This week 10, 20 30 years ago

10 Years Ago

A fire that devastated a former town hall and a museum was called a “significant tragedy” by Southwark’s top historian.

The fire had engulfed the roof of the former Walworth Town Hall building, the Cuming Museum and Newington Library, in Wansey Street, Walworth.
Hundreds of priceless artefacts and documents collected by the Cuming family – including items from around the world – were unaccounted for.

Fire crews from across South and West London – 120 firefighters in total- battled for more than five hours to bring the blaze under control.

Police officers probed over a man’s death were arrested on suspicion of lying at his inquest.

Sean Rigg, 40, died in Brixton police station on August 21, 2008.

An inquest in 2013 heard that his restraining by officers for more than eight minutes “more than contributed to his death.”

The arrests followed a review by the Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC).

Youngsters from every secondary school in a South London borough gave their support to an anti youth-crime campaign.

The campaign was set up by award winning pupils from Prendergast Ladywell Fields College in Brockley.

The 10,000 hands project aimed to promote the City Safe Haven campaign across Lewisham.

At the launch of 10,000 Hands at Lewisham Town Hall, pupils from every school in the borough added their hand prints to a 500m long banner as a “message of hope” which was then taken to City Hall and Downing Street.

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20 Years Ago

A war of words erupted between two South London councils and the Government over plans to increase council tax in 1993.

Local government minister Nick Raynsford had drawn up a hit list of 20 councils – including Lambeth and Wandsworth – which were planning steep council tax increases.

The row led to speculation over whether the Government could use its statutory right to cap council tax rates for the first time.

But the councils defended their plans to increase council tax saying they had not been given a fair share of cash from the Government’s coffers, which meant they needed to raise more cash than areas who had been given a bigger grant.

A TV crew that scoured the country looking for paranormal activity claimed to have found the ghosts of Reggie Kray and Ruth Ellis.

The crew from Living TV’s Most Haunted show spent 24 hours in Caesar’s nightclub in Streatham after one of the team’s experts got a message from beyond the grave from a spirit calling itself “Ruth”.

The owner of the club had said it was the ghost of Ruth Ellis, the last woman to be hanged in Great Britain. She had worked as a photographer’s assistant at the club in 1948.

The spiritual medium had no prior knowledge of the club’s history and the show’s producers emphatically denied that it was a set-up.

News that there would be more cops trained to walk South London’s beats came as cold comfort for the 3,000 Southwark residents who signed a petition for 1,000 extra officers.

Instead the borough got 46, while Lewisham was given 27 and Wandsworth had been promised just nine.

Other South London boroughs including Lambeth were told they would not be getting any extra officers because the Met said their numbers were at capacity in these areas.

But campaigners said they would wait to see how many of the new police actually made it on to the streets, rather than being put into desk jobs.

They vowed to keep the pressure up.

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30 Years Ago

A gang of drug dealers were caught hiding stashes of drugs in garden gnomes.

Southwark police spent three weeks monitoring the gang before swooping on the garden ornaments and smashing them to net the drugs haul.

Five people were convicted of gang activity which involved heroin dealing. The ornaments were found in a front garden owned by one of the gang members in Alma Grove Bermondsey.

As well as gnomes, squirrels and leprechauns were also used to stash the drugs and police watched as the dealers took the heroin from the animals, which were lined up against the house wall.

Police were showered with bottles and a police car was badly damaged after trouble flared up at a popular nightclub.

Officers came under fire after being called to the Ritzy in Streatham Hill after revellers refused to leave the club because they thought they were being cheated out of an hour of music because the clocks had gone forward.

There were around 250 people inside the venue so police allowed the party to go on until its peaceful end at around 3am.

No arrests were made and no one was badly hurt.

An NHS trust was told its hospital had its credit cut off by a Government supplier for failing to pay its bills.

Her Majesty’s Stationary Office told Guy’s Hospital that it could get no credit whatsoever after sending a series of warnings about the spiralling amount owed.

Staff at the hospital, which in 1992 had a budget of £108million, were also unable to reassure South London Press readers that other companies would not follow suit and demand cash up front for supplies.
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