Interview with Mr David Male
David Male born Dovercourt 1928
Mr Male was a childhood friend to the Spencer family of Dovercourt and has interesting memories of the atmosphere in the Spencer family home
My mum and your nanny Eileen's mum, Mrs Florence Spencer, were great friends and both had lots of children. Their houses were close together. My family lived at Portland Place in the house next to where your pop eventually lived. I would come out from my back garden, through the cut and into Oakland Road where the Spencer house was. Florence was very generous and didn't mind other children being round. She was always kind and if it was mealtime she would put out another plate. It was good food. Dick Spencer (alias Percy Spencer, the father of Eileen) was a cook. He was always sitting in the kitchen cooking, making pie, casserole or buns, so when home he would cook and not his wife. He worked on the boats at Parkeston Quay and was often away at night. Mr Spencer was popular because somehow, when he was abroad, he got large quantities of peanuts, roasted them in their shells, brought them home and distributed them freely. My brother Bob particularly remembers that. They always played games, ping pong, board games and competitions.
Of the Spencer children:
Molly was a good swimmer. Arnold was the youngest, a bit older than me. I always tagged on. We went to the field at the top of Portland Place where sometimes the circus would come. There were 6 Spencer's, enough to make a team. Molly and all would swim in the sea. They all knew when there were high tides, which was the best time to swim. They were a very communal family. The others were Joyce, Johnny and Georgie. They made up part of the Lee Road clique, a gang who did most things together.
Molly was a good swimmer. Arnold was the youngest, a bit older than me. I always tagged on. We went to the field at the top of Portland Place where sometimes the circus would come. There were 6 Spencer's, enough to make a team. Molly and all would swim in the sea. They all knew when there were high tides, which was the best time to swim. They were a very communal family. The others were Joyce, Johnny and Georgie. They made up part of the Lee Road clique, a gang who did most things together.
It was nearly always someone's birthday and Florrie would put on a splendid deal. She had a large house that was good for parties, a dining table for ping pong, lots of rooms that were good for hide and seek and she was cool with it all. The family liked playing tricks. They would get a plank from the shed and put it on the floor, you would be blindfolded and have to keep your balance on it and they gave you their shoulders to lean on while they pretended to lift the plank.
Mrs Spencer was a great cinema goer and sometimes took my mum, and there was always someone babysitting. They had a favourite film star, John Boles, and there was a silver framed photo of him in the sitting room. When our mothers were at the cinema the Spencer boys always turned the photo upside down in the frame, waiting for the explosion when Florrie came home, though she always took it well. They were an active group, laughing and competitive.
In 1932 Parkeston Quay underwent a huge extension, built by the London North East Railway and they advertised job vacancies nationwide. Your Pop, George Harrison, came in search of a job. This is how he came to Dovercourt. Dick met him at the quay and took him in as a lodger. The children found him strange. They had never met a Welsh man. He spoke in so strange an accent and some words they did not understand. He was absorbed into the family and so got to know Eileen, she being the oldest. My older brother John got work there at the same time and persuaded George Harrison to watch the Harwich and Parkeston football, after which he became an ardent lifelong supporter. He always supported Wales in rugby.
As the family was so accommodating he got absorbed.
As the family was so accommodating he got absorbed.
All this was pre-1939. War broke up these communities, the older boys going off to war. I was evacuated, at the age of 11, to Gloucestershire. Everyone went their different ways.
Later on in George Harrison's career he worked at HMS Ganges in Shotley as part of the maintenance group, with another of my brothers, Stan. They would go over on the Trot boat from Harwich Pier. This was a small boat laid on for the HMS Ganges workers. My brother Bob married a Welsh girl, Ann, who was friendly with another Welsh girl Gwen Bug, and along with George they formed a little Welsh maffia. They all lived in Portland Place. The Bug family were in the alley type road going back by the side of your Pops house. Portland Place had no houses at the top then. Over the years I maintained contact with George. I was on 1st Avenue and if George was there he'd stop and chat. 'How is Bob and Ann?' he'd ask.
I met Mrs Spencer again before she died, at Eastleigh in Hampshire. I recall her as round faced and jolly, and never nonplussed by anything. Dick Spencer was also known by my father, Mortimer. The Spencer's lived on Lee Road in a big semi-detached house. Before that they lived in Oakland Road, 'With 6 children and 2 lodgers' Arnold had said to me.
I am the only one of 6 brothers left alive now. I trained as a teacher at Goldsmiths College for two years, did an extra year training in drama, and eventually got a doctorate in America. All was in the subject of Drama. I was a professor in Japan and taught at Homerton College, Cambridge.
Florence and Dick Spencer lived complimentary but separate lives with a focus on food which they were both good at. She was always smiling, the one to stick a plaster on your knee. Dick always made two dozen buns. He was used to cooking for loads of people. He was chief chef on the boats, on one passenger boat which prided itself on fine dining. He liked joke books and puzzles. He was scruffy, just being at home and never on public view, cooking at home regardless of the time of day. Their house was strangely benevolent and homely. Your nanny Eileen did a lot of good works with people later in her life. She inherited this, always cooking too. Her own matriarchy was totally carried on from her own family. The Spencer girls were not quiet violets, they were just as involved. They were a self contained group in a small world. The shop Jeans marked the extent of their territory. The meadow was a good place for them, there where we played cowboys and indians, and this was on part of Patrick's farm. The football side was all open then. There were pig styes, an orchard and pond which is filled in now. They all went to 2nd Avenue Infant School, then either to the central school on Waddeston Road or the High School. Their food was stew, sausages and mash, soup and currant buns, all filling and all made in bulk. We never went round to my house as it was too small. They had a darts board at an open shed. The war truncated and brought that little community to a halt.
We would swim in the sea just down from here where there was a little pier. The pier has gone now. There we did fishing, diving, swimming and digging up mussels. The Spencer gang didn't go as far as the lighthouse for that was someone else territory (My mum Jo was was with me at the interview told me her own swimming spot was further along at the pavilion). There were never adults guarding them at the sea. They learnt to swim when they were around 5. No one taught the kids. Their territory stretched to the hockey shelter at the top of Donkey Hill. At the bottom of that hill there were donkey rides. They would go to a little sweet shop, Miss Millers, which was a general store between the bottom of the Oakland and Brooklyn Roads. From 1850 onwards Dovercourt was a holiday place. Only Eileen stayed. The others went different ways, though Molly and Arnold did return.