The Mad Cyclist of Cricklewood

This is a strange story from 1909. On the afternoon of 9 September, seventeen year old Percy Day who worked locally as a clerk for the Midland Railway, was walking with three friends along the Edgware Road in Cricklewood. They were chatting about football and had just reached the junction with Oxgate Lane (near today’s Wing Yip Chinese superstore) when a cyclist passed them.

A cyclist from the 1900s (Getty Images)

He got off his bike, reached into his jacket pocket pulled out a revolver and without warning, fired at the men hitting Percy in the arm. The assailant got back on his bike and cycled off rapidly in the direction of Cricklewood. Fortunately, Percy was not badly wounded and jumped on one of the new electric trams and pursued the cyclist.

Cricklewood tram c.1906

When they reached The Crown Cricklewood, the conductor told a policeman on point duty what had happened. Percy and the PC boarded a motor bus and chased after the cyclist, overtaking him in Kilburn and arresting him outside the Lord Palmerston pub. He was taken to the West Hampstead police station in West End Lane.

The Lord Palmerston, about 1870 (today a Nando’s Restaurant)

At the magistrate court, Ernest Frederick Chamberlin (sic) Stone, aged 27, of independent means, 17 Mount Road Hendon, was charged for shooting with the intent to murder Percy Day. He said people on the Edgware Road had annoyed him, but he agreed the men with Percy Day had not shouted or whistled at him. He said he just wanted to frighten them. His mother was in court and Ernest was allowed to speak with her. Stone was remanded and later after reports from the prison doctors, he was declared insane and committed to the Napsbury Asylum near St Albans on 24 September 1909. The police found that Ernest who came from a wealthy family in Leicester, had been in the local asylum two years earlier.

It appears that Ernest never recovered his sanity, and aged 47, he died on the 11 May 1929 in the Holloway Sanatorium, Virginia Water. He left £7,085 to his father Octavius Chamberlin Stone (1845 to 1933).

We have not found a picture of Ernest, but here is one of his father who was a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society and a famous explorer of New Guinea in 1875 and 1876.

Portrait of Octavius Stone

Apart from the brief newspaper reports, we have no further information to explain Ernest’s behaviour and mental issues.

Comments

The 1994 IRA Attack on Heathrow: the West Hampstead connection

Just before 6pm on Wednesday 9 March 1994 four mortars shells hit Heathrow Airport . Earlier, news agencies had been telephoned by a man with an Irish accent and using a known IRA code word he said, ‘In one hour’s time, a large number of bombs will be going off in Heathrow Airport . Clear all runways. Stop all flights’. The Anti-Terrorist branch of the Metropolitan Police and airport officials decided not to close the airport after a sweep of the terminal buildings and the runways found nothing suspicious. About 45 mins after the mortars landed they closed Heathrow. The missiles had been launched over the airport fence from 6ft-long tubes fitted in the back of a red Nissan Micra parked about 400 yards away in the Excelsior Hotel car park, just outside the airport. After launching the missiles, a charge inside the car set it on fire and the blaze spread to surrounding cars. The Nissan had been stolen in Kilburn the previous Saturday night and fitted with false number plate...

Looking for Lillie Langtry

‘A Jersey Lily’ by John Everett Millais, 1878 Lillie Langtry, known as the ‘Jersey Lily’, was a mistress of Bertie the Prince of Wales, the future King Edward VII. It is widely believed that she lived in South Hampstead and today her name is remembered by Langtry Road which runs off Kilburn Priory, Langtry Walk in the Alexandra and Ainsworth Estate, and the Lillie Langtry pub at 121 Abbey Road, on the corner with Belsize Road. The Lillie Langtry was built in 1969 to replace a demolished Victorian pub, The Princess of Wales, named in honour of Alexandra, Edward’s wife. In 2007 it was briefly called The Cricketers before the name reverted to The Lillie Langtry in 2011. Lillie Langtry’s address is given as Leighton House, 103 Alexandra Road which is now demolished and lies under the Alexandra and Ainsworth Estate. It was thought that Bertie visited her there during their affair which lasted from about June 1877 to June 1880. The dates are approximate as there is little evidence of...

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 the...

History of Kilburn and West Hampstead

Search This Blog