The edited transcript of a tape-recorded conversation Danny Howell made with Albert Elloway, at Medlicott House, Warminster, on 4th May 1988. First published in Remember Warminster Volume Two, compiled by Danny Howell, published by Bedeguar Books in October 1994.
“My name is Albert David Elloway. I was born on 19th May 1907. I shall be 81 in a fortnight’s time. I was born at Warminster Common, at Lower Bread Street. The cottage I was born in used to belong to Newtown School or the Chapel, I’m not sure which, and it was right on the corner. It’s still there but the school has gone. The school has been demolished and houses built on the site.”
“When I was about 18 months old, a babe in arms, my family left Lower Bread Street and moved to 37a Chapel Street. Actually, it was a lane off Chapel Street, called Trowese or Shovese Lane. Some people called it Trowbridge Lane. It wasn’t signposted and don’t ask me where the name Trowbridge Lane comes from. Us locals knew it as Trowese Lane.”
“Trowese Lane connected Chapel Street with the allotments at the top. We lived in one of two houses at the top of the lane. The lane petered out at the allotments, about 20 yards past the houses. Those two houses are still there. I’ll tell you who used to have them – Ted Gooch. He lives up Portway now.”
“I lived at Trowese Lane with my family until I was 14 or 15. The owner of the cottages when we lived there was Oliver Cundick, the baker. When we moved out, Bert Turner, I think his name was Bert, moved into there. He was a relation of Cundick’s. We moved from Trowbridge Lane to Lyme Avenue in the early 1920s, about 1923. In fact, I helped to build the houses at Lyme Avenue. That was one of the first jobs I worked on.”
“My father was always known as Frank but his real name was Rowland Frank Elloway. He was a local man and when I was born he worked for John Wallis Titt at Woodcock. He was just an ordinary labourer. He worked out of town most of the time for John Wallis Titt, on wells and windmills. My dad worked under old Harry Price at Titt’s, and there was Cecil Curtis’ uncle. Cecil’s uncle was known as ‘Weary Willie’ for some reason but I don’t know why they used to call him that. He was a big six footer and he was a hard working man. His name must have been William Curtis. There was a song called He’s A Weary Willie and that was written by a Warminster man called John Neat. Mr Neat also wrote She’s A Lassie From Lancashire.”
“My grandfather, that’s dad’s father, Rowland Elloway, was a tailor and worked for Foreman’s in Warminster when they used to make all the huntsmen’s clothes.”
“Father was my build exactly. I’m the same as him. He wasn’t very tall, he was about my height and I’m 5ft 4 and a half inches. He used to wear a size five shoe. I know he’s been dead all these years but it still chokes me because he was such a lovable man. He really was. I liked my dad, he was a good chap. He was a wonderful father to me.”
“Father had a will of his own. I turns after him. See, I will not be dictated to by anybody, no matter who they are. Dad was just the same. Dad was a patriotic twerp. He put his age on to go off to the Boer War and he put his age back to go off to the First World War. That’s how he was. He went out to France in 1914. He was on the retreat from Mons and all that. He got took prisoner and was made to work down the coalmines.”
“With dad away in the First World War I didn’t see much of him between 1914 and 1918. He came home once. He came home in 1915. That’s how my sister came to be born. Well, you know what it was like. Families didn’t bother about birth control in those days. He was on leave from France. My sister was born in 1916. I can remember when dad went back to France. He left my mother a piled up plate just before he was going back. Mother said ‘You might want that one day.’ He said ‘I can’t tackle no more.’ He went back to the war and got took prisoner. As I said just now he got took down the mines.”
“I’ve got a razor that was given to my dad in 1915 by the Red Cross. It was in a Red Cross parcel he had. He took that razor through France, Belgium, Holland and up into Germany. Dad gave me a German cut-throat razor. That made my face like a butcher’s shop when I tried to use it. I’ll never forget that. It was one Sunday. He said ‘You’ll never get used to that.’ Yet my next brother Francis could use a cut-throat for shaving alright. I couldn’t. So, father gave me that Gillette he was given during the War. I’ve still got it in my bathroom now.”
“They gave an announcement out on the wireless, I think this was before television came in; they wanted people to let them know about sentimental things. That razor was sentimental to me, by God yes, I wouldn’t lose him for anything. Moss was the man on the wireless. My sister wrote and told him about it and it was mentioned on the wireless. People in Warminster said to me ‘We heard your name on the wireless, you got a razor or something.’
“When he came back from the First World War father was a true blue Conservative, and he went with Albert Pearce, who was the gardener at Sambourne House, down to the Conservative Club at Silver Street and got drunk. He used to like his drop of beer. All the blokes did in those days. The men used to live for drinking. What other pleasures did they have? Poor devils. All they had was their work and drinking. Dad came home drunk from the Conservative Club. My mother said to him ‘Oh, is that what I’ve got to put up with now, Frank?’ He said ‘No, I’ve had my fling and now I’ll have no more beer.’ He didn’t have no more beer after that. He stood by his word. He changed, and in more ways than one.”
“On his return from the First World War dad turned from being a true blue to being a staunch socialist. That was because of the unemployment and no work. Dad became a very strong Labour man. He joined the Labour Party, got on the committee and everything. Before the First World War he voted Conservative like his employer John Wallis Titt but not after.”
“Now, here’s some news for you. My father, Benny Withey, Harry Curtis, and Frank Curtis from along the Furlong, formed a union. They formed the first union in Warminster. That was in 1919. They had to pay sixpence a week and they held their meetings in the Chapel School at the Common. They got the union up off their own steam. Back in those days you got victimised for anything like that. Oh yes, my dad was victimised, but he could take it. He wasn’t afraid of anybody, even though he was only a little bloke. I’ve still got his membership card. The motto on the bottom of the card reads ‘Reason, not force.’ To tell you the truth I don’t believe in strikes. You don’t get anything out of strikes. It’s the ordinary workers that suffer by striking, not the bosses. Mind, without unions the working classes would have been sunk.”
“My family didn’t start going to church until after the First World War. Father changed that way too. He didn’t become a religious maniac or anything like that but on his return he recognised that there was a god. From then on we went as a family to church on Sundays and we children started to go to Sunday School. We never did anything of these things before the First World War.”
“My mother was a Warminster person. She came from down the Common. I don’t know how my parents came to meet but they both lived at the Common. I think mother’s name before she married was Price.”
“Mother had to work hard. During the First World War, with dad away, she took in bundles of washing for the Army at sixpence a bundle. She used to wash about 50 bundles of washing a week. There used to be a man who lived down the Marsh, Lower Marsh Road, and he had a horse and cart. I can’t remember his name. He had a flat cart with sides round and he used to collect the bags of clean washing off people and take it back to the camp at Sutton Veny. Mother had a hard day of it on Mondays. I got to give it to my mother, she was spotlessly clean with the washing and she’d sew on the buttons and mend the clothes. She didn’t have to do that, she only had to wash and iron the clothes. She darned the socks if they wanted darning. She sewed buttons on the shirts before they went back. That’s what kept us going during the War.”
“My mother was also on doing gloves for Jefferies. That was one of my jobs, to thread all the bloody needles before I went to school. I did it one day and another of us kids did it another. We took it in turns. There was a rota. There was a pin cushion to stick them in so that they would all be threaded up for mother. She did the gloving at home.”
“The cottage we had at Trowbridge Lane was modern. There were three bedrooms and we had a sitting room and a kitchen. Out the back was a wash house place. You had a boiler up one end and in the corner was your loo. You threw your water down in a pit, which was common for years and years. Most people’s toilet facilities were grim. You dug a hole and placed a bit of wood over to sit on. Grandfather Price used to have to empty it. They used to empty the lavatories late at night, about 12 o’clock, in the dark so no one could see what you were up to, but of course everyone was doing the same thing. My grandfather, what he used to do, was to take all the ashes from the fire into the garden, make a hole in them, and put the toilet waste in there. Then he’d mix the ash in with it. It went solid in a barrel, and in the spring it was taken and put up on the allotments. It was used as manure for the vegetables. We had bits of newspaper for toilet paper. We cut up newspaper and hung it on a bit of string.”
“We had running water but we had to go outside for it. There was one tap for the two houses. At one time there was just a few taps to serve all the Common. There was one on the crossroads, in the wall, at Bread Street and Chapel Street. There was another one in the wall down Marsh Street. And there was one at the bottom of South Street, near where the roundabout is now, near the Mission School. Plus one outside the Globe.”
“Mother did her washing in the copper on Mondays. We kids had to clear the buckets up and fill the big thing, the old boiler, with water for her. And we used to have to put a couple of buckets spare. We used to get a lot of wood. We had to saw it up and keep the fire going. We used to go up Bradley Road when the farmers and the woodmen were cutting down the trees for pit props in the First World War. We were allowed to go up and get all the brushwood. We had a stack out the back of the house about 12 foot high, 12 foot long, and about 8 foot wide. All stacked up. Us boys used to go up with the trolleys to Bradley Road and get it. We used to pinch a couple of pit props and put the brushwood over on top of them and bring it down. Johnny Ryall, the farmer and timber merchant, used to catch us. I’ll tell you a nice thing about him. He could have summoned us easy. He could have got us put away for pinching. That was the law, but no, he had his own way of dealing with us. He said we had to carry them pit props down to his house and put them up beside his wall. That’s what we did and we never got a visit from the law. Johnny Ryall told us not to touch any more pit props or else. He caught me two or three times with the pit props but he never ever summoned me.”
“Johnny Ryall had sawmills. And the father of Drummer Holton, Walt Holton, Arth’ Holton, and Chico Holton, had timber carts and stables up Upper Bread Street. The Holtons used to go off up Bradley Road with the timber carts. They would transport big trees about. I think the Holtons used to take some of the timber up to Mark Hill’s Sawmills at Imber Road. Holton did a lot of work for the Council.”
“We bought a little bit of coal. You got your allowance, a cwt of coal if you were poor from a charity and when you were a certain age you got a blanket. You come in for the benefit of a blanket. Coal then was only about one and three a cwt. Mind you, that was a lot of money then, oh Christ yeah.”
“Mother used to go into town to do most of her shopping but there were tradesmen who called at the door. The baker used to call and the milkman used to call. The milkman was Mr Brown. He came round with a cart with a churn up on the back. His daughter, who married Horace King, used to come round and fill up your jugs. Up at Charlie Wright’s, up on top of Marsh Road, you could buy skimmed milk. It was about a penny a pint. We used that to make rice puddings.”
“Maggie Turner was a dear soul and she had a little shop at the bottom of King Street. She sold cakes, bread puddings, and hard rice puddings which she cut out in chunks. You could take your dough to her and she’d bake it for you. She was a lovable person.”
“Max Holloway had the bakery round the corner from the Bell And Crown. That was old Mr Holloway’s son. He used to ride about on a bicycle. And there was another baker called Oliver Cundick. And Paynes, the leading bakers, had a place in George Street. They also had a shop in Chapel Street. I used to take bread out for Paynes. I started working there when I was about 11.”
“Sam Burgess had a shop at Brook Street. He did everything in that shop – groceries, paraffin, watch repairs, photography, you name it, he did it. He was a little short dappy bloke. We used to like him but he was a bad old bugger though. He used to have his hand on the scales while he was weighing anything out. He’d diddle you. Mind, we all used to go along to Sam’s shop on Christmas Eve because he gave all his customers a bag of oranges. Course that was thirteen instead of a dozen. What they called the baker’s dozen. If you wanted some cigarettes he’d roll five up in a bit of paper for you. You were not allowed to buy them until you were 16. You’d say they were for your dad. Sam would look at you a bit funny but he’d roll them up in a bit of paper. ‘Don’t let nobody see them, my boy, my boy, my boy’ he’d say. He talk on like that. Of course, as soon as we got outside we’d go up some alley and have a smoke. If any boys got outside the shop, playing up, as they often did, Sam Burgess would think nothing of coming out of the shop and throwing a bucket of water over them.”
“Next door to Sam Burgess lived a bloke called George somebody, I forget his surname, and he was a gardener for Harraway’s. George was a bad bugger too. He was ‘the rose king’. He did all the roses at Harraway’s. There was a wall between Sam’s shop and George’s cottage. Us boys would get up on that wall for fun, and we’d shout and sing. George would come out with a stick and swear and shout at us in no uncertain terms to clear off. After a while he got wise and put some sticky tar along the top of the wall. That put paid to our nonsense.”
“There were some miserable devils about, it’s no getting away from that, but I don’t know, there was something about them. All these old chaps were lovable blokes really. No one went without down the Common. Being the eldest of the boys I had to follow suit with dad and go up the allotments with him. You might have a failure with the carrots, you’d be talking with a chap a bit further up and he’d ask you how you were getting on. If you said your carrots had failed he’d say ‘I’ve had a good crop, have some of mine’ and he’d pull as many as you wanted. That was how it was. Or if you ran out of cabbage they’d do the same. Though these chaps were not professional gardeners they had it so there was always food to be got of the allotments all through the year. Your cabbage might get club root and another chap would say ‘I’ll leave you one of mine on the corner of the rudge.’ If you went up the allotment on a Saturday afternoon, nine times out of ten you’d go back up Saturday evening to carry on again. That cabbage would be there for you. Those blokes were bad boozers, all of them. If they couldn’t have their pint of beer that was the end of the world to them. If they hadn’t been drinkers they could have been rich because they all had good money-paying jobs. Such as money was in they days. They’d go out on the booze and go home drunk. Then when the wife wanted some money they had none, they had spent it on drink. But those chaps were good to one another. For all the fights and trouble that went on, there was in fact a community spirit there.”
“Mrs Speedy, or ‘Spiddy’ as we used to say it, used to sell sweets from a little shop on the left as you went up Upper Bread Street. It’s gone now. She was alright but us kids had to keep away from her shop unless we were going to buy something or she’d chase after us. Again, she would always try to do you on the weights with the scales. You were too scared, as kids, to let them know you could see them doing it. Mrs ‘Spiddy’ sold all those old fashioned sweets like peppermints and liquorice bootlaces. Anything like that. She had quite a jumble of sweets there. It was dark and dingy in her shop. It was dirty too. They didn’t bother too much about cleanliness like they do today. At least I don’t think so. No, they didn’t bother too much.”
“Dodge, down on the corner of Fore Street, who had the Post Office, was another miserable old bugger. He was a proper grabber. He had the Post Office and he used to go out delivering bread too. We kids used to play him up. Dodge was a stiff-necked bloke. If you were outside his window talking he’d come out and shoo you off.”
“Money was scarce, mothers were broke. When the housekeeping had gone there was nothing for the rest of the week. But the little shops did alright. There were no big stores or supermarkets about. You relied on the little shops. They had a fair deal.”
“The Vincent family at Chapel Street did pea soup for people. Albert Vincent, a relation of mine, used to repair bicycles. The Vincents, went out to Codford during the First World War but returned to Chapel Street afterwards. I knew Mrs Vincent as my aunt Emily.”
“Factor Daniells lived on Bell Hill, opposite Hampton Lane. He lived in Hampton House. He was a bloody maniac. He had some white marble angels, statues, out the back of his house. They were out the back by a big glass verandah. He used to worship them on Sundays. We used to watch him. You could look through the big bow windows at the front of the house and see him out the back doing this. He’d get a cup of tea or something. He’d drink some into his mouth, in front of these angels, spit it back out into the cup, and then chuck it back over his shoulders. It was some religious rite he did go through. He was a peculiar bloke. He was a tall bloke, a six footer, and he was thin. He was a corn dealer for a living.”
“It was no easy life for the people at the Common but somehow, one way or the other, you were happy.”
“We used to have a wonderful Christmas. That was thanks to mother. She’d make a Christmas cake and all that for us. We hung our stockings up. That was the stocking you took off, not one bought special in a shop like they do today. Of course we didn’t find much in there. Mind, we thought it was a lot. Maybe an orange and a few nuts. Maybe an apple and a prayer book. Parents years ago were mad on giving their kids prayer books or bibles.”
“For Christmas dinner we had a boiling fowl. We had one of our own cockerels from out the garden. Every year we used to rear some. About half a dozen. We would keep one for ourselves and sell the rest. Although we were poor mother never cut back, she did us proud when it came to food.”
“We were not envious of people who had more than us. You were too engrossed in your own selves. I can’t explain the feeling really, we were happy but we had nowt. Today, people copy what the neighbours do, they’re silly like that today. Years ago there was none of that. In any case you had no chance of bettering what others did.”
“The only thing was that there were some people who made money out of others during the 1914-18 War. There was a black market when people used to get stuff out of the camps to sell. They got stuff from the soldiers. That went on. There was a terrific black market during the First World War. I don’t know if it was the same during the Second World War because I wasn’t home then, I was away abroad.”
“People lived like fighting cocks during the First World War. We were not jealous of others. We didn’t bloody well have anything. I’m not ashamed of that. This might sound stupid but I’m proud of the fact we never had nothing and come through it all. To have a mother and father like we had, that was something to be proud of.”
“I enjoyed Warminster during the First World War when the Australian soldiers were about. There were some bad buggers. They used to sandbag people. You know where you go down the Marsh, over the little footbridges over the river Wylye by Henford Mill, well up that lane, Eastleigh Lane, that goes out to Sutton Veny Common. The lane drops into a hollow that runs past Shepherd’s Cottage. They used to sandbag bloody blokes there. They did, ah. That was quite common in the morning. I think they pounced on the men that were on their way to work at Sandhill Camp. I suppose they were after a bit of money. You’d go into school and someone would say someone’s been sandbagged again. We kids were always on about that. That was like blood to us.”
“The soldiers used to get us kids to fight down by the Globe. There used to be a tap in the road there. It was outside some cottages there. It always paid you to lose. I was in the ‘ring’ several times, so were others, but it didn’t pay you to win. The kid that did cry through getting a good hiding got more money than the one who won. They were so softhearted, even though they were swines. They got you to fight because they wanted to see a good scrap. They’d cheer you on like hell. They’d egg us on.”
“There were thousands of soldiers in the camps around Warminster. They used to get in the Bell And Crown and in the Globe. Those places would be packed out. It was terrible. They were bloody madmen. They’d get the drink in them and they’d fight like hell. A fight would start and everything would be cleared off the counter in the Globe. There’d be a right old scrap. Someone would get a message back to Sutton Veny Camp to say there was a God-awful row going on at the Globe, and two mounted police would come in on horses. They’d ride in, right up, you had to get out of the way of the horses. If you didn’t those horses would pitch you out of the way. They’d tie a rope round the troublemakers and pull them off down through the Common. Tie them round the arms and drag them away, off down Chapel Street or Fore Street. They did never bother with getting them up into carts or anything like that.”
“I never saw it but they had a cinema out Sutton Veny for the troops and the soldiers burnt it down. The soldiers made a ring round it and sang We’ll Keep The Home Fires Burning. We kids heard all about that.”
“The soldiers made the pubs in Warminster, trade wise, they made them. Bill Butcher was the landlord at the Globe. The Butcher family were there years and years. I can remember when Bill’s mother had it. She was a little short woman. She ruled that pub with a rod of iron. She was in charge of it all through the 1914-18 War. She was a hard neck. You’ve got to hand it to the women back in they days, they were tough. There’s no getting away from it.”
“John Saunders’ father was at the Bell And Crown at one time. Sawdust was put down on the floor, here and there, in the Bell And Crown, for people to use like ash trays to spit on. People would get shot for spitting on the floor in a place today.”
“My mother, with father being away, had a hell of a job with us kids, because I wasn’t the best behaved of boys. I had two brothers and two sisters. There were five of us altogether. My sister, Audrey, was the eldest. Then there was me, then Francis, then Rudolph, and then Lisette. Lisette is a well-known character and she’s still alive, living in Warminster.”
“My brother, Francis, was killed at Upton Scudamore. He served in Burma during the Second World War. He did three and a half years out in India, come back, and got killed at Upton. It was an accident. Francis was working out Upton Scudamore as a carpenter but he wasn’t really a carpenter by trade. He was really a polisher and turner. He had served an apprenticeship as a turner. He was the first apprentice boy at the Chair Factory for Major John. Major John had opened up a factory for ex-servicemen and he later took on ex-servicemen’s sons as apprentices. Anyway, to get back to what I was saying, Francis was working out Upton Scudamore and there was some very bad gales. A roof started to lift off a building, with the wind, and Francis got up there to try and strap it down. Of course it was the silliest thing he could ever have done. The roof came right off and bashed him against a wall which was only a couple of yards away. It smashed the back of his head and he died on the way to Frenchay Hospital.”
“I was about five when I started school. I went to Newtown School at Chapel Street. I didn’t like school. I’m afraid I was a very bad boy. I did nothing really wrong but I was always getting into trouble. Always getting flogged. The teacher, Miss Agnes [Green] would stretch me across the desk and flail me with one of those soldier’s canes. She was a bad un she was. Nobody liked her much. Her sister, Miss Green, the governess, she was a lovable person. She never touched a kid right through her school life. She always handed the punishment down to the other teachers.”
“We didn’t have a school uniform. Dad was working out of town all the time and mother didn’t have much money. Mother kept us up tidy. We wore hobnail boots to school, and our knickerbockers. Still, everyone at school was in the same boat. That was the beauty of the Common.”
“There was the three of us boys. There was about 14 months between Francis and me, and about the same between me and Rudolph. That’s how people used to have kids, like rabbits breeding. They didn’t know birth control in them days. Life at the Common was not quite so bad in my younger days but previously it must have been terrible.”
“Do you know I am proud to have been born and brought up at the Common? I say that even though we that lived down there were not liked. It was terrible, you dared not mention the Common. What you hear about the roughness and the hard necks down there, that was true.”
“You had to be a boy, a man, because it was no good to be a mammy’s boy down there. You had to fight your own way. You had to fight to survive. Your father told you how to look after yourself. If one of my buddies was in a fight I was there straight away and nobody could stop me. I’d go and I’d get stuck in because a group of boys would get in a circle around one. One thing though, they always fought fair. There was no such thing as putting the boot in. When I was a kid you never put the boot in when you were fighting. It was always fists.”
“You had to be a little bit out of the ordinary to the other boys around, that sort of idea. There were gangs, West Street and Pound Street against the Common. If a boy from West Street or Pound Street came down the Common that was like death. He had to be sent back, he wasn’t allowed down the Common. The same thing would happen if one of us from the Common went up to West Street or Pound Street. It was out of bounds. The West Street boys would come down the Common and there’d be a fight between the lot of us. It was like gang warfare.”
“It had been just as hard, harder, for our father. Remember, the Common was supposed to have been mud houses at one time. And the people who lived there were like gipsies. Not for one minute that my family came from gipsies. I hope to Christ we didn’t.”
“It was a hard life in the old days but it was a different atmosphere. If a policeman come along you didn’t get summoned, well, not hardly ever at all, that was one good thing, because the policemen dealt with any trouble there and then on the spot in their own way. We had a policeman at the Common called Chappell. He was a big six footer. He used to wear a cape. If you were up to no good and you saw him coming you got away as quickly and quietly as you could. If you didn’t see him coming you got a smack from him straight across the earhole or he’d put his boot up your backside. Or he’d wrap his cape around your neck. They would slash the cape right round you. They weren’t kind.”
“Our upbringing was strict. We feared the police but we respected them because it was a fair deal. You were never interfered with if you were doing a simple kid’s trick. They would say ‘Ere, you, out of it,’ and off you went, no nonsense. There was no such thing as looking back twice. They were the law of the land. It’s what is needed today.”
“You dared not tell your parents the police had hit you. If you did your parents would give you another bloody good hiding. It was nothing like it is today, that’s the trouble today. We were controlled at home. We were brought up properly. If you mentioned to your father that a copper had clouted you, your father would say you must have done wrong for P. C. Chappell or whoever to give you a hiding.”
“A policeman wouldn’t hit you if you didn’t ask for it. Their word was law but not today. That’s being honest and truthful. I think today’s police should have all the power they need. If a bloke touches the police they should have the power to down him. They can’t touch nobody today.”
“There was a police house at the top of Pound Street and P. C. Stone lived there. That was straight opposite the entrance to Princecroft. There were two red brick houses there. A plumber who worked for Ernie White lived in one, and P. C. Stone lived in the other one. That was later on, when I was older.”
“I went home to dinner from school. My mother, I’ve got to hand it to her, she was good when it came to meals. She gave us the best grub she could. It was plain food. Like Easter Sunday was the only time you had eggs. Mother would save up so we could have an egg at Easter.”
“Mother looked after us so that we never went hungry. We had an allotment at the Tynings, very near to our house. Actually, we had two bits of allotment. They were called rudges in them days, and they were also called lugs. That’s five and a quarter yards. We had a ten and a half yard one, and dad also had another one, thirteen or fifteen lug. The thirteens were near the edge, as you went up on top of the allotments. The short ones were above, up on the top.”
“We used to put one allotment down to mangolds. Two of us, Francis and myself, used to do that. Well, my older brother, Rudolph, after a while, didn’t have much time to help us with the allotment. He was playing football for St Martin’s and Warminster Reserves, then he became a great shot playing for the town. He was centre-half or something.”
“We sold the mangolds and that paid the rent for the two rudges. Frank Brown that used to live over the top of Bell Hill, father of Jack Brown who worked on the Electricity Board, he used to come over, look at the mangolds and buy them. Cutty Curtis from Broadway Farm was another buyer. They bought them for animal feed. We were a little bit tough when it came to the selling, we’d stick out for the biggest penny. They used to say ‘We’ll give you so much for them.’ The highest bidder got them.”
“Good Friday was planting day for the potatoes. On a fine day everybody would be up the allotments working. We used to pray for fine weather. Of course, when we lived at Trowbridge Lane, mother only had to go up the garden to be on the allotment. At about 11 o’clock on Good Friday morning we three kids, who had been watching the gate, would see mother come out wearing her beautiful white apron over her skirt which came right down to her ankles. She’d be carrying a big jug and a bag. That would be cocoa and hot cross buns. We’d all drift from the different strips of ground and come together for a natter, have a hot cross bun and a cup of cocoa. To us kids that was one of the highlights of the year. It was a great time.”
“When it came to digging up the potatoes, in the autumn, we were allowed to take out the small ones. That was like our money. Dad used to say ‘You sell them small ones to the farmers for pigs and have the money for Warminster fair.’ That’s what we used to do. The fair was alright, there were switchbacks by the Post Office and the other amusements and stalls were right the way through the town centre, plus a bit in Weymouth Street.”
“We had a nice uncle, uncle Frank, and he lived at King Street. He was a great, great uncle. He was a bachelor. We used to go and see him and get a bit of money from him to go to the fair. He used to give us a sixpence. He’d have that put out on the table for us kids when we went round there. It would be ‘Hello uncle, how are you?’ He’d say ‘Here you are my boys’ and he’d give us our fair money. Off we’d go to the fair. The fair stretched all through the Market Place and the High Street. Right at the top of the fair was a bloke who had some bloody ponies. I can’t say how much it was, about two pence a ride, I don’t know. We rode on those ponies so much we had no money left to go on anything else at the fair. We couldn’t get no further. We had to just walk around and look at the rest.”
“We used to get a bit of extra money because there was an October Fair with a big market for all the sheep and cows. Jack Musselwhite, who lived up Bradley Road, was head drover for the Pickfords at Botany Farm and he used to drive the cattle from there to the fair. We’d get sixpence for helping him to do that. We’d run along and stop the cattle getting into any gateways. The fair was at Fairfield Road but the pig market was at Weymouth Street, in the Shambles, behind the Town Hall. Taking those cattle down through town used to get the wind up me. It was a bugger. You’d see a bloody great bullock coming along and they’d charge away down Weymouth Street. Jack Musselwhite was a lovable man but he used to swear at us, call us everything, he told us we were silly fools and he’d use bad language. There were men at the fair to guide the cattle into the pens. All the farmers helped one another up there. It was a different life. People today can’t realise what life was like back in them days.”
“Frank Moody had a bacon factory at Fore Street at the Common. They burnt the pigs in straw to get the bristles off the skin. They’d knock the trotters off with a hook. If we did anything, like little jobs, George Payne, who was the pigkiller, would give us the trotter to suck like a sweet. We kids sucked on them yet those trotters had been walking around in shit. Oh yes. We used to suck them. They used to be nice.”
“A couple of us boys would go round with George Payne on a Saturday morning if he had a few pigs to kill. We’d drag the pigs out of the sty for him. He’d say ‘Come on me boys, come on me boys, lay down across the pig.’ We’d lay down across the pig, to hold it still, while he stuck it in the throat with a knife. That’s how he killed the pigs. The blood was collected in a pail and saved to make black puddings. When George was killing the pigs there was a hell of a bloody lot of squealing going on all the time. If you weren’t careful the pig would bite you.”
“George Payne had a horse and brake that he used to hire out on Sunday afternoons so people could go out for rides. My old grandmother Price used to grow a lot of soft fruit including blackcurrants and gooseberries. Once a year she’d book George Payne’s brake to take the whole family to Longleat. We’d sit up in this open brake. Old grandmother would hand out the fruit to us while we moved along. We thought that was great. We’d go down round Longleat, back round Shearwater, and stop at the Bath Arms in Crockerton. The men went in there for a pint. The women and children sat on the seats in the garden outside. We kids didn’t have beer because the law was red hot. But on the way back, there was a farm on the left at Crockerton, called Green Farm, and we could go in there and buy a penny glass of milk. That was another of our childhood treats.”
“We had an epidemic of scarlet fever break out in Warminster. I didn’t get it but my youngest sister did. We used to go up to the Isolation Hospital at Bradley Road and look at her through the glass. We used to walk out Bradley Road, then back to Crockerton and back up Bore Hill. We used to go out in farmer Greenland’s field at Butler’s Coombe and tread his corn down. He used to get so wild with us kids.”
“While I was at school I joined the Choir at Christ Church. There was also Bert Pearce, Albert Adlam, and Bert Turner. There were five or six boys each side. We were little rogues to be honest. We went in for it because you were somebody if you had a surplice and a cassock. That was being honest and truthful. An old chap with grey hair took us for choir practice every Thursday night. I forget his name. We were bad little devils. The choirboys had the privilege to go up the tower. Bert Pearce had the nickname Nanny. Nanny Pearce’s grandad was sexton. Poor old chap, he was getting on a bit, and he was getting tottery on his legs. He had to come and open things at the Church for us. We used to say to Mr Pearce when we come out of church ‘Can we go up the tower?’ He’d say ‘Not tonight my boys.’ We’d say ‘Yes, come on Mr Pearce.’ He’d give in. He’d say ‘I’ll have to come up with you.’ That’s what we wanted. He’d come up the tower. We’d have a look round and dash back down the tower and lock the door so he couldn’t come down from the tower. We’d leave him in there for about half an hour. He’d be shouting ‘Let me out, let me out.’ That was our fun.”
“We got caught pinching the parson’s pears one Sunday morning. At certain times of the year, like Easter time, Whitsun, and harvest time, there were two Holy Communions held in quick succession. There were carols with the choir at seven o’clock and an ordinary at eight o’clock which was just prayers but no hymns. Us choir boys had to attend the seven o’clock service. After it Bert Pearce, Albert Adlam and myself went over to Christ Church Vicarage, where the Reverend Stuart had this pear tree. We thought wrongly that Daddy Stuart, as we used to call him, wouldn’t return to the Vicarage between the two services. He usually stayed at the Church but on this occasion he didn’t. We were helping ourselves to the pears and he came across. He shouted. He recognised us. Albert Adlam was up the tree. We had to go before the Reverend Stuart. He read the riot act to us. We had a hell of a telling off but Daddy Stuart didn’t tell our parents. Reverend Stuart was a beautiful parson, beautiful bloke. He was a good chap. He was out of this world. If ever there was a Christian he was one.”
“It was through the Reverend Stuart that I got an apprenticeship when I left school. I got apprenticed to Butcher’s, the Warminster builders, as a plumber. Rev Stuart wrote to the Society on behalf of my father. I’d do anything to get that back. I’ve been to Butcher’s a couple of times to see if I could get the duplicate. Because when you get indentures you get two lots, one for the employer and one for yourself. They were on old English parchment, in old English handwriting, with a seal on it. You had to put your fingers on it and say ‘Signed, sealed and delivered.’
“I did a seven year apprenticeship with Butcher’s. I was on my last twelve month of my apprenticeship when I went to work for Ernie White. In those days if another firm wanted to borrow a man they could. Butcher’s loaned me to Ernie White but continued to pay my money. Ernie wanted a plumber. Ernie White’s place was at Portway, opposite Curtis’s. My granddaughter works there now, it’s now a place that does picture frame making. It used to be a soft drinks place, Carter’s lemonade, but I remember when it was Ernie White’s business premises.”
“I did six months for Ernie White before Butcher’s got busy and wanted me back. When I was leaving Ernie said ‘I wish I wasn’t losing you. If ever you need work, are out of a job, you come and see me and I’ll give you a job.’ I went back to Butcher’s, finished my time, and drew my indentures, as per usual, on the day I finished. They said ‘You can carry on working here.’ There were two rates, one shilling and two pence and one shilling and three pence an hour for plumbers. I said ‘How much are you going to pay me?’ They said ‘A shilling an hour.’ I said ‘You what, how come? The rates are one and two and one and three an hour.’ They said ‘You’re not a skilled tradesman, you’re not a journeyman.’ A journeyman was a skilled tradesman who travelled round to get his jobs. I said ‘I ain’t going to work for a shilling an hour.’ This was after I had done a seven year apprenticeship and they offered me a shilling an hour. It wrangled me. I worked a couple of months for Butcher’s. I wasn’t quite sure of myself. I lacked the confidence to go out doing jobs on my own to begin with. After a couple of months I went and saw Ernie White. He said ‘Yes, Albert, we’re busy, when can you start?’ He started to say ‘Before I say come on properly,’ and I stopped him before he could say anything else. I said ‘You’ve already said I can start.’ I was pretty smart, I was on the ball. Ernie said ‘I’m not taking you away from Butcher’s am I? I don’t want to do them out of a good worker.’ I said ‘It’s like this, how much are you going to give me an hour?’ He said ‘One and two.’ I said ‘Butcher’s are only going to give me a shilling. You’re not taking me away are you Mr White?’ He said ‘You’re right, you can start.’ I went back to Butcher’s and gave in my notice.”
“When I first went to work I got six bob a week and my mother gave me back sixpence of that. I used to pay out threepence a week of that into the clothing club at Christ Church. I went to Sunday School there. That left me threepence. I used to buy a penny bar of toffee. Fry’s I think it was. We used to warm the toffee and pull it out, stretch it. And I spent the other twopence on cigarettes.”
“I’ve smoked ever since I was about eight or nine. I don’t know if that’s right about smoking damaging your health. I’m about 81 now and I’ve never had an illness until about two years ago. During the First World War the Australian soldiers always gave us boys a couple of cigarettes. That’s what started me off. They’d give us a couple of cigarettes out of a packet when they marched down Weymouth Street. They used to light a cigarette up for us. We’d sit down on the kerb. They’d let you drink a drop of tea and they’d give us half of their cake. Or biscuits, whichever you wanted. Then you’d pick up their rifles for them when they were on the march again and carry them up to the Railway Station where they were going. Then they used to give you sixpence. That started me off smoking, more than anything. That was during the 1914-18 War and I’ve never given up smoking since.”
“I went to the doctor not long ago. I said ‘Have I got to give up smoking?’ He said ‘Well it hasn’t done you any harm, that’s up to you.’ He didn’t preach to me. He was sensible. See, I don’t drink. The only thing I do is go to a whist drive. I get pleasure from that. No, I don’t think smoking damages your health. It’s not so good for your breath but I don’t think it’s the cause of cancer. I had a medical a little while back, because I’ve got angina and fluid under the lung. I got heart tablets, my heart only keeps going with the tablets. They say we’ve all got a bit of cancer in us. You hear of someone knocking their leg and it starts it off. If you aggravate it then that could cause the cancer. Worry is nothing to do with it, if ever a bloke had a hard time it was me. Worry, I was never bloody free of worry.”
“Mr White was about five six, a lovely old chap. I went on for him until the Depression hit in 1931. Then just about everyone was out of work everywhere. The country collapsed. Bloody hell, the queue stretched a hell of a way up from the Labour Exchange opposite the Town Hall. You can’t believe it. It was like hell let loose. There were long queues at the Labour Exchange during the 1920s and 1930s. They were terrible long queues. The Labour Exchange later moved down to the bottom of Obelisk Terrace at Silver Street.”
“One of the worst things I think in Warminster, as I remember, was the old Workhouse at Sambourne. I used to do a lot of work up there for Ernie White. You’d see tramps, casuals, roadsters, call them what you will, led on the grass outside the Workhouse gates, waiting to go in. There’d be maybe a dozen of them there, swearing at one another. They could go in the Workhouse, stop the day or the night, have a meal and a clean shirt, but they had to do a bit of work before moving on the next day. They couldn’t stop permanently in the same workhouse. They’d go on to the next place, like Westbury.”
“Those old roadsters used to come in and shout and fight like hell. They had to do a certain amount of work to pay for their meal. They had to chop up firewood. There was a bloke called Petty who was my size, and a bloody big bloke who we used to call Blind Tommy. They used to go round with a trolley thing with big huge sides, delivering the firewood which had all been put up in bundles. They didn’t sell the wood to houses, they took it to shops. I’ll tell you who used to have a lot of it, Davis, who had a shop at the High Street. Holloway’s, at the Common, used to have so many bundles too. I think it was a halfpenny a bundle.”
“We often used to help Petty and Blind Tommy push the trolley up over Weymouth Street. We used to grab hold of Petty sometimes and chuck him on the floor because he used to put on old Tom. That trolley was heavy, it had big heavy wheels, and Petty used to try and make Blind Tommy push that on his own up Weymouth Street. Petty was a lazy devil. A bad sod. Him and Blind Tommy were inmates of the Workhouse. They didn’t go from there. Where they come from in the first place I don’t know.”
“Once, when we were living at Lyme Avenue, my father came in one night and said ‘Albert.’ I said ‘Yes dad.’ He said ‘Get your coat on, there’s somebody down our garden.’ I was about 14 years old. Father gave me a stick. He said ‘You walk down one path and I’ll walk down the other.’ We had some raspberry bushes down the bottom of the garden and there was this poor old devil, a tramp, who had got down behind them. Father was sensible about it. He said to me ‘It’s alright Albert, I can see him.’ He went up to this tramp and said ‘What’s the game?’ This fellow said he was trying to find the Workhouse gates. It was a true mistake. They very often came up Lyme Avenue, which is a cul-de-sac, thinking they could get through that way to the Workhouse.”
“Another time, when we were at Lyme Avenue, a beggar came to the door. My father told my mother to make the beggar a pot of tea. While she did so father gave the beggar some bread and cheese, then he thanked my father and went on his way. After he had gone I said to father ‘What did you do that for? He might have had more than you for all you know.’ Father looked at me and said ‘No matter who anyone is, even if he does look like a beggar, judge not the man, never judge the man. Even if you’ve only got half a loaf, cut that in half and give him one of those halves. If you see someone in the street and you get in conversation with them and they’re on hard times, give them a shilling to be going on with, even if it leaves you with only a shilling yourself.’ That was my father’s philosophy. He told me to always heed that advice. That’s the sort of man he was. I have always tried to follow what he said. ‘Judge not another man.’ That was one of father’s sayings.”
“I married a Portsmouth girl. My wife was Daisy Mary Fortnum. Her family tried to find out if we were related to the big grocers Fortnum and Mason but no luck. My wife’s father was a petty officer on submarines. He was time-serving. He worked up through and became a petty officer. He was blown up just before Armistice. A fortnight before. A few years after, my mother-in-law re-married. She re-married a sergeant major of the horse artillery. He was time-serving too. They come up to Warminster and he went as a groom to a major at Tytherington. That’s how I picked up with my wife. Her mother and stepfather took over the New Inn at Corton. I married Daisy from there.”
“I got married at Boyton. We had a surprise there. A very pleasant one. The wife’s stepmother, having the pub at Corton, met all different sorts of people who went in there and through that she arranged for a peal of bells to be rung as we came out of church. As we come out of church a peal of bells struck up. I turned round to the wife and said ‘Listen, isn’t that lovely.’ Of course, being a bellringer, the bells sounded lovely to me. To others, who don’t appreciate church bells, they sounded like a God almighty row.”
“I got married about 1930 or 1931. We wanted a house. My brother Frank was living at Norton Bavant. It was like gold to get a house. When I got married he said he knew of a house that was going to become empty. He said nobody knew about it except him. I said ‘Are you sure?’ He said ‘Yes I am.’ It turned out that there was a person by the name of Humphries who lived opposite him and my brother said she told him they were going to move. He said ‘She ain’t going to tell anybody. If you like to go to Welsh Baragwanath, the estate agent bloke at Heytesbury, you might get a chance for the house.’ I borrowed a motorbike and went out to Park Street at Heytesbury where Baragwanath’s office was. He was the land agent. I saw him. He didn’t know me. He said ‘What’s your name?’ I told him. He said ‘I’ve already got a tenant called Elloway, is he any relation to you?’ I said ‘Yes, that’s Frank.’ He said ‘He’s one of the finest tenants we’ve ever had. He hasn’t half improved that cottage with our permission. You can have the Humphries’ cottage when it comes empty.’ I had the cottage for three shillings and sixpence a week. That was three bedrooms, sitting room and kitchen. My son, John, was born at Norton Bavant.”
“I was fortunate because when I got married I had a great great uncle who left me roughly £300. That £300 in those days was a lot of money, equal to a couple of thousand or more today. I felt like a little millionaire. With that money I was able to set my wife up with a good home. All the way through my marriage I haven’t boozed and I went 50/50 with my wife when it came to money.”
“My wife was reasonably religious, she did things for the church and that’s how I had become a bellringer. Alfie White, the master bellringer, he said to me one night ‘We’re short of a ringer on bell number three, would you like to learn?’ He said ‘I’ll teach you.’ I said ‘Yes, I’d like to learn.’ It took quite a little while for me to learn how to drop the bells, set them, and come in on the changes.”
“Alfie Waite was the farm foreman at North Farm, up behind Scratchbury Hill. He was foreman for George Gauntlett who also had Middleton Farm. There were two other farms in Norton Bavant. Drake Brothers had South Farm and John Elling had Mill Farm.”
“The Rev Penney, who was the Vicar of Norton Bavant, said to me one day ‘Are you still out of work Albert?’ I said ‘Yes sir.’ You did ‘sir’ in those days. He said ‘I’ll tell you what, I want some hedges cut down in the garden. What are you getting a week on the dole?’ I said ’25 and threepence.’ That was for me, the wife and baby John. He said ‘I could make it up to 30 shillings, that would make it a bit better for you.’ I said ‘Yes it would.’ He said ‘Well, if you would like to come and cut hedges and do gardening, there’s a job for you.’
“I was a union man. I couldn’t take the job. There was a farm labourer out of work in the village. I didn’t like the bloke but that didn’t matter. I said to the Rev Penney ‘I’m getting 25 and threepence a week now, that’s something, but there’s a farm labourer out of work.’ In those days farm labourers got nothing when they were out of work. I said to the Rev Penney ‘Do you think you could give him the job? It wants people to help him.’ The Rev Penney looked at me. He said ‘My word, you will make that sacrifice?’ I said ‘Yes, I can’t help it.’ He said ‘You send that man up to me and I’ll give him the job.’ That’s what happened. I thought it was wrong of me to accept that job when there was another man out of work not getting a halfpenny.”
“I knew the Reverend Penney before I married my wife, because I had helped Ernie White with a job inside the church at Norton Bavant. Us blokes were in the church working and we were having a cigarette when the Reverend Penney walked in. It was generally considered wrong to smoke inside church but there was no law against it. We felt for sure that the Reverend Penney would say something to us about it but he didn’t. He wasn’t the sort of bloke to tell you what you could and couldn’t do. The next day he brought us along a packet of cigarettes. He had nothing against smoking in church. He was a real Christian, he was one of these vicars who cared about people, whoever they were, and not about petty rules and regulations. We could do with some more blokes like the Reverend Penney about today. He was the Reverend William Campbell Penney and he lived at the Vicarage in Norton Bavant.”
“As I said just now, I was on for Ernie White until 1931 when the Depression struck hard and I was out of work. I was getting 25 shillings and threepence a week on the dole and things didn’t look good. I tried everywhere for a job. I had pushbiked to Westbury, Trowbridge, Bath, Wilton and Salisbury, looking for work. Everyone was nice but it was always ‘We’re awfully sorry but we’ve got problems finding work for our own blokes.’ A couple of places said ‘Yes, we’ll give you a job if you’re prepared to work below the rate.’ I said ‘No, never, I’d rather starve.’ One of ’em was a firm at Wilton and the other was at Trowbridge. They offered me one and a penny. I said ‘No.’ The rate was one and two and one and three. I said ‘I want one and two at least.’ Of course they wouldn’t start me with a job. I wasn’t skiving; that’s as true as God’s in heaven. I couldn’t get a job anywhere. I went in the Labour Exchange one morning and they as good as accused me of being idle. In those days the dole office staff were strict and, of course, there were some blokes who were workshy. The Labour Exchange offered me a job up in Manchester but I wouldn’t take it. I wasn’t going to leave my wife and kid behind.”
“I did get a job up the camp for a while but that was only temporary. I had been all round putting my name down. They were building a new wing on the Silk Factory at Pound Street. I used to go up every morning about seven o’clock, sit down on the pavement, outside the Silk Factory, waiting, because I had heard there was a plumbing firm coming down. I didn’t know from where at the time, but it turned out they came down from Scotland to do all the plumbing there on this new wing. I sat down there every morning for about a fortnight. I got down there one morning and up pulled a van. These chaps got out and they went in the factory and came back out. They saw me there. I said ‘I suppose you’re the plumbing firm that’s come down?’ I asked in a little meek voice. The bossman amongst them said ‘Yes, we are, actually, we’re from Scotland.’ I said ‘I was wondering, any chance of a job?’ ‘Doing what?’ they said. ‘Plumbing’ I said, ‘I’m a plumber.’ They asked if I had any indentures. ‘Yes’ I said, ‘I’ve got my indentures here with me.’ I always carried them about with me, wherever I went looking for a job. The boss man said ‘Look, we’ve got to get organised first.’ I said ‘Yes, I understand that.’
“It was only a few days before the end of the week, so I didn’t have long to wait. They said ‘Come up Monday morning and start.’ I said ‘Thanks ever so much.’ He said ‘It’s quite alright.’ I went up there. I said ‘What’s your rate?’ They said ‘It’s one and three.’ I’d gone up a scale. I said ‘Oh lovely.’ He said ‘Don’t you forget you’ve got to work for it.’ Just like that he said it. I said ‘Oh yes, don’t worry.’ Well, you might not believe it but you were not allowed to walk across the room, you had to trot. That’s no lie. I’m not stretching it or telling fairy tales. If you had to go up a ladder you went up two rungs at a time. Oh yes. I know because I soon started going up the ladder. We had to put lead around the top of the brickwork. We had to make it watertight. First time off I come down the ladder and the foreman said ‘Just a minute, what’s your first name?’ I said ‘Albert.’ He said ‘Albert, I don’t like this, you’ll have to go up and down that ladder faster than this.’ I said ‘Oh, I’m sorry.’ He said ‘It’s quite alright, I’ve been up and looked at your work, and, by God, you are a good worker.’ I said ‘I don’t know about that but I’ve done seven years.’ That was a bitter pill to me, you know, hearing that after seven bloody years. He said ‘We don’t like to see this crawling about, we like to see people enjoying their work, and we like to see them getting at it.’
“I went up the Silk Factory, working from eight o’clock in the morning to eight o’clock at night on weekdays. And until four o’clock on Saturdays. I used to pick up lovely money. I’ll tell you a marvellous thing about that job. The day after I started there I forgot my flask. My wife was one of the most devoted women that ever walked. She found my flask on the table at home and she put the kid in the pram, and walked to the factory to bring me my flask. She came in the factory and asked where I was. My boss was the first bloke she met. He said ‘Is your husband’s name Albert?’ She said ‘Yes, would you mind giving him this flask? He said ‘No, I’m not giving it to him, you give it to him yourself, I’ll call him down.’ He called me and I came along. I said ‘Oh, hello Suzie, what are you doing here, why the hell did you come?’ You know what it’s like. She said ‘I’ve brought your flask of tea, love, you left it behind.’ My boss said ‘Is that your baby there?’ I said ‘Yes, I hope it is!’ He said ‘Can I have a look at the baby?’ The wife said ‘Yes.’ Anyway, my boss pulled out a pound note. He said ‘Here, have this and buy something for the baby.’ I said ‘No, I don’t want your money. If the baby wants anything I’ll buy it with the money I earn. Thank you. I appreciate it but no, it’s no good. I suppose father brought me up wrong, not to receive any charity and to fight my own life through. I’m awfully sorry but no.’ I told him to put his hand back. He said ‘No, no, no.’ He bent over the pram and opened John’s little hand. He said ‘Now, take it from that child if you want to. You can’t do it. You can’t take it from him, can you?’ I said ‘No, I can’t take it from him.’ I couldn’t. When we went back down he told the other blokes, there were two other plumbers, and I was a little tin god as far as they were concerned, doing a thing like that.”
“I worked on plumbing at the Silk Factory for about a month and then Parsons wanted a plumber. I had put my name down. There was a plumber that worked for them, his name was Bill Kick. His daughter lives down Weymouth Street now. She was a hairdresser. She’s still alive. I was told to go up to see my mother because she had something to tell me. I went up and saw her. She said ‘Bill Kick wants to see you. He lives round Christ Church Terrace.’ I went round. He said ‘Have you got a job Albert?’ I said ‘Yes, I have, I’m working at the Silk Factory.’ He said ‘Parsons want a plumber, I thought you’d like the job.’ I said ‘I don’t know Bill, I’ve got a super job where I am.’ He said ‘Well, think it over, you’ve got a couple of days. Come back and let me know.’ I went into work the next day and told them. They said ‘We were going to ask you to come back to Scotland with us. Will you come?’ I said ‘No, I’m not going to leave my wife and baby.’ He said ‘Well, that’s what it would mean, because we travel around.’ I said ‘No, but thank you ever so much, I’m not leaving the wife on her own.’ He said ‘We’ve got about a month’s work here, that’s the position.’ I said ‘Yes.’ He said ‘We don’t want to lose you but that job you’ve been offered is going to last a lot longer than what we’re on. You grab it. I don’t want you to go, that’s being honest with you, but you grab it.’ I said ‘I’ll work until the end of the week then.’ He said ‘As long as you finish the lead flashings around the wall that we want done, so the brickies can get on, that’ll do us lovely.’ I said ‘Alright, I’ll do that.’ I worked until about nine o’clock that night to get it finished and then I went on for Parsons.”
“I went on for Parsons for two years until I had a row with Graham Parsons. I could have knocked him off the scaffold. He tried to tell me how to do my job. He bought one of them Modern & Practical Plumber books and he read up on it. We had words over it and I told him where to stick the job.”
“I left Parsons and went on for the Gas Company, when it was down on the corner of Portway, in the High Street, where Carters butcher’s shop is now. I went down and asked for a job. They gave me a job. This was when gas water heaters were coming in, in a big way, and they wanted somebody to plumb the water in. I was apprenticed to a plumber and gas fitter, not that I did hardly any gas fitting. I didn’t know much about gas fitting. The Gas Company was private, not national like it is now. Atlee Hunt was the manager there. He said ‘Don’t worry about the gas fitting, we’ve got Stan Trollope, he’s the gas fitter here. We want you to do a bit of gas fitting now and then but Stan will give you the low down on it. There’s nothing to it. The job you’ve got, with the water, is the important part.”
“I went on for the Gas Company until I got fed up with it. Chummie Kill, of Carr and Son, wanted a plumber. He come up to the Gas Company and asked me. He said ‘Do you want to change jobs?’ I said ‘No.’ He said ‘Why not?’ I was getting one and three, plumber’s full rate. A penny over the recognised rate of one and two. I was always out to get every halfpenny I could. That’s being selfish perhaps but that’s how times was. A penny was a hell of a difference, it made about three shillings and sixpence a week extra and that kept me easy in cigarettes.”
“I said to Chummie ‘I’m getting a penny over the rate now.’ He said ‘I’ll give you twopence over the rate.’ I said ‘No, thankyou. I’m not leaving the Gas Company for twopence.’ He said ‘You won’t leave, not for another twopence?’ I said ‘No.’ He said ‘Well, how much do you want then?’ I could see that he wanted me, so I said ‘Threepence.’ He agreed and paid me threepence over the rate. I went on and worked for him up until the Second World War.”
“Chummie’s place was up Church Street. He had a bit of a workshop straight opposite St Boniface College, but he lived in the first house as you turned the corner into Ash Walk. He was a good bloke to work for; he paid well. I took the plumbing over from him. I used to go out and measure up the jobs when it was a price job but I didn’t work the prices out, oh no. I would say I can do that in so many days. Okay, he’d put it down. ‘What about fittings?’ he’d say. I’d tell him what was needed. He wrote all that down. He priced it and I never knew what he did price the jobs at. He never interfered with me. If I said I wouldn’t do a job and it did happen sometimes when blokes upset me, Chummie wouldn’t make me. I’ll give you one instance. There was a bloke lived up top of Brick Hill, on the right in a bungalow. He was a farmer named Doel. He upset me one day, it was something to do with shortcutting the union way of doing things, and I wouldn’t do no more work there. Chummie didn’t mind. It was all made up afterwards.”
“After living at Norton Bavant for seven years we moved to a little cottage at King Street, back at Warminster Common. It was up the top of King Street opposite the two bungalows. When I come home after the Second World War the piece of ground that went up over the top of King Street, opposite the cottage was up for sale. I bought that for £100. It was nearly half an acre. I said to the wife ‘Right, I’m going to build ourselves a bungalow.’ She said ‘What?’ I said ‘Yes, I’m going to sell my pigeons.’ I was pigeon mad then. I was a founder with Reggie Webb of the Warminster Flying Club when it started up again. Mr Artindale, who lived at East End House; Mr Keylock, a retired bloke from up Victoria Road way; and the stonemason Ed Strong, had got the first club going but Reggie Webb and myself restarted the Club in 1937. It has been disbanded. I was invited last year to be guest of honour at the 50th anniversary dinner of the Club. The dinner was held in the Prestbury Club at the Close. They thought a lot of me.”
“I need never have gone in the services during the Second World War because I was in a reserved occupation but I did. I did five and a half years. The evacuation of Dunkirk got me thinking. I’ve got an idea that was May 1940. The cry went out that Gerry might drop parachutes on England. Now I had a wife and a kid. The appeal went out about forming the L.D.V. – the Local Defence Volunteers. That was the forerunner of the Home Guard. They put it out on the wireless one night. The next morning, at eight o’clock, I went along to Warminster Police Station to join the L.D.V.”
“A lot of people in Warminster say they were the first to join but I can honestly say I was the first to go along in Warminster. When I got down the Police Station the policeman on desk duty said ‘You’re the first one.’ I said ‘Oh yes, well, I want to join.’
“Was I patriotic? Well, I had a wife and kid. I couldn’t shoot with a rifle, I didn’t know which end the bullets came out of, but I wasn’t going to stand on my doorstep as I thought and see my wife and child possibly slaughtered. This was all according to what we were told about Gerry dropping parachutes.”
“I was sent with some other blokes up to the top of Lord’s Hill, south of Longbridge Deverill, to watch out for enemy paratroopers. They reckoned that was an ideal place for Gerry paratroopers to land. There weren’t any which was just as well because we only had one rifle between six of us.”
“If Gerry had landed at that time he would have walked through England just like that. There was nothing to stop him. He did the same in Holland, Belgium and France, but admittedly they chucked their doings down. What would we have done? Would we have put our backs to the wall and fought a losing battle? I doubt it.”
“The Home Guard was kitted out near the end but up until that it was a farce. If Hitler had come over all the Jews here would have been put to sleep and all us blokes that were fertile would have been sterilised. Or we’d have been put in the bloody ovens and burnt. Hitler would have washed us out, wiped us out. I think he would.”
“As it happened I was only in the L.D.V. a fortnight before deciding to go into the services. I decided to avenge my father and join up. I didn’t have to register, according to my age, until 1942 but in 1940 I joined up. I was up West Street working for Chummie Kill at the time. I said to young Alec Compton, a kiddie who was under me as an apprentice, a lovely kid, ‘I don’t know Alec, my place is in the services. I want to fight for my family.’ I went off and told Chummie. He reckoned I was mad. He reckoned I wanted my brains tested.”
“I went up to Bristol to join up. There were a lot of big shots, a load of buggers in this place, and I was all worked up. I decided to play them up. I was feeling in high spirits. On the attestation paper it said ‘trade or calling’ and I turned round for devilment and said to the bloke ‘What’s this? Trade or calling?’ He said ‘Don’t you know?’ He was a flight sergeant in the R.A.F. He said ‘What were you in civvy street?’ I said ‘A plumber.’ He said ‘I think you’re wasting my bloody time.’ He said ‘You’re in a reserved occupation.’ I said ‘Well, nobody knows because I haven’t registered.’ They used to register at the Labour Exchange at Silver Street in Warminster. He said ‘We can’t take you, you’re wasting our time, you go on.’
“I walked off across the room. A couple of chaps came in; they were half cut. I was looking pretty fed up because I had lost a day’s pay going down there. One of these blokes said to me ‘You don’t half look miserable.’ I said ‘Yes and so would you.’ They asked why. The beer was talking. I said ‘I want to join up but the buggers won’t have me.’ You can guess what they called me. This flight sergeant heard what was being said. He shouted across ‘Hey you!’ I never answered. I’ve got a name. He shouted again ‘Shortie!’ I went over to him. I said ‘Are you talking to me?’ He said ‘Yes I am. Do you really want to go in the services?’ I said ‘Of course I do, why do you think I’ve come down here? I’ve lost a bloody day’s work coming down here. Who can stop me enlisting? I haven’t registered as a reserve occupation.’ He said ‘I’m afraid mate we can’t do it. You had better go to Salisbury and join up as a labourer.’ So that’s what I done. That was another day off to go there. I got into the services at Salisbury. I told them I was a painter’s labourer, doing the cleaning up behind painters. They accepted my story.”
“I was sent to Blackpool and from there across to Chester, to Hawarden, six miles outside of Chester, a bomber station. We had no rifles. We had to wait for an issue of rifles.”
“During the Second World War I went abroad to France and Germany but it was called a home posting. Oh yes. We were over there but we didn’t get no overseas allowance. It was a nice allowance but we didn’t get none of it.”
“I went over to France. We went out from Portsmouth. I don’t know what the name of the boat was. That didn’t concern us, we were more interested in what was going to happen when we got across the Channel. On the way over on the boat we got the wind up once. We were down below decks, we weren’t allowed up on top. We were going over and we hit something. There was a hell of a thud. We thought it was our last day. We hit something. Christ knows what. We hit another boat or something in the sea. Come daylight we looked out and there was bloody all sorts floating in the water. Everything bar the kitchen sink was floating on top of the sea.”
“We went through the Atlantic Wall. Gerry had sunk some old battleships all the way round the coast where the proper landing place was. There was just an opening to go through. We had it easy once we got through there.”
“We moved under cover of darkness at 12 o’clock at night. We had boats alongside dropping depth charges in case of U-boats. The next morning, 13 hours later, having dodged U-boats, I saw a beautiful sight. I think the Navy is marvellous. They had man-o-wars each side of us, and you could see them, they were blasted great big battleships, and we sailed down through the middle of them.”
“We jumped off the boats. The water wasn’t very deep. We landed on the beaches at Arromanches. We got hell on top of us and our Navy saved us. Gerry must have had a warning, because we were like a lot of bloody flies around a jam pot. It was everybody for himself. Gerry opened up but we were lucky. There’s no such thing as a hero. You’re never a bloody hero. I had the wind up same as all the others. Thousands had the wind up when we got dropped on the beaches. I said to my mucker, a chap b y the name of Blackledge who came from Blackpool, ‘What the bloody hell are we going to do, Tom?’ He said ‘Get down into the bloody sand dunes.’ I always remember that.”
“Gerry never had the range of us; his fire was going over the top of us, but by Christ we had about ten minutes of that and it seemed like ten days. Of course, the Royal Navy opened up and they shook that bloody ground, they did; that ground was going up in the air. They chucked everything over they had bar the bloody battleships. They deadened it. They killed every Gerry in range of their guns. No messing.”
“Having landed on the beaches we then advanced. There was a bloody great hill in front of us. Us blokes had all our kit, packs and rifles and blankets. I was alright because I only had a Sten gun. I was an N.C.O. I never had the old Ross nine and a half pound rifle to carry. We had to walk up over a long steep hill. We called it American Steel Planking, it was that mesh net stuff, about four inch square, and that was a swine to march on. Well, it was a bog, see. If it wasn’t for that you’d sink in the mud about six to eight inches. There had been so many troops over there. I’ll never forget that.”
“The order went round that if any man did disobey orders us N.C.O.s had to shoot him. That was all through some prisoners. There was a mass of prisoners down in a hollow and our blokes wanted to get at them. You can quite understand the feeling. Our nerves were taut. The blokes were shouting ‘Let’s get and shoot the buggers, get them out of the way.’ Feelings were running rife and blokes were getting ideas. Nothing came of it and I don’t think it would have happened in any case.”
“We had a two mile march to the top. The Army Catering Corps were up there. We all sat down on the grass as if nothing had happened. We had a mug of tea and some food. They had some trucks and they took us into a place called Aunay. We had no bloody tents. Ours were all at the bottom of the sea. The first thing somebody said was ‘Where’s the bloody tents?’ That was Squadron Leader Davies. He was a proper Welsh git. He was a bugger. He was the most stupid bloody man you could ever have in charge of men. He had no more idea than a pig did of flying.”
“Us N.C.O.s had to get together for a talk. One turned round and said about the men complaining because there were no tents. ‘When are the tents coming?’ he said. Davies said ‘You were all issued with gas capes weren’t you?’ We said ‘Yes, but what’s that got to do with it?’ He said ‘Tell them to use the bloody gas capes as tents.’ They were dull yellow capes used in the event of gas attack. We had to lay down on the ditches and gullies next to the hedges around the perimeter of a field and drape these gas capes over us. As it happened old Gerry blew that field to bits. He shelled it and left it nothing but craters but he never touched any of us.”
“Our trucks caught up with us and took us on to a place outside of Caen. They took us on to Bayeux, and that’s where the French put laurel leaves around our necks. They were cheering us. A couple of weeks later they would have been just as likely to cut our bloody throats. Ah yes, that’s the French for you. They were a treacherous lot of bastards. They were doing well see, they were on the coast, and Gerry expected an invasion anywhere on the coast, so Gerry looked after the French. Gerry didn’t ill treat them; the French were living in the land of luxury.”
“We were taken on to a place called Kaprijke Airfield. That was the first airfield I went to. I was in the airfield construction squadron and we had to get the airfield operational for the Mosquitos. I was in the R.A.F. but we were on advanced airstrips. We got that airfield serviceable, when we could, when Gerry would leave us alone because he had a go at us every so often.”
“Then we went on to Belgium, to an airfield there called Koksijde Airfield. That was a fighter bomber station. That was about two and a half miles out of Dunkirk. Dunkirk, you see, was a protected bloody town. There were so many Canadian and British troops prisoner there our blokes dare not bomb it. Otherwise they’d kill our own blokes.”
“Every Sunday morning a squadron of Spitfires would go over and machine gun what they could of the Gerries. Never once did an entire squadron come back. There would always be one end up in flames.”
“Gerry used to have a go at us on Sundays. He’d put his shells over. There was a lot of Belgium labour under us. We were practically under fire all the time. Those Belgium blokes did run like bloody rabbits when Gerry did open up. There we were, out on the runways, taking no notice of Gerry. We had a job to do.”
“We went into Holland, travelling about, dressed up ready for action. They got us into a rest area, well, we were practically exhausted. When the War was nearly over we went on to 106 Airfield, Osnabruck, in North West Germany. That’s where I saw a bloke’s face cut right in half. Oh. He was a lovely looking chap. He came from Cornwall. He was a time serving R.A.F. bloke and he was group eight. We came out in groups. The lower your number the sooner you went out. This Cornish bloke was a sergeant and he was a lovely kid. We were filling craters. We had the biggest part of a crater filled in and we were using rapid hardening cement. I was stood back and he was walking back, looking at a Kite. He never noticed the crater and he slipped and fell back into the crater. As he got out, the plane was upon him and the prop came round and cut his bloody face straight off.”
“By then we had seen so many horrors, like blokes’ legs blown off. We didn’t go over as heroes, there ain’t no such thing as a hero, but you got sort of immune, seasoned to it all. Do you know, them bastards, the authorities, created about where that chap was going to be buried. It was terrible the way they treated his widow. It got her in such a state that all of us, a squadron, 500 men, N.C.O.s and officers and everyone, had a whip round and sent that widow three or four hundred quid. We had money out there but there was nowhere we could spend it.”
“The War finished while I was at Osnabruck. The Armistice was signed. We weren’t doing much by that stage because our boys had driven Gerry a long way off. To begin with we were always in range of Gerry but not by then. Our flight sergeant, Johnson, came along and said ‘Ere, Alb.’ I said ‘Hello’. He said ‘The bloody war’s over.’ I said ‘Do what?’ He said ‘Yes, the bloody war’s over.’ All the blokes were cheering.”
“Do you know what? On the aerodrome were bloody hundreds of girt barrels of oil. Around the sides, the perimeter, were huge stacks of wood. They had the goods out there. Johnson said ‘We don’t need to do anything else, the war’s over, the place is ours now.’ I knew what he meant. Blokes like that are devils you know. I turned round to the chaps and said ‘What are we going to do?’ One of them said ‘I’m going to set fire to all of that bloody wood.’ That’s what we did. They had knives and they slashed all the barrels of oil to get a good fire going. All of them stacks of wood were burnt. The blokes dashed off somewhere and got some beer. We had one bottle of beer to celebrate. We had one bottle of beer each. That was our victory drink.”
“To me, war is bloody fruitless. It’s people who greed for power. The workers don’t benefit, they catch it, and it’s the higher-ups who benefit from the power and the money. The thing is, what these young kids can’t understand, Hitler made a mistake, he made the biggest bloody mistake of his life. If he had come over here in 1940, invaded England then, we would have had it. We would never have had a hope in hell then. If the Battle Of Britain hadn’t have been and he had invaded then, he would have beaten us. That’s a terrible thing to say, isn’t it? Never admit defeat. Well, there was nothing to stop him.”
“Back in my young days England was England and I was proud of the Union Jack. I’m not proud of the bloody Union Jack today. We had an Empire; now we got nothing. It’s the fault of politicians. They’re too soft hearted and they’re afraid of the public. It’s the same with hanging and the birch. I say bring back the birch and bring back hanging. Get rid of ’em. But no, they’re back out enjoying life again. It’s the same with these rape jobs. The courts crucify the woman that’s been raped, don’t they, they get her in such a state she don’t know what she’s doing or saying.”
“When I was young there was no muggings and rapes, not like you hear about today. When I was working on the Gas Company there was a bloke up West Street who put his daughter in the family way. He got three years for that. Would they get that today? No. They’d pat you on the bloody back.”
“My father had such ideals and principles. He fought in the Boer War and all that. When I look out the window today and see what goes on in the world I think was it all worth it? It appals me. It was all for nothing. Just because England has gone soft. We’ve lost respect.”
“There’s no discipline now. Schoolteachers mustn’t touch the kids today. Yet, when I went to school and did wrong I got whacked over the head and I haven’t been able to comb my hair for a week where it hurted so much. I know I asked for it, yes, and they thrashed me. It hurt. I couldn’t comb my hair and my mother said ‘You’re not going to school with hair like that.’ I said ‘I can’t comb it.’ She had a look and she said ‘My God, what have they done to you?’ It’s a wonder she didn’t go down to the school. If she could have got at the teacher she would have pulled her to pieces.”
“The lack of discipline is the fault of parents. I honestly and truthfully think it is. I’ve got two lovely grandchildren. They’re the finest grandchildren that walk on this earth. Why? Because their mother and father were strict. They wouldn’t dare sit down before you sat down, they wouldn’t go out the door until you went first, and it’s been yes please, no thank you, all that. It’s only because they’ve been brought up strict.”
“If they brought back the birch and hanging it would be a good thing. Let’s say you were going to break into a house and pinch something? You might get away with it and you might get the pleasures of it, and you go and do it again. You might get caught. When you get to court, what do they do? Suspended sentence? Don’t do it again, don’t be a naughty boy, be a good little chap, you mustn’t do that. Isn’t it? But if they turned round and handed out four or five strokes with the birch people might think twice about it.”
“It’s the same with hanging. Why should we be taxed up to the eyebrows and keep that bloody lot in prison. There ain’t room in prison no more. They can’t get no more in. They’ve got to put up temporary places. Pity we don’t have a clear out like Hitler would have done. We could hang all them that’s committed murder and we’d have bags of room in the prisons. It’s like these blokes who do things against little kids; if we let the women have a go at those men, they wouldn’t want to do it twice. They’d castrate them.”
“Prostitution? There’s nothing wrong with prostitution. Provided that the girls are under the care of a doctor. It might save a lot of these attacks against women and children. They should have proper brothels, in the open, with doctors to examine the girls every so often.”
“They go on about this Aids but you turn the television on and you see these so called stars with umpteen boyfriends and blokes and no end of love children. Love children? Well, that’s what they call them. These ‘stars’ ain’t got nothing to do with their bloody money. Have they? They live on the fat of the land. They’re overpaid. They’ve got nothing to do. Admitted they put time in when they’re making these films but they have a hell of a lot of bloody time off. They go to parties, they feed and they get boozed up.”
“It’s a kind of sick society we live in today. It’s the greed for money. That’s what it is. People are not content, they want more and more all the time, and they can do it because of these credit cards. The issuing of credit cards is one of the biggest crimes going. Bloody Access cards are just as bad. You can get credit for everything from washing machines to three-piece suites, cars and bloody boats. It’s too easy for people.”
“The bank sends me letters offering me overdraft facilities, asking me if I want to buy this and that. No I bloody don’t. It makes me bloody wild when I get those letters through my letterbox.”
“Terry Wogan, they reckon, gets £350,000 for what he damn well does. Bloody ridiculous. And snooker players, £95,000 for the winner. Steve Davis is a millionaire for just hitting a few balls about a table. That’s all. It’s not right. The men that should get big money, and you might be against this, is our boys out in Ireland, those poor buggers, who are carrying their lives in their hands everyday. But if we did the right thing there’d be no need for all this.”
“Look at the fuss that they’re creating now about our S.A.S. shooting those I.R.A. buggers out in Gibraltar. It’s what the S.A.S. are for. What do they expect us to do instead? Capture them and then bring them back to England, spend thousands of pounds on a trial and then put them inside for only two or three years while we got to work and pay to keep them? I say ‘No!’ That would be three we wouldn’t have to keep.”
“Same as this job out in Belgium, where those blokes killed them people in Belgium. Them buggers should have been put inside for life or better still have been hung. They committed a murder. The authorities waste all this money keeping the little devils and they still haven’t brought them to trial. They reckon the trial will take a year. That’s so that solicitors can get a load of money, they get fat on it. They ought to go back to what it was years ago where you would be hung for stealing a sheep. That’s what I say.”
“Every time you turn on the television or open up the paper you hear about England being wrong for killing these I.R.A. blokes. What would Russia do if she had the trouble in Ireland? She’d have put the bloody tanks in, wouldn’t she? It would be like Afghanistan. Our trouble is we’re too soft. The I.R.A. can kill our boys, our people, but we’re not allowed to touch the I. R. A. lest we be labelled a warmongering country. Nothing was said when the I.R.A. dragged some of our young blokes out of a car and butchered them. This Ireland job, all these people killing one another, is to do with religion. Funny religion.”
“Religion is funny. People don’t go to church today because of the hypocrisy of the bloody Church. A lot of these vicars are in love with one another; they’re all a load of homosexuals but we better not get onto that. Who wants to go to church and listen to a vicar’s sermon, knowing that night he’s probably going to sleep in bed with another bloke. Cor, bloody hell. If that ain’t ‘Do as I say not as I do’ then I don’t know what is. Crikey, if I had power, I’d soon wipe a few of these know-alls out.”
“Margaret Thatcher? I’d love to take her power away from her. I’d love to take her money away from her. I’d say ‘Right, now you will not get a job, you can go on the dole. And you will be on the dole for the rest of your life. We will give you a little bit of social security money, so that you don’t bloody starve.’ And that would be that. We would soon see how she got on then. I don’t like her. She’s got us now, back to the bloody 1920s. She’s got it so that men will work under the going rate because they don’t want to see their wives and kiddies bloody well going without. She’s got it back to them and us. Those that got plenty and the rest of us who got nothing. And it’s tough luck according to her if you got nothing. For all she cares you can sleep in the street. That’s that bloody woman all over.”
“Mrs Thatcher tells us the economics of the country are in order. She says everything is alright in the hands of the Conservative government. If you were to go up to the Midlands, the industrial heartland, and have a look round you would see the dereliction. That’s what she has done. At the same time she has allowed people in the city to get rich quick and those people come down here buying up the property. It can’t go on. There’s going to be one almighty bust up. It might be a few years yet but it will come. We’re heading for another depression like the 1930s. It’s bound to come. You mark my words.”
“Mrs Thatcher doesn’t know what it is to want. She has never known that. If she had her way she would take everything she could off the working man and his family. She’s doing more than what our Queen can do. She thinks she is the Queen the way she carries on and nobody bloody stops her. I can’t understand how the Royal Family let her get away with it.”
“The Common Market is one big muck-up. Look at what we’re contributing to it. Bloody millions. They’ve got butter mountains and all the while half the world starves. It’s a mad world. It makes me think. Bloody politicians, I hate them, especially these Conservatives, because they don’t care. They’re all talk.”
“After the Second World War a mate of mine told me about a job going up the School of Infantry with the Department Of Environment. I went off to work up there. This was several years after the Second World War, about 1955, and I had 17 years up there.”
“My father came home from work one day, sat in the chair, and died. That’s how I want to die, with my boots on. I shan’t die at work because I’ve finished work. I don’t want to be in bed ill. I want to go just like that.”
“I can’t remember having a doctor as a child or during my younger life. I’ve never been in hospital in my life. I’ve never been ill until these last two years. I think a lot of it has been where I’ve been on my own and I get depressed. Things play on your mind and that wears you down.”
“The warden here at Medlicott found me on the floor. I was trying to get my breath. It was the first time I knew I had angina. The doctor was called out. He said that because I could talk there was nothing wrong with me. By the time he got here my breathing wasn’t bad and I had recovered so I could talk. He said there wasn’t nothing wrong with me. My granddaughter came in. She asked the doctor what was wrong with me. He said ‘Nothing.’ With that the warden said to her ‘I didn’t think you were going to have a grandad much longer, I’ve had a struggle with him.’ Of course, my granddaughter went out into the corridor and picked the phone up. She phoned my son. He went straight off down Portway Surgery and created hell.”
“Another doctor was sent up to me. That was Doctor Street. He said ‘I hear you’ve been taken worse.’ The warden said ‘No, he hasn’t been taken worse but if you had come up here when I found him you would have seen how bad he was.’ He said ‘I better examine you.’ I was sat here. He come over and knelt down. He told me to slip my shirt off. I slipped my shirt off and he tested my back. ‘Oh dear’ he said. I was upset, I was wild about what had happened. I don’t pull no punches once I do start. I said ‘Well, I’m alright.’ He said ‘No, you’re not. You’re far from it. In this case I’ve got a tablet, I want you to take it, and I want you to report to Doctor Brown tomorrow morning. You are full of fluid and fluid is under you lung. That’s pressing down and slowing your heart up.’ The first doctor had said nothing about this. Dr. Street came round the front of me and I had to bend up and down. He said ‘I’m afraid I’ve got to tell you something.’ I said ‘What’s that?’ He said ‘You’ve got angina. You’ve got it pretty bad.’ I said ‘Oh.’ He said ‘You’re taking it pretty calm.’ I said ‘Well, the other doctor said I was alright.’ Dr. Street said ‘Your heart is weak, it’s hardly going.’ I said ‘I can’t grumble, it’s been going about 79 years, it’s bound to get tired somewhen.’ He made the appointment for me to see Dr. Brown.”
“The tablet they gave me had me in the bathroom every half hour right through the night, passing water. I still take the tablets but I’m fortunate now they only have me out to the toilet about once a night. If I drink something and take the tablet I’m dashing for the bathroom within quarter of an hour. I like Doctor Brown. He was truthful to me. He said ‘You’re in a bad way.’ I said ‘Shall I die sudden?’ He said ‘Do you want to?’ I said ‘Yes, I want to go with dignity. I want to wake up and find myself dead, if you can understand that. That’s how I want to go.’ Doctor Brown said ‘You’ll be alright but promise me one thing, promise you won’t go outside when it’s windy because that will be bad for you.’
“Mother was the one for home cures. Camphorated balls to go on your chest for a cold. And a lot of syrup things. She had her own remedies like a bread poultice for getting a thorn out. I think there’s a lot in those old remedies. We didn’t have a doctor. Our doctor was Siminson, the chemist. If you wanted something to get you well you went down to him and he’d knock you up a bottle of something to make you better. His potions seemed to work. If I’ve got a cold I’m a big believer in Vick. Today, doctors haven’t got time for you. They’ve got too many patients. They dish out tablets to get rid of you.”
“I was always scared stiff of dentists. I didn’t mind having teeth out but I was scared of the needle. That’s the only thing I don’t like about the services. We had tetanus and other injections every month. The doctors giving the injections didn’t worry their heads. They were giving injections one after the other to lines of blokes in the Army.”
“A let down for me was that my son wanted to go in the Army, rather than be an apprentice to a plumber which is what I wanted him to do. I had connections and I had ideas to set up my own business, to have a father and son partnership and to leave a good established concern after the Second World War. The boy wanted to go in the Army, he went in the Army, and that was that.”
“The wife and I had no ties and we both went out to work. We enjoyed life together. We went abroad on holiday. We visited all over the place in the British Isles. We went right up to the Hebrides and the Orkneys. We went to Jersey and Guernsey. We went to about 18 different countries abroad but we worked for that and we saved. I built the bungalow at King Street but we worked to pay for it after I sacrificed my hobby of keeping pigeons. We worked like bloody hell. The wife worked up at Birfords, the cafe in the Market Place, and she worked long hours. I worked until late at night because Chummie Kill had so much work on after the Second World War. I didn’t do anybody out of a job because work was plentiful.”
“The wife and I both saved and paid the cost of the bungalow off. We bought Chapel Cottage out at Upton Scudamore. We spent a couple of thousand on that out of the money we had saved. We wanted a holiday pretty bad. So what did we do? We joined the Youth Club at our ages and pushbiked right through Belgium for a fortnight’s holiday. We couldn’t afford a proper holiday. We sold the cottage at Upton and made a nice little packet. Now I’m here at Medlicott and I get nothing. I get no benefits because I got a little bit of money. I tried to better myself and now I’m penalised. You lose out for working hard and being careful with your money. Today it’s better to be a rogue, for want of a better word, and go out and have your booze and go to bloody nightclubs. It’s just as well to get broke by the end of every week because when you come up to retire the country will keep you.”
“I think Warminster today is still a lovely place. I can’t see nothing wrong with it to be honest. Mind, I wouldn’t want to put the clock back. I wouldn’t want to be young again. This world ain’t worth living in now and I’m not scared of dying. I’ve had a good innings. Death doesn’t bother me. I believe in the hereafter. None of us knows until we get there.”
“I honestly believe that there’s a book with all our names in. As they get down the list so you die. I’m not being stupid about Saint Peter or any of that but when Peter gets your name that’s it. I believe in fate. When your time is up your time is up. Good or bad you are destined to die. It’s like that old saying ‘If life was a thing money could buy, the rich would live and the poor would die.’ The rich would never bloody die, would they? They would live for ever. No, all their money can’t save them.”
“I’ve had a hard life but I had 48 and a half years of happy married life. It was beautiful. We didn’t quite make our golden wedding anniversary. My wife was starting to make the list of guests she was going to have at our golden wedding anniversary party when she died.”
“I found my wife dead in bed. It shakes you. It was not long after we had sold up at Upton and we were going to move to Bristol. She had been packing furniture in the afternoon. It was February and it was cold. She said she wasn’t feeling well but she wasn’t in pain. She said she wanted to go upstairs and lie down. I tucked her in bed. I said ‘Shall I get the doctor?’ She said ‘No, there’s no need for that.’ It was about two o’clock. I said ‘I’ll see you love, about what time?’ She said ‘About half past three will do me lovely because the chiropodist is coming.’ To be truthful I didn’t bother about the chiropodist. I thought ‘Damn the chiropodist, she’ll have to wait.’ I went upstairs about twenty to four. I opened the bedroom door. I said ‘Come on love, wakey wakey.’ There was no movement. I walked across to the bed. I thought ‘God, what’s up.’ I said ‘Susie’ and I shook her gently. There was no response. I put my hand down inside her blouse and felt her heart. I thought ‘Bloody hell, her heart’s stopped.’ What put the wind up me was I lifted her eyelids open and she stared at me. That upset me. I thought ‘My God, she’s dead.’ I hugged her there for about five minutes. Then I dialled 999 for the police and the doctor. They said ‘Keep calm, leave it to us.’ I then rang to tell my son that his mother was very ill but she was already dead. Everything was sorted out and then my son took me off to Bristol.”
“I’ll tell you something now. My wife died on a Friday. I didn’t eat no grub for a couple of days. I went to bed on the Tuesday night and whether this was the sub-conscious or not I don’t know, but I don’t think it was. I sort of dozed off and I woke up. The room was in darkness. My wife appeared to me. She wasn’t like she was when she died. She was like she was when she was 17. She was dressed all in white. She looked young. That was the beautiful part of it. She looked at me and she smiled. A lot of people have said about people appearing to them after death. That happened to me. No one will ever tell me different. That was my wife. That’s true. I think she appeared to tell me not to worry. It was as if she was saying ‘Don’t grieve, I’m alright.’ The next morning I got up, I went downstairs and my son said ‘You’re looking a lot brighter this morning, dad.’ I said ‘I am.’ He said ‘Are you going to have any breakfast?’ I said ‘Yes, I want a nice breakfast.’ I sat down and ate a good breakfast. He said ‘My God, what’s happened?’ I told him. He said ‘Did you imagine it?’ I said ‘No, I don’t think so, it was your mother.’ You can ask my son this he will tell you what I said.”
“It’s been lovely talking to you. It’s been smashing. It’s been a lovely afternoon. I’ve really enjoyed it. I could go on talking until tomorrow morning about the past. My grandson comes up here now and he asks about the old days. I tell him a few yarns. He says ‘Grandad.’ I says ‘Hello.’ He says ‘Grandad tell me what happened about the pig.’ You see, when I was a boy we heard that if you ran a pig long enough he would drop dead. This is as true as God’s in heaven. There were four of us – Lionel Vincent, Harry Farley, Bert Prince and myself. We had heard this. Well, down the Marsh, at Lower Marsh Road, opposite Robinson’s, over the other side of the road, there were some pigs out in a field. One of us said ‘Shall we try that, running a pig until he drops?’ We got out in that field and ran a bloody pig round and round that field. The bloody thing did squeak but we didn’t see anything wrong with that. Mind, he turned on us a few times. He wouldn’t drop dead. We got tired out before he did. Ha ha ha. My grandson can’t get over that. He says ‘Is that true, grandad?’ I says ‘Yes, I wouldn’t tell you fairytales.’ I can tell him so many things about Warminster.”