Spitalfields Life

Courtesy of Nicola White, author of Tide Line Art, I publish this edited version of the story behind a name on a luggage tag she discovered in the river last month, piecing it together by consulting records available online.

“It was a simple mud-larking find at Enderby Wharf one evening after work in Greenwich on Thursday 27th August 2015. The luggage tag was a small piece of metal so insignificant I almost passed it by but then I noticed, through the mud and drizzle, an engraved name “F. Jury” and a faded address. So I popped it in my bag for closer examination. “Perhaps it was a shop in Woolwich?” I thought.

On returning home, I cleaned it off and the engraving was revealed as“F. Jury, 72 Woolwich Road, SE” – 72 Woolwich Rd is in Greenwich, SE10. Occasionally, the discovery of an innocuous find in the Thames can be compared to opening a book – here is a brief outline of the life of Frederick Jury, owner of the luggage tag.”- Nicola White

Frederick Jury was born in Bermondsey in 1873 to Frederick (Senior) and Julia Jury. Fred grew up in Maidstone and Aylesford, where his parents originated, and he had a younger brother William. The Electoral Register of 1901 revealed that by the age of seventeen, he was a gas stoker and renting a first floor furnished room at Sarah Carter’s house at 572 Old Kent Rd, where (according to the 1901 census) she ran a coffee shop.  Sarah married James Carter at the age of twenty-two and they had two children but, by the time Fred came along, James had died and she and Fred fell in love. The register of marriages records that, on 24th August 1901, Fred and Sarah married. He was twenty-nine and she was forty-two years old. They did not have any children of their own.

So where does “72 Woolwich Road,” the address engraved on the luggage tag that I found on the Thames foreshore come into it? According to the Electoral Register of 1904, Fred and Sarah had moved to this address and Sarah ran a coffee shop there. But ten years later, at the outbreak of World War I, Fred and his brother William both enlisted in Australia within one month of each other – as  recorded in the records of the Australian Imperial Forces. William enlisted aged twenty-five on 3rd March and Fred enlisted on 19th March 1916 aged forty-two years. Was Frederick following his younger brother? Did they go all the way to Australia to enlist because the pay was apparently three times as much as in the British Army? In Fred’s case, it could have been that he was too old to enlist in Britain, whereas the upper age limit was higher in Australia.

Or maybe Fred wanted to protect his brother William? He travelled to Melbourne and enlisted at Cootramundra in New South Wales leaving Sarah in Greenwich at 72 Woolwich Rd.  Then, on 22nd August 1916, Fred embarked from Sydney, returning to Britain on HMAT Wiltshire, and proceeding directly from Folkestone to France on the SS Arundel in December. He fought with the Australian Imperial Forces 3rd infantry battalion, 19th reinforcement, who were sent to the Western Front in 1916. For two and a half years, the unit served in the trenches in France and Belgium, taking part in many of the major battles.

Fred was severely wounded on several occasions during active service in Meteren. Notably, in March 1918 when he was hit by a stick bomb which fractured his left foot and then, on 24th June that year, he was hit by a grenade at close range. I can only begin to imagine how terrifying it must have been. He received significant injuries to his chest, jaw, arm, finger, thigh and foot. Then he had several fingers amputated as a result of his wounds and received further major injuries to his left foot.

In June this year, I found an unexploded World War II hand grenade very close to where I discovered Fred’s luggage tag at Enderby Wharf. The controlled explosion was enough to cause a stir in Greenwich, so I can only imagine what it might be like having one thrown right at you. From December 1916 until April 1919 must have been an anxious time for Sarah, anticipating hearing the worst at any moment. During the course of the war, the Australian Imperial Forces 3rd Battalion suffered 3,598 casualties, of which 1,312 were killed in action.

Fred spent time in two military hospitals, the Harefield Hospital in Hillingdon and the Military Hospital at Shorncliffe in Kent. His fingers were amputated at Shorncliffe, while at Harefield Hospital Fred had his foot operated on after it was hit by the stick bomb. Then Fred was medically assessed as disabled and discharged from service in London on 23rd April 1919, after serving three years and thirty-six days. He received a Silver War Badge, sometimes known as the Discharge Badge, Wound Badge or Services Rendered Badge, first issued in September 1916, along with an official certificate of entitlement.

After the War, Fred returned to live at 72 Woolwich Rd until he died on 27th January 1932. Although eighteen years his senior, Sarah outlived Fred, remaining at 72 Woolwich Rd until 1933, moving to Greenwich South St where she died in 1936.

Fred’s younger brother William, who had enlisted with the Australian Imperial Force just a few months before he did, was also seriously wounded in action, receiving multiple gun-shot wounds to the head, and was committed to Sunnyside Mental Hospital in New Zealand in the forties. He died there in the sixties, in the same hospital, and he never married or had children. We do not know if the two brothers ever saw each other again after the War.

You might think that is the end of Fred Jury’s story, but I wanted to find out where he was buried, so I could go and pay my respects to him. And it just so happens that he is buried in Greenwich Cemetery, just around the corner from where I live. I made my way there straight after work, accompanied by a friend to help me search the gravestones.

As we drove straight into Greenwich Cemetery, realising we only had fifteen minutes to find Fred before it shut at 7pm, we were on a mission. Sunlight was streaming through clouds illuminating the view over London but we had no time for that, as we leapt out of the car at Area Z, trying to locate Fred’s final resting place from a rather vague map I had downloaded from the internet. It was like searching for the needle in the haystack with the added possibility that we might end up locked in the cemetery for the night.

At 7.01pm, we realised we should head back to the gates and since, to our great relief, they were not closed, we decided to wait until the gatekeeper came to close them. Sure enough, at 7.05pm precisely, a car sped through the gates and the driver looked at us rather curiously as we got out of our car to greet him. We explained the whole story and the wonderful Jason, grave digger with Royal Greenwich Parks, putting aside the notion that we were quite bonkers,  agreed to help us to fulfil our mission of finding Fred’s grave.

I had never been in a cemetery office before and I was overwhelmed to see the beautiful leather-bound books dating back to the early eighteen-hundreds with every burial registered inside. Jason unfurled a copy of a parchment map of the cemetery so that we could try to pinpoint Fred’s grave. But, would you believe that there was a big rip in the map, where Fred’s grave was located? There was nothing for it but to go and search, even though Jason explained that it was in an area reserved for paupers’ graves, so there might not even be a stone.

Jason kindly accompanied us and helped us to search. We set off, aware that dark rainclouds were gathering and the light was fading. The paupers’ area was sadly very overgrown, with small tombstones arranged back-to-back and, in some cases, completely covered with brambles and nettles. I was not feeling optimistic. In some areas, you needed a machete.

But then, after getting entangled many times in nettles and thorns, and peering beneath horizontal gravestones, my friend shouted “I’ve found Frederick.” And so we all went to see him, and Jason straightened the stone. It was a moving moment, to see his final resting place. Now he has no relatives left to visit him. Indeed, there are no relatives left to visit anyone in area “Z.” There was only a fox which seemed to have earmarked this as his patch.

There was Frederick Jury’s final resting place. We spent a few moments next to his grave. It seemed sad to me that after such a life, we had to search in the overgrown brambles and grass to find Fred’s headstone but Jason – who is familiar with such observations over the years – said he thought that it was not about the material things we bequeath or the state of the gravestone, but the legacy we leave behind in the people we touched during our lives.

There must be hundreds and thousands of other stories lying in the Thames waiting to be uncovered.  In the case of Frederick Jury, many decades passed before the Thames tide washed away the layers of thick mud to reveal the engraved luggage tag and I found myself face-to-face with Fred.

I have to ask myself what is my fascination with a stranger from Woolwich who died over seventy years ago? What led me to take a name on a tag and delve deeper into history? Maybe it is because none of us want to be forgotten? None of us want to be just a name on a tag that ends up in the river. We want to leave a footprint in the world and to know our lives to mean something.

This is my outline of Frederick Jury’s life pulled together from the databases and heritage sites that have information about him. We can only imagine the feelings, thoughts and emotions that Fred experienced, the decisions, considerations and worries, what made him laugh and what made him happy. Why did he go to Australia? What did he see when he looked out from the decks of the HMAT Wiltshire? What were his dreams?

Marriage certificate for Fred & Sarah Jury (Click to enlarge)

Fred Jury’s enlistment papers with his signature

Fred Jury’s medical certificate

Fred Jury’s certificate of discharge

Certificate accompanying Fred’s Silver War Badge

Map of Greenwich Cemetery with a rip in the bottom left where Fred Jury’s grave is positioned

Frederick Jury’s headstone in Greenwich Cemetery

Frederick Jury’s fellows in Greenwich Cemetery

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East End Soldiers of World War I

This afternoon at 2pm, a memorial will be unveiled in the Rose Garden between Sivill House and Ravenscroft Park, Columbia Rd, Bethnal Green to those who lost their lives in the bombing of Columbia Market on the first day of the London Blitz, seventy-five years ago on 7th September 1940

Tom Betts

On 7th September 1940, life changed abruptly for twelve-year-old Tom Betts. It was the first day of the London Blitz, when bombs came raining down from the sky upon the East End and, that night, one fell into the shelter beneath the Old Columbia Market, where Tom and his family took refuge. It exploded killing more than forty people and, although Tom was seriously injured, he was lucky to escape with his life. Yet the events of that night brought an unexpected and sudden end to his childhood.

“I am happy to say that although my story was horrific, my life has been good since.” Tom reassured me when I spoke with him, “I went into the RAF at seventeen years old and then married at twenty-two in 1950. I became a specialist school teacher and I have a great and active life which I share with my lovely wife Betsy and two children.”

When Tom and Betsy asked to join the housing list in Bethnal Green after the war, they were told there was a twenty-five year wait. But then Tom learnt that new homes were being offered in the new town of Corby in return for six weeks work. “I got a job running the first bowling alley and I got a house, and that was beautiful,” he informed me in fond recollection.

Tom rarely visits Bethnal Green, the location of his formative experiences, anymore. It has changed almost beyond recognition, yet this afternoon he is returning for the unveiling of the memorial in the Rose Garden between Sivill House and Ravenscroft Park in Columbia Rd in remembrance of the events of that other day, seventy-five years ago today, when life broke apart.

“It was a very warm, cloudless Saturday, just like any other early September day. We lived in Columbia Buildings in Bethnal Green, part of a grand project built by Madam Burdett Coutts – of the banking world – as a philanthropic venture in the eighteen-sixties. It was an enormous Gothic creation that comprised a covered market, accommodation for several hundred, plus shops and storage for the traders. We had our own church, swimming pool and baths, and the luxury of a laundry on the fifth floor – it was by no means the typical East End block of flats, it was something far more majestic.

That Saturday, after my mother had cooked breakfast for my brother & me, I went out with friends knocking on doors to take orders of coke from the local gas works. Doing our bit for the war effort earned us threepence a sack which was enough to buy pie and eels, and also the means to go to the Saturday cinema. In the afternoon, the sirens began but since we had some light air raids in the previous nights, we were not too alarmed. Yet that day was different, there was much more anti-aircraft gun activity, so we were more curious and climbed up six floors onto the roof to take a better look. There were hundreds of German airplanes, flying so low that the crosses on their wings were clear to see. Then bombs began dropping from them and landing on the docks. It was bizarre – I remember looking down at the square below where children were playing, oblivious to the destruction not too far away.

Eventually, the all-clear sounded and because of the raid my mother was late for the weekly shopping trip into Bethnal Green Road. It took about an hour to buy the weekend groceries and our usual Superman comics. When we arrived home, we found that the water to the flats had been cut off. We learned later that this was due to the amount of water being used to fight the fires and, as evening came, the flames from the docks were very bright. I was sent to the standpipe in the next street to fetch water and I had just filled my bucket when a woman came out to tell us she had heard on the radio that another wave of bombers were on their way. So, fearing an even more ferocious attack, I raced home to persuade my mother to go to the shelter – a large area previously used as storage under the Market Square.

We were not too familiar with the shelter and had only used it once before, when there was light bombing. It was large – about one and a half football pitches in size, divided it into two equal parts by a wall. We had all been given the luxury of a sheet of corrugated metal to sleep on. The shelter began to get warmer and, with over a hundred people down there, it became very hot. Everyone was calm and in one spot there was a wedding party going on they were laughing and singing. The noise outside told us all that bombs were falling and the occasional rumble indicated they were getting closer.

As the night went on I must have fallen asleep, but I remember feeling very uncomfortable and hearing my mother next to me, chatting to my aunt. All that I can recollect after that was feeling giddy and sick. Still feeling very giddy, I opened my eyes. It was dark. I could hear screams and whistles. Startled, I remembered where I was and began to feel around for my mother and brother, as it was impossible to see. The air was full of dust and it was pitch black. In the far distance I could see a tiny light from a small bulb. I could not get my bearings. Still lying on the ground, I focused on the dim glow coming from that bulb in the distance. It was hanging above the exit doors.

I saw silhouettes of people pouring out of these doors, so I began to crawl towards the source of the light and I crawled over a sheet of metal covered by a blanket where a woman sat. She screamed at me to get off as she did not want her blanket covered in blood, but her words made no sense – what blood was she talking about? I felt my head. I had assumed that the sticky liquid I could feel was perspiration. It wasn’t. I began to realise that I was the source of the blood she was referring to.

As I neared the light, I realised fully what had happened and remembered that within the shelter was a First Aid room, as I had been to it as a volunteer to be bandaged up weeks earlier. So, instead of going into the street, I pushed my way towards the First Aid room and, after I nearly forced the door, they let me in. Inside, there were about twenty people including one of my friends. A nurse bandaged my head and we sat in there for what seemed like hours. When the ambulance cars arrived, I was led by two ARP wardens out into the street that was as light as day from the glow of the fires. The warden who was holding my arm asked me to put on a blanket that he held. He said it was for shock. The converted ambulance took me to the Mildmay Mission Hospital where they were really working hard, looking after dozens of casualties.

After being re-bandaged, I was taken onto another ambulance – this time with four stretchers in it and an attendant First Aid worker. It was an horrendous journey, all the time the raid continued, and often we stopped and turned around to avoid blocked streets. At one stage, the woman First Aider who was with us told the driver, through the slot in the cab, that the man on the stretcher above me had died. This really did scare me and when she touched me on the head I shouted out, “I’m not dead.” I am glad she believed me. The driver tried several hospitals and I could hear them saying, “Sorry mate we are full.” Eventually, a hospital in Kingsland Rd took us in.

I was cleaned up and put into a room alone, still listening to the guns and bombs raining down. At last, I heard the all-clear and felt a lot easier. It was now daylight. It sounds silly now but I waited in that room for a whole day before another person came. It was a nun. She gave me some jelly to eat and some warm tea to drink. Later, a nurse came in and changed my dressings – making me feel calmer. That evening, an uncle came to see me. He had traced me from the previous hospital and  he told me that my father was on his way down from RAF Sealand in Cheshire to see me. I began to fret over my mother and brother, knowing that we had all been separated.

By an incredible twist of fate, it appears that a fifty kilogramme bomb had fallen through a ventilation shaft and exploded in the centre of the shelter, which was an approved Air Raid Shelter and an ARP depot. My mother, brother and I were less than fifteen feet from that ventilator, which was made from glass! How unlucky and how unbelievable that such a shelter could be built. To this day, I still do not know how many people died in that approved air raid shelter.

When night fell on the 8th September, the raiders returned. This time I really felt scared as I was alone, some four storeys up in a small room, listening to the bombs crashing down. Early next morning, a nurse came in with some tea and food. Then, about ten o’clock, two ambulance men carried me down the stairs to the front of the hospital where a Greenline coach, converted to carry stretchers, was waiting and I was taken to the Chase Farm Hospital in Enfield.

Arriving there, I was taken straight to the ward at the top of the block where I was bathed, fed and prepared for stitches to be put into my head. This was a rather painful experience as I was kept in my bed as they stitched. They were talking extremely kindly to me but it really hurt. At one stage, a black man from a ship who was unable to speak a word of English went berserk. Unable to understand anything going on around him, he screamed in his own language and began to throw things around the ward. I was concerned that he might hit the doctors while the needle was going into my head. However, eventually he was restrained and my head was sewn up and dressed.

After ten days, my father found me and told me that he had been looking for my mother since the event. By the time he discovered which hospital she was in, she had already died of her injuries. It appeared that she had been taken to a hospital and initially she was unable to speak but, when she was able to so, had given her maiden name making it impossible to trace her. I discovered that my brother had escaped without any injuries and was with my grandmother. I was devastated and I still have feelings of guilt because, on that day, I was the one who had insisted we all went to the shelter.

After a few weeks, I was allowed up and began to help on the wards and I worked the washing-up machine which was in another part of the hospital. I remember at one stage while cleaning up a casualty, a man who had been brought in, I noticed a piece of brick imbedded in his ear. I called a nurse and remember feeling that I was contributing something to the hospital. Although I felt well in myself, my head wound refused to heal and so I remained in hospital receiving an occasional visit from my grandmother.

Christmas came and a nurse took me on an outing to Enfield Town. It was a wonderful treat, she even bought me a waffle with honey on it – a treasured memory during a dreadful time. In the New Year, I underwent surgery and skin was grafted from my leg onto my head. I believe that this technique was in its infancy at the time. I stayed in the main hospital until May and was then transferred to a convalescent home, where I remained until the late August when my grandfather came and took me back to the Buildings where we lived. When I saw the first of my friends, they told me they were convinced I had been killed in the air raid. I assured them that that was not the case.

My grandfather had an allotment and the King came to visit, and spoke to us. He asked what I was doing and I said, “I’m helping my grandfather.” Then, on 24th March 1944, I was having breakfast in my grandfather’s kitchen in Columbia Buildings when the last bomb of the war fell upon Vallance Rd. My porridge flew up in the air, out of the bowl, and landed upon my leg burning the skin.  So, on the very first day of the bombing and on the last day, I got hurt by a bomb!”

Tom Betts, 7th September 2015

Columbia Buildings where Tom grew up

Columbia Market constructed by Angela Burdett Coutts at the suggestion of Charles Dickens in 1859

Old Columbia Market during demolition in 1958, with the cellars that served as a shelter visible.

(Photos courtesy of Alfred Robinson from Tower Hamlets Local History Library & Archives)

These stone pillars in Columbia Rd are all that remains today of the Old Columbia Market

Tom Betts with his daughter at the unveiling of the commemorative plaque

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Tepidarium at Billingsgate Roman bathhouse

In Lower Thames St, where the traffic roars past old Billingsgate Market and around the Tower of London, there is an anonymous door that leads to the past. It is a piece of spine-tingling magic. You walk through a modern door into an unremarkable corporate building and descend a staircase to discover the best preserved piece of Roman archaeology in London.

Here is a second century riverside villa with an bathhouse of cruciform shape complete with an elaborate underfloor heating system. You can see the square frigidarium with its tessellated floor and then the smaller rooms with curved walls, the tepidarium and the caldarium, with tiled floors supported upon pilae permitting the hot air to travel underneath. In these rooms, water could be thrown upon the heated floor to create clouds of steam. For those who originated in warmer climes, the bathhouse provided a welcome antidote to the misery of cold winters in London.

The bathhouse was first uncovered in 1848 during the construction of the London Coal Exchange and drew a response of such wonder that – unlike many other ancient remains discovered in the City in that era – it was preserved. When the Coal Exchange was demolished in the last century for the widening of Lower Thames St, more of the Roman ruins were uncovered before being concealed in the basement of the block where they are housed today.

A century after the bathhouse was constructed, a six metre defensive wall was built along the water front, concealing the river view and blocking out the light. It was then that the bathhouse was expanded within the garden of the villa and perhaps the dwelling changed from a desirable private house to some form of temporary lodging, with the added attraction of a steam bath.

In use until the Romans departed London in the fifth century, the bathhouse then fell into disrepair and collapsed before being covered with a layer of silt, preserving the remains and preventing anyone carrying off the building materials for reuse. Tantalisingly, a Saxon brooch was found on top of the pile of collapsed roof tiles dating from a time when this part of the City of London was uninhabited. Did someone from the nearby Saxon settlements come to explore the Roman ruins one day and slip upon the rubble, dropping a brooch?

When you walk upon the metal gantries over the Roman walls, you feel you are a ghost from the future eavesdropping on another time. The scale of the rooms is apparent, the stone bench in the steam room is discernible and you can see the fragments of worn floor, smoothed with centuries of use by the long-dead. Square pipes, tiles and other details of the construction reveal the work of skilled craftsmen in ceramic and brick, and a single tile bears the imprint of a dog’s paw that wandered through the brick maker’s yard in London seventeen hundred years ago.

Explore Billingsgate Roman Bathhouse for yourself any weekend until 12th December – visit the Museum of London website for further information and booking. Additionally, the Bathhouse will be open for free and without booking on 19th & 20th September as part of Open House weekend.

The hot air from the furnace entered the building and circulated under the floor

The curved walls of the caldarium

Tiles supported on pilae as part of the underfloor heating system in the tepidarium

Tessellated floor in the frigidarium

Fragment of tessellated floor

The stone bench in the tepidarium

The paw print of a dog in London seventeen hundred years ago

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