Post by Matt James on Apr 16, 2009 15:03:02 GMT
GPO MESSENGER BOY 1946 - 1950
I, Maurice Crowe was a GPO messenger boy No. T20 in Nottingham and joined the service at the age of 13.11 years at £1.2.6p per week.I was a small youth of 7stone+ and about 4" 8" in height and couldn't ride a bike. How I got the job amazes me but I suppose having a family tradition of working for the GPO (my Grandfather was doorman to the Head Postmaster) may have had something to do with it.
I joined a force of 70 messengers at the Old Post Office in Queen St and the building being Victorian lent the air of a very 19th century attitude prevailing in the GPO. I rode the heavy iron Federation cycles with only one gear up hills and down dales, for Nottingham has plenty of steep hills, delivering telegrams for 4 years. In my uniform with a pill box hat and a black leather pouch attached to a black strap around my waist I pedalled through all weathers growing stronger and becoming weather beaten.
We worked 48 hours per week and were expected to attend when scheduled on Bank Holidays, at hourly rate of l.l/4hrs with a day in lieu taken at a later date, and Sundays and Good Friday at 1% times the hourly rate. The first shift began at 6.30am and at each succeeding hour from 7am to 12am a fresh force came on duty to complete an 8 hour stint including meal breaks of 20 minutes for a short break and 40 minutes for a main meal. We were inspected by a Mr Stan Day Head Postman, a WW1 veteran who had only one lung,before beginning duty and if our uniform, pouch and boots were not up to standard we were sent home to clean up and begin our tour of duty an hour later which meant we finished an hour later. The contents of each pouch was examined to ascertain if it contained a pencil,a copy of the PO Rules on Telegraph Delivery,a telegram pad for any reply a recipient may want to send and a slip to advise a person of a telegram when they were not at home to receive it. All telegrams must be delivered to the address on the yellow envelope; we were instructed not to post it in a letter box and every effort was made to locate the person for whom the telegram was intended.
Boys being boys we got up to all sorts of activities not necessarily within the strict PO rules. Beaning was one of those illicit occupations - one boy gets his telegrams for delivery and asks another where he's going and they decide they will deliver them together even although the journeys are in the opposite direction. Of course each boy comes back later than the scheduled time. Stan Day was a wily bird he would confront the boys and say directly 'you two have been beaning and I'm giving you a P18 (an offence docket) to explain the lateness'. Our explanation would begin 'Dear Sir' and ended with the words above our signature 'I remain,Sir your most obedient servant"which we obviously were not. A fine or extra hours duty would be the punishment. Stan loved the boys really and always dealt fairly with them; and was well respected. One incident resulted in some damage to PO property it may have been the football game which took place in the old sorting office in the Queen St building where the ball was kicked through a plate glass window. The glass disintegrated to reveal shocked clerks serving at the counter, as a result all the boys were lined up to be addressed by the Head Postmaster A table was laid out with a cloth and the boss appeared in a morning suit - striped trousers and a frock coat with a top hat which he laid on the table. Surrounded by his senior officers he berated us all threatening us with dismissal should anyone in the future be caught damaging PO property.
All new messengers were subjected to an initiation ceremony. This involved turning each boy upside down and while dipping his head into the toilet pan pulling the chain; dowsing the poor unfortunate's head.
•
During the time between telegram deliveries the boys played football on vitreous enamel tables;the pitch and the goals were drawn in pencil two pennies, one _f or each side and a halfpenny representing the ball. The ball was pushed between the two pennies by a pencil held by each player who alternately had a go at trying to score a goal. The game was an earlier version of,what is now known, as Subbuteo. On sport there was a messenger football team who played in the local league. Once the team and supporters went to Birmingham to play a match against the Brum messengers and Nottingham won 1.0 Up in the roof of the PO building was a shooting gallery for rifle practice with pellets. An annual competition took place to find the best shot supervised by the inspectorate.
Earlier I referred to my inability to ride a bike. The boys decided to teach me and set me on the bike at the top of Norfolk Place,a rather hilly cobbled street at the back of the Queen St PO. One boy held me upright with his hand on the seat and ran beside me. At some point he released his hand and all the onlookers shouted 'I was going solo' at which point I wobbled and turned right running into the wall ending up with my body over the railings. In later life whenever I returned to my home city my contemporaries always related the story to my friends.I did learn to ride and became an enthusiastic cyclist. l/6p was paid to clean a cycle. There was a special messenger whose sole job was to repair and maintain cycles.
Boys under 16 were given meal vouchers to defray the cost of food in the canteen.
Delivering a telegram to a wedding sometimes involved a messenger walking up to the top table at a reception and handing it to the bride and groom for which he received a handsome tip. Going to Nottingham racecourse on race days was also a good source of tipping. In Tattershalls ring a punter would grab hold and ask if you could take a telegram for which he paid a liberal tip on top of the charges.
Knowing the layout of Nottingham and its environs was a bank of knowledge a messenger would acquire which came in very useful for a real special job. The Express service ( quite different to the Express service given in the letter mails today) was also provided by messengers to deliver packages. It was the only service by which persons could be delivered - intrigued! An Express docket would be raised, say by a business man who didn't know the area, which required him to be escorted around the town by a messenger. Having paid the appropriate tariff the messenger would then spend the day in comfort in a car directing the person to the addresses he wished to visit. The messenger would quite probably have a meal paid for by the client, a real perk.
On a day in 1948 Princess Elizabeth and Prince Philip visited Nottingham and I had been given a telegram to deliver, unbeknown to me, along the route they were to come into the town. I cycled up the Derby Rd and entered a stretch where there were crowds of people waving flags along the route. I got a great cheer but my journey was soon brought to an abrupt halt when a police inspector stepped out, waving his cane, to direct me into a side road.
Stan Day had the habit of opening telegrams which came down from the instrument room by the vacuum tube and one day he read a death telegram before handing it to me for delivery remarking 'there would be no tip there1. On knocking on the door with this unfortunate news a man appeared and read the message, his wife meanwhile came and looked over his shoulder, bursting into tears. The man smiled and gave me Half a Crown. As to why this generosity was extended to me I will leave to your imagination.
The winter of 1946/47 and the following summer were times of extreme weather. Snow fell deeply and the temperature remained at sub zero for almost 3 months during which time we were not allowed to ride bikes as it was too dangerous. We were given tokens to use the buses and we trudged great distances to deliver telegrams. One morning at 7am I found myself in the wilds on the outskirts of the city trying to walk through snow drifts up to my waist. When the snow melted then came the floods with the River Trent bursting its banks inundating the low lying land of the districts of The Meadows and West Bridgford; the water was higher than the Nottingham canal and both the football grounds were covered. One messenger did attempt to deliver a telegram and got as far as Trent Bridge where he left his bike and walked along the railway embankment to successfully deliver; returning to find his bike had disappeared swept away by the tide. The bike was found sometime later after the floods had subsided in the middle of one of the main thoroughfares. What was the urgent telegram message? -'Are you alright?' from a concerned relative. This message should have applied to the poor messenger. Next came the gloriously hot summer which lasted for 3 months, the temperatures were regularly in the 80s and 90s. I had a beautiful sun tan all summer as I sweated up and down those hills on my bike. One day I was so hot I trudged wearily up this steep hill with my head resting on the saddle. Unbeknown to me I was being watched by none other than my Supervisor Stan Day who next day related the story to all and sundry at the office. It appears that Stan has a large mirror on the wall of his living room which gave him a commanding view of the street and me.
Stan Day had a remarkable memory for the pubs in the city and when a telegram came down for, eg The Marquis of Granby, without a thoroughfare he would go on to relate where all the pubs of that name were located and make a guess for which one it was intended.
In the days when the bikes had fixed wheels it was quicker to come down hill with the feet off the pedals. One messenger did this down a very steep incline known as Donkey Hill and failed to stop in time hitting a bus in the process; fortunately living to tell the tale.
Harking back to Stan Day again he had a sense of humour and would play tricks on new boys One such recruit received his new uniform and Stan looked after it for him while he delivered a telegram. Stan put the uniform aside and placed two bricks inside a delivery pouch handing it to the boy with instructions not to look inside. The boy returned next day with the offending bricks to reclaim his uniform accepting the joke in good part. Pat a messenger was the butt of the elder boys in a rather good humoured way. They would tie him up in a mail bag to be transported with all the collection mail down to the sorting office; only to be found on arrival in the back of the van. Les another messenger was on duty clearing the mail away from the bottom of the chute below the main office letter box when a little old lady posting a letter put her hand inside to ensure the item had dropped down. Les couldn't resist the temptation to grasp the lady's hand; she almost died of fright and Les was severely reprimanded with an appropriate punishment no doubt. Who would guess there would be a man behind a letter box
All boys under 16 had to attend one day each week at The Peoples College to continue our education. I found it quite stimulating but I do remember attending a class one day feeling very tired. I sat listening to the teacher and within a short while I involuntarily yawned, the teacher looked disapprovingly hard at me and continued, again the irresistible yawn came and I was warned if I did it again I would be out of the class. Well you can guess the rest it was just impossible to stifle another yawn and there I was ejected from the lesson.
In 1948 under what was known as 'Reallocation1the boy messengers were renamed 'Junior Postmen' and were issued with cheese cutter hats which were totally impractical on a bike in a high wind. The raingear consisted of a black oilskin cape, which was difficult to unwrap because it stuck together requiring brute strength to tear it apart, a Souwester and a leggings of khaki waterproofed cotton.
I had a spell as an indoor messenger at The Telephone Manager's office. The atmosphere was one of dominance by the so called betters the place reeked of snobbery and obsequousness by the rank concious heirarchy and we were the lowest of the low. I hated it and longed to get outdoors again. I still yearn for the great outdoors and in my later career I always arranged for a trip out whenever the opportunity presented itself.
I was seconded to the Sherwood office to deliver telegrams in that area and as one of my duties I was instructed to take the Postmaster's two Dobermans out for a walk each day. They were so big and strong little me could hardly keep them in check but I didn't lose them.
Another secondment took me to Bulwell some 5 miles outside the town. My hours each day were from 9am to 6pm the Saturday attendance was 9am to 1pm. Being the only messenger there getting away on Saturday afternoon was a struggle. It is well known that weddings occur, in the main, on a Saturday and every telegram that came into the office up to 1pm had to be delivered then further deliveries would come from the Head Office in Nottingham. So I would return to the Bulwell office from one delivery to find a another batch awaiting delivery and when I came back there could be a further batch that had arrived in my absence up to 1pm.Invariably my Saturday attendance extended to 3 or 4pm; the consolation being paid for lots of overtime.
A further duty was working in the Telegraph Instrument room on the top floor of the Queen St, building. We had to convey and distribute telegrams around the room from the teleprinters. The young girls of our age were employed as Girl Probationers and I believe one or two of them eventually married Boy messengers. Miss Smith, a tall angular older women was the supervisor who chivvied us about. Her boyfriend had been killed in WWl,and like many ladies of that age remained a spinster because there were not enough men to go round.
In 1950 all messengers reaching the age of 18 were conscripted into the forces and quite a few didn't return from the Korean War. One friend was seriously injured in an accident and spent the rest of his life in a wheelchair; a very jovial guy who came to terms with his disability and became the life and soul of the party.
I remained with the Post Office for 42 years in many various jobs and departments enjoying my time with an organisation that was quite different in its working environment from other establishments, the sense of humour and in the main the enjoyable association with so many good GPO people
Recently I attended the 'National Federation of PO Pensioners' conference and ran into an old boy messenger from 60 years back and we recognisd each other immediately. Then we spent some hours reminiscing about those days. As George had remained in Nottingham throughout his working life he was able to give me all the updated news of friends we knew, sadly some of them no longer with us.
Maurice Crowe T20
I, Maurice Crowe was a GPO messenger boy No. T20 in Nottingham and joined the service at the age of 13.11 years at £1.2.6p per week.I was a small youth of 7stone+ and about 4" 8" in height and couldn't ride a bike. How I got the job amazes me but I suppose having a family tradition of working for the GPO (my Grandfather was doorman to the Head Postmaster) may have had something to do with it.
I joined a force of 70 messengers at the Old Post Office in Queen St and the building being Victorian lent the air of a very 19th century attitude prevailing in the GPO. I rode the heavy iron Federation cycles with only one gear up hills and down dales, for Nottingham has plenty of steep hills, delivering telegrams for 4 years. In my uniform with a pill box hat and a black leather pouch attached to a black strap around my waist I pedalled through all weathers growing stronger and becoming weather beaten.
We worked 48 hours per week and were expected to attend when scheduled on Bank Holidays, at hourly rate of l.l/4hrs with a day in lieu taken at a later date, and Sundays and Good Friday at 1% times the hourly rate. The first shift began at 6.30am and at each succeeding hour from 7am to 12am a fresh force came on duty to complete an 8 hour stint including meal breaks of 20 minutes for a short break and 40 minutes for a main meal. We were inspected by a Mr Stan Day Head Postman, a WW1 veteran who had only one lung,before beginning duty and if our uniform, pouch and boots were not up to standard we were sent home to clean up and begin our tour of duty an hour later which meant we finished an hour later. The contents of each pouch was examined to ascertain if it contained a pencil,a copy of the PO Rules on Telegraph Delivery,a telegram pad for any reply a recipient may want to send and a slip to advise a person of a telegram when they were not at home to receive it. All telegrams must be delivered to the address on the yellow envelope; we were instructed not to post it in a letter box and every effort was made to locate the person for whom the telegram was intended.
Boys being boys we got up to all sorts of activities not necessarily within the strict PO rules. Beaning was one of those illicit occupations - one boy gets his telegrams for delivery and asks another where he's going and they decide they will deliver them together even although the journeys are in the opposite direction. Of course each boy comes back later than the scheduled time. Stan Day was a wily bird he would confront the boys and say directly 'you two have been beaning and I'm giving you a P18 (an offence docket) to explain the lateness'. Our explanation would begin 'Dear Sir' and ended with the words above our signature 'I remain,Sir your most obedient servant"which we obviously were not. A fine or extra hours duty would be the punishment. Stan loved the boys really and always dealt fairly with them; and was well respected. One incident resulted in some damage to PO property it may have been the football game which took place in the old sorting office in the Queen St building where the ball was kicked through a plate glass window. The glass disintegrated to reveal shocked clerks serving at the counter, as a result all the boys were lined up to be addressed by the Head Postmaster A table was laid out with a cloth and the boss appeared in a morning suit - striped trousers and a frock coat with a top hat which he laid on the table. Surrounded by his senior officers he berated us all threatening us with dismissal should anyone in the future be caught damaging PO property.
All new messengers were subjected to an initiation ceremony. This involved turning each boy upside down and while dipping his head into the toilet pan pulling the chain; dowsing the poor unfortunate's head.
•
During the time between telegram deliveries the boys played football on vitreous enamel tables;the pitch and the goals were drawn in pencil two pennies, one _f or each side and a halfpenny representing the ball. The ball was pushed between the two pennies by a pencil held by each player who alternately had a go at trying to score a goal. The game was an earlier version of,what is now known, as Subbuteo. On sport there was a messenger football team who played in the local league. Once the team and supporters went to Birmingham to play a match against the Brum messengers and Nottingham won 1.0 Up in the roof of the PO building was a shooting gallery for rifle practice with pellets. An annual competition took place to find the best shot supervised by the inspectorate.
Earlier I referred to my inability to ride a bike. The boys decided to teach me and set me on the bike at the top of Norfolk Place,a rather hilly cobbled street at the back of the Queen St PO. One boy held me upright with his hand on the seat and ran beside me. At some point he released his hand and all the onlookers shouted 'I was going solo' at which point I wobbled and turned right running into the wall ending up with my body over the railings. In later life whenever I returned to my home city my contemporaries always related the story to my friends.I did learn to ride and became an enthusiastic cyclist. l/6p was paid to clean a cycle. There was a special messenger whose sole job was to repair and maintain cycles.
Boys under 16 were given meal vouchers to defray the cost of food in the canteen.
Delivering a telegram to a wedding sometimes involved a messenger walking up to the top table at a reception and handing it to the bride and groom for which he received a handsome tip. Going to Nottingham racecourse on race days was also a good source of tipping. In Tattershalls ring a punter would grab hold and ask if you could take a telegram for which he paid a liberal tip on top of the charges.
Knowing the layout of Nottingham and its environs was a bank of knowledge a messenger would acquire which came in very useful for a real special job. The Express service ( quite different to the Express service given in the letter mails today) was also provided by messengers to deliver packages. It was the only service by which persons could be delivered - intrigued! An Express docket would be raised, say by a business man who didn't know the area, which required him to be escorted around the town by a messenger. Having paid the appropriate tariff the messenger would then spend the day in comfort in a car directing the person to the addresses he wished to visit. The messenger would quite probably have a meal paid for by the client, a real perk.
On a day in 1948 Princess Elizabeth and Prince Philip visited Nottingham and I had been given a telegram to deliver, unbeknown to me, along the route they were to come into the town. I cycled up the Derby Rd and entered a stretch where there were crowds of people waving flags along the route. I got a great cheer but my journey was soon brought to an abrupt halt when a police inspector stepped out, waving his cane, to direct me into a side road.
Stan Day had the habit of opening telegrams which came down from the instrument room by the vacuum tube and one day he read a death telegram before handing it to me for delivery remarking 'there would be no tip there1. On knocking on the door with this unfortunate news a man appeared and read the message, his wife meanwhile came and looked over his shoulder, bursting into tears. The man smiled and gave me Half a Crown. As to why this generosity was extended to me I will leave to your imagination.
The winter of 1946/47 and the following summer were times of extreme weather. Snow fell deeply and the temperature remained at sub zero for almost 3 months during which time we were not allowed to ride bikes as it was too dangerous. We were given tokens to use the buses and we trudged great distances to deliver telegrams. One morning at 7am I found myself in the wilds on the outskirts of the city trying to walk through snow drifts up to my waist. When the snow melted then came the floods with the River Trent bursting its banks inundating the low lying land of the districts of The Meadows and West Bridgford; the water was higher than the Nottingham canal and both the football grounds were covered. One messenger did attempt to deliver a telegram and got as far as Trent Bridge where he left his bike and walked along the railway embankment to successfully deliver; returning to find his bike had disappeared swept away by the tide. The bike was found sometime later after the floods had subsided in the middle of one of the main thoroughfares. What was the urgent telegram message? -'Are you alright?' from a concerned relative. This message should have applied to the poor messenger. Next came the gloriously hot summer which lasted for 3 months, the temperatures were regularly in the 80s and 90s. I had a beautiful sun tan all summer as I sweated up and down those hills on my bike. One day I was so hot I trudged wearily up this steep hill with my head resting on the saddle. Unbeknown to me I was being watched by none other than my Supervisor Stan Day who next day related the story to all and sundry at the office. It appears that Stan has a large mirror on the wall of his living room which gave him a commanding view of the street and me.
Stan Day had a remarkable memory for the pubs in the city and when a telegram came down for, eg The Marquis of Granby, without a thoroughfare he would go on to relate where all the pubs of that name were located and make a guess for which one it was intended.
In the days when the bikes had fixed wheels it was quicker to come down hill with the feet off the pedals. One messenger did this down a very steep incline known as Donkey Hill and failed to stop in time hitting a bus in the process; fortunately living to tell the tale.
Harking back to Stan Day again he had a sense of humour and would play tricks on new boys One such recruit received his new uniform and Stan looked after it for him while he delivered a telegram. Stan put the uniform aside and placed two bricks inside a delivery pouch handing it to the boy with instructions not to look inside. The boy returned next day with the offending bricks to reclaim his uniform accepting the joke in good part. Pat a messenger was the butt of the elder boys in a rather good humoured way. They would tie him up in a mail bag to be transported with all the collection mail down to the sorting office; only to be found on arrival in the back of the van. Les another messenger was on duty clearing the mail away from the bottom of the chute below the main office letter box when a little old lady posting a letter put her hand inside to ensure the item had dropped down. Les couldn't resist the temptation to grasp the lady's hand; she almost died of fright and Les was severely reprimanded with an appropriate punishment no doubt. Who would guess there would be a man behind a letter box
All boys under 16 had to attend one day each week at The Peoples College to continue our education. I found it quite stimulating but I do remember attending a class one day feeling very tired. I sat listening to the teacher and within a short while I involuntarily yawned, the teacher looked disapprovingly hard at me and continued, again the irresistible yawn came and I was warned if I did it again I would be out of the class. Well you can guess the rest it was just impossible to stifle another yawn and there I was ejected from the lesson.
In 1948 under what was known as 'Reallocation1the boy messengers were renamed 'Junior Postmen' and were issued with cheese cutter hats which were totally impractical on a bike in a high wind. The raingear consisted of a black oilskin cape, which was difficult to unwrap because it stuck together requiring brute strength to tear it apart, a Souwester and a leggings of khaki waterproofed cotton.
I had a spell as an indoor messenger at The Telephone Manager's office. The atmosphere was one of dominance by the so called betters the place reeked of snobbery and obsequousness by the rank concious heirarchy and we were the lowest of the low. I hated it and longed to get outdoors again. I still yearn for the great outdoors and in my later career I always arranged for a trip out whenever the opportunity presented itself.
I was seconded to the Sherwood office to deliver telegrams in that area and as one of my duties I was instructed to take the Postmaster's two Dobermans out for a walk each day. They were so big and strong little me could hardly keep them in check but I didn't lose them.
Another secondment took me to Bulwell some 5 miles outside the town. My hours each day were from 9am to 6pm the Saturday attendance was 9am to 1pm. Being the only messenger there getting away on Saturday afternoon was a struggle. It is well known that weddings occur, in the main, on a Saturday and every telegram that came into the office up to 1pm had to be delivered then further deliveries would come from the Head Office in Nottingham. So I would return to the Bulwell office from one delivery to find a another batch awaiting delivery and when I came back there could be a further batch that had arrived in my absence up to 1pm.Invariably my Saturday attendance extended to 3 or 4pm; the consolation being paid for lots of overtime.
A further duty was working in the Telegraph Instrument room on the top floor of the Queen St, building. We had to convey and distribute telegrams around the room from the teleprinters. The young girls of our age were employed as Girl Probationers and I believe one or two of them eventually married Boy messengers. Miss Smith, a tall angular older women was the supervisor who chivvied us about. Her boyfriend had been killed in WWl,and like many ladies of that age remained a spinster because there were not enough men to go round.
In 1950 all messengers reaching the age of 18 were conscripted into the forces and quite a few didn't return from the Korean War. One friend was seriously injured in an accident and spent the rest of his life in a wheelchair; a very jovial guy who came to terms with his disability and became the life and soul of the party.
I remained with the Post Office for 42 years in many various jobs and departments enjoying my time with an organisation that was quite different in its working environment from other establishments, the sense of humour and in the main the enjoyable association with so many good GPO people
Recently I attended the 'National Federation of PO Pensioners' conference and ran into an old boy messenger from 60 years back and we recognisd each other immediately. Then we spent some hours reminiscing about those days. As George had remained in Nottingham throughout his working life he was able to give me all the updated news of friends we knew, sadly some of them no longer with us.
Maurice Crowe T20