My Early Years as a Vet
When I first qualified as a vet in 1935, the only veterinary services in Essex were in Romford, Brentwood and Rayleigh. So I accepted a job in Cornwall for £10 a week to live in. My father was a vet and he promised me £250 if I came back to Upminster to start my own practice.
I came back and took a flat over the butchers, opposite the garage in St Mary’s Lane. I bought a car for £100. The registration was ENO 9, which we thought very appropriate.
The flat was an upstairs flat and my sister kept house for me. We had a dog, and had to bring it upstairs. Our sitting room was the waiting room and our kitchen became the surgery. I had to keep the dogs that needed in- patient treatment in the bathroom!
It was later that same year that I got engaged to Jean and then we began to look for somewhere to go to open a proper surgery. I bought a plot of land in Corbets Tey Road; at that time land was expensive. It cost me £400 and was used as allotments, but permission had been passed for shops. It was next door to where Kurts, the hairdressers, is now. We bought that and started building.
We got married in March 1938 and moved into the new house with a little surgery and waiting room on one side and a garage on the other. This three bedroom house and that land cost me £1,250 in total – a lot of money in those days, but it seems very little by today’s prices. We brought up three of our children in that house.
In 1938, at the time of Munich, the Royal Veterinary College circulated a list for volunteers for the army in case there was a war. In 1939 we had our first boy and, when war was declared in September of that year, I evacuated
Jean and the baby to Scotland to stay with a friend. Soon after I was made local Veterinary Inspector for the area, so I was not called up. Jean came back home to Upminster in November 1939.
It was a pretty hectic time, because I had nobody looking after me by then and I used to go home every night to my parents in Grays. If there was a blackout, it was very difficult driving. Anyway, we continued like this right through the war and all the air raids. It was not until I went to sell our
2
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40