Advert - London Underground and Edgware (1925)

Click to Enlarge

1925 and Edgware is the back of beyond, out there where they have to claim to have mains drainage before people will move to it. Edgware station at the end of the Northern Line was opened in August 1924.

U.S. Denounce Hitler's Invasion of Austria

Daily Sketch dated Friday March 18^th 1938

Click to Read

Click to Read

Click to Read

Adolf Hitler was born in Austria but like many Austrians of the time regarded himself as German. When he came to power in 1933 he intended to make Austria a part of Germany once and for all, but Italy led by Benito Mussolini had vowed to defend Austria’s right to independence. By 1938 relations between Mussolini and Hitler had become so friendly that the Italian leader let it be known that he would no longer stand in the way of a German invasion. Hitler threatened the Austrian government with all out war if they didn’t capitulate and agree to Austria becoming part of Germany. The Austrian chancellor, Kurt Schuschnigg, and his entire government, except the one Nazi Party member, resigned. The remaining man, Arthur Seyss-Inquart as de-facto head of government, invited the German army to enter Vienna on March 15^th 1938.

Click to Read

The bombing of Barcelona on the 16^th, 17^th and 18^th March 1938 followed France’s decision to re-open their border with Spain and allow supplies through to the Republicans fighting against General Franco. It was carried out by the Italian air force in planes disguised as Spanish. 

Click to Read

Poland had taken over the Vilnius border region with Lithuania in 1920 and since then there had been no diplomatic relations between the two countries. With an eye on Germany expansion into Austria, Poland decided that it was a good time to have an ally on it’s northern border so issued this ultimatum to Lithuania. On March 19^th the Lithuanian government agreed to the demands. 

Click to Read

The Australian aviator Harry Frank (the ‘E’ initial in the article is a mistake) Broadbent was trying to beat the record of Miss Jean Batten in a flight from England to Australia. A Qantas mail plane discovered him on Torren Island, fifty miles from Wangipo (wherever that is).

Broadbent went on to pilot flying-boats for Quantas and then for a small Southampton based airline serving Lisbon, Madeira and Las Palmas. In 1958 he was an instructor to a Portuguese airline and was forced into an emergency landing in the Atlantic, west of Portugal. The aircraft and occupants were never found.

Click to Read

The use of the cat-o-nine-tails was officially abolished in UK prisons in 1967 although it hadn’t been used since 1962 and only rarely since 1948.

Click to Read

Despite the Mayor's incredulity, Greta Garbo never married and according to some contemporary sources, such as writer Mercedes de Acosta, was of a sapphic bent.

Click to Read

‘Her return to the screen’ refers to the break that Norma Shearer took after the death if her first husband Irving Thalberg. She retired from the business in 1942 and died in 1983.

Click to Read

“Ouch!”

Click to Read

Click to Read

‘Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, the first full-length animated feature from the Disney Studios, was released in the UK on March 12^th 1938.

Click to Read

This is the committal hearing of the men arrested in this post.

Click to Read

Hitler invades Austria? Spanish civil war? Don’t worry! The toffs are having a good time so all must right with the World. The only name I recognize is Cecil Beaton. I must move in the wrong circles.

Click to Read

Any excuse to include an example of my favourite comic strip. Simple and elegantly drawn.

Click to Read

One channel and 3 hours of TV a day for those few people who had sets. No fighting over the remote, then.

Click to Read

This is the very same HMS Belfast that is now moored in the Thames by the Embankment and can be visited as part of the Imperial War Museum. Having been launched as shown above by Prime Minister Chamberlain’s wife on March 17^th 1938, she, the ship not Mrs C, was commissioned for service in August 1939 just in time for the War and was involved in the Artic Convoys and the sinking of the German battleship Scharnhorst.

Click to Read

Click to Read

The Welshman Tommy Farr had won his first fight in 1926 at the age of 12 and fought his last in 1953. He’d beaten the American Max Baer in 1937 in England, but lost this fight at Madison Square Gardens.

Baer’s son Max Baer Jr. found fame on TV as Jethro Bodine in ‘The Beverly Hillbillies’. 

Random Cutting - Drugged and Robbed in a Train (1919)

Click to Read

I love that phrase ‘swell mobsman’. It so beautifully adds to the whole inter-war period feel of this story. The special steam drawn ‘race train’ from Newmarket to London with its individual first-class compartments into which the ‘mining engineer’ Mr Hunwick and his wife are joined by the well dressed and well spoken confidence trickster and are drugged, swindled and robbed of the enormous sum of £280. But never fear, Scotland Yard are on the case and within days the culprit is identified at another race meeting and arrested. Hooray!

Random Ad - Trains to Southend (1930's)

Click to Enlarge

Day trip to Souffend? Plate of jellied eels on the pier? The wa'er splash at the Kursaal? And a ride on a puffer train? What more could ya want, Squire?

Harrow and Wealdstone Train Crash 1952

Bournemouth Daily Echo dated Friday October 10th 1952

Click to Enlarge

This 3 train pile-up happened on 8^th October 1952 at Harrow and Wealdstone station when a stationery train waiting in the station was hit by a through express. The resultant wreckage was then hit by another express travelling in the opposite direction. The final death toll was 112 with 340 people injured,

Click to Enlarge

Continued from Page 1

19 year-old trainee footman Harold Winstanley bought an ex-World War II 9mm Schmeisser machine pistol and some ammo from a friend to hunt rabbits, but instead walked into his employer’s house, Knowsley Hall, and murdered 2 people and wounded 2 others including Lady Derby. He then had a pint at the local before giving himself up to the police. He was found guilty but insane and sent to Broadmoor Hospital for the Criminally Insane.

Click to Enlarge

Pianist Leslie ‘Hutch’ Hutchinson was one of the World’s biggest cabaret stars during the 1920s and 30s. Finding fame in New York he moved to Paris and then London where he became notorious as the black man who had affairs with various white actresses and even, it was rumoured, Royalty. He died in comparative obscurity in 1969 and only a handful of people attended his funeral.

Click to Enlarge

You have to remember it was a different age – innocent but cruel.

Click to Enlarge

Those were the days when throwing an iron bar into a tree and having it land on your head didn’t lead to your parents suing the Local Council for letting a tree grow there in the first place; just a wiser kid.

Click to Enlarge

“By Gad, Sir! Bopping and jiving in Bournemouth! Whatever next? What’s wrong with the Black Bottom? Never did me and the memsahib any harm. Pass the hip-flask!”

Click to Enlarge

And what would Wernher Von Braun know about rockets? Well he did design and oversee the building of the V1 and V2 German rockets that killed so many people in London during World War II. Luckily for the US Space Program he was whisked off to America by the OSS before British Military Intelligence could get hold of him and wring his neck.

By the way his prediction was 8 years and about $23billion out.

Click to Enlarge

The joy! The tears! The spectacle! Who can forget the 1952 version of that agricultural blockbuster (loud fanfare) ‘Soil Fertility’?

Click to Enlarge

This was before the great boom in TV sales brought on by the Coronation in 1953, so the TV salesmen really had to work at it. But what could they show potential customers to lure them into parting with the equivalent of 6 months’ wages?

Click to Enlarge

Not a lot! 1 channel, black and white and broadcasting for less than 5 hours a day.

Click to Enlarge

And only this to watch it on.

Click to Enlarge

As Francis Urquhart often said, "I couldn't possibly comment."

New Orleans Ship Fire - 150 Die

The Manchester Guardian dated Saturday June 17th 1837

The Manchester Guardian founded in 1821 became the The Guardian in August 1959. This issue is about 20 inches by 27 inches and contains 4 pages of 8 columns of almost unbroken text. How on earth Sir Percy Thustgently, or whoever bought it, could read it by candlelight or oil-lamp, I don't know. It is hard enough using those wonderful new energy-saving electric light bulbs. Don't bother looking for the New Orleans story on this page - it is devoted to adverts, as was the case with most newspapers at the time.

Click to Enlarge

On page 2 we find the main story.  Googling '"Ben Sherrod" 1837' shows several sites that give detailed accounts of the disaster.  It seems that the steamship was racing another when the fire started, and it actually happened on May 7th but due to the lack of telephones, air travel, e-mail and the like, wasn't reported in England until over a month later.

Click to Enlarge

Aren't you glad I don't collect medical publications?

Click to Enlarge

Presumably they used the word 'cancer' to mean something different to what we know it as - or they lied in their advertising.

Click to Enlarge

The 1830's and 1840's were the great age of Railway building in Britain. The Manchester and Leeds Railway opened for business in 1839 and was incorporated into the Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway in 1847.

Click to Enlarge

Railway accidents were commonplace but it seems that you didn't even have to get on-board to risk life and limb.

Click to Enlarge

Those were the days when you could break a lad's jaw and only have to pay £2 for the privilege.

Click to Enlarge

For the connoisseurs of such things - the Tax Stamp from page 3.  From 1712 to 1855 every newspaper had to display a Tax Stamp.