N2O.

The problem of Nitrous Oxide (N2O) abuse in the local area appears to be getting worse.  I took the photo above - click on it to see a larger version - last week in Appold Street in Erith. The photo shows a carton of industrial, catering sized Nitrous Oxide canisters that had been dumped on the pavement. Previously, what one commonly saw in the street were small silver thumb sized canisters that users had dropped after using them. Now the larger and potentially even more dangerous catering sized canisters are becoming the norm. Doctors in the UK have warned over an “epidemic” of patients admitted to hospital from laughing gas abuse amid a 257 per cent rise in serious poisonings. Specialist neurologists and toxicologists have warned they are seeing young people admitted through emergency departments every two weeks now due to the impacts of Nitrous Oxide canisters, also called “whippets.” Calls to the National Poisons Information Service have increased by 257 per cent in 2021-22. Figures for 2023 are not yet available. Data published by the NPIS in September 2021 showed a 3600 per cent increase to 37 people, in 2020-21, and its report said the substance was among the top 10 drugs enquired about for the first time. In September 2021 home secretary Priti Patel asked the government’s independent Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs (ACMD) to review the harm caused by Nitrous Oxide after half a million young people reported taking it in 2019-20. Dr David Nicholl a neurologist at Sandwell and West Birmingham Hospital Trust has said in a warning on Tik Tok - “Myself and my colleagues are seeing an epidemic of young people being admitted to hospital off their legs because they’ve been taking whippets. We’re seeing dozens of young people coming into hospital because they’re off their legs, some of whom have life changing neurological injuries…you need to be aware this stuff is legal and its dangerous.” He then went on to say:-“I looked at my admissions over five years between 2015 and 2020 and we only found six cases admitted but now it’s sort of exponentially increasing. So, it’s almost on a weekly basis, we’re getting admissions now. Usually young people and they tend to present with nerve problems.” He also stated that young people were coming in with “altered sensation” in their arms and legs, numbness, pins and needles, difficulty walking and in the most severe cases, injury to their spinal cord which can cause permanent damage. Comments to hugh.neal@gmail.com.

Following my discovery of the dumped Nitrous Oxide containers in Appold Street, it got me thinking about the unusual street name, and where it came from. I did some research and found out quite a lot. It turns out that the name Appold comes from Victorian engineer and inventor John George Appold, who you can see in the photo above - click on it for a larger view. John George Appold was born in 1800 and died of cancer in 1865, as a very wealthy man. As a boy he showed considerable talent for calculation and a decided aptitude for mechanical pursuits, which he was enabled to gratify by introducing improvements in the processes in use in his father’s business - that of a fur skin-dyer, to which he eventually succeeded; and which, by his ingenuity and scientific improvements, he made very profitable. In the early part of his career there were but rare opportunities for improvement by mixing with contemporary scientists; but, as soon as it was practicable, Mr. Appold became a Member of the London Institution, where he enjoyed the advantages of the use of the Library, and of attending the evening meetings. In 1834 he was named one of the Auditors, and in 1844 he was elected one of the Managers; and henceforth he took great interest in the welfare of that Society. He devised many ingenious mechanical contrivances which he incorporated in his home. His major invention was a form of centrifugal pump used for drainage in the fens, which he demonstrated at The Great Exhibition of 1851, which won a gold medal. He also invented a brake for use in lowering telegraph cables into the sea, a system used when laying the first transatlantic cable in 1857. He was elected Fellow of the Royal Society in 1853. He was regarded as quite eccentric, and created many groundbreaking domestic implements, such as automatically opening and closing doors, an early form of air conditioning. Even the gates of his stable yard opened of themselves as he drove through, and closed again without slamming. His name will probably be most universally connected with the Appold Centrifugal Rotary Pump, which was so prominent a feature in the International Exhibitions of 1851 and 1862. He took great and unceasing interest in the laying of the Submarine Telegraph Cable to America, and the paying-out apparatus employed in the early attempts was mainly of his invention. He had amassed a large fortune by the end of his life in 1865, which, by his will, was very judiciously disposed of among his relatives and friends, he not having any family. All his workmen and servants were well remembered, and several bequests were made to scientific societies. Among others, he bequeathed one thousand pounds to the Institution of Civil Engineers, 'for the general use and benefit of the Society.' His connection with Erith, and the area around what is now Appold Street is down to the engineering company Easton and Amos, which was located in the buildings which now form part of Abbey Car Breakers, and also in buildings in Manor Road from 1865 until 1903. They produced and sold Appold designed pumps for industry, which were exported all over the world. John Appold is little remembered nowadays, but in Victorian times he was regarded as a very important person, hence how a road in the vicinity of the pump factory was later named after him.

Whilst researching the historical article on John George Appold, I came across an account of a battle that took place locally, that until now I had never heard of. The Battle of Bexleyheath was a minor skirmish in the English Civil War that took place on the 19th October 1642 near Bexleyheath, which then was rural and mainly farmland. The battle was fought between the Royalist forces of King Charles I and the Parliamentarian forces of the Earl of Essex. The battle was inconclusive, but it was the first major engagement of the war and it helped to set the tone for the conflict. The Royalists were marching south from Nottingham to London, while the Parliamentarians were marching north from Kent to meet them. The two armies met at Bexleyheath. The Royalists were outnumbered, but they had the advantage of the high ground. The battle lasted for several hours, but neither side was able to gain a decisive advantage. In the end, both armies withdrew from the field. The Battle of Bexleyheath was a small battle, but it was significant because it was the first major engagement of the English Civil War. The battle showed that both sides were willing to fight for their cause, and it helped to set the tone for the conflict. The battle also had a significant impact on the political landscape of England. The Royalists' victory at Bexleyheath gave them confidence and helped to rally support for their cause. The Parliamentarians, on the other hand, were demoralised by their defeat, and it took them several months to recover. The Battle of Bexleyheath is a reminder of the importance of first impressions. The battle was small, but it had a big impact on the course of the English Civil War. It is a reminder that even small battles can have a significant impact on history. Comments and feedback to me as usual at hugh.neal@gmail.com.

This week marks the 30th anniversary of the release in the UK of the first popular web browser, called Mosaic. Mosaic was pretty basic by modern standards, and it was not actually the first web browser. It was however the first one to get any level of popular use outside of academia. Nowadays, the Firefox web browser can be regarded as the great grandchild of Mosaic, as it shares much of the original DNA, and developers.  Previous web browsers had only been able to display text; any embedded pictures were usually downloaded separately, if at all (which was no bad thing in the days of the 14.4K dial up modem – the web was an almost exclusively text based place in the early 90’s!) Mosaic brought together a number of then emerging technologies to make what would be familiar to most people as a web browser. Even back then, Mosaic was regarded as being something ground breaking when it was released for the Unix operating system by its’ authors Marc Andreesson and Eric Bina of the NCSA (National Centre for Supercomputing Applications) back in May 1993. Technical journalist Gary Wolfe wrote the following piece about Mosaic in the October 1994 edition of Wired magazine:- “When it comes to smashing a paradigm, pleasure is not the most important thing. It is the only thing. If this sounds wrong, consider Mosaic. Mosaic is the celebrated graphical "browser" that allows users to travel through the world of electronic information using a point-and-click interface. Mosaic's charming appearance encourages users to load their own documents onto the Net, including colour photos, sound bites, video clips, and hypertext "links" to other documents. By following the links - click, and the linked document appears - you can travel through the online world along paths of whim and intuition. Mosaic is not the most direct way to find online information. Nor is it the most powerful. It is merely the most pleasurable way, and in the 18 months since it was released, Mosaic has incited a rush of excitement and commercial energy unprecedented in the history of the Net”. Wolfe wrote with rare prescience – he hit the nail squarely on the head, a good couple of years before most people were more than dimly aware of what the web was at all.  Writer Matthew K Gray wrote “Marc Andreessen's realisation of Mosaic, based on the work of Tim Berners – Lee and the hypertext theorists before him, is generally recognised as the beginning of the web as it is now known. Mosaic, the first web browser to win over the Net masses, was released in 1993 and made freely accessible to the public. The adjective phenomenal, so often overused in this industry, is genuinely applicable to the... 'explosion' in the growth of the web after Mosaic appeared on the scene. Starting with next to nothing, the rates of the web growth (quoted in the press) hovering around tens of thousands of percent over ridiculously short periods of time were no real surprise”.  Mosaic later spawned the first massively popular web browser,  – Netscape Navigator, which was sold commercially, making Netscape briefly the most profitable tech company listed on the U.S stock market, and at one time had a market capitalisation worth $2.9 billion. Eventually Microsoft twigged that the web was the way forward, after an astonishingly long period of inactivity; it went on to licence some of the technology used in a particular version of Mosaic in order to create Internet Explorer, which, along with some more than slightly questionable business practices that I will not outline here (but do feel free to carry out your own research on the subject) effectively killed Netscape by forcing them out of the burgeoning browser market. If you look at the credits screen on any old version of Internet Explorer up until version 7, you will see a credit “based on NSCA Mosaic”. As you can see, Mosaic changed the face of computing, and whilst it seems like the dim and distant past, it was actually only thirty years ago this month. Tellingly a version of Mosaic was developed for the Commodore Amiga almost a year before a Windows version was released. How times change. Incidentally, if you hanker after the old Netscape Navigator application suite, which included the Netscape web browser, the mail and newsgroups reader, and the web page creator, all is not lost. As well as developing and maintaining the mainstream Firefox browser, the Mozilla team have a spin - off group that works on SeaMonkey - a direct descendant on the Netscape Suite - which nowadays is both free and open source. You can get the SeaMonkey suite for Windows, MacOS, and Linux by clicking here.

The following warning of a scam that is operating locally was circulated by the Crayford Safer Neighbourhood Police Team, after they were alerted by a resident:- "On Sunday 23rd April we had a delivery from DPD -  20 minutes later we had another DPD 'Courier'  knock at the door saying that the delivery of an iPhone 14 had been made by mistake and he was collecting it,  How did he know it was an iPhone? -  1ST MISTAKE. I knew this was a scam as the name on the packaging was to a Miss not Mrs  -  we refused to hand it back and stated we would contact the company the phone was from and return it,  The guy then said if we do that we would have to pay for it, at this point I said to him that this was a scam - his face dropped he turned round and trotted down the pathway. I contacted 101 within the hour who put me through to the right channels they took all the details - on Monday I contacted Action Fraud to report it, and the company it came from, and Vodafone who the sim card was from.  On Tuesday the phone was collected via Parcelforce for return. An online account was set up in my name at Lloyds  - except again they used Miss not Mrs and we do not bank with Lloyds. I have also dealt with this and Lloyds had already red flagged it.  I am now waiting to see if anything else has been set up. Please let the community know about this - I have managed to deal with this and thankfully did not give the package back to the bogus courier, but it has made me a bit anxious  -  one other thing  the bogus guy did not pull up on a van or car, which we assume had been parked out of sight. I hope this can be circulated especially to the vulnerable in our community".

As regular readers will be aware, I do occasionally write about famous people born in the local area; this time I am featuring a musician who was incredibly famous - yet his local connection is almost unknown. John Paul Jones (born John Baldwin on January 3, 1946) is an English musician, composer, and record producer who was the bassist and keyboardist for the rock band Led Zeppelin. He is considered one of the most influential and versatile musicians in rock history. Jones was born and grew up in Sidcup. He began playing the piano at the age of five and the cello at the age of seven. He studied music at the Royal Academy of Music in London. After graduating, he worked as a session musician and arranger. In 1968, he was invited to join Led Zeppelin by Jimmy Page. Jones played on all eight of Led Zeppelin's studio albums. He was a key contributor to the band's sound, playing a variety of instruments, including bass, keyboards, mandolin, and violin. He also wrote or co-wrote several of the band's songs, including "The Lemon Song" and "No Quarter." After Led Zeppelin disbanded in 1980, Jones continued to work as a musician and producer for a number of bands, including The Mission. He has released several solo albums and collaborated with a variety of artists, including Them Crooked Vultures, Foo Fighters, and The Pretenders. He has also written music for films and television. Jones is a highly respected musician and composer. He is a member of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and the Songwriters Hall of Fame. He has won numerous awards, including a Grammy Award and a Brit Award. He is considered one of the most important and influential musicians in rock history - and he came from Sidcup!

The short end video this week features two local landmarks - Erith Pier and Abbey Ruins. Comments and feedback to me at hugh.neal@gmail.com.