On 5th September…

1997 - Mother Teresa died. Her life had been devoted to the caring of the sick and the poor especially in India. She was born in Macedonia to Albanian parents and became a nun and promoter of peace and won the Nobel Peace Prize for her work. Mother Teresa founded the Order of Missionaries of Charity which was dedicated to the poor people of India.

On 6th September…

1666 - The Great Fire of London died down leaving 13,200 houses destroyed, 80,000 people homeless, and only six people reported dead. The fire was stopped in its tracks by the blowing up of houses in its path to create a firebreak. The number of deaths may have been much higher, but we will never know because lives of the poor were not considered to be important and were therefore not recorded.

 On 7th September…

1940 - The Blitz began when three hundred German bombers bombed London for the first of 57 consecutive days and nights of air raids during World War II. Nearly 2,000 people were killed or wounded in the first night of bombing.

On 8th September…

1727 - A fire in a barn in the village of Burwell, Cambridgeshire killed seventy-eight people. Fifty-one of those who died were children. Locals had gathered in the barn to watch a puppet show but the doors had been nailed shut to stop too many people entering the barn. When the straw inside the barn caught alight there was no way for the people to escape.

1761 - King George III married Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz in St James’s Palace in London. Together they had 15 children.

1888 - Annie Chapman, the second victim of Jack the Ripper was found dead in the back yard of a house in Hanbury Street, East London. She was found just eight days after Mary Ann Nichols’ body was discovered in Buck’s Row only a 5 minute walk away.

On 9th September…

1513 - King James IV of Scotland died at the Battle of Flodden (also known as the Battle of Branxton) against the English. The Scots had been called into battle by the French who had been invaded by England. Why were the Scots fighting for the French? Well, the French had invoked the terms of a treaty which stipulated that if either Scotland or France were to be invaded by England the other country would come to their aide and invade England in retaliation. The Battle of Flodden was one of the largest battles to take place on British soil with around 26.000 English soldiers facing about 30-40,000 Scottish. The English won the battle suffering only about 4,000 losses with their opponents losing about 10,000 men including their king.

1902 - Harry Jackson became the first man to be convicted of a crime based on his fingerprints. He had left his thumbprint in the wet paint of a windowsill of a house he had burgled.

On 10th September…

1933 - Fred Perry became the first Briton to win the US Open Men’s Singles Tennis Championship. He was also the first man to win all four ‘Grand Slam’ tennis titles although not in the same year.

1939 - Canada declared war on Germany at the beginning of World War II.

On 11th September…

1942 - Five on a Treasure Island by Enid Blyton was first published. It was the first of the Famous Five series of books which tell the tales of a group of four child detectives and their dog; over 100 million copies have been sold worldwide.