History of Kilburn and West Hampstead

Recently, my friend Margery Gretton was walking in Paddington Old Cemetery and was intrigued by the unusual name of Ada Eliza Strange Bodycoat which she found on a grave.   The statue of an angel is on the main path from the gates in Willesden Lane, just before the chapels.  The side panels record Ada’s two children who are also buried here: Boyder Walter Charles, and Lady Gertrude Whaddia (in some accounts spelled as Wadia), who bought the grave for her mother. This is the complicated story behind the people in the grave. Ada’s early life and marriage Ada Eliza Hawkins was born in Marylebone in 1882, the daughter of a farrier and smith, who shoed horses. On 17 March 1901 in St Peter’s Church Paddington, she married William John Strange, a shoeing smith like her father. Their only child, Lucy Gertrude was born on 12 June 1901. When she started at Moberly School on the Harrow Road in 1910, the family were living nearby at 78 Chippenham Mews. Two years later, at the end of 1912,...

George Berthold Samuelson, known as ‘Bertie’ was born in Southport Lancashire in 1889. By 1910 he had started the Royal Film Agency and was one of the first film renters. In late December he had moved the successful business to 270 Corporation Street in Birmingham. With his acquired capital, he decided to make a patriotic film about Queen Victoria called ‘Sixty Years a Queen’ at Will Barker’s Ealing Studio in 1913. The film cost the huge sum of £12,000 to make, but it was extremely popular and made Bertie a profit of £40,000 (worth over £4M today).  With this success, Bertie decided to buy his own studio to make films. The Samuelson Film Manufacturing Company Ltd was set up on 30 May 1914 with £2,000 in £1 shares. He heard that Worton Hall, a 40-room house with nine acres of land in Isleworth, was for sale. Samuelson bought it in 1914 and the official opening of the studios was held on 1 July, where the guest of honour was the famous music hall star Vesta Tilley. Samuelson employed...

Dr Arthur Fuller was called to the Old Bailey to testify about a fatal accident he attended on Maida Vale, around midday on Sunday, September 26, 1909. He said: ‘Birdseye was lying on his back in the roadway, quite dead. The injuries were consistent with the man having been run over by a motor bus’.  At the inquest, the driver of the bus, Sidney John Hughes was charged with manslaughter, ‘the killing and slaying’ of 59-year-old William Birdseye and bailed pending trial at the Old Bailey.  The Victim and the life of a costermonger William was born and bred a Londoner. He lived at several addresses in St Marylebone and by the time he was 28, was working for himself as a costermonger, along with two younger brothers. Costermongers were a common sight on London streets. Their wares included fruit, meat, fish and vegetables sold from a basket or more commonly, a barrow pushed by hand or harnessed to a donkey. William Birdseye sold periwinkles and shrimps from a hand barrow.  E...