Free Up West by Pip Granger Page A

estate – painting and the like – and carried out small repairs. ‘Generally,’ his son remembers, ‘he had to keep an eye on what was going on. He didn’t actually do the letting, but his recommendation counted very much. There were a few bad eggs, but basically it was a pretty stable society. Anything illegal, they would have been given notice to quit. You never abused your flat; you kept it in good nick. You made sure your doors were clean, your step was clean.’
    For those tempted to let things slide, there were stark warnings of what could happen in the streets all around. ‘Drury Lane and Covent Garden was a big tramp area,’ Peter remembers. ‘At the top of Kemble Street, on the corner of Drury Lane, was Bruce House, a Salvation Army type hostel. Tons and tons of down-and-outs, particularly in the immediate post-war years, would spend their time sitting or shuffling around outside there, or spitting in the corners, things like that. Very sad cases, a lot of them, often ex-servicemen who’d been severely damaged in the world wars.’
    There were 700 beds in Bruce House, and a further 344 cubicles in nearby Parker House. Local residents tended to look upon these hostels as a necessary evil. Olga Jackson, who was born not far away before the war recalls, ‘You were told, keep away from those places, but at least there was a place for homeless people to go. They might have beeninfested, because they used to fumigate them every so often, but nobody needed to be without a bed.’
    Her brother, Graham, got to know both places pretty well in the sixties. ‘When I went in to the funeral trade, you had to go in there and get the bodies out – and in the morning they were rank. The worst place of all was down by the Italian hospital, in Old Gloucester Street in Bloomsbury. That was a women’s one. That was awful, believe me.’
    The hostels were intended for single working men, but naturally attracted the homeless, the damaged and the alcoholic, who would hang around the area during the day, no matter what the weather, cadging handouts from people in the market and passers-by. Graham Jackson remembered that, ‘Down Drury Lane there was an electric substation, and the heat used to come out of a vent. The down-and-outs would sit in there: there was like a little alcove, and they used to huddle in there, I often used to see them.’
    Then, as now, London was a city of contrasts: just a few minutes’ walk away from where the homeless huddled for warmth, there was great wealth. On the other side of the Strand, a little along from the Savoy, is the area known as the Adelphi, where Barbara Jones’s parents moved in the late thirties, when she was a baby. Her father was a caretaker-cum-housekeeper in a business premises behind the Tivoli, and they lived in John Adam Street, in the basement.
    â€˜As a family, we had no money and were, effectively, servants,’ she says; but their surroundings rubbed off on them. ‘I was discouraged from visiting the PeabodyBuildings children I knew from school. My parents had to be very cautious because we lived in a business house and had to enter by the front door, along with the rich and influential clients, so we had to be above “comment” at all times! Because we were the housekeeper’s children, we always had to be dressed like “young ladies”.’
    Although she had a prestigious address, Barbara was always conscious of living in someone else’s property. It was hardly the lap of luxury. ‘There was never daylight in our flat. It was electric light all the time.’ There were some perks, though: ‘The Embankment Gardens were our garden, and the river was at the bottom of it – although we knew better than to have anything to do with the water.’
    Several other people I contacted told similar stories; instead of living ‘above the shop’, as in Soho, they