Introducing my father and some of the family
Introducing my father and some of the family
I was destined to be a soldier from the day I was born in North Woolwich on 14 June 1916. My father was a Gunner – a sergeant at the time, on active service in France. Mother worked during the war years at the Royal Ordnance Factory, Woolwich Arsenal, sewing ammunition bags, to augment the small army allotment made to her by my father. I had an older brother Tom, five years my senior, and sister Mabel, born three years ahead of me.
We lived in the top half of a small terraced house in North Woolwich in the shadow of the King George V Dock. The ground floor was occupied by Mr and Mrs King and their three children George, Emmy and Teddy. Next door, in Winifred Street, lived my father’s parents and two of his four sisters.
Grandfather Tom Hall was a senior foreman at Tate and Lisle the sugar refiners. He was a fine big man, very good looking and dignified. He was always immaculate in his turnout, kept up to scratch by his beautiful wife Fanny (née Lea.) He was a quiet man at home, and one of my earliest memories of him was taking his customary after lunch nap, sitting upright in his armchair with his face covered by his handkerchief. This was his daily routine and woe-betide anybody who disturbed him while he had ‘his fifteen minutes!’ Quiet as he was at home, the old man was evidently the scourge of all the bare fisted fighters in the area where he had a reputation as a tough and fearless man.
My own father was clearly blessed with some of the old man’s characteristics. Grandfather Hall, or Big Tom as he was known in the dockland area, hailed originally from Lydney in Gloucestershire as did his wife Fanny. Sadly I know nothing more about his background.
As to the rest of my father’s family, one of his sisters, Nell - my godmother - married Arthur, a railwayman, after whom I was named. They moved to Normanton in Derby soon after the Great War and all touch was lost with them.
May married an Italian merchant seaman Captain and they had one son, Dennis, about my own age, who died while a teenager. Winn married an airman, Billy Williams and they lived in Plumstead. The fourth daughter, Edie, was a beauty, and I continued to see her some times up to the time of her death in the 1970s. Lil, the fifth daughter married Alf and lived in Plumstead.
My mother came from a very big family, one of ten children. My grandmother on my mother’s side was Jane Ann (née Gibson) – known to us as ‘Ginnie’. A dapper little woman and a real live wire. Her first husband George Tinton had been blinded in an industrial accident whilst working as a furnace-man in an iron foundry in Silvertown. Her second, George Hennessy, was an unforgettable character. Like my other grandparents they also lived in North Woolwich and their tiny house in Elizabeth Street stood midway between Royal Victoria Gardens and King George V Dock, just a stone's throw from the Dock. Indeed, a short side street opposite their house backed on to a tall dark fence which marked the dock boundary and the funnels of the vessels seemed to tower above the street. Both Ginnie and old George Hennessy knew the comings and goings of all the ships in the docks.
George Hennessy was a seaman as was his son George. It was a bit confusing for me to know just who was who until I grew up as there were so many uncles and aunts. Ada was the oldest of the Tinton girls and she is still living, now well in her 80s, in 1983. Then there were Jesse, my mother, Eric, also alive and living in Leicester, and their brothers Jack and George. They were the Tintons by Ginnie. Then there was Rose, another George, and Kitty the stepbrothers and sisters by old George Hennessy. My father did not care to be associated with the Hennessy side of the family but I loved them all.
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