Norwich Characters

There is little documentary evidence concerning this Norwich character, and not much anecdotal either, and yet he must have been a very colourful sight on the streets of Norwich  over 100 years ago. The bare facts that follow are the result of local newspaper articles over the past 40 years.

 His real name was William Potter.  He and his wife lived in Whalebone Square, adjacent to The Whalebone Tavern at the bottom of St Clement's Hill. They made a living by  street busking and selling bedding plants,  some reports say from a flat-barrow mounted on a  penny-farthing.  He obviously paid a lot of attention to his image and  dressed in a tail or cutaway coat, with a tall green top hat or bowler. He would sometimes play the accordion while his wife, fully dressed in elaborate Victorian fashion,  would dance beside him.

Any more information about him will usually be anecdotal, but occasionally an item turns up, like the one I'm showing here, that maybe gives a clue to his lifestyle as the people of Edwardian Norwich would have seen it.

This postcard from 1906 is sometimes to be found, but the example I have is signed by the man himself, which makes it very rare, and rather intriguing. The postcard has no inscription on the back,  only the somewhat cryptic one on the front. The back is addressed in his own handwriting to an address in Earlham Road. I suspect that William Potter responded to what must have been considerable local fame, by having these postcards printed, by Woods of Fye Bridge, which he then sold, or gave away, to people he met on the street. This entrepreneurial spirit seems in keeping with his extravagant busking attire, and reinforces the idea that he took his image seriously. If I'm correct, the lady on Earlham Road who received the postcard probably asked him for one in the street, and he promised to send one on. This would account for the inscription which simply identifies himself and his wife, with 'sugar' in brackets. This further suggests that this was the way he was usually addressed, and not by the longer version of his nickname.

As a footnote, I believe that, with the tireless help of my son Sam, we have identified the exact location of the photograph. The pair  are standing outside the gates of Levell's stonemasons yard at 52 Magdalen Road, at the corner of Shipstone Road which is just behind them. A few hundred yards further back can just be seen the outline of Magdalen Road Congregational church, demolished in 1971.

This leads me to the anecdotal evidence. Why was he called "Sugar My Sop"? In passing it should be said that most people who know of him usually refer to him as "Sugar Me Sop", but this would simply be a local corruption of the correct name.  I've seen a few proposed explanations, none of which are convincing, and all of which are pure guesswork.  The explanation I'm going to give sounds plausible, but as with so much about these strange characters, it's impossible to prove definitively. 

Some years ago, an old lady whose family I was connected with, told me this story.

Her name was Alice Knight and she was born in Shipstone Road in 1894. She died at the age of 108 in 2002, and her memories were fresh until the end. She remembers as a young girl, often seeing William Potter and his wife as they made their way from St Clement's Hill towards Magdalen Street and the city, where they would do their busking. She told me that on a number of occasions he would have a board  hanging around his neck bearing the proud slogan: "Every morning I sugar my sop with Dodson's sugar". The Dodson's  in question was a grocer's shop, one of seven John Dodson shops in Norwich, at 128 Magdalen Road, and only a few doors from the Potters in Whalebone Square. Dodson's obviously took advantage of Sugar's fame to indulge in some enterprising street advertising, which would in turn help the Potter's probably limited income. 

The information I've given here adds to the story I think, but part of the enduring fascination surrounding these Norwich wraithes is that they are essentially unknowable, which add to their potency as we peer through the mists that shroud old Norwich.

Eccentric, entrepreneur - character. These people throng the streets in every era, sometimes visible, sometimes not; and I will share my memories of those that I have known, and some like 'sugar'  that I have not, on my blog over the next year or so.  

William Childerhouse reigned as the splendidly named Norwich Bellman for some 30 years, until his death at the age of 67 in 1905.

He became a local hero during the devastating floods of 1878, when he braved the flood waters all over the city,  relaying the latest news and public information advice in his renowned stentorian voice, despite at one point having to drag himself out of the waters after falling off his makeshift raft.

I don't have any new information on this rather obscure character, whose life remains in the shadows while his image is much better known., but I do have a very tenous connection with him. About 40 years ago I had a great friend, Alfie Goose, who was a well known Mile Cross character in his own right. Alfie had some interesting memorabilia about The Bellman, but also the unbeatable distinction of having been introduced to him when he was a young lad, and even sat on the old gentleman's knee. Some of these figures are so far in the past, and so little known about them, that it seems hard to believe they were as real as the rest of us. Through Alfie Goose I've always had the knowledge that The Bellman was once among us, and not just an image on an old postcard.

The photograph shows The Bellman in his familiar pose, and any Norwich resident will easily identify the historic backdrop

My first introduction to the shadowy underworld of collecting came in the unforgettable shape of a Norwich legend; a reclusive collector of the bizarre and unusual, with a predilection for material of a sexual or criminal nature. He had also developed a keen instinct for those fragments of cultural history that aren’t always exquisite in themselves but will always be imbued with the mark of the culture and the times where they originated, if you had ‘the eye’, that elusive instinctive gift that real collectors have, and which Ronnie had to a high degree. For forty years he scoured the back alleys of the antique trade, and gleefully probed the secretive passions of his fellow obsessives, amassing in the process an amazing, disparate collection of treasures, many of which only he knew the origin of.

When I first met him 40 years ago, he was a man of about 60, a gargantuan 280 pounds, with smooth, pale, and unblemished face, distinguished by a small goatee beard, and tiny watery eyes. His hands were smooth and feminine, with delicate fingers and long, uncut nails. He always dressed, whatever the weather, in a long, checked, once expensive, greatcoat, and a deerstalker hat. He was a bizarre amalgam of Sherlock Holmes and Orson Welles and carried with him a pungent aroma of ripe putrescence that lingered long after he had gone. 

He lived in a tiny, four room, end cottage, in a terrace of three; mouldering in the shadow of the gas works, to whom they belonged. Built in the 19th century of grey stone, with no amenities, damp and dingy, and cut high into the side of the hill overlooking the city; Victorian relics, ripe for demolition, much like Ronnie himself - for I speak of Ronnie Rouse, now gone, but for decades a name that resonated among the motley crew of dealers, collectors, charlatans, crooks and obsessives, that made up the fringe of semi-respectable characters  operating in that half world that buys from one side to sell to the other; not fully trusted by either, but irresistible to both. A shadowy world that has fascinated me since I was a child, and which I've now inhabited for too long to ever leave.

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I first visited this shrine to perverse eccentricity on a cold winter afternoon and was immediately ushered into a world where the normal functions of everyday life had been transformed by a mania for collecting and owning, into a tangled undergrowth of objects of desire; the bizarre, the horrific, and, occasionally, the genuinely exquisite. All had been mangled into ceiling high edifices of magazines, books, and comics; postcards, photographs and ephemera; piled onto cupboards to create skyscrapers of desire; a mini - Manhattan of the rare, the strange, the beautiful and the grotesque, through which we shuffled sideways through the narrow corridors of cabinets and paper, left open, but ever encroaching, as he selectively showed his treasures. A first issue of Film Fun; Amazing Fantasy #15; a pile of Victorian Penny Dreadfuls; a drawer full of clay pipes in exotic shapes, some from the American Civil War; a rare antique dildo - his much prized "convent cock"; albums full of glorious Victorian postcards, Valentine and Christmas specials with glowing vibrant colours, and delicate textures. Above the mantelpiece a monstrous stuffed spider guarded the magnificent ormolu 18th century French clock; while on every bare surface, however small, there flourished a profusion of china ornaments, figurines, bric-a-brac; lead soldiers, toys, and strange objects with no discernible purpose, but which had attracted his restless, magpie eye. 

As we sidled through the two downstairs rooms, it was obvious that only a small part of what he had was accessible or identifiable; so much was hidden under piles of paper, quietly rotting against the damp walls, as he relentlessly added more each year to a collection that was already beyond his control or comprehension. We edged up the narrow stairs, lined with more books, to the two small rooms that housed yet more of his madness. On the right, the room full of pornography, his overwhelming passion. Among the thousands of modern glossy magazines were older publications, books and drawings from the last hundred years, cataloguing, describing, and illustrating every sexual perversion and variation known to man, woman or beast; including all three at times in various exotic activities; “The room of 1000 cunts” as Ronnie delicately put it with his sibilant chuckle.

Ahead was his main room, the room his aged mother had occupied for many painful years as she quietly decayed, under the ministrations of her grotesque man-child. Perhaps in remembrance of her recent departure, the only human relationship that anybody knew he ever had, he had acquired a kitten, which he kept in an ornate Victorian bird cage, to stop it defecating over his treasures, a habit it had quickly adopted. The treasures included piles of 1940’s Dandy and Beano comics and annuals, pre-code American and British Horror comics, and his special delight:  pre-war Gems, Magnets, Nelson Lee and Sexton Blake. I examined these in more detail on later visits - the kitten I never saw again. 

On my way out after this first visit, we stopped in the main downstairs room, and he pulled from a pile of books, a 1925 Volume of Forensic Medicine by Harvey Littlejohn; a technical work illustrated with medical photos of victims of crime, both murder and suicide. As the winter afternoon waned, and the grey light faded beyond the one grimy window, Ronnie described in his thin high voice, the horrors that lay within: the throat slit to the spine until it gaped like a monstrous nether mouth as the lifeless head lolled back; the many minor wounds inflicted by the suicide on his throat until he summoned the will to make the final desperate lunge; the head destroyed by the shotgun in the mouth. As he recounted, and displayed, these brutal, despairing assaults upon the flesh, under a single bare bulb, his small eyes glinted, his wet lips collected tiny gobbets of spittle as his excitement mounted, and for the first time in my forays into the murky depths of obsession, I felt a tingle of apprehension as my skin tightened, and I felt a need to get back to the fresh air.

I went back many times over the next years, and even acquired much later, at inflated expense, the volume of forensic horrors that Ronnie, the quintessential Dickensian Fat Boy, had gleefully used to “make my flesh creep” on that first, unforgettable visit. I got to know him well in the following years, although getting close to competitive, acquisitive, and pathologically suspicious Ronnie Rouse was not easy, and we had a number of personal disputes (everything was personal with Ronnie!).  I shared his sense of the morbid delights of sex and death and horror in rancid and twisted combinations; his fascination with popular culture; and his love of the strange; but most importantly we shared that feeling of community that only the true collector knows, especially when I officially joined the ranks by opening my shop in 1985, and welcomed Ronnie, much to his chagrin, as my second customer; the first was much more sweet smelling, although equally obsessive , and a great competitor of Ronnie’s – but that’s another story.

Extract from 'Collecting Memories' 

"Bristow’s Paperbacks” opened in 1968, and was the most successful, genuinely Radical bookshop Norwich has ever had. It was a fair sized shop in the narrow, crowded confines of Bridewell Alley, with a large display window, a crowded selling area on the ground floor, and some narrow winding stairs leading down to a cramped cellar.

 The stock was a wonderful assortment of mainly, but not exclusively, imported books, mostly paperbacks. "Bristow's Paperbacks" aimed to please, and if a book was in print anywhere in the world, they would get it - from the Collected Works of Wordsworth In Arabic, to Diseases of the Cricket Bat Willow - often at knockdown prices. They covered all the mainstream subjects and authors, but also a wonderful range of underground and alternative titles from literature, cinema and theatre, poetry and comics and politics. These specialised interests  were all covered in books that weren’t found in the mainstream shops; "Oz" and "Gay News" rubbed shoulders with authors and artists like Buchowski, Kerouac and Burroughs; Corben, Crumb and Frazzetta packed the shelves along with many other even more obscure names.

 It was in Bristow’s that I regularly bought “OZ” magazine and “International Times”, and books that were only obtainable otherwise through mail order. It was a shop created by an enthusiast, and filled a gap in Norwich that few places outside London could emulate. Giles Bristow himself was a quiet, well spoken, man in his late twenties, aided in the shop by Tim Sillence (see below)

Despite its laid back, slightly eccentric atmosphere, the shop had a good business model, and Giles ran it well, and I assume profitably, for some years. He kept abreast of all the new trends in the world of literature and comics, and when , in 1972, he had access to imported underground comics, he immediately stocked them. These were comics I knew about, and had bought by post from obscure dealers found in the pages of various underground publications, but I had never seen any for sale outside London. No high street shop would stock them as they were always subversive and often obscene, with covers that pulled no punches. Giles could easily have kept them discreetly in the shop on shelves, but he was an honest man, maybe a bit naïve, and he boldly displayed them in his window. They made a superb display, especially to those, like myself, who knew their rarity value, and for a week or so they attracted attention and sales, until the forces of convention roused themselves to deal with this dangerous outbreak of freedom of expression, which was sweeping away the old restraints throughout society as a whole, but which would not be tolerated in Norwich. Some member of the public must have signalled their outrage to the Police, and, always glad of an excuse to demonstrate their authority, they paid a visit to the shop. They seized all the comics from the window, but critically they then went through the shop, and cleared much more stock from the shelves, including six books which were to form the basis of a prosecution. Everything was taken away and stored while the wheels of justice ground slowly on, leaving the bookshop crippled. This undoubtedly gave much satisfaction to those worthy citizens who take it upon themselves to legislate the lifestyles and tastes of the rest of us, but it eventually deprived Norwich of another small piece of the individuality and energy that helped to distinguish us from other cities: Norwich lost something of its character that day, and became a little bit smaller. 

The shop remained in business, but much subdued, until nine months later Giles found himself in the dock at the magistrates court, forced to speak out against censorship, and defend the rights of booksellers to make a living. His plea that "A bookseller seems to be at the mercy of totally arbitrary proceedings, which makes his life almost impossible in a world of changing tastes and values", was dismissed and he was fined £300, which he characteristically refused to pay. An appeal campaign was mounted by academics at the U.E.A, many of whose teachers and students had been customers, but the fund didn't reach its target. Worn out by the case, and beset by other problems, Giles surrendered: the fine was paid, and in 1974 he sold up. Although something of a cause celebre for many of us, he resented, and fiercely resisted, being seen as a symbol; and , although grateful for the support he received, he told a Guardian journalist "I am not going to subsidise everyone else's highly expensive piece of theatre"

But it wasn’t only Norwich that lost; Giles himself lost his livelihood, because the shop never re-opened, and no independent shop of that kind has been seen in Norwich since. He fought his recurring mental health problems with a dogged determination though, and turned his considerable intellect to academic pursuits, studying at the U.E.A where he gained a law degree, which he typically used in quixotic pursuits, including a dispute with Eastern Gas over a £7 bill. He won his case, but was most delighted by winning costs for the replacement of his trademark flip-flop sandals, which he said he had worn out in his pursuit of justice.

By the early 80's though, Giles problems had overwhelmed him, and he largely faded from view, except for some brief encounters I had with him over the next few years. When I frequented The Black Horse on Earlham Road in its raucous heyday in the early 80s, Giles would often be sitting alone in a corner, quietly drinking with a detached air. I spoke to him on a few occasions, but any mention of the shop would see him draw back into his shell; he would shake his head and wave his hand dismissively "No, No.... the shop.....I'm not interested" and the conversation would be abruptly terminated. Some years later when I had established my own shop, he would come in sometimes to try and raise a little money. Although still quietly spoken and polite, he was obviously in serious decline by then, and had even lost his old friend Tim, who left the house he was renting from Giles, after Giles set fire to his collection of irreplaceable underground books and comics, and most of his clothes as well.

He attempted to sell items that were embarrassingly worthless, salvaged from skips and bins, to me and anyone else he could find who would speak to him. I gave him a few pounds from time to time, and never mentioned his shop again; he had nothing left, and was a shadow  of the independent entrepreneur of his halcyon days 20 years before, and I wish now I had been able to do more for him. The one thing I did buy from him was a Robert Crumb poster from an old Oz magazine , which I had framed, and have hanging on the wall of my study to this day, a constant reminder of that rare shop in Bridewell Alley.

In October 1993, aged 53,  he was found dead in an armchair in his little terrace house in Gladstone Street, pinned to the wall above his head, a cutting written by Frank Colby which read: " I have found some of the best reasons I ever had for remaining at the bottom simply by looking at the men at the top".  He had been there some weeks before he was discovered, alone at the end, but not forgotten.

As a postscript to this rather downbeat narration can be added the little known, but equally unsatisfactory, story of his personal life at the time, which concerns a short-lived relationship he had at the start of the seventies that produced two children. One of them, China Mieville, went on to become a renowned fantasy author and left wing activist. He was to become the author of a substantial body of work and winner of numerous awards, but was taken to London with his mother in 1974 when he was two, and in his on line story, Giles is never mentioned, the only comment being " I never really knew  my father". 

It seems to sum up the implacable, failing trajectory of a life that promised much, and, despite the unavoidable personal failings, deserved a better end.

Adapted from "Collecting Memories"

   Tim Sillence, (1944-2002) was a poet and writer, and in later years a notorious eccentric, who took to wearing a crash helmet at  times so he wouldn't hurt his head when he fell over drunk.

He was born in  Surrey but when in 1947  his father was posted at RAF Swanton Morley his  family moved to Norfolk. After attending Norwich School he joined the  RAF and later studied to be a motor mechanic at Norwich Technical  College. He was once hailed by a former collaborator on Radio 4 as one  of the country's great unsung poets. 

In the late sixties he held court in the bookshop of his great friend Giles Bristow  and they were usually attended by a group of lounging hippies, who recognized the shop as a focal point for a burgeoning "alternative society" that was changing the world, as they smoked their cigarettes of an unusual shape and smell, creating that wonderfully exotic miasma that defined a number of establishments in the sixties; it was usually a few minutes after leaving the shop before your feet would actually touch terra firma again, or so it seemed in those wonderfully relaxed days before reality checked in during the scowling seventies.  It was also the place to be on selected Saturday afternoons when a group of regulars would squat in a circle, passing round a thick spliff, while Tim would give a recital of his poetry in an approximation of Burroughs' nasal drawl. These informal gatherings were also the inspiration for the legendary poetry recital/duel with Jeff Nuttall of "Bomb Culture" fame, at Studio 5 in the early 70's. 

These halcyon days passed with the end of the sixties, and with the destruction of Bristow's shop and business in the seventies. Giles later spiralled downwards into an abyss of drink and despair, finally ending his friendship with Tim, who left the house he was renting from Giles, after Giles set fire to his collection of irreplaceable underground books and comics, and most of his clothes as well. 

Tim Sillence continued to be seen around town for a number of years, his still handsome, regular features now framed by a mane of grey hair; his poetry,  always minor but not without interest, now confined to random scribbles as he sat drinking in The Vine, his favoured home for the last years of his life. During my researches for my book, I managed to track down one of the few surviving copies of his magnum opus "The Great Speed Wars", a short narrative poem about his days in an Israeli Kibbutz during the Yom Kippur war. It was illustrated by his great friend, and sometime rival, Jeff Nuttall, and had been irritably offered for sale for 20p by Tim at various festivals in the seventies. It still reads pretty well, and is the work of a man who lingered on the fringes of being "the next big thing" for too long, and subsided into a bog of drink and drugs before he had done the work to justify it. I was glad to have the opportunity to republish it in a short run, as a homage to the Golden Times that tarnished too quickly.

Adapted from 'Collecting Memories'