London Born: A Memoir of a Forgotten City

‘Yeah, I’ll have her, lovely little dog.’

‘Alright, Dinah. Take her on.’

So we got the dog. Mum called her Nel and kept her for fourteen years. She was me mother’s water bottle. She used to get into the bed and wiggle her way down to the bottom and the old gel would put her feet on her of a night time.

We always had two or three dogs living with us. I had a Bull Terrier, but I don’t know if I ever give him a name. I had him a couple or three years but then he strangled hisself with his tether in the garden. We had another little dog, a black and white Jack Russell, and he could pick a penny up off the floor when you threw it down for him. That wants some doing for a dog. Me favourite dog was called Babs. She was an Airedale with a lovely brown and black coat, all tight curls, a lovely dog. Sometimes I took three dogs out at a time over Parliament Hill Fields. In the war it was a training ground for the Army. I seen many two-wheel gun carriages tip arse over head there. They come flying down the hill pulled by four horses, as fast as they could go. When the carriage tipped over the soldiers would put it back on its wheels and off they would go again, round and round.

All the men was away in the war. Me dad was in the Army. He served the whole length of the war in the Royal Artillery, driving the horses that pulled the guns. That was how he got the name Driver Day. He was short and well built with brown hair and he was covered all over with tattoos. His nose was spread across his chops from fighting. When he had leave from the Army he would come home, straight out of the trenches, mud everywhere, filthy. The poor old bugger had puttees wrapped round his legs up to his knees and the mud was all caked in where they hadn’t been taken off for weeks and weeks. His legs looked like ladders from the marks round them made by the ties.

When me mum said Dad was coming home, Jim and me would wait for him at the top of our road. He was always glad to see us. He brought these great big dog biscuits for us called ‘iron rations’ and we liked to eat them. Mind you, they was only nice cause we had nothing else. You had to have a hammer to break the bleeding things.

Me dad was out in the front line for years in France. He was fit as a fiddle and a keen old fighter. When it was peaceful they put up boxing rings and he would organise boxing exhibitions. He was popular—anybody who done a lot of sport in the Army always got on. As well as boxing they larked about in the trenches, gambling for cigarettes, and sometimes, he told me, they would go into farms, nick a pig, take it back to the trenches and roast it. When a horse got shot in battle, as soon as it was down and out, they would carve it up with their bayonets and eat that as well.

While me dad was away, me mum had to keep the seven of us on rations. I would go round and get food from Bucking-ham’s shop. Mum would say, ‘Take the cup with you and get an haporth of jam, a pennorth of sugar, a bit of tea, a tin of evaporated milk and a lump of margarine.’ We hardly ever see any meat.

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The war ended and me dad come home. After he got gassed in France he never could breathe through his nose properly again. Sometimes he was in so much pain with his nose he would come home from work at dinner time and put his head over a bowl of hot salt water and sniff it up. That was the only way he could shift it.

Me mum’s brother, Bob, who lived right opposite us, was much worse off. He lived with his wife Ginny and their kids. He was a typical looking Spanish man if ever there was one —sharp featured and sticking out black hair. His face always looked black from wanting a shave, what was left of it. He had half his jaw blown off in the war. For a pension he got the big amount of two and sixpence a week. The poor old bugger only had half a jaw and looked a sight but he got used to it at the death. He still knew how to drink a pint of beer.

The men went back to work, if they could find work. On every street corner there was gangs of men chinwagging cause they didn’t have the money to go for a pint. It was hard to get a proper job and that was why so many young blokes from our street joined the Army, even after the war. They sent them out to India after they was trained. I think there was a place called Tiger Bay out there and that is how our street come to get its name.

The winter after me dad come home he got the job of night watchman on the other side of the cemetery where they was putting in some drainage. On his first night me mum sent me up with some food. Dad told me to cut through the cemetery on the way back. I had to walk past the gravestones and stone angels glowing all white in the dark. I did that every night while he was up there and I never told him I was afraid.

Me dad worked mainly in the building. After a day’s work he was always in the pub. He lived there. He loved his pint, they all did. That was all they had to do, let’s face it—drink and make babies. Our two local pubs was called the Totnes and the Brookfield—they was only a few minutes apart. Each of them had two bars and an off licence. One bar was for the navvies, the hard workers, and the other for the shopkeepers and people who had a bob or two. They called that the saloon bar and you had to pay extra for yer booze in there. It was a bit more upmarket, with chairs, tables and flowers. There was a brass rail running along the counter and red velvet curtains hanging round to make it look pretty. The navvies’ bar had big benches, sawdust on the floor and spittoons along the counter.

The pubs opened at five o’clock and kicked out at ten o’clock on the dot unless they had the Law straightened up. The guvnor at the Brookfield always took out a pint of beer to a policeman who drunk it in the outside toilet. Saturday nights there would be hollering and shouting and fighting and blokes up to all manner of things. That was how it was. If you fell out with a bloke you stood up and had a fight. When it was over you was back friends again. Some of them went singing in the streets. They would come down our road from the pub, half drunk, get a comb out and a piece of paper and play a tune and people would give them a ha’penny or a penny. One bloke would put his foot in the door, stand there and sing his heart out and then take his hat inside for pennies.

The next day they was back in the pub. The Irish blokes would go up to St Joseph’s, ‘Holy Joe’s’, at the top of Dartmouth Park Hill. They would confess and give the priest a shilling. Then they would hare down to the Archway Tavern. A while later the priest would go down there too, taking off his dog collar as he walked along and putting a handkerchief round his neck. He would go in, spend all their money and they would all wind up drunk as lords.

On a Sunday morning our road was full up with ponies pulling gigs, come to race. The gigs was painted in bright blues and reds and the ponies had lovely shiny coats. They was all done up with ribbons and bows—a picture to look at. People come from all round to watch them fly up and down and they would bet on all types of things—whose pony would win, whose pony was done up best. The old ponies would prance up and down the street, lifting their hooves up high. They trained them to do that by tying a rope between the pony’s legs and the bridle. As the pony’s head come up his hooves had to follow. After the races and the betting all the ponies and chariots would be tied up outside the pub.

Nearly everybody who went to the Brookfield on a Sunday took a bird in a little carrying cage. Me dad took his cage wrapped up in a red and white spotted navvy’s handkerchief so his bird wouldn’t be afraid. He would put the cage underneath his arm and take off the cloth when he got to the pub. Every man put his bird up on the shelf that ran right the way along the bar. The bar was filled with birds fluttering and singing.

Me dad had dozens of different birds: finches, linnets, thrushes, blackbirds. There weren’t a type of bird that breathed that me dad didn’t have at some time. We caught them by going bush bashing. Me dad made eight foot by three foot double-layered nets out of black cotton. We would loop a net between two trees in Kenwood and then bash the bushes with sticks to scare the birds towards it. When a bird flew through the net it was trapped in a pocket.

I went bird nesting and egg collecting with me brothers, too. We collected eggs, made two holes in them with a pin and blew them empty. Sometimes we took birds when they was near to being fledged. I reared them up, feeding them chewed up bread from me mouth or on a matchstick. I brought up lots of birds, including a sparrowhawk. It was a very pretty bird with zebra markings and I let it go at the finish.

In the pub they bet on the birds. One might say, ‘Me bird will sing longer than yours.’ Another might boast, ‘Mine will sing better than yours,’ and another, ‘Me bird’s plumage is better than yours.’ Then they would have a competition. That bird in its little cage was their pride and joy. Everybody had birds, everybody.

When the Brookfield kicked out after lunch me dad would walk home with his bird. As he turned into the Bay he would stop outside the house of Drummer Hawkins who lived at the top of our road. ‘Hawkins,’ he would shout, ‘come out here, I’ll see to yer!’ Hawkins was twice me dad’s size, a brute of a man. When he heard me dad hollering he would come out and they would whip off their shirts and fight like tigers. There would be blood and snot everywhere. Me dad loved a good fight. That evening they would be drinking together in the pub.

The pubs was always full up with hounds gambling. Me brother Bill worked as runner to a penny bookmaker. He collected the bets and took them in. Sometimes the police would come into the pub and he had to give them five bob beer money. The police looked forward to it—that’s all they went in for, to cop their money off of the bookmakers or the gamblers. On one occasion two plainclothes policemen—two real bastards—come into the Brookfield.

They says to me brother, ‘Come on, cough up.’

He emptied his pockets and they went out and round to the saloon bar. Then in come the Inspector and nicked Bill just the same. He got a thirty bob fine.

The elder ones in the Bay was mostly always drunk. They liked a pint of black beer—the cheapest beer you could buy. A pint of black was five pence and other beer was sixpence a pint. The old biddies liked a drop of biddy wine. It was wine from the bottom of the barrel and it was thick like mud. The old gels would take their bottles into the pub and get three pennorth of it. It was the cheapest form of drink to get drunk on quick—it would blow yer hat off. It was also the favourite drink of worn-out prostitutes. Nearly everyone liked a drop to drink, and plenty drank theirselves to death.

When someone died in our street the family would go in the pub with the collection. They wore black armbands. Everyone would throw in a few coppers, thruppence, sixpence—or whatever—for the family. Most people had a parish funeral cause their families couldn’t afford to pay for a proper one. A proper funeral cost six pounds and it was a big event, everybody turned out. They paraded the coffin through the streets covered in flowers. The glass-sided hearse was pulled by black horses with beautiful plumes sticking right up. They was stabled at the top of our street. The horses’ hooves would be muffled by straw put on the road to stop the noise and everyone would come outside and watch them go by.

Me gran died when I was still very young. I don’t remember her having a funeral but she must have done. The day she died me mum was sitting down with me sisters when I come indoors.

‘Yer granny’s dead,’ she says.

‘Well it won’t burn yer lips to kiss her arse then, will it!’ I says, quick as anything.

It just come out. Didn’t she give me a tanning. I was the youngest son and a bit of a favourite with me mum, but that time I think I really upset her. I suppose I thought nothing of death then. People was always dying or getting born.

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Everybody thought the world of me mum. Everybody in the Bay who had children, me mum brought them into the world. I don’t know what people said about the rest of us cause we was always up to villainry, always. But compared to the others in the street we was pretty prim and proper, our family. We wasn’t dirty and scruffy. Oh blimey, some never washed for bleeding weeks in the Bay.

Me mum always wore a black dress with a potato sack taped round her as an apron. She was always cooking or round the wash pot. She worked from about six in the morning till she went to bed, doing housework and washing and ironing. She did all the washing for the Booths as well as bringing them into the world. More or less anything wanted doing it was, ‘Go and see Dinah, she’ll do it.’

She would stand for hours at the copper in the scullery with a big white bar of Lifebuoy soap, rubbing and squeezing the clothes. We helped her by keeping the old copper going. We chopped wood to feed the fire and sometimes we burned old lino. The copper used to boil lovely when you put that on. Lots of houses had green or red lino made of tar, and it was thrown out when it got too cracked. When somebody burned lino the smoke outside was thick and black.

We took turns putting the clean clothes and linen through the old iron wringer. Then Mum emptied the copper of all the water. At Christmas time we boiled the ham and the potatoes in that copper cause there was so many of us to feed. Every year me mum also used it to steam eight Christmas puddings and we usually ate the last one at Easter.

Me mum was the pawn shop runner for the whole street. She got so much in the shilling off people to take their stuff to and from the pawn shop, or ‘Uncle Bill’s’ as all pawn shops was known. All of us was in the same boat as far as money was concerned. Two pound twelve and sixpence a week was an average wage. We had to pay everything out of that—food, clothing and health insurance. In the building game there was no such thing as a regular job. The money never lasted the week so most families got by with the help of the pawn shop.

‘Uncle Bill’ took in people’s valuables and clothes and charged a penny in the shilling when they bought them back. Every Monday morning me mum would do up her hair in earmuffs, put on her bonnet, tie the ribbons underneath and get out the old Bassinette pram. She would take me dad’s waistcoat and war medals, put them in the pram, and set off for the pawn shop on the corner of Tufnell Park, by the tube.

As she went along the street people hollered out to her, ‘Take this for me Day-o,’ and she would pile everything into the pram. She took it in Monday, pawned it for the week, and then brought it back on Saturday. Going down Dartmouth Park Hill on a Monday with all the stuff was alright, but coming back up on a Saturday was a push—it was terrible. The pram was loaded right up high with parcels and it near took her all bleeding day.

We took it in turns to go with Mum to the pawn shop and help her push the pram. We would pass lots of other people on the streets, and cattle, pigs and flocks of sheep on their way to London Caledonian Market.

When we got to the shop she would go into a cubicle. The shop was divided into cubicles so nobody could see what you had to pawn. We stood and waited for ‘Uncle Bill’ to fill out the tickets. Then it was home, back up that hill. Me poor mum, what with that and all the washing, ironing and cooking, she was worn out before she died, poor old sod.

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I got up every morning before six o’clock when me dad hollered up the stairs, ‘Get out of kip!’ I had a cold water wash in the washhouse, scrubbed meself with carbolic soap and then had a cup of tea. I might do the bread run—nine times out of ten we bought stale bread. Me mum would give me her pillowcase and I would take it up to the shop and get it filled for sixpence. When I got back I would have some bread—and jam too, if I could. Then I would get Ruddy out of the coal cellar or find one of me other mates.

There was always people in the street, even early in the morning, sitting on their steps like blackbirds. It was good to get outside and away from the bugs indoors. The bugs was constantly eating away the mortar and the wood. A lot of houses never had wallpaper, only matchboarding painted with green or white limewash. Millions of bugs lived behind that matchboard. Sometimes when me and me brother Jim spotted them we would pick one each going up the wall and have a race. Me mum was always buying stuff to put round the iron bed to try and get rid of them. They sucked yer blood, they would bite terrible and they stank when you squashed them.

One morning, early, I met up with Joey Booth, the youngest of the Booth boys, who was the same age as me. He was pulling our four-wheel cart. It had a plank of wood for a swivel axle, two big pram wheels at the back and two smaller wheels at the front. A lump of rope was the steering wheel.

‘Let’s take the cart out before we have to go to school, Cabby,’ he says.

‘Alright,’ I says.

Everyone called me Cabby cause I spent a lot of time outside the station carrying people’s bags to the cabs for a few pennies. As soon as I see a woman come out with some big cases I would run up and say, ‘Do you want a cab, ma’am?’ and she would say, ‘Yes, please.’ Then I would take the cases over to the cab rank in the middle of St John’s Road.

Joey and I took turns on the cart: one of us pushed while the other drove. Eventually we got to Dartmouth Park Hill. We spotted a baker’s barrow standing on its own. The bloke was down the hill with his basket delivering bread and cakes door to door. We waited till he weren’t looking and crept over to the barrow. There was racks of little loaves and cakes inside and tucked in a corner was a money pouch. Joey reached in and took sixpence out.

It turned out that the bloke always left his barrow there cause he didn’t want to push it back up the hill. So every morning for months and months we took sixpence out of his pouch. There was probably thirty bob in there altogether, but we never took a lot out and he never noticed it was gone. That was a game, that was! We would spend the sixpence on food on our way to school.