May 2008 Archives

THESE are staff of pet suppliers Bob Martin Ltd at their annual dinner and dance in July 1938.
The location was The Palace Hotel in Birkdale – demolished in 1969 – and the photograph was sent in by Daphne Young of Dorset.
It was given to Mrs Young following the death of her uncle, Norman Stanley Lister, who worked at the Bob Martin office in Southport during his teens.
Mrs Young, who was close to her uncle and lived with him for some years, remembered attending a Bob Martin Dramatics Society performance as a child, and laughed as she told us her uncle took one of the principal parts.
Mr Lister went on to serve in the Royal Army Service Corps throughout World War II.
“I remember my grandmother waiting anxiously for news from Dunkirk,� said Mrs Young.
Mr Lister later progressed to Porter Master Sergeant with the Eighth Army in North Africa.
Upon his return to England, he worked at a number of small businesses, and had strong connections with Formby Cricket Club.
He attended St Peter’s Church in Formby, and although he never married, he was surrounded by close family members when he died after a long life.
Mrs Young remembered walking along Lord Street with her uncle. “He took me to a street around the corner to show me where the old Bob Martin factory used to be. I think those were happy days.�
Elsewhere in the edition of the Southport Visiter that featured this photograph, there was concern in our leader column about the impact of growing car use on visitor trends in the resort.
We said: “The Publicity Committee should guard against itself against being rushed into such things as the opening of Pleasureland on Sunday, or the Marine Lake on Sunday, which would tend in the direction of attracting the short-date visitor, and possibly defeat the object of attracting the long-date visitor.
“Southport has always prided itself on a quiet Sunday, and if Pleasureland or the Marine Lake, or other places of similar character, are opened on Sunday it means that more and more Sunday visitors will be coming.
“Apart from the question of religious observance, there was about the Sunday of 10 or 20 years ago an attraction in Southport’s quietude.
“It certainly encouraged very large numbers of people to come to Southport and take up

The 1938 dinner and dance of Bob Martin Ltd at the Palace Hotel. A young Norman Stanley Lister is seated seventh from left on the front row

HUMAN League vocalist Phil Oakey seems to have been one source of inspiration for this crew of stylists.
The model seated on the left sports the hanging fringe that will be forever associated with the singer of the 1981 smash Don’t You Want Me?
Our group chief photographer John Daly captured the award-winning work of these hairdressers at Southport College in March 1995.
We expect they have sculpted many a Barnet since.

Do you recognise yourself on this photo? Call LookBack on 01704-398287, email robert.alcock@southportvisiter.co.uk or leave a message below.

Hair-raising skills were on display at Southport College in 1995

A LOOKBACK reader has given a fascinating account of her experiences of ‘shanking’ and ‘shilling’ in Marshside.
Brenda Ball grew up in a fisherman’s cottage on Shellfield Road that had been in her family for 200 years.
For seven years – from the late 1940s to the mid-50s – Brenda watched her late father James ‘Jimmy’ Evans going out shrimping with his horse and cart.
A builder by trade, Mr Evans shrimped after he broke his legs in an on-site accident.
He later returned to construction once over-fishing started to hamper the yield from the Marshside coast.
“We have always been connected with shrimping,� said Brenda, who is 75 and lives in Botanic Road, Churchtown.
“Every house in Marshside shilled shrimps.�

Shanker James ‘Jimmy’ Evans out with his horse and cart in Marshside, in the late 1940s or early 1950s

Her experiences of the trade – which she explained is known among Marshside folk as ‘shanking’ – began with watching the work her maternal grandfather John Cadwell in the 1940s.
He went out with a net basket on his back, during low tide at weekends and at night, to supplement his income as a cobbler and shoemaker.
“He used to come home and boil the shrimps and then my mother (Betty Cadwell) and grandmother would shill them,� recalled Brenda – who pointed out that ‘shilling’ was the term used for shelling.
She added: “I used to shill shrimps.
“I started when I was three and carried on until I was in my 50s.�

A shrimper nets his catch on the Marshside coast

Brenda has been married to Tommy Ball for 52 years.
After their wedding they moved to Banks and Brenda shilled for local fisherman, Gerald Rimmer.
“My table was always piled to the top,� she remembered.
“I used to shill until two o’clock in the morning when my children were small.
“My fingers used to bleed and my back was aching.�

Boiling the shrimps so they can be ‘shilled’

Although Tommy kept up the shrimping tradition, he never shanked for a living.
Brenda said: “He used to go out on a Saturday or Sunday morning with his uncle.
“He used to boil them and I used to shill them, there was just enough for us to eat.�

GORDON Stanton is photographed here during the 1948/49 soccer season with fellow members of High Park Juniors football team.
Yet his appearance in today’s LookBack is certainly not the first time that Gordon has made the pages of the Southport Visiter.
Back in May 1942, the Stanton family – including then eight-year- old Gordon – made the front page, featured in a story headlined: “Southport Fire Drama: Family Trapped in Burning House�.
Our report told how the blaze began in the downstairs living room of the Stantons’ Hart Street home.
The sleeping family – also including mother Lily Stanton, Gordon’s three siblings and father-in-law Harry Stanton – awoke abruptly and called for help.
Gordon’s 13-year-old brother Derek also managed to escape the home and rouse the next-door neighbour.
The police then arrived and rescued the entire family using a ladder – except 70-year-old Mr Stanton.
Our report continued: “It was thought that Mr Harry Stanton was trapped, but Sgt W O’Keeffe, a constable and a leading fireman in the National Fire Service, managed to get him out after searching for him and finding him in a bedroom, dazed with smoke and with slight burns.
“He was taken to Hart Street police station and given first aid.
“Two NFS crews dealt speedily with the fire. The living room, however, was practically burned out.�
Mrs Stanton – whose husband was serving in the Middle East – later explained she had been awoken by the crash of falling pictures, and thought her home had been struck by a German bomb.
She said: “My daughters, Gladys and Jean, should have gone to work next morning, but had no clothes to go in.
“The Women’s Voluntary Services came to our aid helping us with the provision of clothing.�
Gracing the same front page as the Stantons’ blaze escape was a particularly murky court case concerning an apologetic bigamist.
The Southport man had deceived his second wife by claiming he was a bachelor, when in fact he was still married to the woman he had left in 1935.
His appeal from jail against his three year sentence was quashed as he was not able to justify his actions.

High Park Juniors football team, 1948-9 season. Back row, from left: R Mentha, H Kitchen, B Fairhurst, R Sumner, D Henderson, R Holdcroft. Front row, from left: Gordon Stanton, George (surname unknown), A Ratcliffe, R Andrews

A RETIRED church minister from Southport has told of his extraordinary career path, which took him from the coal pit to the pulpit.
The Reverend Alexander Tee, 82, said he was “very happy� to receive a special Veterans’ Badge, honouring the three-and-a-half years he spent as a wartime Bevin Boy.
From April 1943 he worked at Dumbreck colliery, as part of the wartime scheme that directed labour into the nation’s coalmines.
Rev Tee, who lives on High Park Road, told LookBack he had volunteered to serve the war effort underground rather than in the Armed Forces.
He made that decision because he had already realised his vocation to become a clergyman, and he furthered his religious training by taking a series of correspondence courses during his posting at Dumbreck.
Yet becoming a Bevin Boy was far from a safe option, explained Rev Tee, who worked at the pit’s loading machine. “When you are underground, there are dangers everywhere,� he said.
Among his memories of the pit was the filthy black dust – which led the workers to constantly chew and spit out – and of travelling half-a-mile underground to reach the level at which he worked.
He recalled: “Once a tub of coal came off the rails and I tried to get it back on again and strained my back.
“There was a good, happy spirit among the miners – you are there helping one another.�

Rev Alexander Tee with the miner’s lamp he used at Dumbreck colliery between 1943 and 1947

During his service as a Bevin Boy, Rev Tee continued living at his home in the small town of Kilsyth, located midway between Glasgow and Stirling in North Lanarkshire.
On being de-mobbed in 1947, he went straight into the ministry of the Elim Pentecostal Church, where he trained as an evangelist.
Key to his role was opening new churches in towns where the Elim Church had no congregation.
In 1972, Rev Tee came to Southport as the senior minister at the Elim Pentecostal Church in Manchester Road.
From his base in the resort he opened Elim Churches in Birkenhead, Bootle, Rochdale, Wallasey and West Kirby.
Another central aspect of Rev Tee’s career was raising money for needy children overseas.
He made 10 visits to Africa to help in the development of orphanages – including in Nairobi, Uganda, Sierra Leone and Malawi – and played a key role in the construction of a large orphanage in south India.
Rev Tee said: “Only in the last year have I dropped the number of engagements I carry out all over the country. I just love the work so much.�

BEVIN BOYS FACTS

The ‘Bevin Boys’ scheme ran between 1943 and 1948 and involved recruiting men aged between 18 and 25 years to work in coal mines rather than serve in the armed forces.
It was named after Ernest Bevin, then minister of labour and later foreign secretary.
Some 48,000 men were either selected or volunteered under the scheme, performing vital but largely unrecognised service in the coal mines. Bevin Boys received no medals, nor the right to return to their original jobs, unlike other servicemen.
Famous former Bevin Boys include DJ Sir Jimmy Savile, the late comedian Eric Morecambe and dramatist Peter Shaffer.
If you think you may be eligible for a Bevin Boys award or any other armed forces veterans award, complete a veterans badge application form available by calling the Veterans Agency helpline on 0800 169 2277 or 01253 866043, or by visiting www.veteransagency.co.uk

Ernest Bevin, wartime Minister for Labour, after whom the Bevin Boys scheme was named

AN AINSDALE man has uncovered the tragic story of how his uncle went from Southport to fight and die in South Africa more than a century ago.

Retired furniture remover Bev Gregory has drawn on family memories and archival research to produce a compelling account of how Alfred J. Gregory’s life came to an horrific end during the Boer War.

He was struck down by typhoid in the Orange Free State and perished on May 18, 1900, aged only 28.

Alfred J Gregory was buried in Boshof, South Africa, after his death from typhoid in 1900

Alfred and his Imperial Yeomanry comrades were in the country to combat Boer fighters battling for independence from the British Empire, and had set up camp near the capital Bloemfontein.

He became desperately feverish and was taken to Boshof hospital, where an ultimately futile attempt was made to treat him with drugs.

Bev told LookBack: “As a good Christian, Alfred saw that there were many sick and wounded men arriving at the hospital and it was typical of him to give up his bed so that others may use it – but it was to lead to his own demise.�

The contrast with jovial scenes in Southport less than six months earlier could not have been greater.

On January 6, 1900, Bridge Street resident Alfred signed up to fight in present-day South Africa at Southport Temperance Institute on London Street.

The recruitment of him and others was celebrated with a banquet at the Cambridge Hall (now Southport Arts Centre) 12 days later.

The Southport Visiter produced a glowing report of “one of the finest gatherings ever held in the hall�, which was funded by a public collection and organised by the town’s Mayor, Mr Alderman T. P. Griffiths. Even the menu was recorded by the Visiter, with officers able to feast on roast pheasant with bread sauce and crumbs and their men on roast mutton with onion sauce.

Alfred J. Gregory was buried in Boshof, South Africa, after his death from typhoid in 1900

Soon after, Alfred said farewell to his mother and three sisters and spent a month at sea before landing in Cape Town and a land in the grip of the Second Boer War of 1899- 1902.

The siege of the town of Ladysmith by Boer troops had recently been relieved after 120 days and the British had suffered a clutch of heavy defeats.

Initial experiences of conflict left a deep mark on Alfred, a devout Christian.

Bev said: “Alfred had seen some terrible things for the first time in his life and in a letter to his good friend the Rev F. Sinker (from the Christ Church Bible Class in Southport), he said he was amidst many evils and had seen suffering that had brought tears to his eyes.�

The disease that claimed the life of Alfred only months later was rife among the British contingent. Almost 1,000 troops died in the outbreak at Bloemfontein before it burnt itself out at the beginning of April.

SOLDIER, seaman, trader and devout Christian – Alfred J. Gregory was all these things during his short life.

He was born in Oxford in January 1872 and his family took up residence at 29 Upper Duke Street in Southport in 1881.

After attending St Paul’s Mixed School in Belmont Street until the age of 13, he joined the Merchant Navy.

On his return to the town in 1898 he opened a shop at 11 Princes Street with a works store on Upper Aughton Road.

An advert in the Southport Directory dating from 1900 read: Gregory, Alfred J. (Farmers Supply Stores) – saddler, tarpaulin and window-blind manufacturer, rope and twine dealer.

Emotional tribute was paid to Alfred when fellow members of the Christ Church Men’s Bible Class in Southport learned off his death thousands of miles away.

His friend Rev Sinker told worshippers at a special service: “The news of his death from enteric fever (typhoid) at Boshof came as an awful shock last week.

“I shall never forget with what intense enthusiasm we wished him Godspeed on January 14 in this very hall, as we gave him our offerings of love and admiration.

Bev Gregory holds up a copy of his uncle Alfred’s enlistment papers outside Southport Temperance Institute, where he signed up to fight in the Boer War in 1900

“Little did we know that we would never see his face again, and hear his cheery laugh, or receive that hearty grip of his hand.

“He was a man of God, fine and unselfish, and had the heart of a little child.

“He heard his country’s call and obeyed it. Those short months among the soldiers in South Africa may have been the mission God was preparing him for all his life.�

NEWS of Alfred’s death devastated his mother Charlotte, who had lost her husband, Alfred Snr, in 1895.

She went on to lose another son at the age of only 28 in 1905.

That left only Bev’s father, Frederick, alive out of Charlotte and Alfred Gregory’s three sons.

Burnley Road resident Bev, 71, owes his extraordinary one-generation link to a Boer War combatant to the fact he was born when his father was in middle age.

He now intends to write a book about the Southport men who found themselves fighting for Empire in South Africa.

If you can help Bev in his research, please call him on 01704-578451.

SPRING is in full bloom and summer is just around the corner, with its promise of fairs and festivals aplenty.

Children also have the familiar tinkling of ice cream vans to look forward to, and these three youngsters were certainly having fun in the sun sometime in the 1990s.

Maybe it was you who was photographed here tucking in to a raspberry whip – if you’d like to remind us of those hazy days, phone LookBack reporter Robert Alcock on 01704-398287, email robert.alcock@southportvisiter.co.uk or leave your memories below.

Were you one of these fairgoers tucking in to a raspberry whip?

ONE of this group of choirboys and servers at St Luke’s Church in Hawkshead Street went on to become a policeman.

John Gregson was about 10 years old when he was captured here on film around 1950, standing at the centre of the second row from the front.

He later served in Southport Borough Police Force between 1962 and 1973, before it was absorbed into the newly-created Merseyside Constabulary.

Mr Gregson has now started to compile a family tree and wants to get in touch with anyone who recognises themselves in this old photo.

He said: “After marrying Mavis Deegan, of Old Park Lane, in 1964 we lived for a while at 59 Tulketh Street – which was later demolished, but I believe that the gate stumps are still in situ!� In 1973, Mr Gregson was transferred to Thames Valley Police, where he was promoted to sergeant and stationed at Crowthorne/Sandhurst police office.

If you can help with Mr Gregson’s genealogical research, write to him at: 2 Nightingale Gardens, Sandhurst, Berkshire GU47 9DQ, or email: jc.gregson@googlemail.com

Were you among this group from St Luke’s Church in Hawkshead Street in 1950 Code NA