Read Bombsites and Lollipops: My 1950s East End Childhood for Free Online

betting. For a start, they were in a very good spot, in the heart of bustling, busy Petticoat Lane, renamed Middlesex Street in 1830 (by the Victorians who wanted to avoid references to women’s underwear), though everyone continued to call it by its original name. Their little ‘commission agent’ shop on Middlesex Street was very close to Houndsditch in the City of London precinct, the junction where the time-honoured East-End hustlers or traders and the more respectable City gents, or ‘bowler hats’, merged. Consequently, the law wasn’t much of a problem: a friendly bobby from the local constabulary would usually turn a blind eye to cash being handed over for bets in the pubs and streets nearby: a well placed ‘bung’, or cash bribe, usually also handed over in the pub, saw to that little fly in the ointment. And while it was all fairly new to my dad, The Old Man knew the terrain well; he’d been running a family business in the Lane for most of his life.
    Before the betting business had been launched, the Middlesex Street premises had been a coal shop: this, in turn, had morphed over time from a local horse-drawn delivery business, though Jack’s dad, my great grandfather, had gone bankrupt more than once. So the network of contacts, both legal and otherwise, that Jack had made through a lifetime there meant my dad had a Chief Fixer to back him up if there were any problems. And as a Fixer, The Old Man certainly carried a bit of clout in the area.
    One day, not long after my dad came home, one of the newer runners that Jack had employed to take bets and pay punters was picked up by the police. A lone copper spotted him carrying an unusually large bundle down Middlesex Street and, as suspected, further investigation revealed it contained some black-market ‘gear’, in this case, several dozen pairs of trousers, all new, sourced from who knows where. Clothing, of course, was still rationed then. This was definitely a ‘sus’ package, a discovery that could lead to a court appearance and a hefty fine.
    Yet when the copper, also new to the area, marched the handcuffed and nervous man into the police station, his sergeant looked up in surprise.
    ‘He works for Jack Hyams, you fool. Get him outta here – or there’ll be trouble!’
    So there it was. Jack wasn’t exactly a mafioso making people offers they couldn’t refuse but my grandfather was well established in his ‘manor’. So I doubt my dad agonised over his career choice. And my mum wouldn’t have tried to dissuade him, anyway. She was happy. Ging was back, she knew he wouldn’t see her short and, joy of joys, she had her little girl to look after. Yet she was determined to stick with an only child. A boy, instinct told her, would be A Bad Thing.
    ‘I’m definitely not having any more,’ she wrote in a letter to Sarah, who’d decided to emigrate to Canada after her time in Germany.
    ‘I always wanted a little girl and I got a little girl. A boy would wind up drinking in the pub all the time, just like Ginger and The Old Man.’
    Such single-mindedness was in contrast to my mum’s easygoing demeanour. Maybe she was already concerned about our less-than-salubrious environment. Two kids in the tiny flat would have been a nightmare – it was bad enough humping a pushchair up and down the stone stairs when I was very little – though many still lived in far worse conditions, of course. But essentially, Ginger and Molly, hugely relieved that the war was finally over, just wanted to get on with life. They didn’t have ambition in the sense we now understand it. It was enough for them that they’d come through it all. The future would take care of itself. And my dad’s cash income as an illegal bookie would see us right.
    And so began a routine, six days a week, that remained fairly unwavering for nearly two decades: each morning, my dad, smartly suited and booted, would take the number 649 bus down the Kingsland Road to Liverpool Street and