And So The Story Goes On (13 May 1978)

H.S. Hepworth celebrated his seventieth birthday on May 12.  Here he recounts his early days in journalism ….

On May 12, I reached the age of three score years and ten, the age of Shakespeare’s slippered pantaloons.  So what? You may ask.  Just this.  I was a sickly child and I remember that as I lay on what we called the sofa women neighbours looked down on me, shook their heads sadly and said, “I’m afraid he’ll never make old bones.”  Yet here I am today, nothing but skin and old bones, but still alive and interested in what the future may hold for the human race and especially for that little bit of it which is me.

The upturn in my health began on my 14^th birthday when I was articled to journalism for five years – “This is my trust and seal, so help me, God.”  The pay was 10s a week for the first year, which was raised by 2s 6d each succeeding year and to 25s a week when my indentures were completed.  One week’s holiday per year.  No other regular holiday at all.  A six-day week, but no Sunday work if it could possibly be avoided.

These working hours were not exceptional.  It was a Yorkshire mill town of 30 odd thousand people and most of the workers did a five-and-a-half day week, starting at 7 am and finishing at 5.15pm, with half-an-hour’s breakfast break and one hour’s dinner break.  Mine was a softer job.  I didn’t start until 8.30 but what time I finished was anybody’s guess, except that it was never before 6.00, and that on two days a week I stayed until 8.00 just to keep that office open, even if I had no engagement.

Hardly off my feet

What helped to make me was the fact that on the first three days of each week I was hardly ever off my feet, except to eat and sleep.  In addition to daily calls, like the police station, there was a formidable list of calls which had to be made each week, come what may.  It was a religious town, at least on the face of it – and ours was a religious paper, unlike the opposition paper.  It had to be.  Chairman of directors was the profit-sharing owner of three mills, Theodore Taylor, who was Liberal MP for a Lancashire division for well over 20 years, went on a business trip to America when he was over 90, celebrated his 100^th birthday by doing the palais glide on a works trip to Blackpool, and shuffled off his mortal coil at the age of 102.

Around the churches

So each week, without fail, I called on ministers or other authoritative representatives of five Anglican churches and one Anglican mission church; three United Methodist Churches; four Wesleyan churches; two Primitive Methodist churches; one Independent Methodist church; two Congregational churches (including Theodore’s); one Baptist church; one Salvation Army citadel; one Gospel Hall; one Town Mission; and one Temperance Hall; plus separate calls on a PSA (Pleasant Sunday Afternoon), PME (Pleasant Monday evening), WPH (Women’s Pleasant Hour), and a National British Women’s Temperance Association.  There was also a big RC church in what was known as the Irish Quarter, but the priest would have nothing to do with us.

However, I was pally with a chap of my own age who was a Catholic and just about the time that Tom Cloran became the first-ever Catholic chairman of Bletchley Urban Council, so did that man become the first-ever Catholic mayor of my old borough.

As if to redress the balance somewhat, there were also weekly calls to be made for the weekend concerts and other activities at the Conservative Club, Liberal Club, central working men’s club, three other working men’s clubs, a British Legion Club, an Ex-Servicemen’s Club, and what was called a Trades and Friendly Club, where the secretary slapped my back and exclaimed, “Didst t’a see we supped moor ale na’ t’Central last year?  Put it in big type, lad, put it in big type!”

Every name, initial and figure had to be accurate and woe betide me if the other paper had anything from any of those sources of joy and sorrow which we did not have.  I remember one awful occasion when we published the report of a chapel concert the day before the concert was held and I very nearly got the sack. As it happened, the report was perfectly correct.  I was just a little premature, that’s all.

Talking about accuracy reminds me that on my return from my recent travels there were a number of letters awaiting my attention.  In one of them Mr. J. MacKinlay, of Netherfield, took me to task for describing Charles 1 as King of England.  He is right, of course, and I hereby apologise to all my favourite foreigners.  There has been no King or Queen of England since 1603.  Being a good Scot, he did not enclose a stamp for a reply.  So being a good Yorkshireman I am taking this opportunity of replying at a profit.

Walking to Work

But to return to my onions.  In addition to all that walking while on the job, I walked down the hill from my native village to the town and up again twice a day – six miles a day.  Each time I walked up I tried to beat my previous record for the climb and so, although I had a congenital deformity of the feet, there were years when I could have walked the hind legs off a donkey.  There were no buses and cycling was out of the question with all those hills, the roads consisting entirely of granite “setts”, and the only level ones being strewn with tramlines.

After that came years of very different kinds of work – including night-time desk jobs – in other towns and cities, during which I would have declined but for playing a fair amount of tennis.  When the war came I was judged not fit enough to be in the Army, but not unfit enough to be out of it.  The five years I spent in the Army did me the world of good, I’ll say that for it.  They showed me that I could lift weights and that sort of thing which hitherto I would have thought impossible.  Thence to my 30-odd years in Bletchley and Milton Keynes and enjoying tennis to the age of 58, since when I have been a creaking gate, but they say that a creaking gate lasts longest, don’t they.

Example of poverty

It would be banal to say that in my 70 years I have seen many changes, so I won’t.  Just one thing strikes me.  That is the disappearance of the grinding poverty which I saw in my youth.  One example.  For some reason which I cannot now remember I had to visit a tumble-down house in a back street.  I knocked on the door and a female voice called “Come in.”  Entering, I found a young married woman, poorly dressed, sitting on a chair beside a small fire, feeding a baby at the breast.  The only covering of the stone-slab floor was a home-made hearth rug.  There was a bare wooden table but no other chair and she signed me to sit on an orange box.

I had scarcely sat down when a bowler-hatted insurance man walked straight into the house to give her a few shillings maternity benefit.  But she held out the child to him and said, “Here, maister, tak’ t’babby and keep t’brass!”

Sometimes I wonder that I did not become a “raving Socialist.”

`….. would be banal to say I have seen changes’