History of Kilburn and West Hampstead

Many of our blog stories have recalled the hardship and pain caused by the tough living conditions among Victorian working people in Kilburn and Willesden, where illness, poverty and poor housing were the norm for many streets. For some people, the festive season over Christmas made little difference to their lives and may even have made matters worse. James and Ellen Doggrell In December 1893 (George) James and Ellen (Eleanor) Doggrell were at 10 Steele Road off Acton Lane, close to the Grand Union Canal. They had no children and rented a single room on the ground floor of the small terrace house which has since been demolished. James was born in 1858 in Bath, Somerset. His father George was an agricultural labourer and he had moved his family to Acton by 1881, to a district generally referred to as ‘Lower Place’. It’s hard to imagine Willesden or Acton and Harlesden as rural neighborhoods, with country lanes and fields divided by hedges or ditches. But that was the case in the 1880s ...