Humble Beginnings ( Part 1)

My mother, Agnes, was born on 26th August 1896 in Peabody Buildings, Holborn. She was the daughter of Harry and Ellen. My grandparents.

My father, Edward, was born on 21st December 1896 in St Johns Street not far from Smithfield Market. He was the son of Henry and Annie, also my grandparents.

Mum and Dad were married in July 1921, both aged 24, in the Parish church of St Marks in Clerkenwell.

I was born in January 1927 in, Clerkenwell, in the borough of Finsbury. They called me Eric. I was their only child.

In 1927, only very, very, well off people owned property. In our area it was either the Duke of Devonshire or the Church Commissioners. Everyone else rented rooms where they could. Mum and Dad were better off than some but far from wealthy, so they rented.

We lived above a Silversmith’s workshop in Skinner Street. Wally Stevens was the silversmith and our landlord. We rented four rooms. He was a kind man and I knew him as Uncle Wol.

Mum was a “burnisher”. Burnishing is the art of making thing shine. She did this by polishing gold and silver with other metals called “steels” and jewellers rouge. She burnished for Uncle Wol. Amongst other things, Uncle Wol made silver tea sets from sheets of pure silver. He made a set for Queen Mary, wife of King George V. My mum burnished it. She was very proud of that.

Uncle Wols workshop was a fascinating place for a young boy to explore. There were vats of acid, heavy machinery, pulleys and ropes. At the end of each day I would watch as he swept the workshop floor carefully and then placed the sawdust into a sieve to catch any tiny pieces of silver dust or shavings. He and his wife Violet (Aunty Vi) were wealthy people. They owned the building that we lived in and a house in Wembley. They were also the only people I knew that owned a car.

Dad was a City Of London Policeman. He had to live within a specified distance from the City boundary. After a few years we moved south of the river to Avondale Square, just off the Old Kent Road. We weren’t there long. I was a “chesty” child and had bouts of bronchitis. The doctor told mum and dad it was because of the “bad air” in South London and suggested we move back north of the river. Dad, of course, had to find somewhere close to the City boundary and we moved to Union Square, Islington. We didn’t have much to move and we didn’t have a car. So we took the bus with our worldly possessions from Avondale Square to Union Square. Me, Mum, Dad and Billy our cat, who we stuck in a cardboard box.

The whole area of Islington was owned by the Church commissioners. Most houses in Union Square consisted of a semi basement (ground floor), then two further floors. Each house could hold up to six families. Each family having two rooms. There was a small cellar below street level but this was used to store the coal that lit our fires. There was no bathroom and only one toilet that we all shared.

Because Dad was a Policeman he managed to get some kind of “preferential treatment”. We shared the whole of 31 Union Square with just one other family. Mr and Mrs Bates.

We had no electricity; all lighting was by gas light. The heating was by open coal fires. Which meant that only one room was ever warm at any one time. Our bedrooms were at the very top of the house. In winter I would leave the warm room on the ground floor and climb five flights of stairs in the freezing cold and enter an even colder bedroom. The windows were ill fitting and sometimes there was more ice on the inside of the windows than there was on the outside. We also had a lot of fog in London. Thick heavy fog that seemed to stay around forever. Some days it was so thick that when I opened the front door I couldn’t see the street outside, which was only a few feet away. Because the windows didn’t shut properly the fog would get inside the house as well. I hated it. Especially with my bad chest. The Clean Air Act passed by parliament some years later was one of the best things that ever happened to London.

When you opened our front door from the street, there was a long passageway leading to the scullery at the back of the house. Off the passageway there were doors leading to the front room and the back room. There was also a door that took you outside. There was no garden as such. Just a small yard. The scullery had a tap and a sink in it. In the corner was a large coal fired boiler which gave us hot water. Mum did her hand washing in the scullery and had a big hand wringer with a massive wheel on it to turn the wooden rollers. Fridays were “bath nights”. Dad would bring in the tin bath from the yard outside and place it in front of the fire. Mum would go first, then Dad, then me. All using the same water. The bath was screened by towels hanging from a clothes line.

Life for me as a young boy in the 1930’s was carefree. Every day was an adventure. We would play football or cricket in the street and never see a car.

Dad was now a Police Sergeant and had a good, regular income. I never really wanted for anything. Mum was the strict one and could give a mighty wallop. But she was always fair and I knew she loved me.

I was a big lad and never got picked on at school. I was what my Mum called a “street rake”. Meaning “street wise” today.

There was no television so we went to the cinema a lot. Mum and Dad were great lovers of the cinema and we went twice a week. For us, Monday and Friday nights were cinema nights. Mondays we went to the Empire in Islington Green. We always sat in the same seats in the same row at the front of the circle. Fridays we went to the Blue Hall to see two films plus the Pathe News. In the interval between the two films there would be a variety act or a big band. I saw Billy Cotton there once.

I also went with my mates to Saturday Cinema for kids. We called it Saturday Morning Pictures. It was great. Cinema especially for us. These cinemas were usually referred to as “flea pits” because a lot of the kids in there would have nits, or worse, and the place was warm because there were so many of us in there. It was a breeding ground for all sorts of crawly things!

Every summer, me and Mum would go to Newquay in Cornwall for three weeks. First week was just me and Mum and then Dad would join us for the last two. This type of thing was unheard of in our area. But Dad being a Policeman and having a fair wage coming in every week meant we could afford this luxury. It was also because Mum and Dad wanted to get me out of the smog of London for a few weeks because of my bad chest. Mum would make me take big gulps of fresh air into my lungs as soon as we arrived in Cornwall. I loved Cornwall, it holds some special memories for me.

I was a bright child. In 1938 I went to a grammar school. This meant I left a lot of my old friends behind. I was the only boy in the street that had to wear a school uniform. I was also the only kid that had homework.

If I thought my life changed in 1938, boy was I in for a surprise in 1939!