A second group of students from St Thomas the Apostle worked with Vik on Peckham in the first half of the 20th Century. They focused on the importance of posters in this period, which were used for everything from promoting public health, to recruiting for the army or political campaigning. Some of their work uses the look and style of the old posters, but expresses the present day concerns of young people in Peckham. Others use a more modern style to comment on and explore what was going on in Peckham in the 20s and 30s.
In 1900 Peckham became part of the borough of Camberwell but, apart from this, life in Peckham carried on pretty much the same immediately after the turn of the century as it had just before it, with a steady development of industry, business, social institutions and leisure activity.
Companies like Edison Bell and Heinz set up business in Peckham, but not doing quite what they’re known for today. From 1903 Edison Bell made gramophone records in Glengall Road. Heinz was an upmarket venture: the company started their British operations by distributing imported goods like ketchup through exclusive outlets like Fortnum and Mason and when they bought the premises of pickle makers Batty & Co in 1905 and began to manufacture some of their own products, they continued to pitch these at the same exclusive markets.
Institutions like the People’s League, led by Robert James Lees, survived into the new century but soon collapsed. The Central Hall, built as its headquarters in 1894, went through several incarnations, accommodating first a Baptist denomination, then the `Church of the Stranger' founded by the Revd G. Ernest Thorn who apparently preached in a suit of armour, and finally providing F.R.Griffiths and his `New Bioscope Trading Company' with a permanent cinema site in 1910.
Pre-World War I Peckham was something of a jumble, one in which the ‘Church of the Stranger’ and the cinema could co-exist in the same building for at least a decade. There was competing entertainment in the shape of the music halls with stars like John Trunley, ‘the Fat Boy of Peckham’, reminiscent of the curiosities of the days of Peckham Fair. Trunley weighed 14 stone by the age of six and by then was already topping the bill in music halls. By the age of eighteen he was declared the heaviest person in Britain at 33 stone and continued on stage touring Britain and Europe until World War I.
The start of the war in 1914 spelt the end of Trunley’s music hall career as it did of many other aspects of life. It also saw the last of Tilling’s horse-drawn buses: Tilling had already introduced motorbuses in 1904; the war completed the switch to motorised transport as horses were requisitioned for the war. It also changed working practices: the first women bus conductors in London were hired to work on Tilling route No 37 in 1915 to replace the men who had joined the Armed Forces.
After the war there was a change in focus, encapsulated by Heinz’s switch from exclusive to mass markets, and Peckham entered a period of innovation and change, epitomised in their different fields by figures like Edward Turner and Harold Moody, and by ventures like the ‘Peckham Experiment’.
Edward Turner was born and bred in Walworth and followed his grandfather and father into the field of engineering. He bought a small shop on Peckham Road called Chepstow Motors and from there he worked on revolutionary motorcycle designs which included vertically stacked gears and operating the camshaft through rockers. He built his first bike, the Turner Special, in 1927. Turner’s designs quickly made their mark and he soon became General Manager and Chief Designer of the Triumph Engineering Company where he was responsible for designing such legendary bikes as the Speed Twin, the Tiger 100 and the Thunderbird.
While Turner eventually left Peckham, Harold Moody found his way here. Born in Kingston, Jamaica, he came to London in 1904 to study medicine. Finding his career blocked by prejudice – he was refused a post in a hospital because a matron "refused to have a coloured doctor working in the hospital" - he started his own medical practice in Peckham in 1913 and subsequently campaigned for the interests of coloured people through the League of Coloured Peoples.
Peckham was the focus for another major innovation in the field of health, the Pioneer Health Centre which began at 142 Queen’s Road in 1926 and opened in purpose-built premises in St Mary’s Road in 1935. The so-called ‘Peckham Experiment’ ‘was run by the Pioneer Health Foundation and was the brainchild of doctors Scott Williamson and Innes Pearse who believed that social and physical environment could have a direct effect on health. The Foundation provided affordable organic food from its own farm, a theatre and sports facilities, for which families paid a subscription. 950 families signed up, paying one shilling a week to relax in a club-like atmosphere where physical exercise, games, workshops and relaxation were all encouraged. With its well-lit, open-plan design, the centre’s setting was as pioneering as its approach. The experiment continued until 1950, concluding that: “It is not wages that are lacking … but quite simply … social opportunities for knowledge and for action that should be the birthright of all; space for spontaneous exercise of young bodies, a local forum for sociability of young families, and current opportunity for picking up knowledge as the family goes along”.
Is there life on Mars? Was it all over when the Fat Boy stopped singing in Peckham?
