WHEN STRAND WAS A NARROW ALLEY.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 18008, 19 November 1926, Page 6

WHEN STRAND WAS A NARROW ALLEY.

VETERAN’S MEMORIES OF 90 YEARS AGO. (Special to the “Star.”) LONDON, September 20. Memories of Wellington, Napoleon 11., Gladstone, and London of 90 years ago were given to a “Daily Chronicle” correspondent yesterday by Mr John Evans, of Highgate, who has just celebrated his 95th birthday. “I was born in 1831 in a house in the Strand,” he said, “when that thoroughfare was a narrow alley. “At nine I went to Greenwich Hospital School for training as a sailor. Unfortunately, owing to a defect in my sight, a seagoing life was impossible. I remained there for an extra year to learn the printing trade. "Then I started as an apprenticed printer. In those days we had to work from 8 in the morning till 8 at night, with no half-holiday on Saturday.” "NOT HAUNT TAVERNS.” Mr Evans produced the indenture he had signed with his first employer, which stated:— That he shall not play dice, cards, tables, or any unlawful game lest the master may have to pay for it. That he shall not haunt taverns or playhouses, but be true to his That he shall do no damage to his master, and see that no one else does any. Among other things, Mr Evans recalled the scenes at a public execution at Newgate. He saw, too, convicts working* the treadmill grinding flour for their own use in prison—on a site upon which now stands the Post Office at Mount Pleasant. "I have never seen anything more stirring in London,” he added, “than the Duke of Wellington's funeral.”