Dutton
 

COPIED FROM “THE ANTHONY FAMILY” BY Frances Webster

NOTE: the “I” of the story is Louis Conard Anthony 1885-1951 born in Chesham, Bucks and died in Toronto, Canada. His wife was Ada Emily Hitchmough 1877-1938 born in Runcorn, Cheshire died in Toronto, Canada. Note the difference in their ages, very probably one of the reasons that they left England so precipitously. This script is copied from Louis handwritten story composed in 1939.

I had now been at Powell's office for three years and I was sixteen years of age and began to be restless. I talked of my ambitions for a change to one of the firm of auditors who annually audited our books. This chap had travelled England in the course of his employment and he told me of a position which he knew would be shortly vacant. It was that of an assistant to the workhouse master at the Dutton workhouse in Cheshire. This meant going 250 miles from home, living in an institution and coming home once a year. I thought this over and discussed it with my parents who left it entirely up to me. I made application for the job, secured an interview with the Board of Guardians, got the job and left home, not without some trepidation and took up residence at Dutton. I well remember the day of my arrival at Preston Brook one mile from the house. It was raining most dismal. There was no one to meet me and my heart was in my boots. I was homesick and wondered whether or not I had made a mistake in leaving home to start on my own. But here I was - not for worlds would I have admitted to anyone my feelings. I walked the mile through the rain and was kept sitting in the hall until such time as the head master could talk with me, explain my duties and the rules of the house. He then showed me to my quarters, a bed sitting room allotted to me at the end of the boys' dormitory. This room had a bed curtained off on one side, and an open fire grate at which I found later that my meals were to be prepared and a small table and chair. After what I had been accustomed to this was bare in the extreme. I was left and told to report for duty in the morning. My window looked out on a bare exercise yard and there I sat all that evening feeling the world to be pretty tough.In the morning I found that my duties were to keep all the books in connection with the place, look after the supplies and, in addition, to be physical instructor to about forty boys. For the former I had a staff of inmates who were fully able to look after the bookkeeping and the responsibility of seeing that they were correctly kept was all that I had to do. The keeping up of supplies at an institution of that size was quite a tricky job as there was a varied menu, each day quite different. In addition, hospital patients were on special diets. As this had been handled by inmates on the bookkeeping staff for years, it was not hard to become accustomed to. The job that appealed to me was the handling, outside of school hours, of the boys who ranged in age from six to fourteen years. After the age of fourteen each boy had the choice of joining the navy, the merchant service or working on a farm. They were unfortunate in most cases in being orphans with no friends or relatives to be responsible for them. And yet, were they unfortunate? In many cases they were better off. They had regular, substantial meals, clean clothing and comfortable beds arranged in a long dormitory with twenty-four beds on either side. As I said before my room was at the end of the dormitory so that I could be on hand to keep order. The boys were called at 6.30 each morning, paraded to showers where each washed, the bigger boys being responsible for the younger ones, then dressed, thirty minutes of physical exercise, then to the dormitory, bed making and cleaning and, at 8 a.m., breakfast. After breakfast they attended school at the parish school one mile away. They occasionally got into fights with other boys because of being teased as workhouse kids. They could easily be picked out because, as a body, they were better dressed and smarter than a similar number of outside boys picked at random. I was very proud of this gang of youngsters and many of them were real athletes. Each week I took them out through the fields and woods and I was rather like a father to them. I flatter myself they were fond of me. These walks gave me my greatest pleasure as I was always fond of the fields and woods and had always been a bird lover. We used to look for the various birds and nests and began to know them all by name, the type of nest they built and the kind of eggs they laid. England appeals to me most, not for her cities and towns, but for her woods, lanes and little rural villages. Some people think of the north of England as a place of grimy towns and chimney pots, but my north of England means Frodsham Hills and the country surrounding them, the lanes with the honeysuckle growing in the hedges, the bluebells in the woods and the violets and primroses along the ditches. They are part of me and always will be. The master of the workhouse turned out to be a boozer. He would take a case of whisky to bed and there he would lay until it was consumed so the responsibility of the place often rested on my shoulders. He is dead long since, when his high spirited pony ran away with him, presumably during one of his frequent lapses. He was a very hard man to please so I discontinued very early to try to please him. On one occasion he met me in the boys' dormitory in a complaining mood. I allowed him to get away with some very insulting remarks before knocking him across one of the beds and down underneath the adjoining one. For this I expected to get reported and dismissed but nothing happened and I suppose he felt that he was perhaps to blame. Another of my duties was to admit casual tramps who came for a night's lodging. Each tramp was booked, name, where from, where going, age and description. They were then marched to bath, their clothing placed in vermin exterminator, given a white night-gown and put in cells to bed. Until you have seen a bunch of men with beards in all stages of growth, glowing from their bath and marching to bed in long white nightgowns you don't know what the expression "angels with dirty faces" means. A great many fractious tramps gave me the opportunity of keeping up my practice in boxing although knuckles were in order instead of boxing gloves. One became to realize how sore knuckles can be when stopped by dirty teeth or hard jawbones. I had sympathy with the old timers who used to pickle their hands for weeks before a fight. On one occasion, one chap who had somehow managed to conceal a knife slashed my coat and vest from neck to waist, fortunately missing the skin. Occasionally tramps would cut up their clothing which had become worn. This was to secure a new outfit and when they did this they were sent to jail. Of course, many of them felt that ten days or more was a small penalty to pay for a respectable outfit. It was my duty to appear before the magistrate in the town of Runcorn. This pleased me for two reasons, the day out and the half crown witness fee which was paid. The old magistrate before whom I appeared never failed to ask the same question. My answer either pleased him or he had forgotten that he had previously heard it. He would pompously ask, "Is this man a tramp?" My answer "Yes, sir." Magistrate "How do you know that this man is an habitual tramp?" My explanation seemed to please him and he would sink into a more comfortable position in his chair as I explained. "This man carried the usual outfit, a can tied to his waist with string and, wrapped in a rag, a broken comb, a piece of soap and a mirror. Also he had a package of tea and sugar mixed." This was an infallible guide as only "died in the wool mendicants of the road" had this insignia. The workhouse farm was situated between two estates one of which belonged to Sir Gilbert Greenhall. Consequently plenty of game crossed our land and I became quite proficient in setting snares. I was able to keep the nurses in the hospital supplied with hares and pheasants. If nothing was to be found on our land a 22 caliber rifle picked them off in the adjoining properties but, as the place was infested with gamekeepers, the game had to be spotted and picked up after dark. The danger of being caught added spice to a rather lonely existence. Being the only male officer in the institution with the exception of the master I lacked male acquaintances in the house and being in the country away from a town there were few outside. There was a rule that the hospital and the nurses were out of bounds to me. Therefore they seemed a great deal more desirable and I used to spend as much time as I could without detection in the nurses' quarters. I found that I couldn't taffy them all, so that a disgruntled one would occasionally report me. I always denied vigorously being there but I was never believed and a close watch was kept on my movements. A happy incident gave me an opportunity to get there at least twice per day. After exercising and to take out the stiffness in the muscles I used to massage with embrocation. After using a larger quantity than usual on my leg one day dozens of small blisters appeared. These I suppose were quite harmless but looked angry. I showed them to the master who was quite concerned and thought perhaps it might be serious and suggested I should go the hospital for poulticing. I, of course, assumed ignorance of its cause and visited my favourite nurse at that time. Of course, I told her what it was and she did nothing for it. As fast as the blisters disappeared, I had another real application of the embrocation so that the disease persisted for some time until finally I felt I should have to let it decently heal to allay suspicion. After that I had to scale an eight foot brick wall topped with broken glass in cement but I found that a couple of wet sacks made a very satisfactory protection if laid on top of the glass. I stayed for one year before my holidays, as I thought, came due. So I applied for them only to be told by the master that I would not get any that summer. I told him that I was taking three weeks starting the following Saturday. His reply was to the effect that if I went I need not come back but when Saturday came I packed my bag and went. What a homecoming! It felt grand to be home again, although I felt just a little alien being out of touch for so long. I wonder, does everyone get the feeling when they have left home and come back that they have forfeited something that their stay-at-home brothers and sisters have retained? After a glorious three weeks, I again thought of Dutton and wondered whether some other poor unfortunate was carrying on in my job. Not mentioning the fact that I might have no job, I took the train for the north. Nothing happened. I just walked in and took up where I left off. Thus I carried on for four years and then a nurse arrived who was destined to become my life partner. Little did I realize that when I sneaked over to the hospital ostensibly to talk to one of the other nurses, but really to look over the new one, that here was my fate. I did not at the time feel that I should later transfer my allegiance from red-headed Molly Muir to the dark-eyed newcomer but such was the case and why I cannot yet tell. The ways of women are always a mystery. After watching them for years I have come to the conclusion that if a woman looks you over, Mr. Man, and decides you are "it," all your wiles, if you have any, are as nothing and you will be led, sure as night follows day, to the altar. The dark-eyed one's first approach was to inform me that unless I stayed away from the hospital (she had caught me under the stairway flirting with one of the juniors) she would have to report me. This did not seem to indicate that we could even become good friends but as I said before the ways of the female of the species are mysterious. Each morning the nurses came to the supply room for their needs -brandy and whisky for the patients, special diet orders, etc. These I handed out and when the new nurse arrived I was especially affable, heaping coals of fire as it were. It was not many days before I had broken down the reserve and she had promised to meet me on her evening out when I, as an old hand, would be able to put her wise to all the pitfalls to be encountered in such a wild place as Dutton. We met on several occasions and I, as was my wont, kept the nurses supplied with pheasants, hares, etc., poached from the adjoining estates. This apparently either did not meet with her approval or she meant to keep me under her thumb, as she threatened me with exposure to the police unless I stopped these practices. Perhaps she was trying to make me into a good little boy. I trimmed her in no uncertain language, although I was very amused, as the threat of police or, in fact, any other threat then, rolled of like water off a duck's back. How we first fell in love I don't remember. We just naturally drifted that way, I guess. Perhaps it was our mutual hatred for the petty meanness of the master. It was not long before it was an accepted fact that we were "walking out" as the Cheshire man expressed it. I had to make sure that she was off duty and safely in bed before sneaking around to see my other old girls. She caught me on several occasions and I had to assume a very innocent air and try to appear that I was there on business only. I am going into this rather in detail because it is the part I feel you girls will enjoy. She (I can call her "she" now) was always rather nervous of the dark country roads and if a tramp hove in sight she was like a skittish colt ready to run. On one occasion we were returning to the house at night along the towing path of the canal when two men partly drunk met us. One of them grabbed me by the arm and at about the time he hit the ground she was over the fence and up the field yelling at me to come. This was too good a chance for practice so I stayed with the two until they were good boys. By this time she was nearing home looking for help. I caught her before she arrived there. I think that she there and then decided I must be dangerous and that she had better obey because from then on there was a decided change in her attitude. She had a bicycle so that we were able to ride over to her home five miles away but I was told to go off to amuse myself whilst she went home, after making arrangements with me for our meeting place. I've wondered since why. Her brothers and father were big chaps and perhaps she was a little embarrassed at the thought of introducing my 140 lb. and having them say "Is this the guy you have been raving about? "She was always very sympathetic with her patients and anyone badly battered was sure of very special attention. One incident which she never really forgave me for came about like this. The details are as clear to me as the day they happened. Why is it that things that happened years ago are so crystal clear today and the events of more recent dates have faded into the background ?Mousey Milington, a rough character in the city of Runcorn, came one day with a card of admittance to the house. The rule was to put a new prospective inmate into the receiving ward until the Doctor had passed him as fit before allowing him into the body of the house. As he arrived drunk, I ran him into the tramp cells, pushed him protestingly inside and left him swearing vengeance. He left the following morning before I saw him but left word for me that he would be back and to look out. I heard in town that he was going to teach me a lesson sometime but I forgot about it. Came the time when I was away for the day but upon my return the hall porter informed me that Mousey had been in the Receiving Ward all day long awaiting my return. I figured that if I met him with the other inmates, he would make a scene in front of the whole crowd so I thought I would talk to him then and there. Immediately I walked into the small paved yard he came towards me stripping off his coat and telling me in a grim voice "Take off your coat." I was dressed in a white shirt, collar and cuffs, quite the dude, no dress for a scrap. But I did not hesitate, took off my coat and not even taking time to turn up my cuffs went to work. As I was twenty (he was actually 19 FW), in good physical condition and Mousey was forty with the battered appearance that told of many tavern brawls he was an easy mark. I was amazed to see each of his old scars split open each time they were hit. When he was finally a mass of cuts and went down in the corner my only injuries were a pair of badly cut up hands. I bathed him and plastered him to the best of my ability and when the doctor arrived his head and face were like a pumpkin with slits for eyes. He was sent to the hospital to the tender mercies of "she". How she crooned over him I can only guess. Later I arrived to get my hands bathed and bandaged telling her I had an accident, without going into the details. She was very sympathetic. When I met her that evening for our usual walk she spent the whole time telling me of the poor man that she had fixed up. I listened sympathetically and it was not until a day or so later that the details sifted through to her and then, did I get a raking over the coals. I was a brute and she didn't know whether or not she was making a mistake in having anything to do with me, etc., etc., Brute - brute - brute! It was quite futile to tell her that it was not a quarrel of my choosing and that if he could have done so I would have been her patient. It finally blew over and I was the white-haired boy once again. We had no opportunity of making friends outside the institution as we were too far away from town. The master and the matron were selfish in the extreme. Officers were not allowed to visit one another in the institution. I was the only male officer, other than the master and to tell me at that time not to do this and not to do that only whetted my appetite the more. So, although it was prohibited to visit and all gates and approaches were locked at 6 p.m., the walls were scaled and I visited where I choose. She and I discussed the place and the more we discussed the more we detested it, so one day I suggested we pull out together and go to Canada. Without hesitation she agreed, arrangements were made, tickets bought on the "Victorian" and the day before sailing we walked out for a stroll leaving our things behind except what could be carried in suitcases. Whilst the rest were busily engaged in dinner we were on our way to Liverpool. What young blood will do! I have often been amused since at the casual way that we left home and country and ventured to a strange land with nothing but a wish to be together and make good. 

Page last updated 06 August, 2007 by Rossbret