Recollections by John Butler
WALTER STANLEY BUTLER AND FAMILY
(We will be adding photos when scanned)
EARLY DAYS
Born in 1898, Walter was the second child of Alfred and Elizabeth, who had recently
arrived in Weymouth from Jersey with their eldest son Fred who was by now 8
years old.
In later years, after he was married, Walter was always known 'Jim˙ by his
wife and family, but the rest of the Butlers always knew him as Walter and for the
sake of convenience and clarity, I shall use that name in these notes.
The picture of him standing with his brother Harold outside No. 5 Herbert Place
shows him wearing scout uniform. This would have been taken
close to the outbreak of World War One and it is possible that, along with other
scouts, he was engaged on civil defence duties, giving warning of aerial attack on
his bugle. He would have left school by then and was most likely apprenticed to a
hairdresser as was his brother. He joined the army shortly afterwards and became a
physical training instructor. Later he was sent to France where he was wounded in
a poison gas attack by the Germans which left a lasting weakness in his lungs. After
being discharged from the army, he resumed his training as a hairdresser and after
qualifying, worked away from home.
As a character, he was more happy-go-
lucky than his more serious minded brothers.
His leisure hours were frequently spent in a
public house but that is not to say he drank
to excess. He valued good company as he
himself was and tended to be generous and
caring towards other people. When he visited
parents at Weymouth, he used to take his
mother shopping in a taxi - an unheard of
extravagance for the residents of Herbert
Place in those days. He paid for the shopping
and went back broke!
It was during the post-war era that he
became interested in a young widow, Winnie
Robinson.
WINIFRED GLADYS ROBINSON, nee ROSE
Born at Weymouth in 1894, daughter of Henry John Rose and Sarah Louisa nee Joliffe,
Winnie was the third of a family of eight children. In 1915 she married Ernest
Thomas Robinson who was serving m the army. Unfortunately, he was killed in 1918
leaving her to restart her shattered life. One can imagine the emotional difficulties
for them both when Walter came into her life, and eventually she decided to leave
Weymouth.
In 1924, she was living in London where she worked for a hardware manufacturer
and dealer, Hepburn and Cocks of Portsmouth Street, Kingsway, London WC2. She decided to emigrate to Australia, gave in her notice on the 12th August of that year and took a job as a travelling companion to a lady making the voyage to Sydney as a means of paying for her passage. In Sydney, she lived at 3 Princes Street Bexley
and worked for the Civil Service Co-operative Society of N.S.W Ltd.
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| Walter BUTLER worked as a hairdresser in order to pay his passage to Australia where he proposed to Winnie three times. |
Walter however did not give up the struggle and took a job as hairdresser on board a ship of the Orient Line which plied between London and Sydney. He sailed three times to Sydney to see Winnie. Each time he asked her to marry him and twice she refused him, but on the third visit he said that he would not come out again if she still refused him. So she said "Yes", obtained a passport on the 27th August 1925 and finally sailed for London in the S.S.Osterley with a third class ticket costing £40 on 8th January 1926. They were married in St.John's Church, Weymouth on 16th April 1927.
THE END OF 'STONEHENGE'
My own father once told me a story about his brother Walter as an example of his
caring nature for ot-her people, and relates to an event shortly after their marriage.
By this time Walter was working in London, most likely at Phylis Earles, of Dover
Street, Mayfair along with his brother Fred. He was also lodging with Fred and
Jessie at their home at 93 Lavender Grove, Dalston, London E8, who then rented a
couple of rooms to Winnie and Walter at the start of their married life.
Fred, in a fit of enthusiasm when he had become the proud owner of the house,
had built a massive garden seat out of concrete. As time passed, he began to feel
that it did not look particularly pretty and wanted to demolish it.
It had been dubbed 'Stonehenge' by the
family and seemed just about as endurable as
this picture with Fred, Grace and Pat shows.
With hands that were accustomed to doing fine
work as hairdressers, neither of the brothers
could tackle breaking up the mass of concrete,
particularly Walter who still suffered a weakness in his lungs as a result of the gassing in
World War I, so the problem of "Stonehenge"
remained.
On leaving work one day, Walter went to
light his pipe as he turned out of Dover Street
into Piccadilly, and discovered that he had no
matches left, he looked up the street and sure enough, there was a man selling matches
by the kerb. Times were hard, especially for disabled victims of the Great War, as
World War I was called then. He too was a victim but his disability had not denied
him a career.
As he handed the money for the matches he glanced at the seller. This was no
disabled ex-serviceman; he looked too strong and healthy, "What's a big strong
fellow like you doing selling matches?" he asked. Something in the tone of his voice
must have gained the other's confidence, enabling him to speak freely. "To tell the
truth, Guv'nor, I've been inside, doing time with 'ard labour. I've come out now but,
of course, no one will give me a job, so here I am, selling matches". Walter thought
quickly and then made up his mind. "I've got a job that you could do for me. I take
it that you're quite accustomed to breaking up rocks?" "I've done plenty of that,
Guv", replied the other with a wry smile.
Walter took the man on the bus with him to his home in Dalston and introduced
him to Winnie who was a bit agitated at being asked to entertain an ex-convict to
dinner. "I've only made enough for two, Jim," she said when they were alone together.
"Never mind," said Walter, "Give him half of mine. I'm sure there'll be enough".
Meanwhile, their guest had set to work with a will and the pieces of the demolished ‘Stonehenge' were now forming a new rockery at the end of Fred’s garden. When
Walter had paid the man for the job, the ex-convict said, “Lord Bless you Gov’nor.
You're the first bloke what's treated me decent since I came out!” “That’s all right," said Walter, "If you need a reference, you can now say that you have
been working for me".
THE NEXT MOVES
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| Norah outside 43 Ockenden Road, Islington in 2007. |
They rented a house, No.65 Warren Avenue, where Norah’s sister Barbara was born
in 1934. It was while they were living here that Norah started school. She recalls
being very reluctant and clinging to the railings in an attempt to avoid having to
go, but to no avail. She started at Meon Road Infants School but a later change of
address caused her to transfer to Westover School where on one occasion her teacher,
a Miss Woodward, stood her in a wastepaper basket in the corner for some misdemeanor.
The new house was No.11 Kimbolton Road which Walter had purchased, but it was at
the earlier house in Warren Avenue where I first met my uncle Walter and his family.
FAMILY GET-TOGETHERS
In summer 1935, my parents and I spent a holiday on the Isle of Wight. While we
were there, we made a trip back over the water by paddle steamer to Portsmouth to
visit Dad's brother Walter and family.
The accompanying pictures were taken in the garden
at Warren Avenue and recall an event of which I
have vivid happy memories. The first (left hand)
picture shows, left to right, Walter with his sister (my
mother) behind, then Barbara about one year old
being held by her mother, Winnie. Norah, nearly
41/2 is on the right in a rather charming pose, with
myself at 5 years old, having commandeered the
tricycle and of course looking the wrong way.
In the second one, Walter is
stooping to support Barbara on
the trike, while in the third,
taken by Mum, Dad (Harold) with
his then fashionable Charlie
Chaplin moustache is more concerned about Mum's handling of
the camera than posing for the
picture. Even so, she managed
to cut Walter and me in half!
The weather was hot and sunny and after playing in the garden, Norah and I went into the kitchen where Aunt Winnie took a jug out of the larder and poured us a
glass of barley water each. It tasted delicious but I don’t
recall having had any since those days. The jug had a cloth cover, weighed down
with glass beads to hold it in place.
Because I was living as far from the sea as you can get in this country, I
certainly envied Norah and Barbara living all the year round at the seaside.
The following winter, we went to Portsmouth again to spend Christmas with
them along with Grannie and Grandpa Butler. Grannie, in a letter to my parents
just beforehand, had said that she had fallen down the stairs at No.5 Herbert
Place and had a black eye as a result. When I saw her, I was disappointed; her
eye looked nothing like the black eyes depicted in the children's comics of that
era.
Unlike our house at that time, they had electric lighting and I was intrigued
by an extra lighting pendant in the living room. There was no bulb in it; it
was used as a socket for the electric iron. Uncle Walter had a mains powered
radio which, unlike our battery set at home, I was forbidden to touch as it was,
so I was told, liable to catch fire. (I had had dreams about that radio on a
couple of occasions afterwards!). Dad helped his brother fix up an extension
loudspeaker in their lounge. It was an earlier type of speaker than I was
accustomed to seeing and consisted of a base containing a coil and diaphragm
rather like a headphone earpiece but much larger. To this was fitted a curved
trumpet, rather like an old fashioned gramophone. When the music started playing
in both rooms, everyone thought it was marvellous.
I awoke on Christmas morning to the sound of church bells and soon got down
to sorting my presents out. Two major items that I can remember were a 9.5 mm
cine projector, or 'cinematograph’ as it was called and a train set. The projector
was quickly put out of the way before I could break it so Norah and I got down
to playing with the train. In fact, it was not a train; it was a clockwork
representation of a railway hand trolley worked by pumping a seesaw lever up and
down. It was made of painted tinplate and included a crew; Mickey and Minnie
Mouse. Other Disney characters were painted on the sides including Pluto the dog
whose tail actually stuck out and was the brake lever. There was a small bell
on the see-saw lever that rang merrily as it ran along. The track was a circle
of tinplate '0' guage rails and there was a small station building which had a
departure indicator painted on it saying, "Next train just gone". Of course a
circle of track goes nowhere so we laid the curved rails alternately to form a
straightish zig-zag. This was more fun and I recall that Norah and I agreed
that it would make its crew, Mickey and Minnie, dizzy and that would serve them
right. Such was the minds of small children of our generation. In the evening
everybody was banned from the living room by Harold and Walter until the great
show was ready and, getting impatient, we started waiting in the hallway at the
foot of the stairs. It was like queueing for the cinema and the ladies getting
impatient said, "Come on, its pouring with rain out here!". At last the show was
ready. The projector was hand cranked with a flashlamp bulb and battery There
were two films, about five minutes long by Walt Disney; 'That Bracing Sea Air'
which I cannot remember much about, and 'The Serenade' in which a pair of cats
were sitting on a wall singing or perhaps caterwauling (it was a silent film)
and ended up with Minnie Mouse, having thrown everything she could think of at
them and missed, reached under the bed and grabbed a chamber pot which got stuck
over the heads of the two cats!
At the end of our stay Uncle Walter walked with us to the tram with Norah. He brought his push bike which had an extra saddle mounted on the crossbar.
Of course I just had to ride on that and naturally, Norah complained bitterly.
The tram was a long time coming and Walter and Norah set off first. When we
finally caught the tram, we overtook Walter riding the bike with Norah on the
crossbar saddle, sailing and waving happily. That was virtually the last time I saw him.
VICTIMS OF WAR
Family life continued at Warren Avenue and later at Kimbolton Road. One treat
during the week was on Saturday evening when Walter, on his way home from work
used to stop at the 'Chocolate King', a sweet shop in Charlotte Street to buy
bags of sweet for his family. But dark clouds were forming on the horizon in 1939
by which time, both girls were attending Langstone Road School.
With the approach of World War II, it was
realised that Portsmouth, as an industrial
centre and major naval base would be liable
to air attacks. Whole schools were evacuated
to comparatively safer areas and on September
1st, 1939, Norah and Barbara, who were now
eight and five years old respectively, found
themselves lodging away from home and attending
school at Ottersbourne near Winchester.
For a while, they were billeted with, a young
lady and her father. Shortly afterwards, father
and daughter fell out with each other, so the
young lady left home and came to lodge with
Winnie for the remainder of the war.
Norah and Barbara were then transferred to a
new billet at Newton Valence. From here they
were transported to and from the village school
at Farringdon each day by lorry - the only means
of transport available under wartime conditions.
The village school had only two classrooms, one
was used by the infants with the older children
in the other. There were four or five rows of
desks with each class allocated to one row.
The teacher taught each class in turn.
As for
Norah, her education at least did not suffer
as she passed the 11 plus examination. This
was held at Alton which meant a bus journey all by herself.
That summer they went home for the holidays but the following Autumn term, the sisters became separated from each other. Norah went to the Southern Grammar School, now located in Salisbury, while Barbara was transferred to a Portsmouth School that had been evacuated to Clarendon Park near Whiteparish. They kept in touch however as Norah used to cycle over on Sundays and stayed for lunch.
This enforced separation was not without reason. Portsmouth was subject to
numerous air attacks by the Nazi German air force with a particularly heavy raid
on the 10th January 1941, afterwards called 'the Big Blitz' (from Hitler's boast that
under his air attacks, Britain would be defeated quickly in a 'lightning war
in German, 'Blitzkrieg'). Much of central Portsmouth was destroyed, including
the 'Landport Drapery Bazaar' - the large department store where Walter worked.
He was buried in Milton Cemetary; near
one entrance of which is a pub called
'The Good Companion'. Among the
mourners were his brothers Fred and
Harold. Fred remarked at the time that,
apart from the proximity of the pub
seeming appropriate for his late brother,
he could think of no better epitaph for
Walter than 'The Good Companion’.
With her children away from home and No.
II Kimbolton Road still awaiting repair
the effect on Winnie, now widowed for the
second time and living alone must have
been nothing less than shattering. With
so many other victims of war around her
at the time, it would be easy to under-
estimate the vast amount of courage and
effort she must have needed to carry on
to support and bring up her two daughters
 |
l to r Winnie Butler, Sarah Louise Joliffe,
Norah Coote holding Sarah Louise Coote
in the garden of Chesterfield Road in 1954
|
As a fourteen year old, approaching adulthood, the need for her to know grew
stronger and Barbara, having found out for herself by other means the cemetery
where Walter had been laid to rest, went there secretly alone. Passing through
the gates near 'The Good Companion' she started her long search among the grave-
stones. Eventually, she found it in an area overgrown with grass and wild plants.
There was no headstone. Her mother had not been able to afford one. There was
just an earthenware vase bearing the simple inscription, 'Jim'.
A THIRD MARRIAGE
The story now jumps to early 1952, By this time Norah was engaged to Ted Coote
and they were married in February. Mary and I were also married two months later
on Easter Monday. Neither of us could afford to attend each other's weddings but
it so happened that we spent our honeymoon on the
Isle of Wight and arranged to visit Ted and Norah
at their new home on our return journey. As this
was only a short distance from Kimbolton Road we
popped round to see my Aunt Winnie. A surprise
awaited us. She had become engaged to Alan Sturgis,
a widower who lived a few doors away.
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| Winnie and Alan Sturgess - 'Pop' married on 4 June 1952 |
They were duly married and Alan became known as
'Pop' within the family. In the years that followed,
we made several visits to Portsmouth and on one
occasion we dropped in on 11 Kimbolton Road. That
proved at first sight to be something of a mistake.
Unlike the majority of our family and friends
who invited us to drop in and take them as we found
them, Winnie liked to be well prepared to
receive guests and told us off for not letting her know we were coming. For one caught un-awares, she struck me as not having a lot to
worry about. I marvelled at the way the house
was kept. Everything well polished and in its
correct place and not a speck of dust to be
seen - very different from our own.
Photo to come - caption: Two brides called Mrs Butler:
Left, Winnie, engaged;
Right, Mary, on honeymoon.
They were however in the middle of doing the
washing. We went through to the back garden
where she was putting the clothes through an
old fashioned mangle with Pop turning the
handle. I have a vivid memory of the scene
which I have treasured ever since of the pair
of them laughing their heads off as they
mangled the clothes together. My father's
words came back to me and I was glad to see
something of the happiness that Winnie had
found with Alan after her earlier trials and
tribulations.
Time, however, takes its toll and eventually, Winnie became a widow for the
third time. Later on we had a message from Norah that her mother was seriously
ill with cancer from which she would not recover. We went by train to see Ted
and Norah and then went on to 11 Kimbolton Road where Winnie was expecting us.
If we hadn't been told how ill she was, we might not have noticed. She was
smartly dressed and well groomed and made us very welcome.
Afterwards, Norah came to see us off at the station and explained what an
effort her mother must have made to create that impression of normality.
She died shortly afterwards in 1977 at 811/2 years of age, the last surviving
member of our branch of the Butler family to have been born during the reign of
Queen Victoria.
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