This week 10, 20, 30 years ago
10 Years Ago
Campaigners turned to Rock legend Bruce Springsteen as an unlikely hero in save Lewisham Hospital’s emergency unit from closure and proposed downgrading of maternity services.
The star was contacted by mega-fan and Sydenham ward Councillor Liam Curran.
The 51-year-old Lewisham council member has penned a song – Born In The NHS – to the tune of Springsteen’s famous track and written to the singer asking him to make a special recording of it.
A man knifed his teen dealer to death during a row over stolen money and buried him in concrete.
Stephen Ojerinola, 18, from Camberwell, was beaten with a hammer and stabbed during the fight over ÂŁ10,000.
William Regan, 37, of Lynsted Gardens, Eltham, knifed Mr Ojerinola and beat him unconscious with the hammer after he caught him trying to steal the money.
He then hid the body in a bedroom at his mum’s house for two days before enlisting Lee Davies, 36, of Chiswell Square, Kidbrooke, to help him encase the body in concrete and dump it in a shallow grave.
Mr Ojerinola’s body was found seven months after the killing and the teenager’s family had to wait until February before his funeral could be held at Camberwell New Cemetery.
Regan denied murder, claiming he had acted in self-defence.
Jurors failed to reach a verdict following an earlier trial, but he pleaded guilty to a charge of manslaughter on the day a retrial was due to begin.
Regan and Davies, who was cleared of murder and manslaughter, had both already admitted preventing a lawful burial.
20 Years Ago
South London was revealed as the nation’s capital for the spread of a deadly form of malaria.
It became the only part of the UK where a strong anti-malaria drug was made available to children on the NHS.
The UK was the worst affected area in the developed world and Lambeth, Lewisham and Southwark holidaymakers were identified as most likely to contract the disease overseas.
Medical experts said they saw 300 cases in 2001 – 15 per cent of the country’s total number of cases.
Children in other parts of the country had to pay for the anti-malaria tablets but in South London they were made available free of charge.
A granny became a gang’s trusted drugs’ mule, enjoying Caribbean holidays at the expense of her paymasters.
The 52-year-old was caught at Gatwick Airport with crack cocaine worth ÂŁ170,000 hidden in the handles and axles of her four suitcases.
She said she had agreed to act as a courier because her family had been given death threats.
During her trial police mounted a guard outside the court room, but she was convicted of drug smuggling offences and jailed for 10 years.
A show featuring a naked man with blood pouring out of a cut in his arm was banned by councillors.
The Gruesome show at the South London Gallery involved artist Franko B lying on a sheet of glass with blood trickling out of his body for 20 minutes.
But despite selling 150 tickets for the performance, the Still Life act was banned by Southwark council who refused to provide the organisers with a performance licence.
The wound was to be inflicted by a doctor but the council said it was in bad taste.
30 Years Ago
Parents vowed to fight plans to axe their children’s school just six weeks after it started a new life as a combined junior and infants school.
Latchmere Primary School in Burns Road, Battersea, was singled out for closure by Wandsworth council after it was revealed that just 200 pupils went there even though it had a capacity for 460 youngsters.
Governors said they had begun to address the problem and they thought the school had been saved a year earlier when the council merged two schools and closed two more as part of its Primary Schools Review.
A group of young dancers were left disappointed after their performance for the Queen was cut from a TV special.
The Majorie Hawkins Dancers vowed to lobby the BBC for an apology after their three-minute Irish dancing routine was dropped from coverage of the BBC’s Forty Glorious Years show, which was filmed at Earl’s Court, west London.
The Charlton-based dance troupe, were told the performance, alongside Cliff Richard and Cilla Black was to be shown on October 30, 1992 but their slot was cut by BBC bosses.
But the BBC said the dancers were not the only group to be axed and claimed the show over-ran.
Campaigners won their six-year battle to save a derelict church.
Work began on work to turn St George’s Church in Wells Way Camberwell into housing for the poor after it was bought from the Celestial Church by the Co-Operative Housing Society after it was given a ÂŁ1.5m grant from the Government.
The rest of the ÂŁ2m needed was promised to the group by English Heritage, to pay for the bodies of smallpox victims to be taken out of the church crypt and reburied in the grounds of the church.
St George’s was built in 1841 along with four other South London churches after Parliament pledged ÂŁ1m to celebrate victory against Napoleon.
Generic Picture: Pixabay/JoshuaWoroniecki
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