The Day War Broke Out

by Jacky Hyams

  After a week’s training, Bert was detailed to his first Pullman car, named Bertha: ‘On the Southern, all trains were electrified. Apart from the all-Pullman Brighton Belle, there were twenty electric Pullmans, numbering 1–20, all possessing female Christian names. Each Pullman unit would be in the middle of a six-coach corridor train.’

  Serving packed trainloads of day-trippers or theatregoers with food and drink on the Pullman as it went up and down to the coast was usually a hard slog.

  The Brighton to Victoria shift meant 4.25pm up to London, 6pm down to Brighton, 7.25pm up, 9pm down, 10.25pm up, midnight down, arriving in Brighton around 1am. Then you’d be up to the siding to clear up, check stock, finally getting home to sleep at 2.30am. After the 9pm down, one would feel worn out, but you still had two very busy trips ahead. The midnight train from Victoria was the busiest of all the trips, full of theatregoers all wanting drinks after a night out.

  There were no overtime payments. Quite often, a planned free evening would vanish if there was a breakdown elsewhere and Bert’s shift would be suddenly extended. Working in the Pullman car on the Brighton Belle, Bert was one of a crew of four:

  The chef, who always had to have whites on, along with a chef’s hat, an attendant in charge, an assistant serving in the car, and an attendant just serving refreshments on the other plain coaches up the corridor. On a busy train the attendant had to carry three trays, two on the right hand and arm, one in the left hand. Very seldom any breakages, even at a train speed of 75mph.

  On arrival at London, a Pullman motor van would unload stores, ordered the previous day, to the unit concerned. No frozen foods then, all fresh vegetables, meat, etc., all from the main depot at Battersea. Clean linen delivered every day, table cloths, napkins and hand towels. Soiled linen was returned to the Battersea depot and laundered.

  On the early turns, we’d serve breakfasts, porridge, fruit juice, kippers, bacon and eggs – poached, scrambled or boiled – toast and marmalade, tea or coffee.

  The busiest lunch turn was the 1pm Victoria to Brighton, arriving at 1.58pm. Food was prepared by the chef during earlier trips. Menu would start with hors d’oeuvres or soup (served from a tureen) – no easy task on a train travelling at 75mph. Then there could be fish (halibut or Dover sole), roast chicken, chops, cutlets or mixed grill, all with three vegetables. Sweets were Charlotte Russe [a classic Edwardian dessert, a type of trifle consisting of sponge fingers, fruit and custard], fruit salad or apple tart with cream, steamed apple pudding with sauces, baked jam roll with sauce. Then cheese and biscuits and coffee.

  While the price of breakfast was 2 shillings and 6 pence, this four-course lunch was priced at 3 shillings and 6 pence. Drinks cost 6 pence for a nip of whisky or gin, while brandy was 1 shilling and 6 pence per nip. Cigars were either 1 shilling and 6 pence or 2 shillings.

  ‘We had fifty-eight minutes to serve drinks and a four-course lunch with silver service and coffee and then to collect the cash from about forty passengers. A good system was vital. Unless you worked to a system, it could be chaotic.’

  On extra-busy shifts, it did turn chaotic:

  The chef would sometimes get into a flap, burning the soup, dropping a dish of vegetables and so on. He had a lot of work on, what with the service taking place in the car and the corridor attendant shouting orders to him. In summer, the galley became a sweat box. Against company rules the vestibule doors would be clipped back, letting in a rush of air from the speed of the train. Noisy, but very cooling for the chef! [‘Vestibule’ is the term used for the area at each end of a railway carriage, where the external doors are.]

  In the Pullman car, serving coffee could be a nightmare:

  With a silver jug of coffee in one hand and a similar jug of hot milk in the other, one would start to pour and mix the milk and coffee when the train would lurch over a slight curve of track and instead of finding the coffee cup, known as a demitasse, one would find the passenger’s lap. After travelling the tracks for many months, the average attendant knew just where any curves, bends and sharp points occurred.

  Staff were not allowed to consume the food stocks aboard, except cups of tea: ‘The usual procedure was to dash out on arriving at the destination, purchase chops, vegetables, etc., and the chef would then prepare us a meal, either for consumption in the sidings or en route. Staff were not allowed to drink on duty, but it still went on – a drink could be obtained any time of the day once the train was on the move.’

  The Pullman car consisted of a kitchen, including electric stove, grill and oven, store cupboards, a hot-water urn, a sink and crockery. Alongside was the ice safe or box (refrigerators were available for sale in the late 1930s, price around £22, but the ice safe, where big blocks of ice were kept in an insulated box with hollow walls, was in fairly common use in pre-war catering). Next to the kitchen there was a pantry with crockery, silver, glasses, wines, spirits, beers and expensive cigars. Kitchen waste was emptied from bins aboard into incinerators at depots. No ashtrays were to be emptied out of windows – a lit cigarette end could blow back into an empty compartment and start a fire.

  Seating on a first-class Pullman car was twelve comfortable armchair seats with antimacassars (a decorative cloth placed on the back of the seats to protect them from dirt or grease – most typically from hair oil [Macassar oil] commonly used by men at the time), glasstopped tables with brass lamps and ashtrays. There was also a separate private cubicle with seating for VIPs. If a passenger required anything, he or she would press a bell push by the seat and the number of the seat light up red.

  Accommodation in third-class Pullman carriages (effectively, second-class travel or standard as we know it today, but for confusing reasons third-class rail travel was only officially rebadged as second class by the then British Railways in 1956) consisted of sixteen seats, four at a table, again with a glass top, ashtray and table lamp, but this was ordinary, less luxurious seating.

  Various light refreshments could also be delivered on trays by Pullman staff to passengers in compartments, served on tables fitted into the compartment. There were supplementary charges for this service, between 2 shillings (in first class) and 1 shilling and 6 pence (in third class). A pot of tea and toast or biscuits cost 9d; coffee and biscuits 10d.

  In his four years with Pullman, Bert found himself serving many wealthy or well-known people, including royalty travelling on the Pullman train to a function or to the races.

  Red carpeting was laid along the platform, right up to the entrance to the Pullman car. I saw Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth [as she was then, subsequently HM the Queen Mother, who died in 2002, aged one hundred and one].

  I saw her at a very close distance and was surprised to see how much her features were made up cosmetically. Only the conductor would be allowed to make any contact with the royal party.

  Other well-known passengers Bert served included stage and screen celebrities like the singer and actress Gracie Fields, the Crazy Gang (a very popular group of six comedians, including Bud Flanagan and Chesney Allen, whose popularity extended beyond the Second World War into the late 1950s), Tommy Farr (one of the UK’s most celebrated heavyweight boxers) and the comedian Max Miller (known as ‘the Cheeky Chappie’ for his somewhat risqué repertoire).

  ‘Many stage stars and wealthy people would come on, leaving the porter to load their luggage into the vestibule of the Pullman car, perhaps eight or ten pieces of luggage piled on top of each other.’

  The Crazy Gang were regulars, arriving direct from performances at the London Palladium: ‘They’d get on at 11.30pm, occupy a private enclosure, hand over steaks or whatever to the chef, tip him and by the time the train was due out, they’d have had their meal and then the table would be cleared and they’d settle down to play cards.’

  Serving royalty and celebrities was one thing, but other journeys were not without incident. Sometimes drunken fights would break out in the corridors or compartments, with windows and lights broken. At those times, the train wou
ld stop at the next signal box, the information would be passed on and at the next station, police would board the train.

  The Company had a lot of trouble with race gangs. Race specials were part of Pullman service, sometimes not very profitable and after the racing, many racegoers were drunk on getting aboard. This was the era of the razor gangs [razor-wielding young men usually involved in racketeering at racecourses in the 1930s and 1940s].

  One drunken racegoer, big and rough, demanded a seat in the Pullman. Staff tried to ease him into the corridor but he pushed his way into the car, picking up teapots and smashing tabletops.

  All hell was let loose, an attendant pulled the communication cord and the train halted.

  The driver and guard came along the track, phoned police from a box and on arriving at Haywards Heath station, police came aboard and took him off the train. During the rumpus, not one racegoer or bookie had raised a hand to control this person.

  Part of Bert’s job involved canvassing compartments in order to sell refreshments. This too had its hazards.

  Very often an attendant, including myself, would open a compartment door with all the blinds pulled down and surprise a loving couple, well into the throes of lovemaking.

  I canvassed Max Miller in a first-class compartment and embarrassed him at the same time by finding him in a compromising position with his secretary – she travelled with him quite a lot.

  On one occasion, on a Friday night on the 5.25pm Victoria to Brighton run, Bert canvassed a first-class compartment to find a businessman, truly the worse for drink, with a gorgeous female.

  Sitting next to the man she had both breasts outside her dress and he was fondling her. Strange as it may seem, there were other businessmen in the same compartment but the female didn’t seem too bothered. Another of those dirty weekends in Brighton, which were the talk of the day.

  Long hours aside, however, Bert enjoyed his time on the Pullman car. In 1939, along with many others in the crew he worked with, he was called up.

  Alas, some crew members were to lose their lives in the war. Time moved on and after the war, The Pullman Car Co. came to an end. Some of the cars were scrapped, others sold as caravans, small cafés, summer houses and various other modes of use.

  Gone is the glory of first-class service, of comfort and good food – never to be seen again on the Southern region of the railways.

  A DESK JOB

  A clerical job offered twenty-two-year-old Londoner Eric Phillips a somewhat less energetic role for £2 and 10 shillings a week. He had spotted an advertisement for the job in a newspaper, the News Chronicle, in 1937. His membership of the London Trades Council (an early labour organisation campaigning to improve working conditions) proved helpful in getting the job (from 1935– 9, trade union membership had risen 39 per cent to 6.2 million, one million of whom were female).

  The ad was for an estate clerk in the London County Council’s Valuation, Estates and Housing Department. It said: ‘A knowledge of building methods would be an advantage.’ I applied and I remember it had about four blank pages for you to write about your experience in building. As I didn’t have very much at all, I just put the word ‘slight’ on the first page and on the subsequent pages, I said, ‘See page one’.

  Of course I got the inevitable answer: ‘Thank you for your application but at the moment, etc.’ But twenty-four hours later, it was followed by another letter which said, would I please arrange to come for an interview.

  He was interviewed by the sub-committee of the Housing Committee. ‘They were rather helpful as I was a delegate to the London Trades Council and had got the secretary to stand as a referee. The other referee was my trade union organiser and as it was a Labour-run council, it went down fairly well.’

  Eric got the job, estate clerk on the Becontree Estate, in Dagenham, Essex – a very large council-run cottage housing estate, completed in 1935 with 26,000 homes housing over 100,000 people. The estate was one of thirteen new cottage estates built by the London County Council between 1919 and 1939.

  That first Monday, I got there early at the Estate Office at 100 Ford Road. I was met by the superintendent of the section, who was a lovely gentleman – he made me most welcome. The office opened at half past nine. There was another clerk there and the superintendent showed me what I had to do.

  He said: ‘There’s the rent book and there’s the squares with the dates against them. You put down the amount and you enter it on a sheet of paper, which is headed with the name of the road. You put the number of the house and the amount you’ve taken. There’s £5 worth of change over there, sort it out in the till here.’

  ‘Then he said, ‘Oh, I’ve got to open the office now.’ And that was the extent of my training.

  Becontree was divided up into twenty-one sections with an estate office in each one of them. The rent offices were graded from 1 to 4, with 4 being the smallest. Eric worked in a Grade 1 office, which consisted of a Grade 1 clerk, two estate clerks and a superintendent living in a cottage adjacent to the office.

  We would take 800 rents every week. At the end of the week, we then did a balancing trick with the figures, put it down on a sheet of paper and sent it up to the central office at 882 Green Lane, Dagenham.

  There was an iron grille between me and the customers and they would push their rent book and the cash underneath the grille. The grille was there so if anyone got irate about something, they couldn’t jump at you over the counter. If there wasn’t much of a queue, one or two people would have a chat with me. A very few were abusive but otherwise people were reasonable and I think we were too.

  Afternoons were for new lettings:

  That was when someone came along to view a cottage. Most of the people took what was offered to them. You issued them with a rent book and there was a 5-shilling key deposit, which was refundable if they moved out, providing 5 shillings’ worth of damage – for instance, broken windows – had not taken place.

  Another part of the job was serving Notice to Quit:

  If people were a week in arrears with their rent, we would send a ‘First Arrears Letter’, which would be a gentle reminder. If it continued for another two or three weeks, you would send a second letter of rather sterner stuff: ‘Look here, you’ve got to pull yourself together and get paid up or else!’

  If there was no effort being made, you would serve a Notice to Quit. This was merely a safeguard in case it went on and on. If the rent didn’t get paid, they would end up in court.

  As I recall, there were very few evictions during my couple of years before the war. Usually the family would skedaddle, leave without giving their notice. Possibly there’d been a family dispute or he or she fancied the bottle too much or had got into debt on the horses, having used the rent to back the next winner that lost!

  Behind Eric’s office was a yard which housed a carpenter, plumber, handyman and a few decorators.

  People would come in, reporting repairs to us and after we had balanced up in the afternoon, we would issue chits [a short note recording work to be done or a sum of money] for the workmen. Usually there was quite a lapse between asking for a job to be done and it being executed because demand exceeded the human resources to meet it. Another job we had was to show people the wallpaper book, which had about half a dozen patterns in it. If a house was due for decoration [every five years the council would decorate a house from top to bottom], they could choose which wallpaper they wanted. The Grade 1 clerk was then responsible for issuing instructions to the decorators and he would make out a schedule.

  Eric was on probation for the first year in the job: After that, it was the beginning of my forty-odd years with the London County Council and the Greater London Council.’

  RENTING ON THE BECONTREE ESTATE

  In 1933, the weekly rents, including water charges and rates, on the Becontree Estate were listed as follows:

  Two Room Flat: 9/6d a week

  Three Room Flat: 11/6d a week

  Three Room Cotta
ge: 12/6d a week

  Four Room Cottage: 14 shillings–15/6d a week

  Five Room Cottage: 17/6d a week

  Six Room Cottage: 22/6d a week

  Each cottage or flat had a garden, front and back, with gas installed. In addition, electricity for lighting was installed in many of the homes.

  In areas where jobs were still extremely hard to come by, it was frequently a parent or sibling who would endeavour to shoehorn a school-leaver into work.

  Betty Nettle’s story is typical. Born in 1925, she grew up in a coal-mining area near Stormy Down, Bridgend, South Wales. The youngest of six children, her father worked on the local railway as a ganger – a foreman of a group of labourers.

  Work round where I lived was very scarce before the war. My older sisters went into service up in London, the only work option for girls then. Families were big too, so if a family in our area had a shop, then their children or young relatives worked in it.

  Work was all about who you knew, not what you knew.

  Betty left school aged fourteen in July 1939: ‘My mother said to me, “There’s a job going at Kenfig Hill [a nearby village], minding a little one-year-old baby, start Monday.”’