It was during my time at the Brigg Infants' School that Ken and I were told one morning in October 1931 to go to Nana Turner at the midday break. We had no idea why this instruction was given but when we got to Nana she told us we had a baby brother.
It was typical of the time that we did not know such an event was to take place and it was also usual for a mother to have a few days in bed after confinement. A woman, I think her name was Miss Markham, came to look after us for those few days and I am almost certain she lived in for that period.
While John was still a baby I used to have the job of taking him in his pram around Princes Street and Albert Street in the hope of getting him to sleep. Not many parents today would ask a seven year old to do this but our walk did not take us across any streets and it did not seem extraordinary at the time.
I think it must have been while I was at the Infants' School that I started going to Sunday School at the Congregational Chapel. Looking back it seems that Sunday School was invented to give parents a bit of peace on Sunday afternoons. The teacher was my Nana's cousin, Hettie Leeson, but I have no recollection of any words of wisdom I might have heard from her. One memory is of reciting a poem from the pulpit of the chapel but I have completely forgotten what the poem was.
Every year the four Brigg non-conformist chapels had a treat for Sunday School attendees. Horse-drawn decorated carts carried hymn-singing children round the town before returning them to their respective chapels for tea. Tea always included sandwiches of Nana Turner's potted meat and was followed by sports at a field near the cemetery on Wrawby Road.
When my brother John died my niece Gillian found a battered book, Schoolboy Courage, in his house and she sent it to me. It bears a label Congregational Sunday School. Reward of Merit to Clifford Turner. March 19, 1933. That was two days before my eighth birthday. I suspect that the only merit involved was turning up for Sunday School and I have no recollection of getting it. The Congregational Chapel was closed many years ago, sharing the fate of the Methodist Chapel in Bigby Street and the Primitive Methodist Chapel in Bridge Street.
One day I was talking near the Town Hall to a classmate, Billy Lidgett, who told me about the Church of England Sunday school in the Parish Hall in Elwes Street. I cannot recall why Ken and I changed our allegiance and there was no parental opposition. Perhaps this was because we went morning and afternoon, giving the parents a double ration of peace and quiet. This Sunday School did not join in the non-conformist chapels' annual treat; instead we had a a trip to Cleethorpes by train, or, in alternate years, sports at a field in Westrum Lane and tea at the Parish Hall.
At the age of seven children went on to Glebe Road School or, as we called it, Top School. When I started there it was still quite new, with eight class rooms and a woodwork shop and cookery room. My first teacher was Miss Elsie Stringer who had started off as a pupil teacher and had taught my Dad. There are few lessons of which I have a clear memory - one was about Solon the Athenian law-giver who lived about 500 B.C. When a pupil gave a good answer to a question Miss Stringer would sometimes say "A penny at 12 o'clock". I was occasionally the recipient of a penny which, in those days, bought a Milky Way or two ounces of sweets. I would spend it at Arthur Binns' tiny shop at the corner of Queen Street and Bigby Street on the way home at midday. Arthur's shop was demolished to make way for the new Post Office which was completed in 1936, and, according to local legend, was the only one to bear the Royal Cipher of Edward VIII who abdicated in December that year.
My next teacher was Miss Saxby, daughter of the Brigg Station Master. She must have been pretty colourless as I cannot recall anything she said or did. Then it was on into Miss Rowbottom's class; she too had come from the ranks of pupil teachers and she too had taught my father.
At Glebe Road there were no specialised teachers apart from the woodwork and cookery teachers whom we did not encounter until we were about ten years old, so we had the same teacher all day every day.
Miss Rowbottom was middle-aged and a strict disciplinarian who frequently used the cane to give one stroke on to an outstretched palm. I was not exempt but bore no ill-will towards her and as far as I can tell suffered no psychological harm. I remember quite a lot about her class. On the wall hung a large map of Lincolnshire and from that we had our first lessons of local geography, and it was in her class that I first heard the story of the boy who cried "Wolf".
Sometimes she would give away copies of the National Geographic magazine to those she thought of as deserving pupils and I have a vivid recollection of her once standing by my desk saying "Shall I, shan’t I?" before giving me the magazine. In the days before TV this magazine was a wonderful window on the world.
I think the Gresford Colliery disaster occurred while I was in Miss Rowbottom's class. A local councillor, Alf Fairbanks, organised a raffle in Brigg to help the families of the dead miners. Somehow, at the age of nine, I was roped in to sell tickets from door to door and as a result my brother Ken and I were given the job of drawing the winning tickets. The draw took place in the front room of the Fairbanks’ little house in Garden Street. The details of the 1934 disaster had faded from my memory but just before writing this, quite by chance, I read that 266 miners were killed.
My next teacher was Miss Dobson who was quite young and left during my time in that class to get married. It seemed to be the rule then that female teachers had to leave if they married. It was in Miss Dobson's class that we were taught Rudyard Kipling's poem God of Our Fathers, a doleful dirge set to music and sung on Remembrance Sundays. No attempt was made to explain the meaning of the hymn; it was some time before I knew what was meant by "reeking tube and iron shard."
Miss Dobson's replacement was Miss Ivy Sumpter who lived with her parents quite close to us in Princes Street. She was very young and it seems probable that we were her first pupils after she completed her teacher training.
It was about this time that a child was sent to look for me during afternoon playtime and to tell me to go to the Staff Room, where I found some of the teachers drinking tea. "Clifford" said one, "we think you should join the church choir". That was tantamount to a royal command so on the next choir practice evening I presented myself to Dr Rowbottom, the organist and choir master, for an audition. I was accepted as a probationer choir boy and soon afterwards my brother Ken joined too. There were so many choir boys at that time that we had to sit in a front pew, not in the choir stalls, and we did not wear surplice and cassock.
Then, one Sunday morning, Dr Rowbottom poked his head around the organ and beckoned us into the vestry where we were put into cassocks and surplices and, as the most junior choir-boys, led the choir from the vestry into the choir stalls.
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