Skip to main content

Christmas in Kilburn a Hundred Years Ago


As the festive season approaches, we were fascinated to find two stories which involved soldiers in Kilburn at Christmas in 1915. The First World War had been going on for over a year. The men who had signed up enthusiastically in September 1914, confidently believing it would all be over by Christmas, were now bogged down in their trenches in Flanders.

The first story concerned Kilburn Lane School. The map below shows the school which opened in 1885, on the corner where Kilburn Lane turned a right angle near the Chamberlayne Road end. Today only the infant school building remains and the Moberley Sports centre has been built on the rest of the site.

Kilburn Lane School in 1894


Cookery Class in Kilburn Lane School, about 1898

The Boys band in Kilburn Lane School, about 1898

Christmas 1915
A newspaper in December carried a story about a seven year old unnamed girl in the infant school who said to her teacher, ‘Please Miss, can’t we give the wounded soldiers a treat for Christmas.’ The idea was quickly taken up and the whole school made plans for a Christmas party. Even though this was a poor part of Kilburn, the children gave their pennies to buy cakes, cigarettes and drinks for the soldiers. One girl held a party at her home and raised 12 shillings and 6d. Wounded soldiers from several hospitals were driven in motor cars to the school where the children put on a musical show. They blacked-up as minstrels to perform the programme of songs and sketches for the soldiers. Unacceptable today, this was a very popular form of music hall entertainment at the time. The show and party lasted for four hours and the soldiers said they had a very happy afternoon.

Party for wounded soldiers, December 1915

The Hampstead Heavies
At the end of July 1915 a public meeting was held in West Hampstead Town Hall in Broadhurst Gardens. This was a private hall not a council building, which later became the Decca Studios, and today is used by the English National Opera. The meeting was a response to Lord Kitchener’s call to raise an artillery brigade. As a result of the patriotic talk, lots of local men signed up and formed the 138th Heavy Battery of the Royal Garrison Artillery, who were known as the ‘Hampstead Heavies’.

For more information on the ‘Heavies’ see the excellent website here:

But our second story shows that some people were not so happy to join up. One of these was Samuel Brooks, born in Paddington where his father was a bus driver. Samuel became a labourer, a coal porter and then a carman, loading horses and carts. In 1913 he married Ada Patterson after they had three children born between 1902 and 1909. They struggled financially and Sam joined the Middlesex Regiment in June 1915, probably for the regular pay he received. He deserted soon after but in September the same year he joined the ‘Hampstead Heavies’ Royal Artillery.

Sam clearly did not like being a soldier and just two days after signing up he was admonished by the commanding officer Captain Paris for drunkenness. At the end of September he went AWOL for six days and was arrested by the police. Back in the regiment, he was given 96 hours detention and forfeited six days pay. Undeterred, three weeks later he again absconded for seven days. This time he was taken to Marylebone Magistrates Court at the beginning of December 1915 and charged with being absent from his regiment. The newspaper report said he was a 38 year old gunner in the Royal Garrison Artillery stationed in Finchley Road.

The Regimental offices were in shops near today’s Finchley Road Station. The men and horses drilled in Hampstead Cricket Ground in Lymington Road.

The Hampstead Heavies office in Finchley Road, 1915

To explain his absence, Sam said to the magistrate, ‘Can a man soldier with a wife and three children starving at home? The authorities have stopped the separation allowance to my wife.’

A policeman said he had called at their home at 213 Cambridge Road in Kilburn and found there was no fire or food anywhere in the house. The magistrate was sympathetic, but said there was nothing he could do. He handed Brooks over to the Army escort and suggested that he contact the authorities about his financial problems. His Army record shows that he was again punished and lost seven days pay. Sam, his wife and family, did not have a good Christmas.

Brooks service record seems to end in December 1915, so he did not fight in France with the regiment and was probably thrown out of the Army. In the Electoral Registers Samuel and Ada are still together and appear again at 71 Clarendon Street in St Pancras from 1929 to 1931. We do not know what happened to them after this.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Kilburn National Club

This popular music venue was at 234 Kilburn High Road, on the corner of Messina Avenue. Many famous musicians including Johnny Cash and David Bowie played there. We look at the original building which was the Grange Cinema, and what happened when the National closed and was taken over by two different church groups. Grange Cinema The Grange was a large mansion standing in grounds of nine and a half acres and with a frontage to Kilburn High Road. It was the home of Ada Peters the widow of a wealthy coach builder who made coaches for Queen Victoria . Following Ada ’s death in 1910, the property was sold. The new owner was Oswald Stoll, a major name in the entertainment world who had already built the London Coliseum in St Martin ’s Lane, near Leicester Square . Stoll wanted to erect another Coliseum theatre in Kilburn. In fact, progress overtook him and instead of a theatre, the 2,028 seat Grange cinema opened on 30 July 1914 . This remained the biggest cinema in Kilburn until th

Clive Donner, film director

Clive Donner was born in the Priory Nursing Home at 43 Priory Road West Hampstead, in January 1926. He grew up in 31 Peter Avenue, Willesden Green, where his parents Alex and Deborah Donner, lived for most of their lives. Alex was a concert violinist and Deborah ran a dress shop. Clive attended Gladstone Park junior school and Kilburn Grammar school. He became interested in film when he accompanied his father to a studio recording session. While at Kilburn Polytechnic he made an 8mm film about a boys’ sports club. In 1942 he was working as a shipping clerk when his father who was recording the music for The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (1943), asked Michael Powell the director, if he could find a job for Clive at Denham Studios. After several rejections he got a job as a junior assistant editor for the Sydney Box film On Approval (1944). He gained experience and formed a close friendship with Fergus McDonell, who later edited several of Donner’s films. Clive wa

Smith’s Crisps

This is the story of how Frank Smith and his friend Jim Viney, began in a small way in Cricklewood and built the large and successful company of Smith’s Crisps. Early years Frank was born in 1875, in Hackney. His parents had left their native Suffolk by the mid-1860s for London, where his father ran a fruiterer and florist business. By 1881 the family were living over their corner shop at 128 Stoke Newington High Street, moving to Kingsland Road by 1891. Frank started working when he was 10-years old and went with his father to Covent Garden each morning to buy produce for their shop. Frank married Jessie Minnie Ramplin in Southwark in 1902. The couple and their six-year old daughter Laura were living in Mona Road Deptford in 1911, when Frank gave his occupation as ‘commercial traveller, confectionery’. Soon after this he went to work for a wholesale grocer by the name of Carter, in Smithfield. Carter had a side-line making potato crisps and Frank saw great potential in the product and