Read on Twitter
This is a photograph of Fairyland. It was an Edwardian amusement arcade in Tottenham Court Road, run by my great grandfather. Mechanical games, penny slots, fortune teller Madame Pauline ... 1/
You may have noticed the advertisement for shooting gallery. Installing a shooting gallery in an amusement arcade may have been a mistake. Because Fairyland has a minor place in Edwardian history... 2/
In 1909, Madan Lal Dhingra practised his shooting at Fairyland prior to him assassinating Sir William Hutt Curzon Wyllie at the Imperial Institute. This is seen as one of the first acts in the 20th Century Indian independence movement... 3/
Also in 1909, Special Branch were warned that two Suffragettes were going there to Fairyland to practice shooting; they planned to assassinate prime minister Herbert Asquith... 4/
In fact, Suffragettes did try to assassinate Asquith in 1912, with a hatchet. They missed and hit the person next to him, slicing a part of their cheek and ear off... 5/
Things were quiet at Fairyland, on the murder front, until August 1914. This was when Donald Lesbini shot Alice Storey... 6/
R v Lesbini (1914) was a case that established in British, Canadian and Australian law that, with regard to voluntary manslaughter, a reasonable man always has reasonable powers of self-control and is never intoxicated... 7/
Before it was Fairyland, it was a branch of Lewis and Burrows, chemists (and suppliers of chemicals to Dr Crippen)... 8/
Next door to Fairyland was Walton Hassell and Port, grocers, suppliers of Dr Tibbles Vi Cocoa. the Lukozade of the time... 9/
Today, it's a branch of Greggs... 10/
If you're interested in the story of Fairyland, there's now a podcast on it.
https://anchor.fm/fairylandmurders
@thefairylandpod
... /11
https://anchor.fm/fairylandmurders
@thefairylandpod
... /11
