Hackney Memories E-Book

Alan Wilson

• Herausgeber: The History Press
• Kategorie: Sachliteratur, Reportagen, Biografien
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 243

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2004

Beschreibung

The 1930s were a troubled era, and England was a land of contrasts. This work gives a vivid impression of growing up in a working-class family in the East End at this time. It should be of interest to anyone who remembers the interwar years, and anyone interested in London's social history.

Leseprobe

HACKNEY

Memories

A L A N WI L S O N

In memory of my parents Thomas Arthur Wilson and Louisa Harriet Wilson (née Pruden) who gave me a happy childhood

First published in 2004

The History Press

The Mill, Brimscombe Port

Stroud, Gloucestershire, GL5 2QG

www.thehistorypress.co.uk

This ebook edition first published in 2013

All rights reserved

© Alan D. Wilson, 2004, 2013

The right of Alan D. Wilson to be identified as the Author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights, and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

EPUBISBN 978-0-7509-5420-4

Original typesetting by The History Press

CONTENTS

Acknowledgements

1 A Silver-Plated Spoon

2 Home – 12 Darnley Road

3 Hackney

4 Victoria Park

5 Saturday & Sunday

6 Morning Lane School

7 The Question of My Estate

8 Silver Jubilee

9 Summer Holidays

10 Death of a King

11 Orchard School

12 Empire

13 A New Church Hall

14 The Streets of Hackney

15 Submission of a King

16 The Crowning of a King

17 My Fortune is Told

18 Home

19 An Uneasy Spring

20 Talk of War

21 Munich

22 Crystal Night

23 The Ides of March

24 Parmiter’s School

25 Omens

26 Summer Camp

27 War!

Epilogue

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I am indebted to Tom Lee of the Paddle Steamer Picture Gallery for his enthusiastic help and supply of pictures of paddle steamers and motor vessels and allowing them to be used, and to St Luke’s Church, Hackney, for giving me the photograph of the Church Hall.

I would like to thank the following organisations for permission to publish illustrations from their collections and for the help of their staff: the Hackney Archives Department of the Borough of Hackney, David Mander, Borough Archivist and Peter Kent; the London Metropolitan Archives (LMA) and Rhys Griffith, Principal Archivist; the Trustees of the Imperial War Museum (IWM); the estate of C.R.W. Nevington/Bridgeman Art Library and the Radio Times Magazine; the Hulton-Getty Picture Library

I also wish to acknowledge the skills and guidance of Simon Fletcher and Matthew Brown of Sutton Publishing.

Lastly, I thank my wife, Margaret Wilson, for her punctilious reading of the manuscript, perceptive comments and constant support, not to mention her general patience. I also thank Mary Barker for reading the manuscript so carefully. I remember, too, my mother who over the long years assiduously kept and guarded many of the photographs and memorabilia reproduced in this book.

Alan Wilson

Liphook

March 2004

1A Silver-Plated Spoon

I was born in 1928, when peace was at its zenith and the British Empire splashed red across the globe; never had it reached a greater extent and never had it appeared more powerful. It was an empire on which the sun never set, although James Joyce said that this was because God did not trust the English. But, sceptics apart, the sun of Empire shone brightly on all, and the sky seemed cloudless. Alas, before long that sun was to set and there would follow a sinister twilight of troubled peace and the darkness of prolonged war. The Empire and its greatness were soon to go, but we did not know that then, for none but the wise knew that the glittering imperial robe was but the shroud of a corpse. The majority, whether they stood in frock-coats or rags, were still proud of the Empire.

English cricket was at its height. Jack Hobbs still batted gracefully at the Oval, while the mighty Hammond effortlessly stroked the ball high over cover. Larwood, Tate and J.C. White skittled their opponents out, and in the fullness of their pride English bowlers had no need of body-line. Bradman’s time had yet to come. English tennis, too, was about to revive with the young Perry although, for the moment, the four French musketeers ruled the tennis world while Big Bill Tilden glowered across the Atlantic from his fastness in Forest Hills. Glasses still jingled in the speakeasies of America and Al Capone ruled openly over his gangster empire in the Loop. The aged Hindenburg reigned over a quiescent Germany and, for the moment, Hitler was in decline. Coolidge presided serenely in the White House; the financial collapse of Wall Street, and its portentous consequences, were yet to come. Peace was at its height.

I was born into this world on the first day of spring, 21 March. I had been due on 1 April, an expectation that was a source of considerable worry to my mother – indeed, it appears that this was her principal concern. But, fortunately for her peace of mind, I was in a hurry to meet the world – don’t ask me why – and was born ten days early, thus avoiding the mistake of arriving on a day dedicated to the follies of mankind. I much prefer my spring day.

My birthplace was in the East End of London at the home of my mother’s parents, 13 Beale Place, just off the Roman Road; a lively, living place. As I grew up I became very familiar with this house where the greater family gathered. Each week without fail all the married daughters and their husbands paid a visit to Nan and Grandad. This was before the universal motor car and the weekend outing. But the greater family died with the war, as did the house. No. 13 does not exist now, nor does the rest of Beale Place for that matter. All the houses were blown to pieces by Adolf Hitler. There is not a brick left, nor, indeed, so much as a mark on the London street map, for the area was redeveloped after the war. Beale Place was literally wiped off the map, and with it part of me.

My mother was a slight, talkative woman with a quicksilver tongue. I am sure she would have made a fine advocate given the chance and as a child I could never tell a lie without being exposed by her forensic skills. I found it simpler to tell the truth. Mother was born a minute baby – Nan said she could have been put in a pint pot – and the doctor did not expect her to live. In this the doctor was mistaken by some eighty-seven years. Father always thought that Mother was a scatterbrain. Maybe she was, but she had a native, if untrained, intelligence and a quick wit. She was difficult to defeat in argument as she had a patented, perverse and persistent logic of her own.

My father, like myself, was a large man, over 6 foot tall; in this he took after his father. He was sensitive, hot-tempered, but intensely loyal. To this day I remember his hands were large but gentle and his fingers were like bananas. But they were skilful: he was a good amateur cabinet-maker.

For the first two years of my life I lived in Cadogan Terrace, on the second floor of a flat that overlooked Victoria Park. The park played an important part in my early life and is my first memory. I was lying in a large old-fashioned pram pushed by my mother along a pavement that skirted the park when my eyes took in a view of a strange flickering world of grass and trees; it was like a scene from an old silent film. I was looking through a passing fence of chestnut palings. Its oddity impressed itself on my memory and remains with me to this day. I was less than one year old.

Later I remember toddling in the landlord’s cabbage patch at the rear of the house and looking in wonderment at steam trains that rumbled by on the railway track at the end of the garden, puffing out white clouds interlaced with streamers of black soot. For this was the age of steam, and steam never fails to excite both young and old.

But strange are the ways of memory. For although I remember these inconsequential events, I do not have the slightest recollection of my tryst with death during the Christmas of 1928. I was just nine months old and had contracted pneumonia. And I have no recall at all of my fight for life, nor of the closeness of the struggle, for there were no antibiotics then. Strange that one remembers trivialities while forgetting the dramas of life.

My mother was certain that I had picked up the infection at a baby show. If this is so, then I still have a permanent reminder of that event and its dramatic sequel. I came second, a result that rankled with my mother – she had expectations that were altogether too great. Most of us are the also-rans of life – that is, if you look on life as a race. But there was a consolation prize for this failure. I had not been born with a silver spoon in my mouth – nothing so uncomfortable – but I acquired a silver spoon that day, for that was the second prize. It had a teddy bear handle and I have treasured it to this day. But I have to confess that it was only silver on the surface. Below was nickel and copper.

In readiness for a baby competition. I came second and won the silver-plated spoon shown. I also caught pneumonia and nearly died. (Author’s collection)

My struggle with pneumonia took the traditional course in those days before antibiotics. My temperature rose to 104ºF and stayed there for days. Our doctor warned my parents that a ‘crisis’ would come when nature would make the decision: life or death. The crisis did come and my temperature plummeted. In an hour it was below normal, but my heartbeat dropped with it. My mother called the doctor. ‘Should I give him brandy, doctor?’ ‘I have something better, Mrs Wilson. Strychnine.’It worked and I lived to see my first Christmas.

There was another crisis – a financial one. My parents had exhausted their meagre savings. There was little left, but the doctor still continued to call, unasked for. Unlike today, doctors were assiduous with their house calls. Was it because before the National Health Service there was an extra fee for call-out? Whatever the reason, the frequent house calls of the doctor became a cause of great concern to my parents. Their savings, so slowly accumulated over the long years, had gone and there was a stark choice between doctor’s fees and the necessities of life – food and rent.

My parents were desperate to do their best for me. Not to have the doctor when he was needed lay on their conscience. Granny Wilson was asked to give of her sound practical wisdom. She was certain and blunt. ‘He doesn’t need the doctor any more. The doctor’s only coming for the money.’ Mother was embarrassed, for the doctor had saved my life. ‘I’ll do it,’ said Granny, and so she did. Today, telling a doctor not to call seems very strange.

I have no other memories of those early days except the mantelpiece. It was just an ordinary mantelpiece of dark oak, but in my infant mind it was the symbol of home. The fire in the hearth lies deep in the human psyche, deeper, by far, I think, than the television set. And it was to be the first lost thing of my life. For the time was to come when my parents decided that the flat was too small and we would have to leave. We went to 12 Darnley Road. I remember standing in the living room of the new home staring desolately at a white marble mantelpiece. In my distress I cried out: ‘I want my old mantelpiece! I want my old mantelpiece!’ And burst into bitter tears.

2 Home – 12 Darnley Road

We left Cadogan Terrace to live in a tree-lined street, Darnley Road, which lies just off busy Mare Street, the artery of Hackney. It was a quiet road where the wealthy and the poor, workers and professionals, Jew and Gentile, lived side by side.

Our home was 12 Darnley Road, a stately Victorian four-storey terraced house with a flight of balustraded stone steps that led to an elevated ground floor. Inside the main entrance was an old-fashioned, spacious entrance hall, well lit by the coloured light that filtered through the stained-glass windows of the front door. On this floor were the sitting-room, dining-room and study. Above were two more floors with bedrooms. The bathroom, an afterthought, was on a mezzanine floor. Of course, we did not live in this part of the house; no, this was the domain of the middle-class Hubbles; we lived down in the basement or, as Father insisted on saying, semi-basement. He said this with some pride, making the best of a bad job, ever the dreamer. In truth, as Mother, ever the realist, said, it was a sunless place.

My first memories of the house are of my mother struggling up the ‘airy’ (basement area) steps with a small collapsible pushchair, and me. I did not like that pushchair, for it was much less comfortable than my full-sized baby pram. Nevertheless, it was better than walking. Sadly the day came when my mother left the pushchair behind in the passageway. I looked around puzzled. ‘You can walk today,’ she told me. This I did not like; indeed I felt hurt and deprived. I am inclined physically to be indolent and no doubt this characteristic showed up at a very early stage in life.

In our basement home the kitchen was my favourite room; it was full of interest. It was not one of those fitted kitchens of today’s gleaming white or bogus oak. It was the ultimate in an unfitted kitchen. The kitchen had a dresser, a deal table, an easywork made from a piece of office furniture, and a motley collection of chairs. There was an old gas stove, with a maze of exposed pipes, and a butler sink with brass taps. Everything happened in the kitchen. There we ate, there we washed up, there I had my weekly bath and there my mother did the weekly wash. The weekly wash was done with equipment that is now only to be found in museums: the zinc washtub, the wooden dolly, the scrubbing board and large mangle with wooden rollers. Life was hard work in those days.

There was an old-fashioned fireplace: one of those huge Victorian grates, a tall black basket with half a dozen cast-iron bars. Such things have long been swept away by the dictates of fashion and comfort. Even in the thirties they were becoming unfashionable and a sure sign of being poor and behind the times. People were just beginning to aspire to fashionable things, and tiled fireplaces were becoming popular for those who could afford them. Nowadays the Victorian grates are once more appreciated and much sought-after.

This fireplace fascinated me. Often it was dead and filled with screwed-up newspaper to catch the soot that fell down the chimney. But just once in a while, on a cold winter’s day, the fire was lit and then it would consume coals like Satan’s furnace and glow like a great basket of red and black coals and white ash. A fierce heat radiated from this pyre that seared face and arms; it also sucked in cold streams of air from every crack and crevice, so one was at once roasted and chilled. But if open fires were not as comfortable as central heating, they were infinitely more interesting than flat radiators.

Mother told me to look for faces in the fire. And sure enough they were there when I gazed at the red-hot coals and the yellow flames that writhed between them. I saw the fiery demons of the fire come and go, grotesque peoples of the flames, their faces of red and black breathing out yellow smoke, ever-changing in shape and size, transient creatures that existed for the moment before crumbling in the flames. This fiery dance of the ephemerals fascinated me for hours. So it was that I loved those winter days, in that time before computers when children had to use their imagination and find their own amusements.

Bath night in Darnley Road in the 1930s was an arduous affair, but not lacking in interest. It was not a routine daily occurrence but an exciting, and for me a dreaded, weekly event. My bath was taken in the kitchen before a red roaring fire. It was a family affair. First, Father placed a great zinc bath on the floor and dismay crept in my heart. In vain I protested, ‘Dad! I’ve kept clean this week!’ He and Mother laughed. ‘I don’t need a bath!’ But my pleas were ignored. Kettles and saucepans were filled to the brim with water and put on the gas stove. Soon clouds of steam filled the kitchen. The moment of truth was at hand.

Father emptied the kettles and pans into the zinc bath. Steam billowed, only to be quenched by buckets of cold water. Meanwhile, Mother undressed me and my morale plummeted. I stood naked, scorched on one side by the fire and frozen on the other by cold draughts. Then came the dreaded plunge into the water. Gradually I relaxed but not for long, for soon mother was lathering me all over with a hard bar of Sunlight soap. It was not pleasant, as her hands were rough. ‘Mum, you’re hurting! Let Dad do it!’ So Dad would take over with his large but gentle big hands. They were almost too gentle for they sensitised my skin and raised goose pimples.

A posed photograph, 1931, a torture that I was put through on occasions. (Author’s collection)

Covered with soap, I waited for the worst moment. It came with the pouring of a jug of water over my head. It was either too hot or too cold. Water flooded my face, into my eyes and ears. I held my breath and clenched my teeth. Then I had to stand up, face the heat and the chill, and be dried. Dad said, with a broad smile, ‘That wasn’t too bad, son, was it?’ I didn’t agree. Bath night was not my favourite night. As I dressed, mother and father undertook the tedious process of emptying the bath with bucket and saucepan. The zinc bath would be taken out and hung on an airy wall.

When I was older Mrs Hubble offered the use of her bathroom on the mezzanine floor. There was an old-fashioned enamelled bath that rested on four ornamental legs and above it a ferocious geyser of glowing brass that consumed pennies and ejected scalding hot water. Geyser was an apt description. On ignition, there was a terrifying rocket-like whoosh followed by a moment of fear as boiling water gushed forth in turbulent flow. Such were the thrills of taking baths in those days!

One bath night I formed a cunning plan and persuaded my parents to let me bath myself. ‘I’m getting a big boy now!’ My idea was to mimic bathing without the unpleasant experience of immersion. So I splashed away with one hand in the bath water for some minutes. But my performance was not convincing. My parents burst in and caught me in my deception. I was surprised when they laughed and did not get angry. I have always found it very difficult to get away with anything.

When I look back from the perspective of the early twenty-first century, I realise that our household was remarkably free of gadgets. For the poor, and many of the rich, household technology was little different from Victorian days. There was no washing machine. Washing was done in a tub and clothes cleaned with bar soap on a scrubbing board. There was no electric iron. The irons my mother used were heavy cast-iron objects; they are prized antiques today. They were heated by the coal fire in winter or on the gas stove in summer. There was no vacuum cleaner, although middle-class Mrs Hubble upstairs had an ancient Hoover. The broom and duster, supplemented by a battered Ewbank carpet-sweeper, had to suffice for cleaning. The air was always dusty. But I liked dust and watched its haphazard flight in our dark rooms where it sparkled in slivers of light.

There was no refrigerator, so our food was stored outside in the cool airy, in a meat safe. The only kitchen appliance was the mincer. We did not have a telephone. What on earth would you do with a telephone when your relations were so near?

Needless to say, we did not have a motor car, nor did we ever think of having one. We could not afford one. We did not need one. Our weekend outings were not to the seaside but to my grandparents who lived within easy walking distance. That was fun enough. Rarely did we stray beyond the confines of our family area. Even the Hubbles did not have a car and they could afford one. The truth is that in those days cars were not ingrained in the culture as they are today. They were not an essential element of transport. One of the Hubble sons had one, but it was a sporty affair for fun and not utility.

The electric bell I remember with affection, for it had an antediluvian charm. It was powered by an old-fashioned wet battery, a Leclanché cell, a square 2-pint jar containing a liquid in which was immersed a zinc and carbon rod. Unlike the modern dry battery, you could see how it worked. It also lasted for ever.

There was a home-made wireless of my father’s. I say wireless as ‘radio’ seems a too-sophisticated term to apply to that contraption; if anything it reminded me of a miniature version of Osterley Park. It had two towers, one at each end of a broad façade. The towers were my father’s idea of concealing the lead accumulators. Inside the main housing were four stout thermionic valves, their filaments glowing red from the power provided by the accumulators. A high-tension battery (HT) of 140 volts activated the receiver and amplifier. A separate horn loudspeaker completed the assemblage. The thermionic valve and the horn speaker have passed into technological limbo, as have the HT battery and wet accumulators – for this we must be thankful. Today we buy wonderful miniaturised sets or sophisticated hi-fis that work like a dream, but somehow they lack the simple fun of those early receivers.

For years this pioneering construction of my father’s hung around 12 Darnley Road waiting for him to do something about it. I would constantly ask the irritating questions: ’Why doesn’t it work, Daddy?’ or ‘Why don’t you get it to work, Daddy?’ The problem was that the HT batteries were expensive, consisting of eighty or so cells linked in series, and the lead accumulators that fed the greedy thermionic valves ran down rapidly. These heavy and messy objects filled with sulphuric acid had to be carted to an electrical shop for recharging once a week. Not surprisingly, our wireless set normally operated with exhausted batteries and accumulators.

My father, like others, tried to prolong the life of the HT batteries by baking them in the oven. In the end he gave up, for it was too costly on his wage to keep the wireless going. I never remember hearing any programmes on my father’s wireless set. We had to wait until 1937, when the all-mains Philco radio arrived, before we could listen to broadcasts regularly. But that is to miss the point; in those days the magic of wireless and the reception of the faint invisible signals was enough; its content mattered not.

For home entertainment there was a piano, rarely played, and a portable wind-up gramophone. The gramophone was more important than the wireless. It was to the modern compact disc player what a chariot is to the Rolls-Royce. In place of the glistening CD and delicate laser beam were the old 78rpm shellac records that shattered if dropped, and brutal steel needles. There was no electronic amplifier, only a ‘sound box’ and a trumpet loudspeaker. The machine was tedious to use for it had to be wound up for every record and each record only lasted 3 minutes. Nevertheless I enjoyed the gramophone and listened endlessly to the strains of ‘Colonel Bogey’, ‘In a Monastery Garden’ and ‘In a Persian Market’. What has happened to those popular tunes today? Another favourite of mine was ‘Nigger Minstrels’, presided over by a Mr Interlocutor, who was constantly harassed by one Mr Bones who played the bones.

Otherwise I played with my toys. None was plastic. There were tin soldiers: redcoats with muskets, Zulus with assegais and plumed officers prancing on horses, but there were no tanks. There was a Meccano set of grey metal which, although it gave much pleasure, was far too small for my grandiose plan to build a model of the Tower Bridge. Then there was a large brass Magic Lantern – those were the days before 35mm slide projectors – converted from oil to electricity and projecting a slide of the forlorn wreckage of the R101. But nearest to my heart was a large clockwork Hornby train set, alas to be lost to me forever with the advent of war.

Mr Hubble, our landlord and owner of the house, was a middle-class friend of father’s; one of the business and professional classes who still lived in Hackney. He was a solidly built man with the grave, self-assured face of the wholesale grocer he was. To me as a child, the Hubbles were an awesome, cultured family, denizens of another world. We were divided from them by a flight of linoleum-clad stairs that led upward from our basement passageway to a green baize door, the entrance to that other world. Here the cold linoleum gave way to warm carpeting. I was forbidden to climb those stairs. The urbane world above was not for me. But once I did venture up them and penetrated into Mr Hubble’s lush study lined with books: a whole room given over to learning. I took to it instantly and aspired to it.

That was 12 Darnley Road, also known as Tudor House, a happy place and the place of my childhood. Darnley Road is no more, at least the side on which no. 12 stood is no more since a land mine destroyed it. It now forms part of the playground of a school. Strangely, the other side of Darnley Road is unchanged, much as it was all those years ago. When I face that way, with my back to the playground, I can imagine that nothing has changed. Then I turn round. I see the asphalt plain that is on the other side, my side, the obliterated side of Darnley Road, and see that everything has changed. When I lay in my childhood bed staring at the ceiling I imagined many things, but I never dreamt that one day it would be turned into asphalt and children would play games where Mr Hubble had his study.

3 Hackney

The pre-war Hackney was not the Hackney of today. Old landmarks have been demolished and it lies under the shadows of the all-conquering tower blocks. But not all has changed. Hackney station and the railway viaduct over Mare Street are still to be seen, much as they were in the latter half of the nineteenth century.

Nearby are the remnants of an even older Hackney: the old Regency Town Hall, now a bank, and behind it the isolated tower of St Augustine’s. The tower is all that remains of a medieval foundation. Further back is the ‘new’ parish church of St John’s that replaced the old church in the eighteenth century. By the railway bridge is a dip in the road that marks the site of the old village pond, for Hackney was once a village. This pond or ‘mere’ is the ‘mere’ in Mare Street. The pond was formed by a ford of the long-lost Hackney Brook which once crossed Mare Street.

Further along Mare Street is the Hackney Empire, that cockney baroque fantasy with its bulbous towers owing something to Byzantium – one of the last Edwardian music halls in London. These towers of bygone ages – the Edwardian, the Regency and the Gothic – are the survivors of the Hackney that was. But although they survive, they no longer dominate.