History of Kilburn and West Hampstead

The scene of the crime Rupert Road ran between Canterbury Road and Carlton Vale in south Kilburn. It’s still on the map but no original properties have survived. Number 2 was a terraced house, its rooms occupied by several families. In all, an amazing total of 23 persons were shown living there on census night in 1881, a similar number to other properties in the road. OS Map 1915, showing Rupert Road, Kilburn On 22 March 1881, Ann Moulford and her husband Charles were woken at 2.30am by loud screams of ‘Murder’ from the next room. Reluctantly Charles got up and knocked on his neighbours’ door, the home of John and Eliza Wegener and their two children. ‘What are you doing?’ he asked. John’s reply was ‘Nothing much.’ Charles asked for the door to be opened and when he was told to go away, he broke it open, and saw John and his two children. Ann Moulford followed her husband into the room, and while Charles watched John, she helped Eliza Wegener who was standing near the window into a cha...

          Gaetano Meo (copyright Tom Gordon-Craig) Looking at this photograph of Gaetano Meo, it may come as a surprise to learn that as a young man he was a favourite model of London’s leading Pre-Raphaelite painters. We first encountered him when researching ‘The Good Grave Guide to Hampstead Cemetery’, where he is buried. This is the story of his life in London, and the lives and loves of some of his family members.   From Italy to London Around 1865, Gaetano arrived in London as an illegal immigrant, smuggled into the country aboard a freighter from France. He was born on 15 December 1849 in southern Italy, to Rocco and Francesca Meo. Tradition has it that all the Meo family were musicians, including Gaetano who played the harp. An alternative but less credible version (given we know most family members did play instruments well), claims Gaetano was sold by his cash-strapped parents to gypsies, who taught him to play.  Gaetano left Italy in M...

                                          Frank Vosper Frank Vosper was born in December 1899, just two weeks before the turn of the century. He was born at 24 Gondar Gardens in West Hampstead – the house where Nobel prize-winning novelist Doris Lessing lived for more than 30 years before her death in 2013.  Vosper’s father Percy was a surgeon at Kings College Hospital, having come from Plympton in Devon to study medicine in London. In 1894, Percy married Blanche Permain, whose father was a fine art dealer and they had moved to Gondar Gardens at the end of 1896.  Frank would have had a comfortable upbringing, yet the story of his premature death at just 36 would have made as good a film as any he might have acted in, with a cast list that included Ernest Hemingway and Miss Great Britain.                  ...