Historic Southampton

Photo from my collection. Source for the air raid details: sotonopedia.wikidot.com/page-browse:...

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365 Portswood Road nearby was also destroyed at the same time. It was a boarding house and one lodger, Albert Wakeham of the ARP Rescue Service, was killed.

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McGovern and Toms were awarded the British Empire Medal for their efforts. Emma Ridley died in 1944 and Henry died in 1947.

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Sadly, Kate Dalton died from her injuries, one of 630 civilians who were killed during the Southampton Blitz.

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Had there been any further collapse, they would have been trapped underneath the fire surround too.

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Disregarding any concerns for their own safety, McGovern and Toms bravely crawled underneath in order to lift the piece of wreckage off Dalton, so that she could be freed by other members of the rescue party.

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He was soon joined by Percival Toms who led the ARP rescue party on the scene and together they climbed through the wreckage to search for Kate Dalton. They found her pinned underneath a heavy fire surround in the front room.

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Kate Dalton had been inside. John McGovern of the No. 5 Rescue and Demolition Party was off duty that night but raced to the scene. He began tunnelling into the wreckage before help had even arrived.

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Emma Ridley was rescued from the passage next to the house and neighbours clambered over the wreckage to find Henry in the garden suffering from minor injuries.

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Photograph of the house.

373 Porstwood Road, opposite Belmont Road. The home of 77-year-old retired solicitor Henry Ridley and his 82-year-old sister, Emma. Also the residence of the Ridleys’ domestic servant, 38-year-old Kate Dalton. On 19 March 1941, this house suffered a direct hit from a German bomb.

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The ship passing the pier.

RMS Aquitania passing Southampton’s Royal Pier.

My pleasure. Thank you for reading.

In 1939 she’s still doing the same job, living with her widowed mother. She never married. Flora Baldry died in Norwich on 25 February 1974 at the age of eighty-three.

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Flora was awarded the British War Medal and the Victory Medal for her service during the war and she returned home to Norwich to live with her parents. At the time of the 1921 census she’s working as a fitter in a boot and shoe factory in Norwich.

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The hotel was converted into a Missions to Seamen institute later in 1918. The building no longer exists.

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Early 1900s advert for Flower’s Hotel featuring a picture of the building.

Flora had written it whilst staying at Flower’s Hotel (pictured). Overlooking Queen’s Park on the corner of Queen’s Terrace and Latimer Street, the hotel was being run by James Flower as a temperance establishment as early as 1861.

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… You see they look after us alright. The commandant gave us our pay book and a nice letter from Lady Ampthill.
Best love to you,
Flo’

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Twenty-seven-year-old Flora wrote:

‘Dear Mother,
We have made Southampton but will not set sail until Friday so we are billeted at Flowers Hotel. Am having a little rest before tea so thought I would have the time writing to you…

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Front of postcard, featuring a female postal worker and the text: ‘SOMETHING FOR YOU FROM SOUTHAMPTON’.

Flora’s message on the back.

Flora Baldry was an orderly with the Voluntary Aid Detachment during the First World War, serving in a number of hospitals across France between 1915 and 1919. She sent this postcard to her mother back home in Norwich on 2 May 1918 before sailing back to France from Southampton.

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My pleasure! So glad you find it interesting/useful. Thank you very much.

Great museum.

Thank you!

Street scene with the church spire in the background.

St Mary Street in the late 1920s or early 1930s.

Southampton High Street, early 1900s.

Similar view in 2025.

Looking south down Southampton High Street.

Long corridor with a high ceiling and large windows. A soldier stands in the foreground with his arm in a sling, pipe in his mouth. Nurses stand further down the corridor.

Surgical corridor, Royal Victoria Hospital, Netley.

Since the land was reclaimed in the twentieth century in order to build the Pirelli factory and, later, the Western Docks, the water no longer washes quays at the base of the wall here, and the top of the wall no longer offers the enchanting view of the bay that Jane Austen would have known.

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… and run quite to the wall, commanding an enchanting view of the bay, from the town to the village of Millbrook, and the river beyond it quite to Redbridge.’

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‘The tide washes the whole of this wall… and the ground within is almost level with its top the whole way; so that it forms a most beautiful terrace to the gardens which belong to the houses in the High-street and Castle-square…

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Sir Henry Charles Englefield described this view in 1801 in ‘A Walk Through Southampton’:

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‘My grandmother’s house had a pleasant garden, bounded on one side by the old city walls; the top of this wall was sufficiently wide to afford a pleasant walk, with an extensive view, easily accessible to ladies by steps.’

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