This week 10, 20, 30 years ago

10 Years Ago

A son was seeking answers to how his mother died from burns she sustained in a care home.

Paula Parle, 74, suffered burns to 80 per cent of her body after smoking a cigarette in her room at the Rose Court Care Home, in Lower Road, Rotherhithe, on March 26, 2010.

An inquest into her death had not yet opened, leaving her son Peter demanding the authorities act to make sure it never happens again.

Mrs Parle was placed in the home by Southwark council in September 2008 because she suffered from dementia.

She was allowed to smoke under supervision of staff and her cigarettes were kept in a locked box in the kitchen.

She is thought to have lit a cigarette the wrong way around, and it fell on to her night dress. She suffered horrendous burns and died in hospital later that day.

A multimillion-pound development which promised to create thousands of jobs was given the green light by the Communities Secretary Eric Pickles.

Lambeth council approved planning permission for the £600million redevelopment of Elizabeth House in Waterloo in November the year before.

The decision was subject to agreement by the mayor of London at the time, Boris Johnson, but critics of the scheme asked Mr Pickles MP to call in the decision to reconsider.

However, in a letter to Lambeth council, Mr Pickles said the development should be dealt with by the local authority and said he would not be calling it in.

A shopkeeper reopened his business for the first time since it was destroyed by fire during the 2011 London riots.

Duncan Mundell said Party Superstores, which was gutted, was only able to continue in the 18 months before because he re-mortgaged his home.

The shop, in Lavender Hill, Battersea, was completely destroyed by fire in August 2011.

Party Superstores was able to continue trading after a nearby Debenhams store offered to let it share its floorspace.

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20 Years Ago

The South London Press launched a readers’ competition to name twin lambs – the first born on a city farm for six years.

The rare black Wensleydales were taking their first steps when the competition was thrown out to the public and visitors to Vauxhall City Farm.

The sheep were common in the Yorkshire Dales, but numbers had been decimated by the Foot and Mouth Disease disease, which meant thousands of the animals had to be slaughtered.

The births of the twins came as a shock to 19-year-old farmyard co-ordinator Keith Walsh.

Staff had known the ewe was pregnant but twins are rare for first-time mums.

Police were hunting a sadistic mugger who slashed his victims in the face and neck – after he had robbed them.

One 50-year-old victim needed 50 stitches after he was set upon by the thief, who was armed with a knife and a broom handle, as he walked away from a cashpoint in Tankerville Road, near Streatham Common railway station.

Police said they thought the mugger was behind six other extremely violent cases.

In one case a victim was pistol-whipped, while others had knives held to their throats.

Schools bosses in Southwark agreed to press ahead with plans to set up a boys-only school to share some facilities with a girls’ school.’

East Dulwich Waverley Girls’ School would become a sister school to a new boys’ school on the site of Waverley Lower School on Peckham Rye Common half a mile away.

Parents living in Nunhead, East Dulwich and Peckham reacted angrily as council top brass chose to press ahead with the single-sex “federated” schools option.

The school would share a headteacher and governing body.

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30 Years Ago

Plans to install security measures at seven Tube stations were scrapped.

More than £14million had been spent on security in the five years to 1993 – resulting in an 80 per cent drop in crime.

But plans to put the equipment in Brixton, Lambeth North, Stockwell, Waterloo, New Cross, New Cross Gate and Rotherhithe were shelved due to budget cuts.

The security measures, including help points for passengers had been the subject of campaigns for years.

Despite months of detective work, police were still trying to identify three men whose bodies were pulled from the Thames.

A total of 52 bodies had been fished out of the river in 1992, but all except three of them had been identified and their relatives traced.

But the identities of three men remained a mystery.

Police issued an artist’s impressions of the dead men in a bid to help find their loved-ones. The men’s fingerprints had been put through a police database but drew a blank.

Five dogs were killed and one was left fighting for its life after someone dumped poisoned meat in a park.

Police and the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food launched separate inquiries after the meat was left in Beckenham Place Park, in Beckenham Hall Road.

The dogs were believed to have eaten the meat, which was laced with Paraquat, a lethal weedkiller, and left near the 11th hole of a golf course.

The link to the meat was made by a sharp-eyed vet who found that all the animals had been taken for walks in the same area and test samples were taken from the dogs where boffins confirmed her fears.

 

Picture: Fire crews douse burnt out buildings on London Road in Croydon, Surrey, following a a third night of civil unrest on the streets of London. Credit: PA Images