CHOLERA

 

 

CHOLERA

I have been doing a lot of work on the Kent Water Company in Greenwich over the last couple of weeks leading up to a talk one evening.   When I was going through my records – and I know I’ve written a lot about The Kent Water Company in Weekender -  I could no article specially  about the two small outbreaks of cholera in our area. So I thought I would do that this week and hope that my records are accurate  and I haven’t done it before.

The first cases of cholera appeared in London in 1831 but it was not then recognised that it was caused by bacteria in the water supply.  There was however growing concern at the quality of water supplied by some companies –although our  Ravensbourne water from Brookmill was seen as particularly good.

From the early 19th century water companies began to install methods of cleaning river water by passing it through a sand filter.  This was first developed in London by the Chelsea Water Works in 1829.  Kent Company at Brookmill  constructed a filter bed and began to supply filtered water from 1844 – but they had to take out a mortgage on the works to be able to afford it. Later more filter beds and a settling reservoir were added and sited across Ravensbourne from the Brookmill works. The Company’s clean and sparkling water led to increased custom and eventual great prosperity.

There were more cholera epidemics in 1837 and the government appointed Edwin Chadwick to undertake an enquiry info sanitation.  He showed the link between poor living conditions and disease. Medical thinking of the day attributed infection to foul smelling air.

There was another cholera epidemic in 1848.  

In 1849 John Snow a London-based physician, published a paper ‘On the Mode of Communication of Cholera’, in which he suggested that cholera was not transmitted by bad air but by a waterbourne infection. Little attention was paid to him.

Many improvements were undertaken at Brookmill  in 1850 following an enabling Act of Parliament which allowed then to increase capital to spend on engines, reservoirs and filters. The two filter beds were supplemented by a settling reservoir- which was on the same side of the river as the mill. Further land was purchased at a great price.

In November 1850 the Kent Company agreed to pay the Metropolitan Commissioners of Sewers £5,000 to prevent them throwing the sewage of Sydenham into the small river Pool, a feeder of the Ravensbourne. They also paid the Board for a new sewer to remove all house drainage from the Ravensbourne

In 1851 a Government commission was set up composed of ‘three chemical gentlemen’ – Professor Thomas Graham FRS, W. A. Miller FRS, and Professor A. W. Hofmann FRS. Their report detailed the chemicals found in the River Thames water.  They also pointed out the problems of contamination in the Thames within the tideway and they said extraction from it should cease. They also complained about  the ‘hardness’ which they found objectionable. Kent Company’s engineer, William Morris, said he was ‘well acquainted with their report’, Professor Graham had analysed the Kent Company water and reported it as ‘always delivered bright and clear.

In 1853 there was another cholera epidemic. 

There is the famous story of how John Snow removed the handle of the Broad Street pump thus isolating and removing a major cause of cholera and proving that the infection was water bourne. There is even a Wetherspoon’s pub named after him. What had happened was that in August 1854 cholera broke out in part of Soho.  Within three days 127 people on or near Broad Street died. Many people fled the area but within a week more than 500 people were dead. Snow talked to locals and found they had all used the public water pump on Broad Street and he persuaded the local parish authorities to remove the handle of the pump and as infections subsided he had proved his point that cholera was water bourne from a specific source..

CHOLERA IN DEPTFORD

At  around the same time John Snow did a study in Deptford where the water supply was from the Ravensbourne and supplied by the Kent Company.. Around 90 people had died within a few days - but the river water was known to be clean, and there had been no previous outbreaks of cholera here.

Snow said “I went to Deptford, to make inquiries respecting a most fatal outbreak of cholera .... being confined to two streets’.  His investigations showed that this outbreak was caused by an accidental contamination of the drinking water, which had happened ‘in an unusual manner’.  

 People in the two streets where about ninety deaths from cholera occurred in a few days, used water supplied by the Kent Water-works.  Residents had told Snow that over the past few weeks the water generally smelt highly offensive.  They had therefore thrown away a few pailfulls and only used what was pumped later - which was pretty clear. Snow concluded  that some leakage had taken place into the pipes - there were no sewers in these streets, and the refuse of all kinds saturates the ground in which the water pipes were laid.

This problem was dealt with but soon there was  a terrible problem in Charlton

Lower Charlton seems the most unlikely place to have a water works.but in  1857 a deep well was sunk at North Charlton alongside the Woolwich Road by another new water company –Charlton Pure Water  Co. - - who. built a pumping station and installed a ‘Cornish Engine’ -  a steam engine from Harvey & Co. of Hayle in Cornwall.. It was soon‘pumping its daily supply of water from the chalk well on the margin of the marsh’. It was ‘built it appears by speculating builders on land entirely unfit’. .. ‘on the marsh and the water soaking from the tidal ditch is seen through the floors .. market gardens covered with the foulest manure ..... deep wide cesspools’. There are vivid descriptions of houses where the water supply had been cut off.  Soon problems with the new company led it being taken over by the Kent Water  Co

In 1866 cholera struck.“A middle aged man from one of the cottages ... his wife is ill and a young lodger has just died of cholera ...............a West street six or seven deaths ......... a man and woman are quarrelling ......... a dead child has just been carried from the house’..a ‘few doors on is a decent woman in a clean house whose son, a young gardener, was attacked by cholera in the morning at six o clock and died before noon -  his two boys were running about and the mother was from home’.

In West Street and Harden's Manorway  ‘men were ill in great numbers, and several died within a few days. Men were sick at home’ and sudden deaths by cholera caused “inconceivable consternation among the women”.

Nearly every house in this district used water from the Charton Works. This came from a stand pipe which functioned for a short time every day; and people collect the water in ‘vessels of various kinds, dirty or clean’. There was no water supply to outdoor toilets and in many cases the water had been cut off ‘because the landlords or the tenants have at some time or other neglected pay the rate’.

It was said that this would not do because Woolwich ‘is one of the principal military stations of England. There is large force of artillery, amounting to more than 5,006 men. The dockyard employs many men; the great arsenal of the empire full of artisans in Government employ.’ Thus ‘the health of the place in time of war is of vital importance.’

So  the almost new pumping station  was taken out of use because the well was ‘becoming   contaminated with river water’ 

The waterworks pump house was not demolished until the 1950s. Photographs show a tall ‘Gothic ‘ building looking very much like a waterworks, with a tall chimney. It was leased to a builder’s merchant’s and subsequently to other industries. By the 1950s when it was demolished it had been  in use by the Grafton Engineering Co.

 

This terrible episode seems to have been the only time the Kent Company  were closely identified with an outbreak of cholera   perhaps in the same way that they couldn’t really be blamed for the Deptford outbreak, it wasn’t entirely down to them.  Kent Company water became a standard of purity for all London and cholera would not be an issue in their area.  What a pity that it happened at all;

 

TWO FRIES

 

Well, I thought this week I would do another two or three ‘smaller’ works from Ted Barr’s list of engineering works in Greenwich. Ted’s list will take me some time to get through and I’m adding a lot of similar works ‘smaller’ works onto it all the time. So it might become a big thing! So, the next thing we have on Ted’s list is ‘Fry’and his entry for them reads:

“Fry's (London) Ltd. Catherine Grove. Tool Makers and consumables – eg they made hacksaw blades, drills etc., I have a copy of their catalogue from about 1930. There was also Fry Bros Ltd., Norman Road, Greenwich, S.E. Body Builders, Motor Engineers, and General Engineering.  They made private bodies, bus bodies, trailers and Char-a-bancs.  They were probably part of the Fry's in Catherine Grove but I have not checked this out.  The advert I have is c.1934.”

Now, I already knew about Fry’s of Norman Road.  I’ve written about them before in my book on Deptford Creek but I didn’t know what the other Fry factory was and if I had one Fry business of two. I was silly enough to ask ai to help find what works there were called ‘Fry’ in Greenwich. I then spent as an entire afternoon chasing after a fantasy foundry which ai claimed existed.   No one seems to have taught the wretched system that you can only say that something existed if you’ve got actual proper proof of it.  The sort of thing that I was taught in my earliest days of historical research in my 1950s A level - and I guess that’s still taught today.  Why do they design an electronic  system which just makes things up? And if it builds up its own stories, refers to them and builds more, then we have a whole different truth about the past.

Having said all that, establishing the Catherine Grove Frys has not been easy. Press stories about the firm and its works are very few and give several addresses in inner south London. The industrial history web site, Grace’s Guide, gives a list of references to the company in various trade and specialist magazines with just enough mentions of Greenwich to persuade me that this firm did exist and had a works here.

Looking at Catherine Grove itself we find what appears to be a factory converted into flats. It’s large and impressive and if that is Fry’s building then they clearly were not a small firm by any means. It appears it was known as ‘The Enox Works’; described as ‘a manufacturer, importer, and dealer in tools and machinery’. I am unable to discover what ‘Enox’ stands for except as a brand name. They also had ‘Wo Tan’ as another trade name. They seem to have made a wide variety of tools. In the 1920s they had developed a new type of hack saw blade specially produced for cutting tramway and railway metal and also a new tool for cutting large round holes in metal plates. This was followed by a new type of belt fastener.As late as 1968 they developed an electron beam welding device, ‘ahead of international competitors’.

Ted says that he has a copy of their catalogue and their 1937 edtion has ‘several power hacksaws, a bench drill, bench grinders, and table saws, as well as a variety of hand tools and a few imported machines.’  I note on EBay one from 1964 for sale. The seller has put copies of several sample pages on his description and I note that it runs to 245 close packed pages’ That’s an awful lot of products ! 

The company seems to have been started in 1916 by Arnold P. Schove and his wife, originally a Miss Justin – both names given as shareholders.  They were based in West Wickham and had strong Masonic links in that area. The firm was based in Upper Thames Street in the City which seems to have been their head office, with other premises at King Street, E1 and also in Southwark Street, south of the  River. As well as the works in Greenwich there was another works in Lewisham. They eventually concentrated manufacture at a site in Faraday Road, Crawley, selling out to a Birmingham firm in 1970.

The other ‘Fry’company in Greenwich was ‘Fry Brothers of Norman Road and Deptford Creek. Ted who I quoted above said that they were probably part of the Fry's in Catherine Grove. But I am quite sure that they are two completely separate companies.  They have completely different company names - Catherine Grove  Fry is’Fry (London) Ltd and the company in Norman Road was Fry Brothers. I wrote about Fry Brothers when I was writing up the various works on Deptford Creek and repeated what I had said in the book I wrote about Deptford Creek. I did consider just copying what I wrote then again now - But then I had some additional information. So, what you get here is similar but it’s a bit more detailed.

Lion Wharf, 48-52 Norman Road was  on Deptford Creek slightly downstream of the railway bridge. Fry Brothers – George and Edmund Fry had a hire and haulage business.

They  operated  from there a considerable fleet of spritsail sailing barges – including, for example: Winnipeg, Assiniboine, Minnedosa. Our Girls – all apparently built for them at Battersea and owned by Edmund Fry with a home address in the relatively unpretentious Langdale Road, off Greenwich High Road.

In 1913 Fry’s also dealt in heavy road vehicles saying “their works are adequately equipped to carry out all kinds of wheel repairs, tyre renewing, pressing-up, etc., to any make of motor wagon. …. should the repairs be of a protracted nature, Messrs. Fry. Bros. will … substitute a complete back-axle set … at a nominal charge”. 

Something of the nature of the vehicles they dealt with was revealed by a summons for the breach of bye-laws at West Ham. They had passed through West Ham without a licence to do so in their locomotive engine. They explained it had been hired by the local authority in Woodford and it was its way to its next hirer which was the local authority in Enfield. They were fined and should have had a London County Council temporary licence. I assume this vehicle was some sort of heavy road roller.

There are reports of their supply of granite to Deptford Borough Council…… then ’another 500 tons of granite for Grove Park Workhouse’… of a refusal of their tender for construction of Bramshot Avenue in Charlton... of building a siding at Brimsdown station ... Kentish brown pit flints for Sunbury on Thames Council and so on and so on and many, any more. They also used horses – advertising ‘wanted a smart youth who was an early riser’ to drive a horse and trap. And they frequently advertised horses for sale, or ‘wanted’.

In the 1930s Fry’s appear to have developed and made the EffBee water softener ‘Effbee’ as trade name  being a play on ‘F’ry ‘B’ros.

Clearly a great many of these softeners were sold but ‘to the trade only’ means that most advertisements for the softener are from local shops and agencies rather than from Fry’s themselves. It was advertised as being ‘made in Kent’ - which I suppose includes Greenwich. It claimed to : prevent limescale from furring up expensive hot water boilers and pipes while creating a rich lather with minimal soap for a "luxurious bath" and protecting sensitive skin from hard London water.

It is described as “a tall, cylindrical metal pressure vessel. It utilized natural green-sand or zeolites to exchange calcium ions for sodium ions. Homeowners had to manually "regenerate" the system periodically by pouring block or coarse salt into the top of the canister’.

Developing a water softener seems to be a long way from the sort of heavy haulage that Fry’s had previously been involved in. However Fry Bros heavy haulage repairs business  meant that they had the foundries and machine tools necessary to cast and construct these units. They had  casting floors where molten metal could be poured to create the external casings. A dedicated coppersmithing bay was used for rolling the internal multi-tubular piping and soldering water-tight joints.They had a Machine and Fitting Shop: with the lathes, drills, and thread-cutters needed to machine the complex, multi-way brass bypass valves for which that Fry Bros held the patent.,

The softeners were finished with vitreous enamel. There is no indication of a relationship with the gas industry  owned National Eanamels factory on the next door site.

Many of the webs sites I’ve looked at in relation to these water softeners go on about how South East London has very hard water so residents were crying out for it to be soft . I don’t see this myself – nothing wrong with hard water! I absolutely hate soft water - nasty slippery stuff.

 

 

Small firms Kingsnorth and Francis Tin boxes

 

Over the past couple of months I’ve published stuff about some small firms in Greenwich based on a long list which was sent to Greenwich Industrial History Newsletter in the early 2000 by a very nice man called Ted Barr. They are all firms which he said he knew personally and I’ve been doing the best I can to find something out about each of them - with rather mixed results.

The first one this week is E.Kingsnorth and Sons, Motor Engineers, Blackheath Hill.  Ted said they did tool making and precision works ‘for Elliots’ – who I will come to next. I have just spent the morning looking Kingsnorth up and got various bits of information.  However the one thing I have found out is they have a very active local family history interest - and there is actually an Australian website about the family. Now rather than me write up what I’ve found and get it all wrong can I ask if one of the family history people gets in touch and perhaps I could do something really accurate with your guidance. The best way to contact me is by the  Greenwich Industrial History Facebook page and if you leave a direct message I’ll pick it up. Please don’t try to telephone me whatever you do.

Whether or not I hear from anyone I will write this company up in a future article.

The next one on Ted’s list is the ‘Elliott Machine Co’. He says they were on Blackheath Hill ‘in the old railway station’ – which was, of course, Blackheath Hill Station. But I can find no trace of them at all  - except there is a big American company in Baltimore with that name. In particular they are not listedIn articles and websites about the old Blackheath Hill station – one of which  is Sub Brit’s Nick Catford who goes into  enormous trouble to list down who was there using the site.   He does however mention, as others do, that  there was a ’Heliot’ Company on that site. So I think  someone  is busy dropping their Hs! I’ll write up Heliots in some week’s  time when I get to the Hs.

And so to F.Francis and Son.  I really have a very unusual  bunch  of firms this week – and I do pick them at random! This is Francis Tin Boxes of Blackheath Road. They were on the old Penn’s  site on Blackheath Road - it’s now the trading estate which has got Wickes on it. Before that the company had started at a site in Trundleys Road in Deptford. The site is now occupied by Franklin Close roughly where the print shops stood, Franklin Place the site of the drum lines and Crosslet Vale which covers the round and rectangular tin lines and the tinplate stores before emerging on to Blackheath Road through the personnel office which was a portacabin to the east of the main office block. The entrance was at the corner of John Penn Street and Coldbath Street and the exit was between the main office block and the personnel office. In its time the company was highly successful opening an additional plant at Wrexham to service the Liverpool based oil companies and acquiring Shemtec Packaging of Leeds and Drummond Packaging of Greenock.

When I was doing the Greenwich Industrial History newsletter in the early 2000s I was sent a huge newspaper article about Francis.It was by Colin Smith who had worked for the Kentish Mercury for many years. He was very proud of their work in producing articles on local industries. In particular he had masterminded a special supplement in 1969 to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the founding of Francis Tin Box manufacturers of Greenwich and this is what he had  sent.  Sadly the issues of the Kentish Mercury on the British Library database do not cover 1969, so I can’t check it. However here are some extracts:-

SMITH WITH AN EYE FOR 2069  Surrounded by bits of wire, transistors, circuit diagrams and photoelectric paraphernalia, a young man called John Smith works in a small office perched high up in the five-gallon drum department. On the fast-moving automatic one-gallon rectangular manufacturing line, a can passes a beam of light and a blob of hot solder spits out to land precisely at the base of the neck, which is to be fitted. In the same split second, flux arrives precisely on the other side of the neck. The device which ensures that the solder and the flux arrive at the right moment thousands of times a day is a simple example of what can be done by the application of electronics in the tin box trade.

The talk is of photoelectric cells, capacitance probes, proximity switches and micro cells. John would rather we didn't talk of magic boxes and magic eyes, because this suggests that there might be something mystical and impractical about the whole business.

 

The Francis war effort wasn't confined to making camp kettles and meat tins in 1939-45. They made bombs and torpedoes too. Workers at Trundleys Road used to make large square tins destined to be filled with an incendiary mixture. In the Second World War: "We used to make 65lb. bomb cases and aerial torpedoes weighing 250lb. They stood as tall as I was. We made cases for depth charges as well.

 

A young woman working for F. Francis and Sons used to call in at Mence Smith's on her way to work to buy a threepenny bamboo cane. the cane would be cut into six-inch lengths and handed around to the girls on the benches around her. an essential bit of equipment for any solderer  when everything was done by hand. Today it is done automatically.

 

Five gallon drums - a familiar sight where ever oil is to be found - are turned out by the thousand every day at the Francis factory. Chimeless - they're the ones with a domed top and inset handle - and standard ones with a flat top, are made for a wide variety of customers.  These drums are made to the precise specifications of many different customers. Some have larger openings than others, handles are different, and the type of tinplate used may vary from one customer to another.  One of the most modern and efficient machines in the factory is the Soudronic body welder used in the manufacture of five-gallon drums. This can produce bodies at the rate of 20-22 a minute, compared with about half that number by the old hand-welding methods. After leaving the body welder the drums travel by conveyor belt to be flanged, socketed and double seamed.

.

We reproduced some of the article and some of the pictures in the GIHS Newsletter. We were soon sent emsails with  memories of the factory - .so many it was unprecedented. Over the years we’ve written up  loads and loads of different works on GIHS publications and industrial history websites and so on and, usually no response at all from anyone that worked there. Occasionally you’ll get someone to say something like ‘remember old friends’  but Francis was unprecedented in the amount of stuff that came in.

I see that there is a F.Francis & Sons Facebook page so perhaps I could introduce the firm through that. It says =” F Francis and Sons Limited was a tin box manufacturing company founded in 1869. Originally operating from 140 Trundleys Road, Deptford it was latterly based at Thames Ironworks, 50-62 Blackheath Road, Greenwich, England until closure in 1987. All traces of the company have been obliterated from the site.”

 

They say about work there  “The company was a hive of industry turning out vast quantities of tinplate containers made almost entirely from components made on site.

 Tinplate sheets were received in mostly from the Park Royal railhead then printed to the customers' designs in the print shop where as well as the single colour machines there was at least one 'tandem' printer which printed two colours each pass, the sheets being oven dried before being stacked at the end of the line for transfer to the printed stock store. 

The print shop was the place to be in winter but very hot in summer.

There would be a number of can bodies printed on each sheet depending on the size of the container to be produced and these sheets would be slit prior to manufacture. Customers would call off their designs by the thousand with the large oil companies placing orders for say 100,000 5 litre rectangular cans with approximately 10,000 per vehicle.

As well as the 5 litre oil cans they made 2.5 litre, 1 litre and 500 ml rectangulars as well as all the same sizes in round paint cas which were offered internally lacquered (to stop rusting where water based paints were being packed) as well as in plain tinplate for oil based products. Additionally they produced 20 and 25 litre tinplate drums as well as 205 litre steel drums.

 

I’ve also been through some of the people who contacted us and I’ve  picked out what some of them say about the background of the firm and what it was like working there.

--- material that I delivered to the old Plumstead Local History Museum on closure in 1988 survives, including a large portrait of the founder Frederick Francis that hung in the boardroom

--- F Francis & Sons did not buy the site until 1916. At the time of the First World War they were still in Deptford. From there they made thousands if not millions of camp kettles, mess tins, pails and meat tins

 

--- I remember tea breaks where we had the old sugary condensed milk in tins which was stirred into the tea in the tea pot. & when we went to wash our hands & go to the toilet it was in an outhouse with no hot water - it used to freeze solid ice in the winter.

 

--- also the smell of the printing fluid - cellulose I think it was -  & you could smell it hundreds of yard up the road & yet the workers were smoking almost on top of it, dear, dear - where was health & safety then? what a story A.?

--- I think it was Brenda in quality control who is holding one of the cans in the advert.

--- Good days still remember the smell

 

---F Francis & Sons Ltd, Blackheath Road, Greenwich were awarded £1,000pa for the part military occupation of their factory by the Defence of the Realm Act Claims Commission at their meeting on 6 February 1916

 

 --- the Deptford works was transferred to John Penn Street after the closure of the Crown Cork Co in John Penn Street.Also they had a 45 gall drum production line in Kieghley Yorkshire. I believe they owned Kieghley lifts. Towards the end of my apprenticeship went to Kieghley to aid the installation of that line

 

My mother  had a tin box with F Francis & Sons 1940 embossed on the hinges lid. She told me that it contained chocolates. she received it when she was 14 in Malta during WWII. It might make me a future article

 

There is whole aspect The tin box industry which I haven’t got space to go into now. But there are a lot of people out there who collect tin boxes of particular designs and so on. Well it might do for a

 future article almost

 

Thoughts of Chairman Jack

 

 

THE THOUGHTS OF CHAIRMAN JACK

We set up Greenwich Industrial History Society in 1998.  I booked a room; got someone from GLIAS to come and do a talk;  and then issued a general invitation to anyone who was interested in `setting up an industrial history group to turn up - which a number of people did.  Perhaps about 20 people came, among them and most memorably was a little old man. He walked in and announced  that he was going to be Chair and that appeared to be that.

I had never met Jack Vaughan although I  had heard of some ancient curmurgeon from somewhere in Woolwich  who was good at upsetting council officers. Jack did  indeed live up to his reputation and in the first few months of his chairmanship we had some narrow escapes from some real difficulties caused by Jack’s forthright and determined manner.  He had his nose in everything he could find to have his nose in. He had worked at the Arsenal and there is an article by him on file about his apprenticeship which I will fish out sometime. He was enormously proud of the work he had done there  but he was also quite determined about  a number of other issues in Woolwich and to have his say on them..

Jack was quick thinking, well read and well informed, funny, full of ideas, a leftie, enthusiastic about many, many things – and immersed in many, many groups and activities.  I am very aware that industrial history was not the only cause he gave his heart too.   He always refused to take me to his favourite pub on the grounds that the pubs he frequented were not at all suitable for ladies.  Hmmmm!

We put out the first GIHS newsletter in April 1998 and there is a report on our first meeting. We set up a working party to sort out what was going to happen -it consisted of myself, Jack and Barbara Ludlow who was the Senior Assistant at Woodlands Local History Library. We agreed to cover everything relevant to the industrial history of Greenwich in particular those areas most under development pressure.  Which led to lots of arguments because Jack didn’t agree with anything the Council was doing .  He agreed to give a talk at the next meeting about Woolwich Dockyard . We reported:

“ Jack Vaughn gave an interesting on Woolwich dockyard and the many famous ships built there. Launches from the Woolwich slips took place before vast crowds of onlookers as the ship went down into the river with acres of flags flying from the decks. Relics of many of these ships can now be found in museums and collections around the world. Jack pointed to the origins of the yard as far back as the reign of Henry the VII and went on to talk about remains which could now be found on site. The conservation of the steam factory was particularly noted as a triumph for the Woolwich Antiquarian Society. Thank you to Jack’s daughter for helping with the slides.”

I seem to remember going with Jack around the Woolwich dockyard site with -  I can’t remember where they were from = archaeologists of some sort who had studied the dockyard and wanted to see  it as it was now and see if they could track down the bits and pieces which had been there in the past and  had now gone. They were all very intense and had all these maps and things.  One of them explained that they were very perplexed by a long wall which went right along the river front and wasn’t on any map.  “Oh” says Jack  “try the Greater London Council 1974”.

I thought it might be an idea to publish gradually some of the things Jack wrote for GIHS. There’s not a lot because he died after just a couple of years – he was well in his 90s. I don’t want to start right away with the earliest things he wrote because some senior council officers  objected rather and insisted on a right of reply.  Looking at it after 25 years its all a bit sad – Jack and the officials fundamentally wanted the same things . We have forgotten that as recently as 1998 the Council had very  little knowledge of much of that vast Arsenal site. Those Greenwich Council officers were tasked with getting a regeneration plan together for a Government owned site where outside agencies and developers had their own ideas. This was for acres and acres and acres of land which might be in the Borough but which hardly any of them had ever seen and knew very little about. If, like Jack, you had worked there, you had at least seen it.  

I’ll have to work how to handle that. Anyway - just to get things going here’s a completely decorous piece by Jack

THE OLD SHEER NONSENSE By Jack Vaughan

 

On page 5 of the November newsletter a small item caught my eye under “Bygone Kent” Vol. 22.  An Ashford Lady recalls being raised next door to an old public house, which she refers to as ‘Ye Olde Sheer Hulk’.

 

I remember it (just about) and I looked it up in Volume 1 of Vincent’s’ "Records of the Woolwich District".  An excellent ‘Plan of West Woolwich in 1748 is on page 41.  It covers the streets and alleys adjacent to the Royal dockyard main gate in one of which the pub stood.  It appears on the map as ‘New Alley’ but at the time that Vincent was writing his two volumes this name had   been changed to "Martyrs Passage".

 

In recent years the area, has, needless to say, been destroyed.  I have a map of Woolwich Pubs drawn in 1950, which shows the pub but not the passage.  I would welcome knowledge of the survival of

Perhaps the name of the pub is of interest.  ‘Sheers’ (or Shears) were a special type of lifting structure used in dockyards for inserting or removing masts in wooden vessels.  The word 'hulk' is famously used to describe cut down obsolete battleships for accommodating convicts for deportation- the practice ended with the American War of Independence.  It is likely that some shears were carried in hulks to form a type of floating crane. 

 

I recall that the pub was said to have been built using timber from the Royal Dockyard, which closed in 1869.

I have found further information on the pub in a booklet on ‘Woolwich, Plumstead and Neighbourhood’ – the date is unknown by certainly no later than 1890. Some of this is reproduced below.

-

The " Old Sheer Hulk," another of the branch establishments, (of the Woolwich Distillery and the Old Shakespeare’s Head)  is a house with many associations, having been one of the institutions of Woolwich for many years. In the porch of the house attention is attracted by a painting of the " Old Ship," and the words of the song, "Tom Bowling," by Dibdin, appear below. Many of our readers may regret that the "Old Sheer Hulk" has been restored and improved under Mr. G. H. Campbell's proprietorship. It has, however, now been brought into line with modern requirements, and it is fitted up in the very latest and. most effective style. The house stands opposite to the Royal Dockyard gates, and has always been well patronised by the navy, this patronage still being extended to it, even in its rejuvenescent form. The hotel is singularly well conducted, being under the personal management of Mr. Walter Campbell, the brother of the proprietor. We should also mention that this is the head quarters of, the West Woolwich Cycle Club.

 

I thought I might reproduce over the next few months some of the bits and pieces which he contributed to the Greenwich Industrial History Newsletter but also some of the campaigns he was involved  and what he thought about it all. There isn’t that much of it - as I said he died after just a few years.

To sum up – Ray, one of his colleagues in Arsenal history – said ‘Jack? Well Jack’s Jack – isn’t he?’

Woolwich in 1780

 I have been thinking but I ought to write up all the research i’ve done over 40 years on the man who built the Greenwich railway – the first powered railway in London - George Landmann. He had been a senior and  early Royal Engineer with an extremely interesting local background. He was a civilian when he built the Greenwich railway and it was not his only innovative project

However there are huge gaps in my knowledge of his life and but I really don’t think I’m going to be able to fill some of them at all them at all - so perhaps I should just go ahead and write up the bits I do know about.  Its the 200^th anniversary of the Greenwich Railway in 2036-8 but I am now so very very ancient that I think I had better do it now!!

So, I must apologise if I sometimes try out ideas here of what could go into a book about George Landmann.  To start with he was born in Woolwich in 1780 on the Arsenal site.   I thought perhaps I should say and say something about what Woolwich was like in 1780.  It’s not that easy because we don’t have - or i’m not aware of - relevant maps which would fix what thev town was like at that time The best I can come up with is the 1746 Roque map which shows Woodwich town centre. I rather suspect that Woolwich was one of the most highly industrialised towns in England at that time though I don’t have comparative figures.

I used to always enjoy going to talks where the origins of some industry or other was discussed and the late Professor Ray Riley was there. At the mention of ‘industrial revolution’ he would get up and point  to the size and complexity of the Royal Dockyards two hundred years before the supposed revolution began apparently  around 1780. In 1714 a thousand families were said to ‘belong to the Dockyard’ in Woolwich -  - and where did they live Add where were the facilities Which they would have needed.

I think we can name the area as North Kent Riverside and  it is the area of hillside between the River and the Dover Road. There is marshland between a series of Riverside settlements;- Rotherhithe, Deptford; Greenwich; Woolwich, Erith and ultimately Gravesend. One feature is that on that hillside are numerous excavations and pits – everything from dene holes  to the 1960s cement factory complex at Swanscombe.  In Woolwich  there are several pits right in the town centre. One example is in the land between St Mary’s parish church and the dockyard where concerns about the church’s stability date from the 17th century.

These riparian towns all had a very typical riverside  - fishing,  boat building, barge repair,maybe a ferry. The only exception  is Greenwich where the Palace was on the Riverside while  In Woolwich the Royal Dockyard formed one end of the  riverfront.  In 1780 the national press was full of stories about the need for more ships and thus expanding  the Royal  Dockyards citing Woolwich as the ‘mother’ dockyard  and describing planned extensions there. These extensions, undertaken over the next decade, included the Clockhouse and the gateway, still in place.  The primary ship launched in 1780 at Woolwich was a frigate called ‘Minerva’ – and so built for speed and action rather than size.  However  I don't think there is any reference to Woolwich Dockyard in George Landmann’s  autobiography  which is extraordinary since he must have seen it  every day at a time when the Navy near it's peak of its world leading assurance and effectiveness

Another major works in central woolwich was the Gover reply nment rope yard =  something which I have never written up here although I probably ought to. The rope walk was set up in the mid Tudor period  in order to provide rope for the Navy - every warship used several miles of it, all of which needed to be renewed on a regular basis. It is a very interesting institution In that it was the government owned factory at such an early date. The rope yard was on the line of what is now Berisford Street with a path called Ropeyard Rails running parallel and to the north.

 These two  big important workplaces must have dominated the Riverside in Woolwich in 1780 but George Landmann mentions neither. He does talk a bit about another such workplace - the Arsenal along with and in particular the Military Academy.

To the east of the dockyard and the rope walk lay what became the Royal Arsenal and, rather to my surprise, I find it was not designated as such until the early 19th century but I was very aware that it grew as a number of organisations were brought together. It is also important that this happened under The Board of Ordnance, a body which had been set up by under The Tudors to look after the nation’s military establishments and oversee supplies of armaments. A couple of weeks ago I wrote briefly about the establishment and ideas behind the Royal Military Academy and before that we had a speaker at Greenwich Industrial History Society, Mark Thompson talking about the rise of the scientific soldier along with Royal Artillery and Royal Engineers in Woolwich.

So , in 1780 the Woolwich Riverside was dominated by big government institutions – all of them ‘security’.  The Royal Dockyard was to the west going roughly from the Charlton boundary to what is now the Ferry Approach. To the east is the area which in 1780 had yet to become the Royal Arsenal  - it runs east from the point where the riverside path crosses the Arsenal wall as today. These big industrial sites didn’t leave very much space for the town to exist, particularly when we add in the rope walk on the line of what is now Beresford Street -- Where was Woolwich in all of this? I decided I didn’t know and so I emailed Julian Watson because he knows everything. Julian said: “Good question. Rocque shows it best, squashed between the Dockyard and the Arsenal and overlooked by St Mary Magdalene Church. Crammed into narrow streets leading off Woolwich High Street and Market Hill. Hog Lane with its Medieval houses which was later Ferry Approach… A small but densely populated community of great antiquity with an Iron Age/Roman fort at its heart by a similarly ancient Thames crossing.

South of Woolwich town is Woolwich Common along with Charlton and Plumstead Commons.  There is a whole history to the fate of these Commons but basically Woolwich Common was taken over by the military and actually purchased by them in around 1800 plus a Parliamentary order. This move was not popular and there were many complaints about the behaviour of the military On the Common - something which has not really gone away, since many conservationists  in Woolwich complain  about neglect by the military who still own it

North of the Common and to the west of the town were larger estates owned by the Bowater family. A great deal of that area is now housing. On a site purchased from them is huge range of Royal Artillery barracks built in the mid 18^th century by the Board of Ordnance and currently for Sale. There is also a considerable of amount of  open land around the barracks.  Further to the West is Repository Wood which again was purchased from the Bowater family.

The area of common and military open space has created a big green area to the south of Woolwich town. There are also several features of some interest - probably a great deal of it  in Repository Wood. One feature which should be noted Is the ha which goes along Ha Ha Road

There are of course numerous other military buildings in Woolwich and far more than that have been demolished over the years

John Day last days at the Arsenal

 

And so – I have reached the last couple of episodes of John Day’s memoirs which I’ve been following on and off for the past year. John Day was a premium apprentice in The Royal Arsenal in the 1930s; and  I’ve been using extracts from a lot of autobiographical material which he gave to Greenwich Industrial History Society Newsletter in the early 2000s. In them he describes how he was continually moved from Department to Department in the Arsenal with perhaps only a few months at each place at one time. So I’m afraid this last episode is going to be a bit fragmentary in that John is clearly just jotting down a few last points and ends up with when he eventually left the Arsenal.

 

In the last section of my previous episode- he was at ‘The Tinman’s Shop’ – another department near the Plumstead Gate.  He explained that the Tinman’s Shop was, among other things, responsible for making ammunition boxes used to keep detonators and fuses dry in humid atmospheres. These were often nearly two feet long and, he says ‘it was an education to watch a seam – which ran the length of the tin – being made neatly with one stroke of a soldering iron’. The irons used for this were made of heavy copper with a blunt end; while, he says, ’thin irons like the ones used for D.I.Y were known as ‘winkle pickers’.’

 

Everywhere he went in the Arsenal there were always people doing ‘private’ work and this included John himself.  ‘During my stay I made a “Brooklands” silencer, presumably for his motor bike, from sheet steel and had it dipped in tin on the night shift for a packet of cigarettes.’ He explained how the silencer was developed because neighbours of Locke King, who built the Brooklands motor racing circuit on his land, complained about the noise.I found a blog site which explains the background to the 1924 legal action against noise from the circuit and about the silencer

https://simanaitissays.com/2014/05/24/brooklands-and-its-silencers/

 

John continued with a  story about guns “One morning when I came in, there was a terrific row going on in the foreman’s office. This was because the barrel of a 3.7 inch gun was about 14 feet long and during production had about an extra foot less on manufacture. This was done on the night –shift and on this occasion the two feet had been sawn off the same end. The foreman said, amongst other things ‘What are we going to do with that gun now?’ to which the reply was ‘You can always put it a foot nearer the enemy’.”

Another month or two, between polytechnic term times, was spent in the Shell Tool Room doing odd jobs that included the design and manufacture of a lathe slide rest. John explained that all the tool rooms had a blacksmith to do odd bits of forging and lathe tool making. The one in this shop had been apprenticed to an ornamental smith and “ one day he showed me a rose that he forged as his test-piece. It was beautiful, even down to the veining in the petals and leaves.”

One Christmas was spent in the Forges with another apprentice, who’s name John had forgotten. There was a hearth next to the south wall and near the door. The first thing each morning they lit the fire with paper and wood and put some coal on top to roast into coke which produced a clean fire. Then, it being winter, the tools were warmed since a sudden blow on cold thin steel could find it shattered. He said “There is something fascinating about forming red hot steel which has the consistency of cold lead”. The two main occupations were forging pairs of tongs and making templates. When there was a complicated forging to be done, it needed a template of thin plate to check the shape against and an apprentice was the stooge to make it ....”but someone clever could avoid this.”

 

He describes how they made themselves a toaster comprising a 4” square slab of steel about ½ “ thick with a long handle. “This, heated to red heat in the forge, was the best and most even toaster I have come across for cooking toasted cheese” and “at Christmas we decorated the forge and extended our menu to include kippers cooked the same way.”  And he adds “it may be the only cookery that many men ever undertake - but it’s about adapting their tools to do the work of the chef.”

Also “in-front of our forge was a small steam hammer worked by a rather dour individual. We soon discovered that it was not as easy as it looked to take down a square section, keeping it square. With the slightest provocation, it would go into a diamond shape and it needed strong wrists to hold the diamond edge on to get the metal back to square. High speed steel, worked at less than near white heat would split like bamboo.”

Back to Christmas “as usual short of cash, we collected a number of old files and forged them into scrapers and screwdrivers for some of the awkward jobs we knew existed in the fitting and assembly shops. We went round these shops selling them and taking orders for other special tools.”

One day I went to the heavy forge and sat up on the crane gantry watching the forging of a part of a big gun barrel. To see a lump of red hot steel, some four feet square and ten feet long, being squeezed to shape under a huge hydraulic press is something never to forget.”

“Just behind our forge was a 1000 ton hammer made by James Nasmyth; it was dusty and neglected even then - what a lot of our treasures have been lost”. Yes, What did happen  to many interesting devices remaining in the Arsenal when it closed? It was always my understanding that everything was junked.

The last shop John worked in as an apprentice was Miscellaneous Machines situated at the Warren Lane end of the site.  John, writing in 2001 said it was sited ‘near where the new Museum of Artillery will be’. He wasn’t to know that the ill fated Firepower Museum lasted just a couple of years and I think the building he mentions is one of the ones used by the entertainment group, Woolwich Works.

At Miscellaneous Machines John worked on what he thought must have been a rejected export to Russia just after the Great War.  All the wording on it was in Cyrillic and, what was worse, all the feed handles worked the “wrong” way - because for a fixed handle to move a slide away by clockwise turning, the thread has to be left handed.

John also made bits for a printing press which the foreman was building for himself -all the apprentices well knew that if they got a drawing on an odd sheet of paper, it was a 'foreman’s foreigner'.

He said there was a first year apprentice in that shop who asked about a difficult screw cutting job. “I lent him, grudgingly, my special screw cutting tool with instructions not to let it get blunt. When he came back it showed signs of heavy use, so I told him to take it to the shop blow pipe and harden it, but not to get it too hot. He came back, very hang dog, with a shapeless blob of metal to the delight of the rest of the shop who knew that the tool was made of lead !”.

 

There were traditional joke messages that the younger apprentices would be sent on - caught by the old favourites of “a long weight” or “a right hand cuff”, but Woolwich had a special trick that was foolproof. “Going to the stores to borrow a tool, one would be told that 'Bill Starbuck' had it, but was 'not using it at the moment'  Enquiries about Bill’s whereabouts landed one in a far corner of the shop asking again, only to be told he was working in another building and to go there. The other building either denied knowledge or moved one on another wild goose chase!”

It all had to come to eventually. John became 21 and could no longer be an apprentice, so when the term at the Poly finished, he went back as a journeyman fitter for a few months.  He was engaged in fitting drum brakes to Great War equipment which was being resuscitated:. When he left he was not allowed to take with him  ‘a very nice set of single ended spanners up to 1 inch, which had arrived with a new electric motor and had never been entered in the books, so I reckoned they did not belong to Woolwich!. There was quite an argument.”

John left the Arsenal  and I understand most of his career was in the Patent Office.  He wrote all of this in retirement and I never actually met him although I know he did a lot of            work in the Royal Artillery library.

more small firms

 

A few weeks ago I started series of articles which I hope will look at lots of the little small firms which we’ve had in Greenwich and Woolwich. Most of them are too small and their history too uneventful to do a whole article on them.  I explained that when we started Greenwich Industrial History Society an old chap called Ted Barr used to send me the names of what he said were small engineering firms in the borough. I thought perhaps it was about time that I started investigating some of these and last week I took a  number from  Ted’s list and  It turned out that some of them were not as small as all that.

Right.  Next on Ted’s list, and first for this  week is  ‘Cook, Troughton and Simms’. Well, that was hardly a small firm - after all they named a road after one of its main partners. It’s a firm I’ve thought about writing up before - and I would have done so except that the rather expensive book on the firm’s background was sent to me by Royal Mail  -  which is fatal – unable to deliver it.  So I never wrote them up  – but I understand another local historian has considered doing it. Happily John Smith’s History of Charlton devotes four pages to them – this will be a very, very brief summary.

Troughton and Simms were optical instrument makers ‘of world wide repute’. In 1864 they  bought two acres of land on the south side of Woolwich Road west of Charlton Church Lane and erected workshops and transferred their optical equipment manufacture here from Fleet Street.

The origins of the company go back almost 200 years before they  moved here which can be somewhat confusing .  Very very briefly in 1688 there was an instrument maker in Fleet Street  who in 1704 was taken over by mathematical instrument maker who, in  1720, was taken over by the Royal clock maker and made orreries.  In1748 they were  taken over by a  maker of scientific and measuring instruments. - In 1782 they were taken over by a John and Edward Troughton.

Edward Troughton specialised in astronomical instruments. His company merged with that of William  Simms who made instruments for the East India Company. They also merged with Cooke who made telescopes and much else. Eventually in 1864 it was decided to set up a factory in Charlton and astronomical instruments were made for observatories all over the world here. In the 1920s the firm began to do less well and was taken over by Vickers. In 1925 their buildings were sold to Johnson and Phillips.

It is important clearly that we can hear a lot more about Troughton - if for nothing else for work they did for the Royal Observatory. I think Greenwich Industrial History Society would be very interested in anybody who has been studying the company who might be prepared to come and talk to us about them.

And  we should have told Ted, when he was doing his list of small firms,  that a small firm is not one that for 400 years was selling specialist instrumentation  internationally

Next      Ted listed Custance and Thomson, Meadow Court Road, Lee. He said they were long established and ‘all through World War II, they were on repetition machine parts’.  In 2006 they are listed at  Unit 49, New Lydenburg Commercial Estate, SE7 and closed down in 2010. 

 

In Meadow Court Road their building was just round the corner from Lee Road, next to the car repair business and it appears they left in the early 2000s. Their buildings are still shown in even the latest Google Street View although in other use but they received planning consent for demolition a couple of years ago. It is a relatively small set of buildings .

They are described as a ‘precision engineering company but it is unclear exactly what they were doing None of the reports give any details and there don’t seem to be any advertisements,  beyond a few advertising for staff. They seem to have been running for what appears to be 70 or 80 years. ‘Custance’ is apparently a fairly well known name in the Blackheath village area where there have been several distinguished family members. 

J.M.Dangerfield. In his list of small firms Ted gave no details at all about Dangerfield, other than saying they were plant engineers based in Trafalgar Road.  

John Manners Dangerfield was born in 1855 in West Bromwich where his father was manager of a chain works. He seems to have come to Greenwich at some point in the late 19^th century having lived in Reading where he worked as a carpenter and married. In Greenwich he worked at – or maybe set up - the Magdala Works at 514 Woolwich Road in Charlton -roughly opposite where the Troughton Works was. From 1900 he was involved in a number of local charities and various good works organisations – including, for example, a Wesleyan School and much else. Later this included more political bodies like the Woolwich Chamber of Trade. In 1911 was the wedding of his eldest son, Arthur.

There is remarkably little information about the work at the Magdala Works and their advertisements imply that they dealt almost entirely with transport issues and they clearly employed a fair number of men. In the 1920s they advertised ‘All kinds Motor repair work’ and continued to do this for the next 50 or so years. They advertise the use of Acetylene for welding and cutting. They mention a number of garaging facilities including space for large commercial vehicles. For hire were a ‘2 ton lorry, a delivery van and a touring car.‘

John died in 1942 at the age of 87 when he was living in Glenluce Road in Blackheath. He said that he had been retired for some time and I’m assuming that one of his sons had taken over the works. It continued to always be referred to as J.M.Dangerfield.  I do not know when they closed.

DeVille Brothers.  Ted said they were ‘”Sited on the corner of Royal Hill and Gloucester Circus and run by retired Royal Navy 'Tiffies'. They had a well-equipped workshop, and traded as general and motor engineers. During the Second World War  they made parts for PLUTO - valves and control gears.” 

I am told that ‘tiffies’ is slang for Navy ‘artificers’ - but apart from that it’s been very difficult to find anything much out about this works at all. The address on Royal Hill appears in some newspaper reports.

There are other newspaper reports about a William Lawrence Deville but nothing about any brothers. The main reason for the report  was the theft of Mr Deville’s car from the garage at 51 Royal Hill. The car is said to be worth £1000 which - where I come from - in 1946 was very, very  posh, so whatever the Devilles were doing must have been very profitable

E.Dello.  Ted said ”General engineer working from Sun Lane Garage. They had traded from other addresses and did general repetition work – “in the Second World War it was of a munitions nature”. I had not found the smallest reference to a workshop at Sun Lane or indeed any reference at all to anybody called Dello. I have assumed that Dello is a mistake for something else -but I think it’s a very long shot that it could really be somebody by the name of ‘Dale’. Anyway I found the following story in a Kentish Independent newspaper from 1965-  and I thought even if it isn’t Mr Dello that you might find it interesting.

“AT the top of Sun Lane, Old Dover Road, Blackheath, there stands one of the district’s oldest workshops with many interesting links with the days of hansom cabs, a cycling community ... It provides the working environment for 63-year-old Mr. Edward William Dale, a craftsman-machanic of the old school whose skill at the bench and machine has gained for him a big local reputation as a cycle and motorcar repairer”.

The article explains that Mr. Dale lives in Royal Parade, Blackheath, and has been employed in the shop in Sun Lane practically since his boyhood, working with his son, Michael Raymond, on motor-car and motor-cycle repairs. Surrounded by racks of tools and ‘spare parts, benches and machines, the KI reporter thought “there was an old-world look about the building with its ancient timbers, a lathe and drilling machine which showed evidence of constant use, rather indifferent lighting.” He said that ‘these days’ in 1965 – ‘It is mostly cars and motorcycles.’

Mr. Dale said he bought the business in 1937 from the late Mr. A, F Romboy, for whom he worked as a lad. “Years ago we made our own cycles in the shop and we had many well-known Blackheath residents as customers. There were some good cyclists in the district in those davs.”