Press baron under attack
QUESTION Did the German navy try to kill Daily Mail founder Lord Northcliffe in World War I?
On February 26, 1917, a German warship shelled the area around Lord northcliffe’s country retreat, elmwood, at broadstairs, Kent, in an attempt to assassinate him.
a mother and baby at neighbouring rose Cottage died in the attack.
born alfred Harmsworth in Dublin in 1865, northcliffe rose to prominence as a newspaper magnate in the 1890s.
The founder of modern journalism was able to reach an unprecedented audience through his ownership of The Times, evening news and, of course, the Daily Mail. He controlled 45 per cent of evening newspapers and 15 per cent of Sunday newspapers in britain at the outbreak of World War I.
He was hated by the Germans due to his strong patriotic rhetoric. They loathed the Daily Mail’s Letters From The Front describing the horror of the trenches in the intimate language used by the War Poets.
In 1916, a Mail reporter managed to sneak into a banquet at the German headquarters in the balkans and published the menu as proof.
This was seen as a personal embarrassment to Kaiser Wilhelm, who was ridiculed as ‘a tired andbroken man. The hair is white, though the moustache is suspiciously dark’.
Three months after the Somme had ended in a bloody stalemate, a German destroyer was dispatched in a bid to silence Lord northcliffe.
The day after the attack, his communique to his employees explained: ‘Incidentally, the paper was nearly deprived of its chief proprietor last night, a source of mixed feelings among the staff.
‘at 11.30 my house was lit up by 20 star shells from the sea, so that the place was illuminated as if by lightning.
‘Shrapnel burst all over the place, some of it hitting the library in which these notes are prepared every day, and killing a poor woman and baby within 50 yards of my home and badly wounding two others. The bombardment lasted from six to ten minutes according to various estimates, and was the result of a destroyer raid.
‘The authorities have no doubt that my house was aimed at and the shooting was by no means bad. I understand that the destroyer was three miles out.’
PaulButterworth,Whitstable,Kent.
QUESTION Was George Washington once America’s biggest whiskey producer?
WHen George Washington, america’s Founding Father and first President, retired from politics in 1797, he returned to his Mount Vernon estate on the banks of the Potomac river in Virginia.
The estate had been planted with rye, a cover crop used to manage erosion and preserve the soil rather than as a harvest.
James anderson, the canny Scots plantation manager, realised that combined with Washington’s state-of-theart gristmill and abundant water supply, it could be used to make whiskey.
That winter, anderson began distilling in the estate’s cooperage, using two stills. The project proved so successful that Washington approved plans for a purposebuilt distillery with five stills.
Within a year of its completion in 1798, it was the largest in the country, producing 11,000 gallons of whiskey, which Washington sold for $1,800 ($120,000 in today’s money).
When Washington died on December 14, 1799, the distillery was left to his nephew, Lawrence Lewis. The business floundered and after a fire burned the distillery to the ground in 1814, it wasn’t rebuilt.
MartinColes,Sheringham,Norfolk.
QUESTION Who coined the term Metroland for London’s suburbs?
THe term Metroland was coined by James Garland, an employee of the Metropolitan railway’s marketing board, to describe leafy suburban estates combining the rural dream with easy access to the capital.
The Metropolitan was the first underground, linking Paddington Station with the City of London, opening in 1863.
It expanded north-west to Wembley Park, Harrow-on-the-Hill and on to rickmansworth, amersham, aylesbury and Verney Junction on the Oxford to Cambridge line, with branches to uxbridge, Watford, Chesham and brill, its furthest point from London.
The line was electrified to Harrow and, in 1925, to rickmansworth. The company bought land adjacent to and in between the stations. From the 1920s to the 1930s, this was sold to speculative builders.
Houses quickly sprang up and were sold to buyers keen to use the railway as a quick way to commute to London. Many of these developments, such as Moor Park and Cedars estate in rickmansworth, were exclusive with mock Tudor homes set in large gardens.
The railway company advertised them with the slogan ‘Live in Metroland’ and the term became synonymous with desirable properties with easy access to London and the Chiltern Hills.
Developments spread to Wendover, though the majority were on the London side of amersham. Houses that first sold for £500 are still sought after, going for around £1 million.
The Metropolitan railway was absorbed into the London Passenger Transport board aka London Transport in 1933. It retained much of its character and was the last underground line to use steam for some passenger and freight services.
Steam passenger trains ran from rickmansworth to aylesbury until September 1961 and freight was steam hauled until 1971, three years after british rail had abandoned it.
With electrification, steam era carriages with ‘Live in Metroland’ emblazoned on the door handles were phased out.
Sadly, such changes mean the Metropolitan line has lost its unique character.
RogerCrawford,Bridgnorth,Shropshire.
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