Tag: Local news

MP fights to clear premiers’ bodyguard

Sunday Express – Sunday 12 January 1969

THE WIFE of one of the Special Branch detectives guarding the Commonwealth Prime Ministers spoke yesterday of the case of mistaken identity which has left a cloud over her husband’s future.

Inspector John Warwicker, 38, was suspended by Scotland Yard last year after he spoke up for three brothers accused of theft and was picked out by a police witness as the fourth man involved.

The charges were later dropped and Inspector Warwicker was reinstated. But he received no apology from the City of London police who investigated the theft, or from Home Secretary Mr. James Callaghan who ordered an inquiry into the case.

Yesterday, the inspector’s wife Elizabeth said at her home in Courtiands Avenue, Lee, London: “My husband feels he has been unfairly left with a stigma which will affect his chances of promotion.”

Mr. William Hamling, Labour MP for Woolwich West, who took up the case with the Home Secretary, said: “I am going to seek a full debate in the Commons. Inspector Warwicker has been shabbily treated.”

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.

Age beats the chess champ

Kentish Independent – Friday 24 August 1962

At her home in 192 Courtlands Avenue, Lee, recently, pretty nineteen-year-old Verina Horsnell was packing prior to its return, the cup which she has won for two consecutive years as British Girls’ Chess Champion.

Verina is unable to attempt the “hat-trick” this year as she is over the age limit of eighteen.

She returned the cup to the British Chess Federation for the contest which was held during the Annual Congress at Whitby, Yorks, this week. Verina is a physics student at the Woolwich Polytechnic. “Κ.Ι.” Photo No. G/K 3063.