John Day Arsenal apprentice

 

I was thinking about something to write this week – and I’ve had no net access for nearly a week – and so I have been looking at what I had on my system from the past. We had the first Greenwich Industrial History meetings in the late 1990s and we also had a bi-monthly newsletter. I used to get a lot of stuff sent for publication - much of it from elderly men who had worked in various local industries and wanted to tell people about their experiences. So, I thought, nobody’s ever going to read these old newsletters and perhaps I should dig them out andre-publish them somewhere.

One of the most constant and prolific of the contributors to these early issues of the GIHS newsletter was John Day. He didn’t live locally – I think he lived in one of those Surrey towns near the London border .... Woking?   Leatherhead? He had however undertaken the massive task of listing 30,000 engineering drawings for the Royal Artillery Library which was then based in the Royal Military Academy – now flats - in Red Lion Lane and he had beenbworking in the Rotunda.

Professionally he had been a                mechanical engineer following an apprenticeship in the Arsenal. He had worked for the Patent Office  where he prepared instruction books on Rolls Royce aero engines and much else, eventually actually retiring as Principal Examiner.  He was also a keen historian of artillery practice. He was particularly helpful to me when I researched the Blakeley Ordnance factory on Greenwich Peninsula and introduced me to experts on Blakeley and helped me to write an article which would otherwise have been an extremely innocent and inadequate description of this Greenwich works.

In contributing to Greenwich Industrial History newsletters he was very concerned to tell us about his apprenticeship in the Arsenal, writing a series of articles which will be far too long and detailed to put here individually which I might run as a series.  There were other people who wrote about Arsenal apprenticeships but John’s work was particularly detailed. He began with when ge went there in 1934 but said that the site was already well known to him then.

John explained that in the mid 1930s his father had been appointed as a craft engineer in the Arsenal’s Central Power Station and on Sundays John took him in a hot lunch in a basket. Then since everything was shut he had the ‘freedom to wander where I liked within the building’.  I must admit that I find this surprising - my impression of the Arsenal was that anyone not employed there would be very quickly surrounded by military should they do anything but go where they were told! Perhaps things were different in the 1930s.

 

He explained that at that time there were three grades of apprentices in the Royal Arsenal:

Trade apprentices who, as the name suggests were training in their chosen trade such as fitter, turner, pattern maker, etc. After six months they had one option to change their choice.

Student apprentices who spent a couple of years of practical work after college degrees.

Engineering apprentices who spent five years working at a number of trades while  studying for a degree.  Entry was by examinations and interview at the age of 16.  The average intake in the 1930s was about 12 chosen from some 100 to 150 applicants. For the first two years there was compulsory attendance for two days and two evening a week at what was then the Woolwich Polytechnic, The remaining three years were spent during term time at the Poly. At the end of the five years most of the apprentices had a degree in engineering and the necessary 36 months of practical training needed for membership of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers.

 

So he describes his application for an engineering apprenticship by saying ‘I have no recollection of any examination .... perhaps I was exempted by having matriculated with distinction in technical subjects.’ He described how he had also made a model of a ‘two cylinder boiler fitted pump’ which is apparently described in the London and Brighton and South Coast Railway’s magazine ‘Shop, Shed and Road’. He produced this model at the interview when they asked him if he knew anything about metal work. He says there was a pause ‘while the interview board thought of something else to ask me’.

 

He got his place as an Arsenal Engineering Apprentice and when list of successful candidates was published he was at the top.  He listed others who passed with him –Norman Lindsey – a future Lieut. Colonel with REME;  Robert Walker who became a civil engineer with the Port of London Authority; Sydney Bacon who retired with a knighthood as Director General of Ordnance Factories; Malcolm Starkey,

manager of a war time ordnance factory in Fazakerley, which made Sten guns. He later had a senior position with  Farnborough based motor valve manufacturers, Tranco.

 

On his first day he reported to the Apprentice Supervisor in the Central Office and was taken to the Gauge Shop for the New Fuse Factory. I understand that today it is not possible to identify one exact building which could be called the ‘New fuse factory’ -  although I stand to be corrected by people from the Royal Arsenal historical group.  As far as I am aware the fuse factories in the Arsenal during the Second World War employed many thousands of women but had no specific location and that any information about them would be top secret.

 

John commented that where he was first taken was the ‘Fuse pool room’ -  and I assume ‘pool’ does not mean snooker!  He says ‘the Gauge shop’ was the high accuracy part of the tool room. This whole complex of buildings was near the Plumstead Gate.

 

He was then handed over to Jim Hands to work as his apprentice. Jim made the jigs and tools for a specific product -  the Mechanical Time Fuse No 207 which he describes as ‘a short-term watch mechanism using a swing arm in place of the usual balance wheel’. This was made and assembled by women on the first floor of the adjacent building, which was called ‘The New Fuse Factory’. I am sorry to say that John said that it was always Jim who fixed the belts and bolts underneath the benches while he did all the work on top – and ‘it was a long time before I cottoned on as to why’.  An additional hazard for women workers in this very male environment which I have never seen mentioned in any article about the problems faced there. Stiletto heels have their advantages but I bet they weren’t allowed!

 

The first job John had was to ‘scrape the faces of depth gauges true and square  ... they had to be frosted and be accurate to a couple of thousands of an inch’. Made of a light alloy they were used in the Danger Buildings for measuring the depths of explosives in shells.

 

Jim next suggested John made himself some tools. He began by making an engineer’s square -  a precision L-shaped device  used for accurate checking of 90-degree angles and straight lines. He had to hack saw the shapes; grind the parts; rivet them and it all had to be acceptable to the View Room – accurate to less than one ten thousanth of an inch. John comments ‘I still have the square because I never dared use it.’

 

By then John had a motor bike - a 1920 Sunbeam ‘the Rolls Royce of singles which had cost £2 and which he had restored. Of course he was riding it in to the Arsenal everyday.  One morning, part of the handlebars caught in a man’s pocket, tearing it and his lunch fell out on the road.  That evening he came to see John’s father. He left with ‘a ten shilling note and an old jacket’.

Back at the Arsenal John’s father used his status as foreman of the Electrical Shop to get No.4. electricity substation specially opened morning and evening so John could ‘garage my bike safely in the dry’.