George Hooper
1888 - 1926
George Hooper is our grandfather. His early life is described in the page for his father Henry George Hooper. The area where he lived as a young boy is described in the page about 225 Green Street.
1901 - 1910
We know only one thing about George in this period - he learnt to drive, probably after 1908 when he was old enough. He started out in 1901 living with his mother and brother Albert and at some point he left home - maybe in 1909 after his mother died.
1911 - 1915
On 4th March 1911 George married Helen Grace Forrester. George was aged 22, Helen was 21. She was the daughter of a disgraced law clerk from Canterbury who had been secretary to a friendly society, and embezzled them out of £700. After serving 3 months hard labour, the family had to move to London. George probably never knew any of this.
The marriage took place in Eton, Buckinghamshire. They moved into 2 roomed accommodation in St John’s Wood, where we can see them in the 1911 census. George is a chauffeur domestic (meaning he drove for a family rather than a company).
At this time motor cars were still not very numerous. Driving licences were introduced in 1903, but there was no requirement as yet for a driving test. You simply went to the post office and bought a licence for 5 shillings. The speed limit after 1906 was 12mph. Car ownership was mainly restricted to the rich and most owners would employ a chauffeur in the same way that they would employ a coach driver for horse drawn coaches. Driving was seen as a household servant’s job. St. Johns Wood was a much grander area than either of them had come from. Whoever George was working for as a chauffeur must have lived in the area.
George must have lost or given up his job as a chauffeur, because less than a year later, on the 15th April 1912 he started work as a tram driver (‘motorman’) for the London County Council, initially earning five shillings and threepence a day, about 30 shillings a week. Every six months his pay was increased by 6d a day. When he joined they were living at 21 Haselrigge Road, Wandsworth with Helen's mother. Her father had died during the previous winter 1911/1912 and it seems that George and Helen moved in with her mother soon after her father’s death.
They had a child a year or so later on 11 Jun 1913, a daughter Daphne Ada.
War was declared just over a year later.
1915 - 1917
When war was declared it had an immediate and ongoing impact on the tramwaymen employed by London County Council. Thousands of them were of military age and a lot of these men enlisted in the army over the first few months of the war. This created a shortage of drivers and conductors, so the remaining men were forced to work overtime to maintain the services. They received no extra pay, and the situation worsened as more men enlisted. The LCC reacted to this in two ways. First they no longer took on new staff of military age, under the age of 40. Second, they advised the existing tramwaymen of military age not to enlist, because their jobs might not be available when they returned. They started recruiting older men and retraining office staff to run the trams. These measures effectively reduced the drain on staff but at the same time created unrest among staff who wanted to enlist but couldn't for fear of losing their jobs.
Further unrest was caused by the payment of a war bonus of 3 shillings a week, which was paid only to staff earning less than 30 shillings a week. This effectively meant that no experienced tramwaymen would receive the bonus. By April 1915 the tramwaymen started to enlist again in the army so we can surmise that the threat of being unemployed after the war was removed. There is even a report in one newspaper that the LCC were not renewing the annual licences of some drivers and conductors who were of military service age, thus more or less forcing them to join the army.
The final straw as far as the men were concerned was when plans were announced to employ women as conductors for the duration of the war. Ultimately the situation came to a head on 14th May 1915 when several thousand drivers and conductors went on strike. But there was no public support for such a strike, and within two weeks it was all over. The LCC told the strikers of military age to return their badges and uniforms to their depots and enlist in the army. There was a special recruiting office set up in Whitehall specifically for the thousands of LCC tramwaymen expected to enlist.
But George had already volunteered for the army two weeks prior to the strike, on 30 Apr 1915, joining the Royal Engineers. He must have taken the opportunity to enlist as soon as conditions permitted.
He was leaving his wife Helen and two year old daughter Daphne at home in Lyham Road, Brixton Hill. It seems probable that Helen and Daphne went to live again with Helen's mother while George was away in the army. His two brothers Henry and Albert were already serving, and Henry also had left a wife and children at home.
George joined the Royal Engineers in the 204th Field Company. The Royal Engineers provided technical support to infantry and artillery regiments, building bridges, railways, earthworks, roads and so on. Each fighting regiment had its own RE field company. Even though their main job was technical, soldiers of the RE all carried rifles and would be called upon to fight when necessary.
He was promoted to Lance Corporal a few weeks later, possibly because he was already an experienced driver. But soon afterwards he had an accident which injured his left ankle. He was sent to the Army hospital at Chiseldon, near Swindon in October 1915, and was discharged to light duties.
On 6th November 1915 he was transferred to the 21st Fortress company Royal Engineers, at Landguard Fort Felixstowe, a rather bleak and forbidding place at the mouth of the River Orwell, which had protected the entrance to Harwich and Felixstowe since the 1600s. Fortress companies provided technical support to army bases in Britain, maintaining roads, water supplies, electricity supplies and so forth.
George remained at Landguard Fort for the whole of 1916 and became the driver for Col. Rowe of the Royal Artillery. But on 5 Mar 1917 he was discharged from the Army after a medical examination, which concluded that he would never be fit enough for active service.
Landguard Fort, Felixstowe
1917 - 1926
When he left the army George moved with Helen and Daphne to 70 Midmoor Road, Balham. Even though his ankle injury had cut short his army service, George went back to his job as a tram driver with the London County Council. Standing up all day while he was driving must have been uncomfortable and perhaps painful. In the summer of 1918 George wrote to Col. Rowe (who by now had left the army) to see if there was any possibility of continuing as his driver in civilian life. But to no avail. George stayed with the LCC Tramways .
The photograph below was taken at Norwood Depot in about 1920, showing a tram on Route 20 about to depart for Victoria. Valerie has an almost identical photograph in poor condition which we think shows George on a Route 18 tram which ran from Norbury (terminus pictured below) to Elephant and Castle, across Blackfriars Bridge, left along the embankment, and then across Westminster Bridge, and back to Norbury. The map below shows the 16/18 route marked in yellow
Tram at Norwood Depot
Norbury Tramway Terminus
In March 1918 George’s wife Helen died in hospital while having an operation, leaving George to look after their daughter Daphne, now aged 5. And only a few months later George married Daisy Louisa Russell on 19 June 1918.
Russell was born on 30 Apr 1919, in 70 Midmoor Road, where George had previously been living with Helen and Daphne.. Soon afterwards they moved to Croydon, which is where Daisy’s family were living. In 1921 George, Daisy and the two children were living together in Croydon. Audrey was born on 22 May 1924 in Croydon.
George died of a heart attack on 26 August 1926 in Croydon General Hospital, leaving Daisy with the three children Daphne (14) Russell (7) and Audrey (2). George is buried in Mitcham Road cemetery, Croydon, plot 13852. Was his death connected with stress caused by the general strike of three months earlier? In the earlier tramways strike of 1915 the men on strike were all dismissed and told to join the army. Maybe George feared a similar position from the LCC this time. Whether or not he went on strike in 1926, it would have been stressful.
I wonder whether Russell knew his uncles, Henry and Albert, or his aunt Alice. I have no recollection that Dad mentioned any of them. They lived a fair distance apart - George was in Croydon, Henry in Walthamstow, Essex, and Albert in Greenwich. The only hard evidence of any connection is a photograph of Henry's children Winifred and Reginald from 1917, which must have been in George's possession. It survived all the years and must have been given to Russell when Daisy died in 1975. I suspect that when Russell was a young boy he knew his Uncle Henry, but lost touch after he went to Spurgeons.
Kenelm Lee Guinness connection
There is a puzzle that we haven't got to the bottom of yet. Over the years Dad mentioned on more than one occasion that his father had worked at some stage for Kenelm Lee Guinness, the racing driver. I can't remember any details of what Dad said - just the bare outlines that KLG was a racing driver at Brooklands, and his father being involved with KLG.
What we haven't established is when was this connection? At first we thought it might be around 1911 when George was a chauffeur, living in St Johns Wood. But that seems unlikely because at the time the Guinness family were living in Chelsea about 2 miles away.
After he left the army in March 1917 George was looking for a driving job - we have a letter from Col. Rowe in August 1917 who was unable to help. Maybe George found something with KLG. But by June 1918 when he married Daisy he had re-joined the LCC Tramways as a tram driver, and he was with them until he died in 1926. So the best guess is that it was in 1917/18.
Dad must have been told of the connection by one of his parents, probably his father. I believe the story is correct in that there was a connection, but what the exact connection is remains to be discovered. The KLG spark plug factory was only a short distance away from Balham, in Putney Heath.