please empty your brain below

It wouldn't have been relief that Londoners felt at the sound of a Doodlebug's engine cutting out: that meant it was about to crash and explode somewhere nearby. It was the sound of the explosion itself which meant you'd been spared and someone else had copped it.

dg writes: Updated.
"A replacement railway bridge will be operational by the end of the following day."
I wonder how long it would take to replace the bridge these days!
The Victorian terrace on which the blue plaque commemorating Israel Zangwill sits is owned by Peabody. Many residents have lived there for years, though earlier this year many erected signs urging Peabody not to sell. At least one flat was listed for auction on a property website.
I wonder if this was the first ever use of drones in warfare.
The name drone may have derived from the Queen Bee, a radio-controlled Tiger Moth, used from 1935 as a gunnery target.
During the war, my mother, grandmother and aunt lived not far from Mile End Road by Tower Hamlets Cemetery. In her later years, she told me about hearing the V1 rockets while walking down the street and how she would press herself into the side of whatever building was she was passing hoping it wasn't her last moment. But considering she was also an ambulance driver during the war, had to go into bombed out buildings to recover the injured and dead, had her own home bombed and lost her Royal Navy brother when his ship was sunk by a Uboat, I would say the rockets were just another in a very long line of fearsome days during the war years.
“NOTE. … The introduction of Mr. Gladstone into a fictitious scene is defended on the ground that he is largely mythical.” (!)
I didn't know there's a blue plaque for Ghandi in Bow. There is also one on Barons Court Road in West Kensington.

Makes me wonder how many instances there are of the same person having multiple plaques.
I believe there are three people who have been commemorated with three plaques. The Victorian Prime Ministers,Gladstone and Palmerston and the author William Thackery. I believe the rules now only permit one.Then there are about twenty houses with two plaques.
What about Pitt the Elder?

dg writes: One, nowhere near Bow.
There's an indirect connection with your last visiting place here.
Apparently the place that suffered the highest number of V1 strikes, during WW2, was... Antwerp.
A plaque marks and remembers where the first one fell.
Antwerp: indeed, but more V-2s than V-1s; as I understand it, about half of the V-2 attacks in the war were targeted at Antwerp (about 1,600 out of about 3,200). Most of the rest went towards London, but it is estimated that more people died in the slave labour camps producing the weapons than were killed by the weapons themselves.

On pressing yourself into a building: during the siege of Stalingrad, there were spencilled street signs to inform people which side was more dangerous.
For Iz... Peabody isn't the owner, the properties are on the Crown Estate (I used to live on another part of it the other side of Viccy Park), managed by Peabody.

That housing association is selling off long leases against the wishes of residents, clearly with owner's consent. By using Peabody to do this, the government is hiding that the State is selling off more 'affordable' / 'social' housing.

The 'Estate' surrounds most of Viccy Park; some of its lands were 'surrendered' to create the Park. Not clear what the Estate owns / operates on the current east side of the Park, but on the other three 'compass' sides it's definitely the Crown...

A good book to read on this area, if you can find it is "Gentlemen in the Building Line", by Isobel Watson, published in 1989 by Padfield Publications ISBN 0 951 5003 09.
This dearth of Bow blue plaques is replicated across East London. To balance the 68 in NW3 alone, there are 21 in Tower Hamlets, 7 in Hackney, 1 in Barking, 2 each in Newham and Redbridge, 4 in Waltham Forest and none in Havering.

Near Shooters Hill, there is a Zangwill Road. I've been past it many times and wondered what the origin was - was it named after Israel Zangwill? Much of it looks to me like 30s Metroland type semis, so maybe it was named after him shortly after his death?
There's also a Zangwill house in NW6 (just off Carlton Vale)
The first Barnardo shelter was in the now defunct Fish and Ring pub near St Dunstan’s in Stepney. The sing song on a Saturday night was classic. At least the Local Friends’ takeaway is open .
As 6-year-olds oblivious to the new danger, a friend and I were walking to school in Raynes Park when a flying bomb passed overhead (no warning siren). We stood and watched it with great interest – there were flames shooting out the back! Then we wandered on. When we came within sight of the school gates there was a teacher jumping up and down and shouting “Run! Run!”










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