J W Booth - AUTOBIOGRAPHY C1

CHAPTER I, EARLY DAYS.
I was born in Portsmouth on 5th January 1922. My father,Benjamin Thomas Booth, was a leading seaman gunner in the RoyalNavy, Portsmouth Port Div. His family lived in Nottingham but he had little or no contact with them because they had virtually disowned him when he had run away to join the Navy about the turn of the century. The popular image of the gallant 'Jolly Jack Tar' did not emerge until the First World War. Prior to that naval ratings were still regarded as the sweepings of the gutters and were treated very much like ‘Tommy’ in Kipling's poem of that name. Their families tended to keep quiet about them as though they were in prison or even to pretend that they were.
My mother, Ivy Thompson, was born in London of parents who came from Tyneside. She met my father about 1917 after he wrote to her to acknowledge a gift from a Church Women's Club of which she was a member. She had then been a complete orphan for nearly twenty years and was in domestic service. As far as I know she only visited his family with my father once, about 1918 and they were both amused to see his photograph prominently displayed in a red, white and blue frame with a scroll reading 'He answered the Call' Clearly a son in the ranks of the armed forces had ceased to carry a social stigma. He was a regular of some 15 years standing when the 'Call' came and if he hadn't answered it he might well have been shot as a deserter.
My mother had one sister, Ada, who was present when my parents were married from the home of a distant cousin at Dunston on Tyneside in 1919. My father's family did not attend his wedding, nor indeed his funeral ten years later.
My father remained in the Navy until 1926 and the family lived in a succession of lodgings in Portsmouth. My sister Ada Elizabeth was born in 1920 and I arrived as already recorded in 1922. A naval wife with her two young children was not the most popular tenant and I suspect that my mother had a rough time of it, though she always maintained that these were the happiest years of her life. She was a devout Christian, believing that suffering here below would be a 'thousand-fold repaid' in the here-after.
When out in her pram my sister would greet every passing sailor as 'Daddy'. This was an unfortunate habit in a town where more than half the passers-by were sailors. My mother told me that Ada once greeted a cadet who must have been all of 15 in this way, and I said "I bet he was embarrassed”. Mum said "How do you think I felt, I was 34 at the time"
My earliest recollections, as distinct from family hearsay, are of our last home in Portsmouth; a flat in Lion Terrace. I was then 4 years old and my father reached 40 years of age and was pensioned off from the Navy. In those days, and for years afterwards, all naval personnel below commissioned rank came out at 40 having normally served 22 years, plus up to three years 'boys-time' from 15 - 18 years of age which did not count for pension.
My father's pension was paid quarterly and must have been very little so he was forced into getting a job in the difficult conditions of 1926. He was a qualified gun layer and diver butthere was no demand for either of these outside the Navy.
Towards the end of 1926 we moved out of Portsmouth to a place called Waltham Chase near Bishop's Waltham. The house was a newly built semi but was without gas, electricity or inside lavatory. The outside lavatory was simply a large bucket whichhad to be emptied into a hole dug in the garden for that purpose. The landlord said it was good for the plants. Nobody seemed to care whether or not it was good for the tenants.
My sister Ada and I normally walked to Swanmore to school some 11/2 miles away unless the weather was so bad that we were allowed to take the only bus, which arrived after 9.00 a.m. andwe got black marks in the register for being late. For years I expected these black marks to blight my career for life. When the road was snowed up we stayed at home and I was in imminent fear of arrest. We took sandwiches and cold cocoa to school for lunch as school meals had not then been invented.
We spent about two years at the Chase and for most of that time Dad was back at sea as an Able Seaman on a cargo boat plying between Southampton and Hamburg. I later saw a lot of these vessels and it must have been quite a come down from being a senior leading hand on warships. At a time when many of the men in the forecastles of British merchant ships were certificated deck officers unable to get a better job, this particular ship was hard put to it to get a crew, which speaks for itself.
In 1928, we moved up the road to Wickham about three miles nearer Portsmouth and Fareham. Fareham has since expanded while Bishop's Waltham has shrunk. Dad got a job as a labourer on a dock construction scheme in Southampton. For a full week of fifty odd hours he got about three pounds, the most he ever earned in his life, but the men were only paid for the hours actually worked. Thus on a wet day he might cycle fifteen miles to hang about all day soaked to the skin and then cycle home having earned nothing. Employers now complain about the rapacity of Trade Unions. They should remember how they abused their power when they were cracking the whip.
The house in Wickham was older than the one at Waltham Chase and equally devoid of 'mod-cons'. Wickham village school was quite close to our house so coming and going in all weathers was no longer a problem. It was here that one teacher made a half-hearted attempt to make me write with my right hand pointing out that, as I was naturally left-handed, this would make me ambidextrous. Even at seven years old I thought this was unjust. After all they never tried to make right-handed children ambidextrous.
In 1929 Dad began to suffer severe stomach pains and was taken ill several times when cycling between Southampton and home. In December he collapsed vomiting blood and was taken to Southampton hospital where gastric ulcers were diagnosed.Treatment was by total starvation until the ulcers healed, drip feeding and blood transfusions being still in the future. He died on Boxing Day 1929 and is buried at Wickham.
The hard conditions under which he had to make a living between 1926 and 1929 must have told on him but I think it likely that his constitution was fatally under-mined by 25 years in the Navy. Contrary to general belief, this was not a healthy life of fresh air and exercise. Watches on deck in all weathers alternated with longer periods below where large numbers of men ate and slept in confined over-heated spaces. TB, now practically unknown, was rampant.
Food varied from ship to ship and was very much a matter of luck. No doubt it was basically good and sufficient but catering on a large scale is commonly a bit of a gamble. There used to be a Naval saying "When it’s brown it’s done and when it’s black that bloody cook has been at it". If my father had had 25 years of the kind of cooking I met with in Butlin's Navy at Skegness in 1942 it is no wonder that his stomach suffered. After all, in peacetime no man who could really cook would take a job at Sea. Why should he? Things had improved in the Navy since Johnson said that no man would go to sea if he had the contrivance to get himself put in prison instead, but not all that much. Since my father's time, I suspect that prison conditions have improved more than Naval ones, so Johnson's remark is probably again true.When my turn came in 1937 I did not opt for prison in preference to the Navy but I did prefer to take my chance inthe Civil Service. Maybe I took the worst option of the three

Chapter one: EARLY DAYS – My comments

For the obvious reason that I could not be involved in my father’s life at this time I have little to add to his narrative, anything I do add will either be a comment on the written content or what my dad calls in this very chapter “family hearsay”.

My dad had a more than healthy respect for lawful authority which is already noticeable in this chapter, when he writes;
When the road was snowed up we stayed at home and I was in imminent fear of arrest.
The more complete version of the story is that after the night’s heavy snowfall my grandfather set off earlier that the kids would have and on his return he announced the route impassable on foot. The children were therefore kept off school until a similar sortie some days later changed his opinion. My father set off that day in fear and trembling, sure that the note provided by his father would be no proof against the wrath of the school. In due course he was amazed to see the teacher accept the note without comment and take no action against the truants. In hindsight Dad must have recognised that his father was a quite formidable man and as a school teacher myself I certainly would not have challenged his decision.

As will appear from time to time in this section of my blog my father was very well read and at times he quotes authors without much explanation, thus giving us credit for equal literary knowledge, but I will, when I spot examples, expand on them if I am able.

‘Tommy’ in Kipling's poem of that name - is Rudyard Kipling my favourite poem being If.

Johnson said that no man would go to sea if he had the contrivance to get himself put in prison instead - is Samuel Johnson the noted eighteenth century writer.