Dad's writings

Now I don’t think that I ever travelled on a tram in Hounslow, being only 7 years old when they were withdrawn, but when I was 14-16 in 1942-44 I carried out many a journey on a London tram.

I find it hard to understand that children today are so protected but then I suppose that there are seemingly greater dangers today than in the 40’s. Perhaps?
I started work for a Printers in Heston Maxwell Hailing in the Crossways and under the guise of teaching me a trade my boss used me as an errand boy, shop assistant and sometimes a trainee compositor and machine operator.

One of my very frequent tasks as the errand boy part of my job was to travel to Blackfriars, London by the Underground railway from Hounslow West. (I walked to and from the station) I then had to walk from Blackfriars station to Saffron Hill and collect a very heavy parcel of printed wrappers and take them to our customer The Splendour Lamp Company in a factory estate near South Wimbledon Station.

Of course, I had to walk the mile or so to the factory for this was the nature of employers in the 40’s they had had a rough time as apprentices or trainees and so they then passed this experience on. I later found this to be exactly the same when I became an indentured apprentice in an engineering company in Hounslow. I well remember that that walk took me ages because I was forced to stop and rest every so often because the sisal string binding the package would cut deep into my fingers and palm.

Anyway, back to trams. After collecting the large parcel from Saffron hill I then walked to Blackfriars Bridge where I got on a tram to South Wimbledon Underground Station. The fare for a child was, I seem to remember, 3d all the way and the journey seemed to take an hour, and I am not certain that it didn’t. I remember it as a very rough ride. The seats as I remember were thinly padded, if at all, and very hard. I believe that the back of the seats was hinged on a pivot and so whichever way you were travelling you could move the seat back and sat facing the front.

In our road there were only two or three neighbours who owned cars. One was our near neighbour a Mr. Potter who was disabled due to losing a leg in the Great War, and next-door neighbour Mr. Davis who was a Floor Supervisor in the London Transport Works in Chiswick. He would have been allowed petrol for ‘war work’, however they were exceptional as most adults were forced to rely on Public Transport. I don’t really remember much about this, I suppose that I didn’t use this method of transport myself, preferring to go under my own steam on my bicycle. My dad travelled daily all through the war by Underground train to Whitehall but he always walked to and from the stations that he used, either Hounslow Central or Osterley. My mum walked miles particularly in around 1941 when she had to take me daily to West Middlesex Hospital for physiotherapy following an orthopeadic operation. She pushed a wheelchair the entire journey in both directions. It is incredible when you compare the parents of today with those of the older generation. They walked miles, but today’s equivalent can barely walk to the kerb side to get into their ‘peoples carrier’ to take the children a mile to school!

One of the ugliest features of those early months of the war were the women whose war effort took the form of pinning white feathers in the jackets of young, and apparently able bodied, men whom they thought should have been in khaki. The practice became such a nuisance that the War Office issued armlets to medical rejects as a protection while the Admiralty (I can't speak for other Ministries) followed suit for men whom they refused to release. The Army armlet was in khaki with a red crown, the Admiralty’s Navy blue with the usual foul anchor motif. The armlets soon fell into disuse. Surely there are some lurking in neglected drawers to be unearthed some day when very few will be able to remember their origin and purpose.

One of the white-feather tribe (I have no evidence of her actually insulting anybody with one) was an acquaintance of the four families I have been writing about and a schoolfellow of my eldest sister’s. She gave me many hints before bluntly asking, “why don't you join up”. When air-raids began this heroine badgered her parents to move into move into another flat, nearer an Underground Railway Station which would provide her with a quicker route for bolting below for safety. They moved from the flat, which suited them well, into one altogether less satisfactory in every way where they were obliged to stay for some years after the war until they could get a better one.