When I got home I found father unwell and mother concerned about there not being enough food and too much debt. I then went to London, stopping at the Y.M.C.A. at 5s for a night or 4s 6d for sharing a bedroom with another person. I quickly got another job with a Mrs Hamilton at 42 Green Street, SW6 near Marble Arch as a temporary footman at 30s per week. Mrs Hamilton was very rich from money from Courtaulds Textiles. The butler told me that Mrs Hamilton had got rid of her husband by paying him £500pa on the understanding that “he may not bother her”. She then got a ‘friend’, a Miss White to live with her. Her brother was Sir Paul Latham a Conservative MP. He was forced out of parliament during the war when he was sent to prison for homosexual activity while he was in the Army as a captain. Homosexual activity for men was illegal at that time.

I remember a Lord, who was a friend of Mrs Hamilton, trying to get his three daughters married off as debutants. Unfortunately all of them were somewhat plain and, via the male side of the family, both the Lord and daughters had a large tongue. This made them often at times inarticulate. As a result they went to court for the second time and it cost the Lord £2,000 per year, per daughter to put them ‘on the market’. A young Lord with a Scottish title used to visit Mrs Hamilton but he was quite poor and I was present when he told Mrs Hamilton that he was grateful to get a directorship for £2,000 per annum – the firm was using his title on their notepaper etc. At least twice Mrs Hamilton asked me to sign my name on the transfer of shares from her to Miss White.

After that job I moved to work for a Colonel and Mrs Freddie Cripps. They lived near Grosvenor Square during the week and at Lands End, High Wycombe, Buckinghamshire at weekends. The Colonel had gained and lost three fortunes in his life. His younger brother was Sir Stafford Cripps MP, a leading member of the Labour party. The Colonel was a very likeable gent. He could speak Russian and had been a banker in St Petersburg when the two Revolutions in 1917 lost him his first fortune. I often heard Russian émigré counts who had survived the Revolution talking in Russian to the Colonel. The Colonel used to go into the Whites Club quite regularly. A captain ‘Fruity’ Metcalf, an aide to King Edward VIII used to visit the Colonel and Mrs Cripps to tell of the news of the King and Mrs Simpson. Mrs Cripps was the one who used to actually pay my wages of 25s per week. At that time quite a lot of labourers and semi-skilled men in the UK often received £2 or less per week and they did not get board and food.

In November 1936 I moved to work for Sir John and Lady Noble quite near the BBC Broadcasting House. They also had a large estate in Scotland. Sir John Noble was, I believe the chairman of the MLS Railway and I believe that he got a free train pass from Scotland to London. He was very rich, very old and he suffered from ‘dropsy’ and he used to smell. The butler used to valet him; he was a ‘Scotsman’. As soon as Sir John telephoned to say that he would be coming to London for the weekend, Lady Noble used to take to her bed until he went back to Scotland. When he left on Monday morning he often used to weep and I would have to tell the taxi man the destination, ‘Kings Cross Station’. As soon as Sir John went Lady Noble would get up again. She was slim, well dressed and attractive looking but we, the staff, used to think that she was ‘a cow’. Lady Noble asked me if I was prepared to go to Scotland but I declined. In the kitchen were two Irish women who were sisters. One was the cook and the other was the kitchen maid. Often at times in the afternoon, they would fight each other with pots and pans. They appeared to enjoy fighting; it seemed to be a part of their life!

Sir John Noble had three sons and one daughter. I had to valet the youngest son when he came to London. His name was Michael Noble and he was almost the same age as me. He was a very pleasant and sensible young man. After the war he got a Tory seat in Scotland and became Minister for Scotland under the Churchill and Macmillan Government. The eldest son looked after the Scottish estate. The second son became a Diplomat in, I think, Rome. The daughter, a very able young lady, was looking out for an intelligent, well-off, young man to marry.

A week before King Edward VIII abdicated I called on my brother Roland at St James Palace, Roland used to wait at banquets at Buckingham Palace. I met the King’s third chauffer, a nice man who said I was not like Roland. Lots of people used to tell Roland how very handsome he was and he used to become red in the face and very embarrassed. I said Roland has the looks and I have the brains.


In March 1937 I got a job at Cannizaro House, Wimbledon, SW19 for Mr and Mrs EK Wilson. Mr Wilson had been a director of Ellerman and Wilson Shipping Line, Hull. They had three servants in the kitchen, three housemaids, four in the pantry, one lady’s maid, eleven gardeners, two chauffeurs and one night watchman (a retired policeman). They had one daughter, Lady Munster; she and Lord Munster lived at Bletchingly, near Redhill but had no children. Lord Munster had descended from King William IV 1830-37 ‘outside the blanket’. I felt that Mrs Wilson would have like to have had a son or at least a grandchild from Lady Munster. Mr Wilson used to go shooting game in Yorkshire each year from 12th August. He often used to go to London to visit his club and in the evening he used to pass on to his wife talk about persons whom they knew there. Mr Wilson had lost the use of one eye so we always had to remember that he was blind from the one side. Mrs Wilson was very fond of her pet dogs and used to get a small coffin for her dogs when they died and they had the dog’s graves with memorial stones near the holly collection. Cannizaro House was a pleasant place to work and the Wilson’s were nice people who treated their staff well.

In September 1937, I moved to Belgrave Square SW1 to work for a Lady Dance. The late Sir George Dance made his fortune from putting on successful plays and shows and his chauffeur told me that he made a great deal of money on one particular show in the West End during the 1914-18 War. He told me that people on leave from the War used to go and spend a few hours forgetting about the Western Front by going to the theatre.

Lady Dance had one daughter and two sons. Her eldest son, Mr James Dance was married and became the Conservative MP for Worcester. Mr Edric Dance, her second son was a ‘mummy’s boy’ and he became an actor. One day the ‘old lady’ was telling him off and Edric was weeping and saying “mummy you are so unkind” and Mr James Dance said to him “Don’t let the old cow shout at you like that”; tell her “She is an old cow”. “If she spoke to me like that”, James said “I would tell her off.” During WW2 Mr Edric Dance became a Captain in the Army and died as a prisoner of war under the Japanese. Lady Dance seemed to me to be a ‘spoilt brat’. One day we had to wait on Mrs John Galsworthy, the wife of the great writer of the ‘The Forsyte Saga’. I remember because she asked permission to smoke between each course, a five course lunch, and ate from time to time from a box of chocolates! I believe that Lady Dance was the inspiration for Irene, the difficult wife of Soames Forsyte!