Roy Bowker’s story of the possibly unique “banging in” ceremony at Spicers, London.
SO WHERE do I start? Well my first insight to the printing game was at secondary modern school when the teacher asked if anybody was interested in joining a printing class that was being started. My hand went up basically because a friend of mine had volunteered.
Come the time to leave school and having written to umpteen numbers of printers, in and around London, I was still without any firm offer of work. The one firm that I did get a little bit of joy from was “Ede and Townsend” who were near Finsbury Square I think.
They had said in a reply that there may be a vacancy in the composing room and would let me know at a later date. So off I went to my scout’s summer camp hoping that when I came back I would be in the trade. However the letter that was waiting for me gave some excuse which I cannot remember, all I do know is that there was no job for me.
One of my uncles was in the trade; in fact he was an overseer at Spicers in Union Street just over Blackfriars Bridge. My parents did not really want me to ask him to try and get me in at Spicers as they thought “they would always be beholding to him and that he would not let them forget it” in actual fact I never found uncle Fred anything like that, but maybe my parents knew different.
In the end however my parents said go ahead and ask Fred if there was any chance of a vacancy in any department at Spicers. By this time I had written to almost every printer in and around London, so I guess they thought there was no alternative.
Whilst I was waiting for a positive answer from Fred or Spicers, I got a job at a piano factory that my father had worked in before he started working for himself as a French polisher. I was only there for two weeks when I got the necessary letter I had been waiting for, an interview with the personnel officer at Spicers. The interview went well and I think I started work about the following Monday in the printing machine dept.
Now to the actual subject of this piece of copy:-
I know that various print houses in and around London had their own traditions/quirks but I believe that Spicers to be the only firm that used to “bang in” their apprentices. This I was soon to find out, much to my detriment!
I remember it was a Friday; my apprenticeship papers had been signed in the presence of the personnel officer (Miss Faulk), my Mother, Mr. Arthur Jenkins (who was my very good mentor) and myself. After the signing I went back to my department. What happened about an hour later back in the print room took me completely by surprise.
My cousin who worked in Uncle Fred’s department (a different dept to mine) came over to me, grabbed me around the waist and with the help of somebody else in the shop tied my hands over the top of a pulley shaft! (Not a lot of health and safety in 1954) and my feet were on one of the work benches. Then the next thing, yes you’ve guessed it, my trousers and underpants were pulled down! The male members of my dept then proceeded to smear “bronze blue” around my parts.
These actions by themselves would have been a laugh but, the fact that there were women present and young ones at that brought real tears to my eyes. On top of this humiliation I was left there for over an hour, and during that time it got around the factory that I was there in all my glory and all the other departments came to see, and believe me Spicers was a very big building with lots of departments and employees.
Well that’s the account of my “banging in”, I would like to know if any other firm has or had the same kind of thing?
I have seen many “banging outs” since then, but somehow its not the same as being on the receiving end of a gloved hand full of the dreaded bronze blue. Oh and by the way, it’s nearly all scrubbed off now!