A Moss Side Childhood
A Moss Side Childhood
Dennis Gent
I WAS BORN at 6.40 am on the 12th January, 1922 at 168, Lloyd Street, Greenheys, Manchester 15, exactly twelve months to the day after my parents married. My grandfather owned quite a lot of property, mainly rows of terraced houses, and soon after my birth my parents moved to one of his houses at 147, Bishop Street, Moss Side,Manchester. I don't think my mother was very happy there. She had been born and brought up at Sharston Farm, near Northenden, and in those days it was like the heart of the countryside with woods and green fields, and lots of wildlife. There was hardly a leaf or a blade of grass in Moss Side, apart from Alexandra Park. The houses were in rows, back-to-back with small backyards opening onto narrow entries (passage ways). It was a grey, bleak and sooty area, but the people were very houseproud even though they were mostly desperately poor. The winters were bitterly cold, with one coal fire the only heating. The bedrooms were freezing, and a hot water bottle was essential, even though we children slept three in a bed when we were young.
My father worked as a packer in the basement of a textile warehouse near Piccadilly, but was sacked along with many others during the slump in the 1920s. There was little help for the poor in those days, and certainly no dole. With a wife and baby to support Dad was desperate, not least because his tight-fisted father still insisted on the rent being paid every week. Almost as a last resort,Dad bought a cheap brush, a bag of lime, and a bucket, and went round knocking on doors asking people if they would like their cellars or backyards whitewashed. That led to colour-washing ceilings inside and eventually to painting and paperhanging. Poor Dad learnt the trade by trial and error, and in retrospect I think the standards he eventually achieved were remarkable. Not only did he become a first class decorator, but he could imitate walnut and mahogany wood grains with amazing realism.
The 1920s and 1930s were not good years for the decorating trade.Estimates had to be low to have a chance of being accepted. Paints were of very poor quality compared to today and, generally speaking, tradesmen in all the building industry were looked down upon and regarded as being inferior. Because paints were very slow drying and most houses unheated there was little work from the end of October to the beginning of March, and long hours had to be worked during the summer months to make up. This continued until the 1960s. My father employed as many as seven or eight men and apprentices in the 1930s but never made any money mainly because he was much too honest and trusting.
I don't really remember much about my early years. I was very thin and underweight with a terrible inferiority complex, and I was bullied mercilessly at school. I do remember my first day. I refused to go through the gate and clung to the railings screaming my head off. Even when I was dragged into the classroom I continued at the top of my voice, utterly disrupting the class. In desperation they brought Russell Talbot in from the next class to sit next to me and I finally shut up. Russell lived next door to me in Bishop Street.Russell was about a year older than me. When he was about eleven he was waylaid on his way home from school by the Fletcher twins, two bullies from the same class. They jumped on him from behind and injured his spine. He spent years in a kind of straitjacket and was crippled for life, being unable to turn his head from side to side. I used to go round and we played various games together for hours. Theschool, incidentally, was St Margaret's Elementary in Great Western Street, and was demolished over thirty years ago like most of the streets in Moss Side and Hulme. My schooldays at St Margaret's were not happy: discipline was harsh and a lot of bullying went on. The boys' school consisted of one huge room with a class in each corner separated by folding screens. There was an open coal fire at each end so that the boys at the front of the class roasted and those at the back froze. As the screens were only about six feet high you could clearly hear what was going on in all the other classes, and it's a miracle we were nearly all proficient at least in the three Rs. The headmaster sat behind his desk like a bird of prey just inside the main door where he could see all, and no one could sneak past. His leather tawse with four thongs was always at the ready for latecomers or any unfortunate pupil who had committed some heinous crime, such as talking in class, not doing homework, or having unpolished shoes.One interesting ritual took place most play times. The boys' and girls' toilets were roofless and separated only by a six-foot brick wall. Our objective was to try to get a jet over the top of the wall,success being greeted with girlish screams, and cheers and raucous laughter from the boys.
One day the teacher, Mr Clarkson, called me to his desk at the front of the class and asked me, very quietly, if I got enough to eat. I was quite shocked and said, 'Oh yes, sir, I do sir.' There were few luxuries in our house but I never ever remember being hungry. I realised much later that my mother deliberately denied herself so that Dad and us children had sufficient. My mother's oneluxury was a hot bath every Sunday afternoon. She would run the water, hand hot, until the bath was a quarter full. Then she would get in and continue running really hot water until the bathroom was full of steam. After an hour she would come out looking like a lobster, but relaxed and happy.
I remember the holiday in, I think, Penmaenmawr, when I asked if the mountains were made of cardboard. The only mountains I had seen were those at the Belle Vue fireworks, backdrops for the wonderful battle scenes, and they were made of cardboard. Every Sunday during the summer months (it had to be Sunday, because Dad worked five and a half long days a week then, and it was always football on Saturday afternoon) our parents took us all out for the day, sometimes to Ainsdale Sands near Southport, but more often it was a tram or trainride from Central Station into the country. It was really unspoilt in those days with hardly any cars, and we usually had the fields andlanes to ourselves. I remember particularly Dunham Park, Altrincham,and Alton Towers. At Ainsdale we seemed to be the only people on that vast expanse of sand dunes. Mile after mile of hot, soft sandhills relieved only by patches of cotton grass. Often it was dark as we travelled home, our backs so burnt with the blistering sun that we daren't lean against the wooden backrests on the number eleven tramas it rattled and swung from side to side down Lower Mosely Street,Jackson Street, Alexandra Road and Yarburgh Street to the terminus on Withington Road. These were happy times which compensated a little for our drab existence among the brick walls and smoking chimneys of Moss Side.
At 149 Bishop Street lived my Auntie Dora and Uncle Dan, who was a traveller for a paint and wallpaper company. They were the first in the district to get a wireless set and a telephone. A few doors up lived a stout old lady who used to stand on her front doorstep with her arms folded. She was famed for a saying, often quoted by my father, which was 'It's bin one of them days as is days.'
Every street corner had its shop. I was sent to one called Jones's to buy a crusty cob with a sixpenny bit. Whilst standing waiting to be served I put the sixpence in my mouth and swallowed it. It was recovered the next day.
We formed gangs with other neighbourhood kids and played out till long after dark. We always ran home though when we heard the familiar undulating whistle as Mam called us in, the same whistle that Granpa Neild used to call the hens from far and wide when it was feeding time.
Dad used to take us into Alexandra Park on Sunday mornings,through the rockery, round the lake and the rose garden. It was beautiful then with masses of flowers everywhere and a magnificent cactus house, but no one was allowed on the grass and parkies with whistles kept an eagle eye on us. We always ended our morning at the Demesne Road end of the avenue of lime trees where we dug small pieces of granite out of the path. These we took home and attempted to polish by laboriously rubbing them on the back doorstep, which was made of sandstone.
Sunday dinner was always wonderful, which was not surprising considering Mam had spent most of the morning preparing it. I remember most of all the tiny new potatoes, which must have taken hours to scrape, and the glorious fruit flans, a pastry base filled with whatever fruit was in season, all smothered in thick, whipped cream.
Uncle Harry worked for Dad in Bishop Street days and slept in the attic. My job was to try to get him up and I used to climb the steep stairs time and again to shake him. He just muttered 'Alright', turned over, pulled the sheet over his head and promptly went back to sleep, while Dad and his men waited fuming down below with the handcart loaded ready for off.
Cockroaches were a pest and used to live in cracks in the narrowback scullery. After we'd been to the pictures - the West End in Withington Road, the Imperial, Brooks's Bar, or the Regent on the bridge on Princess Road - we used to creep in quietly, switch on the light, and I would dash round stamping on as many as I could before they got away.
The most carefree times were those we spent at Sharston Farm, only four miles from Bishop Street, but another world. That short journey took us from the terraced houses, back yards and entries of Moss Side to the green, unspoilt countryside of Cheshire. There were absolutely no restrictions and we could do as we pleased. We went across Shenton's field to the pond where we used to swing up and down on along branch stretching out over the water. We went to Gatley Woods, where the undergrowth was like a jungle, but we could play there all day without fear. There was a den over the shippon where we had orange boxes for seats and a table, and jam jars full of buttercups and daisies. The cinder-covered yard between the Tea Rooms and the big ash tree was where we used to play trains. One of us would shuffle around, pushing a yard brush in front to make the track,round and round, twisting and spiralling, crossing and re-crossing until the track was like a maze, and the rest of us had to try to follow.
Every Easter chocolate eggs were hidden in hen's nests in the outbuildings, and we searched excitedly until we found them. There was a very old hen house where, reaching across the perches to the nest boxes, I slipped and fell into about eighteen inches of soft,foul-smelling droppings. I ran howling to the house and was unceremoniously dumped into the sandstone trough under the pump and sluiced with ice-cold water.The summers must have been generally fine, dry and often hot because I don't remember much bad weather.
I think the happiest times of all were the summer holidays. Oh the joy of packing the huge, heavy, leather portmanteau as we prepared for our annual trip to Newton's farm at Langdale End. The tram ride to Victoria Station, and the steam train through Lancashire and Yorkshire to Scarborough, then Mr Noble's bus through the beautiful,leafy lanes until we rattled across the wooden bridge over the river Derwent, and we were there. Every day was sheer magic. Long, long walks over the heather-covered moors, down the banks of the river with huge anthills every few yards, through the dales where the dense foliage overhead made it a green semi-darkness underneath, and the 7am plunge into the icy waters of the river with Dad always first in. And, above all, the glorious silence and solitude. I think we were the only visitors in the whole area. We walked for miles in all directions, and rarely saw a soul, apart from the occasional local.But we did see lots of wildlife: whole colonies of rabbits in warrens, stoats, water voles, trout and other freshwater creatures,adders, herons, various birds of prey, and hosts of insects. We gathered wild strawberries, blackberries and bilberries, and Mrs Newton and Kathleen made them into pies for us. It seemed only rarely that we had to shelter and make a log fire under the stone bridge over the river Derwent. Other outings would be to Belle Vue for the zoo and the firework display, and to Smithfield Market every Christmas Eve.
I don't remember much else about my life during those years, apart from going to Saturday morning matinee at the Park Picture Palace for 1d admission, Sunday School at the Wesleyan Methodist Church on the corner of Great Western Street and Withington Road, and then joining the Wolf Cubs, and later the Boy Scouts. Three brothers named Foden ran the Cubs, Scouts and Rovers, and they set a wonderful example for us boys. They organised games, shows (very amateurish) and camping holidays. I remember one show which was based on a radio programme called 'In Town Tonight'. Celebrities visiting London were interviewed. I was supposed to be an American, Hiram something-or-other, who had to say, 'Advertising pays. A codfish lays 100,000 eggs and nobody knows. A hen lays one egg and tells all the world.' I had a check jacket and flat cap that Dad lent me, and he made the big mistake of lending me his one and only cigar he was saving for Christmas. I was so nervous I chewed the cigar to ragged shreds before I even got on the stage.
Most camping holidays were locally in Derbyshire, but there was one memorable year when we went to Scotland and crossed on the ferry to the Isle of Arran. I can still smell the bacon George Foden fried for breakfast over an open fire. There is just one other camping holiday I will never forget and for good reason. It was organised by St Margaret's, and was a week in bell tents in Hayfield. It started badly because my parents couldn't afford to buy me a rucksack so my spare clothing was made up into a brown paper parcel tied with string. It was raining as I made my way to the school and, as I waited in the playground for our group to assemble, the brown paper started to disintegrate. The other boys laughed at me as I clutched desperately at my shirts, short trousers and underwear, and tears of shame rolled down my cheeks. A teacher took pity on me and made up myparcel again with fresh brown paper from inside the school, and saved me from further humiliation.
As I said, it was raining, and it never stopped all week. A tent in a field was the worst possible place to be - and the tent leaked.The never-ending rain caused a thick mist to develop which brought visibility down to a few yards, and soon we were ankle-deep in mud.My clothes were wet, my straw palliasse and blankets were wet, and I was wretchedly homesick. The outcome was that I developed rheumatic fever from which I nearly died, my temperature once reaching 106ºF. Most of the next six months or more I was unable even to stand, and I remember very little apart from frequent visits by the doctor, and my mother carrying me in her arms and immersing me in rock salt baths several times a week. I must have been ten or eleven years old and, although I recovered, it left me with swollen joints, knees like door knobs and a murmur of the heart. The last was only discovered on a trip to Italy in the late 1940s. I contracted pneumonia (and again nearly died), the doctor saying I had a murmur but fortunately my heart was otherwise very strong. Incredibly I had been passed A1 for the army only a few years previously. Reminds me of an old joke during the war: a man in a wheelchair goes for his medical, the doctor looks at him, turns to his assistant and says, 'Oil his wheels and pass him A1.'
I think I was slightly above average at school because I always tried hard. English was easily my best subject, and I was ok on most others including arithmetic, but algebra I found completely incomprehensible. Life could be cruel at times though. When I was twelve one of the sections in English was spelling. There were twenty words, given verbally by the teacher, and some were quite difficult.I spelt every one correctly, but was given three marks only. Why? Because I began each one with a capital letter, and the only ones marked as correct were the three words which did begin with a capital, like Australia. I was heartbroken and only came third in class. With full marks for spelling I would have been first for the one and only time in my life.
Shortly afterwards I sat an exam for entrance to the Junior School of Art, and to my amazement I passed. The School of Art was on the top floor of the School of Commerce building in Princess Street which, I believe, was originally a Trades Union headquarters. I was twelve and a half when I went there for two years. I quite enjoyed myart study there, and on leaving joined a small firm in Chepstow Street behind what was then the New Oxford cinema. There was only a small staff of about twenty, about three quarters of them girls. Themanager, Mr Speakman, was a young man in his late twenties who was a brilliant artist and had all the worry and responsibility. The boss, Mr Cotton, came late, left early, and sat in his little office all the time. I soon saw there was no future for me in textile designing, though I enjoyed it. There was no equality and the girls, who were at least as good if not better than the boys, received 7s 6d a week and we got 10s. I talked it over with my father and he agreed to me going into decorating, but not with him. He said I should be apprenticed to a big firm so I could learn every branch of the trade. So I went into Mr Cotton's office and told him I wanted to leave, and he immediately offered me a rise to 12s 6d per week. My mind was made up and I went for an interview at the firm of G. F. Holding Ltd, Withington Road, Brooks's Bar, Manchester. They were rather reluctant to take me on because they usually took a boy straight from school aged fourteen, and I was just fifteen. However, they gave me a chance (maybe the Art School training helped) and I did just one year in the 'paint shop' instead of the usual two. In those days there were few ready-to-use tins of paint and in the paint shop were kegs and barrels of various pigments in paste form - Venetian Red, Golden Ochre, Brunswick Green etc - which had to be weighed out into smaller containers ready to go out to the jobs. Also there were forty-gallon casks of pure American turpentine, boiled linseed oil and raw linseed oil. The main item and the basic ingredient in most paints, which had to be mixed on the job, was white lead. This was delivered to the yard a ton at a time in smallish metal kegs each weighing one hundredweight (fifty kilos)and it was hard work carrying them from the lorry in the back entry, across the yard, and stacking them in a corner of the paint shop. The main task for the boy was 'getting jobs up', i. e. getting out all the large variety of materials: tackle (ladders, steps etc.), paints, brushes, dust sheets and so on. All quantities had to be marked down against a printed list which was given to the foreman. On completion this list was returned and all items checked off and remaining pigments weighed and marked down. This system certainly gave a good idea of the actual cost of each job and kept pilfering down to a minimum. Perhaps the worst job was cleaning out the paint kettle (cans). These came back with thick layers of dry paint inside. At one end of the yard was an old iron bath on trestles. This was filled with water in which a large quantity of caustic soda crystals had been dissolved. The cans were immersed in this until the paint softened, usually several days. They were then scraped clean and washed out with a hosepipe. You quickly learnt that great care had to be taken when putting the cans in the caustic soda: any splashes on your skin immediately resulted in large blisters. A copy of the Factories Act Safety Regulations was displayed on the wall but completely ignored. No goggles or gloves were supplied, no first aid box, not even anywhere to wash your hands except a cold water tap in the yard which had the hosepipe attached, so you ate your butties after handling white lead, lime, caustic and other dangerous substances.
After a year I went out on the job with the painters. Transport was by foot, bicycle, tram or bus, even train. Only the bosses had cars. G. F. Holding had jobs throughout the North West and North Wales, and included cinemas, churches, shops and offices as well as private, but the bulk of their work was for breweries, everything from the street corner pub in Salford to huge hotels. I'll never forget one four-storey, plaster-fronted pub called 'The Grapes' in Salford. It was on a busy main road, and as the pavement was not very wide the foot of the ladder was in the gutter. Even then it had to be very straight up, and it was not pleasant for the painters working at the top. My job was 'footing' the ladder, eight hours a day, day after day. The only relief came when I made the morning. midday and afternoon brews, usually about twenty, some without milk, some without sugar, but most heavily sweetened, even some with condensed milk. The latter was mixed into a paste with the tea and sugar, and had to be scraped off the waxed bread-wrapping it was usually brought in. At lunchtime, twelve until one o'clock, I went to the shops with a list for meat and potato pies, chips, fish, steak puddings etc., and it was woe betide me if I forgot anything or mixed them up. I went out with my list at 11.30 am. We worked from 8 am until 5.30 pm,and 8 till 12 on Saturdays. We apprentices had to put up with a lot of ragging, but it was all good fun. I was sent to the shops once for a pound of glass tacks and a rubber hammer - or was it the other way round? Another time I was told to ask for a long stand. Of course,the shopkeeper was in on the time-honoured joke, and told you to wait in the corner.
A year passed by, and then came the best years of your apprenticeship, which really did give you a thorough grounding in the decorating trade. I spent a year with a first-class paperhanger, then six months with the grainer (he really was an artist and could imitate any kind of wood and marble), another six months with the signwriter and so on.
Just before Christmas 1940 we had heavy air raids on Manchester and all staff were put on bomb damage repairs. 'All staff' actually consisted of elderly or infirm painters and young apprentices. The work involved covering roofs which had had slates blown off with roofing felt, fixed with laths, and nailing transparent sheeting over glassless window frames. The 'Big Boss', G. F. Holding, had retired, and his son, F. L., took me on as his assistant. I went round the bomb sites, took a note of materials required, saw that they were ordered and delivered, collected time sheets, and took the wage packets to the foremen to distribute. I felt quite important, and believe my call-up was delayed because of this work. Eventually - I can't remember exactly when - I went for my medical, and took an aptitude and intelligence test. I was asked which service I would prefer, and I said the R. A. F. I thought the uniform was rather nice, and I had an idea it would appeal to the girls more than khaki. I didn't fancy the Navy at all. Of course, when my papers arrived I found I was not only joining the Army, but the Tank Corps - me, who knew absolutely nothing about mechanics or radio and had never driven in my life. So much for the aptitude tests.
From here on my story is told in my letters home. I wrote frequently, and generally in great detail about life in the forcesand my travels in North Africa and Italy, culminating in that magical moment when I first set eyes on that lovely, vivacious girl in Cusano Milanino who was to become my wife.
No comments:
Post a Comment