“Clap for Carers” began On This Day March 26th 2020, where millions of people all over the UK stood outside of their front doors and cheered for NHS workers and carers.
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Annemarie Plas of Streatham Hill is the founder of the Clap for Carers campaign which took place from March to May 2020

William Roupell died at home at Harvey Lodge, Christchurch Road On This Day 25 March 1909

A British politician. He was Liberal Party Member of Parliament for Lambeth from 1857 until his resignation in 1862 due to his arrest for forgery.

In 1854, he forged his father's will in favour of his mother, thus obtaining control of the family estate. In less than ten years he had squandered and gambled away about £184,000. In 1862, he admitted his crimes and was stentenced to penal servitude for life.

After his release from Portland Prison in 1876, settled in London where he proved to be a respected member of the community involved in the church and charity work.
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He is buried at West Norwood Cemetery.

(Find a grave)

Daphne Margaret Sybil Désirée Park, Baroness Park of Monmouth died On This Day 24th March 2010. She attended Rosa Bassett School in Streatham

Known as the "Queen of Spies"

Intelligence officer and college head, was born at Mayfield, Vale Road, Claygate, Surrey, the first child of John Alexander Park (1876–1952) and his wife, Doreen Gynneth, née Cresswell-George (1899–1982).
In 1932 Daphne was shipped off to London, aged eleven, to live with a great-aunt. Owing to the Second World War she was twenty-six before she saw her mother again. She thrived at the Rosa Bassett School, an experimental school in Streatham, which she later regarded as a foundational influence in her life.

In 1940 the offer of a place at Somerville College, Oxford, to read modern languages depended on Park winning a scholarship from Surrey county council. Their offer was conditional on her undertaking to teach on graduation. She turned this down: she was already determined to become a diplomat. They gave her the scholarship anyway.

Park joined the Secret Intelligence Service in July 1948. After a short posting to the UK delegation to NATO in Paris and a Russian course in Cambridge she was posted in 1954 to the embassy in Moscow with the cover of second secretary in chancery

Park retired in 1979 and the following year became the principal of her old college at Oxford, Somerville, where she remained until 1989.

Somerville also provided Park with opportunity for wider forms of public service. Apart from her work as pro-vice-chancellor at Oxford (1985–9), she became a member of the council for Voluntary Service Overseas (1981–4) and of the board of the British Library (1983–9), and a governor of the BBC (1982–7). She chaired the legal aid advisory committee to the Lord Chancellor (1985–91), was a member of the royal commission on historical monuments (1989–94), and made a number of other pro bono commitments. She was made a life peer, as Baroness Park of Monmouth, in the 1990 new year's honours list.
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(Source: Mark Allen )

On This Day 23 March 1959 Minnie Walters Anson died

Minnie Walters Anson (1875–1959) was a painter of miniatures and portraits. Born in London, she studied at Lambeth School of Art, where she won several medals for her work.

She is recorded living at 8 Lewin Road and 22 Kempshot Road
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(Our thanks to Tracey Gregory for bringing Minnie to our attention)

Lieutenant Richard Philip Hearson was killed On This Day 23 March 1918. He was born at 55 Kempshot Road, the family moved to Norwood and he attended Dulwich College.

In September 1914, a month after the outbreak of war, Richard enlisted as a member of the 17th Lancers before, the following June, taking a commission in the Worcestershire Regiment.

In January 1916 he was promoted to Lieutenant and not long afterwards transferred to the Reserve Cavalry Regiment. For much of this period he had been based in Ireland, and in the spring of 1916 was involved in the putting down of the Sinn Fein-led Easter Rising. In October 1916 he went over to France for the first time, attached to the 5th Royal Irish Lancers, and for the next eighteen months was serving on the Western Front, including at Cambrai. On March 23rd 1918, while serving as Regimental Signalling Officer, he was killed in action at Jussy, near St. Quentin.

His younger brother, George, also an OA, would die later that year from tuberculosis he had caught while serving in India.
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(Source Dulwich College)

#Throwbackthursday and Drewstead Road in 1912. This street was previously known as Leigham Court Road West
Interesting former residents include the suffragette Leonora Tyson, the Hale family of actors and more recently Lord Lipsey and Naomi Campbell