Hostname: page-component-788cddb947-kc5xb Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-10-14T23:48:35.616Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Speed and blood on the bypass: the new automobilities of inter-war London

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 June 2012

MICHAEL JOHN LAW*
Affiliation:
University of Westminster, London W1B 20U

Abstract:

The article considers the impact of new arterial roads on the mobilities of the wealthier inter-war Londoner, and argues that they occasioned an emergent form of automobility that was modern, sensational and exciting for the metropolitan driver, but was also highly dangerous, particularly for pedestrians and cyclists living in suburban homes near these roads.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2012

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 This account is based on the trial of Lord de Clifford in the House of Lords and the previously held inquest in to the crash from papers held at the Parliamentary Archive HL/PO/DC/CP/33/7.

2 For the formation and presentation of the suburban arterial road, see Merriman, P., Driving Spaces: A Cultural-Historical Geography of England's M1 Motorway (Oxford, 2007)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Law, M.J., ‘“Stopping to dream”: the beautification and vandalism of London's interwar arterial roads’, London Journal, 35 (2010), 5884CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

3 O'Connell, S., The Car and British Society: Class, Gender and Motoring 1896–1939 (Manchester, 1998)Google Scholar; Moran, J., ‘Crossing the road in Britain 1931–1976’, Historical Journal, 42 (2006), 477–96CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and idem, On Roads (London, 2009); Urry, J., ‘The “system” of automobility’, Theory, Culture and Society, 21 (2004), 2539CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Sheller, M., ‘Automotive emotions – feeling the car’, Theory, Culture and Society, 21 (2004), 221–42CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

4 For social aspects: O'Connell, The Car and British Society; Brendon, P., The Motoring Century: The Story of the Royal Automobile Club (London, 1997)Google Scholar. For legislative aspects: Plowden, W., The Car and Politics, 1896–1970 (London, 1971)Google Scholar. For industrial aspects: Flink, J.J., The Car Culture (Cambridge, MA, 1975)Google Scholar.

5 From Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders, The Motor Industry of Great Britain 1937 (London, 1937), and www.visionofbritain.org.uk for official census data.

6 Buchanan, C., London Road Plans, 1900–1970 (London, 1970), 12Google Scholar.

7 The Autocar, 24 Feb. 1933.

8 For discussions on ‘deep’ England, see Mandler, Peter, ‘Against Englishness: English culture and the limits to rural nostalgia’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 7 (1997), 155–75CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Kohl, S., ‘Rural England: an invention of the motor industries?’, in R. Burden and S. Kohl (eds.), Landscape and Englishness (New York, 2006)Google Scholar.

9 ‘On the road’ The Autocar, 3 Jul. 1925.

10 The index for the price of cars reduced by 51% from 1924 to 1936 and small cars, under 10 hp, grew from being 23.5% of the market in 1927 to 59.7% of the market in 1936, see Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders, The Motor Industry of Great Britain 1937. By 1938, real income had risen by 32% from 1920, see Benjamin, D.K. and Kochin, L.A., ‘Searching for an explanation of unemployment in interwar Britain’, Journal of Political Economy, 87 (1979), 441–78CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

11 Jackson, A.A., Semi-Detached London: Suburban Development, Life and Transport, 1900–39 (London, 1973), 104Google Scholar.

12 Greater London Plan area (excluding County and City of London) population change 1919 to 1938, Abercrombie, L.P., Greater London Plan 1944 (London, 1945), 188Google Scholar.

13 O'Connell, The Car and British Society.

14 See Jackson Semi-Detached London, 183. Car volume estimates from M.J. Law, ‘Automobility and the expanding metropolis: motoring culture and the growth of London 1925–1939’, unpublished University of London Ph.D. thesis, 2010.

15 Jeffreys, R., The King's Highway (London, 1949)Google Scholar.

16 See Law, ‘“Stopping to dream”’, for a discussion on how this was compromised by ribbon development.

17 Richards, J.M., The Castles on the Ground (London, 1946), 45Google Scholar.

18 Hamilton, C.M., Modern England as Seen by an Englishwoman (London, 1938), 34Google Scholar.

19 A. Arculus, correspondence with author, 11 Jun. 2005.

20 Urry, J., Automobility, Car Culture and Weightless Travel: A Discussion Paper (Lancaster, 1999)Google Scholar.

21 Frankau, G., Christopher Strong (London, 1932)Google Scholar.

22 Hamilton, P., The Siege of Pleasure (London, 1932), 297Google Scholar.

23 Sheller, ‘Automotive emotions – feeling the car’.

24 An open car had no roof and its only protection from the outside weather was in the form of flexible covers, see Sedgwick, M., Passenger Cars, 1924–1942 (London, 1975)Google Scholar.

25 Sitwell, O., Left Hand, Right Hand! An Autobiography, vol. III: Great Morning (London, 1957), 234Google Scholar.

26 Katz, J., How Emotions Work (London, 1999)Google Scholar.

27 See Law, M.J., ‘Turning night into day: transgression and Americanization at the English inter-war roadhouse’, Journal of Historical Geography, 35 (2009), 473–94CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

28 Brendon, The Motoring Century.

29 Cooke, S., This Motoring: Being the Romantic Story of the Automobile Association (London, n.d.)Google Scholar.

30 Gardner, C.J.T. (ed.), Fifty Years of Brooklands (London, 1956), 20Google Scholar.

31 Ibid., 27.

32 Vaughan, P., Something in Linoleum (London, 1994), 58Google Scholar.

33 Lorac, E.C.R., Death on the Oxford Road (London, 1933)Google Scholar.

34 This is a composite example based on accounts from newspapers and coroners’ reports.

35 Vaughan, Something in Linoleum, 58.

36 From Plowden, The Car and Politics, Appendices. The present-day figure for killed per 1,000 motor vehicles is 0.06 and injured per 1,000 motor vehicles is 6.4, www.bbc.co.uk/news/10408417 and www.dft.gov.uk/pgr/statistics, accessed 10 Sep. 2010.

37 Ministry of Transport, Preliminary Report on Fatal Road Accidents which Occurred during the Six Months Ended 30th June, 1933 (London, 1933), Tables VII and XGoogle Scholar.

38 Analysis of road deaths on Kingston Bypass and Great West Road, reported in The Times, 1925 to 1939.

39 Ministry of Transport, Preliminary Report on Fatal Road Accidents, Tables VI (a).

40 Kunstler, J., The Geography of Nowhere (New York, 1994)Google Scholar, quoted in Urry, J., ‘Inhabiting the car’, Sociological Review, 54 (2006), 1731CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

41 Freund, P.E.S., The Ecology of the Automobile (New York, 1993), 45Google Scholar.

42 Times, 12 Jun. 1936.

43 Times, 5 Nov. 1929.

44 See Moran, ‘Crossing the road in Britain’.

45 Letter from ‘Realist’, Manchester Guardian, 3 Jan. 1935.

46 Debate in House of Commons, 10 Apr. 1934, quoted in Plowden, The Car and Politics, 277.

47 These accidents have been selected for this article from The Times, and were chosen because of their strong social contrasts. Reports from The Times have been supplemented by examining local newspapers and police and coroner's reports.

48 Pugh, M., ‘We Danced All Night’: A Social History of Britain between the Wars (London, 2008), 350Google Scholar, describes the unusually large number of servants at Castlereagh's disposal.

49 Middlesex Chronicle, 26 Jun. 1926; Times, 21 Jun. 1926.

50 Derived from traffic census tables, The National Archives (TNA) MT/44/16.

51 Thompson, F.M.L., ‘Russell, Edward Southwell, twenty-sixth baron de Clifford (1907–1982)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004Google Scholar, www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/56670, accessed 17 Apr. 2008.

52 Correspondence between Don Williamson, Lancia Owner's Club archivist, and the author, Mar. 2008.

53 Coroner's report, Parliamentary Archives HL/PO/DC/CP/33/7.

54 Parliamentary Archives, HL/PO/DC/CP/33/7, Trial of Lord de Clifford, p. 12.

55 See Williams-Ellis, C., England and the Octopus (London, 1928)Google Scholar, and Joad, C.E.M., The Horrors of the Countryside (London, 1931)Google Scholar.

56 Slough Observer, 24 May 1929.

57 Roughly equivalent to $1.2 million at today's values, www.measuringworth.com.

58 Metropolitan Police reports, TNA MEPO 3/330, 1929.

59 Times, 23 Jul. 1929.

60 Statement of Constable Medley, Metropolitan Police reports, TNA MEPO 3/330, 15 May 1929.

61 New York Times, 1 Aug. 1929.

62 Demaus, A.B., Motoring in the 20's & 30’s (London, 1979), 10Google Scholar.

63 Koerner, S., ‘Four wheels good, two wheels bad’, in D. Thoms, L. Holden and T. Claydon (eds.), The Motor Car and Popular Culture in the 20th Century (Aldershot, 1998)Google Scholar.

64 Koerner, ‘Four wheels good, two wheels bad’, 155.

65 The Slough, Eton and Windsor Observer, 17 May 1929.

66 Cleeve, B.T., 1938, A World Vanishing (London, 1982), 48Google Scholar.