| Description | DOB: January 1st 1879
DOD: Unknown
Born in Hampstead London and lived at no.6 new end square.
Father was a plasterer and the house they lived in was a small cottage, two up and two down, with a back entrance which opened into the back yard and wash house.
Eight families lived in one house next door.
Attended Sunday school, sang in choir for pay, later cut due to lack of church funds. Learned woodwork, brass work, and handbells through free clubs.
Participated in fairs, street games, magic lantern shows.
Experienced local disasters, e.g., Hampstead Heath Railway Station crush in 1892.
Started school at 4 years old, went to Christ Church School, five minutes’ walk from home.
Drilled by Irish guards with broomsticks, military style education.
Left school around age 13.
Various jobs from a young age such as, paper delivery, Baker’s assistant and delivery, milk round, stenographer’s firm delivering photo blocks, page boy for veterinary professor, house boy for pineapple importers, market worker and shop assistant, blackberry seller, barrel organ player.
Eventually secured a steady job making brass and iron bedstands and coil spring mattresses.
Courtship with Ada Hutchinson.
Fishing, swimming, paddling, ice skating.
Participated in boxing and athletic clubs.
Hamstead Heath Station crush (1892).
Boer War and political reflections.
Witnessed Captain Higgins parachuting from a balloon.
Army activities.
Handwritten at the age of 85.
Soup kitchen, Sunday school, choir, woodwork, brass work, fairs, Grotto Day, Bond of Hope, Guy Fawkes Night, Jubilee, childhood games, paper delivery, market work, Blackberries, page boy, house boy, marriage, Ada Hutchinson, Hampstead Heath, Salvation Army, long walks, Parliament Hill Fields, nature, old town cries. |