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Special constables Streetly WW1

Glennys Jean

master brummie
09 January 1915 - Walsall Observer, and South Staffordshire Chronicle - Walsall, :

Belgium

Burnett Road. Streetly; Lunneaus. Middleton, Manor Farm: Arthur H.'witt, Golf Club House: A. J. Illings, Hardwick Road; James Foden. Chester Road: John Joseph Birch. Chester Road: and William Whorton, Foley Road. Thirty-six of these special constables......


Would these special constables be WW1 Home Guards ?? Thks for any info.
 
John Reilly's book "Policing in Birmingham" (p.54-60) states that WW1 led to a loss of police members to the forces, who were often wooed by recruiting officers and offered inducements to join . Some police pensioners helped fill the gaps, and also what had been a rather chaotic ill- or un-trained force into a properly trained police reserve. In total 8005 were recruited over the period , of which 6150 were stillretained at the end of hostilities, they were used for a range of duties- beat duties, air raid duties and guard duties, including guarding the elan valley pipeline
 
There was in fact a sort of Home Guard in the Great War, known as "Volunteers". But on nothing like the scale or degree of professionalism of the WW2 Home Guard. I have a couple of nice images of two of them online. One of these is of the Knowle and Dorridge Volunteers photographed at Stoneleigh in September 1918. On it is a group of fearsome moustaches brandishing its weaponry, including my grandfather and the (unarmed) family dog - and also a fresh-faced 18-year-old, my father, as an honoured guest whilst on convalescent leave, having been wounded on the Western Front. The other image, provided by a BHF member, is of their Sutton Coldfield counterparts.

Equally irrelevant....one or two names on Glennys's list are corrupted. Illings is A. Jillings, in the 1930s and later a greengrocer on the corner of Chester and Foley Roads. Strange that there is another Linnaeus/Lunneaus - this one apparently a Middleton and another farmer. Links to the Cutlers?

Chris
 
Thanks for all that Mikejee and Chris, it's all new to me and very interesting.

As for the Middletons, I have found a link to the Fodens. Hah ha !

Ellen Middleton b1863, married 1888 with Isaac Foden 1860-1923. (Thornhill farm, Perry Barr Common farm).
She had a brother Linneus b1867. It could well be him as quoted as special constable.

Their father William Middleton in 1871 was a licensed victualler - but I don't know the name of the pub.
 
Watching on telly the other night.It said they wanted AIR RAID WARDENS IN 1937.BECAUSE OF THE FEAR OF BOMBINGS
THEY ADVERTISED BY FLYING BANNERS BEHIND AIROPLANE
DID THE GOVERNMENT OF THE TIME KNOW SOMETHING AND KEPT IT FROM US
 
They knew a lot! And so did any thinking member of the public. The big fear was aerial attack, based on the early beginnings of attacks on London in the Great War and the advances of technology in the 1920s and 1930s, very much reinforced by the doings of the Luftwaffe in the Spanish Civil War - Guernica etc. Hence the founding of the Air Raid Precautions organisation which went much further than the simple (Warden Hodges) ARP Warden concept.

Baldwin had said, years previously, that "the bomber would always get through".

We weren't totally unprepared, either in this respect or industrially.

Chris
 
09 January 1915 - Walsall Observer, and South Staffordshire Chronicle - Walsall, :

Belgium

Burnett Road. Streetly; Lunneaus. Middleton, Manor Farm: Arthur H.'witt, Golf Club House: A. J. Illings, Hardwick Road; James Foden. Chester Road: John Joseph Birch. Chester Road: and William Whorton, Foley Road. Thirty-six of these special constables......


Would these special constables be WW1 Home Guards ?? Thks for any info.

The “Belgium” is not relevant.
 
With regard to Air raid precautions, recently on Bargain hunt repeats there was a silver ARP badge produced in Birmingham dated either 1937 or 1938 (my memory fails), showing that they were preparing well before the war
 
Thanks for all that Mikejee and Chris, it's all new to me and very interesting.
As for the Middletons, I have found a link to the Fodens. Hah ha !
Ellen Middleton b1863, married 1888 with Isaac Foden 1860-1923. (Thornhill farm, Perry Barr Common farm).
She had a brother Linneus b1867. It could well be him as quoted as special constable.
Their father William Middleton in 1871 was a licensed victualler - but I don't know the name of the pub.


Middleton, Manor and Thornhill, all with Foden connections and possibly even with Cutler....

It can hardly be a coincidence that there is a large tract of land, vaguely triangular in shape adjacent to the Chester Road extending right down to the Sutton Park boundary and falling between roads which are named Chester, Manor, Foley and Thornhill, the last of these skirting the Park. From the Thornhill Road, and in the middle of this land, a further road extends to a junction on the Foley Road. Its name is Middleton Road.

Up to WW2 and for a time beyond, Manor Road was almost fully developed (with houses possibly from the 1920s and 30s); Middleton Road largely developed with houses perhaps from the 1910s to the 1930s; Thornhill Road the same (on the side opposite to the Park only); and little development on this side of the Chester and Foley Roads i.e. in the area farthest from Park and Streetly village and still mainly farmland.

I'm wondering if earlier maps show the location of the farm or farms whose land here was turned over to housing from the beginning of the 20th century and the extent to which the selection of these road names can be explained by them.

Chris
 
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I knew a Mr. Foden who lived on Chester Road and would have been about the right age to have been a Special in 1915. He died 1945-50. He lived in a house which, unlike most of the others between Manor Road and the Parson & Clerk, no longer exists. Together with a leafy, grass-covered little lane down the side of the house and leading to the fields behind, it was destroyed to make access to the Kingscroft development in the 1960s or 1970s. Its number would have been about 91 Chester Road.

I wonder if this was James and how he fitted within this vast and complicated family!

Chris
 
I knew a Mr. Foden who lived on Chester Road and would have been about the right age to have been a Special in 1915.... number would have been about 91 Chester Road.

Chris
Would this mean anything to you?
1939 census, there is Ada Foden who lived at 105 Chester Rd.

Her father John Foden b1845 Erdington was a shopkeeper in 1881 and in 1911 it's Ada working an OUTDOOR LICENSE & GROCERY, although they lived at that time in Sutton Coldfield.

Ada died in 1940. Maybe her brother George Henry b1878 took over the business?
 
Can only think that this Foden (at 105) lived on a different stretch of the Chester Road, and not in Streetly - nearer the Beggar's Bush/College Arms with their Foden connections. The Streetly sequence in 1939 went something like: 107 Morgan, 105 Lyon(s), 103 Bacon, 101 Myers, 99 Behague (or perhaps Kendall), 97 ?, 95 Farringdon, 93 or 91 ..........

Sorry - misremembered!! 93/91 WASN'T Foden, it was Richards!! Forget everything I said. (I'm starting to see Fodens every-bloomin'-where...)

Chris
 
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Can only think that this Foden (at 105) lived on a different stretch of the Chester Road, and not in Streetly - nearer the Beggar's Bush/College Arms with their Foden connections. The Streetly sequence in 1939 went something like: 107 Morgan, 105 Lyon(s), 103 Bacon, 101 Myers, 99 Behague (or perhaps Kendall), 97 ?, 95 Farringdon, 93 or 91 ..........

Sorry - misremembered!! 93/91 WASN'T Foden, it was Richards!! Forget everything I said. (I'm starting to see Fodens every-bloomin'-where...)

Chris
105 was Foden + Lyons, as George Henry Foden married a Lyons. Never mind, there's a lot of Fodena virus about just now. :)
 
Glennys Jean

I am sorry to bang on about this very minor aspect of the Foden history - and move away from Special Constables - but there is now the suggestion that it impinges to within about 20 yards of the house where I was born.

That is, if we are talking about the right 105 Chester Road.

The occupants of "my" number 105 were, I am 95 percent sure, there in 1939. (If not they must have moved in not more than a year or so later, but I have no recollection of such a momentous event as the moving-in of a new family so close to us). They were a couple in their mid to late sixties, Frederick and Alice Lyon/Lyons. I am pretty sure about their Christian names and absolutely certain about their surname. They were childless. Mr Lyons had retired from a job in a leather goods shop in the Great Western Arcade in Birmingham and had used a large area of land behind his house, beyond the garden, to create a small market garden. There he raised chickens in a series of ramshackle sheds and grew large quantities of vegetables which were regularly shipped to Rose's, the greengrocers on Kingstanding Circle. I spent much of my spare time as a young child "helping" him – he was a kind and, obviously, a very patient man!

I am of course suffering from the Fodena virus and it causes me to have the strong feeling that there was, somewhere or other, a Foden connection in one of these houses. I went off on the wrong track with Mr and Mrs Richards and am now wondering whether there was something connecting the Lyonses. A relative perhaps? Although the only relative I recall was the sister of one or the other of them whose married name was Eldred.

What is critical is the correct identification of the number 105 house. Is the name of any of the neighbouring families readily available from the 1939 census so that we could pin it down? It is fascinating that there is a Lyons/Foden connection here somewhere. I feel that the Fodens are closing in on me......

Chris
 
Glennys Jean

I am sorry to bang on about this very minor aspect of the Foden history - and move away from Special Constables - but there is now the suggestion that it impinges to within about 20 yards of the house where I was born.

That is, if we are talking about the right 105 Chester Road.

The occupants of "my" number 105 were, I am 95 percent sure, there in 1939. (If not they must have moved in not more than a year or so later, but I have no recollection of such a momentous event as the moving-in of a new family so close to us). They were a couple in their mid to late sixties, Frederick and Alice Lyon/Lyons. I am pretty sure about their Christian names and absolutely certain about their surname. They were childless. Mr Lyons had retired from a job in a leather goods shop in the Great Western Arcade in Birmingham and had used a large area of land behind his house, beyond the garden, to create a small market garden. There he raised chickens in a series of ramshackle sheds and grew large quantities of vegetables which were regularly shipped to Rose's, the greengrocers on Kingstanding Circle. I spent much of my spare time as a young child "helping" him – he was a kind and, obviously, a very patient man!

I am of course suffering from the Fodena virus and it causes me to have the strong feeling that there was, somewhere or other, a Foden connection in one of these houses. I went off on the wrong track with Mr and Mrs Richards and am now wondering whether there was something connecting the Lyonses. A relative perhaps? Although the only relative I recall was the sister of one or the other of them whose married name was Eldred.

What is critical is the correct identification of the number 105 house. Is the name of any of the neighbouring families readily available from the 1939 census so that we could pin it down? It is fascinating that there is a Lyons/Foden connection here somewhere. I feel that the Fodens are closing in on me......

Chris
I'll check 1939 tonight and list the names it lets me see .... as from number say 50 - 150?
 
Thanks - to cut down the work, perhaps odds 81 to 131; and evens 120 to 160?

Chris
 
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