The Metropolitan Opera Company successfully launched at Streatham

(Bystander On THis Day 20 September 1933)

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Image © Illustrated London News Group. Image created courtesy of THE BRITISH LIBRARY BOARD.

Reverend Thomas Spurgeon was born On This Day 20 September 1856. British Reformed Baptist preacher of the Metropolitan Tabernacle, one of the fraternal twin sons of the famous Charles Spurgeon (1834–92).
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He lived at "St Remo" 40 Prentis Road where he died in 1917 and is buried at West Norwood Cemetery. He left £6.3k to his wife Eliza.

William Dyce (1806–1864), painter and educationist, the fifth of fourteen children of William Dyce (1770–1836), a lecturer in medicine at Marischal College, was born On This Day 19 September 1806 at 48 Marischal Street, Aberdeen.

His mother was Margaret, daughter of James Chalmers of Westburn; both parents were of long-established Aberdeen families and, despite spending most of his career in London, William Dyce remained closely involved with the town of his birth.

He played a significant part in the formation of public art education in the United Kingdom, as perhaps the true parent of the South Kensington Schools system. Dyce was associated with the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood and played a part in their early popularity.

Dyce was a Streatham resident and died in Streatham on 14 February 1864. He is buried in the churchyard of St Leonards Church in Streatham. He is also memorialised on his parent's grave in St Nicholas Churchyard on Union Street in Aberdeen and there is a street in Streatham named for him – William Dyce Mews in addition to the Dyce fountain on Streatham Green.

(Tim Barringer)

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Portrait by John Watkins © National Portrait Gallery, London under the Creative Commons License and Paintings by William Dyce Francesca da Rimini and Virgin and Child

Isabel Helen Cox was born in Streatham On This Day 19th September 1919. The family lived in Nimrod Road

Electrical engineer and photometry expert, Fellow and President of the Women's Engineering Society.
Attended Furzedown Primary School and Streatham Secondary School (both London County Council schools).

Studied at Newnham College, Cambridge to read for the Natural sciences Tripos, where she specialised in Physics.

She was elected a fellow of the Society of Women Engineers.

1945 Married John Norman Hardwich who at the time was working as an engineer in the High Voltage Research Laboratory Metropolitan-Vickers Electrical Co. He was an associate and also a keen supporter of the Women's Engineering Society, and he shared the burdens of running the home to allow Isabel to continue working at Metropolitan-Vickers.

Hardwich's archive is held at the Institution of Engineering and Technology. The Women's Engineering Society has awarded the Isabel Hardwich medal, named in her honour, since 1987. This is given to a member who has made an outstanding and sustained contribution to the Society over a number of years and gone above and beyond the call of duty.
(Grace's Guide)

On this day in 18th September 1709, Samuel Johnson was born in Lichfield, Staffordshire. Famous for his ability to capture the human condition, we can still relate to many of his works and quotes whilst navigating a very different life and world.

Dr Johnson regularly stayed at the Thrale's House, Streatham Park/Place where he was integrated as one of the family . He worshipped at St Leonard's Church in Streatham in the Thrale's pews.

In 1765 when Johnson made the acquaintance of the rich Thrale family. The husband Henry was a businessman and MP, while his wife Hesterwas a well-born woman with literary interests and considerable social gifts. She soon became Johnson's most confidential friend. In addition to their home at the family brewery in Southwark, the Thrales had inherited a country estate at Streatham. Johnson first visited the couple in 1766, and within a few years he was allocated his own quarters at Streatham Park, where he spent prolonged periods.

A chemical laboratory was even set up there in 1771 for his use, until Henry Thrale decided that the would-be scientist might have an accident owing to his short sight and go up in smoke. A library wing was added to the house, and here in 1780 Thrale hung up thirteen portraits by Reynolds, with pictures of his own wife and daughter joined by the principal members of Johnson's circle.
(Pat Rogers)
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Image Samuel Johnson by Sir Joshua Reynolds, 1756/7 © National Portrait Gallery, London.

On This Day 17th September 1913 Professor (Frederick) Denys Richardson FRS was born.
The family lived at 19 Killesier Avenue, Streatham.

A chemist and metallurgist, the third son of a family of three sons and one daughter of Charles Willerton Richardson (d. 1916/17), managing director of Asquith and Lord, of Bombay, and his wife, Kate Harriet Bunker, a schoolteacher.

Both Richardson's parents died while he was young, and from 1919 the family was raised by his maternal aunt, Omie, and her friend, a Mrs Parrot.

Richardson was educated at University School in Hastings, and at University College, London (of which he became a fellow in 1971), where he graduated in chemistry in 1932. Charles Goodeve, lecturer in chemistry, steered him to carrying out a PhD on the oxides of chlorine, which he completed in 1936.(Oxford DNB)

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Image © National Portrait Gallery, London under the Creative Commons License By Bassano Ltd half-plate film negative, 9 December 1964

PoW card for Stanley Albert Spicer Russell of 30 Shrubbery Road killed On This Day 16th September 1943
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Son of Albert and Alice Russell buried at Chungkai Cemetery in Thailand