London calling.
London Walks connecting.
This… is London.
This is London Walks.
Streets ahead.
Story time. History time.
—————————————
One London life. Or if you prefer, life in London. My life in London. I start my day by re-reading a few pages of Geoffrey Wheatcroft’s wonderful book, Churchill’s Shadow.
He gets to Bomber Harris he says, “he was formidable, coarse and brutal.” My response: I must go to St Clement Danes, the RAF church at the eastern end of the Strand, and take a closer look at the statue of Arthur Harris out in front of the church. Photograph.
So I’m up in my eyrie, my study. I phone Mary. Here’s a snatch of the conversation. More London life.
Me: “Where are you?”
Mary: “On the bus to Kilburn Park Station.”
Me: “Oh”
Mary: “The foxes have dug a big hole in the back garden. They’ve made a huge mess.”
Me: “Oh why have they done that?”
Mary: “I think they’ve got cubs.”
Anyway, Good morning London Walkers. One and all. Wherever you are. It’s May 31st, 2025.
And because it’s May 31st, here’s another London life. Well four London lives.
I’ve got a little reference book that, among other things, sets out for me an On This Day List.
As it happens, there’s a 1915 listing for May 31st. It’s just nine words. Those nine words are: World War I – London suffered its first air-raid.
Well, I was off, wasn’t I. Wanted to know more. Where in London? Who? How bad was it?
So the first thing I did was look at the newspapers for the next few days. Figured they can’t ignore that, no matter what the restrictions on war-time reporting were.
And sure enough, they all ran the story. In a limited fashion.
The Times, for example. It ran the story on June 3rd. The peg was the coroner’s report. June 3rd – three days later – that makes it seem like the Times was very slow off the mark. But not really. The air raid occurred shortly before midnight on Monday, May 31st. The Times deadline for going to press was midnight. So they weren’t going to make the June 1st issue. And then you can be sure, stock had to be taken. And there would have been discussions with the government, how are we going to play this? What are we going to say about it. That banging of heads will have taken about 48 hours. The Times went out there, surveyed the scene, asked the questions, got the go-ahead and guidelines from the government, wrote the piece up, and made the midnight Wednesday presses roll deadline. Ran the story in its Thursday, June 3rd issue.
And, yes, the card they played that got them off the hook of the charge, ‘Three days later, this was a huge story, why were you so laggard about running it?’ the card they played was their coverage of the Coroner’s Report.
The triple headlines of the story speak volumes. Those headlines are, top to bottom, Victims of the Air Raid.
And then beneath that, Coroner on Barbarous Weapons. And beneath that, Verdict of Murder. And there were two sidebar stories. Both of them telling.
The second story was a two-headline job. Those headlines were:
Death of a Child. Followed by A Krupp Label Found.
The story reported the inquest on the body of Elsie Lilian Legget. Elsie was three years old. The Times piece said, “the jury returned a verdict that the child died from suffocation and burns as the result of an incendiary bomb dropped from a hostile airship.”
Elsie’s mum Elisabeth had testified at the inquest. She said the bomb fell through the roof into the bedroom where her five children were sleeping. She said her husband got four of the children out and in the terror and confusion he was under the impression that all five had been saved. The husband and the other four children were all suffering from burns.
The third story was another double headline job. Those headlines were “Thermit” Reaction.
Followed by Enormous Degree of Heat Evolved. The story informed Times readers about Thermit – powdered aluminium and magnetic iron oxide used in welding iron and steel. The Times said, “The heat evolved by the reaction is enormous – as much as 5,000 degrees. Aside here, I don’t know whether that’s Fahrenheit or Centigrade. 5,000 degrees, Centigrade or Fahrenheit, that’s pedantry. About 90 of those bombs were dropped on London. Dropped from a Zeppelin.
Now, back to the main piece. The two victims were 49-year-old Henry Thomas Good and his wife, Caroline Good. She was 46. The first person who testified at the inquest was their son, Henry Thomas, who lived nearby. Henry Thomas, a laboratory hand, said he last saw his father alive at 9.30 pm on Monday night. He went home. He went to bed. He said, “when I was in bed, about 11 o’clcock, I heard a bomb. I went out. I saw flames coming from the direction of my parents’ house. He said, I found my parents’ house ablaze but I was told they were out. I went to my grandparents’ house, taking it for granted that my parents were safe. I was told afterward that my parents were in the house and that they could not get at them because of the great heat.
A doctor went to the house and found the bodies. They were in a back room on the first floor. Both were kneeling beside the bed and were naked. All the man’s hair had been burnt off. The room was in ruins. Apart from a smell of burning there was no smell of any chemical. The woman had a large piece of hair in her right hand. The Coroner asked, “Perhaps she had snatched at her own hair in pain?”
The doctor answered, “Yes.”
The doctor said the man’s arm was around the woman’s waist.
The fourth victim was a woman who’d jumped from a window. She was injured. She was taken to her sister’s house. Where she died.
And just like that, what happened late Monday night, May 31st 1915 – somewhere in London – becomes so much more than its summation: German air raid, four killed. This was a close-knit neighbourhood. Mr and Mrs Good, dead, in their bedroom, kneeling at their bed. Husband Henry’s arm around his wife Caroline. And their son Thomas living nearby. And also close by, Thomas’s grandparents. And the young woman victim. Injured and taken a few doors away to her sister’s house. And of course those parents and five little kids. Now four little kids. Their three-year-old sister having died.
Well, that’s a lot. But I wanted to know more. Where did this happen? None of the newspapers divulged that information. No question but they’d been told not to. Street addresses had military value. Knowing where in London their bombs fell on that first raid would have been useful information to the air power strategists – I use the word with utter contempt – in Berlin.
But I wanted to know where this happened.
The 1911 census returned came up with the goods, so to speak.
Henry and Caroline Good lived at 187 Balls Pond Road. In Islington. They lived in a four-room tenement. Shared those four rooms with their two grown children – Louisa, 22 and Henry, 19. Henry, named after his father, had testified at the inquest. All four of them were Londoners, born and bred. Father and the two youngsters are described in that Census return as Workers.
The father, Henry Good, was a Pepper Miller. Daughter Louisa was a chocolate packer. Henry the son was an engineer’s assistant.
I’ve developed my own way of “doing” statistics, coming to terms with them, trying to get the measure of them.
I try to find out something about one or two or three or four of those statistics – drive it home at these were real people, they had lives, hopes, dreams, friends and family and colleagues, they had a neighbourhood, they had a place that was home, that felt safe.
And then from that I extrapolate, so to speak. I then give some thought to the big statistical picture.
In World War approximately 1500 civilians by bombing raids. Most of them in London. It was over 40,000 in World War II. Half of them in London.
Each of those victims was, in a sense, a Henry or Caroline Good. Or three-year-old Elsie Legget. So, yes, this is a Lest We Forget podcast. Nine words: World War I: London suffered its first air raid isn’t good enough. We need to remember Henry and Caroline and Elsie. And the fourth victim, who died in her sister’s house.
And I think we need to remember 187 Balls Pond Road. What happened there on May 31st, 1915. We’re going to see it differently now, aren’t we. I did what you’re going to do. I looked it up on Maps. Today, there’s a modern housing development there. I wonder if the people who live there have any idea about what came out of the night skies, onto that little patch of London, 110 years ago tonight.
And a final thought. It’s going to take you 15 minutes to listen to this podcast. In those 15 minutes five British soldiers will have been killed in World War I. The death, averaged out, was 486 young British men killed every day that that war went on. That’s one soldier’s or officer’s life, snuffed out, every three minutes. Lest we forget, war is a catastrophe.
You’ve been listening to This… is London, the London Walks podcast. Emanating from www.walks.com –
home of London Walks,
London’s signature walking tour company.
London’s local, time-honoured, fiercely independent, family-owned, just-the-right-size walking tour company.
And as long as we’re at it, London’s multi-award-winning walking tour company. Indeed, London’s only award-winning walking tour company.
And here’s the secret: London Walks is essentially run as a guides’ cooperative.
That’s the key to everything.
It’s the reason we’re able to attract and keep the best guides in London. You can get schlubbers to do this for £20 a walk. But you cannot get world-class guides – let alone accomplished professionals.
It’s not rocket science: you get what you pay for.
And just as surely, you also get what you don’t pay for.
Back in 1968 when we got started we quickly came to a fork in the road. We had to answer a searching question: Do we want to make the most money? Or do we want to be the best walking tour company in the world?
You want to make the most money you go the schlubbers route. You want to be the best walking tour company in the world you do whatever you have to do
to attract and keep the best guides in London –
you want them guiding for you, not for somebody else.
Bears repeating:
the way we’re structured – a guides’ cooperative –
is the key to the whole thing.
It’s the reason for all those awards, it’s the reason people who know go with London Walks, it’s the reason we’ve got a big following, a lively, loyal, discerning following – quality attracts quality.
It’s the reason we’re able – uniquely – to front our walks with accomplished, in many cases distinguished professionals:
By way of example, Stewart Purvis, the former Editor
(and subsequently CEO) of Independent Television News.
And Lisa Honan, who had a distinguished career as a diplomat (Lisa was the Governor of St Helena, the island where Napoleon breathed his last and, some say, had his penis amputated – Napoleon didn’t feel a thing – if thing’s the mot juste – he was dead.)
Stewart and Lisa – both of them CBEs – are just a couple of our headline acts.
Or take our Ripper Walk. It’s the creation of the world’s leading expert on Jack the Ripper, Donald Rumbelow, the author of the definitive book on the subject. Britain’s most distinguished crime historian, Donald is, in the words of The Jack the Ripper A to Z, “internationally recognised as the leading authority on Jack the Ripper.” Donald’s emeritus now but he’s still the guiding light on our Ripper Walk. He curates the walk. He trains up and mentors our Ripper Walk guides. Fields any and all questions they throw at him.
The London Walks Aristocracy of Talent – its All-Star Team of Guides – includes a former London Mayor. It includes the former Chief Music Critic for the Evening Standard. It includes the Chair of the Association of Professional Tour Guides. And the former chair of the Guild of Guides.
It includes barristers, doctors, geologists, museum curators, a former London Museum archaeologist, historians,
university professors (one of them a distinguished Cambridge University paleontologist); it includes a criminal defence lawyer, Royal Shakespeare Company and National Theatre actors, a bevy of MVPs, Oscar winners (people who’ve won the big one, the Guide of the Year Award)…
well, you get the idea.
As that travel writer famously put it, “if this were a golf tournament, every name on the Leader Board would be a London Walks guide.”
And as we put it: London Walks Guides make the new familiar
and the familiar new.
And on that agreeable note…
come then, let us go forward together on some great London Walks.
And that’s by way of saying, Good walking and Good Londoning one and all. See ya next time.