Wandsworth Common

"The School Board recently made an attempt, which they are now understood to have abandoned, to establish a school at Wandsworth Common, a district already well supplied with schools and inhabited almost exclusively by middle-class people, able to pay for the education of their own children. There are in the whole place scarcely twenty people of the class towards whom the attention of the School Board should legitimately be directed."

The candidates duly proposed for election as Conservators: Algernon Black (Wandsworth); Andrew Cameron (Battersea) — outgoing, offering himself for re-election; John Erskine Clarke (Battersea, Clerk in Holy Orders) — outgoing; Philip Cooke (Wandsworth); Has Du Buisson (Wandsworth) — outgoing; Edward William Fithian (Wandsworth); Richard Rundell Oram (Battersea) — proposed by B.T.L. Thomson; Edwin Rainer Ransome (Battersea) — outgoing; James Anderson Rose (Battersea); Benjamin Thomas Lindsay Thomson (Battersea); Thomas Simons Watson (Wandsworth) — outgoing; Henry Paul Whiting (Battersea) — proposed by J.E. Clarke; Eliezer Williams (Battersea).

On Tuesday evening a crowded meeting in support of Mr Stern's candidature was held at the Town Hall, Wandsworth. From the commencement much interruption occurred — a number of young men had attended with the evident intention of disturbing the meeting. On Wednesday a meeting support was held at Lammas Hall, presided over by Mr John Cleave; and on Thursday evening a mass meeting in favour of Stern took place on the Green, Queen's Road, Battersea, addressed by Messrs Gay, Cleave, Willis, Buckmaster, G.C. Whiteley, George Mitchell, Donaldson, Bailey, and others — declared "the most successful and enthusiastic meeting held for many years in Battersea." The polling took place on Friday.

Mr James Anderson Rose entertained the members of the Wandsworth and Putney Working Men's Conservative Association, the Battersea Conservative Association, and the Battersea Beaconsfield Club at a social gathering in his extensive grounds at Wandsworth Common.

During the great storm of late January/early February 1884, the driver of an up local train observed near Wandsworth Common Station (London, Brighton, and South Coast Railway) a large sign-board lying right across the metals. It had been blown from the bridge crossing the line, smashing two posts about six inches square. He had barely time to warn the signalman at New Wandsworth, who stopped the up Brighton Pullman express at Balham Station, where it was detained for some time. "Owing to the roughness of the night and the sharp curve and steep incline it must — except for the local driver's presence of mind — have been inevitably wrecked."