JOHN WRIGHT, our man in Tasmania, sends us another dispatch from the Great Outdoors, this time about the Gold Rush Songster. CHARLES Thatcher was the Billy Connolly of the Australian goldfields. He was born in Bristol in 1831, the oldest son of Charles Thatcher and his wife Sophia, nee Hornsby. They moved to Brighton when Charles was 14; his father started a curiosity shop there. Charles went to London as a teenager to play the flute in theatre orchestras; and in 1853 emigrated to Australia in the gold rush. Finding little gold, he sought something even more elusive - orchestra work.
Everyone entertained themselves, gathering around their fires singing songs of their homelands. But the next year, a tent theatre opened, and then the Royal Victoria Theatre, a room attached to a pub. Charles played in the orchestra and shared a spot with an Irish comedian. He started doing parodies of well-known songs, making them funny and relevant to daily life on the goldfields, and it was soon clear that it was him people were coming to see.
The Melbourne Argus wrote: 'His witty commentaries give a much better idea of life on the goldfields than most of the elaborately written works,' and his best 12 songs were printed and circulated in Melbourne. A year later Charles was performing on his own in a concert hall with chandeliers, called the Shamrock, and played nearly 164 nights in succession. The Shamrock was attached to a pub and admission to the shows was free, as the owners made a fortune selling drinks. One day one Thomas Besnard was fined £5 when he whipped Charles 'for insulting his daughter'.
Then Charles got two days in the lock-up for punching Besnard to the floor, when he saw him coming out of a Shamrock concert. His song, The Amorous Bank Manager, about a man who was caught with a publican's wife and escaped through her window, had a few hisses mixed in with the thunderous applause. The Shamrock's owner then stormed on to the stage demanding to know why 'such a licentious and objectionable song' had been allowed. He shouted he'd 'wring Thatcher's neck if he came near enough,' and when Charles arrived on stage, a fight broke out. Reviews then started to be about Charles Thatcher's fighting ability as well as his songs.
Charles Thatcher was always topical, and sang about 'the troubles of the new chums, the excitement of gold rushes, fisticuffs, horse racing, cricket, the nuisance of dogs around the township, and puddling'.
The Jolly Puddlers was one of his hits and described the alternative and very messy way of finding gold, that involved splashing around to get gold out of waste clay. One day a female singer, Annie Day, arrived in town and two months later she and Charles disappeared. His adoring fans saw him again six months later, when he and Annie returned in February 1861 as a married couple. They kept on with the shows, but Bendigo was no longer the town of wild living. So they followed the diggers to New Zealand, and did it all again there. They returned to Bendigo in 1867, and the crowds were as appreciative as ever. Three years later the couple went to England with their two daughters.
Charles started selling curios he'd collected in the East. So excited by selling old vases he'd bought for a few rupees for 50 pounds, he left again, saying: 'I cannot resist the opportunity of making a few more thousands.' On this 'one more trip' he caught cholera and died in Shanghai in September 1878.
Fact 206: The posh Clifton flats - The Beatles once owned?
ALTHOUGH its fortunes have dipped and soared over the years, the area immediately north of the Clifton triangle has always had a certain air of upper-crust credibility and chic. Queen's Road was where the 1930s equivalent of 'ladies who lunch' shopped, and even though the big department stores and luxury furriers have long gone, the area still retains plenty of its once-elegant fashionability.
Nowhere is this elegance emphasised more than in the art deco splendour of Queen's Court. Started in 1936 and completed the following year, the block of flats of varying sizes is an excellent example of the pre-war aspirations of Bristol— or, more accurately, Clifton—to be a kind of 'mini-Bloomsbury', housing interesting, Bohemian, artistic types and BBC staff taking up positions at Broadcasting House in Whiteladies Road.
Indeed, the 'ocean liner' look of Queen's Court, very fashionable then, was modelled directly on Dolphin Square in London.
At the time, this was one of the trendiest places in the capital to live. The flats were centrally-heated by hot water which was piped under the Thames direct from Battersea power station across the river. The square boasted many famous residents, including the noted British actor Thorley Walters and it was in a flat in Dolphin Square that British fascist leader Oswald Mosley was arrested. In later times Princess Anne lived in the square with her second husband, and it is rumoured that MI5 had 'safe flats' there.
Exciting stuff indeed, and as a model for Queen's Court, Dolphin Square was just the ticket. Queen's Court was aimed at younger single people and married couples — there were no cohabitees in those times! — and it was definitely the more affluent end of the market to whom the 74 flats appealed. Porters in full livery were employed to look after the whims of the Queen's Court residents. They would go out and pick up groceries for them and would empty their rubbish bins quietly and discreetly at night. Some of the residents didn't even have to trouble themselves with anything as filthy as rubbish bins, for a number of the flats had chutes which went straight from their kitchen to the basement.
Queen's Court also included a restaurant serving breakfast, lunch and dinner, (exclusively for the residents, of course) and there was underground parking for all 26 cars, a large number in the 1930s. During the Second World War the flats were used as an air-raid lookout post because of the commanding views they had of the city and an air raid shelter was installed in the basement - again, for the exclusive use of the residents. Despite bombs dropping all around it and destroying buildings very close to it, Queen's Court was never touched and it retained its air of superiority despite the best efforts of the Luftwaffe.
Bristol Post columnist Jean Stone has memories of Queen's Court in those times: 'I remember how very smart and exclusive Queen's Court flats were, with chic ladies going in and out with their Pekinese dogs. In the 1940s, it was one of the best addresses in Clifton. 'Under the flats was Brunner's wonderful cake shop (now a hairdresser) where we would head every lunchtime for chocolate cream buns! Not only were the buns chocolate, but there was icing on the top and luscious cream inside, and the day a poster went up on the window saying it was closing down, we almost wept with disappointment.'
In the 1960s and 70s, the flats began to take on a new existence as residences for students, jobbing actors, artists and other boho types. The 1962 film Some People, starring Kenneth More, was made nearby and several showbiz parties were held in the flats. It was during the making of this film that Kenneth More, a very upstanding actor in the British tradition, met the actress Angela Douglas, with whom he had an affair which blossomed into romance and, eventually, marriage. Other visitors to the flats included actress Beryl Reid, pianist Russ Conway and, in a link with the flats design blueprint in London, actor Thorley Walters. The distinguished archaeologist Leslie Grinsell, who was an expert in ancient burial sites around the south west and was Keeper of Archaeology at Bristol's City Museum, was a resident in Queen's Court for a number of years.
At one stage during the 1960s, the building's ownership fell into the hands of four wealthy London-based musicians, Messrs McCartney, Lennon, Starr and Harrison. Yes, for a brief while The Beatles owned Queen's Court as part of their company Apple Corps' property portfolio, but given that they owned places all over the world at that time, it's highly unlikely that the Fab Four even knew they had the place., never mind worry about whether the rent was being paid on time. By the 1980s, the flats were known for their long, loud student bashes and, eventually, the menacing presence of drugs dealers within their walls. But all that changed in the last few years when the decision was made to refurbish the flats with the aim of letting them to young professionals. In a sense, the history of Queen's Court has come full circle. Thanks to writer, broadcaster and notable Queen's Court resident Richard Hope-Hawkins for help with this feature.
The business — still going strong in Stapleton Road and run for the last 50 years by the Fowler family — can trace its origins back to 1796, but in those days it was run by Alfred and Edward Lyddon. In 1894 Amos Raselle took over and it was under that name that the business became a well-known part of Old Market life. In 1984 it had to move as the area was redeveloped.
For a decade or more, Raselle was the only pawnbrokers left in the city and it remained that way until the early 1980s, when the trade — like the rest of the country — experienced a mini boom. Albemarle and Bond of Bedminster, which opened in 1983 with a brand new image incorporating plush carpets and potted plants, was the first new pawnbrokers to open in the city for 50 years. It is still going strong. Robert Pritchard, the managing director of Raselle's until he retired in 1984, described in an interview in the 1970s just how much things had changed in the business since he had started as a warehouse lad just three weeks before his 14th birthday.
'In the old days, before the war, there were six of us working on the pledge counter and we used to have queues every Monday morning,' he said. He remembered regular customers bringing in the same things every week, such as flat irons, fishing rods and even false teeth. 'They used to get them out for the weekend, which was the only time they had any money and perhaps the only time they needed them in order to tackle the meat in their Sunday lunch. 'It was the same thing with fishing rods —; you only used them once a week. There was real poverty then and poor wages even if you were working, but you couldn't afford to feel sorry for people. After you'd worked there year in, year out, it was just part of the job.'
Before the war, fiddles, flat irons and china dogs were favourite pledges, with the latter two being rejected unless they were in pairs. This was because one iron Was heated while the other was being used, and the dogs, of course, sat each end of the mantelpiece. In the deprivation years of the 1920s and 1930s, long queues built up at 'uncle' — as the pawnbrokers were known — stretching right down Old Market. People would pawn children's clothing and 'best' suits just to get them through the week.
So-called 'tallies' — men who pushed carts around the streets, picking up bulky items such as furniture for pawning — did brisk business. They charged a penny to take it to the shop for you. In early Victorian times, the 1830s, a pawnbroker stated that the main items pawned were men's suits, vests and trousers, and women's gowns, stockings, petticoats and hats. But there were also many items of domesticity such as pillows, blankets, sheets, bedcovers and tablecloths. Miscellaneous items such as umbrellas, bibles, watches, rings and war medals made up the rest.
Pawnbrokers in those days not only kept the wolf from the door, they also kept many a family from the dreaded workhouse. By the end of Victoria's reign, the business had become semi-respectable. John Swaish, who owned six pawnshops, became Lord Mayor of Bristol in 1913 and 1914 and was knighted. He was also a councillor for 35 years and a Sunday school superintendent. One of his workers, Jesse White, had this to say about the trade: 'We had 500 to 600 customers on a Monday... and it was always the women who came. They bought in their husbands' suites, shoes and wedding rings and on that they raised enough money to see them through the week.
'People used to pledge things for half-a-crown (12p), one and six (7p) or ninepence even — you could get a meal for four or five kids for that. Desperate women even went so far as to pawn the weekly wash.' Some families would buy a new suit especially for pawning from a 'duffer', or credit agent, and then pay him off weekly with money raised by taking it to 'uncle'. It was known as a duffer suit.
So the money went around and around. Raselle's business nowadays relies on quick cheque cashing and money transfers and it only takes gold jewellery as a pledge.
By contrast, in the 1970s the items pawned were wristwatches, rings, binoculars, record players, radios and the like. These days the clientele of so-called 'popping shops' has changed from the poor, working classes, unable to find money for rent or food, to middle-class people desperate for cash to pay electricity bills or to pay for car repairs or even to go on holiday. Modern pawnbrokers seem have gone back to their roots as moneylenders. After all, the sign of the three golden balls is really part of the coat of arms of Lombardy, which is where in Italy the first moneylenders set up shop, and not, as some wags have suggested, the two-to-one chance that the goods you have pledged would ever be redeemed.
It wasn’t just the poor and working class who used Bristol’s many pawnshops in the bad old days, ‘quality’ folk weren’t above the services of the pawnbroker when times were hard. The smartest - and those with the most to lose should they be spotted by their respectable friends and neighbours and even, in some cases, wives and husbands - used the oh-so-discreet services of Messrs Chillcotts in Park Street.
Park Street was and is a very, very public place and one of the West Country’s most famous shopping streets, so no self-respecting person would be seen dead trying to pawn a bit of the family silver in the main shop. So instead Chillcotts installed a hatch at the back of the shop which shy pawners could use at night. Goods to be pawned could be slipped through the hatch with the owner’s name attached. Goods went down a chute to the back room and owners claimed the ticket the following day - using the back door in Great George Street for added discretion - when staff could make a discreet offer without causing embarrassment.
