We've recently come across a great website, that specialises in getting hold of
old postcards, putting them into a social and family context and relating their
back story, and we are very grateful to them for inspiring this posting.
One of their subjects is a 1915 card from Dames Road - sent 100
years ago today, on 27 May. Their blog gives some fascinating details (see here) and we thought we'd paint a fuller picture, by putting it more firmly in
its local context.
Below is the rather plain postcard, and it shows the shop
front of TR Page, Bootmakers - with a young girl in the foreground.
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| Start of the tale: postcard of Page's shop on Dames Road, 1915 |
The second photo below, is a blow up of the image of the
girl. The postcards' blog identified her as Ethel Page - daughter of the
bootmaker. She was born in 1907, so would have been around 8, when the card
was sent. As can be seen, she was well-dressed, including wearing a rather
smart pair of boots - presumably made by her father, Thomas.
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| Ethel, proudly modelling her dad's boots |
The recipient was her
friend, Lily, in Crowthorne, Berkshire, an altogether more salubrious area than
Forest Gate.
So, what can we add?
Well, Dames Road gets its name from, the Dames estate, of
which it was part, until the mid nineteenth century.
The social commentators, Howarth and Wilson, in 1907, had
this to say about the part from where Page traded:
In Dames Road, which for the most
part runs northward from Woodford Road, are some new flats, with separate front
doors. The accommodation consists of four rooms and a wash-house downstairs,
and three rooms and a wash-house upstairs. They were built in 1903, and are
inhabited mostly by newly married City clerks.
These flats are very strictly
kept, as they are in great demand. The rest of Dames Road, which was built in
1878, is chiefly inhabited by clerks and businessmen in the City, and has shops
on one side of the southern end. The rents vary from 8s 6d, per week to £40 per
year. The houses have maintained their level up to the present time, but the
shops are difficult to let.
We can assume, therefore, that Page's shop was constructed
around 1878.
According to local trade
directories, Thomas Richard Page, a boot maker, set up shop there in 1908 -
around the time of the birth of his daughter, Ethel. The shop is long gone -
see later - and was near the present Anna Neagle Close.
Page lived above the shop, in a four-room flat. At the
time of the 1911 census he was aged 34 and shared the accommodation with his
30-year old wife Eliza and 4 year old daughter Ethel.
Trade directories
suggest that Page continued to operate as a boot maker from the premises until
the end of the first World War.
By 1922 he moved his workshop a little further up the
street, to 54 Dames Road, where he
traded from for the next 30 years - but now as a boot repairer, rather than
boot maker. Presumably more highly
automated factories in places like Northampton priced small local manufacturers
out of the production of footwear. He must have felt deskilled by industrial
progress.
While trading from 54, he could well have been a witness to
one of the area's more dramatic events - in 1944. Although Dames Road was hit
by three small explosions during the Blitz of 1940 (on 16 September and the 8th
and 15th October), the damage was minor and mainly structural.
The Germans launched their much more vicious series of V1
attacks on London from June 1943, and Dames Road took a very direct and
spectacular hit on 27 July 1944 - a little over 100 metres from Page's shop.
A "Doodlebug" hit a trolleybus at the junction of
Dames and Pevensey Roads - by the Holly Tree pub, killing at least eight people.
Below we reproduce an extract from the following week's Stratford
Express, describing the incident.
The extract is interesting, in that, apart from recording the
incident (rather vaguely), it shows the level of censorship prevalent during
World War 2 - designed to not give too much information to potential German
spies about locations, and therefore assist in the accuracy of further bombing
raids, but also in not fanning the
flames of despondency and having an adverse affect on morale on local people.
Without a very detailed knowledge of local events and geography,
it would be impossible to locate the bombing location referred to in the
extract below. The incident was reported on an inside page of the paper, whose
front page was filled with comparatively trivial local day-to-day civilian matters,
and it is almost certain the newspaper underestimated (deliberately, or
otherwise) the numbers of fatalities endured, in its report.
The extract below is from the Stratford Express of 4 August 1944.
It may be difficult to read, so a transcription is supplied below it.
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| Stratford Express, 4 August 1944, recording the Dames Road trolley bus incident |
Incidentally, the cinema referred to, again obliquely, as being damaged, in the
headline, is almost certainly the Rio Cinema on Woodgrange Road, which was hit
on 29 July (not that you would know if from the report!). It is now the
location of the Durning Hall charity shop.
When a number of dwellings were
damaged close to a public house (ed note: Holly Tree) and the edge of open land
(ed note: Wanstead Flats); early on Thursday evening last, listening apparatus
was employed by members of the rescue parties with a view to finding how many
victims were trapped. It was a demanding voice, heard through a loud speaker
demanding: "Quiet, please, everyone" which brought a strange silence
on the scene. A moment before there had been all the noise inseparable from the
aftermath of any "incident"; but the voice that came out the loud
speaker altered that. Men perched precariously on debris were listening for
sounds which would indicate the presence of survivors. The hush was a weird
one, but it told the listeners all that they wanted to know, and in a minute
came the voice again. This time it said "Thank you, carry on" and the resources
were soon rapidly in progress. A passing vehicle (ed: the trolley bus) was
wrecked by the blast and there was loss of life amongst those travelling on it.
The dead included William Winter, Dennis Barfield, Thomas Driscoll and Reginald
Hillman.
It is likely that the four mentioned above were passengers
on the trolley bus, because four residents of Dames Road were also killed on
that hit, according to Air Raid Precautions (ARP) records. They were: Gladys
Blackman (aged 39), Wendy Blackman (aged 4), Abraham Ince (aged 76) and Edith
Tilley (aged 41).
The eye witness account, below, from a very credible witness, suggests that the death toll was very much higher. No publicly available records confirm quite how many, but well into double figures, by the sound of things.
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| Eye witness account from Cyril Demarne, later chief of West Ham Fire Service |
James Owen, author of Danger UXB - The heroic story of
the World War 11 Bomb Disposal Teams, quotes Cyril Demarne's account of
the incident. Cyril was a fireman of the time, and later became Chief Fire
Officer of West Ham:
A particularly nasty, gory,
situation confronted us, following a V1 explosion in Dames Road, Forest Gate. A
trolley bus, crammed with home going workers had caught the full blast and the
whole area was a sickening sight. Dismembered bodies littered the roadway;
others were splattered over the brickwork of the houses across the way and the
wreckage of the trolley bus was simply too ghastly to describe.
The roof and upper deck, together
with the passengers, were blasted away. Standing passengers on the lower deck
were also flung against the fronts of
houses on the other side of the road. The lower deck seated passengers were all
dead. Although many of the victims had been decapitated, they were still
sitting down, as if waiting to have their fares collected.
Demarne described the Dames Road bomb as "the most
horrific thing I ever witnessed." Given the position he rose to in the
service, and the number of incidents he must have witnessed in a long and
distinguished career, that is some testimony to the horror of the event.
Thanks to local community historian, Carol Price, for
pointing this reference out, and for confirming neighbourhood memories of the nature
of the incident.
The houses in the photo, below, were built on the site of
those destroyed by the bomb, post-war.
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| Junction of Pevensey and Dames Roads today - location of the trolley bus bombing in 1944 |
Back to the Pages of Dames Road. Thomas Richard Page ceased
trading as a boot repairer at 54 Dames Road in 1952 - some 44 years after he
began shop life in Forest Gate - aged 75. Presumably he retired, or died.
The business carried on, however, for another 15 or so
years, in the name of Charles Thomas. We don't know whether he was a relative of Thomas, or had purchased a going business concern. Neither do we know why he ceased
trading, but can assume that he became a victim of the throw-away society that
would rather buy new than repair old.
The lower part of the eastern side of Dames Road was
demolished in the 1970's for redevelopment, and the photo below shows the
cleared ground, including what would have been Page's two shop locations, in
1984.
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| Lower part of Dames Road, undergoing redevelopment, mid 1980's |
The area between Dames Road and Woodford Road is now covered
by a small residential estate.
Amazing, where following the tale of a postcard can take
you!
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