Mr Brundsen, Mr Platts & Mr Crapper

I’m currently researching a walking tour along the Thames path between Putney and Battersea Park. The route has thrown up a lot of interesting facts, not surprisingly given it’s location, many based around it’s industrial past. I always try and weave a human element into the tours with stories or facts that show what life was like for the residents of the area. I came across the following story and it’s just too good to keep to myself.

The story is set in 1898 at a location once known as Falcon Wharf in Battersea. It was the place of business for Frank Brundsen a barge builder who lived in the street that now runs behind the modern waterfront, Lombard Road.
I found a story relating to Frank and a couple of other gentlemen, one of which shall we say later was immortalised into common parlance.

It appears that for several months before and after the turn of the year there had been a lull in demand for barges and Frank had been having to find odd jobs to bring in the necessary money to keep his family housed, clothed and fed.

One morning he was walking from his home to his workshop contemplating another day without any commissions, when he was approached by a respectably dressed gent, who he later finds out is called Walter Platts.

Platts strikes up a conversation and asks Frank if he is looking for work to which he replies that he is. Platts tells him that he is the purchasing manager for a building company and due to illness they have staff shortages and he is having to run errands himself rather than the usual delivery boys. Explaining to Frank that he has pressing matters back at his office he hands him an order form on the headed stationary of Wilson & Sons ltd, West Kensington for several brass stop cocks, the docket is signed by Mr E K Wilson, who Platt explains in the Managing Director.

He says to Frank “Would you take this order to Mr. Crapper, of Chelsea, get those things and bring them to me at 9, Goodge Street Tottenham Court Road and I shall give you recompense for your time and trouble “.

Frank happily makes his way over to Chelsea no doubt celebrating his good fortune, Nobody will ever know if he had any qualms about the errand, but to the casual observer there are a few perplexing issues about Platts story.

Arriving at the premises of Thomas Crapper & Co, sanitary engineers, he is actually served by the owner who he hands the purchase order to. Immediately Mr Crapper is suspicious of the validity of the order form and asks Frank to wait while he gets the stop cocks.

Both Crapper and the firm of Wilson’s seem to have been early users of the fledgling telephone system and a call is made by Thomas Crapper to Wilson’s in which the order form is found to be a forgery. Crapper then calls the local police station and within minutes to some confusion and anguish a constable takes the bewildered Frank Brundsen into custody awaiting inquiries.

Frank relays the details of his errand and his local constable later attests to his good character and he is released. Fitzrovia police station was situated close to Goodge Street and later that day two constables attended the address where they found the occupant Walter Platts surrounded by an Aladdin’s cave of various industrial and household fittings including dozens of gas mantels, brass plumbing fittings, glass bottles, several oil stoves, gas burners and India rubber goods.

They also find a wagon bearing the name Wilson & Sons in an alleyway at the back of Platts house. Platts is arrested on suspicion of deception and forgery and goes to trial at the Old Bailey. He pleads not guilty but is sentenced to twelve months hard labour which he duly serves in Pentonville Prison.

Not much is related about Platts in the court records but I did a bit of digging and found him in the 1901 census and it appears that he was actually a plumber by trade, living only a few hundred yards from Mr Crapper’s emporium on the Kings Road with his wife Louisa and their three children.

It would seems as if his fraudulent activities helped him get stock for his business at no cost. He would target companies like Watsons and for several weeks would use the bogus order forms to pick up items from wholesalers or suppliers, some up to ten miles away using the cart for transporting larger items. This case was not the first time that Platt had been brought before the courts, as I found he also had previous convictions in 1895 for stealing gas, but tantalisingly there are no details about how he managed to do so and to what ends. He received four months hard labour in Wormwood Scrubs

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