ROSE & CROWN – DIXIE ARMS/OLD DIXIE, 2 CURZON STREET/HUMBERSTONE ROAD – Pub History Project

Photo above: Humberstone Road and the now Old Dixie (there was another Dixie Arms in Leicester), in its hey day in the 1960s. (Denis Callow collection)

The Rose & Crown address was mainly Humberstone Road. J. Fletcher was landlord in 1822, and the landlord in 1849, was Mr Sibson (a name that crops up many times as landlord of Leicester pubs), as Mrs. Sibson died at the Rose and Crown in that year. Difficult to research prior to that date because although there were many recordings of a Rose & Crown in court cases, there were three or four of that name in Leicester around that period and no precise address was given.

We do know that the Rose & Crown was re-built and renamed the Dixie Arms in 1853 from the sale notice that appeared in the press:

All that substantial erected and old licensed public house by the sign of the Dixie Arms situate in Humberstone Rd, with brewhouse, stables, outbuildings and carriage way into Curzon Street now in the occupation of Mr. Ellis Pestall Thomas. The above property has been recently erected on the site of a well accustomed house called the Rose & Crown.

Its address is given no. 2 Curzon Street.

1850s George Thornton landlord 1860 Lewis Bradley Abbott licensee, 1862 his son Sam George aged 6 months died of suffocation, Lewis was declared bankrupt discharged in 1867. 1867 Alexander Cummings became licensee, (previously at the Magazine pub) Cummings died 1873, his wife Mary having died some four years prior.

1873 William Sarson, died 1890 aged 63, 1890 Henrietta Elizabeth Sarson, 1897 James Brown Stableford, (deceased) he had previously been a bankrupt a decade prior, after his grocers at 104 Humberstone Rd failed. Apparently undeterred he later took on the Old Dixie, 1909 Elizabeth Stableford, 1910 Arthur Percival Sturgess, 1913 Gertrude Ann Strurgess, 1919 Arthur Percival Sturgess again, Throughout this period Charrington Brewery of Burton On Trent were listed as owners. (the only reference I can find) according to the Justices licensing records.

It was to become a James Shipstones house after Charringtons again according to the Justices records,

Fred and Elsie Turner were licensees of the Old Dixie Arms from 1938-52. During the Second World War the pub was used by American GI’s who often pawned their watches and valuables’ for whisky.

Ray Turner, the son of the landlord, Fred, was told by his father that a black GI was stabbed and killed outside the Dixie. Fred had to wash the blood from the front door off the street but claimed that he was later visited by Allied authorities and was told not to talk about the incident, although this is an uncorroborated account, rumours abounded it for years.

This May 1st 1944 Leicester Mercury report confirms the incident. Corp Arthur A Abrams of the 82nd Airbourne was one killed, the other not a yet named. “in the circumstances no inquiry will be held by the Leicester City Coroner, Investigations being made by American Military authorities. Later it was revealed that the second GI killed was Private Curtis Phares, he too was stabbed not as the newspaper reported “by his own hands” this possibly a cover up so not to antagonize more racial tension. The Dixie Arms was used by mainly black GIs as opposed to other pubs unofficially by whites. Segregation was rife among American GIs, often to the bewilderment of locals. The Dixie also meant something else to the southern boys being affronted, attaching the name to the Dixie South in USA and not the aristocratic local Dixie family in which the pub was named.

There is a backdrop to this incident, there was at this time racial tension in Leicester, but not between locals and the Black soldiers, but between the racially divided US Forces In Feb 1944 the first major race riots occurred in Granby St between black and white G Is, it was reported that at leased 12 servicemen were knifed. The Red Cross Service Club was wrecked due to the presence of newly arrived black servicemen. Granby St was littered with debris and broken glass.

William Hobson would follow the Turners as licensee 1952, with Frank Peake c1957. Arthur Newbold c1960