The Paultons Square trench shelter tragedy- October 20th 1940

Trench shelters were a rapid and quick build solution for the construction of public air raid refuges in London during the Second World War.

They were made by digging deep trenches, shoring up the walls of earth with wooden slats, sometimes brick and mortar and concrete roof coverings. Rather like Anderson shelters, they would disintegrate in the event of direct hits.

But they did protect shelterers from shrapnel and bomb splinters and nearby blasts sending rubble in their direction.

Chelsea had several of them because of the Borough’s large number of green squares and gardens. The most well-known were in Burton’s Court, Royal Avenue and Paultons Square.

Others were in the charming gardens on the Chelsea Embankment.

In the Autumn of 1940, when the full London Blitz had Londoners seeking shelter over 57 consecutive nights of bombing Picture Post sent a reporter and photographer to the Paultons Square trench shelter.

The evocative article was called ‘Shelter Life.’

War-time censorship meant neither its specific location nor even the Borough it was situated in could be identified.

When the article was published on 26th October 1940, the journalist and photographer responsible must have known a high explosive bomb had landed on the ARP Warden’s hut at the entrance of the Paultons Square trench shelter on the King’s Road just six days before.

This was one of a stick of four 50lb shrapnel bombs falling close to one another and sending nasty bullet like fragments in all directions.

Historical maps of Paultons Square Chelsea from 1900 to 1947

An Air Raid Warden, police officer and three others were killed, including a 16-year-old girl; many were injured.

The images and writing in the Picture Post article capture so much of the humanity of Chelsea at that time, and include people living in Paultons Square, nearby Danvers Street, Paultons Street, the King’s Road and Old Church Street who used it.

The photographer was even able to take a picture of the legendary Chelsea Blitz artist and ARP Warden diarist Jo Oakman when she was wearing her Warden’s helmet and uniform.

Using a personal archive edition of Picture Post for 26th October 1940 containing this evocative article this posting for historical, criticism and review purposes analyses the social history of Chelsea from this time and its people fighting the Home Front.

The ‘Shelter Life’ article’s standfirst explained: ‘Strangest sight in London – strangest scene of all our time – is the life of the Shelter.’

The visit to Paultons Square and photographs of its residents became a generic symbol of shelter life in all the air raids of London.

The picture of the two old ladies huddled in blankets wearing similar hats suggests they may have been sisters or close friends. It was captioned: ‘Here One Must Sleep Sitting Up- Each evening at dusk, life for many Londoners becomes new and strange. Firesides are left, homes are deserted. Young and old flock into shelters above and below ground.’ The blankets and wearing of hats means the shelter has no independent heating. It is October and undoubtedly cold at night. The below ground trench shelter means it is also damp most likely seeping through from the surrounding soil of the gardens.

The trench walls appear to be buttressed with wooden joists, bricks and cement.

The Picture Post article imagines it is one October evening in 1940 and a man from Mars arrived in London:

‘He stared round in the gloom. There was the city, with billion horse-power in its engines, and eight million human beings in its houses – the most powerful, most luxurious city in the world – now black, silent, deserted. Only in the main streets a few silhouettes glided along. What had become of all the light? What had become of all the people?

Suddenly over the roofs and chimneys, along pavements and alleyways, came the alarm. All round the capital, amid the howl of the sirens, the man from Mars heard footsteps. He followed the footsteps. They led him underground. There, in the raw light of a naked electric bulb, he saw the Londoners. He saw bare walls and concrete corridors; and against the walls, along the corridors, thousands of people.

He saw the baby feeding at its mother’s breast, the young men playing cards, the young girls making up their lips, the old folk settling down to sleep on a narrow bed. Around him he saw people who treasured above all things comfort, privacy and family life. And here they were sleeping on stone, in public, with a thousand neighbours. He saw fear, courage, sympathy, friendliness. He saw a people who built a great city, who worked hard for a comfortable home, living a new life – cheerless, comfortless, public – in an Air Raid Shelter. And they were doing it voluntarily of their own accord.’

A young woman in coat and court shoes doing her make-up. Had the air-raid interrupted her on her way to have dinner in the King’s Road? Picture Post captioned the image: ‘Here All One’s Life is Public- Privacy, so highly cherished by Britons, is gone. Family life at evening has vanished. Here nothing is intimate. One talks, eats, sleeps, lives, with a hundred, a thousand others.’ Who is the lady with the compact?

We can take a guess for we have a full and detailed list of all the particulars of the people living in Paultons Square, Argyle Mansions- the block of flats above shops in the King’s Road on the Paultons Square side, Danvers Street and Paultons Street about the year before in late September 1939.

This was a war-time census called The National Register. Home Defence and Air Raid Precautions needed a foundation list from which they could work with constant updating.

They needed to know who was living and where, and when not and leaving their homes and business premises empty, who was the key-holder? Consequently, we have a rich sociological profile of Paultons Square and its adjacent streets in the first year of the Second World War.

Four weeks after war was declared, there were many who decided to flee to country homes, boarding houses and hotels outside London where there was safety from bombs falling from the sky.

It seems extraordinary that so many of these three storey houses with basements were left empty when you consider the high property values and much sought after nature of this part of London in the present day. But in Septmber 1939 a large proportion of Chelsea’s population was leaving.

The working and lower middle classes did not have much choice, but to stay where they were. Most of the children and schools had evacuated, but a significant proportion did not and for the early years of WW2, these children roamed the streets without any schools to go to.

We begin with Argyle Mansions, a block of flats with ground floor shops which stretches from Beaufort Street to a group of terraced houses fronting the King’s Road on the West Side of Paultons Square.

The flats are accessed via entrances on the King’s Road. Only one or two minutes to walk to the Paultons Street trench shelter when the air raid sirens sounded.

Number 2 Argyle Mansions is empty.

In number 3, there is 43-year-old Alice Robins, by occupation doing ‘unpaid domestic duties’, 39 year old Dorothy Laws, a solicitor’s shorthand typist, and 37 year old Gertrude Laws who is a permanent civil servant typist.

At number 4 resides Mary J Cowper, 70 years old and her son Francis H Cowper, 33, and a Barrister-at-law and journalist. Francis is also an Air Raid Warden in Holborn. He would write an influential social history of Gray’s Inn and its times titled A Prospect of Gray’s Inn and published in 1951.

This was praised by the Cambridge Law Journal as ‘a delightful and scholarly account’ of the history of the Inn, its lawyers and judges from its earliest beginnings.

In Number 5 Argyle Mansions there is 57-year-old Sybil Drummond of ‘Independent means’ which indicates a private income and wealthy enough to be able to employ 67 year old Sarah Cleaver in domestic service and to do all the household tasks.

At number 6, two elderly sisters- Grace Beasley, 60, and Edith Beasley, 57. Grace lives by independent means. Edith is a private nurse and ‘Travelling.’ I wonder if they are the two ladies photographed huddled together wrapped in blankets and wearing their hats with feathers?

Flat numbers 7, 8, and 9 are empty.

An older man wrapped in blankets lies underneath a bench reading his newspaper. Again, wearing his thick overcoat, scarf and hat (Does being in a shelter count as indoors? Probably not.) Picture Post captions the picture: ‘Here a Corner is Home- He sleeps hard but safe – in the home made by the angle of the bench and wall.’

Quite a number of the houses in Paultons Square may well have been rented to tenants. Chelsea was the ideal borough for the landlord and tenant market. Its quaint little squares and three or four storey terraced houses with basements and back gardens were often rented out as bedsits.

Private rental income was often the best substitute for the lack of a private pension, particularly when the state pension at that time was no more than basic.

Depending on the leasehold agreements it was not uncommon for flats to be sublet as well.

At number 10 Argyle Mansions there is 66-year-old retired schoolmaster George Hunt who is also an ARP Warden in Chelsea. He is most probably the main householder. His daughter Dorothy Hunt, 34, who would later marry Douglas Leigh in 1941, is residing and volunteering for the London County Council Ambulance Service. The Carlyle garage across the road is an LCC Ambulance station. She did not have far to go.

36-year-old fruit grower and Lieutenant Commander in the Royal Navy Peter Barlow may have been the tenant or a friend visiting.

Number 11 Argyle Mansions was empty. At number 12 there is retired Elementary schoolteacher- 65-year-old Catherine Lowe. Geoffrey Basil Rigby, a 20-year-old architectural draughtsman is also living there.

Two young women, most probably teenagers, preparing for a long night in the trench shelter. The Picture Post caption said: ‘It is the girl in slacks who prepares for a hard bed in public. Thinking of the morning, she tidies her hair.’ Many young women in Chelsea started work at the age of 14 and by 16 they would be experienced in whatever they were doing.

The inhabitants featured in the news picture magazine were not identified, but they would have recognised themselves on publication and most likely kept copies as family heirlooms and for their children and grandchildren. ‘There’s mum or grandma during the Blitz’ they might say.

It is also sobering to appreciate that 16-year-old Margaret Hobley was one of those killed in the bombing of the Paultons Square shelter entrance on 20th October 1940. We do not know if she was one of the girls featured in this picture.

At nearby Argyle Mansions in the King’s Road three people are living in Flat 14. 65-year-old Ernest Doll is a retired Metropolitan Water Board Officer, and working for the ARP Transport group and he’s there with his 49 year old wife Beatrice.

His 22-year-old architectural draughtsman daughter Elizabeth is in the L.C.C. Auxiliary Ambulance Service.

Next door at number 15 there are three residents in Home Defence. Byron Cary at 32 is a journalist and ARP stretcher bearer. His 24-year-old engineer brother Richard Cary and 24-year-old Barrister-at-Law James Bovell are both drivers with the L.C.C. Ambulance Service.

When going to the shelters people often took thermos flasks, food and provisions. Some people would take their most precious belongings packed into a suitcase. Picture Post captioned these two ladies: ‘It is Mother who takes supper from a thermos, settling down in her clothes as if she has always slept that way.’

In flat 19 Argyle Mansions on the King’s Road, the 1939 Register reveals it is the home of Metropolitan Police reserve constable Ian Cunningham, 29, and his wife Cecily, 34, another volunteer for the L.C.C. Auxiliary Ambulance Service.

Number 20 is unoccupied, 68-year-old Constance Lawson of independent means is living on her own in number 21. In number 22, there is the physician and surgeon 45-year-old Dorothy Coulson and 40 year old certified midwife Dorothy Ada Reed. Flats 23 and 24 are unoccupied.

In number 25 resides 58-year-old writer and journalist Mary Agnes Hamilton (1882-1965).

She had been the Labour MP for Blackburn between 1929 and 1931, presented the first ‘Week in Westminster’ for the BBC in 1929, and was a BBC governor during the 1930s and a member of the Brains Trust. She would write 35 books which included many political biographies and eleven novels. The novel Dead Yesterday in 1916 had an anti-war theme which was controversial for its time. Her handwritten war-time diaries between 1938 and 1945 and other papers would be donated to the Churchill Archives Centre, Churchill College, Cambridge.

What is not disclosed by the 1939 Register is that Mary Hamilton sponsored and supported a persecuted Jewish refugee from Nazi Germany. She was 31 year old child psychologist Dr Ilse Rosa Hellman(n).

Ilse had been born in Vienna on 28th September 1908. On a first assessment by the special tribunals set up to decide if as a citizen from an enemy territory she was a risk to national security, it was decided on 2nd November 1939 that she was not to be interred.

Austria had been annexed by Hitler’s German Nazi regime in March 1938 in what is known as ‘The Anschluss.’ Ilse said she had no wish as a refugee ‘to be repatriated.’ Both her parents and brother would be murdered in Nazi concentration camps during the Holocaust. Her Times obituary said after the War, ‘she took her brother’s son under her wing, and he later became a successful journalist in The Netherlands.’

She would move into a flat with another Jewish refugee, the research economist Dr. Gerda Johanna Blau at 3 Roland Gardens in South Kensington. Gerda, born on 31st July 1910 and also from Vienna, obtained employment with the International Wool Secretariat in Bush House and would be granted British citizenship in May 1943.

Winston Churchill’s War Cabinet ordered detention of so-called ‘enemy aliens’ on a ‘collar the lot’ policy in May 1940 when the perceived risk of German invasion had been high. Ilse Hellman was included in the internment order and sent for detention on the Isle of Man.

Her time there was short because it was recognised she was needed to fill the shortage of psychiatrists who could help evacuees’ with emotional issues. The Home Office would employ her to provide psychological support for child evacuees escaping from the threat of air raids to country areas betwen 1939 and 1941.

At the end of 1941 she was invited by Sigmund Freud’s daughter, Anna, to work at her Hampstead War Nurseries alongside Dorothy Burlingham. Ilse would go on to be an influential psychologist and psychoanalyst with publication in 1990 From War Babies to Grandmothers: Forty-Eight Years in Psychoanalysis.

Ilse would successfully apply for naturalisation as a British citizen in 1947 with a notice placed in the Hampstead Observer.

She would marry Dutch art historian Arnold Noach in 1949 and died in 1998. Her daughter Maggie Noach (1949-2006) became a leading literary agent and was prominent in public and community affairs in Chelsea.

For this Chelsea child no refuge or evacuation in the English countryside or a seaside town. Picture Post observed: ‘A bed without a mattress, a drink without a tap, a sleeper without a home. A child who grows up in the world of 1940.’ Note the bucket on the other side of the bench- these were the sanitary arrangements. If anyone needed ‘to go’, it was hoped people discreetly looked the other way.

In number 26 Argyle Mansions on the King’s Road lives 31-year-old army officer David Rycroft and his wife Cicely, 29. David is a captain in The King’s Shropshire Light Infantry and has a secret role at the War Office. There’s a retired trained nurse Emily Buckworth next door in number 27. Emily is 74 years old.

Emily could have been either of these two elderly ladies of whom Picture Post said ‘It’s late in life to learn new ways to sleep- but the old keep trying. Their calm gives courage to the young.’

Over in Argyle Mansions there’s domestic servant 25-year-old Margaret Connolly looking after the flat for her employer in number 28, while numbers 29 to 31 are empty. 26-year-old Grace Fell is waiting to get married in number 32. Her boyfriend William Baxter is an advertising manager and signed up for the Royal Naval Voluntary Reserve on 9th October and is now learning seamanship in war-time. In a few months, he might be in a corvette or destroyer escorting the convoys across the Atlantic. Grace and William will marry in 1942.

In flat number 33, retired dancing teacher Gladys Cooper is living on her own while in number 34, Lloyds underwriter Douglas Gregory, 36, is sharing with Chelsea ARP Warden Yvonne Morrow, 36. They will marry in the spring. In number 37, there are two women living together; something rather familiar in Bohemian Chelsea- Caroline Scott of independent means and 77 years old and unemployed masseuse Joan Duncan who is 56.

59-year-old Dorothy Shuckburgh is living on her own in flat number 36. She is a civil servant at the Board of Education.

We now move to the houses on the west side of Paultons Square directly facing the garden containing the huge trench shelter. Two young women are reading a magazine and smiling together. Picture Post captioned this image: ‘Friendship.’ The first house in Paultons Square, number 1, is empty.

In number 2, artist and illustrator Stanley Davis, 53, is living there with his wife Marjorie, who is 39 years old. Numbers 3 to 5 Paultons Square are unoccupied. Solicitor William Kennett, 61, is resident in number 6 and being looked after by his housekeeper, Margaret Heggerty who is 33 years old.

Mr Kennett is a Chelsea Air Raid Warden.

A young couple, young lives- they would have another 5 years of total war ahead of them. Picture Post captioned their loving embrace: ‘Gaity.’

Two retired sisters are living at number 7 Paultons Square. Mary Temple is 65 and Phyllis Temple, a pensioned Elementary school-teacher is 60. They too could have been the two ladies in the Picture Post article. Also residing in their house is unemployed ‘surgical fitter’ Winifred Cole, 62, and unemployed former ‘typing office owner’ Marguerite Watts who is 68 years old.

Number 8 Paultons Square is unoccupied. Estate agent George Thorpe, 65, and Florence Thorpe, 45, are living at number 9.

This is the only picture of artist and diarist Jo Oakman helmeted in ARP uniform and equipment with another Warden in the Paultons Square trench shelter. Picture Post captioned the image: ‘And most of all, Helpfulness.’ ‘Helpfulness’ was very much an apt one-word definition of Jo’s character.

Number 10 Paultons Square is unoccupied at the time of the late September 1939 Register.

61-year-old Annie Redstone is living in number 11 with her 33 year old saleswoman daughter Ruby, her 29 year old tailor son Joseph, 27-year-old gents tailor son Israel, and 21-year-old ‘tailor’s improver’ son Maurice. Maurice is serving in a Chelsea ARP rescue squad.

Number 11 is one of the most occupied houses in Paultons Square. 61-year-old handyman Joseph Schallo and 33 year old cook Ruby Grant are also residing there.

Number 12 in the Square is empty. In number 13 there is 57 year old Raymond Ash who is the manager of the London office of an Australian merchant firm, his wife Dorothy, 48, along with their cook and housekeeper 48 year old Viola Locke.

In number 14 resides 56-year-old Jessie Mackenzie, of independent means, and Alasdair Alpin McGregor who at 41 is an author. McGregor is a Scottish writer and photographer producing a large number of travel books, mainly Scottish folklore and history. He is also a committed animal welfare campaigner urging the RSPCA to oppose ‘blood sports.’ During his time in Chelsea, he would also live in Swan Court and Upper Cheyne Row.

The Bowen family live at number 15. There’s 61-year-old storekeeper Arthur Bowen, his wife Harriet, 66 and their daughter Dorothy who is 37 and a court dressmaker. Dental surgeon Thomas Vaisey, 56, is on his own in number 16.

15 Paultons Square was the scene of a notorious murder in 1870 by Fulham plasterer Walter Miller. It was the home of clergyman Elias Huelin. Miller had killed him for cash and valuables at another of his Chelsea properties, 24 Wellington Square, and buried him in the back garden.

On the same day, 9th May 1870, he then went to the Reverend Huelin’s main home at number 15 Paultons Square where he murdered the housekeeper Ann Boss.

The inquest into the death of Ann Boss had actually taken place in the nearby Black Lion pub (now called The Pig’s Ear) with her body taken there for examination.

Miller was found guilty by an Old Bailey jury on 14th July 1870, sentenced to death by the Lord Chief Justice ‘without hope of mercy’ and hanged at Newgate on 1st August of that year. The West London Press described the murders as ‘Diabolical, cold-blooded and atrocious’. The London Echo newspaper said Miller ‘had shown the utmost callousness of demeanour and treated the subject of his awful crime with the greatest levity.’

Miller had been caught because he hired Chelsea ‘car-man’ Henry Piper to transport his victim’s body out of 15 Paultons Square in a badly trussed up case.

Piper became suspicious when he spotted blood and raised the alarm. He would be awarded £50 by the sentencing judge for being crucial to the arrest of the double-killer and another £20 raised by public subscription which was given to him in a ceremony at the Man In The Moon pub in Park Walk (now a restaurant) after the trial. £70 in 1870 would have the value in the present day of £7,047.80.

There’s a row of five terraced houses in this stretch of Paultons Square- 17 to 21 which are unoccupied.

A group of four men play cards to pass away the time. Picture Post said: ‘Those who wake: Image of London, 1940, is the evening card games in a concrete corridor, with all the bids whispered for the sake of those who sleep.’

In number 22 Paultons Square butler and housekeeper Percy Taylor is taking care of things while the owners are away. Perhaps they have decided to see the beginning of the Second World War in the countryside. County Secretary of a charity organisation Etta Inglis, 50, and former art teacher Blanche Partridge, 57, are living next door in number 23. Etta is also working in the Woman’s Voluntary Service (WVS) for Civil Defence.

At number 24, Gertrude Lloyd, 64 years old, is running the place as a lodging house. Her tenants include Reginald Butterworth, only 16, and a civil servant in the food department, Frederick Tull, 66, and a retired pharmaceutical chemist, and Elizabeth Leighton, 67, and a retired nurse-companion.

Number 26 Paultons Square is the home of journalist and sub-editor John Jesse, 32, his wife Marjorie (née Campion), 24, and their three-year-old son John. Also staying in number 26 are Monica Peck, 29, who is an ARP canteen cook, Margaret Kelsey, 30, and 50-year-old private secretary Carol Melville.

This looks like grandparents and grandchildren. Picture Post said: ‘It is Dad telling bedtime stories to – perhaps – a stranger’s children….The children smile and listen. So the night passes.’

Number 26 is the last terraced house on the west side of Paultons Square. Right next door is 57 Danvers Street which was being run as a boarding house by the 34-year-old Italian lady Elena Maione and her 13-year-old daughter Mignon Gloria Sonia.

The tenants include 80-year-old hotel staff attendant Frederico Ballerini, Michelina Ballerina, 62, and 39 year old Ugo Ballerini- a scientific instrument maker of clinical thermometers. There are two police officers from Chelsea Police station also lodging at number 57. They are junior station inspectors Robert White, 28, and Frederick Hanson, 22. The sixth bedsitting tenant is 45-year-old British Legion clerk John Archer.

Danvers Street houses used to run on the east side all the way down to Cheyne Walk on the Embankment before the parachute mines of April 1941 demolished a group of them on the other side of Blanch’s Garage at number 18. In 1939-40, this has been converted into an ambulance station with another entrance through metal doors onto Old Church Street.

There’s another lodging house being run at number 55 Danvers Street by Janet Cameron. At the age of 77 she is also doing her bit for the war effort by volunteering as an ARP canteen worker- keeping them well fed and warm with hot drinks through the night.

There’s something of a mystery about 55-year-old ‘Martha A Balmforth’ who is cancelled from the Register on the grounds her name has been given error. Martha will in fact remain living at 55 Danvers Street until her death in St Stephens Hospital on 21st July 1965 leaving probate of £1,605 with a value of £26,583.69 in 2024.

The other lodgers in number 55 are Joseph Sakenham, 36, a clerk in a government office, Marjorie MacEllar, 30, a temporary civil servant in the War Department, and 39-year-old estate agent Ronald Neve.

An offal packer and his wife live in number 53, House keeper Mary Leslie is looking after the tenants in number 51 who include a schoolteacher, a trained nurse and private secretary.

All the other houses in Danvers Street on the west side leading to Crosby Hall are divided into bedsits. Crosby Hall is the London hostel for the International Federation of University Women Students, but during World War Two also accommodated doctors and nurses working in the network of hospitals in Chelsea.

There’s retired major in the Regular Army and now liveried messenger Albert Worrall and his wife Minnie renting at number 49. They are both 58 years old.

Shop assistant and ARP Warden in Chelsea, 39-year-old Arthur Windmill, is in number 47 with his wife Mary who is 38. James Parkinson, 31, is another tenant and volunteering as an ARP Warden in Chelsea. During the day, he is a ‘collector of monies for British seaman.’

Hairdresser, John Parkinson, 64, is in the auxiliary fire service next door at number 43. There’s a lieutenant in the Middlesex Regiment, Geoffrey Monk, 22, lodging at number 39.

26-year-old commercial artist and photographer Leslie O’Brennan and his wife Joan, 24, who is the manageress of a fiction library, are living in number 37 Danvers Street.

A mother with her infant children. Picture Post observed: ‘Some sleep serene – unworried by anything. They sleep warm in the least gusty corners. And their sleep is watched over all night long.’

On the other east side of Danvers Street, between the Embankment and Paultons Street, there are more late-Victorian terraced houses rented out as bedsits and flats.

30-year-old journalist Mary Mattinson is in number 29 with her husband John who is a Metropolitan Police Reserve Constable.

Bus conductor for the London Passenger Transport Board (LPTB) George Fallows is in number 27 with his wife Rachel. George will be killed on 20th October 1940; most likely when he was standing on the open platform of his red double decker bus in the King’s Road opposite the ARP Wardens’ hut in Paultons Square and struck by a piece of shrapnel in the neck from a fragmentation bomb.

291 to 301 King’s Road is a block of three storey terraced houses with basements built in the same style as Paultons Square running from the Argyle Mansions block in the King’s Road to the west side of Paultons Square. The Cartwright family, parents and two adult daughters, are living in number 291. John Cartwright, 65, is a theatrical caterer, his wife Frances is 67, daughter Violet, 40, is a supervisor in a cosmetics factory and their other daughter, Margaret, 32, is a secretary and shorthand typist.

293 King’s Road is unoccupied. The artist, sculptor and painter Charles James Pibworth, 61, is living with his wife Geraldine, 51, a medical receptionist, in number 295 with 71 year old widow Mary McMahan who is providing unpaid domestic duties. Pibworth is responsible for sculpting four figures for the Law Society’s extension in Chancery Lane representing: Truth, Justice, Liberty, and Mercy.

At number 297 King’s Road, 51-year-old estate agent Effie Quiggin is doing Chelsea ARP Warden duties, 52-year-old Marion Butler, a Finsen Light Therapy and X-Ray practitioner, is providing war services for the British Red Cross Society, and 25-year-old Donald Garrod at number 299 is an art teacher by day and first aid worker for Air Raid Precautions in Kingston by night.

In 301 King’s Road lives 26-year-old sculptor, modeller and part-time art teacher John S Sagar. Mr Sagar is occupying the only flat in this house. This may well be as a result of the tragedy on 12th January 1939 when German refugee and photography art student Helene Erne Elise Stolt had taken her own life there.

Her father, who had been a Communist representative in the Reichstag, had been killed in a concentration camp, her mother was missing, and her brother had also been detained by the Nazis in another concentration camp. Her boyfriend in England had also left her and broken off their engagement.

The inquest into her death heard that when her student visa ran out she feared being sent back to Germany where she had also been twice jailed by the Nazis after protesting the death of her father. Her death was widely reported in the press.

The Daily Herald described it as ‘a story of despair following persecution in Germany.’ The Hammersmith coroner praised the frankness of her former boyfriend, the financial journalist Christopher Moller, who said in evidence at her inquest: ‘I’m quite satisfied that the fact that I had asked her to marry me on December 9 but said on December 28 that it would be unwise to do so, played a very great part in what happened later.’

Helene Stolt had hoped to travel to America and pursue a career in art photography and striking images of her with her camera were published in newspapers reporting this sad and tragic narrative.

The woman in this image could be beside the seaside. Instead she is in her deck-chair, under a blanket, with her umbrella fully open six to eight feet underground in the Paultons Square garden.

Picture Post said: ‘Those who sleep: Strange parody of the seaside- deck-chairs, rugs, umbrellas. Some are worried by the smell of new cement, or the sound of a bomb.’

The medieval Crosby Hall had been transferred piece by piece from the City of London to Cheyne Walk at the beginning of the 20th Century.

In World War Two it changed from being a rather magical hostel for postgraduate international women students in London to looking after doctors and nurses staffing hospitals in Chelsea.

The Warden of Crosby Hall, Grace Stonedale, 50, Secretary of the International Federation of University Women, Erica Holme, 49, and the Hall’s Housekeeper Eva Barlow, 40, are still running the ship with nine staff who include two cooks.

There are ten nurses of all types resident: VAD, State Registered and British Red Cross Society (BRCS).

Crosby Hall as it looked in the 1920s and 1930s when run as a hall of residence for the International Federation of University Women. Images from postcards largely produced in 1927 include dining hall, common room, student bedroom and outside perspectives including houses on the other side of Danvers Street which would be destroyed in the April 1941 bombing.

There are also two doctors of medicine, an occupational therapist and a student of orthopaedics. And Crosby Hall has boarders from the wider community and these include typists and clerks, an engineer, shop assistant, private secretary, cashier, and women ‘of independent means.’

A woman in Paultons Square knits while sirens are wailing, anti-aircraft guns are firing and bombs are falling. Picture Post said this was one of many qualities of Londoners in their shelters: ‘Patience.’

Paultons House is at the top of the east side of Paultons Square near the turning to the King’s Road. It is a six-floor block of flats. Two Chelsea Air Raid Wardens occupy flat 2. They are 73-year-old Muriel Glass and 38-year-old teacher Phyllis Mary Neville.

59-year-old William R Jones, a geologist based at the Imperial College of Science in South Kensington, is in flat 3.

In flat 6 senior civil servant David Fincham, 39, is another ARP Warden. His wife Sybil, a 38-year-old journalist, is a London County Council Ambulance Service driver. Mary Monsell, 54, in flat 16 is in Chelsea’s ARP based at one of the Borough’s First Aid Posts.

The young couple in number 23 are husband and wife Howard and Mary Hay- 24 and 23 respectively. Howard’s day job is as a bank clerk for Barclays. They serve together in the Auxiliary Fire Service.

A photograph showing high spirits in the Paultons Square trench shelter. There’s a soldier in uniform. Picture Post said this displays the quality of ‘Cheerfulness.’

Paultons Street is on the southern side of Paultons Square parallel to the King’s Road and eventually running to Old Church Street and facing the Black Lion pub. Senior Barrister’s clerk Walter Butler, 32, and his wife Muriel, 31, are living in number 3 with their three young children.

At number 1 Paultons Street on the corner of Old Church Street are the long-established premises of ‘E Butler- greengrocers and coal merchant’- run by the Butler family for over 50 years.

54-year-old Frederick Walter Butler is still living above the shop though it will be wrecked beyond repair in a bombing later in the war. Frederick is the father of Walter Butler living with his family two doors down in number 3.

The Butler family shop was the go to for everything business in this part of Chelsea through the Victorian and Edwardian ages up until the Second World War. Candles, heating oil, fruit, vegetables, grocery provisions, coke, coal and even furniture removals- the Butlers were always there as the quintessential English corner shop.

In 1891, George Butler, then 42, headed the business with his wife Elizabeth and eight children, five sons and three daughters- all living on the premises.

And the children all put their shoulders to the plough in various ways. For example, in the 1901 Census Frederick Walter Butler at the age of 15 was an assistant in the shop. 19-year-old Alice was another assistant. George is the patriarch of the family and now 52 years old. In 1901 he was also providing horse-drawn cab driving services.

In 1907 George passed away at the age of 58, and the 1911 Census reveals his widow Elizabeth had taken over the business at the age of 60. Daughter Francis at 21 was at the counter and Frederick Walter [known as Walter], now 25, was delivering coke and coal. Granddaughter Liley was providing a tailoring service.

During the Great War, Frederick Walter became the main man. It is likely he broke the record when appearing before the Military Tribunal at Chelsea Town Hall for applications for service exemption from conscription because, as he explained in June 1917 he was the only son left to manage the business. His mother, now in her sixties, was unable to help owing to illness.

He had worked for his mother since leaving school, one brother who was in the business had been killed in France, two other brothers and a nephew were serving, and he was the only male left in the business. His mother had never done and could not do the buying.

In 1918 he explained in his ninth applicaton for exemption that he was still the only male left to do the market buying at Covent Garden, and the heavy coal and coke lifting work. During the winter months, the quantity of coal and coke sold and delivered every week averaged seven to eight tons. The Magistrates continued to grant him service exemptions until the end of the war.

By the time of the 1921 Census, ‘E Butler Greengrocers and Supplies’ was thriving. At 35 Walter was the manager assisted by his Kensington born wife Marion. His mother Elizabeth at 70 was still serving in the shop. His sons Walter, 14, and George, 12, were helping while still at school, and dress maker Daisy Francis Clayton was also boarding and providing tailoring services to customers who needed it.

Walter was an active member of Chelsea’s Labour Party, the Chelsea Chamber of Commerce and Chelsea Old Church. The matriarch of the Butler family, Elizabeth, passed away in 1928 and was buried in Brompton Cemetery. Walter had another bereavement blow in 1935 when his wife Marion died in the Chelsea Hospital for Women after two operations. She was only 48.

Marion had helped him carry on the fruiterer and greengrocers shop for 15 years. They had married in St John’s Church, West Chelsea in 1906. Her funeral in Chelsea Old Church was a major event in the Borough in that year with multiple floral tributes provided by friends and local businesses.

She too was buried in Brompton Cemetery, but as with her father and mother in law, the family did not have the money to commission a gravestone or monument and she was interred in a common and unmarked grave.

The Butler family did not own the freehold of 1 Paultons Street, and running a business like theirs was on short margins with little profit. When Second World War bombing wrecked the premises, the business was at an end and Frederick Walter would take on the job of porter at Swan Court in Chelsea Manor Street for ten years.

He remarried and lived in a council flat at number 37 Cadogan Court, Beaufort Street and would pass away at the age of 79 in 1966. It could be said this marked the end of an era. And the site of Number 1 Paultons Street would be rebuilt with no evidence of its past as a much-loved and frequented corner-shop.

In number 13 Paultons Street, Charles Carmody, a 29-year-old domestic servant and butler, is a stretcher bearer in one of the ARP mobile units operating out of their depot in the Carlyle School in Hortensia Road. He is living there with his wife Robertina whom he married in 1938.

Number 11 Paultons Street is the address of two Jewish refugees from Vienna, Austria recently annexed by Nazi Germany. Karl Lemberger, born on 17th January 1904, is a commercial traveller and fled with his wife Herma who was born in Vienna on 16th March 1906. They have been sponsored and given employment as domestic servants by Ship building conference deputy chairman Alexander Belch and his wife Freda at their home Uplands Cottage, Cullesden Road in Croydon.

Karl’s job as chauffeur/gardener and Herma’s as a paid cook give them the right to stay in Britain. They inform the Enemy Alien tribunal in November 1939 that they have no intention of returning to Austria.

They are to be initially granted exemption from internment and special restrictions. But the situation would change on 21st June 1940 when files in the National Archives indicate Karl is ordered to be detained with thousands of refugees from Germany, Austria and Italy who had been previously categorised as not posing any risk to national security.

Nearly a year later ‘a special case’ is made to the Tribunal and he is released on 10th February 1941.

Karl and Herma moved to the West Country and after the Second World War they were living in Beechcroft Road, Upper Stratton, Swindon in Wiltshire.

There was a report about Herma, with her photograph in the The Western Press on 6th December 1986 with the headline ‘O’level Pass for granny Herma, 79’ when she gained an A grade pass in English Language. She was praised for joining an evening class half way through the course at Kingsdown School in Swindon.

The report said she had come to Britain in 1938 as a refugee. She passed away in Bristol in 1998. Karl had died on 6th May 1976 leaving probate of £15,313 which the Bank of England inflation calculator gives a value at the time of writing of £100,948.86.

This senior citizen has learned how to sleep sitting up. No doubt she is a veteran of the First World War when there was also a Blitz and the people of Chelsea had recourse to public air raid shelters. Picture Post observed this is a symbol of ‘Resignation.’

The east side of Paultons Square is again representative of Chelsea at this time of its history: single people, families, home-owners and tenants, working class and middle class occupations, some working in media and the arts, members of the ‘Bohemian set’, people ‘of independent means’ and many volunteering for civil defence.

26-year-old Rosamund Angus at 36A Paultons Square is an interior designer.

34-year-old musician Stanley Atkins at number 34 is in the Police War Reserve.

25-year-old parlour maid Irene Zemann at number 56 may well be a Jewish refugee from occupied Europe who managed to get to Britain before Nazi Germany’s full invasion of Czechoslovakia in March 1939.

55-year-old Cecil Wilkins is a ‘Boots Shoe Dealer Man’ living with his wife Gertrude and their 22 year old son Ronald at number 50. Ronald is a university economics student.

James and Nancy Brinkworth live at number 40 Paultons Square. They are both 58 years old. James is a physicist, lecturer and examiner and Chelsea ARP Warden.

Journalist Herbert Griffith, 42, is an RAF Pilot officer in 217 Squadron and resides at number 37.

At number 46 Paultons Square, theatrical producer, actor and designer Hedley Briggs, 32, is living with actor Eric Micklewood who is 29.

31-year-old Artist Emily Farlonger lives at number 43.

At number 42 Paultons Square, Brass finisher Archibald Fraser, 57, is living with his wife Charlotte and their two children Kenneth, 32, a solicitor’s clerk and Charlotte, 25, a comptometer operator (calculating machine).

Dr Lothar Mohrenwitz, 55, is an influential literary agent living at number 37 and being attended to by the housekeeping couple Kathleen and Herbert Griffith. Dr Mohrenwitz is an exile from Nazi Germany and 37 Paultons Square is the location of his publishing business Mohrbooks.

31-year-old advertising executive James Hamilton-Young resides at 33 Paultons Square.

Chelsea would not be Chelsea without its art and antique dealers. 59-year-old Christinia Wighton deals in antiques from 41 Paultons Square and Louis Meirs deals in art while lodging with the Fraser family at number 42.

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The Picture Post photographer responsible for the evocative series of photographs and portraits of the occupants in the Paultons Square trench shelter was Hungarian Jewish emigré Zoltán Glass [1903-1981] He was one of a brilliant cadre of creative news and documentary photojournalists from Germany, Austria and Hungary who had fled the shadow of Nazi persecution during the 1930s.

His work for Picture Post was anonymous most likely to shield relatives, colleagues and friends from reprisals who were still under German occupation. He was commissioned by the brilliant editor of Picture Post, Stefan Lorant, also from Hungary and of Jewish heritage.

At the time of the late September 1939 National Register Zoltán was living with his brother Stephen, also a journalist and artist at 74 Cheyne Walk.

Zoltán would overcome the problems of internment as an enemy alien and develop a successful studio business in advertising and fashion photograph based at 183 Kings Road and 41 Paradise Walk in Chelsea before moving to France in the 1964. He had been granted British ‘naturalisation’ and citizenship in 1948.

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Bomb incidents and casualty profiles/biographies at Paultons Square during WW2

Tuesday 10th September 1940

‘Paultons Square trenches. Unexploded bomb. False report.’

Location as it is now.

The Air Radio Shelter by Frances Macdonald

Coincidentally, Chelsea artist Frances Macdonald produced this brilliant water colour picture of life in the Paultons Square trench shelter in September 1940. It certainly resonates artistically with the documentary photography in black and white in the 26th October 1940 issue of Picture Post.

Wednesday 18th September 1940

Paultons Square. Incendiary bombs at the south end.

Location as it is now.

Tuesday 24th September 1940

Trenches in Paultons Square. Incendiary bomb.

Location as it is now.

Monday 14th October

52 Paultons Square. Unexploded bomb, which detonated the next day.

This area was very much Jo Oakman’s ‘manor’ as she lived at 8 Justice Walk and as a part-time Warden based at Post Don in Glebe Place she knew all the other ARP Wardens in the district and many of the residents of nearby flats and houses.

She wrote of this day:

’52 Paultons Square had an HE blast on it from the china lavatory-pan factory in the rear of Old Church St. All windows were broken and most doors forcibly opened by the blast down that side of the square. The road was covered in earth, bits of china, pans and glass, all over the place and no 50 Paultons Square – I went over. There were no casualties. […] We knocked up all people in the Square after this trouble to see if they were OK. I found one young fellow very nervous in a home by himself; he seemed to be waiting for friends so I took him into our big shelter in Paulton’s Square. When he got among the other people he ran down the centre aisle like a rabbit. That was the last I saw of him.’

Location as it is now.

Sunday 20th October 1940

Paultons Square trenches. High explosive bomb damaging the ARP Warden’s hut and entrance to the Trench Shelter.

Location as it is now.

Jo Oakman rode her bike to the scene at around 7 p.m. when ‘Bomb and guns started almost at once.’

She wrote:

‘A salvo of three bombs [in fact there were four] landed near so off on the bike I went to investigate and found a small HE had landed slap on the kerb by the Paultons Square trenches – demolishing the Warden’s hut and hitting Warden Purver (from formerly Don Post) and injuring another (Phipps – had a broken femur). Five others were injured -; a man lay outside the flower shop minus his right leg. He looked jolly bad – and I thought he was dead. (Later heard he was alive as he started to moan but died in the ambulance).’

Edward Purver lived with his wife in Cadogan House in Beaufort Street and had escaped death when so many of their neighbours had been killed in the terrible bombing of their public air raid shelter in the courtyard of the block of flats on 9th September.

On 20th October, the ARP Wardens had been so unlucky in being caught in the middle of their shift change which normally took only a few minutes. If they had been a little earlier or later, it would have meant safety for all concerned.

The other wardens injured were Cornelius Alfred Phipps, Henry John Lystor, and ARP messenger Robert Cator. All had been hospitalized but eventually recovered.

It is possible 16-year-old Margaret Hobley had been caught in the blast as she got off a 19 or 22 bus while making her way to the entrance of the trench shelter. This is because London Passenger Transport Board bus conductor George Fellows, 53, took a shard of shrapnel to his neck, a nasty injury which led to his death in the Brompton Hospital later that night.

Was he standing on the open bus conductor’s platform of his double decker vehicle heading for Putney bus garage when the shrapnel bomb detonated into the King’s Road kerbside of Paulton’s Square?

Jo Oakman continued her account of 20th October 1940: ‘I wandered down the side to see where the other two bombs had landed as I saw masonry in the road and found one man at 26 Mallord Street and the other in the telephone exchange. The streets were inches deep in glass -; I found a girl, a Miss Andrews, had been blown through the glass door and had a long deep cut thigh. She and her mother were suffering from shock so I dressed the wound and stopped the bleeding, got them both to bed. Both went to hospital by ambulance.

In the phone exchange – a man has both legs blow off – I think he was dying. Nobody was willing to move him – God rest him – he seemed so bad, couldn’t do much. When back in the Post – I got “ticked off for wandering off the beat.” I don’t feel guilty a bit as it was 25 minutes before any of the A Wardens came on the scene in Mallord Street, but I can also see their point. [Jo was later thanked and praised by the Cheyne Post “A” Wardens for her work and contribution on the night.]

When one’s friends get killed – it hurts! The bombs seemed to be dropped in a line – there must have been 6 or 7 of them. They were small, about 50 lbs – did not make much noise. The crater outside Paultons Square is about a yard across and 2 and a half feet deep. […]

The wardens were changing over shift at the time and all 5 were in the hut. About 6 feet of railings were torn from the Square by the blast and the side of the hut sailed out and little Purver took the nearest packet. I only hope and pray if a bomb ever takes me – that it will do it in style and do the job properly and not leave me behind minus one arm or leg. The Lord protect us all!’

On the following day, 21st October 1940 Jo added:

‘Re the bomb at Paultons Square – it seems to be a shrapnel bullet type that is about 50 lbs and bursts on impact at the pavement kerb scattering bullets with terrific force in all directions with awful blast.

A policeman was killed at Beaufort Street by one of these bullets. A lady also died in hospital. There were four of these bombs: 75 Elm Park Gardens; Outside Paultons Square; 26 Mallord Street; In the shelter behind King’s Road.’

Casualties Sunday 20th October 1940

CWGC entry: 30-year-old Leslie Horace Frank Brown Constable, Police War Reserve. Son of Frank Brown, of 410A High Street, Cheltenham; husband of May Curtis Brown, of 475 King’s Road. Died at Beaufort Street.

The six-foot-tall Metropolitan Police War Reserve Constable Leslie Horace Frank Brown was struck down in his uniform while on patrol duty at Beaufort Street on the junction of the King’s Road.

He was identified at the Dovehouse Street mortuary by his wife May Curtis Brown. They lived in the World’s End at 475 King’s Road– a house which would be destroyed in an air-raid in February 1944. Before the war Leslie had been a ‘Bank Department Messenger.’

The couple married in North Witchford in Cambridgeshire in 1936. Leslie was born in Cheltenham on 25th November 1909 where his father Frank was living at the time of his death.

His family placed an in memoriam notice in the Gloucestershire Echo and Chronicle newspapers stating: ‘BROWN- October 20th, Leslie H.F. Brown, eldest son of F.J. Brown of 410a High-street, aged 30 years.- Funeral at Doddington, Cambridge, Saturday, Oct. 26th.’

Leslie was laid to rest on that day in grave no. 18. Ind row of the churchyard of St Mary’s Church in Doddington, Cambridgeshire.

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CWGC entry: 16-year-old Margaret Mary Dorothy Hobley Daughter of C. W. [Charles William] and D. L. [Dorothy Lillian] Hobley, of 16 Lamont Road, King’s Road. Injured at Paultons Square Shelter; died same day at Brompton Hospital for Consumption and Diseases of the Chest.

The Hobley family were a classic hard-working patriotic and working-class Chelsea family. At the time of the September 1939 Register Margaret had been working as a ‘junior dissecting draper’s clerk’ for a year having left school at 14.

Mother Dorothy was a counter hand in a Chemists and her father Charles was an ‘Oils and Mineral Greases Labourer.’ In 1939, they were living at 105 Field Road, West Brompton.

By October 1940 they’d moved to 16 Lamont Road behind and parallel to the New King’s Road in the World’s End. All three of them were earning a living.

Young people in those days had to grow up early and at 16 Margaret was a responsible young adult. In her long blue coat, she was most likely on her way home that Sunday evening when she was caught in the air raid.

She may have got off the 19 or 22 bus on which George Fallows was the conductor in order to take cover in the Paultons Square public trench shelter. The fragmentation bomb blew apart the Warden’s hut at its entrance.

Despite being taken to the Brompton Hospital she would not recover from the compound fractured skull and shock caused by the bomb splinters and died that evening at 8.45 p.m.

Margaret had been born in Chelsea on the 1st of March 1924. Her body was identified by her father at the Brompton Hospital and she was buried five days later in Brompton Cemetery in plot 190426 with the Reverend Stanley George Newson, the vicar of St Andrews, Park Walk, conducting the graveside burial ceremony.

Her parents were too poor to be able to afford a gravestone and she remains in the ‘common grave’ section of Brompton Cemetery.

Margaret was her parents’ only child. Charles and Dorothy moved to Thanet, Kent after the war. Dorothy passed away at the age of 81 in 1977. Her husband Charles died in 1983 at the age of 83.

Charles Hobley had had a dramatic First World War, managing to fool army recruiters in Clapham Junction in 1915 that he was 19 when he was in fact only 16. Nearly a year later after he had proved what a good soldier he was in training, he had to be discharged when his ‘misstatement’ had been discovered only days before his 23d Battalion London Regiment was about to go to France to take part in the Battle of the Somme.

Charles had to bide his time for a year until he could rejoin the army at the age of 18 in 1917. He would serve on the Western Front and in Russia with the King’s Royal Rifle Corps until 1919.

He reached the rank of Lance Corporal and was awarded the British War and Victory Medals.

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CWGC entry: 56-year-old Edward George Purver Air Raid Warden. Husband of Elizabeth Purver, of 9 Cadogan House, Beaufort Street. Died at Paultons Square Trench Hut.

Jo Oakman thought the killing of ARP Warden Edward Purver was cruel on so many levels. He was of small stature at 5 feet and 4 inches and he did not stand a chance when the Luftwaffe bomb blew him up in the Warden’s hut entrance to the Paulton’s Square trench shelter complex.

Edward, his wife Elizabeth and their daughter, also called Elizabeth, had survived the horror of the direct hit on the public shelter adjacent to their council block, Cadogan House, on the 9th of September 1940 which killed so many of their neighbours and friends.

By day Edward was a warehouseman for a heavy drapery company. At night, he was one of the most popular and efficient of Chelsea’s Air Raid Precautions civil defence group.

He had been born on 6th January 1884 in Marylebone. His father George was a domestic gardener. At the time of the 1901 Census Edward was working as an office boy in a timekeeper office. He was 17 and still living at home with three sisters and two brothers.

By 1911 his father was working as a gardener in the Royal Parks and the family was living at 3 Edward Terrace, Hampstead. Edward was 27 and he was employed as a porter in a packing warehouse.

Two years later he married Elizabeth Susan Nash. And in 1914 their daughter Elizabeth was born.

By June 1921, Edward and his family had moved to 12 Danvers Street, Chelsea. He was working as a dock labourer. When the Census was taken mother and daughter were on holiday in the village of Fairford, Gloucestershire where Elizabeth’s mother Mary Ann and sister Annie were living.

The Mayor of Chelsea, Lady Clare Hartnell JP, said Edward and the other ARP Wardens killed in Chelsea during the Blitz deserved recognition for their ‘heroic achievements in giving their lives carrying out their duties.’

Edward’s body was identified by his daughter and he was buried in the churchyard of St. Mary the Virgin, Fairford in the Cotswolds, Gloucestershire on 29th October 1940.

The public records indicate Elizabeth Susan Purver died in Lewisham in 1955 at the age of 79.

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CWGC entry: 26-year-old Kenneth Douglas Blain Son of Thomas and Violet Blain, of 17 Redcliffe Gardens, Kensington. Injured at Paultons Square; died same day at [Brompton] Hospital for Consumption and Diseases of the Chest.

Kenneth Douglas Blain was born on the 10th August 1914 in West Derby, Lancashire.

He would be baptised in the famous Liverpool church of St Mary six months later on 26th February 1915.

His parents were Thomas and Violet (née Mclaren) Blain and the delay between birth and baptism may be explained by the fact that father Thomas was a variety artist constantly touring the country. They had married in York in early 1913.

Because of the touring of his father in Music Halls and theatres it seems Kenneth had something of a peripatetic life.

At the time of the 1921 census, when he was only 6 years old, he was a visitor being looked after by the Westcott family at 151 Wallasey Village, Wallasey in Cheshire. Thomas Westcott, 71, his daughter Mary, 39, and grandson Thomas 22, were effectively in loco parentis.

Postcard images of Wallasey Village at around the time young Kenneth Doughlas Blain was staying with the Westcott family

By the time of the Second World War Kenneth was a student in London. He was lodging at 17 Redcliffe Gardens, West Brompton with the Hatchett family whose 20-year-old son Ronald was a freelance journalist and stretcher bearer for Air Raid Precautions in Kensington.

Kenneth was one of nine tenants in the house including nurses Violet Williams, Margaret Vaughan and Florence Overall, and the sisters Yvonne and Teresa Hibbitts. Yvonne was a professional actress.

On the evening of 20th October 1940 Kenneth was like so many civilian victims of the Blitz- simply unlucky enough to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. He was likely to have been the young man with terrible leg injuries seen by Jo Oakman. He had been riddled with bomb splinters.

He died in the Brompton Hospital in the Fulham Road that night at 9.30 p.m.

His father Thomas claimed his body for burial and he was cremated in the Golder’s Green Crematorium on 26th October 1940.

Thomas Blain’s London and professional address was 66 St George’s Drive Pimlico.

Thomas performed in his son’s name of ‘Kenneth Blain’ during the 20s, 30s and 40s.

He was a major comedy artist and writer in Britain at this time whose original sketches and comedy scripts were reprised by leading stars in stage, radio, film and television such as Arthur Askey.

In 1933 The Skegness News reported: ‘To-day I am a Nazi!. Amusing topical parody on the “Happy” Song. Kenneth Blain in the West End.

Kenneth Blain, the talented comedian who made his first appearance in Skegness in 1923, and who was one of the star performers on Mr. Fred Clements’ “Arcadia Follies” at Arcadia, Skegness, last summer, is appearing at the Windmill Theatre, Piccadilly Circus.

An amusing parody of Kenneth’s, on the “Happy” song from “Sunshine Susie” attracted the attention of the “The Stroller” of the “London Evening News,” who reproduced the following in his column-

Kenneth Blain writes his own songs, and one parody he is doing in the latest “revue-deville” at the Windmill is clever, I thought: at any rate, it is strongly topical, which is good.

He (like W.H. Berry and Leslie Henson) was an experienced concert-party performer before he came to Town. Mr Vandamm “discovered” him for Mrs. Henderson’s tiny theatre last autumn at Worthing.

A NAZI! The gist of the song I can indicate by the few lines I can find room to quote, although I cannot give you the fierce push-and-go Mr. Blain puts behind them nor show you his amusing swastika “bonnet”:

To-day I am a Nazi, a Nazi, a Nazi;

I don’t know why a Nazi;

I only know I am.

Old Hitler he salutes us;

We say this job suits us;

And if we don’t he shoots us

He’s such a playful man.

And there is a refrain, which exclaims: ‘Glory and luck to old Hitler bold! We’re all free to do as we’re jolly-well told…’

In January 1940, the Worthing Herald reported:

‘Kenneth Blain In Variety To-Morrow. Kenneth Blain, who has appeared in two of the Summer Concert parties and several of the vaudeville shows at the Pier Pavilion, figures amongst the cast of “Winter Cheer” on Saturday. Mr Blain is the author of many of the humorous songs and monologues made famous by Arthur Askey in “Band Waggon.” He has been composing them for years now, and some of the best known and liked of them were sung by Mr Blain at Worthing long before Askey made them known to a much wider public.’

The performing ‘Kenneth Blain” was a regularly featured comedian on BBC Radio and early BBC Television during the 1930s. In fact it can be said he was certainly one of the BBC’s first television comics appearing on 21st December 1932 in a ‘Moment of Burlesque Revuedeville’ between 11 and 11.30 p.m.

It was described as ‘Television By the Baird Process.’ and the Radio Times described him as ‘Windmill Theatre’s new comic.’

He made many appearances during the 1940s in the BBC Home Service variety programme series Petticoat Lane with credits in the Radio Times up until 1949.

By continuing to perform in his son’s name, Thomas Blain was keeping his memory alive through the rest of the war years and late 1940s.

By 1949 and 1951, he was placing adverts in The Stage from 66 St George’s Drive SW1 announcing: ‘Comedian at liberty- Offers invited for Summer Season’ and ‘Disengaged, Writer of First-Class Comedy Material.’

The published credits for broadcasting, theatre and variety diminished in the 1950s and presumably he was no longer getting booking calls on his phone number Victoria 5240.

The young Kenneth was Thomas and Violet Blain’s only son. The public records indicate Violet passed away in Claro Yorkshire in 1978 at the age of 82 and Thomas passed away in 1958 at the age of 76.

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CWGC entry: 53 year old George Fallows Husband of R. M.(Rachel Maria) Fallows, of 44 Dacre House. Injured at Paultons Square; died same day at (Brompton) Hospital for Consumption and Diseases of the Chest.

George Fallows was born in Capel St Mary Suffolk on 26th July 1887 and was educated in the village’s Church of England National Elementary school leaving in 1899 at the age of 12.

He would travel to London where the 1911 Census indicates he was working as a valet in the prestigious clubs of the Duke Street area of St James’s.

He married Rachel Maria Hartley from Holbrook, Derbyshire at St George’s in Hanover Square in 1916.

In June 1921, the couple were living at 7 Glamorgan Street, in the St George’s Hanover Square Parish of London’s West End and George had joined the London General Omnibus Company as a bus conductor.

The Omnibus Company would be renamed the London Passenger Transport Board when transport services in London were combined to run more like a public corporation in 1933.

In the 1930s George was working on the red London double-decker buses and based at the Putney garage which provided the number 19 and 22 routes into Central London via Chelsea.

At the beginning of the Second World War the 1939 National Register shows that the couple were living at 27 Danvers Street, only a short walk from Paultons Square.

It is speculation, but it seems plausible, that George was on the open platform of his bus as it was travelling along the King’s Road at the time of the 20th October bombing at the entrance to the Paultons Square trench shelter.

He died from a puncture wound to the neck and shock due to bomb splinters.

He was in his LPTB bus conductor’s uniform when injured and taken to the Brompton Hospital. His body was identified by his wife Rachel and he was buried in grave number 43949, square 27 of Streatham Park Cemetery on 30th October.

They had been living in a council flat in Dacre House, Beaufort Street when he was killed. Rachel would move to 51 Cadogan House, Beaufort Street and she stayed in Chelsea until her death at St Stephen’s Hospital on 22nd February 1956 at the age of 68.

She left probate of £372 which the Bank of England inflation calculator values in 2024 at £7,883.48.

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Chelsea artist Anthony Gross captured the aftermath of an air raid on the King’s Road in the autumn of 1940 with a gas main on fire in the middle of the road opposite Paultons Square. This scene could relate to high explosive bombing in the area on 9th September or 20th October 1940.

The same scene across the King’s Road from Paultons Square in 2024. The ground floor shops and two stories above are the same buildings, but in the summer sunshine there is no blazing gas main, shrapnel scarred brickwork, smashed shopfronts and shattered windows and their battered window frames.

Other angles of this stretch of shops on the King’s Road so badly affected by the Blitz in October 1940 and painted by Anthony Gross

Wednesday 19th February 1941

27 Paultons Square and Danvers Street. High explosive bomb. The water main was breached and there was flooding.

Location as it is now.

There were claims for bomb damage in respect of other properties in Paultons Square during the period 1940 to 1941.

8 and 10 Paultons Square. High explosive bomb in rear garden and premises damaged.

17 Paultons Square 1940-41. Incendiary bomb. Fire on roof and top floor.

45 Paultons Square 1940-41. Incendiary bomb. Small damage.

Paultons Square and its environs as they are now

(Images by Tim Crook 2022-4)

Paultons Square is one of the most fashionable squares in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea. Houses sell for millions of pounds. The gardens are, of course, private. The square was originally built and laid out between 1842 and 1847. Most of the terraced houses on the south side of Paultons Street from Old Church Street have been rebuilt, though in the same style.

It is also an area of many English Heritage blue plaques celebrating famous people who have lived there.

In nearby Danvers Street, the discoverer of Penicillin, Sir Alexander Fleming, lived at number 20. The antibiotic would be introduced and distributed for treatment of war injury infections during the Second World War and as the US Federal poster below declared, it would save thousands of soldiers’ lives.

The author and naturalist Gavin Maxwell is celebrated for having lived in number 9 Paultons Square. The novelist and short-story writer Jean Rhys lived in Flat 22 in Paultons House on the corner with the King’s Road between 1936 and 1938. The modernist poet and dramatist Samuel Beckett lived at number 48 Paultons Square from 1933 to 1934.

Physicist Patrick Blackett lived in number 48. Other famous residents include the painters Augustus John, at number 45, and Paul Nash, at number 19, the poet Kathleen Raine, in number 47, and grammarian and lexicographer Henry Watson Fowler lived in number 14 between 1900 and 1903.

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January 24th 1974- the sound of a bomb returns to Paultons Square

The Provisional IRA planted a small bomb outside the Paultons Square house of Lieut-Col Oscar Murton who was Conservative M.P. for Poole and Deputy Speaker of the House of Commons. It was on Thursday night, the 24th of January 1974.

It contained two to four ounces of explosive which on detonating shattered the windows of their home and those of neighbouing houses. The iron railings outside were twisted and their stone doorstep was smashed by the blast.

It was a night of three doorstep bombs in Chelsea. Others went off in Godfrey and First Streets within a half hour period.

Mr Murton had been going up the stairs of his home at 10.55 p.m. when it exploded in his dustbin, and he the saw debris flying into the hallway where he had just been before.

He could have been killed as he had planned to put milk bottles outside for the morning and had delayed the task.

He was 59 at the time and was reported in the Daily Mirror saying: ‘The bomb blew out the front door and all the wndows. My wfe was in the dressing room directly above the explosion. Fortunately, the curtains were drawn or she would have been spattered with flying glass. I was on my way upstairs at the time. I was almost blown off my feet.’

My older brother and his friend had walked past the house perhaps only a minute before having returned from playing football in Kensington Gardens. Their route from the 49 bust stop in the King’s Road to Old Church Street meant they had been very fortunate not to have been injured.

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If you are relatives and descendants of any of the people mentioned and cited in this historical account and wish to correct any errors or add any further information, including portraits and photographs, please contact me by way of the comment section.

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The Chelsea Blitz: Chelsea at war between 1939 and 1945 by Tim Crook is coming soon with publication by Kultura Press in 2026.

The book will contain in narrative form all of the postings on Chelsea Blitz history posted and in continuing development in Chelsea History and Studies. Publication is by popular demand from people and online readers wanting to have a book form of this remarkable story of the people’s history of Chelsea during these dramatic years.

It is expected to be the most comprehensive history of Chelsea during the Second World War years to date.

The online postings will remain on open access though with all rights reserved.

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Special thanks to Karen White and Chris Pain whose families lived in Chelsea during World War Two, and Malachy John McCauley, also brought up in Chelsea, who have very kindly encouraged and assisted my research. Special thanks to Marja Giejgo for editorial assistance. Research and archive facilities from Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea Council library services, The Imperial War Museum and National Archives at Kew.

If you would like to protect the history and heritage of Chelsea do consider applying to be a member of The Chelsea Society which ‘was founded in 1927 to protect the interests of all who live and work here, and to preserve and enhance the unique character of Chelsea for the public benefit.‘

I am also a great believer in the importance of local libraries for preserving the memory of community and local history. Royal Kensington and Chelsea Borough Council library services were my refuge and temples of learning when I was brought up in Chelsea. They continue to provide outstanding lending and archive services, have been invaluable in my continuing research and writing about the people of Chelsea. I give tribute to all who work in them, use them and support them.

Congratulations to The Chelsea Citizen, a dynamic new hyper-local newspaper launching in the spring 2025. Founder & Editor Rob McGibbon, Chelsea resident for 30 years and 40 years a respected and campaigning journalist. This is a significant and important development in the history of newspapers and journalism in Chelsea. Whole-hearted support from Chelsea History and Studies. Sign up for the Chelsea Citizen Newsletter.

The research and writing for this project is not funded in any way. If you would like to assist covering the costs involved, do consider making any kind of donation and/or subscribing monthly or yearly using the form below. Many thanks for your consideration.

Please be advised that following subscription if you need to log back in you will need to enter your registered email address, click on login and you will be sent a verification code to that email address. After entering the code you should have access to all the behind paywall pages at kulturapress.com

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