My Father, Your Grandfather, My Dad, Your Granddad

For Abigail and Adrian

Frederick Alfred Burns was born on August 21st 1925 in Holborn, Clerkenwell, London. His mother was Eliza nee Chappell, born 1896 in Islington and his father was Alfred William. He had a sister called Lilian Beatrice, born 1923. His father worked as a gas fitter, and his mother worked as a seamstress for women's underwear. During the First World War his father fought in the trenches of Flanders and was the victim of a mustard gas attack which left him with breathing difficulties, character changes and post traumatic stress disorder.

The family lived in Coldbath Buildings which was built by an early housing association owned by the Peabody Trust which was founded in 1862 by a London based American banker called George Peabody. His aim was to relieve poverty through the provision of model dwellings for the capital's poor. Although Peabody's motivations were altruistic, judged by contemporary standards the facilities he provided would not be considered as “model”. Frederick was brought up in accommodation consisting of two rooms, with no bathroom, toilet or kitchen. Each landing in the large block of flats consisted of units of dwellings sharing a communal toilet and sink, with laundry facilities, drying rooms and bathing facilities on the top floor. The roof was accessible and Eliza kept chickens there. She received slops as chicken food from neighbours and gave them some of the eggs in return.

Coldbath Buildings, in Coldbath Square, were situated near Mount Pleasant Post Sorting Office and some of the extended family were employed there. Alfred William was involved in a road traffic accident and there was a successful court case fought in order to win compensation. This involved paying solicitor's fees which reduced the compensation somewhat; and the rest was spent by Eliza on a grand family holiday at the seaside, where the children were dressed in full leisure regalia, resulting in all the compensation money being spent.

A few years later a third child was born, Leslie. Lilian suffered from rheumatic fever which caused her to develop heart disease and she died on November 2^nd 1938 when she was 15. She was buried in Islington Cemetery, East Finchley in grave 22970, section L. Lesley, who was born prematurely, developed asthma and was sent to The Royal National Hospital of Diseases of the Chest at Ventnor on the Isle of Wight. Nothing of this place can be found nowadays, the main building was demolished in 1969 and the grounds became in 1972 the Ventnor Botanical Gardens.

Not long after this the marriage broke down. Leslie was unlike the first two children and it was rumoured that he did not share the same father as Frederick and Lilian. Maybe Alfred was suspicious about this; in any case he became violent and Eliza had to hide from him. She had two sisters, Isabel and Sophia who lived close by and they shared domestic duties and childcare. The three cousins on the sisters. Frederick, Marjorie, daughter of Isabel, and Sophie, daughter of Sophia would often share the same bed. They would often make alibis and hiding places for Eliza when Alfred was on the hunt for her. After the marriage breakdown, Eliza and her children embarked on a chequered course trying to secure accommodation. My father talked of short stays in rented rooms, moon light flights to avoid rent payments and insecure living. Eliza never remarried, but Alfred did remarry and have further children.

Before the Second World War started the family secured secure council accommodation in the north of Greater London. Frederick reached the age of 14 when the war was starting and left school to start an apprenticeship as a machine fitter with a local engineering company. This apprenticeship finished in 1941 and he wanted to train in the Royal Air Force as a pilot, so at the age of 16 he enrolled on 28^th September 1941 in the Air Training Corps No 259 (Kenton) Squadron with the aim of joining either the Royal Air Force, the Fleet Air Arm or the Royal Navy. In 1942 he had a girlfriend called Peggy Lister who lived at 13 Blundell Rod, Burnt Oak, Edgware.

It was then discovered that Frederick was colour blind and was at a disadvantage for night flying and instrument reading. Because of this disability he was discharged. On 20^th January 1944 he was informed that his application to join the Royal Navy through the Naval Recruiting Office had been refused. On 27^th January 1944 he was called up for National War Service to be a coal miner. He immediately put in an appeal against this as going down a mine was the last thing he wanted to do. His grounds for appeal were that his mother was a single parent, blind in one eye, living on a very low income and that he, Frederick, was the main form of support for his younger brother who had bronchial asthma. The appeal was heard on 15^th February 1944 and was rejected. It stated that his grounds for appeal would not have been enough to gain him discharge from the armed forces, and these were comparable occupations during the war. Reluctantly he started work as a Bevin Boy at Thrislington Colliery, owned by H Stobart & Co, West Cornforth on 11^th April 1944.

The pit in 1935 worked two seams, Busty and Harvey, but by 1950 worked eight seams: Brockwell, Busty, Five Quarter, Harvey, Hutton, Low Main, Main and Top Bunty. In 1945 it employed 1090 workers, 822 below ground and 269 on the surface. It produced coal for cooking, gas, household use, manufacturing and steam; In 1947 it produced in total 304,066 tons of coal.

In West Cornforth he was billeted with Margaret and John Briscoe, a couple whose own young son, William, had recently died. Here he integrated into local life and being 19 years old met and fell in love with a local girl called Elsie and proposed to her. He naturally wanted to introduce her to his mother but this meeting went totally not to plan. His mother was very bad tempered and rude to Elsie and when they got back to West Cornforth Elsie broke off the engagement. In her community family was very important and the mother's blessing to a union was especially needed. She was also reluctant to make a new life in London and was worried that Frederick would want to start their married life there. During this time he wrote a short piece that described working practices and conditions in the mines which is now exhibited in a Welsh mining museum.

He earned between two to five pounds a week, the amount dependant on the shifts and hours worked. From this amount deductions were made for tax and unemployment insurance, hospital fund, nurse fees, doctor's insurance, lost tokens and bus fees. These would average around four shillings. He also paid into the Durham Miners Association and Benefit Society (Thrislington Lodge) a weekly amount of 1 shilling and 4 pence, which included death in service benefit and sick benefit.

He later would talk of conditions in the mine and the treatment he received there. It was a dangerous, haphazard place to work. Officially there were no large disasters where five or more workers were killed, but the deaths from single accidents were prolific and consistent from the records from 1835 when the pit opened until 1959, the last record of known death before the pit closed in 1967. Around the ten years surrounding Frederick's employment, there were 19 deaths from in-pit accidents. The main reasons cited in a report of these times were “killed by a fall of stone” , “caught by tipper” ,“caught by tub” and “fall of cable”. It was a dangerous place to work.

In 1937 a pony keeper Frank Midgley aged 53 had been killed in the pit by a falling cable. Frederick was employed after a short training period as a pony keeper. Ponies were used to haul the hewn coal in waggons along tracks to lifting gear going to the surface. The foreman used to encourage the pony keepers to put too much coal into the waggons for efficiency but this made it difficult for the ponies to pull them and they suffered dreadfully. After a while he refused to fill the waggons any more and told the foreman so. There was an argument, and he threatened to inform outside animal welfare agencies of this practice. Then the foreman backed down. A few weeks later Frederick was working with the same pony when it refused to go down a by-road (tunnel) neighing and digging in its hooves to a stationery position. He couldn't get it to move. Suddenly there was a rumble from the tunnel, and a cave-in occurred where the roof hadn't been adequately propped. The whole roof fell bringing down rock and dust; he would have been killed if he had gone in with the pony.

He often went without leave back down to London to visit his mother and brother and an example was made of him with official sanctions being made for unauthorised absences on 27^th, 28^th and 29^th December 1944. He was fined £6.00 which was more than a week's wages. He made another appeal for discharge which was heard on 27^th June 1945 and rejected on 27^th August 1945. He was finally released in 1946 after being given notice on 9^th February that he was to be released on 27th May, being put into release group 59. He continued to have a friendly relationship with Margaret and John Briscoe up until their deaths in the 1980's, visiting them for holidays and them coming down to the London area many times. They became the godparents of his daughter.

He then went back to live with his mother and brother in Kenton, North London. He got a job firstly with J Laing and Thompson, and then Zenith Carburettors where in 1947 he became friendly with one of the secretaries of the managers, her name was Sylvia Pattison; she was 16 and he was 22 years old. They went out together for five years and married in 1952. They had problems getting accommodation as there was a post-war housing shortage. In January 1952 he wrote in his diary about the frustration that they felt over not being able to find somewhere to live and how he wished that they were married. There were some new flats being built at Hackney and they visited these on 13^th January, but nothing came from it. He noted that the King died on Wednesday 6^th February

They put a postcard in a shop window offering a reward of £25 to anyone supplying information to securing accommodation and this got a result. They were offered a room in a man's house as he was looking for money to support a court case he was fighting to win compensation for a road traffic accident that caused damage that was not his fault. So on Saturday 9^th February they put a deposit down on a room at 28 Culver Grove, Stanmore and arranged for the start of the banns to be called in church. He made a note in his diary that the church would cost £3.10/6d, the cars £2.10/0d and the photos £2.10/0d. On Friday 22^nd February they were very busy moving their stuff around to Culver Grove, they had a rehearsal at the church on 28^th February and on 1^st March they were married at 11am in St Lawrence's Church, Whitchurch, Little Stanmore and their honeymoon was spent in Lynton and Lynmouth, North Devon.

There were still a lot of problems for them to move up the accommodation ladder from the one room but there was a period of post war new growth with the development of new towns. In Hemel Hempstead rented houses were being allocated by the New Towns Commission to people who had employment there. Frederick heard of vacancies there with a firm called Addressograph Multigraph which specialised in addressing duplicating machines, and he was successful in his job application so they were allocated a house, 17 Ritcroft Close, in the area of Leverstock Green in 1954. Sylvia got a clerical job at the children's office. Their daughter was born in 1958 and she attended Merryhill Nursery School from the age of two years. In 1960 Sylvia got a new job as a secretary at Apsley Grammar School, and in 1963 they moved to a larger house at 32 Woolmer Drive, still in Leverstock Green.

Towards the end of the 1960's Frederick grew tired of factory work and switched jobs to become an insurance agent with the United Friendly Insurance Company. His daughter married and moved out of their home in 1976, and he was presented with two grandchildren, Abigail in 1981 and Adrian in 1983. He was made redundant from United Friendly in 1980, then took a small succession of temporary jobs, resulting in a permanent post as a Medical Records Officer at St Albans Hospital in 1985. He retired in 1991, and then moved to a bungalow in Connor Downs, Cornwall. Old-age retirement happened then when men reached the age of 65 and women the age of 60. He died on the 18^th May 2002 at the Royal Cornwall Hospital (Treliske) Truro.