Southgate Road

In May 1907, the residents of Southgate Road, including the Owens, may have noticed curious events taking place around the Brotherhood Church with an upsurge of animated and argumentative discussions being conducted at loud volume in Russian.

No doubt the locals shrugged their shoulders and continued with their daily business. The Russians held 35 sessions over the course of their fortnight stay, and disputed everything from whether to overthrow the Russian Royal Family by force and to what exactly the name of their congress should be. For just a short period, the Owens had found themselves brushing shoulders in the streets of Hackney and Islington, with Lenin, Stalin and Trotsky. All in all, the Russian exiles spent considerable time in London in the first years of the twentieth century, with many of them taking up residence in the city, often as lodgers, for in those days, one simple obvious was of increasing family income by taking in boarders.There was no concept of a ‘spare’ room at that time - only a ‘wasted’ room.

So Maria Rosetta Bradley and her husband found themselves a lodger, who is also recorded in the 1911 census. To everyone’s relief, this was not a Russian revolutionary but a clerk, born in St. Luke, Islington, and working for a silversmith. His name was Charles Albert Eldridge.

52 Southgate Road, 1911 Census