had been in England since 1568 and, after the Babington Plot was uncovered in 1586, the case against her had finally come to a head. Coded correspondence intercepted and deciphered by Walsingham’s intelligence network formed an important part of the evidence used against her. She was tried at Fotheringhay Castle in October, found guilty and sentenced to death.

Elizabeth still did not allow the sentence to be carried out immediately.

Mary had been a queen in her own right, she was Elizabeth’s cousin and she still had supporters who regarded her as the rightful Catholic heir to the English throne. There was also the deeply uncomfortable question of one anointed monarch authorising the judicial execution of another.

By February, the warrant had been prepared.

William Davison, one of Elizabeth’s principal secretaries, took it to her and she signed it. The document then passed under the Great Seal.

Davison later left his own account of what happened afterwards.

He wrote that Elizabeth asked whether the warrant had already been sealed. When he told her that it had, she questioned why it had been dealt with so quickly. Davison replied that he had done no more than he believed she had instructed him to do.

His account also shows just how uneasy he had become. Davison later wrote that he feared Elizabeth might try to shift responsibility away from herself, and he did not want to deal with the matter alone. He went to Sir Christopher Hatton and explained what had passed between himself and the Queen.

On the 3rd of February, Lord Burghley brought the warrant before members of the Privy Council. According to Davison, the councillors were told what had happened between him and Elizabeth and agreed that the warrant should be sent to Fotheringhay without going back to the Queen again.

Robert Beale, Clerk of the Privy Council, was chosen to carry it.

Mary knew nothing of this until the evening of the 7th of February, when she was told that she would die the following morning.

On the 8th of February 1587, she was executed in the Great Hall of Fotheringhay Castle.

Davison was soon in serious trouble.

Elizabeth maintained that although she had signed the warrant, she had not given authority for it to be carried out in the way it had been. Davison was arrested and sent to the Tower, and on the 28th of March he appeared before the Star Chamber.

He was fined 10,000 marks and ordered to remain imprisoned at the Queen’s pleasure.

One of the things I find most striking about this episode is that Davison was not acting entirely on his own. Senior councillors had discussed the warrant, read it and agreed that it should be sent. Yet once Mary was dead, it was Davison who faced the most obvious punishment.

We cannot know exactly what Elizabeth intended at every stage, and the surviving accounts do not give us a simple answer. Davison believed he had followed her instructions. Elizabeth later insisted that the warrant had gone further than she intended.

That disagreement sits at the heart of what happened next.

Next in my Tudor series, I’ll be looking at Mary’s final evening and her execution at Fotheringhay on the 8th of February 1587.

Image info:

Mary, Queen of Scots’ death warrant, signed by Elizabeth I, 1587. Public Domain, via Wikimedia Commons

If German troops landed, who would keep villages running, treat the wounded and stop panic on the roads? Britain had thousands of committees ready for exactly that

If German troops landed, who would keep villages running, treat the wounded and stop panic on the roads? Britain had thousands of committees ready for exactly that.

By June 1942, the government said that between 6,000 and 7,000 Invasion Committees had been established across Great Britain.

I came across them while looking at Britain’s invasion preparations. Most of what I had been reading was about roadblocks, stop lines, pillboxes and the Home Guard, so I was interested to find how much planning was also taking place in individual towns and villages.

One of the early schemes began in Norfolk in 1941. Major-General E. M. Steward, Zone Commander of the Mid-Norfolk Home Guard, believed there needed to be direct contact between local Home Guard commanders and the heads of civilian services. After discussions with the ARP Controller, police and local authorities, informal parish Invasion Committees were started. The idea spread through Norfolk and was later encouraged more widely.

The make-up of the committees varied. Police, Civil Defence, local government, food officials, the Women’s Voluntary Services, fire services and military representatives could all be involved.

Hansard, the official written record of debates and proceedings in the UK Parliament, gives a good idea of what they were preparing for. Volunteers might be given jobs digging trenches, clearing or blocking roads, removing debris or helping with first aid. Committees also arranged messengers in case telephones failed, looked for alternative drinking-water supplies, made plans for distributing food and kept records of useful equipment such as tools, stirrup pumps and sandbags.

Civilian movement was another concern. The fighting in France in 1940 had shown what could happen when large numbers of refugees crowded the roads. Britain’s “stand firm” policy was intended to keep people off roads needed for military movements unless they had been ordered to leave.

There are records from Flitton in Bedfordshire that give us a much closer insight into one of these committees.

Flitton’s members included a food organiser, an ARP representative, a police representative and a Home Guard officer. A Fire Service officer and a WVS representative joined in May 1942. They met every two months in the Parish Church Rooms.

The minutes contain some very specific details. Fire equipment was inventoried. Emergency cooking was discussed. Military exercises were organised. Six local women volunteered for emergency cooking in July 1942, and the Home Guard agreed to dig a slit trench so villagers could see how one should be constructed.

Two noticeboards were also requested because the village did not have suitable boards for the committee names and other notices to be displayed. One was to stand beside the telephone kiosk in Flitton and another opposite the garage in Greenfield.

On the 24th of April 1942, the schoolmaster at Flitton and the headmistress at Greenfield were to allow children to copy sketches of slit trenches from a circular sent by the ARP Controller. They would take the drawings home and get their parents interested in constructing them. By the meeting on the 22nd of May, the drawings had been completed and sent home.

Nearby Little Barford worked slightly differently. It was a sub-area of the Tempsford Invasion Committee, but it had its own reception, first-aid and other defence facilities and was expected to use them independently if circumstances required it. Its plans named the people responsible for emergency food, first aid, the fire service, special police, WVS, vehicles, labour and messengers.

Flitton’s committee remained in existence well into 1944. Its June meeting that year was cancelled because it was considered unnecessary. When members met again on the 21st of November 1944, they heard that the County Council no longer considered the Invasion Committee necessary.

For years, people in villages like Flitton had been meeting, organising equipment and making plans for an invasion that, thankfully, never came.

Sources & research: Bedfordshire Archives; UK Parliament, Hansard; Ministry of Information Digital Archive.

Image info:

Members of the Orford Invasion Committee, Suffolk, 1941. Ministry of Information Second World War Official Collection / Imperial War Museums, D4847. Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons.

Three Days After Stamford Bridge, William’s Fleet Appeared off the Sussex Coast

Three Days After Stamford Bridge, William’s Fleet Appeared off the Sussex Coast

On the 28th of September 1066, William, Duke of Normandy, landed at Pevensey in Sussex. Three days earlier Harold Godwinson had been at Stamford Bridge, near York, fighting Harald Hardrada and his own brother Tostig. Both were killed and the Norwegian invasion was broken.

William had been ready to cross for weeks. His fleet gathered near the mouth of the River Dives during August, but sailing depended upon the wind and for about a month it was against him. A storm on the 12th of September drove the ships east towards Saint-Valery at the mouth of the Somme, which meant more waiting.

 

They eventually sailed on the 27th.

William’s own vessel was the Mora, given to him by his wife Matilda. Around it sailed hundreds of other ships carrying the invasion army, its horses and equipment. We cannot put an exact number on the fleet. Medieval writers disagreed and some produced enormous figures; English Heritage puts the likely number somewhere between 700 and 1,000.

They crossed during the night and reached Pevensey before dawn.

Pevensey looked rather different from the place we see now. The Roman fort stood much closer to the sea, with marshland around it, and its great walls had already survived for centuries. William’s men made use of what was already there, creating a temporary fortification within the Roman enclosure, repairing sections of the walls and cutting a ditch across the peninsula.

The Bayeux Tapestry also gives us some of the practical details of the invasion. Men are shown unloading armour and equipment, horses are brought from the ships and food is prepared. William had brought far more across the Channel than soldiers alone.

Pevensey was only the first stop. On the following day the Normans moved towards Hastings and established themselves there. William’s men took supplies from the surrounding countryside and there was burning and pillaging in the area while they waited.

Harold and his family held extensive lands in Sussex, so William had landed in a part of England closely connected with the English king.

The news reached Harold more than 200 miles away after what had already been a punishing campaign. English Heritage records that he had travelled more than 200 miles in the space of a fortnight before Stamford Bridge. Some of those same men had then fought a major battle.

Harold came south again, stopping in London and collecting more troops before travelling on towards Sussex.

There were only nineteen days between Stamford Bridge on the 25th of September and Hastings on the 14th of October.

Harold and many of his men had covered an enormous distance and fought one major battle before they ever faced William’s army.

What do you make of Harold’s decision to head south so soon after Stamford Bridge?

Bayeux Tapestry, Scene 38, showing William’s fleet crossing the Channel and arriving at Pevensey. Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

Why Were Enormous Water Tanks Built in Britain’s Parks During the War?

Why Were Enormous Water Tanks Built in Britain’s Parks During the War?

On the 20th of May 1941, Herbert Morrison told Parliament what had happened during one particularly difficult air raid.

High-explosive bombs had broken the water mains. Firefighters switched to a reserve static supply, but that was hit as well. The pumps were smashed and men were killed or injured.

Hoses were then run from another source some distance away. A large building collapsed across them and the water was cut off again.

Incidents like this were one reason huge Emergency Water Supply reservoirs began appearing around Britain. Historic England records that they were being constructed in towns and cities across the country from late 1941, giving fire brigades a supply that did not depend entirely upon the mains.

They were put on open ground, including parks, lawns and bomb sites.

Weston-super-Mare eventually had fifteen.

Three stood on Alexandra Parade beside the Odeon cinema and another three were placed on Beach Lawn. Others were built on bomb sites and in residential areas. Historic England’s study of wartime aerial photographs found that none of Weston’s fifteen reservoirs appeared before July 1942.

By the 26th of November 1942, MPs were discussing a different issue: children getting into the tanks.

Metal mesh had already been tried, but Morrison said children were dancing on it within an hour and one fell through. He announced that rings of barbed wire would be fitted to make access more difficult.

People were also throwing rubbish into the reservoirs and interfering with pipes and valves. Morrison described the supplies as being of “first-rate importance” to the war effort.

At Weston-super-Mare, the three reservoirs on Alexandra Parade were still standing when an RAF photograph was taken on the 13th of January 1946. By then they no longer contained water. Historic England records that they had been removed by 1948.

Their purpose was straightforward: if bombing had broken the mains, firefighters needed another source of water close enough to use.

It is another often-overlooked reminder of how much had to be planned for war. Everything had to be considered, including what would happen if something as basic as the water supply suddenly failed.

Did your town have one of these Emergency Water Supply tanks during the war?

Ministry of Information Photo Division, Marchant’s Hill School, Hindhead, Surrey, 1944. The large pool shown in the photograph was actually a wartime static emergency water tank, built so that it could also be used as a swimming pool by the children. Imperial War Museums collection. Public domain via Wikimedia Commons.

At 3.50pm, Two Explosions Tore Through Albion Colliery- 290 Men and Boys Never Came Home

At 3.50pm, Two Explosions Tore Through Albion Colliery- 290 Men and Boys Never Came Home

At about 3.50pm on the 23rd of June 1894, two loud bangs were heard at Albion Colliery in Cilfynydd, near Pontypridd. Dust and smoke rose from the shafts. In all, 290 men and boys were killed.

The colliery began producing coal in August 1887. By 1893, around 1,500 men and boys worked there. A number had travelled to Cilfynydd from elsewhere in Wales in search of work.

There was no accurate record of exactly how many men had been underground when the explosion occurred, adding to the confusion as relatives searched for missing family members. A few men were brought out alive, and most of those who were rescued later died from their injuries.

Bodies recovered from the mine were taken to a hayloft above the colliery stables, where relatives were asked to identify them. Relatives searched by lantern light during the identification process.

Some of the bodies were so badly injured that identification was difficult. In at least three cases, families took away the wrong body and later had to return it.

Albion employed men from well beyond Cilfynydd. Workers from North and West Wales were living in lodgings near the colliery, and men from the Mountain Ash area had also moved there after Phillip Jones became manager. Not all of them had brought their families with them. Some wives and children remained in other villages and towns while the men worked at the pit.

An inquest opened in Pontypridd the following month, but witnesses disagreed about where the first ignition had occurred. The jury concluded that gas had exploded and that coal dust had helped carry the blast through the workings.

Barrister J. Roskill was later asked to examine the disaster. His report placed the first ignition at blasting timber. He believed this had ignited accumulated gas, with the coal dust then carrying the explosion further through the mine.

Roskill criticised inadequate watering to control coal dust and the practice of blasting timber while men were still working underground.

Albion's 290 deaths were the highest then recorded in a South Wales mining disaster. The figure was not surpassed until the 14th of October 1913, when 439 miners were killed at Senghenydd. 

The scale of the loss is difficult to take in. 290 men and boys were killed in a single afternoon, leaving families without husbands, fathers, sons and brothers. In a place where so many households depended on the colliery, the effects reached far beyond the pit itself. Homes across Cilfynydd were left in mourning, neighbours lost friends and relatives, and the whole community had to live with the aftermath of one of the worst mining disasters South Wales had seen.

Albion Colliery, Cilfynydd, c.1894. Unknown photographer. Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

Britain Would Not Defend the Channel Islands - Guernsey Parents Had Hours to Decide Whether Their Children Should Leave

Britain Would Not Defend the Channel Islands - Guernsey Parents Had Hours to Decide Whether Their Children Should Leave

On the 19th of June 1940, families in Guernsey learned that the Channel Islands were to be demilitarised. British forces would be withdrawn, and civilians who wanted to leave would be given the chance to do so.

Schoolchildren could be evacuated to Britain. They were to be registered that evening and brought to St Peter Port harbour at eight o’clock the following morning, packed and ready to leave.

France was collapsing under the German advance. German forces now held ports and airfields only a short distance from the islands, which British planners had long regarded as difficult and costly to defend. The War Cabinet decided on the 19th of June that the Channel Islands should be demilitarised, and ships were sent so that civilians who wished to leave could do so. Evacuation began the next morning.

The Guernsey Evening Press of the 20th of June described thousands of people crowding the narrow streets making last-minute arrangements. It also recorded that “Nowhere in the town could a suitcase be purchased.”
Families were looking for luggage, packing clothes, working out who would go and getting children ready for the harbour. The evacuation was not completed in a single morning; boats continued to leave over the next few days as places were found for those who had decided to go.

Thousands of Guernsey schoolchildren were evacuated at very short notice. Children of school age travelled in their school groups, with some mothers accompanying them as helpers. Mothers with children under five were allowed to travel with their young children. For many of those leaving, it was the first time they had ever left Guernsey.

Evacuation was voluntary, so every household had to make its own decision. Children sometimes left while their parents stayed behind. Some families managed to leave together, while others remained on the island. Nobody could know at that point how long any separation might last.

The other islands responded differently. Alderney’s authorities recommended evacuation and most of the population left. In Sark, most people stayed. In Jersey, more than half the population initially registered to evacuate, but only about 6,600 eventually left.
Guernsey saw a much larger exodus. Around 17,000 people left, about two-fifths of the island’s population according to contemporary parliamentary figures. Four-fifths of Guernsey’s children were evacuated.

On the 28th of June, German aircraft attacked Guernsey. At St Peter Port, tomato trucks at the harbour were mistaken for military vehicles. Thirty-three people were killed and 67 were injured.

On the 30th of June, German troop-carrying aircraft landed at Guernsey airport and the occupation began. German forces arrived in Jersey on the 1st of July.

The word evacuation can sound orderly. In Guernsey it meant thousands of people making last-minute arrangements, shops running out of suitcases and children expected at the harbour the next morning.

I’d especially like to hear from anyone with a Channel Island family connection to this period. Did someone in your family leave in June 1940, or did they stay through the occupation?

And if this had been your family, do you think you could have put your child on that boat the next morning?

Image info:
Two Guernsey women with children collecting Red Cross parcels from Le Riche’s shop in St Peter Port during the occupation. Imperial War Museums, HU 25920 / Wikimedia Commons. Public domain.

Mary, Queen of Scots on Trial at Fotheringhay

Mary, Queen of Scots on Trial at Fotheringhay

By the autumn of 1586, Mary, Queen of Scots had lived in England for more than eighteen years. She had arrived in 1568 after fleeing Scotland following her defeat at the Battle of Langside, hoping that Elizabeth I might help restore her to the Scottish throne. Instead, she spent the years that followed under guard in a succession of houses and castles. By October 1586 she was at Fotheringhay, and the discovery of the Babington Plot had placed her in immediate danger of prosecution and execution.

In my previous post, I looked at Anthony Babington and the secret correspondence intercepted by Francis Walsingham’s intelligence network. When the plot was uncovered, Mary’s rooms were searched and her papers taken. Her ciphers and correspondence were examined, while her secretaries, Claude Nau and Gilbert Curle, were questioned about letters which the English government believed connected her directly to the conspiracy against Elizabeth.

Before the main proceedings at Fotheringhay began, there was already disagreement over whether Mary should answer to Elizabeth’s commissioners. On the 12th of October she refused to submit to them and repeated her objections in further answers that day and on the 13th. Mary had been forced to abdicate the Scottish throne in 1567, but for most of her life she had been treated as royalty. She had been crowned Queen of Scots as a baby, ruled Scotland in her own right and briefly been Queen of France during her marriage to Francis II. She regarded her imprisonment in England as very different from being one of Elizabeth’s subjects.

The hearing finally began on the 14th of October and continued the following day. The commissioners questioned Mary about the Babington correspondence and the claim that she had approved a conspiracy which included Elizabeth’s assassination. Nau and Curle also appeared repeatedly in the evidence because of their involvement in handling Mary’s correspondence.

Mary had to answer the accusations before the commissioners herself. Her papers were already in government hands, and she questioned the use of copies of letters rather than originals. She denied approving Elizabeth’s murder and disputed evidence attributed to the men who had worked in her household.

Something I think is easily lost when we reduce this story to “Mary was tried and found guilty” is just how much argument took place at Fotheringhay. She challenged the letters, the testimony and the authority of the men sitting before her. Her objections about jurisdiction were serious enough that lawyers had already been considering the problem of proceeding against a woman who claimed the privileges of a sovereign ruler.

Once the hearings finished, the commissioners returned to London. They met again in the Star Chamber at Westminster on the 25th of October, where Mary was found guilty without being present. Parliament then pressed Elizabeth to carry out the sentence, with petitions presented during November, and Mary’s condemnation was publicly proclaimed in December.

For the rest of that winter Mary remained at Fotheringhay. Elizabeth still had to decide whether the conviction should end in execution, and this was a decision involving far more than the fate of one prisoner. Mary had once ruled Scotland, her son James VI now sat on the Scottish throne, and her treatment was being followed outside England as well as within it.

On the 1st of February 1587, Elizabeth signed the warrant authorising Mary’s execution. A week later, on the 8th of February, Mary was executed at Fotheringhay Castle.

The warrant itself would now become part of the controversy. Elizabeth’s secretary William Davison was later blamed for the way it had been handled and for the execution going ahead when it did.

That is where I want to pick up the story in my next Tudor post: Elizabeth, the death warrant and what happened during Mary’s final days at Fotheringhay.

What do you think mattered more at Fotheringhay - the evidence against Mary, or whether England had the right to judge her at all?

Image info:

Mary, Queen of Scots, engraving by James Thomson, 1829. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Public Domain.

London’s Deep-Level Air-Raid Shelters

London’s Deep-Level Air-Raid Shelters

Beneath Clapham South station are two long tunnels which were once filled with thousands of bunks. Some of the old signs and iron bedsteads are still there today.

Ministry of Information Photo Division Photographer / Imperial War Museums / Wikimedia Commons — Public Domain.

Clapham South was one of eight deep-level shelters built beneath London during the Second World War. The others were at Belsize Park, Camden Town, Chancery Lane, Goodge Street, Stockwell, Clapham North and Clapham Common.

Today I want to share a little more about them.

The government approved the shelters in November 1940, at a time when London was being heavily bombed. Each was built roughly 30 metres below ground and was around 400 metres long, with space planned for about 8,000 people.

There were upper and lower levels, bunks, toilets, canteens and first-aid facilities. The tunnels were divided into smaller sections, and those sections were given the names of historic British naval commanders. With thousands of people potentially sleeping underground at once, even finding the right part of the shelter had to be organised.

Something else about the design is easily overlooked. London Transport had hopes that the tunnels might eventually become part of an express railway after the war, with trains running under parts of the existing network. That scheme never went ahead.

The shelters themselves took until 1942 to complete. The main Blitz on London had ended in May 1941, so they missed the period when the demand for deep civilian shelter had been greatest.

They still found plenty of use. Goodge Street was taken over for military purposes and was later used as a headquarters by General Dwight D. Eisenhower. Clapham South housed troops from 1943, while Chancery Lane was allocated for protected government and military use.

Then came the V-weapons.

The first V-1 flying bomb hit London on the 13th of June 1944. Clapham South opened to civilian shelterers on the 19th of July, and V-2 rockets began striking London later that year.

Several of the deep-level shelters were opened to civilians during these attacks.

I find the dates themselves tell the story well enough. Approved in 1940, finished in 1942 and finally opened to large numbers of Londoners in 1944. By then the threat above ground had changed completely.

Most photographs of wartime Underground sheltering show crowded station platforms. These tunnels were something else entirely: purpose-built spaces much further beneath the streets, large enough for thousands of people to spend the night.

If you have ever been inside Clapham South or another surviving wartime shelter, I’d love to hear what stood out to you.

The Battle Harold Won Before Hastings

The Battle Harold Won Before Hastings

 

On the 25th of September 1066, Harold Godwinson defeated Harald Hardrada at Stamford Bridge. Less than three weeks later, he would be facing William of Normandy at Hastings.

 

Image info:

The Battle of Stamford Bridge, Peter Nicolai Arbo (1831–1892). Public domain via Wikimedia Commons. 

When we talk about 1066, it is usually Hastings that gets most of the attention. Today I want to go back a few weeks and look properly at what had been happening in the north of England before William’s army arrived.

 

Edward the Confessor had died in January and Harold was crowned soon afterwards. His succession was challenged by William, Duke of Normandy, who was preparing an invasion across the Channel. There was also a threat from Norway. Harald Hardrada intended to pursue a claim to the English throne and found an ally in Harold’s own brother, Tostig.

 

Tostig had once been Earl of Northumbria, but a rebellion against his rule in 1065 had driven him into exile. Earlier in 1066, he had already led an unsuccessful invasion of eastern England before eventually joining Hardrada. The Norwegian king brought considerable military experience with him, and in September their combined force entered northern England.

 

On the 20th of September they met the armies of Earls Edwin and Morcar at Fulford, near York. The English earls were defeated, leaving York exposed. The city submitted and hostages were arranged, with a meeting to take place at Stamford Bridge.

 

Harold was a long way from Yorkshire. He had spent much of the summer preparing for the Norman invasion expected on the south coast, even keeping troops and ships ready for William’s arrival. The northern attack forced him to change his plans and travel north with his forces. In less than a fortnight, he had reached Yorkshire.

 

When Harold reached Stamford Bridge on the 25th of September, Hardrada’s entire force was not together. Men had been left with the fleet several miles away, while later Scandinavian accounts suggest that some of those at Stamford Bridge had not brought all of their armour with them.

 

There are several stories from this point in the battle that have been repeated for centuries. According to later accounts, Harold offered Tostig terms if he abandoned Hardrada. Tostig then asked what would be offered to the Norwegian king, and Harold supposedly replied that Hardrada could have seven feet of English ground, with a little more because he was taller than most men.

 

It makes a good story, although it was recorded after the event and we do not know what, if anything, was actually said between the brothers.

 

A later addition to one version of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle records another memorable incident. A Norwegian warrior reportedly defended the bridge against Harold’s advancing men and prevented them from crossing until an English soldier managed to attack him from underneath.

 

The English eventually crossed and the main battle continued. Hardrada was killed during the fighting by a wound to the throat, possibly caused by a spear or an arrow. Tostig also died on the battlefield.

 

Some of the Norwegian troops who had remained with the fleet came to reinforce the army under Eystein Orre. They had covered several miles at speed before reaching the fighting, and the Norse sagas describe the men arriving exhausted. The reinforcements were unable to prevent the Norwegian defeat.

 

Hardrada and Tostig were both dead, and the surviving Norwegians were allowed to return home after giving pledges of peace.

 

What happened immediately afterwards is easy to lose among the much better-known events at Hastings.

 

William’s fleet reached the Sussex coast on the 28th of September, just three days after the fighting at Stamford Bridge. Harold was still in Yorkshire, and news of the landing first had to reach him before he could begin bringing his forces south.

 

We do not know exactly which men who fought at Stamford Bridge also fought at Hastings, and historians have long discussed how much the northern campaign affected Harold’s army. What we do know is that the two battles fell astonishingly close together.

 

Harold reached London and then continued into Sussex. On the 14th of October, his army met William’s near Hastings.

 

There were only nineteen days between Stamford Bridge and Hastings.

 

For me, knowing what happened during those nineteen days changes the way I picture Harold’s final campaign. The man who arrived in Sussex had spent the previous weeks responding to events at opposite ends of his kingdom, and Stamford Bridge deserves to be remembered as a major battle in its own right.

 

Next I’ll look at William’s landing at Pevensey and what his army did after reaching England.

 

Were you taught much about Stamford Bridge, or did most of your school lessons about 1066 concentrate on Hastings?

 

 

 

The Roads Britain Was Preparing to Destroy or Block if Invasion Came

The Roads Britain Was Preparing to Destroy or Block if Invasion Came

In the summer of 1940, Britain was preparing for the possibility that some of its own roads might have to be blocked and some bridges destroyed before an invading army could use them.

image info

Concrete road barriers at Cheriton, Kent, 10th July 1940. An East Kent bus shelter converted into a pillbox can also be seen in the background.

Credit: War Office official photographer, Puttnam / Imperial War Museums. Public domain via Wikimedia Commons.

After Dunkirk, more than 300,000 Allied servicemen had been evacuated from France, though huge quantities of vehicles, weapons and equipment had been left behind. The speed of the German advance through western Europe had also caused real concern. By June, British planners were looking closely at how an enemy might move inland if troops managed to land.

On the 15th of June 1940, GHQ Home Forces issued instructions for inland anti-tank defences. Stop lines began to take shape across the country, using whatever the landscape already offered. Rivers, canals, railway embankments and marshy ground all had value. Anti-tank ditches filled gaps, pillboxes covered important points and roadblocks were prepared where existing routes cut through the defences.

Near Hoo St Werburgh in Kent, two concrete plinths still survive beside a track leading from Stoke Road. They were part of one of those roadblocks. The wider Hoo defences crossed the peninsula between the Thames and the Medway, and a wartime plan recorded sixty infantry pillboxes and eighteen anti-tank pillboxes around Lodge Hill and Chattenden.

A surviving pillbox on the Taunton Stop Line in Somerset. The photograph was taken in 2006 and shows one of the concrete defensive structures that still survives from Britain’s wartime anti-invasion preparations.

Credit: Gaius Cornelius. Public domain via Wikimedia Commons

What interested me while researching this was just how detailed some of the planning became. A road that had once seemed inconsequential suddenly became important because it created a way through a defensive line.

Norfolk gives us some of the clearest surviving evidence. At Bacton Gap on the north Norfolk coast, a Type 22 pillbox was built near the road junction, fourteen anti-tank blocks were placed along the low cliff and a ditch ran for about 350 metres. Three more blocks obstructed Beach Road.

Mundesley, Walcott and Salthouse were also heavily prepared for imminent invasion, with pillboxes, anti-tank obstacles, barbed wire and positions covering the routes inland.

The same sort of planning appeared much further west. The Taunton Stop Line ran for roughly 48 miles from the north Somerset coast towards Seaton in Devon, with more than 300 pillboxes built along it during 1940. Canals, rivers and railway lines were incorporated into the route, then strengthened where necessary.

Bridges were another concern altogether. Axmouth Bridge in Devon was prepared for demolition, with a pillbox covering its approaches. At Blandford Forum in Dorset, road and railway bridges across the River Stour were also prepared for destruction, and roads could be cratered if needed.

Defensive thinking changed during the summer. Sir Alan Brooke replaced Sir Edmund Ironside as Commander-in-Chief Home Forces in July 1940 and placed greater emphasis on mobile reserves. Many of the fixed positions already built remained in place, however, and some of them continued to form part of Britain’s preparations for years afterwards.

The invasion thankfully never came. The ditches were later filled in, the steel obstacles were removed and most of the roadblocks disappeared. Concrete proved harder to get rid of.

That is why pieces of the 1940 defensive landscape can still be found beside roads, fields, waterways, footpaths and on beaches today.

Do you know of any surviving wartime defences near where you live?

The Victoria Hall Disaster: The Afternoon at Least 183 Children Died in Sunderland

The Victoria Hall Disaster: The Afternoon at Least 183 Children Died in Sunderland

On the 16th of June 1883, around 2,000 children went to Sunderland’s Victoria Hall for a Saturday afternoon variety show by travelling entertainers known as the Fays.

The event had been promoted as “the greatest treat for children ever given”. Toys and books were among the prizes, advertisements for the show had been distributed to children through local elementary schools, and most of those filling the hall that afternoon were between seven and eleven years old.

Victoria Hall stood opposite Mowbray Park, at the junction of Toward Road and Laura Street. It had opened in 1872, so the building was still relatively new. The audience was spread between the ground floor, dress circle and gallery, with around 1,100 youngsters sitting in the gallery alone.

Near the end of the performance, certain numbered tickets were announced as prize winners. Gifts had already begun to be handed out downstairs, and large numbers from the gallery left their seats and headed for the staircase.

At the bottom was an inward-opening door that had been bolted partly shut, leaving a gap of only about 20 inches, or 50 centimetres. Sunderland’s Local Studies Centre suggests this was probably intended to control the number passing through at once while tickets were checked.

Few adults were present and there was no organised queue. Those at the front could only squeeze through slowly, while more children continued down the stairs behind them. The stairwell filled until those nearest the bottom were trapped under the pressure of the crowd.

Adults who realised what was happening began pulling children through the gap. Others joined them, and clearing the stairwell took around half an hour.

Sunderland’s Local Studies account records 183 deaths, all from asphyxia. Some families lost every one of their children, while one local Sunday-school Bible class had taken 30 youngsters to the performance and lost all 30.

The death toll differs between surviving sources. The Sunderland memorial records 183, while Historic England now gives a total of 191 and notes that eight traveller children may not have been properly registered at the time.

Funerals began the following Tuesday and continued until Friday. Businesses across Sunderland closed as a mark of respect. A disaster fund helped with funeral expenses and later contributed towards the memorial, while Queen Victoria sent condolences and made a donation.

William McGonagall also wrote about the disaster in a poem titled The Sunderland Calamity.

Inquests were held in Bishopwearmouth and Monkwearmouth. The Bishopwearmouth jury did not place responsibility on one particular person, although the hall manager was criticised. At Monkwearmouth, the jury called for places of entertainment to have enough exits and for both internal and external doors to open outwards. Historic England records that this safety principle was incorporated into legislation by the end of 1883.

A second enquiry was later held, but it still did not establish who had bolted the door.

The memorial created after the disaster depicts a grieving mother holding a dead child. It was moved away from Mowbray Park for many years before being returned there in 2000. Victoria Hall itself survived until 1941, when it was destroyed during an air raid.

The doorway appears to have been restricted to control the flow of children, but nobody was ever able to establish who had actually bolted it that afternoon.

Image info:

Victoria Hall – The Staircase Calamity, contemporary illustration of the Victoria Hall disaster, Sunderland, 16th June 1883. Unknown artist. Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons. 

Britain Asked Families to Save Paper, Rags… and Bones. But Why?

Britain Asked Families to Save Paper, Rags… and Bones. But Why?

When I was writing recently about the women who collected Britain’s rubbish during the Second World War, I came across one detail that I kept thinking about afterwards. Families were being asked to keep certain things out of the dustbin because they might still be useful.

The Great Round Up, Ministry of Supply / HMSO, artwork by Strube. Imperial War Museums collection. Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons.

One of those things was bones.

It sounds rather strange now, but wartime households were encouraged to save bones alongside waste paper, scrap metal, rubber and old rags. Posters reminded people to separate them from their ordinary rubbish and leave them out for collection.

There was good reason for all this. Before the war Britain brought a great deal of its food, fuel and raw materials in from abroad. Once merchant ships were being attacked and supplies became harder to bring into the country, anything that could be reused at home became more valuable.

A British housewife puts out items for salvage during 1942, Ministry of Information Photo Division. Imperial War Museums, D 7560. Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons.

Bones were a surprisingly useful part of that effort. On the 22nd of February 1940, the collection of household bones appeared in a written Parliamentary question. The Minister of Supply confirmed that local authorities had been asked to help with collections and explained that bones were treated in the manufacture of glue, with what remained then being used for fertilisers.

Other wartime publicity went further, telling people that bones were wanted for planes, explosives and fertilisers. Fats could also be extracted during processing for industrial use.

Old Rags Into New Cloth – Salvage in Britain, April 1942, photograph by Richard Stone, Ministry of Information. Imperial War Museums, D 7437. Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons.

 

All of which meant that the remains of dinner might have to linger around the house for a little longer than anyone would probably have preferred. WVS advice even suggested keeping bones in a lidded container until they could be collected.

Paper was everywhere in the salvage campaigns. Newspapers, cardboard and unwanted books could all be gathered up and reused. A Ministry of Information poster from the war claimed that 70 million books had been collected by December 1943. They were sorted rather than all being immediately destroyed: some were pulped, some went towards replacing books in bomb-damaged libraries and others were kept for members of the armed forces.

Old clothing and scraps of material were collected too.

Worn textiles could arrive at salvage factories where they were separated according to their type and condition. Some became wiping cloths for machinery. Knitted material could be broken down and reused in blankets, uniforms and other clothing, while linen and calico were useful in making paper and Admiralty charts. Even material in very poor condition could sometimes find a use in things such as roofing felt or mattress filling.

When clothes were already rationed and families were being encouraged to make do and mend, there probably wasn't an endless supply of perfectly good clothing waiting to be handed over. Salvage really did mean finding some value in things that had reached the end of their ordinary life.

The collections became part of everyday wartime routines. Paper was bundled, metals separated and bones kept aside rather than disappearing into the dustbin. Posters appeared telling households what was wanted, while councils and organisations including the WVS helped organise collections and salvage drives.

Then there were the famous pots and pans.

The aluminium collection campaign is often remembered through “Saucepans for Spitfires”. Families handed over aluminium cookware believing the metal could help aircraft production. The National Archives points out that the government did not actually need all the extra aluminium being collected. But the campaign still gave people at home a very visible way to feel they were contributing.

Going back to those wartime rubbish collections, it makes the contents of the dustbin look rather different.

Before anything was thrown away, people were being encouraged to look at it once more. A newspaper, an old shirt, a broken metal object or the bones left after a meal might still be wanted somewhere else.

I don't think I will ever look at the phrase “wartime salvage” quite the same way again - especially now I know someone had to keep the bones.

The Secret Letters That Helped Send Mary, Queen of Scots to the Executioner

The Secret Letters That Helped Send Mary, Queen of Scots to the Executioner

The Babington Plot of 1586 was one of the most serious threats Elizabeth I faced during her reign. A group of men were planning to kill the Queen, free Mary, Queen of Scots from captivity and place her on the English throne. At the centre of the story were a series of letters that would eventually help bring the plot down.

Anthony Babington with his accomplices, 17th century / Wikimedia Commons / Public Domain.

 What makes the story so compelling is the way politics, religion and personal danger became tangled together.

Mary had been in England since 1568, after fleeing Scotland when her rule there collapsed. She had hoped Elizabeth might help her regain the Scottish throne, but instead she found herself kept under increasingly close supervision.

Her presence in England was always awkward for Elizabeth. Mary had royal blood, she was Catholic and she had a claim to the English throne. Some Catholics who opposed Elizabeth’s religious settlement saw Mary as someone who might one day replace her, and during the years she spent in England her name became linked with several plots against the Queen.

By 1586, Mary was being held at Chartley in Staffordshire. Her movements were restricted and her correspondence was closely watched. Contact with supporters outside her household was difficult, so when a secret way of exchanging letters became available, she began using it.

Those messages were smuggled in and out of Chartley, giving Mary a way to remain in contact with people beyond her household. The system, however, was not as secure as she believed.

Sir Francis Walsingham, Elizabeth’s principal secretary, had built up a network of informers and agents to investigate threats against the Queen. Instead of shutting Mary’s correspondence down as soon as it was discovered, the authorities allowed it to continue. That gave Walsingham’s men the chance to see who was contacting her and what was being discussed.

Among those writing to Mary was Anthony Babington, a young Catholic gentleman from Derbyshire. He supported Mary and became involved with a group whose plans went much further than simply helping her escape. Foreign support was discussed, along with Mary’s release and the assassination of Elizabeth.

In July 1586, Babington wrote to Mary about the proposed conspiracy. His letter referred to six men who were to carry out the killing of Elizabeth and also discussed plans to free Mary.

The message was written in cipher, but that was not enough to protect it. Thomas Phelippes, one of the men working within Walsingham’s intelligence network, was a skilled codebreaker. Babington’s letter could be intercepted, copied and deciphered before it reached Mary.

Mary replied, discussing preparations for her release as well as other parts of Babington’s plan. Elizabeth’s government later used the letter as evidence that she had accepted the conspiracy. Exactly what Mary meant by some of her words, and how far she supported the proposed assassination, has continued to be debated.

Arrests followed soon afterwards. Babington tried to escape but was caught, and other members of the group were also taken into custody. The plot was stopped before any attempt could be made on Elizabeth’s life.

Mary’s own position became much more dangerous from that point. Her papers were seized and in October 1586 she was brought to trial at Fotheringhay Castle. She denied plotting Elizabeth’s death, questioned the evidence against her and argued that, as a foreign queen, she was not an English subject.

The correspondence with Babington formed an important part of the case, and Mary was found guilty.

Elizabeth now faced a decision that she had avoided for years. Mary was a former queen, a relative and an anointed monarch, so ordering her execution was never going to be a simple matter. At the same time, as long as Mary remained alive, there was always the fear that another conspiracy might gather around her.

Elizabeth eventually signed the death warrant, and on the 8th of February 1587 Mary, Queen of Scots was executed at Fotheringhay Castle, almost nineteen years after she had first arrived in England.

The part that really brings the Babington Plot to life is the correspondence itself. Babington and Mary were trying to communicate in secret, while Walsingham’s men were quietly following what was being said.

Those letters became some of the most important evidence used against Mary.

Do you think Mary, Queen of Scots knowingly supported the plan to assassinate Elizabeth I, or do you think Walsingham allowed the plot to continue until he had enough evidence to use against her?

 

The Women Who Collected Britain’s Rubbish While the Men Were Away at War

The Women Who Collected Britain’s Rubbish While the Men Were Away at War

One wartime job I had never really thought about was rubbish collection. Women’s wartime work is usually associated with factories, farms and the railways, so I was surprised to find women emptying dustbins and sweeping streets too.

Women of the St Pancras Women’s Street Cleaning Brigade with their dust carts, London, 1942. Ministry of Information Photo Division Photographer. Imperial War Museums, D 8942. Public Domain – expired Crown Copyright. Via Wikimedia Commons.

As men were called into the armed forces or moved into other wartime work, councils began losing some of the people who had carried out these everyday jobs before the war. The rubbish still had to be collected. In January 1943, the subject even reached Parliament. Ernest Bevin, the Minister of Labour, confirmed that dustmen were not generally in a reserved occupation and said that the work could be carried out by men over military age or by women.

By then, women were already doing it. In London, women worked as street cleaners and refuse collectors, pushing handcarts, sweeping gutters and clearing rubbish from the roads. The St Pancras Women’s Street Cleaning Brigade was working in the capital in 1942, doing a job that before the war would overwhelmingly have been regarded as men’s work.

Mrs G. Warren of the St Pancras Women’s Street Cleaning Brigade sweeping a London street, 1942. Ministry of Information Photo Division Photographer. Imperial War Museums, D 8944. Public Domain – expired Crown Copyright. Via Wikimedia Commons.

It was hard physical labour. Many household dustbins were made from galvanised metal and had to be lifted by hand, and they could be made considerably heavier by ash and cinders from coal fires. A full bin could be extremely heavy. It certainly makes putting a wheelie bin out at the kerb seem rather easy by comparison.

The contents of those bins were changing too. The government wanted households to waste as little useful material as possible, and salvage campaigns asked people to separate paper, metal, bones, rags and other items. One official campaign instructed householders that paper, metal and bones should not go into the dustbin at all, but should be put out separately for collection.

Bones might sound like an especially strange thing to save now, but they had uses in wartime industry. Waste paper was collected for salvage and scrap metal was reused. Kitchen waste was useful as well, particularly for feeding pigs and hens. Even some of the things people would normally have thrown away were now being saved and collected.

That meant more sorting and more collecting for the people doing the rounds. Street cleaners also had the dirt and debris of wartime towns to contend with, and in places affected by air raids they could find themselves working among damaged buildings and piles of rubble.

There was little glamour in carrying bins, shovelling rubbish or spending hours with a broom and handcart, particularly in bad weather. It was simply one of those jobs that could not be left undone for very long.

These are the Home Front stories I particularly enjoy finding. They remind me that, despite everything going on, somebody still had to deal with all the ordinary jobs of everyday life. Rubbish did not disappear because there was a war on, and neither did dirty streets.

Women were among the people helping to keep those everyday services going.

I think I might complain a little less next time I have to drag my own bin outside.

Had you ever heard about women working as refuse collectors and street cleaners during the war?