Blood on the tracks

You think getting to work on National Express's joke of a railway is murder? Hackney was - somewhat inevitably - the location for Britain's first train killing, in 1864, the gory details of which are detailed in a fascinating new book.

Historian Kate Colquhoun has picked through archives recently released after 100 years spent gathering dust in the Kew archives to write 'Mr Briggs' Hat'. It unpicks how the murder of Thomas Briggs, late of 5 Clapton Square, came to scandalise the whole of Victorian society.

It's a rollicking story, involving his body being thrown from a first-class compartment of a North London Railway train onto the tracks somewhere between Bow and Hackney Wick; a societal fear of foreigners (the suspect, later convicted and sentenced to death, was German); and class war. In those days, carriages were not adjoining, so the first class compartment was a sanctuary inaccessible to the hoi polloi.


So affronted by the murder and its implications, the Daily Telegraph asked: "If we can be murdered thus, we may be slain in our pew at church or assassinated at our dinner table." Or, today's equivalent, shot randomly outside a Turkish social and sports club.

A coda. If you're wondering about where the railway in question ran before it was decommissioned in 1922, click here for more - much, much more.

Makes me sick

File this under "Well, duh..." if you like, but, boy, there are some fucktards out there.

This homemade sign appeared recently on the Lea Navigation towpath – by the bridge between the Princess of Wales pub and the footpath onto South Millfields – and reading it turned my stomach. Who, in the name of fun, would pelt to death a nest of just-hatched chicks and its mother? A few telltale stones were found next to their broken bodies.

Sickened as I was, I was also cheered - that somebody cared enough to put up the sign in the first place. Without it, the birds' murder would have passed me by. Without the intervention of a concerned Claptonista, I doubt our local paper, the 'Hackney Gazette' - ensconced in its offices in not-very-local Ilford - would have spotted it either. For what it's worth, you can read its report here.

But that notice is a testament to Clapton, a reminder that, for all the scumbags in the area, there's an active right-minded majority.

It might just be worth troubling to 'Gazette' with a letter, to remind the police that the thug/s who did this need to be caught.

UPDATE: there's a more detailed news report by Hackney Citizen here.

Tufty ate my winter salad

The winter salad leaves I've been growing in my balcony boxes have held up surprisingly well, despite being covered in drifts of snow for the best part of a fortnight.

It's not the cold that's got them, it's a daredevil squirrel who I caught chomping his/her way through the crop just before Christmas. I say daredevil, as I live in a block of flats, on one of the higher floors. When I chased the little bugger off the balcony, mid-munch, s/he simply shinned down to the ground and scampered off.

Coming soon: new for 2011 in Hackney

In case you missed these snippets, here are a few things to watch out for 2011.

Hackney's getting a cinema.

Dalston's getting a boutique hotel.

Lower Clapton's hugely successful Chatsworth Road Market should ride again (in March, I reckon).

Meanwhile, Upper Clapton, the poor relation, is still waiting the 488 bus route to be extended from Clapton to Dalston Junction.

Happy Christmas!

Viva Chatsworth Road!

A great documentary about the first Chatsworth Road Market.

Chatsworth Road Market: A New Dawn

It's almost here. See you there on Sunday?

(Report from the Hackney Gazette, yours for 50p)

River of dreams

Have you seen Millfields lately? The hoardings by the River Lea Navigation have come down and, wow, what a difference it makes to the place. A nice bit of tarmacking (is that a verb? Answer: no), but it does the job opening up the view. And when the borders are planted with lovely hardy shrubs, bikers won't be able to churn up the beds with their tyres. Tsk, etc.

But it certainly makes cycling beneath the Lea Bridge more of a breeze than it was. No more being thrown off by that notorious cobbly slope.

Once the riverside sundecking, as per the architect's plans, gets put in, the new Chatsworth Road market gets going and the Clapton Tram Sheds get a makeover, Millfields could be the "new London Fields".

A boy can dream.

PS: for all Millfields fans, there's a new blog on the block. Do follow: http://millfieldspark.blogspot.com