FoBLC

{Picture, Caption: Nurses treating soldiers at a clearing station in France} Wedged between a posthumous recipient of the Victoria Cross, John George Pattison and the famed educational pioneers the McMillan sisters on the Old Deptford Town Hall Board of Honour (unveiled in 1919) is the name of Sister Sophie Hilling A.R.R.C. Queen Alexandra’s Imperial Nursing…

The FOBLC are pleased that The Music Hall Guild of Great Britain and America have been able to restore the final resting place of actor and comedian EDWARD LEWIS (1864-1922) who rests in Brockley Cemetery. {Picture, Caption: Edward Lewis (inset) and his restored grave at Brockley Cemetery.} Edward Lewis was born into a theatrical family and made…

A short distance from the entrance to Brockley cemetery aside a shady side path lies an imposing family headstone, topped with its ethereal angelic figure, on which the name Adelaide Macarte is inscribed. Although the lettering has faded the curious passerby can read on the inscription that Adelaide or Addie as she was also known,…

The grave of champion wrestler and boxer Jack Wannop, his wife Miriam, and two of their children, Thomas and Mary, can be found close to the Brockley Grove side of the cemetery, in plot Z/CON/128. They have no headstone. Wannop was well known across Britain and the United States in the 1880s and 1890s, when…

Located close to the outer pathway in Ladywell cemetery close to Ivy road lies a stooped family headstone amidst saturnine undergrowth. The interested passer by would need to approach much closer to discern the faded inscriptions to know that members of the Dadd family were interred here. {Picture, Caption: Richard Dadd working on his painting…

{Picture, Caption: Charles Wadham Wyndham Penruddock (artist’s impression) Source : Depart Hence and Sin No More. David Kidd-Hewitt (2018)} Located alongside the pathway close to the entrance to Ladywell cemetery is found a much faded headstone on which the keen observer can discern an inscription of the wonderfully named Charles Wadham Wyndham Penruddocke, born in Bath…

{Picture, Caption: Dr ‘Gus’ Manning} Finding the graves of long lost luminaries buried in Brockley and Ladywell cemeteries has kept me busily engaged over periods of enforced Covid lockdown when headstone searches have not always been possible. But as all cemetery burials are now digitised (1858-1999) and available to view via the Deceasedonline.com website (there is a…

{Picture, Caption: William Cuffay drawn in his cell in Newgate [National Portrait Gallery London]} William Cuffay was born in Gillingham in 1788 of an English woman called Juliana Fox and a man of African heritage, Chatham Cuffay who had been previously enslaved on the British Colony of St.Kitts. He was soon apprenticed to a tailor,…

{Picture} The Department of English and Comparative Literature at Goldsmiths, University of London hosted the first International symposium on the poet, translator and novelist Ernest Dowson on a storm -tossed saturnine Friday 14th April 2016.   Ernest Dowson who died in 1900 aged 32 is interred in Ladywell cemetery and his signature grave is a regular stopping point on guided walks (it…

Adeline Tanner died young, broken by the horrific experience of being sold abroad into prostitution. Her moving story from Victorian times finds uncomfortable parallels with present day accounts of human trafficking.

Ned Kelly, famous outlaw and folk hero, grew up in Australia in the late 1800s. His life of crime began as a teenager stealing horses and later escalated to murder. Kelly and his gang soon had a price on their heads of £8,000 – today’s equivalent would be £732,600, which could be collected through his…

{Picture, Caption: Drawing of a curiously reticent Tannaker Buhicrosan, c.1885 sporting a Chonmage- a traditional Japanese topknot haircut worn by men Source: Illustrated Sporting and Dramatic News: (Wikipedia).} {Picture, Caption: Japanese Village, which was built in Hyde Park in 1885. Tannaker Buhicrosan had relocated 100 Japanese men women and children to London to populate his…

{Picture, Caption: Giuseppe Garibaldi 1807-1882, Italian general, politician and nationalist who played a pivotal role in the unification of Italy in his trademark poncho and brimless cap c.1864 Source : Wikipedia} {Picture, Caption: Garibaldi at the Crystal Palace. Published in the Illustrated London News, 23 April 1864. Source : Look and Learn / Bernard Platman…

Located close to a pathway aside Brockley grove in Ladywell cemetery is the headstone of a truly remarkable emigre family of twelve children (and eight servants!) known as de Glehn. The family name changed to de Glehn from their former nobiliary particle von Glehn in outrage after the Germans seized Alfred de Glehn’s house in…

Buried in the Brockley section, close to the Ivy Road footpath, lies Lt Gilbert Arthur Price,  a British intelligence officer who died in a dramatic gun battle with the IRA on Dublin’s Talbot Street on October 14, 1920. {Picture} Republican leader Seán Treacy was also killed in the fight which was a key moment in Irish history,…

Located amidst the bosky acreage of Brockley cemetery in an unmarked grave lies the last resting place of five members of the Cavilla family, whose lives were tragically ended in September 1902 in a brutal murder that shocked the nation. An unemployed house painter called Frank Cavilla, aged 34 years of Batavia road, New Cross,…

As you pass along the meandering pathway from the Dissenters Chapel and round the corner walking towards the wall of remembrance in Ladywell cemetery, you could so easily walk past without noticing the drab headstone which denotes that a former Commissioner of Police from 1855-1864 for India’s most populous city Bombay (known as Mumbai since…

{Picture, Caption: Charles and Hannah Cain in 1909 with sons Fred, Tom, Dave and Charles Junior (back row) and daughters  Hannah, Daisy, Florence and Carolyn. (Copyright: Bell family archive)} The following words were written by Angela Catherine Cain, in reference to her new book, Deptford Show Ground – the last permanent fairground in London During…

{Picture} Whilst poring over cemetery burial records on Deceased Online, I lighted on the scant archival details of what appeared a sad early death from August 1928 and became intrigued by what later turned out to be a misspelt surname. The burial record is that of a Blanche Minnie Millicent Zars (nee Leach) of Devonshire…

{Picture, Caption: Beatrice Offor in her studio ( 1902)} Nestling under a shady canopy of bush aside one of the inner pathways in Ladywell cemetery lies the final resting place of Sydenham born artist, Beatrice Offor (the headstone denotes a Beatrice Beavan, beloved second wife of James Philip Beavan, of 8 Bruce Grove, Tottenham). Beatrice,…

The fashionable Kit Cat Club in the Haymarket, which to many people epitomised the carefree days of the 1920s, was opened in the summer of 1925 and immediately became one of the most famous nocturnal haunts in London. Decked out with the last word in restaurant and dance floor equipment it was regarded as one…

A copy of Mordecai Cooke’s drug survey The Seven Sisters of Sleep (1860) was deposited in the Bodleian Library Oxford. When Lewis Carroll also known as the Reverend Charles Dodgson visited the library. The book  had a chapter on the Fly agaric (Hallucinogenic mushrooms) Lewis Carroll “would have been immediately attracted to Cooke’s Seven Sisters…

Francis Bennoch, 1812-1890 by William Ridgway after Alexander Johnston. Source : The Victorian Web (National Scottish Portrait Gallery.) Lying aside one of the inner pathways in Ladywell cemetery close to the Wall of Remembrance is a toppled headstone whose inscription is partially obscured. The inscription is of a nineteenth century Scottish born poet and patron…

Located close to the Cross of Sacrifice in Ladywell cemetery is the final resting place of a truly remarkable man who ‘spoke twenty languages’. Indeed Nicholas John Coundouris who died in 1929 whilst residing in Forest hill is perhaps the only Greek-American buried in the cemetery? His gnarled cruciform headstone is presently entwined in summer…

The Cocos Keeling Islands -‘ extraordinary rings of land which rise out of the ocean’ (Charles Darwin, Voyage of the Beagle), are situated in the Indian Ocean about 700 miles S.W. from Sumatra and 1200 miles from Singapore. ‘If there is a paradise on this earth, it is the Cocos Islands.”     Captain Joshua…

The final resting place of the famous Victorian organist and organ builder George Maydwell Holdich lies close to the pathway alongside the boundary wall in Ladywell cemetery with only the residual border containing a faded inscription on a curbstone visible to the knowing observer. George Maydwell Holdich  [The only known photograph of George is from…

NEXT MEETING on TUESDAY 15th JANUARY at 7.30pm. This is a GENERAL MEETING at which decisions are taken by all members present, not just committee members.  Items to be discussed and voted on will include a Health & Safety Policy and whether the Friends should affiliate to Voluntary Action Lewisham.  Also to be discussed will…