Rupert Siddington’s photo of Stanislaw (or Konstantin) Kulikowski in his tube station alcove

THEIR country had been overrun by Nazi Germany, their armed forces destroyed, cities reduced to rubble and civilians murdered.

For many Polish people the defeat in September 1939 was the catalyst for a death-defying voyage across war-torn Europe to get to Britain to continue the fight.

One brave man who arrived in the UK was Stanislaw – or possibly Konstantin – Kulikowski. We know little about his early life, nor the role he played among 17,000 other countrymen who served with British forces.

But a newly discovered photograph of Stan, as he was known, reveals how as an older man he lived out his last years as a well-known face on the streets of Camden Town, carrying the trauma of conflict to his grave.

Discovering Stan’s story is now the wish of photographer Rupert Simmington, who recalled Stan recently as he trawled through a never-seen-before photo archive. The Chalk Farm-born photographer is collating an album featuring images he took in the 1970s and 1980s – and Stan came rushing back.

In the early 1970s Rupert left London to travel to India, Sri Lanka and other countries, where he took scores of photographs. He returned home before eventually settling in Galicia, Spain.

A founding member of the Georgiana Street Housing Co Op, he could step out and soak up Camden Town’s unique atmosphere – using his neighbourhood as the basis for reams of film.

“I took a lot of photos around Camden Town. I was learning how to take and develop images,” he says. “I carried the negatives all over the world – I had not looked at them for decades.”

Books featuring pictures from Sri Lanka and India were well received, and when he noted how much Camden had changed since his last visit – he hadn’t returned for 20 years – he decided it was time to publish images from the area.

“I started looking through my negatives and the memory of Stan came rushing back,” he says.

He recalls how he had walked past Stan many times. “I bought him a cup of coffee,” he says. “He didn’t take sugar. He would turn down attempts to help him.”

As Rupert prepares the new book, he is keen to find out more. A post on social media brought forward many who recalled Stan, though no one who can confirm his full first name.

“He  lived in the alcove of the old Finlay’s tobacconist kiosk, in Camden Town Underground station,” says Rupert.

“Although he had been living there since the 1970s, nobody knew much about him. He didn’t beg, he refused to accept money, he never drank alcohol, he didn’t smoke and was as much a part of Camden Town as the tube station itself.”

Rupert had one brief but memorable conversation with Stan. “He spoke to me once and it was on the day that I took this photograph,” he says. “He’d seen me walking around with my camera but on this particular occasion he stopped me and said, ‘photographs are important, because people soon forget’. I always knew that there was a lot more to him than the image he presented to the world.”

We know from New Journal archives that Stan fell ill in 1988. We reported: “One of Camden Town ’s best-known characters was treated to the luxury of a hospital bed this week, after friends had noticed he hadn’t moved from the same spot for nearly two weeks.

A 1989 New Journal report about Stanislaw (or Konstantin) Kulikowski

“Stanley the tramp has made his home a tiny alcove next to the tube station, a Camden landmark for the past few years.

“It now stands empty while the 68-year-old Polish ‘Gentleman of the road’ undergoes treatment for malnutrition at UCH.

“Stanley Kulikowski may have his toes amputated since they have become gangrenous and is also suffering from extensive sores all over his body.

“Nurses report that, despite obvious difficulties adjusting to hospital life, and having to suffer a bath of disinfectant on arrival Stanley is ‘relatively happy’ and eating well. Stanley is a very private man, who rarely speaks or ventures far from his alcove home, and hates having his photo taken.”

Someone who apparently knew him better than most was the tube station’s sweets and tobacco kiosk owner, Bhiupan Mehta. He said the time: “Stanley has one special friend who drops by to look after him and bring him food. He apparently served with the RAF as a fighter pilot during the war, but when his wife was killed, he just fell to pieces.”

Stan’s war service is not clear. Polish records reveal there were two men with the name who served. One is recorded as having died in 1981, so unless the records are in error, it cannot be the Camden Town Stan. The second is said to have died in 1997 in Australia.

Rupert says there were few vague facts from snatched conversations. He said: “I spoke to the family who ran the kiosk and they knew him well. He was born in Poland and when the Germans invaded in 1939, he made his way to England. He flew with the RAF during the Second World War, in one of the Polish squadrons, married an English girl and worked as a printer after the war. When his wife died he was so devastated that after the funeral, he never went home and instead, moved into the alcove. This man really was one of the forgotten few, who spent the last 20 years of his life, living in a kiosk, mourning his wife.”

The last known mention of Stan comes from another New Journal article, published in 1989, where a reporter offered a positive update: “The warm hospital bed is a far cry from the wind blasted entrance to Camden Town train station that was home for Stanley Kulikowski for more than five years.

“The once-familiar, bedraggled figure who stood day and night in a tiny alcove by the station has been treated in the relative luxury of UCH after he collapsed five months ago.

“And now the 70-year-old gentleman of the road may be back on the move again – back to his native Poland.

“The trim, smiling, smooth-shaven Stan sitting up in bed on Friday afternoon was unrecognisable from the bulky figure in floppy hat which had become so familiar.

“In a broad Polish accent, the jovial Mr Kulikowski told the New Journal: ‘I have been well fed and the nurses are good, they look after me. But my legs are still in pain and it is difficult to walk.’

“He told how he had joined the Polish air force in Britain during the Second World War, he had also fought in Africa. ‘I came from a very small village in Poland, and we were very poor, so I came to Britain to find jobs and money’.
“And now he dreams of returning to the country he left in search of his fortune more than 40 years ago.

“However, UCH are now looking into the possibility of placing Stan in an ex-Servicemen’s care home where he can completely recover.”

Stan told the New Journal reporter that he had lived all over Camden since the war, but remembered with particular affection his ‘beautiful flat at No7 Mornington Crescent’.

And that although he didn’t remember when or why he took to life on the road, he said he had settled beside Camden Town station “because it was my home”.

Rupert Simmington would be pleased to hear from any readers who can supply more details of Stan’s story.