Before the second World War there were quite a few characters living around the Little Street area; men such as Buck Turner, Matey Chambers, alias Charles Brown, toot Ellis, Old Seeter, a man of mystery, Sos Daniels and Corker Chettle.  These men are but a few of them, but the man I remember most has to be Harry Green, the man who wore beads.

Harry originated from Sussex, having come to Rushden as a young man with a gang of navvies when the mean sewer was being installed through Rushden.  He settled down in Rushden and lived at No.16, Bedford Road, where he lived until just before the Second War when he moved to the house next to Dial Farm, No.23, Bedford Road.  He was ganger over the ground-labourers and worked for most of his life for Robert Marriott’s of Rushden.  He was a man with a terrible temper, but I never saw him in twenty years vent it on to any human; if Harry looked a little bit hot they moved off.

Now, regarding the beads.  He wore a string of big, blue beads completely encircling his throat.  The only time he took them off was when he bathed or washed.  He was probably the only man in this part of the country to wear beads.  They were not worn by men!  If he had been the usual sort of man, other men seeing beads would have said, “Who is that poof?”  But one look at Harry and they never voiced their thoughts.  I worked with him regularly and everywhere we went people were curious: a man wearing beads!  People used to ask why he wore them.  I used to tell them the same as he told me: to keep the dust out of his eyes when he was digging.  He did tell me the real reason.  When he was a young lad he was prone to suffer from bad throats.  The doctor advised his mother to get something to wear round his throat permanently, hence the beads.  And he wore them till he died well into the eighties.

The day I started work, I was left sitting on a low wall waiting for two bricklayers.  Out in the centre of the road was an open manhole.  All of a sudden, I heard a man using foul language at the top of his voice, then a lump hammer came flying out of the hole and landed on the road followed by a steel chisel.  Two hands appeared and then a body: Harry.  I sat still and watched what was happening.  He ran along the top of the road and kicked the hammer and chisel as far as he could.  He turned round and spotted me sitting on the wall.  Perhaps I looked scared; I felt a bit scared.  He gave a big grin and said, “It’s all right, young Den, I was down the manhole cutting out for a pipe and I missed the chisel and hit my thumb with the hammer.”

The New Bicycle

When Marriott’s built St. Peter’s Avenue I used to ride home with him as we both lived up Bedford Road.  It was usual to travel as fast as we could down Wellingborough Road, to help us get up Skinner’s Hill without getting off.  I had a new Raleigh, an up-to-date sports model built for speed.  Harry had a very fast bike, thirty years old with a twenty eight inch frame and twenty eight inch wheels.  It was like sitting up the top of a pair of steps.  It had no brakes and no mudguards, only handle bars, pedals and a worn out saddle.  Parked outside the alms houses, nearly at the bottom of the hill, was a small Putnam and Tully’s delivery van.  Just as we were about to overtake it, it moved off, turning sharp right for St. Margaret’s Avenue.  I stopped.  I had good brakes.  Harry decided in a flash it was either the side of the van or the kerb.  Now, this kerb was eight inches high.  That was when he found out his bike could not jump.  The bike stopped.  Harry left the saddle at full speed, cleared the alms house wall and landed in the garden in a rose bush.  He looked like a big frog as he went through the air.  When he got to his feet he stood there shaking his fist at the van, which was disappearing up St. Margaret’s Avenue.  The air, I might add, was like a blue fog.  They used to say he could swear for five minutes without using the same word twice.  I assure you, it was right.

In the meantime, other Marriott men had arrived on the scene – Reg Welsford, foreman carpenter, amongst them.  Reg collected for the insurance in his spare time.  Third party insurance had just come in, so he advised Harry to make a good job of the bike, report it to the police and no doubt he could then claim a new one.  He laid it along the kerb and jumped through both wheels with both feet.  Then he found out he could not wheel it, so he put it on his shoulder.  He went to Rushden police station where he was told, to be able to claim anything, he had to be in collision with the van and this did not happen.  So, on the way home, he bought a new bike from The Lightstrung.

At this time, I was building an air-raid shelter for Reg Welsford in my spare time.  On the way there after tea I bumped into Harry who told me what had happened.  On arriving at Reg’s house I told him what had happened.  He asked, “Did Greeny say anything else?”  I said, “I’m not sure, as I was coming away, I think he shouted wait while I see that bloody Welsford.”  Funny, Reg never came to work for three days.

Drying The Linnet

Most people, those days, kept a cage bird of a sort as a pet.  Harry had a linnet.  One day he went home to dinner and, being a nice day, he hung the cage outside, on the house wall.  During the afternoon we had a thunderstorm.  When he arrived home, he said, the poor little linnet was wet through.  He thought of drying I with a towel but decided no, he might squash it.  So he had a brain wave.  He put the cage in the oven on a low flame and made himself a cup of tea.  Whilst drinking this he remembered the linnet in the oven in the kitchen.  It was still alive, but, he said, it had its mouth wide open, gasping for air.  He placed it on the table and blew on it until it was all right.  When he told me, it was explanation with demonstration: how it sat in the cage huddled up, cold and wet, followed by an imitation of the bird puffing and gasping for air in the oven and ending with the way he cooled it down.  And he acted all the parts.  Sometimes, on a wet day at work when we were all in the cabin, I used to say, “It’s right, Harry, you did put the linnet in the oven to dry, did you not?” and he would take it from there.  The others used to love it.  Sometimes they used to say to me, “Get Harry at it, if you can.”  This I was able to do quite easily.

I was with him one evening.  Factory Place was at the rear of his house and he owned a big lurcher named Mick.  On the way from Factory Place, Mick kept hitting his head on the wall.  He was having a fit.  Harry used to tell this one, but I had to forego that story.  The way he used to hit his own head on the wall, I used to think he’d kill himself.

When we were building the air-raid shelters at the Tecnic in Bedford Road, the shoehands were a nuisance.  They were always there at meal times, especially at nine o’clock lunch time, asking questions; passing their opinions as to what was going on.  Builders detested shoehands.  To them, shoehands were gossips who thrived on scandal.  They used to say they spread a bit of scandal quicker than the News of the World.  Well, Harry decided to stop them, so on his instructions I had to find the two biggest worms, wash them and put them in a jam-jar.  That lunch time he took one of these worms, opened his mouth and dropped it in slowly.  They all bolted.  He tried to get me to do it.  He did not swallow them.  He held them under his tongue till they had gone and then took them out.  This was successful for a time, so he thought he would try plan two.  We kept pigs and cured out own pork.  He requested two pieces of rind, three inches long and a quarter of an inch thick.  Home cured pork is not pink, it’s more yellow.  I took him two bits.  That morning, when the shoehands arrived, he had his back to them.  When he was ready, he turned round and said, “I’ve got a hell of a cold this morning.”  He’d stuck a piece of rind up each nostril with it hanging down about two inches.  A bomb could not have dispersed them quicker.  After that little episode they bothered us very little.

When we were doing down at one farm in the area, the farmer’s dog had five puppies.  The farmer also had a son and daughter about four or five years old.  I watched them ill-treat the pups one day, so I told the farmer.  He said, “They won’t hurt.  They’re only playing.”  They managed to kill four of them and on the Friday they cut the remaining pup’s tail off with an axe.  I said, “Tomorrow I’ll take that pup home.”

Come Saturday morning, I could not find it, so we came home.  Halfway down Bedford Road, Harry said to me, “Have you got a tanner, Den?”  I had and I gave it to him.  He got his great bag from under the seat and brought forth the pup and gave it to me.  I told my father when I got home that Harry had done me for a tanner.  “Not at all,” he said, “You and Harry are big mates.  He sold you that pup and you bought it in good faith.  Harry stole it if there is any comeback from it.  You would be in the clear.”  I saw Harry Green’s good points over the years.  My mother nursed and fed that pup by hand until he was strong enough to feed himself, and we had his company for thirteen years.  Thanks to Harry Green.

Pheasant For Dinner

When Barnwell Castle was sold to the Gloucesters, Marriott’s were commissioned to build new extensions and redecorate and refurbish inside, altogether work for six months.  The previous owner having been killed on safari in Africa there were no stock there, but dozens of pheasants wandered the grounds just like hens walking about.  The farm bailiff in property visited once a week on a Monday.  My family kept a fair quantity of hens, and war having been declared we were allowed a good ration of corn.  Harry had half a dozen hens and no ration.  One night he said, “Ask your dad if he could spare him a bit of corn.”  Next day he took the corn I took him, laid a trail into one of the stables, and in went the pheasants.  This happened several days running.  I think every man on the job had a pheasant for dinner that week.  I dared not take one home, my father would have taken me down to the Police Station.  I did say to my dad that Harry had said thank you for the corn.  It happened again at another farm during the change-over.  There were, most  likely, a hundred hens running the range and they were fed once a day in the early morning.  They used to lay in the stables and the outbuildings.  Every dinner time he’d say, “Come on, young Den, let’s go and collect our eggs.”  These he used to share with the others.  I could have had a dozen every day but I used to take two.  My father asked, “Where are you getting these eggs from?”  I said, “Harry gives me them, I suppose they’re for that corn you let him have.”  Our hens had finished laying about then.  The old dad said, “They are laying better than ours.”  I nearly said that he’s got more hens than use, but I thought better of it.

Harry Green often told me of the jobs he’d had at various times, like when he was just a lad, he said, he’d worked on the Blackwall tunnel.  When it was finished, he and another lad had the job of white-washing it for over thirty years.  When Harry’s name cropped up, I used to tell them about Harry and his mate and the Blackwall tunnel.  Then I had the occasion arise where I had to go through.  I realised then that he had pulled my leg – the construction inside the tunnel was glazed brick, apparently.  I shouted out, “Greeny, you bloody liar!”  I made the driver of the car really jump.  I thought about it when I got home.  What a dummy: white-washed Blackwall tunnel!  And I never tumbled to it, nor did anyone else.

A Man’s Man

I worked with this man, on and off, for several years.  He was looked on by many as a loud-mouthed, filthy-mouthed man.  There were many who were frightened of him, but there were others who knew him for what he really was.  To them he was just a big bluffer who got away with it.  They also knew of his better points.  He was a man who, if anybody needed help, he would give it to them.  If there was a woman or child about he never swore – he had marvellous willpower – and neither did anyone else if he was present.  We had quite a few Salvationists work on Marriott’s and he made sure they were respected.  I remember my father saying, one night he was working at Shelton at either the vicarage or the church and Harry was doing the groundwork.  The vicar said to my father, “I think that man is one of the nicest men I have ever met in my life.”  The old Dad said to me, “He ought to have been with us last week.”

When I started work, Marriott’s employed an old man who had a growth on his lip which apparently was a cancer of some sort.  Eventually it killed him.  At meal times he used to go on his own and site well away from the rest of the men.  Harry would go and find him and sit and eat his meals with him.  No one else would.  He cared a lot for other people in his way.  For all his bluff ways and swearing, I saw, at times, the real Harry Green and I remember, and I know I had a lot of respect for this man.  I could write a lot about his capers but I dare not, not that he ever hurt anyone.  They happened in a man’s world.

Harry lived with his common law wife and raised two sons [Sonny and George] by her and a daughter [Doris].  He could not get a divorce from his first wife so he lived with this woman and raised a family.  When he was in his eighties, his first wife died, so he and the lady he had lived with for close on sixty years got married.  I thought, “What a man!  He loved her all right.”  If any of your elder relatives ever speak of a man who wore beads, this may give you an idea of what sort of man he was.  I’m glad I knew him and enjoyed his companionship.  He also was top of his job and taught me a lot for which I have been often thankful.  This man was a real man’s man, but most of all he was a man.