“The Honourable Member for Norwood”
Thank you very much to the Herne Hill Society and Brockwell Park Community Partners for inviting me to give this lecture, and my particular thanks to Ann Kingsbury for help with research.
There have been nine MPs for the Norwood constituency alone; and subsequently two MPs for the successor seat of Dulwich and West Norwood, of which I am proud to be the second. It has been really enjoyable and fascinating to have had the opportunity to explore the life of one of my predecessors, and to reflect on the contrasts between Thomas Lynn Bristowe’s experience and mine. I cannot, however, begin this lecture without paying tribute to my immediate predecessor Tessa Jowell, who was so well known to many of you and who passed away very recently. Much has been said about Tessa by many people, but in this context, I think it is true to say that she broke the mould of her predecessors, building on the work of both John Fraser, who we also lost only just over a year ago, and Sam Silkin. John and Sam both pioneered a much more engaging and accessible approach to politics and to engaging with their constituents. Tessa, I think, took that to a different level altogether — her approach could not have been more different from her Victorian predecessors, including Thomas Lynn Bristowe.
The boundaries of the Norwood constituency have changed over time. Constituencies have generally tended to get smaller over time (until the current round of boundary changes which seeks to reduce the number of MPs from 650 to 600). The constituency boundary in 1885 was described as “The Norwood ward and the parts of Brixton and Stockwell lying south of Acre Lane and Coldharbour Lane”. It seems clear that the Norwood ward stretched further west than the current Herne Hill ward, so into the areas that we now know as Tulse Hill and Brixton Hill. Thomas Lynn Bristowe, a stockbroker who lived on Denmark Hill, represented Norwood from 1885 to 1892, when he tragically died from a heart attack on the steps of Brockwell Hall.
I’m far from being an expert on the history of Victorian London — there are many in audience I know whose historical knowledge is far greater than mine, and who make me quake in my shoes as I think of speaking on history in front of you, so I beg your forgiveness for any errors in the detail of what I am going to say this evening. I thought I would start by trying in very broad terms to take us back to what life in this area might have been like in our area of London in the 1880s.
London had just seen the most intensive period of development and expansion related to the industrial revolution. Population of London expanded at an unprecedented rate in the 19th century, from one million in 1800 to 6.9m a century later: growth of around 10% a year on average.
City beginning to face up to the challenges that industrialisation had brought with it — including health — there had been a cholera epidemic in mid-1880s, connection being made between slum housing and poor health; housing itself starting to become an issue in its own right, we know that housing reformer Octavia Hill was active in south London at this time, and also interestingly worked with John Ruskin at Dulwich Picture Gallery; reformer Charles Booth was surveying London and found in 1885 that 35% of people living in the East End were living in abject poverty.
London was also getting to grips with the administrative and democratic challenges of an expanding population — Bristowe’s tenure saw the creation of the first ever London-tier of government, the London County Council, which he marshalled to great effect to secure Brockwell Park for our community. Despite the Representation of the People Act 1884, the year before Bristowe was elected, establishing the modern one Member per constituency system, and expanding the suffrage, still the case that all women and 40% of men did not have the vote. Also infrastructure challenges — this was the period when Bazalgette was building the sewer network, which also resulted in great change in our area: the culverting of the River Effra.
The 1880s were an age of philanthropy, of seeking benefactors and raising funds by private subscription for a wide range of projects from hospitals to schools to libraries — but philanthropy was increasingly not fit for purpose as means of addressing the many social challenges that industrialisation had brought — the middle of the 19th century, for example, saw dramatic drop in life expectancy.
The 1880s were also a period of global change with particular issues of note including the colonial carve-up of Africa, and London was seeing very significant numbers of refugees, particularly Russian Jews arriving in East London, as a consequence of pogroms taking place in Russia. Now, we have residents from every part of Africa and far beyond living in this constituency, and the issue of support for refugees remains the second biggest issue in terms of the volume of correspondence I have received since I was elected — second of course only to Brexit.
Within that backdrop, what would we have recognised of our area of London if we were able to visit during Bristowe’s tenure from 1885 to 1892?
The Dulwich Estate was already 277 years old — and may in fact prove to be the institution which outlasts all of us! We would recognise Edward Alleyn House and the Old College and Christ’s Chapel; the “new” Dulwich College was opened in 1870. Obviously, we would recognise the form and beauty of Brockwell Park and Brockwell Hall built between 1811 and 1813; Belair House was in 1885 already 100 years old; Dulwich Picture Gallery had opened in 1817; West Norwood cemetery first consecrated for burials in 1837; Herne Hill velodrome was built the year before Bristowe died, in 1891 — now restored in large part due to Tessa’s support through her work on the 2012 Olympics; work started on the building of the old St Barnabas Church in Dulwich Village, destroyed by fire in 1992, began in 1892. Maps from the 1850s indicate the presence of St Jude’s Church on Dulwich Road and St Paul’s on Herne Hill. The essential structure of Herne Hill — two railway lines and the station, Brockwell Park, Dulwich Road, Norwood Road, Half Moon Lane, Herne Hill, and Denmark Hill where Thomas Bristowe lived — are already in place by the mid-1850s.
Many of the institutions we most rely on today were not yet developed – though some were emerging: Tate Library in Brixton opened the year after Bristowe died; King’s College Hospital was still up near Lincoln’s Inn Fields and did not move to Camberwell until 1909, though Dulwich Hospital was built in 1887 by the St Saviour’s Poor Law Union, and in 1880 a committee was formed to establish a new cottage hospital in Norwood, eventually built on Hermitage Road off Central Hill.
The development of the Metropolitan Line, the first tube line, was underway in central London, there was huge expansion in railway development, in particular in south London in the rush to be able to get passengers to Crystal Palace; but many Londoners reliant on bicycles and horse buses and trams to get around. Victorian public transport required 50,000 horses to keep it moving. But some things don’t change — despite being an inner London constituency we still only have one tube station and one tube line serving the constituency; the rail infrastructure we have now, is largely the rail infrastructure that was built by the Victorians — and possibly horses would be a more reliable form of transport than that currently provided by GTR and Southeastern!
What would it have been like for Thomas Lynn Bristowe as the MP for this area?
Bristowe had an electorate less than 10% the size of the current Dulwich and Norwood constituency: 7,501 registered voters in 1885, compared to close to 80,000 today.
Bristowe’s Parliamentary contributions were modest. There are very few records of him speaking in the House of Commons, but he appears to have been concerned about some of the conditions he saw in his constituency, asking about the “processions of the unemployed” in South London, which may have been connected to unemployment riots which took place in the West End in the same year. He also asked about the level of stamp duty collected by the Treasury on the indentures of apprentices, probably with a view to getting it reduced.
The aspiration for the Blades Estate to be purchased to secure Brockwell Park as a public amenity in south London was clearly a major issue in the area at the time, and Bristowe appears to have taken on this battle on behalf of his constituents and made a very strong commitment to it, campaigning to divert Metropolitan Board of Works proposal to acquire land for a public park on the east side of Brixton Hill and divert it to acquire the Blades Estate for Brockwell Park, and at one stage committing to underwrite the purchase with his personal fortune. The move to create the London County Council appears to have provided the additional opportunity to progress this issue in part because wrapping the very popular proposal to purchase the Blades Estate into legislation to establish a new tier of government which was inherently controversial, appeared to guarantee the support of several south London MPs.
I want to reflect now, in the context of Bristowe’s experience, on the role that I am privileged to have: being the Member of Parliament for Dulwich and West Norwood in the second decade of the 21st century.
The first and most obvious observation is that someone of my gender could not have been an MP at all in the 19th century. As we celebrate this year, the centenary of some women achieving the right to vote, there is more to do to achieve a truly representative 50:50 Parliament, but there are more women in the House of Commons now than there are women who have previously been MPs but are not anymore. On gender, race and disability it is fair to say that the Victorians hadn’t even got off the starting blocks.
Bristowe’s constituents would have been able to contact him by attending Central Lobby in the Palace of Westminster in person, or by writing him a letter. He would not have held surgeries; he certainly wasn’t contactable by email, Twitter or Facebook, and his Parliamentary activities and voting record were not monitored and published by They Work for You. Although these things are sometimes a mixed blessing, they have undoubtedly increased the accessibility and accountability of politicians and that is a good thing.
I have both a much larger electorate and a much more diverse electorate than Bristowe’s. We are about to celebrate the 70th anniversary of the arrival of the Empire Windrush at Tilbury Docks on 22 June 1948 which heralded the beginning of mass immigration from the Commonwealth to the UK. The very special connection that my constituency has — through Coldharbour Lane, Somerleyton Road, Electric Avenue and the wider Brixton area — with the Windrush, means that this constituency was at the vanguard of the diversification of London’s population, inspiring my predecessor but one, the amazing John Fraser, to learn a few words in many different languages so that pretty much wherever his constituents were from he was able to greet them in their mother tongue. And our area continues to welcome new arrivals, most recently through the work of Herne Hill Welcomes Refugees who are working to bring a Syrian family here under the community sponsorship programme. It is an enormous privilege both to represent such a diverse group of communities, and also to be held to account by them through the universal suffrage.
There are many more political parties today than in Bristowe’s day. Bristowe, a Conservative candidate, was only ever opposed by one Liberal candidate. There was not a Labour candidate in Norwood until 1922 and in 1900 one of Bristowe’s successors was elected unopposed — a situation only ever encountered now by the Speaker of the House of Commons. In the general election in Dulwich and West Norwood last year there were a total of six candidates.
The House of Commons itself plays a more prominent role in the life of a backbencher now compared with Bristowe’s time. In part as a consequence of reforms in recent years it has become a place where constituency issues large and small can be raised in departmental questions, back bench business debates, opposition day debates and Westminster Hall debates. Being a Member of Parliament now is for the vast majority of MPs more than a full-time role, in contrast to the 19th century when it was a part time occupation, only accessible to men of substantial private means. Bristowe is unlikely to have undertaken significant levels of casework on behalf of individual constituents: a system in which the residents in the greatest need did not have the right to vote would have created no incentive to do so in any systematic way. In contrast, I open more than 500 new cases each month on average.
Bristowe would not recognise the welfare state established in response to many of the ills his constituents would have experienced — our NHS, state education system, local authorities responsible for social services, street cleaning, planning, libraries and parks; his constituents could not have dreamed of such things, nor appreciate the intense pressures that these services are now under in the current funding climate. And he would find the numbers of older people living in his former constituency absolutely astonishing; average life expectancy in the 1880s was 43 for men and 47 for women, compared with 78 for men and 83 for women now. It is worth reflecting on the relationship between those two things: our welfare state and the effective doubling of life expectancy. Bristowe himself may have survived the heart attack which struck him down on the steps of Brockwell Hall had he had access to the London Air Ambulance service, King’s Helipad and the trauma centre.
But there are some aspects of our current politics that Bristowe might have recognised. The challenges of poverty and inequality, while they may not have the same manifestations as they had in the Victorian era, are still prevalent in our area. Far too many of my constituents are reliant on Foodbanks, for example, to provide their most essential needs; the need for genuinely affordable, secure social housing is absolutely pressing, and the worst of the private rental market is run by unscrupulous rogue landlords seeking to make a profit of the backs of the poorest and most vulnerable.
Finally, I would make two observations.
First, Bristowe’s prescience in going into bat for Brockwell Park is remarkable. More than 120 years later, the need for our park in a city with polluted air, high density housing, rising incidence of mental ill health and facing climate change is as pressing now as it was then. He secured a park which has been enjoyed and cherished by countless south London residents; whose value was later enriched by the arrival of Brockwell Lido, Lambeth Country Show, parkrun, football, tennis, bowling, birthday parties and many other activities, and which is still today the jewel in the crown of Herne Hill.
Secondly, I think Bristowe would recognise Herne Hill if he were able to visit today. He would recognise it because of the stewardship and concern of local people, informing and holding to account local and national government; and he would recognise it because the passion and concern for the park he established remains as intense as it was during the campaign to purchase the Blades Estate. And I think he would be very proud of that.
Helen Hayes, MP for Dulwich and West Norwood
This lecture was given at Herne Hill Baptist Church on Sat 9 June 2018
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