This week 10, 20, 30 years ago

10 Years Ago

A town hall came under pressure to reveal how much contact it had with a South London household being investigated over allegations of “slavery” in a case described by police as “unique”.

There were early calls for an inquiry after it was revealed that two pensioners arrested at their Brixton home had first been arrested in the 1970s and “had probably come into contact with public services”.

Schoolchildren waited in the cold winds to catch a glimpse of the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh when they viewed the Diamond Jubilee window installed at Southwark Cathedral to mark the 60th year of the Queen’s reign.

She was accompanied by the Duke, and was greeted by hordes of children as she arrived at Southwark Cathedral after a visit to The Shard.

South Londoners gave mixed reactions to Transport for London’s (TfL’s) plans to close ticket offices and run some Tube lines non-stop at weekends.

TfL made the announcement that from 2015, Tubes on the Jubilee, Piccadilly, Victoria and some sections of the Northern lines would run 24 hours through Friday and Saturday nights.

All but six ticket offices would be closed and 750 jobs lost.

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20 Years Ago

The bosses of Britain’s oldest brewery announced plans to move it from its home in Wandsworth.

Young’s had been brewing beer at The Ram Brewery in Wandsworth since 1581, but a change in the law meant the five-acre site could be redeveloped to make way for housing.

Wandsworth council had said the site could only be used for industry.

But the company vowed to stay in the borough.

A trust was launched by cycling fans in a bid to raise £6million to give Herne Hill Velodrome – at the time the only one in London – a major facelift.

The London Velodrome Trust was launched at City Hall in central London with plans to apply for lottery cash to save the last standing relic of the 1948 London Olympic Games.

Plans for the venue included an all-weather cover for the track, a new gym and an indoor climbing wall.

Police doled out leaflets to every home on an estate to let residents know that two crack houses had been closed down.

Tenants living in the Badric Court Estate in Wandsworth, whose lives had been made a misery by the two drug dens, were told that a sophisticated cartel of drug dealers had been smashed during the raids.

Those arrested were not living on the estate but used stairwells to deal crack, while using two flats they had commandeered to store their drugs.

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30 Years Ago

A headteacher attacked his local authority after he discovered that more than half of his 11-year-old Year 7 students could not read or write properly.

The headteacher of the school in Kennington hit out at town hall bureaucrats, saying that nearly 50 boys needed remedial reading and writing lessons.

He said 11 of the boys had a reading age of a six-year-old.

But Lambeth council said that a third of the school’s students came from outside of the borough and had not been educated in Lambeth primary schools.

Teachers reacted angrily to news that their pay would be cut when two primary schools were merged.

About 20 teachers at Oliver Goldsmith’s Infants’ school and Oliver Goldsmith’s Junior School in Peckham Road, Peckham, were told by Governors that the £800 payment paid to Southwark primary school teachers since 1991 should be axed.

The schools’ total budget would be reduced by £24,000 a year. Staff and parents objected to the merger.

Better microchipping was credited for a massive rise in the number of pets being reclaimed by their owners at Battersea Dogs’ Home.

The new chips, which were the size of a pinhead, were injected into the dogs’ necks.

They contained contact details for the owners.

The chips had first been used at the home four years earlier but, by 1993, 21 per cent of all the dogs brought into the home had been fitted with microchips.

 

Picture: Pixabay/acunha1973