Advance and be Recognised: The Autobiography of A. W. Stapleton 1896 - 1978

By Arthur William Stapleton

Advance and Be Recognised: The Autobiography of A. W. Stapleton 1896 –1978 is an absorbing life story. Arthur was a young man from working class roots, who was thrown into the horrors of war. He was a machine gunner in WW1 and an Air Raid Warden in WW2. Arthur Stapleton founded Advance Electronics before retiring a wealthy man.

‘Reading his words was like seeing a blood-filled horror film play out in my mind. My eyes saw the scene evolve, my mind absorbing the vision of mangled corpses hanging on wire. Bodies unrecognisable as individuals, surrounded by severed limbs, half submerged in mud. Death without dignity.

‘It was not a story about a faceless soldier facing death on a daily basis – it was about my dad. I learned more about him after his death than when he was alive. I would like you to know him as well.’ These words are by Marion, the author’s daughter, adopted from within the family.

This autobiography is an absorbing read, both for those interested in WW1 and in what it takes to succeed in business.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Austin Macauley
• Release date: Jan 5, 2018
• ISBN: 9781370857661

Arthur William Stapleton

I had no idea in what esteem my father was held within the electronics industry, until a book full of published obituaries was sent to me. One contained the words, “I doubt if it is a happier ship than when Stapleton was at the helm.” These words remain with me. My parents were of grandparent age so I knew little of his pioneering in this capacity. He was the founder of Advance Electronics, and started his business in a poultry shed in 1922 after surviving service in the First World War. Reading his words about his time fighting for king and country was like seeing a blood filled horror film play out in my mind. Every now and then as I read his words I became choked with emotion. It was not a story about a soldier facing death on a daily basis... it was about my dad. I learned more about him after his death than when he was alive. I would like you to know him as well. – These words are written by Marion, the author's adopted daughter, from within the family.

Book preview

About the Author

I had no idea in what esteem my father was held within the electronics industry, until a book full of published obituaries was sent to me. One contained the words, I doubt if it is a happier ship than when Stapleton was at the helm. These words remain with me. My parents were of grandparent age so I knew little of his pioneering in this capacity. He was the founder of Advance Electronics, and started his business in a poultry shed in 1922 after surviving service in the First World War.

Reading his words about his time fighting for king and country was like seeing a blood filled horror film play out in my mind. Every now and then as I read his words I became choked with emotion. It was not a story about a soldier facing death on a daily basis… it was about my dad. I learned more about him after his death than when he was alive. I would like you to know him as well.

– These words are written by Marion, the author's adopted daughter, from within the family.

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Dedications

I dedicate this book to Aunt Amy, as without her courage, I would not exist.

Also to my dad – an exceptional and totally good man.

Marion L Stapleton Harley

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Advance and Be Recognised:

The Autobiography of A. W. Stapleton 1896–1978

Published by Austin Macauley at Smashwords

Copyright 2018, Arthur William Stapleton

The right of Arthur William Stapleton Irving to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with section 77 and 78 of the

Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All Rights Reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No paragraph of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with the written permission of the publisher, or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright Act 1956 (as amended). Any person who commits any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

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A CIP catalogue record for this title is

Available from the British Library.

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www.austinmacauley.com

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Advance and Be Recognised:

The Autobiography of A. W. Stapleton 1896–1978

, 2018

Austin Macauley Publishers Ltd.

ISBN 9781786938923 (Paperback)

ISBN 9781786938930 (E-Book)

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First Published in 2018

Austin Macauley Publishers.LTD/

CGC-33-01, 25 Canada Square

Canary Wharf, London E14 5LQ

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Acknowledgement

Born in 1896, my father in the 1960s decided to write his memoirs. He would write in longhand and my mother would type them up for him.

They have been in my possession since his death in 1978.

Early in 2016, I felt his story should be told.

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Childhood and Early Years

I was born in 1896.

My earliest memories date back to around 1899 to 1900, and are for the most part dramatic, which I suppose is natural as ordinary everyday incidents do not impinge on the memory with the force of drama. I can remember when I was around four years old, how a gang of hooligans had cornered a cat and were stoning it to death, and how my father dashed out of our small home and laid about them with a stick. He was a kindly man who hated cruelty, but when aroused he could be quite tough himself. The boys ran off and the cat, bleeding from wounds, slunk away close to the wall to try and find a safe corner to lie up and heal or die.

I also remember a procession passing the end of our street, a small street off Borough Road, in the south east of London 1. It could only have been the coronation of King Edward VII. There were dense crowds lining the route and an atmosphere of jubilation which affected even my young mind. We were a very poor family and. along with our neighbours, were quick to realise that money could be made by letting our windows to sightseers but my father, with his usual generosity, let friends and relatives have most of the seats, so I doubt whether my poor mother gained much from the venture. Mother was a vigorous person, with a quick and alert mind, whilst Father, although strong and fit physically, had the mind of a philosopher and lacked organising ability. The neighbourhood also quickly realised that toilets were in demand, although they were not known as toilets in those days, but referred to as closets or WC’s. Young boys were sent out as touts for patrons, and the grosser boys called out, ‘Ha’penny a piddle, penny a poop,’ and returned to their homes with a line of gents behind them. The ladies were gathered in more discreetly by the young daughters and shepherded into homes that had decided to cater for ladies only. One incident imposed itself on my young mind so that I remember it over sixty years later. In the procession was a drummer, mounted on a horse, with the drums slung each side of the horse’s neck, and to play drums on a horse’s back was to me the very height of human achievement.

We were a large family of mother and father with seven daughters and two sons, I being around two years younger than my brother Ben. Naturally, with such a large family, one or the other was always getting into trouble. I recall an incident involving my sister Maud, the third youngest of my sisters. At the end of our street ran trams drawn by two horses. These trams held about thirty passengers and rarely travelled as fast as a boy could run. Maud, who was around two to three years old, must have strayed from the house and run in front of a tram. I was attracted by the screams of the women passengers as Maud was knocked over by the horses and disappeared under the tram. A crowd quickly gathered round, and as we peered under the tram we could see Maud’s white dress in the gloom underneath. The driver and conductor crawled underneath to try and extricate her but without success. I remember my mother appearing on the scene and upon learning that it was her own child, she threw her apron over her head and ran into a nearby shop unable to look at what she thought was her mangled daughter. The fire brigade were sent for and they jacked up the tram to an alarming angle and finally extricated Maud who, to everyone’s astonishment, was uninjured.

My mother lived a life of slavery, as did most women with large families. My father was a scaffolder in the building trade and his wages were around a pound a week. Sometimes he would bring the bulk of his wages home, but occasionally he would be persuaded into a pub by his mates and arrive home drunk and hand Mother what was left of his wages, so that I doubt if she averaged fifteen shillings a week with which to house and feed a family of eleven, nine of whom were hungry children. Many times I have seen my mother’s look of despair, when handed a few shillings left from Father’s wages, and crept to the door of her bedroom and listened to her sobbing. Apart from managing the home, she worked at home making cardboard boxes at a few pence a gross. She would be up at five in the morning whilst the rest of the family slept and put in long hours before she broke off to get us ready for school. All the girls had to have clean pinafores and their long hair combed before they left for school. Then it was back to the box making for Mother. The house reeked with the smell of glue and it was nearly always around eleven at night before my mother ceased box making. Add to this washing for the family of eleven, visiting hospitals, and nursing the children through measles, whooping cough and the usual children’s sicknesses, plus confinements every two years, and you have a picture of my poor mother’s existence.

Yet we were a happy family, and given a second life, I would ask to be born into a large family again. I think one of the reasons for our success as a family was the gift of humour given to all of us by our father. This, I think, is the most precious gift, next to health, and it made of us a happy crowd, jollying and kidding each other every evening as we grew older. My father was a dreamer and had little regard for the truth, which he considered as fit only for pedants and fusspots. It impeded the flow of intelligent conversation and could completely wreck a good story. No, truth was for the morons and defectives according to Father. It was a rare commodity and, like salt, had its value if used sparingly. My father had spent seven years soldiering in India as a young man and he loved telling romantic stories to the family, none of which we believed. I remember on one occasion, when the conversation turned to foreign parts, my father proclaiming self-importantly that there were rivers in India that flowed at a speed of five hundred miles per hour. This was too much even for a family that accepted and appreciated exaggeration and a chorus of ‘Oh, Dad!’ arose from the entire family. The old chap hated his stories being questioned on the grounds of truth and disliked my criticisms most of all because I used figures to beat him and he regarded figures as an invention of the devil, introduced on earth solely to trip up romantics like himself.

‘Look Dad,’ I said on this occasion, ‘if you stayed on a boat which travelled at five hundred miles an hour for a whole day, you would be back home in England when you got off at night.’

My father eyed me coldly, much as a flu germ would eye a scientist back up through the microscope. ‘All right, young cocky,’ he conceded, ‘two hundred miles.’

The family divided on this. Some were willing to accept the new figure but some, and I am ashamed to say including myself, stuck out for a lower figure. After some further argument the old chap offered fifty miles an hour as his final offer and it was accepted.

Sometimes, when the building trade was slack. Father would be put off for a few days. Mother found it difficult to feed us and we often went for long periods without meat or potatoes. We lived on boiled rice and bread and moist sugar during these lean periods and I remember my mother at dinner time placing a sheet of newspaper on the centre of the table, for we could not afford a table cloth, and on this paper she would place a large black saucepan containing boiled unsweetened rice. After days of rice we children grew tired of this diet and complained, ‘What rice again?’ and Mother would fly into a rage and slap us with the spoon. On the following day, if it was rice again, she would place an enamel iron plate in front of each of us and glare at us as she smacked a spoonful of rice on each plate as if she dared us to complain. She tried her hardest on Sundays to give us meat. Sometimes on Saturday nights she would take me with her round the markets and we would wait until we saw the butchers begin to close their shops around midnight. Then she would send me into a butcher’s for two pennyworth of pieces with which to make a stew for Sunday.

There were no refrigerators in the shops in those days so the butchers were glad to get rid of their stock at almost any prices.

When there was a glut of food, prices were very low indeed and roving street traders used to sell fresh herrings at four a penny. Although times were hard, life had a tang and was full of variety and surprises. There were very few multiple shops so every shop had its own character imposed on it by the proprietor and changed character with his health, mood and fancies. Sometimes I would have to get up before daylight and go with my eldest sister Annie to a warehouse near St Paul’s that sold yesterday’s bread cheaply. We used to take a pillow case and wait with a crowd of women and youngsters until beckoned into a dark entrance under a railway arch where we handed over two pence and came away with the pillow case full of stale loaves. We would go up the road a little way and count our haul, which varied considerably according to the amount of stale bread available and the size of the crowd waiting to collect it.

I have some recollections of my early school days which were spent in a large school near the junction of Borough Road and Southwark Bridge Road. At the beginning of this century, the schools of London were run by the School Board of London and looking back at my schooldays I feel they were run considerably better than the schools of today. There was a tough discipline, necessary and essential when one remembers that ninety-five percent per cent of us were young ragamuffins. Although throughout my schooldays, being an incorrigible rebel, I always fought discipline and authority, I nevertheless always respected my teachers’ authority and regarded them as worthy foes. None of us held them in contempt, as is the attitude of youth towards those in authority today.

Even in my youngest days I had a tremendous regard for my rights and, like most people suffering from this defect of character, I had little time to spare for the rights of others. To defend ourselves against the injustice of the masters, I and two other discontents formed a gang which we called The Gang. Having formed the nucleus, we quickly bullied the whole class into joining by threats of a good hiding if they refused. There was, however, one boy who refused to join and we made his life a hell in consequence. He was a quiet lad, a very good scholar and by behaviour and manners a cut above the rest of us. He wore a Norfolk suit while most of us wore clothes that were made of our fathers’ cast-offs. I was particularly annoyed with this boy for not joining the gang and thus making the class one hundred percent gang, and I therefore organised all sorts of torments to harass and worry him. I remember as a final attempt at humiliating him. I arranged that twenty members of the gang should follow him in the form of an alligator tail when he left for home and in complete silence, mimic him in everything he did. I, as the author of the plan, was to be the leader of the file. We had followed him for about a quarter of a mile, mimicking his every action, when he turned and faced me. There was such an agony of pleading in his face as he said, ‘Please don’t do it any more,’ that I felt such sudden remorse at the realisation of the cruelty of my actions that I determined there and then to call off the persecution, and from then onwards I did all I could to protect him. During the years that followed, although I never became a friend. I grew to admire his quiet courage and decent behaviour.

I also remember figuring in another incident of rebellion which, upon reflection, shows the anarchist in my character. It was the custom for all classes to form up in the playground in seven columns, from class one to the lordly seventh, five minutes before the time the classes commenced and each teacher would lead his class into the school in well-disciplined order. I decided that this five minutes was illegally stolen from us and consequently argued with the gang that we should teach them a lesson. I therefore arranged that none of the gang would form up in the playground at five to two, but the moment the last boy had entered the school we should go in as fast as we could, one at a time, each shutting the classroom door and the boy following opening it immediately it was closed. I had calculated that if the operation was carried out as planned, all sixty boys would be able to get to their seats before 2 p.m. I, being the inventor and organiser, naturally accepted the honour of being the last boy in. Five to two arrived and the whole of the class, with the exception of the boy just mentioned, were hiding to watch events. The school assembled in the playground with the exception of our class, and our surprised teacher Mr Jenkins found only one boy. From my hiding place I could hear the excited murmuring of the school at the phenomenon of a whole class being absent and I felt thrilled and excited as the prime mover in this great battle with authority. The classes moved off with our teacher marching beside one single boy. Immediately after the last boy had entered, I signalled to the first boy of our rebel class to enter and we all climbed the four flights of stairs to our classroom in single file. As the boys entered one after the other, each opening and shutting the door, I watched the classroom clock through the door with great anxiety as the success of the whole scheme depended on my reaching my seat before the stroke of 2 p.m. I breathed a satisfied sigh of relief as I sank into my seat just as the large hand reached the vertical. Jenkins, our teacher, showed no sign that anything