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Dear all
A hundred years ago this week… This
seven days, arguably the most significant innovation bearing on the rest of the
war was the departure of the first regular convoy of merchant ships from
Hampton Roads (July 2; Virginia waterway feeding into Chesapeake Bay). This
followed May’s experiments with convoying as a means of thwarting the U-Boat
threat. The immediate outcome looked promising as the accompanying navy ships
beat off a concerted submarine attack two days later.
Back
in Britain, the other wholly new development in warfare – bombing from the air
– took an grim turn as German planes struck Margate and London (July 2; 250
casualties, mostly civilian), Harwich (4; 47 casualties), and London again (7;
250 casualties, including 57 killed). At the same time, it should be mentioned,
French and British planes were attacking German and German-occupied towns.
On
the Western Front, inconclusive though deadly action continued with the British
Army losing a little territory near Lens (July 2), gaining a little near Ypres
(5), and the French beating off German attacks north of the Aisne (3), and near
Verdun (3 and 7), while gaining ground at Cerny (7).
The
Russians’ rather more consequential assault named the Kerensky Offensive (after
its political progenitor) retained some momentum as the Czech Legions won the
subsidiary Battle Of Zborov (July 1-2; now in Ukraine), and a Russian division
broke through with cavalry in Stanislau (6-8; Galicia – and successively, since
WW1, part of Ukraine, Poland, the Soviet Union, Germany and finally Ukraine
again, renamed Ivano-Frankivsk). But generally this last Russian effort on the
Eastern Front foundered as, following the February Revolution), the infantry
formed committees who met constantly to decide whether officers’ orders should
be obeyed.
In
a not unrelated development, Russia’s still successful force in Western Persia
began to withdraw because of turmoil at home (July 8).
Finally,
Arab Revolt forces, advised by T.E. Lawrence, official deputee of Egyptian
Expeditionary Force commander General Archibald Murray, crossed a tract of
desert to take the small Red Sea port of Aqaba from Ottoman troops (July 6).
This provided Allied forces with a supply route which was to help revive their
stalled attempt to take Gaza. The battle itself was both tragic – the 300
Turkish deaths all occurred via a massacre after they’d surrendered – and comic
– during the attack, Lawrence apparently made the schoolboy error of shooting
his own camel in the head.
[Memoir background: my father, Lance Corporal Sam Sutcliffe from Edmonton, north London, under-age 2/1st Royal Fusiliers
volunteer and Gallipoli veteran (Blogs September 20, 2015, to January 3, 2016),
had
fought on the Somme Front with his second outfit the Kensingtons (Blogs May 15 to September 25,
2016)…
until
officialdom spotted his age – 18 on July 6, 1916, legally too young for the
battlefield – and told him he could take a break from the fighting until he was
19. He did so, though with an enduring sense of guilt. By December, 1916, he
ended up posted to Harrogate, Yorkshire, and re-allocated again, this time to the
Essex Regiment 2/7th Battalion, along with a bunch of other under-age Tommies training/marking
until such time as they severally became eligible for the trenches once more… Well, it was an interesting year all right, but my father
didn’t write enough about his eventual 13 months “off” to cover 1917 in weekly
chunks (I can hardly blame him; writing his Memoir in the 1970s he wasn’t really thinking about his son’s self-publishing
blog requirements come 2017).
So for now the blog continues with themed
childhood and teens material – his formative years – under the title The Making Of
FootSoldierSam.]
FOOTSOLDIERSAM SPEAKS
Last week, The Making Of Foot Soldier Sam looked
at the way recreational life for poor families like Sam’s who lived on the
(then) outskirts of London – Edmonton in their case – was all about the great outdoors.
Chiefly Epping Forest, whether in a family group, or as a church or Boy Scouts
activity – the last very much Sam’s saviour as the new organisation (founded
nationally in 1909) also presented him with a whole range of fun and skills he
could never have experienced otherwise, including sports, gym, and camping as
well as the more fringe preparation-for-soldiering aspects such as shooting,
first aid and signalling. However, last week’s Big Fight against the school
bully no doubt also played its part in preparing or discovering his stoic
nature in a scrap…
Now
The Making Of moves on to the last two years before World War 1 when he had to
go out to work because, bright as he was, his parents couldn’t afford to pay
for him to stay on at school. So here’s Sam’s introduction to the working life
and, one way and another, a sense of what social class was all about –
something which, of course, the British Army still reflected and enforced via
the specifics of rank in an even more upfront way than civilian customs and mores
ever could. (NB: my father wrote the early chapters in the third person,
calling himself “the boy” and then “Tommy”, while he temporarily aliased Ted as
“George”, and, when necessary, cunningly switching Sutcliffe to “Norcliffe”):
Summer, 1912, and he said
goodbye to school and, like every other kid going through this transition,
wondered what came next:
‘Suddenly, what had been a school day was a working day. But
nothing to do. A sense of urgency soon built up and the necessity for finding
work and earning money became quite oppressive. Tommy felt he was not doing his
bit.’
The first job he landed
was as a junior warehouseman, the only oddity about it being that his employer,
Howell’s, based in Old Street, sold one thing – walking sticks:
‘But some sticks in the more expensive grades of wood had to
be made to order. In that case, the man in charge wrote a specification in
accordance with the customer’s wishes. This the boy took through the works to
the bench of the craftsman who would shape that stick. Tommy noted the tools of
the trade: a heated tank of water, usually boiling, a flame of the Bunsen
burner type, clamps – the craftsman would have to know all the various types of
cane and wood and be able to select them and bend them into the required shape,
perhaps having first turned them in a lathe. A skilful job.
In short order,
Tommy too had to learn about the materials used, high and low grade, their
colour, graining and finish – and the correct names for them: natural canes
such as Nilgiri and Malacca, whose names indicated their countries of origin**;
others with a manufactured colour and finish. In addition, either the craftsman
or the production line might ornament them with genuine silver and gold bands,
or complete handles finely chased, or with cheap imitations of the precious
metals. So Tommy learned how to polish the gold and silver parts using a fine
rouge powder with a buffing stick – a piece of wood with leather wound round
it.
Howell’s made
swordsticks too – still popular in those days. Tommy never heard of anybody
drawing his sword from his stick and jabbing it into anyone, but perhaps it did
occur in some remote part of the British Empire…
The job and its
location made for a longish day. Tommy left home at about 6 in the morning, caught
the train at 6.20 and hung about near the works until 8 when they opened, then
he worked through to 12, an hour for lunch, and on till 6 with the train
journey of about an hour to come.’
**
From the
Nilgiri mountains in Tamil Nadu and Kerala, Southern India; from Malacca one of
the southern states of Malaysia.
He immediately realised
that a crucial aspect of the working man’s day was lunch and where to eat it –
cheap cafés were very heaven:
‘You can imagine how delighted he was when he found that his
old pal from choirboy days, Reg Curtis, worked near him. They could meet at
lunchtimes and Reggie knew of one or two places to sit and listen to music and
singing for half an hour. He also knew the places where, for a penny, you could
get a large cup of tea – one, part of a chain called Lockharts (bless the
promoter of them), where just buying a mug of tea entitled you to sit there and
eat the sandwich lunch mother had prepared for you. Rest and refreshment for a
penny…
Another place Reg
introduced Tommy to was known as the Alexandra Trust, where hundreds of people
went for cheap food. And it was cheap too – apart from the tea, a large,
toasted teacake cost a penny***.’
*** The Alexandra Trust Dining Rooms: built in 1898, close
to the tram and bus junction at Old Street by philanthropist tea mogul Sir
Thomas Lipton, 1848-1931; in three halls, capacity 500 each, it offered cheap
meals to the poor working classes; six boilers heated 500 gallons of hot soup,
“steam chests” boiled a ton and a half of potatoes an hour, and, in 1898,
fourpence-halfpenny bought a three-course meal comprising “soup, a choice at
will of a large steak-pudding, roast pork, roast or boiled beef, roast or
boiled mutton, Irish stew, boiled pickled pork, stewed steak, or liver and
bacon [with] two vegetables and
bread, and a choice between pastry, or a mug of tea, coffee, or cocoa”; some
100 waitresses could serve up to 12,000 meals a day – details quoted from
Arthur H Beavan’s Imperial London,
1901.
He was doing OK, but then
he had an accident, fell of a high ladder in the warehouse, and after two weeks
recuperation told his father he didn’t want to go back, Cue more worries about
“doing his bit” for the family, but fortunately…
‘… to his relief, he got another job, in the City of London, at
a company quite near the place where his brother George [Ted] worked. Even better, his work didn’t start until 9am so he could take
a later train, 7.15 rather than 6.20 – although that meant he still ended up in
the City almost an hour before he had to start. Still, often he could travel in
with both his brother and his father; Liverpool Street happened to be the
nearest station to all of their workplaces. So, arriving early, together they
would go to one of the little squares in the area and, if it was a light
morning, look at the paper or just sit and talk if it was dark. Tommy could
meet George at lunchtime too, another advantage.
A job of a
different nature – only the office boy this time – but he quickly realised he
had much to learn. It would be up to him as to how he progressed. The firm,
Lake & Currie, had large interests centred on the tin-mining and smelting
industry and scattered around the world: in various parts of Nigeria, in Penang****,
New Zealand and, at home, in Cornwall at Helston and Redruth.
Promptly at 9,
Tommy’s routine commenced under the supervision of the commissionaire, whom
everyone called “Sergeant” – the day’s first task the opening of all incoming
mail and sorting it into piles, department by department, except that addressed
personally to one of the partners, or to the Secretary Of Companies, which
Tommy would place in their individual in-trays. He dealt with mail deliveries
throughout the day too. And once the directors, the Company Secretary, and the
rest of the staff entered their offices, the product of their thought and
labours would soon start emerging. A very varied correspondence it made too,
Tommy discovered – by reading most of it because, as office boy, he had to make
copies of every letter that came in or went out.
Sergeant taught him
their old-fashioned method of copying letters and signatures into a large book:
place each letter on a blank page of its very fine, soft paper; cover it with a
damp cloth and a waterproof oilboard (to prevent the moisture spoiling the
previous copy); then put the book in a heavy, iron press. A clear facsimile
resulted, complete with signature. Tommy completed the job by filing the typed
carbon duplicate supplied by the typist in the book alongside this copy…
The Sergeant taught
Tommy… how to operate the company’s small telephone switchboard, which directed
calls to every department in the building. In fact, Sergeant told the boys
under his supervision they would have to learn to do all the jobs he did,
because he didn’t intend to remain there. He was perfectly sure a big war was
coming up shortly and, in the natural order of things, he would go to the War
Office to take a job which had been waiting for him in that event.’
****
Penang: then
one of the Straits Settlements, a British territory.
That was Sam’s first
mention of the possibility of war looming. But, apart from the lessons in basic
office skills, the Sergeant came to teach him a lot about social class. Not
that Sam swallowed everything he was told – at least, not in the longer-term,
at first he admits he did fall into sucking up to this bitter man who’d become
his immediate boss. A lot of his conclusions derived from what he observed
rather than taking the Sergeant’s word as Gospel (his own perspective was
doubtless affected by the peculiarities of his own background: born into
prosperity, then at two seeing his “ruined” family briskly descend the social
scale to poor working-class, as symbolised by their descent from north to
south, Manchester to London):
‘Tommy did come to realise that, in practice, Sergeant
fulfilled his role very well in regard to callers of higher status, but often
gave short shrift to those, in his view, beneath his own social level… ‘
But the office did give
“Tommy”/Sam the chance to see power and wealth in action – and note sub-strata
even within the hierarchy of power:
‘Out and along a short corridor, the Company Secretary, F.C.
Bull, FCB as he was known, a truly important man, possessing vast knowledge of
company law and of his own company’s subsidiaries around the world. He stood
about 5 foot 4, slim, balding, dark, some grey hair, quick in movement, with
rather a harsh voice and a middle-class accent, very different from that of the
partners; sharp distinctions existed in those days between working-, middle-
and upper-class accents.
… further along,
one company director, Mr Currie, a huge Scotsman with a large estate out in
Buckinghamshire. On the same side, next door along, the office of the other
director, Mr Lake. A big man indeed. The squire of quite a large village up in
Norfolk and the possessor of a dwelling in the fashionable Boltons area of
Kensington***** and a flat in one of those small streets at the back of
Trafalgar Square.
Tommy soon realised
that F.C. Bull occupied a particular and peculiar place in Sergeant’s view of
social class and status. Because, despite his eminence within the company, he
didn’t come from what the Sergeant called “the upper crust”, Sergeant treated
him with respect to his face, then derided him behind his back. Tommy would
snigger at these jibes.
After a while, when
Tommy felt more comfortable with the job, a mad mood seized him; a six-verse
limerick about FCB resulted. It was libellous and it was untrue, but Tommy
asked his brother to get it typed – his wholesale paper firm had offices nearby
in Upper Thames Street – and Miss Violet Turner, prim, young secretary to
George’s boss, presented it very tastefully on mauve-tinted paper. What a
strange thing to do. But George persuaded her, and with some trepidation Tommy
showed this script to Sergeant. He laughed heartily and evilly at Tommy’s vile,
cheap sarcasm, then furtively passed it around other departments, accounting,
shipping, the draftsmen.
Some members of
staff stopped to congratulate Tommy and he progressed through fear of dismissal
at perpetrating this crime to a swelled head because of the kudos he had
gained. Only later did he realise, guiltily, how far he had let himself become
Sergeant’s lickspittle. F.C. Bull was a man who deserved better of his underlings.
… Gradually, Tommy
became aware of the complications in these relationships Sergeant fostered. He
learned that, to obtain this uniformed but civilian job, Sergeant had deposited
a sum of money with the Corps Of Commissionaires******, by way of security – in
case of exactly what eventualities Tommy wasn’t entirely clear.
More valuable than
the deposit was his apparent integrity. Men like him knew and maintained an
expected code of conduct – although, curiously, they had, and they showed,
contempt for anyone of their own class who attempted to improve their status by
study and hard work. Yet these old and trusted servants also felt they were
themselves aping the gentry and becoming traitors to their kind thereby – if
one can follow that line of thought.
Many a tirade on
these matters assaulted Tommy’s ears. Sergeant in his lunchtime strode the
office floor: a bite of his sandwich, a champing of the jaw muscles, a long
swig from a tankard of beer, and out flowed the bitter words. FCB, and Sampson,
head of accounts, and Otley, the top draftsman, all came in for it, the last
classed as a “homo” as well as an upstart.
But the upper
classes, equally, could bring on a rant. The very men with whom Sergeant shared
a number of confidences on a servant-and-master basis, who trusted him –
rightly so – were, apart from business considerations, enemies of his class.
Wont to growl, “God bless the Squire and his relations/Long may they keep us in
our stations”******* – probably the only couplet of verse he knew – he repeated
it endlessly in the course of his lunchtimes orations. The boy listened, but kept
his own council.
… Let’s have a look at Sergeant
and Tommy for a moment. The old boy’s train home went from Liverpool Street too
so Tommy, the most junior boy in the office at that stage, was permitted to
walk with him. Probably 5 foot 2 then, at 14, to Sergeant’s 5 foot 9, he strode
out to keep step. Comical he must have looked in his skintight trousers and
short, bum-freezer jacket, topped off with the square, bowler hard hat. The
gentry favoured a different bowler with the brim curled up at the sides and a
half-spherical crown. Thus one could easily distinguish the officers from the
other ranks – though a closer look would further reveal jackets of fine-quality
cloth, more fully cut too, and trousers more fully shaped from the top to the
narrow bottom (permanent turn-ups had not been heard of; a man turned up the
bottoms of his working trousers only if they were too long for him).’
*****
The Boltons:
the name referred to a street and the surrounding area; it’s still
“fashionable” in a sense – houses fetching £55m upwards!
****** Corps Of Commissionaires founded 1859 to offer work
to ex-Servicemen; now a not-for-profit private company called Corps Security
with the monarch still nominally its “head”.
******* The popular written source of the rhyme seems to be
a lesser-known Dickens novel, The Chimes (1844). It’s quoted by Lady Bowley, wife of the
philanthropist MP who is the butt of the book’s radical social satire; her
version is slightly different to Sergeant’s: “O let
us love our occupations,/Bless the Squire and his relations/Live upon our daily
rations/And always know our proper stations”.
Part of “Tommy”/Sam’s job
enabled him to snaffle rather more than crumbs from the rich man’s table – who
could resist?
‘The company regularly held meetings with business
associates and others, and when the partners considered those attending worth
entertaining fairly well, a lunch would be laid on, bought in from nearby
caterers. If a small, intimate group were invited, they would gather in the
senior partner’s office. A day or so beforehand, Tommy had to visit the
supplier to hand over the order — often at a famous restaurant and bar over in
Cheapside called Sweetings********, where he observed really prosperous City
businessmen, bosses all, who wouldn’t even spare the time to sit down to have
their lunch. These toffs, as Cockneys called them, clad in fine morning suits,
lined the long counter, munching and drinking their ale or whatever they
favoured. The smell of all these delicious foods pleased Tommy; he loved to
stand there and look and breathe it in. White-hatted waiters dressed up as
chefs carved succulent slices of beef or ham.
When the customers
finished eating, they would just throw down some silver on the counter and walk
out – no question of bills or talking about the cost. As Tommy came to
understand, much company business was based on trust, confidence. A word,
perhaps a handshake, even a nod, would seal a bargain. City men expected all
their associates to deal with them in this way. And all the people who served
them, who wined and beered them you might say, came out very well from that
sort of arrangement. They were never let down.
In addition to the
special drinks and foods the restaurant supplied, Tommy had to buy certain
cheeses and a special type of coffee. This task took him to a shop of the old
style where soft cream cheeses hung from the ceiling in muslin bags…
Fortunately, in due course, Tommy would get the chance to do more than look at
all this enticing provender.
When one of these
feasts had concluded, the bosses would take their guests to a club, maybe to
continue the discussion or just enjoy good company. Often, when they left Mr
Lake’s office – the temporary dining room – Tommy went in to clear up before
the caterers came to collect any utensils and crockery they had provided. But
he’d pause to inhale the fumes of cigars and cigarettes, the aroma of all this
good food – and of an appetising cocktail they regularly took called gin cup*********
which they drank from small, silver tankards, a sprig of a small mauve flower
with a yellow centre floating in each one.
And, until the men
from Sweetings arrived, Tommy could eat and drink anything left over – often
quite a lot. Quickly as he could, he’d run through the menu. The lovely cream
cheese, the crisp little rolls, some meat, ham or tongue or beef, a little
salad, and then, of course, the gin cups had not always been emptied so he
sampled them as well. It was very good. And one further pleasure he would save
for later; some of the senior partner’s Turkish cigarettes – made for him by a
chap in Burlington Arcade********** – would be left lying on the table and
Tommy, who sometimes collected parcels of them from the tobacconist, felt free
to take some of them if he wished. For a brief while, the boy would think of
himself as a man. And fare like a lord.
******** Sweetings, in Queen Victoria Street,
near the Lord Mayor of London’s official residence, The Mansion House, opened
in 1889 and, as of 2017, serves lunch (only) to the same kind of clientele,
though as a specialist fish restaurant; one review notes, “many customers first
went to dine there before they even started at their chosen public school”.
********* Gin cup: gin with mint, sugar and lemon juice.
********** Burlington Arcade: in Mayfair, off Piccadilly.
“Tommy”/Sam’s teenaged
struggles with the “know your place” ethos even had a bearing on his deciding
he had to break up with a girl called Bessie Dibbs whom he liked and had known
off and on for years in Edmonton:
‘On his next homeward train journey sitting with Bessie,
Tommy noted the appearance she had of being well-fed, well-clothed – everything
right in her world. Then he appraised himself: his home-made grey mac, the
cheap suit beneath it, the cheap shoes. Comparing the obvious difference in
circumstances between himself and the girl, he knew he would have to break away
before he got in too deep. That wasn’t easy for a naturally shy lad who wasn’t
too good at expressing his feelings. But he did tell her… that they’d have to
discontinue their walking home and talking on the phone.’
In fact, come early 1914,
when he was still 15, his wider feelings about “life” and his own life in
particular had rather slumped into some slough of despond, a sense that he’d
got lost in London’s anonymous mass of workers and that this might be a
permanent condition:
‘The walk stationwards took
them through several of the City’s narrower streets. With his recent history
lessons in mind, Tommy concluded that these deep gulleys between tall buildings
must have been laid out before the Great Fire Of London — Wren’s contemporaries
would surely never have planned so foolishly after the lessons of so great a
disaster***********. As soon as their route crossed in front of the Royal
Exchange they became members of a huge, walking army. Across into Broad Street
and past the Stock Exchange, the solid, advancing mass filled the pavements and
the whole roadway — useless for vehicles to try to move during this great
exodus.
On Saturdays, for
his half-day’s work Tommy had to get up just as early as on weekdays and hurry
to catch the 7.18 train. On those days he often felt stale and played out.
Leaving the office around 1pm, it seemed that he, his clothes, the big station,
and the crowds rushing away from the City, were all dingy, condemned to a life
of hopelessness and frustration.’
*********** The Great Fire occurred in 1666. On the planning and
rebuilding, the Royal Institute Of British Architects website says that Sir Christopher Wren, 1632-1723, submitted a plan for rebuilding the
city with “wide, straight streets", but it didn’t happen because
"building was financed by private enterprise and the desire was to rebuild
quickly", whereas more radical change would have required the Government
taking control.
I should note that his
weekend sessions with the Boy Scouts still reliably uplifted him and he had his
times of good-fun horsing around like any youngster. But, of course, the big
change in his life was on its way willy-nilly, as European politics headed
inexorably for August, 1914.
All
the best –
FSS
Next week: The Making Of Foot Soldier Sam, 1914 – war fever, recruiters, the
great fraudster Horatio Bottomley, the Army presence in the city… and Sam
enlists under-age!
* In his 70s, Sam
Sutcliffe wrote Nobody Of Any Importance,
a Memoir of his life from childhood
through Gallipoli, the Somme, Arras 1918 and eight months as a POW to the 1919
Peace parade.
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