From greasing to sexing, it’s all in a day’s work
JEROME K Jerome, author of ‘Three Men in a Boat’, whose dad was a Baptist minister in Cirencester by the way, famously wrote, “I like work. It fascinates me. I can sit and look at it for hours”.
And it’s true. Learning how others earn a living rarely fails to capture the attention. Which may explain why The Citizen has always taken pride in describing how local people go about their nine-to-five.
In 1953, for example, the newspaper profiled a local lady, Mrs ER Adcock, who had recently triumphed in the British Professional Oyster Opening Championship. At this event, Mrs Adcock beat all comers by prising apart 150 molluscs and serving them with ice, lemon, brown bread and a glass of stout in under two hours.
Someone else who struck a blow for female equality in a male-dominated career sphere was Doris Pinkney, who the Citizen assured us was the country’s only rag and bone woman.
Doris’s four-wheeled cart was a familiar sight about the city, pulled by a brown and white pony, which stood patiently as she visited shops and houses along the way. The bones, she told the reporter, were sold to the glue works at the lower end of Westgate Street.
A Gloucestrian woman named Daisy Pardington had the distinction of being the first female conductor to work on city trams, and her photograph appeared in the Gloucester Journal to celebrate the fact.
Perhaps Daisy knew Albert Pardoe, who unfortunately was put out of his job when Gloucester bade farewell to trams in 1933. Albert was the track greaser.
Trams, as you know, had fixed axles. So at a tight corner the outside wheel, having further to travel than the inside wheel, slipped.
Unless the track was well greased at these curves, passengers experienced much juddering from the screeching wheel. It was Albert’s task to ensure that plenty of lubricant was slopped on the rails.
Perhaps less messy, but only just, was the task performed by James M Smith, who lived at Home Farm, Newent. Though less well remembered in the history of agriculture than, say, Turnip Townsend, Mr Smith was a pioneer in his field.
He was Britain’s first professional chick sexer – a skill he acquired while in Japan in the 1930s.
When he returned home, Mr Smith’s services were much in demand among poultry farmers. Charging a reasonable one penny per bird and able to identify the gender of between 24 and 30 per hour, he earned a regular £20 a week. In today’s terms, that’s about £1,400, and by any measure isn’t chicken feed.
Police constable Mince reserved a place for himself in city history when in April 1934 he was the last bobby to perform a regular shift on point duty at Gloucester Cross. He stopped waving his white-sleeved arms at motorists approaching him from North, South, East and West gate Streets when traffic lights replaced him.
Performing point duty at the Cross was recognised as a stressful business. In fact, in 1928 the Daily Mail described the policeman on duty at Gloucester Cross as the busiest man in England.
This may have been an overstatement, but before bypasses and motorways were built Gloucester’s location as a route centre meant that virtually all traffic from the south west heading north, and all traffic from South Wales heading east (and vice versa), passed over Gloucester Cross. Policemen on this harrowing duty worked 40 minutes on, then 20 minutes off.
In these days of political correctness, he would be termed vertically challenged. But a century or so ago the Bell Hotel in Southgate Street had no qualms about calling him ‘The dwarf, Dickie Dumpling’.
The upwardly underwhelming Mr Dumpling was for many years boot-boy at the Bell and became quite a local celebrity. Sporting impressive mutton chop sideburns and garbed in workwear of top hat and tailcoat, the diminutive Dickie was depicted on billboard advertisements for the hotel.
Sadly, Mr Dumpling is forgotten today, as is a sporting hero named Captain Alan Fyffe, who lived in Gloucester and managed Lord Berkeley’s estate.
At the Paris Olympic games of 1900, Fyffe represented England in athletics and would have won a gold medal, but for the fact that the organisers had forgotten to have medals made.
Instead, Fyffe returned from the French capital with prizes of a book and an umbrella.