The Dulwich Society Journal for Autumn 2013.
The Trees Committee has produced an updated map of significant Dulwich trees which reflects in greater detail the wide variety of species to found in the Picture Gallery Garden and Dulwich Park. Specimen street trees elsewhere are also included and a new addition is the Silk Tree which can be seen in the middle of the Village in front of the Crown & Greyhound.
Award winning botanical artist and Dulwich Society member, Rosemary Lindsay has again produced the artwork for the map. She trained first in architecture at Kingston Art College and worked at several architectural practices before her fascination with the structure of plants led to freelance plant illustration. She is a member off the Society of Botanical Artists and as a Fellow of the Florilegium Society of the Chelsea Physic Garden she regularly contributes paintings to the CPG archive.
A complimentary copy of this map is enclosed with this issue of the Journal as a 50th anniversary souvenir from the Society. Further copies are available either flat in a tube or folded.
A tree to look out for this autumn is the Sweet Gum, a tree rarely seen 20 years ago but now widely planted both as a street tree and as an ornamental, largely due to its reliable truly splendid autumn colour, the leaves turning a rich variety of orange, red, browns and purple before they fall, often all varied on the same tree. Mostly quite small because recently planted, they can be seen as street trees in Herne Hill and Burbage Road, and there is a pleasing row on the left as you go into Dulwich Picture Gallery Garden from Gallery Road.
In Dulwich Park there are two very large specimens beside the Lake with huge leaves almost as large as those of Chestnuts, though not divided to the base as separate leaflets. One of these trees is actually labelled and gives opportunity to appreciate the deeply fissured bark – a characteristic not yet developed on the younger trees.
The leaves unfold in May and are rich shiny green looking like a pointy leaved maple but always alternately placed on the twig, not, as in maples, in opposite pairs. The male and female flowers are not very striking and can usually be found on the same tree and the little brown furry nut-like fruit are very decorative.
The Sweet Gum’s resin is known as STORAX and is used in soap making and perfumery; the timber, known as Satin Walnut, is used for fine cabinet making and inlay work
The tree comes from the South Eastern coast of The United States and was introduced by John Banister He was a missionary and botanist in Virginia, employed by Henry Compton, Bishop of London from 1675-1713 who made the gardens of Fulham Palace, famous for the exotic trees and plants he assembled there. John Banister also sent the first Magnolia (Magnolia virginiana) to be cultivated here, the Scarlet oak,(found in Court Lane Gardens and College Road), and the Honey Locust (Gleditsia triacanthos), being used as a striking street tree in Idmiston Road where its amazingly long flat pods litter the ground every autumn.
I do not know how successful his missionary work proved to be, but we owe much in our landscape to his work as a collector.
Belinda Hindley
Trees Committee
On holiday from Dr. Glennie’s Academy in 1819, at the age of 36, Prout first travelled to Normandy and up the Seine (fig. 1). Of his pictures shown at the Society of Painters in Water-Colours in Bond Street in 1820, Rouen with its many old buildings was the richest of his subjects. From 1821 he sketched in Belgium, the Netherlands and on the Rhine, in Saxony, Bavaria and Bohemia, and in 1822 all thirteen of the continental views he showed at the Society sold on the first day. From 1824 onwards he toured Italy, and his Venetian views made a real éclat. The Illustrations of the Rhine, Drawn from Nature and on Stone, published by Ackermann in 1824, show rather weak work in mountain, sky and the stern castles, but much charm in more myopic focus with the architecture – elaborate tracery, pillars, arches and crockets, towers and turrets, timber frames – and figures in the foregrounds with unfamiliar regional costumes and accoutrements. After 1822 his continental views were so successful that he was to exhibit very few further English or marine views, and by the 1830s he could be said to be one of the most celebrated half-dozen water-colour artists. In 1829, the year before George IV died, he was appointed ‘Painter in Water Colours in Ordinary to his Majesty’, a position renewed by William IV and by Victoria and Albert; there are six Prouts in the Royal Collection.
Prout was acquainted with the consumptive wunderkind Richard Parkes Bonington, sketched alongside him at St Omer in Normandy, and encouraged him to visit Venice, but in his own work he essentially never abandoned the topographical picturesque antiquarian conventions of his youth, repeating old subjects and formulaic compositions. In Sketches at Home and Abroad (1844) he eloquently defends the appeal of old buildings to artists (e.g., fig. 2), and uses terms about contemplating them rather like Wordsworth’s when he was writing about the moral influence of Nature:
‘Architecture is, indeed, the work of man’s hand, but adorned by the hand of time, and is frequently associated, in perfect harmony, with the loveliest scenery. It claims not the glories of the vast creation, its infinite variety, and ever changing beauties, but the lofty ivied arch, “the long drawn aisle”, the silent desecrated cloister, are venerated relics of by-gone days, hallowed remembrances sacred to the heart, and lovely to the eye; they are landmarks of the inheritance of our forefathers; every stone, to a reflective mind, awakens thoughts which ennoble and instruct, impressing the soul with lofty feelings. They are temples, beautiful in death, and well suited for the devotion of an enthusiastic artist.’
However, seen among his contemporaries, he lacks the range, the inspiration, the originality and fluidity of Turner, Cotman or Bonington and their ambitious atmospheric effects. His wooden figures decorate rather than animate the streets in their picturesque costumes; too often perhaps they are seen from the back, and often (this is particularly true of the lithographs) four little dots make them a face (fig. 3). In his later years Prout fell from fashion and suffered financial hardship; critics were to call him ‘somewhat meretricious’.
When he was teaching at Dr. Glennie’s, Prout also had as many as thirty private pupils: in Greenwich, Wandsworth, Lambeth and Clapham; and also across the river in the City, St James’s, Whitehall and Grosvenor Square. He held a drawing class on Blackheath. Under his influence one of Dr. Glennie’s sons became an artist and another a travel writer. A letter from Prout to Arthur Glennie of 1829 apparently discourages him from being an artist rather than following a more conventional career: ‘go on aspire – fag and perspire to much fame – and yet, what is it? Mutton and beef is better’. Early in his career Prout was friendly with important patrons in South London with a good eye for quality in water-colours: not only the Ruskins, father and son, but John Allnutt, a sophisticated wine merchant with a large house on the south side of Clapham Common and a collector of Turner and Constable, and Thomas Griffith (1839-1861), J. M. W. Turner’s agent, who bought Prout’s work. Prout was to be buried in Norwood Cemetery, below a commonplace headstone. Last year (with a friend from the Turner Society) my wife and I explored the cemetery looking for Thomas Griffith’s grave, and cut away the ivy that had totally obliterated its striking stone cross. It was on Griffith’s ample lawn in Lower Norwood in 1840 that the young John Ruskin met his hero Turner for the first time.
Ruskin also enormously admired Prout; his early imitations of Prout’s water-colours, as he acknowledged, influenced his own style. He often wrote about him, first in Modern Painters of 1843 (seq.), and then in an anonymous monograph full of praise in the Art Journal in 1849. Much later, after Prout’s death in 1879 he organised a Fine Arts Society exhibition of his work together with that of William Henry Hunt, publishing an eloquent essay about them in the catalogue. Ruskin and his artist friends coined the words Proutism and Proutise; he described Prout’s version of the picturesque as the ‘nobler’ type, and associated him with calm, quietness, honesty, and gaiety. He used a characteristically strange metaphor for his work in comparing him with Turner: ‘He reflected the scene like some rough old Etruscan mirror – jagged, broken, blurred, if you will, but It, the thing itself still; while Turner gives it, and himself too, and ever so much of fairyland besides’. Ruskin noted his weakness in colour, saying his works were still ‘tinted drawings ‘ as the artists made before Turner and Girtin showed how to do better than that, and declared there was ‘more of Vandyke brown than darkness in the shadows of his Venetian scenes’. Just like Turner, said Ruskin, Prout could draw the poor but not the rich.
Prout himself published eighteen really delightful manuals for painting in water-colours, such as Rudiments of Landscape in Progressive Studies (Ackermann, 1813) and Hints of Light and Shadow (Ackermann, 1838), with illustrations in soft-ground etching, hand-coloured aquatint, and (later) in lithography. He recommends the use of coarse wove paper, and advises about composition, colours (warm and cold), and foreground staffage (recommending stones and the large-leaved plant burdock, which Turner loved). Like a good print-maker Prout thought hard and long about chiaroscuro; the same principle is at work in the great black and white photographers, like Ansel Adams, who favour ‘contrast’. In Sketches at Home and Abroad of 1844 he quoted an axiom of Ruskin’s from a passage on Turner in Modern Painters (Vol. I, II, ii, 2; excised, incidentally, by Ruskin in the 5th edition of 1851 and afterwards): ‘a good artist paints in colour, but thinks in light and shadow’. Prout adds that ‘Nothing shows more the right feeling of an artist than in disposing the separate masses, of full radiance and vapoury gloom’. The image reproduced here (fig. 4), the lithographic Plate VII of Prout’s Hints on Light and Shade of 1838, drawn on the stone by himself, is an example of his principle of carrying dark into light and vice versa. In the corresponding letter-press he explains how ‘in the accompanying Venetian subject the light enters from the building on the left, and conducted by an awning to the craft and figures, and again by drapery, falls into the full mass of sunshine’. When discussing composition he often uses the idea of ‘leading the eye’; indeed he wrote, ‘The eye should never rest’…
In his latter years at De Crespigny Terrace Prout was a member of the (older ?) Ruskins’ circle. On a Sunday in February 1852, the day after Prout attended the birthday dinner for their son (who was that year actually absent in Venice), and which was traditionally attended by great painters whom they patronised, the parents wrote to Ruskin that they had heard at church how Prout on returning home in apparent great good spirits, ascended to his painting room and died of an apoplectic fit.
Giles Coppice now occupies the former sites of seven large Victorian houses built in the early 1860s, Nos 10-20 (even) Dulwich Wood Park and No 6 Kingswood Drive. The first mention of development on the site was in July 1960 when, at a board meeting, the Estate Governors asked Russell Vernon, the Estate Architect, to look at a scheme for converting Nos 14 and 16 into flats. He reported that the houses were in such bad condition that they should be demolished and that, instead, he had prepared a plan for 24 new houses, all accessed from Dulwich Wood Park via a new road. He added that the site was a gently sloping one and that he thought that it was more suitable for houses than flats. The Governors agreed but suggested that the scheme be expanded to include the sites of Nos 18 and 20, whose leases were about to fall in.
Russell Vernon was back in December with a revised plan for all four sites. A crescent shaped road, starting almost opposite Farquhar Road, served 27 two and three storey houses, in a staggered layout to break up the rooflines and the general massing. He reported that the development was designed to be phased and that 14 houses could be built immediately on the sites of Nos 14 and 16 if required.
During the next three years, while the Estate waited for the leases on Nos 18 and 20 to revert, there was no obvious progress. However, late in 1963 the Estate Manager persuaded Wates that there was a development opportunity there if they bought in the leases and in February 1964 Russell Vernon was able to report that this had been arranged. Wates had also rehoused the tenant in No 20, thus freeing up a much larger site for a single phase development. His revised scheme also included the vacant site at 6 Kingswood Drive and provided 28 three bedroom and 14 four bedroom houses. He had also now had the Council’s agreement to access the site from two points, Kingswood Drive as well as Dulwich Wood Park, and the layout showed a small series of closes off the main access road with a form of ‘courtyard’ house instead of the detached and semi-detached houses proposed previously - probably similar in concept to the later scheme built in Pymers Mead off Croxted Road. The Governors instructed the Manager to continue negotiations with Wates with a view to sorting out a building agreement and moving forward.
In March Russell Vernon confirmed that, following a meeting with both the LCC and Camberwell Council, he had been advised that the proposed Dulwich Wood Park dual carriageway would mean that site access from Dulwich Wood Park would not now be permitted. The LCC had suggested that, if a second access was required, the best option would be from the end of Hitherwood Drive through the small area of private woodland. The Governors were not happy with this and instructed Russell Vernon to give the scheme more thought. In April an amended layout accessed the houses from a looped cul de sac off Kingswood Drive - Camberwell were apparently happy with it but stipulated that the road could not provide access to any future development at the adjacent site, Nos 2-8 Dulwich Wood Park.
In November it was reported that 32 units had been agreed in principle and Wates made a formal offer for the site in March 1965 – agreeing to complete the development within three years from ‘Lady Day’ (25th March) 1965. The agreed scheme, however, was very different from the previous ‘courtyard’ house layout. Following the success of the Peckarmans Wood development on Crescent Wood Drive the architects had decided that terrace houses were a more economical option, given the slope of the land, and produced a simpler plan with three rows of terrace houses with a minimum amount of roadway. In his presentation to the Governors Russell Vernon noted that the revised plan would cut down the amount of roadway necessary for detached or semi-detached houses while, at the same time, giving more open space for amenity areas for the residents. The scheme now provided 36 houses, each with a garage, in six groups, giving a density of 53 persons to the acre. The ground rents would be £45, £50 and £60 for each of the three different types of houses and Wates confirmed that the costs were viable. Later in the month a detailed planning application was submitted to the Council.
In June, everything came to a stop. Southwark Council (Camberwell Borough Council was subsumed into Southwark in January 1965) decided to compulsory purchase the site, along with several others, to build council housing. The Governors were frustrated and annoyed and agreed to oppose the order when it was served. Southwark sent a formal letter early in September asking the Governors if they would sell the land voluntarily, but they refused and the compulsory purchase notice was served on the 15th. In November the Council refused the planning application on the grounds that “the site constituters the greater part of an area which the Council is proposing to acquire compulsorily for housing purposes and the development proposed would prevent the implementation of the Council’s scheme”
It was clear to the Estate, however, that some compromise would have to be reached and, over the next year, they offered the Council a large number of older houses in Burbage, Winterbrook and Stradella Roads instead – houses that they could not sell because of short leases. They agreed to give the Council new 40 year leases and permission to convert each house into two flats. The Council accepted and the compulsory purchase order was withdrawn in May 1967.
Shortly afterwards working drawings were ready for the type A houses – the ‘upside down’ houses on the front of the site nearest Dulwich Wood Park. Three months later the drawings for the types B & C houses were also ready – with a flat roof on the type B and pitched roofs on the type C at the rear. By then, the Estate Governors were on record as being unhappy with flat roofs in principle and we must assume that Russell Vernon was at his persuasive best at the meeting. He noted that there had been a few minor internal changes to the planning on the type B while the inclusion of the Type C’s garage under the rows of type B houses meant that the Type C had been redesigned. The ground floor now had a study, cloakroom, hall, bedroom and bathroom, while the first floor had a living room, dining room and kitchen, with three beds and a bathroom above. The final amendment was made on the type C houses when the end three were been turned 90 degrees to face the approach road rather than to present a blank flank wall to it.
Work started in the Autumn and in December Russell Vernon suggested that the new road should be called Giles Coppice which was, as he noted, one of the names previously used by the Governors – all new estate road names had to be related to the Estate’s history.
In February 1968 Wates secured a two year extension to their building agreement because of the initial delay caused by Southwark and the compulsory purchase, and they were given until March 1970 to complete the development. Last but not least, in September the Governors agreed to Wates’ request to allow residents of the new development, and the Hitherwood Drive houses, access to the area of woodland between them.
Alexander Thomas Glenny was born in Camberwell on 18th September 1882, the youngest of six children born to Thomas Armstrong Glenny, a stockbroker's clerk from Co Sligo in Ireland, and Elizabeth Foreman. Glenny was brought up in the Plymouth Brethren tradition and later attributed his diffidence and shyness to its strict code. He was one of the first LCC scholarship boys at Alleyn's School where he excelled by winning the school prize for mathematics. He gained a scholarship to University College, London and intended to become an actuary but fate intervened. Dr Baker, at that time a chemistry master at Dulwich College but later Headmaster of Alleyn’s, had a connection to the Wellcome Physiological Research Laboratories (WPRL) which had moved to Brockwell Hall, Herne Hill in 1899.
The Laboratories’ Director, Dr Walter Dowson, asked Dr Baker to recommend two boys as laboratory assistants, on the understanding that they would have the opportunity to study for a science degree. Dr Baker was clearly influential at Alleyn’s School as well as Dulwich College and thus Glenny was chosen as one of the technicians, going to work for Dr Dowson in the Bacteriological Laboratory in 1899. Taking a job at Wellcome was a risky move at the time. It meant giving up his place at University College to work in a field which was still considered by the scientific establishment with some scepticism, especially, as in the case of Wellcome, where the work was being funded by a business.
At this time Glenny was still living with his parents in Rosendale Road together with his brother, a brilliant civil servant at the Board of Trade, his sister, a school teacher, and their maid of all work, Annie. He kept up a strong connection to his old school, continuing to play football as an Old Boy and acting as scorer for the Alleyn’s cricket team for many years. In 1900 while working as a lab technician, Glenny began studying mathematics and physics at Chelsea Polytechnic, graduating in 1905 with an external BSc in Science from London University. He also studied botany and zoology at Chelsea Polytechnic.
At Wellcome, Glenny was involved in producing anti-toxin sera used to fight diphtheria, a deadly disease at the time. Research had shown that people could be immunised against diphtheria with a therapeutic serum prepared in horses but it was difficult to produce the serum in large quantities and to a high standard of purity.
An early realisation that animal experimentation was essential for work in the bacteriological lab led Wellcome to apply for registration under the 1876 Cruelty to Animals Act. It took a while and the discussions went as far as government level but in 1909 Wellcome became the first commercial lab to achieve registration, a status which had previously been awarded only to universities or medical establishments and this was where Glenny worked for the rest of his career.
Glenny’s methodical organisation skills, capacity for absorbing data, and ability to calculate probabilities almost instantaneously, made his department highly effective. He quickly made changes in the system for routine inoculation of the horses with diphtheria toxin which would yield a vast improvement in results. In 1906 he was promoted to head of the immunology department.
On 7th July 1910 he married Emma Blanche Lillian Gibbs at Wandsworth Registry Office; Emma was born in Southwark in 1886 and was the daughter of a licensed victualler. After his marriage Glenny joined the Church of England and later became a member of his Church Council. The Glennys set up home in Streatham and had three children: John was born in 1913, Peter followed in 1915 and Barbara in 1918.
In 1921 the Laboratories moved from Herne Hill to Langley Park in Beckenham and Glenny’s organisation of the move was considered legendary in the company for years after, both for the systematic arrangement of the vast amount of documents and materials used by the lab which needed to be transported safely and for the fact that not a single item was mislaid during the move. Once settled in Langley Park, he continued his commercial work while also pursuing his own research interests. Henry Wellcome encouraged his scientists to follow a broad scientific agenda as well as their commercial responsibilities. This gave the company scientific credibility as it ensured the name of Wellcome appeared regularly in articles in the medical and scientific literature. At the time it was important for commercial companies to show academic rigour as the quality and independence of their research was often brought into question. It was considered that if scientists must follow a new and unfamiliar field such as medical research, the only fitting place would be within the remit of a teaching post in a medical school, certainly not in a commercial concern.
Glenny’s fundamental research was related to the timing of antibody production and his work on responses in immunised animals was one of his most outstanding contributions to medical research. Through experiments on guinea pigs, rabbits, goats, sheep, horses, and humans, Glenny and his colleagues worked out the basis for the timing schedules of immunisation, both of people and of animals, which are still used today. Another discovery was that diphtheria toxin, detoxified by formalin treatment, retained its ability to induce antidotes when injected into animals. Glenny was able to inject massive doses of the toxin into horses which in turn produced massive quantities of the antidote, thus enabling mass immunisation to become possible. Glenny also increased the effectiveness of diphtheria toxoid by treating it with aluminum salts. He was the first to propose immunising healthy children with anti-diphtheria serum rather than waiting for the disease to take hold and went on to develop the standard vaccine, now used worldwide All these discoveries were important contributions to medical advancement and laid the foundations for new immunisation procedures and products for both humans and animals.
Demand for the company’s products had increased hugely during World War One and by 1939, when war broke out again, Glenny and his team were successfully meeting even greater demands, particularly for tetanus and gas-gangrene antitoxins. The lab also needed to produce vast supplies for the mass diphtheria immunisation campaign launched in 1940, as well as the immunisation of the British armed forces in 1941. It was the lab’s proud boast that ‘every customer got his material on or before the promised date’ even during the war. There was sadness in his private life at this time, however, as his son, Peter, who was a 2nd Lieutenant in the Royal Artillery, died in 1940. A dispatch rider at an airfield, Peter Glenny was sent from a control tower during the blackout to collect a delayed message. In the dark he collided head-on with a messenger from the opposite control tower who was delivering the lost message and was killed.
Glenny was not considered an easy man to get on with, either on a personal or a professional basis. He did not suffer fools gladly, particularly those with no head for figures. He was willing to help junior colleagues but his help came with strident criticism of both their ideas and their methods and he inspired gratitude rather than affection in his team. He never praised anyone, saying it was the worse of insults to praise anyone for doing a good job as it was the least they could do. It may have been his extreme shyness (caused, he thought, by his early upbringing according to Plymouth Brethren principles) which triggered his rather caustic comments. His family, however, saw a different side. His wife very much ruled the roost at home and he was affectionately known as ‘Pop’. To his grandson he seemed ‘a slightly other-worldly, friendly figure’, who taught him Latin tags and inspired him to follow a career in mathematics.
It has been suggested that Glenny did not consider he received the acclaim his outstanding contributions deserved, partly due to working in a commercial concern and partly due to not having a medical background. If he was under-recognised it could also have been because his articles were opaque in their density, sometimes badly written and often delivered some time after the work described within them had been undertaken. In fact he sometimes sparked arguments with associates outside Wellcome over his lack of credit for work which it was later discovered he had not yet published. Public recognition came towards the end of his career and Glenny was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1944. In 1953 he was awarded both the Edward Jenner Medal for ‘distinguished work in epidemiological research’ and also the Addingham Gold Medal for ‘making the most valuable discovery for relieving pains and suffering in humanity’.
Sir Henry Dale, who replaced Dowson as Director of the Laboratories, said of Glenny, “I had formed a general respect for his quiet competence ... He was responsible for everything that was necessary… I had splendid co-operation from him, and we enjoyed working together”. Having spent the whole of his career at Wellcome, Glenny retired in 1947 after 48 years’ service. For the next thirteen years he continued to write up his large volume of unpublished research. His last paper was published in 1955 when he was 73.
When, in 1892, the distinguished architect Alfred Waterhouse wrote to ‘The Times’ to protest at the vulgarity and volume of advertising posters, murals, sky-signs and other devices which were defacing the appearance of London he received wide support. Often led by soap manufacturers attempting to dominate the new mass market created by a large and emergent lower class made up of office workers, the advertisers took advantage of new technology to develop overlarge advertising signs.
The catalyst for the protest was the hanging sign containing 10’ high lettering advertising Messrs Hudson’s soap at their office on Ludgate Hill, marring the view of St Paul’s Cathedral. Before action was taken by the London County Council, twelve other advertisers planned to also put up huge sky-signs on Ludgate Hill.
Patent medicine companies approached their advertising in a different manner, but by also taking advantage of changes in technology, in their case, developments in colour lithographic printing. Among the leaders in this field was Messrs Eno and Company, whose founder, James Crossley Eno had invented and marketed his famous fruit salts. Eno, who lived in grand style in Dulwich at his mansion, Woodhall in College Road, also penned the extravagant claims for his product to accompany the flamboyant coloured advertisements which appeared in the pages of a proliferating number of magazines and newspapers. According to James Eno, his Fruit Salts were a cure for biliousness, feverishness, sleeplessness, headaches and ‘sudden changes in the weather’.
Another company which cashed in on the mass market for health products was the Carbolic Smoke Ball Company, and it was this company’s advertising claim which brought two more Dulwich residents to such prominence in the 1890’s. In 1889-1890 a flu pandemic (estimated to have killed a million people) had caused great alarm. Seizing the opportunity to turn the panic into profit The Carbolic Smoke Ball Company marketed a product it called the ‘smoke ball’ which it claimed was a cure for influenza and a number of other diseases. The device was a rubber ball with a tube attached. It was filled with carbolic acid (or phenol) and the tube was inserted in the user’s nose and squeezed at the bottom to release the vapours. The nose would run, ostensibly flushing out viral infections.
The company advertised their product widely and in an advertisement in the Pall Mall Gazette in November 1891 offered a reward of £100 to any person who contracted influenza after having used the ball three times daily for two weeks according to the directions supplied with each ball. They announced that to show their sincerity the sum of £1000 had been deposited with the Alliance Bank, Regent Street It was stated that one carbolic smoke ball would last a family several months, making it the cheapest remedy in the world and was offered at 10/- post free. It could be refilled for 5/- at the company’s offices at Hanover Square, London.
Mrs Louisa Elizabeth Carlill of 30 Park Road, West Dulwich (now Park Hall Road) saw the advertisement in the Pall Mall Gazette and was persuaded to purchase one of the balls and used it three times daily for nearly two months until she contacted influenza in January 1892. and promptly claimed the £100 from the Carbolic Smoke Ball Company. It is perhaps no coincidence that her husband, James B. Carlill was a solicitor and after her initial claim was ignored, he fired off two more letters to the company on her behalf. On a third request for her reward, the company replied with an anonymous letter that if the device had been used properly it had complete confidence in its efficacy but “to protect themselves against all fraudulent claims” they would need her to come to the office and use the ball each day and be checked by a secretary.
Not surprisingly, Mrs Carlill, prompted no doubt by her solicitor-husband brought a claim to court.
In the action The Carbolic Smoke Ball Company was represented by Mr Herman Loehnis, of Toksowa, Dulwich Common (now the site of Hambledon Place), so it was a very Dulwich affair in court. He assisted H H Asquith, the future Prime Minister for the defendants. However, this distinguished team was no match for Mrs Carlill and she won her case. The company appealed straight away and the Court of Appeal unanimously rejected the company’s arguments and held there was a fully binding contract for £100 with Mrs Carlill including offer and acceptance, consideration and an intention to create legal relations.
The case became one of the most celebrated examples of contract law and is often the first legal case a law student studies.
Dulwich Helpline and Southwark Churches Care: twenty years serving older people in the local community
2013 marks the 20th anniversary of the founding of Dulwich Helpline and Southwark Churches Care (DH&SCC) as separate charities to serve older people in neighbouring parts of Southwark. This is an anniversary that we will celebrate proudly as a single organisation following our amalgamation in 2012.
The core activity remains recruiting, training and supporting volunteers to befriend isolated and vulnerable older people living in the community so that their quality of life and ability to live sustainably in and as part of the community is enhanced. Our work is underpinned by key values of respect and care for the dignity of older people and mutual support within the community.
The organisations' founders, some of whom are still actively involved, started in 1993 from the view point that the then newly implemented Community Care Act would ensure that people could have services to meet their care needs at home, but that these services could never hope to combat the loneliness and social isolation which older people experience when they are no longer able to go out or organise a social life for themselves.
Their vision for a service which was entirely voluntary has developed over the years so that there are now two full-time and five part-time staff who co-ordinate our services to over 500 older people living mainly in the middle and south of Southwark. However the face to face work is undertaken by volunteers – nearly 400 in the last year - and they are involved in all areas of the charities’ life as one to one befrienders, small group leaders, drivers, cake bakers, gardeners, and helpers in the office or at fundraising events. The time they give varies from a regular weekly commitment to occasional help at events. This activity is satisfying and enjoyable and creates a sense of community amongst all those involved.
DH&SCC counters loneliness and isolation by offering befriending, a variety of social groups and also small amounts of help in the house and garden. We also help people to access the social groups by offering them lifts with volunteer drivers. All this enables older people to enjoy social activities and make new friends. We have also very successfully involved senior school students from local schools in discussion and activity groups with older people which have proved a great source of mutual education and enjoyment.
The services DH&SCC offer are vital at a time when statutory services are increasingly constrained by lack of funding. There is a growing body of evidence that having an active social life well into the extremes of old age is very beneficial in terms of mood and the promotion of feelings of wellbeing. It seems to balance the inevitable losses and make life more enjoyable.
Southwark Council and the local NHS recognise the value of preventative services such as ours and we continue to receive grant support from them. Importantly we know this funding is secure for the next financial year and we are extremely grateful for this support. However, it only meets around 40% of our funding requirements. This funding is supplemented by the very generous support of local organisations, businesses and individuals both at our fundraising events and through regular donations.
In addition DH&SCC have just been awarded funding over three years from The City of London Corporation’s charity, City Bridge Trust, to establish a project supporting people with dementia and their carers. We are very pleased to be able to start this new work and it feels entirely appropriate that as the charity comes of age we will be looking forward to supporting older people in new and creative ways.
For more information about our services, volunteering or to donate please visit our website www.dulwich-helpline.org.uk or telephone 020 8299 2623.
Does Japanese Knotweed affect the value of your property and jeopardise a straightforward mortgage offer? The short answer seems to be, yes. And yes, the plant has been found in the Dulwich Area.
Extensive coverage has been given to the effects of Japanese Knotweed on house values and mortgage problems by the media including the Telegraph on 10 July 2013, the Guardian on 8 September 2012 and 9 June 2013, and the Daily Mail on line on 20 July 2013. Those articles and other recent publications refer to the tenacious and deleterious aspects of the plant and the negative consequential issues.
What is the problem? Japanese Knotweed ( Fallopia japonica ) is a rampant perennial plant described as the ‘most invasive species of plant in Britain’ by the Environment Agency. It would not be an issue if its strong invasive root system, which can extend 3 metres deep and 7 metres horizontally, did not have the ability to damage drains, concrete foundations and brickwork, while above ground the plant’s strong growth forces its way through tarmac surfaces and paving.
It is these invasive and destructive aspects that mortgage lenders have picked up on. A survey report identifying the plant as being on the property will have a direct effect on a mortgage offer. However, there are moves by the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors to have conditions attached to a mortgage for a recognised treatment regime.
There is legislation, regarding Japanese Knotweed, in the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981, which makes it an offence to, ”plant or otherwise cause to grow in the wild”, while it is not an offence to find the plant growing in your garden. However, by failing to eradicate it or control it from extending into your neighbours’ gardens it would constitute a private nuisance under common law. That neighbour could apply to the courts for an injunction for the nuisance to be stopped, and claim damages against loss of value of the property and the costs of its removal and any remedial building works. Concealing the existence of the plant on a property before a sale could lead to a claim too.
How to deal with the plant? It is not a simple matter of cutting it down or digging it out to remove it. Digging it out is reported as being ineffective as anything left behind will sprout very vigorously. Under the Environmental Protection Act 1990, Japanese Knotweed is classified as a “controlled waste” requiring it to be disposed of by a licensed waste control operator. Just putting into a composter is not right, at all!
And the solution is? The most effective treatment is reported as being with strong herbicides, like Glyphosate, at appropriate times of the year, such as on re-growth. Even with this approach it can take 4 or more years to eradicate the infestation. Specialists may be able to reduce the timescale by using stronger commercial herbicides.
There is research being carried out on biological control of the plant with Japanese fungi and aphids, but this is not currently a viable short-term option for the householder with Japanese Knotweed in their garden, or those adjacent to them.
The growing number of firms that offer expertise in controlling and eradicating this plant, along with other invasive non-native plants like Giant Hogweed and Himalayan Balsam, reflects the size of the problem. To seek a professional solution look for accredited contractors, and if an insurance backed guarantee can be provided.
September 2013
Saturday 7th Friends of Dulwich Upper Wood - Fungi course - a day course of Identifying Wild Mushrooms & information about edible & poisonous species. £40 with all monies going to help manage the Woodland. Contact Jim Murphy on
Sunday 8th Dulwich Society unveiling of a WW2 memorial plaque in Albrighton Road, Dog Kennel Hill at 12 noon
Tuesday 10th Dulwich Picture Gallery Contextual Lecture Series– From Darwin to DNA – Professor Peter Holland.
Linbury Room 10.30am Ticket £10
Sunday 15th Dulwich Society unveiling of a WW2 memorial plaque in Quorn Road, Dog Kennel Hill at 12 noon
Saturday 21st 12-5pm. Rosebery Lodge, Dulwich Park.Dulwich Vegetable Garden Autumn Open Day,
Sunday 22nd Dulwich Society unveiling of a WW2 memorial plaque at Dulwich Library for Woodwarde Road victims 12 noon.
Dulwich Picture Gallery – exhibition – A Crisis of Brilliance closes
Tuesday 24th Dulwich Picture Gallery Contextual Lecture Series – Our debt to Plato – Baroness Mary Warnock Linbury Room 10.30am ticket £10
Sunday 26th Friends of Dulwich Picture Gallery – Walk – Baroque the Streets – led by Ingrid Beazley. Meet outside the Gallery café 2pm. Walk ends 4.30pm tickets £10
October 2013
Tuesday 1st Dulwich Picture Gallery Contextual Lecture Series– 200 Million and Counting – Dr Khalid Khoser. Linbury Room 10.30am Tickets on the door £10
Wednesday 2nd Friends of Dulwich Picture Gallery – Lunchtime concert – From Blues to Bach. Christ’s Chapel 1.30-2.00pm – entrance from the Gallery cloister
8pm Italian Supper with Italian Opera. 7.00 for 7.30pm in the Gallery Café. Arias sung by Alexandra Carter accompanied by Serge Pachine. £10 per person (including a glass of Prosecco), menu £17-£20
Saturday 5th Dulwich Helpline - Come and Sing a mixture of choral classics and rousing hymns and raise funds for a local charity supporting isolated older people. Afternoon rehearsal and evening performance. Open to everyone who loves singing at any level. More details on DH&SCC website www.dulwich-helpline.org.uk or ring 020 8299 2623
Tuesday 8th Dulwich Picture Gallery Contextual Lecture Series – Secularisation: or not? Dr Grace Davie. Linbury Room 10.30am Ticket £10
Thursday 10th From Fresco to Frame: Artists' Techniques from the Middle Ages to the 20th Century, James Allen's Girls' School Sixth Form Centre, 8pm; see www.ddfas.org.uk
Saturday 12th Dulwich Society 50th Anniversary Party. St Barnabas Hall 7.30pm Tickets in advance £7.50
Tuesday 15th Dulwich Picture Gallery Contextual Lecture Series– The World in which we live: religious ideas and belief - Rev. John Bowker. Linbury Room 10.30am Ticket £10
Wednesday 16th Dulwich Picture Gallery Exhibition – An American in London: Whistler and the Thames opens
Saturday 19th Dulwich Society unveiling of a WW2 memorial plaque for Dovercourt Road victims, Alleyn’s School railings Townley Road 12 noon
Thursday 24th Dulwich Society Trees Committee Autumn Colour Trip (see booking form page ?)
Wednesday 30th – Saturday November 2nd The Dulwich Players present Rope a play by Patrick Hamilton at the Edward Alleyn Theatre, Dulwich College at 8pm. Tickets from 07582 002559 or The Art Stationers, Dulwich Village (£8 in advance, £10 on the door)
November 2013
Saturday 2nd Dulwich Society unveiling of a WW2 memorial plaque in Friern Road (corner of Lordship Lane) 12 noon
Wednesday 6th Friends of Dulwich Picture Gallery – Concert – Leonore Piano Trio 7.30pm in the Gallery. Tickets £15 including a glass of wine during the interval.
Tuesday 12th Dulwich Picture Gallery Contextual Lecture Series – Human Evolution: Ancestors and relatives you never knew you had – Dr Bernard Wood. Linbury Room 10.30am ticket £10
Thursday 14th: Great Photographs of the 20th Century, James Allen's Girls' School Sixth Form Centre, 8pm; see www.ddfas.org.uk
Tuesday 26th Dulwich Picture Gallery Contextual Lecture Series – The Future of (artificial) intelligence – Dr Stuart Russell. Linbury Room 10.30am Ticket £10
To Myddelton House and Capel Manor Gardens on Thursday 24th October 2013. Coach leaves the front entrance of Dulwich Picture Gallery at 9am. Returning by 6.30pm. Guided tours of one hour at each location.
APPLICATION FORM
Name…
Address or email address…
Telephone number (if preferred)…
The cost of £23 includes coach and admission fees. Refreshments and lunch will need to be paid for separately on site. Tea and coffee at Myddelton House and lunch at Capel Manor.
Please return this form with a cheque payable to The Dulwich Society to Judy Marshall, 7 Pickwick Road, SE21 7JN
Please tick if you have any mobility requirements ( )