When the Devil came to Wapping on Christmas Eve

When the Devil came to Wapping on Christmas Eve

Christmas around again and all is merry and bright, but there have always been some who think that it needs  a little bit of something different.

Before the war we lived in Wapping and were part of the fairly large Catholic community so that Midnight Mass on Christmas Eve was quite a large event.  The church was full to overflowing and the the Parish Drum and Fife band played for the carols. After Mass there was the usual chinwagging outside the church before the congregation started to wend their way home to try the mince pies and the crackling off the roast pork.

We lived in a flat on the top floor of a building just down the road from the church so many of the congregation passed by as they went home.

My older brother Tom, about 16 or 17 at the time, a teenager but they weren't called that then, always good for a laugh, had acquired a cows skull, I know not from where, as cows head was not a common dish on east end tables.  So he dashed home immediately after the Mass and and put a lighted candle inside the skull and dangled it on a stick just like a fishing rod out of the window just as they first passers by approached.  He had tipped off his mate Leslie Munns about this and Leslie was supposed to just point it out as he came along.  Leslie though was as big a wag as Tom, he had a deformed back and used to do impressions of the Hunchback of Notre Dame so he did his performance whilst pointing out the skull floating mysteriously in the air.

 Difficult to imagine these days that anyone would be frightened by such a thing, but there was complete pandemonium in the street for some considerable time. It was not clear if it was the antics of Lesie or the skull which was more to blame, but one woman actually fainted and others ran screaming back to the church for protection.  Fortunately the candle soon blew out and the skull disappeared from sight so that those who had not seen it were doubtful that it had ever been there.

Tommy opined to me many years later that there must have been quite a few guilty consciences around that night for so many to imagine that the Devil had come to get them on Christmas Eve. 

1943 Mediterranean cruise with the Royal Navy

Mediterranean cruise.

Service on Board HMS Whimbrel between 1942 and 1946 almost amounted to a world cruise with visits to America and Canada, the Mediterranean, Russia and finally the Pacific.
June 1943 was a reasonably pleasant time on board. Whimbrel had recently been in the Clyde shipyard for a refit following a fairly hard winter serving as escort on the North Atlantic convoys. Refits of course meant that there was an opportunity for home leave, but the train journeys from Glasgow to London and then on the Guildford, mostly took a couple of days.  Many of the younger crew members for various reasons stayed in Glasgow.

 Following the refit and the usual workup trials they joined with a Naval  group escorting convoys from England to Gibraltar.
The weather was quite good and there was not a great deal of enemy activity on these trips. Arriving in Gibraltar Ernie learned that his eldest son was stationed there serving in the Bedfordshire and Hertfordshire Regiment, so he applied for shore leave to go ashore and visit him.  He was a bit surprised to find the request was granted, without question.
He went ashore and found where young Ernie was stationed and they spent the day together and the evening in the Naafi, having rather more to drink than they should perhaps, but it was an exceptional circumstance after all. Time approached to be back at the ship and young Ernie said that he could arrange for his Dad to be taken back to the docks. Going outside the Naafi, Dad was surprised to find a Military Police jeep waiting for him outside, the occupants of which were two lads, brothers, from Wapping. So a Military Police escort back to the docks.
The Petty Officer on duty at the gangplank naturally assumed that Dad had been arrested and was being brought back to be charged, so he was also surprised when the two MP's shook hands with Dad and wished him good luck, and “see you when we all get home.”
After Gibraltar the next port of call was the North African coast. The allied armies were being built up there in preparation for the landings in Sicily which were to take place the following month.

Serving in Tobruk at this time was second son Tommy, who learned that Whimbrel was in the area and made contact to let his father know where he was. This kind of information was not supposed to be passed around, especially in the lead up to a major operation, but there are always ways and means.
So once again an application for shore leave but this time he had to go up before the skipper.
“Do you think you are on some sort of Mediterranean cruise, going round to visit all your relatives?” he asked.
“No sir”
“Well all right, but come back without a police escort this time”
The story of the previous return to the ship had obviously filtered upwards.
As it turned out, there was no chance of an escort and only time for a quick drink together as Tommy could only get a couple of hours off, his C.O. being less accommodating than Whimbrel's skipper. There was however time to have a photo taken.

A Christmas Raffle with a difference

The Pig Raffle

Between the two world wars, the local branch of the Transport and General Workers Union, of which Ernie (my Dad) was the Chairman, used to have a raffle at Christmas time to provide funds for a party for the members children.
Most years the prizes were the usual ones of bottles and boxes and so on. One year, Ernie had the bright idea of having a “pig raffle”, having in mind acquiring a piglet as the prize. “Something different” he thought. So he ordered a piglet from one of his country cousin connections.
By this time Ernie was working for the Stepney Borough Council in the Engineers Department and responsible for pay, so that apart from the members of his trade union branch he knew most of the workforce.
Three weeks before Christmas he received a phone call from the Station Master at Stratford (east London that is not the birthplace of Shakespeare) asking if he was expecting a pig.
“Yes”
“Have you got a horse and cart ?”
“No”
“Well I don't know how you're are going to get this bloody great thing home then. It took three of my blokes to get it out of the luggage van and I want it moved out of my office quick smart”
Naturally he thought that the Station Master, whom he knew, was exaggeration, so he just took the underground along to Stratford after work to collect the pig. He was still only in his thirties, and whilst no weightlifter he thought he could manage to carry a piglet home under his arm.
This was not to be. When he saw the pig sprawled on the floor of the Station Master's office he could barely believe his eyes. Afterwards he insisted that the beast was at least six foot long and weighed close to two hundred weight (two sacks of coal or over 100 kilos) He just did not know how he was going to get the animal from Stratford to Stepney and already it was gone six oclock in the evening and the Station master was pressing to know when he was going to get his office back.
He not only had to get his prize back to Wapping he would need to have it cut up and he knew that he woulde not be able to do that by himself. Whilst he knew the Stratford Station Master, he knew no one else in the vicinity that he caould call on for help, so he had no alternative but to go home and rustle up some help from there.
These days of course it would be no big deal, a quick phone call to a friend or relative and the cavalry would arrive. But folk didn't have phones at home in those days, so back on the train to Aldgate East, change and then down to Wapping. At home, just time for a cup of tea and explain to his family what was going on and out again. Mum, of course had the solution to one of the problems; ask the butcher in Watney Street to cut up the carcass in exchange for some of the cuts, after all it sounded as though there was going to be too much for the raffle anyway.
Eldest son Ernie was dispatched to Watney Street to make the arrangements with the butcher and now to find transport. Wapping was a purely residential area, there were few shops and no market so there were no costermongers living near by from whom to borrow a barrow. There was no alternative but to use a pram and hope that it could manage the weight. Fortunately on the ground floor of the buildings was a family which had had twins and still owned a larger perambulator, so this was borrowed and then the long walk from Wapping up to Stratford Railway Station. The distance was over four miles, at the end of a working day for a 5 foot two inches man who was still not convinced that the pram was going to take the weight of this enormous beast. He had visions of having to cut the damn thing in half and make two journeys, but he hadn't brought a knife let alone a saw with him. Nothing to do but to press on, taking it in turns with son Tom and a neighbour Dan Connolly, they pushed the pram all the way to Stratford resisting the temptation to go into a single pub on the way.
However, all the anxiety on that score was unnecessary. Perhaps the weight was not as much as he had thought, but with the assistance of a porter so there was one person on each corner, the pig was laid lengthways on the pram, not too much hanging over the ends and off they went to Watney Street, a much shorter distance and in the hope that the butcher was amenable. The pram survived the journey, despite much of the way being along cobbled roads- they don't

make prams like that any more.
The Watney Street butcher was quite happy with the proposed arrangement to cut up the carcass and keep it in his cold room until the day of the raffle.
The raffle was a big success with far more prizes than usual and despite urgings in later years, this was to be the one and only pig raffle.

Another World War One Book?

If you go to Amazon Books and type in "World War One" you will get over 19000 hits, yes that is right over nineteen thousand or nearly twenty thousand probably in a week or three.

 

So why am I going to suggest that if your are a family historian you should write another one ?

My simple answer, is you can and you should.

If you have an ancestor, Grandfather or Great grandfather, uncles or granduncles who served or died in the the first world war then they deserve to be remembered, not just en masse on Remembrance Sunday but as individuals.
I think there are three main reasons why a family historian or genealogist should write up their family histories in a narrative and there are no doubt others.



First, don’t waste your research.
You have spent a lot of time and effort and perchance a fair bit of money in the process of finding out about your ancestors. It would be a great shame and a waste for it not to be recorded in a way that will be understandable to others, particularly your present day family, who, quite often, do not appear to be particularly interested.

Secondly your ancestors deserve it
Your great grandparents, or whichever part of your family you decide to focus on, should not be left unheard of and unremembered. You have the capacity and the knowledge to record their lives, so that future generations will know of their forbears.

Finally no one else will do it
The chances are no-one else is going to write a book about your ancestors, so it is up to you. Not only can you do it, you should. Consider the alternatives, many years of work recorded in a gedcom on a CD, or a loose-leaf binder full of Family Group Sheets, Descendant charts and so on. Most regard that as being a “no contest” compared to a printed book.

So get down to it and write the story of that one soldier amongst all the others, he was an individual, not just one of the dreadful statistics of the "Great War", a man with a family, mother, wife,children, siblings, all making him unique.  He needs to be remembered not just as an entry  on a group sheet but in words that your family will understand and appreciate. 

No Gas Mask=No Zoo trip

No Gas Mask=No Zoo trip

As most will know, during the second world war, it was compulsory to carry a gas mask with you everywhere you went.

As a child, my memory for things unimportant was about the same as it is now. Constantly needing reminding about jobs, including taking the gas mask. The gas mask itself was not a problem I knew how to put it on and off, but it was the carrying that was a nuisance. It was in a cardboard box with a loop of string which was supposed to be carried over the shoulder, and it just got in the way of everything that you wanted to do. If you slung it round behind and then sat down, the box got squashed, under your arm it got in the way and so on.

Whilst in Guildford as an evacuee in about 1942 or 1943 a school trip to Chessington Zoo and Circus was organised, which of course was a cause of a great deal of excitement. We had to take a packed lunch and drinks, so my Mum gave me a packed lunch of sandwiches and apples from the garden, sufficient for half the class, and some left over for the animals.

So off we went from home on the bus from Westborough into Guildford to school where the coach was already waiting. Just as I was about to get on it was spotted that I had no gas mask.
Miss Hanley was one of those teachers who could freeze you to the ground with one look, without even saying anything, but she spoke.

“Where's your gas mask ?”

“Forgot it Miss”

“Well you know that you cant go without a gas mask, and you don’t have time to go home again. You will have to stay in school.”
I didn't cry but I must have looked as though I was going to. “It's your own fault, you never pay attention”

Joe Gaffney, the only male teacher in the school apart from Mr. Ridge , the head, then came up and inquired what the problem was, as we were holding up all the others from getting on the coach.

“You're an idiot, you know that? But you are lucky because there is a gas mask hanging up in the downstairs toilets, run in and get it and you will be able to go.”

I was in and back with that gas mask in no time flat, grinning all over my face. On the coach, though I noticed the name on the gas mask box was of one of the boys who was away from school with measles, so I thought that if there was a gas scare whilst we were away I would have the choice of getting gassed or getting measles. I had seen kids with measles so would probably have chosen being gassed.

I don’t remember a great deal about the actual visit to Chessington Zoo, except the surplus of sandwiches and the fact that we were told that most of the larger animals had been evacuated to Devon. Still there was plenty to see and I had no idea where Devon was anyway.

Did I learn a lesson from the fright of not being able to go? Probably not.

Sixty years between shaves

Had a shave at a barbers the other day.  Well not really a barber as it was a young woman did the shaving.

The last time I had a shave in a barbers shop was close to sixty years ago. As a young man I worked at Adelaide House just on the north side London bridge, and if for a variety of reasons I had not spent the night at home,  then I would need a shave before going to work.
Whilst electric razors had been invented, I didn't have one so I needed to go to a barbers for a shave, this being in the days before "designer stubble".
Fortunately there was a barbers shop in the basement of Adelaide House in those days, and it may even still be there, so I was able to pop in and have a shave before going into the office.

A shave of course was not just a shave, there was the routine of the hot towels, then the lathering up, the first shave, more lathering and then the second shave.  The routine finished up with another hot towel followed by a cold one and then astringent aftershave.

Going in to the office smelling of cologne, told everyone that I had had a barbers shave so they wanted to know where I had spent the night.

The shave the other day was pretty much the same routine as it had been all those years ago, apart from the young lady doing the barbering and the dentist type chair that they used. I felt that I was being prepared for a Sweeney Todd routine I was tilted so far back.  At Adelaide House there was no need to tilt the customer back all that far, as the barber was tall enough to do a shave just by lowering the chair a little and then a tilt.

And the hot towels didn't seem to be as hot as they used to be.  These days they are microwaved, whereas in the past a towel was put in the hand basin and boiling water was poured over from a kettle, then virtually straight on the face.

Still it was all as pleasant as it used to be.  One difference at the end though, the barber didn't ask "Will you need anything for the weekend sir ?" as they always used to.

Alphons Eder on Amazon

As I Told you before,  my Great grandfather Alphons Eder went to Brazil in 1859 now he has gone up the Amazon !!

My book about his life is now available as a paperback on Amazon
 www.amazon.co.uk/dp/1500285617

Alphons spent most of his life in the mid 19th century -in the East End of London as a street musician playing in a German Band.

Before that he had made the long journey, for those days, from Slovenia to England and then spent just short of three years on board HMS Ganges on its voyage to British Columbia and back as the flagship of the Commander in Chief of the Pacific Squadron of the Royal Navy. During the journey they went to Brazil and sailed around Cape Horn- high adventure in any century.

A life divided into three separate phases which could be regarded as three different lives.