LITMIR.BIZ

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with a block of lard and then rubbed into the horse’s coat. He always put a stick of sulphur in the dogs’ water too.

      The third pond was the swimming pond. It was for men and boys all week, except for Wednesdays when women could swim there. The swimmers got undressed in a fenced-off bit with partitions. We would watch them come in, see what sort of clothes they had on and follow them when they went out to jump in the water. As soon as they jumped in, back we went and rifled their clothes. If they was better than our’n we nicked them and left our old ones there for them. When I got home me mum would say, ‘Where d’you get that from?’ ‘Off of the rag and bone man,’ I would reply.

      There was a concrete diving board at the swimming pond that was about thirty-three foot high. It was the first Olympic diving board. They come from all over the globe to dive from there into fifteen foot of water. One summer night we was up there fishing at two or three o’clock in the morning. We always took a big old umbrella fishing in case it rained. I picked it up.

      ‘Watch this,’ I says.

      I climbed up to the top of the board and jumped off with the umbrella as a parachute. Then all me mates had to do it too.

      Over by Jack Straw’s Castle was more ponds—the Leg of Mutton Pond and Whitestone Pond. Whitestone was a man-made pond made out of white stone with a little wall either side. It was used as a drive through for horse and carts—anything that was pulled by a horse. The horses would go through during hot weather. As they got in deeper the water covered the hubs of the wheels. It got into all the cracks and the wood swelled. That stopped the dried-out old wheels from sounding so creaky.

      I sometimes took Babs over Parliament Hill Fields first thing in the morning on me own. I always let the dog have a swim when we was over there. One morning, as we got near to the first pond, I seen what I thought was a football about twenty or thirty foot out from the edge. I threw a piece of wood in so Babs would go in and get the ball. As she got near, she went to try and grab it, like a dog would do. Then I seen it was a bowler hat. The hat went down and come up again and I seen a face. It was a man, drownded hisself. I thought to meself, ‘Blimey, the poor sod’s dead.’ He must have been in there some time cause you don’t float till after so many hours or days.

      I went and found a keeper and told him there was a dead bloke in the pond. He come down and had a look then went to the swimming pond run by the head keeper. They got a punt, carried it up to where the man was, put it in the water, punted out and dragged the body in. After a while the other keepers come round and they covered the body over with a black tarpaulin. Then the police arrived with a basket trolley—a basket about six foot long on wheels that was used as a stretcher. They put the bloke on it and took him away.

      Me and Babs watched the whole show but they never asked me a thing, not even me name and address. I never knew what had happened to the man. All I ever knew about him was that he would have had a good job, like in a bank. You knew what people did by the hats they wore. A butcher, a salesman or a grocer wore a straw hat. A builder wore a soft cap. Anybody of any breeding wore a trilby hat. But blokes with jobs in offices and banks, like the one in the pond, wore a bowler hat with a pinstripe suit and they always carried an umbrella.

      I seen several others pulled out of the swimming pond dead. As well as the diving board, the swimming pond had two rafts in the middle what you could get up on and dive into the water. Some people went to go over there thinking they could swim when they couldn’t. The keepers had a long pole with three hooks on the bottom and they used this to fish out anyone who went under. Several times I seen the keeper go out in the punt and haul a dead person out of the drink.

      Women could only swim on a Wednesday till a pond inside the grounds of Kenwood was opened for women only. We would go there and watch the gels swimming. We couldn’t get too near to them but had to stay about fifteen or twenty yards away. They soon had a diving board there too, made of scaffle boards and poles. A bloke called Captain Webb arranged for it to be built for them. Captain Webb lived in a great house up West Hill at the end of Lady Burdett-Coutts’ estate. He was more or less like the Prince of Wales as he was very important and well known for being charitable.

      The other thing we liked doing was a bit of horse riding. The people who owned Kenwood let the Express Dairies put their horses in the field to graze and have a rest, like. Sometimes they was out there for a week or—if it was a poor old horse—a month. They was pretty tame and we would climb over the fence with an old scaffle cord, creep up to the horse, put the rope in his mouth, jump on his back and fly round the field. The old gamekeepers would come after us and fire a gun to frighten us off. We would ride up to the fence as far as we could and leap over—once we was over the other side we was home and dry.

       IX

      Every summer there was an outing for all the women. They went from the Bay to Southend. That was their day out. Practically all the mums, aunts and grandmothers went. They went on a double-decker charabanc with four horses and a driver. The coach was belt driven. It had no springs and solid rubber wheels with iron studs banged in, so they was iron tyres more or less. The poor old horses dragged this forty miles to the seaside and back the same day. They stopped off at about four pubs on the way.

      All the kids crowded round the coach before it went away, waving and singing, and the old gels would throw a handful of ha’pennies or pennies out. We all scrambled for these before they left. While we waved, the horses clopped away up the street on the cobblestones. Then up by Raydon Street the noise was muffled when their hooves hit the straw. There was a bloke up there, name of Bill Duggin, who had an illness what meant he mustn’t hear any row. So there was a load of straw in the road round and about his house, from Buckingham’s shop right down to the cemetery. What he had I do not know, but straw was often put on the road when people was ill. If someone in the street had scarlet fever or some very bad illness they would cover the street from end to end with straw so that when the horses come down they wouldn’t bother them.

      When the women had gone we would spend our money on sweets or ice cream. In the summer there was an ice cream pitch right outside our house. The bloke had a barrow and a churn and the ice cream was a penny, while a cup of ice and half a lemon was a ha’penny. There was a bloke selling toffee apples too. If you was lucky you got the one with the thruppenny bit stuck inside.

      Sometimes we spent our money on going to the pictures. It cost thruppence and there was two sittings of a night time and a matinee in the afternoon. In the evening they had two pictures—they showed you one, then a five-minute rest, then the other one. A pianist played the piano behind the curtain. I couldn’t read the captions so I just used me imagination. Before the film come on we would have a competition for the best call-out and everyone would start up. I liked to shout, ‘Bob each, wild rabbits,’ as loud as I could.

      Not long after the women’s outing us kids would go away. We went hop picking in Kent for a month every summer. We really looked forward to it. First time I went there I thought I was in no man’s land. We slept in a pigsty full of straw and picked hops from dawn to dusk. We didn’t really work hard, but every day we filled huge sacks with hops. We worked with some travellers who went from farm to farm picking what was in season. I went with me brothers, Ruddy, Cocker, Joey and a lorry load of other boys. A few gels come too, but not many—most wasn’t allowed.

      The hop picking trip was organised by Old Mother Ring. She was the moneylender for the poor in the Bay. The most you could borrow was a half crown and you paid back a penny in the shilling each week. You had to be at least sixteen to borrow money. Her old man was in the building game and she had a son called Mickey who we called ‘snotty nose’—dirty sod he was. She paid us three and a tanner a week and cooked for us. We kept some of our wages and gave some to our mothers when we got back.

      After work we bathed and swam in the river, and in the evenings Mother Ring made a big pot of broth with bones and rabbit so we had plenty to eat. We carried on scrumping and thieving and Gawd knows what else when we got the chance. It weren’t long before we got lousy there and as soon as we got home out come the horse clippers and the red carbolic

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