Appendix

I’m trying to gather together some notes on things Jacko Jones refers to which are not part of everyday speech today. Here’s what I’ve got so far.

 

Monkey Walk or Monkey Parade Life for a 20 year old in North London in 1910 was not a question of life at home. Unless part of the aristocracy men and women did not have their own homes until they got married, and even then they were often resident still with the family. That may sound like today, except for a couple of things.

 

First, the homes were much smaller than we have now. Bedrooms were shared, and there was probably just one living room in which were to be found parents and grandparents.

 

Second, and I know this is obvious, but it is easily forgotten, there was no radio, no TV, no records. In short there was no entertainment.

 

So what the world did was it went out, onto the streets. The streets of London (not the West End, but residential London) became packed with young people milling around. Hot or cold weather that’s what they did. There were no cars, and no other automated transport apart from trains and the underground, and the buses were pulled by horses.

 

Each night (this wasn’t just a weekend thing) young people made their own entertainment on the streets. And this was the Monkey Parade.

 

The Pub There were no licensing hours in 1910, pubs opened morning noon and night – if there were drinkers the pubs were open. Some reports suggest that every other house was a pub, and although this is an exaggeration, there were many more pubs than today – although they were a lot smaller than our pubs. People poured in and out of pubs, and fighting (no knives, no guns, just knuckle fights) were common. They came and went, it was part of life.

 

Women were in the pubs as much as men, and a woman being in a pub did not mean she was a prostitute. The prostitutes were found all over the West End of London, not in the suburbs.

Swearing From what I can work out, “Kent” was the equivalent of our “see you next Thursday.”

In 1910 the Liberal Party was in power – but only just having no overall majority in the Commons.   Churchill was a member of the Liberal Party, having become an MP upon returning from the Boer War in South Africa where he met Jones while both were waiting for a boat to evacuate them. Henry Norris was a Unionist – in effect a Conservative, and thus on the other side of the House from the Liberals.   The Liberal Party at this time was a radical reforming party which was seen as revolutionary by the Unionists.  It should also be remembered that the UK included the whole of Ireland at this time, not just the north..