Luton Peace Riots 1919 Family Stories

Victor Samm was born on the day of the riots . A newspaper headline the day after the riot was “Victory for the people “ - and so his parents decided to call him Victor in honour of the rioters.

Jan Ross, daughter.

John Henry Goode served at the Somme and Passchendaele. He led the rioters in the afternoon and was at the front when they broke down the town hall doors. In the evening he played a piano dragged into the street from Farmer’s music shop. He was jailed for six weeks. He did many jobs after the war including window cleaning, paying children a penny to do the upper windows as he was scared of heights. Goode was known as Kissing Cup around town as he would recite poetry in pubs – in exchange for a pint.

Steve Goodman - Interview to follow

Henry Miles, a prize fighter from east London who fought as Jack Daley, moved to Luton to work as a cinema projectionist. He fought at Ypres and was awarded the Military Medal for bravery at the Battle of St Julien. Instead of coming home to a land fit for heroes he found a council unsympathetic to old soldiers and allegedly mismanaging food rations. After the mayor fled the town hall Henry led a crowd of about 500 to his house but he was not there. Henry was arrested and made to walk from his home to the police station with his ankles and legs chained. Rich relatives paid for a lawyer who argued that Henry was suffering shell shock and he was cleared. He went on to work for the council and joined the Home Guard in the Second World War before being killed in an air raid on Luton.

Keith Miles, grandson.

Ephraim Gore was prosecuted for climbing the town hall, pulling down electric lights, setting fire to decorative flags and making a speech. He said the speech was only about his pension and the workhouse. Gore was jailed for nine months. He was originally sentenced to hard labour but that was reduced after Gore pleaded that he would lose his army pension. He had more than 40 previous convictions including theft, poaching and fighting but was never in trouble with the police again after 1919.

Gail Sidebotham, great, great-niece.

Charles Dillingham, a hat maker who was mayor of Luton before Henry Impey, showed King George V round munitions works and Kents on his second day in office. He was on the Peace Day committee and his warehouse premises, opposite the town hall, were damaged in the riots. His relative, Diane Cullen, says her great aunt, Rose Clark, was at the riots and tried to stab the firemen’s hoses with her hat pin.

Diane Cullen

George Bodsworth took part in the Retreat from Mons. After being invalided out of the army he returned for another year, finally leaving in 1920. He was outside the town hall between 1pm and 1am at the time of the riots and seen shouting and waving a stick. George was sentenced to three months in prison for hitting a police constable, which he denied. George later burned his war medals and set up a fruit and vegetable business. Martin Fensome, his grandson, says trial records show the rioters were “lovable rogues” who had good reasons for their actions.

Martin Fensome, grandson

Henry Impey’s great great-niece, Sandy Taylor was told stories about the mayor by her mother. He worked for the council for 20 years before becoming mayor and said reading the king’s proclamation of the Peace Day was one of the highlights of his life. He chaired the Board of Guardians that helped the town’s children, belonged to the allotment association that allowed more than 1,500 people to lease council land to feed themselves and was a lay preacher. But newspapers wanted to blame someone for the riots and other councillors put his name forward. The town clerk, William Smith, and chief constable advised him to leave the town and he became a magistrate in Sutton on Sea, Lincolnshire, and chaired the council. Sandy says riots – across the country, not just in Luton – were a response to unemployment, poor housing and high food prices. She accepts that the mayor was a target for the demonstrators’ anger but feels attempts to put all the blame on Mr Impey have treated him unfairly.

Sandy Taylor, great-great niece

George Buggs was a former soldier who had been captured and held as a prisoner of war. After rioters broke into Farmer’s music shop and took pianos into the street he was arrested, accused of saying “and now for the safe”. George was cleared after the court was told that he just watched the fire and never went near the shops.

Catherine Howe, niece.

Freddie Plater received the harshest sentence at Bedford crown court: three years’ hard labour. He had served two years in France and been badly wounded. On the day of the riot he was dressed as a vicar and jumped on fire engines to stop firemen putting out the blaze. He was arrested the next day.

Mike Allen, local historian

Edmund James joined the town police force in his early 20s. He weighed 20 stone and was put at the front of the town hall on Peace Day, holding back growing numbers of demonstrators. As the crowd grew his brother, Fred, a chief inspector arrived from Wardown Park with reinforcements. When a group went to the mayor’s house Fred and another senior officer went with them and spoke with the demonstrators before they returned to the town hall. Edmund was badly injured in the riots and three years later retired from the force on medical grounds. Their great-grandsons, Gavin Dadd and Tony Ireland, said the family felt the rioters had some justified grievances. Indeed the police themselves went on strike in some parts of the country. There was no animosity towards police after the riots as they were seen as having done their job. Both brothers knew some of the rioters personally.

Gavin Dadd and Tony Ireland, great grandsons

Albert Joseph Sear was policing the demonstration at the town hall on his second day in the force. He joined the police after being wounded at Gallipoli – at the age of 80 a hospital X-ray showed he still had a bullet in his shoulder. He was injured in the rioting and had a scar on his ear for the rest of his life but his daughter, Iris Purvis believes her father had some sympathy for the demonstrators. He was awarded the George Medal in the Second World War for helping defuse an unexploded bomb and retired, as a chief superintendent, in 1953. Iris’s mother told her about the crowd singing round a grand piano in the street. She said Lutonians kept quiet about where they were from after the riot because Luton became known as a lawless town.

Iris Purvis, daughter

Eve May Hurry was the town clerk’s secretary. On the day of the riot the clerk, William Smith, told her to go home. She refused at first but when she heard the mob breaking down the doors of the town hall she left. She had lost two brothers at Passchendale.

Roger Goodwin, grandson

Arthur Perry, who worked at Lye & Sons dye works, was held overnight with several men who had been drinking in the Rabbit pub. He was released in the morning. Cecil Matson, who ran a shoe stall in Luton market, said he ran away before police could catch him.

Keith Perry, grandson

Albert Chapman was a Conservative councillor at the time of the riots and inside the town hall when it was besieged. He became the first working man on the council because his boss, also a Tory, gave him time off to attend meetings. Albert was a member of the committee that stopped the Discharged Soldiers and Sailors’ Federation holding a service in Wardown Park on Peace Day. He was involved in setting up the Luton and Dunstable hospital and getting the sewage system replaced in the Lea Road area where he lived.

His descendants, David and Peter Chapman are Liberal Democrat councillors in Luton.

Dr Lloyd and his wife, Maud, were staying at a relative’s in George Street, opposite the town hall, when the riot broke out. Maud wrote in her diary:

The mayor tried to make two speeches but the mob would not let us hear. After the procession the town council returned into the town hall and shut the door, only four policemen were left to guard it and soon it was forced. … The mob burned the town hall and wrecked the shops near, throwing bricks and bottles at the firemen.

Dr Lloyd treated some of those injured in the riots and later received a letter of thanks from the town clerk.

Stephen Lloyd, grandson

Nigel Lutt a local Bedfordshire historian, researched the life of William Ephraim Gore who he described as a soldier who served successfully in the South African War, but had a more trouble experience in WW1 where he was imprisoned for insubordination. His life in Luton from a young age, was one of engaging in low level criminality having been convicted of 41 offences by the time of his sentencing  in 1919 for his part in settling light to the Town. After completing his sentence of 9 months, he had no further convictions dying in 1956 aged 82.

Nigel also shares his view of Mayor Impey and his role in the Peace Day Riots.

Roy Pilkington worked for the Oakley Brothers who gave extensive public service to the people of Luton and were involved in the purchase of Wardown Park and its gifting to the Town.  Roy was told that Edwin Oakley on the 19th July 1919, a serving  Councillor was the person who read the Riot Act, as the unrest and disturbances spread across the Town Centre.

Heather Lake is Mayor Henry Impey’s great niece.

Heather heard vivid stories of the day that the Town Hall was burned down from her mother. Three of Heather’s mother’s elder brothers went into town that day and mounted police arrived from London by train to clear the streets. One of the brothers, Fred Randall, ran the wrong way and became separated from the others. He ran from the Town Hall towards High Town to the top of Lea Road, where he lived, and heard horses so he ducked into an alleyway. The police shone a torch down the alley but being very thin, he was able to pin himself to a gate and breathe in until they had passed. Fred eventually managed to run home and was severely reprimanded by his father! Heather’s mother remembers hearing pianos being played and the sound of fireworks. The next day she and her grandmother were horrified at seeing the charred remains of the Town Hall in George Street, a memory that stayed with Heather’s mother all of her life.

Heather’s mother remembers what Emily told her about Henry Impey. He was a kind, well-liked man. He married but had no children. He came from a Methodist family and was a lay preacher and councillor before becoming mayor.

Henry’s  wife later had a nervous breakdown and Henry was taken ill. Heather’s mother felt that the events of that day destroyed the Impeys. Henry could never come back to Luton where he was born and bred, despite all the years’ service he had given to the town. Neither of them ever recovered.

There a plaque commemorating Henry Impey in the Methodist church in Castle Street, which his descendants see when they attend.