by Victor Gregg
Mum got us out of our beds at the crack of dawn and by seven we were on our way. John and I knew full well that the walk never took more than an hour, but mother was adamant: ‘Best to be on the safe side.’ We trudged our way to the station, Mum pushing the pram, John and I running ahead, looking into the shop windows and revelling in the novelty of the occasion. Our small, happy threesome arrived at the station a good two hours early, but even so there were quite a number of the group already there.
At nine the church dignitaries arrived, our names were taken and, with instructions to keep away from the edge of the platform, the great adventure started. This was the first time we had travelled outside the area we called ‘home’. What excitement: we were going on a real steam train. ‘Are we going to the seaside, Mum?’ ‘Shut the window, Victor, we’ll all be covered in soot.’
Mother told us what we had to do. ‘You can play around in the evening, but during the daytime we all work with everyone else at the picking. Don’t be rude to anyone and show respect to the farmer and his family. If it wasn’t for them and the church we wouldn’t be having any holiday.’ (The farmer turned out to be like the rest of his breed: get the crop in by any and all means. You could hardly blame him – the hop harvest lasted about five weeks and if the crop got musty or too wet the farmer’s year of hard labour went down the drain.)
The train pulled into a station right out in the country. Then we had to wait for another train. This one only had three coaches which were very old, not like the ones that we were used to seeing at King’s Cross or St Pancras. In we all piled and the train chugged along a branch line and finally pulled up with a hissing of steam and rattling of chains. There was not a house in sight and Mum had to push the pram along a path, through a couple of fields, through bridle lanes where the trailing brambles tore at our faces and hands and, of course, our legs; boys never wore long trousers in those days. Finally, we arrived at some sheds. Some were joined together, some built in twos with wooden walls and corrugated-iron roofs. These were our halls of residence, one family to a shed. We were lucky there was only three of us: some of these families would have the mum and dad and as many as four children. Some had brought their cats and dogs and one couple even had a caged bird. Finally, everyone was sorted and then the man we were told was the overseer sat us down in an adjoining barn-like structure which had a roof but no walls. We were told that this was the dining room and, sure enough, a trolley was wheeled in with some hot stew, platefuls of home-baked bread followed by large containers full of sweet tea; this was more like it.
I had the feeling that our mum was a bit shocked when, after our meal, the overseer introduced us to the facilities. We were shown the toilets, a long shed with a wooden plank with holes in it. When you had answered the call of nature you were expected to fill a large jug with water from an outside tap, sluice it down the hole and then cover the hole with a wood-framed piece of canvas.
The wash-houses were of similar construction, one for men and one for women, and, of course, no hot water. By the time we reassembled back at the huts a huge farm cart had arrived and some farmhands were unloading bits of furniture: a wooden-slatted cot for each member of the family and a table. The cots were made so that they could be placed one on top of the other to save space. John being the youngest was assigned the bottom bunk, I was on the top and Mum’s bed was against the opposite wall. The room was divided by a curtain that hung from a wire strung along the length of the room. The only other object was a pot-bellied wood-burning stove. I never measured the room but, thinking back, I guess it was about twelve feet across and perhaps fourteen feet wide. Next arrived some palliasses which we stuffed with straw – these were our mattress and pillows. There was no means of illumination. Afterwards we learnt that the regulars brought their own paraffin lamps.
As the evening approached, we became aware of a strange overpowering odour: the pungent smell of the hops.
We were woken when it got light by one of the farm boys going around and blowing a whistle. Mum was up like a shot and opened the door. Outside, visibility was down to about three feet, the whole camp was enveloped in a thick, soft, clinging mist, on top of which it was freezing cold. ‘Come on you two, get your lazy bodies out of them beds and go and wash.’ ‘It’s freezing, Mum.’ ‘Do the two of you good, put some colour in yer cheeks.’ Our mum was relentless. ‘Come on, I’m not ’aving the pair of you layabouts showing me up, and I’ll be looking be’ind yer ears, I don’t want to see any tide marks.’ When we returned to the shed she gave us the once over: ‘I’ll scrub the pair of you tonight, you’re not getting away with that cat’s lick.’
The only thing I remember about the breakfast was the horrible concoction that went by the name of porridge. It was even worse than I had experienced at the Shaftesbury, and nowhere as good as our mum’s. However, the porridge was followed by big trays of fried bacon, eggs and beans and as much bread as we wanted. Everyone helped themselves; not a crumb was left on the trays. Then, hunger satisfied, it was off for our initiation as hop-pickers.
The morning mist had cleared and, with the sun shining, the dew slowly dried off. Down to the lines we trooped. The smell of the hops was by now overpowering. I was sent off to find brother John who had disappeared in the general mêlée. It took me a full hour and when I finally located him he was sitting under a small tree crying his eyes out. He had got himself lost. When I returned him to the arms of my anxious mum, she said, ‘Keep your eyes on your brother, Victor, it’s the sudden change. John carn’t cope like you.’
There were about a dozen of us in our group sitting on stools around a long bench. On top of the bench there was a big long sack. There was a farm worker with a long pole whose job it was to pull the lines of hops off the wires that they grew along and on to the table. As the lines came down to the table some of the branches got entangled with the hair of those women, like Mum, who had not covered their hair with a scarf. On that first day plenty of time was wasted while the women tried to untangle their hair from the vines. Those far-sighted men and women who had managed to escape this predicament were now busy picking the hops off the vine stalks and filling the sacks with hops and making sure that no leaves went in.
At about eleven in the morning a whistle was blown and everyone stopped. Mum propelled me and John to the food shed where a light lunch had been laid out by the farmer. Bread and cheese and a sort of salad. ‘Don’t show me up by gulping yer food down like pigs.’ That was our mum telling us not to be greedy. Everyone helped themselves, no one counted how many slices of bread and cheese you had, and after about twenty minutes we were all back at the bench slaving away at the hops. There was another break in the afternoon and then slog on until the overseer blew his whistle signifying the end of the day’s toil. Then we trudged back through the fields to the huts or sheds, where we had a wash before sitting down to whatever dinner was served up. As soon as dinner was finished, Mum gave us our orders: ‘Go into the woods and get some firewood.’ This was for the pot-bellied stove; everyone was doing the same thing because the only possible way to get rid of this sort of sticky dirt was with lashings of hot water. Our mum’s list of what to bring had included the biggest kettle you could get hold of.
Once we’d got the wood, Mum set about boiling the water, and there we were, me and my brother John, stark naked, while Mum set to work on the grime we had accumulated in the course of our first day’s work. By the time she finished the long bar of Sunlight soap had shrunk by half: ‘And don’t get dirty like that any more or it will be a repeat performance tomorrow.’ There was no way that John and I wanted a repeat of that torture so we swore to our mum that we would keep ourselves clean in future
By seven in the evening some of the men were already on their way to the village pub while the rest of the group sat around a big campfire. John and me had never experienced anything like it, with the smoke getting in our eyes and the sparks from the huge fire leaping up into the night sky. The women spent the evening gos
siping about the day’s goings on and then Mum brought out her mandolin and another man fished out an accordion and the evening came alive to the sound of singing. Us boys were very proud of our mum; she was much in demand.
John and I were on our own there as all the kids came from different areas and we knew none of them. The first item on my agenda was letting all the other kids know that ‘anyone taking the piss out of my bruvver is going to cop it’. It wasn’t that I felt belligerent towards the other kids; it was what I saw as the proper way to protect John, who I always thought was a bit on the slow side. Anyway, we kept to ourselves and the holiday ran its course without my getting into any trouble.
Then all of a sudden it was time to go. I’m sure our mum enjoyed herself but we never went again. I think the pole in the toilets was too much for her.
15
Mr James and His Canes
I was now eleven and along with all the other eleven-year-olds I was sent to one of the three senior boys’ schools in the area. I ended up in the roughest of the lot. The streets surrounding this establishment were completely run-down. The people who lived there could hardly be blamed for giving up hope, and yet there was a never-say-die spirit of survival and it showed in the way people lived. On the one hand they circled the wagons and thumbed their noses at all authority, but come a royal occasion or a national day of celebration out would come the flags and the bunting, all home-made, but bringing the dull streets to life. At school the whole of the new intake was marched into the main hall where the senior teacher laid down the law which we were to abide by. He had a habit of accentuating each sentence by whacking his cane on his desk. ‘You boys will turn up each morning clean and tidy.’ (Whack.) ‘You boys will stand up when a teacher comes into the classroom.’ (Whack.) And so on. Throughout this oration his eyes swept along the two lines of boys standing in front of him. As soon as he had finished, another man came in. This was no less than the headmaster himself who turned out to be an entirely different character. The senior teacher was built like Charles Atlas, while the head was short and had a benign smile on his face, indicating that here was a man who wouldn’t hurt a fly. The big stick and the velvet glove.
The message was that we were here for the next three years, after which, at the age of fourteen, we would be thrust out into the big nasty world. ‘Just get stuck in, boys, and learn what you can, you will not get any second chances.’ So said the headmaster. Then he disappeared into his office leaving us to the tender mercies of the muscle man who went on laying down the law.
I didn’t know it at the time but I later learnt that this was a school that made other boys tremble at the thought of being sent there. Each teacher had his own classroom, and me and the other boys in my class filed into the room where the most feared of the teachers held court: the dreaded Mr James. Mr James didn’t talk like any of the other teachers; this was because he came from Wales and the people there all worked under the ground digging out coal. Those who were too clever for the coal job came to England and became teachers.
Mr James had a selection of canes that he kept hanging on the wall behind his desk. When we were all sitting down he stood up behind his desk and glared down at the tribe he was to teach. After studying us for some moments he carefully selected the stick that he fancied and then, without warning, brought it down with a resounding thwack on the top of his desk, sending clouds of chalk dust billowing into the air.
Mr James was the geography teacher and he spent three sessions teaching us about India. ‘Right, boys, this morning our subject is India, same as last week. Now, which one of you bright lot is going to tell us the name of the capital of India?’ Up went the hands of half the class. ‘Delhi, Mr James.’ ‘Good show,’ said the teacher. ‘Now, who’s bright enough to tell us which side of the continent Karachi is on and which side Calcutta is on?’ So effective was this teaching by rote that at least half the class was able to answer. ‘You there, yes, you with your mouth full of toffee.’ James pointed to one of the young scruffs in the back row who attempted to extract the toffee from his mouth and stick it under the flap of his desk. ‘Tell the class, Roberts, why on the map India is coloured in red.’ ‘’Cause it’s the British Empire and they all belong to us.’ Mr James complimented Roberts on his knowledge. ‘And tell us, Roberts, what do we call the people who live in this India that’s coloured in red?’ Roberts thought about this for a moment. ‘Red Indians, sir.’ ‘Red Indians!’ roared James. ‘Roberts, are you by any chance trying to be Jack the Lad?’ By now the class was roaring with laughter and Mr James could feel his authority slipping away by the second. ‘Out here in front, Roberts, bend over.’ And poor Roberts, whether his answer about Red Indians was intended as a joke or not, was given a couple of strokes with the cane.
Mr James’s methods wouldn’t be acceptable today but, good or bad, they worked then. The whacks I suffered were forgotten once the stinging sensation had disappeared. In fact, the boys boasted about their teacher’s prowess with the cane, suggesting that they were tougher because they were able to withstand all that he could lay out. And yet all the noise and threats turned out to be a façade behind which the teachers of this supposedly hard-nosed institution gave their all to offer the boys every possible chance to lift themselves out of the gutter.
At Cromer Street School I was introduced to the personal weaponry that replaced the comparatively frail pieces of wood we used at Prospect Terrace. Strips of half-inch brass were heated and bent to a shape that fitted a clenched fist. The finished article was a primitive knuckle-duster, not as heavy as the real thing but hard enough to stop any adversary who cared to chance his luck. Of course, it was no use having this weapon unless the owner had the guts to use it.
A couple of pennies between the fingers of a clenched fist was another widely used method of inflicting damage. With one well-aimed slash the pennies could reduce a face to ribbons. The most important thing was to make certain that whatever tool was carried looked like an article of everyday use. If a lad, even if he was a young boy, was picked up carrying an ‘offensive weapon’, or the means of ‘breaking and entering’, it meant a sojourn behind bars, the length of sentence depending on the mood of the magistrate.
In about the second week, during the afternoon break, six or seven of us, all new to the school, were messing about kicking a ball against a wall. Up sauntered a gang of older boys who went straight to the point: ‘Oi, you lot, f–– off, this is our bit of wall.’ This challenge was answered with a blank stare. We all knew that these boys came from Ossulton Street, a particularly tough area by Somers Town, but nobody was going to make the first move of submission. It was now up to the aggressor to prove his point, which he did by giving the biggest of us – me – a right-hander which split my nose open. Blood gushing everywhere and that was it – a bundle. The opposing warriors were finally pulled apart by a couple of the teachers and the whole pack of us were marched up to the headmaster’s office.
We all got a right whacking with all sorts of dire threats about further punishment. The head told us that it was us new boys who were the prime culprits, guilty of breaking the peace. ‘Whatever you got away with in your last school, it’s different here.’ I still see the lad who started it all; him and his mates were standing behind the head smirking away. Nobody argued with the head, although, funnily enough, we never got challenged again. Mum gave me another dressing down when she got home that evening: ‘You’re growing up now, time to think of your future.’ If Mum had tried to clip me one I would have let her. We all loved our mums.
All the schools in the area organised outside sports activities. There were about six schools in the King’s Cross educational group and every three or four months teams were picked from each school which presented themselves at the allotted playing field, nearly always at Coram’s Fields. If a boy was picked to represent the school it was considered a matter of honour.
Our school always won the boxing. If I was lucky enough to win a bout and get one of the lit
tle medals I took it home to our mum expecting praise, but Mum never approved of fighting: ‘Carn’t yer get a medal for something worthwhile?’ I was never able to see Mum’s point of view. What I and my mates understood was that if you didn’t stand up and fight you were at everybody’s mercy, mostly from the boys in the next street. The headmaster, Mr Thornton, played the violin. The geography and history teachers played the cello and the English teacher, Mr Barbour, was a pianist. The other four teachers taught painting, poetry and drawing. The result of this unusual dedication was that the classes were full, and this in a school where the boys were so poor they used to put cardboard in their boots to cover the holes; where socks were a luxury and all the clothes worn by the boys would be hand-me-downs or purchased at the local charity shop, the Crusade of Rescue. If it proved nothing else, it proved that whatever part of society they come from, children are always willing to learn, and the teacher is the crucial element.