SUFFRAGETTE CITY

This seemingly bleak 1960s townscape captures several fascinating stories about the East End of not so long ago, even if in many ways it may as well have been an image from ancient history.

The view is straight down Bromley High Street. Don’t make the same mistake as Bruce Robinson in his house brick magnum opus ‘They All Love Jack’ – this High Street is not Bromley in Kent! It is Bromley-by-Bow.

The cameraman was standing in the middle of Bow Road when he took this picture. Bow Church is just to his left. Further down, a hundred yards or so and also to the left was 198 Bow Road (now a gap between blocks of flats) where Sylvia Pankhurst took over a local bakery in 1912 to house the headquarters of the East London Federation of the Women’s Social and Political Union – better known as the Suffragettes. Hence ‘Suffragette City’. Sylvia Pankhurst wanted to garner support from the working class as up to that time it was predominantly a middle class movement.

Several of the scenes depicted in the fictionalised film ‘Suffragette’ (released in 2015) are based on events that occurred in this vicinity.

One of Sylvia Pankhurst’s first open air meetings was held down Bromley High Street. The prominent block of flats which you can see – which is still there – stands on the site of a school. On a cold 17th February in 1913 a cart was pulled up against this school yard wall. A small crowd gathered, observed by the local constabulary.

Sylvia clambered up on top of the cart harangued all who cared to listen, and many who did not. She made a call for arms:

‘I said I knew it to be a hard thing for men and women to risk imprisonment in such a neighbourhood, where most of them were labouring under the steepest economic pressure, yet I pleaded for some of the women of Bow to join us in showing themselves prepared to make a sacrifice to secure enfranchisement.’

There was no movement forwards and the meeting soon broke up. Drastic situations called for drastic measures. Sylvia and her middle class acolytes decided they needed to up the tempo in order to inspire the local populace. She took the only reasonable course of action in such circumstances…

‘I broke an undertaker’s window.’

And there on the right hand corner of Bromley High Street, as if on cue, we find poor innocent C. Selby & Sons, Undertakers (by appointment to Jack T Ripper – according to some). With their windows repaired! Fifty or so years and two World Wars had passed by the time the picture was taken, so I suspect Selby’s windows had been repaired several times in between. As we shall see. But they do make a big target, don’t they?

Sylvia breathlessly continued:

‘I was seized by two policemen, three other women were sized. We were dragged, resisting, along the Bow Rd, the crowd cheering and running with us.’

The first of many broken windows. Job done and the newish Bow Road Police Station (opened 1903) had some guests for the night.

(THE SAME VIEW - JANUARY 2016)

In the 1990s Selby’s moved to more solid premises – the old Bow Road Police Station (opened 1854) about a hundred yards to the right at 116 Bow Road. This is right next to Bromley Public Hall – the scene of various Suffragette meetings, until they were barred from the premises for causing wanton destruction.

Bromley Public Hall is currently the Registry Office for Tower hamlets and holds locally issued Birth, Marriage and Death Certificates, including those of the Ripper victims (excluding Catherine Eddowes as she was murdered in the City of London). Copies of these certificates are on display.

In the 1960s when the picture was taken, Bow Road Police should have had their hands full – unless they were taking back handers – as the Kray Twins’ notorious Double R Club, at 145 Bow Road, was directly opposite Bromley Public Hall. How much simpler it must have been for the Boys in Blue to deal with window breaking women!

Anyway, the Suffragettes took umbrage at being barred from Bromley Public Hall. That could only mean one thing. After all they liked the sound of breaking glass (there is a connection here to the title of this article, music lovers).

On 14^th December 1913 they marched to the house of a prominent Conservative Councillor and former Mayor of Poplar John Le Manquais who they identified as being the prime mover in banning them from council premises. Inconveniently for Le Manquais he lived at 13 Tomlins Grove – just a couple of hundred yards to the right of Selby’s – on the very fringes of Suffragette City!

As the large procession turned into Tomlins Grove they were met by mounted policemen who had turned out of Bow Road Police Station (just across the road) to protect the Councillor’s residence. What followed was a mass brawl – known as ‘the Battle of Tomlins Grove’ no less.

There were many injuries and more arrests. There were cries of police brutality. To even things up a police inspector got a black eye. But Le Manquais avoided defenestration.

(13 TOMLINS GROVE IN JANUARY 2016 - BEHIND THE FIRST CAR)

Nevertheless these protests bore fruit and women were of course given the vote after the First World War. It is time to return to the picture.

On the left we see the Black Swan. It was demolished in the 1970s for road widening.

This Black Swan replaced an earlier pub of the same name that was destroyed in that First World War. And this brings us to a more tragic story.

It is little known but during the First World War Germany sent over several Zeppelin and fixed wing aircraft forays to bomb London in what is now regarded as the first Blitz.

On the night of 23rd September 1916 Zeppelin L-33 under the command of Kapitänleutnant Alois Böcker approached London. Just after midnight it dropped a number of bombs over Bow. One 100 kg High Explosive scored a direct hit on the Black Swan destroying the pub and undoubtedly breaking the windows of Selby’s opposite.

Rather more tragically eleven people were killed in the raid, including four people in the Black Swan. These were the landlord’s twenty year old daughter Cissie Reynolds, his twenty one year old daughter Sylvia Adams, her year old baby daughter also named Sylvia and Mrs Potter their 63 year old grandmother. An eyewitness (Lieutenant Roberts of the London Regiment), on leave from the army reported:

‘After making sure my family were safe, I went to Bow-road, a few yards away, where a large public-house, the Black Swan, had been wrecked. Only the carcass of it was left standing, and a heavy pall of black dust hung over the ruins.

‘I and others groped our way amongst the debris, searching for any victims who might be alive. Lifting some flooring, we discovered the wife of the licensee, Mrs Reynolds, lying in the cellar, where she had been blown by the bomb. It had struck the house dead in the middle, taking all the floors to the basement.

‘Firemen found a baby stuck in the rafters. Fortunately there had been no customers in the house at the time.’

(INSIDE THE BLACK SWAN AFTER THE RAID)

Three other people inside the pub at the time miraculously survived.

The L-33 was damaged during the raid and was forced to land at Little Wigborough near Colchester in Essex in the early hours of the morning. The crew surrendered and earned the distinction of being the only armed Germans captured on British soil during the war. For them the war was over.

As we have seen the Black Swan was rebuilt and a memorial in green tiles was placed on an exterior wall reading:

THIS BUILDING WAS DESTROYED

BY GERMAN AIRCRAFT

SEPTEMBER 1916

REBUILT 1920

After it was demolished what happened to the memorial? The victims have been long forgotten.

And Selby’s? They went on to bury Charles Lechmere (known to some as Cross) in 1920 – the same year that the Black Swan was rebuilt.