Angela South - My fathers and mothers century : the story of an ordinary couple in an extraordinary time

Copyright 2013 Angela South

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I dedicate this book to my two sons, Michael and Clive,
who were born too late to meet their maternal grandfather.

I had intended this to be the story of my father, John Louis Salter, an ordinary man but living in an extraordinary turbulent half century, which shaped his life and subsequently mine. A negative view of the twentieth century comes from two crippling world wars but on the positive side in Britain the government began starting to take responsibility for the well-being of its people. At the beginning of the twentieth century the welfare state was starting to stir into action.

However, since researching into my fathers life, I realise what an extraordinary life my mother had also lived before she had reached twenty five years of age and I want to incorporate into this story her own personal battles. This is a story that also belongs to my sister and I and explains how we came to be the adults we now are.

My birth happened eleven days before my dads fifty-ninth birthday and the day after my mothers twenty fourth birthday. My childhood memory of my father was one of embarrassment after all, other children had fathers of normal age why not me? Once I was an adult and the more I thought about him the more I began to realise that I knew nothing about him and so many questions formulated themselves in the years since his death. I decided therefore to do some research into his life and hopefully to get these questions answered.

Once our parents have gone from our lives we are left with our memories of them; some with luck are good and some bad particularly if we have been lucky enough to have our parents with us into adulthood. One memory which sticks vividly in my mind happened in 1965. I was fifteen years old and my sister thirteen. As a family we were sitting around the table having our traditional Sunday lunch family roast. Dad began talking about his World War One experiences once again and my sister and I exchanged exasperated glances as we thought we had heard it all before. This time it was different. He told us how in World War One his friend and fellow comrade, Will, was shot when machine gun fire ripped through him. He fell beside dad screaming in agony as his intestines fell from his wound. Will begged my father to shoot him to put an end to his agony but my dad could not do it.

At this point in the story he had our full attention as the tears fell from him fifty years after the event. Dad was forced to carry on and his friend subsequently died screaming in agony in no mans land for help which arrived too late to prevent a horrendous death. To my dying day I will never forget this. It was the one and only time I ever remember my father crying. It was forty years later on before I started researching my dads life and incorporating it into a book.

I found that I needed to do this as I felt I had been very unfair to his memory throughout my life. I remembered him as a bad tempered old man. I was seventeen when he died and I fear that I felt some relief. We both found my adolescence started in the 1960s a trial. I began to fear that his death from heart failure had been my fault as he found my behaviour difficult to deal with as I reacted to the emerging 1960s of short skirts and staying out late.

I think I have succeeded with his book in getting to know the man I called dad and thinking of him with love and respect.

Having been born to a German mother and British father I have provided an explanation of how Germany became a very powerful country. I feel my life started in 1870 with the unification of Germany and if it wasnt for the events that unfolded from then until my birth in 1949, I would not be here in my current persona.

It is 7 September 1890 and a warm, sunny day with the prospect of an Indian summer on the way. This was the day my father, John Louis Salter, first entered the world in the presence of his maternal grandmother, Mercy, and at the home of his maternal grandparents, George and Mercy Hackett, in Hythe Fields, Egham. George worked as an agricultural labourer like many of his day. Mercy was illiterate as referenced on my dads birth certificate where she was forced to make her mark being unable to write her name.

John Louiss mum, Emily, had been married to John Salter Snr just under a year so she was performing her marital duties very well by producing a male heir. Dad started life in the Victorian era, which still had ten+ years to run. The birth would have been painful for Emily as no anaesthetics would have been available to working class women although it was accessible to the upper classes thanks to its usage by Queen Victoria. However, the birth of a male child would have been cause for celebration. The agricultural labourers cottage where he was born would have been very small with little in the way of comfort as living conditions for the poor had not much improved since his father had been born in 1866.

Hythe Fields in Egham is still in existence as Hythe Fields Avenue, a part of Egham Hythe with close proximity to the River Thames. It is situated to the east of Egham with a road which links it to the charming village of Thorpe. Its change over the last one hundred years has been immense and it is now a highly built-up area with the M25 cutting through it and two large theme parks in close proximity. In 1890 it would have been all agricultural land with farms and workers cottages but I could find nothing to remind me today of these farm lands. A visit to Egham Museum showed me an entry that confirmed my great-grandfather, George Hackett, had paid his rent and rates regularly and in May 1895 paid rent of 6 to a farmer, William C Saunders, for his cottage and garden which had a rateable value of 4 15s 0p. I found it very exhilarating to see this actual entry of the day completed in a beautiful handwritten script.

Weather records for 1890 show September to have been a warm month but was followed by a bitter winter that set a record for the coldest winter since records began. London recorded no sunshine at all during December 1890, which is apparently another record.

Several notable people from the twentieth century shared the birth year of 1890 with dad including: Charles de Gaulle, who died in November 1970, Michael Collins, the Irish Nationalist, who was ambushed and killed in 1922, Dwight Eisenhower, the thirty fourth US President who died in March 1969, Rose Kennedy, who was President Kennedys mother, who died in January 1995 and Agatha Christie, who died in January 1976.

These notable people, apart from Michael Collins, had the good fortune to live a longer life than my dad.

Poverty was still prevalent in both country and urban areas at the end of the nineteenth century. Victoria was still on the throne and the Victorians prim attitude towards class and women was very much the order of the day. The middle classes had grown in number through industrialisation and many of these families employed domestic servants from the poorer classes. This provided work for working class females until well after the Great War.