Jeremiah Abimelech Snodgrass

Fighting for his home

By Anne Bransford

Fictional Proof of Evidence

Jeremiah Abimelech Snodgrass of *** Marietta Street, Covent Garden will say:-

I am 52 years of age. I was born at the French Hospital in Shaftesbury Avenue and I have lived at my present address all my life. I have an ironmongery business on the ground floor and live over it with my wife, two sons and their wives and fourteen grandchildren. The property is held on an 80 year lease at £25 a year. My sons and wife are partners with me in the business. My grandchildren all go to school in the neighbourhood. I belong to the Covent Garden Society for Encouraging Everybody to Do Everything; I am familiar with all the public houses in the area and I regularly attend St. Paul's Church where I have been a (st?) man. All my friends, who are numerous, live here, and my neighbours and neighbouring businesses form a large part of the customers at my shop, and the rest of my customers come from areas adjacent to the Covent Garden district.
I understand that it is proposed to widen Marietta Street into a 4-lane highway. This will involve demolishing my home and shop and those of everyone else in the street. The interruption in the business will obviously last for years and many of my customers will be driven away and will not return. If I move my business elsewhere I will have to start again from scratch. In addition the proposed halving of the population will deprive me of many of my friends and the places and means whereby I have entertained myself in my times off. I believe therefore that these proposals will ruin my business and social life and that of my family. I have reason to think that many of the families will be affected in the same way. In addition, I am chairman of the Covent Garden small shop owners' association. At a meeting held by them at the Balland Crumper on 2nd July 1971, 86 out of the 102 members were present. I informed them of the nature of the statement which I now make and they agreed by a vote of 83 to 3 that it represented their general views."