Hard Times and Easy Terms - And other tales of a Queens Park cockney

A Notice of Thanks

I would like to thank Mr. Stephen Yeo who upon reading my manuscript was the instigator of its being published by QueenSpark Publications. To the four charming ladies, Ursula Rohde, Mary Boakes, Mary Mason and Pauline Jones, who through their hard word on the typewriter and the arrangements, made the book possible. And to any other members of QueenSpark, or otherwise, who were anyway connected with its publication.

Thank you,
Bert Healey

A Forward

Listening to Radio Brighton a few years ago the announcer said he had just read a book published by QueenSpark Publications called a Town Beehive, written by a local lady, Mrs. Daisy Noakes, in which she described her life as a school girl and afterwards as maid in a boy’s boarding school. As I went to school at Park Street, Kemp Town, about the same time as she went to her school, I bought the book to see if I knew of any details or persons she had written about. As it happened I knew quite a lot of what she wrote about. Exploring through the book again one day, I began thinking of my own early childhood, when I was a boy, a youth, and a young man, and jotted the details down. Then from which I eventually began putting them together and from which the book was formed. Of course it was impossible to put everything down, so I have written about the most interesting, and eventful happenings.

Of the characters and friends, most of whom have passed away, with the young readres in mind who know nothing of those times, I hope this book will give them some slight idea of the Twenties and Thirties. They were, and are still, called ‘the bad old days’. I wonder if they really were.

And, as for that word ‘inflation’, we never heard of it, and would not know what it meant if we had.

Bert Healey

Note about Money – Old and New

Already ‘the old money’ – pounds, shillings and pence – has become a memory. Younger readers aren’t likely to know what a ‘tanner’ is. Or a ‘bob’ or 6/8d (pronounced six-and-eight), let alone 39/11d, 1/4d, 3 guineas ……… It was more complicated than now.

Then there were 12 pence (d.) in the shilling, and 20 shillings (s.) in the pound. Six shillings was written 6/-. Six shillings and eight pence as 6/8d. One pound six shillings and eight pence (one pound six and eight) as £1 6s 8d. A farthing was a quarter of a penny (1/4d), a ha’penny was 1/2d and thruppence (the old 12 sided thruppenny bit) was 3d. Sometimes sums of more that £1 were written in shillings: £1 19s 11d could be written as 39/11d. A guinea was one pound and one shilling. There had not been a note or coin for it for years.

Sixpence (6d) was a ‘tanner’. A shilling was a ‘bob’ (12d or 1/-). So ‘two bob’ was 2/-: a florin coin. 2/6d was called a half-a-crown. There was a half-crown coin – a big heavy silver coin. Crowns had disappeared long before. Bert also uses the expression half-a-dollar to mean 2/6d. There was also a ten-bob-note.

In value, 6d of the old money (and the sixpenny bit or tanner which represented it, and which has only just been withdrawn) was worth 2 1/2p of the new money. So the old shilling (12d.) equals 5p new money. The old bob equals 10p. The old ten bob equals 50p, and so on.

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1. My short life in London

I was born in Canning Town, London East End on 18th March, 1908. The sound of Bow bells can be heard from the Old Iron Bridge, so that makes me a true Cockney. I can remember as a young child being held up over the Parapet and looking at the Thames flowing by.

My father was a Motor Bus driver, and had lost his licence over some technical error. He was working as a motor fitter at the Boleyne Yard of the Road Car Bus Company at Upton Park. After getting his licence back, we had to move to what was then called West Kilburn.

There was me, my sister Ginny and Freddie, my brother. When I was about 5 years old, I went to an infants’ school at the end of our street. We had a free dinner given to us two or three times a week at school, and I can still see to this day little oval white things floating in the gravy which I thought were maggots, but were in fact little bits of the butter beans in the stew. Although my father earned good money in those days, we always seemed to be hard-up. I remember my mother toasting stale bread and crusts and putting dripping or bacon fat on them, and if no fats then we would eat them dry.

After a time we moved to a place called Fortis Green. It was a flat over a dairy and a few yards past our door on the corner was a big grocer’s shop where my mother bought all her groceries, and also a large bottle of stout. I used to have an eggcupful every Sunday dinner time, and can remember even now what a lovely rich taste it had. The buses went past our door and I can remember seeing my father when he was going on a late turn, running after a bus, jumping on it as it was moving past. My Dad was a good athlete, but he stumbled one day and nearly fell. After that he always walked down to the bus stop.

My father was five feet ten inches tall, weighed 14 1/2 stone and was tremendously strong with a terrific neck and shoulders. He was an ex-prize fighter with bare fists, and afterwards with the gloves. He could knock down heavyweights with one left-handed punch. He rarely used his right, and when he did it invariably broke his opponent’s jaw. As a youth he travelled the boxing booths and boxed as they did in those days, giving exhibitions in the music halls. He was taught in a boxing school, run by the great champion of the world, Jem Mace. He was also the pupil of a wonderful coloured fighter called Jim Butler.

My Dad’s father, my grandfather, kept a posting yard, for four-horse coaches – horse cabs – and also a coal and coke department next door. There was a big family of my uncles and aunts and they all helped in the business in Liverpool. My father had strong American connections, too. His grandfather, my great-grandfather, went to the USA from Ireland, settled down, married and had a family. One of the sons returned to Ireland, and then Liverpool, whence came my father. One of my father’s sisters went to the States in the mid-eighties and married a fellow called Westinghouse. My Dad often used to talk about her.

My Dad drove a horse cab in the family business, working Lime Street Station and the docks. After a time this got too tame for him and he hit the road, travelling and working through North Wales driving four-horse brakes at seaside tours in the summer, and doing odd jobs such as painting and decorating in the winter. He went from Wales to Manchester, where he drove for a funeral company, and eventually came to London. Where he met my mother. Being a four-horse coachman he soon got a job with the Star Bus Co. and from there to a firm called Patsy Hearns, who ran horse buses from Kings Cross to Victoria.

About this time motor buses were coming on the streets and my Dad thought that’s the thing, horse buses will soon be out. He applied to the Road Car Company for tuition as they were learning horse bus drivers to drive motors, and when they had passed their tests employed them as drivers.

My father was quick to learn, passed his test and was a motor bus driver. He used to tell me of his experiences when driving. The buses had solid tyres then, and the roads were like skating rinks owing to the buses leaking oil. When it rained, if the brakes were put on, the old bus would turn a Catherine Wheel, going round and round and sliding perhaps the other way round twenty or thirty yards away and come to a stop after hitting the curb and nearly turning over. Needless to say the passengers would all be screaming their heads off, and the old girls fainting and calling for smelling salts. Eventually they put trays under the engines and this made the roads much better. Whilst driving Dad met my mother who was a waitress in her uncle’s coffee shop, where my Dad had some of his meals.

There was no time limit for working in those days. My father took the first bus out about 5:30 a.m. and with his conductor would work until about 8 o’clock when they would have their breakfast which the conductor would pay for out of the takings. They would start again, and keep working until they wanted their dinner and then on again until tea time. My father was very strict as regards drinking. All drivers and conductors would nip into a pub, and have a pint whenever they fancied one. My Dad would have one pint of bitter only until he finished. The wages were never paid weekly as now. The conductor would take his and my Dad’s wages out of the takings and the rest would go to the firm. Eventually jumpers or inspectors as they were called now arrived, and checked the tickets and the conductor’s way bill. Being all ex-conductors they made a casual look at the passengers’ tickets and passed the conductor’s way bill. Inside the bill would be money, invariably half a sovereign which the jumper pocketed. One jumper told my Dad that he jumped a bus that was domino – full up – and of all the passengers aboard, standing as well, only about ten had tickets.

My Dad and his conductor kept working until 9 or 10 o’clock and put the bus in the garage. There were no relief drivers or conductors, and the bosses and foreman kept on wanting my Dad and his mate to keep on and on working. No days off unless you took one yourself. Eventually my Dad and his mate would take two or three days off and after the first day off, there would be a terrific knocking on the door. My mum would open it and a greasy fitter was outside with the bus at the curb saying could my Dad start work again and go and fetch his conductor. My Dad would still be in bed, tired out, and too tired to move. The fitter would go away and leave the bus outside the house where it would stop perhaps for two or three days with kids jumping in and out of it, ringing the bell, punching the bulb horn, peeing in it and having a rare old time until my Dad decided to go to work again.

My Dad earned terrific money then, nearly all gold. I don’t think notes were out then. In the end the Road Car Co, got taken over by the General and that’s when we moved to West Kilburn again. Things were entirely different on the General. You had your set hours and two crews on a bus instead of one. And weekly wages. There was still a bit of a fiddle but nothing like what was on the Road Car. My Dad did not like it, and stopped off a lot, drank heavily, and this I think was the beginning of the break up of the marriage.

My Dad who was a fine looking man with a big fair Lord Kitchener-type moustache, had courted and married my Mum. My mother came from Plaistow. Her maiden name was Maria Jane Windsor. I used to look at her and think she was the most beautiful lady on earth.

As a boy I loved my Mum and thought she was an angel from heaven. She was a fine-looking woman to look at. Sharp, strong nose and chin, lovely brown eyes and a great mass of dark brown hair, which she piled high on her head, held together by hairpins. She was a wonderful cook. I can still taste her steak and kidney pud, and her Yorkshire or butter pudding was marvellous. She would make lovely golden brown bread pudding and Spotted Dick, roly-poly jam, and bacon pudding which nobody seems to cook these days. I can still smell her roast pork with the lovely crackling and steak and onions with lovely floury potatoes. Sometimes, if there was any cabbage, potatoes, swedes, etc. left over from dinner, she would make a bubble and squeak with bacon for a high tea, and it was absolutely delicious. I missed all this when I had to go with my father. What wouldn’t I have given, later on, to have had one of her meals, with the lovely cottage bread and slightly salted butter which she used.

When my Dad earned big money, we had the best of everything. My mother had lovely clothes and she always wore button-up boots, very rarely shoes. Her hats were always fastened with a hat pin. I thought the pin used to go in her head one side and come out the other.

When we shifted back to Kilburn, all this changed. Then my Dad started to stay away from work – not so much money coming in. This was the time of the toasted crusts. Previously spoken about.

In Kilburn Lane, near where we lived, where was a little shop called a Farthing Shop, which sold groceries from a farthing upwards. The kids would go in with a basin or mug, and get a farthing’s worth of tea, sugar, jam, marmalade, pickles, etc., or a ha’porth or pennyworth. Also on the counter was a big tray with salmon and shrimp paste, covered with a layer of dark brown fat. This was sold by the weight – 1 oz, 2 oz, etc. for whatever money you had to spend or could afford.

Opposite our house was a big pub which in those days, just before the First World War, kept open nearly all day, except for a break in the afternoon; then opened again up till 11 or 12 at night, according to business. My father, who made it a rule never to go in pubs near where we lived, sometimes gave a copper or two to a girl who ran errands for my Mum, to go and fetch a quart of bitter in a big jub, and a bottle of stout for my Mum. I sometimes went with her for company. In the bar called “Bottle and Jug” where we went were invariably two elderly women with glasses of stout by their sides, dressed in a man’s cloth cap with a hat pin in it, a sack tied around their waists as aprons, long skirts and button-up boots, jawing away at one another like billy-ho. At their feet was a big enamel bowl, or sometimes a bucket, and into this they would be peeling potatoes, shelling peas, beans, onions, cabbages or whatever else they were peeling. They said it was “getting the old man’s dinner ready”, and away they would go, jawing, sipping the stout, saying, “Hallo, Dearie” to me and the girl. Everytime I went in there with the girl, the two old girls would be sitting there, glasses of stout by their sides, saying “Hallo, Dearie”, still peeling spuds, still peeling beans, still jawing, coughing, sneezing, drinking sips of stout. Dressed in the sack aprons and cloth caps and the button-up boots. I don’t know what time the “old man’s dinner” was got ready, but I should think they are still there now, jawing, sipping stout, still saying “Hallo, Dearie” to me and the girl. Yes, they are still there now, or their ghosts are, a real bit of Cockney London, the likes of which neither I nor anyone else will ever see again, more’s the pity.

At Fortis Green I went to school at the other side of the Green. I used to wear a sailor’s coat, and a cap with a shiny peak on it. One day in the cloakroom I put it on and it seemed rather small. When I got home my mother said it was the wrong coat and cap. The next day she went with me to school, and by luck there was my coat and cap hanging on a peg. She replaced it with the one I was wearing. After that I was always careful to put my coat and cap, which my mother had now marked, on a peg far away from the other one.

This was the time of the suffragettes, and I used to watch some of the ladies with banners, meeting on the Green, and then march down Fortis Green Road, handing out leaflets and singing something about their dying in prison until they got the vote.

My Mum and Dad were always having terrible rows, and one day my father came home and had such a terrible quarrel with my mother that blows were struck and my father left, with me and my sister crying and my poor mother sobbing her heart out. My father did not come home for days, and my mother was running short of money and had to get the groceries, meat, bread, etc. from the grocer’s on tick. Eventually my Dad came back, squared up the grocer’s and decided to move back to Kilburn again, as it was too far away from here for him, when he had to take the first bus out at 5.30 am from the bus yard at Willesden.

I well remember the moving day. It was in a horse and cart. We set off sometime in the morning and arrived at Cambridge Road, Kilburn sometime in the afternoon. I remember the journey. The old horse clip-clopping along. The old bloke smoking an old clay pipe and every so often spitting a long stream of juice into the gutter. My sister all of a fidget and keeping on wanting to pee – my mother telling her to stop fidgeting about, and looking at all the people and shops passing by. The horse now and again relieving itself and making a mess on the shafts. It was nearly all horse traffic in those days, although there were quite a number of motor buses, lorries and cars. And any amount of taxi cabs – but not so many horse cabs, gradually dying out and being taken over by taxis. I thought the journey was never going to end. At last we arrived in Shirland Road, off Cambridge Road, where we were going to live.

The war was on. One day in the early evening, we heard a lot of thumping, thudding and bumping. We went out into the street and there in the sky was a huge silver sausage-like thing, going along in the sky and a lot of thuds and bangs with people shouting and screaming. That Zeppelin was brought down by Lt.Sgt. Robertson, who was the first airman to receive the V.C. My Dad, at the outbreak of war, with a lot of other drivers, had been given a uniform and sent to Grove Park, where he taught soldiers in the horse transport how to drive motor lorries. The drivers were paid so much a day with food at the canteen and an allowance home. My Dad left the army, I don’t know why, and came back to Kilburn where his job on the London General was open to him.

After a short while in Kilburn, my mother gave birth to twins, two girls named Elsie and Violet. This was in 1915. The rows still continued and things came to a head in court where my mother was given custody of the twins and my sister. My father was given custody of me. I think the court felt that it was too much for my mother to have charge of all of us and gave some of the responsibility to my father.

My mother kept a nice home, very clean. She was a wonderful cook, and we were always warmly and neatly clad. On going with my father, I had no proper home, always in lodgings and most of my meals in coffee shops, and I missed my mother and sisters and home very much. Ginny was about four and a half then. She was dressed up in lots of frilly things, petticoats, etc with a pinafore on top. I would take her by the hand and walk to the end of the street and back. She was a little darling. Not once did I ever hear her cry or scream and very rarely did she make a fuss. She died soon after I left with Dad. I should say she’s in the children’s heaven, laughing and playing with delight as she did for the short time she was on this earth.

My father left the buses and took lodgings in First St., Chelsea. He got a job with Harrods, the big stores, where he drove in their private hire department. A big Daimler. He drove some well-known people whilst he was there. Admiral Sims, the American Ambassador, lots of Lords and Ladies and Members of Parliament. My father being of Irish descent was a Roman Catholic and as I had been christened at Maryland Point R.C. Church, Stratford, I went to a Roman Catholic school, just off Draycott Avenue, Chelsea. For meals my father brought home food which the old landlady cooked. I don’t think rationing was out then.

My mother had taken a job in a laundry when we lived in Shirland Rd. I went up to see her one day, and the man who went to fetch her said there was a soldier boy to see her, as I had a kind of khaki coloured suit on. This put my mother in a flurry as she thought it was either Dad or her brother. When she saw me she nearly had a fit and didn’t half rant on at me.

Afterwards she took me into the laundry where all the girls and women were ironing, scrubbing, starching. They all wore white aprons and a kind of big white bonnet. The women who were scrubbing wore aprons made of sacking. They were all very jolly, singing and laughing and calling me the little soldier boy.

How different today, with the washing machines, laundrettes, electric irons – all mechanised. All the laughing singing laundry girls, now no more, all gone. When I look around now and see everybody dashing about in cars, no time hardly to speak to you, buses thundering by, hardly stopping to pick you up, airplanes taking people to the other side of the world in a few hours, going up to the Moon and landing objects on Mars. And two terrible World Wars which were to end all wars. The detestable pop music, men walking about with long hair so you can’t tell them from women, girls and old women walking about dressed like men, the untold strikes and interruptions at work, the muggings of old and young people, assaults and batteries and violence at football matches, hi-jackings and wars abroad… How can we say we have advanced since what was known as the bad old days? If they were bad before the War, then to me, in spite of the rough times I’ve had, they were absolute heaven and I’d willingly go back to them today if it were possible.

When my Dad and Mum split up and he moved to Chelsea with me, we were there for about six months when petrol rationing came into force. Harrods had to lay a lot of the drivers off, and we came to Brighton about the end of 1915. I was getting on for eight years of age.

2. Brighton Hallo

My earliest recollection of Brighton was on arriving at Brighton station, mingling with the crowd at the barrier, and pushing through without being noticed as my old man had not paid my fare. That was my first introduction to sharp practice. No matter where we went I always worked this trick until I got too big and nearly got caught once and that was that.

My Dad got lodgings at Albion Hill, and got a job driving a big Scout lorry for a builder named Parsons. He had built a lot of houses up Dyke Road way. He also did furniture removal with the lorry. He had a job to move some furniture to London from Davis, the Antique and Furniture Dealers at the bottom of North Street.

It was almost unheard of in those days for a lorry to go to London. In the meantime I had moved to Cheltenham Place, living with a man named Ball, and his wife, who was the motor fitter for Mr. Parsons. I was boarded with them, and went to Central School at the bottom of Church Street. My Dad had lodgings elsewhere. When I heard about the London trip I begged, pleaded and cried to my Dad to let me go and eventually he gave in.

I remember we started out early one morning from the Unicorn Yard where the Regent was built. My Dad, me and one removal man named Ted. After we left Patcham it was rural country all the way. No wayside halts or cafes. Only an occasional market gardener’s cart going towards Brighton. The Brighton Road was really an old coaching road then, just room enough for two vehicles to pass one another. When we got to the top of Handcross we had to stop as the motor was boiling like an old steam engine. My Dad parked outside a pub and he and the removal man Ted went in and had something to eat and drink, and he brought me out some sandwiches and a glass of milk. My Father then filled the engine up with water, put some oil into the engine and filled the tank up with petrol out of a two gallon petrol can which he carried. In the meantime nearly the whole village turned out to look at the lorry as they, or some of them, had never seen one before. They would not believe we had come from Brighton and were going to London. There seemed to be scores of kids and they all ran after us for a long way when we started and kept shouting Brighton as the name and address of Mr. Parsons was printed in letters at the bottom of the lorry. I remember when we started off again seeing the school at the end of Handcross and some kids and a mistress standing in the playground watching us go by.

Eventually we arrived in London in the early evening. The house we had to go to was in Clapham Common. When we got there a woman was waiting and said we could sleep in the house in the servants’ hall that had some furniture in it, and unload in the morning, as, owing to the blackout, it was too dangerous to move in the dark. My Dad asked if there was any garage about to put the lorry in, and when told there was not, parked the lorry in the Common, and we went into the house for the night. In the morning my Dad, Ted and me set off for a coffee shop where we had breakfast out of the expense money given for the journey. Ted and my Dad with the help of the woman, who was a servant in the house, unloaded the lorry, and when it was done the servant gave my Dad a pound and said that it was from the owner. He gave 10 shillings to Ted and said he didn’t expect it as it was a nice surprise.

We set off for Brighton again about 2 o’clock, and bar from stopping to fill with water, oil and petrol and get something to eat, had an uneventful journey home, except once when my Dad fell asleep at the wheel and old Ted shouted at him and just saved him from going into the ditch. We arrived back in Brighton the next day, crawling along all night as we only had oil lamps on the lorry. When I went back to school I received two of the best on each hand for playing truant. The journey with the unloading took three days. What a difference now with these juggernauts doing London to Brighton in 3 hours or less.

Owing to petrol rationing the lorry had to be laid up, and my Dad drove a lorry on hire to Brighton Corporation used as a coal lorry. As the lorry was parked in the Corporation Yard, in Park St., my Dad got lodgings for me and him in Sloane Street next door, and I left Central School and went to Park Street School. It was a lovely school in those days. In the hall was a sloping, longish form, you could lay on it and practise swimming. That’s where I first learned learnt to swim. I used to spend a lot of time in the form, and when we went down to North Road Baths I jumped in right away, and made the strokes I did on the form and without any trouble I was swimming and I could soon do a length of the Baths. That form was the finest tutor of swimming I ever had.

I soon made friends with some of the boys in school, and some of them lived in Sloane Street, Park Street and nearby. A lot of them were fishermen’s boys, and some from very poor families. Life was very tough in those days. If you were poor. Fortunately my Father was nearly always in work, and I was well fed and clothed. Apart from having no real home and having my meals in coffee shops, I was fairly happy except when I thought of my Mum and sisters, then I would burst into tears. After all I was still only a child.

The only recreation for children in those days was what you made yourself. For girls it was skipping, hopscotch, playing He, and if she was lucky enough, taking her dolly out. For boys bird nesting, football and cricket in the streets using a lamp post for wickets and your coats for goal posts. Also we played a game called hot rice where one kid had a ball, and threw it at another kid, and if it hit him then that kid would try to hit some other boy and so it went on. ‘Knockers’ – tying door knockers together and knocking the first one and when the old girl or bloke opened the door running away, and the old person shouting after us then banging the door and causing the next door knocker to bang, and so it went on for perhaps three or four houses. The old people shouting what they’d do to us if we were caught, and us thinking it was wonderful sport.

But our greatest sport was with iron hoops. Nearly every boy had one in those days, and in our play-ground there were racks where the boys used to put the hoops before going into school, just like bicycle racks today. I had a lovely little hoop, and to propel it, I had what was called a skeeler. It was like a meat hook with a handle at the end. When school was over, all the kids with hoops would be running home with them, or having races, or making it go round and round in the road. When you ran with it using a skeeler, it made a kind of humming sound, which I always imagined was a train going along. Sometimes you would hit the curb with it, and the hoop would break. You would then have to take it down to the blacksmith’s shop in White Cross Street, leave it there, and perhaps for two or three days you would be without it, and be very miserable, because it was a companion to you, or it was to me, with no-one else. Then when it was done, the Blackie used to charge 2d or 3d, and I was in heaven again.

In the summer some of the kids, girls as well, used to go barefooted on nice days, so their parents could save on the shoe leather. To be in fashion, I left my boots and shoes off, and used to go with my pals down to the Banjo Groyne beach – the tide seemed to go out further then – and go bathing with to clothes or swimming costumes on, girls as well, but they kept well away from us. On the way back some of the very poor children used to look for what they called Chockers; that was an apple core not eaten very much, or perhaps an orange that had only been partly sucked. The lucky finder would have first bite, and then hand it over to the next one, and so on, until it was all gone, pips and all. I never did fancy having a bite. I think I did once, but I did not like it.

It is a marvel to me how the kids stayed so healthy; except for snotty noses, and the occasional cold, we never seemed to ail from winter to summer. It makes me shiver even now to think of the different things people used to suffer from in those days. Notices used to be nailed to the railings all along the front and in public places, “For the prevention of Consumption, Please Refrain from Spitting”. The notices about dog excrement came after these words.

Most of the boys wore what they call Eton Collars, in those days, worn on the outside of the jacket. Some of them used to be made of rubber but these were not popular, as they were non-porous. They looked very nice, but the boy used to get hot because no air was getting through. I always had linen ones.

On Saturday my Dad used to give me 4d, a lot of money in those days. I used to buy a ha’porth of “suckers”, sweets, and go to the Saturday morning picture show, for children only, at the Old South Hall in Edward St. The admission was 2d. There was the serial, Eddie Polo in “The Grey Ghost”, a travel picture, a feature film, a comic, and perhaps Gaumont or Pathe News. When Eddie Polo came on the place was Bedlam. Kids shouting and bawling at the villains, chucking apple cores, paper bags, nut shells at the screen, and if Charlie Chaplin came on in the comic, you thought all Hell had broken loose. If by chance they showed a news film, and the Kaiser or German soldiers were shown, I swear you could hear the hissing and booing right down to the Front. The show lasted a good two hours, What value it was and what fun. I shall never see the likes of that again nor will anybody else.

One day I sauntered along to Woolworths 3d and 6d Stores, two or three doors away from Marks and Spencers 1d Bazaar. In Woolworths you could buy a gilt ring for 3d, and for 2d more have your initials engraved on it. The 6d one was really posh. I bought the 3d one just as it was, put it on my finger and went into the 1d Bazaar, and asked one of the girls there behind the toy counter if she had any broken toy soldiers. She searched and came up with one or two with arms and legs missing, or perhaps a head gone, gave them to me quick, and told me to hop it as the broken ones were remelted again to make new ones, and she would get into trouble if found out. What enterprise – no wonder that 1d Bazaar has turned into one of the greatest stores in the world.

I showed some of my pals the ring, and they did not think much of it. One Saturday I thought I’d have a change and go to the children’s show at the Princes in North Street. I sat down next to a nice plump, fair-haired girl about my own age, eight or nearly nine. She had her younger sister with her of about six. We soon got talking and I gave her a bit of toffee. When we came out I arranged to meet her next Saturday. This was the beginning of my very first love affair. That night I could hardly go to sleep thinking of her. The week seemed endless, until Saturday came. I met her outside Needhams Clothing Shop in Castle Square which. is now the “House of Holland”, and as she had some coppers, and so had I, we went to the Coronation Picture Palace at the bottom of North Road. I had some sweets, and we held hands. I was in absolute Heaven. When we came out I gave her my ring. It fitted her middle finger, and she was so pleased she gave me a great big kiss full on the mouth. I had nothing to do with girls since leaving my sisters, and I went all colours of the rainbow. I arranged to meet her next Saturday in Queen’s Park where we could go on the roundabouts and swings. We had a wonderful time, I pushing her on the swing as high as she could go, and then going up and down with her on the seesaw. At last it had to end as I had to go to the Coffee Shop where my dinner was waiting for me, and I didn’t dare be late. I took my leave of her, forgot to make arrangements to see her again and eventually, like all kids, forgot all about her.

One day, outside the Tobacco Kiosk at the Aquarium, me and some pals were asking the soldiers and Civvies if they had any cigarette cards, when I spotted her walking with a biggish kind of posh kiddy. When she saw me, she tossed her head up in the air and looked of me as though I was some horrible stinking insect. This properly got my gander up and I went up to her, and asked her for my ring back. She said she had not got it, and not to speak to her. Meanwhile the big hero with her told me to hop it and gave me a shove. Being now thoroughly roused, and urged on by my mates, I got stuck into him. He was useless against such a rough school as I was brought up in, and after the first two or three punches he started squawking and backing off. Little Fairy in the meantime was screaming her head off, and seeing some soldiers and Civvies coming towards us I thought it time to vamoos. That was my first love affair, and the last for many years to come.

One day, messing about, I thought I heard a lot of shouting and screaming coming from the Pepper Pot way. Running to the end of Park St, looking up towards Queen’s Park Road, I saw about 20 or 30 boys and girls running down the hill as fast as they could go, with some man running after them. The girls were screaming their heads off and the boys were shouting. The man stopped and sat down on the curb, with the kids shouting at him a safe distance away. It was a fellow called ‘Shylock’ who was a bit mentally deranged, and who used to sell oranges, apples, bananas etc… The poor fellow, if he could not sell anything, used to throw all the fruit into the air, or throw it against the wall. The kids only made him worse by calling hi ‘Shylock’; how cruel kids can unknowingly be. The poor man, being deranged, would shout, bawl, and wave his hands and arms about, to the great delight of the children. I think that in the end he was put away. I expect that a lot of those children, like me, regretted calling out and teasing the poor fellow when they grew older. I know I did.

The time was now Autumn, 1916. The Front was packed with soldiers in Khaki, and ‘the Blues’, the wounded.

The Volks Electric Railway started from Palace Pier in those days, and I can always remember a doll dressed as a Red Cross nurse which was fixed to a collecting box for the wounded, outside the pay kiosk. The Southdown buses ran from the Aquarium to Shoreham and Lancing, to Lewes, and sometimes to Newhaven. Also, at night, they took the soldiers back to a big camp called ‘Happy Valley’ out on the downs near Shoreham. The trams were running from the Old Steine to Dyke Rd., Lewes Rd., Elm Grove, Ditchling and Beaconsfield Rd. and to Brighton Station – a wonderful service in those days. Also there were horse cabs and horse brakes. Many taxicabs, and some cars and lorries ran about with a big bag on the roof filled with gas because of the petrol rationing. As the vehicle went along the bag jumped and flew about like a live thing trying to escape from its chains. During this time my father had left the Corporation, (no petrol again) and had taken a job as an assistant to an electrical engineer, who was in charge of running the Electric Plant at Telscombe Cliffs. That place was then a kind of airdrome for balloons and certain types of aircraft. I was still going to Park Street School and my father had taken lodgings with me in Queens Park Rd., near the Pepper Box, and I still had my meals at a Coffee Shop in Lavender St. My Dad used to walk to Telscombe every morning starting at five o’clock and returned at four o’clock in the evening. There was a transport vehicle that used to pick the men up at Castle Square. It was a Foden Steam Wagon which towed an open truck with smoke, sparks, and steam smothering the men as it did; my Dad preferred to walk. This was the Winter of 1916-17, a severe one, with snow, gales and frost. Talk about tough, can you imagine anyone today walking along the cliffs in the pitch black, icy cold morning, on a rough dirt track of a road, as it was then, with the wind howling like Banshees, all for four and a half quid a week? But that was good money then; nowadays they don’t walk a hundred yards with their cars taking them to and from work.

My father, whilst at Telscombe, made the acquaintance of a very fat jovial man, later to become a great Brighton character, called ‘Happy Gordon’, more of which I shall tell later.

Xmas had come, and after a short spell living with a woman, her daughter and small boy who was a little younger than me, in Toronto Terrace, my Dad took some rooms over a shop opposite Dorset Gardens in Edward St. They were empty rooms and my father was going to buy some furniture and make a bit of a home. He had paid a couple of weeks’ rent and one day he took me with him, and we went and saw the rooms. When we went in we found that the place had a peculiar smell about it – it was really awful. My father had a look round and the walls were covered with dark brown things which were crawling about all over the wainscoating and over the floor. I started being sick, the stench was so awful. My father went out and I ran after him. He went to a hardware shop nearby and bought some Sulphur Candles and Bug Powder. We then returned to the rooms, where he sealed the windows and doors with paper, set light to the candles in the middle of the room, and went out and shut the doors.

My Father went and saw Ted Ball in Cheltenham Place, and asked if Mrs. Ball could put us up for a night or two, until we could go back to Edward Street. She did so and my Father was now having a lot of his meals in Friskin’s Cow Heel and Udder Coffee shop in Carlton Hill. He arranged for me to have my meals there also. I used to sit in there a lot, and in the room at the back with Mrs. Friskin’s son, Johnny, watching either Mrs. Friskin, her daughter, or a man named Dick who worked there, take one of the udders out of the shop window, carve it into slices for the customers, and weigh them whatever amount they wanted.

I used to have a lot of it for my meals; it was a very sweetish kind of meat. It tasted quite pleasant and was a lightish pale brown colour with streaks of fat in the middle, and could be eaten hot or cold. I liked it cold best, with pickles. Also they sold cow heel, pigs trotters, chitterlings and ordinary hot dinners with potatoes, cabbage, etc. I liked it there and made friends with two brothers, one my age, the other younger, named Welch, whose parents kept a pub called ‘The Sack of Shavings’, half way up Carlton Hill. The two boys wore clogs, and in the beginning of 1917 when. It snowed, the Welch brothers used to kick and gambol in the snow, without getting their feet wet.

My Father was now a bus driver with Southdown, the Telscombe job having fallen through, or something. A couple of days after lighting the Sulphur Candle my Dad took me to Edward Street, and we went in. There were still clouds of smoke around, so he opened the window. But when the smoke had cleared we could see that the walls still had some bugs on, and there were still some crawling around, half-dead, on the floor. The smell was awful, and my Father decided that it was too risky, and unhealthy for a young boy. He went to see the man who owned the shop and after a row when my Dad threatened to punch him, we got 5 shillings back, one week’s money.

We knew an old gardener who lived in a passage at the bottom of New England Road, and we went and saw him and his missus and asked if she could look after me, give me my breakfast and tea, etc. She said yes, as they had no children of their own. I had a lovely little room all to myself and it was like heaven to me after some of the lodgings. The old gardener’s name was Tester. They were a lovely couple. Mrs. Tester was like an angel to me, and treated me like her own son. I was very happy there and spent some of the happiest days of my youth with her. I still went to Park Street School, catching the tram at the bottom of Elm Grove, which took me to Egremont Place, just in front of Park Street. Also I still had my dinner in the Coffee Shop in Lavender Street.

The winter soon went by, and in the summer I used to go down to the Aquarium to see if I could cadge a ride with my Dad on the bus. One day I saw him just starting to go along the Front towards Shoreham. I tried to catch him, but couldn’t. So I decided to go and meet him as he was returning, and started walking westward in the direction of Shoreham. I remember there was a soldier home on leave with all his equipment on, with muddy boots, puttees and a rifle, walking in front of me. I kept about two hundred yards behind him, taking a little trot every now and then to keep up. He turned off somewhere round Fishersgate, so now I was on my own.

In those days, the coast road was just a muddy country road, with big holes in it filled with water. Wish Road was called Wish Meadow, and it was there that the circuses used to pitch – ‘Bronco Buckie’s Wild West’, admission children 6d’. The kids used to save their pennies selling jars, rags, anything, and walk perhaps all the way from Carlton Hill or Kemptown to see it. I used to go as much as I could, Shylock was out there once, and one of the circus men threatened him with the long cattle whip, with all the kids shouting. Shylock hopped it.

Nearing the lighthouse, where the Mystery Towers were being built, I saw a bus coming along. I waved and shouted and it pulled up – and thank the Lord it was my Dad who had spotted me. He was very worried and asked me what I was doing out there. When I told him, he laughed and gave me a shilling. He had no need to scold me, as I was very worried too, and almost in tears.

Being with Mrs Tester, I did not think of my Mum so much, but when I did the tears still came to my eyes.

What with the good plain food, running with the hoop and swimming in the baths, I was getting to be a strong healthy lad. I still used to knock about with the boys in our little gang, particularly with one boy named Jim South, who went to Park Street. I met him a little while ago in the Gt. Eastern Pub. I had not seen him for over 50 years, but he knew me. I didn’t know who he was till he told me. He looked remarkably well, with a wonderful head of hair. He told me he had been with the old Southern Transport Company.

The rubbish dump in those days was at Black Rock, and some of the kids used to go there to see if they could find anything. After the walking episode, my next adventure, or misadventure, was to go with some boys to the dump, searching the rubbish. We never found anything, only empty cocoa tins, condensed milk tins, tea packets, stale crusts, hones, fish heads – and filthy hands and clothes full of coal and chalk-dust. I soon packed that up, Mrs. Tester had to wash all my clothes and I had to have a thorough scouring and washing, and have disinfectant put on me.

The Brewers’ Drays, in those days, were all pulled by massive great cart horses, and when they were standing outside a pub, they invariably had their nose-bags on Now and again, they would stamp their great iron-clad hooves. Some of us, for dares, used to run underneath their bellies to the other side, whilst they were standing still. Whether the horses knew or not I don’t know, but while we were running under them, they never moved. Imagine what one of those huge hooves would have done to us, if they had moved or stamped their feet. I shiver even now thinking about what they could have done to us.

I was now 9 years old, and had been in Brighton 18 months or so, and was fast losing my cockney accent.

When not at school, I was nearly always on the beach, watching the fish being auctioned at the fish market or helping to pull the Luggers or fishing boats up the beach, while the fishermen put ice into fish boxes for the fish waiting to be sent away.

One day on the beach, near the Metropole, some youth about 15 got into difficulties in the sea, about 200 yards out, and started to scream and shout, going under. A crowd of people, including some soldiers gathered round and just stood watching. The youth was now crying feebly and although I was only 9, I was going to go in after him. Just then an old man, he must have been over sixty, in a blue serge suit, went into the water and using the breast stroke (I can still see it now) swam out to the youth, and, as he was going down again, grabbed him and started swimming back towards shore. About 20 or 30 yards out, the youth started struggling with the old man and started pulling him under. The old man started shouting “he’s drowning me”, but still kept trying to reach the shore with the youth. About 10 yards out, some of the soldiers and civvies went into the sea, and helped them reach the beach. The youth was saved, and the old bloke collapsed with exhaustion. The youth recovered and I remember him, tears pouring down his face, thanking the old man for saving his life.

A lady standing by organized a collection among the few people standing there and herself put a £1 note in. She said to him, “You’re a very brave man”. The old man thanked her, and, now shivering, (it was late summer) with his clothes still streaming with sea water, walked up the beach towards the promenade. I have seen some deeds and experiences in my time, but that was the bravest, greatest thing I ever saw. Nearly 60 years ago, I shall never forget it, not if I live to be a hundred. Well, old gentleman, you surely got your reward when you passed away, because God surely took you into Heaven.

The 1917- 1918 winter came, and with it the most terrible malady since the black plague. It was called Spanish Flu. The people died by the score. All day horse-drawn Funeral Carriages would be coming and going in nearly every street, going to and from the cemeteries. In every part of Brighton and Hove, rich and poor alike were dying of the horrible disease. No person was safe, although surprisingly enough, very few children caught it. I think that the adults, weakened by the rain of the war and not having the nourishment to resist it, had no physical strength to fight it and simply succumbed. Quinine came out, and the flu gradually lessened, but not before causing hundreds and hundreds of deaths in all walks of life. Mr and Mrs Tester and my father escaped it.

One day, my Dad called for me, in spring 1918 and took me to a big yard near the station, where there was a lovely car standing. It had lovely paintwork and was very shiny. He told me to get into the front. It was a Landaulette Daimler. He wound it up and off we went. It was the first time I had ever been in a big car and it was lovely. He dropped me off along the front part of the West Pier, gave me 6d, and told me to to back to Testers and wait for him. After two or three days my Dad called again, spoke a long time with Mrs Tester, gave her some money, and thanked her very much for looking after me. I did not want to leave as Mrs Tester had been a mother to me. She said that it was for the best, and to always come and see her.

I went along with my Dad to a house in Osborne Villas, Hove, occupied by two elderly women. The place stank of cats’ pee. It was awful. At the bottom, on the front at St Katharine’s Terrace, was a wonderful little coffee shop, called Chatfields. My father made arrangements with one of the two sisters who owned it, for me to have all my meals there, breakfast, dinner and tea. They did not open on Sundays, and the two filthy old women had to get me something.

I used to detest it. The smell was something awful. One old girl always sat by the fire, and all of a sudden she’d dive into her dress somewhere and come out with her finger and thumb holding something, which she then threw into the fire. After a second or two there was a sharp crack. It was a flea, she must have been lousy. I told my Dad and he soon got other lodgings in Byron Street with a very nice, white-haired, elderly lady, a widow who looked after me fine on Sundays.

I now had to go to a new school. It was what was then called a ‘Second Class School’, where the pupils paid 6d a week, a very good elementary school where algebra and French were taught. The French master was a tall, thin, bony man, Monsieur something or other, who used to get very excited when teaching. If you said anything wrong, he would rap you on the forehead with his bony knuckles, which didn’t half hurt.

We had a lovely playground, and we also used to go to Hove Park, have cricket and football matches, sports, running … it was almost a college. The school had its own cap, price 2/6, made of a nice dark green cloth with ‘CR’ woven in golden letters on the front. I had one and didn’t half feel posh,

Like every other school I had been in, I soon made friends with kids I liked and made ‘bad friends’ as we used to call it, with those I didn’t like. I was now well over 10 years old, and was first class at all sports, especially cricket, but also a terrible dunce. I was always bottom of the class in the exams. I was the world’s worst in sums. Small or long division I could never do.

A kid named Markwick sat in the desk in front of me, and one day we were doing sums. I could see over his shoulder and I copied his paper. They came out all right and I got full marks. This went on for quite some time, until one day our master, he was a powerful fellow named Mr Hansford, shifted me back to the end of the class and I got my sums all wrong again. He knew that I had been cheating.

In time I learnt long division and was getting on fine in algebra, French, history and geography. Unfortunately my education stopped when I was 14, and I forgot it all. If only my Dad had let me carry on schooling and I had gone to the Grammar School and, who knows, from there perhaps to University, as some of the boys I went to school with did, my life would have been totally different. My greatest regret in my later life is that I never really had a good education, I had a fair one, but all too short.

At Christmas we had the school concert, for which all the kids had been practising for weeks. Some of them were wonderful singers, reciters, piano, violin and cornet players. In school plays, me and another kid named Hicks often did the two stuttering men, which was a bit near the bone. It went down well with the classes, but not with the headmaster, a real strict, stern old disciplinarian of the old school, which we could do with now. His name was Mr Rees. Needlesss to say, I did not do that sketch the next year.

The war was still on when I went there. We used to go to school at 8.30, have dinner from 11.30 until 12.30 and finish at 3 o’clock. The number of hours were the same as in peace time, we just started and finished earlier, to save light and fuel. That went on well into 1919.

My father was now his own taxi owner. The big car that he had given me a ride in was bought by a business gentleman who knew my Dad when he was boxing. My father made arrangements with him after putting so much down, to pay him off on the H.P. My father tried to work in Brighton as a taxi driver, but failed his knowledge test. So he went to Hove where they weren’t so strict, and passed.

Although petrol rationing was still on, my Dad always got plenty somewhere. It was a lovely car, a 22 horse power Daimler, BK 12, a Portsmouth registration. I used to have plenty of rides at first but I soon got fed up with that, as I couldn’t be with my mates. My father did very well with the taxi and soon paid the gentleman off with the agreed interest.

With the good schooling at Connaught Road, and the nice boys and girls I was going with, I soon stopped speaking the rather coarse language that I had been using, and was beginning to act and speak quite nicely. The good manners which I learnt stood me in good stead in later years.

My father had now rented a nice empty flat in Clifton Terrace. It had two beds, a kitchen, bath and front rooms. It was quite cheap, as you could buy a good new house in those days for £800. We furnished it out from a store in London Road, putting so much down, so much a week. It was very nice when furnished, and the first real home I’d had since leaving my mother. I had to walk down every Saturday, with the card, to London Road, which the man marked up after I paid the money. It was soon paid off as my father used to pay extra money on top of the original amount.

It was a long way to go to school now. I had been to Connaught Road over two years now, and my father being a Catholic, and me also, had me finish off my schooling at St. Mary Magdalene’s School, R.C., at the bottom of the street. I was confirmed in the church, and went to Mass every Sunday.

It was a mixed school, boys and girls. The Head Mistress was a very nice lady, named Miss Conlin. Nearly all the pupils were either of Irish or Italian descent with some English who were mostly fishermen’s children. There were a number of R.C. fishermen families in Brighton.

I soon palled up, as usual, with the boys, being a good footballer. I soon became popular. One boy in my class, Stanley Wickson, won the Boys’ Swimming Championship of Sussex – no mean feat in those days – from the many boys who had entered from the different schools from all over the county.

3. My First Wages

I finished my schooling there when I was fourteen, wondering what trade I should take up. I had previously, when I was thirteen, taken a job on Saturday mornings, delivering eggs in a covered barrow to different kinds of shops, such as cooked meat shops, grocers, butchers, and some fishmongers. It was for a youngish woman, who had opened up as a wholesaler in Castle Street. I delivered the eggs and got the receipts. I suppose she employed me because I was cheap labour. I started about 9 o’clock and finished about 12:30 – 1 o’clock. It was hard work pushing the barrow, which I did for the pocket money, which was 2/6d.

I had been doing this for 4 or 5 months and had bought myself a pair of football boots, and a jersey and shorts. I saw one of my mates carrying his football gear. He said there was a match on between his school, Christ Church, Bedford Place, and a scratch team of boys from other schools, and that the other boys were short of players. I asked him where the match was, and he said Preston Park. I promptly left the barrow outside a pub in Western Road, called the City of York, rushed home, got my football gear, shorts, jersey, boots, socks and all, and ran nearly all the way to Preston Park.

A lot of the boys of both sides I knew. The Captain of the other schools put me at right back, which I had played before. We kicked off, and within 10 seconds or so, we had scored with a long range shot. What a start!! Then we lost 9 – 1, I think I kicked the ball about twice.

I don’t know what happened to the egg barrow, and didn’t much care. Perhaps she pushed it herself. That was my first job.

After leaving school, I took various little jobs going as a messenger boy for different people and shops my dad knew, never really learning a trade as I should have done.

When I was about fifteen, my father took me to Banfields, a very well known Engineers and Stores in Western Road, Hove, with their works in Brunswick St. East. I was apprenticed as an Electrician’s Mate, to a man named Mr. Harris. I used to carry what they call a Meger and the lead covering and tubes to put the wires in.

I was there about 12 months, doing very well learning the trade, and just due for a rise when for some unknown reason, I packed it up, and went and joined the Army. You could not join under eighteen in those days, but I was a fairly big kid and got accepted. I did not say anything to my father until it was time to go. He asked me how I managed to get in, and I told him I’d put my age up. He never said anything, but gave me a funny look, and off I went. It didn’t much matter to me, I’d never had a proper home anyway.

I had to go to Chichester Barracks first, and from there to St. Mary’s Barracks, Chatham. The Barrack Room was a big long room with big arch-like window spaces with no glass in them, and iron bedsteads down each side with the blankets folded in a neat pile at the foot of each mattress and a painted green locker over the head of the bed for your personal belongings.

All I had was what I stood up in, and what the army had given me, two hair brushes, an open cut throat razor, two rough towels, and my sheets and blankets. I think I had about 3/4d in money.

The fellows in the barrack room were all older than me, from eighteen upwards, and mostly from the North, miners’ sons, sons without fathers, some who had no homes, a lot whose fathers were out of work, all kinds, some quite well educated.

I had joined the R.E. and had put my trade down as a lorry driver. I should have said electrician’s mate.

I had a nice blue pin-striped suit on, brown shoes, and a dark blue double-breasted mac. that was very popular with young men in those days. I had to go and collect my uniform, boots and underwear etc., from the stores, and leave my civilian clothes with a Corporal, who gave me a chit to sign, and I walked back to the Barrack room trying to get used to the great big enormous army boots, and the rough clothed uniform. I felt like a proper berk, and that everybody was laughing at me.

After some drilling, finding the Mess room, and canteen, I soon got into the swing of things and was beginning to like it, especially as there was money every week. I think it was about 7/6d or so.

I, as usual, palled up with a fellow, and we had one or two walks into Chatham. We had heard from the others that there were lots of women on the game, and to be careful or you could catch a dose. I was too frightened, and in any case had no money for that kind of pleasure.

After a week or two, I was told to be ready for my driving test. When the time came, I had to go round to the back of the barracks, where there were stables for the horses, and a big shed for the lorries. A corporal was standing by a large open solid-tyred lorry, an A.E.C. with the engine running. He told me to get into the passenger’s seat on the box, and got behind the wheel, and off we went out of town into the country.

He handed her over to me, I managed to get her into first gear, the clutch was heavy to get out and the gears felt like moving a ton weight. I accelerated up, and tried to change into second, but I could not move the gear lever, it was immovable. No matter how I tried and struggled, I could not get it out of first gear. I stopped for breath, the corporal said nothing, and I tried again. This went on for 5 or 6 times, when the corporal took over, I was nearly crying with temper and frustration. Of course, I knew I had failed.

When we got back, I was told I needed more experience, and I could go into the garage, learn the greasing, help the fitter, and make myself generally useful, until I learnt to pass my test.

In later years, when driving big heavy stuff, I had learnt all you had to do with a stiff gear leaver that felt heavy, was to give it a sharp knock and it would fly out.

I wrote to my Father and told him I had failed the test, and didn’t want to be a grease boy, and that I wanted to come home. He went down to the Recruiting Office in Waterloo Place, where I had joined up, told them I had joined under age. The Army was very strict in those days about that, and after a day or two I was told to go and see the Sergeant Major.

He gave me a right old dressing down, told me I had made a fool out of him, and the driving instructor, the drill instructor, and the whole army in general. I thought he was never going to stop, and that I had committed some serious crime, and that I was going to be put into the Glass House for 6 months. I was then given a railway warrant. I handed back my uniform, and personal things, razor, brushes, etc. (if you lost anything you were fined), collected my clothes etc., and was given what money was due to me. I think it was about 6s. I was on my way to civvy street and Brighton again. I had been away about two months.

I had been home about a week, when owing to the land-lady selling the house where we were in Clifton Terrace my Father got another empty flat of three rooms, a kitchen and no bathroom, in Port Hall Road. It had lovely big rooms, not like the attic-type ones we had just left. I made my room very comfortable.

There was a nice gas stove downstairs, with a ld slot and my Father said it would be much better if we cooked most of our meals ourselves. It was much better than the Coffee Shop. Food was cheap then, and I enjoyed myself cooking whatever I fancied,

My father still had the taxi, which was beginning to get a bit worse for wear now, and the taxi work had dropped off a lot.

I now had an Insurance Card, stamps from Banfields for over 12 months, and one franked by the Army, with a kind of ink stamp showing the Crown. I took these down to the Labour Exchange at the bottom of Montpelier Road, and after a long wait upstairs, was called into an office to see a clerk.

I gave him the cards, he asked me a lot of questions, what I had been doing since leaving school etc., gave me a lot of forms to sign, gave me a card, with Monday, Wednesday, and Friday on it, Box No. something, 10:30 a.m., and told me to sign on at the Box No.
on the days mentioned, to start on Wednesday as today was Monday.

On Wednesday I arrived at the Labour Exchange at about 10:15. There was a queue right up Montpelier Road, up to the crossroads, where the traffic lights are now. I asked some bloke if this was all right for the 10:30 queue. He nearly had a fit, and said this was the 10:45 and 11 o’clock line, and told me to go and attach myself to whatever Box No. I was on. I did so, and still had to wait half an hour or so until I could sign on. I came out well after 11 o’clock.

On Friday I got there at 9:45. There was already a queue waiting half way up the road and inching down, foot by foot. It was about 10:35 when I signed on. The men signed a paper and received a slip in return, which they cashed at the pay box. I received nothing, just signed.

The following week I did the same thing again, only I made sure I was early. On the Friday, I received a slip, took it to the pay box, signed a form and was given 6/6d, including a day’s back pay. The following week I did the same, and received about 5/6d. This was classed as youth’s pay. Adults single got 17/6d, I think, and a married man with children got, according to how many children, up to about 28s or 30s, Perhaps not as much, but just enough to exist on, if you could call it existing. Perhaps enough to keep you from starving altogether, after you’d paid the rent, if you paid any rent.

Down the passage next door to my room in Porthall Road lived an old gent, well over 70, who used to walk up and down the road outside our house, up to the end of the street one way, and then return and walk to the other end. All morning this went on, until he went in for something to eat, then again in the afternoon. Same thing until tea-time, then in the evening until 8 o’clock, Regular, winter and summer, unless it was raining or snowing or very cold, then he would stay in. The landlady, Mrs Baker, said he had been an old sailing ship’s captain, who had lost his ship and it had made him deranged.

He incessantly talked to himself, muttering away, and laughing all day, inside and outside the house. At first it nearly drove me barmy, hearing this old bloke muttering away half the night to himself, then suddenly laughing and cackling away. I told my father, and he said he could hear him, but that I’d get used to it. Sometimes he would stop for weeks, and the place was very quiet.

One night, I had been to the Regent to see one of John Barrymore’s silent films, and arrived home about 11 o’clock. Walking up the stairs, I thought I heard someone behind me, so I stopped and turned around and the noise stopped. There was no-one there. I started up again and the footsteps started following me again.

I felt a strange sensation. My scalp started to prickle and I started to sweat, although it was a bitterly cold night. I rushed up the stairs and into my room, and locked the door.

There was no gas or electric light in the room, only oil lamps or candles. I lit a candle and then the oil lamp and kept looking to see of anybody had followed me in. I got into bed and kept the oil lamp going all night. Next morning in the daylight I thought what a fool I had been, and forgot all about the incident.

Two or three weeks later, I was reading a book by candlelight, 2 candles by the bedside, when for no apparent reason the candles started to splutter and the flame stretch out and hiss, as though someone was trying to blow them out. The room went dark and shadowy, and my hair stood right up on end. I was paralysed with fright. Suddenly something seemed to start bouncing about, like a child bouncing a tennis ball, and the noise of a lot of things rolling about; like the sound of marbles rolling down a table. I just sat on the bed too bloody frightened to move or say anything. The candles went down to the least possible flame they could without going out, and the bouncing ball or marbles reached a pitch, as though the kid or person was trying to see how quick and fast it could bounce them. How long it went on I don’t know. It seemed like ages to me.

Suddenly the candles stopped spluttering and returned to their normal flame, the ball and marbles stopped bouncing about, and my hair gradually settled down. I was still shaking with fright, but I got up and looked at the window. Nothing open, not even a breath of air coming from it. The same with the door. I kept the candles going all night, and it was a long time before I could sleep. I told my father the next day and he said he had heard nothing. Underneath us was a window cleaner and his wife, very nice people to me. And old Bert, as his wife called him said he often used to hear funny noises, but she said she never did.

I gradually forgot all about it until one night, coming in about 11:30, I’d been to the Hippodrome and had something to eat at the Big Trailer Coffee Stall that used to be outside the station, and was going upstairs when the footsteps started after me again. I didn’t stop this time, but bolted up the stairs as fast as I could, rushed in and locked the door. My hair had gone up again and it seemed as if it was made of wire. I kept the light on all night and told the old man about it next day. My father was very suspicious being of Irish descent, and said there were spirits here, but they won’t hurt you. This didn’t help me much. They might not harm you physically, but they did a lot of blooming harm to me mentally.

I stopped in that house for about 18 months and although I got slightly used to the spirit or ghost or whatever it was, I was always scared when I got in late and always ran up the stairs. Several times after I heard the bouncing ball and marbles they seemed to come from a distance away, and not in my room as in the first instance. Once I asked Mrs Baker if she heard anything, and she said it was rumoured when she first took over the house that a young man had committed suicide in the W.C. over a love affair. Well, whatever it was, I can assure you it was not the toilet being flushed that I heard. Even today I can still hear the sound of that ball and marbles.

After being on the dole for a month or more, I got fed up with having to queue up for a few measly shillings and got a job helping a man who had a horse cab and used to do furniture removing as well, two or three times a week. He used to give me 3/6 or 4/-, and put a stamp on my employment card. It was better than signing on. Some days I made as much as a pound. I also did all odd jobs, anything to get a bob or two. I often wished that I had stopped at Banfields. I would have been well away by now and getting at least 25/- to 30/- a week. Also some days when I was free I used to go out to Conway Street where the Tillings bus yard was, and join a group of men waiting outside the garage, hoping to be called in if a driver’s or conductor’s job happened to be going.

Most of the men waiting were ex-service men from the 1914-1918 war and had public service licences or stage-carriage licences as they were called then, and had heavy vehicle experience in the army service corps. Some drove the charabancs on the Front for the different coach firms in the summer, and drove anything – coal lorries, gravel lorries – in the winter. If they could get no work, they went on the dole and went to Tillings in the winter hoping for the best.

No family allowances then, or your rent being paid by the Social Services: you could go on the Panel and get medical treatment if ill, and have the Panel money, but you paid for your medicine and lived as best you were able„ The ‘Welfare State’ and the wonderful life as it is supposed to be now under this so-called Socialist, Communist, party who are now in power, was never dreamed of then. Yet we lived and were a hundred times more cheerful and had wonderful food when we got it, and not this frozen muck we have now. We danced at the Regent or Sherry’s, had wonderful beer at 4d a pint, five Woodbines for 2d and paid ld on a bus which took you almost the length of Brighton. We might not have had the money in those days, but by Jingo we had friendship and neighbourly companions, and we could go to a football match in peace, not frightened of the yobbos ganging up and knocking old people over. There was no mugging of people walking or strolling out, and no incidents of people being kicked, etc. No, there was none of that because everyone going outside the law was given whatever sentence they deserved to meet the crime. The suspended sentences of 12 or 6 months and the idea of fining people to be of good behaviour are both stupid. What a load of rubbish, no wonder these yobbos go round mugging people, committing robberies, sexual assaults and violence when they get such stupid sentences as that. The kid-glove treatment: “You must behave yourself or you will find yourself in serious trouble”, a fine of £20 and a demand for good behaviour for 12 months – rubbish!

1925 was passing and I managed to keep finding odd jobs, sometimes doing very well and more or less my own master, getting the stamp on my card every week. It was better than being on the dole in that blooming great queue, and anyway, I was fiddling and not doing too badly. I had an old suit and overalls for working, a nice suit and flannel bags, a sports jacket, two or three nice pairs of shoes, shirts, etc. Anyway, I was keeping myself and not asking the old man or anybody else for anything.

It was hard going sometimes, perhaps I’d only do one job a week, and have to go to the Post Office and take a pound out. I had a savings account and every spare coin or half quid, or quid, I put in the Post Office account.

One thing I learnt, your best friend in this hard world, outside your wife and home, is your pocket. I learnt my lesson after leaving the army and not having a penny piece, signing on the dole and getting a few measly shillings a week. My father helped me along and gave me money and food, but I vowed then as a youth of 16 or 17 that when I got going I would always have something for a rainy day, and how that helped me in later life.

I know fellows who suddenly, getting an extra bob or two would go straight into the boozer and blow the lot and come out skint, without the money for a packet of Woodbines, even though they knew that their shoes could do with being soled and heeled or that they needed a new shirt. I did not drink, only shandies, and smoked very little, perhaps five Woodbines a day. It used to make me cough.

1926 came and I was still fiddling merrily on. I had a couple of full insurance cards, which I sent to the Labour Exchange and I also joined a Society for National Health, to go on the Panel if sick. I joined the Pearl Insurance and registed with Dr Willan, my Panel doctor. His full title was Lt. Col. Willan, an army doctor, who, when the 2nd World War broke out, was called up and looked after the troops in the hospitals in Brighton and Hove. He was a real good doctor: you couldn’t malinger with him.

Once or twice a fortnight I would go along to the Labour Exchange. I could walk right in, as I had nothing to sign, and see if there was anything doing. There were posters all over the walls, telling you to emigrate either to Canada or Australia. I got the prospectus from the counter and read it in St. Anne’s Wells Gardens, where I used to sit and watch the old blokes play bowls and the young girls play tennis, which was much better.

The brochures described how marvellous it was in Australia. You could go and live on a farm and learn all about farming, sheep shearing, cattle ranching, etc. You could have your passage paid out and pick whichever type of farm you wished to learn on, dairy sheep, or cattle. Accommodation would be given in a wonderful hostel, where you would live with other healthy, smiling youths, as the pictures showed. All meals would be found and a little pocket money given each week. The same went for Canada, only they had lumberjacking as well as farms.

This seemed almost too good to be true, wonderful to me, until I read that whichever work or place that you chose, you would have to stay there for at least five years to pay off your fare money, and for learning whatever it was you were learning.

This seemed not so much different from the Army to me, and thousands of miles away into the bargain. I decided to stay here with all the unemployment, and keep fiddlin’ and see what fortune had in store for me.

It had something in store – but no fortune, at least not yet anyway. One day I was at Tillings and a fellow I had chummed up with, Percy Davies, got called in, went for his driving test, passed out alright, and was driving the bus the next day. He stayed on the buses until he retired at 65, and had well over thirty-five years on them. He knew what it was like to be out of work, and made sure that he was not going to go on the dole again.

I’d now had my driving licence for over a year, and could drive anything, cars or lorries. I could have had several driving jobs on light vans, deliveries, shops, butchers etc…As I was mostly offered 30/- to 35/- a week I was better off as I was, as they wanted you to work six days a week with half a day off, and in the case of fishmongers, come in on Sunday mornings. I said ‘no thanks’, not for 30/- a week and a lot of fish to take home, no, not even for a salmon.

I used to go out to the Albion every Saturday when they were playing at home – they had a good side in those days. It included Tommy Cook, centre forward who played for England, Jimmy Hopkins, who played for Ireland, and Jack Jenkins, who played for Wales, one of the greatest right-backs I ever saw. Today, I don’t know what he’d cost, any one of my generation who saw him would agree. He was simply great, I can’t describe him any other way.

4. The Big Shutdown

Spring came, football finished, and cricket was almost getting going, and with it came the greatest upheaval since the war. The General Strike started. All transport stopped, buses, trams, railways, ships, docks, mines, engineering firms, theatres, picture palaces and the Stock Exchange. Everything to do with workaday life stopped. It was as thought the whole of Britain was cut off from the rest of the world, and like war time again. Only this was worse, with no rationing and nothing moving.

Young men and women started volunteering to drive transports, buses, trams, coalcarts etc., and were immediately rounded on by strikers, called scabs and blacklegs, and jostled, and in some cases severely beaten up. Buses, trams, lorries, the underground etc. started having wire netting put around the front and windows, for protection against stones, bricks, and clubs wielded by strikers.

In Brighton, pickets were outside all the bus, tram and railway stations, and the few factories that were in the town at the time. Taxi cabs and horse cabs still kept running as they had nothing to do with the strike and were mostly one man businesses.

I went out to Conway Street. It was bedlam and all the staff were on strike. Pickets stopped anybody going near the bus yard and asked them what their business was. Eventually the police stopped the pickets from interfering with pedestrians as some of the people were going home, and living near there. Volunteers who were able to get into the yard with police protection, started taking the buses out, midst terrific boos, shouting, fist-waving, and despite missiles that were thrown, a few buses started working the essential routes.

I did not want any part of it. For my own actual feelings, I thought it was a good opportunity to get driving the buses, as it was really the best job in the town in those days, and I had never had a good weekly wage, only what I fiddled thro’ wiles and a bit of sharp practice. It seemed a wonderful opportunity to get a good job. Tillings paid about £3.10s. a week for a driver, and a bit less for conductors.

But on second thoughts, I was too frightened to volunteer, and it never appealed, it was against my nature to be a blackleg.

I left Conway Street, and started walking back to Brighton, with a young fellow I knew. Some of the buses passed us on the way, with volunteer drivers and conductors, and a policeman on the box with them. It was only very old people and invalids who used them, hardly any ordinary people. They were booed and hissed at by the strikers, and ordinary people as well. I realised after what it meant for those volunteers, and what they had done to some of the strikers who had lost their jobs to them. Not only had they taken away their living, but had stopped them getting the dole as well, as strikers were not eligible for it, so they had to live on parish relief. I thanked Heaven that I had never volunteered for for any work or did anything against the strikers.

A lot of the volunteers, when the strike was over, were kept on. It must have been hell for them, because the original workmen who had been on strike and were back working, shunned them, as if they had the plague. For years afterwards they called them scabs, blacklegs, job stealers and home breakers and many more things, besides, and an occasional good punch for good measure.

I am so glad it didn’t happen to me. I could never have slept with the thoughts of stealing another fellow’s job, with perhaps his kids after having been used to plenty, now in dire poverty, and him having to go on the parish, until he got the dole, which was after 6 weeks, if you got the sack in those days.

The strike went on, and from a safe distance, I used to watch the strikers marching, and sometimes being chased by the police, and so-called gentry, and the elite of Brighton on horseback, with big truncheons and sticks.

I remember one well known big Brighton businessman, with a well-known champion boxer, rode up West Street with police outriders, hitting any poor striker or lagger who couldn’t get out of their way. It must have been great sport for those so-called sportsmen. What a thrill to hit a defenceless hungry person, whose only sin was that he was standing by his mates, for the right for them to have a decent living, and to have a few of the decencies of life, such as they could see around in those days.

What a terrible crime. It goes against all the decency and heritage of good English men and women, that the working class should go on strike, and the mines, railways, shipping, huge bus companies etc. should have their shareholders and owners deprived of their huge profits, while the working class went on strike. “The awful bounders, it simply isn’t cricket, old boy.” That I can imagine was the gist of the conversations in the hotels and saloon bars, between those heroic gentlemen, who had on horseback belaboured the poor unfortunates who happened to be in their way.

Not all the upper or middle class were against the strikers. A lot of ladies and gentlemen were distressed to see them so ill-treated. Many ladies manned canteens, stalls, hostels, etc, and worked very hard into the night supplying the poor and strikers with meals, clothes, etc., and driving the sick, injured and aged to hospital clinics and to the doctors’, etc. Young college and technical students, male and female, did different chores for the poor and aged, such as bringing coal, and the girls helping mothers with young children, and the housework in general.

A lot of ladies and gentlemen gave anonymously to the strike fund, and in whatever way they could, they helped to ease the difficulties of the strikers and their dependents.

The strike continued on. Things were now getting serious. No papers were printed, and wireless was more or less in its infancy. A one-sheet paper was printed by unpaid workers, and was distributed free. It only told about the strike and its effects, no topical or sporting news, just a little local news.

By this time, everybody was getting fed up with it. A lot of the strikers were wishing they were back at work, and earning money. Wives were starting to complain about the children going short, no money or food coming in. Queues outside bakers, butchers, grocers, etc. – if they were open and had anything to sell, or if you had the money to buy anything.

My father was actually doing very well with the taxi, as there was no transport – only private cars and taxis were running. Gradually cinemas, theatres, concert halls, etc. began opening. The strike had been on for a week now, and the meetings seemed to be getting less and less well attended. A lot of the strikers kept mostly inside, or mooched around the library, or in the parks, watching bowls, tennis or cricket matches.

I went to the pictures quite a lot. I saw Valentino, John Gilbert, Charles Ray, Harold Lloyd, etc. I used to fall in love, or thought I did, with Pauline Frederick, Agnes Ayers, Norma Shearer, Nazimova, and the “It Girl”, Clara Bow. I used to imagine I was Richard Dix, and if a bird sat next to me in the pictures, try to look like a strong silent film hero, such as Ronald Coleman. All I did was to screw my face up, as though I had smelt something nasty, and the bird, thinking it was her I was smelling, sat as far away from me as possible, and when the lights went up, hopped it to the other side.

I learnt afterwards there is nothing like being your own natural self, whatever the circumstances, or whatever company you are in. I found that you only make a fool of yourself, and look such a mug to put on affected ways, or try to be what you can never hope to be. People who put on that affected Oxford accent, that supercilious look, and haughty disdainful attitude, only make themselves look cheap and nasty, and what they are, pure snobs. Real people talk normally, eat normally, and act normally. The greatest example of this was Sir Winston Churchill. No affected accent there, the greatest orator of our time, just spoke as an ordinary person speaks. No elaborate gestures or grimaces, like some of those M.P.s or Union leaders get up to, and think they’re God’s gift to the working class as well. “Winnie” although some of the things he said I didn’t agree with, was a real mass man, not an imitation of one.

The strike was now nearing its end. The Union leaders, Thomas, Clynes, Snowdon, MacDonald, and Baldwin etc., were meeting, and the bosses were meeting and wrangling and angling, and after days of skirmishes, and negotiations etc., the strike ended.

The strikers were no better off, some of them had lost their jobs, others were up to their eyeballs in debt. Those who had kept their jobs, and were told to go back to work, were only too glad to go back again and pay off the bills they had amassed, vowing no matter what happened they would not go on strike again.

The general public were only too glad to see the back of it, and things gradually got back to normal. How then can strikes benefit anybody, when, as happened in this strike, many lost their jobs, others plunged into debt, and were at variance with their wives and families over it? Then after all that trouble go back again to exactly what they were doing before. It doesn’t make sense to me.

5. Brighton Scenes

June came, and with it Brighton Races. I used to like going up to the Hill, and see some of the racing mob. Derby Sabini, the tipsters, all ex-jockeys or stable lads, or they were supposed to be. I used to have a go on the roundabouts, coconut shies, hoop-la, try to ring the bell with the hammer, and see the old hurdy-gurdy going and whistling all day long. The ice-cream man selling “Joe Assenheim at 2d” and chanting “A kekkin (gerkins) ld and 2d each, lovely pine, 2d a slice, ice cold lemon and sherbert 2d a glass”. Fish and bread stalls, jellied eels, and chocolate men, Peters, Rowntrees, Nestles, etc. The gypos with their “combination” cry, where you paid ld to go into a circle of canvas held by the crier, who let you go to the lav., male and female compartments.

After the races, you joined a crowd around two or three black men selling a pink powder in a little box, and saying it was the tooth powder they used in Africa. One of the men used to be all dressed up, in coloured feathers, bangles and a kind of coloured plus-four suit, saying it was the original powder his father, grandfather and great-grandfather and so on used. Later on he turned out to be the greatest coloured tipster ever known …”Prince Monolulu”. That’s the first time I saw him, and I think that’s how he first started on the racecourses.

When you used to come down Elm Grove from the race-courses all the old blokes would be hanging their caps down over the wall, on a bit of string, hoping you would put a copper or two in, as that was the Workhouse which is now the General Hospital.

I was now over eighteen and no trade learnt, and not much prospects of one. I occasionally met some of my old schoolmates. Most of them on leaving school had been put into apprenticeships of different kinds of trades, and afterwards when able had branched out on their own. Some had stopped in the same job until they retired. One or two had gone to either Australia, New Zealand, or Canada under the Immigrant Scheme. Others just did nothing. I still did my little jobs, and fiddles and was quite happy.

If a good revue, such as Ernie Lottinger was on at the Hippodrome, I’d go to the first house. Side circle was a shilling. After half time, if it was a poor house, I’d slip into the centre circle. Perhaps one week would be a variety, with such turns as Nellie King, or Nellie Wallace, Harry Tate, a big dance band, at least eight or nine turns, all for 1/6d centre or 1/- side circle.

After the show I would perhaps have two or three plates of whelks, twopence a plate, or cockles, or, if flush, oysters for 1/6d in the seafood shop in Boices Street. Or walk up to Spencers, just past the Regent, and get a faggot and pease pudding, piping hot in grease-proof and newspaper for 5d. (3d faggot and 2d pease pudding). Or, if I didn’t fancy that, go into a fish and chip shop and have a three-penny, and a penn’orth slice of bread and a portion of pickled cabbage and onions.

I used to eat it all on the way going home, and then finish up having a cup of tea or coffee at the coffee stall. A really good night out, with five Woodbines, for under 2/- with a penny on the tram home chucked in. Life in the twenties to me was great, simply great.

In the summer, perhaps Hobbs, Sutcliffe, or Woolley, any of these great batsmen would be out at the County Ground, facing the bowling of the mighty Maurice Tate. I reckon one of the greatest medium fast bowlers that ever was. You could see any of them for a shilling, for all day.

Then, when coming home, stop the “stop me and buy one” bloke on his tricycle and have a lovely ice-cream for 2d or a choc ice for 3d. Yes, to me and my generation, “those were the days”, of which we will never see the likes again, no, not if we live for a thousand years, those wonderful days will never come back.

6. Driving a Taxi

One day, my Dad told me to meet him at a garage mews in Eastern Road, opposite the Hove parish church at about 11 am. When I got there, the old man’s taxi was in the road, and he was talking to a chauffeur. He introduced me to the man, and we all walked down the cobble-stone yard to a garage where a big oldish Daimler was garaged. The man showed my father round the car, which was in very good condition, started it up, took it out in the yard, the old man got in the front with the chauffeur, and I got in the back. And off we went.

The car pulled away beautifully and was quite silent. After a bit my Dad had a drive, then told me to take over. She was a lovely car to drive, with plenty of power.

When we got back, Dad and the chauffeur had a long confab together and when it was over, I got on the box with him and asked him what it was all about. He said that the chauffeur had had the car since it was new. He was the only driver from 1913 up until the present, excluding the war years 1914-1918. When the lady and gent he drove for bought a new 35 h.p. Daimler Landaulette they made him a present of the old one. He was going to go on private hire with his son, but the son didn’t want to, as he had a good job. So the chauffeur wanted to sell it, price £100. It was just thirteen years old. He offered it to Dad at so much down and the rest to be paid off in weekly terms.

As the old man’s taxi was a 1910 model, this was 3 years younger. Dad did not want to get rid of his taxi yet, and said that I could drive the car and he would get it passed as a taxi in Hove. I could have it and pay the man off.

I was not very keen on the idea. Taxi work had dropped off a lot since Dad started in 1918. I used to go down to see him sometimes to have a ride or pass the time away, if I wasn’t working. Sometimes it would be an hour or more before a fare came. I didn’t want to be tied up, as I was fiddling along all right. The old man said it was a precarious way to live, and that taxi driving was a good honest living. Anyway, he kidded me into saying I’d give it a go.

He had a taxi meter put on, arranged with the Hove Hackney Cab inspector for me to take it down, and have me and the car passed out. The inspector was a very nice, jovial man who passed me and the car all right. He gave me an enamelled plate with a number on, to attach to the car. The inspector told me to be careful not to overcharge or drink too much whilst driving. When I told him I only drank shandies, he laughed and said the new type of taxi-driver wasn’t like the old horse-cab taxi drivers, as they only drank pints of bitter or poor ale.

I took the car to the rank at Brunswick Place, where my father worked, and the taxi drivers who worked with him on the rank came and had a look at her. They said she was a nice bus. That’s just what she was. They were all big seven-seater cars for taxis in those days, almost the size of a charabanc.

I got her going, bought a peaked cap and was a taxi driver. I had about 5 gallons of juice in her when I started. Next day, I was going past St. John’s Church when there was a funny kind of splutter. She gave one or two tremendous jerks, as though she was a young maiden trying to free herself from chains. Then came the biggest bloody bang I ever heard. It was her way of telling me she had run out of petrol.

I had only done seven or eight fares with her, and thought there must be a leak or something. Anyway, after putting two gallons in, I set the speedo and put two spare gallons in a can I carried. I did two or three fares to Brighton station and a couple of short journeys, and a fare to the Princess Hotel, in The Drive. I had just turned into Grand Avenue, when she started her performance again – jerk, splutter, bang.

I looked at the speedo. They only registered 999 miles in those days, or at least this one did, so I had put it back to zero. It now registered 13. I thought, it’s impossible, the speedo must be wrong. I looked for any leak, but could find none, so I put the two gallons in, and started all over again.

Next day, same thing. I looked at the speedo, and it said 27. With the engine idling, waiting, etc. I worked out that she did seven miles to the gallon! Although petrol was 1/1d a gallon, I’d be hard put to pay the chauffeur off, keep her running, buy oil, garage her – and keep myself – on seven miles to the gallon.

I told my father and he said he would see the man. He did, and the man said he could get eight or nine miles out of her on a run, and that round the town it was a bit less. The old man told him he was not paying over £50 more for her. He’d have his deposit back, and the bloke could have her back. The chauffeur knew he could never sell her, and, after a lot of wrangling and argument the chauffeur settled for another £20 – £50 in all.

I never did trouble to pay it, except for another £7. I paid my father back about thirty quid. So I had her for £37 all in, meter, licence etc, a lot more than she was worth, although I did have a fair living from her for four years.

Taxi driving in those days was totally different from the saloon cars now. Most of them were all open in the front, just a roof, windscreen and, if you were lucky, you had what was called side curtains.

In the winter it was terrible. The icy wind when you were going along would almost cut your ears and nose off. When it rained, your right shoulder would be soaked through, right to the skin. Perhaps, while standing in the rank waiting for a fare, it would start snowing and you’d have to put a rug over the radiator, and my feet would be like blocks of ice. It was worse than awful. Perhaps, after waiting for nearly an hour or more, some old girl would come along and say, “Dudley Hotel” – 500 yards away – and give you eighteen pence, that was 1/4d for the fare, and twopence for yourself. The old car, with starting her up and keeping her warm, and going to the hotel would use almost a gallon of petrol. So I’d get about 4d out of it.

Of course, like everything else, it was not all bad. I had some wonderful days’ takings, and my first Christmas in 1926, I had a wonderful holiday, I worked right through it; I worked Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, Boxing Day, right up to the Sunday. It snowed all Boxing Day and I never stopped running. As fast as I dropped one fare, either I picked one up there or a little further on. It went like that for two or three days.

My father did well also. I gave him some of my takings, and put £10 in my Post Office account, paid the insurance, and licence and garage for a week. It was a shilling a night, and six bob a week, if you paid for a week. One month cost me 24/-, quite a lot of money in those days. I paid, because I knew business would be bad for weeks after, and it was bad. One day, I pulled onto Brunswick Place at nine in the morning about three weeks after Christmas. I stopped there all day until 9 pm without turning a wheel. I never even went and got a cup of tea in case I missed a fare. I ran to the lavatory and ran back. All to no avail, since not one fare came along. Yet over the other side there were two taxis who did fairly well.

I eventually pulled off at 9 pm, went down to Divals and ordered two rashers, two fried eggs, bubble and squeak, four or five slices, and after that I had some bread pudding and two or three cups of tea. The girl who served me was a girl I knew, and when she asked if I was hungry, I said no, I was just having a snack!

When I told her that I had had nothing to eat since breakfast, and that I had stood on the rank all day without moving, she said I must have been barmy to do such a thing. I said so too. And vowed there and then that wherever I was, and whatever the circumstances, I would always get my dinner and tea and never do anything like that again.

I kept that vow right up until I finished taxi driving. In the summer time, of a Sunday, I might on a fine sunny day park on the taxi rank at the boundary of Brighton and Hove, at the bottom of Waterloo Street. There was a taxi rank and a charabanc rank there. I knew most of the chara drivers, some of them used to go taxi-ing in the winter.

The chara firm was called Royal Red, and was owned by two brothers named Poole. They used to do some nice country trips and excursions, and private hire trips. One of the drivers, named Freddie Biggs, I knew very well, he also used to drive taxis. He asked why I didn’t go with him and drive a chara, and I said that I would think about it.

One day, waiting outside the Cricket Ground for a fare, I saw him coming along with the chara. He stopped and asked me if I would like to have a go on her. I jumped up and he showed me the gears. It was a Thorneycroft. I started in first, turned up Willbury Road, put it into second, and top, with no trouble, slowed up at Cromwell Road, turned right, then right again down Palmeira Avenue and round again to where the cab was. She was easy to drive, not like that A.E.L. in the army.

Freddie Biggs was very pleased, and said he’d tell old man Poole the next day, as they were short of drivers. He told him and Freddie came up on the rank to me and said they would let me have a test for a Stage Carriage Licence. But I never did go. I wasn’t doing too bad with the cab and I didn’t fancy being out all day on the Front, touting, and then driving. And, when you got home, or next morning, you had to clean it out. If it had been raining you had to wash it, too, all on your own for 3½ quid a week less stamps, seven days a week.

No: I was my own master. As such, I could work seven days a week, or five days, whichever I fancied. I did go coach driving later on, but that was a long way off.

This was in 1927, and I was only 19, and you were not allowed to drive a chara until you were 21, or a taxi. I never even gave it a thought, neither did my Dad. It never even occurred to either of us, not until years after, when some person said to me that I was young to be driving a taxi. I was then 22, and said that I’d been driving a taxi for four years. Then this man looked at me in an old-fashioned way, and said that you were not allowed to drive either a bus or a taxi until you were 21.

I went and told my father and he said that he had never given it a thought and I am sure that I didn’t, or didn’t much care either. Years after I told a police inspector I knew, who was just a constable then, and he said that although it was not a criminal offence I could have had my licence taken away from me.

I used to go out with some very nice girls. One particular girl had started in service at 15, in a big house near where I used to stand, and she worked her way up from kitchen maid, housemaid or something, to second cook. She would eventually be cook. She was about 21 or so in 1928, a little bit older than me.

She was a fine, lovely girl, well-made, lovely teeth, and fair, bobbed hair. We used to go to the pictures. She had one full day off a month, half a day off every week, and on Sundays, what was called an early night off. I used to meet her mostly on her half day or Sunday evenings. I could not manage a full day off.

She used to like a port and lemon, and we would perhaps go on to the West or Palace Pier if it was a fine night, have a dance, watch the Pierrot show, and go into the bar. I would have a pint of shandy and she her port and lemon and if we had another one, she always insisted on paying.

I had some marvellous times with her. Of course, she wanted to get married and kept on suggesting it. The taxi work was so uncertain in those days and I thought that I was a bit too young for marriage. She said that she had money saved and that with my savings we could get a home together. She said that she would get a house, and could always get a job as an outside cook if necessary. I nearly agreed, two or three times. Once it was almost on the tip of my tongue, but I decided against it. This went on for five or six months until one day, after a little tiff, she got angry and walked away.

I never saw her for a long time, until one day she came up to me on the rank and said that she was getting married to a young man who had just finished his electrician’s apprenticeship and that after they were married they were going to emigrate to the U.S.A. I wished her all the very best of luck and happiness. She was a lovely girl. And depression or no depression, I bet she didn’t let that worry her. She’d work and not go short. I never saw or heard from her again, and was often sorry afterwards that I let such a lovely girl go, she was a darling.

Since the day when I went without food all day, I made sure that I had regular meals. Directly I got the cab out at 7.30 a.m., I would put it on the rank and walk over to Costicks Coffee Shop in Brunswick Street East, and have whatever I fancied. Eggs, and bacon, two rounds of bread and butter and a pint of tea would cost about 10d. Then for dinner, roast beef or mutton, cabbage and potatoes and after, rice pudding and one pint of tea 1/-. Tea, similar to breakfast was 10d or so.

Susy, the owner was a big, fair-haired, nice looking woman of about 35 or so then. I often had dreams about her. But when her old man came through the shop, I forgot all about that. He was a head waiter in one of the big hotels on the front. Sometimes he and Susy would have a night out to the Regent Dance Hall or Sherrys, when she would order me to pick them up and bring them home again. When she had evening dress on, she looked gorgeous and he also looked very smart in evening clothes.

When people went out to the theatre or to dance in those days, it was always in evening clothes, looking lovely, smart and clean. Nowadays, some of them look as though a good bath, and a change of underwear, not forgetting the horrible tattered and lousy-looking jeans that they wear, would do them good. I can’t understand it, well-connected, good-looking, educated young men and women, walking about in those horrible jeans with patches on their behinds. Stupid long matted hair, growing past their shoulders. Bloody great boots with soles and heels like thick lumps of concrete. Smoking pot or whatever they call it. Staging demonstrations. Breaking into houses and calling themselves squatters. If that is modernisation under what is supposed to be a welfare, socialist state, then let me go back to the bad old days as they were supposed to be, and a good meal in a restaurant for a few coppers, instead of the pounds which you have to pay now, and for horrible stuff at that.

7. A Hard Time and Hard Landlady

It was now 1929 and I had been taxi-ing for three years and the car was getting very noisy and rattling quite a lot. The taxi work had dropped off terribly, sometimes I would do only three or four fares all day.

The Depression was on, and even the rich seemed hard up. I had long ago left Port Hall Road and had a temporary room in West Hill St. It was only for a short time until I could find a more suitable place.

Whilst here, just after Christmas, I caught a very bad cold and started to cough. No matter how I tried, I could not get rid of it. I bought every different kind of cough mixture there was and it would not go. One day, which I’ll always remember, in the middle of January 1929, I was in the rank and I started to shiver. I could not stop, and sweat seemed to be pouring out of me. I could hardly move to start the cab up and put it in the garage. I caught a bus to the Dials and could hardly walk to the lodgings where I went straight to bed.

I could not stop sneezing and coughing and tossing about. Eventually the landlady knocked on the door and asked me if I was all right. What a question! I was almost half dead. I asked her if she would kindly go out and get me a bottle of Owbridges Cough Mixture, a pint of milk – and heat it up and bring it to me. I gave her a dollar, and she was well pleased. The room was 6/- a week, and what she had left out of what I gave her for the purchases came to well over 3/-. So I told her to keep the change for her troubles.

After I had drunk the hot milk and had some Owbridges I felt a little warmer, although I was still shivering and every now and again I’d break out into a funny kind of cold sweat. I knew I had something seriously the matter with me.

The next day I could hardly move, and was coughing and retching. It was ages before the landlady came up.

She was a stout, hard-faced looking woman, who looked as though she thought everybody smelled except her. I had been there three weeks, paying one week in advance. I had about three days to go. Before I could say anything, she said would I be staying another week, as she had a young lady who wanted the room permanently, as she was in an office in nearby Queens Road. I said, if I was strong enough, I would look for another place tomorrow. Then I asked her if she would be kind enough to go and bring my Doctor who lived in Montpelier Road. She was humming and hawing about how she had to get her husband’s dinner ready, and she never asked me if I wanted any. Her face changed when I gave her 2/6, and off she went.

About two hours went by, and she came up to tell me the doctor would come about 2 o’clock. I thanked her, and she looked quite pleasant until I asked her if I could have some more hot milk. She had a look like thunder. I rumbled in a second what she had done, and told her to take a shilling from the coins on the table. Her face lit up immediately, and she said she’d bring it up right away. She’d given me half a pint and kept the other half herself.

The doctor came about half past two. It was Dr Sloman, one of the old school. I should think he was getting on for 80 then. He had previously cured me of a nasty blook poisoning. He gave me a good examination, told me I had a severe gastric ‘flu, and to stop in bed. He wrote out a prescription and told me to drink as much beef broth and hot soup as I could. I thanked him and asked him what I owed. He said it would do when I got out. I insisted on paying, so he said, “Oh, alright, 3/6”. His fee was normally 5/-. I think he looked at the landlady and took pity on me. I thanked him, paid the 3/6 and off he went.

What a prospect I had in front of me, in my cold room, no fire and a hard-faced harridan of a landlady, who I knew would not let me stop one second in the room if I could not pay for it. Now I knew the benefit and foresight of savings, and of putting a bit by regular, no matter how small. I managed to get out of the bed, get my trousers, jacket and my thick chauffeurs’ top coat, which I had bought for 10/-. I put my socks on, went out to the landing and called, “Are you there?”

I had to do this about four times, when the kitchen door was flung open and she yelled, “Did you call?” I said, “Could you come up a minute?” She hesitated as though I was putting out an invitation to her, flounced back into the kitchen, rattled some pots and pans, said (or coughed) “Ahem, Ahem”, then came out. I went back into my room and sat on the bed. She came up, and stood in the doorway. I said, “The doctor says I have got gastric ‘flu, and that I have to stay in bed”. Her face was like thunder. Before she could say anything, I said, “Thank you very much for all you have done for me. I think the rent is due tomorrow. If you think it is possible for me to stop one more week, I will pay you now. And if it’s not too much trouble, could you get me a pound of stewing beef (cost about 8d then), a pound of onions and make me a broth and bring it up to me with a brown loaf and a quarter pound of butter”.

She was looking at me as though I was going barmy, her face was as red as a pickled cabbage. She was just about to burst out and shout something, when I said, “I will pay you for your trouble and kindness”. Her face began to look quite pleasant again. It reminded me of Fagin, when the Artful Dodger brought that gold watch in. She spluttered, “Ahem”, a bit, and said she had never done that kind of thing before,
“But seeing as you’re not being very well, and I don’t like to see people suffer, after my husband comes in and has his dinner, I will see to it”. I said, “You are so kind, could you square this bed up a bit for me, and while you are out, give the prescription to the chemist and, when you can, collect it”. I thought I’d gone too far, as she gave another Ahem, and promptly started bashing the pillows. She smoothed the sheet, pulled the one blanket and tiny paper-thin quilt straight, took my prescription, and flounced out. Not before I had paid the rent, and a further 6/- for the medicine and goods. The whole lot including medicine would come to under 3/-, so she wasn’t doing too badly. I asked her where the toilet was and she showed me the door on the landing. I thanked heaven it was not an outside one, as it had started to snow.

When I thought about it afterwards, I thought what a blooming mug I was. I could have asked Dr. Sloman to take me to hospital, where it was nice and warm. I could have been attended to properly, had my food and medicine given to me, all for free – while here I was on the verge of pneumonia in an icy cold room, no heat or comfort, a condescending horrible bitch of a landlady who couldn’t care if I rotted in hell as long as I had money to pay for the begrudging service she gave me.

I gradually got a bit better with the meat broth, with onions, (she kept the cooked beef), hot milk and the little brown bread and butter I could eat, and the doses of Dr. Sloman’s medicine. The shivering, sneezing and coughing began to ease off. I had been in the room five days, and, apart from going to the toilet, had not moved.

Today was a Tuesday, and I felt strong enough to get up. I looked in the glass and I looked very shaken and haggard. I was 5ft 9 1/2 ins in height and weighed 13 1/2 stone. I thought I must have lost nearly a stone by the look of me. I dipped into the icy cold water with the flannel, and rubbed it over my face and washed my hands. The basin had a film of ice on it. I dressed, which took me a long time, and went gingerly down the stairs.

She heard me coming, opened the door and said, “I’m glad to see you’re better. Are you going out?” I was bloody near half dead, no matter about being better. I told her I was going to get some more medicine and something to eat. She said in the meantime, then, she would tidy my room. And would I be staying another week, as the young lady wanted to move in. I said I expected I would have to stay another week until I got stronger. She gave one of her Ahems again and flounced back into the parlour.

I went to the chemists who had made the prescription, showed him the bottle and he made me up another while I waited – 1/6. I got in the bus, and had a penn’orth to the Clock Tower. I walked down to the Divals, and the girl I knew came up and served me. She said, “You don’t half look ill”. I said I felt ill, and all. I had a dinner, or what I could eat of it, and two cups of tea. Then I thought – I shall go up Queens Road, walk up Dyke Road by St. Nicholas Church, through Buckingham Road and that way to West Hill St. Fate again. Passing some houses opposite the church I saw a notice in the window of a nice clean-looking house: “Bedroom to Let, Gas cooker and fire, own meter”. I rang the bell. No-one answered. I rang again and waited. Just my luck. I started to go down the steps, when a young woman just came to the archway over the steps, and when she saw me, said “Oh”. I told her I had come about the room. She invited me in, put her parcels down and took me upstairs to the room. It was a front one on the top floor, a penny-in-the-slot meter, big gas ring and a gas fire. The bed looked like it had plenty of clothes on it. I asked her how much, and she said 6/6 a week. I had to put my own money in the meter. I asked her if I could come in right away and she said, yes. I paid her 6/6 and she gave me a latch key.

I went to West Hill St and rang the bell. The harridan opened the door, still with her hard to be done by look. I said nothing to her, and she gave one of her Ahems. I went into the room. I had started to sweat again, and sat down on the bed until I cooled down. Then I packed my things into a lovely leather suitcase I had bought off an old lady taxi fare. It had been too heavy for her. It was almost too heavy for me in my weak state. I packed and locked it, picked it up and hopped it from that horrible room. I thumped down the stairs. I had nothing to creep down for. I still had two days lodgings to go. She heard me coming down the stairs and said, “Going out again?” She was in the kitchen. I said, “You can let your room off to the young lady now, you hard-bitten, grasping, horrible old bitch, I hope I never set eyes on you again”, went out and banged the door. She did not open the door or say anything. I think she must have been struck dumb.

I went down to the station and got a cab. The case was too heavy for me in my state. It was one of the old ex-horse cab drivers, who knew my father and me. I told him I had been ill, and of the terrible woman I had just left. Then he started….”Bloody woman…” Didn’t he rant on. I had to laugh. I felt better already.

It was a nice room with a view over the church and the people and traffic in Dyke Road. I put the gas fire on, had a wash. I had no kettle, so had to use cold. I took some medicine, undressed, put the fire out, went to bed – and didn’t remember anything more until I woke up.

It was still very cold. Occasional snowflakes, but not thick. After a week I went down to the garage where I kept the taxi in Davigdor Road. It was still where I left it in the corner, but I sensed something was not quite right. Nor was it. When I opened the bonnet, the tops of the cylinder blocks were all cracked and the bolts holding them down were forced up from the nuts. Every cylinder was cracked open. It was a four cylinder steam valve. I had not let the water out and drained her, and it had frozen up and burst. It meant new sleeves and the cracked cylinder block either replaced or welded. In fact, almost a new engine, or secondhand one.

I went and told my father, who was then living in Hampton Place. He carried on saying, why didn’t I let the water out? I told him I had been laid up and couldn’t get to see him or the cab. His cab was OK, and not touched by frost. He had better come up and give an estimate of what it would cost to repair her, and how long it would take. It was over £20, almost a fortune in those days, and at least three weeks. I told my father not to bother about it, and not to spend money on her. She had almost had her day. The hood was leaking where the passengers sat. She was rattling and making a terrible noise, and only going seven miles to the gallon. It was not worth having her repaired. It would cost well over £60, and I would never get it back the way taxi work was then. Depression on, two or three jobs a day. Not for me. I’d had three and a half years’ good work out of her, and had done fairly well. The old man sold her for scrap. He had a hard job to get seven and a half quid for her, although she was full of alu, copper, brass, horse hair etc.

8. On the Dole and on the Knocker

I went down to the Labour. By luck, the clerk was a bloke who used to be a bad debt collector for a private firm of investigators. He used to talk to me on the rank whilst watching for somebody. I told him the cab was worn out, that I had two or three cards I’d sent in. He went away and came back after a bit, gave me a form, pointed out some places where he had put a cross for me to sign, showed me a place where I had to write my own account – and, after signing, he gave me a ticket with Wednesdays and Fridays on it. Only two days to attend now, not three. He said that I would be alright. I signed for Friday; then again Wednesday; then Friday again, when I received a slip with 24/6 on it. I didn’t expect anything, and now I was getting 17/6 per week. I was well pleased and said I could go back to my old way of life before I went taxi-driving.

After nearly four years away from it, and the Depression on with thousands out of work, it was a lot different now. All the people I used to do odd jobs for didn’t want to know. They either had no money now, or were fiddling and doing things for themselves.

All my old haunts were either gone, or there were fresh ones in, who were looking for victims themselves. Prices were rock bottom. You could not make a shilling out of anything, let alone a pound or thirty bob like I used to. No matter where you went, things you’d picked up for half a quid or so you could get a stack of for a shilling or less. Fellows I used to know were either on the dole, or their old women were working and keeping them going. This was really the Depression. People who had money held tight to it and didn’t spend a penny unless they had to. The stuff that was going cheap was amazing. If you bought it you couldn’t sell it again. I tried once or twice and was hard put to get my money back, let alone make a profit. I was thankful I had the foresight to save a pound or two, or I don’t know what I would have done.

It was hard going to make anything on the side. I did manage one or two little fiddles and jobs, but not like I used to. Good job I did not smoke much, or I think I would have been in it. The blokes I knew, or most of them, would all be in the boozers, spending what spare cash they had, if any, on beer, fags, and playing darts, dominoes, shove ha’penny etc. I used to go in occasionally, but being used to an open air life, I could not stop in a boozer long, with all the smoke, bad breath, coughing, sneezing, wheezing etc.

My father still kept going with his own cab, and one day he went to start it up and there was a terrific throttle and a bang. The base fell out, all cracked. A piston had gone right through it. The cylinder cracked, so that was the end of that. She was so old that the metal had crystallised. My father had run her for nearly twelve years and she had hardly ever broken down. I think he got a fiver for her for scrap. He was mad on Daimlers, and this time he got a nice 30 H.P. 6-cylinder Daimler cheap, which did about 11 or 12 to the gallon, so he was happy.

I was now living in Borough St. near the Labour Exchange. One day I was sitting in St Ann’s Well Gardens, reading the paper. The Derby was to be run on the Wednesday. This was Monday. I turned to the runners and riders and kept looking at a runner. I could not take my eyes off it. I did not bet much, but now and again I’d have a flutter. The next day I went down to see my Dad and asked him what he fancied in the Big’un. He liked a bet in big races. He said he didn’t fancy anything. I told him about the one I fancied. He said, keep your money or please yourself. He was more interested in my coming back and driving the taxi now and then. I said I’d think about it. I went home, had something to eat and went over and had eight penn’orth in the Tivoli cinema opposite. Next day I had a look at the Derby runners again. A bookie lived next door, named Arthur Rowcliff. I had a look to see how much money I had. It came to about 11/-. I was going to have a Dollar each way, when I thought, oh, the old man’s right, I’ll keep the money in my jacket. If I lose I’ll have a shilling till Friday unless I go to the Post Office and draw some out. So I had some grub and went up to St Ann’s Well Gardens and watched the girls play tennis and the old blokes play bowls. I stopped there till four o’clock, forgot all about the Derby, bought the Evening News, cooked some bacon and eggs, had a pot of tea, looked at the paper, nearly fainted, cursed, swore, threw the paper down – “Trigo” has won the Derby. The horse I kept looking at because he had a Brighton born boy-apprentice jockey on his back named Joe Marshall. I knew his brother Peter very well, a boxer. Joe Marshall was the first apprentice to win the Derby. The odds were 28-1. I would have won over £10 – a fortune in those days. Ever since then I have never asked anyone’s advice about what they fancy in a race. If I looked at a horse and I thought it had a chance, win or lose I’d back it – and I might add I have won more than I’ve lost.

Once or twice I went away for a day to see how things were in Worthing, Eastbourne, Hastings, Tunbridge Wells. They all seemed to be doing better than Brighton as regards a bit of dealing. I bought and sold one or two articles, but by the time I had something to eat and the fare, I’d only make a bit, but it was something.

1929 passed. I used to drive the new taxi for my father now and again. It was a rather nice car, dark grey, with a black lining and disc wheels. When spring 1930 came, I asked at the Labour whether I would be able to draw the dole if I went away somewhere, like Wales, Blackpool, etc. The clerk said yes, if I was looking for work, but I would have to have an address to go to, and wherever I went, I’d have to pay my own fare too. I decided to stay where I was. It would be a trouble to get an address, and from what I could find out, places like Blackpool were as hard off, if not worse than, Brighton in the Winter. As for the Summer I could get a seasonal job if I wanted one, such as they were: waitering, hotel work, stop-me-and-buy-one, or go back taxi-ing. I had my mind made up. My Father made it up for me.

9. Bath Chair Blues

My Father called round to see me one day, and said he’d got to go up to the hospital for an exam and would I take the cab over, as he did not know how long he would be off. So, I went and signed off at the Labour. The Clerk that I knew said that as I was working for my Father I should put an insurance stamp on the card every week. I think it was about 1/10d then. Then if anything happened I could always sign on again. Very good advice which I took and which later came in very handy. 1930 was a terrible year for taxi work. My Father had shifted from the Brunswick Place stand, to one on the Front at the bottom of Landsdown Place. There were three good hotels there. The “Dudley” high class, “The Alexandra” a good residential and family hotel on the front bottom of Holland Road, and the “Riviera” a high class Yiddisher hotel always or nearly always full up, winter and summer.

Walking past the “Alexandra” a little while ago I saw it was empty, dilapidated, paint and plaster falling off, almost a ruin. Though when I knew it, it was always smart, nicely painted and clean, a really nice class hotel. What a shame it is these buildings and terraces should be allowed to go to ruin as they had done. I think its almost criminal that they should be so neglected. Brunswick Terrace when I knew it and worked it, housed well-to-do business, retired professional, and titled ladies and gentlemen, with household staff, cooks, parlour maids, butlers, etc. Now it looks like a slum – all flats, a lot empty, dilapidated.

When I worked it, a regular fare to the Hippodrome every morning was Mr.Foster Marner, the Manager, who afterwards opened the S.S. Brighton. For years he was the manager for the London Pavilion. Sometimes a little old smoothly dressed gent would hail you to take him to the bottom of West Street. He was Charlie Morton, one of the greatest race horse trainers there was. I think he won every big race including the Derby. Several theatrical people lived along the Terrace and some titled ladies and gents, and well known celebrities. Brunswick Terrace was Brunswick Terrace in those days – not a lot of delapidated scruffy looking flats as it is now!

Sometimes on fine days an old boy in a bowler hat would trundle down a thing on four wheels, two large at the back and two small ones in the front, which looked like a miniature horse cab. He would pull it over the Front, then shunt it back and forth behind me, until it was on the Rank and it looked like he was plying for hire. It was bath chair. Not an ordinary bath chair, this one was licenced by the Council and coach built. It had a lovely leather hood made exactly like the horse cab hoods, able to go up and down, a leather sheet that buttoned up each side to protect the passenger from dust etc., a rug to wrap round the person’s feet and legs, a foot stool, for them to rest their feet on and to get in and out. The body was real coach built, just like a cab, nicely painted, dried and varnished. In fact a human drawn, one seater, hackney carriage. They were mostly pulled by old horse cab drivers, several by old army and navy men, one by an old retired ex-Indian railway engine driver, and another by an old Canadian bloke who had stopped here after the First World War.

The old bloke who pulled up behind me was an old horse cabman named Charlie Punchard. A thick set sturdy old man, typical horsey blocke, getting the Old Age Pension, and trying to get a few bob extra. He used to tell me of the fares he drove – most of the old time Music Hall artists, jockeys, trainers, well known celebrities, that had stopped at the “Grand Metropole” or “Old Ship” for the weekend, – they used to in those days – and then he’d take them back to the “Mattler” station. Of the scores of carriages of a Sunday on the Front with the footman and coachman on the box, sporting gents with a high stepper in a smart turncoat, the ladies with their parasols in the back of an open carriage, giving the eye and smiles to the young sporting gents, four-horse brakes going to Shoreham, or perhaps the Devil’s Dyke – all these things I heard about, but just before my time.

Old Charlie was a very good judge of those horses and trainers, and he would often say to me, “I think trainer Russell, or Hartigan or Wartingen or Peacock, will win the big run today”. And, nine times out of ten, he would be right. We could only afford up to 2 bob or 1/- to win, but to our Charlie it was pennies from heaven if he won.

If he got away I think it was 3/6 an hour perhaps pulling some Old Tart or retired old army or navy bloke up and down the Front. Perhaps as far as the West Pier, stop at the Pier for 20 minutes or so, so that they could breathe the fresh air, then pull them back. Perhaps the person was staying up Lansdowne Place, and Old Charlie would have to pull his guts out, sweat like a pig, to pull the old man or woman, who perhaps weighed 16 or 17 stone up to wherever they were stopping in Lansdowne Place. A human horse all for three and a tanner, and a tanner for a tip – 4 bob in all.

Old Charlie would then bring the bath chair down behind me, and go straight up to the boozer, have a pint, then another, then another and another. It was only four pence a pint then, and Old Charlie could go 8 or 9 pints without any trouble. One day he pulled on the Rank, and was talking to me when the porter from the “Alexandra” came over for him. Some old girl wanted him to go to Hove Lawns, past Hove Street, wait there for ½ hour or so, then bring her back. It was a good job for him and away he went. I got off with a fare and was fairly busy, and forgot all about Old Charlie. Suddenly it started to rain, as it can do in Brighton, and the wind got up. I was kept fairly busy up till about 2 o’clock when I went and had my dinner at Lucy’s. When I pulled on the rank I noticed Old Charlie’s bath chair there and presumed he was having his usual pint at the boozer. I kept getting fares, and getting off, until I had my tea. I pulled on the rank again, and the bath chair was still there, swaying from side to side in the wind, just like a little sailing boat. “Blimey”, I thought, “Old Charlie’s working late ain’t he, what’s he expect, a midnight tour or something.” I got off once or twice, then about 11:30, I see Old Charlie sauntering down past the Dudley Hotel, and after looking very carefully left, right and then left again across the Front, he sauntered over, gave me a sheepish look, and said, “I had a pint or two yesterday, and treated myself to a whiskey, and when I got home I went straight to bed, and did not wake up until 3 a.m. to go to the lav., then just as I was getting back into bed again, I remembered I’d left the chair on the Front. I had a good mind to get dressed and go down, and put her in the stable, but when I looked out of the window, and saw it pelting down, I said, ‘Well she’ll have to stop there now, and got back into bed again.'”

I have often laughed and thought of that. I wonder what would happen these days with the bath chair, if it had been left on the Front all night.

10. Selling Brushes with Fidgety Joe

1930 passed and my father was his old self again. I had managed to pay expenses, but it would be no good two people trying to live out of it. So I told my Dad I did not particularly want to drive. I knew he wanted to go back, so I went and signed on again, as my cards were all up to date. Whilst signing on one day, I got talking to a fellow I knew, who seemed rather agitated. I asked him what was up. ”Well”, he said, looking right, left and all around – he was one of those blokes who talk out of the side of their mouths as though everything’s a top secret and nobody must know about it – ”After I sign on, I’m going to collect my gear, have a bobsworth on the prattler and get to work – why don’t you come with me?” With nothing much to do, and being curious, I said ”Alright”. Coming out of the Labour, we went to Tidy Street where he lodged, and he came out with a fair-sized suitcase stuffed full of gear bought at Mence Smith’s Stores, which we lumbered up to the Station, bought a shilling return ticket to Haywards Heath, and out we got.

On the outskirts of the town, he had shown me in the train what was in the case, and the selling lingo etc. We undid the case, marched up the drive of a house that had ‘No Hawkers, Peddlars or Circulars’ on the gate and rang the bell. After a bit the door was opened, and a big hard faced woman, who put me in mind of a Prison Wardress, said ”What do you want?” Then Joe said, ”Madam, can I show you our new line of Pure Bristle Dust Pan Brushes, our soft-as-silk cleaning cloths, and our famous Liquid Furniture Polish?” The woman said, ”No, you can’t. Didn’t you see the notice on the gate?” and slammed the door. It was a start, at least she had spoken a few words! Some just opened the door, said ”No”, and shut it again. Others looked through the side window, made a funny face and shook their heads, and so on.

This went on for about half an hour, and I gave Joe a rest and had a go. The first house I copped. Ain’t it funny, after all Joe’s gabbing and telling the tale, I copped the first house. That’s the way it goes all through life.

She was a nice old lady, who said yes, she wanted a nice soft hand brush for sweeping biscuit crumbs off her tea table. I let Joe get on with it then, once we had broken the ice. We had one or two sales after that, and about 1:30 went into the pub, had two pints, and some bread and cheese.

I got talking to the Landlord, who said he originally came from London, had been in Fleet Street working for one of the big newspapers as a compositor. He had retired, had taken the pub over, it paid expenses. He and his wife lived free, with a little profit, and it suited them. Of course, he was, or I should think he was, a man of substance and a Person, and the pub was more or less a hobby. In those days, plenty of other landlords with little pubs had to go to work, and their wives looked after the pub, until they came back in the evening. I doubt if some of them hardly paid expenses with the takings let alone made a profit. I think it made them feel big to be called a publican, and have to work and slave to keep it going. Not me, I wouldn’t want to be tied down, a slave, to keep some mouldy little beer house going, simply to be called a publican.

After we left the pub, we made one or two more calls sold a bit more stuff, then came home. On the train Joe counted out how much we had taken. We had sold 10 brushes, bought for 1/6, sold for 2/6 or 2/-, 8 bottles of polish bought for 8d, sold for 1/6, 1/3 or 1/, 15 cloths bought at 6d, sold for a shilling which came to 22/- profit. Two shillings for train fare, 2/- beer and lunch – 18/- all told. Joe offered me half. I said, no, 6/- will do. So he had 12/-. It had been an experience, and a day’s outing, but I felt terribly tired. I could hardly lift my feet up. I said good-bye to Joe, got a bus home, and was in bed and asleep within minutes. Next day I was stiff, sore, but after a day or two it soon wore off.

I saw Joe again a few weeks afterwards, and he asked me if I fancied coming out again. I said, “No, thanks Joe. I’ve got something in mind”. Joe, still talking out of the side of his mouth, told me how he had got a nice sale at a big Girls’ High School. That’s how Joe, and hundreds of others like him all over the country, conjured to get a living, and a few bob to keep going, in the ’20s and ’30s.

This was the time when a lot of American cars were about, such as Essex, Buicks, Dodge, and Fords which had not long gone from the Model T to the gear change. You could still tell they were Fords, there was not much difference in the styling. Another light car was the Trojan – a two-stroke, two or four seater, chain drive with kind of solid tyres. Young men in Oxford Bags had Austin Sevens, fitted with big exhaust pipes and cycle-type wings – kicking up a hell of a row, imagining they were driving four and a half litre Bentleys and all they were doing was about four m.p.h. all out. Other young men, thin and lean, wearing plus fours and half starved, went from door to door, trying to sell Hoovers, Clene Easie brushes, Electric light bulbs, scented soap, floor polish, etc. There used to be a saying then, ‘Plus fours and no breakfast’. I have seen hundreds of those young men who had no dinner, no matter about breakfast.

There was a bit of the Roaring Twenties and early Thirties, as they called it. Two or three years before, the ‘Charleston’ came out, and a little after that the ‘Black Bottom’. It was jazz, jazz, jazz all the way. Young giggling youths and girls going to work would suddenly twist their feet around doing the Charleston on the pavement. Errand boys on bikes would be whistling ‘Ain’t She Sweet’ all day long. Music shops would have gramophones, and trumpet speaker radios blaring out hot jazz. The dance halls opened about one p.m. and carried on to one or two in the morning, filled to capacity.

The doorman would be shouting, “Full up, full up”, and have a big notice outside, “Full up”, as well. The girls and women wore dresses right up to their knees, their chests were as flat as pancakes. I never saw a girl or a woman with a bust, unless it was an elderly lady with a tailor-made.

11. Albert – 1st Class Wide Boy

It was well into 1931 now, and I heard Southdown wanted some drivers for the season. I applied for a test and was truly determined to go and have it. I went to Edward Street and I passed the test. I was told to go and get my uniform, tool box, etc. I was taken on one or two of the buses to learn the routes, and started bus driving.

I remember my first week’s wages were 1/1/4 per hour, £2 11s 2d or so for 48 hours. To me, being single with lodgings at 5/- a week, it was quite a good sum. Bus driving was quite a pleasant job then, compared with now, and I enjoyed myself till the end of the season. When September came, me and the other men who only started that year were put off, and told to come back next season. I did not mind, because I could go taxi-driving for my father for the winter, as he said he wanted the winter off, and I could keep my unemployment card up to date.

I was on the bottom of Lansdowne Place again. There was only me and another taxi driver called Titch, with an old Limousine Rolls Royce, who worked the rank. One day on the rank, I got talking to a slim, sharp-featured, quick talking Cockney fellow whose name was Albert. He was a great conversationalist, and very amusing. I had to go for a fare, and said I would see him again. I forgot about him, until one night I finished early, and on the way home to Borough Street, I went into the ‘City of York’ for a pint. And there was Albert. We got a bit tiddly and Albert burst forth into song. Poor Albert had been gassed in the First War, and his voice was a kind of mixture between a honking old Gander and the fog horn of the Queen Mary. He started off with ‘Nellie Dean’ and went right through the card up to ‘Any Old Iron’ – you could hear him three streets away. Whilst singing he made such gestures as putting his hat over his eye like Maurice Chevalier, and the same kind of facial grimaces to go with it.

Then he’d cuddle a chair and sing to it, ‘If you were the only Girl in the World’, and when we got chucked out of the boozer he started on a lamp post. There was nobody in the world like Albert.

He was a fellow of about 35 then, had T.B. and had been a bookmakers’ clerk, a top-class tic-tac. All the racing world knew him. All the pubs knew him. All the coppers knew him. In fact everybody knew Albert. He was what was known as a Character – a real one. When not tiddly, a great talker, you could listen to him for hours. He used to sit on the seat with me on the front, whilst I was waiting for a fare. He’d talk about how So-and-So used to make a Penny Book in Bethnal Green, and now was one of the biggest bookies in the country. Bookies often started without any money at all. Albert would talk about how perhaps he’d go down to Sandown for a bookie, as a clerk, put the joint up, rattle the bag with old nails and bits of tin in it to make it sound like money, have luck in the first race and then have a good day. The bookie would pay them well and when they got home they’d go in a pub, or a jellied eel shop, eat their fill of grub and booze, and perhaps go to the Oxford or some other music hall and perhaps see Marie Lloyd, Dan Leno or Harry Champion. I myself have seen most of the great Victorian and Edwardian stars, Vesta Tilly, Albert Whelan, the first artiste to have a signature tune which he used to whistle coming on and going off. They were truly great performers, which I and nobody else will ever see again.

Albert had a family of about four young children. He was always on the dole, fiddlin’ here, fiddlin’ there, getting cast-off clothes, shoes, boots, for nothing. Down to the butchers who knew him, buying stewing pieces, scrag ends, pigs’ trotters, sheeps’ heads, hearts, liver, kidneys, brains – and then to the grocers, getting bacon knuckles, bacon rinds, cracked eggs, yesterday’s bread and cakes, specked fruit, old spuds, limp cabbage, bruised celery, loose tea, skimmed milk, broken biscuits – the Lot, and a lot more besides. Yes, that’s how Albert lived, if you could call it living, as most of our class lived in those days. Yet they were happy. Look at Albert! If he got one extra shilling or two, he’d have a pint or two and be singing all night. We lived for today. Who cares about tomorrow? Skint again next day, more scrounging and fiddling, and so life went on. But what a life, what a variety. The films and plays had nothing on our lives, mine, Albert’s, and my mates’ lives. Ours was true, not make believe.

One Saturday I picked up four blokes to go out to the Albion and decided to wait on the rank there, and get a crowd back. When the crowd started coming out. I saw a very stout man with a sailor’s peaked cap on with a white top. I knew his face from somewhere, and I then rumbled who he was. It was a great Brighton character called Happy Gordon. I have previously spoken about him. He was about 5′ 8″ in height, weighed over 20 stone. When my father got his first taxi in the early 1920s, perhaps he would take a night off, take me with him and go down and see Happy who kept a boarding house in Middle Street. Some of the guests might be in the front room, where there was loads and loads of bottled beer and stout and spirits. Everyone would be drinking and talking, the women and the men. There would be a great big dish with ribs of beef on it, another with mutton. It was called mutton then, not lamb! A jug full of celery, pickled onions, loaves of bread and a big dish of butter. Mrs Gordon would be cutting the bread and dishing out whatever the people wanted. Meat or cheese, beef or stout, spirits, roast mutton, lovely crusty bread, and butter. I used to gorge myself.

Then somebody would kind of creep in. To look at, he looked something like Tommy Trinder. He had a biggish lower jaw, a funny kind of grin and when he spoke I couldn’t make out what he was talking about. It was a kind of mumbo jumbo, and whilst he was talking, he had a kind of grin and when he finished he looked very fierce and angry. He was the pianist Wally – he was a bit touched. I used to see him kissing and cuddling cab horses, and perhaps an old cart-horse. When he passed you in the street, he would always be carrying a shiny black carrier bag, muttering to himself. But couldn’t he play the piano! All by music, he was simply great. He used to play a number called ‘Jasper Brown’. It was a kind of hot beat jazz for those days. It had a marvellous rhythm and he used to get so excited he’d jump up and down on the music stool and nearly turn the piano over. The women would be in hysterics with laughter, the men and Happy egging him on. I could not move for laughing so much.

There was a high-class restaurant called Chatfields just round the corner in West Street. In those days, in the front window would be a little waterfall, a kind of little stream with live eels swimming in it. Customers could pick which eel they fancied and have it cooked whichever way they liked by the chef. Sometimes they would have a small orchestra at weekends, with violinist, accordion, drums and Wally on the piano. The musicians might change, but it was always Wally who played the piano. He must have been good, because Chatfields then was very high-class. Sometimes Happy would give Wally a break on the piano. He played by ear. He could knock a fair tune out and to be different he would sometimes play by his fists, using his knuckles.

He branched out into big business. He had a sea-front arch cafe, a shell-fish bar, rowing and motor boats, a butcher’s shop and he moved from Middle Street and took a big private hotel on the front near the Palace Pier.

He was once called up to serve on the jury at the Assizes Court in Lewes. When he went to go into the jury bench, he could not get through, owing to his size. The judge excused him. It was in all the local and London newspapers and caused a terrific laugh everywhere. He died soon after the war started: a real Brighton character, the likes of which we will see no more.

12. Spindle

Of the many characters I have met in my life, I think Spindle was one of the most curious and Pickwickian that could ever have been created. He was an ostler before the First World War and when war broke out in 1914, being in the Territorials he was automatically called up and drafted into the Royal Artillery (horses). I don’t know whether he saw service abroad or not. But after being discharged in 1918, he lived in Farm Road, Hove, next to where my Dad stood with the taxi. When I first saw him, I would be about eleven years old. This apparition loomed up before me and I could only stare in wonder. Discharged soldiers after the war were allowed to keep and wear their uniforms providing they took the brass buttons off and put ordinary buttons on.

Spindle had army riding breeches on, the inside leg parts that were made of whipcord were washed whiter than snow. Polished leather leggings so shiny you could see your face in them, ending up with army boots that had been soled and heeled with big rubber soles. And glistening with shine. A civilian jacket and waistcoat with the short khaki army great-coat with civilian buttons, topped by a cloth cap. He was very thin.

He had a lean, dark face, quite handsome in a way, with a black kind of walrus moustache, which in the middle had turned a kind of coppery colour due to nicotine. He never had a cigarette out of his mouth. He smoked Players Weights, five for 2d, old money. He was so thin that if you looked at him sideways you could hardly see him. Hence the name ‘Spindle’.

He was always on the dole and did odd jobs such as washing my Dad’s car, or polishing the brasses, or running errands for anybody. A character straight out of Dickens. There was no wireless in those days and Spindle would get the results of the big races from the tissue of the bike boy, the tissue being the name of the message the boy would be carrying from the Exchange Telegraph Company of any big race results, Test Match scores, big fight results or big law cases such as the Russell case. The boy would be taking the tissue to big hotels, sporting houses, bookmakers, etc.

One day, a great shout came from along Western Road. Bus drivers stopped. People in the street stopped and stared. Heads appeared from out of shop doorways. It was Spindle. He was shouting “King of Clubs, 100 – 1, King of Clubs 100 – 1, Pat Donoghue”. It was the winner of the Lincoln, the first big flat race of the year, and it was ridden by Pat Donoghue, the son of one of the most famous jockeys in the world, Steve Donoghue. So you see, Spindle was one of the first news broadcasters in the world.

He used to frequent Rideouts the barbers, where it was 3d a shave and 6d a haircut. Around the walls were big long mirrors, so that anybody coming in would be scrutinized by the people in the shop, who would all be playing cards for big stakes, and the money on the table. Old Fred Rideout weighed about 25 stone and when he rubbed out they had to make a special coffin for him because they could not get him in an ordinary one. On the floor would be two old bitches, one called ‘Well’, and the other called ‘Drainpipe’, which was a cross-bred Dachshund. Old Fred had an allotment opposite St Ann’s Well Gardens where he would trundle a hand-cart up every day, and get spuds, cabbages, onions, etc. which he would bring down and put on a big table inside the shop door, perhaps with a rabbit, hare, chicken or a side of beef, along with other sundry goods amid the smell of shaving soap, beery breath, cigar smoke, hair from the haircuts, and pinches of snuff which old Fred took, all waiting to be collected by Sarah the housekeeper. It was the scandal house of Brighton. Any news, scandal or wicked goings-on Rideouts would be the first to hear about it. Dirty rhymes, tales, filthy postcards and ‘funny stories’ – you know what I mean – Rideouts was the place.

One day, a smart young fellow came in and had a shave. Two days later he came in again. After being shaved, he watched the card players for a short while. This went on for a time and then one day he asked if he could have a hand. “Certainly”, they all cried, -anything to oblige a ‘mug’. So he lost the first day, and the second and on the third he came in with a police sergeant and an inspector, two coppers and himself and said, “I am a detective sergeant in the Hove Police, and I charge you with unlawful gambling, playing cards for money, etc., etc., and you will accompany us to the Police Station where you will all be charged”.

And they all had to go down in taxi cabs with the police, where next day old Fred was fined heavily and the others accordingly. So that wasn’t so funny was it, well not to old Fred it wasn’t. The things he called that copper and what he would do to him if he could get him. It was quite like anyone from the Spanish Inquisition talking, only worse. It made no difference. They still played cards, the money was still on the table, old Fred still dumped the veg on the table along with whatever goods were there. Still the funny stories, post cards, etc. And Drainpipe and Well still scratched and snored along-side old Tim the cat. Talk about Sweeney Todd the Barbers – it wasn’t in it with Rideouts.

13. Hard Times and Easy Terms

One day I had to have some repairs done to the car, so I went into the pub and there was Darkie. Darkie was a 6 foot, handsome fellow. He looked a proper horse-dealer, gypsy type. Very witty sayings, slang, talking sideways through his mouth. He was a great attraction to young ladies – and elderly ones as well. He was marvellous company in a pub, or elsewhere for that matter. He would tell a tale truth-fully, or a pack of lies, which he almost believed himself he was so convincing. Whichever it was, everybody listened to him with rapt attention. When I first knew him, he had a pony and cart and would be selling logs in the winter. I can hear his shout now, “Logs, logs”, which he called out in a rather musical tone. Then in the spring he would sell plants and flowers, or do a bit of loving or odd jobs. The old man who used to go round with him died, and Darkie packed the pony and cart up and went labouring. He married and had a big family.

In those days, if you had been on the dole for a certain number of weeks, you had to go in front of a committee called the U.A.B., the Unemployment Assistance Board, consisting mostly of magistrates, retired army or navy men and councillors. They would decide if you were to have any more payments or not: a judge and jury to all who came before them, dealing out untold misery to the poor unfortunates who were refused payments. In fact, sentencing them to what you might say was hell on earth.

Darkie had to go up there. He had about four kids then. He, his wife and the kids all marched into this big house in Montpelier Road, just above the Labour Exchange, that was the U.A.B., and Darkie stated his case for his defence – why the Assistance should be granted to him.

After hearing his case in front of a Board, the jury after deliberation refused him. Darkie promptly said to them, “See those kids – I ain’t got no money to keep and feed them and can’t get none. There they are, and there they stop. You have ’em, and you feed ’em, and you look after ’em”. And he told the kids to stop there and he marched out with his old woman, with the kids all bawling and shouting and crying and peeing and causing a hell of an uproar. And the Committee of hard-faced men and women going pale in the face trying to quieten the kids. They told the porter to go and find Darkie and fetch him back, and when he came back they said that owing to exceptional circumstances he would be granted the U.A.B. money. Darkie had no more trouble with the U.A.B. after that.

Of course, Darkie was an exception. Some of the poor unfortunates refused had to go on the Parish Relief or into the Workhouse. Thank goodness those terrible days have gone. People today who have never experienced it don’t know how lucky they are not to be unemployed or unable to get the dole, as it was in those times. As I have said before, a living hell.

So I carried on with the taxi, and for the next year or two did quite well. Then the work started dropping off a bit. But I got quite enough to pay expenses to keep myself and give my father something.

One evening, about the end of October, he came along and started talking. Albert came up – he knew of my father and some of the old times my father knew, and they had quite a long chat. I met Albert soon after, there was not much doing, so I said, “Come on, have a ride up to the garage, I’ll put the cab away and we’ll have a drink or two”. He was skint as usual, so I gave him two or three bob. You didn’t lend Albert anything, you either gave, or treated him as if he was skint, but never loaned. If you did, it was treated as a gift, so why bother? I don’t think Albert ever repaid anybody – if anybody did ask him for anything back, it was treated as an insult and Albert would hardly condescend to reply.

In the twenties and early thirties there were three ways you could get goods besides shopping. By local stores: if you paid cash, you got a rebate. The second was hire purchase, and the third was what used to be called ‘easy terms’. When easy terms first came on the scene, Albert and the likes of him, the so-called wide boys, used to order goods, whatever they be – bedroom furniture, lounge suits, clothes, carpets, musical instruments, pianos, cutlery – in fact, practically everything. Tools, garden equipment, no matter what it was you could have it on easy terms and the wide boys were in clover.

Albert or likewise would select something, post away the first deposit. The agent would come round with some papers to sign, Albert would glance through them and sign. After a bit, down would come the goods, and whatever it was, it was used for a bit, then it was ‘second-hand’. Then Albert or the likes would ‘flog it’. Perhaps the article in those days was worth £8 or £9. Albert would get 30/-, 25/- £1 or even 15s if the going was hard. After weeks of non-payment, it was generally £1 a month, the agent would come round to see Albert. Of course he would be out, so week after week the agent would call, then leave the letters, nice ones at first, then the threatening ones, then the Final Notice to go to Court.

If it did go to Court, the County Court Judge would invariably throw it out. Or if he did hear the case, Albert would get away with it because he would plead that the contract said he could pay on easy terms – that meant easy stages. At the time, he had no means of paying anything, as he was unemployed, but if he should manage to get employment, he would continue paying by easy terms. This kind of thing went on for some considerable time, until the big firms and warehouses had their contracts altered to ‘hire purchase’, where the hirer was getting the goods on hire, and they weren’t his, until the last payment was over. So that put paid to Albert and the Wide Boys. If they did manage to get something on the h.p., they risked imprisonment, which many of them got. The judges knew that they had had a wonderful time on the easy terms, and cracked down hard on them. In any case, the Black Lists came out with the defaulters’ names and addresses, and they are still operating.

When I met Albert that evening, we had a drink or two, in two or three well-known places, such as The Eight Bells, now gone, Seven Stars, the Da Costa, with a well-known racing man as the landlord. Then Albert took me into the Cosy Club, where the Old Fire Station used to be in Duke Street. One of the greatest fighters ever was a member, “Kid Lewis”. From there to another club, underneath the Regent, I forget the name of it, a lot of billiard tables there, with the wide boys waiting for the mugs to come in. I didn’t think much of it, all filled with cigarette smoke, bad air, these spivs and hangers-on who never worked, fiddled at the dogs, and at Markets, and caught any poor mug who got into their clutches. They all knew Albert. No, that wasn’t for me.

I liked fresh air, working for a bob or two, and having a pint or two. In later years I did use drinking clubs for a while and must have spent some considerable amount of money in them. I still occasionally go into a nice one I know, more to see people I know, but very, very seldom now. For one thing, the price, and another thing, I hardly ever drink now.

One day on the rank I watched and saw a bloke pushing a little old cart thing, two small pram wheels in front and two big ones behind, with a seat and two big wooden pedals fixed to a treadle, and a big grindstone. He stopped at the beginning of the boarding houses in Lansdowne Place and cried out “Carving knives, pen knives, scissors to grind”. The first part was quite musical, but when he got to “Scissors to grind”, it ended in a kind of funny wail. He waited a short while, and then he started off again, and so he went on right up the street. I don’t think I ever saw him grind anything up Lansdowne Place, though he used to come round regular every six weeks or so.

Now you never hear any of the old cries that were about then, like the strawberry man with his horse and cart – “Fine ripe strawberry”, or “24 a shilling herrings” or “16 a bob mackerel”. The milkman who carried a churn, and the people bringing their jugs out to have half a pint or a pint – he used to call “Milko, milko”, and many other cries. Now and again a rag and bone man comes around, but not very often.

The summers of 1933 and 1934 were quite nice ones from the weather point of view, and I didn’t do too badly with the cab. One day, four or five young men – they were reporters – came out of the Dudley and told me to go to the Old Ship. There was a lot of excitement in Brighton at the time. The Trunk murder was on. They all had “Kiss me quick” hats on, one a miniature copper’s helmet. Funny hats had only just come out. The cab being open at the back, everybody could see them. They caused a great laugh from the people, going along raising their little round hats to all the birds, and the birds all giggling and laughing. The copper on point duty at the bottom of Preston Street, burst out laughing when he saw the copper’s helmet.

I don’t know, people don’t seem to be so carefree and gay as then, all solemn and serious. In those times all the errand boys would be whistling the latest tune. All the pubs, or most of them, had a piano and sing-songs and when it was time to go, all went home quietly, perhaps a few, like Albert, singing going home. None of the horrible rowdiness, window smashing which goes on now. I had to walk out the other evening to post a letter about nine o’clock, and I never met one person going, and not one coming back, and only two people at the Post Office posting letters. I did not meet a solitary person. Whether people are scared to go out or not I don’t know. Years ago, lots of people used to go out for an evening stroll.

14. On the Rank and on the Buses

I worked the taxi all 1931, winter and into the spring of 1932. During that time, me and Titch with the Rolls taxi used to have long talks together. He originally came from Lewes, his people being connected with the racing stables. Titch himself was in the stables as a boy, but got kicked on the spine and it made him slightly hunchbacked. He was a very funny fellow, mimicking a parrot. “Hello, Polly”, then whistling like one. “Eee-aw”, like a donkey, making the sound as if he was sawing wood with the actions. When he came back in the old Rolls after a fare, he would go up and down in the driving seat as though he was riding a race-horse, and sometimes he would wear a real jockey cap. Bystanders used to stare in amazement and the local residents and the copper on the beat used to be hysterical with laughter. I wonder what that old Rolls and the old man’s Daimler would be worth now – a fortune I should think.

Every day regular, at one o’clock, a taxi driver used to walk past us going home to dinner. He lived in one of the mews near St John’s Church. He had a very pale, melancholy face, very thin with a long nose. Titch called him Funeral Face, which incident reminds me of some of the nicknames given to the cab and taxi drivers of those and earlier times. ‘Salt Water Dick’, so-called because when young he would carry sea-water into hotels and guests houses for the residents and visitors, so they could have hot sea-water baths. ‘Billy One Thumb’, ‘Cowfold Jimmy’, ‘Lying Arthur’, ‘Rhubarb’, ‘Brusher Hall’ and many others: all characters in their own way, all now gone.

In the summer of 1931, while I was on the buses, my father, always connected with horses and dogs, sent away to Blackburn, I think it was, for a puppy that was advertised in the “Our Dogs” book or journal, out of a litter of pups by the previous year’s winner of Crufts, the Supreme Champion, Beau Brummel of Wildoaks, a wire-haired terrier. It cost 5 guineas, a lot of money in those days. A week afterwards he came down in a crate. You could tell he had come from a champ. Great long thin face and head, tail cocked right up, beautiful body, legs as stiff as cardboard, and dainty feet. The way he walked, so cocky and sharp, as though he knew he was from one of the greatest dogs in the world. He was the greatest watchdog I have ever known. He would be in my room at the slightest movement or noise, and it was bedlam. He would growl at a fly.

I always kept him on a lead in town. He’d spot a dog a mile away, no matter what it was, alsatian, spaniel, retriever, he would growl, splutter and curse at them in his own language. The other dog would get as far away as possible and look at Bobbie with amazement. He was frightened of nothing. I kept him tight on the lead. If he was loose he would have gone for some other big dog and got himself seriously injured. But he would have fought to the death, he’d never give in.

I would take him with me on the taxi. When the whistle blew for a cab from the Dudley, he’d start barking, jump down, run to the back of the car and bite at the exhaust pipe. When smoke used to come out, he would bite at the smoke, and get his face all covered in oily soot, and sneeze and cough. Then he’d run back onto the front seat, and away I’d go. If any luggage came on the front, he’d be clambering all over it, biting it, never stopping barking and growling, no matter how much I shouted and bawled at him he would not stop. When I reached the station and took the luggage off, he would then go quiet as a mouse and not a murmur would come out of him. He went back to my father and died while I was in France in the army. He was about nine when he passed away, near enough the average age for a dog, a great little pal and watchdog.

Spring came, 1932, and I went on the Southdown again. In the first season, once or twice I had to go on the front and drive a charabanc. They were called Charas then. I had the same conductor each time to show me round, a man named Charlie Homewood, one of four brothers, three of whom were on the motor coaches as conductors. The other brother was an antique dealer. All the three conductors were characters. Two, Harold and Dick, were two of the finest touts I have ever known.

In 1932 I think the money had gone up a penny or so an hour. With doing overtime and being asked to go on the rank several times, as well as taking a service bus to London once or twice, I was picking up some good weeks’ wages during the season. I liked this much better than taxi driving, and though only seasonal, I vowed I would go on the opposition coaches next season. When the season ended, I signed on, and was all set for the winter as I had saved a fair amount.

One day I went into the ‘City of York’ and Albert came in with a fellow called Darkie. We all treated one another and started getting merry. Albert was in conversation with an old fellow called Ted Needham, who had a gruff voice – he had been an old costermonger. They were talking about what was going to win that day. You could have 6d each way, or 6d treble or accumulator, 6d up and down two horses. If anything to come, 2/-, or 1/- each way on something else. The lowest stakes taken by the bookies then were 6d. Albert was a good punter. He generally had 1/- up and down, 2 horses, and if to come, 2/- on something else. Sometimes he won, and more often one would win and the other go down.

Now we were getting warmed up in the boozer. There was an old Scots woman who was in our bar. She came from Glasgow, and she invariably started Albert off, when she started ‘I belong to Glasgow’. Her name was Sadie. I never could understand what she was talking about. It sounded like a lot of Italian to me. By this time Albert would be in top speed. ‘When you’re living down in Poverty Street’, he would foghorn out – well, we all were, weren’t we? ‘What’s the use of loving a girl, if the girl don’t love you’ – all wonderful catchy tunes, which you never hear now. By this time we were all well canned, and at 2.30 we would come out, and Albert would stand in the road with his hat over one eye, doing the Al Jolson act. Sadie and old Needham would be doing a knees-up-mother-Brown, and Darkie and I would be singing and whistling. The shoppers would be standing and looking at us, and some bystanders would be clapping and singing. Then along would come a copper, invariably it would be a man called Steve. He never said much, and when Albert saw him he would shout ‘Good old Steve’ – and Sadie and old Needham would pack up and head for home. We all lived nearby, except Darkie. He lived out in Hove. Albert would be taken to Steve, hardly able to stand, and Steve would tell him to “hop it”. We all went, no trouble, no bother, everyone happy, including Steve.

Home – or what was called home. I had a fairly nice room, and I did a lot of my meals myself. I always had a breakfast, as, if you had something to eat first thing you were all set for the day. There was gas downstairs and a gas cooker, same as at Port Hall Rd., but none upstairs, I never could make that out. I went into several houses the same. Perhaps the people who had them built were frightened of gas in the bedrooms.

Miss Scott, the landlady, was very good to me, and always gave me my Sunday dinner. She was over 70, and, like most spinsters, had been let down by a man when she was young. On Friday nights she would always go out to do her shopping and have a little tiddly in the ‘Western’, a pub. She always drunk what was known then as a half quarter of gin. It was not quite a double in measure. She used to have a lot of salt with her meals, and invariably would put salt on any food she gave me. I sometimes had to leave the meal she had given me. I told her very kindly that I did not take salt, and sometimes she would remember. But more often she would forget, and the meal spoilt.

The year went by and I was getting ready to go and apply to the opposition coaches for a job for the summer. I wanted to start at Easter, as I did not want to go taxi-ing again. One day my father came to see me, and said would I take the taxi over, as he had to go to hospital, and he did not want to put a journeyman driver on it. Bang went my hopes for the season. I could not refuse my Dad, as it was a nice car he had, and he knew I would take care of it.

But as things turned out it wasn’t such a bad move after all. My father had been driving a very high-class lady, who had a summer flat in Brunswick Terrace. She was a middle-aged, very nice looking lady, with a lovely smile and such a pleasant way of speaking to you that it made you feel that the aristocrats were such delightful people: that it was all lies that they looked down their noses at the working classes and only tolerated them because somebody had to work and keep their properties, or whatever it was they owned, clean and in order.

The lady still kept her nanny as a companion. She must have been well over 70 at that. She was very crusty and gave orders as though she was the lady and not the servant. I would have liked to have called her just what she was – an ill-mannered, stuck-up, horrible old bitch, who reminded me of that horrible landlady I had.

The lady was a great animal lover, and made a great fuss of Bobbie. She hired my father regularly every morning for various jobs, such as going shopping. All high-class places, like Booths in East Street, Miles the Florists for flowers for her mother’s grave in Hove cemetery, which she visited regularly once a week. Or to the Princess for dinner in the evening, or the Theatre Royal. I got on very well with her, and she always asked how my father was getting on.

My father went to hospital but had no operation, and did no more driving. This was 1933, and he lived until 1946, when he was 76. So whatever it was he went to hospital for, it seems it took a long while if it was this which would finally take him off.

One day the lady asked me if I could take her and the nanny to Tunbridge Wells to a hotel near the Pantiles, kept by some relation of the nanny’s. I was very pleased at the job, as it was lovely driving in the country in those days. I took Bobbie and he was highly delighted. Jumping up and down, barking, looking through the dividing window at the lady inside, his tail stiff as a poker. He looked a picture.

The niece at the hotel was every bit as snooty as her aunt, and when the lady got out, put on airs and graces as though she was the Duchess of Duke Street or something. It beats me why some people, just because they have got a little more than the working class, and are perhaps in a good position, or own or manage some business or hotel, have to put on airs and graces, and silly imitation la-di-da talk, like this woman did to the lady. Trying to put herself in the same class. The lady being who she was, greeted her gracefully, and to me standing there holding the door open, made the other one look just what she was – a silly stuck-up snob.

The lady told the woman that Bobbie and I were to be given dinner and tea as we were stopping until five o’clock. It was a lovely day, and I took Bobbie on to the common nearby. How he enjoyed himself chasing birds and leaves, running up to me, back and forth. It’s the same as everything else, if you treat animals or children properly they will always reply you with happiness, look well, and be pleasant in outlook. An animal ill-treated as some poor creatures are, will be snappy, look miserable, its coat dull and matted, and frightened to go near strangers. Persons ill-treating animals and children as some, or I should say many, still do, should have the animal or child taken away from them.

15. Taxi Driving Bye-Bye

I met another nice girl who was in service in a big boarding house in Lansdowne Place. She was almost the same as the one I knew years ago. Very pleasant and nice to talk to. Pay her whack if we went anywhere. She also wished to get married, as most girls did then. The taxi work was getting very bad again, some days hardly ever moving, especially in the winter, and I was hard put to keep going. I could not see myself able to keep a wife, though she also said she could keep working. But I was too used to being able to go where I liked, have a beer or booze up, and all that would go if I married. So she too packed up and eventually got married. Eventually I met my wife and got married, but I know now I need not have had all those years of lodgings and back room bed-sits, and that I could have kept a wife and home easily if I had got wedded to either of those nice girls. Still, I did not lose by it in the end, as I could not have had a better partner than my dear wife Lottie.

Round about that time I started smoking cigarettes a lot, hardly ever having one out of my mouth. One day, automatically, I put one in my mouth, lit it and immediately started to cough and be sick. Retching and spluttering, my face turned red and I had a terrific headache. It was some minutes before I recovered. Sitting down on the seat, I vowed “That’s the end of them”, and from that day until the present if I have a smoke, I’ll buy a packet of small cigars and have one when I feel like it. I always contend that if I had kept on with the cigarettes I would have been dead within 12 months of that attack. I am not preaching the wrongs and rights of cigarette smoking, but that’s what happened to me, over forty years ago. Like everything, taken moderately it will do you no harm, but abuse it like I did and it will ruin you.

The taxi was now getting very rickety and sometimes jumped out of gear, a sure sign of wear and tear. It was a 30 h.p. sleeve valve Daimler, looked very smart, but was now old-fashioned. It was pressure-fed. On the dash was a little brass pump, which folded down after putting petrol in. You pumped the pump up and down until it started to get hard to pump, pushed it back to the dash. Open the bonnet, flood the carburettor, advance her a bit on the ignition, open the hand throttle a little, wind her up, and away she’d go. A lot of the old taxis, instead of having pressure-feed, had what was known as an auto-vac, the forerunner of your electric pumps today. Others were what was known as gravity-fed: the petrol tank was near the engine, higher than the carburettor, so the fuel ran down, something like the old water fountains.

I started getting pains in my shoulder, right side, the result of getting soaked, and getting underneath the car when a puncture came, and perhaps it pelting down with rain or snow, to put the jack under: then get the spare wheel off the running-board. It weighed one cwt., I should think. Take half an hour to get the wheel off, and another half an hour to get the spare on again, smothered in dirt and grease and soaked through. Then after that’s all done, pull on the road and wait half an hour or so before a fare came along. No wonder I was getting fed up to the teeth with it. If I hadn’t saved up a few quid earlier I don’t know what I would have done.

I had to get another car somewhere, and I was lucky. A nice 24/60 h.p. Sunbeam Landaulette was going cheap. It was an enclosed drive, protection for the driver, modern and fairly good mileage – she did about 14 to the gallon, if not a bit more. So I bought her, sold the Daimler, scrap of course. It was a pleasure to sit in comfort, away from the wind and rain in the Sunbeam. It made a nice taxi.

Dropping a fare one day in Nizells Avenue, opposite St Ann’s Well Gardens, it reminded me of when I was going to school in the early twenties at Connaught Road. I was given quite a nice cricket bat, and in St Ann’s Well other kids and myself got together quite a good little cricket team. We played with a tennis ball, had stumps, and the pitch was an unused pathway. It may seem crude now, but to us then it was like the Oval or Lords. And didn’t we learn to play cricket! When later playing with a real cricket ball, on a good pitch, it was easy after the dusty pathway full of holes and bumps. That’s the way to learn to play cricket, not knowing where the ball is going to pitch. One of the boys playing with us turned out to be a great cricketer-footballer. He played for Sussex at cricket, and for Fulham at football. His name was Jim Hammond. His Dad was groundsman at a big college not far away, called Wick College, and he used to talk to my father quite a lot about racing, as they both liked a bet.

The summer of 1935 came, and I forget now, but I think it was either 25 years of King George’s reign, or 30 or 40 years marriage. Anyway on the lawns where I worked, they started putting up platforms, and little stands, bunting, flags etc., making as though a carnival was coming. Me and old Titch got a bit concerned when some workmen started to put barriers up near the cab rank. I knew the foreman and I asked him what they were for. He said it was only to stop any parking along there whilst the parades were on, and that they wouldn’t touch the taxi rank anyway.

The parades of ex-service men and women, regular soldiers, sailors, airmen etc, with lots of bands, kept coming and going. The lawns were full up of people parading up and down, and me and old Titch never stopped running, as fast as we got into the rank, so we would get off again with another fare. This lasted all the week, and really, outside of the first Christmas I had with the taxi, it was the busiest time I ever had.

When it was all over, the work dropped dead. It was awful. For days, me and Titch would have only two or three fares apiece, hardly paying expenses. I had saved quite a lot from the parade week, and with my other savings was in no danger, but I could not keep drawing money out to keep going, and told my father. He said, see what happens at Christmas. So I kept on, occasionally seeing Albert and Darkie, but no more jolly-ups in the boozers.

Things were very bad all round, worse than ever. I think there must have been 6 or 7 thousand on the Labour Exchange. To make matters worse, it was one of those depressing autumns, the dull, misty, no sun type. I wanted to pack up and go on the dole, as I was still working for my father, but going past there one day and seeing the queue I said to myself, no thanks, I’ll keep struggling. And when Christmas came I did fairly well and could pay all excess insurance, Road Fund, etc.- and had rather a good time.

On fine days, some afternoons a rather big, heavy-set man used to come down and sit on the long corporation seat with me. He was not unlike Wallace Beery to look at, and had the same jovial way of laughing and talking. He was the chef at the Riviera, and he’d come down to get a bit of fresh air, as he said it was very hot in the kitchen. Being rather stout I suppose he felt the heat. He was a great conversationalist, telling me of his times in the various big hotels in London and elsewhere whilst he was learning the art of cooking. Of the great chefs he was under, of their different dispositions, some very excited, others who hardly spoke only when they had to; of the different dishes ordered, and the great parties, meetings and functions they had to cater for. Of the different Royalties, Lords, Dukes and Earls who were patrons, and their whims and ways: how they wanted this and that done. I could listen to him for hours. I didn’t think there was so much to do in a hotel until he told me.

Whilst in the Riviera, he took some course or other so he could join the Royal Automobile Club as a patrol man. He said he was fed up with the kitchen. He duly passed his exams and joined the R.A.C. I used to see him on patrol near the Dyke when I was coach driving. When war broke out, he went to France with the B.E.F. same as myself. I saw him once, but never heard of him again. He got killed in the invasion of France, along with hundreds of others.

Now I think, was it worth it? – what I and hundreds more went through on that beach. And afterwards those who went to the Middle East, El Alamein, Burma, the Second Front. Never to come back again, or else to come back maimed for life. This world now, with two great nations suspicious of one another, both filled to capacity with atomic weapons, with their spies and espionage. The lesson will never be taught. The last war was to end all wars and a short while after that – Korea, and after that, Vietnam. What did all those men get killed for?

The taxi work was now awful. I told my father I had had enough of it, and wanted to go coach driving. He agreed, so I sold the Sunbeam. £9, I think, for scrap again, and went on a well-known Brighton coach firm, ‘Unique’, where life was much more comfortable – and where I really was very happy and had some wonderful times until the war started and I joined up. Ah well, that’s another story.

16. Postscript

Childhood: Then and Now

A lot has been said and written of the harsh and cruel way the children were treated and brought up in my time. As far as I can remember, the parents of working class children fed and clothed them as best as it was humanly possible to do so on the lousy, meagre wages that were paid to them then. I suppose the average wage would be about £2.15.0. to £3.5.0. A skilled craftsman would get from £3.10.0 to £4.10.0, perhaps £5, which was considered big money then. When invited to any of my mates’ homes, either to play ludo, games or to tea, the rooms, kitchen, parlour and scullery would be spotless, the ornaments shining on the mantelpiece and even the copper, as nearly all homes had one, would be clean and bright, clear of ashes. And invariably I would be given my tea, sometimes toast and dripping with the jelly on top, that to me was manna from heaven, only having coffee shop grub to eat. And always bread and jam or home-made delicious cake. The parents might have been poor, but their kids had good plain wholesome food, and though perhaps patched and darned, their clothes were always clean and tidy. I thought how lucky those kids were to have such nice homes to live in, which to me seemed like palaces, after the lodgings, or some of them, I had lived in. My father always saw to it that I was well clothed, good boots and shoes, first-class underwear and socks and always a nice Sunday suit. And that I had always my meals whatever I wanted at the particular coffee shop where I was eating. I could have what I fancied but coffee shop grub is not the same as home-cooked, be it ever so humble.

Of course there were cases of cruelty, neglect, ill health and hungry children in isolated cases, but not so rampant as is made out. I remember the nurse coming round and looking at all the class’s heads, to see if anybody had nits, and the poor unfortunates that had, taken out to a little room, his or her head de-loused with special stuff, and perhaps the kid coming back and crying with shame, and some of the snootier kids cringing away in case they caught anything as the child passed them. Some of the kids didn’t wear boots or shoes in the summer, but mostly through their own choice, as I did when I’d meet them on fine sunny days. If forced not to wear anything, it was only so their very poor parents could save on the boot leather for the rainy and winter days ahead.

Medical treatment and doctors and hospitals were not used so much among the poorer classes then as now. For one thing the doctor’s fee, and also a lot of old-fashioned parents preferred to use their own remedies, some of which were very good, and others deadly and dangerous. I remember a kid in our class with an ear infection, the wax used to run out of his ear and down the side of his face. Every day that kid came in and every day the same thing, his ear would be running. Now that could not happen today. For one thing the master or mistress would see to it that parents took him to the doctor’s. Another thing parents today do not have to pay any doctor or hospital fees and can get the best of treatment no matter what circumstances they are in.*

In another case at school, I saw a little girl walking as though her knees were locked together as she walked. This was rickets, hardly ever seen now, if at all. It was caused by lack of nourishment, and I think it affected the bones. Of course such cases were more frequent then, but only because of the poorness of the parents. A more frequent malady amongst children of those times was of those who could not hold their water. Invariably in nearly every classroom would be a boy or girl with his or her hand up, wanting to leave the room, and if by chance the hand was not seen, the child would clutch itself below, twisting and turning and calling out Miss or Sir, until told to leave the room, and if you happened to be sitting next, or near to the poor child when it came back you could smell the sour, bitter smell of the urine, because there was always a certain amount of stale leakage in the child’s clothes.

Some of these cases, I won’t say all, were caused by the neglect of the parents, in not taking the child to the doctor’s. In cases of colds, coughs, etc., most parents then had their own particular remedies such as onion broth, winter green and camphorated oil for chest, covered over with brown paper. Red flannel as a chest protector and if the old man had rheumatism, he’d rub himself with “Hartshorn and Oil”, a very strong horse liniment-like stuff, and when it was being used, caused your eyes to smart, it was that strong. I haven’t heard of that stuff now for over 40 years, “Harts Thorn and Oil”. What contributed to illness, disease, sickness etc. in the summer and hot weather in those days were flies. There were swarms of them: in nearly every street or road there would be a pile of horse manure and hundreds of flies around it, and if disturbed would rise up like a cloud. The most horrible of them being the bluebottle, who after being on filth etc. would perhaps settle on some meat or food or other and lay its eggs. The dustbins and rubbish wasn’t collected so frequently as now and some of the hotels and restaurants weren’t too particular either, the way the refuse and rubbish was dumped out the back. This dirt and filth all attracted flies and insects by the scores, also the many horses that were about caused most of the trouble with the excrement.

I can remember Old Wally the Drover, who always wore clogs, winter and summer, saying to a tram driver who had to stop to let the cattle go by,”The drat flies are bigger than ever this year, and they’re biting like sharks”. He had driven that herd from Lewes Market to the Slaughter House just off North Road. He was about the last drover in Brighton, and when the cattle went by train and road, then droving was finished. Old Wally ended his days by standing in the forecourt of Brighton Station doing any kind of errands wanted. He lived to a great age and died just before the war.

When motors came into being properly then the flies went, or most of them. The horrible things then had either to be trapped by fly papers, which looked horrible when covered by them, or by a wire ball-like thing, which they crawled into, but couldn’t get out of, and were promptly thrown in a bucket of water to drown. The shops then did not have the protection they have now for food and goods. The fishmongers had no covers over the fish such as nets, and it would be all open, same as at the butchers, dairies, grocers, bakers, etc. – and the flies, after being on filth would be settling on all the goods. The hygiene today and the motor car have gone a long way to doing away with the diseases and sicknesses of those times.

As for cruelty, children were brought up differently then, and would not dare answer their parents back, or be saucy to school masters or mistresses, or they’d soon get a cuff round the earhole, or two of the best with the cane. The only case of real sadistic cruelty I knew of was to a ragamuffin kid who sometimes joined our little gang. His father was a real hard case, always in trouble with the police, being boozed, etc. He, the boy, answered his old man back, or something, some minor misdemeanour, and the father, in a fit of rage, took his belt off and gave the kid a real larrupping, so severe that the kid showed us the weal marks on his buttocks, great red weals with the skin all puffed up. That certainly was cruelty, and one of the worst cases I ever knew. That kid was tough. I often saw him for years after – he went into the building trade and when things were bad in the winter, was a barrow boy. I don’t know if he is still alive.

That was just an isolated case, the same as poor little Maria Colwell. No, I don’t think parents were any more cruel then than they are now, with young mothers abandoning newly born children on steps and such, as is read about frequently nowadays. We might have been poor, but we knew how to behave. We weren’t kept by a Welfare State – we had to go out and get it somehow.