FBI ends the careers of John Dillinger, Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow, Pretty Boy Floyd and Baby Face Nelson

Born This Year:
Brian Epstein September 19th
Sophia Loren September 20th
Peter Arnett November 13th
Yuri Gagarin March 9th
Hank Aaron February 5th 
Giorgio Armani July 11th 
Tom Baker January 20th 
Brigitte Bardot September 28th 
Pat Boone June 1st
Maggie Smith December 28th
Marty Feldman July 8th


Events:
The Flying Scotsman becomes the first steam locomotive to be officially recorded at 100 mph.
The Luxury Liner Queen Mary is launched in Scotland
Cats-eyes for lighting roads are invented in England 
Donald Duck is born.
Alcatraz federal penitentiary opens
Italy wins the Second World Cup.
Oswald Moseley and his Nazi Party agitating.


Major World Political Leaders:
Germany Chancellor - Adolf Hitler 
Italy Prime Minister - Benito Mussolini 
Soviet Union General Secretary - Joseph Stalin 
United States President - Franklin D. Roosevelt 
United Kingdom - Prime Minister Ramsay MacDonald

Sylvia was the third child of Edward (Ted) and Marion (May- Nee Kingston) Mann.

Their first child Alan who died very young and was seldom spoken of as the mention of his name deeply affected our father.

The family lived in 12 Stanhope Gardens. Dagenham) until the outbreak of the war forced the evacuation of May and the children to Stockwood Hills, Bridge End in Wales with Ted staying on to work.

Later they then moved to join Dads sister Elsie Smith Norman and Josephine lodging with a Mr. Churchill at 10 Glasfryn Square, Pyle Wales. The children had a good time in Wales playing with the local children, the boys and a close friend Vincent often “bombing” a local river bridge by floating containers of miner’s lamp carbide which sank on contact with the piers and pitching the carbide into the river with “interesting” results. Sylvia or David told me the tale, but Norman cannot remember the event!

Regular use was made of nearby Morfa beach and Sker Point with many visits made to Porthcawl where winkle picking was a favorite pastime. 

The house is still there, and Vincent was alive when Norman and Joan visited it in 2015.

At some time in 1940 a wayward German bomber took exception to their Essex home and obliterated it, fortunately Ted (a London Black cab driver) was at work at the time, arriving home in the morning in time to find rescue workers carefully recovering the “body of a child ”which was in fact Sylvia’s three foot tall rag doll.

The Mann family must have returned to be re-housed in Massingham Street, Stepney Green some time in 1941-2 as I was born in Mile End Maternity Hospital in October 1942 and Janet in 1946, incidentally the maternity unit was housed in the Old Mile End Work House into which Great Grand Father Kingston had been admitted as a boy as mentioned in the Swaby Family History of which Sylvia has a copy.

The Smith family returned to their Old home(?) in West Ham area of London some time in 1945 and the two families remained very close, with the bond strengthened after the sudden death of Elsie’s husband Jim, when Ted became a proxy Dad to them

Sylvia attended Raines Grammar Foundation (originally a Raines Asylum for Girls) until, for various reasons, she left school at 14 years old to hoping to become a secretary.

After a family dispute she left home to live with Aunt Elsie and family in their West Ham flat and I suspect made a fearsome duo with Josephine. The pair being disapproved for befriending Italian ex-prisoners of war who were building “temporary” prefabricated housing in the Plashet Road area, which incidentally, the Smiths moved into and were living in until the 1960s.

What happened around the time Josephine left home to work in a Hotel in the West Country I am not sure, but she may have come home for a spell.

However, at some time later she found her métier when she joined the General Post Office as a trainee telephone operator eventually becoming a Telephonist on the International Exchange after an aptitude for foreign languages was noticed.

Sylvia said that she dated an American Airman called Tony who came from Ohio. She also talked about dancing with a Sailor during the Coronation (2nd June 1953). She claimed that that they danced into Scotland Yard and out the other side.