Friday, 20 November 2020

GIHS lectures on YouTube

 Greenwich Industrial History Society have now set up their own YouTube channel,

https://tinyurl.com/GIHSvideo 

there you can find Alan Burkitt-Gray's 13 Oct lecture about the role of Greenwich, Charlton and Woolwich in the global telecoms revolution.

Also on the channel is Mary Mills's lecture on 10 Nov on 300 years of the Greenwich Marsh/Greenwich Peninsula.

The channel went live this afternoon, 20th November - and everything is free to view. https://tinyurl.com/GIHSvideo 

Mary's lecture is of course just a few of the narratives from her new book 'Greenwich Marsh. Greenwich Peninsula' £10 from Amazon

Friday, 13 November 2020

More Merryweather - females fighting the flames- scouting for fires


Females Fighting the Flames… Scouting for Fires… 

...............Isabella’s Engagement… ...... Training a Dolphin .............and ................the Pompier Debate

by Neil Bennett


Fire, the devouring element, has never been known to discriminate between the genders of its victims. Accordingly, where women were alone in home premises when their menfolk were out at work, they needed to know how to fight it. Newspapers carried adverts showing women diligently waging battles with fires using Merryweather corridor pumps. But in 1886 an important institution was opened by Queen Victoria where there were nothing but women – the Royal Holloway College. Situated at Engelfield Green, just west of Egham in Surrey, it had been built by philanthropist Thomas Holloway and admitted its first students in October 1887. Twelve months later, with the co-operation of Principal and Brigade Captain Miss Bishop, and his right-hand man Mr J H Cleaver, J Compton Merryweather had by this time welded together a team who on a cold Tuesday aced their first fire drill. He was impressed with the alacrity with which the women performed their duties, being mostly quick and agile in making the connections with the internal high pressure mains and hydrants, running out the hoses and working the hand fire pumps and corridor engines. The brigade was divided into three detachments, each with a lieutenant leading about ten students.

Holloway was not the only ladies’ College to tool up – Girton and Newnham, both famous colleges in Cambridge, already had private brigades trained (‘drilled’) by Merryweather and his men. Girton, named after a village near Cambridge and the first women’s college, had been established in 1869, and brought on the start of the fire brigade movement among ladies. It was not formally to become a college of Cambridge University until 1948.

A genuine insight into student life is a rare journalistic gem, but especially so when referring to a women’s college at bedtime in 1890. Parents’ Review writes of the Girton students, who might have numbered as few as eighty in total,

“Between dinner and tea, even the hardest working student unbends. College calls are made and the debating and other smaller societies hold their meetings. Novels take for a brief space the place of text-books, and evening papers and magazines pass from hand to hand. By ten the students’ day is done. After a gossip with their friends, the wise retire to recruit themselves for the next day’s work by a long night’s rest, the foolish burn the “midnight oil.” Occasionally, however, midnight toiler and sleeper alike are startled by the rattle of the captain of the fire brigade. Then books and beds are hurriedly forsaken, and pumping, passing buckets, and the lowering of students from the college windows, is the order of the night.”

Relocating our observation to St Michael’s Mount off the south west tip of Cornwall, in August 1889, we see a new Merryweather ‘London Brigade’ fire engine arriving and being christened. It was for service in the anciently established on-shore town of Marazion. Instead of boys or men, the twenty-six places on the handles were taken by young ladies, who, at someone’s word of command “Work levers!”, brought the engine into play and threw a good stream of water. General approval was expressed at the result. This was no nineteenth-century gender tokenism, and nothing jaded their enthusiasm, as fourteen years later the women were still present in the same number, ready to pump, scale ladders or if necessary jump into a sheet. And the photo proves it…


Trained by Merryweather’s and manhandling the London Brigade Manual in 1903, the women of Marazion and St Michael’s Mount fulfilled an important fire protection duty.

Mr Merryweather’s concern to teach the necessity and techniques of defending the ravages of fire extended far and wide, but he did not overlook the needs of those closer to home. John Blundell Maple MP (later knighted) was the husband of James’s sister, Emily Harriet. Their mansion, estate and horse-breeding farm, Childwick Bury, had a newly-built laundry, perhaps judiciously situated half a mile from the residence. Despite its modern design, it was universally acknowledged that laundries generally were a fire risk owing to dangers such as overheated flues, stove pipes, drying-closets, or linen left carelessly by ironing stoves. Mrs Blundell Maple fostered a female fire brigade from the laundry staff and they were equipped with “an elegant little copper and brass fire engine, weighing only 14 lb or 16 lb (6 - 7 kg), which is suspended in the corridor on the wall” – the hand fire pump, along with its hoses and buckets. At the call of ‘Fire!’ the engine was carried to the waterside, hoses connected and on the head laundry-maid’s word of command it pumped fifteen gallons per minute into the ironing room and drying closet, reportedly only ninety seconds after the alarm. At each drill exercise two women operated it, but they might have been the ones saddled with extra washing and drying-out afterwards. The head laundry maid was required to lead fire drills every month, while Merryweathers’ inspector superintended the training once a quarter.

Merryweather offered fire drill classes exclusive to ladies, free of charge, to those setting up private brigades at country houses and institutions of many sorts. Their advertisements carried picture impressions of women doing a fine job of combatting the flames. There was a Merryweather Fire Brigade of ladies in Greenwich, supported by the company’s established ‘school’, inculcating life saving by canvas escape chute, portable ladder escape, sling seat escape and kit bag escape. Fire extinction followed rescue training, the women becoming proficient in indoor and outdoor hydrants, portable hand fire pumps, chemical extincteurs, buckets, hose, and then manual, chemical and steam fire engines. By the time the history of fire fighting had reached the last Christmas in the 1880s, Merryweather had made by far the premier contribution to consciousness-raising, practical training and provision of apparatus to women who had the determination to save their souls and property from the all-too common blazes. Among Britain’s female leading spirits in the pursuit were Mrs Edward Smith near Billingborough, Lincolnshire and Miss Fazakerley of Banwell, near Weston-super-Mare. The nieces of the Marquis of Abergavenny christened and started the Llandudno steamfire engine, and likewise Lady Peek at Wimbledon, Lady Shafto Adair at Lambeth and Miss Czarnakow at Mitcham. We might conclude from this that ladies mastered the technical intricacies of ‘steamers’ and other relevant skills and were there to do more than push the handles up and down to the traditional London cries of “Beer-oh!”


A Cambridge University college women’s fire brigade in the 1870s, possibly Newnham. Corridor-type pumps and small branch-pipes are in evidence. Tutoring in response to a fire was probably by Merryweather’s Captain James H Cleaver or Chief Fire Inspector Joseph Mason. Chief Officer W J Rushforth, whose name alone was befittingly didactic in this setting, may also have contributed. AUTHOR’S COLLECTION

 

A Merryweather manual is made ready by four women, their garments fireproof and conducive to ladder climbing, we hope. The demonstration, leafy location unknown, appears to be for the purpose of professional male endorsement. AUTHOR’S COLLECTION


An artwork possibly inspired by the scene in the preceding picture, with the addition of the draught horses and the lady driver with the whip hand. Merryweather brass helmets are atop the heads of all the women, and the company’s standard carriage fire engine under their control. The gentleman in the peaked cap, perhaps Merryweather’s Joseph Mason, has successfully completed the ladies’ coaching and they are ready to go. The illustration appeared in the first week’s issue of the Daily Mirror in 1904. A fragment of progress in women’s liberties, but perhaps obscuring the fact that by this time the ‘real’ firemen were driving self-propelled steam ‘Fire Kings’ and were about to be introduced to internal-combustion engines.       DAILY MIRROR

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ord Robert Baden-Powell (1857-1941) ignited the enthusiam of boys (and largely their parents) in Britain and the world in 1907. He launched his famous book a year later, and the Scouts were on their mission of outdoor awareness, adventure and personal development. A Boy Scout, as everyone knows to this day, can kindle a flame by rubbing two sticks together. But almost from the outset this incontrovertible fact was counterpoised by his ability to put it out.

There is no evidence that Mr Merryweather met Baden-Powell, but B-P’s chief scoutmaster, secretary and manager of the movement, Mr J Archibald Kyle had the idea of organising a fire drill among his own senior troop at Richmond, resident near the Thames. This was after boy scouts across the country had been reported to have given useful aid in dousing fires on several occasions. On the second Saturday in April 1910, following talks with James Compton, the first Scouts’ fire drill was held at the company’s Greenwich works, to be followed in a series. The conduct of the training was assigned to the Merryweather fire brigade’s chief officer, Mr Rushforth. The Scouts already possessed a small ladder fire escape, but James promised to loan a manual fire engine.

Both Baden-Powell and Kyle had written books, as had Merryweather, and in 1912 monographs became available entitled ‘The Boy Scouts: Baden-Powells at Fire Drill’ and ‘Fire Drill for Boy Scouts’. While Messrs Merryweather gave a nod to the unsurpassed Valiant steam pump, so well proved in the country regions in the Boer war, they had by now furnished the promised manual fire engine to the Richmond Senior Troop, and proffered the “Boy Scouts’ First Aid Kemik Fire Engine and Ladder Cart”. 

A year later the Scouts held one of their first ‘Grand Exhibition and Rallies’ in Birmingham, involving competitions for twenty-eight Patrols for the Fireman’s Badge. A fire truck designed and built by Merryweather was essential to the repeated exhibition drills that took place. Captain Wells, judge of the contest and a former London chief fire officer, had assisted in its design. The compact hand cart was assured to carry two hook ladders, one fire hook, fire drag, socketed ladders, more than one hand pump, ropes, canvas buckets (the company’s staple since its beginnings), canvas tank or cistern, mops for dousing fires, adze (a type of axe), and the indispensable jumping sheet. Compressed-air extinguishers were also carried, presumably the Kemiks mentioned above. Along with the seeming dangers of using some of these self-same pieces of equipment, and the threat of fires, the boys were urged not to try to do the work of seasoned firemen. Was the implied prospect of adults sending young boys up the outside of buildings on hook ladders better than the only recently curtailed inclination to send them up the inside chimneys?

It was expected that this fire truck would become the standard Scout fire engine, approved by the Association Headquarters, for issue across the country. 

Thus, formidably forearmed and trained, boy scouts could fulfil their unaided mission to quench small outbreaks in rural areas where the Brigade might take some time to arrive, or to give real assistance to the fully-fledged fire-fighters, in any emergency.



 Scouts pose meaningfully with the Merryweather Fire Brigade manual. In markings at least, it appears a different machine from that of the Ladies’ Brigade.  ‘MAGIC LANTERN SLIDE’ – AUTHOR’S COLLECTION


An important shot of boy scouts, with large flat-brimmed hats in the distinctive early style, posing with a partly built (or possibly part dismantled) motor fire engine with Hatfield pump, at the back of the Merryweather works, showing a view of the Ravensbourne Creek at low tide. The vehicle was perhaps being prepared for a test of the pump. The photographic source quoted a year of about 1908, but it is likely to be a little later than this. The identity of the trainer, on the right, is unknown. The scouts may have been given initial familiarisation with the motor fire engine, but would not have been placed in charge of it.    AUTHOR’S COLLECTION

The equipment which Merryweather provided to the Scouts in those formative years, and even more so their training, gave the youths of the day the tools and confidence needed at a time when fires were prone to erupt at any accidental time or place, and indeed for the great conflict that was to follow imminently.

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Mrs Isabella Jane Merryweather appears to have led a social and Conservatively political life in her own right, as distinct from her husband James Compton, and her earlier husband Henry. She was the owner of her house and its land (277 Clapham Road) and she was an active member of the Churchill (Kennington) habitation of the Primrose League. The Primrose League, originating in 1883, aimed to pursue former prime minister Benjamin Disraeli’s objectives, the society’s symbol of the primrose being his favourite flower. Like Disraeli, the League promoted popular enfranchisement and engagement in support of Conservative ideals including Sovereign and Empire. More than half its members were women. Isabella, or Mrs James Compton Merryweather as she would more often be called at the time, frequently held garden parties for the League in the mid to late 1880s. Broadly speaking, the League ran out of political puff following the Conservatives’ defeat in the 1906 election. 

At some point before or after the turn of the century, the sculpted contours of Isabella’s life led her to take an interest of some sort in the ‘Waverley Hydropathic’ at Melrose in the Scottish borders. She presented it with a statue of Sir Walter Scott, the poet, balladeer and author of historical novel Waverley. The ‘hydropathic’ was a hotel integrated with a facility for the therapeutic benefits of hydrotherapy – the early name being ‘hydropathy’. Set in beautiful grounds, the opening of the Waverley ‘hydro’ took place in 1871. It was architecturally interesting as the first building in Scotland to make major use of concrete, following the patent of a Mr Tall of London (and predating Robert McAlpine’s first concrete building). ‘Hydropathy’ or the ‘water cure’ seemed to mark an early example of the divergence of so-called ‘alternative medicine’ from science-based therapy. It would have involved the use of pumps, though it is not known whether her husband’s company contributed these.

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While opportunities for young boys seemed to be abounding, as in the previous section, adult women of the same era were becoming very assertive in their seeking political influence, that is to say enfranchisement, suffrage or the right to vote. Since the 1860s a movement had sprung up arguing nationally for better women’s education. Merryweather& Sons the company, is rightly regarded as a business of conservative precepts, but in the early years of the twentieth century Mr Merryweather’s second wife, Isabella, cited above, took the opportunity to contribute to a major cause of political advancement.

It would be too simple a judgement of the Primrose League, the women’s suffrage movement, and Isabella Merryweather to write that Isabella had a political change of course or a new inspiration in her passion and pastime, but she established herself as a suffragist, if not a suffragette.

A key figure in the Suffragette movement, and second only to Emmeline Pankhurst, was ‘General’ Flora M Drummond (1878-1949). On one of the many occasions when Flora clashed with the law in pursuit of direct action she came to be thankful to the Merryweathers.

In 1912 fiery feminist Mrs Drummond declared that the militant suffragettes, in pursuit of women’s right to vote, “…would come out and destroy property even more indiscriminately than they did before, and they would make life not worth living for Cabinet Ministers”. Flora organised most of the suffragettes’ protests and outrages, burning and damaging property and buttonholing members of parliament, but they were careful not to cause injury. She was a member of the Women’s Social and Political Union – “Deeds not words” – for whom she was both a doer and a public speaker. She earned and endured many terms of imprisonment, usually being quietly let go after feeling the effects of a hunger strike.

The women’s activists came from a broad class base. It is not quite clear whether Isabella Merryweather had the vote, as she may have gained it from being a married property-owner. These votes were somewhat restricted to local government (municipal) elections. Her tangible support for the women’s movement began on 11 October 1912, at 8.30 pm to be precise, when she and her co-operative husband made available their property at 4, Whitehall Court for the first “At Home” of a local Votes for Women group. The meeting was organised by Helen Gordon Liddle and the speakers were Georgina Brackenbury and Janette Steer. This was nine days after Flora Drummond’s fearsome deposition reported above, and six months after a notorious maritime disaster in which a ship had had the bad luck to be conceived, engineered, built, timetabled, skippered and steered by men…and sunk.

Campaigning and agitating for women’s right to vote, in Britain, had begun long before the dawn of the twentieth century, but as time went on numerous suffrage bills in Parliament were defeated, one after another. This was partly because of Queen Victoria’s implacable opposition to the women’s movement as a whole, and neither Gladstone nor Disraeli wanted to affront her. Liberal Prime Minister Asquith was later faced with the suffrage question being conflated in votes with other issues, and a further defeat, particularly in early 1913. Winston Churchill did little to help. Mrs Merryweather read the Daily Herald, a paper supporting the Labour Party and very partisan in favour of the women’s suffrage issue. Isabella wrote to them in praise of their writer’s uncompromising criticism (in an issue on 8 January 1913) of the ‘intrigue’ that led to this outcome. 

Friday 18 April 1913 saw Flora Drummond and members of her cohort appear on a summons at Bow Street Police Court where they were branded “…disturbers of the peace and inciters of others to commit divers crimes and misdemeanours and were likely to persevere in such conduct by which further crimes and misdemeanours were likely to be committed by divers women”. Outside were women noisily parading placards in support of both women’s voting rights and free speech. On this occasion Flora was only to avoid a spell in the Holloway cells if she agreed to be bound over not to take part in any militant movement connected with woman suffrage by public speaking or otherwise. She eventually and reluctantly gave this undertaking, for the time being. The court accepted her providing bail in her own recognisance of £200; further sureties of £100 each for Mrs Drummond were provided by Baron von Hirst and Mrs Isabella Merryweather. One hundred pounds in 1913 would buy the equivalent of more than £11,600 in the year 2020.

It is unlikely that Flora or someone on her behalf was randomly moved to the idea of taking the short walk from the court to the company showroom (at the corner of Long Acre with Bow Street), finding that Isabella just happened to be present that day, with a sympathetic ear and a purse that could be unlocked. Isabella’s brother, Henry Clarke Hulland had been a long-term manager of the Long Acre offices, apprenticed with Merryweather fifty-seven years earlier. The financial and political wherewithal for Mrs Drummond’s bail was undoubtedly planned, the groundwork laid and backed up by the other members of her family, and Isabella may have been present in court.

Later in July, Isabella chose The Suffragette as the newspaper in which to quote her own contact name and London address advertising what seems to have been a holiday let for a five-bedroom house in Saxilby near Lincoln, the town of her first marriage. 

If they had had time to converse amid the pandemonium surrounding in Bow Street, Isabella would have found in common with Flora, among other things, a closeness to manufacturing industry and the redoubtable skill of ‘typing’. Flora had been a manager of the British Oliver typewriter company, after her husband became unemployed. This (unrelated to Olivetti) was exactly the brand of typewriter used in Merryweather’s offices since around 1902 – “The Machine preferred by Engineers”.


Flora Drummond (of short physical stature, carrying what appears to be a bag), with Emmeline and Christabel Pankhurst in a demonstration in Bow Street, London near the Law Courts and the Merryweather showrooms.  daisymick

The first sovereign nation, i.e. not a colony, to award and maintain women’s suffrage was as far away as Norway, but it did so in 1913. Women’s evident ‘usefulness’ during the Great War stood them in better stead, but it was not until 1928 that women achieved electoral equality with men in Britain.

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While the scouting boys accomplished their fieldcraft, fire-fighting and knot-tying, the Scout movement embraced gender inclusiveness in 1910 with the introduction of the Girl Guides. There were, however, girls as well as boys whose interests inclined more to theatrical exploits than the mainstream pursuits of scouting. Fame beckoned. One of the girls, from a family of stage performers, found with James Compton Merryweather a means to mutually promote their names.

The father of Margaret ‘Midge’ Dolphin was Walter Dolphin. He seems to have been bred in the judicious naming tradition of something like Water Ford, the town (and ford) in Ireland. Walter Dolphin was the stage manager at Daly’s, which was a Leicester Square theatre where ‘Vue West End’ now stands. It was the last theatre in the Square to be demolished, in 1937, in favour of the oncoming ‘picture houses’.

Ms Dolphin’s forenames of birth, Margaret Flora Stuart, were frequently substituted for a nom de theatre such as the aforementioned Midge, Midgie, Madge or Peggy. Just to sow doubt in a future researcher’s mind that she was real, one newspaper gave her name as ‘MidgieDolphni’. Did the plethora of names dilute her future brand as a celebrity? Born in November 1899, Midgie appeared, aged twelve, dancing in a group of plays at the Aldwych called ‘The Golden Land of Fairy Tales’. In the same year her ethereal credentials became Shakespearian as she acted the fairy Mustardseed at the Gaiety theatre in Manchester.


Midgie was far from untalented. She could sing, dance, recite, navigate a punt, row, cycle and swim as well as act. She also won acclaim at an early age for her caricature artistry, and sketched and sold cartoons of her fellow theatre players and male and female visitors to the capital’s high-class residences and hotels.

Even in Midgie’s childhood years the onset of the ‘movies’ was perchance seen as both a career threat and an opportunity to an aspiring actress. Films were the way ahead. A fire engine factory could be just the ticket…

In the meantime, Midgie did indeed appear in two of the earliest black-and-white silent films. Billed as 'Madge Dolphin' and starring with Warwick Buckland, her first was Props’ Angel, released in March 1913. Of shorter length than we are used to today (the reel 1350 ft x 35 mm), the film was made by Cecil M Hepworth and written and directed by Edward Hay-Plumb. ‘Props’ was the nickname of the fictitious properties master of the Theatre Royal. The film’s plot, in which Midgie acted as the girl Elsie, was given in Kinematograph Weekly, 20 March 1913. 

Midgie was aware, as one newspaper wrote, of…

“…hairsbreadth escapes…those thrilling films so often seen on the screen where the heroine rescues a whole family from the burning house and then jumps from a seventh storey window”.

We do not know whether these were films she had seen, but the much-inspired Midgie wanted to be the first trained stunt-woman, at the foundation of a profession now much represented in movies the like of ‘James Bond’ and ‘Jason Bourne’. This, had she known it, was surely a better destiny than that lying await for very many young women of the time: to become ‘munitionettes’ in factories such as the Woolwich Arsenal. Could Merryweather’s help fortify her career?

Midgie's next film was Detective Daring and the Thames Coiners, by the Daring Films company, where she starred with escapologist Harry Lorraine. She took the part of the girl ‘Eileen’. This was a longer opusthan Props’, being 2450 feet in length x 35 mm. Of course the running time depended on how fast the projectionist cranked the handle, but was quoted as 24 minutes. The film was ready by March 1914; on 2nd April Kinematograph Weekly detailed its action-filled plot, and it could be seen from 11 May. ‘Daring Films’ was Harry Lorraine’s production company. Directed by Sidney Northcote, the film was a detective crime caper which saw a gang of ‘coiners’ routed. (These twentieth-century gang coiners no longer clipped the edges of minted coins to melt down, but pressed their own counterfeit coins using cheap base metal). In the synopsis of the story, however, it seems that Eileen as the girl appeared in short dialogue scenes near the beginning, leaving the drama involving a crane to the adults. Did this sow the seeds of a little discontent and a ‘burning’ ambition?

Whether Midgie herself sought an invitation to Merryweather& Sons’ works, or whether she was guided by her father or one of the makers of her films, or an advantageous theatre colleague, is not known. But the fire engineering company boasted at its top not only an engineer, businessman and fire-fighter, but also a supreme trainer, and perhaps most relevant, a publicist. When James Compton Merryweather and Margaret Dolphin became known to each other, the plan to meet hatched quickly. Like Midgie, Merryweather, too, saw the declining trend expected for live theatre and with it perhaps the lessening of lucrative contracts for the installation of fire-proof curtains (‘irons’) and hydrants (although the kinematograph also proved its own fire risks on several occasions). A widely-known association of the company and its products with a young film star would benefit both Midgie and Merryweather& Sons. A photo-op was settled upon – the publicity would be worth a lot more than the pictures of anonymous boy scouts in training.

James Compton would have given the young ‘wannabe’ a fatherly greeting and taken a decently reserved pleasure in the teenager’s company. As befits a modern-day film unit, the factory took on an ad hoc costume and wardrobe department, along with a veritable props department for the former ‘Props’ Angel’. They fitted her up with a Merryweather metal helmet, a fire hose and branchpipe, to go with the necessary jumping sheet, hook ladder and words of encouragement.

Papers reported that “the ambitious young lady…took lessons in life saving…practised climbing up hook ladders, jumping into a sheet, carrying an unconscious child over her shoulder, driving a fire engine and other daring things. Such is the amazing education of the cinema actress”. The reports gave Midgie’s age as thirteen, despite the articles not appearing until nearly the end of March when she was in fact fourteen. This was all before her new film’s release date of 14 May 1914, though we don’t know exactly when ‘shooting’ of the Coiners was completed. It looks as though her dynamic training experience may have been concurrent with the filming. The Merryweather visit was documented in the Mirror’s intrepid photographs but it is not known whether any ‘movie’ footage was shot at this time and place.

Following a photo appearing in company journal The Fireman, the occasion, or occasions, of la Dolphin’s training made a splash in the aforesaid national newspaper, as below:


‘Midgie’ is holding a hose branch (incorrectly), left, and preparing to jump into a sheet held by Merryweather employees – right of picture. The crane picture shows Harry Lorraine suspended and escaping from what is probably a very early Coles, either road or rail mounted. There is no evidence that Merryweather & Sons owned this crane. (Surely there would have been no escape from the much better Coles ‘Argus’ of the 1950s…?) DAILY MIRROR (February 1914)

In this modelled photo at the Merryweather premises, the girl appears to be wearing the same pair of boots as in one of the Daily Mirror pictures. CLARK & HYDE / MERRYWEATHER & SONS / FIRE

Midgie's ‘training’ and ‘rehearsals’ in the time available at Merryweather's would have had to be superficial and supervised. Some girls’ schools of the time had ‘jumping sheets’ and practised with them in case of fire. But today, jumping sheets are no longer used by British or European fire brigades as they are dangerous both to ‘jumpers’ and ‘catchers’. ‘Carrying an unconscious child over her shoulder’, we hope meant that she improvised with a reduced size of the training dummies known to exist at this early time. And a Merryweather motor fire engine of 1914, which the papers claim she drove, would have been difficult and potentially dangerous to start, and likewise to drive and steer, even if only round the works yard. She would have had to eschew plunging the valuable vehicle off the edge and into the murky waters of the Deptford Creek. We remember that only six years earlier one of the company’s motor fire engines was in a fatal accident while being tested on the road. The lady’s pose on the ‘hook ladder’ is discussed later in this chapter. 

With the help of Midgie’s character the coiner gang was satisfyingly dealt with and the bursars of the Royal Mint could sleep easy at night. But after the excitement of the film and her action tuition, the locus of Midgie’s career did not soar stratospherically. In spite of her training, initial success and support by the society and general press, she did not appear in any more films, although musical comedy Theodore and Co gave her some further acting success in a Gaiety theatre at age sixteen. Her two films were among the few uplifting distractions which saw the public through the dark years of the war.

Marriage is a thing of more than one school of opinion, but within an ace of her eighteenth birthday Midgie took in wedlock Major Sydney B Edwards of the Royal Garrison Artillery, ‘one of the South African heroes’. The forthcoming matrimony was reported, with pictures of Midgie, in the Tatler and other papers. After the wedding the Major’s posting may have taken him back to South Africa. It is not known whether Margaret gave birth in that country. Artillerymen’s hearing is often said to be at risk…but for whatever reason the couple sadly divorced and Midgie took ship and sailed home from Natal to live in England, in 1925. 1938 saw her re-marry in Islington to Charles H Cartwright.

The one-time immortal Mustardseed, Margaret could not quite live up to this ideal and as it eluded her she passed away as a widow, aged sixty-two. Her resumé included working with film and theatre personalities still celebrated today with warmth and Wikipedia pages. Margaret’s address near the end of her life is now occupied by a café restaurant, near the seafront in Frinton-on-Sea. Her effects had a value equivalent in 2020 prices to just £2800.

Cecil M Hepworth's film company, lacking luck and innovation, became bankrupt, and in 1924 all his film negatives were melted down for their silver content towards payment of the receiver. Midgie's second film did not survive either. So it is difficult to know whether any early novelties in cinematograph techniques or acting were explored in these films. Frequently throughout its existence, Merryweather and Sons’ presence was discernible and germane both to historical events and the naissance of technologies, but this time in the film industry, it played the smallest of cameos.

Merryweathers’ customers, as always those in fear of fire and destruction, everyone from governments to innkeepers, were the ones who capitalised the company as the Great War came and went. James Compton Merryweather, who died in his palatial home before the end of the fighting, never appeared in a film, but many of the company’s manufactures remain preserved in this way both in fictional and newsreel productions.

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Margaret Flora Cartwright had breathed her last, but one small aspect of her life underwent a reincarnation. Her picture became immersed in the mid-1970s debate in the British fire service on the future of a vital piece of equipment, the ‘hook ladder’, also known as the pompier or scaling ladder.

The hook ladder, possibly originating in Germany in the 1820s, or by its French name, is said to have been introduced to the Metropolitan Fire Brigade by Captain Wells. It had a singular and specialised purpose. Anyone who has used a ladder to paint part of their house will know the importance of the ladder being ‘footed’ and remaining firmly on the ground. Climbing a hook ladder, in contrast, entailed mounting the ladder as it dangled precariously from a window-sill above, while the ladder’s lower end flailed in empty space, usually at a dauntingly extreme height.

The ladder’s length of 13 ft (4 m) was a bit more than the height of a single storey of a building, it weighed 28 lb (13 kg)  and at the top was the ‘bill’, a large, strong, protruding metal hook, usually with serrations on the underside. A hook ladder would be called for on occasions when victims were trapped and calling for help from an upper floor window of a burning building, where it was accepted that owing to the fire there was no other means of escape, and where extension ladders, a wheel escape or a turntable ladder could not be brought to bear owing to lack of access or lack of length.

After muttering something to his heavenly protector St Florian, and taking a deep breath, the fireman, starting on the ground outside the building, or indeed at the top of another ladder, would engage the hook end of the ladder onto the window-sill or window-frame of the floor above, probably using it to smash the glass. He would then climb the ladder to the window and secure himself on the ledge or straddle the remains of the window, haul up the hook ladder and from there aim the ladder upwards again to the next floor above, hurl it against the target window or window-ledge and when satisfied with its purchase, climb up to repeat the process. A rotten bit of wood or failing mortar could mean death.

After the hero’s necessary number of repetitions and clambering over the broken glass into the target room, this was not the time to find that your casualty was in no danger other than from a harmless veil of smoke. Did they just fancy being rescued by a fireman and having a story to tell? The fireman had to decide how to bring them down, either by what was left of the stairs or with a variation on the way he had come. The fireman would sometimes work in tandem with other firemen and/or further hook ladders if more of either were on hand. The simple ladder could thus effect access and heroic rescues at a height of many storeys, and its successful use was attested to with lives saved many times, over a span of between one and two centuries.

The fire fighter needed strength, bravery, confidence in himself, and though it was not always acknowledged, luck. Training, which itself sometimes proved fatal, was paramount. A hook ladder rescue was probably the biggest challenge a fire-fighter would meet in his career, and when the implement was used in anger it would nearly always lead to a high honour and medal being awarded.

Merryweather were the primary source and made a range of hook ladders in its own works, usually of its favourite wood, ash. The catalogue of 1938 depicts exactly the same products as 1906, though the price of the single-centre-pole type (4th from the left, below), such as Midgie was ascending, has climbed from £3/5/0 to £7/0/0.

 

Merryweather light portable hook scaling ladders.  MERRYWEATHER & SONS

The redoubtable Midgie returned to the scene in the 1970s when one of her photos, taken in the 1913 training, was used in the discussion on whether to continue the use of the hook ladder in British fire fighting. To pose for the company’s house journal, The Fireman, she had stood with a Merryweather single-spine hook ladder, and at the time the company were surely wanting to show the ease and safety of the equipment: Even a woman could do it! Even a child could do it! Commercial publicity and promotion are everywhere, but today this seems a bit disingenuous, at least as far as the implied risks are concerned. Rightly evident in Midgie’s modelling photograph is her Merryweather safety belt, made of leather and woven flax, specific for hook-ladder use and priced the same as the hook ladder. But clearly she is attached to and standing on a convenient fixed vertical ladder, although at a significant height. It is unclear whether, or how the hook ladder is suspended. The 1913 cinema player looked every bit the Avenging Honor Blackman of the 1970s, but was safer than any fire fighter in an operational situation.

Accomplished Assistant Divisional Officer Allan Miller M I Fire E, who was a fire brigade trainer (and Associate Fellow of the Institute of Civil Defence), had the photo reprinted in Fire journal in early 1976 to support the proposal that the hook ladder be maintained in use, saying that in London alone they had been purposefully involved in twenty rescues in the preceding five years. The ghastly Leinster Towers Hotel fire was an example. However, there were factors such as modern double glazing with toughened glass, and building standards regulations bringing the gradual replacement of unsafe buildings and an end to their wooden staircases and inadequate access. These meant that the prerequisite Risk Assessment on a fireground would never realistically lead an officer to issue the order “Scale the building!”.

The civil law, reflecting possible damages awards to the families of either fire-fighters or fire or accident victims, undoubtedly had a hand. On the hook ladder issue, after impassioned pleas on both sides, ‘Health and Safety’ arguably won. Preceding Merryweather’s exit from London, the company neither received nor sought any more orders for hook or pompier ladders. Awe-inspiring skill and bravery had been ingrained in the very wood of their substance, coated with vermillion paint or varnished and polished to perfection. The life-saving appliance, made so long ago with assiduous care, was consigned to the hands of museums, antiquarians and dealers in adornments for the world’s fashionable restaurants and pubs.

Notes:

- This piece is a chapter of future book “Sustained by Extinction  –  The Merryweather Story” and is therefore written from the perspective of the Merryweather & Sons fire engineering company of Greenwich, London.

- This piece does not encompass all existing information or pictures of Margaret Dolphin, Isabella Merryweather or other persons or items mentioned.

- Information retrieval and text by N G Bennett. Pictures copyright other persons.

- Special thanks to George Dyson and Janice Healey.

- Anyone wishing to help write (or illustrate) the book, or publish it, please contact via Greenwich Industrial History Society


Friday, 18 September 2020




ARE THESE PICTURES OF PENN'S ENGINE WORKS ON BLACKHEATH ROAD?


The pictures below come from a set which we have been given by someone who got them from an unknown source.  They are copies - so someone out there has the originals.
They are marked 'Thames Ironworks' - now that works was in Newham, on Bow Creek, and it closed in 1911.   However  in 1899 Thames Ironworks had taken over the famous Greenwich based Penn's Engine Works.
We think it very likely that these pictures are of the old Penn works - perhaps taken at closure in 1911.
Penn's was on the Wickes site in Blackheath Road with an entrance in Coldbath Street.  Many people will remember the Erecting Shop demolished in the 1980s while listing was being considered.

There is more information on Penn's on past pages of this blog - use the search facility and see.

We know nothing about these pictures and would be VERY interested in any comments on what they show - and - where do they come from? where are the originals?











 

Thursday, 3 September 2020

Wednesday, 19 August 2020

GIHS AUTUMN PROGRAMME

 

GREENWICH INDUSTRIAL HISTORY SOCIETY

AUTUMN MEETINGS 2020

 

All meetings will be virtual, held via Facebook Live, YouTube, Zoom or similar technology (technology to be decided).

 

Video attendance will be free of charge, live as they are delivered, and each meeting will be recorded for free viewing afterwards.

 

For full details, see http://greenwichindustrialhistory.blogspot.com/ or see our Facebook group at https://tinyurl.com/GIHSoc

 

We hope to resume in-person meetings in 2021, depending on current laws about meetings, but we want to continue to make meetings available online at the same time.

 

There will be no charge for any GIHS meetings, live or virtual, at least through to the summer of 2021.

 

Tuesday 13 October

Starting online at 19:30

Greenwich and Woolwich, the birthplace of the global telecoms industry and the internet

The global network that we now call the internet was built in factories along the river in Greenwich, Charlton and North Woolwich. One of them is almost certainly the oldest working factory in the industry. And the optical fibre technology that the internet uses today was invented by an electronics engineer trained in Woolwich and North Woolwich.

Alan Burkitt-Gray, SE London-based telecoms and technology journalist and secretary of GIHS 

 

Tuesday 10 November

Starting online at 19:30

Greenwich Marsh to Greenwich Peninsula – 300 years of regeneration

The Greenwich peninsula, now the home to the O2, North Greenwich station, hotels, endless blocks of flats and tunnels to the other side of the river, has been the scene of industry for a thousand years – with tide mills and factories that made gunpowder, rope, soap, linoleum, concrete and steel, not to mention the gasworks.

Dr Mary Mills, industrial historian and joint chair of GIHS 

 

Tuesday 8 December

Starting online at 19:30

The Eastern Telegraph Company’s first cable system – the Red Sea Line to India

It’s 150 years this year since the UK was first connected directly to India, via Gibraltar, Malta, Alexandria, Aden and the Indian Ocean. The cable was made in Greenwich – and the Aden-Mumbai stretch was laid by the Great Eastern, the Brunel’s paddle steamer that was built on the Isle of Dogs. 

Stewart Ash, SE London-based submarine cable consultant and historian

 

Tuesday, 4 August 2020

GIHS NEWSLETTER August 2020

Greenwich Industrial History Society

Newsletter August 2020


Like every other Society we had to pause our meetings from March onwards. But we have an exciting offer to all members – and to followers of our Facebook group: online meetings, via Zoom, to start this autumn.

We are building the agenda for our autumn schedule of online meetings, and we will announce the topics and speakers shortly.

Among the subjects we are considering are Greenwich’s contribution to the communications revolution from 1851 onwards; the Great Eastern and its role in the first cable from Britain to India; the East Greenwich gasholder, recently demolished. Please let us know of other wishes and suggestions. Please email marymillsmmmmm@aol.com or alan@burkitt-gray.com with your ideas.


AGM report

The GIHS officers are now Andrew Bullivant and Mary Mills as joint chairs; Alan Burkitt-Gray as secretary; Juliet Cairns as auditor; and Elizabeth Pearcey as a co-opted extra member. Our treasurer resigned, and so Alan, Mary and Juliet are now doing it between them. It has taken some time to sort out the paper work which our late, and very valued, treasurer, Steve Daly left. But we are working on it.

We are not going to charge a membership subscription for 2020-21. All our online meetings will be free and – when we finally are able to gather back in our regular meeting place – meetings for winter, spring and summer 2021 will be free too.

Please contact Elizabeth Pearcey (details below) for membership enquiries.

 

Facebook page and the GIHS blog

There is a lot going on in industrial history in Greenwich at the moment and we attempt to report as much as possible on the Greenwich Industrial History page on Facebook. If you are a Facebook user, search for the society, go to https://www.facebook.com/groups/1549240565122658/, or go to this specially shortened link https://tinyurl.com/GIHSoc.

We will also post details of all our meetings – including our online meetings – there.

Our Facebook group now has 500 members and new people are joining all the time. Many of them are young people who are moving into the new flats on the Peninsula.

We are also still running the GHIS blog at https://greenwichindustrialhistory.blogspot.com/ for longer items – and there is an Instagram and a Twitter account.

Over the past couple of years we have hosted a small advisory group for people involved in various projects and campaigns. Hopefully this has provided a measure of mutual support.  If you would like to contribute please contact us.

So what is going on? A quick run round

Being Greenwich, this is all about development sites – and, with all the activities listed below, things are really still on hold. Until the start of lockdown we had regular meetings of members who were involved in various projects, so please keep in touch so we can tell people what it going on.

·       THE GASHOLDER. Clearly this has now been demolished . We are left with an amazing photo archive and much new information. We had four site visits and a commemorative artwork is planned. We are also in touch with many historians and activists with an interest in the gas industry and gas holders. The Silvertown Tunnel will include major works on the site of the No 2. Holder (demolished in 1985) and we hope that this will provide items of interest.

·       ENDERBY WHARF. The Enderby Group continues to monitor developments. It is to our regret that Barratts – which developed the site – never constructively engaged with the group. Enderby House has now been passed to Young’s brewery, although what is happening is still not clear. Our members worked closely with Bobby Lloyd who designed a commemorative artwork for the site. We have had a number of articles and books published and are grateful to Bill Burns, who runs the Atlantic Cable Web site https://atlantic-cable.com/

·       ROYAL ARSENAL. We are in close touch with the group running the Royal Arsenal website and with other activists on the site. Before lockdown there were successful pub-based information sessions and the group also hosts a lively facebook page and has a terrific website.  https://www.royal-arsenal-history.com/

·       GREENWICH ARCHIVE. We have been closely involved in drawing attention to the deficiency in the current arrangements through the Greenwich Archive Users Forum.

·       DEPTFORD DOCKYARD. We are in touch with residents who seek to challenge the development plans for the site – which were agreed some years ago and may now be revised – and they hope to get the historical context re-examined.

·       SIEMENS SITE. We have members working with the developers here and other members working with local campaigners. It is hoped that the new development will include some reference to the past of this important company. Sadly, as many will be aware, Brian Middlemiss from the Siemens Engineering Society was killed in an accident. He and other members had provided a vast amount of help and support over the years.

·       MORDEN WHARF. A planning application is now in for this important site. Members have been involved in providing historical information here.

·       SILVERTOWN TUNNEL. Planning applications for the actual works are now being registered. We are looking at plans for an archaeologist on site and are seeking advice on their remit. Clearly we would like them to evaluate the remains of the two holders on site  (YES – two holders.

·       DEPTFORD CREEK.  We have been happy to support West Greenwich residents who have been campaigning for a Creekside footpath to be opened – as planning consents have ruled. They would like this to include information with reference to the many industrial sites on the Creek – and to include buildings currently in use by Thames Water for construction of the Tideway Tunnel

·       PUBLICATIONS. Many members are involved in the production of community based newsletters and leaflets on Greenwich’s industrial history – for example Richard Buchanan’s monthly newsletter for Woolwich Antiquarians.  Stewart Ash has produced many articles, and three books – one on the Enderby family and one on the cable industry in Greenwich are on the Atlantic Cable website. His biography of Sir John Pender is available through Amazon.  Mary Mills continues to produce an article most weeks on Greenwich industry in Greenwich Weekender and hopes to re-publish Greenwich Marsh –first published in 1998 but this time longer and with proper references – again via Amazon.

·       REQUESTS: We currently have requests for information on:

o   Greenwich Ferry Countess of Zetland

o   Old photographs of Park Row

o   Always happy to take on issue and see what we can come up with.

·       Alan Burkitt-Gray, o   ( 7 Foxes Dale, London SE3 9BD Phone 079 6202 1330  alan@burkitt-gray.com)

·       Mary Mills o   (24 Humber Road, London,SE3LT marymillsmmmm@aol.com)

·       Elizabeth Pearcey o   (125B Dalling Road London W6 0ET.: 020 8222 8468.: 07738 473547. e.pearcey@gmail.com)


Friday, 24 July 2020

Articles on Greenwich Peninsula History - by Mary Mills

Mary Mills –Works on Peninsula History

As ever I find 'consultants' paid  for writing histores of Peninsula sites - and getting it all wrong.  They never ever seem to consult existing work - and goodness there is a lot out there for them to ignore.  

These are just some of my own articles and booklets on Peninsula History - there are many others I just can't track down or still trying.  

Sorry if this is boastful - but I am not getting paid for this, and others are getting consultants' rates for writing nonsense.   

bleat bleat


Alexander Theophilus Blakeley. Ordnance Journal 2001

Beale’s Gas Exhauster  Greenwich Weekender  10 June 2020

Bessemer and Greenwich. GLIAS Newsletter. Letter

Blackadder.  Greenwich Visitor.

Blackwall Point Greenwich Society Newsletter Sept/Oct 2018. 

Breach in the Sea Wall, Bygone Kent. 19/.4.

Bugsby’s Reach http://onthethames.net/2014/02/14/platform-defence-bugsbys-reach/

Bugsby’s Reach consultation. GLIAS Newsletter

Case for Listing cranes at Lovells Wharf .Groundwork 1999

Ceylon Place cottages. Greenwich Visitor

Damn Your Eyes Mr. Sharp.  Meridian Magazine. March 2000

Dock That Never Was, Bygone Kent . 20/.4

Drugs, Guns and High Finance. Bygone Kent. 19/7.

Early Gas Industry and its Residual Products in East London.  Book M. Wright 1994

East Greenwich Gas Holder is Going. Newcomen Links. Sept 2019

East Greenwich No.2.  GLIAS Newsletter 1986

East Greenwich Tide Mill. London’s Industrial Archaeology 17. 2019

Enderby Leaflet (with Stewart Ash and Peter Luck)

Enderby Wharf. The True Story. Westcombe  News Feb 2017  (with Peter Luck)

Explosion at Blackwall Point Greenwich Weekender  5th September 2018

Explosion 200 years ago. Industrial Heritage  Vol. 32 Winter 2007

Explosive Magazine at Greenwich Greenwich Weekender 17th June 2020

Explosive Magazine at Greenwich, Bygone Kent,. 18/12.

Finding the Bulli Bulli GIHS Newsletter Vol.2/ 5

From Greenwich across the Atlantic . Greenwch Weeknder 16th July 2020

From Mr Bugsby to the Coaling Jetty. Booklet

From the Great Meadow to the Barge Builders Greenwich Weekender 27 May 2020

Gas Workers Strike in South London,  South London Record 4, 1989.

George Livesey Business History 1988

Georgian Cottages on the New Millennium Experience Site

Georgian Cottages nearly demolished for the Millennium Exhibition. Greenwich Society Newsletter

Peninsula History Docklands Forum; April 1998

Giveem enough Rope Greenwich Weekender  24 June 2020

Granite wharf Greenwich Weekender  13 May 2020

Greenwich and Woolwich at Work. Suttons 2002 Book 

Greenwich Gunpowder Depot, Gunpowder Mills Study Group, 21.

Greenwich Harbour Master. Greenwich Weekender  16th May  2018

Greenwich Inland Linoleum, Bygone Kent, 20/3.

Greenwich Marsh Flood Defences. Newcomen   Bulletin 170, April 1998.

Greenwich Marsh, M.Wright 1999 Book 

Greenwich Peninsula. Docklands Forum 1999

Greenwich ships travelled far. Greenwich Weekender 10th June 2019

Gunpowder. Inspection and Death, Bygone Kent. 19/l.

Henry VIII King of Industrial England.  Greenwich Visitor November 2018

Henry Bessemer in Greenwich. Newcomen Society Bulletin, 172, 1998.

Hills Family, Bygone Kent, 18/3,

History of the Holder Greenwich Weekender 16th April 2018

How I found the Dry Dock Capstan. Greenwich Weekender 23rd April 2019

How Time and Tide shaped our History. Greenwich Visitor Oct. 2008

Ice Well at Lovells Wharf Kent Underground Research Newsletter.63

Industrial Accident at East Greenwich. Bygone Kent, 17/11, 1996

Industrial Site in East Greenwich, Bygone  Kent, 17/12 1996.

Innovation, Enterprise and Change on the Greenwich Peninsula.  2018  Book 

Into the Marshland. Greenwich Weekender  29th April 2020

Jetty. Booklet 2018

Jim Hughes and Orinoco Bygone Kent February 2001

John Beale and Joshua Beale, Inventors from Greenwich Marsh, Bygone Kent, 18/6, June 1997

John Beale of Greenwich. Industrial Heritage. Vol 28 Summer 2002

Jumbo. No More, Greenwich SocietyNewsletter

Kicking up a right stink Greenwich Weekender 13 March 2019

Looming against the sky is the skeleton of the great holder  Greenwich Weekender 8 Aug. 2019

Lovell’s Wharf Booklet

Lovells Wharf Bygone Kent  Nov & Dec 1999 & March 2000

Made in Greenwich. The Appleby Beam Engine. Greenwich Society Newsletter

Man who laid cables under Atlantic. Greenwich Weekender 13 June  2018

Maudslay Son and Field for Kew Bridge Engines Trust CD 2002

Maudslay Son and Field in Greenwich Bygone Kent in three parts  Jan, Feb & March 2002

Medieval tide mill Greenwich Weekender 6th May 2020

Memorial to the dead in the Great War from the East Greenwich Gasworks. Greenwich Soc. Newsletter

Millennium Site - Bad Smells on Greenwich Marsh, Bygone Kent, 17/7 July 1996.

Millennium Site - Who built the Gas Works, Bygone Kent, 17/5, May 1996.

Millennium Site, New East Greenwich, Bygone Kent, 17/8 1996,

Molassine. Bygone Kent

Mollassine Co. & smell to remember  Greenwich Weekender 8th June 2019

Mystery Steel Works, Bygone Kent. 20.

Nathan Thompson and the Wooden Nutmeg.   Bygone Kent. 19/ 5.

Olinthus Gregory Description of the East Greenwich Tide Mill. Industrial Heritage  Vol.33 Spring 2007

Our Poor Doomed Gas Holder Greenwich Weekender 6th March 2019

River People Greenwich Weekender  3rd June 2020

Shipbuilding in East Greenwich. Thames Shipbuilding Study Group

Stockwell and Lewis. Dry Dock Bygone Kent  20/9.

Tragic death of Mary Mahoney killed on her first day at the firework factory  Greenwich Weekender  6th December 2017

Tragic demolition of Jumbo. Greenwich Soc. Newsletter

Thames Tunnels AIA Newsletter  140 Spring 2017

We made History on an Industrial Scale. Greenwich Visitor Sept. 2018

Writing the History of the Greenwich Peninsula. OU Student Journal