Digest: 200-year-old skeleton buried at last, another row over Traveller sites and farewell to a favourite chippy
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SKELETON IN THE CUPBOARD
THIS doesn’t happen every day: a funeral service and burial for somebody who died around 200 years ago. The long wait to be laid to rest for a woman whose skeleton once hung in the classrooms at Highgate School in Highgate Village came to an end earlier this month. A coffin was duly brought out of the school and taken to the adjacent churchyard.
Revealed in the current edition of the New Journal, the burial is part of an ongoing debate about what should happen to traded human remains and the lack of dignity many feel surrounded their use in educational settings. Plastic alternatives are now used as alternatives in schools but there are still skeletons in school storage cupboards up and down the country.
Investigations found the Highgate School skeleton was most likely an Indian woman, aged 20–45, who died from cancer or diabetes.
Full story in this week’s paper and on the Camden New Journal website.
WHEN WE BECOME THE ANTS
WE have been told the Labour government is putting AI at the centre of its policy platforms and a new campus has opened in Somers Town to encourage teenagers to learn how to work with it.
But the ‘Pause AI’ protest in the Knowledge Quarter, as they call parts of King’s Cross these days, urged authorities to be less gung ho. Campaigners lined up to tell us that it’s not just coders that should be worried about their jobs and that we’ll all be replaced sooner or later by the machines.
And after that they will kill us all.
We asked one of the demonstrators calling for more regulation and caution how we’d all die in this scenario and he said he didn’t know, but then added grimly: “It’s the same way an ant doesn’t know how I’m going to kill it when it’s in my house and I use some ant poison. Ants don’t understand what ant poison is because we are a thousand times more intelligent than they are. If we create something that is a thousand times more intelligent than we are, then we are not going to understand the things it does.”
You can see more from the demonstration on our YouTube channel, Peeps.
You’ll notice by the occasional typo that, unlike some other newsletters, NewJournal+ is not written or curated by AI.
‘WE FEEL WORTHLESS’
CAMDEN Council is struggling to meet its obligations to find sites for the Gypsy and Traveller community, as required by law. Its list of eleven possible locations has been whittled down to just two – with many of the abandoned ideas coming up against local resistance, particularly Frideswide Place in Kentish Town.
One of the last options is a plot near Chalk Farm tube station at the bottom of Adelaide Road and close to the Constable House council block. Even some of the Traveller group voices think this one is a bit tight on space, but another rush of objections has led to a level of despair.
“People don’t understand Travellers, if people were to sit down and have a conversation with us for an hour or so I reckon 99 per cent of people would walk away thinking that is a really lovely person,” said Martin Power, known for his boxing success and whose late father was the campaigner Johnny Power. “It feels as a group we are being penalised, and it’s not right.”
HARRY’S PLAICE
IT’S amazing how small businesses can leave such a lasting imprint on people’s lives, and that’s clearly the case in Mulkern Road, close to the Elthorne Estate in Islington. Here, until last week, you would have found Fisherman, one of those pleasing takeaways which mix fish and chips and Chinese food on the menu. When regulars heard Harry the owner was shutting up shop – everyone only knows him as Harry – they decided to have a final night party for him, bringing in a DJ and remembering all the Friday night chip suppers they’d enjoyed over 40 years.
COMPUTER SAYS NO
HERE’S a little window into how the world of journalism and communications has changed over recent years. Not that long ago, local reporters were invited into Holborn police station once a week where they’d be told about significant crimes and given reassurance by officers about how trends were being tackled. Sometimes there were opportunities to ask questions of the borough commander.
These days, if we want to ask the Met about an incident, we have to email a central desk with the details and they check them against a database. We then sometimes get a short sentence about what’s happened, sometimes we don’t.
This was the case when we asked what police are doing about shop windows in Hampstead being smashed, which has happened several times in the last six months. As the incident we asked about wasn’t on the police computer search, then there would be nothing to tell us.
We appreciate that some websites are bombarding police with requests to fill their live blogs every time a scrap of police tape is spotted, but this was a classic case where five minutes explanation from a local sergeant might’ve helped businesses feel more reassured that this isn’t the kind of vandalism which has been left in the ‘too small to bother with’ tray.
HERE WE GO
ARSENAL seem to be on a spending spree after signing Christian Norgaard, Kepa Arrizabalaga and Martin Zubimendi in recent days, with hot shot striker Viktor Gyökeres potentially the next to join in a multi-million pound deal.
But have the Gunners counted in another outlay that may soon be coming their way. It has long been a bone of contention among several London Assembly members that the capital’s many football clubs do not cover the complete cost of policing at their home matches.
And with more European matches and more home women’s matches – and let’s be clear that a complete league season of Arsenal women’s matches at the Emirates Stadium is to be welcomed all the way – the bill is getting bigger.
The estimated cost of policing the Premier League across the country has been put at £70 million and Sir Mark Rowley, the Met’s commissioner, told the BBC this week: "Why isn't the organiser paying for that, rather than local communities who lose their resources to go to football matches?”
Given these days just one transfer can cost £70 million, the teams collectively may struggle to answer that one ahead of the start of the new season next month.
JENNY’S LAST DANCE
AS our politics column, the North London Bubble, reported yesterday, Camden’s chief executive Jenny Rowlands has enjoyed a leaving party in Vision Hall, the new name for the Camden Centre in King’s Cross. She made everybody get on the floor for a dance. You’ll be able to read an interview with her and her successor Jon Rowney in the upcoming edition of the paper.
WRITE THAT IF YOU WANT, I’M TOO OLD NOW
THE ‘Bishop of St Pancras’ has died aged 74.
We have to put that title in quote marks because it wasn’t completely clear how Anthony Earl-Williams, a colourful character with a hundred anecdotes to share, achieved his rank – but before his death, he was holding Latin mass in his front room on the Dunboyne Road estate in Gospel Oak. You can see the altar in the picture above.
When his name came up over the years, history was often dug up and people would refer to a tabloid story which saw him briefly expelled from the Conservative party – he had advertised spanking services in the 1980s.
But earlier this year he said he was too old to care about people’s cutting comments about his consensual sexual activity, including cruising on the Heath.
“I wanted to live in Hampstead,” he told the New Journal. “When I can go prowling on Hampstead Heath. You can write that if you want, I couldn’t care less. I’m too old now. It was not really prowling, it was wandering.”
We couldn’t have known that the last time he would speak to the press was the interview in which he said this to us earlier this year. It was a bittersweet chat which revealed a curious life story, but one which was about much more than the old newspaper headline that had followed him around.
ICYMI ROUND-UP
ISLINGTON North MP Jeremy Corbyn may be helping to start a new political party. He was named by Coventry South MP Zarah Sultana on Thursday as she announced they would be co-leading it together. You can read in the North London Bubble how it isn’t quite as simple as that and we await some more official declarations.
PINK Floyd guitarist David Gilmour has run into planning complaints after installing a new green shed at his house in Hampstead. Neighbours say it’s too big and in the wrong place for it to be screened by vegetation and the Hampstead Hill Residents Association has gone as far as asking Camden Council to demand its removal.
THERE’S a new, unmissable plaque on the front of the main Town Hall building in King’s Cross, marking the site of Britain’s first Caribbean Carnival. It was set up by Claudia Jones, who has a reception room named after her in the refurbished council HQ. We get letters of complaint if it is suggested that the carnival in 1959 inspired the Notting Hill Carnival’s creation but, whatever the true story, the ground-breaking event in Camden is worthy of commemoration.
POLICE are appealing for witnesses and footage after a pensioner died in a collision with a lorry in Balls Pond Road. Police, fire engines and paramedics were called to the junction with Southgate Road shortly after 2.30pm last Tuesday. Despite medics’ best efforts to save him, a man in his 70s died from his injuries at the scene. The driver stopped at the scene and is assisting the police investigation. Police are looking to hear from anyone who was in the area and witnessed the incident, or anyone who may have captured it on film.
IF you haven’t read it already, paid subscribers can enjoy Dan Carrier’s look at what’s happened to one of London’s musical heritage streets, Tin Pan Alley, for NewJournal+. The 12 Bar club has been lost in the revamp of the area but its owner still dreams of one day being allowed to return.
PLUS: Broken water pipes flooded Plender Street over the weekend leading to questions about how quickly Thames Water responded;
Fleet Primary School summer fair successfully went ahead despite a break-in just days before;
New phone masts are planned for West Heath Road, Hampstead, after phone companies told the Town Hall that streets like Redington Road and Templewood Avenue were a mobile blackspot for Vodafone customers;
Comedian Jimmy Carr has applied to put heat pumps on the roof of his Swiss Cottage mansion;
Don’t forget it’s the Camden Mela in Coram’s Fields this Sunday (July 13), beginning at noon;The One School of Performing Arts (OSPA), based at William Tyndale School in Upper Street, is fund-raising to help its talented young performers accept an invitation to dance in Las Vegas;
The Heath and Hampstead Society are in meetings with the City of London to discuss changes to the funding of maintenance on Hampstead Heath;
Tributes have been paid to the brilliant pianist Alfred Brendel who lived in Well Walk, Hampstead, and has died aged 94;Camden Council will fight a legal challenge from a Christian nurse who says she is offended by transgender awareness painted crossings in Bloomsbury;
Dan Thomas, a former losing Tory candidate in the Barnet and Camden constituency (London Assembly), has defected to Reform;
London Zoo began its ‘Zoo Nights’ series which gives people the chance to stay overnight;
Eight new padel courts are set to be installed, temporarily, in Murphy’s Yard in Kentish Town;
AND if you like stuff with racquets, don’t forget there’s a big screen up in Islington Square, off Upper Street, to catch all the tennis action from Wimbledon each day until Sunday.
WHAT WE’VE BEEN REVIEWING
Staying on the tennis theme, theatre editor Lucy Popescu gave a thumbs up to Jimmy at the Park Theatre – with Adam Riches ‘memorable and utterly convincing’ as Jimmy Connors.
Harrington’s review of Olivia Rodrigo blasting out her angsty hits in Hyde Park (and watching Glasto on TV) is live.
Rob Ryan shared his thoughts on jazz sax star Haffner ahead of a clutch of London gigs.
At the movies, Dan Carrier saw British comedy Chicken Town and recommended it as ‘heartwarming, funny and very silly indeed.’
LAST UP…
THERE was a farewell drink for the Hampstead and Highgate’s long-serving reporter Natalie Raffray at the end of last week, as she prepares to move on to pastures new.
We may be rival titles and have some thoughts about how a once-famous paper has changed in recent years, but Natalie was always committed to telling the stories of her home borough.
She is one of the last links to the Ham’s long-gone offices in Swiss Cottage and her dedication will surely be missed. Good luck for the future!
And that’s it for now.
Look out for bonus features later this week and the North London Bubble politics column at the weekend. Do subscribe to NewJournal+ if you haven’t already. Thank you for your support.
someone being offended by a painted pastel zebra crossing costing the council money in legal fees is very stupid, it looks lovely and it's a great tribute to the nearby queer bookshop, I hope they make their money back on that time waster