Category Archives: history

40 Elephants

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From the archives, the sixth and last of our month of best history posts

2025 Update – Disney + is about to broadcast a series on the 40 Elephants called ‘A Thousand Blows’ and it premiers on 21 February. We at the Observer like to think that we inspire Disney in a variety of ways and we hope that our story about the Elephants from several years ago gave them the confidence to pursue their project.

Elephant and Castle has always been a haunt of the curious and suspicious type, and in the 19th was the home of several criminal gangs. The most fascinating was an all female crime syndicate who specialised in shoplifting and who existed for over a 100 years, 40 Elephants. A side hustle was blackmail and extortion, as you do.

In the 19th century, the 40 Elephant ladies were able to turn social mores distinctly to their advantage. The same outfits which were designed to conceal a scandalous bare ankle could also be cunningly deployed to conceal frocks, hats and scarves. And as they used their ill-gotten gains to ‘look the part’ in high end joints such as Selfridges, no one really questioned them when they came out of a changing room. They were also able to flout social mores in other ways, by supporting their husbands who were often idling away at home or weren’t quite as clever as the Elephants and ended up in prison. 

Unlike many unruly male gangs, 40 Elephants was a tightly run and neatly organised cell of gangs that operated out of E&C but extended beyond our fair area. Apart from shoplifting, the Elephants undertook daring and ferocious daytime raids which terrified both shopowners and customers. When they were not working clandestinely they would descend en masse on large stores and ransack the place, causing chaos and confusion by entering and leaving through various doors. The Elephants would escape on foot or later by fast cars, and if apprehended wouldn’t think twice about putting up a fight as formidable as any man. 

In the 20th century the most notable ‘Queen’ of the gang was Annie Diamond, below, who was raised in Lambeth Workhouse and was reportedly given the name for a predilection for punching police officers while wearing several diamond rings. She was also known for her ingenuity, for instance the gang never wore the clothes they nicked, but instead bought flashy new threads to minimise detection. While not punching officers, Diamond and her gang threw lavish parties with endless champagne and, in all likelihood, freebies liberated from Harrods. Some would call them entrepreneurs in a time when women had few options, others would call them criminals who frightened people. Either way, 40 Elephants knew how to take care of themselves. 

If you want to find out more about 40 Elephants, a very interesting YouTube clip can be found here. If that hasn’t calmed you down there is even a very posh bar called 40 Elephants in, believe it or not, Great Scotland Yard. 

Kennington’s Lost Tragedy

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From the archives, the fifth of our month of best history posts

We often take for granted living in a society that is peaceful, calm and free of external threat. We’ve all felt vulnerable over the past two years but we also have a great deal to be grateful for. Before we get ensconced in Christmas revelry, we want to share with you a nearly forgotten tragedy that happened in Kennington Park 81 years ago.

At the outbreak of WW2, as now, most of us were vulnerable to events that were beyond our control. To address this, air raid shelters were constructed in Kennington, Vauxhall and Archbishop’s parks for people who were caught in their flats or couldn’t make it into a tube station. In reality these were hastily constructed trenches made of thin concrete slabs. While they were considered ‘bolt holes’ for people caught in the open, often folks had to seek shelter there for upwards of 12 hours. 

At 20:05 on 15 October, 1940 part of the Kennington Park shelter suffered a direct hit from a 50lb. bomb. A survivor from a nearby trench recalls the roof being lifted off followed by an eerie silence. Local rescue workers laboured desperately in what must have been extremely precarious circumstances to recover as many survivors and bodies as possible, but erosion and mud make their task insurmountable. No official death toll was announced at the time but the figure is now believed to be 104 fatalities. 50  bodies were recovered and this remains the official death count. Most of them were buried in Lambeth Cemetery; the remainder still lie, unidentified, beneath the park. 

As you can imagine, the government didn’t want to impact this and other civilian disasters for fear that it would adversely affect wartime morale. In the years following the incident was largely forgotten until researchers began to put the pieces together from scant news reports and by speaking to survivors a few years ago. Today a stone with an inscription by Maya Angelou stands in the park as a poignant and subtle reminder of the tragedy.  So when you next stroll through Kennington Park or have a kickabout,  spare a thought for your fellow, former Kenningtonians and just how much we have to be grateful for today in spite of external threats.

From the aerial shot below of the south field in Kennington Park you can still clearly see the outlines of the former trenches. 

Bert Hardy, Chronicler of Greater Kennington

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From the archives, the fourth of our month of best history posts

Bert Hardy (1913-1995) was a self trained photographer and resident of Elephant and Castle who worked as chief photographer for the Picture Post during a pivotal moment in the history of the UK. Hardy travelled the world photographing wars and current affairs and closer to home covered the D-Day landings and a certain royal wedding. Closer to home ever still, he was commissioned a series of photographs called ‘Life in the Elephant’ over a three week period in 1949 depicting working class life in the Elephant.  

Set amidst a backdrop of bombs and building sites, Hardy captured the backdrop of a seemingly unchanged pattern of life….horse drawn carts, trams, kids playing…juxtaposed against a community that was changing radically. The wintry weather had a great deal to do with the effect of these photos, as did Hardy’s predilection for haze and smog. The photos below are just a snippet of those generated for the Post. We invite you to Google the man and you might just find yourself down your own time consuming but very enriching rabbit hole. Meanwhile enjoy the photos below.

A small boy reads a newspaper at the kitchen table while his mother opens a tin of food at their home in the Elephant and Castle area of London, 8th January 1949. Original publication: Picture Post – 4694 – Life In The Elephant – pub. 1949 (Photo by Bert Hardy/Picture Post/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)

The Forgotten Zoo of Greater Kennington

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From the archives, the third of our month of best history posts

If you find yourself in Pasley Park in Walworth then you’re standing in the grounds of the Royal Surrey Zoological Gardens, London’s first ever public zoo. In 1831 a man named Edward Cross moved his private collection of animals from the Strand to Walworth to create what was a huge public spectacle covering 13 acres. Previous menageries, such as those poor animals on display for a select few at the Tower of London, were fortunately no longer profitable at the time and began to close. 

summer-of-fashion-1844

The Zoo was set in the grounds of Surrey Manor House (the street ‘Manor Place’ being a nod to this) and featured carnivores including lions, bears and baboons contained under a giant 300 foot glass conservatory, which was at the time the largest such structure in England.  A similar massive structure was erected for herbivores. Also featured were moveable aviaries, a three acre lake and a waterfall. While not quite as vast as the newer recruit in Regents Park, the Zoo was nevertheless insanely popular with the public. 

In the early 19th century competition for public diversions was fierce, and our zoo had to counter the attractions of the newly opened zoo in Regents Park and the more libidinal call from our own Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens. The zoo branched out and began to host historical re-enactments, such as the eruption of Mount Vesuvius and the Great Fire of London. These were highlighted by nightly fireworks which must have added an odd element of frivolity to depictions of destruction and ruin. Also added were assorted gardens with hanging plants where people could promenade. Today  this is better known as ‘cruising’.

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Sadly (well, not for the animals),  our own landmark zoo could not compete with two influences. One was the inexorable rise of its aforementioned cousin in Regent’s Park, the other was the general decline in Pleasure Gardens in mid Victorian times, which also saw off Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens. By 1857 (followed two years later by Vauxhall) and after just 26 years the Zoo ran out of money and was sold. It had a few incarnations after that, such as being the first home of St. Thomas’s hospital, but was effectively lost forever.

By the way, Pasley Park is a pint sized, petite and pristine little park and a delightful place to work, walk or wander.  Our team strolled over it on our way to review foodie hotspot Louie Louie  which we’ll be telling you about in a few days, you lucky devils. 

January 2025 update. Louie Louie has joined the giant foodie hall in heaven but there are a range of great and ethnic places to inspect in Walworth Road. 

The Era of the Adventure Playgrounds

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From the archives, the second of our month of best history posts

If you’ve ever had a mosey around the Ethelred Estate and the former Lillian Baylis school site (now luxury flats but don’t get us started) you’ve probably noticed a rather fanciful and fenced off adventure playground. It’s a smaller, updated version of what was a much more sizeable playground on the site, and we’re here as always to tell you of its fascinating history. 

Junk playgrounds took off after WW2 and our offering was located on the site of a bombed school building. Forward thinking folks thought it would be clever to use these fallow sites as areas for kids,  and also wisely substituted ‘junk’ with ‘adventure’  With a little help from the LCC, a determined coterie of Greater Kennington volunteers and children developed the large site mostly by using discarded detritus from the war. The concept was, instead of covering the site in concrete, to create a system of walkways, tunnels, ropes, enormous slides, and old tyres to play in. Included in the new Lollard Adventure Playground were handmade huts for children to undertake crafts when the weather wasn’t so great. The kids even grew vegetables there. 

Now, to our 2023 eyes unsupervised nine year olds playing with giant bonfires and pushing around rusting cars might not be our precise definition of ‘safety’, but it must have been great fun for the kids. The concept at the time was to encourage children to learn by expressing themselves while also learning to avoid risks. This, so the thinking went, would foster confidence and independence. Our adventure playground occupied more or less the entirety of the school site and entertained thousands of local children until, sadly, Lambeth wanted the plot back for a school in the 1960’s. At least it wasn’t for luxury flats.

Due to a lack of funding from Lambeth, the playground was mostly closed in 2013 and since has served as a haunting and eerie relic of its former self, now rather resembling a sad and deserted amusement park from a Scooby Doo* episode. The playground is now run by a noble but underfunded charity and is only open on very specific days for free access play. The mission remains to provide a unique space in which children can enjoy varied and creative play in a homemade space. If you want to learn more they would love to hear from you. 

*If you are too young to know who Scooby Doo is then please ask an elder. 

The Great Stink(pipe) of Kennington

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From the 2020 archives, the first of our month of best history posts

Do you wake up at night thinking ‘will the Runoff EVER do a feature on sewage and foul smells’? Well dear reader, if so your time HAS COME as we’re here to reveal the purpose of that black crowned column in Kennington Cross.

The Victorians gave London many architectural gems; the Houses of Parliament and St. Pancras to name a few. In Kennington they endowed us with probably London’s most attractive example of a  Stinkpipe, and that is what we see in Kennington Cross. If you’re wondering what we’re talking about, the Victorians solved many problems but struggled with sewage for years. This was called The Great Stink of London and resulted in some radical methods to solve it. Stinkpipes were one such concept and were installed around London to divert the smell of poo and their more noxious byproducts. The concept was to elevate the odours from sewers and subterranean rivers above sensitive Victorian noses.

January 2025 update – Fans have also made us aware that this Stinkpipe might have also been used to release fumes from the toilets below. We know you relish such detail.

So while the Great Stink might have been deplorable, it realised great advancements later in the industrial age, such the creation of the Embankment and most recently the mighty Thames Super Sewer. And such is the preoccupation with Stinkpipes that someone with apparently a great deal of time on their hands has mapped them all out.

If you share this interest and also have time on your hands you’ll notice more examples of Stinkpipes in the middle of Vauxhall and in a tiny pocket of Kennington Park, below.

The Last Days of Liz Truss at White Bear Theatre

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When we first saw the title of this new play at the White Bear Theatre, we thought it rather odd as the end of Liz Truss seemed to overlap with the beginning. Nevertheless, we just visited the Bear’s latest offering and we’re here to tell you all about it. If you’ve never been to the White Bear Theatre, it’s been a Greater Kennington staple since the 80’s and focuses on new and cutting edge writing. 

The Last Days of Liz Truss is an origin story told from her own perspective, and beings with a jaunty twirl around her childhood in Scotland and Leeds and her battle to be called ‘Elizabeth’ as opposed to her given name of Mary. A similarity to Thatcher is invoked/contrasted in this period and underlined when Liz/Mary breaks into song with 80’s tunes such as ‘Material Girl’. We then speed through her early parliamentary career as a junior minister as she builds alliances with the likes of Kwasi and Therese Coffey (‘TC’). 

In the second half we encounter the Truss who we all remember, trying to rationalise cutting taxes as the establishment deep state (cunningly deployed by remote voices) urge her against this. Then come the pesky little realities which work mendaciously to tear her apart. For example, the Queen dying and pension plans. It’s not exactly a spoiler alert to tell you what happens to Liz/Mary after just 49 days. However, Liz readily deploys the use of a lettuce held aloft to symbolise her own downfall, in a manner not unlike Hamlet’s skull. Overall it’s a captivating and very well acted monologue with defined moments of dark humour.  

The Last Days of Liz Truss is on now and runs until 14 December at the White Bear Theatre Pub and tickets can be grabbed here.  While the theatre is situated within the White Bear Pub, it is independently owned and not part of the Youngs mega chain.  But the Bear has some lovely Christmas lights.

Local Heroes of Kennington

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This Saturday (5 October) is London Guiding Day, and we’re here to guide you about a fascinating walking tour around Greater Kennington that will be undertaken throughout the day, brought to you by the good folks at Lambeth Tour Guides  

Local Heroes Kennington is our representation for Guiding Day, and reading from the press release ‘The Kennington tour will introduce you to suffragette art students, the son of a slave who rallied the working classes, a Black Prince and a little tramp, ending at Oval with some trailblazing cricketers’. The press release also encourages people to leave the area in order to ‘discover more tours around London’. We don’t encourage this. 

The tour will include notable and notorious denizens of Kennington including Jemina Durning Smith, Charlie Chaplin, the Black Price, and a whole bunch of ancient people on Instagram who we don’t recognise but who must have been very important. We’ve been notorious in Greater Kennington for over a decade now, so it’s curious that no one knocked on the door of our subterranean bunker to interview us. And we, unlike the lot above, even have the distinct advantage of still being alive. But we’ll get over it.  

There will be six identical tours running on the hour and they meet at Kennington Station and can be booked here.  They are free, but these people are professional tour guides and a tip (a fiver will do) will go a long way to expressing your satisfaction. 

Kennington Cross, 1960

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In this fascinating picture from 1960 we can see a woman pushing a pram through Kennington Cross. You can see the gas holders on the right and the lorry is stopped in front of the present day Tommyfield. What is now Marsh and Parsons estate agents on the left was a fruitier (wouldn’t that be nice) and in the middle, what is now Daniel Cobb was Ferguson which sold TV’s. It is also handily the main attraction at the top of this webpage.

On the right you can see a derelict building with the word ‘Puddefoot’ on the side. Puddefoot, Bowers and Simonett advertised itself as selling ‘ivory, tortoiseshell, and horn merchandise’ and had been in Kennington Cross since the end of the 18th century. This hideous link to the past was probably abandoned after being hit by enemy action and by 1965 it was bulldozed and replaced by the slightly less hideous Edinburgh House.

Mark Hanbury Beaufoy, Social Reformer

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At the end of the 19th century, Vauxhall and the Thames foreshore were repositories of things and people which London needed but didn’t really want. Local man and future Kennington MP Mark Hanbury Beaufoy chose to expend his spare hours making life a bit better for the less fortunate people who lived and worked there. 

In 1864 Beaufoy inherited a vinegar factory at 87 South Lambeth Road (now a handy Holiday Inn Express). Vauxhall at the time was full of poor people looking for work and at its height the factory employed 125 folks, mostly from the area. Beaufoy was a supporter of the nationwide campaign to establish an eight hour work day and implemented this in his factory to set an example to the rest of Britain. 

Beaufoy’s family endowed and built the Ragged School in Newport St, Vauxhall, to provide education to destitute children who couldn’t access mainstream education. We wrote about the place in 2021. It closed after only a few decades, and Beaufoy made the decision to replace it with a vocational training school for underprivileged boys. The Beaufoy Institute then opened in Black Prince Road and this delightful, Doulton tiled building lives on as the London Diamond Way Buddhist Centre. The reason the building hasn’t turned into overpriced flats is that in his will Beaufoy stipulated that the building not be used for commercial purposes. And as if being a vinegar magnate, social reformer, and advocate of gun safety wasn’t enough, Beaufoy was also a Liberal MP for Kennington between 1889 and 1895. 

If you’re a map nerd you might have noticed a preponderance of vinegar factories around Victorian London, and this is not because people had a mad passion for chippies. Instead, before refrigeration it was used as preservative for perishable foods.  If you are a map nerd you might have also noticed the volume of very smelly factories (including one making, lord help us ‘essence of beef’) which dominated Vauxhall for many years. s.