Johnson Ball's daughter contributes to the QC Website
You must accept my memories as those of a seventy-three year old whose parents separated before I was three. As a child, I was terrified of my father, who used to visit us in Quinton, weekly, to begin with, and the visits always ended (or even began) with tears and hysteria from my mother whom I loved devotedly. Later, ten years later, I learned to love and respect my father too. Children of broken homes were far less common in those days and even then, by the time I was in Junior School at Lapal I was naughty enough to play for centre stage by my unusual situation, supported by my father's love of attention; it seems now in my memory that there was some article most weeks in the County Express: it was the only newspaper my mother could afford, or did afford. We were never in ignorance of what my father was doing.
I should begin at the beginning: my father was born in 1901, just not a Victorian, to a poor man, Peter Ball, who worked in a local factory in Warrington and his wife Florence, their second child, younger brother to Marian who had been their reason for a very rushed an ill-matched marriage. Peter was funny and gregarious and spent his money usually before he got home on pay-day. In his cups he could quote much of Shakespeare so he was by no means illiterate or stupid but thought life was for living and had no thought for his wife who was endlessly ambitious for her little son. Marian she did not care for, and to be honest, Marian had no likeness to anyone in the family. She became a seamstress and her daughter a director at Kidderminster Playhouse. I believe I met Aunt Marian once but my sister, fifteen years my senior knew her well and liked her. She had a loud and jolly laugh s befitted a rather generously proportioned lady. I was told with probably more truth than discretion that when Florence found herself in the family way she thought Peter was the best choice of several possibilities; he was certainly very handsome and popular!
My father left school at 12 to work as 'gopher' at a printing factory nearby and dutifully brought his money home to his mother. By this time his parents were separated, Peter living upstairs and Florence downstairs in a one up/one down terraced house in Walter St. Warrington, rarely speaking. There was no money for a physical separation; the kitchen was in a cupboard in the downstairs room and the 'necessary' at the bottom of a very small garden. All the money Johnson brought home was put away for his education. He went to night-school during his teens, studying drawing, technical drawing, art, engineering and mathematics. His mother didn't forget his social advancement and sent him to the local Methodist Sunday-school and Church ; Elmwood, to mix with a better class than she knew she was.
There it was that he met my mother, eldest of three girls. Her father, Harold, had been a carpenter and had fallen in love with the daughter of gentry and served his seven years courting this dainty girl with an 18 inch waist and serious eyes He worked his way up to be a cabinet maker to be more worthy of her. For seven years she turned down all other suitors including the inheritor of Mackintosh's, yes she came from Halifax, and they married. Her father got so cross he threw her out and refused to see her again. After that she only saw her mother and sisters secretly. Her father never saw her again.
I remember stories of my parents' early days when they would race an earlier Jowett with a dickie-seat on Southport sands when he would delight his young wife and his mother-in-law by doing a ton on the long hard beach. My mother delightedly turned to her mother and said, "over 100mph, Mamma ! What d'you think of that?'. "Well, very comfy," replied my Grandma, an imperturbable Yorkshire woman. That must have been about 1927, just before my sister was born. My mother wasn't very lucky with pregnancies and they lost the next four. My father, typical of his time, longed for a son, and when my brother was born in 1940, he was happy to call it a day, but my mother didn't want to have what she called a second only child, so the marriage continued under obvious difficulties and I was born at the beginning of 1943.
When I was married, my brother borrowed Daddy's brown Bentley to take me to church in Sandon Road, Edgbaston. I was very impressed. Even more with the Dellow which my brother received as his 21st. present. My sister had a handbag and I had a pair of white boots and in those days the disparity between boys and girls never struck me.
When my parents split my father applied for custody of Tony but said he didn't want me because girls were always trouble, so the court awarded custody of us both to my mother and told my father he had to pay 4 pounds a week for her and the two children. My sister was just off to University in Leicester so my mother got nothing for her for the six months she was still at home. As social history, its well worth noting. My brother Tony and I went to stay with my maternal grandparents and our two amazing aunts for ten months while my mother did an emergency teacher training course. Before that she was earning 16 pounds a month as an untrained teacher. She taught at Colley Gate Infants' and I went with her although I was only two. Things have changed. I took my youngest and let her sleep in the Moses basket under the desk while I taught. Can you imagine Health and Safety now? My son, an actor, writer, director, producer, works for H&S and he is horrified when I talk about when I was young.
By this time Daddy was building a relationship with a former student, Jennie Priest, who was the opposite of my mother, very calm, unflappable. She kept a low profile all the time they lived at Chawn Hill. He told me towards the end that he never stopped loving my mother but he just couldn't stand the tension. He certainly loved Jennie, as did I when I got to know her. I didn't meet her until I was about fifteen when he used to borrow me to be hostess at his official functions. Jennie was a Jehovah's Witness and was turned out of her congregation when she began to live with him after the move to Chawn Hill. I don't know if that was before or after my parents divorce. Mummy hated being divorced!
I can remember Daddy sat me down before they split and insisted I learn to draw a perfect circle. So I must have been two and a half. Can you imagine that now? My youngest Grandchild is two and a half and does little more than scribble with bent circles for faces which only she can recognise. My own youngest at two could draw stick pictures in perspective, ie, the flowers inside the garden wall! I still have it clearly named and dated by a very proud mother. I must pass it on before I die or go gaga, or it will be thrown away.
My father's handwriting was always beautiful, until just before he died at 84 when it got a bit wobbly, but still well-formed and regular. I was abroad when it was obvious it was close to the end and rushed back from Trinidad, but although he was already in a coma, I'm sure he knew I was there. My elder son was let out of public school and came with me to the funeral. I didn't realise there were any students there. John Stephens should have come and talked to the family.
I was amused that Daddy found it appropriate to teach elocution. He retained his broad Lancashire accent to the end. Jenny had to have elocution lessons to lose her Black Country accent and spoke slightly 'poash' Midlands English but I suppose he didn't hear himself, at least not critically. When we went up to see him to tell him we were leaving on our first posting abroad ( My husband was a diplomat) my father took Kit aside and said in broad Lancashire, ' You're a braite lad, are you not? Can you not get a job in your oan cuntry?' He worried a lot about us being in a 'furrin cuntry', and constantly tried to persuade us back into academic life. Shades of "Uncle Matthew' in Nancy Mitford's stories!
I think Daddy should have insisted on his staff doing hand-writing lessons as sometimes the teachers had poorer writing than the pupils. But the pupils' spelling and usage isn't as good as he would have hoped. As an English teacher myself, I'm as pernickety as my father. P'raps it's just my age. My brother, who became a doctor, gets manic about mis-usage. I've got paintings of my father's - did you now he was a dedicated artist too? He was also engine-mad.
I was delighted to discover some of his pupils still remember some of my father's work.
Marion Burdess [nee Ball]
I should begin at the beginning: my father was born in 1901, just not a Victorian, to a poor man, Peter Ball, who worked in a local factory in Warrington and his wife Florence, their second child, younger brother to Marian who had been their reason for a very rushed an ill-matched marriage. Peter was funny and gregarious and spent his money usually before he got home on pay-day. In his cups he could quote much of Shakespeare so he was by no means illiterate or stupid but thought life was for living and had no thought for his wife who was endlessly ambitious for her little son. Marian she did not care for, and to be honest, Marian had no likeness to anyone in the family. She became a seamstress and her daughter a director at Kidderminster Playhouse. I believe I met Aunt Marian once but my sister, fifteen years my senior knew her well and liked her. She had a loud and jolly laugh s befitted a rather generously proportioned lady. I was told with probably more truth than discretion that when Florence found herself in the family way she thought Peter was the best choice of several possibilities; he was certainly very handsome and popular!
My father left school at 12 to work as 'gopher' at a printing factory nearby and dutifully brought his money home to his mother. By this time his parents were separated, Peter living upstairs and Florence downstairs in a one up/one down terraced house in Walter St. Warrington, rarely speaking. There was no money for a physical separation; the kitchen was in a cupboard in the downstairs room and the 'necessary' at the bottom of a very small garden. All the money Johnson brought home was put away for his education. He went to night-school during his teens, studying drawing, technical drawing, art, engineering and mathematics. His mother didn't forget his social advancement and sent him to the local Methodist Sunday-school and Church ; Elmwood, to mix with a better class than she knew she was.
There it was that he met my mother, eldest of three girls. Her father, Harold, had been a carpenter and had fallen in love with the daughter of gentry and served his seven years courting this dainty girl with an 18 inch waist and serious eyes He worked his way up to be a cabinet maker to be more worthy of her. For seven years she turned down all other suitors including the inheritor of Mackintosh's, yes she came from Halifax, and they married. Her father got so cross he threw her out and refused to see her again. After that she only saw her mother and sisters secretly. Her father never saw her again.
I remember stories of my parents' early days when they would race an earlier Jowett with a dickie-seat on Southport sands when he would delight his young wife and his mother-in-law by doing a ton on the long hard beach. My mother delightedly turned to her mother and said, "over 100mph, Mamma ! What d'you think of that?'. "Well, very comfy," replied my Grandma, an imperturbable Yorkshire woman. That must have been about 1927, just before my sister was born. My mother wasn't very lucky with pregnancies and they lost the next four. My father, typical of his time, longed for a son, and when my brother was born in 1940, he was happy to call it a day, but my mother didn't want to have what she called a second only child, so the marriage continued under obvious difficulties and I was born at the beginning of 1943.
When I was married, my brother borrowed Daddy's brown Bentley to take me to church in Sandon Road, Edgbaston. I was very impressed. Even more with the Dellow which my brother received as his 21st. present. My sister had a handbag and I had a pair of white boots and in those days the disparity between boys and girls never struck me.
When my parents split my father applied for custody of Tony but said he didn't want me because girls were always trouble, so the court awarded custody of us both to my mother and told my father he had to pay 4 pounds a week for her and the two children. My sister was just off to University in Leicester so my mother got nothing for her for the six months she was still at home. As social history, its well worth noting. My brother Tony and I went to stay with my maternal grandparents and our two amazing aunts for ten months while my mother did an emergency teacher training course. Before that she was earning 16 pounds a month as an untrained teacher. She taught at Colley Gate Infants' and I went with her although I was only two. Things have changed. I took my youngest and let her sleep in the Moses basket under the desk while I taught. Can you imagine Health and Safety now? My son, an actor, writer, director, producer, works for H&S and he is horrified when I talk about when I was young.
By this time Daddy was building a relationship with a former student, Jennie Priest, who was the opposite of my mother, very calm, unflappable. She kept a low profile all the time they lived at Chawn Hill. He told me towards the end that he never stopped loving my mother but he just couldn't stand the tension. He certainly loved Jennie, as did I when I got to know her. I didn't meet her until I was about fifteen when he used to borrow me to be hostess at his official functions. Jennie was a Jehovah's Witness and was turned out of her congregation when she began to live with him after the move to Chawn Hill. I don't know if that was before or after my parents divorce. Mummy hated being divorced!
I can remember Daddy sat me down before they split and insisted I learn to draw a perfect circle. So I must have been two and a half. Can you imagine that now? My youngest Grandchild is two and a half and does little more than scribble with bent circles for faces which only she can recognise. My own youngest at two could draw stick pictures in perspective, ie, the flowers inside the garden wall! I still have it clearly named and dated by a very proud mother. I must pass it on before I die or go gaga, or it will be thrown away.
My father's handwriting was always beautiful, until just before he died at 84 when it got a bit wobbly, but still well-formed and regular. I was abroad when it was obvious it was close to the end and rushed back from Trinidad, but although he was already in a coma, I'm sure he knew I was there. My elder son was let out of public school and came with me to the funeral. I didn't realise there were any students there. John Stephens should have come and talked to the family.
I was amused that Daddy found it appropriate to teach elocution. He retained his broad Lancashire accent to the end. Jenny had to have elocution lessons to lose her Black Country accent and spoke slightly 'poash' Midlands English but I suppose he didn't hear himself, at least not critically. When we went up to see him to tell him we were leaving on our first posting abroad ( My husband was a diplomat) my father took Kit aside and said in broad Lancashire, ' You're a braite lad, are you not? Can you not get a job in your oan cuntry?' He worried a lot about us being in a 'furrin cuntry', and constantly tried to persuade us back into academic life. Shades of "Uncle Matthew' in Nancy Mitford's stories!
I think Daddy should have insisted on his staff doing hand-writing lessons as sometimes the teachers had poorer writing than the pupils. But the pupils' spelling and usage isn't as good as he would have hoped. As an English teacher myself, I'm as pernickety as my father. P'raps it's just my age. My brother, who became a doctor, gets manic about mis-usage. I've got paintings of my father's - did you now he was a dedicated artist too? He was also engine-mad.
I was delighted to discover some of his pupils still remember some of my father's work.
Marion Burdess [nee Ball]