Childhood in Surrey

70 Midmoor Road, Balham

This is the house where Dad was born on 30th April 1919. His father George was a tram driver with London County Council tramways, based at Norwood depot and working on the route from Norbury to Victoria. He had married Daisy Louisa Russell in August 1918 in Croydon. George's first wife Helen had died earlier in 1918 while undergoing an operation in hospital.

Midmoor Road was built around 1905, and was populated by skilled workers, both manual and white collar. Many of the houses were divided into two flats. George and Daisy probably moved there soon after their marriage and were renting a flat in number 70, consisting of three rooms. The location was convenient for the tram routes and several of the houses in Midmoor Road were occupied by LCC tramways drivers and conductors. The previous tenant of the flat in number 70 was a tram conductor. It's possible that some of the houses were owned by the LCC and rented out to their workers.

They stayed in Midmoor Road until Dad was about a year old.

145 Northborough Road, Norbury

In about 1920 the family moved a couple of miles south to Norbury – 145 Northborough Road. Dad lived here for the next six years until he was aged 7. This house was built between 1914 and 1920, so it's possible that they were the first occupants. Again, it was very convenient for the South London tramways which operated between Norbury and London Victoria. Many of the houses in this area were occupied by LCC tramways workers so maybe they were owned by the LCC. This is how the house looks today, with its location shown by the point of the arrow on the map.

This is how it looked in about 1921 with Dad aged about 2 with his Mum. During this period there was still a lot of building work going on, and Northborough Road wasn't yet fully made up so it was very muddy in the winter months. There are several reports in the local paper about the mess and the plans to turn Northborough Road into a main route through the area. But in those days before it was made up it would have been a quiet road with little or no traffic.

Audrey was born here on 22 May 1924, when Dad was 5 years old. He would have started school around this time but I haven't discovered where that was.

I remember Dad saying that he had travelled on the trams as a boy with his father driving. I expect he caught them here at the Norbury terminus which was only a few minutes walk from Northborough Road. 

George went on strike on 4th May 1926 along with tens of thousands of others as part of the National General Strike. There was no public transport for the first few days of the strike. The tram service resumed on Saturday 15th May. This would have been a stressful time considering there was no money coming in for a couple of weeks, and there was the threat that the strikers would lose their jobs. In an earlier strike in 1915 all the strikers were sacked. Fortunately this time the tram workers all resumed work for the LCC when the strike was over.

But in August 1926 Dad's father George was taken into Croydon General hospital after a heart attack. Daisy was in the hospital at his bedside when he died on 26th August, aged 37.  Maybe the stress caused by the General Strike three months earlier was a factor.

George's death left Daisy and the two children with no income, and potentially the loss of their home.

But with the help of her father William Russell, and Thomas Banks, another driver from the LCC tramways who lived nearby, Daisy applied to Spurgeons Stockwell Orphanage for a place for Russell. The application was accepted on 15 Sep 1926, about three weeks after George's death, but there was a delay of about six months before Russell was able to enter Spurgeons. For that six month period he was placed temporarily into the care of the poor law union, in the Shirley Cottage Homes.

The Shirley Schools cottage homes were built in 1903 by the Bermondsey St Olave Workhouse Union, as homes for orphaned and destitute children who would otherwise have gone in to the workhouse. There were 38 children's homes on an 80 acre site. Each home or cottage housed around 20 children headed up by a matron who acted as a mother. Dad stayed here from about September 1926 until he entered Spurgeons on 25 Apr 1927.

Stockwell Orphanage (Spurgeon's)

The Stockwell Orphanage was founded in 1867 by Charles Haddon Spurgeon, a baptist preacher. It provided a home and education for fatherless children. At its peak the orphanage was looking after 250 boys and 250 girls. It was organised into houses of 20 to 30 children, each house with it's own matron.

This picture of Dad with his Mum could well have been taken on the day that he entered Spurgeon's, 25 April 1927. He lived here until 27 July 1933. There follows a selection of images of Spurgeon's many of which were taken in 1929 when Dad was there.