Professor Zazra, the fortune teller

In 1915 The Foreign Office were contacted by the British Consul General in Barcelona about a poor boy in Granollers near Barcelona, who had received an advertisement written in Spanish, from an astrologer called Professor Zazra shown in a turban and Indian dress, requesting money for a horoscope. A resident of Granollers forwarded the advertisement to the Consul General and asked for action to be taken against Prof. Zazra.

The Foreign Office in London took the matter seriously and raised the complaint with the Home Office who asked Scotland Yard to investigate.

This advert by Prof. Zazra appeared in numerous newspapers.

The police went to 90 New Bond Street and found that Zazra, ‘The Chief Mystic of the Hindu School of Predication’, was an Englishman called Arthur Drew Clifton. They warned him that unless he stopped advertising, he would be prosecuted under the Vagrancy Act (1824). The police described him as a very shrewd man and one not easily scared, but he complied (for a time).

Drew Clifton moved from New Bond Street to 192 Alexandra Road which was on the corner of Kilburn Priory, before today’s Alexandra and Ainsworth Estate was built between 1972 and 1979.

192 Alexandra Road, today 3 Langtry Road

In 1921 using the name of Victor Despard and the mail collection address of 165 Kilburn High Road, he advertised membership of the ‘Amalgamated Astral Aid and Mystic Circle’ for a postal order of two guineas.

For this the applicant will receive ‘52 splendidly helpful mind guides, letters of inspiration and concentration time charts.’ ‘Members of the brotherhood will feel the force of this big powerful energy in their business, home life, private matters, love affairs, and in everything which goes to make up a life-time.’

In 1922 Drew Clifton was still advertising in foreign newspapers and he particularly targeted West Africa. In December Inspector William Draper of Scotland Yard answered an advert using the cover name of Ali Obed Khan from Lagos.

He received a pamphlet headed, ‘Let me read the sands of time for you’, and a list of products such as, Indian fakir crystals for developing the faculty of clairvoyance (prices from 10s to 25s), and charms for health success and love. There were also books; ‘521 Ways to Fortune’, ‘The Book of the Black Arts’, ‘How Not to Grow Old’, and ‘Wrinkles and Pimples Removed’.

Inspector Draper sent a cheque for 15s for ‘a sketch delineation of the future’ and he filled in a form giving a fictitious date of birth, sex, occupation.

He received a package of 12 pages of typed information which began; ‘I find from my observations that a full and varied career is before you: that your chances of advancing to a higher plane are indeed good. During certain times the fates are against you. …. Your increase of income and fortune should be rather rapid and to a certain extent unexpected…. The parts of the body most likely to be troublesome are the skin, blood, lower limbs, and the stomach’.

When Inspector Draper went to 192 Alexandra Road, he found five busy young women typists and thousands of letters from around the world. Draper said it was very well organized and the largest business of this kind he had ever seen.

Arthur Drew Clinton appeared at Bow Street court on 30 January 1923. He pleaded guilty to a charge of ‘unlawfully professing to tell fortunes’ and he was fined £25 with £10 10s costs. Today this is equivalent to about £2,000, and considering the huge scale Drew Clinton was operating on, it was very lenient.

Like the police, we have found it difficult to trace Drew Clifton who used several names and changed addresses. His real name was Arthur Edward Tapner and he was born on 4 February 1870 in Littlehampton West Sussex, the son of a cabinet maker who in the 1881 census was employing five men and two boys.

Arthur became a builder’s manager in Hastings, and he married Beatrice Ellen Pain there in 1894. By the time of the 1911 census, they had moved to 90 New Bond Street. He had changed his name to Drew Clinton and they had three children. He said he was an agent for a mail order business.

Arthur Drew Clinton was still shown at 192 Alexandra Road in 1928, and it looks like he moved to Brussels and perhaps carried on his business there. We found that he died in Brussels aged 62 in October 1932.

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

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

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

History of Kilburn and West Hampstead

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