District councillor for Sutton, Mepal, Witcham, and Wentworth (East Cambridgeshire District Council) and county councillor for Coveney, Little Downham, Mepal, Pymoor, Sutton, Wardy Hill, Way Head, Witcham, and Witchford (Cambridgeshire County Council)
At Cambridgeshire County Council today I asked a question of the Chairman of the Fire Authority about what their plan of action will be for Bonfire Night this year. I asked:
“One of the effects of the current pandemic, and the rules about social gatherings, will be that professional or large community fireworks celebrations and bonfires on 5 November will be prohibited. This may well mean many more smaller family firework events being held in people’s gardens. As one of the reasons for encouraging attendance at larger communal events in previous years is that this is safer than large numbers of enthusiastic amateurs handling fireworks, what plans is the Fire Authority putting in place to (a) advise the Cambridgeshire public in the coming weeks, (b) try to minimise the risk of harm to people and property, and (c) liaise with other blue light services in advance of 5 November?”
The response was that the Fire Authority will be discouraging residents from having their own bonfires or firework displays, but will also be publishing some general safety tips, including buying from licensed vendors and remembering the fireworks safety code.
John Kent, second from left, serving with the Carlisle police
October is Black History Month, so every day during October I will be posting up an introduction to an historical person of colour with a place in the history of the United Kingdom.
John Kent (1805-1886) was a British police constable in Carlisle and is reported to be the first black police officer in Britain. He served seven years in this office before being dismissed in 1844. He then became a court bailiff, then a Parish Constable at Longtown.
Until 2006 it was thought that Britain’s first black police officer was Norwell Roberts of the Metropolitan Police, though Astley Lloyd Blair joined Gloucestershire Constabulary as a Special Constable in 1964.
Kent was the eighth child of a seaman who worked on the estate of a colonial civil service worker in the West Indies. Kent’s father is believed to have arrived in Britain at Whitehaven, and worked in service with a family who considered him a slave. He was later given his freedom and went to sea.
As a constable he was known among city residents as Black Kent and this nickname was used by adults to scare unruly children. He had some notable achievements as a constable, but 6 December 1844 Kent arrived for duty while intoxicated – common enough in the days before safe drinking water, but he was disciplined and dismissed. He then became a court bailiff and later a parish constable in Eskdale.
Kent returned to work in Carlisle after leaving the police force. At the age of 78, he was employed as an attendant by the London and North Western Railway Companies, working in the waiting rooms at Citadel station.
Kent died in 1886 in Carlisle, and was buried in Carlisle Cemetery.
More about John Kent at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Kent_(police_officer)
October is Black History Month, so every day during October I will be posting up an introduction to an historical person of colour with a place in the history of the United Kingdom.
Andrew Watson, born in Demerara in British Guiana in 1856, is widely considered to be the world’s first black person to play association football at international level. He played three matches for Scotland between 1881 and 1882.
Watson was the son of a wealthy Scottish sugar planter and a local British Guianese woman. He came to Britain with his father and older sister, and they inherited a substantial amount when their father died in London in 1869.
Watson was educated at Heath Grammar School Halifax and King’s College School Wimbledon. He studied natural philosophy, mathematics and engineering at the University of Glasgow but left after a year and became a partner in Watson, Miller, and Baird, a wholesale warehouse business in Glasgow. He married twice, the second marriage following the death of his first wife. Watson moved to Liverpool and qualified as a marine engineer.
Watson played for a couple of local sides, and was also the first black administrator in football, while also taking part in athletics competitions.
In 1880, he was selected to represent Glasgow against Sheffield, and was also selected for a tour to Canada in 1880 which was cancelled after the death of the secretary of the Scottish Football Association.
In April 1880, he also signed for Queen’s Park, then Britain’s largest football team – he led the team to several Scottish Cup wins, thus becoming the first black player to win a major competition.
In 1882, he moved to London and became the first black player to play in the English Cup; and in 1883 he was the first foreign player to be invited to join the leading amateur club in England, the Corinthians. He also played for other amateur English clubs.
Watson signed for Bootle in 1887, where he was paid professionally. This means his professional career predated that of Arthur Wharton, who was previously considered to be the first black footballer to play professionally.
Watson went on to win three international caps for Scotland before moving to London in 1882, a decision which effectively ended his international career as the SFA only picked players based in Scotland at this time.
Watson retired to London in around 1910 and died of pneumonia at Kew in 1921. He is buried in Richmond Cemetery.
More about Andrew Watson at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Watson_(footballer,_born_1856)
Lilian Bader, corporal in the British armed forces
October is Black History Month, so every day during October I will be posting up an introduction to an historical person of colour with a place in the history of the United Kingdom.
Lilian Bader (1918-2015) was one of the first black women to join the British armed forces. Born in Liverpool to a Barbadian father and a British-born mother, she and her two brothers were orphaned when their father died. At the age of nine she was separated from her brothers and placed in a convent, where she remained until she was 20.
At the start of WWII Bader enlisted in the NAAFI at Catterick, but was dismissed after seven weeks when it was discovered that her father was not born in the United Kingdom. In 1941 she enlisted in the WAAF, trained in instrument repair, became a Leading Aircraft Woman and was eventually promoted to corporal.
In 1943 she married Ramsay Bader, a tank driver in the Artillery, and they had two children together. After the war, they moved to Northamptonshire. Bader studied at London University where she received a Bachelor of Arts degree, and then became a teacher.
More about Lilian Bader at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lilian_Bader
October is Black History Month, so every day during October I will be posting up an introduction to an historical person of colour with a place in the history of the United Kingdom.
George Augustus Polgreen Bridgetower was a virtuoso violinist who, though born in Poland, spent much of his life in England. He so impressed Beethoven that Beethoven originally dedicated his Kreutzer Sonata to him, though it was later dedicated to another violinist Rodolphe Kreutzer.
Bridgetower was born in Poland where his father worked for a Polish nobleman Prince Hieronim Wincenty Radziwiłł. His father, John Frederick Bridgetower, was probably a West Indian and was later a servant of the Hungarian Prince Esterházy, patron of the composer Haydn. George’s mother was from Germany.
Bridgetower moved to London at an early age and was performing as a violin soloist by the age of ten. He gave successful violin concerts in London, Paris, and elsewhere, and the British Prince Regent took an interest in him and oversaw his musical education.
On visiting his mother and brother in Dresden, Bridgetower gave concerts there and later in Vienna where he performed with Beethoven. It was at this time that Beethoven dedicated his sonata to Bridgetower, and they performed it for the first time together in May 1803. Beethoven presented Bridgetower with his tuning fork, now held by the British Library. However Bridgetower and Beethoven fell out, and Beethoven changed the dedication of the new violin sonata to Kreutzer, who never played it, saying that it had already been performed once and was too difficult.
Bridgetower returned to England, where he married and continued his musical career. He was elected to the Royal Society of Musicians, and studied at Trinity Hall, Cambridge where he earned the degree of Bachelor of Music in 1811. He died in Peckham at the age of 71 and is buried in Kensal Green Cemetery.
More about George Bridgetower at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Bridgetower
The following planning applications in the Sutton division have been published by East Cambridgeshire District Council.
20/01155/FUL Little Downham Land east of 21A Cannon Street Little Downham Construction of one four-bedroom detached dwelling with single garage and associated works.
16/00610/AEA Little Downham Site south west of 20 Third Drove Little Downham To extend commencement deadline detailed in Condition 2 of decision dated 15 May 2017 to 1 May 2021 for construction of detached 4 bed dwelling and garage.
Further information can be found on the district council’s planning pages. If you would like to respond formally to the council about any planning application, comments should be addressed to the district council and not to me. Comments may be made
online using the council’s public access web page (the link above);
Pre-Raphaelite artists’ model Fanny Eaton (portrait by Walter Fryers Stocks c 1859)
October is Black History Month, so every day during October I will be posting up an introduction to an historical person of colour with a place in the history of the United Kingdom.
Fanny Eaton was born in Jamaica and became an artists’ model for the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood in the mid-nineteenth century, first in Simeon Solomon’s painting The Mother of Moses, and later in works by Rossetti, Millais, and others.
Fanny Eaton in Simeon Solomon’s The Mother of Moses
Fanny and her mother came to England from Jamaica in the 1840s, where Fanny worked as a servant. She became an artists’ model to add to her wages as a charwoman.
In 1857 she married James Eaton, a horse-cab proprietor and driver, and they had ten children. In the 1880s she had been widowed and was working as a cook on the Isle of Wight. She died in Acton at the age of 89.
More about Fanny Eaton at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fanny_Eaton
Portrait possibly of Francis Barber, attributed either to James Northcote or Sir Joshua Reynolds (1770s)
October is Black History Month, so every day during October I will be posting up an introduction to an historical person of colour with a place in the history of the United Kingdom.
Francis Barber, born a slave on a Jamaican sugar plantation in 1742 or 1743, was the manservant of dictionary-writer Dr Samuel Johnson in London from 1752 until Johnson died over thirty years later.
In later years he had acted as Johnson’s assistant in revising his famous Dictionary of the English Language and other works. Barber was also an important source of information for Johnson’s friend and biographer James Boswell.
At the age of about 15, Barber had been brought to England by his owner, Colonel Richard Bathurst, and was sent to school in Yorkshire. He was then sent to Johnson as a valet, after the death of Johnson’s wife. The legal status of slavery was still unclear at that time, but when Bathurst died in 1754 he gave Barber his freedom in his will, with a small legacy of £12. Johnson himself was an outspoken opponent of slavery, not just in England but also in the colonies.
On being freed, Barber went to work for an apothecary in Cheapside then signed up for the Navy. He was discharged in October 1760, and returned to London and to Johnson to be his servant.
When Johnson died, he left Barber £70 a year (over £9,000 in today’s money) along with Johnson’s books and papers and a gold watch. Johnson wanted Barber to move to Lichfield, where Johnson had been born, which Barber did, opening a draper’s shop and marrying a local woman. He later opened up a small village school.
Barber died in Stafford on 13 January 1801 following an unsuccessful operation at Staffordshire Royal Infirmary. He was survived by his son, Samuel Barber, his daughter, Ann, and his wife, Elizabeth. Samuel became a Methodist lay preacher, while Elizabeth and Ann set up a small school. His descendants still farm near Lichfield.
More about Francis Barber at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_Barber
East Cambridgeshire District Council has adopted two supplementary planning documents (SPDs).
The first SPD sets out East Cambridgeshire District Council’s approach to the natural environment, providing advice on policy requirements including issues such as:
‘net gain’ in biodiversity through development proposals
protection and provision of trees
protection of existing nature sites
supporting the Council’s position in relation to the recently adopted Local Nature Partnership vision to ‘double land for nature’ by 2050 across Cambridgeshire.
The second SPD on Custom and Self-build housing provides guidance to large scale developers who are obliged to meet the Local Plan policy to provide self-build plots (i.e. development consisting of more than 100 dwellings should set aside a minimum five per cent of plots for self-build purposes). The SPD also provides useful advice for individuals, groups or Community Land Trusts (or similar) who may be interested in providing self-build plots. Parishes interested in including self-build plots in their Neighbourhood Plans may also find this SPD useful.
(Note: any person with sufficient interest in the decision to adopt the SPDs may apply to the High Court for permission to apply for judicial review of the decision to adopt the SPDs. Any such application must be made promptly and in any event not later than three months after the date on which the SPD was adopted.)
Princess Sophia Duleep Singh selling The Suffragette newspaper outside Hampton Court in 1910.
October is Black History Month, so every day during October I will be posting up an introduction to an historical person of colour with a place in the history of the United Kingdom.
Princess Sophia Alexandrovna Duleep Singh isn’t everyone’s idea of a typical suffragette. Her father was a maharajah from the Punjab who had been forced to abdicate his kingdom to the East India Company, her mother was of German and Abyssinian descent and brought up by missionaries, her godmother was Queen Victoria, and she lived in Hampton Court.
On returning from a trip to India in 1909, Princess Sophia took up the cause of votes for women, not only in Britain but also in the colonies. In 1910 she accompanied Emmeline Pankhurst and other suffragettes to the House of Commons hoping to speak with the Prime Minister, but they were thrown out and many of them seriously injured.
She raised funds for women’s suffrage, sold The Suffragette newspaper outside Hampton Court, and appeared in court charged with failing to pay licence fees, part of her campaign of withholding taxes as a protest.
During WWI she volunteered as a British Red Cross Voluntary Aid Detachment nurse, serving at an auxiliary military hospital in Isleworth from October 1915 to January 1917, and tended wounded Indian soldiers who had been evacuated from the Western Front.
In 1918 the law was changed to allow women over the age of 30 to vote. Princess Sophia joined the Suffragette Fellowship and remained a member for the rest of her life.
Princess Sophia died in 1948 and was cremated at Golders Green.
