The
splendid Grade II listed Art Deco Bianchi memorial was created by Cesare
Bianchi for his wife Martha who died in 1936 giving birth to her second child. The
memorial is set in a large triangular plot that had wrought iron railings and a
gate until they were stolen by thieves in 2011. A futurist angel stands with
wings outstretched over a gateway inscribed with the name Bianchi. On either
side of the gateway are carved relief panels, one showing Martha ascending to
heaven accompanied by wingless angels and the other showing Martha and Cesare,
apparently reunited in the afterlife, sitting on a bench with Martha finally
cradling the baby she presumably never got to hold before she died.
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Martha Gall-Bianchi |
Martha
Gall and Cesare Bianchi were born within a few months of each other; Martha,
one of 9 children, in the small town of Insch near Aberdeen in 1897, and Cesare
in 1898 in the village of Cernobbio on Lake Como in northern Italy. He first came
to England in 1913 but as an Italian national was recalled to Italy after the outbreak
of the First World War to serve in the Alpine Brigade of the Italian army as an
interpreter. Italy had, of course, joined the war in 1915 on the side of the
allies fighting against Austria and Germany. When the war ended Cesare returned
to Britain and found work at the Palace Hotel in Aberdeen where he met Martha
Gall. The couple were married in 1921 and had their first child Patricia the
same year. Later they moved to London, where Cesare eventually became Head Chef
at the Café Royal. The family were
living in Lawn Road in Hampstead when Martha tragically died in childbirth in
1936. The baby survived and Cesare started to raise his son Robert with the
help of Martha’s older sister Mary and Robert’s older sister Patricia. The family
barely had time to get over Martha’s death before the Second World War broke
out. The entry of Italy into the war in June 1940 was a disaster for the
family. Despite living for 27 years in Britain, fighting on the same side in
the great war, and being a father to a young motherless family Cesare found
himself interned by the British Government as an enemy alien and by the end of
June he was in Liverpool waiting to board a boat for an internment camp in
Canada, the British authorities apparently believing that only removal to
another continent would ensure that the ex pat Italian community would be
unable to help the Axis war effort.
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"Oh for the touch of a vanished hand and the sound of a voice that is still" |
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Cesare Bianchi |
On
the 30 June Cesare joined 734 other interned Italian men on the SS Arandora
Star (owned by Frederick Leyland & Co) along with 479 interned Germans and
86 German PoW’s, all bound for St John’s Newfoundland. The ship sailed
unescorted and early in the morning of 2 July, having crossed to the north of
Ireland, was 75 miles west of Bloody
Foreland in County Donegal and about to set off across the open Atlantic to Newfoundland.
Here she was spotted by U Boat U-47
commanded by Gunther Prien. The U boat was almost out of torpedoes and about to
sail back to base when she picked up the Arandora Star. In fact all that was
left in her guns was a single broken torpedo that had already failed to fire.
Prien decided to give the defective missile one last chance and took aim at the
enemy ship; this time the torpedo fired, detonating against the starboard side
of the ship, flooding the engine rooms and immediately killing all the personnel
there. There was chaos on board the sinking ship as sailors, military guards
and the Italian and German internees fought to get on the lifeboats and life
rafts, some of them falling from the bows in the desperate scramble. 805 people
drowned including the ships commander, Captain Moulton, 12 ships officer, 42
crew, 37 military guards, 486 Italians and 175 Germans. Cesare survived and
returned to Liverpool from where he was interned on the Isle of Man. He was
lucky, many of the survivors were sent to Australia to be interned on an
isolated camp on the Murray River for the duration of the war. When the
authorities decided that Cesare was no longer a threat in 1942 and released him
from internment the journey home from the Isle of Man was much easier than it
would have been from South Australia. He re-joined his family in Hampstead where
his sister in law had been looking after the children in his absence. He found
work in catering, helping to develop frozen food in Smithfield Market and must
have hoped that he could now quietly see the rest of the war out.
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V2 devastation at Smithfield Market |
In
June 1944 the Luftwaffe launched the first of their new series of weapons at
London, the V1 flying bomb. By September the Nazi’s upgraded their long range weaponry
to the world’s first long range ballistic missile, the V2. The V2’s trajectory
and speed (a falling V2 can travel up to three times the speed of sound) made
it invulnerable to the traditional
defences of anti aircraft guns and fighter planes. Over the next seven months
the Germans launched 1358 at London. Many either fell short or overshot the
capital and exploded in relatively uninhabited areas of the Home Counties, particularly
after November 1944 when British intelligence began leaking false information
to the Germans implying that most V2’s were overshooting London by 10 to 20 miles.
The V2’s that did get through killed an estimated 2754 civilians and injured
many more. The last casualty was killed in Orpington on March 27 1945. Just
three weeks earlier, at 11.30am on March 8, a V2 hit Smithfield Market. The
rocket breached the market buildings and punched through the floor, entering
into the subterranean railway tunnels beneath before exploding. The huge
explosion, heard all over London, created a huge crater into which the market
buildings collapsed. 110 people died, not just market workers but women, many
of them with their children, who were queueing to try and buy from a
consignment of rabbits that had gone on sale that morning. Cesare was amongst
the dead and if that wasn’t bad enough for the Bianchi children, so was Mary their
aunt.
Cesare
was buried with other victims of the V2 in the City of London Cemetery in Manor
Park. He would have certainly wanted to
be buried with his wife but the circumstances of his death made that
impossible. Mary Gall’s place of burial is not known.
I would like to thank Jon Gliddon for allowing me to use the results of his genealogical research in this post and Robert Bianchi for permission to use his parents photograph's and for providing additional information about them.

My God, what a story. That poor man, to have endured so much for so long, and then to die in the horrific bombing. And the children! One never knows all the stories behind the monuments or tombstones. Thank you for sharing this one. Most moving.
ReplyDeleteThank you Kay. This is a story I've always found particularly moving.
DeleteI lived in West Hampstead in the 1980's and sometimes on a fine Sunday I would visit the tranquil cemetery in Fortune Green Road and sit and read. I was fascinated by the Bianchi Memorial and could never pass it without stopping to admire it's sad beauty and often wondered about its back story. I was so moved by it I wrote down the inscription poem "To My Mattie in Heaven" and still have it today.
ReplyDeleteFinally, I know the history and how heartbreakingly tragic it is. God bless Mattie and Cesare - reunited forever.
Thank you David.
Great post, David. I'm working on a project on Italian immigrants in the UK and Cesare Bianchi has a role to play in my research. Might you be able to put me in contact with Robert Bianchi? I can be contacted at selena [dot] daly [at] ucl [dot] ac [dot] uk Thank you!
ReplyDelete