Welcome to London Overlooked, home to true stories about the extraordinary lives of ordinary Londoners, mainly from the eighteenth, nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
We are based in South London and previously worked in education. We now spend our time researching and writing about London's past, and are available to give talks on local history.
All articles on this website and photographs taken by the authors are protected by copyright. If you wish to use our content, please contact us at londonoverlooked@gmail.com.
Our books
The Tooting Tragedy: Cholera, Cruelty and Children of the Victorian Poor
by William Ellis-Rees
In the early weeks of 1849, a devastating outbreak of cholera tore through Surrey Hall, a residential school for workhouse children in Lower Tooting. It was a tragedy on a terrible scale, and the loss of life owed much to the appalling conditions in the school, where half-starved boys and girls wearing threadbare clothes were crammed into filthy premises, and were kept in line by tyrannical adults. The owner, Bartholomew Peter Drouet, had been busily turning human misery into handsome profit, but now, in the wake of the tragedy, he found himself on trial at the Old Bailey on a charge of manslaughter.In this book, the first full-length history of the Surrey Hall scandal, the reader is given access to the children’s experiences before, during and after the outbreak of cholera. The stories they told of cruelties perpetrated behind closed doors shocked the nation, and Drouet quickly became a despised household name, a process that was helped significantly by the journalism of an outraged Charles Dickens. However, change was in the air, and the events in Tooting, far from being just a local affair, had important consequences for the future management of the children of the poor.
Tooting Bec Asylum Remembered 1903-1995
by Karen Ellis-Rees & Annie Caulfield
This is an account of the large psychiatric asylum — later renamed hospital — that stood on the edge of Tooting Common in south-west London from 1903 until 1995.
Tooting Bec Asylum Remembered aims to preserve the memory of the thousands of patients and staff who lived large parts of their lives in Tooting Bec Hospital using documentary evidence and images, and, at the same time, to uncover some of the history of the site on which the Heritage Park Estate was built after the hospital was demolished.
The book can be purchased from the Tooting History Group website by clicking this button.
The Splintered Eye & Other Haunting Stories
by Karen & William Ellis-Rees
A collection of chilling stories to entertain and disturb in equal measure. A Victorian clergyman is tormented from beyond the grave.
A lonely photographer struggles to separate image from reality in post-war London. A terrifying journey down the Regent’s Canal turns a young man’s world upside down for good. A child’s innocence is shattered at Christmas.
These eleven tales, which range in tone from the ghostly to the weird and eerie, and in setting from the nineteenth century to the present day, reveal how greed, cruelty and violence bind the spirits of the dead to the world of the living.
London Ghosts Unveiled: The True Stories behind the Capital's Hauntings
by Karen & William Ellis-Rees
Whether or not you believe in the supernatural, you will enjoy discovering the truth behind these ten scary stories.
Discover the real Nurse Lizzie Church, haunting the wards of University College Hospital. Feel for the Bacons of Bermondsey, tormented by a malicious poltergeist. Read about the real victim of a murder whose screams are heard in Farringdon Station. Meet fraudulent spiritualists, eccentric recluses, a twitchy Methodist minister, and a melancholic with a fear of being buried alive.
Vengeful witches and gibbering spectres, haunted houses and dismal graveyards—they are all to be found in this entertaining anthology.
The Elephant of Exeter Change
by William Ellis-Rees
This is the remarkable true story of one of the most notorious incidents in early nineteenth-century London.
A five-ton elephant confined in a menagerie above a shopping arcade in the Strand suddenly goes berserk, with horrifying and tragic consequences. Set against a backdrop of theatres, schools of anatomy and dangerous slums, the story offers a vivid insight into life in the rougher quarters of the city.
The showmen and the animal dealers who operate in this shadowy world are roguish impresarios masquerading as respectable scientists. But at the heart of the story are two good men: a ship’s captain and the founder of the new Zoological Society of London.
Welcome to London Overlooked, home to true stories about the lesser known people, places and peculiarities of London, with a bias towards the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
While the great and the good may make an occasional appearance, we want to remember the lives of ordinary Londoners. The only qualification for inclusion is that something or somebody has an interesting story.
We are Londoners with interests in historical and genealogical research and a desire to share the sometimes arcane knowledge we have picked up over the years.
You may use our written content for non-commercial purposes. Please attribute it either to Karen or to William Ellis-Rees.