Maurice and the Papers

In a dark little narrow shop, squeezed between the Ferntower Fruiterer’s and the Midland Bank (now in 2015 the Acoustic Café and William Hill bookmakers), every day sat Maurice Sugarman, or Zuckerman, probably Zuckerman and the Anglicised version was what he told people.

It was not Maurice’s shop, it was owned by Lee’s, their main shop was a confectioners and tobacconist in Ferntower Road in the row of shops. Maurice worked for Lee’s, he did the newspapers.

Maurice arrived at the shop round about 5 a.m. and began sorting the papers that had been dropped in bundles outside by the newspaper delivery vans. The papers needed to be sorted into rounds for the paperboys, each newspaper had to have the number of the house it was for, written in thick pencil in one corner, together with an abbreviated street name: Peth for Petherton, Lecon for Leconfield. Sometimes, when the round was being done by experienced paperboy, Maurice would just write P, or L, or even just the number standing alone, and he would point out to the paperboy at length that that was what he had done, to save time you see.

Maurice spent much of the morning folding and sorting newspapers, and writing numbers in one corner.

At about 6 or 6.30, the paperboys turned up. You were supposed to be 14 to be a paperboy, but Maurice would sometimes accept a 13-year-old, as he did with me.

The paperboys (there were no girls) picked up a wide natural-coloured canvas bag, with a strap that fitted over the opposing shoulder, the bag could therefore be carried while riding a bike, and the boys filled it with the bundle of newspapers from their pile on the counter, sometimes, in fact nearly always, having to wait while Maurice finished marking them up. A bike was not necessary as none of the rounds was all that far, but most boys used one. The paperboys did their round, stuffing newspapers into the letterboxes of houses and flats. Pretty-well every dwelling had a newspaper.

Daily Mirror, Daily Express, Daily Herald, News Chronicle, less commonly the Daily Telegraph, The Times, or the Daily Mail.

Each paperboy did the same round every day, sometimes following that with someone else’s round, when another boy had not turned up.

And then, the rounds finished and the empty bag delivered back to Maurice, the boy cycled home for breakfast and then off to school.

After school, the same thing again, down by bicycle to see Maurice for the evening paper deliveries, Star, News and Standard. Some boys only did the morning round, some only the evening, and some, like me, did both.

I am fairly sure that I did the paper round seven days a week, though there were no evening papers on Sundays. Sunday mornings were different too as the morning papers were different: News of the World, The People, Sunday Pictorial, and the fatter ones, the Sunday Times and The Observer. Start time was also a bit later on Sundays.

Maurice was there seven days a week, the only time he had off was Sunday from mid-morning. He presumably must have had a couple of weeks holiday every year, though I have no memory of this. I can remember him being ill on occasion, for he was not young, and when he was not there Mr Lee did the papers.

Maurice was Jewish by background, though almost certainly no longer in practice. He had no wife, possibly she had died, and he lived with a teenage daughter. I have in my mind that Maurice closed the shop mid-morning and went home to make his daughter some lunch, returning in the evening for the evening papers. He probably did do that, for he surely didn’t work a fourteen or fifteen-hour day. Did he? No, I’m sure he didn’t. The little shop was closed midday.

On Christmas Day there were no papers, Maurice took his daughter to Lyons Corner House at the Angel for Christmas lunch – buses ran on Christmas Day in those days until mid-afternoon.

‘Lovely lunch’, Maurice would say, ‘Couldn’t fault it’. And we who were with our families for the family Christmas festivities felt rather sorry for him.

If I remember correctly, Maurice died, and the Lees closed the little corner shop and brought the papers into their main shop. This coincided with the rapid spread of televisions and consequent rapid decline in the number of people taking two daily papers, or even one, though there were still plenty who did.

By that time, though, I was no longer doing a paper round, by the age of fifteen or so it all seemed a bit juvenile.

And why do one at all? A certain amount of pocket money was nice. Was it ten shillings a week for mornings and five for evenings? That sounds familiar. Maurice did not pay the money, for that you had to call in the main shop and see Mr Lee, who wasn’t always there. Mrs Lee or the Lees’ daughter would pay the money though if they felt like it.

At school, the teachers were against boys doing morning paper rounds where there was no especial family hardship, they felt that it got in the way of school work, boys not being as wide awake when they came to school as they might be and time that could be more productively spent. They were probably right.

But it was work, and every male member of the family worked, dads and granddads and uncles and neighbours and relatives of friends. They all worked, so it was a kind of becoming an adult. Very important, that.

Lee’s stayed operating until the early 1970s when Mr and Mrs Lee sold the business and retired. The shop including the paper deliveries was taken over by two young men named Fred and Dave, who fairly soon were to be seen driving around in rather elaborate cars, one had a Rolls Royce. On the basis of a paper shop?

Who knows? They had their respective parents for support in the shop, but even so.

Fred and Dave were very popular, always cheerful and friendly, but then something caught up with them. Was it the taxman? Or something less straightforward? Anyway the cars went and so did Fred and Dave, Dave I know did a spell in prison, though you would see him after he came out and he was still ever cheerful, working as a minicab driver.

The shop was sold to Turkish Cypriots, and that was the end of the confectioners, tobacconist and newsagents in Ferntower Road.

Dave