History of Kilburn and West Hampstead

This is a famous, and in many ways unique, case from 1949.  The Background Stanley Setty was born as Salman Seti or Salik in Baghdad in 1903. The family moved to Manchester in 1908 where his father was a cloth merchant. Stanley worked in the business until 1920 when his father abandoned his wife and children and went to live in Italy. To earn a living, Stanley set up a shipping business with his brother David and when that failed, worked on his own account as a cloth dealer. Unfortunately, he lost a great deal of money gambling and was declared bankrupt in 1927. To avoid his creditors, Stanley left the country in December 1927 to stay with his father in Milan. He returned in April 1928 and at his bankruptcy hearing it was said Stanley bought cloth on credit, selling it cut price on the same day, and not paying the suppliers. That August he pleaded guilty to multiple offences under the Bankruptcy and Debtors Acts. When the judge sentenced him to 18 months in prison, Setty’s mother h...

This story looks at two local clubs, before and after the War, where groups of amateur enthusiasts made short movie films.  Brondesbury Cine Society The Brondesbury Cine Society held their first meeting on 13 September 1932. It was originally called the Kilburn and Brondesbury Amateur Movie Society until the name was shortened in April 1933. They initially met in an empty floor above an engineering workshop (no address given). Then in October 1932 they rented St Anne’s Church Hall in Salusbury Road Willesden for weekly meetings and to show their silent films. Today the building has been replaced by a modern church.    1935 OS Map showing St Anne’s At the end of October 1932 an audience of 200 people came to see ‘Hemsby Holiday Camp’, a film made by Claude Dickins at the Norfolk camp that summer. Other films included ‘A Day at Bourneville’, ‘A Day at Port Sunlight’ and ‘The Mistake’ (no other information was given about this film). The Hampstead News reported that in addit...

On the evening of 23 August 1929 soon after 10pm, the audience was leaving the Ionic Theatre Golders Green, having just seen the silent film ‘The River’, staring Hollywood actors Charles Farrell and Mary Duncan. As they left the cinema and headed towards the bus depot and the Underground station, some of them saw two men arguing outside a shop in The Parade. Today, this is Leverton and Sons Ltd, funeral directors, 624 Finchley Road, near the clock tower in the centre of the road. The Ionic Theatre One of the men appeared to punch the other in the face and he fell backwards hitting his head on the pavement. The assailant ran off and jumped on a bus going towards Childs Hill and Swiss Cottage. People tried to help the injured man and PC Garner who was on point duty was called. When he got there, he was shocked to find the man was a colleague, PC John Self who worked in plain clothes.  Dr Leakey, who lived locally, was called and he found PC Self unconscious on the pavement. He was t...