Place:Tottenham, Middlesex, England

source: Family History Library Catalog

Research Tips

Tottenham is one of the ancient parishes of Middlesex. In 1894 it became an Urban District, and it 1934 it was incorporated to become a Municipal Borough. Tottenham Municipal Borough was abolished in 1965, becoming part of the London Borough of Haringey. In the 19th century it was part of the Edmonton Registration District.

the text in this section is copied from an article in Wikipedia

Tottenham () is a town in north London, England, within the London Borough of Haringey. It is located in the ceremonial county of Greater London and the historic county of Middlesex. Tottenham is centred north-northeast of Charing Cross, bordering Edmonton to the north, Walthamstow, across the River Lea, to the east, and Stamford Hill to the south, with Wood Green and Harringay to the west.

The area rapidly expanded in the late-19th century, becoming a working-class suburb of London following the advent of the railway and mass development of housing for the lower-middle and working classes. It is the location of Tottenham Hotspur Football Club, founded in 1882. The parish of Tottenham was granted urban district status in 1894 and municipal borough status in 1934. Following the Second World War, the area saw large-scale development of council housing, including tower blocks. In 1965, the borough of Tottenham merged with the municipal boroughs of Hornsey and Wood Green to form the London Borough of Haringey.

Tottenham is renowned for its multicultural, ethnically diverse population. Following an influx of an Afro-Caribbean population during the Windrush era in the mid-20th century, it became one of the most ethnically diverse areas in Britain. It has more recently become home to an increased population from Africa, Asia, South America and Eastern Europe. At the 2011 census, the population of Tottenham was 129,237.

History

the text in this section is copied from an article in Wikipedia

Toponymy

Tottenham is believed to have been named after Tota, a farmer, whose hamlet was mentioned in the Domesday Book. 'Tota's hamlet', it is thought, developed into 'Tottenham'. The settlement was recorded in the Domesday Book as Toteham, in the ancient hundred of Edmonton. It is not related to Tottenham Court Road in Central London, though the two names share a similar-sounding root.

Early history

There has been a settlement at Tottenham for over a thousand years. It grew up along the old Roman road, Ermine Street (some of which is part of the present A10 road), and between High Cross and Tottenham Hale, the present Monument Way.

When the Domesday Book was compiled in 1086, about 70 families lived within the area of the manor, mostly labourers working for the Lord of the Manor. A humorous poem entitled the Tournament of Tottenham, written around 1400, describes a mock-battle between peasants vying for the reeve's daughter.

The River Lea (or Lee) was the eastern boundary between the Municipal Boroughs of Tottenham and Walthamstow. It is the ancient boundary between Middlesex and Essex and also formed the western boundary of the Viking controlled Danelaw. Today it is the boundary between the London Boroughs of Haringey and Waltham Forest. A major tributary of the Lea, the River Moselle, also crosses the borough from west to east, and often caused serious flooding until it was mostly covered in the 19th century.

From the Tudor period onwards, Tottenham became a popular recreation and leisure destination for wealthy Londoners. Henry VIII is known to have visited Bruce Castle and also hunted in Tottenham Wood. A rural Tottenham also featured in Izaak Walton's book The Compleat Angler, published in 1653. The area became noted for its large Quaker population and its schools (including Rowland Hill at Bruce Castle.) Tottenham remained a semi-rural and upper middle class area until the 1870s.

Modern era

In late 1870s, the Great Eastern Railway introduced special workman's trains and fares on its newly opened Enfield and Walthamstow branch lines. Tottenham's low-lying fields and market gardens were then rapidly transformed into cheap housing for the lower middle and working classes, who were able to commute cheaply to inner London. The workman's fare policy stimulated the relatively early development of the area into a London suburb.

In 1894, Tottenham was made an urban district and on 27 September 1934 it became a municipal borough. As from 1 April 1965, the municipal borough formed part of the London Borough of Haringey together with Hornsey and Wood Green.

An incident occurred on 23 January 1909, which was at the time known as the Tottenham Outrage. Two armed robbers, Latvian Jews of Russian extraction, held up the wages clerk of rubber works in Chestnut Road. They made their getaway via Tottenham Marshes and fled across the Lea. On the opposite bank of the river, they hijacked a Walthamstow Corporation tramcar, hotly pursued by the police on another tram. The hijacked tram was stopped but the robbers continued their flight on foot. After firing their weapons and killing two people, Ralph Joscelyne, aged 10, and PC William Tyler, they were eventually cornered by the police and shot themselves rather than be captured. Fourteen other people were wounded during the chase. The incident later became the subject of a silent film.

During the Second World War Tottenham was one of the many targets of the German air offensive against Britain. Bombs fell in the borough (Elmar Road) during the first air raid on London on 24 August 1940. The borough also received V-1 (four incidents) and V-2 hits, the last of which occurred on 15 March 1945. Wartime shortages led to the creation of Tottenham Pudding, a mixture of household waste food which was converted into feeding stuff for pigs and poultry. The "pudding" was named by Queen Mary on a visit to Tottenham Refuse Works. Production continued into the post-war period, its demise coinciding with the merging of the borough into the new London Borough of Haringey.

Riots

• The Broadwater Farm riot occurred around the Broadwater Farm Estate on 6 October 1985 following the death of Cynthia Jarrett. Jarrett was a resident of Tottenham who lived about from the estate, who died of heart failure during a police search of her home. The tension between local black youths and the largely white Metropolitan Police had been high due to a combination of local issues and the aftermath of riots in Brixton which had occurred in the previous week. The response of some of the black community in Tottenham and surrounding areas culminated in a riot beginning on Tottenham High Road and ending in Broadwater Farm Estate. One police officer, Keith Blakelock, was murdered; 58 policemen and 24 other people were injured in the fighting. Two of the policemen were injured by gunshots during the riot, the first time that firearms had been used in that type of confrontation.

• The 2011 Tottenham riots were a series of riots precipitated by the fatal shooting of Mark Duggan, a 29-year-old man in Tottenham, by officers of the Metropolitan Police Service on 4 August 2011. Attacks were carried out on two police cars, a bus, a Post Office and several local shops from 8:00 pm onwards on 6 August 2011. Riot police vans attended the scene of disturbances on Tottenham High Road. Later in the evening, the riot spread, with an Aldi supermarket and a branch of Allied Carpets also destroyed by fire, and widespread looting in nearby Wood Green shopping centre and the retail park at Tottenham Hale. Several flats above shops on Tottenham High Road collapsed due to the fires. 26 shared ownership flats in the Union Point development above the Carpetright store – built in the landmark Cooperative department store building – were also destroyed by fire. The triggering event was when a group of over one hundred local Tottenham residents set out to undertake a protest march against the killing of Mark Duggan, who was shot by police officers assigned to Operation Trident earlier in the week. The crowd made up of Duggan's family and local community leaders, gathered outside Tottenham police station on 6 August 2011 to protest the failure of the police to provide family members with a formal notice of the killing. The circumstances surrounding Duggan's death were not entirely clear at the time of the riot. On 17 August 2011, the Prince of Wales and his wife Duchess of Cornwall visited an emergency center to meet victims of the riots.

Railway history

• The Northern and Eastern Railway – running from Stratford to Broxbourne – was opened on 15 September 1840 with two stations in the district: Tottenham and Marsh Lane.
• The Tottenham & Hampstead Junction Railway was opened on 21 July 1868. South Tottenham station was opened in 1871. St Ann's Road opened in 1882 but closed after service on 8 August 1942.
• The Stoke Newington & Edmonton Railway – The section between Stoke Newington and Lower Edmonton opened on 22 July 1872 with stations in Tottenham at Stamford Hill (half of the station lies in the borough), Seven Sisters, Bruce Grove and White Hart Lane.
• The Palace Gates Line opened in Tottenham on 1 January 1878 with stations at Seven Sisters and West Green. Passenger services ceased in 1963 with the line finally closing on 7 February 1965.
• The Tottenham & Forest Gate Railway opened on 9 July 1894.
• The first section of the London Underground's Victoria line opened on 1 September 1968.