King's Cross Kid
Authors: Victor Gregg
I dedicate this book to the memory of my childhood friends in that long ago time, and especially to the women who helped me find a pathway through the years of my youth, now alas all departed.
Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it
George Santayana,
The Life of Reason
, vol. 1, 1905
Contents
King’s Cross to the Thames, my childhood stomping ground
King’s Cross and the streets where I was born
18 Costermongers in Kenton Street
27 Joe Brown’s Masters of Rhythm
34 Boxing Clubs and the Palais de Danse
38 The Loss of Sammy and Maisie
Also Available by Victor Gregg with Rick Stroud
King's Cross to the Thames, my childhood stomping ground
King's Cross and the streets where I was born
I first entered the life and world of Victor Gregg in 2009 while researching what life was like for a member of the Rifle Brigade fighting in the Western Desert in the Second World War. I had been given an introduction to Rifleman Gregg by Major Tom Bird who was his company commander in Egypt in 1941. Vic lived in Winchester, home of the Green Jackets and where, in 1937, he started his life as a soldier. When Vic collected me from the railway station that cold autumn day I had no idea that I was meeting an extraordinary man who would later become my friend and co-writer.
That first meeting led to our collaborating on
Rifleman: A Front-line Life from Alamein and Dresden to the Fall of the Berlin Wall
.
The title alone gives some idea of the scope of Vic’s life and the adventures he’s had.
A few months after the publication of
Rifleman
, Vic came up with the idea of writing about his childhood in London’s King’s Cross between the wars, something he had only briefly touched on in the first book. Vic was born in 1919. His father vanished soon after the birth of Vic’s sister, Emily, leaving the children to be brought up by their mother and grandparents. Vic left school when he was fourteen and was soon drawn into the gaudy, violent world of Soho. He was also fascinated by what he calls the ‘arty-crafties and beardy-weirdies’ of Bloomsbury – the bohemian bunch of artists, writers and political activists. King’s Cross, Soho and Bloomsbury are the background to Vic’s story.
Vic describes a world that has vanished, swept away by bombing, post-war reconstruction and the welfare state. Just before we were to deliver the manuscript of the book, now entitled
King’s Cross Kid
,
Vic and I spent one Sunday walking round his childhood haunts. Much more survived than I had expected. While some places had gone completely, the street names were still there, as were many squares, rows of houses and shops.
We walked from the renewed splendours of St Pancras station, where Vic used to steal coal; we had a cup of tea in Exmouth Market, where Vic’s first employer owned a sweat shop making spectacle frames; we stood in the doorway of a Peabody Buildings block of flats where the fifteen-year-old Vic knocked a man senseless to defend family honour. What had once been butchers’ and greengrocers’ shops were almost all now smart coffee houses and restaurants, but, amazingly, the ironmonger where Vic was sent to buy paraffin is not only still there but is owned by the same family and the old, disused gas mantle still hangs from the ceiling.
Slipping in and out of the trendy, well-heeled crowds were the ghosts of eighty years ago: young kids on the scrounge, stealing vegetables from Covent Garden, blagging tips off doormen in the posh hotels. Mothers and fathers desperate, poor, prepared to do anything to feed their children. A mark of that poverty came when Vic said to me, ‘You could tell the posh houses round here, they were the ones that had front doors.’ Poor as they were, those people had a strong sense of identity and knew how to have a good time and, like Vic, many had a contempt for authority. Their fighting spirit lives on in the pages of this book.
Rick Stroud, October 2012
1
I'm lying on a wooden two-tier cot. Down below me, still in the land of nod, my brother John is not yet aware that a new day has dawned. My dad gets up and puts the kettle on for his morning wash and shave, then I can hear my mum getting up. She doesn't get dressed because as soon as my dad is away from the sink her first job is to cook his breakfast. While he shaves I can hear them nattering away to each other. I lie low, because Mum likes us to stay where we are, âout of harm's way', until she's seen my dad off to work.
After all the clattering and natter between Mum and Dad I peek through the gap in the blankets which hang from a length of sash-cord and divide the family sleeping quarters. I watch Dad pick up his bag of tools, he gives Mum a kiss and off he goes. Silence descends.
âCan we get up now, Mum?' On the way down from my perch on the upper bed I manage to give brother John a sly kick. âShall I give 'im a whack, Mum?'
âYou dare let me catch you 'itting your little bruvver and I'll tan the arse off yer.'
So I leave John to make himself known in his own time. If he gets up a bit too late then I get first dibs at the porridge our mum puts on the table, and John will be left with the lumpy bits and start howling in protest. Mum might give him a gentle whack to shut him up and I will be smirking all over my face.
2
The four of us live in two pokey little rooms up on the third floor of number nine Compton Street which is in London near King’s Cross. The front room faces the street and serves as the family bedroom, lounge and dining room, all in one. The other room is the kitchen and washroom, it is smaller than the front room and looks out on the backyard where all the dustbins and other rubbish are kept. Outside on the landing is the coal box and a big tin bath which hangs from a nail banged into the wall, all nice and handy. There are two toilets in the house, one in the basement that is used by the lady who lives down there, the other on the second-floor landing and for the general use of the rest of the house. Every day the women of the house take turns to keep the toilets, stairs, passages and landings clean. The last thing our dad does before he goes to his bed is to make sure that all the windows are wedged tight with little bits of wood. This is because the slightest breath of wind and everything starts rattling and Dad will wake up grumpy because he couldn’t get any sleep. He says the noise reminds him of machine guns going full pelt. I don’t know what a machine gun is or what it sounds like and the rattling doesn’t keep me awake. The real problem was that our houses were lit by gas and to make the gas burn bright you had to cover the lamp with a mantle, a fragile cotton tube impregnated with some sort of substance that made it glow and stopped it catching fire. The wind can blow in so hard through the gaps in the woodwork that it blows the gas mantle to bits, so Dad has to go outside on to the landing where he keeps a big paraffin lamp with glass all round it that stops the flame from blowing out. Mum says she don’t mind the paraffin lamp ’cause she can put her hands over the flame to keep her fingers warm. Our dad gets very angry about what he calls the ‘landlord’ ‘who takes the rent and don’t do nothing for it!’ Dad says that if he had the chance he’d take this landlord out and shoot him. Mum tells him not to be silly, and then they have a laugh and go to bed. I know all this because I can peek out of the crack in the curtains. Mum and Dad think I’m fast asleep but I’m not.