Eddie (Ted)

The Streets of East London, 1920-1933

The yellow light from the gas lamppost danced upon us faintly through the shoe shop window. My friend, Tommy, and I yanked together at the last box of shoes left on the shelf. Kerplunk! A handsome pair of boots landed unceremoniously on the floor. Tommy put both his feet into one of the cavernous overshoes. The leather reached to his knees. With some difficulty he stood up, balancing like a tightrope walker without-stretched arms. Tommy’s father, a long-time acquaintance of my mother’s family, owned this shoe store in Poplar, East London, over which both of our families lived and shared the tiny bathroom, kitchen and meager laundry facilities. My family rented a room from Tommy’s folks where we stored our few possessions and slept. Tommy and I, both two years old, were our parents’ firstborn and only children. Each evening after Tommy and I were put to bed, our parents went to the common kitchen and, drinking cups of tea, laughed and talked about the day. This evening after a good night kiss, I went to sleep and dreamed of shoes.

“Eddie!” Tommy whispered loudly through the crack in the door. I awoke, jumped out of bed, tip-toed to the door, and worked at the big black knob. The latch finally gave, and the door creaked open. “Let’s go try on a pair of shoes!”

That very afternoon we had asked permission to do this but our mothers said, “No, boys. The shoes might get scratched, and then they would have to be sold for less money.”

“But we’ll be very careful!”

Our mothers shooed us away, “Go and play together with the wooden blocks.” The desire to cover our feet with strong new leather grew within us throughout the remainder of the afternoon.

When Tommy first knocked on our bedroom door I rubbed my eyes to wake up. I thought I was dreaming. It wasn’t until the longed-for aroma of leather surrounded us that I realized it was real. Tommy tried to hop in the boot that engulfed both feet. He lost his balance, grabbed for a chair, rocked precipitously for an instant, then crashed to the floor. We held our breath. The upstairs laughter stopped. I heard my mother. “Joe, is it a burglar?” The legs of four chairs scraped the floor, and I looked over at my mate’s white face and big round eyes. The door opened. Tommy’s Dad appeared with a big stick from the fireplace held like a club over his head. The other adults were close behind. As their eyes adjusted to the dimness, they saw us, perched atop fifty pairs of new shoes. Tommy’s mother gasped, “What a bad influence Eddie is on our Tommy!”

Father’s strong arms scooped me up and whisked me from the scene. My gentle, brown-eyed mother followed closely as we hurried up the stairs to our room.

Soon after, my father found us another place to live. He borrowed a horse and cart, loaded all our earthly goods onto it, placed mother and me on top, and slowly led the horse through the noisy streets of London to our new home: 820 Old Ford Road, in Bow.

As we meandered through the busy, dirty streets my father chatted to cheer Mother up. She and her family had lived in Poplar as far back as she could remember. Even though our new home was only a few miles away, she felt like an uprooted begonia that hung with bare roots as she waited to see where she would be planted.

“You know, Flo,” Father exclaimed enthusiastically, “it’s a wonderful stroke of luck that I found this place! It has everything, and you’ll be in charge of it!”

This perked Mother up a little. She had always waited in line for Tommy’s mother to finish with the knife and cutting board before she could make my father a sandwich followed by being told how thick to cut the bread and how much jam to use.

Father kept up his cheery conversation. “Bow is on the river Lea, a branch of the Thames River. A long time ago the Old Roman Road met the river here, to get Kings and people across the Lea they built Bow Bridge, which is shaped just like the bow of a rainbow.” My father pointed toward the arched bridge in the distance with a satisfied smile.

“After building it, the foundations slipped,” Father continued, “which made it dangerous to use, so traffic was routed to the old ford upstream. That detour became Old Ford Road, where we’re going to live!” My father had been reared in Bow and was proud to introduce us to it.

A breeze blew heavily in our direction. Mother pulled the edge of her dress up to her nose. “The smell is awful Joe! Surely we won’t smell that all day!”

“You’ll get used to it,” he assured her and continued with more historical facts: “Sometimes the Lea is called ‘The Cut’. Do you see the towpath on either side of the water, Eddie? That’s where horses pull barges loaded with goods to and from various parts of London.”

“The water sure is dirty, isn’t it Daddy.”

“Yes. All the buildings along the river dump their waste into it,” he said.

Our eyes watered as thick, rank fumes wrapped ‘round us like a dirty blanket. “The smoke is coming from that building over there,” my father pointed to a grimy brick structure that belched dark gray puffs.

“That’s Cook’s Soap Factory, and today’s the day they boil the bones of dead horses to render the fat to make soap.”

I thought about my weekly scrub in the bathtub and worriedly turned to my mother. “You don’t wash me with horsey, do you Mummy?” She drew me close and was just about to say something when an enormous horse with a cart full of boxes pranced onto our side of the street.

“Heaven help us!” mother screamed.

Father jerked our horse’s reigns and shouted to the man behind the boxes, “Watch where you’re going Matey! Sleep at home, not on the road.” He turned to Mother with the explanation, “He must have been at the bottle last night.”

At last on Old Ford Road, my father stopped the horse. “We’re here, Flo! We’re here! Our own place!”

Mother clambered down from the cart. Sure enough, there was a door with the number 820 on it. Father worked the lock with a key. I sat on our possessions and watched my parents disappear into the doorway. Mother reappeared in a flurry and pulled me from the cart. “Come and look Eddie, our own place!”

Our new home was two stories high, ten feet wide, and eighteen feet deep. There were two tiny bedrooms upstairs and a scullery downstairs which contained a two-burner gas stove, a stone sink, a copper (a boiler under which a fire was lit to boil water for washing clothes), and a fireplace.

The small parlor just inside the front door had a gas meter in the corner. I stopped to look at it and asked my father how it worked. “We put pennies in this slot, Eddie, according to how much gas we use to light the house. Each week the gas man comes… and collects the pennies.”

Father ushered us out to the back thirty feet of our premises. “There’s even a back yard where you can play, and Mother can hang up the wash to dry!”

“Do you think we could have a dog back here, Daddy?” I asked, since I wouldn’t have Tommy to play with any more.

As if he had already thought about it, my father said, “How about a little Terrier? A mate at work is trying to find homes for a whole batch of them. I’m sure I can get you one.”

Mother examined the outhouse while I further questioned my father about the dog. “The outhouse is quite adequate, Joe, quite adequate,” Mother said as she emerged from the tiny cubicle.

Just then we heard a loud bang! I jumped to my mother’s side. Father quickly reassured us as he pointed across the back fence. “That’s where they fix carriages. Don’t be frightened. You’ll hear it all of the time. It’s the iron monger’s shop.”

A door slammed shut and a scratchy voice quavered a tune from the direction of the side fence. We glanced up and watched a disheveled woman throw a pail of water out onto her back plot. She turned and saw us.

“Are you moving in?” she asked. “Because if you are, I’m telling you, the owner is a stickler for his money each week. He arrives Friday afternoon exactly at two, dressed in his finery, with his gold pen and little book.”

“Oh!” we said.

“And sometimes we have trouble in the water lines,” she continued, “so the water man visits regularly; and don’t forget to lock your front door each night. There’s some undesirables about who might bother you when they’re tipsy!”

Father put his arm around Mother and ushered her inside of our house. “Thank you for the advice!” he called back to the neighbor.

Soon our life took on a pleasant schedule. My father left each morning on the General Omnibus Company’s red buses to work in London as a typewriter mechanic. He returned by six PM, or earlier, if he was able to catch a green “Pirate bus” (a competitive, non-scheduled bus line that made better time). During the day mother hummed through her work in the house, and I either watched her or played. I was allowed the freedom of the back yard and the area immediately in front of our home. This gave me access to Cohen’s Dress Factory, directly across the street. In warm weather the factory doors were opened to let in any cooling breezes, and I would daily stand at this portal enchanted.

I watched rows of girls at sewing machines deftly working bright pieces of cloth. A short buzz from a machine, a wisp of color, a flip of the material, another buzz from the machine. These girls glanced at me from time to time and flashed a smile. My heart skipped a beat. Often they sang melancholy songs of the nineteen twenties: Carolina Moon and You Made Me Love You. Then they would switch suddenly to bright two-steps and fox trots, their voices lifting gaily to the tunes of Ain’t She Sweet and Walking My Baby Back Home.

Every so often the charge hand would come out to where I stood. “Off with you. Don’t bother the girls!” He waved his skinny arms and scowled at me. I moved away but hurried back at five-thirty in the evening when the girls lined up to punch the clock. I had learned their names, and as they filed past I murmured, “Good night, Peggy. Good night, Rose. Good night, Sue.” On one occasion, Peggy stopped and gave me a quick hug. Her softness and warmth, her perfume, filled me with an insane delight. I worshipped her after that. The first woman I ever loved.

The first dog I ever loved Father brought home in a typewriter box a few weeks after we moved in. Her name was Flossy, and she became my playmate. The first time that our “Water Man” met her I was in the back yard. He had checked the pipes inside of the house to locate the “trouble,” then had come out to check the outhouse pipes. His head was inside of the small cubicle as he listened with his special stick to the mysterious gurgles in the lines. Just then Flossy ran up and snapped at his backside. The water man lurched forward, banged his head on the wall above the toilet, jabbing his eye with his water stick. Flossy kept barking as the man bellowed and swung his stick. Mother ran outside and grabbed me. “Eddie! Get in the house where it’s safe.” Then she rescued the water man from our barking Flossy.

Flossy always met us at the back door, tail wagging furiously each time we entered her backyard domain. One day Father left a pail of whitewash and a brush by the side of the back door where I couldn’t miss it. My artistic mind went into full gear just as she rushed up to lick me. She was black, and I wondered how she would look white. Flossy stood at attention while I meticulously decorated her in a coat of gleaming whitewash.

Ten minutes later I stepped back to appreciate my handiwork. Transformed, the dog stood robed in white as if ready to meet Saint Peter. Stiffly she turned to lick her shiny coat, and started to cough. This jolted me to reality. At any moment my father or mother might find me! They possibly had another use for the whitewash, and just maybe they wanted Flossy to wait for this heavenly robe!

Desperately I tried to de-paint her with a towel that Mother had left on the clothesline. My mind raced with explanations. “I tripped over the bucket of white-wash and somehow it landed on Flossy!” Or, “I walked into the back yard and found her like this!”

Just then I heard my full name, “Edward Philip Ware!”

I was doomed.

“Yes, Mummy?” I said sweetly as Mother approached.

“What are you doing?” She put her hands on her hips. Her eyes were dark and piercing.

“Helping Flossy. Somehow she got white-washed!”

“Be sure your sins will find you out, Edward! Clean her up!” My mother was not much on quoting Bible, but she regularly used Numbers 32:23 on me. Mother turned and went back in the house. I heard my parents laughing through the kitchen window, so I relaxed. But that night before I got into bed mother talked to me about Flossy and what I had done. “You tried all afternoon to clean Flossy, didn’t you?”

“Yes, Mummy.”

“She is going to look gray until her hair grows in black again. You tried to cover up your painting her, but things that we do wrong, and especially lies, have a way of wiggling to the surface like little worms in the dirt.”

I knew about worms in the dirt as I had dug up a plant in the park and quickly re-buried it when one had crawled out of the hole I had made.

The next day was Sunday and as I hurried home from afternoon Sunday school my mouth watered at the thought of the tender roast beef, golden potatoes, and gravy-filled Yorkshire puddings that awaited me. But there was a dark side to this dinner: “greens” which I tried not to think about.

“How was Sunday school, Eddie?” Mother asked warmly as I hung up my cap and jacket.

“Great. They talked about ‘Daniel in the lion’s den’.”

“That’s an exciting story. Hurry and wash your hands, your father is ready to eat.”

I scurried to the table and sat at my place between my parents. My father tussled my hair. Mother brought in the hot food. She divided out the pieces of meat, potatoes, and savory puddings, finally ladling gravy into the Yorkshire pudding’s steamy pockets. Last, she returned from the kitchen with a pan of olive-drab vegetables and plopped a healthy amount onto my plate.

“Do I have to have greens today?” I asked as I tried to keep the awful green juices from invading my potatoes. My stomach revolted and my appetite fled as the green river was absorbed by the white starch.

Some months previously my parents had started to allow Flossy into the house. She hid under the table at mealtime. Whenever I thought I could get away with it, I offered the greens to Flossy. As much as I knew she loved me, I had never been able to coax her to help with them. On this particular day I had the answer to my dilemma. My father was in a serious conversation with my mother about radio and how he wanted to make his own crystal set, so I thought I would not be seen when I scooped gravy onto the greens and lowered them to Flossy. She sniffed once, took a tentative lick, then turned away.

“Flossy!” I hissed under my breath as brown and green rivulets spilled onto Mother’s clean linoleum floor from my clenched fist.

My father turned to me. “Is something the matter with Flossy?” I couldn’t possibly get the green mass back onto my plate without being seen. “Eddie,” Father continued, “what do you have in your hand?”

“I was just checking if Flossy wanted to get healthy!”

“Put your greens back onto your plate,” Father said.

I obliged.

“Eat them up!” I wretched and heaved as I struggled to eat the vile vegetable. At last the mass went down. I gave Flossy a little kick as I enjoyed my Yorkshire Pudding.

That night before going to bed I asked Mother, “Why do I have to eat greens when they remind me of the linoleum in the outhouse floor? They spoil the taste of Yorkshire Pudding.”

“Because your body needs them to grow strong. Not everything that is good for you is easy or tastes good, Eddie.” She hugged me as I got down on my knees beside her, then we prayed for the sad, the hungry and for the poor souls in hospitals. I sang:

I was with my parents in our happy home for another year watching life in Bow go by our front door, when one day Mother said, “Eddie, you’re four years old now. It’s time for you to go to school.”

After that, each morning I dressed in shorts, (in those days you had to be fourteen to wear long pants) a jersey and shoes, then hurried downstairs to a bowl of hot oatmeal or a slice of bread dipped in “dripping” (the tasty fat and juices from Sunday’s roast). Afterward I presented myself to my mother who carefully placed my school hat on my head.

“Be careful with your hat Eddie. Not everyone can afford a hat with an emblem on it, and we can’t afford to replace it!” Some children wore rags to school and odd hats with no emblems. Sometimes I wondered why I had a nice hat and most of my friends didn’t.

For the first few years, Mother walked me over the wood-cobbled streets to school. Horses clip-clopped, hauling loads of freight; cars and buses beeped, carrying goods and passengers; bicycles and pedestrians sought the remaining space along with neighborhood children and barking dogs. Amidst this commotion, one morning, a horse reared and broke from its harness.

“Runaway! Runaway!” people screamed.

We saw the horse’s bulging eyes, flared nostrils, and sweat-drenched body careen toward us. Mother turned white and grabbed me. She pulled me to the nearest wall and shielded me with her body. I could barely see what was going on, but I realized at that moment that she would give her life to save me. After the frantic animal raced past, mother let go of me, and I watched a brave man run out and grab the desperate animal’s bridle. He was dragged until he was able to gain the mastery of it and bring it to a stop. We all clapped. Our hero ignored the praise, but I noticed the happy gleam in his eye and his extended chest as he walked past.

Mother held my hand as we walked on to school. A hearse with a team of shiny black horses was coming down the street. The noble creatures pranced in unison with great, black ostrich plumes attached to their headgear. Black-suited, high-hatted grooms attended them as they carried the living and the dead on their last earthly journey together.

“Mummy, those horses aren’t scary, are they?”

“No, dear, they are not. Whenever you see them come down the street I want you to take your hat off and stand very still and respectful until they’ve passed.” She removed my hat as we stood quietly together and watched the glass-sided hearse go by.

“Why are those people crying, Mummy?”

“Because someone in their family died, and they are going to miss them,” she answered as she put my hat back on my head.

“Mummy, you and Daddy will never die, will you?” The thought had never crossed my mind, but paralyzed me now.

“Not for a long time, darling,” she assured me as we entered the school grounds. Mother waved me away to play with my friends as she stopped to talk with some of the other ladies,

“Mornin’, deary. Did you hear it last night?” Mrs. Leach, who lived on our street, greeted my mother.

“It was hard not to. Quite a row,” Mother admitted.

“They say the Cooper woman was taken to the hospital,” whispered our neighbor.

“No! How awful. She’ll never come out,” my mother said as if it was Mrs. Cooper’s death sentence. The local hospital was avoided at all costs. However, when someone had the misfortune to darken that establishment’s doors, they were considered to be at the mercy of harlets and low-life sorts—the nurses.

“Yes, she’s done in,” prophesied Mrs. Leach with a shudder.

“How about their little girl?” Mother asked.

“I haven’t heard. God help her! Hopefully it won’t be the workhouse!” Mrs. Leach was envisioning that grim institution with bare walls and cold cement floors.

“It sure is a shame,” agreed my mother.

Mrs. Cooper had often been the topic of conversation. She was a dejected little woman who lived in the “flats,” the poorest tenement in the area. It was said that her husband beat her unmercifully. Sometimes Mrs. Cooper dropped her little girl off at school, but she never stopped to visit with the other mothers. When Mrs. Cooper passed them, the women fell silent until she was a few paces beyond them. Even though they were all desperately poor, the women still had a pathetic class distinction among themselves. They deferred to the woman whose husband was doing better than theirs and always talked about the plight of those doing worse.

Mr. Cooper, a huge navee (road worker) with leather straps around his calves was known for his uncontrolled strength when he was drunk. Neighborhood children got out of his way, after hearing about him from their parents. There was one person, however, who was never afraid of him and that was his daughter, who daily flew to him like a bird, and was gathered tenderly into his tree-trunk arms.

My mother and our neighbor concluded the morning’s gossip session, then started for home.

They had gone no more than a block, when Teacher ran toward them, waving her arms. “Come quick, Mrs. Ware! Eddie’s put a pea up his nose, and I can’t get it out!”

Mother forgot the neighbors and raced after Miss Jones to her son.

That morning a friend had come to school with a peashooter, a six-inch tin tube from which he blew dried peas at various targets. He allowed me to hold some of his little missiles. Without thinking, I had inserted one of the little round peas into my nose. To my instant horror I realized that it wouldn’t come out!

“I have a pea stuck in my nose!” I cried.

My teacher tried to get me to blow my nose. Then she tried to reach the pea with her fingers but it only went deeper. Mother and Teacher took turns pounding me on the back. A few frantic minutes later I sneezed, and the pea flew out. Mother returned home, and I went back to my seat.

After school on the same day, contrary to strict orders, I let Flossy out the front door. She proceeded to chase horses. Mother had to run down the street after her. When my mother returned with Flossy in her arms, she was exasperated. “Eddie, I can’t take this any longer. I’m going to run away and be a soldier if your behavior doesn’t improve!”

This produced marvelous results for a few days. I could not imagine life with Mother gone off to fight some distant battle.

Several months later Mother went away for a week. I thought it was because of my misdeeds, and I was beside myself with anguish. When she returned, she carried a squirmy bundle in her arms. She called it my “brother.”

Five years passed before Mother delivered Joan in our upstairs bedroom. Cliff and I were shushed and shoved around downstairs. After what seemed an eternity we were invited upstairs to meet our little sister.

Mother no longer walked me to school, but she always asked about my day when I got home. “What was your favorite class today, Eddie?”

“Oh, Mum! I drew the most wonderful picture of a boat out on the ocean. The art teacher told me it was very good. He said that it was even better than the steam train I drew yesterday.”

“I’d like to see it! And how was the math lesson?”

“Oh, all right, I guess.” I quickly changed the subject. “My friend George told me today that they got ‘electric’ light in their house. Are we going to get it?”

“Actually, yes. This very afternoon!”

Later, a man arrived from the Fixed Price Electric Light Company. He ran a single wire into our house and installed a light in the living room. To our amazement, when we pulled on the cord that hung beside the bulb, a bright, magical light appeared.

“Coo, it’s like the middle of the day!” my father said that night after work.

We each pulled the string until father ordered, “Now, now, we don’t want to break it before we’ve had it one evening. There’ll be no more pulling tonight!” We reluctantly stopped the exercise, but marveled all evening over the instant, glorious light that modern science had provided.

Each evening under the new light Mother, Cliff and I played games at one end of the dining table, while my father worked on projects and his hobbies at the other. Sometimes he brought a typewriter home to repair.

“Daddy, why do you work all of the time? Wouldn’t you like to play with us?” I asked.

“I’m working for an Aspidistra plant, Eddie.”

“A what?”

“Every home worth anything has an Aspidistra plant in the front window, doesn’t it, Flo?”

“Well, yes,” Mother confessed.

Not many months later Mother had her very own plant placed carefully on a stand by the window in the parlor. It wasn’t the most beautiful plant I had ever seen, but there was something to be said about rising in the world.

I thought again about the differences I saw between my father, who stayed home at night, and my friends’ fathers who always were at the pub. Also, most of my friends’ homes did not have an Aspidistra plant.

“Daddy, Jeffrey told me that he plays an interesting game with cards every night with his parents. Why don’t we have cards?”

“Because cards are associated with fortune telling, gambling, and drinking,” my father said, “and those things cause a lot of trouble and sadness.”

“Yesterday I saw Mrs. Jones beg her husband for money for food for their children, right out on the street! Then Mr. Jones threw back his arm and hit her and she fell down. It looked like she went to sleep on the ground!”

“Listen, Eddie, you’re eight years old now, and I need to tell you a few things. Mr. Jones drinks alcohol, and spends nearly all of his money on it. When he has liquor inside of him it takes over, and he doesn’t act like himself. He’s actually a really nice man. Your grandfather drank and gambled when I was a little boy. On his payday he would stop to gamble before he got home, so although he had a good job with the railroad, he rarely came home with enough money to feed us. My mother had to go out to work. She was a kitchen maid in a hotel, worked sixteen-hour days and made just enough to keep us from starving. While she was gone we children were left at home with a neighbor who did not care if we had shoes on our feet in the snow. One of my brothers died of pneumonia after he caught a bad cold.”

My father was nearly in tears. “Each night my mother had me kneel beside her and say my prayers. One night I asked God to make my daddy a good daddy. While my eyes were closed, I heard someone crying. I looked up and saw your grandfather in the doorway. Shortly after that he started to go to church and made things right with God. He no longer gambled or drank, and my mother had a better life.”

I was surprised to hear this about my grandfather since I often visited my grandparents on the weekends and walked with them to church.

One Saturday Grandfather and I walked to the Chemist’s (Pharmacy) together. On the way we passed a group of dejected, miserable men who carried signs as they marched past us. “Who are they?” I asked as I turned to watch them go on down the street.

“They are miners out of work, Eddie. England is in a depression, so there are a lot of problems. These men have no way to feed their families.” I felt terrible for them and added them to the list of those that Mother and I prayed for every night.

Another day my grandparents came to our house and asked my mother, “We’ve heard that the king is going to go by Mile End Road this afternoon. Would you mind if we took Eddie with us to see him?”

I was excited to go, so my mother put on my best clothes, and my grandparents handed me a little Union Jack (British) flag to carry and wave.

When we arrived at the street there was a multitude of people, all with flags. Grandfather put me on his neck, but all I could see were flags and lots of people. Then I caught sight of the Royal carriage. It stopped not far from us and King George greeted one of our neighbors! How we wished it had been us!

Another famous visitor came to our poor neighborhood one day, Gandhi of India. He was in London to try to gain freedom for his country from the Commonwealth. Mr. Gandhi was housed on Pommes Road because he insisted to stay where the poor lived. This was just around the corner from Grandmother Ware, so she took me to see him.

I was frightened at his unusual appearance: dark skin with a cloth wrapped loosely around him, round glasses, and a little mustache. There were many children around him, and I murmured “hello” to him. He smiled.

As Grandmother and I walked home I asked her, “Why is he so thin?”

“Well, Eddie,” she explained, “he’s a man who loves his people and sometimes doesn’t eat to bring attention to their needs. He practices what he preaches, he does.” She looked down at me tenderly. ”It’s amazing, Eddie, what one man can do in this world.” I thought, if a little, practically naked man like that can do something in this world for others, maybe I could too.

Once while I was at my grandparents’, my Uncle Jack, Father’s brother, asked me, “How would you like to learn to play the trumpet? If you want, I’ll teach you. Then you can go out on Sundays with us.”

The Berger Hall Free Methodist Church in Poplar was associated with Guiness, the brewery master, who supplied money and silver musical instruments to the poor East Londoners. This made it possible for us to learn an instrument. Since the brewery was the cause of the vast majority of the heartaches in our neighborhood, I guess its owners slept better if they made some attempt at restitution.

At eleven years of age I joined my uncle in the band. We practiced all week. Then on Sunday morning went out on the streets, marched to a given location, formed a circle, and played Christian music. Our leader, a man with wavy, white hair often preached from Matthew 11:28, Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Certainly his audience could identify with the words, but only a few looked out of their doorways and listened to him tell about Jesus’ love for them. At the end of his talk we lined up again and played as we marched back to the church.

Another church that I was involved with was Bow Baptist, two doors from our home. I attended every function that they had for my age: Cubs, Christian Endeavor, and the Sunday afternoon Sunday Schools.

Each week my parents gave me two pence to put into the offering at Sunday school. With the coins in my pocket I felt like a man of means. I hurried past the church door and entered the local convenience store where I bought a piece of candy with one pence. My conscience bothered me but the sweetness in my mouth drowned anything it had to say. I was taught at Sunday school that Jesus had been little like me, so I hoped he understood our splitting the money.

In church I learned Bible stories and Christian songs. Each year the Sunday school put on a Christmas party. Awards were always good books. I received Pilgrim’s Progress, The Cloister and the Hearth, and many other classics. These whetted my appetite to read, so I started to frequent the library; autobiographies, poetry, and adventure stories were my favorites. The Sunday school also treated us once a year to an adventure into the countryside or to some large park for a picnic.

The only other time our family left Bow was for a week in the summer. We traveled on the London Northeastern Railway to “Southend-on-Sea,” a twenty-five-minute train trip to the shore, where we splashed in the sea and cavorted on the pebbled beach. 

Of course my father had a few days off at Christmas, but we always stayed at home and relatives came to see us. On Christmas day the Wares came over. Our parlor, only used at Christmas time, was festooned with bright paper chains we had made. All through the day the adults sat and reminisced. They interspersed tales with gales of laughter. Sometimes they lowered their voices and told stories that were “not for young ears.” I sat very quietly with my young ears turned in the opposite direction and pretended to be busy. Thus I learned all kinds of interesting things. Later in the evening Uncle Jack led us all in the game of “Follow the Leader”. We sang and jostled around as we copied his every antic. If he stepped over a chair, we stepped over it. If he did a turn in the middle of the room, we all did. The game created a great deal of merriment.

Mother’s family, the Sucklings, visited us on “Boxing Day,” the day after Christmas. Mother’s forebears were seamen and shipbuilders who believed that they could trace their lineage back to Lord Nelson. I don’t know about Lord Nelson, but I could sure see Long John Silver, of Treasure Island fame, in my grandfather as he stomped around the house on his wooden leg, which had been removed due to sugar diabetes. He always wore a seaman’s jacket, open at the chest, no matter the weather. Known to drink a quart of whiskey a day, he also gambled. When Nanny Suckling died, my grandfather Suckling came to live with us for several years. I loved him and his stories of ships and the ocean.

Both he and my father smoked delightful “S” shaped pipes. As I watched them from day to day, I longed to indulge in this manly act. Jeffrey, a good friend of mine from school agreed with me.

At the opportune moment, we borrowed our father’s pipes and huddled together in the corner of an alley several streets away. After we lighted up, great puffs of gray smoke billowed from our mouths. After a little practice we felt like men. Unknown to us, an unsympathetic woman who saw our smoke reported to my mother. I was met back at home with, “Be sure your sins will find you out, Eddie!”

Following that episode, Jeffrey and I raided the local park and brought armloads of stolen flowers to our girlfriends.

When Mother discovered our theft, she sent me to the iron monger’s for a cane. These devices were imported from some heathen country for the castigation of small boys. The salesman never questioned my purchase, but let me sort through the canes to choose whichever one I wanted. These whips averaged three feet long and were very willowy. At school I had experienced the use of this implement when I was whacked on my hand two or three different times. I bought the cane that I believed would issue the least pain, then worked it back and forth all the way home in order to take some of the sting out of it. When I gave it to mother, she promptly issued my punishment.

One autumn afternoon a school pal and I walked through the local park with our catapults (slingshots). We targeted various plants and trees. Then one of us accidentally hit a window in the park-keeper’s house. Stunned at the power of our weapons, we aimed at the other panes too, until there was not one window left. I slept fitfully for days waiting for the park-keeper to find me. He never did.

It was the exception rather than the rule when I escaped getting caught. At twelve years of age it was my Sunday morning duty to get up and bring my parents a cup of tea in bed. To me this task was a nuisance, except for the biscuit or cookie I could snitch while I worked in the kitchen. However, one Sunday morning I was especially irritable. I knew the rules for making English tea: first the teapot must be heated by rinsing with boiling water. Then with utmost precision, one teaspoon of tea is measured per cup of tea, with one extra teaspoonful ‘for the pot’. This brew is steeped for three minutes. That morning such an exercise seemed entirely unnecessary. I poured boiled water into the cold teapot, took the lid off of the tea can and dumped into the teapot what I considered the right amount of tea. Confidently I sallied up the stairs and presented the tray to my sleepy parents.

“Thanks Eddie,” Mother muttered as she brushed wisps of hair from her eyes. She then pulled herself up and sat against the headboard. I balanced the tray on her blanket-covered lap. Automatically she poured two cups of tea, added the necessary teaspoon of sugar and dollop of milk.

I watched as she closed her eyes, raised the cup to her lips and took a swallow. Immediately I knew I had a problem. Her eyes opened wider than I had ever seen them before, and she started to gag. Father awoke instantly and began to bang Mum on the back.

“Paint, Eddie! It tastes like paint!” she wheezed. “Go get more milk!”

I nearly fell over myself as I raced downstairs then back up again with the bottle of milk. No matter how much milk, sugar, or extra water was added, the tea remained tea-paint.

“Eddie,” Mother told me, “you will have to give account at some time for all of your actions; your sins will always find you out.”

Often when I arrived home late from school I found it hard to explain to Mother that I had stood on London Bridge for those missing minutes and watched as the water flowed out to sea. I daydreamed of stowing away on one of the many ships and sailing across the ocean to wondrous adventures.

Other times I was late due to travel escapades on land. My school buddies and I jumped onto the back of horse carts, or lorry (truck) tailgates for a free ride home. The horse cart drivers, infuriated, lashed back at us with their whips.

The whips never quite reached us so we held tight as the vehicle got up speed. We were often carried farther than we wanted to go, so we’d walk a long way back.

One afternoon, after telling Mother that I was late due to a delay at school, there appeared at our front door an unhappy policeman. I stood behind Mother.

“Madam, is your son Edward Ware?”

When I heard my name I almost wet my pants.

“Yes, he is!” Mother said with a worried look on her face.

“Well, madam, he has been observed jumping onto the back of moving vehicles. This is an illegal act, madam. Further, the last time he was nearly run over by a truck. Nearly killed, madam.”

The report was grossly exaggerated in my opinion, which was worth mud at that moment. The policeman continued, ”I warn you, madam, he’ll end up in Borstal if he isn’t watched and kept from such foolishness.” [Borstals were run by His Majesty’s Prison Service and were intended to reform seriously delinquent young people.]

We both gasped at the thought of me in reform school.

My mother was nearly in tears. “Yes, Officer. We will deal with him, Officer. Thank you.” As she closed the door, the “bobby” frowned at me and turned away.

“Your sins have found you out, Eddie, ” Mother started to sob. “Go to your room and wait for your father.” Still crying when my father got home, she told him of my criminal activity.

“Edward, your adventuresome spirit has gotten you into trouble,” my father said as he spanked me with his shaving strap. “It isn’t that you should never do exciting things, but you must consider the dangers, and your mother’s feelings.”

On another occasion that I ‘did not consider the dangers’ my father destroyed a go-cart that I had painstakingly built. “You would get run over by a car in that.”

I was frustrated that he could invent and explore new technologies, but I couldn’t. When crystal radio sets came along, he built one. I sat beside him for hours, intrigued with the coils, knobs and valves. Our whole family marveled at the sounds of music and voice that issued from the earphones that he had put together.

I remember vividly the day a horse-drawn van drew up to our door. The driver proceeded to unload typewriter after broken typewriter into our home. These were stacked against the walls, under the beds, and on the stair steps. Every spare inch of the house held boxes of parts. A typewriter repair company had liquidated and sold my father its entire stock. I heard my parents talking the night before.

“Flo, it’s an incredible opportunity! If we buy these typewriters, I can fix them and then sell them.”

“Yes, Joe, but it will take everything we’ve saved.”

“I know. But it’s the only way we will ever be able to get enough money to move to a neighborhood that is better for our children. We will never be able to rise in the world just on my salary.”

“Whatever you think is best, Joe,” Mother said.

Every night I watched my father work on typewriters. Each day he took a fixed machine into London and sold it.

One typewriter was dreadfully warped. “That one looks too bad to fix” I said as Father studied the damaged machine.

“It had a nasty fall off a desk I think, Eddie,” he said as he continued to survey it. Then to my utter amazement, he raised it about two feet off of the ground and dropped it! When he retrieved it, behold, it worked! After he had cleverly noted the direction in which the frame was bent, he banged it back in the opposite direction.

The money saved from my father’s extra labors grew until one day he came home very excited.

“I’ve found us a new place, Flo! We’re moving!”