Exiting Tooting Broadway tube station, the imposing bronze figure of King Edward the Seventh seems to gently usher visitors towards the delights of Upper Tooting Road. Like some over-sized regal estate agent, it’s almost like he’s about to give a pitch on what a great place this is to live. Indeed he’s looking in the direction of Totterdown Fields. The construction of the great ‘garden’ estate there mirrored the period of his reign and a home on it would have been the place to be. The statue celebrates a golden Edwardian age, when thousands of arrivals flocked to the new commuter suburb, now just a short tram journey from central London. Great public buildings were built, cinemas opened and the radical Totterdown Fields estate was acclaimed around the world. In 1903, work-in-progress was famously checked by three future kings who rolled up on a decorated tram. The house they visited on Ruislip Street is marked with a plaque.
It was here, in the last years of the first decade of the twentieth century, to No26 Lessingham Avenue that Fanny Fletcher moved from Marylebone with her four adult children and grand daughter Violet. Its possible they might even have been in the crowd of thousands in the above photo, gathered to watch the unveiling of the statue in November 1911. It was here also, in the modest five room flat on Totterdown Fields, just round the corner from where the royal visit was made, that terrible news arrived in the spring of 1912. The great Titanic had sunk on her maiden voyage and Fanny’s youngest son Percy, the ship’s bugler, who had called passengers to dinner on that fateful night, was one of 1,496 lives lost.
Always looking out for stories to tell on my guided history walks in the Tooting and Wandsworth area, I came upon an interview with Titanic survivor Frank Prentice. It made me wonder if there were any local residents on the voyage. A quick search took me to the Encyclopedia Titanica site and an outline of Percy’s background. The Fletcher family have a lively history and we took a deeper look. Fanny was a farmer’s daughter from the village of Rose Ash near Tiverton in Devon. She married Adam Fletcher in St George’s Church Hanover Square, London on 13 March 1874, they were both 21. He came from Lincolnshire and was working as a coachman. The residence indicated on the marriage register is Lambeth Mews, off Curzon Street in Mayfair. Its still there, now called Clarges Mews.
The Industrial Revolution may have sucked them into the big city but for whatever reason the young couple then moved to Guernsey. It was there, in St Peter’s Port that their first children, George and Alice Rose were born. The Governor General there at the time was a former army officer, The Honourable General St George Gerald Foley. Its quite possible that Adam and Rose worked in his household, for when Foley retired to Frimley in Surrey they appear to have gone with him. Adam worked with horses and as a coachman and the 1881 census picks them up at an address ‘The Stables’ on the estate at Tekels Castle in Frimley. Much of this was destined to be sold off to support the Army Staff College at Sandhurst with part of it submerged beneath the new M3 motorway in the 1960s.
Back in London, the Fletchers returned to the familiar Mayfair area from at least 1883 and three other children were born. Maud in 1883, Arthur in 1884 and Percy on 3rd February 1887. It seems a strange reverse move, leaving the countryside for the big city and expanding their family, but of course they were following the money. The 1891 census sees the family of five at 10 Bourdon Buildings, just north of Berkeley Square, a small enclave for people catering for the needs of the wealthy, enclosed on all sides by grandeur and privilege.
The most expensive spot on the Monopoly board, still today a strange world of gentlemen’s clubs and grand hotels. Growing up surrounded by so much excess would have given young Percy a glimpse of his future life and the kind of people he might encounter on a luxury liner. With many coach-houses, stables and farriers’ shops, Bourdon Street’s population consisted predominantly of people like Adam – coachmen, grooms and those involved with horses and carriages. Charles Booth’s notebook from 1899 reports on the abundance of stables and mentions a ‘Home for Fallen Women’. Just around the corner on Davies Street, Bourdon House was the home of the Duke of Westminster who of course owned most of all this.
In September 1898 eleven year old Percy enrolled at St Mark’s School in Marylebone, a distinctive building that still stands on the Old Marylebone Road and possibly where he learnt to play the bugle. It had been a sad year as his father had passed away a few months before and on 17th May was buried in St Marylebone Cemetery, East Finchley. Also the final resting place of our friend, Peter Barr ‘The Daffodil King’. Its possible that Adam Fletcher’s death, at the age of just 45, hastened another move. As the Victorian age came to a close, by 1901 Fanny and four of her children lived in Marylebone at 52 Wharncliffe Gardens, very close to Lord’s Cricket Ground at the junction of Lisson Grove and St John’s Wood Road. Fanny was 46 and no job is indicated, but everyone else was working. George (26) was an architectural draughtsman, Maud (18) a dressmaker and Arthur (16) a clerk for a coal merchant. Oldest daughter Alice had married Harry Goldson in 1897. He was a servant in the employment of John Wodehouse, the Earl of Kimberley, who served as a Foreign Secretary in Gladstone’s government. With Harry now working as a railway guard, they had started a family and were living nearby in Westbourne Park. Meanwhile 14 year old Percy had left school and taken up a job as an enamel and metal worker.
Wharncliffe Gardens was an imposing set of five storey blocks, built in the late nineteenth century to house people whose homes had been swept away by the railway line entering Marylebone Station. It was named after the chairman of the railway company. A Victorian ‘model dwelling’ providing decent accomodation for working-class people, a typical flat had three bedrooms, a sitting room, a kitchen and an inside lavatory. Residents were mainly in regular work with good wages. A V1 rocket killed 33 people and destroyed much of Wharncliffe Gardens in August 1944. A memorial for the victims is in the same cemetery where Adam Fletcher is buried.
At some stage in the first decade of the twentieth century, something triggered the family’s relocation to the rapidly developing suburb of Tooting in south west London. An area where the population had quadrupled over a fifteen year period. The jewel in the crown was the much acclaimed Totterdown Fields Estate, visited by royalty in 1903. It was built over a ten year period between 1901 and 1910, the London County Council’s first cottage estate, 1,244 homes for nearly 9,000 people constructed in the spirit of the art and crafts movement. Combined with a new tram line running from central London, Totterdown Fields kickstarted the evolution of our area into the busy commuter suburb it still is today. The below map shows how it all happened and the red dot indicates the Fletcher’s home. All Saints Church and Hillbrook School were two of the amenities built to serve this new community. Just a short hike across the Common, residents could take a dip in the new Tooting Bathing Lake, to evolve later into our much-loved Tooting Bec Lido.
The building of the estate was not without problems. There was wrangling over the costs of construction, complaints about shoddy workmanship and even resentment from local residents at the prospect of ‘a workmen’s town altering the character of the neighbourhood’. Eliza ‘Lady Bountiful’ Bell, a local philanthropist, well known for her views on ‘progress’ must have been enraged at the new development emerging on the other side of Upper Tooting Road within full view of Park Hill and her own estate. By April 1906, about a third of the houses had been completed. Prospective tenants not only having to show they could pay the quite steep rents but that they could keep a tidy house. The Fletchers’ five room cottage with scullery and bath would have cost between 13/6 and 10/6. With her adult children earning a wage, Fanny would have been able to keep up the payments at 26 Lessingham Avenue. Percy might be considering going to sea but as long as his contributions were received they would be all right.
The presence of two year old grand daughter Violet at Lessingham Avenue in 1911 seemed strange as all the adult children were listed on the census as single and she wasn’t one of Alice’s children. Records suggest that in the spring of 1908, a woman by the name of Maud Fletcher had a daughter called Violet Marjory at Queen Charlotte’s Maternity Hospital in Marylebone. The little girl was baptised at St Mark’s Church, Marylebone on 1st May 1908. No father is indicated on the records. It is possible Violet was born out of wedlock and that as a result of her birth, shortly afterwards the family relocated to the new estate on the other side of London. Welcome to Totterdown Fields. Fanny Fletcher’s name was on the electoral roll at 106 Lessingham Avenue in 1909 and from 1910 to 1913 at No26. This was Percy’s family home and whatever his work, moving to south west London may have lead to him meeting his future wife, Mary Meaney. At the same time as the Fletchers settled into their Tooting home, on 31 March 1909, the keel of a giant ship was laid at the Harland and Wolff shipyard in Belfast. Fuelled by JP Morgan’s money, the White Star Line was about to produce the biggest, fastest most luxurious ship the world had ever seen.
At the age of 24, in September 1911 Percy returned to the St John’s Wood area and was baptised at St Mark’s Church, Hamilton Terrace, just round the corner from where The Beatles crossed Abbey Road. It would have been a short walk up Hamilton Terrace from the old family home at Wharncliffe Gardens. As I write this, very sadly, a fire on the night of 26 January appears to have destroyed much of the 150 year old building.
Getting baptised was possibly something Percy needed to do before his wedding to Mary Meaney. His life was about to turn upside down. Not only was he getting married to an Irish girl living in Wandsworth but he had embarked on an exciting new career on the high seas. Mary, originally from the town of Kilrush, County Clare, was living at 13 Strathville Road, Earlsfield. Set back from the road on the curious Garratt Lane bend, its easy to walk past St Gregory’s Roman Catholic Church and forget that its there. It was here on the banks of the Wandle that Percy and Mary were married on 7th January 1912.
Strathville Road is now a very desirable residential street at the Southfields end of the road, a short walk from Wimbledon Park. Many of the houses are painted in pretty pastel shades. The happy couple might have celebrated with a drink in The Pig and Whistle or more appropriately The Sailor Prince on Garratt Lane. The certificate indicates that Mary’s father Thomas, a draper was deceased. One of the witnesses was an ‘A Meaney’, the other was Percy’s brother Arthur. Its hard to guess how much rent Mary was paying in 1912, but a house on Strathville Road is currently offered for monthly rent at £3.6k.
The dynamic Father Benedict Williamson was the parish priest at the time, he was also an architect and a few years before designed the stunning St Boniface Church in Tooting. He might have been having a day off on 7th January as Father Charles Murphy was the priest who officiated. Father Benedict was very likely involved in this religious procession which took place in the area just a few years later. The Church was destroyed by bombing in 1944 and the present building dates from 1956. By coincidence, its only a short walk past Earlsfield Station and up the hill to 97 Magdalen Road. Opposite the cemetery entrance on the corner of Ellerton Road is the house that was the last residence of Titanic survivor Amelia Lemore, believed to have been rescued in Lifeboat 14. She died there aged 84 in 1950.
Prior to his service on The Titanic, Percy was also a bugler on her sister ship, The Olympic. Interestingly his baptism date on 17 September 1911 was just a few days before The Olympic was due to set sail on her fifth Atlantic crossing. On the marriage certificate Percy indicated his profession as ‘seaman, bugler’. Could his baptism have arisen out of some kind of family desire to ‘keep him safe’ on the seas? He may possibly have been on board as she set out on the Solent on 20th, only for HMS Hawke to run into her side seriously damaging both ships. The voyage was cancelled and The Olympic had to be sent back to Belfast for repairs. This ultimately caused a delay in the completion of The Titanic. No one was seriously hurt but it would have been a frightening premonition of the vulnerability of these great ships.
Percy’s name comes up a lot on the internet in any detailed Titanic items and we are not sure yet when he first went to sea and was part of the crew on The Olympic. This may actually be footage of him! His blowing of the bugle to summon First Class passengers to dinner (as he did on that fateful night) has become an iconic Titanic moment in recent years, captured in the 1998 James Cameron film. He’s also in the 1979 TV movie S.O.S. Titanic. Some accounts suggest he came from Southampton and when he signed on he gave an address which we believe is a mis-interpretation of ‘Lessingham Avenue, Upper Tooting’. Southampton Local History Centre records seem to support this as they acknowledge the address given doesn’t exist. Percy was paid the same rate as a steward, £3,15 shillings a month. This would have allowed for a healthy contribution to the Lessingham Avenue rent.
The Olympic’s maiden voyage to New York was in June 1911 under the charge of future Titanic captain Edward J Smith. It was for a while the largest ocean-going liner in the world, only three inches shorter than The Titanic, which came along a year later. Mary would have known Percy was likely to be away from home for lengthy spells but surely never imagined that three months later he would lose his life on one of these great ‘unsinkable’ ships. Widowed at the age of 27, Mary relocated to Canada, settling in British Columbia, where she remarried in 1917, becoming Mrs James William Yell. Sadly he died of TB just three year later. Mary passed away in Vancouver on 22 October 1968 and was interred in St Peter’s Cemetery, New Westminster.
Meanwhile a Titanic Relief Fund started a few weeks later and huge amounts were raised to help dependents. Almost certainly that would have been directed towards Mary rather than Fanny and his siblings at Lessingham Avenue. Another relatively new estate in this area was the Heaver in Balham and the company at 223 Balham High Road produced aluminium medals to give to ‘active workers of the Relief Fund’. Many of these turn up online on various auction sites. They bear the title ‘Help Surpasseth Pity’ with an impression of The Titanic at sea on one side and some statistics on the reverse. The relatively new cinemas in the Tooting and Wandsworth area also raised funds and screened newsreel footage of the disaster. The Broadway Cinematograph Palace had opened its doors just ten days after the sinking and the local newspaper reported it showing ‘a splendid series of pictures relating to the Titanic disaster, including Captain Smith on the Bridge and The Carpathia nearing New York with survivors on board’. There was also footage of icebergs off the coast of Labrador.
We’re not sure how much longer Fanny lived at 26 Lessingham Avenue but the loss of Percy was followed by further family tragedies which very likely contributed to her ending up at West Park Asylum. Four years of War and grave economic hardships in the twenties would not have made life any easier. We can’t find any records indicating that George or Arthur served in the First World War, though with such a common name and many British records destroyed its possible. Her eldest son George was listed at Lessingham Avenue in 1911 and working an architect’s assistant, though ‘disengaged’ at the time. In the 1921 census he was an inmate at Kensington Workhouse. Arthur, then aged 26 was employed as a coal clerk in 1911. He married Margaret Noonan in December 1912 and a son William was born the following October. Margaret passed away in 1929 and 1939 records pick Arthur up living in 58 Gipsy Road, Lambeth. Also present were William and his wife Vera. Arthur had climbed the ladder and was now a coal depot manager.
The life of Evelyn Maud, the dressmaker daughter who was there in 1911 with two year old Violet was to take an interesting and ultimately happy turn. She married an Aussie soldier, Ernest Theophilus Greville on 19 October 1917 at St Matthew’s Church in Marylebone and went back to Sydney with him after the War. Here they had a son, Victor Raymond Greville born in 1922 when Maud was 39. Ernest was seriously wounded at Gallipoli and hospitalised in Egypt. Having turned 40 he voluntarily chose to join the War effort and was very lucky to emerge from the Dardanelles in one piece. His comprehensive military records show he came to Britain on leave in 1916 and presumably ran into Maud not long afterwards. On their marriage register the address indicated was 135 Lisson Grove. Its curious that Fanny’s name is missing, only that of her late father. Having lived on the sea-front at Manly, New South Wales, Maud passed away in 1960, a year after her husband. We haven’t found yet what happened to Violet.
Fanny’s other daughter Alice Rose had eight children, three of whom died in infancy. She lost her husband Harry in 1915 and Alice and her youngest children spent time in 1917 in St Pancras Workhouse. By 1921 she was living with her Mother at 23 Convent Gardens, just off Ladbroke Grove in Notting Hill. Alice is listed as an out of work machinist. She passed away in Hendon in 1956 aged 80.
The next we know about Fanny is that at some point she entered West Park Asylum in Epsom. This was one of a cluster of five mental hospitals constructed on the edge of London to cope with the rapidly increasing number of people in need of care. Hospitals like Springfield and Tooting Bec were already creaking at the seams looking after a generation whose mental health had been shattered by the effect of a decade of War and depression. It was the largest concentration of such hospitals in the country and the place that Fanny Randal Fletcher died on 9th March 1929, one of around 9,000 patients buried in Horton Cemetery. Many of their stories are being told on the Friends of Horton Cemetery website. Alice Mullen gives a harrowing account of working for one of these Epsom Asylums in her book ‘Alice from Tooting’.
So much tragedy, so many upheavels, so many deaths, lives foreshortened, a country which one hundred years ago was blighted by the shadow of War and desperate economic times. Outlined in this account are just some of the family tragedies we know about and who knows what other events helped propel Fanny Fletcher towards West Park. The family’s story is a fascinating insight into the precarious lives of so many people in Britain at that time. We hope we can honour the memory of Fanny, Maud, Percy and everyone else by telling their story on our Walks. Passing St Gregory’s Church, Strathville Road and 26 Lessingham Avenue will never be quite the same again. Totterdown Fields Forever.