1950s: Beloved King is mourned

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Nicola Rippon reviews the year 1952 when Derbyshire, and the nation, were mourning the sudden death of their beloved King.

The scene at the Farnborough air show where a pilot, John Derry, his observer and 26 spectators were killed as a jet fighter disintegrated after crashing through the sound barrier in 1952

FOR Derbyshire, as for the whole of Britain, 1952 was a year dominated by the death of a much-loved King, and by the accession of his young daughter.

Although the nation knew that its monarch was not in good health – he had appeared unwell during the traditional Christmas broadcast only six weeks earlier, and had looked tired and drawn as he waved goodbye to his daughter and her husband when they left London Airport at the start of their long Commonwealth tour at the end of January – the suddenness of his death came as a shock.

When the simple announcement came from Sandringham House, at 10.45 on the morning of Wednesday, February 6, a stunned nation learned that, after a sudden decline overnight, King George VI had died in his sleep.

Among the first to hear the sombre news were thousands of Derbyshire children listening to a schools’ broadcast on the BBC wireless service. Even the eight and nine-year-olds in the class, children normally too young to fully appreciate a world event, were shocked by the words they heard.

The King was held in great affection by the British people whom he had led through some of the darkest days in the country’s history. He had never wanted, nor indeed expected, to be King, but had fought against acute shyness and a speech impediment to accept his duty, following the abdication of his brother, Edward VIII, later the Duke of Windsor.

One Derby woman summed up most people’s feelings when she told a newspaper reporter: “I feel quite stunned.”

And one Derbyshire man had special reason to be devastated by the King’s death. Tom Jerram, the eldest son of Mr and Mrs Jerram, of 35 High Street, Chellaston, had been the King’s personal valet for more than 25 years.

Some comfort from private grief was given in the public rituals and ceremonies that took place over the next few days.

At 11am on Friday, February 8, as the public proclamation of the Queen’s accession was made at St James’s Palace, the Mayor of Derby, Councillor Zachariah Padgin Grayson, read the same statement from the steps of the Council House and, for the first time in their lives, hundreds of people joined in singing the unfamiliar God Save the Queen.

A fanfare of trumpets heralded the proclamation and, afterwards, some of the crowd moved on to County Hall, in St Mary’s Gate, where the High Sheriff of Derbyshire, Mr G C M Jackson, read the proclamation again, this time on behalf of the county.

Many scheduled events had to be postponed or cancelled. Major J W Chandos-Pole, presiding at the Derbyshire Conservative Political Club lunch at Ramsden’s Cafe in the Cornmarket, asked members to stand in silence, and an address by Peter Bailey, chairman of the Conservative Association’s East Midlands Area Education Committee, was cancelled.

Derby Borough Police’s rugby match against Monmouthshire Police was cancelled, as was a dance that was to have followed at the Borough Police Station.

The regular midweek meeting at Derby’s greyhound stadium was called off, as was the annual dinner and dance of Derby Chamber of Trade, to have been held at the old Assembly Rooms.

There was some controversy, however, when the Rialto Ballroom announced that dancing would still be held there. Proprietor Mr J Aldread explained: “It’s a Forces invitation dance and I can’t cancel it at such short notice.”

While the Derby public were prepared to accept that Mr Aldread had been placed in a difficult position, they were less convinced by Sam Ramsden, who announced that his dance night, at the Plaza, the following evening would also have to go on “because I’m under contract with a Birmingham band”.

His decision brought intense criticism and several angry letters to the Derby Evening Telegraph.

Many Derbeians made the journey to London to see the King’s lying-in-state at Westminster Hall. One Derbyshire-born man, warmed only by a black overcoat and an oil heater, was hard at work producing a painting of the lying-in-state.

Frank Beresford, who had studied at Derby School of Art at the end of the 19th century, had performed the same service 16 years earlier at the lying-in-state of George V.

Meanwhile, work continued in Derby on the borough’s funeral wreath.

Produced by T Rowley & Sons, the wreath measured five feet in diameter and proved too large to be assembled at the florists’ Green Lane premises.

After completion, it was displayed at the Council House where it was viewed by a steady stream of people.

On the day of the funeral, Derby held its own civic procession and memorial service at the cathedral to coincide with events in London. Two minutes’ silence was held across the town, signalled by the sounding of the air-raid sirens at 2pm.

Men, women and children in homes, schools, factories, offices, shops and out on the streets, stopped what they were doing, removed their hats and bowed their heads to pay their personal tribute.

As the rumble of traffic died, the procession began its sombre journey from Corporation Street to the cathedral, accompanied by the strains of Handel’s Dead March from Saul. The only other sounds audible were the faint whispers of mourners, the crisp steps of the marching feet, and the cathedral’s minute bell.

All across Derbyshire, similar services and memorials were in progress, the people of a county, and of a nation, united in grief for their dead King.

The year 1952 also saw the death of Denby-born Charles Stone VC, at the age of 63.

He had won the nation’s highest honour for courage in 1918, during the Germans’ spring offensive in France, and had later won the Military Medal before returning to civilian life, and employment at Rolls-Royce. A special memorial service was held in his honour at Belper British Legion.

There were near escapes from tragedy, too, as a Rolls-Royce party of 520 people from Derby, Burton, Belper and Ilkeston were witnesses to a terrible accident at the Farnborough Air Show in September.

Some 130,000 pairs of eyes were on a de Havilland 110 fighter as tragedy struck. The aircraft made its approach, breaking the speed of sound and producing a sonic boom to great excitement and applause.

But, on its second, low-level pass, as the aircraft travelled at speeds of around 500mph, its nose lifted slightly and the plane disintegrated.

Mrs H G Pick, of Enfield Road, Kingsway, told the Evening Telegraph: “Suddenly streams of smoke left it as though it were firing rockets. The body started to fall to earth and the engines hurtled over our heads, landing about 50 yards away.”

As one of the engines fell on to waste ground, the other plunged into a crowd on a hillside and the rest of the plane, including large pieces of the cockpit, was hurled to earth causing death, injury and destruction on a huge scale.

There was panic as spectators tried to locate their colleagues and loved ones. At least one young woman from the Rolls-Royce party had her eye blackened and her cheek cut by pieces of the plane’s fuselage.

But, like Gilbert Ford, of Buchan Street, Derby, she could later reflect on her good fortune. “It was all so sudden and tragic,” Mr Ford told the Telegraph. The days that followed revealed the full extent of the disaster. Only yards away from the Rolls-Royce party, some 31 people had been killed and dozens more had suffered serious injury.

While the shadow of tragedy hung heavily over much of the year, several Derbeians celebrated success. Normanton’s Herbert Beetham appeared in his third English billiards championships final, while young actress Joan Rice, who spent her early childhood in Abbey Street, was propelled to stardom in Walt Disney’s The Story of Robin Hood and His Merrie Men, playing Maid Marion opposite Richard Todd’s Robin Hood.

Meanwhile, home-style guru and florist of choice for society hostesses, Constance Spry – who was born in Warner Street, later lived in Wilson Street, and had provided the flowers for the wedding of Princess Elizabeth – published her book How To Do The Flowers.

And there were new beginnings, too, as the Derby Playhouse welcomed audiences for the first time to its premises in the former Baptist Chapel on Sacheveral Street. Unlike its predecessor, the Little Theatre in Becket Street, the Playhouse, with its permanent repertory company, was to stage only professional productions.

Despite all the sadness of 1952, Derbyshire, like the nation around it, seemed to be finally pulling away from the dark days of the first half of the 20th century, and looking forward to a new year and a new “Elizabethan Age”.

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