The London Daily Newsletter Tuesday 17 January

On 17 January 1949, the first TV sitcom debuted in the United States. The Goldbergs, television’s first situation comedy, ran until 1954. The show, which evolved from a nearly 20-year-old popular radio programme of the same name, followed the adventures of a middle-class Jewish family in the Bronx. Gertrude Berg played gossipy housewife Molly Goldberg, and Philip Loeb played her husband, Jake, who worked in the clothing business. They had two teenagers, Sammy and Rosalie. In each episode, the family would face another typical middle-class problem–and Molly enjoyed trying to help the neighbours in her apartment complex solve their problems, too. Later, when the fictitious family moved from the Bronx to suburban Haverville, the cast was joined by philosophical Uncle David, Sammy’s fiancee (who later became his wife), her mother, and new neighbours. In 1952, Loeb was blacklisted for alleged Communist sympathies. The show’s sponsor, General Foods, dropped the series, and the show moved to NBC-without Loeb, though Berg had fought to keep him aboard. Loeb declared under oath he had never been a member of the Communist Party, and the charges were never proved, but his career was destroyed. He died in 1955 after taking a fatal overdose of sleeping pills in a hotel room.

Whipps Cross
The ’Whipps Cross’ name specifically applies to the junction of Lea Bridge Road with Whipps Cross Road and Wood Street.

Whipps Cross is first mentioned in local records of the late fourteenth century as Phip’s cross, referring to a wayside cross set up by a member of the family of a John Phyppe. Further versions on maps and deeds are Phyppys Crosse in 1517, Fypps Chrosse in 1537, Phippes Cross in 1572, and finally Whipps Cross by 1636. The change in the initial consonant is thought to have been a product of the local Essex dialect at that time, in which ’F’ sounds were pronounced as ’W’. To the south of Whipps Cross Road and west of James Lane, the Forest House estate had its origins in a lease of land granted by the Abbot of Stratford Langthorne Abbey in 1492. Forrest House was built by 1568. Ownership of the estate passed to James Houblon, a wealthy City merchant of Huguenot descent, in 1682. Houblon built a new house in the English Baroque style. In 1703, the estate was sold to Sir Gilbert Heathcote, the last Lord Mayor of London to ride on horseback at the Lord Mayor’s Show. The estate was later sold to the Bosanquet family in 1743, and it remained in their hands until 1889, when it was sold to the West Ham Board of Guardians who established a workhouse. During World War I, the workhouse infirmary was used to treat wounded soldiers and this became Whipps Cross Hospital in 1917. Of notable births at the hospital’s maternity unit was one David Beckham. The area to the south and west of Whipps Cross is residential, mainly terraced housing built in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The boundary between Whipps Cross and Upper Walthamstow to the west and with Leytonstone to the south is ill-defined. To the east of Whipps Cross is an area of Epping Forest called Leyton Flats, which features a lake created from old gravel pits called the Hollow Pond. In 1905, a swimming pond was excavated by manual labour as part of an unemployment relief scheme, located to the north of the Hollow Pond. It was locally known as the ’Batho’. In 1932, a new open-air swimming pool, now called Whipps Cross Lido, was opened there by the Lord Mayor of London. By the 1980s, attendances had fallen and the decision was taken to close the lido on 4 September 1982. The site was levelled and returned to forest land.

TUM Book Club: Tube Mapper Project
Photographer Luke Agbaimoni created the Tube Mapper project allowing him to be creative, fitting photography around his lifestyle and adding stations on his daily commute.

The Underground is the backbone of the city of London, a part of our identity. It’s a network of shared experiences and visual memories, and most Londoners and visitors to the city will at some point have an interaction with the London Underground tube and train network. Photographer Luke Agbaimoni gave up city-scape night photography after the birth of his first child, but creating the Tube Mapper project allowed him to continue being creative, fitting photography around his new lifestyle and adding stations on his daily commute. His memorable photographs consider such themes as symmetry, reflections, tunnels and escalators, as well as simply pointing out and appreciating the way the light falls on a platform in an evening sunset. This book reveals the London every commuter knows in a unique, vibrant and arresting style.

London Omnibus (1914) Chevalier Fortunino Matania (1881–1963) was an Italian artist noted for his realistic portrayal of First World War trench warfare and of a wide range of historical subjects.

Fortunino Matani

Video: Flying into LCY
A simulated flight into LCY courtesy of Google Earth Studio.