Gotts Blog Introduction

The Gotts Surname Family History Posted on by

This blog is part of the GOTTS Surname Family History, which contains: News and incidental articles in this Newsblog Main Gotts website with 360 pages describing where the surname occurs, Gotts Hall of Fame, War, Crime, etc (Click on ‘Gotts … Continue reading →

Edwardian life in London – 56

The Gotts Surname Family History Posted on by

31 November 2023

Food in World War 1

See, want a threepenn’orth of giblets or fish, and they give you all the pieces of fish for a couple of coppers that time, to feed all the family. I’ve see one firm used to sell only English meat. No frozen meat. They were shipping butchers. And we used to buy a rump bone off ‘em after they’d cut the steaks off and for the hotels and restaurants. And they used to charge you threepence. It was like a three cornered bone, like what they call the whole leg, hopping feet, and there’s be enough meat and suet fat on there to make a beef steak pudding for the whole family for threepence, English meat. Would be all right today, wouldn’t it. Feed a family of about eight for threepence. And then when the bone was chopped up and boiled they had soup a whole basin of soup out of it Mum’d make ‘em.

Mum was learnt, wasn’t she. It comes to you, see. Circumstances make you an expert at things, you see, it was the same as me. I learnt to fiddle as I call it, and go along life like that. You see when I got on I had a lot of friends, boys worked in Billingsgate Market, had a few boxer friends, see, and use to go there and they used to bring home that time -samples from them you see what they give me. And then if I took any repairs from ‘em I’d go down there and take ‘em their footwear and they’d send me back a box of kippers or something like that to take home, or a box of roe. Don’t get those things now. Come in handy they would.

Yeh, if I still wanted to I could still go and find friends there. Oh yes, I was a respected boy. Yeh, they got one friend of mine, he’s managing the car park there now, he was a good boxer was George. George Reeves, he fought most of the best middleweights and welterweights here and I used to spar with him a lot see, and we were great friends. Well, what they call a wheel within a wheel, you help one another. I done a trick there one holiday Monday, I went there, in the war. And I think I took ‘em a couple of pairs of shoes, or boots what I’d mended for ‘em, and there was my friend.

He worked for a firm, only had one box of fish come up. And I said to him ‘Is that all the fish that’s come up today Ted?’ He says yes. Well in this box of fish was two big cod and in the middle a small cod. I suppose the small one weighed about six to eight pound But the two big ones filled this here box up. So an old Jewish man came up and he says to me: “Do you think they’ll sell that fish?” I said, “You won’t buy that.” “He says why not?” “I says you wouldn’t pay five pound for that box of fish would you?” “Why not?” he says. So I says “I’ll speak to the friend of mine for you.” So I went and told this to Teddy. His name was Allen. I said, “Ted, there’s this old boy there, he’s willing to give a fiver for them couple of fish. Don’t want the little one. He says that’s for me.” So, he says “Right, good.” See, so he paid this money for them two fish, and he paid the porterage, they had a shilling or so porterage. And he had two big long bags, like net baskets as they call ‘em, you’ve seen the little next baskets what they make plaited and he had two long ones, he had one cod in each and he had a taxi waiting out the back to take ‘em away.

And I spoke to him. I said “how do you make it pay?” ‘Course I- you know- tapping him. So he said “Well, I’ve got a club. I fry that fish in big slices of cod, and I cut ‘em up and I charge ‘em half a crown a piece. See?” From the small slices he’d get half a crown, the big slices he’d get a dollar see. Cut – it’d be cut in half. Fried cod in this club he was serving in that club, Of course that time it was good money, So I thought to myself, right, he’s earning a few pound out of that then. Yeh, they was nice big long cod you know. And he was charging half a crown a small piece of fish. ‘Course now they charge five bob for a piece like that. And that’s why I told Teddy, I said “Ted, he’s told me he gets half a crown a piece in the club.” He was in the gambling club see, of a night time and they’d want a bit of fried fish, half a crown or and they got no limit to their money those gamblers and that’s how it goes. Well, anyhow I had my cod for nothing, they were satisfied and they could have got a fiver for the fish, the two porters. I think the guv – they had to give the guvnor thirty-five bob for that fish with the shilling for porterage. So they had the rest of the fiver between ‘em. And I had a fish for nothing, that cod, lovely big cod about six to eight pound easy, it was. I know it was a nice one. Enough food for all of us over the weekend, you know. Oh yeh. Yes, I said, you won’t give five pound for that fish and he says I will. ‘Course there was no one else had fish, it was like a holiday Monday, in the war. Food was short in the first world war.

This is the end of Alfred’s tales of life in London. I hope you have enjoyed it. The last sheet has some details of the people in his family:

Mr Gotts
Father c 1850 Carman
Mother: Cigarmaker Barmaid P part time hop picking
Siblings:
1 Mark died young
2 Joe Selling rabbits (hawker?) council worker
3 Fred Army service Bus driver, Mechanic, Own garage
4 Ted 1914-18 Skilled railway supervisor
5 Sid Carman, Docker
6 Mr Gotts
7 Sister Tailoress unmarried
8 Sister Tailoress Spouse warehouseman
9 Sister Tailoress Spouse Driver
Wife No work after marriage
Children;
Son Army, Police, taxi driver
Daughter ? Spouse ?

c/o British Library C707/366/1-8 P161-163) Click here for the beginning

Ian Gotts of Kings Lynn

The Gotts Surname Family History Posted on by

I’m sorry to hear that Ian Gotts of Lowestoft, then Aberdeen then Kings Lynn has passed away. Ian did lots of family history and has contributed much to my Gotts website, either as content or as a reviewer of what I have written, for which I thank him very much. He was my third cousin once removed, both of us in tree #040.

This is Ian on the left when I visited him in 2012

There are some email links for him on the website which I will change when I upload the next version. Please address any queries to me, Ian Gotts of St Albans.

Edwardian life in London – 55

The Gotts Surname Family History Posted on by

Alfred Gotts commentary continued:

And then ’course just after the ’14 war motor started coming in hand. A big firm I worked for they had a Foden lorry with solid tyres, steam lorry, they were the first big heavy motors and then they had a little motor come along, about a ton van. And now it’s all motors. And everything will come to a stoppage soon, you’ll see. With the motors. Well it’s coming to a stoppage now I think. Every now and then there’s a bridge breaks down, you read in the paper, there’s thousands of motors stranded, blocked up. They can’t get out and they can’t get in. It’s a funny thing this motor business. You didn’t know such a thing as congestion.

Oh, the streets were dirty, but they were swept regular, weren’t they. The Borough Councils had workmen that time, was honest to be a workman. Then they swept a street, Now you walk along a street today, I’ve seen in my simple way weeds growing which a Borough Council man wouldn’t allow. He’s pull his fingers out and pull that weed out, but not today, they leave ‘em. They don’t know they’re there, they don’t even see ‘em. Even when I come by my little garden there, on the front of our window, I see any dandelion or anything growing – that’s starting with the grass now, fresh grass, I pull it straight out. Them little daisies and one thing and another, but if everybody had the same idea, these weeds wouldn’t be about, thistles and that all over the place.

The road sweepers at that time were Borough workers, and they used to work in gangs, they’d be about four or five men with a gang, go up one street and down another, but they were swept. But this morning the man came here, he works as a porter, his wages say about thirty pound a week, easy. And just five minutes after he’s gone the paper and that is all what he’s put out in the main road. Instead of picking it up and putting in the dustbin, he’s put it out into the main road and it’s blew back again.

When I was a boy they used to come twice a week, the dustmen did, with the old horse and carts. There was two dustmen, see, and two carts, one they filled up and took away and while he was away they was filling the other one up. See, and then when he come back he drove away and he brought the other one back. Single horses mostly. They had them all over the place here in the City. Each district had its own dustmen you see.

They used to be late deliveries with the mail, it was all day long. Early in the morning and late at night, they used to be delivering letters in the dark. Yeh, of a night time have the postmen come round. In the dark, they don’t do that now. You see everybody’s become what I call gangsters so they don’t go out with the mail late at night. Yeh, the postmen used to have an oil lamp round the waist. They never had them electric batteries. Just an ordinary oil lamp like the policemen did. A policeman had oil lamp and all. Used to turn it off from the top, there was a domed top and he used to turn it off, that was ordinary oil. See then, the night duty policemen had a different coat on to the day duty. That there was their night duty coat over the oil, to protect it. They used to use them old coats for that purpose. Yes, that was only ordinary oil they used, oil lamps. Of course when the electric batteries came along they was well advanced.
The postmen had oil lamps as well.

c/o British Library C707/366/1-8(p159-160) Click here for the beginning

Edwardian life in London – 54

The Gotts Surname Family History Posted on by

Alfred Gotts commentary continued: 

I knew an old man, he made brewers dray wheels. Only the wheels. All the brewers drays were made by a big firm here in the East End and they were named Bonlacks, and they used to give him this hub, the block, this here hub to start with, and these here pieces of spokes, wood for the spokes, and the ferrules. And he used to cut them out, them wheels, fit them in the hubs, then he’d put the ferrules on, and then they were sent away to the blacksmith, they’d put ‘em on a big steel plate like on the ground it is, and they put the tyre on, hot the tyre, then put it on the wood and they’d burn it on. That’s how they used to do it. Now them wheels last a hundred years or more, easy.

And that old man, most of them old heavy drays what you don’t see now, them old heavy wheels he made ‘em. And he was a foreigner. He was proper old country you know, in Russia where he come from. Him – he made those wheels for Mann and Crossmanns, they was local brewers where he mostly made the old wheels for. He’d start off cutting the hole in the boss, you know, and cut the spokes out, I forget how many spokes went round a wheel, and he’d fit them in there, and then he’d put the ferrules on then they used to go away to be tyred. Now that man worked day and night for that for years, all on his own. There was no one they reckoned could compete with him. He was an expert on that.

Mann and Crossmans used to employ a lot of people. You see they had to have a man like that making these wheels because they had so many vehicles being used. They used to have people making barrels but they don’t now, they’re all metal barrels, aren’t they? Labour is changing. You see all those horse keepers what they had – during the war when I was a warden – a bomb dropped here, on Cambridge Road here near Whitechapel Station, killed a lot of their horses and smashed all the stables up, and I saw a lot of them horses, I helped tie up a few of ‘em – that was out in the street, you know, run helter skelter – when that bomb dropped in Cambridge Road on them stables. Yeh, well you see they had farriers working there regular, blacksmiths, they had harness makers, employed everything.

They were all skilled men, you know, they didn’t have amateurs to look after ‘em. If you went to get a job that time you had to show that you knew what you was doing before they employed you. Most of the jobs years ago as far as I can remember a lot was by recommendation. Say I worked there at the brewery, I’d say to the foreman, “I’ve got a friend of mine who could do with a job.” “Well, fetch him along” they’d say, see. “And if he works like you do or if you’re – like -then we’ll be satisfied.” See, as long as a man pulled his weight he was kept, you see most manual workers, when they got a job, were given a job on what they was physically able to do, you know what I mean, if it was mostly pulling your body about, and if you wasn’t fit for it you couldn’t get employment. You see it’s no use asking a weak man to carry a sack of coals, is it? That was a very hard job. A sack of coals was two hundredweight. Well, when you got a sack of coal on your back you’ve got to walk say fifty yards with it, upstairs and all that business which we had to, a weak man couldn’t take that job on so you had no competition from him, did you. See, so them fit men like even in the docks if a man couldn’t pull his weight and they had to work hard that time. Now it’s all done with the container, they put the hooks on it and away it goes. A lot of jobs is not done now.

I’ve seen my dad like even – I used to get up five in the morning on average see. Monday to Saturday, that’s six days isn’t it. Twelve hours a day was his day’s work, before you could have earned a penny overtime. You had to do twelve hours work before you could come on the overtime basis. Six o’clock you start in the morning, six o’clock you started on overtime. But some people didn’t get overtime, it all went in with their day’s work. I was doing work with my dad – I’d been doing the journey work three times a week, that’s every other day a journey that would bring you home say one and two o’clock in the morning. Never got no overtime for that. You just took it and that a matter of course. See, ‘til the unions start coming along, just previous to the war the unions got started coming along, they had a union here in the East End, was called the Carman’s Trade Union. And then that went to the National Union of Vehicle Workers. It’s like it is now the General Transport Workers now. Well I remember some of them early starters that run that union – just ordinary men with a little gift of the gab you see, but it’s everywhere you went after a certain time, everywhere you went you had to be a union man, otherwise you wouldn’t be employed. And the dockers who worked hand in glove with the transport workers, so they respected one another you see. And that’s how it went on, got a strong footing.

Say you was in a small firm and you wasn’t in a union they want to get up nasty any time they wouldn’t let you in to be served at the docks or anything like that. See, that could cause a strike that could. The employers would tell you to join the union, see, after time. At first they took no notice but after a time I was working where men didn’t want to join a union. Well no notice was taken of ‘em. But if dockers say no union men won’t be served, if you ain’t got a ticket you can’t come here. They don’t want no blacklegs coming in here you see, no scabs they used to call ‘em.

Dad had to be didn’t he. He was compelled and they all was compelled to be. You had to be. I become chairman of the Car Man’s union as a young man, and then secretary I worked with, he was a car man as well.

And I used to have a meeting every week in a local pub see, where our branch was, and when anything went wrong you knew who Tom, Dick & Harry was in the firm. I was chairman and the secretary between us we knew everybody that worked at the firm, say there were three or four hundred people working there at that time, we knew ‘em all. Some come up the branch, others didn’t. But some you never took much notice of as long as they paid their fees.

Some people were interested in the union activities and some weren’t. To me, when they first started it was a general booze-up. It was always in a pub where they held the branch you see. And they’d have a room in the pub for their meetings. There was complaints you could put before the secretary or so and so.

A minimum wage was coming along just about the ’14 war and that knocked everything a bit sky high. But of course after the war the firms started weeding out those they wanted to weed out and everything become level again.

54 c/o British Library C707/366/1-8(p156-159) Click here for the beginning

Click here for the next chapter

Gotts deaths in recent years

The Gotts Surname Family History Posted on by

I was updating my records of Gottses from the GRO website and thought I would show the numbers as a chart. Up to 2019 the number of Gottses dying was about 10-12 a year. You can see the effect of Covid in 2020 and 2021. Mind you, the ages of those people was notable: of the 35 deaths in 2020 and 2021, 17 were born in the 1930’s and 5 in the 1920’s! The oldest was a lady who either just reached her 100th birthday or just fell short of it. Good for them!

Molly Iris Gotts Landgirl – #22

The Gotts Surname Family History Posted on by

The World War II Women’s Land Army Index Cards, 1939-1948 have recently been added to Ancestry. The only Gotts is Molly Iris Gotts, living at Sunnyside, Lower Street Southrepps in Norfolk. The card shows she enrolled in 1940 (age 24 b 1914), was married whilst in service and resigned 3 11 1944. She is the daughter of Stephen Henry Gotts and Alice Jane Clements.

Prior to this we can see in the 1939 National Register Molly was living at The Lodge Cromer Road, as the cook for Fred W & Jessie Hampshire, where she is listed as born in 1917 which is the date her birth was registered. For some reason her Land Army card shows her as three years older as 24 when she joined up, instead of her real age which was 21!

Edwardian life in London – 53

The Gotts Surname Family History Posted on by

Alfred Gotts commentary continued:

My sisters were all dressmakers, there’s only one left of them, there’s two gone and there’s one left – she lives over at Morden in Surrey. They were all dressmakers, ‘course that was the East End trade that time. Bootmaking and dressmaking and upholstery and all them trades were here in the East End you see.

One sister, she married a lorry driver, the youngest was a lorry driver. And one, he worked for Kierley and Tonges the wholesale grocers, he was a war policeman during the war. They are the international tea stores, and he was a warehouseman for them. ‘Cos they had vast warehouses here at Whitechapel, back of Whitechapel Station you can see it. That’s all been pulled down now though. Of course when I was there during the war that was an area I was in as air raid warden. My area there. Whitechapel – from one to four posts I belonged to as air raid warden. My area there. Four post was Petticoat Lane, all that area, this side down Commercial Street and then Hanbury Street and Whitechapel Road right to the corner of Cambridge Road there was the old area, you see, and I knew more or less everybody on that area. Because you learnt to go round every day you know people by sight and you knew by their number. You could tell – funny things what you learnt during the war, to keep your eyes open, to be observant and little things like you knew where the fire hydrant was in the dark, say a strange fireman come along he’d want to know where it was wouldn’t he. And you could tell him. Here you are, there it is.

My third sister didn’t marry.

My boy he went into the Army. And then he went in the police, and then he become a taxi driver. And the girl, she married a chap but never had any children, but the boy’s got four children, and ten great grandchildren we got.

We never had a lot of furniture as a boy, never had a lot. I can never remember, only seeing a bed in the room, couple of chairs, and that’s all. Table and no elaborate furniture. You see today a person’s got a fridge, a wireless, a television. They’ve got electric light. They’ve got heaters to heat the fire instead of having coal or coke like we had. If we never had coal and coke we went and found old leather and old boots to burn for firing, see that was our fuel, it didn’t cost nothing. Firewood you had collected it. It’s easier to get firewood today than it was when I was a boy, because nobody wants the firewood today, so there’s no demand for it, so you have plenty. You go up the main road you see the boxes laying there from the fruit along Whitechapel Road there, well when I was young you’d have to pay a few coppers for each box. Well now you get ‘em given to you. Unless we went up the market like Leadenhall market and took ‘em away from the shopkeepers there, they were only glad to clear ‘em out for you.

Carpets, today everybody’s got carpets, that time they never had it, they had oilcloth didn’t they. They’d have a bit of carpet it was true. They’d buy it second-hand as a rule. But mats, they’d have a mat at the door or inside a couple of mats in the passage, some people never had.

You could buy furniture second-hand always. And them strong Windsor chairs they called them, you know, last you a lifetime. I’ve got chairs in my house they must be getting on for a hundred years old. But you can stand on ‘em and work on ‘em and do anything you like on ‘em. But what I’m coming to is this: they didn’t cost about four and six each that time. You could buy four Windsor chairs, I think they used to work out about two and ninepence or three and six each the most. And you painted ‘em up how you like.

You’d buy ‘em from these here furniture shops they used to have ‘em in the window they would. They was very cheap at that, Windsor chairs. And that’s the finest chair ever a household can have. I’ll explain why. If you go on a kitchen chair, if you want to stand on it  you’re liable to break your leg or your back. But you stand on a Windsor chair you’re as solid as a rock and on a ladder. I’ve got one, all the children when they got married I told ‘em no standing on these cane bottom chairs. I’ve given ‘em all a chair I have. Painted ‘em up silver and white and all lord knows what. If you want to fit a light up there, stand on the chair if you haven’t got steps. But don’t go on ‘em other chairs. I’ve got little chairs sawn down from Windsor chairs – short ones about a foot high. Now you get on that. Even now, I get on there I know when I’m on it it’s solid and it’s not going to let me down.

There was good quality furniture. But things is different prices today, the prices is outstanding today. When you take a chair like that for instance, look they want about six bob, five or six bob for a chair like that. Well, when you reckon like that you could get four for less than a pound couldn’t you. Windsor chairs would outlast a thousand of them. Some of them old-fashioned workers that made chairs they was proper mechanics. But what they did earn, they only earned about thirty bob a week if they earnt that did they. They were proper cabinet makers. Good old cabinets they were Used to see ’em making these stool and in the fields with the old knives with the old knives what they used. Crude-looking tools, but they were experts with it.

Click here for the next chapter 

c/o British Library C707/366/1-8(p153-156) Click here for the beginning

Edwardian life in London – 52

The Gotts Surname Family History Posted on by

Alfred Gotts commentary continued:

I’d say they were good old days, well, people were happy as far as I was concerned. They wasn’t never had that fear of war on them. You see the 1914 was came along and that caused a lot of hardship. Tom, Dick & Harry got slaughtered, mown down for nothing which should never had happened. Before that people were generally hard up, you see, there was no two ways about it. It’s a different thing, you see, when I was a young man a man had a decent job, he wouldn’t let his wife go to work. Now they got a decent job or not they go to work. See when a man got married he kept his wife. But she had more children then probably, she couldn’t have worked even if she’d wanted to, but some did a little bit of what I call work. But the average person today all go out to work.

Not that so my mother never went to work after her first couple of children. I never let my wife go to work. All the time, as soon as I got married to her, and of course it was her second husband. Oh no, I always thought I was the breadwinner and I entitled to keep her. And I did.

I found a rent book in a flat somewhere that’s about a flat we had at the bottom of Jamaica Street. Dunston Houses. My mother-in-law lived in Cressey Houses and I lived in Dunstan House. We paid a lot of money, about eight shillings a week for that flat. I think it’s about four pound odd now, four pound ten a week. Yes, well you see it was all different. I always considered when I got married I wouldn’t let my wife to go work and I kept her. I said ‘ you’ve got enough work to do without going to work.’ My father never said whether he felt like that or not did he. But he never gave up hardly any money did he. What could he give up if he earnt say twenty five shillings a week they give up a pound he though he was giving up a fortune. Whereas I went to work you see, I earnt a few bob.

My brothers all went away at separate times. They didn’t stop together, it was only me and my next brother – there were three of us left, Joe, the eldest one, he got married. He got eight children, I think he had. And he got married. He had a greengrocery business, and he started selling rabbits, and he sold rabbits for years, and then the ’14 war came along and then that dwindled away. Then he went to work – he finished up on the Borough Council working. He was more or less a gambler, he done all his money in betting. Yeh, there’s lots of people even today adoing the same. They go into the betting shops you see, they’re encourage to bet today. When I was a young man or even up ‘til a few years ago, you had to be afraid to put a bet on because you didn’t know if the policeman’s going to pinch you -for- lock you up for and charge you.

My next brother he’s in Wales now, he’s alive, he drove Haig about, Douglas Haig. He was a Staff Sergeant. ‘Course when he joined the Army you see, in the 1914 war there wasn’t hardly any cars about. And there was a motor driver, a Rolls driver who could drive a powerful car, like him, he was apprenticed at Straker and Squires, the big people. And he was a proper mechanic. Beside being a motor driver he knew why a car worked, you understand. That was the benefit of them people then.

He was in the Army, in two days he was in France. Then as I say, he became Haig’s Staff Sergeant. When he came out of the army he went to Wales, his governor was a Colonel in the Army, apart from being a colliery owner, see, he was a colliery owner, and he had a little cottage there, being a chauffeur to him and instead of him going back to him you see he started a car business of his own. Repairs and all that, a garage, and he took a partner and they worked there at Porthcawl for years ‘til he retired.

Ted, my next brother, he was on the railway, he was up at Manchester, he was sent to Manchester Industrial School for playing truant here in the East End at that time. He was a supervisor. He was also one of these mouthpieces for the union up there. He used to travel backwards and forwards from Manchester to Euston, see, and every time I’ve been with him at Euston to see him off all the drivers and all the staff of the railways saluted him as they knew him. He was a union representative for them.

Sid was my next brother, of course he was a carman and he finished up working in the docks when the depression came. When they started to get rid of the horses he went to work in the docks. He was a character as well. Everybody knew him in the East End. See he was a strong union man for the dock people. Like the dock workers, when he come out on strike they got nothing, now they come out they get thousands of pounds now. When he retired they got just a couple of shillings a week I think they got. These people now get hand outs and pensions you see.

So I’m the last of five boys in the family, the youngest son. And in the fourteen war the whole five of us was in the service. We joined up, and Sid, that one next to me I just mentioned, he done seven years in the Army. What did I say: he was a special reservist, he done his training, then he came home, he was on a system at that time, you could join, do so many months in the army then you go on what they call the special reserve. And he was doing is training when the ’14 war broke out, ‘course he didn’t come back, they kept him. Yeh, and he was a special reservist. He was a corporal in the Royal Fusiliers. Full corporal.

Click here for the next chapter 

c/o British Library C707/366/1-8(p153-156) Click here for the beginning

Edwardian life in London – 51

The Gotts Surname Family History Posted on by

Alfred Gotts commentary continued:

You were frightened of the police, because that time when I was a boy if you was to be spiteful or cut up rough they used to draw their stick and club you. They weren’t afraid to club you then. They knocked hell out of these tough boys with the stick because that’s what made them all afraid, they got a crack on the head. Oh that was nasty. I saw here a man – every time he saw a policeman it was like a red rag to a bull, he would want to go and insult him. Well, he went up to this young policeman and he was going to have a fight with him, see. And before you could look round the policeman got him on the floor. Bang, bang, bang. He was a champion boxer of police. And this fellow, I never forget his face, was cut from here right down here. But he clobbered him. He cured him of being a tough boy against policemen. That was them terrors. Oh they used to look after theirself the police did years ago, ‘cos they were knocked and kicked about by the drunkards you see. And some of them chaps were real tough boys, them policemen. Not like they are today, they’re not tough, they’re only little frail boys, these was – some of ‘em weighed seventeen and eighteen stone, and was athletes as well as being policemen. Oh, I’ve seen some wonderful athletes in the East End here. Used to be boxing boys and that I used to go with. In fact that club up there – well that night school was the only club around here, which is where they had a athletic club. And then the police has their own athletic club, and they used to come up there to the LCC and like do training up there see. And when you belonged to that them athletic clubs there was a lot of time it was the only gymnasium what you could use.

My parents weren’t bothered where I was when I was a young man, my mum was only interested as long as you brought her wages in. She was never bothered where I went at night. My sisters, well they were different, girls was indoors, weren’t they. They didn’t go out or they went to church.

Them girls, they were all dressmakers, like three of ‘em, and they all had their jobs during the week to help Mum when they grew up. One done washing, regular. One done the front room and upstairs and the bedrooms, another one done the stairs, and Lord knows what, they all had their regular jobs and they kept that on ‘til they got married theirselves. If they’d wanted to go to out we would have taken them. See we had two variety places here, one was the Mile End Empire, opposite Stepney Green. And then there was the Forresters Music Hall in Cambridge Road. They used to have a lot of dramas there, and that was a cheaper place, it was tuppence, up in the Paragon it was only threepence. Then, when of course the bioscope came along, the pictures came along, everywhere was picture palaces. You could go where you liked see, see what picture was showing. Charlie Chaplin, when he first started you see. When I was young he was only a young man as well.

People were excited by films when they first came out. I saw a film in Whitechapel Road, then only paid a penny to get in there and opposite Whitechapel church and like the train came in, so all the people got up and ran out, they thought it was coming on top of ‘em. See, the train came along ch-ch-ch-ch like, they thought the train was coming into this here fairly big room where you all sat side by side. Yeh, all the people got up and run out because they thought the train was coming into the room to ‘em. Yeh, never seen anything like that. Oh yes, they were good old times.

c/o British Library C707/366/1-8(p147-149) Click here for the beginning

Click here for the next chapter