It is with real pleasure that we welcome Audrey Dewjee back to the pages of Historycal Roots. Her latest article describes something of the experiences of the 4,000 RAF West Indian airmen who were stationed at Hunmanby Moor in Yorkshire during the Second World War. The subject has been very close to Audrey’s heart for a long time and her article has been a real labour of love which we are delighted to lay before you. Veterans Alford Gardner and Gilbert Clarke (pictured) were among those present at the unveiling of a commemorative plaque in the nearby town of Filey in 2023. You can read Audrey’s article here:
You have to be careful about claiming to have identified the ‘first’ of anything in the past, there is always the chance someone will find an earlier example – wise words that historian Ray Costello shared over a convivial lunch in Liverpool some years ago.
John Ellis is far too canny to fall into that trap but he has identified Flight Sergeant Thomas Smith, a ‘man of colour’ from Barnstaple in Devon, as a founding member of the Royal Air Force when it was formed on 1st April 1918. As a ‘founding member’ you can’t get much more ‘first’ than that, although it is possible, of course, that there were other Black men who joined on the same day.
Perhaps others stories will emerge but, for now, we celebrate Flight Sergeant Thomas Smith. Thomas, who had a Black father, a White mother and an American grandfather, got into the RAF in spite of the provisions of the Royal Air Force (Constitution) Act of 1917 which restricted entry to men of ‘pure European descent’. Thomas was able to get round this manifestation of the institutional racism of the time because he was already serving as a Petty Officer in the Royal Navy Air Service and was able to transfer across into the newly formed RAF.
Thomas came from a humble background. His father, Moses, was a ‘hawker’ (a street trader) and his mother, Elizabeth, the daughter of a mussel gatherer, was also a fish hawker prior to her marriage to Moses. Moses, who undoubtedly faced racism, was no stranger to the Barnstable constabulary and was in the local gaol on more than one occasion. But he was also an eloquent man, well able to speak up for himself. He was also known to box at the local fair and there were occasions when he used his pugilistic skills to defend himself as the need arose.
Thomas had more than one brush with the law himself. In May 1911 he took revenge for an assault on his father by attacking both the father and sister of the culprit. He was serving in the Royal Navy at the time and his Commanding Officer spoke up for him, describing him as ‘a very good character’ and ‘a very good man’.
When war broke out in 1914 Thomas Smith was serving on the battlecruiser HMS Indefatigable and he saw active service in the Dardanelles and North Atlantic. The Indefatigable was sunk at the Battle of Jutland in May 1916 with the loss of almost the entire crew of around 1,000. Fortunately Thomas, following promotion to the rank of Petty Officer, had been transferred to another ship in December 1915 – a lucky escape.
You can learn much more about Thomas Smith, including his ground-breaking time in the RAF, in John Ellis’s latest article for Historycal Roots. It really is a remarkable story:
There is no doubt that many of the West Indian passengers who disembarked from the Empire Windrush on 22nd June 1948 suffered challenges and hardships in the ‘Mother Country’ but there were also a great many acts of kindness that should not be forgotten. None more so than that shown by a church in Balham on the first Sunday after the ship’s arrival in Tilbury.
The Church of Ascension in Malwood Road, Balham in London is situated only a few hundred yards from the Clapham South Deep Shelter where on 27th June 1948 over one hundred West Indian men (they were all men) were about to spend their first Sunday in England after arriving in the country five days earlier.
Reverend Bryn Thomas, the Vicar of the Church of Ascension, awoke that morning thinking about the West Indians temporarily housed in the Deep Shelter far beneath the trains running on the Northern Line. Most of the occupants of the Deep Shelter would have been regular churchgoers in the Caribbean but, over 4,000 miles from home and their local churches, they were faced with what appeared likely to be a pretty miserable day. The weather forecast was for coolish temperatures with the occasional shower. In the England of the 1940s everything closed on a Sunday and of course there was no television and certainly no Sunday football. All that lay in store for the men was a day walking and chatting on Clapham Common and perhaps taking shelter from the showers in the huge marquee that had been specially erected on the Common.
Reverend Thomas had the idea of inviting the men to a party at the Church that evening. He made the short walk to the Shelter and announced that all were welcome.
It seems that Reverend Thomas made this offer before he had secured the support of the congregation as he only announced his plan at the morning service. This created a flurry of activity.
When it was realised that there was insufficient crockery a churchwarden came to the rescue by procuring a bathchair to wheel to nearby St Luke’s Church where he was able to borrow seventy cups and saucers. With the rattling of crockery no doubt disturbing the peaceful Sunday afternoon he trundled back to the Church of Ascension without any reported breakages.
Women members of the church rallied to the cause and baked two hundred cakes in a single afternoon as well as making and cutting a similar number of sandwiches. This amazing achievement is made all the more remarkable and commendable as this was during a period of rationing and, as a Church representative Mr. W H Garland told The Clapham Observer, they had to “scrounge tea and sugar.” No doubt many Church members sacrificed their own allowance in order to entertain their West Indian guests.
It is a sign of the times that newspaper reports assumed the baking and sandwich making was the preserve of the female members of the Church.
Between eighty and one hundred of the men from the Deep Shelter accepted the invitation to the Church.
The event was a tremendous success and was even reported in the national press, the Daily Herald of 28th June gave it the headline “Threw A Party For Men From Jamaica.” Mr. W H Garland said that the West Indians were “charming people; they were churchmen and keen.”
Final word must go to one of the West Indians who, after the evening service and the ‘party’ said he and his compatriots had been given “the time of our lives.”
By mid-July all the West Indians had found work and left the Deep Shelter, the marquee was taken down and Clapham South returned to normality.
However, the links with the Empire Windrush don’t end there. On 23rd February 1952 Lloyd Barrington Jackson – passenger number 704 – married Grethel Christine Webster at the Church of Ascension and the officiating Vicar was Reverend Bryn Thomas.
The scene of Lloyd and Grethel’s nuptials
The Church of Ascension (now known simply as Ascension Balham) has remained a place that welcomes everyone. It is a vibrant community Church (see the link below). If anyone is doing a Windrush-related tour they could do a lot worse than stopping off at the Church for coffee and cake and a very warm welcome while they imagine the evening of 27th June 1948 and that great act of kindness.
In case you think John Ellis has been resting on his laurels since the start of 2023 I am here to disabuse you of that notion, the apparent hiatus in activity stems from my delays in uploading the material he has sent to me. There are three new pages from him that, between them, illustrate the diversity that has long existed in the British Armed forces.
Perhaps the saddest story of the three is that of Charles Girling who was born in St.Domingo in about 1781. Originally colonised by the Spanish in 1496, the island that came to be known as Hispaniola was to be heavily contested by competing colonial powers, with the English and French vying with the Spanish for influence and control of the area before Toussaint L’Ouverture came on the scene.
Charles Girling enlisted in a British regiment, the 20th Light Dragoons, in 1798 when the regiment was in Jamaica. In 1802 the regiment returned to England and Charles Girling went with them. But by 1805 Charles had been admitted to the notorious Bethlem Royal hospital (‘Bedlam’) afflicted by ‘lunacy’ (a diagnosis that could cover a wide variety of issues) and, having been declared ‘incurable’ in May 1806, he spent his remaining time in institutions until he died in 1807. His story is not a happy one but John has done a remarkable job in tracking Charles’ progress through the several institutions responsible for his care.
The stories of William Perera and the Jacotine brothers, Harold and Eric, date from World War One. All three were born in Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) and served in the British Army. Harold Jacotine was killed in action in April 1918 but his brother and William Perera both survived the war and returned to Ceylon. Eric Jacotine would later return to England, settle in London, become a taxi driver and raise a large family.
Now he has stumbled across some remarkable Pathé News footage on You Tube which shows a group of Ceylonese men (Cyril must surely be among them) marching to enlist in London in January 1916. It is black and white (obviously), silent and grainy (and you have to get past the irritating adverts at the beginning) but it gives us a fascinating glimpse of the men John wrote about:
John Ellis’s latest post features a soldier who was born in Mauritius, was conscripted into the British Army in February 1918 whilst working in Paris, saw active service with a Dorset regiment in Flanders and was attacked by a racist mob on the streets of London in April 1919. That shorthand introduction to the story of Robert Bissessur raises an intriguing series of questions but I want to focus here on the last part of the story.
The fact that there were ‘race riots’ (i.e. attacks on black people by racist white mobs) in Britain in 1919 is well documented. David Olusoga[1]Black and British – A Forgotten History is just one of many historians to write about the issue. Olusoga identifies nine cities where violence occurred. The first of the ‘riots’ took place in Glasgow in January, riots followed in South Shields, London (Docklands), Hull, Barry, Newport and Cardiff in south Wales and Liverpool. The riots in Cardiff were arguably the most ferocious (three men died) and those in Liverpool are possibly the best known – a Bermudan sailor, Charles Wootton (or Wootten), was hounded to his death in what Olusoga describes as a lynching. I have never previously seen Edgeware in London mentioned in this context and yet this is where Robert Bissessur and some fellow black soldiers were attacked by a mob.
The incident actually took place in Praed Street which certainly wouldn’t be considered ‘Docklands’ but is quite close to Paddington station and to the Paddington canal basin. Praed Street is little more than a stone’s throw from Cato Street, scene of the 1820 Cato Street conspiracy, on the other side of the Edgeware Road, and only a little north of the site of the infamous Tyburn gallows, so the area is steeped in history. By the 1830s Cato Street was said to be ‘full of the lowest class of Irish’ and when Charles Booth did his poverty survey in the 1890s they were still there.[2]Conspiracy on Cato Street – A tale of liberty and revolution in Regency London by Vic Catrell It is unlikely much had changed by 1919. So, we can safely assume the area would have been rough and ready by the time Charles and his fellow black soldiers visited.
The story of the riot featured in a number of newspapers, one going so far as to describe what transpired as having the hallmarks of an attempted lynching. John’s article includes an extensive quote from the African Telegraph and Gold Coast Mirror‘s 1st April 1919 edition but several other newspapers also carried the story.
John has also sent me newspaper cuttings that refer to an incident in Winchester near to the Army camp where white and black soldiers (like Robert Bissessur) were waiting to be demobbed. Clearly racial tension was widespread in 1919, just how widespread probably merits further discussion, for now, we will leave that for another day.
You can read John’s article about Robert Bissessur here:
In 2021 we published an article by John Ellis about Cyril Adolphus Stuart. Recently, John stumbled across a photo of Cyril and we have added it to the original article. Published in the Daily Mirror in its 8th March 1915 edition, the photo includes the King in the background (mounted, second right) and, in a separate picture, the Queen presenting Cyril with his prize.
The caption under the photo reads “King George, always at home with his soldiers, acted on Saturday as starter in the big military race run at Aldershot, when over 500 soldiers competed. The Queen very graciously presented the prizes. The race was won by Private Stewart [sic], a coloured soldier from Jamaica.”
Within six months Cyril was dead, he died of his wounds on 11th August 1915.
John Ellis has struck a rich vein recently and several new pages have been added to the site. In each case the men were identified as being ‘of colour’ on their official records and John has been able to identify the ships they served on. The men have in common their Caribbean (or Bermudan) heritage and that they served during the War, in some cases almost nothing more is known about them (always frustrating). But, in the past, we have been contacted by descendants of people discussed on this site, it is always gratifying and rewarding when this happens.
John’s recent articles are about:
Samuel Adolphus Clarke;
Edgar Jesse Forbes;
George Alexander Bartholomew Green;
William Edmund Smith; and
Cyril Waite.
Their experiences varied considerably – one died at sea when his ship was sunk, another survived when he was rescued after his ship hit a German mine, he and the three other men survived the War. You can read about them via the index page of this site:
You might expect ‘The Oxford Companion to Black British History’ to be an authoritative source. You might… However, it’s entry for the Empire Windrush has this to say:
‘when the Empire Windrush sailed on 24 May, there were 492 passengers (and six stowaways) on board.’
The only correct part of that is the date she sailed – but only if you ignore the departure from Trinidad on 20th (24th was the date she left Jamaica).
A common myth is that the ‘492’ were all men and all Jamaican. The ‘Companion’ doesn’t fall into that trap, it says that ‘most of the passengers were young adult men’ which is true, ‘most’ were. But it does gloss over the presence of many women (over 250, almost 25% of the passengers), a fair number of children (80) and some family groups.
Let’s be charitable and point out that the ‘Companion’ was first published in 2007, things move on (even history!) and we learn more. We know a lot more now than we did fifteen years ago.
Our latest contribution on the subject talks about some of the families on the Windrush, you can read about them here:
Apologies, we got so carried away with the lovely new photo of Mona Baptiste that this morning’s post contained the wrong link for the separate website about her. This is the correct link: https://mona-baptiste.com/.
Still, it gives an excuse to send you a cropped version of the photo with the full original (incorrect) caption – she was 22!
A passenger on the HMT Empire Windrush is 21-year-old Miss Mona Baptiste from Trinidad. She arrives to sing blue’s numbers on the radio and in night clubs.
Tilbury, 22 June 1948
It is with real pleasure that we welcome Audrey Dewjee back to the pages of Historycal Roots. Her latest article describes something of the experiences of the 4,000 RAF West Indian airmen who were stationed at Hunmanby Moor in Yorkshire during the Second World War. The subject has been very close to Audrey’s heart for a long time and her article has been a real labour of love which we are delighted to lay before you. Veterans Alford Gardner and Gilbert Clarke (pictured) were among those present at the unveiling of a commemorative plaque in the nearby town of Filey in 2023. You can read Audrey’s article here:
