Delivery Riders Strike and South London 'Dark Kitchens'

Notes from Below report on the recent food delivery riders strike:

'On Friday 2 February thousands of food delivery riders, demanding a pay rise, took strike action against all of the apps, in over 90 zones across London, Brighton, Liverpool, Bath and Glasgow. The strike demanded a pay increase. In 2017, Deliveroo paid a minimum £4 per delivery. Now, they pay a minimum of £3.15 to mopeds and £2.80 to bikes. That is a 40% real terms pay cut. Uber Eats have made similar changes.

This was the biggest strike yet in food delivery in the UK and it shook the management of the apps. Across many areas, riders focused locally and organised pickets to shut down dark kitchens and key restaurants...

20 riders picketed the editions kitchen in Forest Hill. When more riders arrived at the kitchen and learnt about the strike, most stopped working and joined in. Only a couple tried to pick up, and before long the manager had turned off the app. Nothing went in or out for hours. Most riders agree a pay rise won’t be won in a single strike; they’re ready for a longer campaign. A few days after the strike, deliveries seem to be paying more than they did. The rates have been calculated upwards a bit'

The Forest Hill site mentioned is in the Dulwich Business Centre, Malham Road SE23 and is one of a number of 'Deliveroo Editions' dark kitchens. Essentially these are  anonymous industrial units managed by Deliveroo where under one roof different restaurant brands use separate kitchen spaces to prepare food.  The Forest Hill/Honor Oak one makes food for Coqfighter , Zing Zing , Popeyes Louisiana Kitchen, Dishoom and Pho. Another one is in British Wharf, Landmann Way SE14 with food vendors including Jacob's Kitchen, Shake Shack,, Poke Shack, Remedy Kitchen, Jude's Ice Cream and Bleecker Burger. This site is known as Bermondsey 1, not far away at 145 Ormside Street, SE15 is Bermondsey 2 with Dishoom , Wing-Stop, Tao Tao Ju and Pho.

Deliveroo's kitchens have been mapped by Autonomy, and they have also researched this phenomenon noting that Deliveroo are just one of the businesses operating this model.  Foodstars, another big operator, has kitchens locally at 107 Ormside Street SE15 (off Ilderton Road) and at 81 Enid Street SE16.

With more strikes likely these places will be a focus as busy places where large numbers of delivery riders are constantly coming and going.

(below - pickets at Forest Hill Deliveroo kitchen last week, photo from Callum Cant on twitter.

Update: On Valentine's Day (14 February 2024) there was another successful strike, couriers blocked Westminster Bridge and there was a picket  - pictured below - of the Deliveroo dark kitchen on Ormside Street (picture again from Callum Cant)

'Prince Andrew Didn't Kill Himself'

Some anticipatory conspiracy theory - this sticker spotted today on a lamp post opposite Skehans Pub in Gellatly Road  SE14. 

 

The Castle Owner and the 'Countess' of Gellaty Road SE14: a 1957 trial

In a sensational trial in 1957, a 52 year old man was prosecuted for shooting a 22 year old woman with intent to murder at 57 Gellatly Road SE14 (described in press reports as being variously in Peckham and New Cross).

The accused, Denys Eyre Bower (b.1905), was the owner of Chiddingstone Castle near Edenbridge in Kent. He had been in a relationship with Anna Lena White, a dentist receptionist, single mother and daughter of a bus driver who lived in Gellatly Road where she cared for her widowed mother. In court she stated that she had agreed to marry Bower but had called it off  due to 'disparity in ages'.

A couple of weeks later in September 1957, Bower arrived at her house in his sports car. White told the court that she had 'noticed the budgerigar perch was down' and turned to fix it before hearing a bang as Bower shot her and then shot himself. A policeman who lived opposite (at no, 50), Roger Harris, heard the shots and rushed to the scene. Both survived and were taken to the Miller General Hospital in Greenwich; White was later treated at the Brook Hospital in Woolwich.

Bower, who had been married twice before, was a former bank clerk and Baker Street antique dealer. He had bought Chiddingstone in 1955 using a £6000 bank loan. The relationship with White seems to have been built on a fantasy. The court heard that Bower had given White a 'completely fictitious' 'foreign name and a Continental ancestry'.  He had told police that she was 'the daughter of the Marquis of Grimaldi and was born in Monaco' and that 'her real name was Anna Lena Bagrielle Suzanne Grimaldi'. In other evidence it was said that it was White who initiated this - 'Miss White agreed that she told Bower that her name was Anna Grimaldi, that she came from Monaco, and that her father was a marquis. She also told him that she had been married to the Count D'Estanville, and that Chippy was her son by that marriage. She was introduced as the Countess D'Estanville to various people. She told Bower that the Count D'Estanville had died in Switzerland'.

White was no Countess though and had in fact been born in Camberwell on 6 April 1935;  her parents David White and Marion Clasper were married in Deptford in 1930.

Bower claimed that  he had shot White by mistake while showing her an antique pistol, and then shot himself on realising what he had done. This was rejected by the jury, as was the defence argument that as a Buddhist Bower wouldn't hurt any living thing.  He was found guilty of attempted murder, and sentencing him for life the judge noted that the bullet had narrowly missed White's heart and killing her.

Bower was released from prison on parole in 1962. While detained he won a libel action againat the Sunday Pictorial newspaper which had claimed he had a 'mental breakdown'. Back at Chiddingstone he continued to build his collection of Japanese, Egyptian and Jacobite antiquities until his death in 1977. His collection can be viewed at the castle to this day. Not sure what became of White, hope she went on to have a good life.

Bower pictured in 1956
(photo from Chiddingtsone Castle site)

(See reports in The Times, September 21 1957; October 31 1957; November 20, 21, 26 1957; July 7 1962).

SE14's secret sanctuary for garden creatures

 

Somewhere in SE14 there is a hidden pond where gnomes, rabbits and other creatures sit next to a waterfall.  These poor things had been cast aside and abandoned, but have now found a new home at this South East London sanctuary.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

If you want to find it, you will need to look beyond this barrier at Lewisham's Reuse and Recycling Centre, Landmann Way, SE14 (off Surrey Canal Road)