Alfred Gotts commentary continued:
I was still living at home when I joined the army. I passed in the services as an army shoemaker, I was given a discharge as a satisfactory shoemaker. And I was used to army boots you see, they were heavy boots that time, and I became a bit of an expert in repairing ‘em. ‘Cos they got used to having them big scotch tips on the heels, like they do on the horses. And it was good practice for me. But when I came home out of the services I started more or less working for myself.
When I first got pay for working I got the pay from the organist of a night, I used to get about two shillings a day that time, about five nights a week. Well, I had ten shillings stock money, didn’t I? Well I could use that and earn a few more shillings after I done the organist, on Saturday and Sunday, all like that, we wasn’t fussy which days we went to work. It was all to earn money. And my brothers never use to treat me any different once I was earning.
I had household pets in the garden you know, like the pigeons was our favourite. Pigeons was nearly everybody’s favourite. And chickens, anything like that, rabbits – tame ones, we had some lovely pets.
After I left school they didn’t get much church out of me, I retired from that. You see most boys joined the Boys Brigade, then from there they went into the Scouts and then other activities. I was never interested in politics. I’d vote, but that was it.
‘Course later life came along: bioscope, and pictures, that interested the boys on a Saturday and Sunday more than anything. We’d go to the pictures on a Saturday or Sunday, there was hundreds of little places you could go for a penny or a ha’penny to see the pictures.
Sometimes we’d go up a show. You see, ‘cos the theatres when I was a boy wasn’t very dear. You could go in for threepence – the music hall here, it was only threepence to get in. In the gallery. It was fourpence in the pit, and some places were tuppence.
We didn’t go into central London much, but some went up the West End music halls, up to the Alhambra or up there. That was an outing. Oh I’ve been in Lyon’s Corner House up Hyde Park there. Trafalgar Square and all that area. Hyde Park was their favourite – right to a place called the Lyons Corner House they called it. It wasn’t a long way, only two or three coppers to ride there. People didn’t like wasting money years ago. ‘Course you could ride about a mile and a half for a penny, easy. Mile and a half, two mile up from Aldgate to Burdett Road.
c/o British Library C707/366/1-8(p138-139) Click here for the beginning