CRUMPET KING

Greymouth Evening Star, 6 February 1939, Page 9

CRUMPET KING

ACUTE ARTHRITIS CASE LONDON, January 10. > Half London is asking: “Where is Jack, the Crumpet King?” The muffin and crumpet season has begun, but his bell has not been heard. No one has seen him striding, tall and lean, a grin on his face, a muffin board on his head, says A. B. Austin in the “Daily Herald.” In Maida Vale, Kilburn and Marylebone they have been looking for him. Along the Edgeware road they have listened for him. In Brondesbury, St. John’s Wood, Harlesden and Willesden Green they have gone crumpetless for lack of him.

As winter draws on they will look and listen in vain. Jack, the Crumpet King, asks me regretfully to tell them why. “This year,” he says, "I shall have to let London down.”

He sat in his home on the top floor of a Notting Hill tenement house, limping when he rose to greet me. “Acute arthritis, they tell me.” He shook a fist at his legs. “Been laid up since last crumpet season. Medicine, bandages—it’s no use. I couldn’t walk the round.”

Jack, the Crumpet King, is really William Hills. Though he is only 19, even he couldn’t tell you when he first became Crumpet King. It grew on him, like his Cockney fun. The loss of his living (he is an organ grinder except on crumpet days) can’t stifle his fun.

“All planned out the winter was," he laughed a little ruefully. “New jokes for the crumpet bags-—‘Gold Watches Taken in Exchange.’ New basket with slogan on it —‘Oh, Mother, Look!’ New stories for the customers. Heard the one about the policeman who pinched a bloke for putting my crumpets into slot machines to get

fags? "I’d have told them about the muffin man who once says to me. ‘Sold out?’ ‘Yes,’ I says. ‘How do you manage it?’ he says. ‘Oh, I says, T just go round the prisons so as to make sure of catching my customers in. They’re glad to see me.’ "They’ll miss me. It don’t matter where 1 go they know me. Thirty miles 1 might walk sometimes of a Sunday. Sell as many as 900 crumpets if it's a good old wet day. Net that I’m a crumpet cater myself. Give me a. nice bit of toast.

“Thev’ve got to have the right flour, crumpets have. No sweepings. Pm particular about that when ! buy them. They go green too quickly. Then you’ve got to tell the customers they’ve got a drop of Irish blood in them.

“I was going to have a White coat this time, too. It‘d have showed up lovely. But what’s the use? Can’t do anything but wait for the kids to come home from school.’’ "Like to see their room?” asked Mrs. Hills eagerly. We went into the- bedroom of Florrie, eight this month, and Gladys, aged six. Twin beds, toys neatly stacked, window wide open, and on a chair a small blackboard with the words chalked on it: “Kopp Your

Room Tidy.” “Tell them,” said Jack, the Crumpet King, as I went downstairs. “Tell them I’ll be out with crumpets next season if my missus has to wheel me in a bath chair.”