DISCLAIMER

The names of places in this document are those used in John Peter Upton’s original memoir. Some of the place names have changed, others have been obliterated. I take no responsibility for the accuracy of place names.

Chapter 1. Introduction.

John Peter Upton was born on 19th December 1905 and passed away on the 13th of June 1987. Although his name was John Peter, and christened as such, he was universally known as “Jack”. He was 81 years, 5 months, and 26 days old when he died. His birthplace and place of death were Bristol in England. His father was John William Upton. For the sake of clarity, his father (John William) is always referred to as “Jack Senior”. Jacks’ mother was Annie Florence Cotty and Jack was married to Lily Rachel Bradley, the mother of his children; daughter; Judith and of his sons; Hugh and Robert. The biographies of Annie Cotty and Lily Bradley will also be added sometime in the future.

There were several distinct periods in Jack’s life which affected him as much as it did his family. This biography is a summarized extract of his memoir, which is too long and disjointed to publish as a single entity. Relevant information on the different periods of his life have been extracted and compiled in this summarized version of his autobiography.

Chapter 2. Childhood.

At the time he was born, his parents were living in a house owned by his mother, which had been bought from an inheritance from her father (John Frampton Cotty). This gentleman, or his father, was a miller and had been an early investor in Spillers Flour, (founded in 1829, defunct 1997). In the 1800’s, Spillers Flour was, to the food industry, what Ford Motors is to the car and truck industry today – huge.

There is considerable verbiage in Jacks memoir about his childhood in this house. Perhaps the most memorable anecdote he describes was one occasion, when he was about five or six, the girl next door called him into the garden of her house one day and proceeded to display her genitals. He was totally unimpressed, having frequently had the opportunity to gaze upon the womanhood of his cousin, then a six-month-old baby. This poor girl-next-door, who was so willingly exhibiting herself, was seen doing so by her mother. The result was that she was dragged away, frightened, and screaming, for some “attitude correcting” punishment by mother. As Jack observed in his memoir, this probably emotionally scared her for life, resulting in the frustration of her future husband, or husbands and any lovers.

is a curious coincidence relating to the house where Jack was born. This came about in the 1960’s when it was owned by one of Jacks business partners. When his partner died, rather suddenly in 1970, it was agreed with his widow, that the remaining partners should each buy one third of the property. Thus, without making any effort, he became a one third owner of the house that he was born in!

After birth, Jack caught pneumonia. At about the same time, Jack Senior came down with pleurisy. This must have been rather traumatic for his mother who, being a simple woman, turned to religious sources for solace. This in turn led to her discovery of Christian Science which was followed by a wholehearted commitment of both Jacks parents to the teaching of Mary Baker Eddy. Although Jack had been christened in a standard, run of the mill Protestant church, he was, from about age three, indoctrinated into Christian Science. As Jack grew older, he began to question the general philosophy of Christian Science. This most probably began with an incident which he describes as follows.

Sometime around 1910, Jack Senior got possession of a house he had bought before his marriage to Annie Cotty and had leased, being a bachelor and not needing such an opulent address. This was “The Elms”, a large, prestigious house sitting in beautiful, manicured grounds but, unfortunately, in a not quite as desirable neighbourhood as Clifton or Redland. In Jack Seniors developing position in the business and Christian Science world, social gatherings were frequently held at “The Elms”. After one of these gatherings, Jack got out of bed when everyone else was asleep. His objective was to sample the leftover “delights” served at the party before the servants cleaned up. As he recounted, many years later, he gorged on the “delights” and then began investigating the drinks. The result was predictable, dreadful gastric upset, a brutal hangover and, when Jack Senior was told, got his bottom thrashed with a cane! Jack rarely drank again and then, only half of a half pint of beer – if that!

In time Jack’s brother, Cecil, was born on 20th August 1909. Jack records the following in his memoir:

Chapter 3. Schooling.

In 1909 he was at Sefton Park school. Having already been taught the alphabet and numbers by his mother, he went straight into the second form. He is not clear, in his memoir, what his early schooling was, or the years he attended, only that he went to school. He probably attended Sefton Park from the age of five until he would be about ten or twelve.

Jack was an avid student all his life and enjoyed learning however, Jack Senior had developed the routine of taking extended weekends in the country to recuperate from the demands of his business life which interrupted attendance at school. The consequence was that Jack was absence from school on Fridays and Mondays, which generated inquiries by the school. This created a confrontation between Jack Senior and the school authorities. The consequence of this was that Jack was sent to a boarding school.

In the lead up to the implementation of this decision and from studying the prospectuses that Jack Senior had obtained from different private schools like Blundell’s, Kings of Taunton, Clifton College and the Bristol Grammar School, Jack was mentally prepared to attend one of them. He had no great desire to go to boarding school but if it had to be, he wanted to go to Clifton College in Bristol. As was the custom in England in those days, a private schools required the passing of an entrance exams to ensure that the candidate student was academically suited. Social suitability was based on name and the financial capability of the parents. Jack apparently did very well in the Clifton College entrance exam and was accepted, but a school of lower grade (according to Jack) offered a scholarship. This was Colston’s School, founded by Edward Colston of slave trade fame. Jack Senior, always with an eye on expenditure, selected Colston’s rather than Clifton College. According to Jack’s memoir, he was mortified. Some of his friends from Sefton Park School, living in other affluent neighbourhoods, were sent to Clifton College by their parents. Colston was a tough school where beatings were inflicted on pupils as a medium of discipline and punishment. Whenever Jack spoke of Colston’s, there was always a tone of detest in his words. Years later, as a man and father, he visited the school on a whim. At that time, the school was undergoing renovations and was therefore empty of students, staff, and administrators. As he describes in his memoir he felt as if some disciplinarian ghost was going to seize him and beat him for trespassing! Many of the sights and artifacts of his school days still existed and this no doubt unsettled him. School days were not Jack’s happiest time.

Chapter 4. Adolesence.

After leaving school, probably in 1921 at sixteen years old, it is not clear what life activities he was involved in. He mentions “Lewisham” frequently in his memoir. It is assumed that he took some courses, from some educational organization, either in person or by correspondence (remote learning). Lewisham could also have been connected to the Christian Science church. Again, his memoir is not clear as to why he went there.

He did not go to university, as he had wished, but did take a course at the University of Bristol on Philology (a branch of knowledge that deals with the structure, historical development, and relationships of a language or languages). Some time during the 1920s, in his late ‘teens, he had been introduced to someone at Bristol University who encouraged him to enroll as an undergraduate. This required the blessing of Jack Senior, who would have to finance his attendance. The “for” argument was that, as an engineer Jack could earn £25 a week, compared to non graduate earning between £2 or £3 a week. Jack Senior would not even consider the proposal saying that Jack would be earning twice that (£50) by the time he was thirty, so why did he need any further education? Jack Senior’s position was that Jacks’ future career was in Bristol Butchers Limited and his education to date was more than necessary to run a business! This summed up the Victorian view on family business and education, that life would continue the same as it always had regardless of where you came from socially and economically.

There was no understanding of any professional training beyond the Law or Medicine, and medicine was even questionable. In the late 1800’s and early 1900’s, doctors were regarded as ‘trade people’ and when called, entered the home of the wealthy through the servant’s entrance. The alternative was the military or the church, neither of which were consider suitable or appropriate by Jack Senior. Accountants were a budding profession, but all the university business courses of today were unknown. Jack Senior sincerely believed that he got to where he was by using simple arithmetic and common sense which any sensible boy could do the same - under his tuition. Thus, Jack’s fate and career was settled to the benefit of neither and the cost to both.

Chapter 5. The Mendips.

Sometime in about 1911, Jack Senior became involved in a business enterprise (Springfield’s Limited) at Charterhouse, in Somerset. To facilitate a weekend retreat from the burdens of business and the pursuit of good health, he had two huts built as a weekend residence, one of which was his parents’ bedroom the other being the kitchen. This was an enormous adventure for Jack, then a young boy of seven or eight, who slept on the floor of the kitchen and ran a bit ‘wild’ in the fields and natural landscape, or with his mother who taught him the names of plants and herbs and what they were used for. Later, Jack Senior had a long “room”, about 30 feet (9 meters) by 15 feet (4.5 meters) built, all windows at one side and French doors at the ends. Around it was a wide gravel path. This formed a covered corridor connecting the kitchen and bedroom hut. A second bedroom was added later, together with a separate toilet but without water. This had to be brought up from a spring, in two buckets of about 4 gallons – 18 liters each, from a spring at least 100 feet (30 meters) lower down the hill. This was Jacks’ job and no doubt this exercise developed his body strength. Simple weekend visits (Saturday and Sunday) to the Mendips became extended visits (Friday to Monday) as his fathers’ business activity focused on what became the “Springfield’s factory”.

In 1913 his father acquired the Mendip Bungalow Hotel in Blagdon, Somerset. It is not clear why, but it was undoubtably connected to his activities at Charterhouse where the Springfield’s factory was located. The hotel was very attractive to the affluent Bristolian for fishing, walking, and hiking in the Mendips with the added attraction of the caves at Cheddar. It no longer exists having been replaced by a Conference Center attached to Bristol University.

Sometime in the 1920s, Jack joined the University of Bristol Speleological Society - UBSS. He was a Founder Member and, although he was not a student at the University of Bristol, he was given a special membership because the UBSS was given permission by Jack Senior to study the Roman ruins on Townsfield, Somerset, UK. Townsfield was part of the property that the “Springfield’s factory” stood on. The UBSS members were very disciplined, being ex-military (World War I) and some were in their thirties. For the first time in his life, he found fellowship with an educated and intelligent, new type of men. They had had the extraordinary experience of a terrible war in a foreign land - of which they spoke nothing!

Jack participated in the exploration of many of the cave sites which had been found before the Great War but had not been properly surveyed. In Aveline’s Hole, they found a species of mouse, very ancient but not extinct. This mouse hole was right beside an area frequently used as a convenience (bathroom) for people visiting the Rock of Ages. This is where the Reverend Toplady wrote “Rock of Ages, cleft for me” inspired by the lightening in a thunderstorm. Now it is just a tourist stop! Further away, under Dolesbury, they found a good cave, with human and bear bones. This was dug out, foot by foot, and everything was properly recorded.

Jack also went into Swildon’s Hole to explore deeper and further. One exploratory expedition lasted 18 hours underground and opened a whole new area in the cave network. The effort was arduous and is described at some length in his memoir. One needs to remember that this exploration effort was done with candles only. Food was carried loose in a canvas bag hung around the neck! No plastic containers in those days. Sleep or rest was achieved wherever you stood, sat, or could find a dry place to lay down. Imagine being in a place where there is absolutely no light, and you accidently drop your candle, and then the matches fall into some water!! Speleology in those days was not for the faint of heart and required some significant courage!

Among his other cave exploration activities, he was part of a team that explored the Cheddar Caves and found a long passage then unknown to the owners. He also reconnoitred Wookey Hole caves and other holes some on the Piney Sleight farm. It was here that his brother Cecil got interested and helped to dig a very large deep hole. Jack left the Society in 1929 to focus on his “day job”.

Chapter 6.Employment.

There is no definitive date that establishes when Jack went to work in his first job, or even what that was. Since he had not gone to university after leaving school, he probably began work at Bristol Butchers at about the age of 17. There are random references in his memoir to working at Bristol Butchers and “training”, but this was all ‘on the job’ training. There were no formal courses at school or anywhere on how to grade animal skins.

Through some “old boy” agreement, Jack was sent to live with a hide and skin dealer, name of Hawes, in Cheltenham, about 45 miles/72 kms from Bristol. The “agreement” is irrelevant. Every morning Jack had to be ready and waiting at 7:30 AM in the dealer’s garage. After they got the truck started and warmed the engine, they would follow a circuitous cross-country route, Jack sitting between Hawes, the dealer, and the driver. From photographs I have seen, the driver and passengers sat “in the open”, no doors, no roof, or windows. Winter operations must have been very uncomfortable. They made stops at all the butchers in villages and small towns, possibly haggled over the price to be paid for the hides, threw them in the truck, weighed the hide’s, gave a ticket to the butcher, and went on. There are many instances in his memoir about driving trucks to pick up or deliver the hides and skins. It is reasonable to assume that he was probably working at a labourer level, participating in the weekly auctions, and generally “learning on the job”. This went on until 1929 as he “learned the trade”, to prepare him to eventually take over from his father, as was the usual practice in Victorian England of Jack Senior. The Bristol Butchers business was to become Jack’s inheritance and the Springfields factory was to be his brother Cecil’s inheritance. This appears to have been Jack Senior’s plan and both sons bought into the vision. Alas, it was not to be.

There is little mention of Lily Bradley, during this period. She is present in his memoir but devoid of detail. He describes that he was being enticed to “become better acquainted” with another young lady, whose father had some business connection to Bristol Butchers. One needs to understand that by general middle-class standards of the early 1900’s, Jack Senior was a very wealthy and influential person. This reflected on Jack, and he was, by any standard, “a catch” for any young lady. Where and how he met the women who was to become his wife, the mother of his children, and the genesis of half of todays “Upton” descendants, is not described.

Chapter 7. New Zealand and Australia.

One day, in late 1928, Jack was told by Jack Senior, out of the blue, that he was to join a government sponsored trade delegation to New Zealand and Australia: an early Trade Mission. The objective of the mission was to encourage both countries to export more wool, lamb, and lamb skin to England and in return to buy more English exports of finished goods. Jack’s roll was to establish contacts in these countries, specifically in the hide and skin sector for the profit of the English leather tannery industry.

On 5th January 1929, he left for Southampton with the then Lily Bradley (first mention of his future wife) and her father, Captain William Reginald Robert Bradley RNR, DSO. After a three-day weather delay, he boarded the ship, said his goodbyes, and sailed into the fog, down the Solent.

After a major case of seasickness, eating little for fourteen days, being attended to by the ships doctor, he began to get well and asked permission, a safety control, to go on deck. No doubt from the description in his memoir, the voyage from England to the Canaries was very uncomfortable due to an exceptionally bad winter storm in the Bay of Biscay. The storm was bad enough to slow the ship to ride out the storm and the heavy seas. There was no long-range weather forecasting in those days and probably no radio communications! Life at sea for him was further aggravated with a second storm, which struck enroute to the Canaries and sent him below decks for another several days, but by now he had “gained his sea legs”.

After crossing the mid Atlantic Ocean and passing through the Panama Canal and marvelling at the “wordless efficiency” of the operation, the ship began the Pacific crossing (no mention of the number of days). On arrival at New Zealand the ship anchored about 12 miles offshore. It was then that the passengers were informed that there was 30 tons of dynamite on board, and which had to be offloaded away from Auckland harbour. After finally landing, his first meal was “the most wonderful asparagus sandwich’s, the flavour of which always reminds me of Auckland”. From this point on all his travels were recorded in a diary that he wrote daily. That diary is now among his papers in Auckland along with an album of photographs.

Jack thoroughly enjoyed his time in New Zealand, and during an official visit to Patea, north of Wellington, he was offered a job by two unmarried brothers in their fifties. They owned a freezing plant and a business like the Springfield’s operation in England. They were looking for a young man, with experience, to be the manager and to take over when they died. He did not realize that this was the chance of a lifetime. He was blinded by, and believed that, he owed his loyalty to Jack Senior. Then there was the matter of Lily, still in England and who he felt he had to consult. He declined the offer, thinking that he could return to New Zealand if he changed his mind. He was obviously naïve about job offers, travel distance and Lily’s reaction!

Whilst in Christchurch, he experienced a slight earthquake tremor for the first time while he was having a hair cut. Everyone rushed into the street in time to see the steeple of the church slightly swaying. From Christchurch, he returned to Wellington and after a day or two, the Trade Mission took the boat to Sydney, Australia. At about this point, Jack received a cable from Jack Senior telling him to return to England because of what he, Jack Senior, considered alarming news circulating in business quarters – the pending economic collapse. Of course, it was impossible for him to resign from the Trade Mission since he was without the funds necessary to book a berth on a ship to England. He did not respond to Jack Seniors telegram.

It was in Sydney that Jack had a moment of insight and awareness.

This ‘revelation’ was probably his sub conscious realization, and denial, that he had made a catastrophically bad decision in not accepting the offer that he had been given in Patea to manage and eventually probably own a freezing plant business. As it turns out, that business is closed, the building structure remains but is derelict. He was devoid of any worldly experience. He had lived a closeted, limited, and restricted life in a semi religious cocoon in Bristol, blindly believing Jack Senior’s continuous emphasis that he would inherit wealth and position one day. Ten years of working like a labourer, had so crippled his thinking that when faced with a recognition that he had no future, he was ready to capitulate, and go quietly to his unknow fate. He could see no alternative and even if he did, he did not know how to exploit it. Furthermore, he did not, and could not, know that Jack Seniors promises of his future; the inheritance of Bristol Butchers, was also a “non-starter”!

The following passage has been reproduced from his memoir, with some editorial changes for the sake of brevity. They are reproduced because they give a brief view of the world as it was in 1929,

The stops enroute, to refuel and reprovision the ship, were few and shore side visits were short. I recall, as we left Port Said, an Arab boy, clinging to the top of a pole on a dhow, pushing his arm right into my face through the porthole as he tried to snatch up anything within reach. I just happened to be standing there when it happened. We then called in at Malta. I remember my first view of the Grand Harbour, filled with large ships and the Palladian frontage of the Sigi (unknown) hospital, which was right opposite me. We went ashore and attended a buffet luncheon in the Auberge of Castille. This was where the governor, Lord Strickland, and his daughter lived. Speeches of welcome were made, and I think that Lord Bledisloe was there, but I could not be sure. Afterwards I, and another member of the mission, walked from the Auberge down to Kingsway beside the Opera House. Here we turned right only to find the street crammed with people and soldiers, of some Scots regiment, standing with bayonets fixed. I was told that there had been an attempt on the life of Strickland the night before. However, we felt menaced and after a walk of about 50 yards we turned back. It is a great pity that I did not see the whole street, since this would have been interesting to compare with my second visit in 1969. One thing that still stands in my memory, is the site of several old women, kneeling on the pavement, outside the church opposite the Opera. These women were all praying, moaning, and saying their beads. In the evening another reception was given on the ship for Lord Strickland, but I did not attend. I was getting a bit anti-something.

After departing Malta, a gale blew that lasted to Gibraltar, where we could not stop. We turned north, passing Spain, then through the Bay of Biscay and into the English Channel. On entering the Solent, the site of green fields really made me feel marvellous. After we docked, I was surprised to find that Jack Seniors chauffeur had been sent to meet me. We soon got to Bristol, and I remember that as we entered Bristol, there were flags flying for some reason. The chauffeur said that the flags were to celebrate my return! To this day I cannot recall if Lily was waiting for me or even if she had come down in the car to Southampton, which seems probable.”

The euphoria of Jacks’ return to England, must have been palpable as the car pulled through the front gates of “The Elms”. Jack, the conquering hero, transported in a chauffeur driven Black Alvis, from which he descended like the heir to the kingdom, while the chauffeur held the door, touching the brim of his cap in salute, must have felt orgasmic! If ever there was a scenario that reflected the old saying “Like a lamb unto the slaughter”, this was it!!

Chapter 8. A New Begining.

To put the following exchange between Jack and Jack Senior in perspective, some background information is necessary. About 1910, Jack Senior, had initiated a new venture, Springfield’s Limited, to produce Tallow and Bone Meal. This was a time when accounting and business refinements like budgeting or regular accounting reports were generally ignored in some quarters. Disclosure to shareholders was probably executed with large national and multinational companies but private, family businesses dispensed with shareholder rights as we know them today.

At start-up, Springfield’s Limited, probably cost far more than Jack Senior had expected so he borrowed money and, to pay the principal and interest on the loans he played fast and loose with business taxes. The consequence was that in 1929, when the global financial collapse occurred, Springfields Limited was carrying a considerable, and unmanageable, debt.

The debtor companies, which were also customers of Bristol Butchers, fearing the loss of their loans and of their principal supplier, imposed a condition on Jack Senior in return for continued, and probably future financial support; they installed an accountant in Bristol Butchers.

For reason that can only be speculated about, Jack Senior was not going to reveal that he was in financial difficulties to the shareholders, who were Annie Cotty his wife, Jack and Cecil his other son. He probably feared that by letting Jack into a management position, Jack would soon discover the level of the debt he had incurred. This could lead to a challenge from Jack about Jack Seniors strategy and capability for solving the debt problem.

Being old school Victorian, Jack Senior would not tolerate a challenge from Jack. The most practical option then was to prevent Jack from knowing the facts of the debt. To do that he would have to deny Jack from holding a position, any position, in Bristol Butchers. Imagine, if you will, Jacks emotional shock to such a statement when, after some fifteen years of labouring and being told constantly that he was the heir to the business, that he was not wanted in the business.

The following dialogue is reproduced exactly from Jack’s memoir recalling the hours following his arrival in Bristol from Southampton and his experience of the Trade Mission.

At 6 PM my father came in, said he was glad to see me back, and settled down to his tea without any conversation as to my Trade Mission experience! By now I was getting very annoyed and, having slightly lost the sense of awe that I always had of him, I began to lead the conversation around to my future. Possibly I was too premature, but the pressure that had worked up in me through being ignored on my return, when I was expecting a warm family welcome and a lot of interest in my travels, had made me very direct and seeking to find out where I stood. Also, I was very annoyed at having to wait two hours. So, I put a simple question to my father.

This was a tremendous slap in the face, a cancellation of all I have been brought up to expect. In that instant I realized I had to confront a future that I was quite untrained to handle. I was faced with the sudden reality that I had no future.

Tempers were rising and in all this time my mother had not spoken, Emily had left the room and I think that Lily was sitting quiet, hardly believing her ears.

I stormed out of the room, called Lily, and took the car that still had my luggage including a big cabin trunk, painted with a broad yellow stripe, and left for the Mendip Hotel. It was a foolish act. By doing so I had cut myself off, but it did not appear like that until only a few years ago. If I had calmed down, if my mother had acted as a catalyst, I could have gone upstairs to my old room and simply stuck around the house until he did something. In fact, I played his game, and I lost.

And so began Jacks’ wanderings and achievements outside of the “Family Business”. The lamb had been slaughtered in a most cruel manner!

Chapter 9. South Wales (UK).

The period immediately after Jack’s confrontation with Jack Senior is somewhat vague in his memoir. Lily, at this point unmarried, had been persuaded by Jack Senior to work at the Mendip bungalow hotel (without pay of course) as the assistant manageress. Having no other place to go and not being able to stay at The Elms, the family home due to the confrontation with Jack Senior, Jack withdrew to the hotel where he proceeded to reorganize and manage the place.

Jack was understandably still in shock over his confrontation with his father. He had come to regard him as protective, one to be respected and someone who he could depend on and from whom he would inherit all the things that he had been promised. He also felt that it was impossible for him to get married since he had no job, no career, no assets. Thousands of men were out of work and businesses were closed or closing.

About six months after returning from Australia, still living at the Mendip Bungalow Hotel, he received a letter from someone who had previously worked for Jack Senior, offering him a job in Newport, South Wales (England, not Australia). Without hesitation Jack bought an engagement ring, proposed to Lily, and left for South Wales.

The man who had hired him was named Amery and the company was called South Wales Butchers. His job was to tour through South Wales, calling on all the butchers, grading, buying, and paying for any hides and skins which were picked up later by a truck, just as he had done for the dealer in Cheltenham.

For anyone who has not been to the coal valleys of South Wales, there are parts of it, where the coal mines used to be, that were, and maybe still are, unhealthy, ugly, poverty-stricken, and depressing almost beyond description. In the early 1900s, when coal was the principal source of energy in England, the lives of coal mine workers in South Wales could not have been any better than that of American Negro slaves in the southern USA. In the 1950s, when I had occasion to visit the area in the military, I could not imagine any place on earth more depressing than the coal valleys of South Wales. The following is recorded in Jacks memoir:

The full weight of the economic depression was now being felt by the British population. During this period, Jack lived very poorly, barely making enough to live on. Business conditions deteriorated, men were laid-off as the work diminished, and before long he was driving the collection truck as well, often getting back to Newport, in the dark with almost no streetlights. In his memoir he reports that he also did some praying, he had not entirely lost the belief in Christian Science. He did however persist and gradually built up the business in South Wales, no small feat! Based on his effort his pay was increased significantly.

Maybe because of that, Jack suddenly decided to get married – and Lily agreed, but then it occurred to him to wonder how he was going to pay for everything! He approached Jack Senior, with whom he was barely on speaking terms, and asked for the moneys which he had previously earned at Bristol Butchers and had given to Jack Senior to invest in Springfield’s Limited. Jack Senior refused on the grounds that it was “a bad time”. Jack then asked for a loan, which was also refused because he, Jack, was working for another firm and they might lay him off at any moment! He refrained from asking his mother, feeling sure that she would side with Jack Senior. Finally, in desperation, he turned to his brother, Cecil, who loaned him £100, saved from five years of employment at Springfields Limited.

On 10th of June 1930, at St Mary’s church in Woodland Road, Clifton, Jack was duly married to Lily Bradley. At the time of leaving for the church, Jack Senior was in a huff because Jack was not getting married in the Christian Science Church and threatened not to attend the wedding. His mother took the position that she could not go if Jack Senior didn’t. How this ended is not documented!

After the honeymoon, Jack and Lily settled into Newport, South Wales. They lived in lodgings, in a poor neighbourhood and knew no one. Jack cycled to work daily to save the bus fare. Lily had nothing to do, no job and, it was costing more to live than Jack was making. Jacks’ memoir is particularly bitter about this period of his life, probably with some justification and he ends one chapter as follows:

Chapter 10. Dorchester.

In early 1930, Jack Senior had an opportunity to buy a hide and skin brokerage firm in Dorchester, that had fallen on bad times due to the death of the owner. For reasons which are not clear, there were competitive complications in this purchase. To avoid this, Jack Senior persuaded an old friend of his named Frank Newton, to buy the company, under some terms which are not disclosed. Frank Newton was a lawyer, and childhood friend of Jack Senior, as well as being Jacks Godfather, Jack having been christened Protestant style at birth before his parents committed to Christian Science. To make sure that Jack Senior had control of the operation of the business, he prevailed upon Frank Newton, to hire Jack to run the business. Somehow, through the convoluted structure of corporate interests organized by Jack Senior, Jack was released from the South Wales company, and sent to manage the new acquisition in Dorchester.

The firm had been bought for about £2,000. This money had been lent by a bank with the security of Jack’s mothers’ jewelry, which was worth about £4,000 at the time! Neither Jack Senior nor Frank Newton invested any money, and a limited company was formed, with Jack Senior and Frank Newton being the only shareholders.

It turns out that there were three things unknown to Jack before he even arrived in Dorchester. Firstly, he was responsible for paying the capital and interest on the loan Jack Senior had arranged. This was a monthly obligation for as long as that took. Second, some butchers who supplied the hides and skins to the original company, felt that they were not bound to the new company, and elected to sell directly to a major tannery in London. Third, this break in the supply agreement set a precedent for all butchers in the region to break any original handshake supply agreement. The consequence of this was that by the end of 1930, revenues had significantly dropped, profits declined, and the firm was on the verge of bankruptcy.

Within a very short time, all this became evident to Jack who responded by hiring a man with a motorcycle to follow the London tanner’s truck that picked up the hides and skins from butchers, note where they made the pickups and, on what days. With that market intelligence, Jack bought a cheap truck and made the pickups one day before the London tanners did the rounds. The tanner in London got the message and withdrew rather than face a turf war somewhere else. While this recovered the market share, the profits remained low due to the increased cost of the truck, but it was enough to give him some financial stability.

Based on that financial stability, a family began to develop. First me, Hugh, on 30 March 1934, Then Robert on 3 March 1937. We were born in the first house they rented in Dorchester on Apsley Road. At the same time Lily’s mother came to live with Lily and Jack, Lily’s father having died in October 1934. In 1937 they moved to a bigger house on Herringston Road where Judith was born on 8 April 1938.

At this point in Jack’s biography, we need to digress to a subject that many couples, married or otherwise have experienced: the suspicion of adultery. There is absolutely no doubt that Jack and Lily were not suited for each other. Because of the massive lifestyle change forced on Jack, by Jack Seniors abrupt termination of him, Lily suddenly found herself in a social atmosphere completely foreign to her upbringing. She was the daughter of a man who had been a marine Captain of the prestigious Peninsular Orient Line, and a reserve Naval officer, who served on minesweepers in the North Sea during WW1 - had survived and been awarded the Distinguished Service Order (a military decoration of the United Kingdom awarded for meritorious or distinguished service by officers of the armed forces during wartime, typically in actual combat). Her mother was a teacher, and had held the position of the Headmistress of a fashionable girl’s school; Redland High School. Her mother was also a religious woman, and very Victorian in her demeanor. She was well educated and had some social standing. She died in 1943.

In summary, Lily was, in the 1920’s and 1930’s prepared for marriage to an upper middle-class man (educated and socially connected) and with “some prospects” (inheritance of property). At the time Jack and Lily married, he had neither and Lily had no life experience with which to make life judgments. Her mother probably knew little about Jack or the Upton family business and would have probably been reluctant to broach the issues of marriage with her daughter. Her father, having spent most of his life at sea, was probably blind to those issues. Jack did have doubts about his fitness for marriage, as he recounts in his memoir, and specifically with Lily. Whether he did not have the courage to break off with Lily or had some irrational view that he had made a commitment to her, is not clear. What became clear was that Lily was desperately unhappy in the first years of marriage in Newport and little better in Dorchester. Aside from the “prospects” issue, Newport was a swamp of low-class working people, which Lily had no experience with and who Jack had little time for. Dorchester was a country backwater of the middle class, who isolated themselves for security and rejected outsiders from joining their cliques. Both situations must have been exceptionally frustrating to Lily who, consciously or not, may have sought elsewhere for emotional comfort since non was forthcoming from Jack. Jack records a series of incidences that raised his suspicions about Lily’s faithfulness to the marriage however, Jacks own fidelity was not without question.

In 1937, Jack was in a poor state, emotionally and physically, from the stress of six years of effort to re-build the Dorchester business. Believing that he was to inherit the business, he spared no effort to restore it to its once profitable state. He was now totally divorced from the activities of Bristol Butchers; Robert had just been born, and Hugh had caused considerable upset and anxiety for both parents when he was suspected of having meningitis. He was hospitalized and no evidence of meningitis was found. To relieve the stress, Jack proposed to Lily that they take a holiday, and leave Lily’s mother to care for Hugh and Robert. Lily declined, saying it was too much for her mother to look after, she was probably correct, so Jack went on his own. The following are his exact words of an incident on his holiday.

After returning from an intellectually stimulating, and perhaps risky interlude in Continental Europe, he resumed the daily activity little knowing that another catastrophic event was about to be unleased on him. Business was improving significantly in the Dorchester company, so much so that Jack was able to pay off the loan, originally made by Jack Senior in 1934. Furthermore, he was able to buy the house that he and Lily had rented on Herringston Road, just before Judith was born in 1938.

In early 1939, Jack had a tannery customer that bought cow hides for production of leather garments and boots. This Tanner (Maloney Co.) was also a customer of Bristol Butchers. It appears Maloney Co. was very bad in paying its’ bills and owed a lot of money to the Dorchester company that Jack ran and to Bristol Butchers. Jack was coming to the end of the company fiscal business year in June 1939 and did not want a large amount showing in his books as an Accounts Receivable. His personal income also depended on showing good financial results. Jack decided to demand payment from the Maloney Co. to clear their account. Knowing that Bristol Butchers also did business with the Maloney Co., and not wanting to raise an issue that may impact Bristol Butchers, Jack told Jack Senior what he proposed to do - they were talking to each other at this point. Jack Senior told him to go ahead and to collect Bristol Butchers money as well! In the subsequent meeting with Maloney Co., Jack arranged that they would pay half the outstanding balance immediately and give three post dated cheques for the balance. Because they were post dated for deposit after the fiscal year end, an accounts receivable remained, and the cheques were held for deposit in the next fiscal year. That cleared the account with Bristol Butchers and paid some of Jacks outstanding account receivable to the end of the fiscal year. He duly recorded the receipt of the monies, including the post-dated cheques and went on with business. In due course, Jack sent his accounting records to Bristol Butchers for the accountant, name of Frederick Coates, to audit and prepare the annual statements in July, the fiscal year end and then distribute copies to Jack Senior and Frank Newton, the de facto owner of the Dorchester Company that Jack ran.

In July 1939 Frank Newton telephoned Jack and told him he wanted to see him immediately, in Bristol. Thinking that Newton wanted to tell him what a good job he was doing, discuss future operations and maybe give him a pay increase, Jack reported as instructed. Newton began the meeting by accusing Jack of stealing money from the company and falsifying the accounting records! Newton had telephoned Maloney about the monies he owed, and Maloney told Newton that he had paid everything and owed nothing, which was quite true, provided he honoured the post-dated cheques. Jack vigorously argued that he had accounted for the receivables properly, demanding that Newton examine the “cheques paid in” record, but Newton refused saying that post dated cheques were a simple means of fraud and furthermore, told Jack was not fit to run a business and gave Jack thirty days notice to resign or be fired. Jack was thunderstruck and in total shock! To make matters worse, he went to see Jack Senior and asked him to remonstrate with his good friend Newton, but Jack Senior refused, saying that “if that is what Mr. Newton thought fit to do, then it must be the right thing!”

As things turned out, this was a completely dishonest and a connived manipulation, conceived by Newton and supported by Frederick Coates and Jack Senior. Newton, because he wanted to move his nephew into Jacks position now that the company was profitable and growing. Coates, because it removed Jack from any connection to Bristol Butchers and discovering the company’s financial state and a swindle that was in the making involving shares in Bristol Butchers, which Coats had aspirations of deviously acquiring. Finally, Jack Senior, because he did not want Jack or his brother Cecil to know about the financial chaos that Springfield Limited was in, and which now threatened Bristol Butchers. A very poor commentary on the honour, ethic, and business morality of the three conspirators.

Chapter 11. Newport, South Wales.

By a remarkable coincidence, William George Amery, for whom Jack had worked in 1930, at the South Wales Hide and Skin Company Limited, wrote to him offering a job as General Manager of the firm. Jack replied saying that South Wales was the last place he wanted to live in. Amery approached Jack again and again Jack refused. Then the outrage with Frank Newton happened, and Jack was about to refuse Amery’s third offer, when he received a telegram (now called an e-mail) saying; “General Manager has been sacked, expecting you on Monday” and that, as the saying goes caught Jack between a “rock and a hard place”; wait for a conscription notice into the military or have an income in a place he did not want to be. He went to Newport on the following Monday, two weeks before the outbreak of the Second World War, on September 3rd, 1939. It was an amazing piece of good luck because he could have been conscripted into the army, leaving Lily and the children suspended in Dorchester with no income. He was now thirty-four years old, and his job was classed as, “Essential War Service”.

After settling into his new job and getting acquainted with anyone who had remained after he went to Dorchester in 1930, he began the process of buying a house. He was living in lodgings, Lily and the children were still in Dorchester. Purely by chance he bought the very last house built in Newport before the government order came out freezing all building. The house was just the foundation when he bought it and cost £345.

Lily could not move from Dorchester until the house in Newport was finished but as the builder had nothing else to do, he finished it in about three months. The house in Dorchester was put up for sale by the simple expedient of putting a sign in the window visible from the street. Unfortunately, a roving Army officer saw the notice and served a notice to say that the house had been seized by the Army and the sale could not go on. It was in 1947, two years after the war ended, before he was able to sell the house having received only token rent for the six years the army used it.

On 18th January 1940, the government instituted a series of controls for efficiency purposes. All companies in the same business, in the same geographic area were to be merged by the government. One of the merged companies place of business was designated as the new plant or yard, again by the government, the rest mothballed and rented by the government for a token rent or condemned. The merged companies were free to decide what clerical and operating staff they kept; the surplus staff were immediately conscripted. Since Jack’s company had outperformed all the others in terms of total product handled over the previous three years, other companies were merged with his, all moving to the best business place of the four. To make this work, a new company was formed, and a General Manager was elected by the remaining merged management, Jack was elected as the General Manager. Since he now had a complete accounting and production staff, his roll was reduced to overseeing the general orderliness of the enforced merger.

The companies that had been merged were either wound up or became non operating shell companies. Jack however saw another opportunity. His original company, now classified as nonoperational, had been left with three trucks (lorries) which the army had not expropriated and an empty building that had been the South Wales Butchers place of business. Through a chance meeting with someone, Jack learned of three other trucks that were available. These were quickly purchased; drivers were hired, and Granville Transport Limited came into being. There is a lot of detail in Jacks memoir about this period, the amount of money that was being made, the personalities of drivers, the accidents – some serious, some humorous, and shady deals that surface wherever “quick money” is plentiful. There were also opportunities to supplement the amount of food staples that were consumed in the household. Many of the neighbours, whose discretion could be trusted, benefitted from his driver’s opportunities to barter with the cooks on merchant ships that docked in Avonmouth and Cardiff while his lorries were being loaded.

While Jack was heavily involved with the Monmouth Mutual Hide and Skin Co. Ltd., South Wales Butchers Ltd. and Granville Transport Limited, he felt he should be in the military as were thousands of other men, many of whom had been employed by him. His work placed him in a category of “Essential War Service” and made him exempt for military service. This bothered him. On at least two occasions he tried to volunteer for military service and both times he was rejected, once by the intervention of some authority.

His desire to “go to war” in 1942, in his late thirties, was probably the result of his conscience and a deteriorating relationship with Lily. Both his brothers in law (Lilies brothers) were in the British and Canadian army and were serving overseas in the front lines. Two of his immediate neighbours were casualties of war, one a prisoner of war in Germany, the other killed in the desperate attempt to evacuate the British Army from Dunkirk in June 1940. He felt guilty of “not doing his bit”.

Lily was also under enormous strain. She had had to leave her mother in Dorchester at a critical time during a war. This was similar to 1925 when, right after marriage, she was isolated in Newport, knowing no one, with no friends and, then again in 1931, when she was summarily moved to Dorchester. Now, ten years later she was once more in Newport but now in a war situation, with three small children to care for and feed with food rationing, a husband who was absent from early morning to late at night plus two brothers in harms way in the military. There were ill feelings, subtly communicated by other women of her acquaintance, that their husbands were away from home serving in some military capacity somewhere while her husband managed to come home every night.

The stress that both were burdened with was further exacerbated by a decision to relocate the two eldest children, Hugh and Robert now aged eight and six, to a remote boarding school away from the continuous air raids and bombing. Their thinking was that if they suffered the fate of so many by being killed during an air raid, at least the eldest children would survive. Many, many children were removed from big cities for this very reason and relocated into country villages away from the bombing or even transported overseas to relatives in Canada or the USA. One must wonder if their thinking about relocating the boys was compromised by the stress in their lives. The boys, Hugh and Robert may be safe but what about Judith then four or five years old, and if they were killed in an air raid, who would assume responsibility for their children? The issue of the risk level was reasonable, Newport was between two major Atlantic ports; Cardiff and Avonmouth, both significant and conveniently located targets for bombing raids. Newport was the location of a major aluminum smelter while Bristol was the center for fighter aircraft production. In World War II, the technology for dropping bombs from any altitude was not very precise, especially at night when most bombing raids took place. It was also very easy for enemy aircraft navigators to mistake one city from another in the dark, especially when they are mere kilometers apart. Add to this the importance of Cardiff, Newport, Avonmouth and Bristol to the British war effort, it is easy to see that they were living in the middle of something of a “hellhole”.

All this stress, soul searching and restriction on serving, prompted Jack to rush to join a rather pathetic organization known as the Local Defence Volunteers (LDV) in 1940. This was a desperate attempt by the government at the time to create a last line of defense against possible invasion. The country was a bit on edge at that time as attested by Winston Churchills famous speech in parliament in June 1940. Jack was given an armband with LDV printed on it and they paraded without any weapons. Later they had some Boer War rifles (1899 to 1902), about 10 between 100 men, others got some pikes. Shortly after, the LDV became the Home Guard, and some serious training of selected volunteers began. Jack was the recipient of such training in antitank weapons, bomb disposal, small hand weapon training and various administrative functions. He was promoted to Lieutenant and shortly after to Captain, as his assigned area of responsibility covered most of South Wales.

Despite repeated efforts to resign his special status, he continued serving in the Home Guard and running three companies. Finally, In February 1943, Jack was told to report to the Home Guard South Wales headquarters in Cardiff, where he was transferred to the Military Command. He was then assigned to the South Wales Borderers with the rank of Captain, an infantry regiment fighting in Northern Europe at that time. He was assigned to “special duties” which would be responsible for controlling captured civilian areas behind the allied armed forces as they advanced. There was no explanation of how or when he was to join the regiment, he was told to go home and wait. Some time elapsed and he began to think his special status was preventing him from joining a fighting unit and further, that maybe his haste to participate in military action was a bit stupid at his age. As if to answer his questioning, he suddenly received a telegram telling him to submit his qualifications to the Combined Control Commission in London. Thus began the next phase of his life.

Chapter 12. Germany.

In September 1943, Jack was interviewed by several military officers from different regiments and divisions. This lasted a day and a half. With impeccable military logic, he was told he would be sent to Italy within two weeks and to go home and arrange his affairs. The reasoning was, that since he could speak fluent German, it should be easy to learn Italian in a couple of weeks, after which he would be assigned to manage and control an area in southern Italy. This did not quite work out because the Italians capitulated in September 1943 and re-aligned with the allies in October, negating the need for forces to “manage and control” the civilian population.

Jack was told to await further orders. While waiting, he negotiated disposal of his shares in the companies he was involved in, except his shares in Granville Transport. He believed that once peacetime was restored there would be a huge demand for transport services, and he found that he had an affinity for the business. Unfortunately, this would not come to pass because after the war and very quickly with the election of a Labour government, all Road Transport companies, Granville Transport among them, were nationalized in 1947 into a single entity, British Road Services.

In early 1944, Jack was called back to London to attend courses, training, and briefings on the post war occupation of Germany. The course covered a full range of subjects and lasted several months. The objective of the Control Commission was to control movement of the German peoples, re-establish industries where possible and discreetly seek out government and military people who were to be tried for war crimes. Disarmament was the sole responsibility of the Allied Armed Forces. The period of allied occupation of Germany was expected to be five years while the German economy was rebuilt.

At the end of training in the summer of 1944, Jack was promoted to major and was dispatched to Bruges in Germany, along with some twenty other military officers who had been wounded and declared unfit for military duty or called out of retirement. Two weeks later he was assigned to the City of Hanover, but the fighting was still raging in the area, so he waited at Osnabruck, Germany, still close to the “front line”. Osnabruck had been severely bombed so there was no accommodation to be had and refugees were milling around aimlessly. The military governor in Osnabruck directed him to Munster, slightly less damaged. There he stumbled on a local monastery and camped there for a few days, sleeping in the open since it was summer and until he could find a place to live. Jack was not particularly shocked by the damage and destruction. He had witnessed and experienced that in Newport and Bristol, both heavily bombed. He was however horrified and felt a bit overwhelmed by the condition of the population with little shelter, no food, no medical support and little clothing. The people had just been subjected to a military war of massive proportions sweeping over and destroying virtually everything they possessed, leaving them in shock, emotionally stunned and visibly shaken, something he had not witnessed during the bombing raids in England. It had a profound effect on him. In May 1945 he was still in Munster when the war in Europe ended. There was no rejoicing or celebration, just another day of misery for the civilians and struggle for the occupiers.

In July 1945 he was ordered to Hanover, his original destination. Hanover had been taken by the Canadian and British armies but had been terribly damaged from bombing and fighting in the streets. The devastation was extreme, and the population was reduced to literally living in the streets, scrambling for what little food there was. After additional briefing from the military Governor staff in Hanover, Jack and two other officers were assigned to Oldenburg in October 1945 and told to report to the Control Commission there. Much to his surprise, he found that there was already a detachment of the Canadian 3rd Infantry Division already managing the affairs of the city. The Canadian detachment was a big group of about 20 military officers, all battle scarred and war weary, waiting for repatriation to Canada. In typical Canadian style, the army had already re-established control of Justice, Public Health, Police, Industry and Trade, and Agriculture “departments”, each headed by a military officer. Jack was assigned to the Industry and Trade department to reactivate the tanning and leather industry. In very short order, the Canadian officer in charge of the Industry and Trade “department” relinquished all responsibility and authority to Jack. This meant not only finding and assessing the status of all leather tanneries but requisitioning anything necessary to restart the business to produce shoes and boots and coats to the thousands of civilians, many of them with nothing on their feet of back. Since it was autumn (fall), the suffering was minimal, but a bitter winter was approaching, and clothing of all kinds was vital to the survival of the civilian population and refugees, now moving west from the Russian zone.

For many years Jack had been troubled by hemorrhoids. Normally he was able to control the discomfort but in early summer 1946, when a blood vessel ruptured, he was hospitalized at the Canadian Army hospital at Wilhelmshaven, and there operated on by the Canadian surgeon. When he had recovered, he returned to Oldenburg and was immediately given sick leave. Being summer, Lily had let him know that she was taking the children to Weymouth, so he joined them for some rest and relaxation before returning to Germany.

It was at this time that the distance between he and Lily became evident, particularly when he tried to discuss the family’s future. He saw no future for himself in Newport or in England. The Combined Control Commission in Germany offered an immediate and secure future since he expected to be involved in the reconstruction of the country. If not that, then perhaps Australia but certainly not England. His position with the Combined Control Commission offered the possibility of permanent civil service employment, with pensions and other benefits but that it would require them to relocate to Germany. Lily was opposed to the idea of living in Germany; had England not just fought and won a war over “a vicious and devilish people?” He hoped that time would change her attitude.

He returned to Oldenburg in late summer and later was promoted to the rank of full colonel with responsibility for managing all tanneries and leather goods manufacturers in the British zone of Germany as well as for settling refugees from East Germany who fled the Russian occupation. This was his primary mission, the reason he was there and a huge job that required a lot of travelling throughout Germany. He enjoyed many of the privileges of rank; a chauffeur driven car, prestige accommodation and a personal staff among others. He was also thoroughly enjoying his work.

Post war British government policy, up to the general election in 1945, was the total integration of Germany with England. This would not happen if the political persuasion of the leaders of the German civilian population were opposed to the idea of integration over time. The basis of the plan was for getting at least the British zone of Germany, and hopefully the whole of Germany, so interlocked with Britain that the Russian threat would be muted. To this end he solicited the views of prominent Germans for the British Foreign Office, or which ever branch set policy for unification with Germany. Some of the people he talked with had silently resisted the Nazi regime, others less so. At the same time, because of his fluency and contacts with the same community leaders, he was able to gather intelligence on Nazi collaborators and relay the information to the department handling legal affairs. Jack was officially informed, at the time of his promotion, to find himself a house, or a flat (apartment) and be prepared to live there permanently. Some of the personnel of the Control Commission in Germany, Jack among them, were to be absorbed into the British Civil Service, with pension and allowances.

This development was just as Jack had predicted and he wrote to Lily and asked her to prepare to move to Germany. She was probably very hesitant due to any number of issues, not least of which was living in a foreign country that England had just contributed to nearly annihilating, with three children, two of which were in boarding school. She did however sell the property in Newport and, with the encouragement of Jack Senior, moved to the Mendip Bungalow Hotel. This gave her a reason to move to Bristol from Newport, which like Jack, she did not like as a place to live, as well as time to see what was going to happen in Europe. For Jack Senior, he got someone to live in the hotel so that it was not vacant, without having to pay them. Unoccupied properties were targets for “squatters”, people who have nowhere to live because bombing had destroyed thousands of homes, not yet rebuilt.

At the end of the war, England was effectively bankrupt. In the British General Election of 1945, the Labour (Socialist) Party formed the government. This was followed by a significant loan of US$3.5 billion from the United States. That is a significant amount in 2021. Consider that in the context of 1946.

In 1947, as an austerity move, and possibly a political agreement between the USA and the UK as part of the US loan agreement, the government made a major troop withdrawal from occupied Germany. This included the Combined Control unit that Jack was attached to. It also removed any continuance of the previous government policy of unification with Germany. Germany thus became functionally under the control of a single political, diplomatic, and military American entity to confront Russian aspirations to annex the whole of Germany. This is how Jack suddenly found himself back in the UK, unemployed, no income, no prospects.

Chapter 13. Transition.

Through some connection, Jack landed a job in London, buying cheap imported merchandise, and then selling it to just as cheap retailers. His salary was so low that he could barely support his living expenses in London. Lily, on hearing the news of the troop withdrawal, moved quickly to purchase a house in Coombe Dingle, Bristol, taking with her a woman she had befriended, named Kye Critoff and who had been employed by the government war time Land Management Program, at the Mendip Bungalow Hotel. On a weekend visit to Bristol, Jack felt that Lily had decided that she was now free of him, she owned the house, and he was not wanted since he had abandoned her by going to Germany. Jack made the point that there were costs to her new life and, that since she didn’t have an income and the rent paid by Kye was not sufficient to pay school fees and other expenses, that his presence would be useful. He also pointed out that he had not abandon her to go to Germany, it had been done to raise their standard of living, and during his whole tenure in Germany, she had received virtually his whole considerable salary. This enabled her to pay school fees, among other things, none of which he had any input into, including the house, which as an investment, was somewhat questionable. Lily probably realized the strength of the financial argument and relented - for which Jack records in his memoir:

Fortunately, and for the sake of continuity at a minimum, but only delaying the inevitable, Jack returned to Bristol and life continued.

Chapter 14. Seamus Ltd.

Jack resigned his unhappy job in London and returned to Bristol. Recognizing that his father was his only hope and contact, the others being in South Wales, and he could not face the idea of returning there, he swallowed whatever pride he had left and went to see his father and asked for a job.Jack Seniors answer amazed him.

So, he went to see Fred Coates – and got brushed off.

Returning to his father, he asked for some explanation of what Coates told him, the summary being that Bristol Butchers and Springfields Limited had been amalgamated into a federation known as FABCON, and Coates was the General Manager. As such, his father no longer had any role in the operation of the amalgamated companies. Jack and Cecil’s position as shareholders and heirs to Bristol Butchers or its successor, FABCON, was tenuous at best, nonexistent at worst – as will be revealed.

In further conversation it came out that Jack Senior was working with a man named John Cross who was a horticulturist. Together they were experimenting with growing vegetables by some method on a property owned by Jack Senior. The vegetables were being grown using a secret formula for a fertilizer made from seaweed, and a special uranium ingredient called “NON” for secrecy. In Jack’s view, Cross forgot to add the rest of the word; “SENSE”! The idea was that, if they could finance and operate a factory to manufacture this “wonderful fertilizer” with the secret ingredient, Jack Senior would get the money back which he had already loaned to Cross, and Jack would have a job with decent income.

After several meetings with Jack Senior and Cross, a company was going to be formed called Seamus Limited, and it would be capitalized by Jack. Shares were to he held by Jack Senior, Cross and Jack. Jack was then told by Jack Senior, that in deference to Jack’s mother’s wishes, Cecil (his brother) had been promised that he would be given a salary from Seamus Limited for supervising Cross, who was, according to Jack Senior, to be the General Manager of Seamus Limited! Not exactly what Jack, as the financier of the project, had in mind.

When Jack spoke to Cecil abut Seamus, he (Cecil) was not aware of any “secret” fertilizer, that there was going to be a company or that he was to have a roll in the company! He did however tell Jack that he would like to participate if Jack was going to finance and run it. At that time, Cecil was an employee of Springfields Limited. This situation would cause a conflict of interest for Cecil; he could not receive a salary from Seamus Limited as an employee of Springfields Limited. To avoid any conflict of interest for Cecil, Jack told him he would finance the start-up and allocate 100 shares to him. These Cecil paid for. Jack had no intention of having John Cross work with him in any capacity. Jack disliked Cross and told Jack Senior that Cross was to be given a contract to work as a Sales Agent with a retainer of £10 a week because he allegedly had contacts with the retail distributors.

Shortly after the formation of Seamus Limited, a shareholder meeting was held to address company operations and administration. At the end of the meeting Cross demanded an official appointment as the Seamus Sales Agent. Jack agreed and drew up an agreement setting the previously agreed remuneration on condition of results, sales orders for a set quantity of product. After about two months there were no orders to speak of and product inventory was building up. Jack told Cross that this was not acceptable, and he was terminating the Agency agreement. Cross sued. This prompted Jack Senior, after being updated by Cross, to meet with Jack and Cecil and order them to make a settlement with Cross. Jack was now 43 years old; Cecil was 39. For the first time in his life, Jack blew up at his father and angrily told him there would be no settlement with Cross, that neither he nor Cross had paid for their shares and thus were not shareholders and that Jack Senior had no business, or legal right, to be directing the decisions of Seamus management and that there would be no further discussion of the matter. To emphasis his anger, he told his father to get out of his office. Jack senior left without a word.

Jack asked Cecil as “Cross’s supervisor” to deal with Cross’s lawyer, which he did most effectively. Subsequently Jack called an Extraordinary General Meeting to resolve the matter of share ownership and payment of allocated shares. Since all the shareholders were at the same time directors of Seamus limited, Jack wanted clarification to avoid further episodes with Jack Senior or Cross. Neither Cross nor his solicitor turned up to the General Meeting of shareholders. Cecil moved a motion that they should immediately cancel all the shares issued and then re-issue all the shares to just the two of them, each having half. This was done and in effect made them partners.

Before this Extraordinary General Meeting of Seamus, Jacks meeting with Fred Coates had taken place where he brushed off Jack telling him there was no place for Jack, or Cecil, in Bristol Butchers Limited or FABCON, which now owned it.

Chapter 15. Confrontation.

Returning to Jacks meeting with Frederick Coats, after the termination of the Combined Control Commission and before the creation of Seamus ltd., his objective had been to renew his connection, in some capacity, in Bristol Butchers. He was, after all, hugely experienced in the Hide & Skin trade as well as the Tanning industry, had extensive and international management experience and knew many of the participants in both England and Germany. It seemed a very logical opportunity for both parties. In addition, he was also a shareholder in both Bristol Butchers and Springfields Limited – or so he thought! In response to Jacks proposal to rejoin Bristol Butchers, Fred Coates bluntly and rudely told him that he was not welcome and that he did not want anymore Upton’s in the company, including his brother. Jack pointed out that he was, after all, the heir to Bristol Butchers, Springfield’s Limited and all the properties. Coates responded by telling Jack that, contrary to his belief, that was no longer true, that he had no claim to anything and that the meeting was ended and any discussion on his re-connection with Bristol Butchers was closed.

After recovering from the shock and the scope of Coates’ statement, Jack had the presence of mind to ask to see the Minute Book and Balance Sheets of the Bristol Hide & Skin Company since he was a shareholder. Coates refused and Jack left in total shock, infuriated by Coates attitude.

When he had recovered his demeanour, he went back to Jack Senior for an explanation. He was told that the hide market in Bristol had been amalgamated into FABCON. The same applied to Springfield’s, and Coates was now the General Manager of FABCON so he, Jack Senior, had little influence over anything. Cecil was still foreman at Springfield’s, but Coates wanted him out, because according to Jack Senior, Cecil did not obey instructions. The story about FABCON was not quite correct, as Jack later found out.

Having some brotherly feeling for Cecil following the organization of Seamus Limited, and as his “partner”, Jack told him about the FABCON and the Springfield situation, what he had learned during his confrontation with Coates, namely that it appeared that they were no longer shareholders of Bristol Butchers and Springfields Limited, and that their expected inheritance no longer existed. If Jacks findings and interpretation were correct, Cecil saw himself as having lost everything, which indeed he had - although he still had “his job” and wanted revenge. They decided that the issue of Springfield’s and Bristol Butchers had to be settled through court action since Jack Senior and Fred Coates would be uncooperative and obstructive. Jack contacted a lawyer he had met and become friendly with in Germany, a junior lawyer at the Nuremberg trials. He came down to Bristol and being a London lawyer, he dressed very smartly in black jacket and striped trousers with rolled umbrella and bowler hat. Such a character was rarely seen in Bristol!

After being extensively briefed by Jack, the lawyer made an appointment to see Fred Coates. At the meeting the lawyer presented an overview of the situation and asked to see the corporate Minute Book. To backup the demand, and to place the request in appropriate legal format, the lawyer placed one penny on Coates desk and repeated the demand, on Jacks behalf, to see the Minute Book. Coates said that it was not available in Bristol, it was in London. The lawyer then told him to have it ready for inspection within 24 hours. Next day the Minute Book was produced, as demanded. On examination they could see that it had been written up the day before, because several typed sheets had been pasted in. It was obvious that proper legal procedure to record company affairs had not been followed. Notices of Annual Shareholder Meetings had not been sent out, no shareholder meetings had been held or Minutes recorded in the Minute Book. The Minute Book was a complete fabrication, created by Coates brother, Richard Coates, who had a law practice in London and appeared to be the company lawyer for Springfield’s and Bristol Butchers as well as FABCON.

How Fred Coates got ownership of the shares of Bristol Butchers was a simple swindle, a paper slight of hand. All he needed was the shares of the majority shareholder, the shares held by Jack Senior. In the 1930s Springfields Limited had been close to bankruptcy due to the start-up cost. To continue operations, Jack Senior negotiated loans with customers. Still later further debt was incurred thus jeopardizing the financial stability of Bristol Butchers. This was the point when Frederick Coates entered the picture at the insistence of the lenders. Some time later, when the lenders were getting very anxious about the loans, Fred Coates offered to loan Jack Senior the monies to cover the Springfields debt. As security, Coates demanded Jack Seniors shares in Bristol Butchers as collateral. Jack Senior agreed, without telling his wife, Jack, or Cecil who were the shareholders. No loan agreement was drawn up. Jack Senior later claimed he signed over the shares as collateral by writing on the backside of the certificate that they were given as collateral, to be returned when the debt to Coats had been repaid. Through devious recording of the transactions in the Minute Book and issuance of new shares, any record of Jack Senior’s claim evaporated. Coates owned Bristol Butchers – period!

On the lawyer’s advice, Jack and Cecil prepared to sue for a restoration of the original distribution of shares of Bristol Butchers and the Springfield’s Limited, because a theft of corporate shares had taken place. These shares, now representing considerable value, rightfully belonged to Jack, Cecil and their mother. Collectively they had nothing, and in fact Jack and Cecil had been disinherited without even knowing it. First however, they had to change the heart and mind of their mother. She had to be convinced that Jack Senior, her husband, had abdicated his responsibility to them. In so doing, their collective shares had been stolen, probably devalued and both companies were now owned by Fred Coates. This left her, Jack, and Cecil victims of theft with nothing of their original ownership in the respective companies. Cecil persuasively presented the facts to her, and she signed the requisite papers.

The case went to court. The judgement at the conclusion of the case was that there was no proof of Jack Seniors claim that the shares had been transferred as collateral thus they had to have been sold to Fred Coats, as supported by the company Minute Book and share issuance records. There was no record of any payment to Jack Senior simply because Coates money was paid directly to the creditors and there was no paper trail to the contrary since a considerable period had elapsed. The court refused to order a reversal of Bristol Butchers affairs on these counts. The judge did however, award £10,000 to the plaintiffs; a considerable sum in the early 1950s, as compensation for the value of their shares and damages for failing to inform the shareholders.

So ended a sorry chapter in the affairs of the family, created by a man who, had he paid for and encouraged the education of his sons, may have prevented the loss of the business, and provided a foundation for future generations and opportunities.

Chaapter 16. Parting Of The Ways.

Cecil left Springfields Limited having been given the choice of keeping his job at Springfields and relinquishing any chance of being restored as a shareholder or loose his job but retain a position to be a shareholder. He chose the latter and assumed responsibility for Sales and Marketing at Seamus leaving Jack free to deal with administration and production. Cecil had inherited an income entity at the death of his wife, Dodo, in 1948. This financial security had been a great help to Cecil in the intervening years and may have been the main factor that allowed him to take a chance leaving his job at Springfield’s. Cecil worked very hard to sell the fertilizer around Bristol, both through retailers and directly to the market. Both of them went to Guernsey to visit a major potential customer and got a massive order for their effort. On their return they also visited Exmouth, where yet another major order was obtained. Things were looking up.

After several years, the market around Bristol seemed to be saturated, and Cecil started expanding his sales activity to the southern counties of Dorset, Hampshire and Sussex, focusing on horticultural nurseries. This was useful but not profitable enough because of the costs of sales and transportation to these areas. They solved the problem by appointing a sales agent for the area. To cover the cost of their labour force, which now had idle time as sales had peaked, they began a garden service directed by Cecil, the far better marketing resource than Jack. In the beginning this was little more than gardening work to use the slack time of the employees but, it had the promise of a prestige landscaping business. One day during a conversation with one of the owners of a supplier to Seamus, Jack interested him in having his property landscaped. Cecil took charge of the project and because of this he met the very attractive daughter of the owner, then in the process of divorcing her husband; she was divorcing him, not the other way around. During the project, they became attracted to each other, and Cecil proposed marriage. Eventually her divorce was granted, they married and, Cecil’s involvement in Seamus began to diminish due to his involvement in a new venture. Despite the worsening relationship between Jack and Lily, exacerbated by Cecil’s almost total withdrawal from the business, Jack continued running the Seamus operation and the landscaping business. When Jack occasionally protested to Cecil about his lack of involvement in the business, while still drawing a salary, Cecil responded with the suggestion that if it was a problem for Jack, then he had Cecil’s support to wind up the company and give him his share or buy his share and do what he wanted with the company.

One day Cecil asked Jack to lend him £5,000 from the company to support his new venture, he wanted to buy the Winter Garden Hotel in Bournemouth for £30,000. Jack obliged feeling that he had an obligation to help Cecil in his venture and new married life, after all, Cecil had come to his rescue and loaned him £100 with which to get married in 1930. As a precursor to winding up Seamus, Jack had the Seamus accounting firm draw up a valuation of Seamus. The result was that each share was worth £.5 (10 Shillings) making Cecil’s 2,000 shares worth £1,000. When Jack presented Cecil with the valuation and establishing his debt to the company as £4,000, Cecil replied that he valued his share as £5,000 and that had been paid since it was the same amount as the loan which he had from the company. He itemized how he arrived at that figure, discarding the accountant’s valuation. For Jack, Cecil’s justification was ridiculous but if it provided a way to separate himself from the partnership with Cecil, he would quietly accept it.

At about this time Jack’s parents were ailing. Jack Senior had had a minor heart attack, or a stroke. His mother had also had a stroke some years before. Being committed members of the Christian Science Church, they rejected any medical intervention. However, on one occasion, Jack Senior had a fall and was barely able to communicate. Someone called an ambulance, and he was taken to the homeopathic hospital. Cecil decided that they should now go to a home for the elderly where they could be cared for properly. They never returned to the Elms. Several weeks later, on being told that Jack Senior was near death, Jack felt some obligation to go and see him, which he did one warm summer evening. During his visit, Jack Senior asked Jack to get him some whiskey. Feeling some sensitivity to the old mans probable dying wish, Jack obliged, went out and bought a quarter liter bottle of whiskey which, upon receipt, Jack Senior promptly downed half, placing the rest in the bottle under his pillow. When Jack left, as a matter of conscience, he told the night nurse about the whiskey. She told Jack that it did not matter, the old man was not expected to live through the night. He did. Furthermore, he recovered sufficiently to return to the residence where he had been placed. Later, about 1957 or 1958, on a rare occasion when Jack and Cecil communicated, Cecil told Jack he was a fool to have resuscitated the old man, better to have let him die and spare Cecil the burden of having to look after and support him! Cecil was by now well established with the hotel in Bournemouth, living in a prestigious residence with his wife and three boys. Jack Senior and Jack’s mother were now living separate lives in an elder care home in Bournemouth, supported by Cecil. Jack Senior was alienated from his wife, who now despised him for his treachery and deceit, though her favourite son, Cecil, was obviously a success and was now her protector. Jack’s succinct summary of his father’s life was as follows:

Chapter 17. The Final Years.

Three years before Jack and Cecil went their separate ways, Jack had bought a small sales agency company in 1955 which imported agricultural products used in the manufacture of fertilizers. This was enormously profitable, and Jack quickly recovered his capital investment. Cecil had taken exception to Jack having a separate corporate interest, understandably so. However, Jack had offered Cecil the opportunity to invest, but he refused. Everything was going very well until England joined the European Common Market, coupled with labour disputes and port worker strikes. Before long the company was losing money, so Jack closed it.

In late 1956, during the sales agency venture, Lily suffered a stroke, a cerebral haemorrhage. Jacks mother had come for afternoon tea, as was her custom on a given day of the week. By chance Jack happened to be at home although the relationship between him and Lily was now strained beyond the breaking point. During the tea, Lily excused herself and went to her room, they now had separate bedrooms. Shortly, Jacks mother announced that it was time for her to leave and she left the room to go and say goodbye to Lily, a Victorian norm. She returned quickly telling Jack he had better go and look at Lily, she was ill. Jack went to her room and, finding her face down on the bed having thrown up, lifted her and half carried her to the bathroom to wash her face. She complained of a violent headache so, after making her comfortable on another bed, he called the doctor, who, after hearing the symptoms, told Jack it sounded like a stroke or a heart attack and to get her to a hospital immediately. Under the ‘procedures’ of those days, she was taken to an isolation hospital, the only place that had a bed. The diagnosis was that she had had a stroke, an artery above her pallet had burst. This was, in those days inoperable and the doctors gave her a 30% chance of surviving. Lily was not told this, but Jack found himself suddenly confronted with something he had never contemplated, the death of his wife. It was an emotional shock, leaving him with some sense of despair, none of his children were close, physically, or emotionally; Hugh in Canada, Robert in the navy, and Judith was living in Torquay. How to break the news to them if she were to die? How to break the news to them so that they could get to her bedside before she died? And what use were his parents with their belief in Christian Science or Cecil, a widower himself soon to remarry and occupied with his affairs. Over some six weeks Lily recovered, much to the surprise of everyone, her discharge from the hospital being noted in jack’s memoir as follows:

The following material is being included, first to provide some insight into Jack’s character and, secondly to extract from his memoir, his contribution to the failure of his and Lily’s marriage. What is written here, is Jack’s account of the final death throes of the marriage. There is also Lily’s account which could undoubtably be different. Unfortunately, she did not write a memoir and, the only person who might have a firsthand perspective is their daughter, my sister, Judith. Her input has not been documented – yet.

As the rift between Jack and Lily was expanding, Jack continued his study of spiritual things, strange philosophies, and nonreligious concepts. He had been doing this since they had lived in Dorchester when he met some intellectual thinker and was introduced to Theosophy.

To try and explain Jacks pursuit of the spiritual, philosophic, and anti religious ideas is not a subject worthy of much record. Jack was raised and indoctrinated in the Christian Science ideology. Jack Senior was an elder of the Church of Christian Science in England and, in 1920, founded the first church in Bristol. His commitment was total, predicated by his brush with death on at least two occasions. Jack Senior would eat charcoal biscuits when feeling “under the weather” as these were not medicine. He is also reputed to clean his teeth with charcoal powder and complained of headaches requiring everyone to creep about the house.

Jack’s mother was intellectually and spiritually totally committed to the church. No newspaper, magazine, book, or pamphlet was permitted in the house unless it was endorsed and approved by the Christian Science Church. No doctor was ever consulted on any illness or injury, no medication was kept in the house or used, even patent medicines. A hospital could not be visited for first aid of an injury. All healing had to be done through “radical reliance on God”. Jack frequently used the word “brainwashed” when recalling his religious upbringing. His intellectual resistance began to challenge the idea of Christian Science when, as a young boy, he scalded his wrist. He then suffered weeks of pain because his mothers’ method of treatment was to walk up and down in front of him reading from Mary Eddy Bakers textbook, “Science and Health”, in a loud voice and denying the existence of “error” on his wrist. As time passed, Jack began to realize that doctors did exist and, that they healed people; most of the time. Therefore, if Christian Science was correct in denying all the medical activity in the world, why were there doctors? and nurses? and hospitals? If cures could be obtained by a prescribed thinking and reading the “Science and Health”, why then were all these people in places performing medical activities which evidently healed – most of the time. As he matured in age, he began the search for the “real truth” and invited Lily to join in the search. She, being of a much simpler religious upbringing, declined.

In addition to this religious training, Jack Senior was a dominant figure in his life and frequently promised and reminded Jack, repeatedly, that the business; Bristol Butchers, Springfield Limited and the Mendip Hotel would one day be his and Cecil’s. Everything came from Jack Senior. Jack lived under this promise for perhaps the first forty years of his life.

Jack’s quest for some kind of “truth” took him into many areas: Theology, Astrology, Scientology, the works of a wide span of philosophers, mystics, and spiritual teachers. At one point he investigated the works and teachings of George Gurdjieff. Through investigation he came in contact with a woman (name not relevant), a retired physiotherapist who, despite her profession, was a student of the Gurdjieff teachings. This lady held ‘sessions’, at her home in some village in the country, for people seeking truth and a return to a healthy life. She invited Jack to one of her ‘sessions’ at her cottage in the country. He duly turned up, but on the wrong day and met the physiotherapists companion, a woman badly crippled with multiple sclerosis. As these things happen, Jack and the MS victim connected intellectually and, what used to be referred to as a ‘platonic relationship’ evolved. This continued for perhaps three or four years and was the basis of Lily’s divorce action.

The details of the circumstances that led to the divorce action are described in Jack’s memoir however, there are some elements of his account that are open to question. In short, Lily accused jack of having an affair with the MS victim, the physiotherapists companion. This is unlikely given that she had multiple sclerosis and was significantly crippled. She was also from a more affluent and elevated social class than Jack, as was the physiotherapist. Jack was not known for his dress style, which could best be described as scruffy or his personal hygiene habits which were, at best ‘questionable’. Bathing or showering were completely absent from his daily routine, or for that matter, at anytime. It is questionable that any woman, in her mid forties, would be attracted to Jack’s persona or his personal conduct and behaviour. There is no account of Lily’s ‘side’ other that what Jack reports and again, he may have coloured that in his favour.

The conclusion of the whole sorry affair could best be described as Lily’s “entrapment” of him but again, is Jack’s account accurate? It stretches the imagination that Lily could have engineered something by herself, but we will never know. Suffice to say, Lily sued for divorce on the grounds of infidelity, proof of which may have been contrived, and the decree was issued on 24 April 1959.

Jack returned to his landscaping activity, now reduced to him and one casual employee while Lily moved to London to be close to Judith, her daughter. She quickly found a job, created a new life for herself and eventually entered the civil service, in some capacity, from which, in time, she retired. Jack reacted to the divorce by buying into a small engineering firm which went bankrupt just as soon as they got Jacks’ money. But this did not slacken Jack’s thirst to invest in another small firm, a fancy goods wholesaler and manufacturer of small items to suit a particular retail trade. There were two directors of the company named Hastings and Cornwall (not their real names). Business was good and Jack loaned money to the business to buy more stock. Demands from Hastings for more money kept coming and Jack borrowed from the bank, using another property as collateral. At some point Jack refused to loan more money, so Hasting proposed that Jack should buy the inventory of another firm which was in liquidation. This way the cheap goods from the liquidated firm would satisfy the stock demand of the Hastings and Cornwall business. At this point Cornwall had discovered that Hastings was running a deception; pocketing the money from sales while demanding money from Jack to buy more stock to replace the inventory which was no longer there but which still showed on the company books and physically existed but was an empty box. Rather than expose his partner, Cornwall retired after having a dispute with Jack over commissions.

By divine intervention, Jack had a landscaping client named Fred Haynes, a gentleman of considerable talent for making money. One day, Fred Haynes asked Jack if he had an employee named Pearson (not his real name). When Jack told him he did and, that he had just taken him on as part of a deal to buy the inventory of his company, Fred Haynes told Jack that he had heard, ” on the street”, that he had reason to believe that he, Jack, was being defrauded. Fred told Jack that he would investigate as he had employed Pearson at one time but had fired him for theft. Next day Fred Haynes told Jack what he had learned of Hasting duplicity. Jack was shocked that he had been so stupid and had been so cleverly duped. Through some very quick manoeuvres, Hastings was terminated along with Pearson, with the option to sue if they wished, the staff were laid off and the company was closed. After doing an audit, the accountant found that many of the boxes were empty and that there was often no stock behind the front box. There were many unpaid bills and on verifying the invoice status with a customer, it turned out to have been paid and the customer in fact had receipts for payment. The remaining inventory was liquidated generating more revenue than the total of the loans Jack had made plus being able to repay the bank loan – and thus ended another venture.

Chapter 18. The Maltese Waltz.

From 1959 to 1968, Jack fell back on the landscaping business, not getting rich, since his intention was to avoid the attention of the “taxman”, but still making enough money to be comfortable and take several holidays which he had not done since the 1930’s. He took several vacation in Germany on bus tours and managed to visit Canada and New Zealand as well. He had struck up an acquaintance with a tour manager, named Fred Allen, who worked for Wallen Tours Ltd.

The interesting part is that the name “Wallen” is never mentioned in Jacks memoir, yet in the 1980’s, Jack had some connection with a Len Wallen who owned hotels in Bournemouth and property in Malta and, who may also have had a family connection with Wallen Tours, which was in Bristol, Jack’s home base. What the business connection was with Len Wallen is not revealed and never was. Perhaps this is the source of much of Jacks ‘intelligence’ that he obviously gathered on the business affairs of his brother, Cecil, who also owned an hotel in Bournemouth.

Len Wallen was separated from his wife, who lived in a very expensive flat in Berkley Square in London (very high rental district). There is reason to believe that Jack frequently stayed at the Berkley Square flat while attending Scientology course or conferences in London. The frequency of his visits and the familiarity he had with the Mrs. Wallen raises the suspicion that they were far more than friends, after all, there was only one bedroom in the flat!

On 10 January 1968, as recorded in Jack’s memoir, his good friend Fred Haynes, in response to Jack’s complaint that winter in England was getting too much for his old bones, suggested that he should go and live in Malta and start a company to do landscape gardening, even showing him an advertisement in the “Malta Times” that there was a gardening firm there. After a couple of days looking over the landscaping market opportunities, he concluded that while the idea would have suited him perfectly, he was completely ignorant of the pitfalls of the Maltese way of doing business and did not think he was able to compete with a firm that was already established. He seemed to have learned a couple of lessons from previous experience, so he abandoned the idea of emigration and free enterprise.

Once again, the strange fates that are never too far from the Upton’s, got involved. The Wallen Tours Ltd. tour manager, Fred Allen, ran into Jack when he was having lunch in the local pub. Jack told him about his Malta venture exploration. A day or so later, Fred Allen telephone Jack and told him that an English company he (Fred Allen) was familiar with, Complete Gardener’s Limited, had a subsidiary operation in Malta that was not doing well. He strongly encouraged Jack to telephone Complete Gardener’s Limited and enquire if they might need a new manager in Malta, leading Jack to believe that Fred Allen’s connection was more than casual. Jack was invited to go and see them.

The principles of Complete Gardener’s limited were a couple of ex military men and of course they all made a quick connection based on their respective military careers. Jack was asked to go to Malta, look over the operation there and report back with his findings and recommendations. He would be paid a consulting fee for his effort which was a new experience and one that his personality was not ideally suited for. None the less, Jack spent several weeks examining every aspect of the business, getting to know the employees and inspecting the landscaping contracts already in progress. He filed his report, emphasising that many of the financial problems arose due to their business methodology, that they needed significant capital injection and that the debt equity ratio would negate their ability to borrow and make it extremely difficult to attract capital infusion. He recommended that they liquidate the company rather than let it fall into bankruptcy, which could impact any other business operations they had. He was duly thanked, paid his consultation fee and he returned to Bristol leaving Malta certain that he could not live there as there was little future for commercial gardening despite the boom in housing construction.

In November of 1968, Fred Haynes persuaded Jack to go to Malta again only this time to join him in acquisition of property for subsequent construction of vacation homes for winter weary English, European and Russians. This did not happen for undisclosed reasons, but it did prompt Jack to dispose of the Seamus Ltd. property that he still owned. Once again Fred Haynes stepped in, insisting that he could make a better deal than Jack. The result was that the property sold for £10,000, far more than Jack had expected to get! By now he had come to terms with the idea of leaving England, partly due to the climate issue and partly to avoid, not evade, taxes. Fred Haynes had already moved himself and his wife to Malta and was negotiating purchase of a big property at Meillieha Bay.

In April 1969 Jack returned to Malta, this time with the intention of finding a flat in which to retire, which he did but the description of which causes one to wonder if the word “flat” in Malta was interchangeable with the word “hovel”. Having settled on what might be called accommodation, he returned to England to settle his affairs. While doing that, he received a letter from the principles of the Complete Gardeners Limited, informing him that, after due consideration, they had taken his advice and decided to liquidate the subsidiary company in Malta and would he accept a mandate to do it. He wrote back congratulating them on their decision but declined their offer however, having seen Fred Haynes handle the liquidation of his own near catastrophe venture, he recommended Fred Haynes, forgot the whole issue and went about relocating himself to Malta permanently.

Fred Haynes, still in Malta negotiating the land purchase, undertook the mandate to liquidate the Complete Gardeners Limited subsidiary. Some time later, he wrote to Jack and asked him to send him two signed blank cheques and he would do Jack a favour. At this point, Jack had the idea that Fred was in the process of acquiring a nursery for Jack to grow plants in and sell, like a garden center in England, which is what he wanted to do in Malta.

A few days later, Fred again wrote to Jack informing him that he now owned Complete Gardeners (Nurseries) Ltd. a restructured landscape and nursery business. Rather than liquidating the original subsidiary company, Fred had restructured it. Jack now had as a going concern, a company with the manager, a foreman who knew his job, and 20 men and a truck and all this for about £1,500 including the continuation of the office space and the telephone, which is unusual in Malta. Fred told Jack that the firm would run itself, all he had to do was find a flat, and go into the office weekly to sign cheques, and read letters. But it did not happen quite like that.

On 23rd June 1969, Jack returned to Malta and the next day held the first General Meeting of Complete Gardeners (Nurseries) Ltd. For the next nine years Jack lived on Malta with occasional trips to England.

There is no record of his life or activities in his memoir from June 1969 until sometime in 1978 when he left Malta and returned to England. His Memoir effectively ends with his acquisition of Complete Gardeners (Nurseries) Ltd.

Chapter 19. An Epilogue.

Jack did not cease to exist after leaving Malta, he lived another nine years. He travelled extensively and repaired his relationship with Lily, to some degree anyway. His travels took him to Canada, New Zealand, Australia, Indonesia and quite possibly several European countries. Initially his travels were probably related to curiosity about his family, to find out if any ‘negative’ characteristics of his parents had been passed on to his grandchildren.

After leaving Malta he “retired” to the house on Hughenden Rd. in Bristol and converted it to a “rooming house”. He continued his association with Scientology for a while and maintained his association with Len Wallen, who owned a hotel in Bournemouth. It was through this association that Jack obtained intelligence on the activity of his brother Cecil, but sadly never made any effort to contact or visit him.

On reflection, Jack was probably a child of above average intelligence and intellectual potential. It is an oversimplification to suggest that the anxiety he suffered from for most of his life stemmed from the “mothering” style of his mother in his childhood and the fact that she became a mother a bit late in life. There can be no doubt that his father’s “Victorian attitude”, and even physical and mental bullying, contributed significantly. One could speculate that up to his teenage years he had the belief that he was born a “rich kid”, but, because he was intelligent enough to observe, the life reality did not quite “add up”; he had no friends, he had a “less than desirable” education, there was no social life as befits someone of “his class”. This was exacerbated by being forced into Bristol Butchers, virtually as cheap labour while seeing others of his early youth prospering in respectable careers and positions. Then came the economic collapse of 1929 followed by a marriage he was ill prepared to contribute to and finally, the abrupt rejection by Jack Senior, Word War II in 1939 and a life of scrambling to support his family.

The realization that he had no future in his father’s business must have been traumatic. From childhood he was given to believe he had a secure future and would eventually inherit the family business. Then the burden of earning a living during the depression years of the 1930’s in a depressing, poor environment in South Wales, newly married to a woman also not prepared for a “less than desirable lifestyle”, compounded his anxiety. The deceit of Jack Senior’s friend in accusing Jack of theft and stripping him of an opportunity to restore himself with Bristol Butchers followed by having to return to South Wales and a life he detested, the strain o the marriage and the beginning of the second world war undoubtably made things worse. he deterioration of the marriage made his anxiety worse and probably introduced an emotional depression. One must wonder why he never had a nervous breakdown. Instead, he focused his energy and efforts to provide his children with the best education that he believed suited their personalities and characters, the opportunity he insisted that had been denied to him.

In his final years, he derived some peace of mind having achieved both financial and intellectual independence, two things that were important to him. He also had given his children what he most wanted them to have; education on which to build their lives. The results may not have been what he had expected but he was enormously proud of their respective successes, much of which he attributed to Lilys mothering skill during the second world war when he was absent for much of the time. His life achievements were, by material standards, very modest but then, he did not measure achievement that way alone.

One of Jack’s failures (he had several) was in Australia, while associating with pillars of industry and experiencing their views on life and business, that he did not see a golden opportunity that was handed to him. Had he been even slightly more aware of the world at large, he would have seized the opportunity rather than defer to the unknown wishes of his father and the fantasy of life with Lily.

One cannot place his failure to seize the family business from his father when he was told that he had no place in it. There had to have been signals of his father’s mismanagement, but he was not educated or skilled enough to see them. What transpired was the deceit of his father and the treachery of a business professional, non of which can be blamed on Jack. Perhaps his failure was not turning around and going straight back to Australia, something which he did regret.

The failure, or lack thereof, of having a higher education also gave rise to considerable frustration. One must wonder what his life and career could have been with a better level of secondary education, followed by attendance at a university. His early childhood and adulthood experience, and questioning, Christian Science philosophies led him to seek answers in “popular” intellectual inquiry such as theosophy, and Scientology among many others. In turn, this preoccupation began the cracks in his marriage since Lily could not, or would not, take any interest in “learning”. An argument that he could have attended university by other means, as is sometimes the practice in the modern world, did not exist until probably the 1950s. He did not have that opportunity.

His major failure was his lack of emotional contribution to the marriage. Being in a constant state of anxiety in the crucial years following his break with Jack Senior, he did not see or understand the vulnerability of Lily. This did not improve with each of the family moves and was exacerbated by Jack’s pursuit of enlightenment via questionable philosophies. Jack should have been more sensitive and found more time with her through us children. He was never able to find an ‘Entente Cordiale’ with Lily, they just did not exist in the same mental dimension.

His regret that he never fully enjoyed or could participate in the successes of his children or know his grandchildren troubled him. He was very aware of this but due to many of them living in foreign countries, it was virtually impossible to accomplish amything– the technology did not exist then. He did brag a bit about his children’s activities to people he randomly met and talked with. He was, for the most part, as fond as he could be of is children’s marriage partners and spoke glowingly, not lovingly, of their behaviour, their appearances and, where relevant, of their abilities and activities.

If there was one single thing that he would claim as his success, it would be that his children were brought up to be competent, capable, and reliable – and that they, and most importantly his grandchildren, were educated.