Our Family History

Alfred Stephen Rose was born on 13th February 1902 in West Ham, London. His father, also called Alfred Rose, was a bricklayer by trade but later became a greengrocer.  Alfred Rose Senior and his wife Emily (nee Stock) had married in West Ham Parish Church on 17th July 1898 when they were both 19 years of age.

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Alfred and Emily had four children. Their eldest Daughter, Julia Annie was born on 27th February 1900 and was named after Alfred’s mother. My grandfather, Alfred Stephen Rose was born 2 years later. His brother Charles Henry (later known as “Wag”) followed on 28th May 1903, and the youngest child, Daisy Elizabeth was born on 13th June 1905.

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In 1901 Alfred, Emily and their 12 month old daughter Julia resided at 79 Marcus Street, West Ham. Their neighbours at number 81 Marcus Street were a family called the Newman’s. The Newman’s and the Roses were later to become united by two different marriages.  

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The 1901 census for Marcus Street, shows Gas Pipe Fitter James Newman, and his wife Rosa Jane living with 6 of their children - Rosa, an 18 year old domestic servant, George, a 16 year old Grocers’ assistant, Joseph, a 14 year old Chemists’ warehouse boy, May who was 9 years old, Alice Ethel, aged 7 and 4 year old James, who would eventually marry Alfred and Emily’s eldest daughter, Julia Rose.

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The Newman’s eldest daughter Annie had married George Simons on New Year’s Eve 1898. Their eldest daughter, Annie Ellen born in 1899 and known in the family as “Nelly”, would eventually become the first wife of my grandfather, Alfred Stephen Rose.

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By 1911, the growing Rose family had moved further up the road to 85 Marcus Street. The small, narrow “2 up 2 down” terraced house where the family of 6 lived, had a parlour and a kitchen downstairs, an outside lavatory in the yard and 2 bedrooms upstairs –one for Alfred and Emily with all four children sharing the 2nd bedroom.

 

In the neighbouring area were the Royal Albert Docks and many factories and industrial buildings. West Ham was a predominantly working class area of the East End of London, and most men were employed in skilled trades, factory work or unskilled manual labour.

 

I remember my grandfather telling me that as a child he didn’t have many toys to play with – mainly handmade soldiers carved out of wood.  In his Christmas stocking each year he would get an orange, a shiny new penny and a lump of coal for good luck.

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As a young boy, enterprising Alfred would earn 2p a week by running various errands for his paternal grandmother Julia Rose who lived at 75 Marcus Street. He would also get a dinner cooked for him on Sunday afternoon if he would go and fetch his grandfather – who was also called Alfred – and bring him home from the local pub. Alfred’s grandfather was a cabinet maker, and both he and Alfred’s father liked a drink. Many members of his mother Emily’s family – The Stock’s - were either local publicans or barmen. My grandfather enjoyed the odd glass of Stones Ginger wine at Christmas, but he was never a big drinker and I often wonder if this very early exposure to the effects of alcohol left a long lasting impression on him.

 

According to Alfred, his father also enjoyed gambling, but his winnings always ended up back with the publicans and the bookies and according to my grandfather, any money his father had or hid, was slowly frittered away over the years.

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According to my mother, it was Alfred’s Mother Emily who was the guiding, strong, moral influence in his life and it was she who kept the family together during difficult times. She was the strict matriarch who reinforced all the rules.

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On 30th April 1917, at the age of 39, Alfred’s father enlisted as a Private in the Army Reservists with K Squadron of the Army Service Corps Remounts and was posted to Swaythling near Southampton on the 2nd May. He never saw any enemy action overseas during the First World War, and was discharged at Woolwich as “no longer medically fit for War Service” on 1st March 1918. 

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As a boy, Alfred attended Napier Road School in West Ham, and left in 1916 when he was 14 years old. His very first job entailed working in a factory for 12 hours a day making chamois leather cloths where he earned around 8p a week.  

 

Whilst his father was away with the Army in 1917, 15 year old Alfred stayed in West Ham taking care of his mother, his brother and his 2 sisters.

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In January 1917 a catastrophic explosion, which happened just streets away from where Alfred and his family lived, had a profound effect on 15 year olds future career choice.

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The Silvertown Explosion hit London’s Royal Docks in the East End of London on January 19th 1917. It claimed 73 lives, injured almost 500, destroyed over 900 houses, left up to 70,000 homes badly damaged, and left thousands of families homeless. It is still regarded as one of the biggest explosions in the history of London and yet at the time it was not widely reported in the national newspapers.

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Silvertown was still a new suburb in 1917. Until the 1850s, the area between Bow Creek, Barking Creek and the modern A13 had been marshland. The opening of the Royal Victoria Dock in 1855 provided a magnet to industry. Factories and housing for the workers quickly followed. One of the biggest ‘manufactories’ was SW Silver & Co’s India rubber, gutta-percha and telegraph works, and the buildings gave Silvertown its name.

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The Royals (the Royal Albert Dock opened in 1880) became ‘the warehouse of the empire’. By the turn of the century it was said that every home in the country owned or had used at least one product that had come from Silvertown. Jam, soap, chemicals, varnish, paint, boxes, oil and sugar from Tate & Lyle were just a few of the goods that came from this crowded and industrious little corner of East London.

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By now, the once fresh air of the Essex marshes was heavy with the stink of chemicals. One of the worst offenders was Brunner Mond, a chemical works established at Crescent Wharf in West Silvertown in 1893 to manufacture soda crystals and caustic soda. The Production of caustic soda ceased in 1912, which left part of the factory idle.

 

Two years into the First World War, the Army was facing a crippling shell shortage. The War Office decided to use the factory’s surplus capacity to purify TNT from 1915 onwards, despite opposition from Brunner Mond and the fact that the factory was in a highly populated area.

 

From the beginning the government understood that locating a TNT factory in the midst of housing was ‘very dangerous’, but its needs were such that the Ministry felt it ‘worth the risk’.

 

Dr FA Freeth, Brunner Mond’s head chemist went further, saying:

‘It worked but was manifestly dangerous. At the end of every month we used to write to Silvertown to say that their plant would go up sooner or later.”

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At 6.52pm on January 19th, a fire in the melt-pot room caused an explosion of 50 tonnes of TNT. The TNT plant was destroyed instantly, as were many nearby buildings, including Silvertown Fire Station opposite.

 

Much of the TNT was in railway wagons awaiting transport. Many buildings in the immediate vicinity, including Vanesta’s plywood factory as well as many streets of houses were destroyed.

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Fires raged in the nearby flour mill and on ships in the dock. Silvertown Lubricants Oil, which stood on a site next door, was ravaged. Around 70,000 properties were damaged and the red glow in the sky could be seen for miles around. The final death toll was put at 73 and those injured numbered 400, but these figures have always been thought to have been an underestimate.

 

Among the dead was Dr Andreas Angel, an Oxford professor doing voluntary war work as the plant’s chief chemist. He was attempting to help put out the fire when the explosion happened.

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The emergency services immediately became involved in putting out the fires caused by the explosion, treating the wounded, and beginning to repair the damage caused. First-aid stations were set up in the streets to treat minor injuries. A Salvation Army rescue team was sent into the area under Catherine Bramwell-Booth, and the YMCA also rendered aid, including food and hot drinks. Thousands were left homeless, requiring temporary accommodation in schools, churches, and other similar places.

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Despite all the terror and chaos, there was no official news about what had happened. Everyone in the local area was frightened that the explosion may have been down to the Germans and they were fearful of what might be about to follow in the hours, days and nights ahead. It was only as the days passed that the full scale of the disaster became apparent.

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All kinds of rumours began to circulate in the local community about whom or what was responsible. Anyone with a German sounding name was seen as suspect. Even the chemist Dr Angel was seen as a possible suspect for a time. Rumours were rife that a tall suspicious looking man had been seen acting strangely near the factory, shortly before the blast, and there were some reports that he was actually seen inside the grounds.

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The local community never found out what really happened until many years later. When the war ended certain stories trickled out but it took over 50 years for the truth to finally be revealed. There were restrictions on what the press could print at the time, just like there was in the Second World War. The official line of the authorities was to suppress the news and order a press blackout on much of the information about the disaster but without giving any credit to the Germans either.

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Many local people thought that the explosion was “an accident waiting to happen” and the fear that something like it could easily happen again never left them for many years after. Lessons were not learned from the explosion either. 23 years later during The Blitz there were still many factories with inflammable materials located in the area. Silvertown, North Woolwich, Canning Town and Custom House took more bombing than anywhere else in London during the blitz.

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Back on that fateful night on January  19th 1917, in every street around Silvertown, groups of people, dazed by what had happened, and many suffering seriously injuries surveyed the ruins of homes and shops. Rescuers used their own clothes to wrap around the injured in the cold night air. There were many courageous acts that night that have been remembered over the 100 years that have since passed. The fact that the explosion happened in the early evening when many people were still not home from work, meant that civilian casualties and deaths were slightly lessened.

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Alfred and his family would have all done all they could to help any family members, friends, or neighbours who were directly affected by the explosion. Alfred would have seen Firefighters and Police Officers in the streets doing their best to put out the raging fires and helping the injured and recover the dead from under the rubble. He would have heard about all the stories of tragedy and heroism and may have known many of the people involved.

 

Vernon Charles Roberts, a boatman in the Southern division, rescued 28 year old mill hand Miss Kramer from the debris of No. 11 shed, and used his boat to convey her across the dock for first aid. Staff of the tugs Power, Holland, Scott, Canada, Lea and Hornet are credited with saving Ranks Mills and C silo from destruction through their quick action to fight the fire, and with ferrying the injured to hospital.

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Two Policemen died in the explosion, along with 2 Firefighters from Silvertown Station and there is no doubt that these deaths, the civilian losses and everything else that he witnessed as a teenager on that night, would have a profound impact on Alfred’s life. 

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Firefighter Frederick Sell, 45, of Fort Street, Silvertown, and sub officer Henry Vickers, 49, also of Fort Street, were killed fighting the fire and some of their colleagues were injured.

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3 days later, The London Gazette reported: “On January 17, (a very serious incident took place) in Silvertown. West Ham Fire Brigade was summoned and on arriving with their engine was told to save themselves, as they could do no good. Nevertheless, though well aware of the danger they began to couple their hose. The explosion took place blowing away their engine. Sub officer Henry Vickers and fireman Frederick Sell were killed and Station Officer Samuel Betts and firemen James Betts, Henry Chapple and James Yabsley were injured.”

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Many years later, Fireman James Joseph Betts, one of the survivors, who was awarded the King’s Medal for bravery, described in the London Sunday Express, the following eyewitness story of what really happened on that terrible evening:

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It was ten minutes to seven; a chilly, starry night on January 19th 1917. The war had dragged on for two and a half years. I was on night duty with a number of others of the brigade at Silvertown Fire Station in Poplar.

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On every side loomed the black shapes of factories. Behind screened windows — for every precaution was taken in those days of air raids, and not a light showed — vast armies of war workers were engaged on their various tasks of turning out munitions, food, and clothing for the troops. Opposite the fire station was the munitions factory of Messrs. Brunner Mond, Limited. Behind it the flour mills of W. Vernon and Sons. A little to the east were the oil refineries of Silvertown Lubricants, Limited, and the saw-mill and creosote works of Messrs. Burt, Boulton and Haywood. To the west stretched the sugar factory of Messrs Lyle Limited.

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Nearly 5,000 workers were there in all — hundreds of them women and girls who were “doing their bit” in the absence at the front of husbands, fathers, sons and sweethearts.

 

Perhaps the most important of these factories was that of Messrs. Brunner Mond, for it was here that, night and day, the ceaseless task of manufacturing shells and armaments was taking place. The hourly cry from the front was “More munitions.”

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Not the least important branch of this vital work of munitions making was carried out in the chemical laboratories which lay a little away from the main works. These were the “danger” buildings, where high explosives were manufactured. From all sides came the din of racing machinery, the mournful treble whine of sawmills, and the rattle of cranes as the barges lying in the adjacent Thames were loaded. Pedestrians hurried past the fire station to and from their work, for it was about the hour when shifts were changed. Children carrying baskets of provisions and enamel tea-cans containing the evening meals of parents working overtime, hastened on their way. There was in the air the electrical tension brought about by high-speed production in an urgent cause.

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Suddenly, without warning, a bright orange tongue of flame shot up from the very heart of the Brunner Mond works high into the air, all the more vivid on account of the enveloping blackness of the night. Into the station rushed one of the men. “Brunner Mond’s is alight!” he shouted.

 

None knew better than we the terrible implications conveyed by that brief warning. For, once those rising flames reached the danger, buildings, there was little hope for the lives and property in the vicinity.

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There was, too, a further danger, for besides the vast quantity of T.N.T. contained in the “danger” building there lay on the permanent way that ran close to the building four railway trucks containing enough of the deadly stuff to” blow up half London. Within a few seconds fire alarms rang through the station, and our chief immediately rapped out orders.

We rushed to get out the escape and the pump. There was not a second to lose if we were to quell the fire and avert an explosion. But I felt it was such a forlorn hope that I yelled to my wife who, with our twelve-year-old son, lived in the quarters behind the station. Get out of it, Polly, for God’s sake. We’re all going up in a minute!”

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The next second we were tearing across the road into Brunner Mond’s yard. Outside the fire station people stood transfixed as though fascinated by that now fiercely burning building across the way. Others were fleeing helter-skelter anyhow, anywhere from that flaring presage of imminent danger, yelling warnings as they went. Some lay flat, on their, faces on the pavement, some prayed against the walls of the street.

As we entered the factory gates we were met by the flying figure of the timekeeper, a burly Scotsman. “Run for it, mate, we’ll be gone in a minute,” he yelled to me as he almost staggered past, hatless, distraught, his face distorted by a terrible fear.

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They were his last words. Then it was as though heaven and gravity plunged to meet the earth in a shattering upheaval. In one second the whole world seemed to have crumbled. It might have been seconds, minutes, hours before I next remembered. I was lying on my back on a piece of waste ground 200 feet from the spot where I and other firemen had been fixing the hose ready to play on the flames.

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Around me was a vast plain of rubble. The factory had gone. There were fearful sounds in the air, the screams of injured women and children, the groans of those imprisoned under debris, the rattle of rafters and girders being feverishly overturned by rescuers who had rushed to the shattered area, the shrill resonance of ambulance bells, the imperious clang of fire alarms, the roar of flames. On every side great fires were blazing.

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In all nine factories and mills had caught alight. They had been ignited by red-hot iron girders, flung sky-high by the explosion, and which had fallen in their midst. Something of the terrific force of the explosion can be imagined when I tell you that parts of our fire-engine were found a quarter of a mile away, smashed and twisted beyond recognition.

Enormous boilers were hurled into the air and landed several streets away. Houses we’re left with cracking walls, windows gone, doors blown in, and roofs with gaping holes. In places which received the full force of the explosion it was as though a giant pestle had descended from the heavens and pounded them to powder.

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Every building in London was shaken. Half a million windows in shops and houses across the river a mile away at Charlton and South Woolwich were broken. The explosion was heard in districts as far apart as Salisbury and King’s Lynn. Meanwhile the surrounding factories burned fiercely, and the task of rescuing workers in their blazing depths began.

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Every available fire-engine and escape from all parts of London converged on Silvertown. It was a grim and awe-inspiring scene.- For , three or four hours after the explosion the whole of London was lit by the flames.

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The fire area itself was an astonishing spectacle. Imagine an arc of towering, flat-faced factories, with row upon row of windows. At that moment they were as if they had been filled with burning coal. Every window opening glared like an iron furnace when the doors are opened.

Through long cracks in the walls long flames waved out like fiery serpents. Now a great fragment of iron — it looked as large as a cottage roof — would slide down the sides of the glowing pile. Towards the river another great factory blazed fiercely. Its windows appeared like a series of white-hot ingots. To the right the widespread frame of a row of timber sheds resembled a great main line railway station afire. The scene seemed unreal.

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There were these towering bonfires of light spread out across the black landscape, and as their flames leaped up to the sky they threw into relief the broken shells of rows of houses — streets without windows and, what was more, without inhabitants. Some were dead — no one knew yet how many. The rest were gone — anywhere away from that scene of death and destruction.

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High overhead poured vast clouds of smoke. Beneath them from the flour mills, where several hundred girls had been at work, came flying showers of millions of tiny particles of light as though a sweeping storm of sleet had become incandescent. No doubt these tiny specks were the glowing ashes of a myriad grain of wheat carried up into the sky by the waves of flame. It was like a golden rainstorm.

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The firemen and their apparatus were almost helpless against conflagrations of such number and magnitude. For days afterwards the heaps of debris in the midst of the mere shells of these mills and factories that remained were smouldering. Weeks afterwards, when the task of clearing away the wreckage began, the workers came across red-hot embers deep down among the piles of debris.

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While the great battle against the fires, was being waged. By firemen, a large army of helpers was helping to extricate the dead, and injured from the wreckage of their homes.

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The heaps of ruins which had been houses were slowly explored. It was like scraping and scratching among great rubbish heaps. Sometimes a distracted mother in search of a missing child would push herself to the forefront of a group of searchers and herself claw at the pile of rubble in a frenzy of apprehension until her fingers bled.

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Such scenes were frequent. One of the bodies dug out of the wreckage was that of a young clerk engaged in a large sugar refinery, one of the factories set ablaze. This youth had run from the factory to the manager’s house close by to warn him of the fire. As he was knocking at the door the explosion occurred, and the wall of the house collapsed and buried him.

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One woman was putting her babies to bed when the explosion occurred. She rushed out with them, and in her terror ran on and on till she was taken in by some kindly people, at whose house she stayed. A number became mentally unhinged by the shock. One lad’s blood turned to water. He died six months later. My wife was rendered stone deaf: One encountered at every turn stories of simple heroism and human fortitude in the face of this terrible calamity.

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There were tales of rescues by those who themselves were seriously injured. One man dragged four badly injured young children from the wreckage of a demolished house, and it was not until afterwards, when he suddenly sank into unconsciousness, that those around realised that he had himself lost a foot.

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There was one brave girl, Norah Griffiths, who helped to hold up a roof that would otherwise have fallen and crushed to death a number of young children attending a Band of Hope meeting at a local mission hall.

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People divested themselves of their outer garments, despite the bitterly cold weather, in order to wrap up the shivering forms of homeless children, scores of whom had been separated from their parents in the darkness and confusion.

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In every street stood groups of stranded people, gazing ruefully at what once had been their homes. In many cases the roofs and the bed rooms had just disappeared. Only parts of the walls of the downstairs were now left. These rooms were no longer rooms. They had no ceilings. Their fronts had vanished.

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One of the most immediate and pressing problems was the housing of the homeless. The Salvation Army did wonderful work. It established buildings and provided food and hot drinks. A nearby chapel was hastily converted into a creche, and hundreds of children were found shelter. Some of the victims sought refuge further afield, at the house of relatives and charitable institutions.

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With the coming of dawn there were still hundreds of homeless ones, weary and pale-faced, trudging the dismal streets. The entire district was cut off by a military guard and police forces. Through this cordon passed streams of refugees from the stricken area in search of food and sleep. Some clutched the glass vases which had adorned their mantelpieces, for in many cases it seemed to have been the most fragile articles that had escaped injury. Others carried clothes baskets filled with personal trifles saved from the ruins of their homes. Everyone seemed to bear a load of some sort — trunks, sacks, bundles, even treasures hastily wrapped in sheets and blankets. Some wheeled perambulators loaded with household goods.

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And hundreds who had fled from the place as soon as they had overcome the great, shocks of the explosion begged a night’s lodging a few miles away tramped back to see what they could salvage from the wreckage of their former homes.

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How little the world at large knew of this and a score of other similar war-time disasters, involving loss of life and injury among the civilian population! Seventy-four lives had been lost, nearly a thousand maimed and injured. The place which had been a munitions works was a waste of black desolation. Nearly a dozen factories and mills had been destroyed.

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Thousands of houses were wiped out. Hundreds of people were rendered homeless. The damage amounted to £1,212,661. There were third-party claims running into several million pounds sterling. A dozen people living in the immediate vicinity of the explosion were never seen again. This terrible story of death and destruction was told to the world in the following prosaic announcement which appeared in the daily newspapers.

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“The Ministry of Munitions regret to announce that an explosion occurred this evening at a munitions factory in the neighbourhood of London. It is feared that the explosion was attended by considerable loss of life and damage to property.

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Even today, it is still hard to appreciate the huge impact of the Silvertown Explosion and the trauma suffered by the many thousands of local people who were directly affected by it. At the same time, the resilience of the local community and their pulling together in order overcome adversity was something quite special to witness – and this East End diehard spirit would be tested again later during the 2nd World War.

 

Many Police, firefighter colleagues and people from the local community came together to pay their respects at the funerals of those men killed in the explosion in the line of duty. These poor, hardworking people, living in cramped housing, all grieved together.

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The Ministry of Munitions ordered an investigation led by Sir Ernley Blackwell, which was published on 24 February 1917. A definite single cause of the explosion was not determined, invalidating those early theories such as German sabotage or an air-raid, but it was found that the factory's site was inappropriate for the manufacture of TNT.

 

Management and safety practices at the plant were also criticised: TNT was stored in unsafe containers, close to the plant and the risky production process. The report was not fully disclosed to the public until the 1950s, so many local people believed that it was down to the Germans, for many years after.

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On 20 June 1917, Andrea Angel, the plant's chief chemist, who was attending to the initial fire, was posthumously awarded the Edward Medal (First Class) as was P.C George Wenbourne. Police Constable Edward George Brown Greenoff was posthumously awarded the King's Police Medal, and is commemorated with a plaque on the Memorial to Heroic Self Sacrifice in Postman's Park, in central London.

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Many buildings in Silvertown had to be demolished and rebuilt.  1,700 men were employed in the reconstruction task by February. £3m in aid was paid to those affected by the blast, equivalent to approximately £40m in 2007, of which £1m was paid to local businesses and factories, including £185,000 paid to Brunner-Mond.

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The clear-up was under the direction of Sir Frank Baines, and a report in the Manchester Guardian of 12 February 1917 stated 750 to 1000 men were on site. Six hundred houses had been demolished by the explosion and 400 new ones were being built. Three hundred others had been repaired and many more re-slated. The dock was up and running quickly, despite the widespread devastation which was well detailed. Within days temporary arrangements were in place for other docks to receive and transport grain and other goods – these supplies were essential to Britain, especially during wartime. The quick, if partial, recovery of the dock becomes less surprising when you read the reward records - sick pay appears as a request rather than an automatic right, suggesting dock workers could not afford to take unpaid time off, even if they were ‘badly cut’ or otherwise injured. It was not however until the early 1920s that all of the repair or replacement works to the dock buildings were completed.

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Henry Cavendish-Bentinck and Alfred Mond, son of the eponymous Ludwig Mond, debated in Parliament the living conditions of residents during the reconstruction; conditions were said to be "gravely prejudicial to the public health" and "not fit for human habitation". It was mooted that the residents should be relocated to a newly built garden city, rather than spending £1.3m rebuilding the present, dilapidated, area.  John Joseph Jones, MP for Silvertown also maintained an interest in the disaster.

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Alfred Rose decided that as soon as he was old enough, he was going to apply to join The Police or The Fire Brigade - even though his father wanted him to become a bricklayer. In August 1922 aged 20 he was accepted into the Fire Brigade – and he said he chose them over The Police because they had been the first to interview him. 

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2 months later in October 1922 Alfred Stephen Rose married Nelly Simons, the niece of his sister Julia & his brother-in-law James Newman. Alfred's parents had originally tried to dissuade him from marrying Nelly, who had a history of heart trouble. In the summer of 1924 Nelly gave birth to a son whom they named Ronald.

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In 1935 Nelly suddenly died of heart attack aged just 35, leaving her husband Alfred to bring up 11 year old Ronald with the help of his parents, whom he moved back home with.