My Early Years

I was born on 17th January 1924 at the Kings Arms public house in Princes End, Tipton, the first of three boys. At that time, my grandmother, Alice Preston, was the licensee. My father, Harold Smith, worked at a factory as a supervisor, but at night he helped in the pub. They inform me that when I was born I was the ugliest baby that anyone had seen. My next door neighbour tells me that I have not changed much!

I kept them awake at night, so one night my father took the top off a bottle of milk, put a teat on the end, and left it in the cot. I drank the lot and slept for 24 hours. My grandmother said that he had killed me, but that they had had the best night's sleep since I was born.

The choice of names is not very clear. My father chose Stanley and they wanted another name as well. Whether by accident or design, my mother's youngest sister, Nance, was sitting on the old night soil toilet, which was down the garden, when she came running down shouting that she had thought of another name: 'Bertram'. It was decided: 'Stanley Bertram Smith'. So why 'Tony'? Well, that will be explained later on.

Me, Tom, Bob, Reg and Frank.

I will now jump forward four years to when my brother Reg was born. You do not remember too many facts, but I always thought that I had three mothers and one father. The reason I thought this was because the house was my grandmother's. Mum and Dad and my Aunt Nance, my mother's youngest sister, would tell me to do this, grandmother would come out and ask why was I doing this, then Mother would tell me to do something else. Confused?

In the local paper they have a photograph of the old pub and with it is grandmother and two of the old customers. When I began to understand the layout of the pub, you never saw any ladies in, only men. Ladies only started coming in later on. There was sawdust on the floors, iron tables, and spittoons under the tables. The men used to spit in these from a good distance.

The main room was called the 'Tap Room'. I still have not learned why this was the case. In the middle of the Tap Room stood a coke burning stove and after the men had left at night, around 11 or 12pm, we would take a shovel and bring the coke out of the stove and put it on our fire in the kitchen. Then we would grill beef steaks over the fire on a wire grill. The last one was wonderful. On my 5th birthday I started school. This was next to the public house. I think I must have been the quickest youngster to be sent home. They sent me home because they found me kissing a young girl in the playground.

At about six years old we were allowed to attend the local cinema known as the 'Flea Pen'. I would go with my cousin Tom who was twelve months older than me. The films we liked were cowboys and indians and this was how my nickname 'Tony' was thought up. In one of the long-running films there was a cowboy and his horse: Tom Mix and Tony', we would go back home taking off these two. One of the customers in the pub saw us and started calling me Tony. That is how I got the name and now no one since that time has used my real one.

In the cinema they had long wooden benches and when it got too busy, the owner would come along with a long bamboo pole, tap you on the head and ask you to move closer. We did not mind this, but some of the men would come straight from work, bringing their sandwiches with them, usually it was bread and cheese with onions.

On the 23rd May, 1931, Frank, my youngest brother, was born. The world has changed a lot since we were young, but not for the better. There were no televisions, only radio and these were run on batteries and accumulators. You had to take them to be charged. There could be as many as six or more of these and only people with money could afford them. The young children didn't swear as they do today. Most houses left their doors open and you felt safe. Some of these ordinary folk would make stone ginger beer, or it cost you one penny a bottle. You could speak to most people without being afraid.

The churches were our centre of social entertainment and Milk Bars where we went for drinks and a chat. Most houses had what we called 'the brew house'. This was attached to the dining room and had the cooking stove and the boiler for washing clothes, nearly always done on a Monday morning. The hot water in the boiler was also used for baths. Our bath was a metal one and could be carried around the 'brew house'. It was very cold so you tried not to have many baths. There were no washing machines, so every Monday women would boil the clothes and then you would hear them thumping the clothes with a wooden dolly in a wooden tub. The main transport was by horse and trap or trams. To go ten to twenty miles was like going fifty to a hundred miles today.

My grandmother was one of the first ladies to hold a pub licence and she was very strict with the customers as they were big drinkers, employed mainly in the steel works. Rules were laid down so that they could play dominoes, but no cards. This came about because four men were playing one day and an argument started, one of the men took his boots off and threw them at the other man. The boots missed him and went through the window, so no more games of cards. They still tried to cheat, even at dominoes. We kept four boxes of them behind the bar and the way they would cheat was by marking the double sixes. If the men found one marked they would put them back in the box, stick them in the stove and ask for another box.

When you look back, I think my generation had the best of both worlds. Before World War One there were the Victorians. My grandmother was sent away into service at the age of fourteen. My grandfather was working in a factory at the same age. There was no television or radio and young people had to make their own entertainment: marbles, skipping etc.

After 1924 things began to get different, more relaxed, but not enough to let children and teenagers get out of hand. Mind you, my English master would tell us that he felt sorry for us because we were born in a nervous time, just after the First World War, 1914 - 1918.

The one thing at that time was that you did not grow too old too quickly. Sex was a bit more reserved and not many girls got into trouble as it was frowned upon. If a girl did get pregnant she was sent away to her auntie's to have the child.

My Aunt Nance, who lived at the pub with us before she got married, died in 1996 at the age of 93. Just before she passed away I was able to ask her if some of the stories I had been told were true. She said they were, and they did happen.

My mother and father at the back of the pub.

On a Saturday night we would cut up loaves of bread, butter it, and then make sandwiches for the men on Sunday, all free. I could never understand how they went home on Sunday and ate their dinners. George Ashfield, one of our old Boar War customers (you could always tell them because they had large beards), was a heavy drinker. The story goes that his wife was cooking his dinner when the plate slipped and it went on the floor. She went into a panic because he kept to a set time and would be very nasty if it was not on the table. When the bell rang she had to think what to do and luckily George was not too drunk so she told him to go into the front room and his dinner would be about five minutes.

The gods must have been with her, because he went to sleep in his rocking chair. When he had gone off she had a brain wave. She put her finger in the gravy and very gently, so as not to wake him, smeared the gravy on his beard. He was only asleep for about five minutes and woke up angry shouting for his dinner, fingers crossed, his wife said 'you had it when you came in. There's still food in your beard.' He put his tongue round, tasted the food, and said 'yes, you're right', and went back to sleep.

The second story is about a bald headed butcher. His name was Mr. Yeardsley and a young boy came to work for him. Mr. Yeardsley gave him the job of sweeping the old sawdust off the floor and putting more sawdust down. Twenty minutes later the boy was back asking what he should do next. Mr. Yeardsley told him to be very careful and clean the knives. Twenty minutes later he was back for a new job. Yeardsley, after some time, got fed-up with the boy asking what to do, so when he came back after his sixth job, old Yeardsley told him to take his trousers down and stick his behind in the window. Twenty minutes later the boy was back saying that he had done that. Yeardsley went mad and asked what the customers had said, the boy replied "they said, good morning, Mr. Yeardsley"!