Eyewitnesses
Olivia Cockett at
33 Breakspears Road, between Brockley and Lewisham, started her diary entry:
“1.30am. I am scared stiff. Sirens at 11.20 after I’d been to bed and got up
once for bombs. Cellar; bombs very
close; quiet later so top window – big fire blazing high over the Rotherhithe
Docks. Shivered for the poor souls in or
near it. Trembled uncontrollably when
the big bangs came. Had a fag. Seven of us, no one broke down, but we did
not like it. Heavenly moonlight and
peace out in the garden.
Up again 2.45. More
bombs, no siren. Spent rest of night in clothes,
on settee, afraid. Crawled upstairs into
bed again about 6.”
George Orwell,
who had been watching from not far away, at 24 Crooms Hill, Greenwich, recorded
in his diary: “The raid which occurred on the 24th was the first
real raid on London as far as I am concerned, i.e. the first in which I could
hear the bombs.
We were watching at the front door when the East India docks
were hit. No mention of the docks being
hit in Sunday’s papers, so evidently they do conceal it when important targets
are hit …
It was a loudish bang but not alarming and gave no
impression of making the earth tremble, so evidently these are not very large
bombs that they are dropping.”
Orwell contrasted that with his experience of the Spanish
Civil War when a bomb 4 kilometres away made a “terrific roar”.
Colin Perry at
Holmbury Court in Tooting, was alerted to the siren at about 11.10pm. “I got an apple and went downstairs. It was a simply heavenly night. Overhead we heard the roar of a German
bomber, and myriads of searchlights scanned the sky for trace of her. This bomber to my mind seemed intent on
circling round our neighbourhood, though I recall reading articles how bombers
never circle but drop and run. I went to
the top of Number One block [Holmbury Court] after I had heard three wooshes
signifying explosions but all Surrey and South London seemed quiet … The bomber
went round and round and the all-clear went at around 1.50 or thereabouts. Two hours!”
He saw “a gigantic red glow in the sky Citywards”. His father was a journalist and found out “a
bomb set fire to Rylands in Gresham Street and Fore Street and razed it to the
ground … Barbican had a bomb.”
“At 3am I was awakened by another hellish German, and as I
listened to him drawing nearer I heard him drop a heavy bomb and the explosion
seemed close. I listened … nearer … now
the guns were in action … no sirens … like waiting for the luck of the
draw. I poked my head out of the window;
the searchlights were still up though I considered them much less powerful than
ordinary peacetime practices but of course the moonlight was brilliant.”
He says the population had been warned the alarm would not
be sounded for individual German planes, but at this point his family went to
the shelter. “I stayed on top … three
more terrific explosions, guns or bombs I could not say … We got back into bed
about 3.30am.”
Other bomb-damage reported by his father included two sugar
storehouses on fire and damage to Ford’s works at Dagenham
What happened?
The film “Battle of Britain” contains a version of the
events of this night and explains the first bombs to fall on the central area
of London as being due to a single lost Luftwaffe crew ditching their bombs to
go home. In the film, this leads the RAF
to raid Berlin (this happens just as the disgraced Luftwaffe crew who inadvertently
bombed London arrive there to be dressed-down).
In response for the RAF raid, Hitler is so furious he orders
the Luftwaffe to switch the attacks from the RAF airfields to London; with the
airfields given breathing space the RAF recover, the Battle of Britain was won
and invasion was averted, changing the course of the war (and of history).
Three aspects do not make sense to me:
(i) Could a single plane have caused the damage
listed in contemporary records?
(ii) Was Thameshaven the target?
(iii) Did this raid really lead to
the Blitz on London?
I’ll go through them in turn.
The single plane?
The theory of the single plane was contemporaneous: for
example, John Colville, a senior aide on Churchill’s staff, noted in his diary
for Monday 26th August: “London has been bombed – by a single
aircraft on Saturday night – and in retaliation we sent eighty-nine bombers
over Berlin on Sunday night.” So even 36
hours after the bombing on the night of 24th-25th,
Churchill’s staff believed a single plane had been involved.
The Battle of Britain film takes up this theme, but other sources
(such as Wallington) say two planes were involved. However, the supreme “After the Battle:
Volume 1” questions whether one or two planes could have produced the number of
incidents and the spread over time that was reported.
I would tentatively suggest a minimum of six planes (based
on minimum numbers of one over Middlesex, one over north and east London, two
over central London, and two over Surrey), with ten being more likely. They seem to have been flying singly or in
pairs.
Target Thameshaven?
I don’t doubt Thameshaven was A target on this night. But none of the books or websites I consulted
give a reference source for the target(s) for the Luftwaffe for that evening. My question is whether Thameshaven was the
only target?
Its position on the ‘coast’ (albeit the Thames estuary) made
it a good night-time target: the lights of the city could be ‘blacked out’, but
there was no way to stop the moonlight glinting off of water. Colin Berry and Olivia Cockett both record
how bright the moonlight was (the
full moon
was on 18
th August). German
navigators would thus have been able to get an accurate idea of where Thameshaven
was.
In addition, the location of Thameshaven at the mouth of the
Thames gave a short journey from the Luftwaffe airfields in northern France. Some sources say Rochester, on the other side
of the Thames estuary, was also a target, and this would have all the same
attributes as Thameshaven.
So, given this ‘simple’ target, and the bright moonlight how
did the Germans seemingly overshoot their target by over 30 miles? They are then said to have jettisoned their
bombs over seemingly empty countryside which would have involved ignoring the
distinctive line of the Thames, also visible in the moonlight, not to mention
the Regent’s Canal, running just north of sites bombed such as Wenlock Street
and Scawfell Street.
Perry tells us that Fords at Dagenham sustained damage, and
it would make sense for this factory, also on the riverside, to have been a
secondary target for the Luftwaffe. The
other possibility is that it was the main target and the planes were lost
trying to spot the less distinctive coastline in that area. From Dagenham to the main bombing sights was
14 miles.
The night that
changed history?
The tit-or-tat version is that London was bombed on the night
of the 24th, Berlin was raided on the night of the 25th,
and … the Blitz on London began on the 26th? Well, no – it was 12 days later, on the 7th
September (two weeks exactly from the ‘accidental’ bombing of London on the 24th
August).
This table lists the number of incidents where civilians
were killed in the areas around London (note London City Council was what we
would now think of as inner London, so for example West Ham was in Essex and
Tottenham was in Middlesex):
|
London City Council
|
Essex
|
Middlesex
|
Surrey
|
25th August
|
0
|
0
|
1
|
1
|
26
|
0
|
1
|
2
|
2
|
27
|
0
|
0
|
1
|
0
|
28
|
0
|
1
|
1
|
0
|
29
|
4
|
1
|
1
|
0
|
30
|
0
|
0
|
0
|
2
|
31
|
4
|
8
|
1
|
2
|
1st September
|
0
|
3
|
0
|
4
|
2
|
0
|
0
|
0
|
0
|
3
|
1
|
1
|
1
|
1
|
4
|
1
|
0
|
0
|
2
|
5
|
5
|
0
|
1
|
0
|
6
|
10
|
5
|
1
|
3
|
7
|
98
|
45
|
2
|
0
|
This makes clear that while the raid on Berlin on 25th-26th
might have been a factor in the decision to switch to deliberate area bombing
of London, there was no simple cause-and-effect.
It couldn’t be argued the Luftwaffe had to develop detailed plans
to bomb London, for example, as if Hitler had simply wanted revenge then he could
have ordered completely indiscriminate bombing where any one civilian target
was as good as another. In fact, over
the whole weekend of the 7th-8th September, the county of
Middlesex saw only four incidents where civilian deaths occurred, and Surrey
saw none at all; this indicates German targets were close to the river, on both
banks.
So … just another
myth?
To dismiss the events of the 24th-25th
August as ‘just another myth’ - to be ranked alongside such sceptical
re-interpretations as the myth of the Blitz, the triumph of “The Few” or the
‘miracle’ at Dunkirk - would be a mistake.
Civilians died and the civil defences were put through their paces for
the first time in many cases.
Using different sources we can piece together the following scenes
of bombings and/or fires on that Saturday night:
Fore Street - the Barbican
(Cripplegate) area
The docks
Scawfell Street – off of Hackney
Road, by Haggerston Park
Wenlock Street – north of Old
Street and City Road
Elsewhere in London
Fore Street
The incident at the Barbican is probably best-known, because
a sign still marks the site where the first bombs fell on the City of London;
this
blog
does a great job of investigating the modern view of the area. (It’s a fascinating website for London
history in general.)
Wallington reports the siren at 11.08pm was the sixth alert
of the day. A bomb exploded close to the
door of the church of St Giles, Cripplegate, knocking over a statue of the
poet, John Milton. Buildings were also
set fire in Fore Street. The
Redcross
Street fire station was close at hand but despite the quick response, 200
pumps (over 800 firemen) were needed to control the fire. Wallington says up to that point a 30-pump
fire was regarded as “a major outbreak”.
This photo is undated but shows a burned out building on Gresham Street at the corner with Wood Street. The lack of other damage visible suggests this could eb from around the 24th August 1940.
The docks
Seemingly at the same time as Fore Street was catching
alight, two separate dockside warehouses in the West India Docks (site of
modern Canary Wharf) were also starting to burn. These could have been the warehouses
containing sugar referred to by Perry. One
fire required 100 pumps plus 2 fireboats, and the other fire required 70 pumps
plus 6 fireboats.
The contemporary official report says one of the buildings
was the Neill Warehouse with Warehouses Numbers 3 and 4 being set alight later
in the night. I can find no other
reference to “the Neill Warehouse” – can anyone help?
Wenlock Street
Located about 600 yards north-west of Old Street
Underground, the line of Wenlock Street still exists but is almost entirely
modern flats and there seems to be no pictorial evidence of how the street used
to look.
A bomb here killed Mrs Rose Windust, a widow aged 70, living
at number 55. We know this was on the
north side of the street, probably close to New North Road, possibly opposite
the junction with Evelyn Walk.
Mrs Windust was born Rosetta Magee in Shoreditch on 9
th
October 1869, daughter of John (a paper stainer) and Emma, being baptised at
St John’s in Hoxton.
Aged 21 she was living at home, her father shortened her
name to Rose for the Census papers, and her employment was making artificial
flowers.
She married William Richard Edward Windust on 7th
April 1895, aged 25. He was a shop
fitter, like his father, and they went on to have at least 6 children, two of
whom died when young.
She continued to work while the family was young, first as a
“jet worker” (presumably she carved
the mineral jet to
produce goods such as statues or jewellery) and later as a milliner (a hat
maker).
It was slightly unusual for a woman to continue to work with
a family, but times do not seem to have been easy – the 1911 Census records the
family living at 55 Wenlock Street with the parents and four children in a
4-apartment house or flat.
William seems to have died in 1921, his death registered in
Romford although it is not clear why it was away from his home address.
We know nothing else about Rose, other than that she was
still in the family home of at least 30 years when she was killed.
Scawfell Street, Haggerston
(then in Shoreditch)
The south end of this street still exists, from the junction
with Hackney Road to the junction with Dunloe Street, numbering to 12 on the
east side and 21 on the west. The modern
street ends here with
Haggerston
School replacing the former road. The street line is then picked up gain the
other side of the school, joining Kent Street.
In 1940 this would all have been Scawfell Street, numbering up to 104
and 107.
Look for the red circle in the aerial view at the bottom in the middle of the screen. Scawfell Street runs north from the circle, then comes the modern school, then the old street line (now Kent Street.)
Three people were killed here at numbers 76 and 78, which
would have been on the east side, just about where the northern ‘stump’ of
Scawfell Street meets the school boundary.
The people who died were:
At Number 76
Ada Elizabeth Short aged 23, a nurse at a first aid post,
and Hannah Amelia Short, 28, her sister-in-law.
Hannah was born in West Ham in 1912, daughter of William
Brandon and Caroline Florence Windus.
Her parents married in 1907 at St Ann’s, Hoxton, and her father’s
occupation was given as a sawyer (one who saws wood). By 1911 the family lived in Haggerston and
William had new work as a fish frier in a supper bar.
Hannah grew up to marry Alfred Herbert Short (born 14th
August 1910 to Herbert, whose occupation was making wooden packing cases, and
Ada, who was a dressmaker). The wedding
was in the second quarter of 1936, Alfred’s mother having died the previous
year.
The couple had one child, Kenneth, born in 1938 and around
this time they lived 110 Samuel Lewis Trust Dwellings, Amhurst Road.
Alfred remarried in 1947, to Florence (nee Loynes), and died
in Chelmsford in 1989.
Alfred’s younger sister, Ada, died alongside Hannah. She was born in 1917, and lived with Alfred
and Hannah at number 76. She had been
trained as a nurse at a first aid post, but nothing else is in the public
domain about her.
At Number 78
Stanley James Ryder, was 50 when he died. He was born in Hackney in 1890, and his
father was a waiter in an inn. He was
one of four children, two of whom died young.
At the 1911 Census he was a waiter as well.
While it is not easy to find a record of military service in
World War One, he was married on 2nd August 1919, which might
suggest a serviceman being demobbed. The
bride was Ellen Brightwell, three years his senior, and daughter of a wood carver;
the wedding took place at All Saints, Haggerston.
The couple had one daughter, Ellen, born in 1920. Ellen senior probably died in 1944 in
Shoreditch.
I could not find a photo of 76-78 but the above shows numbers 63-81.
Looking at the 1938 electoral register the properties are
generally occupied by two families, presumably in an upstairs flat and one
downstairs. The Ryders shared number 78
with Frederick and Emma Borrows; were they still living there when Stanley
died? And at number 76, who out of the
Pughes (mother and daughter) or the Ridleys (husband and wife) had moved out to
make space for the Shorts to move in?
Did they know how lucky they had been?
And the Ryders had lived at Number 80 until 1936 before moving next door
(indicating these flats were rented) – had they stayed put they would have
survived.
This is the view from Kent Street, north of the school, looking back down the line of the old Scawfell Street. Numbers 76 and 78 would have been somewhere just past the parked red van.
Elsewhere in the
London area
Wallington also refers to two other fires in east London
that night, requiring 30 and 20 pumps.
It’s unclear whether this referred to one of the areas listed as being
bombed, which included Leyton, Wood Green, and Stepney as possible
candidates. However, the following day
it was reported 100 people in Bethnal Green being left homeless – this could be
what was described as the fire in Stepney, as the two areas border onto each
other.
Other areas bombed in London were Canonsbury Park, Highbury
Park, Enfield, and Millwall. In Surrey
the targets reported to be attacked divide into two groups: a south-western
group (Feltham, Kingston, Hampton Court, Malden) and
a southern group (Epsom, Banstead, Coulsdon).
The other certain casualties that night were at Ida Road in
Tottenham. At number 17, Mary Ann
Kingsland was fatally injured and her son William and his wife, Ivy, were
killed; Mary Ann died the same day at the prince of Wales Hospital in
Tottenham.
Mary Ann Jeffries Bellamy was born in 1865, daughter of a
bricklayer. She married Thomas, son of a
labourer, on 2nd June 1884, and they had around ten children. Thomas died in 1930. Mary Ann left £222 to a son, Charles
Kingsland, boot repairer.
William, Mary Ann’s son, was born in 1901, one of twins. He married Violet Ivy Williams (born 1904) in
1930 and they may have had one child, William, the following year.
References used
The eyewitness quotes are from:
Olivia Cockett – “Love and War in London” (edited by Robert
Malcolmson)
George Orwell – “A Patriot After All” (edited by Peter
Davison)
Colin Perry - “Boy in the Blitz”
John Colville “The Fringes of Power: Downing Street Diaries
1939-1955”
Other sources cited:
“After the Battle, Volume 1” (edited by Winston Ramsey)
Neil Wallington – “Firemen at War”
