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Early CHildhood in a Car-Free Knaresborough
Howard Bell was born in Knaresborough in 1907 - to be exact, he
was born in the room above the corner doorway of the building which
is now Boots the Chemist on the north-east corner of the Market
Place. Along with most births at that time his was attended by
the midwife - very few people went to hospital to give birth, though,
as Howard says, "... of course, the doctor would attend as
well, but he generally arrived too late, when it was all over".
His earliest memory is very vivid - that of a cannon being fired
inside the Castle Yard, on the coronation of King George the Fifth
in 1910.
"They had a Russian cannon that was captured
at Sebastopol in the Crimean War, and it was where the War Memorial
is now. They were ramming grass sods down the barrel and it was
firing them over the mill - they all landed on top of the mill
roof! So they were charging half a crown for someone to fire
the cannon. A line of gunpowder went to a hole in the cannon
and I can just remember crying my head off. My father wanted
me to fire a cannon so's I should remember it all my life and
it banged and it frightened me so much I was crying."
Despite his father's entreaties, Howard could not be persuaded
to fire the cannon. The cannon is no longer there, moved perhaps
after the First World War when the War Memorial was built.
Howard's early schooling was in Castle Yard School. The building
housed the infants on the ground floor and the Girls Junior School
was on the first floor above. The Infants was run by two Miss Southwells,
two daughters of someone who had been in the diplomatic service
in India. They were very good linguists, especially in French,
which Howard studied with them later on for matriculation which
required one foreign language. Although he had one lesson a week
of French at school, Howard also studied one night a week with
the Miss Southwells.
At four years old Howard began at the Castle Yard School and spent
two years there before going on to the Boys Junior School. Howard
still has school work from his earliest school days:
"... we came across some letters I'd written
while I was in the primary school. My first writing, what is
now called joined-together writing; and one of them is written "Dear
Mother, I am writing one of my first letters to you" and
then my eldest daughter took it and said "I'll save that"."
Howard vividly remembers being invited back to an Irish school
friend's home for a party only to discover that it was, in fact,
a wake, complete with the deceased old lady propped up on a chair
in the corner with a clay pipe in her mouth - two days dead! He
didn't stay long! There were a lot of Irish labourers who made
their homes in Briggate in the 1920s.
As now, there were sports in the schools - mostly football and
cricket for the boys - as "rugby wasn't popular in this area".
Howard took part in all of the sports but particularly enjoyed
swimming. There being no pool in Knaresborough he had to make his
way to Starbeck - most children had a bicycle and would cycle to
and from the baths. He had swimming lessons there with the school
but on most Saturday mornings he would go with his friends:
"We used to go mostly on Saturday mornings,
we used to walk to Starbeck. My pocket money, when I first went
to Castle Yard School, was a ha'penny on a Wednesday and a ha'penny
on a Saturday, and the girls that worked for my father were told
not to give me any money for doing an errand, and one girl got
the sack, because she gave me a penny; mind you, she'd perhaps
been asking for it in other ways."
It cost one (old) penny to go to the baths:
"... but my father used to give me, if
I was going swimming, I used to get a penny for the baths and
a penny to buy myself a teacake. There was a little café just
by the station, the last shop on the right hand side when you
reach the station, towards the station, it was a confectioners.
We used to buy a penny teacake and then walk home but if we had
funds we had a buttered teacake which was three ha'pence."
An extra halfpenny for butter!
The school day lasted from 9 in the morning until noon, then began
again at 1.30 p.m. to end at 4 p.m. Most children went home for
lunch, unless they had cycled in from surrounding farms or villages,
in which case they would bring a packed lunch. The Grammar School,
now King James's, which Howard went to in 1919, took in some boarders:
"... they had some boarders, only about
a dozen, not more. The headmaster's house was in the back of
the school, a part of the first building, and there was a dormitory
above that and that's where the boarders were."
Children at school were taught all of the usual basic subjects
- reading, writing, arithmetic - but in 1916 the Grammar School
was renamed "Knaresborough Rural Secondary School" and
the school was obliged to teach some rural subjects such as poultry
and bee-keeping, joinery, gardening, etc. The school had its own
little farm, roughly where the tennis courts are now, with a greenhouse
and the animals.
Conkers and marbles were played at break time. One game of marbles
involved setting up a piece of wood with different sized arches
in it through which the children tried to shoot their marbles -
the piece of wood belonged to one of the children:
" You sort of bought your marbles from
him, like you would at a coconut shy, so much for half a dozen
marbles, perhaps a ha'penny for half a dozen marbles, and then
he paid out (marbles) when you got some points. He'd got
his stock of marbles by the ones that bounced. Generally, you
used to buy a tub of marbles, some were the size of my thumbnail,
some were that big (smaller) and the value went up according
to the size. The big one was worth five small ones."
Howard's family are long-standing Knaresborough folk - his grandfather
had a shoe shop where the library now is (in both the 1834 and 1841 Pigot's
Commercial Directories William Bell is listed as a Boot and Shoe
Maker in Jockey Lane), and his father was a draper in the town.
He started as an apprentice to a local draper in the Market Place:
"It was called Hebblethwaites. He started
as an apprentice there, and then went to London to learn the
trade. Then took the draper's shop on the corner, my grandfather
bought it and my father'd to come back from London to run it.
He settled down, and then he bought the old public house, where
the Spar shop is now, the Post Office, it was only two windows
on the front and two on the side, and he extended it."
Valuation of the Fixtures etc.
in the shop in Market Place Knaresbro in the County of
York from Mr Charles Thomson to Mr Thomas Seymour of York
the landlord of the said House & Shop.
Inventory of the same
Door Bell. 87ft shelving rail with 17
Hooks.
32ft 6in shelving. 4 supports to the same. 19ft Glass Cupboard
105ft shelving. 14ft 6 shelving. 2 Glass Bells
19ft 6in Glass Windows in 3 Pieces. 15ft Wood Boards.
Counter with drawers. 3 Rollers. 3 Window Blinds.
Tin shade to Gas. Pin Rail 5 Hooks. Wood Floor in
Brewhouse. 6 supports to same. 7ft shelf. Step Ladder.
Gas Fittings in House & Shop. Iron sun Blind & cover.
Window Bottom.
Valued by me at the sum of six pounds
fourteen shillings and eleven pence
This 21st day of July 1886
£6-14-11
George Hewson
Licensed Valuer
High Street
Knaresbro |
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Howard's father met his future wife in London, but she settled
down in Knaresborough - as well as Howard they had a daughter,
who also still lives in Knaresborough.
THE FIRST
WORLD WAR
Howard was seven when the First World War broke out - he
remembers the period well:
"Oh yes, I've some good memories
of the war. Because I was of that age when I started to
do things. And of course, we had troops stationed in Knaresborough,
billeted all over the place, in private houses, schools,
in what was the workhouse. For training. We had a cycle
corps - the East Lincolnshire Cycle Corps - I think most
of the regiments trained away from home.
And we had a cavalry corps stationed in Knaresborough,
yes, and as boys we used to wait until they had been for
a ride, they went for a long distance ride every day. And
we'd dash home from school about four o' clock and get
a quick cup of tea and go out to where the stables were.
There were some stables, Pickles has a factory, at the
back of the Borough Bailiff Hotel there's a long shed,
that was occupied by cavalry. My father got friendly with
the colonel. We used to ride one horse, and take another
on a lead, because there were no motor cars in those days.
Ride up the high street, down Park Row, to the Stock Well,
water the horses, and then round Stockwell Road and ride
straight back. We used to ride one and lead another, about
six of us did that."
Several of the fathers of Howard's friends lost their lives
in the war. Howard's father was invalided out:
"Yes, well he was [involved] at the
beginning then he was invalided out. He had stones in the
bladder, now, of course, they just destroy them, never
even start to let them form, but in those days it was an
operation and it was a case of operating, and he had a
scar right down there (indicates length of stomach area) and
he was invalided out. Then he was in what was called the
Local Volunteer Corps. It was like the Home Guard in the
Second World War - what they used to call the "Look,
Duck and Vanish"!"
Howard remembers an aeroplane crash in Knaresborough during
the war:
"I can remember an aeroplane coming
down in the Nidd. I don't know whether it was a Gypsy Moth
but it was a single engine biplane came down in what is
now the cricket field, he ran out of petrol. He went to
fill up with petrol, and when he took off, he sort of paced
it out by going diagonally across the field. He thought
he could take off, and he set off, he had what they call
a skid bar under the tail end of the plane, wheels at the
front, and a skid bar at the back, and that caught a branch
of the hedge and he went straight down, nose-dived straight
down.
I can remember my father being on guard with his rifle
and bayonet to see that nobody pinched anything from the
aeroplane. In our house, I don't know where it got to,
right up to the Second World War, hung up a blade of a
propeller, made of wood, laminated. My dad got that and
he was supposed to be guarding it! I can remember my father
being on guard, of course all the local people lined up
on the road to see if they could see this aeroplane, my
dad's keeping them away!
I sneaked down with a flask full of tea and some sandwiches.
I would be about ten years old then.
The pilot was killed and his wife came over and stayed
at the Mother Shipton Hotel and used to walk up and down
the banks of the river every night, because they hadn't
found his body and then a week afterwards they found it,
tangled up in some of the roots of a tree, he'd been washed
out of it (the aeroplane). And I can remember looking
for the body."
Exciting times for a young boy! At the end of the War Knaresborough
celebrated - one rather disastrous event stuck in Howard's
mind:
"... they had a firework display
in the Castle, and all the fireworks were put out on trestle
tables outside the old courthouse - in front of the courthouse
and the bowling green there's a dip - this was before the
bowling green was made and it was more level then, and
some silly ass put a lighted taper down on this trestle
table and so the fireworks went off and the rockets were
laid on one trestle table horizontally and they all fired
into the crowd - it's a wonder somebody wasn't badly hurt
- but they all went up and in about five minutes it was
all over!"
Howard remembers Knaresborough during the period of his
childhood as a bustling market town, with people coming from
as far afield as Pateley Bridge and Boroughbridge:
"Oh Knaresborough's altered a lot.
It was a country market town, a proper market town. With
a produce market on a Wednesday, and a cattle market on
a Monday - you'd see them sell cattle in the High Street,
before the present cattle market was built, they used to
sell cows and sheep in the High Street, because they didn't
have motor cars in those days. As boys at school we used
to have to run home on a Wednesday which was the market
in market square, the farmers' wives brought all their
eggs and butter and that to sell in Butter Lane. They used
to line up on both sides of Butter Lane with their baskets
of eggs and butter and that. Before they erected a covered
market in the centre of the ordinary market - like scaffolding
with a canvas cover. And we used to have to run home, as
fast as we could on a Wednesday and help the errand boys
to take the parcels round to the various traps and horse
traps. We knew whose trap was which, we knew those with
six seats on either side, when the customer was finished
we used to take it and put it on a seat, we knew where
they came from, nothing was ever taken.
And on a Monday we used to dash home from school to take
sheep or cattle to the farm, that the farmer had bought
that day."
High Street on Market Day, circa 1910
Howard's father's customers also came from the outlying
villages - travelling in on horseback or horse-drawn carts
and wagons:
"A lot of my father's customers used
to come from Cattal, Green Hammerton. Nearly every shop
had stabling behind the shop - where Boots have extended
towards the Newsagents, that used to be Moss the Grocer's
shop and they had stabling behind their shop. My father
had stabling for six horses, with the traps as well (at
their Public House)."
Often Howard would travel with the delivery man to the villages,
one customer was particularly memorable:
"Before the First World War I used
to go round every day with the man with the van (horse-drawn
vans) somewhere. I used to go to a little cottage at
Cattal village, and the driver would say "Go on, see
if Mrs So-and-so's in" and I would go down the garden
path and knock on the door. She'd come to the door, she
always use to say "Nay lad, thas come at wrong day,
I haven't baked today" and my face used to drop and
then she'd say "Go int' the pantry, see what tha can
find" and I would go into the pantry and there was
always a currant cake on the shelf, and I used to cut myself
a slice of cake, and pour myself a glass of milk, nearly
always warm from the cow.
That went on for years, and even when I retired, the old
lady would be in her nineties then, used to come in the
shop, spoke in her language, really broad Yorkshire, and
the girls used to laugh. I remember one day, there were
two customers in the shop, real toffee-nosed, one of the
girls was having difficulty with them, she couldn't show
them what they wanted, they were being really awkward,
and this old lady came in, we always used to give her a
chair in front of the counter, so the girls always knew
when she came in there was a chair for her. She sat down,
and I walked across and was talking to her. She said "Ey,
any more o' that and I'll smack thee backside for tha,
and it won't be fust time, either". Well these two
customers, the toffee-nosed type, looked around, they couldn't
understand it, but that was her language. And I was in
my sixties then!
Oh, life was a lot different then. You were friendly with
your customers, especially the country people."
High Street on Market Day, circa 1910
THE
STATUS
Life was a lot different for the working people too - a
job for life was as much a rarity then as it is becoming
now. Most manual workers were hired by the year at the annual
hirings:
"Every year there was, the Status
they called it - how it got that name I don't know. There
was always a fair, it was stopped during the war, on top
of the crag (above the House in the Rock). There
was a fair - roundabouts and swings and that, they had
a fairground there, for the Status it was for a fortnight,
two Wednesdays in November. All the farm labourers would
come into town with a year's wages. They only got so much
a week pocket money, and they were hired for the year.
And housemaids and chambermaids, they were all hired as
well.
This happened every year, and the next year they had to
go back. To the same people, maybe, hired them year after
year.
... she (a maid) lived in the house, [in] all big
houses there was a maid's staircase, very often a bathroom
and toilet in that part of the house just for the maids.
They were hired for a year, they got their keep and so
much a week pocket money, plus all sorts of extras - they
got all their clothing. That's what our men used to take
around - the housemaids' aprons and fancy caps and things,
and working clothes. And they were paid the rest of their
wages for the year at Status time. Perhaps under £30
- on top of their keep. "
Notice the gas lamps outside. Calling
Card circa 1910
Working people came into town with a full year's wages:
"And that used to be marvellous business
for the shopkeepers.
The vanman used to collect from all these people and my
father very often used to help out. He told this story
about coming to Cattal, as you go down towards the station,
there's a long straight road before you get to Cattal village,
and he was coming along there one night, he'd been helping
the vanman, and he said to one vanman, "go on - I'll
meet you back at Cattal station". He's carrying about
a hundred pounds, which was a heck of a lot of money in
those days. And he was walking along, and as he walked
he heard footsteps, almost at the other side of the hedge,
so he stopped, when he stopped, the footsteps stopped.
So he walks a bit further, same again, footsteps, and when
he stopped, footsteps stopped. So he got a stake out of
the hedge bottom, was all ready to defend himself, if it
was somebody after his money - and he would tell this story
against himself - he realised it was a horse! The horse
was keeping up with him, and when he stopped, the horse
stopped. To hear him tell this story, totally against himself,
because I can quite realise how scared he might be."
LAW
AND ORDER
Knaresborough would have had its share of the criminal element
and, although the Superintendent of Police for the whole
of the Harrogate district actually lived at Yorke House,
the job of keeping law and order in the town was left to
the local policemen:
"... there was a sergeant, and about
three policemen. And they all used to carry a cape, and
when it was fine the cape was rolled up and it used to
fasten with a buckle. And if we were doing anything wrong,
like sliding down the backs of Castle Yard, and the policeman
came and got anywhere near us, he'd clout us with his cape
and if the buckle end caught you, you knew about it. But
it never bothered us in any way. And if you went home and
told your father he'd give you another one to go with it!
It was the same at school, I've had cane many a time -
you could get caned for not paying attention! You were
sent round, there was a little toy shop - you know the
china shop at the top of Kirkgate - it used to be a little
toy shop and she used to sell canes. You'd be given about
thruppence, to go round to buy a cane for you to be caned
with! And that hurt more than the cane!"
THE
SCOUTS
At the end of the First World War Howard started at the
Grammar School and became interested in Scouting:
"Before about six of us could join
the Scouts, we weren't old enough, we used to go to a little
stationer's shop and buy a penny paperback booklet, about
six inches square, on scouting, on semaphore signalling
and Morse and all sorts of things. And we used to meet
in the Castle Yard, we used to meet where the War Memorial
is now, and I remember my mother made us flags, they were
fastened to a piece of wood, to do semaphore signalling
with, one [boy] stood about where the War Memorial
is and one where the Old Courthouse is."
When he was old enough, Howard joined the Scouts and began
a lifelong association with the movement, which even enabled
him to travel abroad:
"The Scout movement started a year
before I was born actually. There was a scout troop in
Knaresborough and the Scout Master had to do it and his
two sons were Patrol Leaders in the Scouts and they kept
it going throughout the War and then it was reformed in
1918, by a man who had been away, he was a captain.
I've been a scout all my life, I was Leader of the Knaresborough
Scouts for about 2 or 3 year and I Scouted at Wesley's
Chapel (in London). I made some good friends and
had some good times. In 1919 I saw in the magazine The
Scout, I was sat reading it over supper one night,
and I just read "The Second City of London Sea Scouts
are going to Holland on a fortnight's camp, such and such
a date, and have a few vacancies, anybody who'd like to
join write to such and such" and I'm a boy, like,
11 years old. And my father said, get a pen and ink - this
was before fountain pens, a steel nib and a bottle of ink
- I couldn't believe he was serious, he said "Write
and ask how much it will be" etc. etc. So I wrote
and posted it, we lived then where Boots shop is, and it
was a fortnight to go to Holland, sailing from just outside
Tower Bridge in London, it was a fortnight's camping with
some Dutch Scouts - £10.
And because I was joining a party in London I got my return
fare to London for 10 bob. And I can remember my father
fastening a luggage label tied to a button on my shirt,
and he gave the guard of the train half a crown or something
to see me off at King's Cross. I was met at King's Cross
by an uncle of mine, who lived in London, and he took me
down to Victoria Embankment, and at that time Scott's ship,
the Discovery, was anchored off the Thames, as a sea scout
training ship, and I slept on the ship overnight in a hammock.
And the first thing when the London boys, the Sea Scouts,
said "Oh you landlubber get up that rigging" and
they made me climb right up the rigging, and the last bit
was a Jacob's Ladder, a rope ladder, and it led to a barrel,
lashed to the mast at the top, and a hole in the bottom.
Up this ladder, through the hole in the bottom, and that
was the lookout. I was alright going up but when I looked
down!
We camped in Holland with fifty Dutch boys and fifty Austrian
and Hungarian refugee boys. And we were told afterwards
that it had been organised by what eventually became The
League of Nations just to see how the boys could get on
together. We got on alright, of course we couldn't speak
each other's language but we played football, we went out
together - we got on alright.
All of the parents in Knaresborough, the parents of all
my friends, said "Fancy letting your son travel all
that way on his own with people you don't know, you've
never met" Of course you wouldn't do nowadays. I was
the only boy at the Grammar School who had been abroad
at that time. And after that, I went every year for four
years."
Howard travelled not only to Holland but also to Italy and
Belgium. On one of these occasions, Howard met an acquaintance
a long way from home:
"It's surprising how many times I've
met people abroad I've known. When I went to Belgium with
the Scouts, about twelve years old, First Knaresborough
Scouts, we camped on the sand dunes of the River Schelde
at Antwerp - I think it's all oil refineries and storage
tanks there now. And we used to go across to the town on
a ferry every day and one morning a man walked across and
he said to me "You boys English are you?" I said "Yes" -
he said "From Knaresborough?" [and] I said "Yes".
He said "Do you know Billy Bell?" [and] I said "I
ought to do, he's my father" and he'd worked for my
father before the 14-18 war managing a shop in Starbeck.
And he'd been in the Army during the 14-18 war and married
a Belgian girl and stayed over there. 40 or 50 of us boys
got onto this ferry - a coincidence that he should pick
me."
He has fond memories of special occasions such as being
part of a Guard of Honour at the christening of the present
Lord Harewood:
"Knaresborough Scouts, First Knaresborough
Scouts just after the war - they formed a Guard of Honour
along with the Wetherby Scouts, at the christening of the
present Lord Harewood, at Goldsborough, and all the Royal
family came, King George the Fifth, Queen Mary, Duke of
York, Prince Albert, all the Royal family except the one
who was later on the Duke of Windsor - he couldn't get
on with Lord Harewood so he didn't come. We formed a Guard
of Honour from the church to the War Memorial, the Knaresborough
Scouts on the side where the church is and the Wetherby
Scouts on the other side. King George the Fifth stopped
- our scout master had served in the Boer War - he was
in the army - and this would be about 1922-23 something
like that - he (the king) stopped as close to me
as I am to you (about 2 feet) talking to the scout
master - I was next to him but one - I wasn't half proud
- about 12 years old."
The christening of George Lascelles
- return from Goldsborough church.
Queen Mary leads the procession with Scouts lining
the road.
From a postcard kindly lent by Pat Wood
At that time the Scouts met in Scriven:
"... they met in what was the WI
hut down in Scriven - that was actually presented to the
Scouts. And at that time I was totally involved with the
First Knaresborough Scouts at Scriven. And the headmaster
at school asked me if I would leave and help to start a
Scouts group in the new school. I was in the top form then
and I said I would do on condition that I could talk to
my old scout master and if he agreed to losing me I'd help
start a new scout group."
LONDON
APPRENTICESHIP
On leaving school, Howard decided to go into his father's
business, but on his own terms:
"... but I only went into my father's
business on one condition - he'd been down to London to
learn the trade. A lot of my friends were sons of businessmen
in Knaresborough and went into business in the family business,
but never went anywhere for experience. In other words,
learnt the trade from their fathers. I realised that my
father had done a good thing by getting some London training
because it's a lot different. So I decided, if I was going
into the business I was going to learn the trade away.
So I went into the wholesale drapery business. There were
about 3 or 4 big firms who had their own hostel and employed
youngsters from provincial shops. The shop couldn't give
them a senior position because they had no experience.
And these firms in London, there were about five in the
City of London who had a hostel and were only too glad
to get someone from the provinces to work in the warehouses
- the hostel my firm had was in Charterhouse Square, very
near Smithfield meat market and the warehouse was in Cheapside.
Wherever you came from, whether you were an errand boy,
apprentice or son of a businessman or possibly the son
of a director of a big firm, you all started at the bottom.
We were two levels below ground, in an old crypt of a
church, and the bottom one was [where we] started unpacking
packing cases coming in, and the next level was packing
cases to go out, and the next one above that was sorting
out the goods for the various departments. And when you
got to a department you were on the answering desk, it
was maybe a year before you were allowed to serve a customer.
And after you started serving customers you could branch
two ways, either to buyer with a department or go out travelling
as a commercial traveller. And my firm had 72 travellers
over the British Isles. Each regular traveller had a range
of goods in a brougham about the size of an ambulance,
with a driver and samples from twenty odd departments.
A Special Traveller would go out with samples from about
three departments, but a bigger range of samples, went
out and travelled by train with these baskets - no travelling
around by car, it was donkey work. And what I did was I
went on seven different travellers rounds for a week each
with a bigger range from those departments, I used to do
that four times a year - so I did seven weeks away from
London, four times a year. I covered the Border counties
and it was jolly good experience, because you were going
in to shops and meeting proprietors or buyers in departments
of big stores - you were seeing small shops and big shops
and big stores - all good experience. And then after five
years I could see that my father was getting older. "
While in London Howard jointly founded a Scout Group with
a friend at Wesley's Chapel, and then he took over the Rover
Scouts - the senior Scouts.
"The boys all came from Hoxton area,
in London, very poor families and we decided we would take
them to camp for a weekend, so we gave them a list of what
they should find. And two or three of the boys came to
us and said "We can't come through because we can't
fill this list up" I said "Why - what are you
short of?" so one boy said "Well if I take, if
I bring a blanket, what are my three brothers going to
do." Four of them sleeping in a bed with one blanket!
So I told St John's [Ambulance] who went out to staff theatres
- they were all St John's men at theatres in those days
- there was always a St John's team at football matches.
Now, when they were short of staff for anything like that
they used to let us know and we'd find somebody to take
their place because all my Rover Scouts group had passed
the St John's Ambulance badge. So we used to learn elementary
First Aid. So I went to the St John's Ambulance [and said]
it was impossible to take the boys to camp because of the
blankets. He said "Don't worry about that". He
loaned us 50 blankets and I said "I'll have them laundered
and looked after" "Don't you bother - bring them
back just as how you've finished with them, we'll send
them with all our others to our laundry"
and so they were able to take the boys camping.
He fondly remembers a jamboree at Arrow Park, Birkenhead,
and parading at the Cenotaph:
"I was in the jamboree at Birkenhead
on the 25th anniversary of scouting; and one thing in that
was outstanding - every scout throughout the world subscribed
the equivalent of a penny towards a gift for Lord Baden-Powell
and they asked Lady Baden-Powell "what do you want?".
Well, of course, he always wore shorts, he'd been out in
South Africa, fighting in the Boer War, and when we asked
her she said "Well, the only thing I can think of,
is a pair of braces", because he hadn't any! So when
the presentation was made, the scout got up on the platform,
and gave him a pair of braces, and hung them across and
around his neck, like a medallion! So we did that, and
also a very nice Rolls Royce car and a caravan! It was
quite a joke.
And there are quite a few experiences like that I can
remember when I was in the Rover Scouts. We used to parade
at the Cenotaph with a service - a very short service -
laid a wreath, on the Sunday after the 11th of November.
Now various other organisations have followed suit - just
the Jews would go on the following Saturday, because that's
their Sabbath day. And we used to get somewhere like 3000
Rover Scouts, meeting on the Embankment marching up towards
Whitehall, marching down Whitehall, past the Cenotaph,
then back to the Embankment, 3000 Rover Scouts."
In London Howard worked with the first Blood Transfusion
Service:
"We had a gentleman, Mr Oliver, come
to see us, he was Secretary of the British Red Cross, for
the whole of the Greater London area. And they were trying
to get a blood transfusion service, and there were other
organisations approached for volunteers that refused, and
he started it from his own home, and he and his wife and
two neighbours manned the telephone 24 hours of every day
and he asked us if we could help. And we said well it was
rather difficult during the day because of working but
what will we do? Anyway we decided to help them - we'd
set up a card index system (it's all done on computers
now) but we set up a card index system giving the name,
address, nearest telephone - because there wasn't everybody
who had one - when they were available, what [blood] group
they were - as much information as possible. My Rover Scout
Group, along with Mr Oliver's neighbours that were running
the job, helped to start it. So I was right at the beginning
of the blood transfusion service. 1928, I think.
And the first year that we did, full year that we did,
we had 350 or so transfusions. We had to do various hospitals,
but in those days it went direct to the patient - it had
to be a perfect match, I think there was only four groups
in those days, so it would be one of those groups. And
what happened was they'd go to the hospital, and it was
taken from a vein in the arm and was going into a solution,
a saline solution, with the nurse stirring it up, and it
was either direct to the patient before the operation through
the saline solution, during an operation and after an operation.
And then the second year we did it we topped the thousand
which was marvellous. Of course they do a thousand every
day now."
Howard himself, gave blood:
"It was all voluntary. The only thing
I got paid for was at St Bart's. A doctor wanted to show
some trainee doctors how it was done and I went and he
shoved a needle up one of these veins here (arm). What
happened, I must have jerked and the needle came out -
couldn't do anything about it - got blood on my suit and
my shirt and waistcoat and my trousers so I had to send
them to be cleaned and they paid ten shillings for my suit
to be cleaned. That was the only remuneration I ever got!"
BUSINESS
IN KNARESBOROUGH
Howard decided that it was time to return to Knaresborough
to help his father, who became ill, but never really retired
from the business:
"I came back from London in 1931,
when I was 24. And as soon as I got back, my father, who
hated book-keeping, absolutely detested it, the day I started
he said "There's the books - they're all yours. There's
two cheque books, one's my private account, one's a business
account. I've arranged with the bank that you can sign
them both. From now onward, they're yours to sign"!
I came back in the February, and he went in to hospital
on the August Bank Holiday and he was in for quite a while
so I was thrown in at the deep end then. But he'd never
retire completely. We'd see him in the business every day
for a week, and then we wouldn't see him for about a fortnight.
And do you know what he'd done? He'd bought a house that
was cheap. In the thirties, a lot of big houses in Harrogate
were sold very, very cheap. And he'd buy one, he'd have
the gas taken out and electricity put in, he'd have new
fireplaces put in, get the decorators in - all these lads
that were starting on their own, he employed them, just
to give them a start. And so we wouldn't see him for a
fortnight.
... soon as he'd finished off he'd sell and if he made
fifty pounds profit he'd do well."
Howard founded a branch of Toc H in
Knaresborough and remembers attending a wonderful meeting
in the Albert Hall in London in 1933 - the 18th anniversary
of the founding of Toc H. "Each branch had a banner
- a marvellous sight!" and he also continued his involvement
with the Scouts:
"Well, I was approached by Lady Evelyn
Collins, used to live at Knaresborough House. She was Chairman
of the Scout Committee in Knaresborough, and she approached
me to see if I would act as Scout District Commissioner.
Much as I wanted to [do it] I had to turn it down because
I'd just formed Toc H and just got that going, and that
was a service organisation, however, later on in life I
became President of Knaresborough Scouts."
As a member of Toc H Howard visited the Knaresborough Hospital
Tramps' Ward. On one occasion Howard spoke with a tramp who
seemed very articulate and who claimed his brother was also
a solicitor. Howard mentioned this to Willy Gill, a solicitor
who was visiting with him, and they returned to Willy's offices
(now Raworth's) to look up in his book for solicitors with
the same name. They found one and called him to be told that
the tramp was indeed his brother - he had lost thousands
when the Kruger Match Company went bust and it seemed to
have turned his mind - he had been missing for two months!
Howard's business was growing and during this period his
father never quite left the business:
"When I came back I should say we
had about 12 [staff]; we finished off, when the place went
up in smoke, with 22. During that period he (Howard's
father) was very busy, going to sales of property.
You could buy a house in Harrogate for about £200-250
- it was ridiculous. He bought two in St George's Road,
where you go up to the Ministry of Defence, a pair of houses:
two reception rooms, kitchen twice the size of this (roughly
20 ft x 40ft), and six bedrooms each and he bought
them for £500 for the two. So I took one and he took
the other. Between us, as I mentioned before, he got young
men who were just starting on their own. While he was doing
that I was running the business "
As well as the Irish labourers, another group of Irish workers
who settled in Knaresborough were the girls who came over
from Belfast to teach the Knaresborough girls how to make
shirts. There was a shirt factory in Knaresborough (now Niddal's)
which had previously been a garage - Brown's "Harrogate
Road Car Company" - which ran yellow coaches locally
nick-named "yellow perils". At the time of the
second world war it was a parachute factory set up by a Londoner
bombed out of the East End.
Howard married in 1933 - his wife was originally from Wakefield:
"From Robin Hood, near Loftus. She
was in what is now the National Health Service - she went
to Chemists shops all over Yorkshire or West Yorkshire
taking samples of medicines. Like an inspector really.
She would go in, unbeknown to anybody, she would then show
her badge, her identity, and ask for a sample of the medicine
they prescribed themselves and then took them in for examination
and analysing.
And she was a Licentiate of the Faculty of Insurance -
that was almost like the National Insurance - and she was
a bronze medallist with the highest number of marks in
that year's exam.
Her father retired, he was in the colliery, an engineer,
and he retired and bought a business in Knaresborough -
bought a dairy, in the Market Square. She found it a bit
awkward travelling to Wakefield and back - she packed it
in and helped her father run the dairy - and that's where
I met her. Married in Knaresborough, at the Methodist church."
THE
SECOND WORLD WAR
At the end of the thirties it seemed obvious to many that
war was on the horizon:
"I became an ARP warden in 1938 when
it (ARP) first started. I had to have training,
gas training, one night we had a gas demonstration van
over, and people were going through this van and put on
a gas mask and just lifted the edge of the mask a little
to get a slight sniff of it (the gas). I had a pair
of overalls on, like a boilersuit, and went home and, not
thinking that the gas had impregnated the boiler suit and
she (his wife) started crying her eyes out and I
suddenly realised what it was so I had to make her run
round the garden out the back to get it out of her system
while I stripped off all my clothes outside and she went
in to fetch me some clothes.
We went round the villages fitting gas masks all the children,
men and women - they even had one for babies, which was
almost - well you know the carry cots that you carry a
baby in - like a crib - a solid base with sort of a cellophane
cover over it so it would be canvas overall with a square
where the baby could look out - it wasn't very - I don't
think anybody ever used them because there wasn't any gas.
We used to go round the villages and the way we found out
whether we'd fitted it (the gas mask) right or not,
we'd put something over the end and as soon as they said "I
can't breathe, I can't breathe" we knew it fitted
all right.
We had to check the blackout. We took it in turns to stand
by during the day, and at night it worked out you would
be on about once a week for one night to
man one of the posts overnight, mostly be somebody's cellar
underground. One post was opposite Boots, next to the Yorkshire
Penny Bank there's a café - in their cellar down
there, and we used to use that as a post. Another one was
a great big house in Boroughbridge Road that had an underground
cellar and we used to go there - had like canvas chairs
and deckchairs to relax in but no beds or anything - you
didn't get undressed, you were ready to go into action.
Quite a few people in Knaresborough had their own cellars
so they went down into their own cellars. The house next
door to me where Mr Prudames lives, the greengrocer, they
had one in their garden - a proper dugout with a cover
over it similar to an Anderson [shelter] - the cover only
came to about so high (waist height). Matter of
fact the cover at one time was covered with grass sods.
And we all took First Aid - doctors and medical people
taught us bandaging and that, just normal first aid, elementary
First Aid."
Howard recognised business opportunities:
"We knew that stuff would suddenly
become scarce so we put in a contract for blacking out
all Scotton Banks Hospital. We knew 12 months before then (outbreak
of war) that there'd be a complete blackout, you see,
and going back from the experience in the First World War
he (his father) and I sorted out between us what
we might want for the blacking out of Knaresborough and
placed orders for what we wanted; and we actually had in
stock something like two and a half thousand yards of Black
Italian cloth. Now Black Italian is a sort of satin finish
cloth that they used to use for the back of men's waistcoats,
and it was ideal for blacking out windows. And we put in
a contract for Scotton Banks Hospital. Anyway, when war
started we had the material upstairs - other people couldn't
put in for a contract because they hadn't the material.
We didn't make the curtains, they did that in the sewing
room of the hospital, we just supplied the material, about
2000 yards of Black Italian at half a crown a yard.
And they used to buy paper blinds, roller blinds, in those
days, made of a dark green paper or similar green paper
and we used to stock them, every two inches, from about
24 inch wide up to 5 feet wide and we bought these from
a firm near Wakefield their brand name was "Japa" paper
blinds. And we could see war coming. I got onto the firm
and I said we wanted paper blinds so I said "Will
you send me two rolls on the passenger train via Leeds
up to Knaresborough and I'll collect it at Knaresborough" I
saw this [man] about two months afterwards and he said "I
went straight to my boss, I said to him "I've got
a bloke on the phone, he wants a roll of 36 wide and [one
of] 48 inches wide" and he said "there's about
a mile on each roll and he wants them sent by passenger
train" So his boss said "Look, if he wants them
you sell him them, because" he said " it's better
for us to sell a roll like that than little rolls" So
they came by passenger train and as soon as war started
we had this paper and we made a counter as wide as that
wall (about 15 feet), about square, and what we
did we used the width of the paper as the length and then
cut widths (to fit windows) and we stayed after
the shop had closed in the evening cutting up blinds for
the next day. And I went down to Kitchen's saw mills, and
they sold plaster latts, about inch wide latts, I said "How
many plaster latts have you got" and there's a hundred
to a bundle in 36 inch length and 48 inch length which
was just what I wanted. The idea was to, you cut it (the
window width you require) off 48 inches wide, fold
it over the top over the plaster latt put a tape round
at each end hanging down each side roll it up from the
bottom, also stuck to a plaster latt, tie it up with the
two tapes and there's your blackout blind. We must have
sold thousands. I also got another four rolls
of each and there was a mile on each!
And I met this friend of mine, one of Kitchen's family (later), he
says "I know what you were going to do with those
plaster latts" he says "You were a bit quicker
than I was" he said "You sold them all didn't
you" I said "Yes" he says "You paid
us what?" I says "usually about 5 shillings for
a hundred something like that", it was one penny each
and he says "Aye, a penny each". It was just
one of those ideas. They nailed the top latt to the window
frame and then from the bottom roll it up and tie the two
tapes."
When he was called up, Howard decided to join the RAF if
he could:
"I wanted to join something that
would be of use to me after the war, I know it sounds a
bit ..., but I knew the RAF and what branches there were
in it - I was wearing glasses then and I knew my eyesight
was going to disqualify me from flying duties. I felt I
wasn't mechanically minded enough to be in any engineering
line. But the equipment branch was stock recording systems
was just right for me."
While stationed at Blackpool in 1940 catastrophe struck
- the shop in Knaresborough went up in flames:
"I was doing the square bashing at
Blackpool and I got a telegram to say it had been burnt
down so I showed it to the Corporal who was doing it and
he said "I'll take you through to the Adjutant and
see if you can go home for a day or two" I said "Quite
honestly, there's a few things I shall have to sign. I
shall have to meet the solicitors with my father, and the
insurance people, and the bank and that" So he took
me to the Adjutant."
Howard was able to get home to help his father and then
returned to learn his duties in the Equipment Branch of the
RAF from where he was posted overseas to Egypt:
"I had to learn all about how to
keep stock and I could use that in my own business, after
the war. And so I went into this equipment branch and I
was in the equipment branch right up to the rank of Corporal.
The RAF in '42 suddenly decided - we recorded on cards
with a description, etc. properly recorded - [and they
decided] that the people who should dish out the goods
shouldn't have to do with recording as well, so they split
the duties in half, one section dealt physically with all
the stock coming in and going out, while the others did
all the paperwork. And headquarters in Cairo wanted it
[out there] setting up as a new job with all the paperwork
about how to set it up, etc. And the Wing Commander turned
up [at the camp] just outside Heliopolis, down the Suez
road, outside Cairo. And [he] came down to our unit and
said "Look, I've been thinking, we've got to set this
up so it can be used as a training centre if it's
done properly, outside Cairo, that we can bring people
in for, all over the Middle East to see how it was done, "We've
only you Corporal" - he'd got my name from somewhere,
and he said "Do you think you could do it? Are you
prepared to do it?" So I set up the first equipment
recording section out in the Middle East, and he said "That's
all the background there, if you can sort that ---- lot
out!!!" So I had all that to study up and sort out.
And after I'd finished he said "Why don't you put
in for a commission?" I said "Look I'm not bothered" -
I actually put in for it before the war, when war first
started, and I went before a Board in London, and they
said "Well, we'll let you know". Well that was
in September '39, now by November I was called up in the
ranks, before they'd made a decision, and a few months
after I went and did my equipment course at Cranwell, after
I'd done my square bashing at Blackpool. And then I went
to Coastal Command, down at Tenbury, I was there for a
bit, and then I was posted overseas, actually got overseas
in August, September 1940. By that time, I was quite happy
where I was, I wasn't bothered about a commission.
I was posted down to a Group Headquarters, and doing,
as an officer, in a much bigger way, the job I'd been doing
as a Corporal. So, even before I went before the Commission
Board, they must have decided already. And it was funny
because when I went before the Board, usually on those
things you're interviewed by an officer first, before you
go before the Board, just to check on all the details,
and that. And it was the same Wing Commander who'd given
me the job of setting-up. He just said "Sit down Mr
Bell, sit down Corporal, and we'll have a cigarette" So
I knew then I'd more or less got it."
Howard's duties included ensuring that the troops were well-equipped:
"Yes, if it hadn't have been for
being away from home and family I could have really enjoyed
it because I was there when Monty went up on the west push
to turn Rommel out of Egypt and at that time my job was
backing up units with spares that were dropped off cargo
boats. As the army moved up, and the engineers cleared
a fishing port or anywhere with a jetty, then the cargo
boats were waiting to go in and drop spares. And it was
my job to see that those spares were despatched and dropped
off at the right place. So I'd more or less been doing
work that eventually led to the invasion of Sicily. After
we'd cleared North Africa, we started preparing for the
invasion of Sicily, roughly 3 months before D Day in Europe.
And I was one of the team doing the logistics, as they
called it, working out what squadrons wanted spares, and
where, etc. etc. And when the invasion of Sicily took place,
most of our work was put on microfilm, flown back to England,
for the D-Day people here to work on, to see what we'd
done, where we'd made mistakes, where we'd succeeded, etc.
etc. The invasion of Sicily was really a dummy run for
the invasion of Europe."
Mistakes were made which everyone learned from:
"The Americans tried landing in Algiers,
and made such a hell of a mess of it they had to withdraw.
Now there were some British personnel with that and they
had to learn by the mistakes they made because they offloaded
all the stuff on the beaches, started moving into North
Africa, adjoining to us, from the west, and none of the
cases, packing cases, etc., etc., they'd offloaded onto
the beaches, had any proper identification mark. So they
didn't know whether an engine was an aero-engine or a tank
engine or a lorry engine or what it was.
But we'd already worked our own system of identification
out, which was a blue diagonal line across every side of
a case and the name of the unit and where it had to go
to, a code name, and I was lumbered with suggestions for
codes. So, Air Commodore asked me one day, he said "Where
do you get the names from for all these codes?" I
said "Well, you're asking an awkward question, sir." But
I told him, I said "The people who have to stencil
the code letters onto packing cases, they don't want whacking
long words, half a mile long, they want a maximum of five
letters. And they don't want apples, pears - names of fruit,
because that's what one of them had done at one time and
the lads all thought "Oh good, it's a case of fruit" Another
lot, sent to Malta, was the names of drinks, and they sent
a signal through "expect so many cases so-and-so and
so-and-so" and the laddie who took that radio message,
it would be in code of course, and when it was deciphered
they went round "Ooh, there's some drinks for us".
And he (the Air Commodore) said to me "Where
do you get the code words from?" I said "I buy
an Egyptian Mail", that was a newspaper, two pages
of which were printed in English - there was a fairly big
English colony out there. I said "I look at the names
of race horses, Egyptian race horses, and as soon as I
see one with five letters or less, it goes in the code
book to be used.
[The code was] for the destination, and a list of items
would be sent by signal, and the equipment officer on the
squadron, or any unit, would get a message, "Pick
up so many cases so-and-so at so-and-so so-and-so" and
then he would get a list sent by telegram, motor cycle,
something like that, of what items it would be."
Howard was not always operating from behind the lines:
"I was with the Wireless Intelligence
Wing, it's a very early version to what's happening now.
We had American helcrafter radio receivers, which were
far better than anything the British had at that time,
and we had units working right around North Africa right
up to Palestine, Syria, Lebanon, into Turkey, a semi-circle
like that, listening to every German message they could
pick up. Now [with] one laddie working on a set, at the
base, at Heliopolis, just outside Cairo we had eventually,
when it built up, over 400 receivers each on a separate
wavelength, and that was on for 24 hours a day. A thousand
messages might come through and only one be of any importance;
they were all in code and we had decoders - it was Army,
Navy and Air Force, but under RAF Command. And one of them
in the army, he was a Lance Corporal, he was commissioned
the same day as I was, he was a Professor of Maths at Cambridge
University. They reckoned he could crack a German code
in 10 minutes - this was long before any Enigma.
The lads who worked at the western end of Africa, Algiers,
now I used to take spares up for them, in a small convoy,
two or three lorries, and I visited most of those units
all the way up from North Africa to Turkey. but there's
a hell of a lot of desert you can get lost in. It's a good
20 or 30 miles of desert from the coast road."
And Howard saw his fair share of action and amusing incidents:
"When I first went overseas this
unit I went on took over a building that was being built
as a museum just outside Heliopolis about 8 miles out of
Cairo and the building was only half finished and the unit
was there and hadn't even a tented camp. We worked in parts
of the building and in the hot weather we all slept outside
- we made our own beds, what the Indian army call "charpoys" four
legs and a ground sheet strapped across it. Well, all of
us used to put our tin hats under the bed - like a lot
of how-d'you-dos under the beds - and it was so hot we
used to lay in our beds with just a towel round our waist.
One night they were raiding Heliopolis and we sort of half
sat up on our beds watching what was happening, the ack-ack
going up and flack from the guns and then somebody says "That's
a bit near us isn't it?" and then we realised it was,
so we all dived for shelter. Now we had some slit trenches
round the compound and so we all dived [out], put our tin
hats on but lost our towels - I wish I'd had a camera to
see about 50 lads just going over! Well I dived down into
one trench and I took all the skin off my chest - I was
sore for days. It was funny! Anyway, it dropped two munitions
into our compound but neither of them went off - if they'd
gone off it would have been "goodbye"!"
... and more coincidental meetings:
"... how coincidental it is to meet
somebody you know miles away from where either of you should
be. I was holding a clothing parade for a small unit, the
radio tenders that were out of the wind, they'd
dug a hole in the ground and put a camouflage net over
the top that one of them lent us, to hold this clothing
parade; you give lads new shirts, new socks, things like
that, they came in one end and out of the other. There
was a trestle table, about as long as that wall (about
15 feet) with all things laid out, towels, shirts,
shorts, and shoes, particularly, and all of a sudden there
was a voice said "Look there, there's a plane up there" and
another voice said "Oh, it's one of ours, it doesn't
matter". Anyway, it wasn't! I dived under one side
of this trestle table, and another one dived in the other
side, and he looked at me and he said "Hey, what the
hell are you doing here!" Knaresborough boy! Yes,
went to the same school as me."
HOME
AGAIN
Tragedy struck Howard's family in 1943:
"My boy and youngest girl contracted
scarlet fever. There was an outbreak in 1943 of scarlet
fever in the town, and my son died the same day, and my
daughter was taken into hospital. When I came home my boy
had been cremated, my youngest daughter was in hospital
and my wife was in an awful state. I'd been overseas for
over three years, and you immediately got disembarkation
leave, a day for every month you'd been abroad, so I think
I'd something like 39 days leave. So it was during that
period I thought, "I don't ask for anything from the
RAF, I'll ask them see what they can do". By that
time I was de-commissioned - I was commissioned during
the war. Yes, I got a mention in despatches for distinguished
service. In the Birthday Honours list in 1944, after preparation
for the invasion of Sicily. Anyway, I thought "I'll
write to them" so I wrote to, I knew where to write
to, I knew someone in Personnel, in that department, and
put my case to have a near posting, and they posted me
to Marston Moor, which is just up the road. It's only two
miles from here. So I got permission to live out. My father
had died and my wife was running the business, so I had
to work there (Marston Moor) during the day from
half past eight in the morning, till five o' clock, then
doing what I could for the business.
As a matter of fact I closed Marston Moor down. We got
down to what they call "Care and Maintenance Party" January
'46 when I was demobbed, February rather, and this was
the end of 1945. We got right down to about say a couple
of officers and about 50 personnel. And [then] the entire
Transport Command closed one of their big stations down
and took over Marston Moor and opened it up again."
During the war Howard's wife looked after the business,
but rebuilding the burnt-out shop was a problem:
"... after the war, it was almost "start
again". I couldn't get a license to rebuild right
up to 1956. It stayed derelict all the time - I had a wall
built round it, a wall about so high built round it and
I thought "I shall have to do what business I can
from the other shop"; in the High Street, that was
the men's outfitters, Cromwell House. Anyway, I managed
to buy the property next door, which is now an estate agent,
and that gave me more room for children's wear and I bought
one in the Market Place, which is now the Heart Foundation
next to the Royal Oak Hotel top end of the Market Place.
I managed to buy that property - I wanted it because we
had quite a good household trade - sheets, blankets, things
like that, gown material and dress material and so I opened
that, put a manager with staff [in]. Then it got into the
sixties and I was advised by two people who sell businesses,
agents for business, and they both said "Look, you're
making it very difficult for yourself, you're putting a
noose round your neck because Knaresborough's only ..." -
at that time it was about 15000 population, it's bigger
now - he said "the firms that can finance the business
that you are doing want a town with a bigger population
and you're too near Harrogate - they're providing that" and
I was doing a fair bit of school outfitter trade outside
the shop that was entirely apart from the shop and staff
were getting difficult to get and my father had died at
the age of 64 and so I thought "I'm going to have
a bit of a time" so I packed it in."
CHAMBER
OF TRADE
Howard and his family had been living in Hambledon Grove
but in 1949 they moved to Crag Top. Before the war Howard
had helped to found the Knaresborough Trade Association,
which became the Knaresborough Chamber of Trade:
"I was President in 1934, 1948 and
1952. I was Area Chairman for the North-Eastern area two
years [and] I was appointed to the Board of Management
for the National Chamber of Trade in 1950."
And selling the shops in 1962 saw an increase in his Chamber
of Trade commitments.
"I sold the stock and sold the property
because good will doesn't mean anything nowadays - it did
when I was a boy - and I got what I wanted for the stock
and I got what I wanted for the property at that time and
at that time I was being invited to become President of
the National Chamber of Trade. I had to say no to start
with, of course"
The National President was elected by a small sub-committee
of the present President, plus the Chairman of the Board
plus the Secretary. They look at a list of Members of the
Board and pick out three possible candidates and then the
Chairman of the Board interviews one to see if they want
it.
"Now I'd had to refuse twice - it's
a two years appointment and it works this way: you're President
Elect for two years, you're President for two years and
then they make you Past President for two years. So it's
six years and I just hadn't the time to do it and of course
it costs money as well. Anyway, when it got to '63 they
said "Now, you're next one on the list, and there's
no running away and getting out of it!" [so] I said "Alright,
fair enough, I'll tackle it".
So for six years Howard was spending a lot of time on Chamber
work - giving his time for the good of his community as he
has always done.
NOTES
Toc H is an organisation
founded in 1915 during the First World War and which continues
today with the underlying aim of bringing a wide spectrum
of people together, linked by a common task of service to
the community. Toc
H website
October 2003 Sadly Howard Bell died on
October 6th 2003. His well-attended funeral service was held
at Gracious Street Methodist Church on 14th October 2003. |
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