Jimmy White ~ Engineer Turned Baker

From the book Yesterday’s Warminster, by Danny Howell, published in 1987:

Jimmy White (1864-1945) had come to Warminster in 1886, to take an appointment as an engineer at John Wallis Titt’s ironworks. When an opportunity arose to purchase the bakery business at East Street, he resigned from his engineer’s job and ran the bakehouse until his retirement in 1936.

Mr. and Mrs. White lived at the residence known as Brockenhurst at East Street, and someone who has good reason to remember the couple’s retirement is Eddie Ball’s niece, Gwen Ball, now Mrs. Howell. She said “When they retired from their business they gave me a keepsake which I still have to this day. At that time I was fourteen and living just around the corner from Jimmy White’s, at the Furlong. When I arrived home from school, my mother would say to me ‘Do you want to go up to Mr. White’s to get a one-penny fat cake?’ They were big and the best I’ve ever tasted. Jimmy White did all his baking in the shop and it used to smell lovely. He also sold groceries and sweets and for a farthing you could get a tube of coconut sweet tobacco. Jimmy was a little short man, with a bald head, and he and his wife were ever so kind to everyone, especially children. They were the kindest people you ever could meet’.

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