Cyclist deaths, 1914 and 2015

Cyclists lay down in the road and blocked traffic on Monday night in Camberwell, to mark the death on 29 May of Esther Hartsilver. Esther , a physiotherapist at Kings College Hosptial, was killed when hit by a lorry while cycling close to the hospital in Denmark Hill. She was the sixth cyclist killed on London's roads this year.

photo from report in Independent

Sadly, the death of cyclists on our roads is not new. I recently came across a similar tragedy from a hundred years ago, with a Lewisham cyclist being killed by a hit and run driver  in Baring Road, Lee. The Daiily Mirror reported:

'Search for Owner of Car That Was Driven Off After Fatal Collision.

 '...the police were still without a definite clue to the motor-car which was involved in a fatal collision with two cyclists at Lewisham on Saturday night and failed to stop after the accident. The cyclists were Mr. Harry Tyrell, of Lewisham, and Miss Caroline Wells, who lives in the same road. Mr. Tyrell was fatally injured and Miss Wells badly hurt. Shortly before the collision a policeman saw a man and woman cycling from the direction of Bromley towards Baring road, Lewisham. A little later he saw a dark-coloured low, open car, with two men in it, proceeding in the same direction. The car had a powerful head light'. (Daily Mirror,Tuesday 14 April 1914).

Lets hope we don't have to wait another hundred years for the roads to be safe for cyclists.

Poetry is in the streets

The Lewisham Natureman White Stag has been featured here several times, having been spotted at various places across South East London. Emma D. sent us this photo of the stag seen recently in Northbrook Park in Lee:

'Beauty is nothing but the beginning of terror we're just still able to bear' - Rilke, 1875-1926.

Chalked in St George's Way SE5.  next to Burgess Park, last month:

Possibly accidental Deptford Jackson Pollock effect on wall in Trundleys Road SE8:

History Corner: The Fifth Monarchists, 17th century London religious radicals

In 1660, the monarchy was restored in England after 11 years in which the country had managed fine without a King. Charles II wasted no time in tracking down and killing the 'regicides' associated with the execution of his father, King Charles I, at the end of the English Civil War in 1649.

The first of the regicides to be hanged, drawn and quartered was Thomas Harrison, who was executed at Charing Cross. He had been one of the Fifth Monarchists, a radical current who believed that the age of earthly kings was over and that Christ would soon return and bring about social justice.

In the aftermath of Harrison's execution, a group of Fifth Monarchists decided to stage an uprising.  On 6 January 1661, around 50 Fifth Monarchists headed by Thomas Venner (a wine-cooper), set off from their meeting house in Swan Alley, off Coleman Street in the City of London. Their manifesto 'A Door of Hope: or a Call and Declaration for the gathering together of the first ripe Fruits unto the Standard of our Lord, King Jesus' called for the abolition of imprisonment for debt, the end of the death penalty for theft, and other social reforms, as well as for the overthrow of the monarchy. After several days of fighting, they were defeated. Venner and ten others were hanged for treason.

In the aftermath of the rising, the government rounded up all kinds of religious dissenters, including Quakers, Baptists and Congregationalists. Their meetings were banned, and thousands were jailed: 'Some 400 Baptists and 500 Quakers were arrested in London alone... So many sectaries were committed at the Croydon sessions for refusing to take the oath of allegiance that Sir John Maynard wondered where they could be detained... According to Maynard, the leader of the Croydon sectaries, Dr Bradley, was allowed by the jailer to 'imprecate destruction on the kings and all the Royall Line, in that which they call there devoction"'.

Despite this repression, dissent continued - including in Southwark and Deptford. In 1661 it was reported to magistrates 'that dissidents were meeting daily at the Southwark home of George Tutchins. Having failed in Venner's attempt, he allegedly said, they would rise again on the next moonlit night, and this time would have the use of fifty five barrels of powder stored in Deptford'.

An intelligence report in March 1661 'noted that a Deptford radical was expending funds to win supporters in the army, while another report of about the same date indicated that ministers in the west who were managing a design were corresponding with the Congregationalist Ralph Venning, lecturer at St Olave's, Southwark'. There were clashes between radicals and conservatives at the time of parliamentary elections in 1661 (albeit elections in which many did not have the vote):  'in Southwark, where there was a long-standing radical community, the Presbyterians, Congregationalists, Baptists, and Quakers, under the leadership of Colonel George Thompson and Captain Samuel Lynn, were unable to prevent the election of four conservatives. Once their defeat was apparent, the radicals drew swords and fought with the supporters of Sir Thomas Bludworth'.

Another hotbed was Lee - then in Kent, now part of Lewisham. 'Because it was only a few miles southeast of London, it was easily accessible to radicals from the City. On 1 October [1661], a number of ex-Cromwellians were at Lee, including Colonels Robert Blount (or Blunt) and Thompson along with three other officers. The pulpit at Lee was open to virtually all comers. In the opinion of the informer Edward Potter, its congregation of more than a hundred would "prove as Dangerous to the government of England as any if They are not sudenly prevented". The minister at Lee, William Hickocks, contributed to such fears by preaching that the saints must be willing to die for God's cause'.

In 1662, 'Concerned about meetings of armed dissidents near Deptford in January, the king directed a constable with a band of volunteers to seize all concealed weapons in Blackheath Hundred. In March, London authorities discovered that the grocer Thomas Bone had some twelve pounds of powder and six bullets. Bone not only had ties to the Fifth Monarchist preacher Anthony Palmer, who told him "thes times cannot last long" but was also sending provision to men incarcerated in the Tower for treason'.

In another planned rising (the 'Tong plot' of 1662), conspirators considered a plan to seize the king 'at Camberwell on one of his biweekly visits to Henrietta Maria at Greenwich'.

Re-enactment 2013

Inveterate agitator Ian Bone and others are planning a film/history walk/re-enactment of Venner's 1661 rising early next year. He says:  'On January 6th we will be laying a wreath in Swan Alley off Coleman Street in memory of  Thomas Venner and  his fellow Fifth Monarchists who courageously rose  up here  against the return of the monarchy in 1661'. Meet in Swan Alley at noon - more details here.

Not sure if Ian Bone is a descendent of the Thomas Bone mentioned above, or whether his current home in the borough of Croydon is anywhere near the haunts of the anti-Royalist preacher Dr Bradley.   (Most of the information above, and all the quotes, from 'Radical Underground in Britain, 1660-1663' by Richard Lee Greaves)

Three young people killed in two weeks

All the UK tabloids have the story of Megan Stammers on the front page, the teenager who ran away to France with her teacher. Pleased as I am that she is safe, I can't help noticing that the lives and indeed deaths of other young people just don't seem to be deemed of national significance. Here's a few sad South London stories from the past couple of weeks:

- On Thursday night, 15 year old Junior Nkwelle was stabbed to death on the Loughborough Estate in Brixton.

- The day before, Wednesday 26 September,  a 21 year old man was stabbed to death on the Aylesbury Estate in Walworth.

- Two weeks ago, on the 14th September, 14 year old Kevin Ssali was stabbed to death after getting off a bus in Burnt Ash Road, Lee. A 17 year old from New Cross has been charged with his murder.

- On that night too, a 19 year old was stabbed and critically injured in New Cross Road.

To be fair some of these stories have had brief mentions in the national media, but the tone of 'another stabbing in London' quickly dismisses them. Three young people killed in South London in two weeks should be a national scandal, and you can't help thinking that if the victims had been pretty white girls it would be.

Second thoughts, 2 October: reading back over this a few days later I still agree with the thrust of my initial reaction, but perhaps it was a bit clumsy to bring Megan Chambers into the story. She's got her own problems which I don't want to belittle. And I certainly don't want to suggest that terrible things don't happen to 'pretty white girls'. I guess the wider point though is who gets constructed in the mainstream media as deserving of sympathy, and it does seem to be that measured simply in terms of the amount of sympathetic press coverage, the lives of young people stabbed to death (many, but not all of them, young black men) are afforded less value. Kevin Ssali had been missing from home for some time before he was murdered, his worried family weren't on the news.

I do think racism has something to do with this, even if we want to use the term 'institional racism' whereby the fact that black people end up being treated worse is the salient point, whether or not the individuals making decisions are personally prejudiced. Linked to his is an implicit notion of what kind of people it is imagined that a newspaper's audience will relate to as 'one of their own' and what kind of people are the 'others' they fear. And there is also the fact that sometimes there isn't a straightforward good vs. evil morality tale - some of the people who get stabbed might be involved in violence themselves. But even when the latter is true, we mustn't lose sight of the broader tragedy - why are young people killing each other? There is no straightforward answer or solution, but to acknowledge its importance in the first step.

'Sinn Feiners' in New Cross, 1921

In June 1921 the Irish War of Independence was at its height. In May 1921 Sinn Fein, the party promoting Irish independence, won 124 of the 129 seats in the Irish parliamentary elections. The parliament was dissolved and the British government ruled Ireland directly as a colony. There were violent clashes between the Irish Republican Army and the British forces, including the notorious Black and Tans. It was in this context that sabotage of the railways was attempted in London, including a taxi hijack drama across SE London - I assume the car hired in New Cross and then hijacked in Lee was the same one that ended up in the shoot-out in Bromley. A month later a ceasefire was agreed in Ireland paving the way for most of the country to become a sovereign nation.

'OUTRAGES NEAR LONDON (Ashburton Guardian, 20 June 1921)

Sinn Feiners last night attempted to set fire to a number of railway signal boxes around London. The most serious outrage was at Clapton, where the assailants fired revolvers and wounded the signalman, who managed to telephone for assistance. He reached the next box, where he was medically attended. The criminals at Southall poured oil on the instruments and the woodwork, after binding and partially gagging the signalman, who was just able to shout for help. Workmen from the locomotive works nearby arrived just in time to prevent the fire. A similar attack was made at Barnes, where the fire was extinguished before much damage was done. A party of gunmen hired a taxicab at New Cross at midnight and told the driver to proceed to Lee. When approaching Lee the men jumped out of the taxi and surrounded the driver. They bound him and threw him on the roadside, and then disappeared with the car.

Nine arrests have been made. Scotland Yard reports that the signal-box outrages are the work of Sinn Feiners. The men arrested are all Irishmen, aged from seventeen to twenty-four years. They were armed with revolvers and carried wire-cutters and paraffin. At Bromley (Kent), the police stopped a taxi-cab from which six armed men fired. The police returned the tire, wounding a man named Robinson, who was recently acquitted on a charge of incendiarism. He, with three others, has been charged with firing at the police. with intent to murder.

Further attempts were made to damage the London railways last night, sleepers on the Brighton line at Battersea were set on fire, but the flames were extinguished before serious damage was done.

Further attempts were made to damage the London railways last night, bleepers on the Brighton line at Battersea were set on tire, but the flames were extinguished before serious damage was done'.