History of Kilburn and West Hampstead

On 3 September 1939 the Prime Minister, Neville Chamberlain, announced on the radio that Britain was now at war with Germany . People expected air raids, but nothing happened until the Blitz began in September 1940. This was the period that came to be known as the ‘phoney war’, but while Britain waited there was considerable public concern and rumours about German spies. A German Spy Ring On the 30 Sept 1939 , 27 year old Wilfred Ronald Ward who lived with his parents at 187 Heathfield Road , Handsworth, appeared at the Birmingham Police Court. He was charged with demanding £500 from a man, never named but referred to as ‘Mr X’ throughout the proceedings. Unless the money was paid, Wilfred had threatened to expose Mr X as a German spy. Mr X had received a letter on 5 September signed by ‘Jim Rickards’ and had gone to the police. They had listened in when Ward, using the name Rickards, telephoned and repeated the threat but Mr X had lost his temper and the call was ended...

From 1890 to 1896 Joe Parkin Mayall had a photographic studio at 209 Kilburn High Road . Today this is Hillman’s butchers shop near the corner with Willesden Lane . The Hillman family has had a shop here since 1922. Hillman's, 209 Kilburn High Road, 2015 John Jabez Edwin Mayall (1813 to 1901) Joe was the second son of famous photographer, John Jabez Edwin Mayall, mistakenly referred to as an American in some books. But he was actually born in the UK , in Oldham , as Jabez Meal. After a move to West Yorkshire where his father worked as a dyer, the family emigrated to the States. In 1842 Jabez Meal traveled to Philadelphia where he changed his name to Mayall and became an early daguerreotype photographer. With a partner he set up a successful studio at 140 Chestnut Street and their photographs were awarded prizes.   Self portrait by John Jabez Mayall, Daguerrotype, Philadelphia 1842 In 1846 Mayall sold up and returned to England where ...

Joseph Goebbels joined the German Nazi Party in 1924. He was part of Hitler’s inner circle and was Minister of Propaganda from 1933 to 1945. When Hitler committed suicide in the Berlin bunker as the Russians were advancing, he named Goebbels as his successor. But he was only Chancellor of Germany for a day: he committed suicide with his wife and six children on 1 May 1945 . What was little known, until it appeared in the Daily Express in March 1938, is that Kilburn had its own Goebbels. The article said: Pronouncements of Mr Goebbels of Cambridge Road Kilburn, have nothing to do with international affairs; they concern the price of prime pork and best English lamb. Sometimes customers in his butcher’s shop tease him about a recent speech of the German Minister of Propaganda, but Mr Goebbels of Kilburn, unperturbed, goes on slicing a nice piece of undercut. He has no interest in politics. Newspaper picture of Cornelius Goebbels in 1938 Cornelius Goebbels, who was...