17. Living Rough

I read that there are more people living rough at this point of time than ever before. At this point of time is one of those queer modern phrases which have crept into the English language and freely translated means right now. Anyway I don't know whether the writer of the article had been counting them or not, but I am disputing his statement and saying there were far more on the road in the early thirties. Why? Because they had no bread, man. (Another queer phrase meaning boracic lint. Skint.)

They weren't living rough doing their thing. (Trans: too idle to work). They were just pawns on the chessboard of free enterprise and of no consequence until the war, when they quickly reached queen position. In the modern jargon, your country needs you, man. (Trans: someone's got to die, so guess who?). I met up with a few of these lads one summer night in '32 when I held the important post of tea-boy at a coach painters* in Little Albany St, N.W.1.

What's left of Little Albany Street. Sep 2017. www.instantstreetview.com

From this palace of industry, (Trans: rat infested, bug ridden, converted stable) I sallied forth at ten-thirty, one o'clock and half past four to Old Bills Cafe in Osnaburgh St bearing a long pole on which hung a dozen or more tin billy cans, and repeating in my mind a list of the workers requirements. Like two of drip, two of marg, or five woods, or half of Digger shag, and each can to be charged to the brim with a pennorth of tea.

We lived well then and no expense was spared when it came to the inner man. England's mighty empire sprang not from the Industrial Revolution or the playing fields of Eton, but from the cuppa char and two of drip of the British Working Man. My efforts were rewarded with the generous stipend of the 12/6d a week and whatever I could fiddle by milking their cars of their petrol and flogging it back to the owners when they came to collect. At 1/3d a gallon this added up to a tidy bit if we had a good week.

One Friday, the guv'nor, an enlightened employer who had the well being of his staff at heart, came up on a 50 to 1 shot with a quid on the nose, and on returning from the boozer in a extremely benevolent frame of mind (Trans: p----d as a newt), informed his staff en-bloc, that there was no work tomorrow so they might as well all sod off to safhend on a beano and he'd give us a tenner for the beer. Then quickly added that he wasn't bloody well paying us wages as well.

The London Gazette 7 July 1931

The cold reasoning brain of your true executive will always supersede the mind befuddling fumes of four ales. So as work was cancelled for Sat and a tenner bought enough wallop to float the Queen Mary in those days and paid our fares as well, (1/9d return cheap excursion), the morrow found us disporting ourselves around the old mud heap, Southend-On-Sea.

Late evening found us engaged in a hotly disputed contest in The Ship Inn with a team of gentlemen from a jam factory. The best of three dart games, twelve aside, losers to pay for the beer. It was one all and the decider was well under way and I was sat in a corner with the jam factory tea boy where we had been put by our respective foreman with a bob each to buy beer and crisps and strict orders to keep out of the way. He was named Nathaniel , stood about four feet nothing and was as muscular as a pair of anaemic braces. If he'd laid on the beach the winkles would have queued up to kick sand in his face. I was no Charles Atlas then, either, but we both felt ten feet tall as we supped our halves of four ale and puffed Woodbine smoke towards the ceiling and bragged of our importance as tea boys. He told me he also had to chop up the wood for the raspberry jam. When I said "Eh?" he said that raspberry jam was made from turnips and the pips were bits of wood chopped up fine to make it look real. I believed every word being very naive at the time and he was so serious. I still have my doubts and raspberry jam is still called wooden pip jam in our family. We suddenly realised that it was ten minutes from the departure time of the excursion train and on telling our foremen both got the same answer - "P--- off!". So we did and ran like the clappers (Trans: quickly) to the station and got there in time to see the train steaming up the line. As it was the last train home we strolled back to the pub to find it closed and deserted. Where all the darts revellers had gone so quickly was a mystery to us, so we wandered to the beach and that is where we met up with a bunch of lads who were living rough.

Ship Hotel, Southend On Sea

At first I thought that a lot of other blokes had missed the last train home as there were dozens of them sitting around on the beach, the seats, and in the shelters on the front, but Nat told me they were all on the road. He seemed well versed in human affairs and spoke as if being a tramp were a classified occupation. Something like being a cowboy. There were young fellows of our age, middle aged men, and elderly chaps. English, Scottish, Welsh and Irish. Chatting, smoking, some in earnest discussion, others just staring across the water. All with one thing in common. A large bundle containing all their worldly possessions. 

We got talking to a group of lads of our own age. A couple of Scottish boys on their way to Portsmouth in hope of joining the Navy, a Welsh lad who'd been trying to get work in the Kentish mines, a Geordie who was just looking for work anywhere, and three chaps from Notting Hill who were trying to get bookings as an acrobatic act around the seaside shows. They obviously weren't having much success if they had to bed down on the beach at night, but their spirits were in no way dampened by this. Full of life, they gave us all a demonstration of handstands, backflips and balancing then stripped off to have a swim in the sea. They were chivvied out by the patrolling fuzz (Trans: night shift from the local nick) who moved everybody off the beach to the shelters on the front with strict instructions to stay there till dawn then shift our bodies as far from Southend as possible before the dawn patrol got around. None of the lads seemed envious of the fact that Nat and I had homes to go to and were there because we'd missed the last train whereas they were there because they'd nowhere else. I got the feeling that we were being granted membership of their community for the night and were the ones who needed advice, freely given, on how to keep warm and comfortable on the hard wooden seats which faced the keen off-sea breeze. We awoke around dawn and thrown over Nat was a ragged overcoat to help keep him warm. Like I said before, he looked like an advert for 'Consumption and how to live with it' so perhaps the lad who owned the coat thought he might snuff it during the cold, early hours and there would be some awkward questions asked. But I prefer to think it was the compassion of a lad who had nothing, for another boy who was his guest for the night. An unknown soldier of the Cenotaph of the vast army of British unemployed of the Thirties, many of whom were on the road.

And I'll still bet there ain't so many today no matter what the writer of that article says.

Lies, damn lies and statistics? These statistics prove Grandad to be correct.

                                                     

Notes:
* The only coachworks on Little Albany Street my very modest research - I really haven't looked hard -  turned up was dissolved in 1931. See the extract from the London Gazette.