This was the Coroner’s opinion of David Miller, who had
failed to help his lodger rescue two of her young children from a fierce fire
that gutted 90 Willesden Lane. The blaze was discovered shortly before 2pm on Friday
19 June 1908. No. 90 still stands, in a parade of three-storey shops with flats
above, between Torbay Road and Callcott Road. In 1908 it was occupied by David
who ran his tailoring business on the ground floor. He occupied the basement
and first floor, while Annie and Alfred Reid paid Miller a weekly rent of 6 shillings
and 6d for the rooms on the second floor.
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| 90 Willesden Lane today (Dick Weindling, 2020) |
David Miller’s father Abraham was born in Poland and came to
England in the 1870s. He was a tailor living in Mile End in 1881 with his wife
and five children; David was the youngest, just four months old, born in or
near Spitalfields. Abraham Miller had moved to 90 Willesden Lane by 1899, when
he advertised his business in the local paper, offering a variety of tailoring services,
at remarkably low prices. Four of
his nine children then living at home were employed in the family business. After
Abraham died in 1906 and was buried in the Plashet Jewish Cemetery in East Ham,
David took over the business.
Annie Cross and Alfred Reid were
married in 1903 and at the time of the fire, they had three young children:
Frederick John born in 1904, Charles Edward (1905) and Florence Mary, (November
1907). Formerly employed as a labourer, Alfred had then been working for
several years as a draper’s porter in premises on Kilburn High Road.
The Fire
Annie was washing her children
when she first saw smoke coming up the staircase and billowing outside in the
back yard. Rushing downstairs, she met David Miller, his mother and sister Fanny.
She told them the house was on fire, but they did not seem to believe her; later
Annie said the Millers made no effort to help her. She ran back upstairs,
gathered up her three children and shouted for help from the front windows. Some
of the crowd of onlookers who had gathered outside in the street, advised her
to go to the rear of the house. Annie rushed with her children into the back kitchen
and tried to put Frederick out of the window, but it was too hot. In the
confusion she lost hold of both Frederick and Charles.
Despite flames and the
intense heat, Annie managed climb out of a window and haul herself up onto the
roof, holding Florence in her arms. Seeing the Millers in the back garden she
threw Florence down to Fanny, who caught the baby in her outstretched skirt. Someone
on a neighbouring roof attempted to rescue her but was beaten back by the
flames. Annie tried but failed to get back into the house to save her sons and
in her desperation, she jumped from the roof – about twenty-five feet - into
the back yard. Onlookers helped break her fall; she hurt her leg and her burned
hands and arms were cut by an iron fence. But it could have been much worse.
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| Dramatic picture from the Illustrated Police News |
The smoke was first seen by John Barnard, the son of a
fishmonger with a shop at 39 Willesden Lane. He got no answer when he knocked
at the door; the Millers were eating dinner in the basement and the door was locked, a preventive measure taken since
the shop had been previously burgled during the lunch break. He forced the door
open with a pole. At the inquest John said he thought there might have
been time to save Annie and her children, but admitted the flames were like a
furnace.
The Willesden fire brigade
responded very quickly. They got the call to attend at 2.09 and the fire engine,
equipped with ladders, was sent from the station on Salusbury Road and
arrived six minutes later. By then the building was well alight but the fire
was brought under control by 2.27. Frederick was found in a back room and
brought down to street level where a doctor tried to resuscitate him without
success. A fireman found the body of poor little Charlie, badly burned, under
his cot in a front room. The building was burnt out
from floor to roof.
The Inquest
The Kilburn Times in a long report
said: The terrible fire which unhappily involved the lives of two little
boys cast quite a gloom over the neighbourhood, and much sympathy was felt for
the parents. At the inquest, the Coroner was highly critical of
David Miller. In his opinion the tailor’s action – or rather inaction - was in
marked contrast to the bravery Annie had shown that afternoon. When she met her
landlord at the foot of the stairs and he finally saw the flames, she told the
Coroner he’d cried, Good God, the place is on fire! and bolted into the
garden. Miller told the court he didn’t know where the children were. Coroner: You
did not take much trouble to find out. Why didn’t you go to the poor woman’s
assistance? Miller replied that he had felt powerless, he didn’t know what
to do and admitted he panicked once he saw the stairs and bannisters were alight.
He later said he’d known the children were upstairs but thought the boys could
escape without help.
David’s sister Fanny said Mrs Reid told them her children
were upstairs. The Coroner asked, could your brother not have helped? She
replied; Perhaps he had not the presence of mind, to which the Coroner
responded curtly, I am sorry if an Englishman had not presence of mind on an
occasion like this.
What caused the fire?
The Millers kept a gas stove permanently alight to heat
their irons, in their workroom which was at the rear of the ground floor. There
was also a small quantity of benzene in a bottle purchased that day and used to
clean fabrics. The Jury concluded that the stove had been the cause of the fire
and did not mention the benzene, but it is highly flammable,
and the bottle could have exploded if engulfed in flames. The Coroner
did not mince his words when summing up: he reiterated that David Miller might
have been able to help Mrs Reid if he had acted more quickly, that he panicked
and made no effort to find out where the children were. A verdict of accidental
death was passed on the two boys, who had been overcome by smoke.
The Funeral
The funeral procession left the mortuary hall in Salusbury
Road on the afternoon of Wednesday 24 June.
Around 3,000 people lined the roads or waited
at Willesden New Cemetery in Cobbold Road. The tiny, white velvet coffins were
carried on an open car, and there were many wreaths and floral tributes from local
tradesmen on the High Road and Willesden Lane. The funeral was carried out by James
Crook, the undertaker at the corner of Buckley Road and Kilburn High Road.
The immediate aftermath
The inquest had been told a fund had been started to help
the Reid family. This was formalised by appointing a committee and trustees to
administer the money donated. On 10 July, a report in the local press said a
total of just under £75 been received (worth about £7,700 today). The money
would be deposited in a Post Office savings account,
half in Mr Reid’s name and half in Mrs Reid’s. They could each draw out a
maximum of 30sh per quarter. Donations were made by people and
businesses in Willesden Lane, and employees of the large
department stores Bon Marche and David Fearn, on Kilburn High Road, either of which
may have employed Alfred as a drapers porter.
What happened to the Miller and Reid families?
The Reids stayed in the neighbourhood. They quickly found a
new home at 2 Quex Mews, off Quex Road, where they rented four rooms over
stables. Alfred and Annie had three more children, two born by the time of the
1911 census: Sidney Percy (1909) and John Stephen (1910). Alfred continued his
work as a draper’s porter. The couple entered their dead sons on the census
form, the names crossed through in red ink by the enumerator. Twenty-eight
years later, in 1939, Annie and son John were still living at Quex Mews; John
was working as a milk roundsman, in other words he delivered milk door to door.
Alfred is listed in the local directory as the householder in 1940. He died in
1945 in Greenwich.
Florence who survived the fire, married
Jack Godfrey Waldron in St Mary’s Church Abbey Road, on 26 December 1931. Jack
gave his occupation as a ‘driver’ of 224 Belsize Road and Florence was renting in
Kingsgate Road; her father was one of the witnesses. By 1939, Florence and her
young son John were living at 8 Grange Road in Willesden.
Perhaps it’s not surprising to
find David Miller left Willesden Lane after being severely criticised by the Coroner.
After rebuilding, in 1910 the shop was still a tailor’s business, now run by
Reuben Kitchenoff. In the months immediately preceding the fire, David had married
Helen Alice Cross Slade. By 1911, the Millers were living in Watford and
the family later moved to Bristol, where in 1939 David again gave his
profession as that of a master tailor.
Kilburn, like other areas of London, had numerous fires in
the Victorian and Edwardian eras. However, fatalities were rare, so the death
of the two young children and the amazing escape of their mother, was widely felt
by the people of Kilburn as shown by the large numbers who watched the funeral procession.
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