History of Kilburn and West Hampstead

While searching old newspapers, I came across this story of a child actress who became a major pantomime star in the late 1920’s.                               Lennie Deane aged 11. In 1914 Lennie Deane first appeared on the West End stage when she was 10. The following year she was one of the Babes in The Wood at the Aldwych. Each year she appeared in Christmas pantomimes such as Puss in Boots, Cinderella, and Dick Whittington.  She was very popular as a singer and dancer and became a star in the 1920s at major theatres such as the London Palladium.  Here is a silent clip of her as Cinderella at the Palladium in 1926. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yThsaLtYJP0 Lennie toured the country performing in pantomime and musicals where she was a big hit as Rose Marie. She was born in November 1904 as Selina Solomon, the daughter of a commercial traveller in fine art. By 1919 the family were li...

PC Leonard Crayford was on night patrol on 3 December 1933. He had joined the Met only 16 months earlier and was stationed at the West Hampstead Police Station where he lived as an unmarried constable.  Shortly after 1am he was passing the Marks and Spencer store in Kilburn High Road when he saw a man inside the shop. He contacted the police station and Station Sergeant Mountfield arrived with a large body of men. PC Draper and the Sergeant climbed onto a flat roof at the back of the store and discovered that a window had been broken and the protecting metal bar had been sawn through. Looking through the window they saw several shadowy figures moving around the store.  One man spotted them and raised the alarm and the gang fled. The police caught a man inside the shop, and followed the others who ran into St Mary’s Primary School on the corner of West End Lane where they barricaded themselves into the teachers’ room. The police broke through and arrested the other three men....

By day an accountant’s clerk and by night, a professional bicycle rider, debonair man-about-town and burglar, the highly versatile Frederick Monks was sentenced to twelve months’ imprisonment for robbery in October 1904. At the time he was the only man ever known to the London Police who had lived a ‘quadruple life’ and his story is a romance of roguery. He lived four widely divergent lives, mingled in four different classes of society, had four sets of friends, and maintained four characteristics. He was arrested in his lodgings in Kilburn Park Road (no number was given in the reports). The Clerk In the morning Frederick Monks, dressed like all the other clerks, took a seat at his desk in Wilson and Co. a firm of accountants at Nos.37 and 39 Essex Street, Strand. His demeanor was modest and unassuming. He was deferential to his employers and congenial with his colleagues. He ate his modest lunch alongside them, chatting about girls and sport - subjects which clerks often talked about....

The writer Vidiadhar (Vidia) Surajprasad Naipaul was born in 1932 in Trinidad, where his father was a journalist in the local newspaper. In the 1880s the family had emigrated from India to work on a sugar plantation.  Vidia was educated at Queen’s Royal College, a high performing school in Port of Spain, which was run like a British public school. Before he was 17, he won a government scholarship to study English at University College Oxford, where he arrived in 1950.  About halfway through his degree course he became lonely and depressed. Then in February 1952, at a college play, Naipaul met Patricia Hale, who was studying history. They became a couple and Pat supported and encouraged Vidia’s writing. In 1954 he came to London while Pat went to Birmingham, her hometown, to do a further degree. Vidia desperately needed a job, and he was fortunate that in December 1954 Henry Swanzy who produced the weekly BBC Caribbean Voices, offered him a three-month renewable contract as pre...

In June 1905, Grace Hawthorne starred in the title role of the play ‘Josephine’ at the Kilburn Empire. Born in America as Priscilla Cartland, she was discovered by manager William W Kelly who brought her to London in 1886 and gave her the stage name of Grace Hawthorne. Known to his colleagues as ‘Hustler’ Kelly, he made sure Grace was the first American actress to take the capital by storm. They were very successful with a play called ‘A Royal Divorce’. This about Napoleon and the Empress Josephine and was performed across the country for many years from 1891. With help from Kelly, Grace became the lessee of the Princess's Theatre in Oxford Street and several other theatres but ran into financial difficulties. She wore extravagant costumes which cost £1,500 and had run up debts of £14,000 when she went bankrupt. Grace and Kelly ended their professional partnership, but William continued touring ‘A Royal Divorce’ with his wife Edith Cole playing the role of Josephine.  The actor Joh...

This is the extraordinary story of a KGB officer who defected in London. It is mainly about the Russian spy, with a short account about what little is known about his agent who lived in Cricklewood. Most of his files at the National Archives have not been released, but Christopher Andrew who wrote the authorized history of the MI5, provided some details of the case in his book ‘The Defence of the Realm’. Books by Nigel West and others, as well as newspaper articles, have been used to piece the story together which sounds like something straight out of a spy novel. The Trigger On 30 August 1971, at 1.30 in the morning, PC Charles Shearer and PC George Paterson were on duty in a police panda car. When they came into the Tottenham Court Road, they saw a Hillman car in front of them which did not have its lights on and was being driven erratically. They decided to follow and pulled the car over in a side street near Warren Street Tube station.  The driver was quite belligerent when he ...

This is a story about two terrorists in the 1970s and the West Hampstead policeman who was involved in both cases.   PC Bob Brown Born in Croydon, Bob Brown joined the Met in 1969 and was stationed at West Hampstead for 15 years. During this time, he was regularly involved in the policing of the annual Notting Hill Carnival and the experience he derived from these large scale urban policing events served him well during the Brixton Riots in 1981.  Although local crime was the mainstay of PC Brown’s daily brief, he also took part in two cases of international terrorism while serving at West Hampstead police station. They had moved from West End Lane to a new building in Fortune Green Road in 1972. Astrid Proll Anna Puttick had been working for ten months at the Finchley Road Garage, when on 15 September 1978 she was arrested by Special Branch, supported by West Hampstead police officers including PC Brown. The garage at 265b Finchley Road, which has since been demolished, was ...