Wapping and Dartmoor

Of all the places in London's  East end which have been gentrified over the years,   Wapping is one that stands out.

I'm wondering if any of the Porsche and Land rover owners who occupy apartments in the former warehouses are aware of the connection with Dartmoor, the prison, that is.

The former warehouses which line the river front abutting onto Wapping High Street or Wapping Street as it wass then, were designed in the nineteenth century by Daniel Asher Alexander the Surveyor to the London Docks company.  

It is said that his work was heavily influenced by the Florentine artist Giovanni Piranesi and in particular his macabre drawings of imaginary prisons.

  Not difficult to see that this  influence is evident in the warehouses in Wapping.  Later Alexander had the opportunity to put this enflunece into greater effect  when he was commission in the early 1800s to design the new prison on Dartmoor. 

From surgical boot to a stage clog

My cousin Tommy Harrington contracted polio as a child. He survived the illness but,like many others he ended with one leg shorter than the other.  The only remedy then was the surgical boot, a contraption consisting of a brace on the longer leg and a heavy boot with a thick sole on the shorter.  Like most children fitted with the boot Tommy hated it. He knew that it helped with his walking but it made him stand out from the other children. Also at this time in the early 1900s children whose limbs had been damaged by polio were "cripples" and rarely got beyond that either in description or aspiration.

Tommy Harrington would not accept that. He developed a liking for music possibly derived and perhaps learned from his grandfather Alphons Eder, a street musician,  how  to play the accordion and concertina. As well as being a natural musician, never learning to read music, he began writing comic songs and performing them for anyone who would listen.

Later he decided to go on the stage, developing a yodelling style of singing and dressed in his own version of a Dutch costume. He later said that the costume was inspired by wanting to cover his surgical boot so baggy trousers did that well.. Eventually he was able to have some special boots made which resembled wooden clogs, which he wore to the end of his stage career.

He appeared on the Music Halls which were still popular and numerous in those days, recorded many of his songs and even had hits, such as they were then.  I told much of this in a previous blog. I am reminded that he died twenty-five years ago but you will still find mention of him on the internet.  By today's standards a "celebrity".

And so it's over

And so it's over

The eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month has passed for the hundreth time.

The last post has sounded, the flags furled and the bands, army cadets,  scouts and guides  marched off. The crowds drift away from the memorial cenotaphs which will then continue to sit alone, on a village green or in the centre of an unapproachable  roundabout, for another twelve months.

The poppies will fall not just in the fields of Flanders but from the lapels of the folk in the shopping malls but the men and boys that  are supposed to be remembered by them will also drift back into the mists.

The centenary of the great war will have been commemorated and "Lest we forget" has been repeated over and over but within a few weeks it will be replaced with "Merry Christmas"or another Yuletide greeting.

But the men, many just boys, who died in that so called great war in some corner of a foreign field or in the depths of the sea, will still be there presumably still believing that they had died for something worthwhile.  After a century which has included another world war and numerous other conflicts since, it is difficult to understand why it was not the promised " war to end all wars".

The politicians and military of many countries, including our own still appear to believe that political problems can be resolved by military action.

If you, like me, do not believe this to be true, then don't unpin that poppy from your lapel. Wear it or a poppy badge every day in the hope that it will eventually mean that the death and maiming  of service men and women is not required.

         Ask, as did Siegfried Sassoon.  "have you forgotten?"

Lest We Forget the Sailors

Lest we forget the Sailors.

Whilst most of the battles of World War One were fought in France and Belgium there were also battles happening at sea.  Over forty thousand Royal Navy men lost their lives and their were 5000 merchant ships sunk with a comparable loss of life.

The second RN ship to be sunk was HMS Pathfinder which was the first ship to be sunk by a U-boat using a torpedo.  This happened just off the Firth of Forth on 5th September 1914 with the loss of most of the over 250 crew.

Among the crew  was our cousin Leading Stoker Joseph Chance, who although a regular seaman having joined the Navy in 1908 he had only been on board Pathfinder for four months. 

The torpedo fired from the U-boat hit a magazine and the subsequent explosion caused the ship to sink very rapidly which accounted for the great loss of life. This was in the early stages of the war and the Navy had yet to find a strategy for dealing with submarine attacks.

Joseph was just twenty-four years old and had married just the year before.  He is recorded among the 8,500 names listed on the Royal Navy Memorial at Chatham. The Merchant Seamen memorial is at Tower Hill in London. 

Postmans trousers

Do you remember when postmen in Britain wore trousers?  Not just in the winter but all the year round. The material was a dark blue serge like most uniforms and the trousers had a red stripe down the sides of the leg.

I remember this very well as I was once given a

pair of postmans trousers to wear for school.  Not sure how old I was, probably about ten.  The war was on and there was clothes rationing and small boys wore out clothes faster than the coupons or money lasted, so second hand or hand me downs were the natural thing.

Those trousers though were just too far, but I had no choice.  Quite apart from the rough material it was that red strip down the side. 

 It took  a long time to get rid of that red stripe.  Day after day using school ink to cover up the red.

Eventually it seemed to fade into something less obvious but I was still aware of it.  The strange thing was that none one else seemed to notice it, but I did.  If I had had the nous to think about it then  I would have realised that we all wore a rag bag of mismatched clothing. And of course long trousers had the advantage of protecting legs during rough play.  But it was that red stripe!!

All that was left

When our grandmother Ada Rosetta Sadler died on her birthday at the age of 82,  the only items among her effects that related to her first husband were these.:

No photo,no letters from the front, no marriage certificate, just the scroll and a "Dead Man's Penny"

Ada Rosetta Feston was 25 years old, with  two daughters, one four years old and the other under three months when she was widowed. At first she did not know she was a widow.  Fred Feston disapeared into the mud of Flanders on 25th October 1917 during the third battle of Ypres, and was posted as missing.

Ada grieved for her lost husband but had to get on with life to provide for her children.  Eventually she remarried and perhaps it is not surprising that her former life had to be put to the back of her mind and that eventually all that remained in any physical sense were these two artifacts.

We have tried to honour the instruction on the scroll :

"Let those who come after see to it that his name be not forgotten"

Changing History

It is sometimes difficult to understand how organisations and events which have existed for many years, sometimes centuries can be quietly taken over, changed beyond recognition but still claim to be continuations of the original.  A bit like the Labour Party after the Blairite takeover.

Bur for the moment I have in mind the Doggett Coat and Badge race which happens on the Thames every year, in September these days, and is claimed to be a continuation of a race established in 1715.

Well yes there is a race with that name which has been held on the Thames since that time but it is nonsense to suggest that it is the same race.

I do not denigrate modern day winners in any way, but a race between two young athletes, members of rowing clubs in light weight skiffs is not the same race as one rowed by young working lightermen, against five other competitors in the heavy wherries which were the working boats of the Thames watermen.

It is difficult to tell from the list of winners here when the competitors did not need to be working watermen or even been apprenticed to the trade as was the case in the beginning. Originally it was a race for  young watermen “in the first year of their freedom” of the Watermen’s Company and the course was four and a half miles from London Bridge to Chelsea. A  considerable test of endurance and boatmanship especially  until 1873  when the race was  rowed against the tide. This probably accounts for the difference in the time take of just over an hour and half compared to the times these days of about twentyfive minutes.

At the time that the race was won by our ancestor Francis Jury in 1809 this was the case as was evidenced by the places they were from as shown on the list: Hermitage, Lambeth, Horseleydown, Bermondsey, etc.  Nineteenth century lightermen earned their living by steering the large flat-bottomed barges into which they had offloaded cargo from the ships coming into the river.  No mechanical method of propulsion, no motors or steam engines, just use of the tide with a long oar for steering.  A skill learned from seven years apprenticeship under an experienced master.  Tough work by any measure.

These days membership of the Company of Watermen and Lightermen of the River Thames do not need to have been apprenticed to the craft and almost anyone can become a Freeman.  It is amusing to speculate how many Freemen of the Company who have just paid their dues would be comfortable in  one of these small craft on the sometimes bumpy waters of the Thames.

Another Murder Mystery from Ed McKie

Follow the career of PC George Morrison of the Bermondsey Police Station in the reign of Queen Victoria.  Not yet a detective or even a plain clothes policeman  he is involved in discovering the identity of a man found dead in the old abandoned watchhouse.  His success in piecing together the odd pierces of information gradually uncovered, lead him to identifying, not just the man but his killer.

This is his second foray into detective work which he hopes will lead him to promotion and  Scotland Yard.

Now available in Paperback at Amazon.
The Kindle version is also available here.Here
? Loop
If you buy and enjoy the story please find time to do a review.  If you dont like either of these books then I would be pleased to here your views (You dont have to be kind).

Does your dog speak to you?

Most dog owners know that their pets "tell" them about their needs.  I want a drink or some food, go for a walk and so on.
 Now two researchers from Salford University have been receiving lots of media attention from all over the world, having published the results of a study which showed that there is a distinct dog "language" .  Sean O'Hara and Hannah Worsley ¹ conducted research with 37 owners and their animals where they video recorded hours of footage which on analysis showed clearly that dogs communicate with their owners  through  behavior  and signs which have a specific meaning and are intended to get a particular  response. Many reporters have interpreted this as a kind of sign language.

Sean and Hannah visited London recently to be interviewed by Sarah Vine, a Mail columnist who wrote quite a long piece on the subject.


Admittedly most of the piece was about Sarah Vine and her own dogs, but interesting nonetheless.

The Salford research was carried out in the North West of England and it would be interesting to know if the same results would be found in other parts of the country.
The North East , for instance.  We all know that folk on Tyneside speak English which is unintelligible to people from elsewhere. What about their dogs? Does a Newcastle whippet understand Geordie and respond with two fingers instead of a paw? Then down in the West Country there is a different English again.  Further research is required..

And its a pity about Brexit.  It would have been a further area of research to discover what kind of Gallic gestures those French poodles use when asking for the garlic bread.

---

1 Worsley, HK & O'Hara, SJ (2018) Cross-species referential signalling events in domestic dogs (Canis familiaris). Animal Cognition, 21(4): 457-465. ^↩

Have you made a will?

How many  people  leave  it too late to make a will?

A distant relative, James heron when writing his testament in 1825 started by saying "I Consider it to be every mans duty in his own lifetime to settle his affairs in such a manner as to prevent all disputes after his death....."
He  then went on to leave all his estate to his only son, also James.  He survived for a few more years and in the meantime son James was apprenticed as a solicitor and became a member of the Society of Writers to the Signet,
Inheriting some nine thousand pounds James decided not to work anymore  especially when he later inherited the estate of his uncle, William Heron a substantial addition to his coffers.   Time slipped by, as it does, James lived the high life and did not think he was going to die.  He did, of course, but earlier than he anticipated so  had not had time to either marry or make a will.  Ironic that a man with legal training should die at the age of thirty eight and had not made a will.

The result of dying intestate was that his elderly aunt, Elizabeth McKie, as his next of kin, inherited everything.  According to the legal records, she was too aged and infirm to even write her own name so she quickly disposed of much it,  giving the Dalmore house and estate to her brother William in trust for his daughter.  She also gave railway shares to her neice,  Helen which enabled Helen's husband to retire from his bakery. 

Doubtful if this how young James would have disposed of his goods,  etc  had he got round to making a will.

So the moral of this story is, if you want to decide who gets all your goods and chattels then make a will.

Hone Stone

Do you know what a Hone Stone is?

Until very recently if you had asked me I would have thought along the lines of those stones used in olden days for sharpening scythes and sickles and the like.  I knew that there were stones used by carpenters for sharpening chisels but thought they were called oil stones.

I recently found that one of my great-great grandfathers was a hone stone manufacture in Stair in Ayrshire.
Hone stones from this small manufactory in the mid nineteenths century had two brand names Tam O' Shanter and Water of Ayr and they were famous mainly for sharpening razors and a finer variety was used in the jewelry trade.

The stones quarried in the Dalmore Estate near the small village of Stair in Ayrshire.  How William McKie came to be the proprietor here is very vague and difficult to follow.  It was originally owned in the early part of the century by a James Heron and according to some information it was passed down through the female side of this family.  William McKie was  the son of Janet Heron but we have not established the direct connection between Janet and James Heron..  Work for another day.  

Old technology still works.

Have you noticed in the recent spell of cold weather  that despite all the latest gizmos in cars you have to revert to  the old ways to get started and they always seem to work.  You might have a satnav which helps you get lost in a strange town or a hi fi radio with 190 stations nione of which you want to listen to, but you still need a shovel to clear the snow from the driveway.unless you are the Highways agency, when you will need four blokes and a aJCB.

And the best way of getting the frost off the windscreen is still a plastic scraper as the heated windscreen system takes too long to work. And when the doors are frozen closed and you have a wireless key with no keyhole, how do you unfreeze the lock?  Such is progress. 

Is Remembrance now just a photo shoot?

Those who know me will know that I am not a jingoist of any kind so I make no apology for returning to the subject of remembering the dead of the first world war.
Visiting Tyne Cot Cemetery this week I was appalled to say the least at the sight of young people climbing about on the central memorial cross just to have their photos taken.
I spoke to one of the guides who told me that the steps on the base of the cross where designed to be used for that.  She said that when King George V visited the cemetery he wanted to stand on the place where so many allied soldiers had stood.
I pointed out that standing on that spot reflecting on the dead of war was a world away from using a memorial as a platform for photographs.
She replied "You are entitled to your opinion."

The first time we visited Tyne Cot, we were almost alone there and it was a moving experience.  Unfortunately this time it was almost impossible to think of it in quite the same way.

Hopefully after 2018 this place will return to being a place of remembrance and not the tourist venue that it appears to be today.

A hundred years ago

Frederick Feston died just over one hundred years ago on 25th October 1917. One of the casualties of the Third battle of Ypres that they called Passchendaele.  Not the only one who died that day so it is all too easy to lump them all together as casualties and forget that each of them was an individual: son, father or husband.

Fred Feston is a real man to us even though we never knew him. His daughters never knew him,   the first only a baby and the second born after he died. His widow remarried so his memory gradually faded.

We know him because of our interest in family history and we have been able to piece together his life before the war and the events surrounding his few brief months in the army in France before he disappeared into the mud of Flanders.  No grave-just a name inscribed on a long wall among so many others and an entry in  memorial book.

The Third Battle of Ypres ended at the beginning of November, too late for Fred Feston and for close to three quarters of a million men who died there in less than a month.  In a poem, Sigfried Sassoon put it "I died in Hell, they called it Passchendaele."

A crowd, a host

To borrow from Wordsworth "I saw a crowd, a host ..........of people"

I was in my early twenties and hadn't seen a crowd like this before. I had seen crowds, of course, London rush hour, football matches and even from in a CND march, but they were moving crowds. This one was standing still and I didn't know what was going on.
This was a Monday and I was on my way to work at the GPO in the City of London from where I lived in Downham, just over ten miles.  I cycled everyday and never had a problem but that day I was completely baulked. Cycling in London back in in the 1950s was not as dangerous as it is today, a lot less traffic then but there was a special hazard of the tramlines which are not there anymore.
I discovered that the reason for the crown  was the Lord Mayors Show and the way to work was completely blocked.  I might just as well have been on the other side of the river as the other side of this mass of people just waiting to see a  hangover from medieval times. But of course a free show always attracts crowds.
The show was always held on the 9th November in those days no matter what day of the week it was and at the time I remember thinking it should have been held on the fifth! They have a bit more sense about it now and it always held on a Saturday, probably because when they changed it people still worked a five day week!
No matter which diversion I tried, down towards Cannon Street, up every side street but was still blocked.   I was still stuck until the parade had left the Guildhall area and some of the barriers had been removed so that I could get through.
Even without the bike I would still not been able to get through.  Have you ever tried to push your way through to the front of a crowd? Over an hour late for work, stopped two hours pay which I could ill afford still being on the lowest pay in the place.
I was never greatly enamoured of pageantry and stuff associated with the aristocracy and the upper classes before, but this confirmed an innate antipathy.  Almost joined the Communist Party!

First bath for forty years

Went on holiday recently and the bathroom had no shower so I had my first bath for about forty years.

Had forgotten how relaxing it can be wallowing in a tub full of warm water.  But getting in was not easy I hadn't worked out the logistics of sitting down in the bath when my knees refuse to bend sufficiently, however I managed it without creating a tidal wave.

Getting out again also required a great deal of thinking about before it was achieved.  I managed eventually.  Yes it was nice, but I don't think I will do it again.

Difficult to remember when baths transitioned into showering.

There were no showers when I was young and when we were evacuees during the war there were often no  baths either so it was off to the public baths. Slipper baths they were called then and I have no idea why. The towels supplied at the public baths were called huckaback, I have no idea about that either but I do know that they were linen, a bit like a tea towel with no drying capacity so you often walked home almost as wet as when you had got out of the bath.

We had no bath in our first home when we were married so it was like going back to childhood days and the slipper baths. They were still using huckabacks so we took our own towels.

In Flanders field

July 2017 marks the centenary of the Third battle of Ypres  By most definitions one of the bloodiest and controversial of all the dreadful battles of the First world war  By November the battle had gained very little for the allies but had cost the lives of close to a quarter of a million men, with debatably a similar number of German soldiers.

We shall be visiting the Tyne Cot Cemetery this October which is one of the largest of the Ypres salient. It contains the graves of 11,961 British and Commonwealth soldiers including close to 600 Australians, 450 Canadians and close to 200 from New Zealand. There is an astonishing number 8373 graves of men whose names are not known and whose headstone bears the inscription "A soldier of the great war.  Known unto God"   

There were over thirtyfive thousand men who were  never found or identified, most lost in the mud. Their names, including that of our grandfather Frederick Feston, at least are known and  are inscribed on a memorial wall 150 metres long.

War cemeteries like Tyne Cot are never easy to visit. They are not places of possible quiet contemplation like many a village churchyard in England.  The serried rows of stark white headstones appearing to stretch into the distance defy any attempt to view them without emotion even though they record events which occurred a century ago.

A Soldier's Wife

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My Maltese great grandmother Liberatta Xerri was what is now called an army wife.

In 19th century Malta her policeman husband died leaving her to fend for herself and two young children, one of whom was born after her husband had died.

She later married Thomas Anson a private in the Kings Liverpool regiment and went with him ti India leaving her two young daughters in the care of her mother in Malta.

No married quarters, wives shared the barrack rooms with the soldiers with only a blanket draped around the bed space at night.

When the regiment moved between stations it was mostly on foot and the wives and children walked as well.  

During four years in India the regiment covered a thousand miles on foot. No transport except occasionally pregnant wives could get a lift on a baggage cart, but that was actually against regulations.

If you would like to read the story it is on Amazon http://amzn.eu/fPYRKKS

Kindness is alive and well and can be found on a Virgin train.

Arrived at Euston station last night on our way back from Slovenia just too late to catch the fast train to warringon.  Instead of waiting an hour for the next one we decided to catch a slower train but which was leaving shortly.  It was a bad decision as by the time we were on board we realised that the unreserved seats were all taken and the carriages crowded and over full.

After struggling for a while I was finding it difficult to carry the suitcase any further through the train in the hope of a seat.

A young man, say mid thirties, saw our plight and offered to carry our suitcase back through the train to find a seat in the first class compartments  "I'll sort you something out " says he.  He led the way, pushing against the flow of people still trying to work their way forward in the forelorn hope of a nonexistent seat.

Eventually we got to an almost empty first class compartment and took a couple of seats and it was only then that we realised he was a passenger as well, not railway staff.

After the first stop the train conductor came along and we showed our tickets.  He said that we would have to leave the compartment or pay extra fare.  We were still too tired to argue and asked how much extra he wanted for us to remain where we were.  He said that it would be 80 pounds each which was more than we had paid for the return tickets in the first place.

The young man who had brought us along then intervened.  "That is ridiculous.  With all these empty seats why are you insisting that they go back along the train.  If they have to go, then you carry their bag.  I carried it here so I know how difficult I was for them."  The cunductor replied that their where now plenty of seats. The young man responded, "Well I have a reserved seat in the first carriage, before they move, perhaps you could go through to the front to see if my seat is unoccupied,"

There was just a little bit of edge coming into the conversation when another voice joined in.  A younger man seating with a female companion called out "I will pay for them".  He came forward with his wallet in his hand and " I can't believe that you are even thinking of asking this couple to move knowing how crowded the train is.  I saw haw this chap was helping them and it restores some of my faith in human nature.  So I will pay for all three."

I am normally a sentimental bloke but all this moved me to tears.

We did not hear how this ended.  It appeared that the conductor relented and moved on down the train without taking any money, but the magnificent gesture had been made.

No doubt the ticket collector has his job to do, but Virgin trains collect enough revenue to allow their staff some discretion on overcrowded trains.

We allowed our Samaritans to go without thanking them properly, but they know who they are and I think they know how grateful we were, not just for the assistance but for the generosity of spirit which inspired the gestures.

What we learned doing National Service

National Service - what we learned

Every now and again after some particular outrage by a young person, student, hoodie, longhair  or what have you, then some armchair ex-colonel or even someone more important like a former Lance Corporal,  will come out of the woodwork and suggest that National Service should be re-introduced instead of sending young men to university.

I have been thinking of writing a book about my National Service days sixty odd years ago, and will call it something like "Learned to drive and learned to skive".   Haven't got round to it yet but when I do......

The Chapters will include:

How to pretend to be busy by carrying a clipboard

When in a barracks, walk quickly looking straight ahead so that it would appear that you have some purpose and remember to walk around the parade ground and not across it.

All the verses of  bawdy rugby songs, even if you have never played rugby.

Swearing  in Arabic, 

 How to darn socks

Marching without kicking the heels of the guy in front so that a whole platoon is not brought down like a row of dominoes.( Never really mastered that one)

Spend long hours doing nothing either on your bed or in the Naafi if there was money left.

If it stands still paint it, if it moves salute it.

Play brag and solo whist

Get drunk, if you can afford it on ten Bob a week

Smoke by buying five Woodbines at a time.

Fire a rifle, sten gun and pistol (not a revolver!)

And most importantly....

Bite your tongue when being given orders by jumped up little squirts with upper-class accents and no brains.