The house and shop where this small business was carried on, was not very good, so my father, inheriting some money from his father and having saved some himself, built a good brick house with a large store and a warehouse, parlour, living room and kitchen on the ground floor and with a bake-house and storeroom in the basement, and 6 rooms upstairs – room enough to have a large business and home for a large family.
[12] Well, the family came along all right, and the business furnished plenty of work, but profits were small, expenses heavy and people got into his debt and did not pay – and the law did not favour the collection of small debts. One man told my father “I’ll pay you when I think I will”.
This store, or shop as we called it, had 4 large windows for the display of merchandise, and 3 of them had sliding glass panels inside, to keep goods from getting dusty. The windows showed drapery, earthenware and glass, tin-ware and ironmongery, and groceries respectively. There were 2 counters, one for drapery and one for general goods. The land on which the house was built belonged to the Ecclesiastical commissioners, i.e. State Church (footnote 1), so my father had to deal with their local representatives, which were the Dean and Chapter of Winchester, but it was made a freehold so he [13] never to my knowledge paid tithes to the State Church.
I should before proceeding further tell more of my father; perhaps it should have been done earlier.
When my father was a boy, he was sent to a boarding school at Brill in Buckinghamshire; I think it could only have been a small place, as it is hardly to be seen marked on the maps. However, I’ve seen his schoolbooks, MS, all very neatly written in, and am sure he did his best. I suppose he did farm work when at home, but the time came when his parents died and the home was broken up, and he my father went to London and got a job as a porter at White and Greenwell’s Drapers in the Borough of Southwark, just over London Bridge on the Surrey side of the River Thames of London. That great city, at that [14] time the largest in the world, reached out into at least 3 counties Surrey, Middlesex and Essex, and where it extends to now, 1943, I don’t know, but still believe it to be the most populous city on earth. Leaving W&G’s he obtained a job with Ridgways the tea dealers, who ran tea vans, two-wheel carts with tilts or covers; this was a more profitable employment selling tea or coffee, and having a horse to drive – it suited him, being used to horses on the farm. Well, he saved some money and invested it in gas shares in one of the London companies.
Now, what trade a man is, or what occupation he may follow, whether he is successful in business or not, whether he is a vegetarian, fruitarian or meat-eater, is only part of the tale, and to get a good start I will go back a few years.
My grandpa William Moores had some difference of opinion with the clergyman of the parish, resulting in his leaving the State Church, and going to a little chapel [15] at Wadsdon Hill, and as a matter of course his boys went too. Now, I’m not able to say what denomination this little place represented, but since James, Joseph and Thomas were all Baptist, it seems fair to infer that it was a Baptist church. So, when Thomas lived in London, he joined the Baptists, strict and particular (footnote 2), and taught in the Sunday School at East Street Walworth, and I think Miss Maria Swan, afterwards my mother, was a teacher there too; also there was a William Grace who was secretary of the school, of whom more later. But Thomas and William both sought the hand of Miss Swan and she gave preference to Thomas, and when they were married, settled down in a corn business in the Buckingham Palace Road (footnote 3); but went to Fleet on my grandfather going to sea, and so settled down as it proved for 20 years, doing business and raising a family; there were 10 of us children; see chronological table page 6.
[16] There were about 400 people within a radius of 4 miles. My father had an underground oven extending into the yard, or under it, and was a considerable expense to heat as the rain seeped through and it cost more for fuel. In that way, he had to have a new oven built in a few years. We had a man to do the baking, while he [my father] attended to the other part of affairs until he had learned to bake bread. Also, when expenses were too large to pay a man. So he had a boy to do the horses and delivery work, get in coals and water, and make himself generally useful.
Transcriber’s footnotes:
1. Church of England.
2. In those days, Baptist chapels were classified as General, Strict, or Strict and Particular, according to how they viewed the nature of the church; One aspect was church membership (should every member be baptised as a believer), and the other admission to communion – but which of these was “strict” and which “peculiar” I’m unable to say.
3. A road running along the side of the Palace in London.
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