The boy who fell

Another church, another grave. This time not an infant. A teenager. Alfred Hickman, the fifteen year old boy trainee at HMS Ganges, the Royal Navy's shore college at Shotley Gate in Suffolk, who fell to his death from the training mast in 1928.

You may have read my recent post about a visit I made last July to the site of HMS Ganges, which closed in 1976 and is presently undergoing - or supposed to be undergoing - redevelopment into a housing estate. I had long been fascinated - morbidly, considering my fear of heights - by the college's tall training mast, which every boy student had to climb. One student would be selected to be the Button Boy, and had to work his way to the topmost tiny platform, a round disk the size of a drinks tray, and stand there saluting, with very little to hold onto. Overcoming vertigo would have required not only the stern force of Naval discipline, and a teenager's belief in his own immortality, but a determination to live up to the honour of being selected. 

Standing steady on that Button needed a dry day with no breeze. But also to get up there (and down again) the agility and climbing skills of a monkey. So, the boys were encouraged to practice on the mast, and get used to dizzying heights, and develop the physical techniques required to ascend (and get down from) a traditional sailing ship's rigging. You might think that by 1928 such techniques were long redundant. But the Royal Navy took a different view. And never changed its mind until 1976.

Incidentally, there really was a rank of Boy, and - mainly depending on your age - you might be a Boy 3rd Class, a Boy 2nd Class, or a Boy 1st Class, before furthering your career as an adult seaman. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boy_seaman. 

Here are some screenshots from Wikipedia about the mast, the difficulties boys faced when climbing it, and the particular fate of Alfred Hickman:

Just a coin. But it needs to be interpreted as a medal. The Button Boy would have proved himself the bravest and most physically accomplished student of his year.

But there was no denying that climbing a high mast was dangerous, whether as part of a ceremonial display or only for practice. However, the Royal Navy admits to just this one death from falling:

Alfred Hickman's death was clearly smoothed over and eventually forgotten. An unfortunate accident. Nowadays the matter might be taken a lot further, but not in 1928. Wikipedia says he was 'an orphan with no known family', and if this was true, perhaps there was nobody to make a prolonged fuss on his behalf. That being so, I was curious to know what was done as regards his burial. Did the Navy pop him into an unmarked grave at Shotley church? Or was he treated better than that? 

On the final day of my Suffolk holiday, on 19th July, I made the effort to go and see.

Shotley church stands well apart from Shotley village. There's a valley in between. The church is surrounded by attractive farmland, with a good view of the River Orwell and the huge container port at Felixtowe. Here it is. Rather boxy and barnlike on the outside.

Inside, it's more impressive, and rather formal. You can tell at once that it was the 'official' place of worship for everyone at HMS Ganges.

There was full information on the burials. I found Alfred Hickman listed.

There you are: 'Accident on the Mast'. The only boy whose cause of death was so described. 

I was surprised at the number of deaths over the years of boys who were - after all - in the care of a national naval college. Nor were they routinely used on any kind of active service during the First World War, although they would have to spend some time furthering their studies on board a warship, and might have become exposed to harm that way. 

Meanwhile they were fed and looked after, albeit in a spartan manner with aggressively firm discipline. But they had the resilience of youth, and were in any case physically fit. And yet the greater number of buried boys' deaths were from 'illness', and - given the dates - not mainly from the Spanish Flu epidemic rampant in 1918 and following years. Perhaps it was just very, very easy to fall ill and not recover in the days before modern medicines. In some cases the cause of death was 'Unknown' - again beyond understanding when these youngsters were so closely supervised. I wondered whether some suspicious or embarrassing deaths - suicides perhaps - had been glossed over. 

Well, back to young Alfred Hickman. I had at least established that he was on a register of burials, and definitely had a grave. Could I find it?

The graveyard was large. The 'public' part was close to the church. Beyond were the forces graves. There was no mistaking those for HMS Ganges Boys. A sea of them stretched away to the perimeter of the graveyard.

I'd need to look at every one until I came across Alfred Hickman's. It was early evening by now, and I was getting hungry after a long day out, but I wasn't going to shirk finding him. And I did in the end. His grave looked exactly like the others. The Royal Navy hadn't treated him differently. 

Even though he had died by accident, possibly from larking around high up, the Navy had done the right thing. I was glad of that. He was nothing to me personally, you understand, but even so I felt concerned to find him and make sure that his grave was as good as the rest. That duty done, I was free to go. 

It was hard to imagine what this fifteen year old boy could have been like as a person. I imagined that having no family was a misfortune he was acutely aware of. But it let him be his own person, and he might have been the most boisterous, the most daring, the most confident and self-assured of his class. Perhaps he was also the cockiest and the most unruly, and the constant target of oppressive official punishments. That might make him defiant; or so miserable that he would care nothing for his own safety, courting welcome death if need be. Who knows.

Akenham

Akenham was a small Suffolk village a hundred and fifty years ago, then lying in deep countryside on the north-west side of Ipswich. Now you can barely call it a hamlet. Most of the village has vanished: there's a few cottages; there's a farm; and next to the farm is a church, rather hidden by trees. In 1878 that church was the scene of one of the country's greatest modern religious scandals. It led in 1880 to a change in the law concerning burials - immediately affecting everyone in the country, for death was commonplace, particularly infant death. And it was the burial of a toddler who had died that caused the scandal. 

The toddler was exactly two years old: little Joseph Ramsay. He died on his second birthday. At the time, his father had the right to request a burial in the parish churchyard, which could not be denied, and the Anglican rector had a legal duty to attend. The rector could not however conduct a burial service himself if the dead person had not been baptised. This toddler hadn't been: he'd been born into a Baptist family, and his baptism would have been deferred until he was a young adult. 

Although the Anglican rector could not conduct the burial service, he had a duty to witness the event, which by implication meant remaining present until any alternative service had finished. There was such a service, in the field opposite the church, conducted by a Congregationalist minister from Ipswich who had been invited to speak. Those proceedings began late, and kept the Anglican rector waiting, no doubt glancing often at his watch, and gradually growing very impatient. Eventually fuming, he locked the churchyard gates and went home for his tea - but not before there was an ugly exchange of words with the bereaved father. Once the service was over, the father had to lift the little coffin over the churchyard wall, and spade his child into the ground without any kind of official presence to see and possibly bless the event, because the parish rector had gone off in a huff.   

This was the era of formidable vicars who might well be as touchy and awkward as the local squire. It was also the era of Nonconformist churches of all flavours, all of which were a thorn in the side of the established Anglican Church of England. This rector felt only disapproval: the little boy's bereaved father a Baptist, not an Anglican; wanting a non-Anglican (and therefore irregular) burial rite at an inconvenient time; and the thing conducted by an imported Congregationalist minister, rather than the proper parish incumbent. 

Well, the burial was done, but it didn't end there. A newspaper in Ipswich, known for its support for Nonconformist churches, quickly got hold of the story and ran with it, publishing a heavily critical report that the rector saw. He felt personally attacked - and without justification, as he had (in his view) done his duty - however barely - and could not be criticised. A lawsuit followed. The rector 'won', but was awarded only token damages. Meanwhile, the whole country had been shocked by the affair, and this led to the passing of the 1880 Burial Laws Amendment Act, which at last made it perfectly legal to conduct any appropriate burial service, or none at all.

As readers know, I am not religious, but I'd known about this nineteenth-century event at Akenham for decades. I'd looked the location up on the map, but had never been there. Now I was staying not far away. It was time to go and see for myself. It was 12th July, a bright and fairly sunny day, although rain was forecast later. 

I parked Fiona at the side of a farm track which led uphill through cornfields edged with poppies. It would have been a bucolic dream, except for the twin lines of electricity pylons that strode across the scene. Still, I could make some half-decent pictures of them, set against that cloudy sky:

The gravel track went steadily upwards (and northwards) to a junction with another track. I then had to jink westwards to the still-hidden church. This map should show what I mean. I was parked near where it says 'Ppg Sta' towards the bottom right corner of the map.

I began to get glimpses of the church and churchyard as I approached closer. Soon I stood by the churchyard gate that the rector had locked in such a marked manner before stalking off.

It wasn't a very substantial barrier. But any kind of locked gate is a powerful symbol of access denied. Opposite was that field where the alternative Nonconformist service had been conducted, much to the rector's disgust.

It was easy to imagine the grieving parents, the black-coated minister, and a small group of friends and well-wishers in workaday attire, with the rector pacing up and down nearby.

So to the church. Incredibly rural in feel. Very simple inside. It was now in the care of the Churches Conservation Trust.

It would of course look rougher in little Joseph Ramsay's time. There was a stone memorial plaque on a window ledge that replicated the words on his gravestone. Tap on the picture, to enlarge it and read it more easily.

There was also a framed board with the burial story on it.

The church was not only about Joseph Ramsay. Three farmworkers, apparently from the same family, had not come back from the First World War trenches. There was a cross to them outside, too.

The cross was near the entrance, on the favoured south side of the church. Where was the toddler's grave? I wasn't surprised to find it behind the church, on the shadowy north side - still of course on consecrated ground, but somewhat hidden away. Indeed, it was surprising that there was a gravestone at all. But I suppose there had been a whip-round to pay for one, with possibly the newspaper contributing, considering the nationally-important outcome of that make-do burial in 1878.

The grave wasn't hard to find - the burial story was fairly well known, and many people might want to make a pilgrimage to Akenham. So the surrounding grass was well-trodden. Well, I'd made my own pilgrimage. 

Coming away, walking back to Fiona with my right leg telling me I'd overdone it, and a pitter-patter of rain telling me that I might get drenched, it struck me that I was most unlikely to be buried when I died. No, I'd be gone in a puff of smoke in some crematorium. Unless, of course, it was by then mandatory to be recycled. (Hmm. As in the 1973 film Soylent Green, perhaps?)

Mission Impossible: Kettle Quest

How difficult can it be to buy another kitchen kettle, when the old one dies? I hadn't realised the bother it would be.

I'd been using a Prestige electric kettle that I originally bought at Sainsbury's in Newport, South Wales in August 2011. It had cost £29, quite a lot for 2011, at least if you simply wanted an ordinary kitchen kettle. But it wasn't for the kitchen in the house. I bought it for the caravan. I'd taken to using the kettle there for all my hot-water needs, personal washing included, and so a powerful home-sized kettle seemed just the thing. Here it is in a couple of shots taken late in June 2013, when I was pitched in the Lake District on my way home from Scotland. I'd just boiled the water needed to hand-wash some knickers. It was ready in a jiffy. (Don't ask what - or who - the red knickers were for)

That Prestige kettle was a good one. The only downside was its nondescript colour - beige and browny-black. But of course it drew a lot of current, and for nearly two years had been putting a strain on the consumer unit, hidden away in the caravan wardrobe, and doubtless begging for mercy. 

A couple of days later, while still in the Lake District, my electrics suddenly went kaput. What had gone wrong? I went to the Caravan Club site reception and almost burst into tears. I felt helpless and much too far from home in Sussex. The Club site staff clustered around, and tested my electrics. It looked like a serious mishap. I thought of melted wiring - and huge expense - but my immediate concern was being without any mains electricity. I relied on that for several things, including electric heating (important because it had turned cold and wet), although I could turn to gas heating if need be. But mains electricity was vital for charging up my phone and laptop every day, both of them heavily used. I still had battery power for basic lighting. And I had gas for cooking. I could also use gas to boil water, with a rather retro standby gas-hob kettle:

This handsome beast whistled when boiled, and was therefore fun to use, but it used up my propane faster than I liked. (But I still keep it in the caravan - you never know when it might be needed) 

Once home, after that worrying and very inconvenient mains power failure, I rushed the caravan into my local dealer's workshop, fearing the worst. But it wasn't as bad as I was expecting. The service manager soon told me what had happened: I'd blown a switch in the consumer unit. And that was all. No looms of wiring had to be replaced. Phew! He still told me off - we'd known each other for years, so I didn't mind - explaining that the miniature consumer unit in my caravan 'wasn't man enough' to cope with large current flows. I should have used a smaller and less powerful travel kettle all along. 

I learned my lesson! I quickly bought this little kettle:

It lasted quite a while. But all travel kettles are lightweight affairs and will stop working after three or four years if regularly worked hard. There have been two replacements since. 

Meanwhile - back home - I'd been using this shiny Russell Hobbs kettle, and continued with it until early 2017. The Prestige one was put away as a spare. Here are shots of the Russell-Hobbs kettle in 2015 and 2016:

I liked that style of kettle very much. But eventually, after years of service, it died. The local water supply in Sussex leads to rapid scaling from all the chalk in the Downs, which in turn means the heating element in the kettle has to work ever harder, and at some point it gives up. That happened by January 2017. So I dug out the Prestige kettle, and now put it to its proper use. Here it is in 2017, 2021 and late 2022:

The beige Prestige kettle was so visually unremarkable that it never merited a special photo-shoot. It only appeared in general shots of my kitchen, or in the background when shooting more interesting things, such as my Ruark R1 radio. Although its appearance bored me, it did its job pretty well. Then a couple of weeks ago it too fell victim to the Morbid Sussex Kettle Disease. Time for a new kettle! Meanwhile, I raided the caravan for the shiny gas-hob kettle, and used that, discovering at once that reserving one of my four gas hobs for boiling water was highly inconvenient if attempting to cook an evening meal at the same time. I must buy a new electric kettle next day, which happened to be a Sunday.

I decided to look for something altogether nicer. Could John Lewis at Home in Horsham provide? So here I was, around midday on that Sunday, in the lift at John Lewis, looking grimly confident that I'd be able to buy a posh new kettle:

But John Lewis didn't have any cheap kettles! The only ones on display were hideously expensive:

I wasn't going to pay £100+ for a kettle! So, with the clock now ticking, I drove on to Hookwood, near Gatwick Airport, to see what the big Tesco Extra store there might have. Not a great range, as it turned out. Perhaps no store nowadays carried a big range of goods, with online shopping so prevalent. But there was a grey plastic kettle by Tower that looked OK at £30. The best of an indifferent bunch of mundane kettles. I bought that.

Back home, I felt it would be good enough. Its handle was comfortable, a good sign.

I filled it up and switched it on. You had to push down that little lever under the handle. It moved, but wouldn't stay down, and so switched itself off immediately. Things that I buy usually work well for me. I couldn't believe it might be faulty. Maybe there was some special finger or wrist technique I had to practice and master? Perhaps some incantation to be uttered? Or some tune I had to whistle? I consulted the instructions, was none the wiser. 

Reluctantly I gave up, and very carefully repacked the kettle in its box. It would have to be taken back to Tesco for a refund. Something for next day, after a second evening without a working electric kettle. I cooked something simple that didn't require four gas hobs. 

Next morning - Monday - I drove to a closer Tesco Extra store, and joined a dispiritingly long queue of customers with something to discuss at the Customer Services counter. I chatted with the lady just in front of me to pass the time. It was almost my turn to be served, when I discovered that I'd left my bag - with the sales receipt in it - back in the car. Oh no! With a sigh I went back to Fiona, retrieved my bag, and braced myself for another long wait to be served, for of course I'd lost my place in the Customer Services queue. What a mission this was all turning out to be, just to buy a kettle.

However, this time the queue moved faster. Soon I was explaining how the kettle was faulty, and asking for a refund. There were no difficulties. I still needed a new kettle, and keen to get it that day. The Customer Services lady suggested the Next store, close by on the same retail estate. I never went to Next - no particular reason - but thought it worth a look now. And finally I saw what I really wanted: a colourful kitchen kettle that was decidedly more attractive and upmarket than the dull offerings at Tesco. The Next Yellow Kettle. £45, so not exactly inexpensive; but a snip compared to the posh objets d'art at John Lewis.

Here's the unpacking at home, and its first use to make a well-earned cuppa.

In a perfect world I'd want a brighter yellow, but that would be my only cavil. Its lemony yellow still chimed pretty well with all the other yellow accents scattered around my kitchen, such as that mug. It had a 3,000W element, and boiled the water fast. The handle was comfortable, the thing felt balanced in my grip, and it poured well too. 

So, mission accomplished, and I'm very content!

It's funny how you take things like kettles for granted. But they are indispensable. I think it's silly to waste money on a very fancy kettle, unless it's completely won your heart. But I also now think that it's worth spending a bit more - in this case £45 rather than £30 - to secure something that will not only do the job well, but improves the look of your kitchen.