Into 'Civvy Street'

Into ‘Civvy Street’
1946 – 1948

Looking back over the years, it astonishes me that during the final year that I spent in the army I never for one moment considered any possible future other than resuming the career that had been abruptly interrupted in 1939 – that of student sanitary inspector. Had six years in the army, including three as a POW, addled my brain, or had the imminence of marriage driven every other thought from my mind?

I was twenty-four years old. My six years military service (seven by the time I was discharged) plus my General School Leaving Certificate with Matriculation Exemption from London University, would have ensured me a university place. The Labour Government would have been happy to pay both my tuition fees and a living allowance for my wife and myself. I could have pursued my schooldays’ dream of becoming a writer.

I didn’t even think of it! The few working class boys I knew who had made it to University had all become either teachers or priests. Neither calling appealed to me. No, I was delighted to know that the government would pay for me to attend a special ‘Further Education and Training’ course for ex-service trainee sanitary inspectors and would pay my wife-to-be and myself an allowance that, we calculated, would be enough for us to live on. I attended a selection board for such a course and was accepted. I would be notified of the time and place of the first course that began after my discharge from the army.

I was discharged from the army on 23rd April 1946. Heather and I were married just four days later, on the 27th. We had planned a fortnight’s honeymoon at a guesthouse that had been recommended to us on the outskirts of Dawlish in Devon. I have forgotten its name but it was owned and run by a Quaker, the first Quaker I had ever actually met. All the guests were invited, if they wished, to attend a Quaker Meeting for Worship held at the guest house on Sunday mornings. Heather and I politely declined.

I don’t remember much about that honeymoon (does anybody?) except that it was cut unexpectedly short. A letter from my mother enclosed an official notification that a course for trainee Sanitary Inspectors would begin at Battersea Polytechnic on the following Monday. My attendance would be expected.

So, we had one week’s honeymoon instead of the fortnight that we had planned. The guesthouse proprietor, when told about our situation, generously declined any payment for the second week that we had booked.

We went back to the home of Heather’s parents. It was just about possible to get to Battersea Polytechnic from there daily and we knew that we would be welcome to stay until we had found somewhere to live in Battersea.

We certainly didn’t want to do that though. I signed in as instructed but the course didn’t actually begin for another few days. Heather and I trudged round the streets of Battersea and Clapham with a suitcase, calling in at estate agents, studying the cards in tobacconist’s shop windows and the advertisement columns of the local newspapers. It took only a few days for us to find at least a temporary home. A very kind lady in The Grove, Clapham Common took pity on us and let us have a furnished apartment on the top storey of her home, stressing that we could have it only ‘for a month or two’ while we found something more permanent.

It was Heather’s Uncle Charlie who found us a more permanent home. There was an advert in the ‘Methodist Recorder’ for furnished rooms in Battersea at No 14 Southolm Street, off Battersea Park Road and only a few hundred yards from Battersea Polytechnic in one direction and Battersea Park Station in the other. The accommodation consisted of a ground floor kitchen and toilet compartment and a roomy sitting room and bedroom on the first floor. The rent was a good deal lower than we were paying on Clapham Common.

There were snags about it though. It was in a somewhat slummy street and our accommodation had only very basic facilities – no bathroom and only a cold water tap over the kitchen sink. A large ‘tin’ bathtub was hung up against an outside wall in the tiny back yard.

There was another furnished apartment on the top floor. Occupants were a very friendly and helpful lady called Mrs Somerville who had a husband that we never saw and a son Alex, who was still away in the forces. Her accommodation was even more basic than ours. She had no proper kitchen sink – just a three cornered sink with a cold tap over it (they used to be called ‘dripstone sinks’ I believe) in a corner on the floor of the landing! Another snag was that it was only a few hundred yards from a railway embankment carrying the main line from Waterloo to Clapham Junction. Trains seemed to pass, shaking the building, every few minutes of the day and night. It was astonishing how quickly we became used to it.

We took the tenancy and, despite all the drawbacks, the months that we spent there were happy ones. I was quite enjoying my course at Battersea Polytechnic and Heather seemed happy as a housewife. She couldn’t do the washing and get it dry in the flat, so every week she would put it in a large suitcase and take a tram from the end of Southolm Street to the Municipal Washhouse, a journey of – I suppose – about half a mile. Here there were no washing machines (they were yet to make their appearance!) but there was hot and cold water, sinks, scrubbing surfaces, and detergents. There was also what I now realize was an enormous spin dryer called a hydro-extractor or ‘hydro for short, in which the women using the washhouse put their washed clothes to get them damp-dry.

All of this I learned second-hand from Heather. Men were strictly prohibited from entering the washhouse and I was allowed to wait outside to help Heather home with the washing only as a very special concession. ‘House-husbands’ and lone fathers had clearly not been heard of in those days.

We were both very inexperienced slum-dwellers. There were no power points and I wrecked a new electric iron (a wedding present) by plugging the lead from it into a light socket. Not that that would have done any harm had our electricity supply not been DC (direct current). The iron had been designed for AC (alternating current)! Heather took her housewifely duties very seriously. One day, coming home from the Poly, I was horrified to see her outside the first floor windows standing on a plaster cornice while she hung onto the window with one hand and cleaned the pane with the other!

In the evenings Heather would help me with my studies – testing me on my knowledge of public health law and so on. It was possible to obtain past exam papers from the Sanitary Inspectors’ Examination Board and I practised answering them regularly. By the time the exam came round I reckoned that I had answered every question that could possibly be set me. Mind you, as well as the written exam there would be an oral exam and a practical inspection – which could be of a dwelling house, a factory, a slaughterhouse, a shop, a canal boat, or practically anything in fact. Candidates had to make an inspection and produce a written report. Both the final report and the notebooks we had used during the inspection had to be submitted to the examiners.

Although there was a separate examination for Inspectors of Meat and Other Foods this subject – perhaps at a less detailed level – was part of the Sanitary Inspectors’ syllabus. For practical inspection of meat and fish we had to pay regular visits to Smithfield and, less frequently, to Billingsgate. To familiarise ourselves with the practice of our other duties we had to spend six or eight weeks with the Public Health Department of a London Borough, an Urban District and either a Rural District or, since there were few of these within easy reach of Battersea, an urban district with rural characteristics.

For all of these expeditions I purchased a second hand bicycle for 30 shillings (£1.50) I think and made my way by cycle. We were, of course, entitled to travelling expenses based on the second-class rail fare or bus fare. Thus, with official approval, I was able to supplement our just-adequate living allowance.

The three authorities at which I had my practical experience were Battersea Borough Council, Sutton and Cheam Urban District Council, and Esher Urban District Council. It was the last of these that had rural characteristics.

It was Battersea – possibly because it was on my doorstep and had some serious housing and environmental health problems – that I found most helpful. I made one or two good friends among the inspectors and public health staff and was told that when I passed my exam there would almost certainly be a job there for me if I wanted it. Sutton and Cheam, and Esher I remember less well. At the end of our time with them the Chief Sanitary Inspector had to submit a general report about us. The Chief at Esher showed me his report before he submitted it. I was rather surprised to find myself described as being ‘of the right type’ since he and the only Additional Sanitary Inspector were committed members of the Conservative Party and I had never made a secret of my – at that time – quite radical left-wing views!

There are only two of my fellow-students that I remember with any clarity. There was a black Jamaican, Denzil Smith, who had a problem getting his living allowance as, although he had served in the RAF, was not a British Citizen. I invited him to our home on one or two occasions. Then there was another E. Hall (he was actually E.W.E. Hall) who had been a glider pilot and had taken part in the D Day landings. He and I were, I think, usually regarded as the course’s most promising students.

I was able to do him a service after we had both qualified. I fairly quickly got a job with Westminster City Council – and immediately signed on for the course for the Meat and Other Foods Inspectors Certificate that we had been advised to acquire. He left his application too late. The course was full and he would have to wait another year. Before the course actually began I had applied for and obtained an appointment with the Gipping Rural District Council in Suffolk. I immediately wrote to him and suggested that he should write to the course organisers, signing himself simply E. Hall, and tell them that he had now moved from 14 Southolm Street, Battersea, SW11 to wherever he was living. This he did – and no-one was ever aware that he wasn’t the E. Hall who had originally signed on!

There were also two women students – former ATS members – with us at Battersea Polytechnic. I think that they both passed the exam. I do remember though that one bleak and drizzly November afternoon we visited a Horse Slaughterhouse in Plaistow (not one of London’s more cheerful areas!) and one of them fainted. Mind you, I had felt pretty queasy myself and I don’t think that I had been alone.

The exam was held in the autumn of 1947. I felt fairly confident that I had done well in the written papers, and I had been very lucky with the practical inspection. I had a simple ‘two rooms up and two down’ terraced house in a poor area (not unlike my own home at the time!) with minimal facilities. It was empty and I noticed that most, if not all, of the houses in the street were also empty. Could it be one of the Housing Act’s Clearance or Improvement Areas that we had learned all about? I thought it likely.

When I wrote my report I detailed all the house’s deficiencies and items of disrepair and added, ‘A cursory glance at other dwellings in the vicinity suggested that there should be further inspections made with a view to the declaration of a Clearance or Improvement Area’. That, I thought, was one up to me!

I was less happy with the oral examination. Always, I think, it is as you are walking away from that kind of ordeal that you think of the replies that you should have made to the examiner’s questions!

The exam results were sent to candidates by post, but a few days earlier they were pinned up in the entrance hall of the Royal Sanitary Institute’s (now the Royal Society of Health) headquarters in Westminster. On the fateful day Heather and I took the train from Battersea Park Station to Waterloo and walked the short distance to the RSI’s HQ. Hand in hand we nervously perused the posted notice. I had passed! I had been fairly confident of success – but you can never be sure until you see it in print.

I was now a qualified sanitary inspector and my next task was to get a job. Theoretically I was still employed by the Ipswich Corporation and was on unpaid leave of absence for military service. I could have gone back there, but Heather and I had made ourselves a home, however humble, in Battersea. I was determined not to relinquish it except to move into somewhere at least equally satisfactory.

Ipswich Council replied to say that they were unable to help with housing so I terminated my appointment with them and ‘signed on’ for unemployment pay though – as it turned out – I drew it for only a few weeks.

Heather and I scoured the local government press – ‘The Municipal Journal’, ‘Municipal Engineering’, ‘The Local Government Chronicle’ for sanitary inspectors’ jobs in the London area – or elsewhere if they were offering housing accommodation. I applied for an inspector’s job in St. Pancras and was granted an interview. I wasn’t successful. Someone with experience was appointed.

Then I applied for one with the City of Westminster. This time I really was successful. I was appointed as an ‘additional sanitary inspector’ with what was, I suppose, the wealthiest and most prestigious borough in London at what was, at the time, the princely salary of £450 a year including ‘London Weighting’. In 1939, when I had been last in the labour market, anyone with a salary of £250 or over was reckoned to be ‘comfortably off’. My dad had certainly never earned that amount. It was, of course, appreciably more than the government grant on which we had been living.

The office was in Charing Cross Road, not far from the Edith Cavell memorial. I became a commuter. Every morning I would catch the 8.30 a.m. from Battersea Park Station up to Waterloo, then the bus to Charing Cross Road. Westminster’s sanitary inspectors used to foregather every morning after they had done their ‘paper work’ at a nearby Lyons Corner House for coffee and a chat, before departing to their various districts to investigate complaints or make routine inspections of homes or businesses.

There was a very good staff canteen for Westminster City employees just down the road from our office where we would gather again for lunch. My sons and grandsons are, I think, quite astonished when I tell them that that brief period I spent with Westminster City Council was the only time after leaving the army that I wasn’t able to get home for lunch or, as I tend to call it in my working class fashion, dinner.

It was a circumstance that only lasted a couple of months. A few weeks after I had started work at Westminster an advert appeared in the Municipal Journal for an additional sanitary inspector with Gipping Rural District in Suffolk – an area, just outside Ipswich, that I knew well. Salary was only £390 but there was a car allowance and the offer of the tenancy of an unfurnished bungalow!

I consulted my Westminster colleagues. They advised me to ‘go for it’. I did, and was successful. At the end of December Heather and I departed from Battersea for ever and in the New Year of 1948 I took up my appointment with the Gipping Rural District Council (see Return to Suffolk 1948 to 1955).

By the end of 1947 I had been out of the army and married for just over eighteen months. Heather and I had spent most of that time in Battersea and, on the whole, it had been a very happy time.

We had paid regular visits, though not as regular as both our parents would have liked, to both Ipswich and Ilford. We also, one day, took a train to Newbury and visited my old great-aunts Aunt Tem and Aunt Annie (See Origins, My parents). Heather’s sister Margaret stayed with us for a weekend (we had a bed-settee in the sitting room) and so did one or two of Heather’s old school friends.

On summer evenings we often went into Battersea Park and I remember rowing Heather on the ornamental lake there.

We attended a local Methodist Church and Heather resumed Sunday School teaching, a task she thoroughly enjoyed. Although I had lost my Christian faith I went along with her and helped where I could. She was, I remember, a great success in the leading role in a Harvest Festival event staged by the Church, ‘The Lord of the Harvest’. On another occasion she was one of a number of Sunday School Teachers who took a group of their kids to Southend for the day by train. I waited for them at Clapham Common tube station on their return.

It wasn’t long after we moved to Suffolk that Heather was diagnosed as suffering from pulmonary and laryngeal tuberculosis. She was away from me for two years and in that time she had eight ribs removed on the left side of her body to collapse her left lung permanently and give it a chance to heal.

After that she gave birth to and brought up two fine sons and managed to live a more-or-less normal life for many years – for which I am profoundly grateful. She was always short of energy though, always liable to contract chest and throat infections, always needing to take an after-lunch rest, never able to do heavy shopping on her own or go anywhere for very long without me being there to give her a hand from time to time.

Possibly it is because it was just during those first eighteen or so months of our marriage that she was completely fit and ‘normal’ that their memory is so precious to me.

There were warning signs to which we should have paid more attention. The winter of 1946/’47 was a particularly bitter one with snow and ice on even Battersea’s streets for weeks. It was followed by a wet spring. Twice at least during that time she was stricken with what we, and the doctor, thought was ‘flu. She had a sky-high temperature every evening and a subnormal one every morning. She was hoarse and had a bronchitic cough. She sweated profusely at night and was completely devoid of energy. There were no antibiotics in those days and the doctor’s advice was the standard, ‘Keep her warm and in bed, give her plenty of warm drinks and some aspirin to get her temperature down’. Each time she seemed to recover but, thinking back, I realize that each time she was a little weaker. She should have had an X-ray examination. What a difference earlier diagnosis might have made!

Had her disease been diagnosed just a year or two earlier that disabling and energy-sapping operation might not have been necessary. Nor would she have had to have it had she developed the disease a year or two later. The continuing development of antibiotics made thoracoplasty operations obsolete.

These thoughts come unbidden into my head. There really is no point though in speculating about what might have been, had circumstances been just a little different.

Heather lived till she was eighty-two, outliving all her ‘fitter’ cousins. We had 60 happy years of marriage, two fine sons, three grandchildren of whom she was immensely proud and – as a bonus – loving nieces and a nephew whom Heather lived to see have wonderful and loving children of their own. Although I did, over the years, recover my Christian faith I have often wished, and still wish, that my faith were as strong and unshakeable as hers was.

I have typed those last few paragraphs with difficulty. I have been on my own now for over two years – and I still miss her more than I can say.
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