Fascinating memoirs of Carol Hazel who lived in the West Indies and was sent to School in Streatham 1909-12, Streatham School for girls
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Diary entry On This Day 15th June.

​John Thomson was born on this day 14th June 1837. A resident with his wife Isabel at "Moordown" 51 Woodfield Avenue and Mount Ephraim Road Streatham. They are both buried at Streatham Cemetery in the Historic Parish of Streatham in Tooting
A photographer and travel writer, he was born on 14 June 1837 at Portland Place, Edinburgh, the third of the four children to survive infancy of William Thomson (1794–c.1870), tobacconist, and his wife, Isabella Newlands (1801–1863).
He contributed a series of illustrated articles on life in China to The Graphic in 1872–3, published privately a magnificent portfolio of carbon prints, Foochow and the River Min (1873), and more importantly a large-scale work, Illustrations of China and its People(1873–4), which was responsible for firmly establishing his reputation as a photographer, traveller, and leading authority on China.
He was decorated by the French Government for his work in Cambodia
(Source Richard Ovenden)
Image of John Thomson University of Bristol Library Creative Commons License (www.hpcbristol.net).

The noted Hampshire cricketer Daniel Day was born in Streatham, On This Day 14 June 1807, the seventh son of a builder/ carpenter who died when Daniel was a baby.

Daniel is recorded living at "The Rookery" and was baptised at St Leonard's Church on 19th July 1807
He learned his cricket on the local common and at a school where his fellows included Alfred Mynn, the future ‘Lion of Kent’.

In his teens he was engaged by the Lord's groundsman, Cobbett, as a practice bowler and went on to play for several leading Surrey clubs, notably the Camberwell Clarence side, through which he became friendly with the celebrated Nicholas Felix, a cricketing schoolmaster of many talents, whose innovations included a ‘Catapulta’ bowling machine and items of protective gear.
(Source Sotonopedia)
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Day patented a protective cricket glove with Mr Wilson at the India Rubber Company in Streatham.

On This Day 13 June 1839 Ernest George was born

Sir Ernest George RA (13 Jun 1839–1922) was an English architect, landscape and architectural watercolour painter, and etcher.

He was born at 9 Portland Place, Southwark, London, on 13 June 1839, the second of three sons of John George (1806–1886), ironmonger, and Mary Elizabeth (b. 1811), daughter of William Higgs, a wholesale ironmonger of Streatham. John George, in Ernest's words 'a man of Kent', had entered partnership with Higgs about 1840, and in 1851 moved with his family into an old house adjoining the warehouse and yard at 179 Borough High Street, Southwark. In 1854 the family moved to 36 Albert Square, Kennington

He lived at "Redroofs" in Rycroft Road, Streatham with his Sister Mary and daughters Margaret and Cecily. In 1871 and 1881 the family lived at Grecian Cottages, Crown Hill.
(Source England, Wales and Scotland census).
George lived at Redroofs until 1903, selling Redroofs to Edmund Frederick Tattersell. It was destroyed c1912

Braddell recalls..."I remember very well the lovely farewell party that Ernest George gave at the house before he left Streatham...I can remember with horror at his giving up living in so delightful a place of his own making.....for life in what I considered when I first saw it, a commonplace Victorian barrack fit only for a rich City Merchant..."

A nationally renowned architect, with a variety of styles, and working with a succession of partners, Thomas Vaughan, Harold Peto and finally Alfred Yeates. He served as president of the Royal Institute of British Architects from 1908 to 1910.

Ernest George's London office was nicknamed "The Eton of architects", and the 79 pupils included Herbert Baker, Guy Dawber, John Bradshaw Gass, Edwin Lutyens and Ethel Charles. Ethel Charles was the first woman to be elected a member of the Royal Institute of British Architects.

George's last partner (from the time of Peto's retirement in 1892) was Alfred Bowman Yeates: the firm designed several fine country houses as well as Southwark Bridge, the Royal Academy of Music (Image 4), and the Lombardic-Romanesque Golders Green Crematorium (Image 5) where, fittingly, he was taken after he died in 1922 at the age of 83.

His other work includes the interior of Claridges Hotel, and the Royal Exchange buildings.
George was also involved in designs in Streatham and SW London- Hambly mansions, Coffee Tavern at Streatham Common, the Church Hall in Guildersfield Road and Henry Tate's mausoleum at West Norwood Cemetery
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He is also well known as an artist, mainly of street scenes in towns and cities across Europe. (Image 3 below - 1886 Watercolour of Fleet Street).

Harold Collier Watson was born On This Day 13 th June 1871. He lived at "Laneside" 28 Leigham Lane and 13 Streatham Hill.

Harry Watson (13 June 1871 – 17 September 1936) was an English landscape and portrait artist born in Scarborough. He briefly lived in Canada between 1881 and 1883.

Watson studied at the Scarborough School of Art 1884–88, at Lambeth School of Art and at the Royal College of Art (R.C.A.) 1889–94, where he won numerous gold, silver and bronze medals and was awarded a traveling scholarship to Italy.
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Watson exhibited at the Royal Academy (R.A.) from 1896; member R.W.S. 1915; R.W.A. 1927; R.O.I. 1932. Taught at Regent Street Polytechnic from 1913.

​On This Day 12 June 1967 Bombadier Billy Wells died
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William Thomas Wells, better known as Bombardier Billy Wells (31 August 1889 – 12 June 1967)
Billy Wells lived at 99a Streatham Hill and Nimrod Road, Streatham His two sons attended Streatham Hill College

He is best known as the man hitting the gong at the start of Rank films

​Major Leonard (‘Lenny’) Montague Greenwood was born On This Day June 12th 1893, the youngest of six children, of whom five were sons, born to Baptist minister Thomas Greenwood and his wife, Harriet.

After leaving the College at the end of 1910 he took a job in the city with Deloitte, although he was for a time in early 1911 in the Caribbean, during which he was twelfth man for British Guiana against the M.C.C. – in those days effectively the England touring side.
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On October 10th that year, near Le Cateau, Lenny was leading an assault when his men came under gas attack, despite which he refused to leave his post until the operation was completed. His bravery in this was ultimately to be rewarded with the D.S.O., but it would have to be awarded posthumously; just a week after the action, on October 17th, he passed away in hospital at Rouen as a result of a serious bout of broncho-pneumonia, almost certainly exacerbated by the effects of having been gassed.
(Dulwich College)

John Raphael was killed 11 June 1917. He lived at 52 Gleneagle Road

John Edward Raphael (30 April 1882 – 11 June 1917) was a Belgian-born sportsman who was capped nine times for England at rugby union and played first-class cricket with Surrey.

He was a Barrister by profession and a Liberal politician.

Raphael was Jewish and the son of multi-millionaire financier Albert Raphael, who was part of a banking dynasty that in the 1920s rivalled the Rothschild family John Raphael was educated at Merchant Taylors' School, and St John's College, Oxford.
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In January 2021, one of the eight pastoral Houses at Merchant Taylors' was re-named in his honour.
In World War I Raphael served with the King's Royal Rifle Corps as a Lieutenant and died of wounds in 1917 at the Battle of Messines, while fighting in the country of his birth.