British accents

Damian London SW15   Sat Jul 18, 2009 10:55 am GMT
HENRY ALLINGHAM
Born in Clapton, East London: 06 June 1896
Died in Brighton, East Sussex: 18 July 2009

The REAL Cockney accent....the accent of true born Londoners who, technically speaking, should all have been born within the sound of Bow Bells....the bells of the church if St Mary-le-Bow, in Bow, East London, but of course true Cockneys came from a much wider area of London, and not just the East End, although East Enders have always claimed to be the REAL Cockneys.

Anyway, today, Saturday 18/07/09 is a very sad day for many people, not just those who are interested in UK regional accents, and the true Cockney accent in particular.

Early this morning the authentically oldest man in the world died peacefully in his sleep in a care home in Brighton, East Sussex at the age of 113 years and 42 days.

Henry Allingham - born in Clapton, East London, on 06 June 1896. Apart from being the very oldest man in the whole world Henry was particularly famous for being the very last survivor of the fighting men of World War One, in which he gained distinctions for his valour and bravery on the field of battle....the last survivor of the Battle of Jutland in 1916.

So passes away one of the very last living links we now have with the 19th century...Henry lived in three centuries, and in the reigns of six Monarchs (Victoria, Edward VII, George V, Edward VIII, George VI and Elizabeth II) - what an achievement.

He was truly compos mentis right up to the very end practically and, in his wheelchair, he was present, before the Queen, at the Cenotaph in Whitehall, London, on Remembrance Day last November, and was quite alert and aware on the occasion of his 113th birthday party last June.

06 June 1944 is known as D-Day, when the British and the Americans invaded Nazi occupied France at the start of the Liberation of Continental Europe towards the end of WW2......that day was Henry's 48th birthday. To someone still in his 20s even the age of 48 sounds quite old, buit 113? Wow!
The previous oldest man in the world was a man from South Wales.

Henry had a genuine Cockney accent, and he must surely have been one of the very last speakers of genuine Londonspeak, as the so called "Cockney" accent of today is a sort of hybrid of the old Cockney and Estuary, a bastardised, concocted version of the original, which actually began to die off in the early 1960s with the onset of mass immigration into the UK and a much more mobile population internally.

The British media interviewed him on a number of occasions during this remarkable gentleman's last few years, even after becoming the official oldest man in the world, and although his extreme age had considerably affected his speaking voice you could still detect the old Cockney accent if you listened very carefully, and had some idea of what it would sound like in the first place.

Henry remembers the Battle of the Somme in 1916:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xk_R303aoso

When he was a mere sapling of 110 years of age:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qdbVgzXoZbA

RIP Henry mate! You've earned your medals and more some!