Advert - London Underground and Edgware (1925)

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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.

Advert - Lockheed Constellation aircraft (1940's)

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The Lockheed Constellation evolved from the WW2 Lockheed 10A and Hudson bomber. In April 1946 the first aircraft of a foreign airline, a Panair Lockheed 049 Constellation, landed at the newly opened Heathrow Airport after a flight from Rio de Janeiro

Advert - Welbeck Mini Cabs (1960's)

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Mini Cabs appeared on London streets in 1961 as the result of a loophole in the 1869 Carriage Act which allowed for taxis other then the official 'black cabs' if they were not hailed in the street but called via a control office.

Advert - British Rail excursion (1940's)

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King's Cross to Doncaster for the St Leger for only £1 11s 9d (£1.58 or allowing for inflation £59.75) or if you were posh 1st class for £2 13s (£2.65 or £99 after inflation). The journey took 3hours and 30 minutes whereas now it would be about 1hour 45 minutes (unless there were leaves on the line) and the first class return would set you back £285

Random Ad - Visit the Rhineland (1937)

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The "A Nation at Work.. Dusseldorf" exhibition dates this advert to 1937, the year Buchenwald Concentration camp was opened for business. 

Come to Cologne 'The gateway to German Culture'. That is German culture as defined by Adolf Hitler and the Nazis. After the book burnings of 1933 the SA also purged the art galleries of 'decadent' works and no Concert Hall owner in his right mind would put on a performance of any music with a Jewish taint.

Bad Kreuznach is renowned for its radium spa. Nothing like a dose of radiation to get the blood circulating.

Random Cutting - Listening to a Wireless on a Train (1923)

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This early attempt at the iPod certainly had it's drawbacks. 

Duke and Duchess of York in Baltic

Daily Sketch dated Tuesday March 19^th 1929

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The Duke and Duchess of York in the Baltic. The Duke was to become George VI and the Duchess will always be remembered by tabloid readers as ‘The Queen Mum’.

The Conservative Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin during the second of three terms as PM.

George V’s wife was officially ‘Queen consort of the United Kingdom and the British Dominions, Empress consort of India’. Did she have lots of names? Of course she did - Victoria Mary Augusta Louise Olga Pauline Claudine Agnes.

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40-year-old Vera Sidney died on February 15th 1929 after a few days’ illness. Her brother-in-law, Edmund Duff had died only 10 months earlier also after a few days’ illness. A third similar death in the family, that of Mrs. Violet Sidney, less than a month after Vera’s led to so much local gossip that all three bodies were exhumed. All were found to contain much more than their fair share of arsenic. 

Edmund Duff’s widow, who is quoted at length in the article, was actually the chief suspect but nothing was ever proved and all 3 deaths remain a mystery.

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Ah! The good old days when Britannia ruled the waves. The front battlecruiser is HMS Repulse followed by HMS Renown. 

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Several passengers saw a man board an Eltham to Kidbrooke train on March 13th 1929. Several of them reported hearing a scream during the journey.

At Kidbrooke station a man was seen running away from the train. When Mrs. Winifred East failed to return home from visiting friends, the police were called and her decapitated body was found on the railway line. She had been beaten, stabbed and her head cut off post-mortem. The man was never found and the murder remains unsolved.

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Chancellor of the Exchequer Winston Churchill. Could that be a cigar in his left hand, by any chance?

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The Helicogyre was not a success, although the idea of adding thrust to the tips of a helicopter rotor was taken up again in 1957 with the Fairey Rotodyne, which was more successful but fell foul of noise restrictions.

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Cathleen Nesbitt appeared in over 300 stage productions and has 89 entries for film and TV work on the IMDb ranging from a short in 1919 to ITV Playhouse in 1981 via Hitchcock’s ‘Family Plot’, TV’s ‘Wagon Train’ and ‘Upstairs, Downstairs’. She died in 1982 at 93. 

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Just the thing for long train journeys especially for those who’ve left their laptop, ipod, ipad, DS and smart phone at home. Seriously though I’d find such a guide-book interesting.  

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Annette Benson had a short film career from 1920 to 1931. ‘A South Sea Bubble’ starred Ivor Novello.

Constance Bennett was a bigger star whose screen career spanned 50 years. The must have recovered from this illness because she didn’t die until 1966.

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“By Gad, Sir! What a thrilling sight. Young Monroe-Hinds tossing his balls around like a good’un. Pass the brandy!”

Leslie Monroe-Hinds played in the Eton vs Harrow match at Lord’s in July 1929 and contributed 74 runs in a drawn match.

Sinking of the General Belgrano

Daily Mirror dated Tuesday May 4^th 1982

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A month to the day after Argentina invaded the Falkland Islands (see post), the Argentine light cruiser General Belgrano was sunk by HMS Conqueror using 3 torpedoes. 770 of the Belgrano’s crew were rescued but 323 died.

This was the day the Sun newspaper went with the headline ‘GOTCHA!’ which was changed for the later editions to something a little more appropriate

‘It’s a Knockout’ started in France as ‘Jeux sans Frontier’. Stuart Hall, who has been in the news lately and in the nick for a while yet, hosted the UK version. About 800 people were using the stand when it collapsed and about 60 were taken to Scunthorpe General Hospital.

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A potpourri of Falkland related news. Like the RMS Queen Mary and RMS Queen Elizabeth, it was the QEII’s turn to be used as a troop ship.

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Jimmy Carter and Leonid Brezhnev had met in Vienna in 1979. By 1982 Brezhnev was ailing and in November he died. Reagan actually had 5 summit meeting between 1985 and 1988 but with Mikhail Gorbachev.

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The original Mods had died out by the late 1960’s, some having morphed into skinheads or just grown too old. The skinheads in their turn died out, but in the late 1970’s and early 1980’s both subcultures enjoyed revivals and, evident from this article, emulated their cultural forefathers by spending Bank Holidays causing mayhem at seaside resorts.

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To celebrate the 10^th anniversary of Mastermind they held this Champion of Champions contest. Sir David Hunt answered questions on Alexander the Great to get 13 points and increased this to 28 in General Knowledge.

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A warning to those that take what they read on the Web as gospel – several sites including the Oracle, sorry, Wikepedia, state that this experimental 3D broadcast on TV South’s ‘The Real World’  happened in February 1982. I notice that all the sites seem to have cut and pasted the same wording from one another. They also claim that the first full 3D programme – a showing of the 3D western film ‘Fort Ti’ was shown in December 1982. Or November. Or even October.

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This appears to be a fairly early satellite tracking and positioning system probably using the first GPS satellite that had been launched in 1978. I can’t find any reference to the acronym SARGOS anywhere.

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The Advanced Passenger Train or APT was designed to run on existing track at speeds of up to 155mph so had a hydraulic tilting system to keep the train on the track on bends. The first passengers were carried in December 1981 but there were problems from the start and the APTs were withdrawn from service. High Speed Trains with a top speed of 125mph replaced them.

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Over the next 10 years ‘Wogan’ ran to 252 editions during which the Irish mumbler interviewed everyone from Eddie the Eagle Edwards to Vincent Price to Roy Orbison via Paul McCartney and Fanny Craddock.

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Wrong. Faye Dunaway didn’t appear in Octopussy, the 4 years younger Maude Adams took the role.

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Wandsworth boy Frank Bruno had his first professional fight in March 1982, which he won along with his next 20 fights. He won the European Boxing Union Heavyweight Title in 1985 and the World Boxing Council Heavyweight Title in 1995.

Rommel Launches Big Blow at Americans

Sunday Graphic dated Sunday April 4^th 1943

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Big blow or not, a couple of days later (April 6^th) the Italians and German Afrikakorps were defeated at the Battle of Wadi Akarit and by May 13^th the German and Italian forces in Tunisia surrendered to the Allies.

Erwin Rommel was well respected not only by his own men, but, surprisingly, by his counterparts in the British and American armies. In 1944 he was involved in a failed conspiracy to overthrow Hitler and was forced to choose between being tried, convicted and executed along with his family or committing suicide. He chose suicide and was buried as a Nazi hero.

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Benito Mussolini had been politically insecure since the war in North Africa had started to turn against the Axis powers in late 1942. Unrest at home with strikes, inflated food prices and an unwelcome German army presence along with the Allied invasion of Sicily in July 1943 led to the Dictator being ousted and arrested. Unfortunately this didn’t mean that the Allies could just walk in and take over. There was another year of bitter fighting before the Germans were cleared from the country. 

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No trains, no petrol for cars and no extra buses, but apart from that, have a good Easter Holiday!

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70,000 children cannot be traced! Why isn’t this front-page news? Are they really lost or just not in London anymore? Are the ones ‘drifting back’ part of the 70,000? Were they ever found? Are they still out there? What is this snippet really about?

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Maybe this is where the 70,000 lost children have gone – to Lord Woolton’s agricultural holiday camps.  Lord Woolton became the Minister for Food in 1940 and it was because of his management of food rationing that on the whole the British people all got a fair share of what food was available. He even had a pie named after him, though I doubt you’ll find one in Tesco’s these days.

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This was a common type of wartime news item; quoting increased production figures to boost moral; rather in the style of the USSR Agricultural 5 Year Plan updates that peppered Russian news in the Communist era. 

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‘Failure to comply’ to the Nurses and Midwives Order 1943 was ‘punishable by fine, imprisonment or both’ Civil liberties? You must be joking – we’re at war, Love.

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In 1940 the clocks in Britain were not put back by an hour at the end of Summer Time i.e. not reset to GMT. From then until 1945 clocks continued to be advanced by one hour each spring and put back by an hour each autumn, so for these summers Britain was two hours ahead of GMT and operating on British Double Summer Time. Note the reminder on the front page.

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After World War I, Sir Percy Robert Laurie KCVO CBE DSO had been a Deputy Assistant Commissioner and an Assistant Commissioner in the Metropolitan Police. He retired in 1936 but was recalled in 1939 to be Assistant Chief Constable of the War Department Constabulary and then the Provost-Marshal of the United Kingdom until this little problem got in the way. His conviction was later quashed on the basis that ‘he had simply made a mistake’.

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King Feisal (or Faisal) II of Irak (or Iraq) succeeded his father just a month shy of his 4^th birthday. He was murdered during a coup in 1958.

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Orson Welles' ‘Citizen Kane’ has been long regarded as the best film ever made by those that should know, so it is interesting to see it referred to, along with his second film ‘The Magnificent Embersons’ (sic), as ‘badly received by the British public’.

Johnny Weissmuller (as Tarzan) and Maureen O’Sullivan (as Jane) had made 6 movies for MGM, but when this Tarzan-meets-the-Nazis propaganda flick was made at RKO Maureen bowed out. In the plot Jane is on holiday! She never returned to the jungle. Johnny did 5 more Tarzans plus 13 Jungle Jim films and a TV series.

‘Colonel Blimp’ has a well deserved reputation as a clever satire.  

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Scientists and MPs plan Britain’s post-War future based entirely on the ‘inexhaustible supplies’ of coal – oops! At least they correctly predicted the ‘electrification of the railways’.

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There must be hundreds of authors who were household names in their day, but who are now all but forgotten. Rex Beach was an American novelist, playwright and Olympic silver medallist water-polo player (1904 St Louis) who spent 5 years in Alaska during the Klondike Gold Rush and wrote several very popular novels in the Jack London idiom. His second, ‘The Spoilers’, was filmed 5 times. After the death of his wife he committed suicide in 1949.

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A lot of the older papers (1920’s-1930’s) I have blogged have had episodes of fiction serials in them, which I haven’t posted because 1 day’s excerpt of a story would be pointless, however this paper has this complete short story written by Wing-Commander (later Group Captain) Leonard Cheshire who went on to win the Victoria Cross in 1944. See this post for more on Leonard Cheshire.

Cigarette Price Battle

Daily Mirror dated Tuesday September 24^th 1968

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When the front page of a newspaper features a story about a dancing mouse you can rest assured that no wars have broken out, no Popes assassinated, no famous film stars died and no planes have crashed. To a lesser degree the same can be said for a paper that leads with a headline about the price of cigarettes. Combine the two and you have a ‘slow news day’.

I’ve never been a smoker. I tried but nearly choking and watering eyes just didn’t appeal and, as my grey-haired old mother used to point out, I’ve always been ‘as tight as a mackerel’s arse’, so I didn’t see any sense in paying for the displeasure. The prediction that small shops would suffer from supermarkets’ price-cutting was true and still is.

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Cont'd from Front

The Ford factory in Dagenham produced its first vehicle in 1931 and its last in 2002. Some say the Unions ruined the British car industry and some say the Unions were necessary because the employers put profits before people. I lived in Dagenham but never worked at Ford’s or in any other factory so I really couldn't comment. 

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Farmer John Derek James sought refuge in a derelict cottage near Weston-under-Redcastle, Shropshire, after being challenged by the police over the illegal possession of a shotgun. He took a woman hostage and held out against a combined force of police and soldiers for 17 days. The siege ended when the woman took the gun off him while he was asleep. At the subsequent trial he was sent to Broadmoor Mental Hospital.

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Dr Christian (or Christiaan) Barnard had performed the World’s first successful human heart transplant in 1967 on Louis Washkansky, who died 18 days later of pneumonia. I'm sure there is something to say about white South Africans receiving black South Africans' hearts but I'd rather not go there.

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Tony Blackburn and Ed Stewart posing with two young ladies. Let’s hope for the DJs’ sake the ladies are older than they look.

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British Rail and its French equivalent, SNFC, operated the Princess Margaret hovercraft from 1968 until 2000 jointly. The craft was seen in the Bond film ‘Diamonds Are Forever’. 

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These days I imagine that an insurance company setting a 25 mile limit on a driver would constitute a breach of human rights and be earning some lawyers a few bob in The Hague or Strasbourg. 

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In 1968 there were just over 18,000 drink-driving convictions in England and Wales. In 1988 there were over 105,000 but the figure has been stabilised at about 85,000 in recent years. Oddly the number of fatalities due to drink-driving dropped steadily between 1979 at 1640 to 430 in 2006, possibly due to a series of December TV campaigns have informed, cajoled and shocked drivers into not drinking and driving. 

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The General Certificate of Education exams were introduced in 1951 to replace the old School Certificate and Higher School Certificate exams. Results were originally graded 1 – 9 with 1 – 6 being passes, but this was later replaced with A – E for passes and U for fail. In 1988 the GCE’s were replaced by GCSE’s using A – G and U, but recently there has been talk of reverting to a number system of 8 – 1 with 8 being the top grade. Fun isn’t it?

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Jennifer Croxton only appeared in the 1 Avengers episode – she played Special Services agent Lady Diana Forbes-Blakeney in ‘Killer’ a story in the 1968/69 Linda Thorson season.

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Strange how our attitude to words change. The word ‘cripple’ would never appear in a headline these days and is even mildly shocking when seen in print, but in 1968 you, and I, would probably not have even noticed it. At least the policeman was convicted and received a jail sentence, which is surprising.

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This could well have been printed last September following the appallingly wet summer we had in 2012.

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Let me get this straight – printer Edward Wilson forged £1.25million to sell to Argentine rebels and planned to use the proceeds to help the needy in Nigeria, and was talked into this by a ‘total stranger’. Was Jonathan Routh doing ‘Candid Camera’ in 1968?

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The Larks, drawn by Jack Dunkley lasted from 1957 until 1985. I liked it because the father character looked just like my brother-in-law did at the time. Its demise can be added to the list of crimes committed by Robert Maxwell who took over the Daily Mirror in 1984.

I can’t find out anything about ‘The Flutters’ but I thought I’d give it an airing.

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The great Roy Kinnear who did everything from Shakespeare, Hammer Horror, ‘The Avengers, ‘That Was The Week That Was’, Sherlock Holmes, The Beatles’ ‘Help!’, Dickens, ‘Sparrow Can’t Sing’ and ‘Jackanory’ to ‘The Return of the Musketeers’ in 1988 during the filming of which he fell from a horse and died in hospital the next day. His son Rory Kinnear was in the recent Bond films ‘Quantum of Solace’ and ‘Skyfall’.

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In August 1968 the Soviet Union had invaded the Czechoslovak Socialist Republic because the Communist government of Alexander Dubček was contemplating liberal reforms. When there is nothing else you can do humour can help.

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The Queen’s sister Princess Margaret Rose had married the society photographer Anthony (or is it Antony?) Armstrong-Jones in 1960. They were divorced in 1978. 

Wikipedia calls him  ‘Antony’, the BBC ‘Anthony’, the Telegraph ‘Antony’, Pathe News ‘Anthony’.  All together now - “You say Antony, I say Anthony, You say Christian, I say Christiaan, Let’s call the whole thing off.”