Get My 3 Kids Out Of Russia says Mrs Maclean

Sunday Pictorial dated Sunday 12th January 1958

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Donald Maclean was one of the Cambridge group, along with Guy Burgess, Kim Philby and Anthony Blunt, who spied for Soviet Russia.

Maclean and Burgess defected to the USSR in 1951 having been alerted by MI6 agent Kim Philby that arrests were probable.

Maclean left his pregnant wife and two children behind, but they joined him in Moscow in 1953. Maclean’s heavy drinking and affairs, along with Melind’a dis-satisfaction with life in Russia, probably led to this plea to get her children back to England.  In fact they all stayed in Moscow until 1979 when she and the now grown up children left for the West. Donald Maclean died in Moscow in 1983 and Melinda died in New York in 2010.

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The 19-year-old au-pair from Holland, Mary Kriek, was found murdered in a ditch near Colchester. She disappeared on the 5th January 1958, after getting off a bus only yards away from the house where she was employed, and her body was found the next day 10 miles away. She had been viciously beaten about the head.  Despite a wide-ranging investigation the case remains, to this day, unsolved

In January 1961 the body of 20 year-old Jean Constable was found close to where Mary Kriek’s had been.

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R-875 or Dextromoramide was discovered in 1956 and was used to treat pain and, in combination with other drugs, as an anaesthetic. Its main proprietary name was Palfium but was discontinued in the UK in 2004 because of how addictive it was compared to morphine.

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It beggars belief that a member of the Local Council can be so out of touch with reality that he doesn’t realise that increasing someone’s rent from one sixth of their income to one third would cause financial problems. Actually, then as now, it doesn’t really surprise.

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The threat of Nuclear oblivion aside, the 1950’s were an optimistic time especially when it came to the benefits computers were going to bestow on our world. They would solve all the World’s problems, give us more leisure time than we’d know what to do with and even replace politicians. Pity the hardware looked like something out of an early episode of ‘Dr Who’.

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For only £10 9s 6d you can become the next Rock’n’Roll sensation, but don’t forget to pick a suitable name – Marty Wilde, Cuddly Dudley, Red Price, Dickie Pride, Vince Eager, Conway Twitty, Rory Storm, Wee Willy Harris, Billy Fury, Eden Kane, Screamin’ Lord Sutch – sorry all taken.

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I see a great answer for Alexander Armstrong’s  ‘Pointless’ quiz. If the question were to name as an obscure as possible presenter of London Palladium’s Beat the Clock surely the portly actor Robert Morley would get you a zero.

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The English Coronet Camera Co. introduced this stereo camera in 1953 and it produced 4 pairs of 3D photographs on a reel of 127 type film.

If you are interested (and know where to get some 127 film (and get it processed)) there are a couple of these cameras on E-bay at the time of posting.

Anyway I was a Scott's Porridge Oats lad myself. With the cream off the top of the milk and Golden Syrup! They hadn't invented cholesterol in 1958.

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If you want to hear this gem you’ll need a copy of the CD ‘Just About as Good as It Gets! Great British Skiffle Vol. 3’.  By the way the ‘B’ side of the single was that old whistle-along favourite ‘Boodle-Am-Shake’.  

Alcock and Brown Win Atlantic Prize

Daily Mail dated Monday June 16th 1919

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A back page rather than a front this time because the front is all adverts. This is the real news of the day. Flyers Alcock and Brown complete the first non-stop Atlantic crossing.

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The Viscount Northcliffe owned Daily Mail put up the prize of £10,000, which would be the equivalent of around £1,400,000 today

Captain Alcock didn’t live very long to spend the money; he was killed in a plane crash in December 1919.  A W Brown, on the other hand, lived until 1948.

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If you have ever moaned about the leg-room, food or anything else on a transatlantic flight try reading this account of Alcock and Brown’s experiences.

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This reads like something from a John Buchan novel but the real story was that IRA member Seán Hogan, was arrested on 12th May 1919 and was being moved by train to Cork when 8 IRA gunmen attacked the train at Knocklong and rescued Hogan.

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So 3000 people gathered and attacked a coffee shop, did extensive damage to the property and tried to lynch a ’negro’. So of course the Arab shop owner was charged with ‘allowing his premises to be conducted in a disorderly manner’.

See the post ‘A Week in April 1919’ for the Liverpool riot.

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Miss Chrissie White’s career of 186 films lasted from 1908 to 1933. She married her co-star Mr Henry Edwards and died in 1989 at the age of 94. 

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On the other hand the IMDB list only 3 films for Garrick Aitken, all made in 1919. Alas his leading part at 3 is lost in the mists of time.

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The R34 airship made her first flight on the 14th March 1919. The trip written about here lasted from the 17th to 20th June, and was followed, in July, by a transatlantic crossing taking 108 hours. I wonder if the in flight movies were ‘The Birth of a Nation’ followed by ‘Intolerance’? (they were both very long)

In 1921 she was written off after a forced landing in bad weather.

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Well I’ll be…  As a life long non-smoker I suppose this is why my subconscious interests are always well and truly suppressed.

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“By Gad, Sir… I betcha didn’t know I was a male model in me salad days, what!  That’s me on the right looking a proper prannie. Still it paid for the odd snort of cocaine, doncha know!”

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That’s a journey of 25 miles from just east of Guilford to Putney Bridge and it’s not the number of cars and motorbikes that amaze me, it’s the 217 bicycles he saw.  I wonder if they were all riding on the pavements.

Interesting arguments from J S Redmayne -

‘Nature never intended it’ – nor for men to fly (try telling that to Messrs Alcock and Brown)

‘great men and women spring from large families’ – ever heard of Isaac Newton, Leonardo Da Vinci, Franklin D Roosevelt, Hans Christian Andersen; all sibling-less children

‘nations that practice birth control decline’ – all nations decline over time. Ask the Greeks.

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A very good friend’s mother once told me that her father drove a Foden Steam Lorry in the 1920’s on a regular run from London to Nottingham and back.  It took 3 days each way.

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This is an advert for the British Heavyweight Boxing Championship bout between the current holder (since 26^th May 1919) Percy Goddard and Joe Beckett.  Beckett won the bout and held the title until 1923, when Goddard regained it and held it until 1926.

Beckett had originally taken the title off Bombadier Billy Wells who, for those old enough to remember, was the man who banged the giant gong at the beginning of all the J Arthur Rank films.   

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I am aware of cooking temperatures in the form of ‘Gas Mark 5’ and ‘200 degrees Centigrade’, but ‘a good clear fire’ is a new one on me.  Who was this recipe written for – cavemen?

Nixon Resigns

(London) Evening Standard dated Friday August 9th 1974

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Richard Milhous Nixon had been Dwight Eisenhower’s Vice President from 1953-1961, had run for President in 1960 against John F Kennedy and had lost, and finally won the 1968 Presidential Election against Hubert Humphrey.

On 17^th June 1972 there was a break-in at the Democratic Party Headquarters in the Watergate Complex and two Washington Post journalists, Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward, investigated. They uncovered a link between the burglars and the White House.  At first the big question was did Nixon know the break-in was going to happen? This later became regardless of whether he knew, is the President trying to cover up White House involvement?

Nixon blustered his way through the next two years but, facing a Senate Impeachment trial on a charge of obstruction of justice, finally he resigned.

Even so he could still have been indicted on criminal charges relating to conspiracy to break into the Watergate, but in September 1974 the new President, Gerald Ford, controversially pardoned Nixon.

Only two Presidents actually faced Impeachment trials – Andrew Johnson in 1868 and Bill Clinton in 1998 and both were acquitted.

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If you really want to you can listen to this speech on Youtube and read what you will into his choice of words and tone of voice. The HistoryCommons channel 2 part upload has the full speech.

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As predicted in this article front-runner Nelson Rockefeller became Ford’s Vice-President.

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 The film ‘All the President’s Men’ was released in 1976 starring Dustin Hoffman as Bernstein and Robert Redford as Woodward. The film won 4 Oscars including best supporting actor for Jason Robards. It also got 10 BAFTA nominations.

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Doris (Dolly) Kray was having an affair with George Ince who, in May 1973, had stood trial for the Barn Restaurant Murder that happened in 1972 in Braintree, Essex. Ince was found not guilty and part of his alibi was that he was in bed with Dolly Kray at the time. She testified on his behalf with the approval of her husband Charles.

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This was pretty well the Osmonds’ last gasp as a chart-topping group before going into their separate careers. Their last UK top ten single ‘Love Me for a Reason’ was released that year.

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Traffic curbs.. geddit?? Curbs. Traffic. Oh forget it!

The congestion charge hinted at here finally came into force in 2003. London traffic problems are nothing new.  Back in the late 1950’s I travelled about 10 miles by bus through East London to get to school. One day there was a hold up and my friends and I were complaining about being late, when an old woman said, “You should have been here when it was all horses. Those were real traffic jams and they happened every day.” Or words to that effect.

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Veggie eating, astrology believing, Nixon hating hippie buys fur coat! Even stereotypes are allowed a mistake once in a while.

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Born in New York’s Hell’s Kitchen, Raft became first a dancer then a movie actor. In the 1930’s he was one of the biggest stars of Gangster films alongside James Cagney and Edward G Robinson. In the 40’s his career flagged. He turned down ‘High Sierra’ and ‘The Maltese Falcon’, both leading roles that went to Humphrey Bogart.

In the 1950’s he worked as a ‘greeter’ at the Capri Casino in Havana, Cuba, which he partly owned along with Mafia men Meyer Lansky and Santo Trafficante.  

In 1967 he was denied entry into the UK (where he was to have been Casino Director at the Colony Club) due to his gangster associations.

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One of my favourite films and one of my favourite film posters.

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Roman Polanski was born in France of Polish parents and was brought up in Poland.  World War II started when he was 6 and the Nazis interned his parents. His father survived but his mother died in Auschwitz.

After the War he attended the National Film School and went on to appear in and to direct Polish films. After trying and failing to make a mark in France he made 3 films in England (‘Repulsion’, ‘Cul-de-Sac’ and ‘The Fearless Vampire Killers’) and then ‘Rosemary’s Baby’ in the USA.

Three years after ‘Chinatown’ he was accused and found guilty of sexual assault on a 13 year-old girl during a photo-shoot. To avoid a jail sentence he fled to France and, as a French citizen, has lived there ever since.

According to Wikipedia –

The victim, Samantha Geimer, during a television interview on 10 March 2011, blames the media, reporters, the court, and the judge for causing "way more damage to [her] and her family than anything Roman Polanski has ever done." She adds that the media were "really cruel," stating that the judge was using her and a noted celebrity for his own personal gain from the media exposure.

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I'm always a bit suspicious of round figures like £3000000 in articles like this so I got my calculator out – at £25 per ounce 3 UK tons which is 6720lb (3 * 2240) and therefore 107520 ounces (16 * 6720) would cost £2688000.  Call it 2.7 extra large and we have a deal, OK Squire?

Lord Haw Haw Arrested

Sunday Graphic dated Sunday June 17th 1945

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William Joyce was born in America of Irish-American parents but the family moved to Ireland when he was an infant, and they stayed there until he was about 15 when they moved to England. In 1932 Joyce joined Oswald Mosley’s British Union of Fascists and went on to become Deputy leader of the Party. In 1937 Mosley and Joyce fell out and Joyce left to form the National Socialist League.

Just before the War he was tipped off that he was about to be detained as an ‘undesirable’, so he and his wife fled to Germany where they became naturalised German citizens. During the War Joyce, among others, made English language propaganda broadcasts for the Reich Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda. His became the most familiar of the voices and a Daily Express journalist christened him Lord Haw Haw. The name stuck.

At the end of the War Joyce was arrested, brought back to England and, on the basis that he had an English passport, charged with high treason. Even though the passport was obtained under false pretences and he was born in America and was at the time of the broadcasts a German, he was found guilty and hanged on 3^rd January 1946.

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The period between VE (Victory in Europe) Day in May 1945 and VJ (Victory over Japan) Day in August 1945 was a kind of false Peace. The papers were full of up-beat stories of soldiers coming home and ‘building a better Britain’ but almost ignored the on-going conflict in the Pacific. In this paper for instance the only reference to the Far East is this single column 3” piece on the back page.

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The first General Election since 1935 was due on 5^th July 1945 and Winston Churchill (Conservative) was standing against Clement Attlee (Labour).  That the Sunday Graphic supported the Conservatives is pretty obvious when you read the above article.

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Quoting the other side ‘out of context’ seems to have been fair game in the Election run-up.

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It was just this sort of propaganda that probably lost Churchill the Election. The general public (i.e. the voters) were fed up with the War and just wanted to get it over and done with and then forgotten.

‘The only picture of Churchill in an air-raid shelter. He seldom took cover’ – he just spent a lot of time in the well-protected and fortified War Rooms under Whitehall. Not that I blame him.

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Not exactly a great review for what is now regarded as a ‘classic’.

The phrase that jumped out for me, though, was ‘On the way home in the bus having seen…’ Leaving aside the surprise that the film reviewer of a leading Sunday paper went home on the bus, these words triggered many memories of going to and from local, and not so local, cinemas by good old-fashioned red London double-deckers.

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And we won the War!

Seriously, the last paragraph is misleading. There may have been no queues in Berlin but that was because there was nothing to queue for. German civilians in Berlin were starving.

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More nostalgia! Dripping sandwiches…Mmmmm!

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Britain had been running Palestine since 1922 and by 1945 was anxious to pull out due to the increasing violence between Jewish and Arabic communities, so in 1947 it handed the problem over to the United Nations who decided to partition the country into Israel and the Palestine Territories.

So the lucky recruit who joined the British Section of the Palestine Police Force in 1945 would have been in the middle, hated by Jew and Arab alike. 

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The War in the Far East, Palestine troubles and the General Election  - forget them all – we have cute kittens!!