by David Long
In the early morning of 10 October, a fully laden barge from the Royal Gunpowder Mills at Waltham Abbey caught fire as it passed beneath a bridge on the Regents Canal. Before the crew could take evasive action, the Tilbury exploded, killing all four of them, destroying several houses (including that of Royal Academician Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema) and several animal enclosures at the Royal Zoological Gardens. Macclesfield Bridge sustained particularly heavy damage but was then rebuilt using salvaged parts. This explains why several deep grooves worn in the support pillars by the tow-ropes of horse-drawn barges now appear to be on the wrong side. When the bridge was rebuilt a decision was taken to turn the pillars round in order to even up the wear.
1917 – Silvertown
The loudest sound ever heard in London, on 19 January a massive explosion ripped through the Brunner Mond Chemical Works in West Ham. More than 50 tons of TNT vaporised in an instant, killing 73 people and injuring more than 400. It didn’t seem like it at the time, but the timing was lucky – the blast occurred at 6.52 p.m., meaning most of the workforce had left the site. It was also too early for them to have gone up to bed, which was fortunate as many of the houses in the area had their upper storeys ripped apart by the shockwave. In all, more than 900 properties were destroyed and a further 70,000 damaged, including many on the other side of the Thames. (The New York Times even reported that windows were blown out of the Savoy Hotel, and that a taxi had nearly toppled over in Pall Mall.)
1992 – Baltic Exchange
Three people died on 10 April when IRA bombers attacked this fine Edwardian edifice in the heart of London’s financial centre. A further ninety-one city workers were injured in the detonation of more than a ton of fertiliser and Semtex plastic explosive that had been concealed in a white truck. With the cost put at £800 million – more than the cumulative total of all the other IRA explosions up to that point – the damage to the listed building was so extensive that permission was given to demolish it despite a pre-existing preservation order. Today, the site is occupied by the Gherkin, with the Exchange awaiting reconstruction in Estonia.
1993 – Bishopsgate
Another explosion less than a year later, involving another 1-ton fertiliser bomb in a tipper-truck, caused an estimated £1 billion worth of damage and affected buildings as far as 600 yards away. Casualties included the Nat West Tower, Liverpool Street Station, and the pretty little fifteenth-century church of St Ethelburga’s, which collapsed amidst some 500 tons of broken glass. The latter was eventually, painstakingly, reconstructed and a security ‘ring of steel’ thrown up around the City to prevent such a thing happening again. Incredibly, just one person was killed, a News of the World photographer who had ignored warnings to get his story.
1996 – Canary Wharf
With the City protected in this way, the attention of the IRA switched to London’s newest financial district in the Docklands. In the early evening of 9 February, a third fertiliser bomb – smaller, but still deadly – exploded near South Quays Underground Station causing £100 million of damage. Two people were killed, thirty-nine injured, and South Quay Plaza was largely destroyed, leaving a crater 10 ft deep.
London’s Weirdest Cold War Relics
North End Station, NW3
Nicknamed ‘Bull and Bush’, after the nearby pub made famous by a thousand cockney music-hall singalongs, this Tube station on the Northern Line (between Hampstead Heath and Golders Green) never saw a single passenger enter or leave a train.
Unique among London’s forty or so ‘ghost stations’, it effectively closed before it had even opened as it became surplus to requirements following the happy collapse of an awful-sounding scheme to build suburban semis all over the Heath. In the 1950s, it was fitted out to be London Transport’s emergency HQ in the event of a nuclear attack by Russia, but today all that can be seen of it above ground is an anonymous, white concrete blockhouse. This is little larger than a domestic tool shed, and is tucked away behind a fence in Hampstead Way.
RAF Kelvedon Hatch, CM14
Outside London but very much a part of it, this slightly strange-looking chalet-bungalow near Brentwood in Essex is actually the guardroom of a vast, fortified citadel built into an adjacent hillside. This was designed to shelter as many as 600 military and civilian personnel, the most senior establishment bods charged with assessing the scale of destruction after the nuclear balloon had gone up.
Now a museum (follow the slightly comical ‘This way to the secret bunker’ signs), it included facilities to house the PM and his Cabinet, as well as BBC staff brought over from Broadcasting House. Together, with Whitehall presumably lying in ruins, they would have provided the command HQ from which to organise and instruct any survivors in the shocking aftermath of an atomic attack.
Pear Tree House, Lunham Road, SE19
Another important Civil Defence bunker was concealed beneath an anonymous block of two-bedroom flats on the Central Hill Estate in Upper Norwood. The flats were built in the wake of the 1963 Cuban Missile Crisis on the site of a crater made by a German V-2 rocket – i.e. the direct ancestor of the intercontinental ballistic missiles that threatened to turn the Cold War hot. Somehow, the secret leaked out shortly afterwards and the supposedly bomb-proof doors were frequently plastered with CND stickers until the 1980s. Following protests from left-leaning Lambeth Borough Council – which had declared itself to be a so-called ‘nuclear-free zone’ around the same time – the bunker was eventually decommissioned in 1993.
Took’s Court, EC4
One hundred feet beneath this narrow City alleyway, with an anonymous entrance round the corner at 39 Furnival Street, this deep-level shelter housed a giant ‘atom-proof’ telephone exchange. Equipped with its own sick-bay, sleeping accommodation and a canteen for up to 150 staff, it was reportedly supplied with enough food and water for a six-week shutdown.
Most significantly, the exchange also contained the famous Cold War ‘hot-line’, linking the Kremlin with the White House in the hope that Eisenhower and Khrushchev could engage in jaw-jaw rather than war-war. Today, the biggest giveaway to its existence is a large crane over the Furnival Street entrance, presumably used to lower heavy telecoms equipment down into the depths of the bunker.
Waterloo Siren, SE1
A favourite for cabbies to point out to tourists, an old air-raid siren can be seen on one of the railway bridges leading in to Waterloo Station. Unlikely to be of Second World War vintage – there were hundreds of these, but they were all removed after VE Day – it is assumed to have been installed to warn of an impending Soviet attack. That said, and rather disappointingly, it has more recently been suggested that it is simply there to warn Londoners the next time the Thames overflows its banks.
45 Cranley Drive, HA4
Another anonymous chalet-bungalow, this time close to RAF Northolt in suburban Ruislip. In the 1950s, it was home to a couple called Helen and Peter Kroger, in reality two American communists called Lona and Morris Cohen. For years, from 1954 to 1961, the pair transmitted ‘information of special importance’ from the ordinary-looking bungalow to their Soviet masters.
Part of the Portland Spy Ring, which had an interest in advanced naval technology being developed and tested on the coast of Dorset, they were eventually caught and imprisoned. In 1969, the pair were exchanged for a businessman called Gerald Brooke, who was being held by the Russians on a charge of espionage. Today, there is nothing to distinguish their house from its neighbours, although after nearly half a century its infamy is still well known to locals.
British Museum Station, WC1
Another ghost station, this time on the Central Line, although there is nothing to see of it above ground in Bury Place nor at the former entrance at what is now 133 High Holborn. The station was taken over by the Ministry of Defence following its closure in the 1930s and, for the duration of the Cold War, held by the Brigade of Guards. Beyond ‘administration’ it has never been explained what purpose it served, and today it is thought to be
used for storage.
South East London Regional War Room, Kemnal Road, BR7
Another of London’s four Civil Defence Control centres, this ugly concrete blockhouse was badly vandalised after being decommissioned and then sold to a developer in the late 1990s. After being converted into a luxurious £3-million private home – an extraordinary project with a central atrium and swimming pool – it was bought by a City financier and his family who, liking the contrast, swapped it for a medieval, timber-framed house.
17
Illegal London
‘It is my belief, Watson, founded upon my experience, that the lowest and vilest alleys in London do not present a more dreadful record of sin than does the smiling and beautiful countryside.’
Sherlock Holmes in The Copper Beeches
by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
Ten Infamous Highwaymen of London
Isaac Atkinson – Executed 1640
Unusual in that he was an Oxford graduate and a specialist who preferred ambushing lawyers to laymen, Atkinson took to crime as a way of supporting the lifestyle he felt he owed himself as the son of a gentleman. After a rare departure from his normal modus operandi – he robbed an ordinary woman at Turnham Green – Atkinson was hunted down and, despite shooting dead a number of his pursuers, was captured. ‘Gentlemen,’ he said on the gallows at Tyburn, ‘there’s nothing like a merry life, and a short one.’ And then he swung.
Claude Duval – Executed 1670
The French-born Duval or Du Vall arrived in London at the Restoration, having entered the service of an English nobleman in exile. Perhaps as a consequence of his exotic continental countenance, memories of him have been much embroidered with tales – for example, that he would dance with lady victims and charge their husbands to watch. What is known is that he was run to ground in a tavern in Chandos Place, W1, and, like Atkinson, hanged at Tyburn.
Jack Collet – Executed 1691
Also known as Jack Cole, Southwark-born Collet had a thing about religion and, after a few years disguised as a bishop, he succeeded in robbing a real one. (Apprehended on the road from London to Farnham, the Bishop of Winchester was ordered to hand over his robes which Collet then appropriated to wear for his work.) He was eventually charged with ‘sacrilegious burglary’ after robbing the church of St Bartholomew-the-Great in June 1691, and he met his end at Tyburn shortly afterwards.
Tom Rowland – Executed 1699
Rowland was another who liked dressing up, and, after learning to ride side-saddle, he disguised himself as a woman for many of his more successful hold-ups. For eighteen years, the ruse worked a treat, but he was finally apprehended at Hounslow and sent to Newgate where – apparently – the romance of his calling meant he received many women visitors. Refusing to repent for his crimes, Rowland was carted to Tyburn for the usual.
Nathaniel Hawes – Executed 1721
A familiar figure on the roads around Hackney and Shoreditch, Hawes famously refused to plead in court until (he said) a ‘suit of fine clothes’ was returned to him, which he intended to wear to the gallows. His refusal meant he was liable to be tortured, and he duly was by being pressed under a board or door on which was placed 250 lb of masonry. Eventually able to take no more, he pleaded not guilty, but no one believed him and he was hanged a few days before Christmas.
William Gordon – Executed 1733
Not much is known about Gordon’s career as a highwayman, much of it spent between Epping Forest and Knightsbridge, but after his execution at Tyburn, a slightly ghoulish attempt was made to bring him back to life. Unknown to the court, a surgeon, M. Chovot, arranged to make an incision in Gordon’s windpipe before he was hanged, and then to ‘open a vein’ after he had been cut down. Needless to say, it didn’t work, although the corpse reportedly groaned once after being removed to a house in the Edgware Road.
Dick Turpin – Executed 1739
Born in Essex, trained as a butcher and hanged at York, as with Jack the Ripper there has been so much talked and written about Dick Turpin that, beyond the basics, it is hard to tell fact from fiction.
For a while, he is known to have lived at Whitechapel, and later still on Millbank, but when London became too hot for comfort he famously fled north and assumed the alias of ‘Palmer’. Unfortunately for him, a letter to his brother revealed his true identity to Yorkshire magistrates, and his fate was sealed. Bizarrely, and despite a marked taste for violence, rape and murder, he is remembered as one of eighteenth-century London’s most colourful and romantic characters.
James MacLaine – (executed 1750) and William Plunkett
With an accomplice called William Plunkett, vicar’s son MacLaine robbed the aesthete and man of letters Horace Walpole while he was making his way home from Holland House across Hyde Park. Walpole was slightly injured by ‘the pistol of one of them going off accidentally’ (my italics), but after receiving a letter of apology from the highwayman later the same year he reported in his journal that ‘my friend Mr M’Lean is hanged’.
John Rann – Executed 1774
Immortalised as ‘Sixteen-String Jack’ – a reference to coloured cords he wore attached to his knee breeches – John Rann was employed as a postilion and then a coachman. Something of a dandy, he turned to petty theft as his outgoings outgrew his income, and pickpocketing soon gave way to highway robbery. After holding up a member of the Royal Household at Brentford, an attendant on George II’s daughter Princess Amelia, he found himself in Newgate Gaol. For his execution, he reportedly appeared in a pea-green suit with matching nosegay, and is commemorated today in the name of a pub in Theydon Bois at the eastern end of the Central Line.
FROM ROZZERS TO COPPERS –
LONDON’S POLICE FORCE
Bantams
The nickname the City of London Police have for the men of the Met because the former used to have a 6-ft height restriction compared to just 5 ft 10 in. for the ordinary Old Bill.
Bill or Old Bill
This may be a nineteenth-century reference, when the cipher of William IV was embossed on police truncheons, although the police themselves make another dozen or so suggestions for the term’s origins.
Bluebottle
Possibly a reference to the uniform, together with a piece of cockney rhyming slang, bottle being short for ‘bottle and glass,’ meaning arse.
Bobby
No longer widely used, but derived from the common diminutive of the name of the founder of the Force, Sir Robert Peel.
Boys in Blue
An obvious reference to the blue uniform worn by most officers.
Cop or Copper
Possibly an acronym for ‘Constable on Patrol’, but it has also been suggested that it refers to the metal bands on nineteenth-century truncheons.
Flatfoot
Now rarely used, but a reference to the fact that a beat bobby would traditionally have spent all day pounding the streets.
Fuzz
An American import from the 1960s.
Heat
See Fuzz.
Peeler
See Bobby.
Pig
Offensive and of surprisingly long standing, with possible nineteenth-century origins.
Plod
From Enid Blyton’s village policeman, with female colleagues occasionally known as ‘Plonks’.
Rozzers
‘Rozzing’ is an old East End term for roasting, although a French connection is also suggested from the continental criminal slang term ‘roussin’ or ‘rousse’, meaning redhead.
Sweeney
Specifically used to describe the Flying Squad, i.e. Sweeney Todd in rhyming slang.
Woodentops
Derived from the 1950s’ children’s BBC television series of this name but now rarely used.
London’s Worst Ever Riots
1517 – Evil May Day
Following a call from the open-air pulpit of St Paul’s Cross for ‘Englishmen to cherish and defend themselves, and to hurt and grieve aliens for
the common weal’, Londoners ran riot through the streets of the City looking for foreign merchants and others whom they accused of deliberately ruining trade in London. Many were killed, and houses and business premises razed to the ground, before order was restored by militiamen under the command of two noblemen, the earls of Suffolk and Surrey. Hundreds of the rioters were arrested, but most were pardoned and, despite the death and carnage, a mere thirteen ringleaders were hanged, drawn and quartered.
1668 – The Bawdy House Riots
In seventeen-century London, Shrove Tuesday was traditionally celebrated by an invasion of brothels by young apprentices but, for reasons never made clear, things got out of hand in 1668. Various properties were smashed up in an apparent response to the perceived licentious behaviour of the newly restored Court, with Pepys referring to the chaos in his diary for 24 and 25 March. Nine offenders were subsequently sentenced to hang.
1780 – Gordon Riots
What started as a protest against the removal of certain anti-Catholic laws rapidly escalated as rabble-rousers attacked various foreign embassies and Roman chapels before moving on to public buildings such as Newgate Gaol and the Bank of England. Eventually, troops arrived to restore order, which they did by killing several hundred rioters, with more than two hundred wounded. More than twenty ringleaders were tried and executed but, incredibly, Lord George Gordon – the leader of the Protestant Association – was not among them.