The International Brigades Memorial at the Old Spotted Dog Ground

Clapton Community Football Club stalwart and local activist, Kevin Blowe, writes about a significant anniversary and memorial unveiling of the Spanish International Brigades at Clapton's ground on Saturday 26 April.

Since launching its International Brigades-inspired away kit in 2018, Clapton Community Football Club (CCFC), the owners of the Old Spotted Dog Ground on Upton Lane, has wanted to mark the debt of gratitude owed to those who volunteered to join the fight against fascism in Spain. The club also recognises the part that the red, yellow and purple kit has played in the growth of the club and its links to the struggle in Spain.

The now-famous CCFC away kit, featuring the colours of the International Brigades, launched in 2018 with sales in excess of 20,000

We are grateful for the many new friends we have made along the way and it gives us great pride that CCFC has been able to finance a significant memorial to those with who aided the fight for the Spanish Republic between 1936 and 1939. In March 2019, the club had asked to site a memorial in West Ham Park, but our proposal was rejected by the City of London Corporation.

After securing the Old Spotted Dog Ground in 2020, the plan shifted to installing it inside our ground, but a combination of the ongoing pandemic and then the need to have the Old Spotted Dog Ground ready for men’s and women’s first team games meant further delays.

International Brigades banner - proudly on display at many marches and events, courtesy IBMT's website 

However, after six years of planning, the Newham International Brigades memorial is unveiled on Saturday 26 April 2025. The significance of 26 April is also that it marked the anniversary of the ‘carpet bombing’ of the Basque town of Guernica by combined German, Italian and Spanish fascist forces, which became the subject of Picasso’s famous painting. This finally convinced the British government to allow refugee children to travel to Southampton and a number of these children later went on to become professional football players in England and Spain.

Picasso's Guernica painting

We have worked closely with the International Brigade Memorial Trust, whose President Marlene Sidaway lives close to the Old Spotted Dog Ground. Her partner, David Marshall, served in Spain and the poem inscribed upon the memorial was written by David, who is also remembered on a bench in nearby West Ham Park.

The Newham memorial

The club asked local firm Rodwell Memorials, based in Manor Park, to create the memorial in red granite, which was ordered in September 2024. In February 2025, volunteers began work on the concrete base, which was laid by some of the team from Hackney Bumps, an outdoor skate park in Clapton that we previously worked with to raise funds for Gaza Sunbirds and Pal Gaza.

The Newham memorial taking shape )courtesy IBMT website

Fighters against fascism

The memorial pays special tribute to those from the area around the Old Spotted Dog who made that journey, whether to take up arms or to tend to the wounded. The details of those with a link to the local area are given below, along with their dates of birth and death, as well as any known political or trades union affiliations. Lost records as well as changes in the boundaries and administration of the area means that our list may have some omissions.

Newham was not created until 1965 and births before that would have been registered to the boroughs of West and East Ham. Volunteers born in the area may also have only been known by their last address before signing up. Below we list those registered as coming from, or having a strong relationship with West Ham.

If you do know of any further volunteers from the area then please let us know, or inform the International Brigade Memorial Trust on admin@international-brigades.org.uk. You can search for further volunteers in the IBMT database.

Volunteers for Spain

Fred Adams

1911-1994 - Transport & General Workers’ Union

Born in West Ham, Fred Adams was a builder’s labourer, who fought at the Battle of Jarama in February 1937. He received two thigh wounds and was repatriated on medical grounds after eight months in Spain.

Joseph Caleno

1912-1963 - Communist Party

Originally a boot repairer by trade, Leicester-born Joe Caleno spent 13 months in Spain and was cited for bravery at the Battle of Brunete. He was sent home after sustaining an injury, and in 1939 he was living and working in West Ham Lane, Stratford, as a shopkeeper and tobacconist.

Percy Cohen

1901-1974 - Transport & General Workers’ Union

Stratford-born Percy Cohen served  as an ambulance driver in Spain for 18 months, before being repatriated in August 1938. His occupation was given as a provision merchant.

Max Colin

1912-1997 - Young Communist League

Born in Stepney, Max Colin lived in Rosebery Avenue, Newham. He was a driver and mechanic, serving in that capacity for 10 months in Spain. He was wounded at the Battle of Brunete in the summer of 1937.

Charles Cormack

1912-1938 - Communist Party

Born in Forest Gate, where he lived in Vansittart Road, Charles Cormack was killed on 27 August 1938 in the Battle of the Ebro on his 26th birthday. He had been in Spain for five months. He worked as a driver before joining the International Brigades.

James Cormack

1910-1991 - Communist Party

James was the brother of Charles Cormack and lived in the same house on Vansittart Road. The pair arrived together in Spain in March 1938. The Lambeth-born painter was wounded in the Battle of the Ebro in August 1938, losing three fingers. He returned home four months later and then lived in Field Road, Forest Gate.

Cecil Cranfield

1906-1976 - Labour Party

A former lightweight amateur boxing champion, Cecil Cranfield was born in Camberwell and worked as a salesman. When he joined the International Brigades, his address was given as Romford Road, Forest Gate. He was a machine-gunner in Spain, where he remained for eight months, and was wounded in January 1938 at the Battle of Teruel.

George Degude

1910-1937 - Communist Party

Born in West Ham, George Degude lived at Newington Hall Villas, Church Street, Stoke Newington. He arrived in Spain in February 1937 and was an ambulance driver. He sustained a fatal head injury at the Battle of Brunete in July 1937 and died soon afterwards.

Edward Dickinson

1903-1937 - Industrial Workers of the World

Born in Grimsby, Edward Dickinson was a salesman who gave his address as Upton Lane, Forest Gate. He arrived in Spain in December 1936 and was captured at the Battle of Jarama in February 1937 while second-in-command of the British Battalion’s machine-gun company. He was shot on 13 March 1937 after protesting over the shooting of a fellow prisoner.

Gerrard Doyle

1907-1970 - Communist Party

Limerick-born driver and moulder Gerrard Doyle served in Spain for 17 months and was wounded in fighting at Jarama and at Brunete, in February and July of 1937. In March 1938 he was captured at Calaceite and held at the prisoner of war camp at San Pedro de Cardeña, near Burgos, until returning home in October 1938 in a prisoner exchange with Italian troops. He gave his address as Vale Road, Forest Gate.

Thomas Duncombe

1913-1938 - Communist Party, National Union of General & Municipal Workers

Born in West Ham, Thomas Duncombe gave an address at Rosher Road, Stratford, when he arrived in Spain in February 1938. He was a labourer and was listed as missing, presumed killed, at Gandesa on 3 April of that year.

Leslie Huson

1907-1938 - Communist Party, Transport & General Workers’ Union

Metallurgist Leslie Huson was born in West Ham and emigrated to Canada when he was 18, but had returned home and was living in Clerkenwell when he joined the International Brigades in February 1938. He survived for only two months, dying of pneumonia in hospital in Valls, Catalonia.

David Marshall

1916-2005 - Young Communist League

David Marshall, a civil servant from Middlesbrough, was one of the first volunteers in Spain. Arriving in Spain in August 1936, he was wounded at Cerro de los Ángeles, near Madrid, and repatriated in January 1937. After service in the British Army, he became a set designer and carpenter with Joan Littlewood’s theatre company at Stratford’s Theatre Royal, eventually settling in Forest Gate. He lived in Reginald Road, close to West Ham Park, where there is a memorial bench to him.

John O’Connor

1915-1999 - Communist Party, National Union of Railwaymen

Steel fixer John O’Connor was born in Poplar and was living on Upton Lane, Forest Gate when he volunteered, arriving in Spain in February 1938. He was in the International Brigades for 10 months, serving as a cartographer and lookout with the British Battalion at the Battle of the Ebro in the summer of 1938.

Pat O’Mahoney

1890-Unknown

Canadian-born Pat O’Mahoney was a veteran of the First World War who lived in Geere Road, Stratford. He was a nurse/masseur and arrived in Spain in February 1937. He was wounded at the Battle of Jarama later that month and sent home in May 1937.

Gordon Siebert

1910-1990 - Labour Party

Gordon Siebert was a clerk, born in West Ham. He arrived in Spain in October 1937 and did not return home until the end of the Spanish Civil War in April 1939, having been imprisoned for disciplinary offences.

 

Japanese seafarers in East London

 Introduction

In this intriguing article from regular contributors Mark Gorman and Peter Williams, they uncover the story of sailors from the Far East who have memorials in a local Christian churchyard dating from more than a hundred years ago. They also discover more about why this might have happened and the remarkable story of a Christian missionary who is buried locally in Woodgrange Park cemetery.

East Ham connection

In the churchyard of East Ham parish church (the church of St Mary Magdalene) there is a memorial that only has Chinese writing on it. This is in that part of the cemetery that is now Newham Council’s East Ham Nature Reserve.

The so called Chinese grave St Mary’s June 2024 (photo Peter Williams)

 

In June 2024 a member of a corporate volunteering programme spent a morning in the nature reserve. She was of Chinese heritage and was able to decipher part of the grave inscription. She worked out that the death occurred in the fortieth year of the Meiji dynasty which was founded in 1868. So death occurred in late 1907. She also thought the memorial had been erected in March 1909 after the deceased friends got together and organised it, or got the headstone placed then.

The volunteer was aware that the Meiji was a Japanese dynasty and not Chinese. The Japanese and Chinese (Mandarin) languages share many characters but they are pronounced differently. So it seemed the deceased might be Japanese.

Peter, a long term volunteer at the nature reserve, is married to Ros who has lived in Japan and can speak and read Japanese. It turns out the text on the grave is actually Japanese, and it is clear the deceased served on a ship, the “Awa Maru”. East Ham parish church is less than a mile from the Royal Docks, at the time the largest enclosed docks in the world. London was also the largest and busiest port in the world in 1900.

There were numerous ships plying trade between Britain and Japan at this period as the two countries were allies then, and this press cutting shows the Awa Maru was passing Gravesend heading for London in early December 1907.

Western Daily Press - 2 Dec 1907

 

 

The dates fit, as the person in the grave died early December 1907, and shortly afterwards, the ship sailed for Japan, as in this press cutting.

It seems that Awa Maru was built in Nagasaki in 1899 and below is a record of a Lloyds of London inspection - it seems to have had a Scandinavian captain in 1899:

https://hec.lrfoundation.org.uk/archive-library/documents/lrf-pun-nag1129-0067-r

 The ship even has its own Wikipedia page:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Awa_Maru_(1899)

 

And here is a photo of the ship in British waters:

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/392195027536

 

The photo was taken because she ran aground off Redcar, Yorkshire in 1906 but was refloated.

In WW2 another ship bearing the same name was involved in a notorious incident where it was torpedoed by the US Navy and 2,000 people died. It was carrying treasure. See more here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MV_Awa_Maru

Who is memorialised at East Ham?

His name has been deciphered by a Japanese friend of Ros’s in London called Ai Minematsu (Ai).

In summary: His surname is Haru. His given name is either Kyoji or Noriharu (depending on how the characters are pronounced). The date of death shown is early December 1907.

It seems his shipmates got the stone put up – we know from the records the ship was heading back to London in March 1908 when the burial was completed, according to the dates on the stone itself. There is also evidence the memorial stone was imported from Japan, and that the inscription must have been carved there, as this could not have been done in London.

The story in context - Chinese and Japanese burials in east London

By 1900 there were large numbers of Japanese and Chinese seamen in the London docks. Chinese seafarers had been coming to Britain for some time. 

Chinese seamen and Chinatown

Some Chinese sailors jumped ship and settled, opening lodging houses, provisions stores, cafes, association halls, and laundries to cater to the transient seamen and indentured labourers that could be signed on by British merchant shipping companies in China’s treaty ports for less than half the wage of a British seaman. 

By 1890 there were two distinct, if very small, Chinese communities living in East London’s dockside neighbourhoods. Chinese men from Shanghai stayed around Pennyfields, Amoy Place and Ming Street and those from Guangzhou (Canton) and Southern China lived on the other side of the West India Dock Road on Limehouse Causeway.

The lack of fluency in the English language of many Chinese migrants added to the hostility they received from British seamen and led to cultural segregation. Gradually the streets of Pennyfields and the Chinese Causeway, as it became known, began to be transformed by colourful shops and cafes serving Chinese food, their interiors an exotic contrast to the generally drab surroundings of Limehouse.

In 1895 an article in the Gentleman’s Magazine stated that Chinatown in Limehouse was no more than a single street of shops and boarding-houses: "It exists by and for the Chinese firemen, seamen, stewards, cooks, and carpenters who serve on board the steamers plying between China and the port of London."

It was this maritime dependence which generated the rapid growth of Chinese businesses in Limehouse during the First World War. And it was this dependence which hastened the decline of Chinatown in the 1930s. Chung Chu, who kept a café on Limehouse Causeway, said in 1931 that "the loss of shipping entering the London docks was killing the Chinese population.”

Japanese seafarers

Japanese sailors were also arriving with the introduction of regular mail, passenger and freight services between the UK and Japan from the late C19th. On average two Japanese ships a month were docking in London by 1900. Given the arduous and dangerous conditions at sea, deaths would have occurred and occasional references are made to Japanese funerals in the newspapers.

For example, in 1900 there was a report that “Plaistow cemetery” had 28 Chinese and Japanese graves “and strange looking epitaphs are cut upon them in Chinese [sic] characters”. In January 1904 the Daily Mirror reported the burial in East Ham of a sailor from a Nippon Yusen Kaisha ship (possibly the Kanagawa Maru, which was in the Albert Dock at the time). As no Buddhist priest was available, a Japanese Anglican minister conducted the funeral service.

The Japanese Christian Institute

This was set up possibly in the late 1890s and may have had two locations, one at Tilbury and the other near the Albert Dock in Custom House. It was run by Margaret McLean, who was born in Inverness in about 1837, and who had been an English teacher in China from 1866 and then moved to Japan from 1872 due to ill-health.

Living in Yokohama, in her spare time she did missionary work with British seafarers. In her book Echoes from Japan (1889) she makes clear that although she had been brought up in the Free Presbyterian Church in Scotland she was non-sectarian and also that she was strongly evangelical. She also makes clear her love of Japanese society and culture, which she contrasts favourably with China. She returned to Britain in 1881, probably again due to ill-health.

 

Finsbury Weekly News and Chronicle 2 April 1904

In 1892 Japanese crews came to bring back naval vessels built in Newcastle and Glasgow, and Margaret began missionary work with them. According to one account, when a regular mail service was introduced between London and Japan she moved first to Tilbury and then to the Royal Albert Dock (though the chronology may in fact be the reverse). By the early 1900s two Japanese ships a month on average were docking in London, and Margaret was also travelling to other ports (Sheerness, Portsmouth and Plymouth) when ships arrived.

The JCI welcomed Japanese seamen and Margaret McLean (who seems to have run the Institute single-handedly) sometimes took parties of up to 200 to see the sights of London. According to the Japanese ambassador in London she was called the “mother of the Japanese navy” and naval barracks displayed her picture on their walls. In 1903 she became the first European to receive the Japanese emperor’s Imperial Order of the Crown, sixth grade, a medal for women only.

Location of the JCI

This is not clear. In the 1901 census Margaret McLean was living at 2 Dock Road Tilbury, described as an “unsectarian missionary preacher, Japenese [sic] mission”. However a letter from Margaret McLean indicates that the JCI was in Coolfin Road, Custom House. This may indicate that the JCI had two locations, or that the JCI moved to Tilbury from Custom House c1900. However, reports of Margaret McLean’s funeral in September 1904 refer to the JCI in “Woolwich” which implies that this was its main or final location.

Margaret McLean became seriously ill in early 1904, and died at Southsea in September. She is buried in Woodgrange Park Cemetery. See more below.

A twist in the tale

In August 2024, when discussing this story with volunteers in the archives at Newham Council, it emerged there are photos in the archives of further Japanese memorial stones in East Ham cemetery.

Wrongly labelled memorial to Chinese sailor (Newham Archives)

 

The first is labelled ‘monument to Chinese sailor’ but is undated. On checking this location in the graveyard today this memorial no longer exists, and it is impossible even to find the base. Note one face of this stone is in English, the rest in characters. The name of his ship ‘Bingo Maru’ (all Japanese ships are something Maru), and then a death date (illegible). Research focussed on this ship has shown that this is the person memorialised here, a J Kawauchi who drowned in 1901:

Westminster Gazette - 21 November 1901

The ship was also spelt ‘Binga Maru’ or ‘Benga Maru’ sometimes in the British newspapers. The above cutting also confirms that stones were imported from Japan.

There is another remarkable photo in the Newham Archives showing the unusual stone that was brought into the UK:

 (Newham Archives)

This photo clearly says "Monuments to Japanese sailors", and it seems the one to the extreme right is the same as the surviving one discussed earlier in this article, which initially appeared to be on its own. In August this year Peter and Ros visited this site and were quickly able to establish that there is indeed a group of memorials together. One of this group is visible and readable after clearance of vegetation, though it is tipped to one side.

Photo Ros Bedlow

Three faces have now also been read by Japanese national Ai:

Name: Yoshizo (given) Kawaguchi (surname).

Date of death: 18 September 1911. Aged 22. From Tottori prefecture, Iwamoto village, Ooaza, Ooiwa, Iwami District

British newspapers at the time reported ship movements in remarkable detail.

Searching the digital versions, it is clear ‘Kitano Maru’ was off the St Catherine’s lighthouse, Isle of Wight and London bound on 13 September 1911.

Liverpool Journal of Commerce - 14 September 1911

It is hard to identify the other memorial stones as none is now standing, and some are more than half buried.

These are not graves in the normal sense, as they are far too close together for burials – so either the seamen are buried elsewhere, or at sea, or they were cremated (as is the Japanese custom) though cremations were rare in Britain at the time. Official church records are of burials only, not memorials.

The stone used for the memorials is also interesting, being not recognisable as one of those used for gravestones in the UK. As discussed above, there is a possibility that the stone was imported from Japan. 

We can speculate about the very poor current condition of this cluster of 5/6 Japanese graves. It is possible they have been deliberately vandalised (there was huge anti-Japanese feeling after WW2) but this is speculation. We can also speculate these Japanese seamen converted to Christianity under the influence of Miss McLean, as otherwise it is hard to understand how this group of stones came to be in this Christian graveyard.

More on Miss McLean

In another coincidence, while the authors were searching for unrelated images in the Newham Archives, a photo was found of the grave of Miss McLean in Woodgrange Park cemetery Romford Rd, on the borders of Forest Gate and Manor Park. This can be seen here in a photo taken in 1991 with its Japanese characters.

 

Newham Archives

Notice it says “erected by the officers and sailors of the Imperial Japanese navy”. In the early 1900s there was a strong military alliance between Britain and Japan. New warships for Japan were being built in Newham at the shipyards of the Thames Ironworks which were located where the River Lea and the Thames meet. In fact, these were the last major orders for the yard and it closed not long after. The works' football club morphed into West Ham United FC (hence The Hammers from the tools the shipwrights used).

Woodgrange Park Cemetery, which is a private profit-making business, went through a very troubled period in the 1990s when it was bought and sold a number of times, and a developer called Badgehurst got hold of it with a view to part of it becoming a housing development. 

They applied for planning permission which was refused, then it was appealed and again refused. The Cemetery Friends Group were objectors. The owner then obtained the "Woodgrange Park Cemetery Act 1993". This allowed the clearance of the part on High Street North side for building work. The Friends Group took part in the consideration of the Act, and no work was undertaken until it came into force.

There was considerable controversy. The local MP, Stephen Timms was involved and there was much press coverage over the years, to save the graves.

Miss McLean’s grave did survive this trauma but has been vandalised since the 1990’s. It has lost its cross/anchor at the top due to vandalism in 2023, and the lower part of the Japanese inscription has been covered by raising the ground level when the current cemetery owners, a Muslim organisation, re-landscaped that part of the cemetery.

Miss McLean’s grave, autumn 2024 (Photo Ros Bedlow)

From this photo you can see there is a small interpretation sheet in front of the grave. The cemetery owners recently agreed that the Friends’ Group could place this sheet explaining why a grave with Japanese writing is there.

The sheet says that she set up the Anglo Japanese Christian Mission in North Woolwich road (now the runway to London City Airport), that she died insolvent, and that the grave was paid for by a member of the House of Lords, who was a founder member of the Plymouth Bretheren, a conservative Christian sect, not unlike the tradition of her Scottish Presbyterian upbringing.

In recent years a representative of the Friends' Group met with the Japanese Attache at the cemetery. He was interested and said he would try to get funds for the grave to be restored, but sadly they lost interest and were not forthcoming with funds.

Ai, our collaborator, has undertaken further research in the Japanese diplomatic archives. According to an article there, in September 2019 somebody from the Cemetery (presumably from the Friends' Group) contacted the Embassy of Japan in London to try to find any information on Ms Mclean, as the cemetery people couldn't decide what to do with her grave. Then the embassy staff contacted the Diplomatic Archives of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Japan in Tokyo in 2020.

They found an old document explaining how she got the Imperial Order of the Crown. This showed that Naval Officer Tamara recommended her for the award to the Japanese ambassador to the UK, who in turn sent a recommendation to the Japanese Foreign Minister, in 1902. She was awarded the recognition and was contacted by the ambassador to that effect the following year.

The file suggests that Miss McLean was very well known amongst Japanse seamen staying in the UK. She looked after them well, and they called her "Dear Mother". As already indicated, she was known as the "Mother of Japanese seamen" in the UK.

The article states that in 2021 with help from the Embassy of Japan, the manager/caretaker of Woodgrange Park Cemetery managed to contact the relatives of Miss Mclean and the cemetery decided to keep Miss Mclean's grave there.

The historical documents from the Diplomatic Archives of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Japan will be archived locally (presumably in Stratford - although that has yet to be confirmed, or those documents received).

Conclusion 

What started as a query over a supposed Chinese grave in a cemetery in East Ham has led the authors on an interesting journey into a little-known aspect of local history: the presence of seamen from Japan in Newham over one hundred years ago - and the influence of a Christian mission in looking after their welfare.

End note

Peter and Mark acknowledge the considerable assistance they have had on this project from Ros Bedlow and her friend Ai Minematsu with translating the Japanese; and from Ken Marshall of the Friends’ of Woodgrange cemetery who carried out his own independent research. All have contributed interesting new discoveries to this article. Tony Morrison helped with AI to enhance and read a grave inscription. Kathleen Partington a volunteer at Newham archive shared her knowledge of grave records at East Ham parish church.

A shortened version of this article recently appeared in the Newham Recorder Newspaper online version. The authors acknowledge the help of Jess Conway archivist at Newham with this.

Do not hesitate to contact either this blog or the authors for details of some of the sources accessed for this article, and in particular, if you can add more to this fascinating subject.

You may also be interested in this short film from Newham Heritage Month contributor the Thames Festival Trust: https://www.facebook.com/ThamesFestivalTrust/videos/591480612272837/ , Keiko Itoh on the Japanese Seamen’s Club, Elizabeth Street North Woolwich from 1898.

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Forest Gate and WW1 - on the 110th anniversary of its outbreak

Over the years, we have published various articles on how Forest Gate was impacted by the First World War. On the 110^th anniversary of its outbreak, this post summarises them, with links to the greater details provided in each.

Troops on the battle fronts

Elliott Taylor and Barney Alston published Up The Hammers to mark the centenary of the outbreak of World War 1. It is available from Newham Bookshops and other reliable book retailers. It is the story of the West Ham Battalion (known as the Hammers Brigade) from its establishment in Forest Gate in December 1914 until its demise and amalgamation with other detachments following severe losses in 1918.

Recruitment poster for Hammers Battalion

We published two articles based on it, featuring the lives of Forest Gate soldiers: here and here. The first covered the period until the first day of the Battle of the Somme (1 July 1916), and the second covered the period until the battalion's disbandment in January 1918.

A significant local figure in the battalion was William Walter Busby of Sherrard Road, a local Congregationalist and scout leader, who was awarded the Military Cross for gallantry during the Battle of the Somme and who was killed on the fateful night of 26/27  November that year, when over 170 members of the Battalion were killed at the Battle of Ancre.

Forest Gate's William Walter Busby MC

Other Forest Gate soldiers whose roles were recognised by Taylor and Alston and whose stories we relate included: Bernard Page, Leonard and Alan Holthusen, Gilbert Simpson, Arthur Davies, Alfred Sekles, Private EM Wilding, Private Robert Lee, Hubert Ayres, Joseph Sait, Arnold Hone, Cpl Frederick Hunt, Sgt Harold Joseph Morrison, and 2/Lt George Gemmell.

Their stories and their experiences are summarised in the blog articles but well told in Taylor and Alston’s book.

Cover of Taylor and Alston's book

The home front

We have been fortunate to have access to almost a century of the Godwin Road school logbook, including how the war impacted the school, its pupils, and the wider community. We published details of the impact here, in an article and series of diary entries that featured:

·         Deaths of former Godwin pupils during the conflict;

·         Assistance Godwin pupils gave to the war effort;

·         How war-induced fuel and food shortages impacted Forest Gate;

·         Impact of air raids on the district;

·         Attempts to provide "business as usual" in the school; and

·         The impact of the Spanish flu epidemic of 1919 on Godwin.

West Ham borough suffered  2,035 civilian and military deaths during World War 1; the exact number of the Forest Gate death toll is not known.

1915 post Lusitania sinking anti-German riots

Contemporary photo of anti-German East End riots

After the onset of war, the biggest upsurge in anti-German feeling locally came nine months after the outbreak of hostilities; and followed the sinking of the Lusitania on 7 May 1915. There was a significant amount of rioting and looting of German premises in both Forest Gate and Manor Park by Forest Gate residents, reported by the Stratford Express.

Stratford Express reports the riots

Extensive extracts from the paper identified locations of the rioting and looting; these included:

·         341 Green Street (now the library)

What is now Green St library attacked

·         Manor Park Broadway

What is now Manor Park library attacked

·         Station Road, Manor Park

·         Romford Road

·         Green Street and

·         Sebert Road

Bonheim's the furriers, Sebert Road attacked

We were also able to identify over a dozen local looters and rioters, successfully prosecuted in Stratford Magistrates Court.

The anti-German riots article can be accessed here.

Conscientious Objectors

We accessed several primary sources, secondary reference sites, and books to find considerable details of 48 Forest Gate people who claimed Conscientious Objector (COs) status during WWI and provided details of them here. On a pro-rata basis, given the total number of COs registered nationally, Forest Gate could have expected to have been home to only eight. It is not entirely clear why the local number would appear to have been so disproportionately high.

We found ten local Quaker COs (John Edwin Davies, Alexander Stewart Fryer, Frank George Hobart, Ernest George Mountford, Reginald William Mountford, George Leonard Pratt, William Ronald Read, Frank Augustus Root, Robert Sandy, and George Alfred Weller). 

Twenty other local COs quoted religious objections as grounds for seeking exemption from military service. Some were Jehovah's Witnesses, but others were members of the Church of England (CofE) and its fundamentally pacifist arm, the International Bible Students' Association (IBSA).

Two of the 48 claimed political objections to fighting (Edmund Howarth and Frederick Thompson, the former described as an "Anarchist/Communist/ Athiest" and the latter as a member of the Independent Labour Party). 

There were four local Absolutists who refused to enlist or undertake any work that could be seen as supporting the war effort. They had a totally torrid time. They were Howarth, Thompson (above), Frank Augustus Root, and George Arthur Weller.

Twenty-one of the Forest Gate 48 served prison sentences because of their CO status - some in several prisons. Fifteen - almost a third of local COs spent time in Wormwood Scrubs, four in Winchester, two in Dartmoor, and one each in Maidstone, Pentonville, Newhaven, and Wakefield, while four spent time in unspecified prisons.

The fate of several Forest Gate WW1 war memorials

About twenty varied war memorials were erected after World War 1 in the Forest Gate area.  As far as is possible to tell, about half of them have subsequently been lost or destroyed. The article chronicling their fate can be accessed here.

About half of the memorials we featured were in churches and synagogues; some have been subsequently lost or destroyed as a result of Second World War bomb damage, while others were not saved when churches and a synagogue were demolished.

War memorial: All Saints church

Forest Gate's major cemeteries have Commonwealth War Grave memorials and about 300 individual graves and plots with headstones.

CWGC memorial Woodgrange Park cemetery

There are a small number of other employment or school-specific memorials to the WW1 fallen, including at St Bonaventure school, the Royal Mail Sorting Office, and one recently installed outside Forest Gate police station.

War memorial outside Forest Gate police station, erected during centenary of war

In all war conflicts, some deeply tragic personal stories illustrate the human cost and suffering of the wider story. This blog has featured two very different case studies, both resulting in devastation and death caused by the “War to end all wars.” One was a love affair that ended in death on a battlefield, and the second was a horrific murder case undoubtedly induced by post-traumatic stress disorder.

The diaries of two local lovers whose affair was extinguished on the battlefields

A decade ago, local resident Paul Holloway self-published an account of a romance between his Forest Gate grandmother, May Larby, and a friend she met while travelling to London to college—fellow Forest Gater Jack Richardson. The book was called There Are No Flowers Here. We published a story summary in two articles, here and here.

May Larby

The romance between the couple, who lived within half a mile of each other, only lasted two years, but May lovingly remembered it for the rest of her life through the precious letters they exchanged during its brief duration.

May’s daughter from her later marriage, Elizabeth, kept these letters, and Paul transcribed and published them on her death, in remembrance of the two women and Jack.

The first episode of the series tells how the couple met and how their friendship blossomed until Jack, having enlisted in the City of London Fusiliers, was sent to the front line in France in early 1915.

Jack Richardson

The second episode of the blog records Jack’s experiences in the trenches until his final message to May:

“While the weather lasts, I think on the whole, I would rather be in the trenches than in billets. I scarcely ever sleep comfortably in town because I expect to be called up with an alarm every night I hear the gunfire; here the guns boom all night and one doesn’t notice it.

"My beloved, these days of sunshine make me feel only a matter of weeks or a month or so before I see you again - I dream of it at night."

Sadly, it was not to be. On Sunday, 25 April 1915, Jack was wounded, having been reconnoitering in front of his trench at night with his sergeant. He died of these wounds on Friday, 7 May 1915, aged 22.

Jack's memorial scroll

May later married Richard Williams and had four children. She became a successful mathematician, was awarded a CBE for her contribution to maths in education, and died in 1986, aged 91. But the memory of that brief affair lingered with her till the end - 70 years on; individual testimony to the lasting grief that the 'war to end all wars' brought to so many.

The 1919 Forest Gate Murders – a Post-Traumatic Distress Syndrome case study

Some of the most horrific local civilian deaths resulting from World War 1 came six months after the cessation of hostilities when four members of the Cornish family were murdered in their home, Stockley Road in April 1919.

The murdered Cornish family

Henry Perry, aka Beckett, was executed by hanging at Pentonville jail on 10 July 1919 for the murders - and so became the last person judicially executed for  Forest Gate-related killings.

Case reported

The story of the killings and subsequent trial is a horrific one, covered on the blog here. Perry, a war veteran, pleaded insanity, but this was dismissed. PTSD was not a well-understood condition at the end of World War 1. “Shell shock” was probably as close an understanding of the condition that existed then, but it was not accepted as a defence.

Henry Perry aka Beckett, as a soldier

In a more enlightened time today, it would be widely accepted that the four Cornish family deaths, along with that of the perpetrator Perry, would be accepted as deaths consequential to the traumas and suffering Perry experienced on the battlefields of Europe.