Children of Hiroshima - peace meetings in 1950s Lewisham and Bromley

The Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament was founded in 1958 and its first wave of activism peaked in the early 1960s at a time when fears of nuclear war were at their height. The movement against nuclear weapons started a few years earlier, with a key campaigner being the Methodist minister Donald Soper (1903-1998) - who incidentally went to Haberdashers school in New Cross.

In October 1955 'a ten day peace campaign by South London pacifists' included showings of the Japanese film 'Children on Hiroshima', documenting the impact of the first use of a nuclear weapon ten years previously. The film was shown 'in Bromley library and various church halls in Bellingham, Downham, Lewisham and Catford culminating in a  public meeting in Lewisham Town Hall.

Peace News 7 October 1955

Lewisham Borough News, 11 October 1955. Venues for film shows including St Dunstan's Church Hall, Bellingham; Public Library, Bromley High Street; Wesley Church Hall, Downham; St Mark's Church Hall, Lewisham; St Laurence Church Hall, Catford; St Luke's Church Hall, Downham

400 people attended the event in Lewisham Town Hall on 25 October 1955 with an extra hall being needed to accommodate demand.  As well as the film showing, Dr Soper gave a socialist and pacifist speech quoting from Joseph Rotblat (a physicist who had walked away from the Manhattan Project that developed the first nuclear bomb) 'Two of every three people don't have enough to eat. Economically we can have guns or butter but not both. The world must dedicate itself to producing necessities for the life of its increasing population or it will squander its resources in killing suddenly those who do not starve slowly'.  Also speaking was Sybil Morrison (1893-1984). Born in Sunderland Road, Forest Hill she was active in the women's suffrage movement then a lifelong peace activist.

Peace News 4 November 1955 

Stills from film:

A South East London transgender marriage in 1954

I have seen a few mentions on twitter and  facebook about the case of Vincent (born Violet) Jones and Joan Lee who were each fined £25 in 1954 following their 'illegal' wedding at St Luke’s Church in Downham - illegal because Vincent was not legally recognised as a man. An article at Historic England includes a photo of the couple on their wedding day (see below), with a quote from Jones: '‘We both love each other and when everything is put right we intend to get remarried. We shall have a public ceremony. We have nothing to be ashamed of.’

I wanted to see if I could find out more about this and thanks to the British Newspaper Archive and Ancestry, plus a couple of hints in messages from Bob from Brockley and Running Past, I think we can piece together more of the story.

Joan Mary Lee seems to have been born in Lewisham in 1933, her parents were George and Mary and in 1939 they were living at 120 Capstone Road in Downham with George working as a fitter for Post Office Engineering. Vincent Jones seems to have been born Violet Jones in Steyning, Sussex in 1928. The 1952 Electoral Register has Violet Ellen Jones living at 42 Ringmore Rise in Forest Hill. 

The couple met when they both worked as tracers in the drawing office at the South East London Telephone headquarters - not sure where this was, but it may have been the telephone exchange on corner of Glenton Road and Lee High Road SE13. According to the People (24/10/54) 'Girls who knew them say that "Miss Jones" had arrived at work one day in man's clothes and insisted that "she" had become a man, after operations'.

In September 1954 the vicar of St Luke's, Rev D G N Clark, 'pronounced Vincent Eric Kenneth Jones' of Forest Hill and '21 year old Joan Lee of Moorside Road, Downham, man and wife'  (Daily Herald, 25 October 1954) at a white wedding attended by relatives. 

After a two week honeymoon in Hastings they had set up home in rented rooms at 162 Ardgowan Road, Catford*.  It seems to have been the Vicar who reported them to the police having become aware that Vincent's  birth certificate bore the name Violet Ellen Katherine Jones. Following a police visit to their home in November, the couple were summonsed to appear in court for making a false statement to obtain a marriage certificate.

'The Girl Bridegroom' (Sunday Mirror, 24 October 1954)

The case was heard at Greenwich magistrates in December, and both were fined £25, the case receiving national media attention, some of it quite sympathetic. The magistrate said that Jones had 'made a grave false statement to cover your unnatural passion with a false air of respectability'. But this does not seem to have been a case of a same sex marriage by subterfuge - of the marriage of two self-identifying lesbians. Jones clearly identified as a man, telling the Daily Herald (25/10/54) for instance: ''I am a man. There is no doubt about that, and I have nothing to fear. My wife and I are very happy'.  In her statement, Joan said 'As time went of I became increasingly sure of my feeling for him as his for me, which neither of us made any attempt to hide from the world. To me he is as any other husband is' (Daily Herald, 14/12/54). 

Jones seems to have been recognised as a man at work and elsewhere and had experienced what would later be termed 'gender dysphoria' since childhood.  Jones' lawyer told the court that they had 'been a tomboy until teenage' and 'began to feel  desperate about her situation. It seemed ridiculous for her to be a female - she couldn't feel that she was a female. She tried to imitate them but found she couldn't do it'. Jones had sought medical treatment and spent four weeks at the Maudsley Hospital which had apparently 'advised Jones to wear male attire'(Liverpool Echo, 13 December 1954).

Jones told police 'I am a man but if you mean physically I still possess female organs... I have been to doctors to alter my sex completely but I was sick of waiting'. Jones had 'written to Denmark where there was a case of a woman doctor who changed her sex' (quoted in Alison Oram, 'Her Husband was a Woman!: Women's Gender-Crossing in Moden British Popular Culture', 2007). Gender Reassignment Surgery was in its early stages so it would have been very difficult for Jones to access it in 1954.

What happened next is unclear. Sadly Joan seems to have died in Dartford in 1966, bearing the name Joan Jones which suggests that the marriage continued. A press report from 1954 mentions that 'Joan is bald and wears a wig' which perhaps indicates an underlying serious health issue. There's a little confusion about Vincent - although so named in court, he is also referred to as Vic in press reports (e.g. by Joan's father below).  And it is as Victor E.K. Jones that he is named in a few places on family history website Ancestry, seemingly dying in Hastings in 1991 - decades after his honeymoon there with Joan.

 * press reports give address as Ardgowan Road, I have deduced house number from fact that their landlord Cyril Thomas is listed as living at 162 Ardgowan Road in 1962 electoral register.  Thomas 'in whose house the couple took rooms'  was quoted as saying 'They are a nice quiet couple. Sometimes they go out dancing' (DH, 25/10/54). 

'Girl weds girl in sex change sensation ' (People, 24/10/1954)-
found at British Newspaper Archive

(post last updated 18 November 2021)

Deptford Colour Bar 1958

Today is Windrush day, commemorating the arrival of Jamaican migrants in Britain on the Empire Windrush on this day in 1948 and the wider impact of people of Caribbean origin in this country.

The recent plight of some of these migrants in the Windrush scandal has rightly been condemned, but the fact is that generation faced racism from the moment they stepped onto British soil. This shameful, but not untypical example, is from Deptford in 1958. The landlord of The Robin Hood and Little John pub, Peter Sparkes defended his policy of a  'no drinks for coloured people' on the basis that 'My customers just don't like coloured people'. Condemning this 'pub colour bar', Deptford Labour MP Leslie Plummer noted that there were 'several hundred West Indians living in Deptford' (The People,  13 July 1958).

The pub was in Deptford Church Street. It closed in 1970 and was demolished in 1977.

This was not an isolated example - as late as 1965 there were demonstrations outside the Dartmouth Arms in Forest Hill against a similar ban on serving drinks to black people (see previous post on this).

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).

New Cross Speedway Programmes

 The New Cross Stadium stood next to the old Millwall FC ground in New Cross on the land now known as Bridgehouse Meadows. As covered here before, it featured greyhound racing, stock car racing  and speedway. Here's a selection of New Cross speedway programme covers

1948

1949

1950

1953

July 1963

The stadium closed in 1969 and was demolished in 1975.

Programmes from the huge collection of speedway memorabilia on sale at ebay by G.Williams Sporting Memorabilia. Click images to enlarge.

Soft Wax and the Search for LT: a 1950s London Soundman?

As mentioned here last week, Vinyl is a new record shop in Deptford at 4 Tanners Hill (previously home to Blossoming Together, Deptford Deli, Deptford Properly and in the 1930s the Communist Party's Workers Bookshop).  It has a coffee shop upstairs, records downstairs and a gallery space. There's a great installation on there at the moment as part of the Deptford X Fringe called Soft Wax.

Steve Wax and Cecile Buxton have recreated the feel of a West Indian front room set up for a blues party, drawing on the latter's childhood memories of living in Spitalfields in the late 1950s. There's a 78 record player from the period, and a collection of records to go with it.

As for the records there's a fascinating mystery with a local connection. Steve picked up a collection of unidentified old records which had been sold to a Greenwich record shop - many of them were 1950s American R&B records including a number of 'soft wax' acetate discs. This music was very popular in Jamaica at the time, and without proper local distribution of the records DJs would sometimes make their own copies using acetate cutting machines. 

Most of the records have 'LT' scratched into the label, suggesting that they belonged to a DJ of that period (and maybe later, some of the music dates from 1960s and 70s). 

So the search is on for LT - who was he? There are some clues, some of the record sleeves have the address Herman Miller of Harlesden written on them. The records were sold by an older Caribbean woman, believed to have been the widow of the records' collector, who probably lived in the New Cross area. LT could have been the person's name, or possibly nick name/DJ name. If you have any clues get in touch.

The installation closes tomorrow (Sunday) but the Soft Wax project continues. Next week (October 12th) they are taking part with Jamtone in a 70s style Reggae Sound System Dance at the Vibe Gallery in Bermondsey:

'It’s a return to the source for us. Together we will be select a blistering mix from the rich heritage of Jamaican music. From the 60s into the early 80s and beyond. For this night the tunes will be spinnin’ on Jamtone’s traditional Sound System rig, enabling them to be appreciated to full affect, in a “back-a-yard” style. Expect guest musicians and DJs live on the mic too.

Darren Jamtone has been the mainstay of Sound Systems for two decades. He is now an accomplished live and studio Sound Engineer too, with many records to his name. Steve Wax has been carving out a unique niche as an installation DJ. This evening will commence with the playing of a “one away” collection of late 50s acetates, played on a period deck with an accompanying installation. There will be a vintage record stall, for your continued listening pleasure. There’s a fully licensed bar and arrangements have been made to order food in. Pure niceness all'.

Lausanne Road SE15 in the 1950s

Andrew Simpson grew up in Lausanne Road, SE15 but has been living in Manchester for many years where he now runs the Chorlton History site. He has though been writing a bit recently on his time in South London, including a series of reflections on his time at Crown Woods School in Eltham in the 1960s, with some evocative 1968 school photos. He also reflects on his less than happy time at Samuel Pepys Secondary Modern in Sprules Road SE4 (previously Brockley Central School, then later Hatcham Wood, Telegraph Hill and lately but not for much longer Crossways Sixth Form - soon to be taken over by Christ the King) - and the failings of the 11+ system which consigned many children to second best education.

I particularly liked his tales from Lausanne Road in the 1950s, when his parents let out rooms to a range of interesting characters including 'Millie the Mole'  and her  boyfriend Boy Boy Jones, a getaway driver for a Peckham smash and grab gang and 'a couple who met in Lausanne Road. She was single and German and he was Polish. Their romance began with midnight trysts and ended with the two getting married... Both had been victims of the displacement of millions of ordinary people who had been in the wrong place when the war broke out and found themselves part of that tide of homeless refugees in 1945'.

Lewisham 1956: 'Rock Rock Rock!'

The 1956 release of the film Rock Around the Clock famously saw riotous scenes at cinemas around the country. The trouble at the Gaumont cinema in Lewisham has been mentioned here before.  The Observer recently reproduced an article about it by Anthony Sampson, originally published in the paper on 16 September 1956.

'Nobody in the one-and-tenpennies at the Lewisham Gaumont took much notice of the News. The pretty Teddy girl next to us, with an apple face, short tousled hair and a pony-tail, had her feet up on the seats in front and was smoking a cigarette.

She was 15, and she worked in a shoe-store at New Cross, she said. The boy on whose lap she was sitting was 18, on leave from the army. They talked to the American girl next to me. "What are American teenagers like? I bet they're hep-cats! But the Americans got no one like Diana Dors. She's gorgeous. I don't like that Marilyn girl – she's covered in make-up."

The News ended. "I'm getting in the groove," yelled a small boy unconvincingly. Some more boys – all with the same cropped hair and long dark coats – sat down in a bunch.The title appeared – Rock Around the Clock. There was a shout of "doyng" – a teenage cry. Then a loud, wild shout beat out, with a sudden throbbing, like an express train rushing through a station. One, two, three o'clock, four o'clock ROCK! Five, six, seven o'clock, eight o'clock ROCK!

Everyone roared the words. Then, just before the music stopped, the stamping stopped. The plot – about a dance band promoter suffering from the dance band slump – took over. "I've seen it five times," said the soldier. "I'm going every night this week. You should have seen this place last night. Jiving on the stage they were, till the cops came."

There were six policemen standing around the auditorium. The plot reached the stage where the promoter was being taken to see a village dance hall. There was great tension as he approached. He pushed the door open and said: "See you later, Alligator."

The audience roared the words as jivers whirled across the screen. The stamping and finger-snapping started again. A boy in front stood up and started jiving in front of his seat. A policeman appeared at the end of the row and pointed firmly at him. The boy hesitated for a moment, looked at his friends, and then walked sullenly out with the policeman, followed by some of his friends. There was a mutter of resentment, but the stamping went on.

One of the boys came back. "They got a meat-wagon in front and put Ernie in it," he said. There was a lot of growling and then 20 of them trooped out, pulling faces at the policemen and jerking their knees towards them as they passed.They came out on the pavement, where hundreds of people were waiting expectantly. Three policemen followed them, edging them down the road in a slow march. As soon as they got ahead of the police, the ringleader of the group shouted ROCK ROCK ROCK, and two girls started jiving while everyone clapped. A police car glided up: someone shouted "The law!", and they all walked faster.

The Gaumont Palace was on Loampit Vale and later became the Lewisham Odeon. The building was demolished in 1991.

History Corner: the New Cross Boys

Gangs are not a new phenomenon. In his book Gangs of London (2010), Brian McDonald mentions numerous South London teenage gangs from the 1950s: Balham Boys, Brixton Boys, Bermondsey Boys, Borough Boys, Rotherhithe Boys, the Elephant and Castle Boys, Wandsworth Boys, Lambeth Boys (yes it was a bit of a boy thing!). Then, as now, there was sometimes violent conflict between gangs - in 1953 for instance a gang fight on Clapham Common led to the death of 17 year old John Beckley.

New Cross Boys

According to McDonald, 'perhaps the largest of London's 1950s teenage gangs, the New Cross Boys... roamed from Canal Bridge to Deptford, causing mayhem at Millwall Football Ground, youth clubs, cinemas and dance halls. The only noted puncher among them was Freddie 'Ginger' Simmonds, who gave a creditable performance in a stand up fist fight with future gangster Eddie Richardson. This occurred on a snow-filled pavement outside the Trocadero cinema at Elephant and Castle, after a snow ball fight got out of hand... In a clash with rivals from Peckham's Goose Green, over 200 teenage youths fought running battles over a period of three days in 1956'.

In another of his books, Elephant Boys, McDonald mentions a fight involving the New Cross Boys in the New Cross House pub.

Deptford Red Hands

He also mentions 'An earlier Deptford gang, the Red Hands, so named for the red armband that identified members, came unstuck in 1926 when one of their team was stabbed to death after attacking a rival Rotherhithe Boy. William Shillibeer, aged fourteen, was convicted of the manslaughter of thirteen-year old Albert Hannah'.

This case was discussed in Parliament after the trial in March 1927, with  Frederick Pethick-Lawrence MP asking 'the Home Secretary whether his attention has been drawn to the remarks made by Mr. Justice Acton in the trial of William Arthur Edward Shillibeer, of Rotherhithe, at the Central Criminal Court, for murder, to the effect that it was quite clear that he was in the first instance wantonly and gratuitously insulted and provoked by a gang of boys gathered together for such purposes, and afterwards assailed by a number of those boys, who gave every indication of an intention to act together in attacking and doing violence upon him'.

Elephants on the rampage in New Cross

There are many hazards today in the New Cross Road, but being attacked by elephants is no longer one of them. Not so in the days when the New Cross Empire music hall stood on the corner of Watsons Street and New Cross Road (more or less opposite Addey & Stanhope School), as these two stories show:

‘Seized by an Elephant’


'Mr Thomas Race, of Speedwell Street, Deptford, who is 62, was walking past the New Cross Empire last night when an elephant which was to appear in a turn there and which was standing in a passage seized him round the waist with his trunk and threw him to the ground. Mr Race was taken to the Miller Hospital, Greenwich, and detained’ (Times, January 10 1934)

‘A Trunk Call'

'A five-year old elephant escaped from the New Cross Empire in south-east London yesterday. It was recaptured by circus hands in New Cross post office. An assistant at the post office said: ‘We had quite a queue of old-age pensioners. There was a loud trumpeting, and through the swing doors appeared an elephant. Our queue disappeared like magic into telephone boxes and on, to and over the counter. We didn’t lose even a stamp’ (Times November 16 1951)

Incidentally there are some fantastic 1930s family photos from Deptford at Lewisham Family Album, as I have mentioned before. There is mention there of circus animals sometimes being kept at Murray's Alley stables off Comet St, Deptford - either for circuses up on Blackheath or for the New Cross Empire. Somebody commenting there recalled 'Circus Elephants were once taken through the grounds of Speedwell and Comet House from the Murrays Alley Stables, I think to the New Cross Empire for the stage circus. One Elephant charged into the New Cross Post Office and a person was tragically injured. I think that was in the late l940's. Most of the children in the flats followed them through the grounds'.