London American Civil War Veterans

A remarkable - to me at least - snippet of information emerges from the murky pages of the South London Press, 16 May 1919, in the form of a short report on a meeting of the London Association of American Civil War Veterans, held at the Bermondsey Ragged School, Gedling Street. Salient details as follows:

• Colonel Bevington, treasurer of the Association, provided tea, while Mr F. W. Smith, secretary, took the chair (Mr Ambrose Pomeroy JP, the vice-president, was unable to attend). The business before the meeting included arrangements for decoration day and also organising a visit Windsor.

Of course a quick search of Google reveals that those in the know have long known about this Association, but its existence came as a surprise to me; hopefully this fragment will add a little more to the scholarly knowledge about the organisation. (And it goes to show, yet again, that if you really want to drill down through the layers of historical sediment forget The Times etc. and go for the local press - much more interesting and useful.)

The Great James Robertson Justice - a vignette

Bearded and booming, James Robertson Justice was the sort of memorable screen presence that we just do not have these days, and we are all the poorer for it. Everyone remembers him as the domineering Sir Lancelot Spratt in the Doctor films, but I like him as the appropriately named Captain Boomer in Moby-Dick - a brief but noteworthy appearance in a great film.

I came across JRJ at TNA recently in a most surprising way; not, as one might expect, in connection with his fighting for the Republicans in the Spanish Civil War (although I've often wondered if that story is apocryphal), but as a passing reference in PREM 13/2774 which confirms that JRJ had a passion for falconry - apparently he pursued the pastime with Sheikh Zaid bin Sultan al Nahyan, the ruler of Abu Dhabi. I wonder how that worked in practice: the same briefing note confirms that the Sheikh spoke no English.

The brass neck of some people

So, slavery is abolished throughout the British Empire in 1834 and the so-called apprenticeship scheme - intended to ensure that the former slave-owners had access and continued control of a supply of labour - collapses in 1838. Your slaveowners have pocketed some £20m as compensation, while the drudges on whom the whole system rested get nothing. And yet what do we find in CO 321/81, a volume of official Colonial Office documents from 50 years later? We find one F. B. Byar writing to the Colonial Office because he is considering instructing his solicitor to bring a case that he is due further compensation for the two slaves he had owned in Barbados. In exquisitely polite terms, Byar wants to know about the compensation payments from 50 years previously. People can, of course, rationalise anything to themselves, but this? The mind reels at the sheer audacity.

WW2 Rubber Neckers

I chuckled at this item, found among some press-cuttings at Westminster City Archives concerning civil defence in London in WW2 (ref: CD 146.8); the Borough's Civil Defence collection, of which these cuttings form a small part, is a remarkable collection, incidentally. This was from the Daily Sketch of 1 July 1940:

Don't Rush to Incidents

Sightseers with nothing to do are still hampering the Civil Defence Services personnel working after flying bombs have fallen. This anti-social behaviour was the subject of comment in the Daily Sketch yesterday.

Immediately after one bomb fell yesterday morning sightseers collected. 

For some time they were responsible for delaying ambulances and rescue parties trying to reach buildings with injured people in them.

Thirty minutes after the bomb fell a police loudspeaker car arrived and a police announcer added his pleas to those of the other police for the public to move on.

A police car, making continuous appeals, pushed its way through the crowd to clear the way for an ambulance.

Not exactly in the Spirit of the Blitz, but it could have been worse: these days they'd all be taking selfies.

Deputy Director of Biscuits...

We seem to be stuck in a never-ending loop of political absurdity at the moment, but the archives furnish us with numerous examples that confirm that the absurd has - thankfully - always been with us.

I call as my next witness one Mr W. H. Phillips, but first consider:
November 1943 - British troops continue their advance in Italy; Berlin is pounded by the Allies from the air; the Cairo Conference considers ways to defeat Japan; the Tehran Conference gets under way, attended by the big three; fighting continues unabated in all of the major theatres of war...

And Mr Phillips? Well he's just been promoted from Assistant Director of Biscuits to Deputy Director of Biscuits in the Bakery Division of the Ministry of Food. Lest there be any doubt about the truth of this momentous event check the MoF's 'Bulletin of Staff and Accommodation Changes (No. 48)' in MAF 84/670.