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THE
EARLY YEARS |
I was born on 26th October 1920, a Tuesday, at Wanstead
Nursing Home, East London. My father Herbert "Bert" and mother Amy Grace,
lived at Stanley Road, Leytonstone, although soon after my birth , we
moved to 14, Selby Road, Leytonstone, where we remained until I was 12
years old. I had a sister, Doris, one year older than myself, and Laurence,
one year younger. I suppose you would say that , we were respectable but
poor, although not as poor as some. Dad was works manager of a local engineering
company, with a wage, at that time, of 2 pounds 15 shillings.
The average working man's was 1 pound 10 shillings for a standard
working week of 50 hours. Mum was a dressmaker before she married. Dad
came from a Yorkshire family (Selby and Hull, although their ancestors,
came from the village of Rawden, near Guiseley) and Mother came from Lincolnshire.
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He was by today's standards, a very strict father, although, in later
life I think I gained great benefit from his guidance and example. Dad
ruled and we all obeyed, very Victorian. All meals were at certain times,
with everybody seated at table. You did not speak, unless spoken to (talk
was for elders, not children) You ate your meal, and cleaned your plate
(food was hard earned, and not to be wasted) I have had an unfinished
meal served up at the next mealtime.
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While still at school, we were expected to pull our weight in the home,
doing jobs to earn a 'Saturday Penny' which you received after your jobs
were finished at lunch time on Saturday. A quick dash to the sweet shop
on the other side of the road, clutching your penny, would buy a lot of
sweets (4 ozs. for a Farthing - 4 to a penny -960 to a pound). The usual
jobs in the home, were boot polishing, resoling and steel re-studding,
cutlery cleaning, garden digging, and turning the mangle for mother on
Monday Washday But the worst job was straightening bent nails for Dad
to reuse. (many times I have acquired blood blisters on the fingers).
Dad did a lot of spare time carpentry to earn extra money (his father
was a cabinet-maker at the Guild Hall in London) He acquired a supply
of bacon boxes and reused the timber. The nails had to be straightened
and reused, thousands of them! |
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When I was five years old, mother walked me half a mile
to Junior school for my first day. She only ever took me once, in future,
I had to get myself there. The school was Cann Hall road school, an L.C.C.
(London County Council) with juniors 5 to 7 years and seniors 8 to 14.
Before leaving juniors, you were expected to be able to write (joined
up) know your times table up to 12 times, write a short essay, and read
from any school book. In the seniors, (boys only) we were taught written
and mental mathematics (no calculators), algebra, geometry, history, geography,
art (sketching and painting) Shakespeare, etc. and religious sessions.
In the sixth form we were taught Pitmans shorthand and typing. School
times were 9 -12 and 2 - 4.30. Not having any playing fields, on Friday
afternoons from 3.0pm, we were marched to Wanstead Flats, part of Epping
Forest, for football or cricket, depending on time of year. All the teachers
(male) wore black gowns and mortar-board hats, and were addressed as Sir.
They kept strict discipline, no unauthorised talking or inattention in
class, or we were kept in class after lessons. Boys kept in, from all
different classes, were put in one classroom and a duty teacher would
set the tasks, usually 100 lines. For misdemeanours, you were marched
to the Head masters study and stood in the corridor in line until dealt
with, which could be an hour later, I think part of the punishment was
the standing waiting, for the other pupils to see, everybody knew why
you were there. The punishment was usually, so many strokes of the cane,
from one to six. I only had one 'six-hander' its something you never forget.
Very severe cases were dealt with on the seat of the pants. Truancy was
almost unheard of, the school-board man would call home to see the parents,
this brought shame on the family, in front of the neighbours, which was
very important.
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When I was seven, Dad acquired a secondhand junior bike
(nothing was ever new, even for birthdays - no spare money) and after
repainting and fitting wooden blocks to enable me to reach the pedals
I obtained my first transport for the next eight years. After school,
I went everywhere on that bike, it was nothing for a gang of us to go
off on Saturdays, nobody knew where we were, and finish up miles from
home. One day when I was ten years old, we were in Wanstead Park (4 miles)
playing next to the River Roding. I was straddled a floating log, when
one of the boys pushed me into the middle of the river. Obviously, the
log revolved and shot me into the water. Not being able to swim, there
were no lessons given in those days - I was drowning. Fortunately a young
man dived in and saved my life. He did not stay, so I never who he was,
but I shall always be grateful. I went into some bushes, stripped off,
and my mates each took a piece of clothing and ran around trying to dry
them off they thought it was great fun. I did not tell my parents, I would
have got a 'ticking off' for playing near a river.
While in the seniors, I was picked for the athletics squad, to run for
the school in the Inter-Schools annual games. My forte was 100yards sprint
and 440yards relay (4th. Position) We had to practice on Wanstead Flats
before school, nothing ever interfered with lessons. We held the sports
days at the Essex County Cricket Ground, where up to ten schools competed.
Our school did very well, and I was in the squad for two years. When I
was ten years, Dad lost his sight. He was always short sighted, but this
meant that he could not carry on in engineering. So we had a period when
he was out of work. I became his eyes. We traveled everywhere together,
I had to read everything for him. He still tried to carry on with his
carpentry work, although all measuring and tricky items were left to me.
I learnt how to use my hands, Handle the tools, including sharpening chisels
on an oil stone.
Over the rest of my life, the knowledge I learnt as a boy, has proved
to be invaluable. Dad took on all sorts of work, we made a timber veranda,
25ft long and delivered and erected it in Buckinghamshire. Also, a two
bedroom bungalow, built in sections and had to pass it over the garden
wall at Selby Road, to load it on the lorry for delivery to Epping. We
then spent a week erecting it.
At twelve years old, we moved to South Hornchurch, near Romford. I had
two more years at school, which was Bush Elms, Hornchurch. This school
came under Essex County Council and was mixed. The standards and discipline
were much lower, I came top of the class in my first exam, whereas in
London, I usually came about tenth, I was immediately put up a class.
I am afraid I did not settle in there very well everything was very slack
even the mixed teachers. |
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Dad had bought a house in Chestnut Glen, South Hornchurch
very near to Hornchurch Aerodrome, I remember laying in the long grass
looking up at the Gloucester Gladiators (bi-planes) coming into land,
we could see the pilots in the open cockpits. Dad paid 325 pounds for our end
of terrace house (the inner ones were 300 pounds) and we immediately set about
building a lean-to garage ( which became our workshop during the war).
Being new, we had to develop the garden, so I helped Dad to build footpaths,
a fishpond with a fountain, and tool shed. Not happy with that, he goes
and rents an allotment, which I also have to help him dig.
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After a couple of years, Dad regained partial sight in one
eye, and was able to get a job at the London Association for the Blind
in Victoria, SW1. His job was as fitter for the knitting machines. The
LAB was a company with charity status which employed blind and partial
sighted girls on industrial knitting machines making woolen ladies garments.
These were of high quality and were sold mostly to the fashion market
and nobility ( The Queen Mother was their patron). They held fashion parades
in various parts of the country. They needed a transportable catwalk,
so Dad made this for them , and in my school breaks, I would go with him
to various hotels and country houses and erect the catwalk. The company
also had a blind men's company at Peckham making basket-ware etc.
At fourteen years, I left school and Dad got a job for me in Peckham,
London. There was no question of further education, we had to start earning
a living. I worked at a printers as a compositor The hours were 8.0 till
6.0 and 8.0 till 12.0 on Saturdays for 15 shillings and 6 pence per week
(75p) As Dad and I had to be in work by 8.0am We were up at 5.0am, a 3
mile walk to Romford station catch the steam train to Liverpool Street,
where Dad would catch the Underground to Victoria and I would drop off
at Monument Station, walk over London Bridge to the station and catch
the Southern Electric to Peckham Rye station and so to work.
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After doing this for eighteen months, I decided to cycle to work to save
the fares, this was 32 miles each way. This worked OK until late one wet
evening coming home a van skidded into the side of me knocking me to the
ground. My bike was a write off, and a passer-by advised me to see a doctor
who had a surgery a few doors away. On examination he declared there were
no bones broken, so I proceeded to go home by train. The jolting of the
train did not help my shoulder, which was swelling badly, and when Dad
saw me. he took me straight to Oldchurch Hospital, Romford. After an x-ray,
I was told that my clavicle was broken, and I remained in the hospital
for seven days. I never did go back to Peckham.
While at home for the next few weeks, I heard that I could start an apprenticeship
locally, I had found out that the newspapers were paying the colossal
sum of 15 pounds a week for compositors, if they had served a seven year apprenticeship.
So I joined a company Pirie, Appleton , of Chadwell Heath, ( part of the
Portway Group), and was duly indentured for seven years. I attended the
London School of Printing, one day per week |
Looking back to my days as a compositor, it is interesting
to realise how much techniques have changed in the printing industry. As
a compositor, in 1934, we had to set the printed page with words made up
of individual letters or ' type'. These were cast in lead with the impression
of each letter cast on the end. This type was then placed in a 'composing
stick' to form words. When the stick was full the type was transferred to
a tray, called a 'galley' The type was kept in trays set on a frame, the
upper tray, or ' case' contained capital letters, and the lower trays carried
the 'lower case' letters. This is the origin of the terms 'upper case' and
'lower case' These terms are still used in the computer world. The type
was placed in a frame on a steel slab (referred to as a 'stone') and after
planishing to insure all the letters were of equal height, were locked in
with wooden wedges (known as quoins), ready for the letterpress printing
press. The points system used for the sizes of the 'fonts' of type, go back
to the early days of print. The very early terminology for 12point was 'pica'
and for 6pt was 'nonpareil I.e. the smallest size For newsprint, where speed
was everything, (newspapers are printed overnight) the individual letters
were too time consuming, so a machine was devised to cast whole lines of
type in one piece called a 'slug'. The machine was the Linotype. An operator
would type the words on a keyboard, which released moulds of the letters,
which would then automatically cast the slugs, ready for the compositor
to divide up into pages. Letterpress is now almost extinct, it is now being
done by computer. The only letterpress printing today is done by specialist
firms for very high class work, and expensive books etc. This is usually
combined with the use of specialist handmade papers made from cotton and
pure wood fibres, dried slowly on a mould. When the sheets are removed,
the feathered edge is sometimes left which is called a 'deckle edge' There
is a firm in Germany, using the letterpress method to produce the entire
works of Shakespeare in single play books They are hand-bound in goat-skin
leather, with 22carat gold blocked titles. The books are very labour intensive,
and very expensive.
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When I was fifteen, I wanted to join the Romford Wheelers Cycle
club, and as I needed a decent bike, I decided on a handmade touring/racing
model costing 34 pounds (an ordinary bike would have cost 4.50 pounds. So I took up
a paper round to get the extra money. I got a job at a news- agent for seven
shillings and sixpence (approx. 32p) a week, I got extra for Sunday mornings.
This entailed getting up at 5.0am to get the deliveries done by 7.0am (
I had to be at work by 8.0am). Each week I banked the money in the Post
Office Savings Bank.To speed things up, I got an extra job in the evenings,
collecting and delivering customers films to and from chemists and taking
them to a processing company, this earned me an extra seven shillings and
sixpence a week. After a year I was able to have the bike made and join
the Romford Wheelers. |
While at Pirie, Appleton's, I met Irene, which changed
my whole life. She was 16 and I was18. She worked in the Self-Seal envelope
department, so we saw each other every day, we usually had lunch together,
I shared my cheese sandwiches and she shared her bean sandwiches. We met
on 19th August 1939 and continued courting for five years. The war years
made life so uncertain and Irene had to go in the services, but she was
able to choose the NAAFI. Life was run on a day to day basis and not a
time to be looking into the future. However, things got a little easier,
so we eventually married at Holy Cross Church on the 17th June 1944. I
remember my brother Laurence, who was my best man, who drove me to the
church, saying " this was my last chance, to make a run for it" We bought
a 3 bedroom semi-detached house in Gidea Park for 950 pounds with a 600 pounds mortgage.
My brother Laurence, suggested that we start up a small engineering business,
we had a chance of orders from his company. This was very tempting, as
being an apprentice, my wage was only half of his with no chance of overtime,
and I was now courting. I approached my company about a possibility of
early release (I had served 4.5 years) In view of the imminence of war,
they were prepared to release me. Dad had two lathes, a drilling machine,
various other tools, in the workshop beside the house. Did I mention that
Dad had been a toolmaker. So we started a business.
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Prior to 1946, I had never heard of Sudbury!
In February 1946, I was called up for the RAF, and on leaving the intake
at Padgate, Warrington,I with six hundred other 'sprogs' were put on a
train for an unknown destination, to start our 'square bashing'.
After a nine hours journey we arrived at 8.0pm in the dark, at a cold
windy railway station, goodness knows where. After a while, we were picked
up in Bedford trucks, and whisked off into the night to a campsite with
Nissen huts, fifteen to a billet. Next morning, on parade for roll-call,
we were informed, that we were in Sudbury, Suffolk. To most of us this
was the end of the world. We were billeted at Gt. Waldingfield, on a campsite
near the church, within marching distance of the airfield.
The USAF 486 Bomb Group left in August 1945, the camp was then passed
over to the RAF, and I arrived in February 1946. The airfield was complete
with a control tower, runways, perimeter track and a parade square, which
is now Heathway. The huts on the airfield still had the aircraft recognition
posters on the walls. The camp post office and cookhouse were down Folly
Road, I spent many hours on 'fatigues' in the cookhouse, peeling spuds
and washing up.
Little did I realise, that after my service, I would bring my engineering
company to Cornard Road (Lucas Road) in 1949, and stayed in business for
33 years. I have seen Sudbury grow from a small market town, where the
live stock was sold in the market square, the Corn Exchange was just that,
the police station stood where the roundabout is now, Borhamgate was a
house of that name and Gt Cornard was a small village with a church.
Incidentally, I engraved the replacement plaque for the USAF Bomb Group
which is mounted on a stone plinth at the entrance to the airfield. |
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