Guards Menswear, London and Basingstoke in the 1960s.

The prompt for this week’s Sepia Saturday is Bobbies, bellies, bums, brushes and beards. 

I'm not sure what the collective noun for a group of bellies is. A bouquet of bellies was the best I could come up with, but I also like a bevy, a bulge and an embarrassment! Anyone got any better ideas?

This is a photo of me with a group of work friends and colleagues about to join the carnival procession. The year was 1969, and the carnival was in Basingstoke, Hampshire. I'm standing in the front row fourth from the right (in front of the cooking pot!), with my friend Annike to my right and Rose our office manager to my left.

It took weeks and weeks to make the paper flowers, grass skirts and palm trees, but it was a lot of fun! A couple of low bridges on the way to the town centre played havoc with the trees. It was made even worse when we set off along the route because the lorry in front of us was complete with a fully operational water canon! The boys on that float thought it was hilarious to soak the girls on ours. This was in the days when you jammed lots of people onto small vehicles not like the ‘monster trucks’ in use now.

We all worked at Schneider’s (Guards Menswear) so goodness knows why the chap on the back of the lorry thought it was a good idea to remove his trousers!

Since 1843 Guards have trousered the well-dressed man. Guards in the modern mood, with many refinements born of this long experience, are available in remarkably fine Worsteds, Gabardines and Twills...

When I started working for Guards, the business was located in Durward Street, Whitechapel, but it wasn’t long before they moved to Basingstoke. The 1960s saw lots of businesses moving out of the city into ‘overspill’ towns as part of the Greater London Plan. I loved the excitement of going ‘up to London’ by train and was sorry when the time came to move. Now of course, I wish I had taken more notice of my surroundings. I have a vague recollection of a tall building, an old-fashioned lift and the office where I worked. I assume there must have been machine rooms and cutting rooms, but I honestly couldn't say.

Above: Durward Street in the 1960s, practically unchanged from 1888

My memories are more about the girls I worked with, many of them born and bread in that part of London, and the places we visited in the lunch hour. Market stalls, pubs and shops were the things of interest back then.  How I wish I could return to my seventeen-year-old self and take a proper look around!  I do remember being nervous on the walk to and from the underground station, especially on murky evenings. My head was always full of stories of Jack the Ripper, London smog, dark alleyways and gruesome murders. Durward Street (formerly Buck's Row) was close to where the body of Jack the Ripper’s first victim was discovered.

Police Constable Neil with the Body of Mary Ann Nichols in Buck's Row, Whitechapel

The Gloucester Citizen 08 September 1888

The scene of the crime is not far from Buck's-row, where the woman Nicholls was lately murdered. The discovery was made by John Davis, living at 29, Hamborough-street, in the yard of which the body was found. Mr. Davis was crossing the yard at a quarter to six, when he saw a horrible looking mass lying in the corner. While he was gone to give information to the police, Mrs. Richardson an old lady, sleeping on the first floor, was aroused by her grandson, and looking out of the back window saw the body lying in the yard. The throat was cut from ear to ear, and the deceased was lying on her back with her legs outstretched; her clothes were pushed up above the knees, and the body was ripped up from the groin to the breast-bone, the heart and liver were torn out, and the remains were lying in a pool of blood...

I had no idea this post was going to turn out to be quite so gruesome. It’s amazing the twists and turns these stories take.  Something that surprises me time and time again is how one thing leads to another.  Every time I set out to research one member of my family, I find myself meandering around lots of dead ends and dark alleyways – much as I did here!

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