John D

John D

John D was born on 29th June 1927. He lived in Darnall until he was 7 years old and then Handsworth.
John is being interviewed by Mary Grover

[John’s account of his family is edited at his request.  Information relevant to his reading journey includes the facts that his family moved from Darnall to Hardsworth and then to Attercliffe. Bombed out of Attercliffe, they eventually found a house in Tinsley. John attended Firth Park Grammar School till he was 18. He got his Higher School Certificate in 1945. He was called up just as he was beginning his teacher training but returned to it after his National Service. This training equipped him to become a Junior School teacher.]

Mary Grover: John could you tell me where you lived in your childhood and teenage years and what took you about the different areas of Sheffield that you lived in?

John D: Yes, I was born at Darnall at about zero years of course!  I’d started the college about one month and then I got the call up papers and I was in the RAF where I remained then for three years. I got back more or less in the June or July and then I went to the college properly and did, in those days, it was a two year course.

MG: John, before we leave those school years, which primary school did you go to?

JD: Well of course I started off at Darnall. During the war that became an auxiliary fire station. I don’t think there were that many children. Then I went up to Handsworth, Handsworth Council School, of course they were all council schools in those days and then I went to Attercliffe Council School and that’s where I sat the scholarship it was called in those days, the eleven plus if you like. But that was bombed; it was set on fire on the same raid that you know … in actual fact the wall at the end of our yard was the school yard. We were next to the school so we were both bombed out together, the school and I. By that time of course I was going to Firth Park so I continued at Firth Park until I was called up.

MG: So when you went to school did you feel that you got access to any books that interested you?

JD: At that time, to be quite honest, my only interest in books was for entertainment. In other words all the books I was reading were fiction so really and truly, up to going to school and needing books for information then of course, I was really into fiction. Now when we got to Firth Park there was a peculiar system in those days in that you paid an amount, it wasn’t a huge amount, although it was to my grandparents, I think it was about a pound or two pound or something a year, to hire the books from the school.

MG: Good heavens.

JD: Did you not know that?

MG: No.

JD: Oh, yes we had to hire our text books and back them and take care of them of course because you could be charged if they were damaged. I think when the Education Act came out later on of course it meant that the books then became free. It was the same with school dinners. When I first went, school dinners were seven pence a day, which doesn’t sound a lot today, but it was a lot in those days. When the government stepped in and said all children must have access to school meals because of rationing and of course not getting sufficient of the right kinds of foods at all because of the war, it actually went down to five pence because that was the standard charge throughout the country.

MG: That’s interesting. So this fiction that you read when you were very young, can you remember any of the books that you read?

JD: Doctor Dolittle and Just William of course, yes. I wasn’t fussy on the really weighty novels, you know like the Dickens and stuff like that. I am sure the stories were splendid but they were buried in a lot of print and to me I wanted it quick and easy, something that I could do. I think I once told you the story on tape before where I had borrowed this book, it was, I think it was a Doctor Dolittle book, I’m not sure now but it was a book of that nature. I got home and I’d read it in an hour of course so I took it back to the library and they told me, ‘Go home, you can’t have any more books You can only have one borrowing a day, you can’t go back’. I think at that time I only had one ticket anyway so it meant that although I’d walked several miles to the library, there and back, it meant that I was frustrated because I couldn’t borrow a book that I wanted.

MG: So did you go home and come back again?

JD: The next day, yes, but not that day.

MG: That’s a long walk from Tinsley to …

JD: No, you’ve mistaken me. I’m perhaps confusing you slightly because we were bombed out in Attercliffe, we moved up to Handsworth again, where relatives lived, and then the house that we’d lived in at Darnall, our next door neighbour, Her house was empty; she had gone away from Sheffield at the time I suppose because of the bombing, so she let us have her house until the Corporation provided us with the Tinsley house.

MG: I see, that’s interesting.

JD: So it was from Darnall, Thornville Road it’s called. From there down to Attercliffe library.

MG: So how old were you when you made that long journey, the few miles to borrow the Doctor Dolittle and then come back? How old do you think you were when you took out Doctor Dolittle?

JD: Well I was certainly at grammar school at that time. It might have not been Doctor Dolittle, I know I read Doctor Dolittle, it could have been some other because, with the disapproval I might add, of the librarians of the time, I started borrowing adult books. Edgar Wallace was my favourite but there were others, Agatha Christies and all the usual. So it could have been one of those that I’d read you know, because I was a quick reader. That’s my problem now, I’ve got macular degeneration in the left eye; my right eye is OK but it’s been spoiled by the left eye, if you know what I mean. I read so quickly that the ordinary magnifying glass is no good to me so at the moment I am exploring with the low vision unit, a way of getting a whole page magnifier.

MG: So these Edgar Wallace, you got them from a municipal library did you?

JD: Oh yes. In those days there were a very popular read.

MG: And what about Zane Grey, did you ever borrow them?

JD: I wasn’t a great fan. I know of Zane Grey, yes, cowboy books of course. I know of them but I wasn’t a great fan of cowboy books in those days. Nowadays I love ‘em! Mainly because they are short and they’re all more or less the same pattern, vey moral.

MG: Quite a few people have said they got their Zane Greys and Edgar Wallace and their sort of entertainment from Red Circle libraries. You didn’t use those?

JD: No, I didn’t. There were two … we weren’t rich enough to be quite honest. There were two, the nearest Red Circle library that I know about, there could have been others, was at Darnall and it was in a couple of shops that had been knocked through but if I’d wanted to borrow them privately rather than municipal, I would have gone to Boots in town because their top floor, half of the top floor was Boots library. But better still there was the top floor that was the library and I think there was photographic equipment and stuff like that. Then there was the main floor with the pharmaceuticals and other and then there was the basement. Now Boots Bargain Basement was famous because all stuff that had been damaged on the way here, boxes damaged rather than the goods themselves, was downstairs, and similarly with books. When books became well, either unfashionable or even perhaps unreadable or perhaps not in a fit state to loan out, they went down to Bargain Basement and you could pick those up for a penny a time.

MG: Could you?

JD: Oh yes.

MG: Can you remember any of the books you have bought?

JD: No I can’t. Except I do remember one and I’m a little bit miffed about that because it was an old Atlas of the World, New Zealand at that time was still Van Diemen’s’ Land or whatever. I took this home and thoroughly digested it; it was just a book of maps I suppose, or perhaps a gazetteer and probably when we were bombed it probably stayed in the house. It’s quite likely.

MG: Shame. But the Boots Bargain Basement was a really good source?

JD: That was the source.

[My uncle] used to give me a ha’penny to go down to one of the cinemas depending on what they wanted. The nearby one was called The Regal, at the bottom of Staniforth Road and then farther down Attercliffe Common as it was called there was The Adelphi, then The Globe and then I think The Pavilion. I think they all still in existence.

MG: Four?

JD: There were four, yes. Attercliffe was a very populous place. Don’t forget there were rows and rows of steelworkers’ houses, back-to-back in some cases. I remember when we started to get our Anderson shelter in the back yard of St. Charles Road, I’d often wonder why there were six houses in the yard, three at each side of the passage and there was a strip of two or three flags wide of flags and then the rest of the place was asphalt and then there were the outside toilets of course. Those we had to share. I think there were about three of four toilets for the whole yard. When we started to dig down through the asphalt to put the Anderson shelter in (when I say ‘we’ I mean my uncles, they discovered there was soil underneath and pigsties). So at that time in the middle of what is now a very, or was then, a very heavy industrialised place, had been smallholdings at one time.

MG: So you passed your Eleven Plus and you went to Firth Park.

JD: That’s right.

MG: And do you think you …

JD: When I was searching these out I found the actual letter that they sent from the Education Committee that told me that I’d been allocated to Firth Park Secondary School.  Don’t forget in those days, the ordinary school you know, not what we call grammar schools now, but the ordinary schools, there was infant, junior and senior. Secondary schools were what we now call grammar schools. So when I went in ’38 it was Firth Park Secondary School. I remember this Education Bill changed it to Grammar School and we had to go altering all the SS to GS.

MG: So when you got to that school do you feel you got at education that really equipped you for further study?

JD: It was an all boys’ school. I didn’t realise what a disadvantage that was going to place me at, at that time, but it did. Did it equip me? I was fast to learn, so I could say that, what shall we say, I enjoyed learning. I still do come to that. When I watch television at night, it’s very, very rare perhaps only once in an evening that I have a fiction thing on. Last night, was it last night? Or was it the night before? I had that school one on, what they call it? You know this one that has been moved up to Scotland? My memory plays me tricks. I’ve not lost it but I can’t recall instantly. This school, I watched that but it was fiction of course, and the rest of the night I was watching non-fiction. That is a typical night, yes.

MG: And when you were a teenager was that true as well?

JD: I was always interested in learning, yes.

MG: So which teachers, if any, really inspired you to learn?

JD: I can’t say that any teacher inspired me but I can say when I was in the Sixth Form one teacher annoyed me! He never seemed to teach us anything. He was on about logic and stuff like that, he was supposed to be teaching mathematics and I was interested to learn mathematics not logic. They might have been the same thing for all I knew and I actually remember at one time saying to him, ‘I’m sorry Mr. Gigg’, and that was his name, ‘I’m sorry that you are not teaching me anything, you are a rotten teacher.’ He grabbed hold of me by the scruff of the neck. This was an eighteen year old remember, or 17 getting on towards eighteen, and he carted me off to the Head Teacher who was a man called Mr. Padfield and he said, ‘Leave him with me’. He gave me a good talking to and said, ‘Now go and apologise’, which I had to of course. By the time I’d cooled down I did but we never felt the same about each other!

MG: But it didn’t put you off going into teaching which is what you did, isn’t it?

JD: Well there were lots of what I call good teachers. I mean he may have been a good teacher, I don’t know, but there were lots of what I call good teachers who I actually admired. One of them, he must have been very much ahead of his time, it was in 1938, he was teaching French by having French coins and stuff like that which was very, very unusual in those times. I remember when I moved into his room for French, of course we moved round in those days, the teacher had his own subject room and we moved to it, probably four times in the day. I remember going to the wall and looking at all these French coins that had been fastened to the wall and pictures and records and he actually taught us French songs. Now that in those days was extremely unusual in 1938. Later on he became the Deputy Head. I am not surprised really. A man called Wetherall.

MG: So you got enough education to enable you to go on where? Where did you go after the school? You went on to the college?

JD: The college, yes.

MG: But that was, first of all you went into the RAF after you left school.

JD: Yes, I started at college but I’d only been there a month and I was called up.

MG: So when you went into the RAF did your reading take a bit of a back seat or did you go on reading?

JD: Well [laughs], hmm yes, it’s a peculiar situation in that I was in the RAF, yes, but what had happened is that at that time they were demobbing everybody who had been in for a long period of time. With each batch of newcomers, you didn’t choose what you wanted to do in the RAF; they told you what they wanted to replace the people who were being demobbed out of there. I became a storekeeper. A storekeeper, yes. I suppose mathematics and reading all that came into it, yes it was. But for the first part of my training we were near Blackpool, then the storekeeper, I was transferred to another place again near to Blackpool, Wheaton, Warton, Freckleton, yes these names. I think, memory plays you tricks, especially after a time, we are talking about 60 years ago. I think I was due to go to Burma because the war hadn’t finished with Japan and they were still fighting the Japs in the Burmese jungle, yes. I’d never been vaccinated as a child so when they vaccinated me to go overseas, as indeed they did all the batch, I caught vaccine fever which put me in hospital. You see I wouldn’t have been in hospital in civilian life, I would have been in bed at home, but in the RAF you can’t stay in bed all day in the barrack so I was put in the hospital. At the end of that time I was given some leave and by the time I got back my batch had gone. So I was then a loose cannon if you like. So they put me on to a squad who went round closing RAF airfields and American ones too.

MG: So you were busy?

JD: Very busy, yes.

MG: So did you have time to read?

JD: I can’t ever remember reading while I was in the RAF. I honestly can’t, no I can’t. I probably read a paper, a newspaper, but I can’t even remember that. No, I can’t remember.

MG: That’s interesting. Some men have mentioned that when they were in the army the novels of Hank Jansen were quite popular. You never came across those?

JD: No.

MG: No. So …

JD: I do remember we shut down an American … not a large number … about ten of fifteen in this group that went round stations closing. I do remember we went to this American station to close it down and the things I went for were the records. The Americans at that time had a scheme called V Discs. You’ve never heard of V Discs?  All artists like, well Bing Crosby and Frank Sinatra and Judy Garland, all that sort of artist, they went into recording studios and recorded special V Discs for the forces which were then distributed to all the American stations. I think somewhere still in my loft I’ve still got some of these V Discs left and they were not the versions that were on sale to the public, they were especially recorded. Although sometimes, for instance with Dick Haymes, I used to like Dick Haymes, and one of his films was oh … memory again sorry. One of his films was about an Irish composer called Ball and Irish Eyes Are Smiling. You see I can remember it’s just a matter of not often, not … and I got this V Disc and it was all the songs from the film that had been recorded from the film soundtrack as they do commonly nowadays but in those days it was unusual. I mean a 78 record was nothing from a soundtrack.

MG: That’s interesting.

JD: Incidentally this isn’t strictly in your remit I know, but each 78 had a number on. Most of Bing Crosby’s were recorded in Los Angeles and the number was prefixed by LA and then suddenly for some reason, which I couldn’t fathom at the time, we were getting records with XYZ and a number on and I thought, ‘Where have these been recorded?’ Now what had happened is that the record company sent the Flying Fortresses that came over, flew over and landed in Freckleton, that was where I was stationed and they landed there before they were distributed to airfields throughout the country and the record company used to get the pilots or somebody to take over a record, or a matrix I should say, to stamp records from but very often they were shot down or something and the records never reached this country so they would borrow a record from a serviceman and make a master from that. So it wasn’t an original that had come from America as it should have been and that was why the XYZ was put on because it was made from these smuggled in records if you like, that the forces were bringing over with them. Also they were 78s and they were shellac and they broke, but some got through obviously.

MG: And it made a difference to you.

JD: Oh it made a difference to me. Yes, we got all the latest American just as today the teenagers do the same.

MG: So when you got back from the RAF and went back to college, what subject did you study there?

JD: On my Higher School Certificate there were three principal subjects which was mathematics, chemistry and physics but in those days the teachers were cute as I am sure they are today and they realised that you couldn’t get a school certificate unless you’d got these three subjects, principal subjects, unless if you got one of your subjects at less than pass they could do it as a secondary subject. So we had to take another secondary subject because two secondary subjects made up one principal. So I got maths, physics and chemistry and then I did applied maths so that if I’d failed in any of those three this applied maths added to the failure would have given me a pass.

MG: Yes. That’s a challenging group of subjects. So what did you then study at college?

JD: The same more or less. But don’t forget I had a three-year gap.

MG: So you came out of college at ’49?

JD: Well ’50. My first, I finished college in June or July whichever ’50 and my first teaching post was in ’50.

MG: Where did you teach?

JD: Woodhouse. Not grammar school of course but Woodhouse Council School as it was in those days. Woodhouse, yes Woodhouse. There is a second school called Woodhouse West which is at the other end of the village.

MG: Were you teaching maths or science?

JD:  No, I opted to teach juniors so I did maths but of course I did everything else as well.

MG: So you taught juniors and during your time in teaching at Woodhouse did you start to read again much for pleasure?

JD: Well I needed to didn’t I? A lot of the subjects that the children wanted to know about and were in the syllabus I was not exactly ignorant but I’d probably not been in touch with them for years. Yes.

MG: So it was mostly reading for your job?

JD: I would have said so, yes.

MG: What about newspapers or magazines?

JD: Ever since certainly since I’ve been married and probably before I’ve had a daily paper and it is only in the last couple of years that I have stopped that because I’ve never got time to read it. Some days it was never opened and of course my eyes …that’s a problem with newsprint.

MG: Yes, and what about books in the house John? I meant to ask you this earlier, did your family have books in the house much?

JD: Well my grandfather, who, as I say I lived with.

MG: Your mother’s father?

JD: Yes, my mother’s father. He was a steelworker all his life. He was born in Rotherham and he moved out to Woodhouse Mill where there was a steel works at that time, I don’t know if it’s still there, as a labourer. My grandmother, she was a country girl in little village called Fence and her father was a winder at Fence Colliery. In those days there was a colliery there, only a small colliery but it was there. Of course they courted and married and that was it. They decided he would probably get a better job in Sheffield so they moved to Sheffield to Darnall and then he got a job in Sheffield and more or less lived with that job the rest of his life.

MG: So did they bring any books with them?

JD: No, I was going to tell you this. My grandfather I think, I’ve no proof of this, but I’m pretty sure that my grandfather was quite a brainbox. My grandmother, she was very nice and you know, we got on well and all of that sort of thing but she was very much a housewife. Of course my grandfather worked 12 hour shifts in those days, there weren’t eight hours and stuff like that, he liked to do intellectual things within his capacity and within his finance as well. They were never what you would call well off. He used to take a magazine called John Bull.

MG: Oh yes! Yes.

JD: And John Bull, they had loads of competitions in. There was something called ‘Bullets’, you know ‘Bull-ets’, John Bull and they started off a sentence and you had to finish it off and it was how you finished off that was the competition. In other words it wasn’t just a filling in squares or there was no actual solution, it was … I remember some of his ‘Bullets’ but some of them have gone. For instance one, he used to remember this one, because he won a prize with it. It was ‘Jazz…’ and then the rest of the thing was blank. He wrote after it, ‘Sir Henry wouldn’t’ – ‘Sir Henry Wood –n’t’.

MG: How nice. Yes.

JD: Yes, he was quite a clever man. I think that any brains that I have were via my mother.

MG: So she was an able woman as well as your grandfather?

JD: Oh yes, she was. She could have done a lot more than she ever did with her life but I don’t think she regretted it at all.

MG: That’s wonderful. So you are running this reading group now at Gleadless?

JD: No, we are not running a reading group, we are running a coffee morning with discussion encouraged. Not a reading group.

MG: I see. Not a reading group. So you don’t discuss books particularly in this reading group.

JD: No. It may just come into it. Somebody may say, ‘Oh I borrowed this book and it was OK’ or perhaps describe features of it but no. It’s a social occasion because a lot of the people nowadays we are getting a different kind of clientele who do things but when we first started this group it was for people who were old and not able to get about much. For instance across the road there is a lady called Elsie, I think she has gone into a home now, and her friend was called Vera, lived across the road, she had a 90th birthday and we give her a party in the library here. They just didn’t get out anymore. Their big occasion once a month at the Methodist Church at the end, they have a lunch on the first Saturday of the month and the big occasion was going to that lunch. So coming here was an extra, once a week if you like, rather than once a month.

MG: But when I was talking to you all a few months ago most of you were readers actually.

JD: Like I say, the clientele over time has changed. It’s not only the clientele that’s changed, the people have changed. People would have at one time just sat in the house and knitted or read a book or perhaps watched the television. They are now younger looking. They are not younger, they are still the same age, but they are now getting out on the free transport and get to town. Joan is a good case, if she doesn’t go out on a day then it’s a bad day for her.

MG: That’s excellent isn’t it? So going back to your reading during this life because you spent your whole working life as a teacher in Sheffield. What books in that adult life have you really enjoyed?

JD: Oh. I’ve always enjoyed crime books. Edgar Wallace of course was my favourite but I still read the Just William books. I’ve got some in my house and I still read the Edgar Wallace, especially the River books. Now they were a cut apart. Edgar Wallace was such a … he had to write fast because he incurred such debts in America, gambling. He needed a book a week to keep him afloat financially. I think he did it in a Dictaphone and then had it typed up. That would be the norm those days I suppose. I can remember in several stories he started off with the hero’s name as being Jones and by the end it had become Smith because he’d gone so fast he remembered it was a common name. So his crime books Four Just Men and things like that were flimflam but his River books, those were different because he’d been a reporter on one of the big London … and he’d been sent to Africa I think, Boer War and such like. From memory, I may be not remembering right, I think he’d gone into Africa, the Congo and that, perhaps as part of the British Colonial process and as a reporter writing, I’m not sure if it was The Times, it was one of the big heavies, the daily heavies in London. So his stories were authentic if you know what I mean. They were stories and they were fiction but the backgrounds and the people were authentic and I enjoyed that.

MG: That sense of reality reflected in the novel.

JD: In the novel, yes.

MG: So did you read much actual history?

JD: History? Do you have a time for finishing?

MG: We’re fine for another ten minutes. Is that all right for you?

JD: Yes, yes. History was badly taught at school. It was all dates and battles and Kings and Queens. I didn’t enjoy it at all. I think that apart from Latin, history was I think just about my worst subject but when I came out and started with children we then talked about other things than dates. Of course they were younger children, juniors, and I got an interest then in history from a different viewpoint completely. This is why I enjoy archaeology.

MG: Is that another interest?

JD: Well I spend Saturday mornings glued to More4, the digital channel, where they keep repeating Time Teams ad infinitum. They get three or four in every Saturday morning and I get up and watch them all through Saturday morning unless I am doing something, you know,  that has to be done.

MG: Do you find historical novels interested you?

JD: Not particularly because again most historical novels deal with dates and battles and things and I’m not really interested in that but I am interested in other countries. All these television programmes, I love them. This new series that’s been repeated on the Tudors.

MG: Excellent.

JD: On BBC4. Yes, excellent.

MG: Absolutely. So a classic question is if you only had one, perhaps two books, to take away with you what they be?

JD: On a desert island. [Laughing] It wouldn’t be the Bible. I have never been a great one for religion. I don’t know really. I know this sounds stupid but one of them would probably be what they call several books together in one volume.

MG: A compendium?

JD: No, not a compendium. Come on, tha’ knows lass!

MG: A trilogy?

JD: No. Not a trilogy. It’s got a name. Anyway several books together and I would like one of those with all the River stories in.  That would be one and the second book would surprise you, it surprises me but it’s true. I would love to have a gramophone catalogue going back to the early days. I would sit and read it and go over it again and again and again. It would last me a lot longer than any book.

MG: How interesting. So do you have a big gramophone collection of your own?

JD: Yes I do.

MG: Do you? 78s?

JD: 78s yes, but now mainly CDs of course and DVDs.

MG: So are you a musician yourself?

JD: No.

MG: No, but you just love listening to music?

JD: I just like listening to music, yes.

MG: How interesting.

JD: I was listening to a programme today on Radio 4 at half past 12, half past 11 sorry. It was about music and I agreed with everything the man said about it you know. It’s an experience, it’s not … I’ve forgotten a lot of what, well I’ve not forgotten it but I would need time to recall it. Yes, music. I love it. Listening. But of course most of the critics can’t play either.

MG: One of the things we often ask is do the words highbrow, middlebrow, lowbrow mean anything to you?

JD: I am very lowbrow.

MG: You feel you are lowbrow?

JD: Oh yes.

MG: Do you really?

JD: Very much.

MG: What makes you say that?

JD: Well, because I like lowbrow things! My record collection was dance bands of the 30s and 40s and big bands. So in Britain you’d have Roy Fox, Ambrose, Lew Stone, Roy Fox, no I’ve said that haven’t I? Oh and that sort of thing.

MG: Great. So would the word highbrow for you be a word of criticism or just not your thing?

JD: My motto has always been ‘live and let live’. Let ‘em live with it if they want it, that’s them.

MG: Absolutely. So are there any books that you read with pleasure when you were younger that you wouldn’t read now?

JD: I can’t remember the ones that I did read except Dr Doolittle and Agatha Christies. I think you see Agatha Christie was my … I could borrow her books there were so many of them. I could borrow them and I could reread them. They were good of their time but they are very dated now. I don’t know who the script writer is who scripts these Poirot things but he … I think he picks out modern things rather than just slavishly copies the book.

MG: I agree, yes. It’s interesting you go for these writers who have written a lot. So do you like that getting an author who you enjoy and reading lots of that author?

JD: Oh yes, yes I do.

MG: I’m trying to think of another one who wrote …

JD: Hamish Macbeth?

MG: Oh yes, yes. Absolutely.

JD: That one from New Zealand. I never knew how to say her name.

MG: Ngaio Marsh.

JD: Ngaio Marsh.

MG: She’s interesting isn’t she? A lot of those thirties novelists, crime novelists are really interesting to reread aren’t they? They give you a picture of the period.

JD: When you think about novels today, not just crime novels, but social novels as well, most of the writers are women. Have you noticed that?

MG: They are a lot of them, aren’t they? It’s true.

JD: Yes. I don’t know if it’s because they have more time than men.

MG: I don’t know.

JD: They marry a rich man and they can write novels the rest of their life or something or whether they just enjoy doing it, I don’t know.

MG: Did you read Dorothy Sayers?

JD: I did read Dorothy Sayers, yes.

MG: Did you like her stuff?

JD: All right, yes.

MG: Not much?

JD: Not as good as some of the others.

MG: Margery Allingham?

JD: Yes, I liked hers.

MG: Well it’s wonderful to hear your reading story John. Thank you ever so much. The one last question is do you think there are any ways in which reading has changed your life?

JD: I wouldn’t say it had changed my life, that would be wrong. I think I have done what I wanted to do, reading or not, but I would say it has made life more pleasant.

MG: Absolutely. So you read for pleasure?

JD: Yes. At the moment, as I say, I’ve got this what-you-call-it in my eye …

MG: Macular degeneration.

JD: Yes. See my memory plays me tricks, my short term memory. Very much so. Macular, macular, you see it comes to me after a few seconds, macular. This causes me that I can’t read a newspaper without a magnifying glass which frustrates me because I will be like that if it’s too much. My one fear is that it could come in the other eye and I wouldn’t be able to read. That would be a tragedy. I would give up then I think, yes.

MG: Thank you very much John and very good to talk to you.

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‘Those Cheerless Cemeteries of Books’

The thrill of entering a public library. Thousands of books arranged in familiar patterns. Fiction and non-fiction. Classics and novels contemporary and historical, romances, crime stories and thrillers, sci-fi and fantasy. Books about art, science, music, history, travel, philosophy, politics. What will I find this time? Something entirely new? a much-anticipated sequel? an old friend? Each visit is a promise.

At the beginning of the 20th century, public libraries, including Sheffield’s, looked very different from our ‘open access’ model, where the books are there for us to wander through, to pick up, to choose or return. Then, while there might be a few out on display, many public libraries hid their books away behind counters, or kept them out of sight in rooms marked ‘No Entry’. Catalogues, often out-of-date, were set out in the public area, and sometimes copies could be purchased. Borrowers would seek the advice of library staff. Once a book was chosen, an assistant checked on its availability and, if it was not already on loan, retrieved it from its shelf and handed it over to the borrower.   

The Sheffield Corporation have given a good deal of attention lately to the development of the public libraries on modern lines, and evidence of the progress that has been made will be forth coming to-day when the Central Lending Library will be open for view to the public on the open access system. … (Sheffield Daily Telegraph – Thursday 1 June 1922)

From an anonymous pamphlet, The Truth about giving Readers Free Access to the Books in a Public Lending Library (1895)

With the exception of research and specialist institutions, there must be few ‘closed access’ libraries now. Why was it the norm in the early days? Maybe librarians and library authorities had little faith that books would not be disordered, damaged or even stolen by borrowers. Controlling access was a way to safeguard books owned by local ratepayers, not all of whom were happy with their money supporting the, to them, wrongly named free libraries. Perhaps there was also some attempt to influence what people read. Librarians and councils habitually worried about borrowers preferring the light novel over the serious work. The public library was, after all, invented to help people improve themselves.

Sheffield Central Lending Library 1910, with books locked away behind the counter (Courtesy of Sheffield Libraries and Archives – www.picturesheffield.com.
Ref: s02145)

As well as keeping borrower and book apart, closed access often meant problems for library staff. Book stores generally seem to have been crammed with shelving from floor to ceiling and young assistants had to scurry up and down long ladders to find books. Here is Joseph Lamb, Sheffield’s chief librarian from 1927 to 1956, on his days as an assistant:

Birmingham Central Library in those days (1913-14) was a murderous place in which only those with sound bodies and hardened minds could survive. Most of its large stock was shelved in three tiers of iron galleries reaching to the ceiling. In a closed library with an average daily issue of 900, the amount of leg work demanded of the staff was enough to qualify them as Everest climbers. (J P Lamb, Librarian While Young, The Librarian and Book World, Vol XLV, No 3, March 1956)

Opening of the Birmingham Central Free Library. Illustrated London News. Sept 16, 1865, page 256 (public domain). The ‘cheerless cemeteries’ can be seen on the left, with ladders for the staff to climb up and down.

And Sheffield librarian Herbert Waterson, who started work in 1869, hinted at the particular problems the ladders meant for Victorian women seeking library work.

Closed access inspired a piece of Victorian technology, the ‘indicator’. This was a screen, often fixed to the wall and divided into tiny sections, each matched to a book listing in the catalogue and showing if the book was in or out. The Sheffield Daily Telegraph proudly described the locally-made model installed in the new Brightside Library in 1872:

… the handsome mahogany frames on each side of the lending counter, in which is arranged what known as the ‘Indicator System,’ whereby the reader may see at glance whether the book he wishes to borrow is available or not. The system is ingenious, yet so simple that all can understand it. … (Sheffield Daily Telegraph, Saturday 17 August 1872)

The Cotgreave model of indicator
(from A L Champneys, Public Libraries (London, Batsford, 1907))

Indicators were often very large and could be unwieldy. The ones made in 1876 for the Upperthorpe and Highfield branches had the capacity for 12,000 books each. One of the Highfield assistants claimed that the staff used to play football behind their screen when the librarian was not on duty.[i]

Open access in a public library was trialled as early as 1893 at Clerkenwell in London by James Duff Brown and seems to have aroused considerable opposition.[ii] It began slowly to be adopted, as the objections to it were proved baseless. But in conservative Sheffield closed access was the order of the day until after the First World War. In two places only could borrowers roam at will among the books. The branch library at Walkley, which opened in 1905 with a grant from philanthropist Andrew Carnegie, was converted to open access in 1913-14 by its pioneering librarian, Albert Ibbotson. His superiors objected but he got away with it. ‘The [open access] Walkley Library’, said a letter from Mr A Ballard to the Sheffield Independent on Tuesday 16 August 1921, ‘has been for the past seven years a veritable university to the working people’.[iii] At the same time, two schoolteacher members of the Council’s library committee petitioned successfully for the opening up of the Reference Library.[iv]

These were among the few innovations in Sheffield Libraries in the early years of the 20th century. By 1921 the service was in decline, and there was much muttering in the press. The numbers of books borrowed were falling, book stocks inadequate, administrative practices old-fashioned, staff demotivated and buildings (especially the Central Library) in poor repair. New chief and deputy librarians – R J Gordon and J P Lamb – were recruited to put things right. Determined and modern, they wasted no time.

Converting all the libraries to open access and introducing the Dewey classification system, as funding allowed, was an early decision in July 1921. The task was huge but, by the following June, the necessary alterations had been made, the stocks of books refreshed and classified. The new open Central Lending Library was ready. Albert Ibbotson from Walkley had been appointed to run it in 1918 and was probably an ally for Gordon and Lamb. He had been described by the Sheffield Daily Telegraph on Friday 8 March 1918 as a ‘progressive librarian’. By 1919 he had already introduced a very limited form of access: ‘…two cases in which the latest books are always placed on view, and the rapid demand for these volumes shows how useful the system is’ (Sheffield Daily Telegraph – Saturday 6 September 1919).

No doubt primed by Gordon and Lamb, who both knew the value of publicity, the Sheffield Telegraph was eager to explain the new system to the city:

At the Library entrance is the staff enclosure where the issue records are kept and from which the staff control the entrance and exit wickets. A borrower desiring to change a book hands it to the assistant at the entrance counter, which is to the left on entering, and receives his borrower’s ticket exchange. The assistant then releases the wicket gate and the borrower enters the stockroom to select his book. After selecting the book he wishes to borrow he returns to the assistant who completes the necessary records and releases the exit wicket for the borrower to go out. Apart from this arrangement which will be greatly appreciated by borrowers, who can wander at will among the volumes, there is a new system of classification which makes for rapid working and ease of selection. As most borrowers at Public Libraries ask for books on a particular subject rather than by the author, and because of the many advantages gained by having all the books on the same or related subjects on one shelf, the books have been classified according to the subjects they cover. The Dewey Decimal classification has been used for this purpose and seeing it in operation, one is impressed by the value of the system. The books in the Library are arranged in two parts: prose fiction and non-fiction. (Sheffield Daily Telegraph – Thursday 1 June 1922)

Sheffield’s Attercliffe Library after conversion, showing the staff enclosure, the wicket gates to control access and the open shelving (Courtesy of Sheffield Libraries and Archives – www.picturesheffield.com. Ref: u01383)

The degree of detail suggests how much of a change this was. The journalist goes on to say: ‘There is no doubt that the public will appreciate the new system, under which borrowers are allowed actual contact with the shelves containing the books.’ Over the next few years, Sheffield’s branch libraries were all converted, with counters and screens removed and new shelving installed.

Borrowers in later years clearly still appreciating open access (Courtesy of Sheffield Libraries and Archives – www.picturesheffield.com. Ref: u02265)

Open access libraries are so familiar to us that any other system seems impossible. But in 1956, as J P Lamb approached retirement, he saw some merit in the old ways:

It seems to have been my library lot in my younger days to be fully occupied in re-organising old type libraries. Those cheerless cemeteries of books are now thought to have no redeeming features; but reflecting on my work in them after a lifetime spent in creating ‘modern’ mass appeal libraries, I am not at all sure that the change has been wholly good. Open access has resulted in the loss of a personal contact with the reader, which no kind of readers’ advisory system can replace. … The librarian as guide, philosopher and friend was then a reality. … (J P Lamb, as above)


[i] From Kelly, James R, Oral History of Sheffield Public Libraries, 1926-1974 (unpublished MA thesis, University of Sheffield, 1983). A copy is held in Sheffield Archives.

[ii] Kelly, Thomas, History of Public Libraries in Great Britain, 1845-1965 (London, The Library Association, 1973), pp. 175-82.

[iii] Did Mr A Ballard become Alderman A Ballard CBE who chaired the Council’s Libraries Committee between 1944 and 1954? It seems very possible.

[iv] The City Libraries of Sheffield 1856-1956 (Sheffield City Council, 1956). Along with the newspapers quoted, this is the main source for this article.

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