The Dawn of the Crystal Set...

Dad had been brought up by Granny French in No 42 Hartopp Road in Alum Rock in Birmingham for the majority of his early life, right up to when he left to do his National Service, where he met Mum. I'd always been under the impression that Granny French was called 'French'  because her first husband was called Dupont, information gleaned from her Marriage Certificate and who was, actually, a French citizen. . I'd also pondered at the back of my mind why it was that a Mr Dupont, him being French, had served in the military on the Royal Yacht as a Royal Marine?? Surely that couldn't be correct? On thorough searching of the old family papers I have  been able to piece together the real story. 


Poor old Mr Dupont died very early on in their relationship leaving Granny French, my Granddad Shaw's sister, a widow some time after the First World War.  At this point wouldn't it be great to reveal a wonderful love story of a young English girl going to France to tend the wounded and returning home married to a dashing French soldier? Yes it would, and it could even be true... The facts are however that there is no evidence to support this story and nobody left alive who could shed any light on their relationship. What a shame!


The real story is that Granny French actually married a Mr French... that was his surname.. and it was he that served as a marine on board the  HMY Victoria and Albert  III,  the Royal Yacht during the 1920's.  The photo posted today shows Granddad French in his Navy Police uniform  a role he undertook during his final naval years having been a career sailor since leaving school.  He is certainly a person I wish I could have a conversation with today about his life and times which potentially must  have been so rich...


What I can remember is the unfortunate end of Granddad French. He left this world as an alcoholic with cause of death as 'Cirrhosis of the Liver'  on his death certificate.  This reveals the nasty side of life in Hartopp Road during the time Dad was being raised and goes some way to explain why he didn't like me going up the road to frequent The Country Girl pub.


Granddad French had spent most of his naval pension in the pub and all my Dad's life the cloud of alcoholism was always hanging over his  thoughts.   I never ever saw my Dad drunk.. I don't think he ever was!  He just wasn't a drinker and frowned upon anyone who did. He had even taken 'The Pledge'  ordained by the catholic church for those who wanted to earn  'indulgences'  to be cashed in later, once you entered the afterlife , as a quicker route into heaven. Nonsense, yes, but in those times and with Dad's experience of the demon drink, I can see why he supported the cause.


Hartopp Road was a typical small terraced street in the real heart of Birmingham. If you wanted to, and I often did, you could walk into Town, Brum's city centre, in half an hour or so. Otherwise it was a cheap bus ride on the No 14 or 55.  I used to regularly walk to St Andrew's, the home of Birmingham City FC which was only ten minutes up the road to watch the matches and get players autographs. I'd often get in for free over the fence or in through the main gate once the game had started and the turnstiles were vacated. No 42 was near enough to hear the baying of the crowd on match days but not quite near enough to demand protection money off supporters parking their cars to go into the match.


We never had a bathroom till the summer of 1968, or piped hot water, and the loo was outside in the yard. Bath night was Friday night in an old tin bath which hung for storage in the outside loo. That loo had a cast iron 'ROBORO' cistern that took a hefty pull and a bit of a knack to yank on the chain to flush it . Mum would use the twin tub washer to heat the water and which we all used to share, with 'hot sups' from the kettle to warm things up as each of us vacated the tub in turn. I can remember a story from one beach day holiday in Bray when I remarked to mum that the sea was a bit cold and maybe a hot sup from the kettle would warm it up a bit? I was only young... I'm sure it would have worked?


One remarkable thing about No 42 was the long thin strip of a garden which was to serve well as the route for a substantial long wire aerial for my early crystal sets. On Corporation Street in the centre of Brum there used to be a radio shop. I can't remember its name exactly but I have a hunch it was called 'Lasky's'. I can remember walking into town, a good three miles, to buy a diode for my first crystal set. I can also remember walking from home to Hay Mills, almost half way to the Airport at Elmdon, to visit an army surplus store in the quest for some high impedance headphones. I got them and they were of the sort used by tank crew with a fabric and wire contraption to enable them to be worn under a steel helmet. The rubberised phones were excellent!


As a side, I used to visit that army surplus store often and can remember now a whole wall full of R1155's. I wonder where they all are now? Amongst my purchases were things like air raid warden rattles (for the match) ex army torches (for reading under the bedclothes...once I could read that was!) gas mask (for stink bomb making)  a khaki knapsack (to hold my school books and sarnies) a felt covered water bottle (for long thirsty days when we had warm summers) and even an old mine detector complete with battery case (to search for shrapnel at the local bomb sites).  The end of Hartopp Road had been vapourised due to a stray stick of bombs which had fallen during the war. You could map the path and fall of the stick over quite a long linear distance. The craters and mayhem started up the road by the Parkfield Rolling Mills Factory, smashed through the end of Hartopp Road, on to Couchman Road and finishing up on Bowyer Road. The crater left in Couchman Road remained for years, well into the 1960's, and was always a magnet for kids, including me, as the large hole filled with water from time to time and was a great place to swim! There were a couple of wrecked cars too and the small crystals of toughened windscreen glass often served as diamonds in elaborate games of derring do. Health and Safety of today would have had the vapours... In my teens a large posh house was built on the site, the best in the area by miles, and this was the new vicarage proving perhaps that in such a depressed area even the Church of England had to have its presence felt and lorded station in the community upheld.  


The first crystal set I built, I must have been around 11 or 12, and was taken from pictures I found an old encyclopaedia which some how arrived in our house. Using just the circuit diagram and what must have been the sparsest of information (that I could understand anyway!) I put together a Heath Robinson  contraption made of a wooden base board and toilet roll holder coil former and  which included using enamelled copper wire carefully unwound from an old transformer as the basis of the long wire aerial. This projected out of my back bedroom window and down to the fence at the bottom of the garden. A sloper, although at the time I didn't know it would have been so called.  As the house had a nice lead pipe cold water supply,  the earth was pretty sound too. Having been brought up drinking water from lead pipes I reckon I  have survived despite current fears about lead poisoning!  


I soldiered on with a variety of circuits and experiments often spending hours and hours just trying to grab a signal and make some sense of it. Sadly I have to remark that Dad never helped me and Mum often got so exasperated with the clutter in my bedroom, or worse in the small living room,  that my overriding memory is one of me being a bit of a geeky nerdy nuisance (although those words hadn't been invented in the 1960's... 'Boffin' maybe??)  I probably haven't changed much!! From crystal sets came TRF's and later a superhet... But that was much much later! 


Amidst the crackles and buzzes of static I first heard far and distant voices from aircraft making their slow mainly piston engined progress towards exotic destinations such as Gander, Santa Maria and New York.  I heard the weather broadcasts informing me of ice conditions in the St Lawrence Seaway... I heard trawler men swearing at each other... I heard the nutty guy who liked to sing about drinking tea from Hilversum... I hear Radio Moscow, The Voice of America and AFN..... All broadcast in AM in those days, even the aircraft transmissions!


I was hooked, not only by catching those radio waves but also the aircraft, the places I heard and the information I could hear. It was as if I was travelling and visiting those places.... Being there without going there.  I can honestly say that the combination of radio and plane spotting was what set me off on a long and happy association with all things technical and probably kept me out of a great deal of trouble throughout my teenage years. I'm sure others will agree, once you can hear something exotic and exciting amidst the mush and whizzes of short waves, the quest then becomes How can I improve this? How can I make reception clearer?  I had to improve things. So I bought my first copy of Practical Wireless.......


But that is another story, especially as it must have been quite a few years and much sweat and toil before I could really get to understand what on the dickens most of it was it was trying to teach me!