Wilf Lunn: Aunt Zillah’s stall on Brighouse market

Oct 3 2009 by John Avison, Huddersfield Daily Examiner

MY aunt Zillah taught me how to make tissue paper flowers which we attached to bits of privet we’d pinched from neighbours’ hedges.

The twigs were made up in bunches and I think she then sold them door to door.

Her other enterprise was selling old clothes on the small market in Brighouse – not the main one but the one down the end of King Street.

The Imperial cafe was on the corner as you walked down and the Co-op was on the right. The small market was up a ginnel to the left past the tripe shop. I remember the stalls were under proper roofs with wooden opening flaps.

She had all her second-hand clothes piled up on the stall. She didn’t bother with the affectations of the well-to-do, namely, coat hangers.

I tend to this day to hang my clothes on the floor because I have a magic bedroom floor.

I stood with aunt Zillah only once on the market. It was both hilarious and embarrassing.

It didn’t matter how well dressed the passing folk were, she’d try to lure them over to the stall, shouting: “Oi! mister, you look like you need a good pair of trousers!” This, to immaculately-dressed gents in their best Saturday promenading pants.

Or to a particularly over-endowed busting out busty lady she’d discreetly whisper: “More pudding than clout dear. Just look, I’ve lovely brassieres for the larger lady.”

It was a long time before I twigged what this meant. It alluded to your cloth being too small for boiling your big Christmas pudding in. We lads, of course, would liken these ladies’ chests to a dead heat in a Zeppelin race and we called brassieres ‘Double-decker wobble checkers’.

After the day’s market apprenticeship with Aunt Zillah I felt qualified to improve myself so I went to the other larger market and got a Saturday job. I was on a toy stall.

Although it was just a market stall, the owner had strict standards. I was not allowed to eat behind the stall or put my hands in my pockets.

I lasted just the one day. I explained to my friends that I was accosted by the market mafia gang of boys who informed me in no uncertain terms that jobs on the market were theirs. I was advised not to return.

My friends thought I was very wise. When I say ‘group of boys’ that was not strictly true. It was just the son of the local coal man. He was actually as strong as a group of boys from humping coal. I didn’t fancy being lifted by my ears and thrown about.

My uncle Tommy worked the markets selling pots. He was a ‘speiler’ – he’d shout and juggle plates. Just to show how strong the plates were he’d smash the plate edge on a tea chest. He knew just how to do it without breaking them. It was very impressive.

I remember one woman shouting: “Are they all right in the oven?”

He replied: “Of course they are, madam.” She bought half a dozen and as she walked away from the stage whispered to the crowd: “If you don’t turn the oven on.”

They loved it. It was his last half dozen so he didn’t care if they believed him.

He had a guy welding handles onto steel discs and with these he cornered the early chapatti griddle market.

One trick he told me was to age new Toby jugs by putting them in a rain water barrel. I tried it. I thought perhaps I could sell them to Mrs Foster who had an antique shop on Trinity Street, but it didn’t work.

I did encourage her to go on the market with her stuff, though. We were the first and only antique stall on the market at that time. The rules dictated that similar stalls were not allowed. This idiotic regulation also applied to the arcades. I suppose they thought discouraging competition was good for trade. It doesn’t work.

The Arcades in Leeds are thriving because shoppers know that where there are similar shops together you have more choice.

Fortunately they scrapped this idea with the Tuesday and Saturday Flea markets to which I am a frequent visitor.

I’ve had some great buys. From Mick Guile who has sadly passed away, I bought a Munyon’s Chemist’s Shop letter. It’s initialled by the manager, Hawley Harvey Crippen, the murderer.

It was of particular interest to me because Doctor Crippen sold quack homeopathic plasters that he maintained cured deafness.

A while ago a rumour went round that a dealer had found a lot of letters in the bottom of an old toolbox. They were reputedly from the serial killer John Christie to his sister in Halifax.

The dealer disappeared and no-one knows what happened to him or the letters.

In earlier days on the market I bought a Mobo-type horse and a mechanical bottle opener which I transformed into a back scratching machine for a lad on Jim’ll Fix It.

My best buys were three wooden cannibal forks and what I originally thought was a pewter vinegar bottle which turned out to be a rare baby feeder.

I found a Garton’s sauce bottle. They were the original HP makers. My childish interest is that Gartons spells snot rag backwards. Robert backwards is of course Trebor who have just announced they now make gum.

They ought to be ashamed. Isn’t there enough of that rubbish about without making more?

My weirdest find was a boxed pair of spiritualist ‘Aura Goggles’. Recently, for just a pound, I bought a bottle which appeared to be of no real interest until I researched it and found it was a ‘Mellin’s Baby Food Bottle.’

“So what?” I hear you cry. Well, the interesting thing about Mellin’s was that Humphrey Bogart’s mother Maude Humphrey drew the adverts and guess who the baby was she put in them? Yes, it was dear old Humph’. He didn’t like people to know that.