Introduction
William Hoad, or Billy as he was generally known in his younger
years, was my maternal Grandfather. Billy liked to write and he
liked to talk. In his early twenties in the 1890s, he kept a diary
as he began his adult working life as a journeyman painter and
decorator in Sussex and London. This daily record started off in a
halting fashion with brief notes of the building sites he was
working on and how he spent his evenings and weekends. But as he
became more confident with this medium, so the record became
fuller. Some sixty years later in the 1950s, now retired and living
in Norwich, he was frequently invited to give talks to community
groups on all sorts of matters. Sometimes these groups were seeking
his knowledge on professional or historical matters; more commonly,
he would entertain a group with tales of growing up poor in rural
Sussex, of his start in business, or of old characters he had met.
This record will draw on both Billy’s diaries and his later
recollections.
Billy Hoad, 1896, detail from a
group photograph of the Hampton Court Maintenance Staff Annual
Beano outing to Maidenhead (see the forthcoming posting on 'Billy
on holiday').
Billy never learned to type. His diaries, lecture notes and
reminiscences are all handwritten in an attractive, readable
script. They have spent the past half century folded up in
mouldering manila envelopes or stuffed into an ancient leather
brief case. From a strictly personal point of view, I want “to do
something” with these papers, partly to acknowledge a grandfather
of whom as a young child I was very fond, and partly to acknowledge
my mother’s careful preservation of these relics of a much loved
father. But it is the record Billy has left of his class, place and
time that may be of more interest to a wider audience.
Billy Hoad’s diaries chart the uncertain life of a journeyman
painter during a time of recession in the English building
industry, never sure of how long the current job would last or
where the next job would be found. They tell of the social life of
a young man in a small market town, of his interactions with a
small circle of friends and of his participation in church and
other local community groups. They tell of the pressure of family
obligations on the oldest son of an habitual drunk, a son who felt
obliged to support both his parents and his seven younger siblings
for as long as any of them needed that help. They tell of a
succession of girl friends, each relationship doomed to failure as
long as his primary financial commitment remained to his parents
and siblings. They tell of an intelligent, questing mind observing
the great events and philosophical issues of the day and adopting a
liberal, sceptical view of most of what he saw. They tell of
someone with a great thirst for culture, taking every opportunity
to catch the train up to London to take in a musical or dramatic
performance or to explore the great museums and galleries.
There are very detailed accounts of Billy’s journeys, by train
to centres such as London or Brighton, and then day-long walks
through the cities or through the countryside. It is almost
possible to retrace his steps as he toured the building sites of
South and West London looking for employment. In 1898 Billy bought
himself his first bicycle and suddenly his range expanded. Many of
these explorations are developed in some detail in his diaries. The
early diaries stop at the end of 1899 and, apart from an account of
Billy’s first forays into independent business in 1902, that is
where this account will finish.
William Hoad, aged 82, addressing a
conference of AGA salesmen in 1955.
Billy’s later reflections on his early life fill in some of the
gaps. They talk more about his family, about his common and
sometimes dubious ancestry, of local characters he knew as a lad.
There is an illuminating account of his progression through the
school system, from dame school, to church primary school, to
Horsham Free School and then out to work at 14. These later
writings are particularly interesting in their accounts of Billy’s
early work experience, of the series of part time jobs he took from
the age of 8 to help support his family, of his apprenticeship to
the “three branch trade”- the combination of painting, plumbing and
glazing that covered just about everything that needed to be done
to the inside of a house, of his years as a journeyman
painter/decorator, and of his first steps to develop a business of
his own in the early years of the 20th century.
I shall be using a series of linked web pages to let Billy tell his
story. It will begin with some of the accounts of his early years
that Billy wrote as an old man. In most cases, these formed the
basis of talks he gave to community groups. These initial
recollections will provide the context for a series of excerpts
from the diaries that Billy kept between 1893 and 1899. A couple of
verbatim transcripts will be included to give a sense of Billy’s
day-to-day life, but for the rest, a thematic or event-based
approach will be used. This should make the diaries more accessible
and informative than would a complete transcript. If there is
enough interest expressed, a full transcript of the diaries is
always a possibility at some point in the future.
My introductory comments and insertions will be in italics or by
way of footnotes. All the rest will be Billy Hoad’s own
words.
Billy mentions dozens of friends and contacts by name and it would
be interesting to hear from any of the descendants of these people
who come across this record. Some may even be able to provide
photographs of their ancestors from this period. There is an
account in the diaries of Billy going halves on a second hand
camera with his best friend Bernard Baker. It would be a triumph of
the digital age if some of the photos the two of them took turned
up!
Tom Prebble
New Zealand
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