Tag: Great detail

Storm in a British Rail tea-cup

Daily Express – Wednesday 22 March 1967

So incensed was Malcolm Stuart by a dirty railway carriage that his anger erupted into a storm in a British Railways teacup.

Out of the window went cups and saucers that littered the carriage floor along with cigarette ends.

“All the years of frustration about delays and dirty trains welled up inside me,” he explained at Guildhall (London) Magistrates Court yesterday. “I know it was a silly thing to do, but I wanted to make a protest.

The delay

“What made matters worse was that the only other occupants of the compartment were a Dutch couple and a German couple. I thought it was dreadful that they should see this sort of thing in a train which was supposed to have been cleaned.”

It was when Mr. Stuart went to Liverpool Street station to catch the 8.10 boat train to Harwich that his cup brewed over. First, he said, there was a 20-minute wait to board the train – and an inspector said the delay was because the train was being cleaned.

Then in a compartment among the ticket stubs, he saw three cups and saucers with tea slopping inside them.

Angry Mr. Stuart asked a porter to do something about it. The answer was that it was the job of the restaurant car staff to remove tea-cups. A protest just brought a shrug of the shoulders from the porter.

The cost

So Mr. Stuart, 29-year-old research journalist of Courtlands Avenue, Lee Green, London, said he himself would remove the cups – and started dropping them from the window.

The protest cost him a £3 fine for wilfully damaging two teacups and saucers, and £2 for not giving his name and address to a railway policeman. He was ordered to pay for the crockery, worth 6s. 1d.

  • An Eastern Region official explained last night that there are three levels of cleaning. “A” allows for sweeping inside the carriages and servicing the toilet. “B” allows for brasses to be cleaned in addition. “C” is a very thorough job all round.

‘Everything is suffering from change…’

[AWH – Possible start to booklet? Out the window modern, cube-shaped flats and maisonettes were springing up. In just xx months, his house would be demolished.

Maybe try to find the Catford letter.]

The Rev A. Miller Hagerty, sat in his soon-to-be demolished vicarage near its soon-to-be-demolished church, hammering out a letter that railed against change. “”Everything in this age and generation is suffering from change,” he wrote, as modern flats and maisonettes sprung up around him.

That change “inflicts itself on the community life socially, economically and even religiously,” he added in his letter to the Sydenham, Forest Hill & Penge Gazette’s “You Tell Us” page. “Road traffic bewilders us, housing is an ever growing problem, the equitable adjustment of wages and prices, the turmoil of strikes, with thier dislocations, are a nightmare.” Beyond Courtlands Avenue, things were even worse. “The international strife of the powers breed the fear of the possible disintegration of civilisation.”

He kicked off a tradition of Courtlands Avenue letter writers. Though they were less angst-ridden as time went along.]

Sydenham, Forest Hill & Penge Gazette – Friday 16 September 1960

Magistrate inspects church fittings

East End News and London Shipping Chronicle – Friday 24 June 1955

Magistrate inspects church fittings

Poplar men found guilty of receiving

STATUES of angels, ecclesiastical vases, memorial plaques, a church bell, a font, a sacristy, and a weather vane, all alleged to have been stolen from a church at Eltham, were displayed in and outside the Thames Courtroom on Friday, and were inspected by the Magistrate (Col. W. E. Batt).

Roy Little, aged 18, general dealer, and his brother, John Henry Little, aged 28, lorry driver, both of Lochnagar-street, Poplar, and Vincent Patrick Keeping, aged 20, general dealer, of no fixed address, pleaded not guilty to stealing between May 7 and June 10 from St. Peter’s Church, Courtland-avenue, Eltham, approximately hundredweights of brass, copper and lead church fittings. valued at £60, the property of the South London Church Fund and Diocesan Board of Finance. six

They also pleaded not guilty to receiving the fittings. knowing them to have been stolen.

STORAGE

Canon Laurence Ambrose Brown, Southwark Diocesan Secretary, in charge of re-building war-damaged churches in South London, said that all the fittings had been stolen from St. Peter’s Church, which had been used for storage purposes for the last 14 years.

Det. Const. Stanley Evans said he found all the fittings at the address of the Littles early in the morning of June 10. In a bedroom in the house, he found Roy Little in bed, with his brother John under the bed. Keeping was hiding, doubled-up, in a clothes cupboard.

After questioning, they were all taken to the police station.

Roy Little told Col. Batt that he bought the fittings from a gipsy at Sidcup. He paid £28 for them and took them to his storage railway arch at Deptford. Because he thought they would not be safe there, he contacted his brother, who was visiting Woolwich, and his brother took them in his lorry to Poplar for safe keeping. John Little said that when John Little said that when they all got to Poplar, his brother and Keening decided to stay the night. When the police knocked on the door he realised that something was wrong and hid under the bed because he was afraid of the police. He did not know the metal was stolen.

Keeping said he helped to unload the church fittings from the “gipsy’s” lorry near Sidcup police station. From the look of the fittings he assumed they must have come from a builder’s yard.

“What, angels and plaques to deceased gentlemen and things like that?” queried Col. Batt, who said that there was no evidence of stealing against the three accused and dismissed the stealing charge. He found them guilty of receiving.

John Little, who was reported to have 13 previous convictions, was remanded on bail of £25 until June 25 and Roy Little and Keeping were both placed on probation for two years.

Abbey Wood man was led into trouble

Kentish Independent – Friday 07 November 1952

ABBEY WOOD MAN WAS LED INTO TROUBLE

Stated to have been led into trouble when he got into un-desirable company, Joseph Ernest Dalladay, 22, street trader, of Abbey Grove, Abbey Wood, was placed on probation for years when he came up for sen-tence at the London Sessions. two

Last sessions. Dalladay pleaded guilty with three other men, who were sentenced to 15, 18 and 21 months’ Imprisonment for a re-ceiving church bell, other articles, which had been stolen from a store in St. Peter’s Church. Courtlands Avenue, Lee, and for taking and driving away a lorry from Kentmere Road, Plumstead, belonging to Harry William Alcorn, of Barth Road, Plumstead.

Mr. Eric Dashwood, Court Probation Officer, said that Dalladay, who had lost a leg in an air raid at the age of 15, had not been in trouble betore