Postman's Park: The Wall That Remembers South London's Forgotten Heroes

This week Rach is dreaming of Devon (and still hasn't worked out what to do there beyond letting the kids run feral), Hannah's fun employed and doing her best to enjoy it before real life catches back up, and we somehow end up talking about McDonald's drink orders for far too long. Sorry, Trevors.

Tucked behind St Paul's Cathedral is Postman's Park, a small memorial garden with a wall of hand painted tiles, each one commemorating an ordinary person who died trying to save someone else's life. This week we look at how the wall came to exist, the Victorian painter George Frederick Watts who built it from newspaper cuttings, and why that method means the wall gets things wrong. 

Then we cross the river to meet the seven South Londoners honoured there: a nursemaid who dropped three children from a burning window, a policeman killed searching an empty house, two boys who drowned holding onto each other, a woman who went back for her mother-in-law, a nine-year-old who died trying to save his baby brother, a surgeon who wrecked his own health saving a stranger abroad, and a 2007 rescue that became the first new tablet added to the wall in 78 years. We also ask whether a memorial like this should be a finished, unchangeable record, or something that keeps growing.

Transcript

Hello, I'm Rachel, I'm Hannah, and this is the Sinister South podcast, a podcast all about (0:30) the right bad things what happen this side of the river. (0:35) Safe side. (0:36) Safe side.(0:37) Indeed you do. (0:38) The correct side. (0:40) You all right? (0:41) Not bad, darling, not bad.How are you? (0:42) Good, yeah, I'm all right. Sweating bollocks, but otherwise I'm fine. (0:48) I hate it when, like, it's such a British thing to be like, (0:53) oh, yeah, I'm fine.I'm really hot, actually. It's really hot. (0:56) And then when it's cold, it's fucking freezing.(0:59) So cold. (0:59) So cold, I can't think straight. (1:01) But honestly, those are the two extremes, the extremes that we apparently seem to be (1:05) living in at the moment.I don't understand what's happening. (1:08) My eldest turned around to me the other day and just went, (1:10) I just need the heatwave to finish. (1:13) Yes.I mean, I don't blame her. (1:16) Yeah, I know. (1:17) I know.We shouldn't moan. (1:19) We shouldn't moan. And yet we do because it is our public sport.(1:22) Here we are. (1:23) It is. Well, to be fair, I would actually say that complaining about the weather (1:27) is probably more of the national game to this country than football.(1:31) Oh, stop talking about football. (1:33) By the time this one comes out, we'll probably be out of football. (1:40) But yes, but yeah, no, I'm all right.I'm hot. (1:43) But otherwise, all OK. (1:45) Just doing the fun countdown to the summer holidays.(1:49) And when I say fun, I mean, absolute, like what? (1:54) I've not planned ahead. I've done nothing this year. (1:58) Normally, I've got at least two clubs booked.(2:03) I've got nothing because I need to book one of them. (2:05) But I'm waiting for a certain someone who does not listen to the podcast (2:09) to tell me what dates she's booking her one in so that then I can book my one in, (2:13) not her back. She's got other things on her plate, Rachel, chill out.(2:16) But yeah, like I haven't done that. (2:19) And that's only for one of the kids, not both of them. (2:22) Yeah, because you have to be eight.(2:24) And my youngest one is not. (2:26) So I've got to figure out what the fuck I'm doing there. (2:27) We are going to Devon, though.That'll be nice. (2:29) Where we basically just get to move the chaos that usually lives in my house (2:33) to a very small tin box for a week. (2:36) So that'll be great.(2:37) I hope it stays at 35 here. (2:39) Oh, yeah. I'm literally so excited for that.(2:43) Yeah, I don't know. (2:44) I don't know what to do in Devon. (2:45) That's another thing.(2:47) You been to Devon? (2:51) It's just one of those things where it's like we've been so many years in a row now (2:54) and I love it down there. (2:55) And it honestly is just like a great week to just let the kids be feral. (2:59) And it's lovely.(3:01) But I've done all of the attractions. (3:03) Yeah, that's the problem when you go more than once to a certain place. (3:07) It's just like I've done it all.(3:08) The only other place I've not been yet is Buckfast Abbey. (3:11) But I can't go because if I go with Will, (3:12) he'll try and insist that he's Scottish again (3:15) and buy all the tonic wine and think it's a brilliant idea. (3:18) I've never had it.(3:19) Have you not? It's nice. (3:21) What is it like? (3:22) Ah, wine. (3:24) Just wine? (3:25) No, it's like it's... (3:27) How do you describe Buckfast? (3:29) Welcome to the south where we talk about completely fucking random bullshit.(3:37) It's a fortified wine. (3:39) It's a bit like port, but it's very strong. (3:42) The only time I have actually had it and enjoyed it was day two of Download 2010.(3:53) Okay. (3:53) Because I was still incredibly drunk from day one of Download. (3:57) Is this proposal Download? (3:58) No, no, no.That was two years later. (4:02) No, this was Download where... (4:04) This was secret Download. (4:05) This was secret Download where I was not meant to know William.(4:11) And yet I did. (4:12) But that's a story for another day, maybe on Patreon. (4:15) Yeah, so maybe I'll go to Buckfast Abbey, (4:16) but he'll probably decide that he needs to buy loads of fortified tonic wine.(4:20) Well, he can because I haven't tried it, so... (4:22) I could bring you a bottle home. (4:23) Bring me some home. (4:24) There you go.I'll do that instead of fudge. (4:25) Normally, I bring you home fudge. (4:26) This time, I'll bring you home tonic wine.(4:28) Why not? (4:28) You buy me fudge. (4:30) I'll open it, have one bit, put it in a bag. (4:32) I'd like to leave here.(4:33) Yeah. (4:33) Forget it exists. (4:34) And then about three months later, be like, (4:36) Ooh.(4:39) I think that's got a shelf life of about three weeks, not three months. (4:44) Yeah, fudge is one of those confectionery items that does not have (4:46) any sort of chance to be forgotten in my house. (4:49) No.(4:50) I fucking love that shit. (4:52) Honestly. (4:54) Yeah, there we go.(4:55) Devon, holidays. (4:57) I'm already losing my mind. (4:59) It's fine.(5:00) What about you? (5:01) You up to anything? (5:02) Literally, like, no. (5:05) No, we have just sat here going, what the fuck are we going to talk about? (5:07) Yeah, I know. (5:09) Maybe we just talk about like, we used to be fun.(5:13) We used to have things to say. (5:14) And I don't know if it's like, we've both been more (5:19) insular or if we've been spending too much time together. (5:22) So therefore... (5:24) But like, even then trying to think about silly or funny things that have happened.(5:27) I just feel like life's really serious. (5:30) Life is really serious. (5:31) I also think to say... (5:32) I also do think, as I said to you a minute ago, (5:34) the other problem is that we've started spending more time together, which is lovely.(5:39) But we've also started spending more time together. (5:41) And the people that are in our immediate circle, (5:45) like, we're talking about shit that like, we can't talk about on a public forum. (5:49) So suddenly it's just like, well, I can't say that.(5:51) It is annoying that you've got to respect other people's privacy. (5:54) I know, right? (5:54) It's such a ball ache. (5:56) Gossip, Trevor, the gossip.(5:57) Honestly, the gossip. (5:59) But no, we can't talk about any of it, which is really annoying. (6:02) But yeah.(6:02) So instead, you've got this. (6:04) Me talking about fucking tonic wine. (6:06) Jesus Christ.(6:08) Okay, we move. (6:10) We move. (6:10) We move.(6:11) Yeah, it's... (6:14) How's fun employment? (6:17) Yeah, all right. (6:18) My flat's quite clean. (6:19) Oh, that's lovely.(6:20) Because I just go insane. (6:23) I can't sit still for very long. (6:25) Yeah.(6:25) And fun employed people don't get cleaners anymore. (6:29) It's fine. (6:30) It's part of the... (6:31) Tightening the belt for now strategy, but they will be back.(6:34) They will be back. (6:35) Yeah. (6:36) So I've just been plodding, really.(6:39) And trying very hard to enjoy it. (6:42) Yes. (6:43) Because I know that soon enough I'll be back in grown up adult land.(6:50) Yeah. (6:50) And it'll be moaning about that. (6:53) Going like, oh, I just want to laze around.(6:55) So I'm trying to kind of remind myself to stay in the present and use your time wisely. (7:01) Read a lot and blah, blah, blah. (7:03) Which I am doing.(7:04) I'm like on 30 books already. (7:06) Oh, wow. (7:08) Which... (7:08) What are you reading at the moment? (7:10) So... (7:10) Oh, that, you know, that Mother Faker that you read on holiday? (7:13) Oh, yes, yes.(7:13) So I finally opened that. (7:15) So that's what I'm reading physically. (7:17) I'm listening to The Barbecue at Number Nine, which is the woman that wrote (7:22) the list of suspicious things.(7:25) You know, the one that's about Sutcliffe? (7:27) Oh, right. (7:28) Yeah. (7:28) She's written another one.(7:29) I can't remember now, her name's just left my head, but it's good. (7:33) I really like her style of writing. (7:35) And I think she can write different age groups really well as well.(7:38) So like some of the characters are much younger, some are much older. (7:41) But the voice changes enough. (7:44) But they're all still readable, if you see what I mean.(7:46) Yeah, fair. (7:47) But I've read some good stuff recently. (7:49) So like that's been keeping me entertained.(7:51) It's very good. (7:51) I'm still like, I've gone through a bit of a... (7:54) I went through a major like, I'm reading all the time. (7:56) It's amazing.(7:57) And now I seem to have kind of like gotten to a point where I'm like, (8:00) I can't quite get over it. (8:02) I'm still finishing, which is ridiculous, because it's really not a long book. (8:06) I'm still finishing The Cry of the Girls, or The Song of the Girls.(8:10) I can't remember. (8:11) Pat Barker. (8:12) It's a really good book.(8:13) I really like her writing. (8:15) But I just I've got to a point in it now where I'm just like, (8:17) I don't seem able to kind of like, just get it finished. (8:20) And then I started reading Mr. Magic.(8:23) Oh, yeah. (8:24) Which I'm enjoying so far. (8:25) And then I went to... (8:28) So Pride Day, when I went out of town.(8:30) Originally, Will was going to go on his own. (8:32) And I was going to stay at home with my big one. (8:34) But we decided, fuck it, we'll all go.(8:36) And he had set out his plan for the day, (8:38) because he was going to hang around up London (8:40) so that he could bring the little one home with him. (8:42) And his plan was that he wanted to go to Denmark Street to look at the guitars. (8:46) And then he wanted to go to Forbidden Planet to look at geeky stuff.(8:49) Right. (8:50) So we were like, well, we'll come with you and do all of that geeky stuff. (8:53) Because my eldest is following in her father's footsteps.(8:57) And it's a bit of a geek. (8:59) Said with all the love, like entirely. (9:02) But there's certain things that they talk about.(9:03) I'm just like, OK, I don't understand that. (9:07) That's fine. (9:08) That can be a you thing.(9:09) But we walked into Forbidden Planet. (9:12) And it was much, much, much busier than I remember it being when I was a lot younger. (9:17) Loads and loads of people in there.(9:19) Also, one of the hottest days. (9:22) And oh, my God, the smell. (9:23) Oh, really? (9:24) Oh, my God.(9:25) I don't mean to be horrible. (9:26) But genuinely, there was a point where I said to Will, I was like, (9:29) I may have to just leave you. (9:31) Because if the smell of beer and urine gets any stronger.(9:34) Oh, wow. (9:35) I may hurl all over this incredibly expensive statue of Goku that you've found. (9:42) Yes.(9:43) And then he would probably have gone, actually, it's Gohan and not Goku. (9:47) But yes, that was that was interesting. (9:50) And then we went downstairs to where they've got all the graphic novels and all the anime.(9:55) Not anime. (9:56) Is it manga? (9:57) This is the written one. (9:58) I don't know.(9:59) Whichever one it is. (10:00) And I found a book called Trad Wife. (10:04) Oh, yeah.(10:04) Yeah, yeah, yeah. (10:05) I haven't started yet, but it looks really good. (10:08) So I bought that.(10:09) Cool. (10:09) It was quite amusing watching my big one go. (10:11) I really want some.(10:13) I think it's anime. (10:14) Manga is the TV version, I think. (10:18) She wants a graphic novel.(10:19) People who are into it are screaming at me right now. (10:21) And I do apologise. (10:22) But she wanted a book.(10:26) And she was like, this one looks good. (10:28) I was just like, so with this, probably best if maybe daddy looks up what it's about. (10:39) Because, yes, it looks very kid friendly on the front cover.(10:44) I don't think it always is. (10:46) Right. (10:47) I've had this conversation with her where I'm like, (10:50) yeah, so I know that that's got a school girl on the front and it's pink.(10:56) It might not be. (10:57) That's not necessarily what's going to be happening. (10:59) It's not really what we want to be reading about, maybe.(11:04) So, yeah, so now he's been set a task for her birthday. (11:07) Trying to find her. (11:08) To find one that she can get into.(11:11) So, yeah, she wants, she's going very, like, she's really into Studio Ghibli. (11:15) Yeah. (11:16) And they've got some really nice Studio Ghibli books that I'm like, (11:20) I'll happily read those with you.(11:22) I get that. (11:24) But yeah, it was insane. (11:25) And I'd forgotten how large the downstairs of Forbidden Planet is.(11:29) Oh, right. (11:30) Fucking huge. (11:31) Like, I couldn't tell you.(11:34) All right. (11:34) I'm going to say it's been decades. (11:35) Yeah.(11:36) I mean, I was just down there being like, hang on, we've come this, (11:40) have we not walked this way before? (11:42) Why are we in a labyrinth underneath? (11:45) Underneath central London. (11:47) But yeah, so that was, that was interesting. (11:51) I did read another two books I think you'll like.(11:55) One I listened to. (11:56) One I do have a copy of, so you can have it. (11:58) Okay.(11:59) I've got a copy of Dissection of a Murder, which is by Jo Murray. (12:02) It's kind of being, BookTok got its teeth into it. (12:06) It's interesting.(12:08) It's like, I quite like when a book is like, each chapter is a different character. (12:13) Right, okay. (12:14) Or like, yeah, you cycle through like some, that kind of.(12:19) Way it's, it's dealt. (12:21) Shut up, Hannah. (12:22) I know what you mean.(12:25) It was interesting. (12:27) Most of the BookTok reviews were like, didn't see the twist coming. (12:31) Right.(12:31) I would be very interested to see when you pick up on it. (12:35) Okay. (12:35) And if it's at the same point that I picked up on it.(12:38) Okay. (12:38) I will say that I wasn't 100% sure until it happened. (12:42) Right.(12:43) So, okay, kudos on that. (12:46) But I didn't, I don't know if it was quite the, I'm not, Sam and I'm. (12:49) Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.(12:50) What? (12:51) Kind of thing that BookTok made it out to be. (12:53) But it was, it was very good. (12:55) And I read Five by, is it Iona Bannister, I think her name is.(13:00) Which is, it's really interesting. (13:03) Again, that's a multiplayer kind of scene. (13:07) But it's, I think it's like set within, there's five people.(13:11) There's five main characters. (13:13) And then there's a supporting cast around them that you hear about, but not from. (13:17) Right.(13:17) Necessarily. (13:18) Or you might hear from them in a weird way during another character's scene. (13:23) Right.(13:23) But it's, I think it's like the five minute or no, it's eight minutes before the train (13:29) gets there. (13:30) And you know someone dies. (13:32) Oh.(13:33) So from the very first sentence, I'm not ruining anything. (13:35) It says it on the front cover, I think. (13:37) There's five people are about to get on this one train.(13:40) And one of them is going to die. (13:42) Okay. (13:43) And you don't know when, how, why.(13:47) Like, yeah. (13:48) And like, you really don't. (13:50) I, again, it was a bit Agatha Christie and then it could have been any of them.(13:54) Okay. (13:55) As well. (13:55) Yeah, yeah, yeah.(13:57) I found myself very gripped by that. (14:00) Okay. (14:00) Yeah, I really enjoyed it.(14:01) Well, I might have to give that one away. (14:03) So a couple of recommendations. (14:04) Thanks, mate.(14:05) I will add them to the list. (14:06) Maybe that's what I can do in Devon, just read. (14:09) Yeah.(14:10) Let the kids be free. (14:11) It was helping you. (14:12) It really was.(14:13) It was. (14:14) Maybe you should do a bit of enforced fun and make yourself have half an hour in bed reading. (14:20) Regardless.(14:21) Who are we kidding? (14:22) The reason why I've stopped reading is because I haven't. (14:24) Because the fucking football's on. (14:25) No, no, no.(14:26) I've not been on holiday. (14:27) Oh, yeah. (14:28) Oh my God.(14:29) That's what we could talk about, babe. (14:30) How are you dealing with your first full month without a trip abroad? (14:33) I actually do think that it should be made illegal for there to be a four week working month. (14:38) It's just, I don't understand how people do it.(14:40) Like three weeks. (14:41) It's insane. (14:42) I'm like, I'm coming with it.(14:44) I mean, I'm coming apart at the seams, if I'm honest. (14:47) I don't really know. (14:49) I don't really know how to deal with it.(14:51) I need to go and. (14:52) Have you moved back to diamond shoes since your diamond flip flops? (14:56) Well, no, I'm still clinging to the hope that there will be a last minute dot com scenario (15:04) and I'll just fuck off for a long weekend somewhere nice. (15:07) Hey, I'm fun employed.(15:09) Hey, I could go at a drop of a hat. (15:12) My house is so clean. (15:13) I know where all my clothes are.(15:14) I could pack literally half an hour. (15:16) Give me half an hour, I could pack. (15:18) But yeah, no, I have genuinely, I've struggled.(15:21) It's not been, it's not been good. (15:22) I feel like I'm made for a three day, like three week month. (15:27) That should just be none of this fucking four day week bollocks.(15:30) I can work five days. (15:31) Just give me a week off every month. (15:33) Every month.(15:34) Where I don't have to do anything. (15:35) Yeah. (15:36) Don't have to parent.(15:37) Don't have to look after anybody, anything. (15:40) Just read and drink. (15:43) Babes.(15:44) Oh, the life choices I should have made. (15:47) You're literally staring at your perfect companion for this. (15:49) I know.(15:49) All I do. (15:50) I know. (15:51) I'm unemployed.(15:52) All I do is drink and read. (15:55) That's what we've established. (15:57) We're trying to find something to fucking say on this podcast.(15:59) So all I've done is drink and read, guys. (16:01) I don't know what you want me to say. (16:02) Can I please ask you to tell the Trevors something that's just popped into my brain? (16:07) Oh, God.(16:08) I don't know. (16:08) Talking about drinking and reading. (16:10) Can you please tell the Trevors how many drinks you order when you do a McDonald's? (16:15) When you do a McDonald's food order, please.(16:19) Because it's obscene. (16:21) Well, those of you that listen that know me will already be aware of this phenomenon. (16:27) I would like to say it's just when I'm hungover, but it's not.(16:29) It is a general kind of standard of mine. (16:32) And it is just McDonald's. (16:35) But whenever I order McDonald's, there is a rota of... (16:40) I like to have... (16:43) I have six drinks.(16:47) It's basically, normally one of everything. (16:50) So the other morning I was hungover and I really just wanted to... (16:53) Look, I haven't spoken much about the side effects of McDonald's, particularly. (16:56) I'm aware of the controversy and the division of opinion and the feeling of kind of (17:08) abandonment of my body positivity that I did have.(17:12) I'm aware it's a controversial subject. (17:17) But... (17:18) Did you see how dismissive I was then? (17:21) But look, your girl doesn't get hungry very much. (17:25) No, she doesn't.(17:25) But when your girl is hungry, she will have very specific requirements. (17:32) And I woke up hungover and I was like, if I don't have a sausage and egg McMuffin, (17:35) I think I might pass away. (17:38) It'll be the end of life.(17:39) Yeah, yeah, yeah. (17:40) For someone. (17:41) Okay, so not necessarily you, just whoever's in the vicinity.(17:44) She's going to go down. (17:45) Okay, fine, fine. (17:47) So that came with a coffee.(17:49) So let's drink one. (17:50) Right. (17:52) I know what's coming.(17:54) It's full sugar Coke, diet Coke, Fanta Zero, strawberry milkshake. (17:59) And then this time I had the Sprite x pineapple drink. (18:05) I spend more on drink than I do on food when I order McDonald's.(18:10) It was just, I think what it was, I think the reason why I was so shocked when you told me this (18:14) was just that, like, I've never considered doing it. (18:18) Why? (18:18) Why have I not gone? (18:20) I really fancy a milkshake. (18:20) They make the best ice.(18:22) The best ice. (18:24) It's world class. (18:25) I don't understand what they do to it.(18:27) Knowing McDonald's probably something horrific that like, I don't know, (18:30) my spleen's going to fall out at some point. (18:32) But like, I'm aware. (18:35) You know, I don't know what they do to it, but it's like crack.(18:39) I mean, it's crack ice. (18:41) It's crack ice. (18:41) That is exactly what it is.(18:43) See, I usually have like a staple whenever I go. (18:47) In most places, again, like we're going through a whole load of stuff with my kids and seeing (18:52) if they've got certain isms that they've both got. (18:57) And it is just so funny because the more and more I read up on the different isms and what (19:01) they've got, the more I'm like, oh, so that's me.(19:04) And then that's me. (19:06) And then that's me. (19:07) And that's a little bit of me and a little bit of Will.(19:10) Okay. (19:11) But one of the things that I have realised that I do without realising it is that no (19:17) matter where I go, I have the meal that I get. (19:21) Right.(19:21) Yeah, yeah, yeah. (19:22) And I will not deviate. (19:25) So if I go to an Indian, if I go and get a curry, it will always be, I know there's no, (19:31) it's bland.(19:32) I know it's not spicy, but it's what I have every single time. (19:35) I have butter chicken. (19:37) I love a butter chicken.(19:40) Butter chicken, coconut rice, Peshawari naan. (19:43) That is dessert. (19:44) That's a cake.(19:45) You're having a cake. (19:48) Yes. (19:48) And I likes what I likes.(19:50) Richard and I are perfect Indian ordering partners. (19:53) I will say this. (19:54) There's not a lot about our relationship that is exemplary.(19:57) And the other couple should take note of. (20:01) But we are the perfect pair. (20:03) We're like, we both like, we'll have a sweet one.(20:06) Yeah. (20:06) A spicy one. (20:07) Right.(20:08) Then rice, like, just our order is down perfect. (20:13) No, see, mine's always sweet. (20:14) And then I'll throw in a little bit, like, if it's a special occasion, (20:18) I'll get myself some Bombay potatoes.(20:21) That's the only savoury thing. (20:23) And that's if it's a special occasion. (20:25) And an onion bhaji.(20:26) Quite partial to onion bhaji. (20:28) But that's my order for the day. (20:29) Do you cover that in mango chutney? (20:32) Yeah.(20:32) Yeah, I've met you. (20:34) Yes, I'm a writer. (20:35) Have we ever tested you for diabetes? (20:37) I got tested when I was pregnant with my youngest.(20:40) I don't have it. (20:40) There we go. (20:42) But yeah, and then if I go to a Chinese, (20:44) it's always sweet and sour chicken with rice, (20:45) egg fried rice, (20:46) or it's a chicken chow mein with sweet and sour sauce.(20:50) Okay. (20:50) If I go to, like, there's always a set meal. (20:54) McDonald's, it changed recently.(20:56) Oh. (20:58) And to say that it's shooketh me (21:02) is a bit of an understatement, (21:03) because genuinely, like, I was always a quarter pounder of cheese. (21:06) Yeah.(21:07) Fries. (21:08) Double quarter pounder is too big. (21:09) It's far too big.(21:10) Too big. (21:10) You don't need that much. (21:11) Don't need that much meat.(21:12) I don't need that much bread. (21:13) Just no. (21:14) Single please.(21:14) Always used to be a single quarter pounder of cheese, (21:17) medium fries, and a full fat Coke. (21:19) Okay. (21:19) That was it.(21:20) I used, I tried milkshakes, like, they're lovely, (21:22) but I don't want that. (21:23) No, it's just ice cream in a pot. (21:25) I don't want that with my burger.(21:27) Like, no. (21:27) Oh, would it be too sweet? (21:29) It will be too sweet. (21:30) There's a, there's a, look, listen, right? (21:32) There is, I'm going to smash your head in.(21:37) But no, but recently it's changed, (21:38) because I've gone down the route of a, (21:40) what's it called? (21:41) The Big Arch. (21:42) Oh, okay. (21:43) Fuck me.(21:45) Oh my God. (21:47) Like, I used to think meat, (21:48) like McDonald's was always just mediocre. (21:49) Right.(21:50) It was always just like, yeah, fine. (21:51) I'll get it because the kids want a happy meal. (21:52) Fine.(21:53) I'll get it because it's 20 quid for all of us to eat, (21:56) rather than 50. (21:57) Not when you order drinks at the rate I do. (21:59) Not when you order six drinks, I can imagine.(22:01) But no, now I've got a Big Arch (22:05) and life has changed dramatically (22:08) to the point where now all I want is McDonald's. (22:11) But it's never thought, (22:12) it's never occurred to me (22:13) that I can have more than one drink. (22:14) Of course.(22:15) And this has now completely opened up an entire world. (22:17) What drink do you have with a curry? (22:19) With a curry? (22:20) Oh, probably just a cider. (22:21) Has to be a lemonade.(22:22) It has to be. (22:24) A lemonade if a soft drink or a beer, obviously. (22:27) But yeah, lemonade with a curry.(22:29) Always have cider. (22:30) Just cider with everything. (22:32) But yeah, there we go.(22:34) Boring enough content for us? (22:38) Fucking hell. (22:39) What's Nando's order? (22:40) Oh, my Nando's order is terrible. (22:43) I have always get hummus with peri-peri drizzle.(22:46) Boring. (22:47) And then I get a lemon and herb (22:52) pita with... (22:53) Chocolate cake. (22:54) With cheddar and pineapple.(22:55) Oh, yeah, yeah. (22:56) And then I have been getting, (22:58) like they've got new ones at the minute. (22:59) I've got the hearty grains (23:01) and the tomato... (23:04) You like a grain.(23:05) Salad. I do like a grain. (23:06) Yeah.(23:07) I do like a grain and the tomato salad you want. (23:10) I do like, yeah. (23:11) Hot chicken pita.(23:13) Hot. (23:14) Hot chicken pita, pineapple and cheddar. (23:18) Peri-salted chips, even though I don't know what they do to them, (23:21) but there's more calories in the chips than there is in the mash, (23:24) which is just mind-blowing to me.(23:26) Because you can see the butter on the mash. (23:27) Yeah, yeah, yeah. (23:28) But yeah, no, apparently.(23:30) Peri-salted chips and corn on the cob. (23:33) Ah, nice. (23:34) Do you like a corn on the cob? (23:35) I will say that their mac and cheese is pretty good as well.(23:37) I don't get a look in with that. (23:38) No. (23:39) Not with my kids.(23:40) There we go. (23:41) Anyway. (23:43) Any of you are still here.(23:45) If you're still here, welcome to... (23:47) Right, do some nice bits and then I'll tell you a story. (23:49) Fine. If you're still here, thank you.(23:52) Well done. (23:54) I promise we will do something fun with our lives at some point. (23:56) We'll be able to tell you about it.(23:57) But anyway, nice bits. (23:59) We are all over the place at the minute, both physically and mentally. (24:05) We have... (24:06) First of all, if you could, please go and tell someone about the podcast (24:10) and give us a five star rating or review.(24:14) Spotify or Apple podcasts are usually the best places to go and do that. (24:17) Five stars, please. Nothing below.(24:19) Thank you very much. (24:20) And then we've got... (24:22) Oh, I can't. (24:23) I'm trying to set up and I'm pulling my headphones off.(24:25) It's all going wrong. (24:26) We are on social media. (24:29) What is your problem? (24:34) What is your problem? (24:37) You're basically upside down.(24:40) What is going through your fucking head? (24:44) Could you treat this with some dignity and respect, please, Rachel? (24:47) I absolutely can't. (24:49) We've got dedicated listeners that come to us as a source of information. (24:53) And you've decided to try and learn how to do a handstand (24:57) while talking about arguably one of the most important bits (25:00) to get this podcast any further.(25:04) I'm really sorry. (25:05) OK, I'm too hot. (25:07) There's too many limbs, this whole thing.(25:10) Anyway. (25:10) Right. (25:11) We are on all the social medias.(25:13) You can come and find us on TikTok and Instagram under Sinister South Pod, (25:16) or you can go to hand.orrach.sinistersouth on Instagram (25:20) for some of our more personal behind the scenes type content. (25:25) There is the Facebook group, which is run by the ever so lovely Lou, (25:29) which is called Trevor's Unite. (25:31) We've then got a website and an email address.(25:34) So the website is sinistersouthpod.co.uk. (25:39) And you can come and leave a little note on there. (25:42) You can see what episodes we've covered, (25:44) what episodes we've got coming up, (25:45) or you can email us at sinistersouthpodcast at gmail.com. (25:49) Hannah's there. (25:50) She'll answer you.(25:50) Come and say hi. (25:51) And then there's a Patreon, which again, (25:53) we'll just kind of gloss over until we figure out what the fuck (25:55) we're actually doing with it. (25:56) So yeah, there you go.(25:58) Was that everything? (25:59) I believe so, darling. (26:00) There we go. (26:01) I'm going to try and get comfortable.(26:02) You try and get comfortable. (26:04) Stop eyeing up my pillows. (26:06) I am eyeing up your pillows.(26:07) That's what I need. (26:07) I need pillows. (26:09) We still haven't put the fucking bed back.(26:11) That's the problem. (26:12) Because Rachel is a lazy cow and I haven't been out into the office. (26:16) So fuck it.(26:17) Right. (26:17) I've got my temper pillow. (26:20) We're ready.(26:20) Off you go. (26:21) If you fall asleep, I'm not going to fall asleep. (26:24) I'm just very chill.(26:25) It's all good. (26:26) Listen to your dulcet tones. (26:28) It is a little after two o'clock in the morning on the 24th of April, 1885.(26:34) Oh, we're going back. (26:35) Union Street in the borough, just south of the river. (26:38) A row of shop fronts shuttered for the night.(26:40) Above one of them, a family is asleep. (26:44) The shop on the corner belongs to Henry Chandler. (26:46) He is an oil and colour man.(26:49) Paint, varnish, turpentine, lamp oil, the trade of the age. (26:53) It also means that the building he lives above is, for all practical purposes, (26:58) packed with things that burn. (27:00) Ah, nobody thinks about this on that ordinary night, though.(27:03) But this isn't going to be an ordinary night. (27:07) In the small hours, a fire takes hold on the ground floor in and around the shop. (27:13) By the time anyone upstairs wakes, the staircase, the only way down, is already gone.(27:19) Flames and then that thick, black, choking smoke come up the stairwell. (27:24) In the rooms above lives a young woman named Alice Ayres. (27:28) She is 25 and she helps to look after the Chandler children.(27:32) And when she wakes to the smoke, she does something that the people watching (27:36) from the street below will talk about for the rest of their lives. (27:39) She goes to the window. (27:41) There's a crowd gathering now, the way they do, helpless, looking up, shouting.(27:46) She can't get the children down the stairs. (27:49) The stairs are on fire. (27:51) So she drags a feather mattress across the room (27:54) and she pushes it out of the window down into the street.(27:57) And then she goes back into the smoke. (28:00) She comes back with a child and she drops that child from the window (28:04) down onto the mattress and into the arms of people below. (28:08) And then she turns around and she goes back into the smoke again (28:11) and she does it for a second time and then a third.(28:15) Three children, one after another, lowered or kind of dropped from a burning window (28:20) while Alice Ayres stays inside a house that is coming apart around her (28:25) to make sure each one gets out. (28:28) Only when the children are down does she climb onto the windowsill herself. (28:32) And here's where it goes wrong.(28:34) She's been in the smoke too long. (28:36) Witnesses said that she seemed to stagger about and lose her footing, (28:39) that she'd obviously breathed in too much smoke to judge any of it cleanly. (28:45) And she falls and she misses the mattress and she strikes the ground badly.(28:51) She's carried alive to Guy's Hospital with terrible injuries to her spine. (28:57) The three children she saved, they're the reason we know her name. (29:01) But hold the rest of it there for a moment (29:03) because we're going to come back to Alice (29:05) and we're going to come back to her twice in this story.(29:08) But there is much more to her story than a brave nursemaid and a fire. (29:14) And the part you haven't heard yet is the part that makes this story kind of worth telling. (29:20) Because Alice Ayres is one of them.(29:23) She is one of the people on the wall. (29:27) So let me tell you about this wall because everything in this episode hangs on it. (29:33) And if you've never been, it is one of the strangest and kind of quietest places in London.(29:39) So if you go into the city, the old square mile, the financial district, (29:43) and you'll find St Paul's Cathedral. (29:46) And if you walk just a few minutes north, you come to a small park. (29:50) It's tucked in behind the great bulk of what used to be the general post office headquarters (29:55) hemmed in on all sides by offices.(29:58) It's called Postman's Park. (30:00) And it got that name because the postman from the old sorting office (30:03) used to come and eat their lunch in there. (30:05) It's built on an old churchyard, the burial ground of St Boltoff's Aldersgate.(30:11) So it's green and shaded. (30:13) And it has that particular stillness that old graveyards have in the middle of such a loud city. (30:20) And along one side of that park, there is a long wooden shelter.(30:24) A logger, I believe it's called. (30:26) If you want the architectural word. (30:28) It's a roofed walkway open at the front, maybe 50 feet long, (30:33) held up on wooden posts with a tiled roof.(30:36) It looks like something you'd shelter under in a sudden downpour. (30:40) Right. (30:40) And that's exactly what a lot of people do.(30:42) They duck under it out of the rain, and then they notice what's on the wall behind them. (30:47) So the wall is covered in ceramic tiles, tablets, hand painted, (30:52) each one a little rectangle of glazed pottery (30:55) with a green background and a border of leaves and flowers. (30:58) And each tablet records a death.(31:01) Not a famous death, almost the opposite of a famous death. (31:04) Each one tells you in a few plain lines about an ordinary person, (31:09) a labourer, a servant, a child, a clerk who died trying to save somebody else's life. (31:16) Today, there are 54 of these tablets on the wall, remembering 62 people.(31:21) And of those 62, seven come from our side of the river. (31:25) Seven South Londoners. (31:27) They're who we're here for.(31:29) Because I could see your face being like Hannah. (31:32) What you're talking about is not South, babes. (31:34) Just so you're aware.(31:37) You can read along the wall and it is, it's just this kind of litany of quiet, (31:42) catastrophic bravery. (31:43) It's a man who went into the water after a stranger, (31:46) a woman who went back into a fire, (31:49) a boy who went under holding up a smaller boy. (31:52) Ordinary people on ordinary days who made a split second decision (31:55) to put themselves between another human being and death, but ultimately lost.(32:01) The whole thing is the idea of one man and his name was George Frederick Watts. (32:07) And in his day, Watts was not a nobody. (32:10) He was one of the most famous and respected painters in Britain.(32:14) A grand Victorian artist, the kind who painted, (32:17) I can never say this, is it allegories? (32:20) Allegories. (32:21) Allegories. (32:22) And portraits of the great and the good.(32:25) But Watts had an idea that he couldn't let go of. (32:28) For years, decades, actually, (32:30) he had been quietly clipping stories out of the newspapers. (32:34) Little paragraphs, the kind that run and are kind of forgotten by the next day.(32:39) Someone drowned, someone pulling a stranger off of a railway line. (32:43) But he kept them all. (32:44) And he built up this scrapbook of ordinary heroism, heroism.(32:50) Hope I'm going to be able to speak for the rest of this podcast. (32:53) Of heroism that the world had noticed for one day and then moved on from. (32:58) So in 1887, which was Queen Victoria's golden jubilee, (33:03) celebrating 50 years on the throne, (33:05) Watts wrote a letter to The Times.(33:07) He said, in effect, (33:09) everyone's going to mark the jubilee with the usual pomp. (33:12) Statues to the powerful, monuments to the mighty. (33:15) What about the others? (33:16) What about a monument to? (33:18) And this is his phrase, heroism in everyday life.(33:23) The people whose courage got a newspaper paragraph and then nothing else. (33:27) He said, and I'm keeping this short because it's his line and it's a good one, (33:30) but he does like a chat. (33:32) The material prosperity of a nation is not an abiding possession.(33:37) The deeds of its people are. (33:39) And the response to this in 1887 was nothing. (33:46) The jubilee planners weren't interested.(33:48) The idea just sat there for over a decade. (33:51) Watts was getting old and it might have died with him, (33:54) except that in 1898, the vicar of that church in the city came to him. (34:02) The church had had this bit of former churchyard that it had turned into a public garden.(34:07) And would Watts like to put his memorial there? (34:10) And Watts by now decided he'd simply pay for it himself and oversee it all himself. (34:15) Oh, wow. (34:17) It was built in 1899 and unveiled in 1900, designed to hold 120 of these tablets.(34:24) And on the day it opened, there were four, (34:27) four tablets on this enormous blank wall of good intention. (34:31) Now, here's the thing that I need you to understand about how this wall was made, (34:36) because the whole rest of the episode kind of grows out of it. (34:39) Okay.(34:40) Watts did not investigate these deaths. (34:42) Oh, good. (34:43) He wasn't a detective or a coroner or a journalist like us.(34:48) Ah, we like Watts. (34:49) He built these tablets out of his scrapbook, (34:52) out of newspaper clippings, things he could find in the public record. (34:56) The wording on the wall comes over and over again from some Victorian newspaper reporters (35:01) that were written in a hurry on a deadline the day after someone died.(35:06) It does sound like basically he was doing... (35:09) He was sinister something. (35:10) He was sinister something. (35:14) There was no careful selection process, really.(35:17) No board of historians weighing in with evidence. (35:21) Watts chose the cases he'd collected. (35:23) And after he died in 1904, his widow, Mary Watts, (35:27) and a small committee attached to the church carried on, (35:30) picking cases, commissioning tablets, filling the wall over the years.(35:35) So what you're looking at when you stand in front of that wall (35:38) is not exactly a record of what's happened. (35:41) It's a record of how the Victorian press said it happened. (35:44) And those two things are not always the same.(35:47) The newspapers got things wrong. (35:49) They got names wrong and ages wrong and dates wrong. (35:51) And sometimes they got the whole shape of a family wrong.(35:54) And when they did, when the clipping was wrong, (35:57) the mistake got copied out and painted onto a tile (35:59) and fired in a kiln at over a thousand degrees (36:02) and fixed to a wall in the city of London where it has stayed wrong for 120 years. (36:09) So this brings up us to something I kind of genuinely did not expect (36:14) when I started thinking about this. (36:17) And I've put it as a side quest all on its own, (36:21) but it's the wall that gets it wrong.(36:25) So a memorial feels like the last word on something, right? (36:29) It's carved or cast or glazed. (36:31) It's permanent and it has the authority of stone. (36:34) When you read a name and a date on a monument, (36:37) you don't tend to question it.(36:38) Why would you? (36:39) Somebody went to the trouble of making it permanent. (36:42) It must be right. (36:43) But this wall, as we've just said, (36:45) was built out of these newspaper clippings.(36:48) And once you know that, you start to see all the cracks in it. (36:51) Literally, the errors sitting there in the glaze. (36:56) So here's one small tell to start with.(36:59) On at least one of these tablets, (37:01) the date given isn't the date the person died. (37:03) It's the date the newspaper article about them was published. (37:08) Somebody, what's all the committee or whoever was transcribing the clipping (37:12) copied the date off the top of the newspaper cutting (37:14) instead of the date reported in the copy itself.(37:18) I see. (37:20) That's the kind of mistake that only happens (37:22) when your source isn't a record of the event, right? (37:24) It's a record of the reporting of the event. (37:27) And once you start looking, the South London tablets, (37:30) the one this whole episode is going to be about, (37:32) are riddled with these things.(37:35) So I'm not going to tell you, (37:37) like, each one of them deserves their own proper telling, right? (37:43) So that's coming. (37:45) But I wanted to kind of give you a taste of what's on the wall (37:48) and what's wrong with it. (37:49) Okay, yeah.(37:51) So there's a woman commemorated as Mrs. Yarman. (37:55) That wasn't her name. (37:56) And the wall says that she died going back into a fire to save her aged mother.(38:01) It wasn't her mother. (38:02) Two mistakes on one tablet about one woman's death. (38:05) Excellent.(38:07) No, sang excellent. (38:09) Oh, sorry. (38:09) You looked at me like you were going to say something else, I'm sorry.(38:10) Excellent. (38:11) Excellent. (38:13) There's a boy on the wall called David.(38:16) His name was Daniel. (38:17) There's a child whose age is just completely wrong. (38:20) There's a man whose date of death on the wall (38:22) doesn't match the date on his coffin.(38:24) And there's Alice. (38:26) Where the wall doesn't get a fact wrong exactly, (38:29) but it tells you something about her that kind of hides who she really was. (38:35) But that one I'm saving.(38:36) We'll come back to Alice. (38:37) Okay. (38:38) Now, you might hear all this and think it makes the wall a bit of a shabby thing.(38:42) A monument full of errors. (38:44) And I want to argue the opposite. (38:46) And here's the fact that turned me around on it.(38:49) There is a tablet on that wall that commemorates a group of men (38:52) who died in a sewage works. (38:54) Men who went down into a well or a tank to rescue a workmate (38:59) who had become overcome by gas (39:01) and died one after another going in after each other. (39:04) Oh, wow.(39:06) The original tablet got it wrong. (39:07) It named the wrong place. (39:09) It said it was West Ham when the disaster was at East Ham.(39:12) And it gave the wrong year. (39:13) It said 1885 when it actually it was 1895. (39:16) Right.(39:17) Wrong place, wrong decade. (39:20) And at some point, somebody noticed. (39:22) And in 1930, decades later, they took that tablet down.(39:27) They physically removed it from the wall. (39:29) And they had a new one made with the correct details. (39:32) And they put the corrected version up.(39:34) But here's the lovely part. (39:35) By 1930, the original tile maker was long gone. (39:40) And the new tablet was made by a completely different firm (39:44) in a slightly different style.(39:45) So the corrected tile doesn't match its neighbours. (39:49) It had to go in a different row, (39:51) which means that if you stand in front of the wall today (39:53) and you know what you're looking for, (39:55) you can actually see the correction having been made. (39:58) You can see the scene.(40:00) You can see the place where the memorial admitted (40:02) that it had made a mistake and fixed it (40:04) and didn't hide the join. (40:06) And that completely changes what that wall is for me, right? (40:10) It's not a thing pretending to be infallible. (40:12) It's a human record made by human beings (40:15) out of imperfect sources.(40:17) And its keepers knew that (40:18) and cared enough to correct it when they could (40:20) and left the evidence of the correction on display. (40:23) The errors aren't the failure of the wall. (40:25) Getting one of them right in the end (40:27) and showing it's working, (40:29) that's the wall at its most honest.(40:32) So I'm just going to take a quick pause (40:34) to do a corrections corner. (40:36) Because I, Hannah, got some details wrong in my case (40:39) last time it was mine. (40:41) Oh, did you? (40:42) I'm not going to go and rehash everything.(40:45) But one of them that I think is very important for me to say (40:48) is that she was his ex-partner. (40:51) She was not his girlfriend. (40:52) She was his ex.(40:53) And I think everything is very clear on that. (40:56) I don't know how I fucked it up. (40:58) Fine.(40:59) But I did. (40:59) Fine. (41:00) So here I am showing you my join.(41:02) Fair enough. (41:02) I like it. (41:05) So every single person who you're going to meet (41:08) comes to us through this imperfect glaze, right? (41:12) And part of what I'm trying to do in this episode (41:15) and what I think it's for (41:16) is getting these seven people's stories back (41:19) as close to right as the record will allow.(41:22) Which in its own small way is an act of remembering them. (41:27) Yeah, 100% it is. (41:29) Okay, our first proper story takes us to Croydon (41:36) in the spring of 1893.(41:39) And it's the story of a policeman named Robert Wright. (41:42) Now, you have to picture Croydon in 1893 as its own place. (41:47) It's not the London suburb it feels like now, (41:50) but a busy town in Surrey with its own council, (41:53) its own police and its own fire brigade.(41:56) Hold on to the thought about the fire brigade (41:58) because that's going to matter a great deal soon. (42:02) Okay. (42:04) It's the night of the 29th into the 30th of April (42:07) and a fire breaks out at a shop on North End, (42:10) one of Croydon's main streets.(42:12) And of course, because this is the pattern of the whole century, (42:15) it was an oil and colour shop. (42:17) Paint, oil and crucially petroleum stored down in the cellar. (42:21) Okay.(42:22) Robert Wright is one of the police constables who gets there. (42:26) He's there with a colleague, another constable named Barnett. (42:29) And the first thing they do is sensible and brave in equal measure.(42:33) They know that there's paraffin in the building. (42:36) So the two of them actually roll barrels of it out of the way, (42:39) trying to get it out of the cellar to stop the whole place going up. (42:42) Right, yeah.(42:43) And as they're doing that, (42:45) someone in the crowd shouts that they think there's a woman (42:47) still inside upstairs trapped. (42:50) That's the moment that puts Robert Wright on the wall (42:53) because he doesn't hesitate. (42:55) He and Barnett go up the stairs into the smoke, (42:57) into a burning building that they already know (43:00) has petrol in the cellar underneath them to try and find her.(43:04) And while they're up there, the petrol goes up. (43:07) There's an explosion in the lower floors (43:09) and suddenly the two constables are completely cut off. (43:12) They're up in the smoke with fire between them and the only way out.(43:16) They get to a window. (43:18) Barnett, the colleague, gets out. (43:20) He jumps or kind of half falls, as reports go, (43:23) onto a lower roof and then down further.(43:25) But he survives. (43:27) The first thing he says to everyone around him (43:29) when he's down gasping on the ground is, (43:31) go and save Wright. (43:32) Go back for Robert.(43:35) But they can't get to him or they can't find him. (43:38) And Robert doesn't come out. (43:40) When they do finally reach his body, (43:42) he is completely overcome and dies.(43:46) And Wyatt's dead by this point. (43:48) So when they went into the building, (43:51) when Robert climbed those stairs into the smoke, (43:54) actually, as it turns out, (43:56) the woman he was looking for wasn't there. (43:58) Oh, God.(43:59) The house was empty. (44:01) The man who ran the shop had shut up, (44:03) had shut everything up and gone off to Gravesend (44:06) to be with his wife and child. (44:07) He'd taken the last train out of Croydon.(44:10) Oh, God. (44:11) There was no one trapped upstairs at all. (44:14) The cry that sent Robert up those stairs (44:16) was a complete mistake.(44:17) He died searching a burning house (44:19) over a cellar full of petrol (44:21) for a woman who was, at that very moment, (44:23) perfectly safe miles away. (44:26) God. (44:27) He was a young man.(44:28) And this is the other thing that the wall does leave out. (44:32) He had a wife, Bessie, (44:33) and they'd just had their first baby, (44:35) a little girl, about only a month before. (44:37) Oh, no.(44:39) So while the inquest was going on, (44:41) there was a brand new mother at home, (44:43) herself said to be seriously ill, (44:45) with a month-old daughter (44:46) and a husband in the mortuary (44:48) who had died for nobody (44:49) in the most literal sense, (44:51) for an empty room. (44:53) The plaque gives you a clean version. (44:55) Police constable, burning house, (44:57) petroleum in the cellar, (44:59) went in any way killed by the explosion.(45:01) All true, all genuinely heroic. (45:04) But underneath the clean version, (45:05) there is a bit of a messier, (45:06) sadder, more human story. (45:08) And actually, when you go into the inquest (45:12) into Robert's death, (45:13) the messiness doesn't stop at the empty house.(45:16) Because something else came out in that inquest. (45:18) Something that turns this from a story (45:20) about one brave man (45:21) into a story about how a whole town (45:25) did or didn't look after the people (45:27) who ran towards its fires. (45:29) And that is very much a side quest.(45:32) Okay, okay. (45:33) Side quest to the drunk fireman. (45:36) Oh, good.(45:38) When somebody dies in a fire, (45:40) there's an inquest. (45:41) A coroner, a jury, witnesses, (45:43) the fire brigade, the police, (45:44) whoever was there, (45:45) all give their account of what happened. (45:47) It's meant to establish how the person died.(45:49) And at the inquest into Robert's death, (45:51) one of the police inspectors (45:52) got up to give evidence. (45:54) And what he described was frankly a scandal. (45:57) According to the account of that inquest, (46:00) the inspector, Lemmy, (46:02) told the coroner that (46:03) that there were firemen actually in the room.(46:07) In the room where Wright was, (46:10) like where he'd collapsed. (46:12) And they hadn't found him. (46:14) And the reason, he suggested, (46:16) the reason that these firemen (46:17) were stumbling around in this burning room (46:19) and failed to locate a collapsed man (46:22) right next to them (46:23) was because they were drunk.(46:26) And then another inspector called Goss (46:29) backed him up. (46:31) The coroner called it a great pity. (46:33) Which is a very Victorian way (46:35) of describing something horrifying.(46:37) That Robert Wright might, might, (46:39) have had a better chance (46:41) if the men sent to that fire (46:42) had been sober. (46:44) Potentially, yeah. (46:45) The town clerk promised the men's conduct (46:48) would get serious attention.(46:50) And then buried in the reporting, (46:51) there's this extraordinary little phrase. (46:54) It's described almost as an unwritten law. (46:57) That when there was a fire, (46:58) the police would open up a public house (47:00) for the firemen.(47:02) What? (47:02) Open a pub. (47:03) For the men fighting the fire. (47:06) Now, I want to be careful here.(47:08) And I want to be fair. (47:09) Because it would be very easy (47:10) to turn this into a ha! (47:12) Drunk Victorian firemen. (47:13) What twats.(47:14) Yeah, yeah, yeah. (47:15) And that's not the whole story. (47:17) The real story is sadder (47:19) and kind of more systemic than that.(47:21) And it tells you something (47:22) about what firefighting (47:24) was actually like in 1893. (47:26) Because this wasn't London. (47:28) This wasn't Captain Shaw's (47:30) famous Metropolitan Fire Brigade (47:32) with its stations and steam engines.(47:34) This was Croydon (47:35) with its own local brigade. (47:37) And Croydon didn't even buy (47:38) its first steam fire engine until 1897. (47:41) Oh, wow.(47:42) OK. (47:42) So in 1893, (47:44) the men fighting this fire (47:45) were working with old equipment (47:47) by hand in the dark. (47:52) Kind of in Victorian times, (47:54) especially in kind of satellite, (47:56) these satellite towns that weren't London.(47:58) Very often the police (47:59) and the fire brigade (48:00) were all tangled up in with each other. (48:03) In a lot of places, (48:04) they were the same men (48:06) or at least overlapping forces (48:07) under the same command. (48:10) And what was sometimes called (48:12) police fire brigades, (48:14) which is exactly why.(48:16) It's a police constable, Robert, (48:18) who's the first up the stairs (48:19) into the burning building. (48:21) The line between policemen and firemen (48:23) was genuinely blurry. (48:25) And the drink.(48:26) The drink has to be understood (48:28) in its own time too. (48:30) This is hard, brutal, physical labour (48:32) through the night in heat and smoke (48:34) with none of the protective equipment (48:36) we think of now. (48:37) Beer was the fuel (48:38) of heavy Victorian manual work (48:40) across the board.(48:42) It was completely normal (48:43) for it to be laid out on, (48:45) to be laid on for men (48:46) doing exhausting jobs. (48:48) So that unwritten law (48:50) about opening a pub for the firemen (48:52) isn't quite as mad as it sounds. (48:54) It's the culture of hard physical labour (48:57) colliding with a job (48:59) where being impaired (49:00) couldn't get someone killed.(49:02) Yeah, exactly. (49:03) But that collision is exactly the point (49:05) because the tablet on the wall (49:06) gives you the heroism, (49:07) clean and simple. (49:08) And the inquest gives you (49:09) the system underneath.(49:11) The hero, heroicism. (49:13) Oh my God. (49:15) An underfunded local brigade, (49:17) working men doing a lethal job (49:19) on cheap equipment and cheap beer (49:21) and a constable dead in a room (49:22) full of men who couldn't find him.(49:24) Both of those things are true (49:26) at the same time. (49:27) The wall only had space for one of them. (49:29) Yeah, fair.(49:30) And I think that's the thread (49:32) that's kind of going to run through (49:33) a lot of these stories. (49:36) The heroes are real, (49:37) but so is the failure (49:38) sitting right behind it. (49:40) Right, fine.(49:41) The empty house, the missed rescue, (49:43) the systems that let people down. (49:45) The wall remembers the courage. (49:47) Our job, maybe, (49:48) is to remember the rest of it too.(49:50) Okay, yeah, fair. (49:51) So the next one is quite short, (49:53) but it is about children. (49:55) So I'll be honest with you (49:57) before we start.(49:58) It's one of the ones (49:59) that will stay with you. (50:00) It's very sad. (50:03) So we're in the summer of 1886 (50:05) and we're in Woolwich, (50:06) down by the river (50:07) where the great Royal Arsenal was.(50:09) The huge government works (50:11) where they made guns and ammunition, (50:13) employing thousands of local men. (50:15) It's early September, a warm evening, (50:18) and a group of boys is doing (50:19) what boys did on warm evening (50:20) by the Thames. (50:21) They're swimming, bathing about, (50:23) bobbing about, (50:25) off the shore near the Arsenal, (50:27) out where the river is wide and tidal (50:29) and a great deal more dangerous (50:31) than it looks.(50:32) We've covered the tidal Thames (50:34) before on this podcast. (50:36) Hell yeah, we have. (50:38) Two of these boys are 12 years old.(50:40) One of them is called James Bain (50:42) and the other one is our boy on the wall. (50:46) Although, as we'll see, (50:48) the wall gets his name wrong. (50:49) Okay.(50:50) The wall calls him David Selves. (50:52) His name was Daniel. (50:53) Okay.(50:54) Daniel and James are both sons (50:56) of Arsenal workmen, (50:57) local families, ordinary, (51:00) and out in the water, (51:02) something goes wrong. (51:03) One of the boys gets into difficulty (51:04) out of his depth or caught by the tide (51:07) or just simply tired (51:09) and the other goes to get him. (51:12) There was a Thames police boat (51:14) out on the river that evening (51:15) and the men on it heard (51:17) the commotion happening.(51:19) Okay. (51:19) They heard one boy call out to the other (51:21) and the words they heard, (51:23) the words that got reported were, (51:24) quote, (51:25) keep it up a little longer, Jim. (51:26) Keep it up a little longer.(51:29) By the time the police boat reached the spot, (51:31) both boys had gone under (51:33) and when they were found, (51:35) they were together. (51:36) The reports say that they were clasped (51:38) in each other's arms. (51:39) One boy had gone to try and hold up the other one (51:42) and neither of them let each other go (51:43) and they drowned like that, (51:45) holding on to each other (51:46) a little way offshore (51:47) in water well over their heads.(51:51) That's what's on the wall. (51:53) Daniel, age 12, (51:54) supported his drowning playfellow (51:55) and sank with him (51:57) and it's almost unbearably simple. (51:59) A 12-year-old's instinct (52:00) in that last moments of his life (52:02) was not to save himself (52:03) but to keep hold of his friend.(52:07) Now, like I say, (52:08) the wall gets two things wrong here (52:09) and they're both examples (52:11) of exactly what we talked about (52:12) in the first side quest. (52:13) So the first is his name, (52:15) David on the tile (52:16) for Daniel the boy (52:17) and the second is the date. (52:19) The date carved onto the wall (52:20) appears to be the date (52:22) of the newspaper report (52:23) about the inquest.(52:25) Right. (52:25) Not the date the boy's actually drowned (52:27) and it's the same fingerprint again. (52:30) It's the clipping, (52:31) not the event, right? (52:33) It's the paper, not the death.(52:35) And there's one more detail (52:37) because I can't fully stand it up (52:40) but I kind of want to be honest about it. (52:43) According to one account, (52:44) Daniel was the youngest of 11 children. (52:47) And if this is right, (52:49) his family had already lost another son (52:51) to the water a few years before.(52:54) An older brother (52:54) said to have drowned some years earlier. (52:57) I can't confirm that that's true (52:59) as solidly as I would like. (53:01) So treat it as what it is, (53:02) a kind of reported detail, (53:04) not a certainty.(53:05) But if it is true, (53:06) then somewhere in Plumstead, (53:08) there is a family that lost two boys (53:10) to the same river (53:11) and only one of them got a tile. (53:14) So we talked in the first side quest (53:17) about the tablet (53:18) with the two mistakes on it. (53:19) The woman the wall calls Mrs. Yarman (53:21) who died going back in for her aged mother.(53:23) Yes. (53:24) It's time to put that right. (53:26) Brilliant.(53:26) Because behind those two mistakes (53:28) is one of the bravest (53:29) and most terrible stories on the wall. (53:32) Her name was Mary Jarman. (53:35) Jarman with a J. (53:36) And we're in Bermondsey in March of 1900.(53:41) Mary lived with her husband George (53:43) in a small house, (53:44) four rooms, (53:45) at number 34 Druid Street (53:47) down near Abbey Street in Bermondsey. (53:50) South London, (53:51) working London, (53:52) right in the thick of it. (53:54) And living with them was George's mother, (53:56) an elderly woman, (53:57) 77 years old, (53:59) named Elizabeth.(54:01) It's about two o'clock in the morning, (54:03) the 23rd of March. (54:04) George wakes up. (54:06) The lower part of the house is on fire (54:07) and he does what you'd do.(54:09) He wakes his wife (54:10) and he goes downstairs (54:11) to try and find a way out. (54:12) And he's driven straight back (54:14) by the heat and the smoke. (54:16) The ground floor is gone.(54:19) Now here's where Mary (54:20) becomes the woman on the wall. (54:21) Because the fire is between them (54:23) and the ground floor (54:24) and the front upstairs room, (54:27) well, that's where George's mother is. (54:31) Elizabeth is asleep in a room (54:33) that is already burning (54:34) and Mary goes in after her.(54:36) Fucking hell. (54:37) So Mary goes into that room (54:39) and the reports say (54:41) that the bed itself was on fire (54:43) and she tries to get the old woman out (54:44) and she can't. (54:46) And she's being badly burnt (54:47) on her head, (54:48) her face, (54:49) her arms.(54:49) But she goes back (54:51) and tries again and again. (54:53) This frail elderly woman, (54:55) a dead weight, (54:55) in a room full of flame (54:57) and Mary will not leave her. (54:59) It took being physically dragged away (55:01) in the end to get Mary out.(55:03) She wasn't going to come out on her own (55:05) while Elizabeth was still in there. (55:08) George, meanwhile, (55:09) had got to a window at the back (55:11) and he actually, (55:13) the reporting is a bit confusing, (55:15) but I think it's him (55:16) that manages to drag Mary away. (55:18) Right, okay.(55:20) And he manages, (55:21) he helps to lower his wife down (55:23) out of the window (55:23) into the crowd of people (55:25) waiting below. (55:27) And then he jumps himself (55:28) and his fall is broken by a heap of mats (55:31) that neighbours and people nearby (55:34) have pulled to under the window. (55:36) Right.(55:36) He survives and Mary is alive, (55:38) but she is terribly burned. (55:41) Elizabeth, the old woman, (55:42) doesn't get out. (55:44) Mary is taken to Guy's (55:45) and she lasts a day, (55:46) maybe two, (55:48) and then she dies of her injuries.(55:51) At the inquest, (55:52) one of the jury men said (55:53) that what she'd done (55:54) deserved a better reward than this, (55:57) which is about the truest thing (55:58) anyone has said (55:59) about any of these people. (56:01) Yeah, 100%. (56:03) So now back to the tablet on the wall (56:04) with its two mistakes (56:05) and see what they actually cost.(56:08) The wall calls her Mrs Yarman, (56:11) the wrong name, (56:12) so that if you were looking for her, (56:13) you might never find her. (56:14) And the wall says that she died (56:16) trying to save her mother (56:18) when in fact it was her mother-in-law. (56:21) And George didn't bother (56:22) to try and save his own mum.(56:24) Okay, fine. (56:25) Yeah, George found the window. (56:29) Well done, George.(56:33) Men! (56:35) So the wall gave her a misspelled name (56:37) and took away the full measure (56:38) of what she'd done. (56:39) So let the record show it properly, (56:41) at least here, (56:41) her name was Mary Yarman of Bermondsey (56:44) and she died going back into the fire (56:46) for her husband's mother. (56:48) Yeah.(56:50) So I'm going to do a tiny bit (56:54) of a side quest here. (56:56) Okay. (56:56) It's a shorter one, she says.(56:59) But I thought it would be (57:01) a nice kind of reprieve, (57:03) kind of halfway through the stories (57:04) to do a bit of a breath out section. (57:08) Okay, cool. (57:08) Because otherwise it is (57:09) just horror upon horror.(57:10) Yeah, fair. (57:11) So these stories are heavy (57:14) and there's one kind of lovely element (57:17) hiding in plain sight here. (57:19) And it's a story (57:20) not about the people on the wall, (57:21) but about the wall itself.(57:23) Okay. (57:23) And it's about the actual tiles (57:25) because those tablets aren't just bits (57:27) of institutional signage. (57:29) They are works of art (57:30) made by one of the greatest craftsmen (57:32) of the entire Victorian age.(57:34) And his story is its own small tragedy (57:37) with a genuinely happy twist at the end. (57:40) Okay, fine. (57:41) His name was William De Morgan.(57:43) And if you know anything (57:45) about Victorian design, (57:46) you know his name (57:47) because De Morgan was the great tile maker (57:50) of the arts and crafts movement. (57:52) A close friend and collaborator (57:53) of William Morris, (57:54) the Morris of Morris & Co. (57:57) Of the wallpapers and the fabrics (57:59) that you can still buy today.(58:01) De Morgan was the ceramics man (58:02) in that circle, (58:04) the tiles, the pottery, the glazes. (58:07) And he was a bit obsessed (58:08) in the way that great craftsmen are. (58:11) His particular obsession (58:13) was something called lusterware, (58:15) a technique for putting (58:17) a shimmering, iridescent, (58:18) almost metallic sheen (58:19) onto a glazed surface.(58:21) It's an ancient technique. (58:23) It goes back to the mediaeval Islamic world (58:26) and it had been basically lost. (58:29) And De Morgan, (58:30) more or less single-handedly (58:32) taught himself to do it.(58:34) Wow. (58:34) He reinvented it almost from scratch (58:36) by trial and error (58:37) because he couldn't bear (58:39) that this beautiful thing had disappeared. (58:42) The first 24 tablets on that wall (58:45) are his, hand-painted, (58:47) and I mean genuinely hand-painted, (58:49) each one individually, (58:51) no two exactly alike.(58:53) In an age that was industrialising everything, (58:56) mass-producing everything, (58:57) De Morgan insisted on doing it by hand, (59:00) which made everything he produced (59:02) beautiful and slow and expensive. (59:05) And this is the tragedy, (59:07) more or less, (59:08) financially ruinous. (59:09) Ah, fine.(59:11) There's a lovely South London thread (59:13) running through all of this. (59:15) De Morgan's workshops (59:16) moved around over the years (59:17) and for a stretch, (59:18) he was out at Merton Abbey (59:19) in southwest London, (59:21) right next door to (59:22) William Morris's own works. (59:23) Oh, cool.(59:24) The two of them, (59:25) friends side by side. (59:26) And when De Morgan eventually gave up (59:28) and the wall needed more tiles, (59:30) the firm that took over (59:32) was Royal Dalton, (59:34) whose great works were at Lambeth. (59:37) So the later tablets on the wall (59:39) are Lambeth pottery.(59:41) The memorial is, (59:43) in a quiet way, (59:44) the South of the River object, (59:48) made across the river (59:49) from where most of its heroes (59:50) lived and died. (59:51) Yeah, fair. (59:52) But here's the human heart of it.(59:54) William De Morgan spent his whole life (59:56) chasing beauty (59:57) and he never really made any money at it. (1:00:00) His pottery was propped up for years (1:00:03) by earnings of his wife, Evelyn, (1:00:05) herself a serious and gifted painter. (1:00:08) And eventually, (1:00:09) in the early years of the 20th century, (1:00:11) he gave up.(1:00:12) The pottery closed. (1:00:14) He was getting on. (1:00:15) He was in his 60s.(1:00:16) Very old. (1:00:17) Very old. (1:00:19) And there's a line of his (1:00:21) from around the time (1:00:22) that he left ceramics (1:00:23) that I think is one of the saddest things (1:00:25) any artist has ever said.(1:00:26) Oh, God. (1:00:27) He said, in effect, (1:00:28) that all his life (1:00:29) had been trying to make beautiful things (1:00:31) and now that he could finally make them, (1:00:33) nobody wanted them. (1:00:36) I'll have them.(1:00:40) Now, there is a twist (1:00:41) because that's not where his story ends. (1:00:43) Because in his late 60s, (1:00:46) William sat down and wrote a novel (1:00:47) and it was a hit, (1:00:49) a genuine bestseller. (1:00:51) And he wrote more of them (1:00:52) and they sold.(1:00:53) And this man who struggled financially (1:00:55) his entire life (1:00:56) as one of the finest ceramicists (1:01:00) in the country (1:01:00) finally became famous (1:01:02) and comfortable as a novelist. (1:01:05) And I love that. (1:01:07) And I also can't quite ignore (1:01:09) the ache underneath it, right? (1:01:10) Because here's a man (1:01:11) who spent his life (1:01:12) trying to make something beautiful (1:01:13) that would last (1:01:14) and the things of his (1:01:16) that have lasted (1:01:17) that are still fixed to the wall (1:01:20) in the city of London (1:01:21) a century later (1:01:21) are still doing their job, (1:01:23) are still telling you (1:01:24) these people's names (1:01:25) are his tiles.(1:01:27) He made the vessel (1:01:28) that carries the memory. (1:01:30) The heroes are remembered (1:01:31) because of the thing De Morgan made. (1:01:34) Oh, that is lovely.(1:01:37) So let's get back (1:01:38) across the river then, shall we? (1:01:39) Back to the horror. (1:01:40) And back to the hard business (1:01:42) of that wall. (1:01:43) And this next one (1:01:44) is the smallest story of them all.(1:01:47) The youngest and the shortest. (1:01:49) And I think it might be the one (1:01:50) that says the most about (1:01:52) what this whole memorial is for. (1:01:54) So we're in Woolworth, South London (1:01:56) in July of 1886.(1:01:58) And this is the story (1:01:59) of a nine-year-old boy (1:02:00) called William Fisher. (1:02:05) That confused the fuck out of me. (1:02:06) Yeah, same.(1:02:08) Apparently my neighbours (1:02:09) are having a party. (1:02:18) Sorry, let's have a vape. (1:02:21) William lived with his family (1:02:22) on Brandon Street in Woolworth.(1:02:24) And one evening (1:02:25) he was out on Rodney Road (1:02:26) nearby with his little brother. (1:02:28) His little brother, James, (1:02:29) was two, a toddler. (1:02:33) Nine years old and two years old (1:02:34) out on the street together (1:02:35) the way children were (1:02:37) in and out of the road (1:02:38) in a city full of horses.(1:02:42) Oh no. (1:02:43) And a van comes. (1:02:44) A big one.(1:02:45) A two-horse van. (1:02:46) The kind of thing (1:02:47) that did not stop quickly (1:02:48) and did not stop for children. (1:02:50) Oh God.(1:02:51) And little James, the two-year-old, (1:02:53) is in the road (1:02:54) directly in the path of it. (1:02:56) And William, who's nine, (1:02:58) goes after his baby brother. (1:03:00) He runs into the road (1:03:01) and he grabs him.(1:03:02) He gets one hand on him (1:03:04) and he tries to pull him (1:03:05) back out of the way. (1:03:06) But he doesn't quite make it. (1:03:08) And the van catches them both.(1:03:09) They're knocked down (1:03:11) and they go under (1:03:12) and the wheel goes over them (1:03:13) before the driver (1:03:14) can pull the horses up. (1:03:16) And both boys (1:03:17) are taken to Guy's Hospital. (1:03:21) So the wall will tell you (1:03:23) that William Fisher died (1:03:24) trying to save his little brother.(1:03:26) And that's true. (1:03:27) That's exactly what he did. (1:03:29) But the way it's phrased (1:03:30) you'd assume that he succeeded.(1:03:32) You'd assume that the little one lived (1:03:34) but he didn't. (1:03:36) William died at the hospital (1:03:37) and James, the two-year-old, (1:03:38) the baby (1:03:39) that he'd run into the road to save, (1:03:42) James died too a few hours after him. (1:03:46) Both of them in one evening (1:03:47) on one street, (1:03:48) a family in Woolworth (1:03:49) put two sons out to play (1:03:51) and by the end of the night (1:03:53) both of them were dead (1:03:54) at Guy's Hospital.(1:03:55) And they were buried together, (1:03:57) the two brothers, in one grave. (1:03:59) Oh my god, that's heartbreaking. (1:04:02) And this is the smallest tablet as well.(1:04:06) It's only a few lines long (1:04:07) but it's the one (1:04:08) that kind of makes the whole point (1:04:11) of this sharpest, I think. (1:04:13) Because William Fisher gets remembered. (1:04:15) He's on the wall.(1:04:16) He did something very brave. (1:04:17) He ran towards danger (1:04:18) for someone he loved. (1:04:20) And the memorial exists precisely (1:04:22) to catch people like him (1:04:24) who'd otherwise be forgotten.(1:04:27) But look who's already fallen out of the frame. (1:04:29) Even here, even on the memorial (1:04:31) designed to stop exactly this thing. (1:04:34) His little James isn't on the wall.(1:04:36) He wasn't a hero. (1:04:37) He was a victim. (1:04:39) So technically, I guess he doesn't qualify.(1:04:43) And the parents, the mother and father (1:04:44) who lost both boys in a night, (1:04:47) they're nowhere. (1:04:48) There's no tile, no line, nothing. (1:04:50) The wall captures the hero (1:04:51) and lets everyone else fall through the net.(1:04:54) Now, I'm not trying to be critical of the wall. (1:04:57) It can only do what it does. (1:04:59) But it's worth seeing clearly.(1:05:01) Behind every one of these tiles (1:05:03) there's a whole cast of people (1:05:04) the memorial never gets to hold. (1:05:07) William Fisher, age nine, is remembered. (1:05:10) Almost everyone standing around him (1:05:12) that night is not.(1:05:14) So our last individual story (1:05:17) before we go back, (1:05:18) as I promised we would, to Alice, (1:05:20) is a bit different from the others. (1:05:22) Because almost everyone we've met so far (1:05:24) has been poor. (1:05:25) Poor working class or a child.(1:05:28) They've been labourers, servants, arsenal boys. (1:05:31) That's who this wall is mostly for. (1:05:34) That's how it seems anyway.(1:05:36) But this one is a gentleman, (1:05:37) a professional man. (1:05:39) And I think he's worth including precisely (1:05:41) because he complicates the picture a bit. (1:05:44) Okay, fine.(1:05:45) His name is Alexander Stuart Brown (1:05:47) and he was a surgeon from Brockley (1:05:50) in South East London. (1:05:51) Ah, my old patch. (1:05:53) Brown was a fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons, (1:05:56) a serious medical man.(1:05:57) He lived at a house called Hollybank (1:05:59) on Brockley Road. (1:06:01) And he was, by all accounts, (1:06:02) a substantial local figure. (1:06:04) Involved in local government over in Lewisham, (1:06:06) active in local affairs, (1:06:08) a Freemason, (1:06:10) a respectable established middle-aged professional.(1:06:12) Not the sort of person you expect to find (1:06:15) on a wall full of drowned children (1:06:16) and burned labourers. (1:06:19) Fucking hell, Anne. (1:06:24) Oh dear.(1:06:25) I do need you to know, Trevor, (1:06:26) that that is just me having a dark sense of humour. (1:06:28) I apologise if it is inappropriate. (1:06:32) Oh dear.(1:06:33) And here's the situation he was in. (1:06:34) Brown had recently been in a very serious accident. (1:06:38) He'd been in a carriage accident (1:06:39) and it had badly injured his spine.(1:06:42) He was in real trouble with it. (1:06:44) It was the kind of injury that (1:06:45) realistically those days could finish a man. (1:06:49) And on medical advice, (1:06:50) he was doing what well-off Victorians did to recover.(1:06:52) He was travelling to the warmth of the continent (1:06:54) to recuperate. (1:06:56) Nope. (1:06:57) Recuperate.(1:06:57) Trevor, I can't say recuperate. (1:06:59) There you go. (1:07:00) For God's sake.(1:07:01) We've done that about six times now. (1:07:04) He was sent to go and be somewhere warm on a beach, (1:07:09) try and rest his broken back. (1:07:12) So it's what I need to do every three weeks.(1:07:14) Exactly. (1:07:15) Okay. (1:07:16) So he'd got as far as Boulogne on the French coast (1:07:19) and he arrived at the quay there, (1:07:21) this injured man, (1:07:22) this man who could barely look after his own body at this point.(1:07:26) And he saw someone fall from the pier into the water. (1:07:30) Right. (1:07:30) He saw a man in the sea drowning.(1:07:33) And Alexander Stewart Brown, (1:07:35) with his ruined spine, (1:07:36) on his way to Convalesce, (1:07:38) because his own health was hanging by a thread, (1:07:40) went in after him. (1:07:41) Oh, for God's sake. (1:07:42) He got into the water and he got the man out.(1:07:44) And then, because he was a surgeon, (1:07:46) he didn't stop there. (1:07:47) He worked on him, (1:07:48) soaking wet on the quayside for something like two hours. (1:07:51) Oh my God.(1:07:52) Trying to revive the man he'd pulled out. (1:07:55) Bloody hell. (1:07:56) And it destroyed what was left of his own health.(1:08:00) The exertion, the cold, (1:08:02) the strain on that damaged spine, (1:08:03) it broke him. (1:08:05) And he had to turn around and go home. (1:08:07) And not long after that, he died.(1:08:09) Oh my God. (1:08:10) He went abroad to save his own life (1:08:11) and he spent it on a French quayside (1:08:13) on a stranger who fell off a pier. (1:08:16) His funeral back home at Lewisham was a big affair, (1:08:19) with over a hundred mourners.(1:08:21) His Masonic brethren dropping sprigs of greenery onto the coffin. (1:08:26) The whole civic weight of a well-known local man. (1:08:30) Which is a very different send-off (1:08:33) from the others that we've heard about.(1:08:36) And that contrast is kind of worth sitting with a bit (1:08:39) because the wall flattens it, right? (1:08:42) On the wall, the surgeon and the servant and the schoolboy (1:08:45) all get the same green tile, the same few lines. (1:08:49) In death, going into the water for a stranger, they're equals. (1:08:52) Whatever else you think about the wall, (1:08:54) there's something quite radical in that.(1:08:56) Yeah, definitely. (1:08:57) Especially at that time period as well. (1:09:01) And true to form, (1:09:02) because we can't get us through a single one of these (1:09:04) without the wall slipping up.(1:09:06) Even Brown's tablet has an error on it. (1:09:08) Okay. (1:09:09) The date of death carved on the wall (1:09:11) doesn't match the date recorded on his own coffin (1:09:13) or his own memorial.(1:09:15) They're more than a week apart. (1:09:17) Okay. (1:09:17) Even for a respectable fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons, (1:09:21) the wall couldn't quite get the day right.(1:09:23) The newspaper clipping wins again. (1:09:25) Fair enough. (1:09:26) At the start of this episode, (1:09:28) we left Alice falling from a burning window on Union Street, (1:09:32) having dropped three children to safety.(1:09:34) And I told you we'd come back to her (1:09:36) because there was more to her story. (1:09:38) And the part you haven't heard yet (1:09:40) is the part that I found the most interesting. (1:09:45) Okay.(1:09:46) So it's kind of two parts, really. (1:09:48) It's one that lifts you up and one that certainly doesn't. (1:09:50) Okay, good.(1:09:52) So let's start with the thing that the wall doesn't want you to know. (1:09:55) Okay. (1:09:57) Because we've spent this whole episode on the wall's mistakes.(1:10:00) The wrong names, the wrong dates. (1:10:02) But Alice's tablet isn't wrong, exactly. (1:10:05) It's something more interesting than wrong.(1:10:07) It's careful. (1:10:09) The wall describes her as the daughter of a bricklayer's labourer, (1:10:13) which is true. (1:10:14) It positions her as a humble working girl, (1:10:16) a servant who saved her employer's children.(1:10:20) And that framing is not an accident. (1:10:24) Because those three children, (1:10:25) she went back into the smoke for again and again. (1:10:28) They weren't her employer's children, (1:10:30) or just her employer's children.(1:10:33) Alice wasn't the servant of that household. (1:10:36) The woman of the house, Mary Ann Tandler, (1:10:38) was Alice's sister, her older sister. (1:10:42) Which meant the three little girls (1:10:44) that Alice dropped from that window and died saving (1:10:46) were her nieces, her own flesh and blood.(1:10:49) Alice was their aunt. (1:10:51) And once you know that, the story changes a bit. (1:10:54) This wasn't a servant doing her duty by the family she worked for, (1:10:57) admirable as that would be.(1:10:59) This is a young woman going back and back and back (1:11:02) into a burning house for her sister's children. (1:11:04) And the Victorian world telling the story (1:11:07) kind of quietly sanded that bit off. (1:11:10) They preferred her as the humble servant, (1:11:12) the working girl who knew her duty, (1:11:14) because that was the more kind of instructive story.(1:11:17) The one that taught the poor to be dutiful. (1:11:21) The true version, the aunt, the family, the sister's babies, (1:11:25) was somehow kind of less useful to them. (1:11:28) So the tile gives you the servant and keeps the aunt.(1:11:32) Now for the part that lifts you up. (1:11:35) Because Alice, almost uniquely among people on this wall, (1:11:39) gets remembered twice. (1:11:41) She's up there in the city on Watt's Wall with all the others.(1:11:45) But she also got remembered at home in Southwark, (1:11:47) right where it happened. (1:11:49) And you can still walk it. (1:11:51) First, there's a whole street named after her.(1:11:53) Oh, wow. (1:11:54) When the streets around there were being reordered, (1:11:57) one of them was named Ayres Street for Alice. (1:12:00) Oh, okay.(1:12:01) A bricklayer labourer's daughter, (1:12:04) a young woman who'd have been nobody to history really, (1:12:07) with a South London street carrying her name to this day. (1:12:11) That's very sweet. (1:12:13) And there is a second bit, (1:12:15) and I find this kind of almost unbearably poignant.(1:12:18) But there was a painting just a few hundred yards (1:12:21) from where the fire happened. (1:12:23) So there's a place called Red Cross Garden. (1:12:25) It's a beautiful little green space.(1:12:27) And it was made by one of the great figures (1:12:29) of Victorian social reform, Octavia Hill, (1:12:32) the woman who went on to co-found the National Trust. (1:12:35) Octavia built this garden as, in her words, (1:12:38) an open air sitting room for the tired people of Southwark. (1:12:42) Somewhere for the overcrowded poor to breathe.(1:12:46) And next to the garden, she built a hall, a community hall. (1:12:49) And to decorate that hall, (1:12:51) she commissioned a famous artist, Walter Crane, (1:12:53) to paint a series of pictures of ordinary everyday heroism. (1:12:58) Fair enough.(1:12:59) Not gods and generals, but local heroes. (1:13:02) And the very first one he painted, unveiled in 1890, was Alice. (1:13:07) Oh, that was lovely.(1:13:08) The Union Street fire painted large on the wall of a hall in Southwark, (1:13:13) about 500 yards from where she actually died. (1:13:16) Her neighbours made her a heroine of the streets that she'd lived on. (1:13:21) Now, I will be straight with you.(1:13:23) The original painting is lost. (1:13:25) The hall changed hands over the decades, (1:13:27) and it's in private ownership now. (1:13:29) And Crane's paintings didn't survive.(1:13:32) But the garden is still there, and you can stand in it. (1:13:34) And the story of the painting survives. (1:13:36) And in recent years, a new artwork inspired by it was made in that same hall.(1:13:42) So Alice is still remembered in the city, on the wall, and in Southwark, (1:13:47) in the street name, and the garden, and the memory of that lost painting. (1:13:51) Yeah. (1:13:52) Yeah, twice over, which I don't believe anybody else on the wall can say.(1:13:56) Fair enough. (1:13:57) Although I didn't look at the ones that weren't so fair, but they come. (1:14:01) And I'd love to end Alice's story there, kind of on that warm note.(1:14:05) But there is a sting in the tail. (1:14:07) And it belongs to the theme, kind of realistically, of this whole podcast. (1:14:12) Who gets remembered and who gets left behind? (1:14:14) So I'm not going to smooth it over.(1:14:16) Because while Southwark was naming streets after Alice, (1:14:19) and Walter was painting her on the wall of a hall, (1:14:22) the whole country was holding her up as a model of British courage. (1:14:26) Her own family was not being looked after. (1:14:30) Some years after Alice died, there was a report, (1:14:32) an appeal in the press, that her elderly mother, Alice's mother, (1:14:37) had ended up in the workhouse, scrubbing floors in her old age as a pauper, (1:14:44) the mother of one of the most celebrated heroines in England, (1:14:47) and she'd fallen through every crack there was.(1:14:50) And I want to flag, honestly, that this is the detail I'd want to nail down harder, (1:14:54) before I swear to every particular of it, but I can't. (1:14:58) It comes from a press appeal at the time. (1:15:00) And I would want to kind of verify it multiple times, but whatever.(1:15:06) But the shape of it is that it seemed like Alice really got lifted up as a heroine. (1:15:14) Like the story really caught attention. (1:15:16) Right.(1:15:17) And it did turn her into a lesson as well, like we've been through. (1:15:22) And it let the living family that she'd been supporting slide into the workhouse. (1:15:27) The heroine is immortal in glazed ceramic and her mother scrubbed floors for her supper.(1:15:33) And if you want the whole argument of this episode in a single image, (1:15:37) who are we to choose to remember and who we let quietly fall through? (1:15:42) It's those two women, like the daughter on the wall and the mother in the workhouse. (1:15:47) And like, don't forget, the mother lost everything. (1:15:50) Like Alice's sister died in that fire, like the mother of the children died.(1:15:54) And like, I don't believe I think only two of the children made it too. (1:16:02) Oh, God. (1:16:03) That was a bit hazy.(1:16:04) So again, there are bits of these stories I have left out. (1:16:07) Yeah, fair. (1:16:09) It's yeah, it's just like this.(1:16:11) It's really interesting to me that there's this whole kind of big (1:16:15) celebration around Alice's life and like this incredible act of bravery. (1:16:21) And yet there was no kind of local go fund me. (1:16:23) No one did a Kickstarter for the mum that was kind of just then abandoned.(1:16:28) Yeah, exactly. (1:16:30) Anyhow, there is one more name I want to give you before we finish. (1:16:34) Okay.(1:16:35) And to get into it, we have to jump forward right out of the Victorian world we've been living in, (1:16:41) past the fires and the horse bands and the hand pumped engines, (1:16:44) all the way to the 7th of June, 2007. (1:16:47) Okay. (1:16:49) Thames Mead, South East London, a modern place post-war, (1:16:52) built out on the marshes by the river, threaded through with canals and waterways.(1:16:59) And on that June afternoon, a little after five o'clock, (1:17:02) a nine year old boy named Harley Bagnell Taylor was playing near one of those canals when he fell in. (1:17:08) Oh, God. (1:17:09) A channel called Broadwater Dock.(1:17:11) And the walls of it were high, kind of something like 15 feet. (1:17:16) Oh, wow. (1:17:16) So it's a sheer drop as well.(1:17:19) There is no way you could climb out. (1:17:21) Yeah, yeah, yeah. (1:17:23) In a flat overlooking that water lived a man named Lee Pitt.(1:17:27) He was 30 years old. (1:17:29) He worked in print as a reprographics operator. (1:17:32) And he heard the boy screaming.(1:17:34) And Lee Pitt did the thing that everyone on the wall did. (1:17:37) He didn't weigh it up. (1:17:38) He ran and he jumped him.(1:17:41) He got to the boy and he held him up. (1:17:43) He kept Harley's head above the water while people who'd come running, (1:17:48) lowered a hose pipe down the sheer wall and got the boy to grab it and hauled him up and out. (1:17:53) And they saved him and Harley lived.(1:17:55) And then they turned back to help Lee, but he'd gone under. (1:17:59) A police officer who was first on the scene, dived in after him. (1:18:03) And for a moment, got a hand onto the top of his head below the surface.(1:18:08) But there was nothing to hold on to, (1:18:10) nowhere to brace and he couldn't keep him, him and himself up. (1:18:15) And Lee died. (1:18:17) He was 30 years old and having just saved a nine-year-old's life.(1:18:22) Exactly the way a boy called Daniel tried to save his friend Jim in the Thames 120 years earlier. (1:18:31) And here's why Lee is the name I've saved for last. (1:18:35) It's not just because he's the most recent, (1:18:37) but because after he died, his colleagues thought he should be remembered.(1:18:42) And one of them, a woman he worked with, approached the Diocese of London with an idea. (1:18:47) The wall. (1:18:49) Postman's Park.(1:18:50) Put Lee on the wall. (1:18:51) And you have to understand what an extraordinary request that was, (1:18:55) because the wall had effectively been finished for decades. (1:18:59) The last tablet had gone up in 1931.(1:19:02) There had been nothing new for, and this is the number that stops you, 78 years. (1:19:08) 78 years of silence on that wall. (1:19:10) And there were people connected to the Watts legacy (1:19:12) who felt strongly that it should stay that way.(1:19:15) That the wall was a finished thing. (1:19:17) A closed record of its own Victorian moment, (1:19:20) and that you shouldn't add to it. (1:19:22) And that its incompleteness was part of its meaning.(1:19:26) But in 2009, they did it anyway. (1:19:30) They made one more tile, in the old style, (1:19:33) to sit with the others, and they put Lee up on the wall. (1:19:37) The first new name in 78 years.(1:19:40) A print worker from the 21st century, up there in glazed ceramic, (1:19:44) alongside the Victorian servants and labourers and children. (1:19:48) The wall, after nearly eight decades, spoke again. (1:19:52) And there's one last thread, and it ties all the way back to where we began.(1:19:56) Part of the reason that there was any appetite to add Lee's name to the wall at all, (1:20:01) and part of the reason Postman's Park had come back into public consciousness, (1:20:05) is that it had turned up in a hugely popular film a few years earlier. (1:20:09) A film that used the wall, and used specifically one of its tiles. (1:20:13) The tile of a young woman who died in a fire on Union Street, Alice Ayres.(1:20:18) In fact, a character in that story takes her name from the title. (1:20:22) So, from the tile, I should say, sorry. (1:20:25) The film is Closer, in 2004, was directed by Mike Nichols, (1:20:30) and adapted by Patrick Marber, from his acclaimed 1997 stage play.(1:20:35) The character, Alice Ayres, brilliantly portrayed by Natalie Portman, (1:20:40) who earned an Oscar nomination for her role, (1:20:43) is a mysterious American stripper in London. (1:20:46) So, follow that line. (1:20:50) Alice goes into the smoke for her sister's children in 1885.(1:20:55) A century later, her name is on a wall that a filmmaker happens to notice. (1:21:00) The film puts the wall back into people's minds, (1:21:03) and that renewed attention helps to make it possible, in 2009, (1:21:07) to add one more name, the first in 78 years. (1:21:11) The woman, from our cold open, helped put the newest name on the wall.(1:21:15) The very first story, and the very last one, (1:21:18) reaching across 120 years to touch each other. (1:21:22) And it leaves us with a question I genuinely don't know the answer to. (1:21:26) Okay.(1:21:26) So, I'll just hand it to you. (1:21:27) Fair enough, yeah, cool. (1:21:29) Should they have added Lee? (1:21:31) Is the memorial a living thing? (1:21:34) Something that should keep growing, (1:21:35) keep catching the Harleys and the Lee pits of every new generation, (1:21:40) because being a hero didn't stop in 1931.(1:21:44) Yeah. (1:21:44) Or is it a finished document, a record of a particular world (1:21:48) that we ought to leave exactly as the makers left it, (1:21:51) 78 years of silence, mistakes and all? (1:21:56) I don't think there is a clean answer, (1:21:58) but I know that the next time I'm near St Paul's, (1:22:00) I'm going to go and stand under that wooden roof, (1:22:02) in that quiet little park, (1:22:04) and read those green tiles again. (1:22:07) Alice, Robert, Wright, Daniel, Mary Jarman, William Fisher, (1:22:11) Alexandra Stewart Brown, Lee Pitt.(1:22:13) Ordinary people from our side of the river, (1:22:16) who went towards the danger (1:22:17) when everything in them must have wanted to run the other way. (1:22:21) The wall got some of their details wrong, (1:22:23) but it got one thing that matters right. (1:22:26) It kept their names.(1:22:27) And now, so do we. (1:22:29) Oh, May, thank you very much. (1:22:32) That was an awesome episode.(1:22:34) I loved that. (1:22:34) Did you like it? (1:22:35) I did. (1:22:36) You like it when I go off-piste? (1:22:37) I do like it when you go off-piste.(1:22:39) I also like it when you give me a history one. (1:22:42) I know. (1:22:43) I love all of that.(1:22:44) It makes me very happy. (1:22:46) I knew nothing about Postman Park. (1:22:48) There you go.(1:22:49) And as you were talking, (1:22:51) I did have a little bit of a Google image search, (1:22:56) and, yeah, found some of the... (1:22:58) It's beautiful, isn't it? (1:22:58) It's gorgeous. (1:22:59) But it is beautiful. (1:23:00) It is absolutely gorgeous.(1:23:01) And it's just something that, like, (1:23:03) I think your question at the end was really interesting, (1:23:05) because there's a lot of these sorts of (1:23:09) there's no right answer questions in history. (1:23:14) But it is that thing of like, you know, (1:23:17) heroes, what constitutes a hero? (1:23:22) Who's going to decide who gets on it, (1:23:24) if we are going to add to it? (1:23:26) Yeah, exactly. (1:23:27) Who decides who doesn't? (1:23:28) Who, you know, what level of heroism (1:23:33) is deemed heroic enough? (1:23:36) You know, do they have to have died (1:23:38) in order to make the wall? (1:23:42) There's something about it.(1:23:44) Like, what Lepit did was incredible. (1:23:47) Yeah, oh my God. (1:23:47) And like, the sacrifice should be absolutely, (1:23:51) like, revered.(1:23:52) And he, like, what a hero. (1:23:58) But there is something about the idea that what (1:24:01) was an artist and wanted to do something artistic. (1:24:05) And it's the fact that it is all wrong.(1:24:07) And we're not all wrong, (1:24:08) but like the fact that it's from newspaper clippings (1:24:10) that he pulled together himself (1:24:12) and kind of he chose ones. (1:24:17) I mean, and I know the committee chose (1:24:19) from his selection afterwards. (1:24:22) I don't know if it's art, (1:24:25) but and the artist can't have any say over it anymore.(1:24:28) Is there any? (1:24:29) Should it then be ring fenced? (1:24:31) I'm not saying you couldn't do something (1:24:32) in a similar vein, (1:24:36) but is that, you know? (1:24:38) Yeah, because it's interesting. (1:24:39) Again, I just kind of think that there's something, (1:24:42) again, I don't disagree at all (1:24:44) that Lee shouldn't be commemorated (1:24:46) and his sacrifice shouldn't be. (1:24:49) It's hard to say celebrate a sacrifice, (1:24:51) but you want to celebrate his.(1:24:55) Incredible act of selfless bravery. (1:24:58) And that is the thing, right? (1:24:59) It is that like people who, (1:25:01) especially for people they don't know, (1:25:03) like who just don't even stop to think, (1:25:05) they just do it. (1:25:07) And there's something so incredibly, (1:25:11) just I can't use the word brave again, (1:25:13) but there's something just, (1:25:15) it's a special kind of person (1:25:18) that will throw themselves.(1:25:19) And it's kind of like what we spoke about (1:25:21) in last week's episode of Robert Knox. (1:25:23) Just put yourself in harm's way (1:25:25) in order to try and help somebody else. (1:25:27) It's just phenomenal.(1:25:28) And I'm not for a second diminishing that. (1:25:31) But there is a thing about the idea (1:25:33) that this is of a time and it is of a place. (1:25:37) And actually are there, (1:25:40) should the idea that it was Victorian, (1:25:42) like part of me even wonders, (1:25:43) should it have gone up to 1931? (1:25:45) Or should it have? (1:25:45) I think 1931 was the correction.(1:25:48) Fine, okay. (1:25:49) Of the disaster. (1:25:50) Fine.(1:25:51) East Ham, West Ham. (1:25:52) Yeah, okay. (1:25:53) Because, yeah, I wonder if there is something (1:25:55) about that particular time in history.(1:25:58) So I also feel like if you're going to continue (1:26:00) to use it as a memorial (1:26:01) and not as a piece of finished artwork, (1:26:03) then shouldn't it all be corrected? (1:26:05) Well, yeah, 100%. (1:26:06) And then have you lost all the originality in it? (1:26:08) Of course you have. (1:26:09) And it is that whole kind of, (1:26:11) that question around like, (1:26:13) what is, it's public history (1:26:15) with its faults and all.(1:26:17) And there's something quite charming (1:26:20) about the, (1:26:23) that's how I hope Trevor's feel about this podcast (1:26:25) when I do my episodes and get shit wrong. (1:26:28) That's what I'm trying to say. (1:26:28) If I can say it, then maybe they'll agree with this.(1:26:31) But no, but there is something quite charming (1:26:33) about the fact that there's like small errors (1:26:35) that were never really kind of caught (1:26:38) and stuff like that. (1:26:39) And again, as you say, (1:26:40) it kind of like links back to the time. (1:26:42) There's no, (1:26:44) if the newspaper got it wrong, (1:26:46) then that's it.(1:26:47) It's got wrong ones. (1:26:48) It's between a journalist and an artist. (1:26:51) It's not, (1:26:53) not that I'm saying we're artists, (1:26:54) but we're certainly not journalists or coroners (1:26:56) or detectives, you know.(1:26:59) But it's also the fact that like, (1:27:00) you know, newspapers and stuff like that is interesting (1:27:03) because they usually are the main source of historical record. (1:27:07) Like if you don't have enquiries (1:27:09) and all the rest of it, (1:27:10) and you don't have that sort of record (1:27:13) that's maintained and kept, (1:27:15) you know, unless it's acute, (1:27:18) still haven't sent me my fucking paperwork. (1:27:19) You know, you are reliant on newspapers.(1:27:22) You are reliant on that reporting. (1:27:24) So actually the fact that the newspapers are wrong, (1:27:26) the artwork on the wall is wrong. (1:27:28) There's something about it that's quite charming.(1:27:30) There is, there is. (1:27:31) Thank you so, so much. (1:27:33) That was a really cool episode.(1:27:35) And I really liked the fact that we kind of, (1:27:37) we went back, (1:27:38) we've got a little compendium of stories (1:27:40) and it was fascinating. (1:27:41) Lot of fires. (1:27:42) I would not want to be in the paint and oil sales life.(1:27:50) I don't feel like that's, (1:27:51) that's a bit of me if I'm honest. (1:27:54) But you do kind of think as well, (1:27:55) like I've always got it in my head that like fires, (1:27:57) for some reason, (1:27:58) and this is a ridiculous thing to say, (1:27:59) I think it is just because of the great fire. (1:28:01) But I just assume fires are like an older thing.(1:28:03) Like by Victorian times, (1:28:04) we've kind of like, (1:28:06) we know what we're doing with it. (1:28:07) In the terms of that, (1:28:09) there are so many of them. (1:28:10) Fire still exists, I am aware.(1:28:13) But what I mean is, (1:28:16) for them to be that deadly, (1:28:20) that often, (1:28:22) I kind of have in my head that it's like, (1:28:25) that's, that's what we were, (1:28:26) we had like the idea that there weren't fire engines, (1:28:29) like proper fire engines in the Victorian time. (1:28:32) I'm just like, what? (1:28:33) Excuse me? (1:28:33) Not as we knew them. (1:28:35) Yeah, exactly.(1:28:35) It's mad. (1:28:37) But I'm sure that many, (1:28:40) many people, including friend of the podcast, (1:28:41) Luke can school me on fire engines at some point. (1:28:44) You have done what? (1:28:46) One main episode, a Patreon episode.(1:28:49) Yeah. (1:28:49) Two main episodes on fires, (1:28:52) and a Patreon episode on fire. (1:28:54) And a Sinister South Short.(1:28:55) And a short. (1:28:56) Yeah. (1:28:56) On fire.(1:28:57) Fire. (1:28:57) Yeah, yeah. (1:28:58) But no, fire doesn't exist these days.(1:29:00) Fire does not exist. (1:29:02) I knew what I meant. (1:29:03) It's late and I'm hot.(1:29:05) Blood's all rushed to your head because you've been laying upside down. (1:29:08) Laying upside down on the floor. (1:29:09) But no, thank you so much.(1:29:11) Really do appreciate it. (1:29:12) You're so welcome. (1:29:13) And it was really interesting.(1:29:13) And now I must immediately, (1:29:15) next time I'm anywhere near St. Paul's, (1:29:17) go and find Postman Park. (1:29:18) Go and have a look. (1:29:19) Yeah, Dafo.(1:29:20) Awesome. (1:29:21) Well, there you go, Trev. (1:29:22) That's your lot for this week.(1:29:24) We'll be back next week. (1:29:27) I haven't decided what case I'm doing yet. (1:29:29) I've got two that could end up being what I cover.(1:29:34) I just need to... (1:29:35) The well. (1:29:35) Well, this is the thing about the well. (1:29:37) There's not a huge amount of info about the well.(1:29:39) Oh, no. (1:29:40) So I'm having to try and... (1:29:42) Either it's going to be another one where I go, (1:29:43) Hmm. (1:29:44) So, guys, there's not much to say about this one.(1:29:48) And see how many side quests I can put into it. (1:29:51) Or I will do something entirely different. (1:29:53) But yes, that'll be next week.(1:29:56) So as we said earlier, (1:29:58) do all the nice things. (1:29:59) Go and leave us a nice five star review. (1:30:01) We'll love you forever.(1:30:02) And we'll see you next week. (1:30:03) Take care of yourselves and each other. (1:30:05) There we go.(1:30:06) Have a wonderful week. (1:30:08) Enjoy. (1:30:09) And we will see you next week.(1:30:10) See you next week. (1:30:11) Love you. Goodbye.(1:30:12) Love you. Bye bye.