Heyday of the Brown Bomber

HE was known as The Brown Bomber, a weatherbeaten town character who spent the summer months stripped to the waist and tootling around the district on his trusty old push- bike.

And one who mourns his recent passing is keen correspondent Ken Melling, for it closes another lively chapter among Ken's memories of youth.

Real name Harry Boughey, the 'Bomber' was a crowd-pulling assistant for travelling fun-fair spielers who regularly pitched their boxing booths on open-ground spaces in and around St Helens.

Ken, from Chancery Lane, Parr, who has supplied me with many fascinating flashback stories over the years, cranks us back in time once more. "Harry," he explains, "used to stand on the platform outside Sullivan's boxing booth with an apple in his outstretched palm. Then old man Sullivan, who had two boxing sons, Sammy and Johnny, would slice it in two with a downwards swish of a sharpened bayonet."

The stunt never failed to pull in the crowds and after his party trick the unscathed Brown Bomber "would leap into the ring and have a go."

The cauliflower-eared pugs, taking on all-comers from among the audience, shared the sporting bill with legendary all-in wrestlers, such as Babe Beech, Mad Scotty Ambrose and the mysterious Masked Marvel.

Ken adds that, up to recent times, Harry was still a familiar sight, travelling all over the place on his bike and sporting a fabulous sun tan.

Another of the colourful characters who peopled Ken's youth was Big Edie, a strapping Amazon of a woman who heaved boxes laden with clay for a living. She was the most muscular member of the female team of shovers at Kelly's clayhole and brickworks . . . "being able to push four boxes at a time."

Ken looks back to the 1940s when members of the street gangs left school. This was a time when King Coal and the glass industry together reigned supreme . . . and when jobs were plentiful.

The school-leaver could take his choice from Pilkingtons, UGB , Forsters Glass and an abundance of local coal pits. And if he didn't like the job he'd first obtained, then it was a simple matter to pack it in and pick another. It was a case of jobs chasing workers then! The deafening sound of factory sirens and buzzers ripped through the St Helens air twice a day, at clocking-on and finishing time. And Ken clearly remembers the great stampede as workers by the thousand swarmed out of the Pilkington glass factories for the journey home - mainly on push-bikes.

It was also a time when smog often hung over the town - the result of so many smoke-belching works chimneys.

Youth pit training had been introduced, and a 16-week course made the young recruit eligible for underground work. "I still have my certificate in my possession," says Ken with just a hint of pride.

Pleasures were simple then. Our Parr memory man reflects on one particularly scorching hot summer morning, down Burtonhead Road. The night-turn lads, with tommy-tins hanging from their belts and shod in clogs, were playing a keenly-contested soccer match with a tin can for a ball. They'd just come from the Ravenhead canteen after breakfast.

It's little things like this which have left an impression on Ken and cause him to feel a warm glow of nostalgia.

The entertainment scene for a young lad about town was cheap and cheerful. "The town was packed with sing-along pubs to the sound of the old joanna," he recalls, "and you had to get there early or it would be standing-room only."

The now-demolished Scarisbrick Hotel, nicknamed 'Little Lads Pub' was a popular watering hole for the teenagers. "A couple of pints, then over the road to the YMCA's tanner hop, feeling that you really were it!"

National Service was in full swing. Members of the old boyhood gang were being called up while those working down the pit were caught in the dilemma of whether to stay in their reserved occupations until the age of 27 or shoulder arms with the rest.

Ken opted to sign on for the Irish Guards, along with two of his old classmates from Parr Central School.

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.