Last Week: We met Grandpa and travelled through his childhood and his family’s transfer to Africa, where he was schooled in Nairobi for a few years.
Me So, you say you came back to England in 1914.
G I came back in June 1914 (with?) my Uncle Arthur and Aunt Annie, and Langley and Edgar – the two children. He was coming home for a holiday, intending to go back. We arrived in England in July 1914 when war broke out. My parents were going to come a year later but were not able to do so because of the war. As my uncle couldn’t go back, he bought a farm in Swepestone in Leicestershire.
Me Which uncle was this?
G This was Uncle Arthur, Langley and Edgar’s father.
Me So did you stay with them?
G No. We lived in Hull in a street of houses and it was arranged that as my parents couldn’t afford to send me to a boarding school, I should go to Hull to the school where I had started my secondary education. I lived with the people who had been our next-door neighbours.
Me Was this row of houses like terrace houses?
G It was a row of houses – a terrace house, yes, with a small yard at the back. The houses were back to back with a wall between them. I joined the same class at school as I would have been in had I stayed there. I went into Form Three and I hadn’t lost anything by being abroad.
Me I remember you said to me that this was a time of you life that you didn’t care to remember. Is this still so?
G It was all right at first. There was just what I used to call “the old man”, who would have been getting on for 60, and his daughter. Then she got married and her husband came. She then had children, and after that I didn’t get a room to myself and it became pretty awful. There was hardly a book in the house. There was no intelligent conversation or discussion.
Me Where had you found your need for intelligent discussion and books? Had your father given you all this?
G No, no. What happened was this. I had another friend of my age whose mother was widowed and we used to talk about how we were going to get on. If you only had an ordinary secondary school education, it wouldn’t lead to anything. We got the idea that unless you had a degree, you couldn’t really progress and get into the higher jobs. You would remain labelled an artisan and would never reach a managerial position. There was no one to advise us and we decided we’d have to get our Matriculation. The London Matric was the one I decided I would have to get. (I had left school?) and was working and I didn’t have the background to do it.
Me So how did you manage?
G When I was 16, the man I was living with was a foreman-fitter. He couldn’t read or write and his idea was to make me a fitter. To do that you had to have a 5-year apprenticeship and if you were going to finish your apprenticeship by the age of 21 you would have to start at the age of 16. So I left school in August when I was just 16. If I had stayed on at school for another 6 months, I could have taken the Cambridge Senior Exam. I had taken the Junior Cambridge Exam the year before I left. The Cambridge Senior would have exempted me from Matriculation.
Me But he suggested you started you apprenticeship immediately.
G Yes. Because of the war, I only got letters from my parents at several months’ intervals. I had no one to advise me in this country and it wasn’t until towards the end of 1919 that my parents came home and found out the conditions under which I was living. They saw that I would end up as a fitter so my father arranged for me to go to Manchester to a locomotive manufacturer as a pupil apprentice.
Me Didn’t you at some stage do classes in the evenings when you realised you weren’t getting the academic education you needed?
G In Hull, I went to night school but that didn’t lead to any proper qualification.
I did an all-round training in Manchester. As a pupil-apprentice it meant that I could go into every branch of the new works. You were not confined. As an ordinary apprentice, you were either an apprentice fitter or an apprentice machinist or an apprentice turner or a boilermaker. Each was a particular trade. As a pupil-apprentice you spent time in every shop in each of the different trades.
During that period I went to Technical College in Manchester. We went there two days a week. To begin with, my idea was to get this London Matric and I went to (classes) to get a general education and it was there that I came into contact with Literature and a classical education, but it was too late to start this at the age of 18 and I didn’t pass my Matric Exam. I then went to the Technical College where I studied Mathematics and other things and eventually I took the examination of the Institute of Mechanical Engineers and that was where I got my qualification. You start as a student and then you become an Associate. Then when you pass another examination you become a Graduate. Then when I got a job I got the full qualification.
Me So this was around 1918?
G I started my pupil-apprenticeship training in 1920 and I was there for 3 years. (I always thought my father had been responsible for my appointment as an apprentice-pupil) (I think this is what Grandpa was trying to say – it is very disjointed here – ed) but later, I found out from Langley who had a book on the history of railways in Africa, that the Uganda Railway had bought locomotives from Naysmith Wilson (the company Grandpa was apprenticed to – ed) and it was through this (and his father’s connection with it? – ed) that I was taken on as a pupil.
Normally, a pupil-apprentice had to pay £75 a year and you received no salary at all. It was obvious that because they had supplied Uganda Railways they took me on as a pupil-apprentice without paying a premium. But I had to be supported. What happened was that you paid the premium and it was paid back at 25 shillings a week. I got the 25/- but my father didn’t have to pay the premium obviously because of the order that Uganda Railways had placed. At the time, I didn’t know all that.
( I do not believe this was the main reason Grandpa was accepted as a pupil-apprentice. I am sure his history of diligence and attempts at self-improvement as well as his obvious intelligence secured his appointment – ed).
(When I had achieved my professional qualification with the Institute of Mechanical Engineers) I thought I would get a job on the Uganda Railways, but when I applied for the job, the railway was nearly bankrupt. They gave the excuse that I had had no running experience. That meant I’d had the construction experience of locomotives but no practical experience of the running of a railway, so it was arranged that I join the Great Central Railway with its headquarters in Manchester. There I spent 6 months in the running shed where they repaired the locomotives, and 6 months on the footplate, stoking the engines.
Me Literally? Did you stoke?
G Yes. There was the driver and fireman and me. You had to have been a pupil-apprentice to do this. You spent the 6 months doing the fireman’s job. You weren’t allowed to drive because previously there had been an accident where an apprentice was driving the engine so they wouldn’t allow that any more. But you travelled on the footplate and kept to the same hours. You were also attached to the breakdown van and if ever there was an accident, a derailment, day or night, you were called out to the breakdown train. There was an accident between Liverpool and Manchester when I was called out at 2.o’clock in the morning, so off you went to the works. The breakdown train was always ready to go and as soon as you got there, there was tea laid on and you played cards until you got to the accident. Once you got there you never stopped working whether it was 24 hours or 36, until you got the railway working again. All the men were wonderful – the way they worked! It took 36 hours for this particular accident before we got things straightened. They got one line free and while they were working on the other line the trains were coming past. We were there all day and night and all the next day. (The next paragraph is verbatim – ed)
All the men, we were always known as ‘gentleman apprentices’, and of course we got on very well with them and there was never any ill-feeling towards you, because in those days, a fitter’s salary in the days when I was an apprentice in the works, was £2–14s-0d and there were no holidays and they were allowed a week’s holiday a year but they were not paid for it. I was three years there, that was 21, 22 and 23, then I did a year with the Great Central Railways, which took me to 24.
Me Why did you leave the Central Railway then?
G Well, they took me on as an apprentice, unpaid, for one year. When my year was up, I had to leave, and in 1924 jobs were very difficult to get.
Me How did the First World War affect you and your training? This would have been in your last year of school, wouldn’t it?
G I had started my apprenticeship in Hull before the war ended. Many men were called up at the age of 18 so at 17, I was the oldest apprentice in the shop.
Me And you weren’t called up?
G No. The war ended in November and I would have been 18 in the following August, so I wasn’t old enough.
But we used to work. I started work at 6.0 in the morning and we did a 53-hour week and during the war we had to work overtime although I was an apprentice. I remember I worked from 6 in the morning until 20 past 8 at night, all day Saturday, all day Sunday for 3 weeks. I thought life was coming to an end. Things got better after the war was over.
Me After you’d done your one year on the Great Central Railways, you were out of a job.
G I was out of a job. Naysmith Wilson had been contacted by the Madras and Southern Mahratta Railways (MSM) for an Assistant Locomotive Superintendent and I went to London for an interview. The first time I didn’t get the job because another of our apprentices had an uncle on the Board so there was a little bit of influence, but I got the job on the second interview and went out as Assistant Superintendent on 500 rupees a month. (a rupee was worth 1/6d, or 7½p or 15 SA cents).
Me Hadn’t it been your intention to go to Africa rather than India?
G I thought it was automatic, my father being on the Uganda Railways, that when I had finished my training I would become an Assistant Locomotive Superintendent on the Uganda Railways.
Me Why didn’t this happen?
G Because, so I observed, the railway was nearly bankrupt and they had stopped recruiting. As it turned out I was much better off in India than I would have been in Uganda because Uganda was quite a small railway relatively.
Me I can remember your telling us at one stage that people with degrees and those who had gone to the best schools had much better chances of jobs. Do you think this is so?
G It was definitely so. Nearly all the recruitment onto the Indian Railways were people who’d had a degree, probably a Cambridge or –
Me Or who had been to Public Schools.
G Or had been to Public Schools. But Mechanical Engineers, this dating back to the days of Stevenson, had been raised from the artisan class. They were never considered quite the same calibre as your Civil Engineer who had a university education. Your training was practical instead of academic and I found out when I went to India that the majority who had jobs in the mechanical engineering, the locomotive industry, had not been to Pubic Schools because in those days you had to have had the practical experience in the works, and any technical qualifications you got…
(Just heard Grandpa’s clock strike 12!)
END OF TAPE ONE SIDE ONE – Whew!
Next week: Grandpa travels from Bombay to Madras by train, and uncovers skulduggery in Guntakel
Dusty, wow! This is a marathon…well done!!
Awesome Dusty… looking forward to the next one
Nossie – thanks…we’re still just warming up
Semi – glad you’re enjoying it. Thanks for reading, and stay tuned.