FROM THE PREFACE

There is nothing special about the author of this book but there is something very special about the place where I spent most of my working life. What I have seen, heard, and done has been seen, heard, and done by thousands before me. It is just that, following the closure of the Printing Division of Oxford University Press in 1989, I felt that I would probably be the only one left to switch off the lights and put out the cat. I thought that I owed it to those thousands of craftsmen and craftswomen to put inkjet to paper. If you have not got the time or the inclination to read the entire book then you can simply read one man’s recollection printed below because it sums up beautifully what life was like for a printer at Oxford University Press. It was penned by a Mr E. L. Gass who started work at the Press in October 1883 and retired on 28 September 1935. He, like me, came to the Press as an errand boy, worked in the composing rooms, joined the Reading Department, and ended his career in the Printing Division as Head Reader. He, again like me, knew all the hidey-holes, all the fiddles, and in the end blew the gaff on some of the sharp practices. This book is dedicated to him and to everyone like him who has had the fortune or misfortune to walk through the arch into the Garden Quad and hear the cry ‘on the press!’ and to know what it meant.

I first became acquainted with the inside of the Clarendon Press at the early age of twelve. A neighbour of my parents was the compositor who was responsible for setting up and preparing the University Gazette for press, and on the Tuesday evening of each week was too busy to go home to tea, so I was called on to take it to the Press. I well remember the climb up to the top of the dark staircase on the Learned Side, lit by two feeble gas-jets of the old flare pattern, one on each landing.

I began work at the Press in October 1883. The old order was changing. No more would the Printer to the University accompany the brass band on its annual excursion by boats to Godstow, where they held high festival. No more would he parade his company of volunteers in the quad and march them to the Parks for their weekly drill. Mr Horace Hart had arrived to take over the management as Controller, and the intimate association of master and man along with his family became a thing of the past. But at the date when I started work, Mr Pickard Hall had not entirely severed his connexion with the Press. He still roamed about the buildings and gardens for several more months, often accompanied by two snapping little Charles the First spaniels.

I wonder what the present-day apprentice would say if he had to start his day’s work at 6 o’clock in the morning? Yet that was the rule of the Bible Side in 1883 and for a number of years later. Three-quarters of an hour were allowed for breakfast, from 8.15 until 9, one hour for dinner, 1-2 p.m., and work finished at 6 o’clock in the evening. On Saturdays during the winter months we worked until 2 o’clock, in consideration of which we received an extra day’s holiday at Whitsuntide and the August Bank Holiday week; but there were other holidays which were given free. For instance, on each of the Fair days we closed down at 4 o’clock, all apprentices receiving 1s. to spend each day and each boy 6d. Shortly before my arrival at the Press the whole place was closed for two half-days during the Oxford Races, held on Port Meadow. On the August Bank Holiday took place the annual Wayzgoose, each adult employee receiving 15s. and each apprentice 5s.; a railway excursion was arranged, and everyone was expected to purchase a ticket.

My father always made a point of arriving at his work a few minutes before time, and as I had to accompany him on the early morning journey, we usually found in winter that the gas-jets had not been lit when we arrived. To reach the Bible Side composing-room on the middle floor of the south wing, where I had been introduced as the ‘printer’s devil’, we had to walk through the machine-room and climb the back stairs, the composing-room staff not being allowed to walk through the stitchery, which was the nearest way, on account of the girls employed there. On those dark winter mornings we had to grope our way along the rooms, often running into obstructions which had been left projecting into the gangways overnight, and sometimes barking our shins as a result.

On taking up my duties I found myself in the company, among others, of a number of old-fashioned compositors who still retained the dress of their youthful days and came to work regularly in tall hats and frock coats. There were many so garbed working at the Press in those days - in the machine-room, on the Learned Side, and elsewhere, as I discovered later.

For a short time after my arrival the old composing room ran a very humdrum course: the new Controller had not yet completed his reorganization. My duties as errand-boy took me to all parts of the Bible Side buildings, but very rarely to the Learned Side, which was still a thing apart and rather sparsely inhabited. My journeys to the machine-room with proofs led to my discovery of the roller-making room, where it was possible by making a polite request to receive a piece of the trimmings of a new roller. This was made chiefly, I believe, of treacle and glue, and was considered quite good enough to eat when other sweetmeats failed.

As errand-boy I received 4s. 6d. per week, and among other jobs it was my duty to pull proofs on the old Stanhope hand-press, which came originally from the printing-room of the Old Clarendon and now has been presented to the South Kensington Museum. Another job I was put to was to paper-up the pages of type which had been used to produce the Revised Bible which had just been given to the world. But I often had time on my hands, and sometimes on the hot summer afternoons, along with the junior apprentice, I would climb through the trap-door in the room next the top of the back staircase and wade in the tank of water which was fixed over the staircase-well. Sometimes we would get through a skylight which was over the tank and sit out on the roof. A favourite prank of ours was to remove a nipple from the old flare gas-fittings, and, taking a deep breath, blow down the pipe, which had the effect of dimming all the lights within a radius of many yards.

After a term of about six months I became apprenticed, my indentures being the first which bore the signature of the new Controller, Horace Hart. The system in use on the Bible Side in those days was for the apprentice to be handed over to some competent workman who was responsible for teaching him all the tricks of the trade. A double frame was provided, and apprentice and teacher worked together. For his trouble the compositor received one shilling per week. The apprentice received each week one-third of the first 15s. he earned (according to the compositors’ scale) and half of all over that sum, and every time he earned 30s. a bonus of 1s. 6d. was put to his credit and paid out at the holiday periods.

When the apprentice had completed his indentures he invariably entertained the whole of the composing-room to a feast. The more opulent would hire a room at Jericho House and put on a superior spread, but generally the feast would be laid out under the frames of the composing-room and would consist of bread and cheese with plenty of beer. I remember being present at two of the Jericho House feasts; these always finished up with punch served in a loving-cup, which was passed round the company, each one before drinking having to repeat the toast:

Here’s to him who now is free,

Who once was apprentice bound:

We’ll drink his health and merry, merry be,

We’ll drink his health all round.

It was while I was a compositor apprentice that I saw the beginnings of what afterwards became the Lithographic Department. A hand-press and its various appurtenances were set up in the Bible Side type-store, and here began the reproduction of old manuscripts for which we soon became so famous.

A considerable quantity of beer was consumed on the premises in those early days. It was, of course, forbidden to go out during working hours and fetch it into the Press. But the porter was old and not very alert, and there was the back gate behind the ‘Clarendon Arms’ open most of the day. Boys were encouraged to fetch it in, and one particularly artful card had a coat made specially for the job with a pocket running all round the skirt from one side to the other; here he could conceal as many as 6 or 8 half-pint bottles, which he retailed at a profit of a halfpenny on each bottle. Of one of his customers, who was always in a semi-fuddled condition, it was said that he frequently sold him a half-pint twice over. Having delivered one half-pint to his client, who would stand it down under his frame, the young rascal would steal up shortly afterwards round the back and take it away again, replacing it by an empty bottle. The old fellow could never remember whether he had drunk it.

After about two years as a compositor apprentice I was transferred to a reading-desk, and thenceforth, for the whole of the remainder of my service with the great Clarendon Press, I was connected with the Reading Staff.

After five years on the Bible Side I was transferred to the Learned Side, and I entered a different world. Instead of working in the composing-room with the noise and bustle all round and the roar of the machines underneath, I was given a desk in a glass-house just inside the middle composing-room door. This I shared with another reader. The reading staff, as also the clerical staff, of those days was a very small body. I can recall the names of only seven readers and four clerks.

During the course of my fifty-two years’ service many famous persons visited the Press. I specially remember the great W. E. Gladstone coming here. He was editing a new edition of Butler’s Analogy and came to see the Press during the course of production. Someone suggested to the Controller, who was escorting the Grand Old Man, that the workmen would like to hear him speak. Mr Gladstone consented to do so; a platform of planks supported on bales of printed paper was hastily erected under the archway looking into the quad, and standing on this he gave us a wonderful address on one of the early Dutch printers.

Such occasions furnish memories that are good to linger over when leisure is ours again.

The book is not just my story and the minor part that I played in OUP’s printing history. It is the story of a great University Press over the last 100 years as seen through the eyes of many compositors, machine minders and their assistants, binders, staff, and maintenance engineers - the ‘Clarendonians’. It was not my intention to write a monograph with countless footnotes and cross-references but a simple narrative on Press life. It is not a history of the Printing House but a social history that is held together by the addition of my experiences on a roller-coaster of a wonderful journey; one that lasted more than 43 years. My research has used no 'official' records and there are bound to be errors and omissions. The book casts no judgements and does not try to make a fool out of anyone. To tell the story as I have will probably only make a fool out of me! I cannot pretend that everything has been a bed of roses. Everyone has had their share of happiness and sorrow. The Press was filled to the cloisters with wonderful people and there has been, as in life, great joy and great sadness. It has been a privilege to work for Oxford University Press as a printer and a publisher and one that I would not have swapped for the world!

The period covered goes back much further than one hundred years because, as with Alex Hayley’s Roots, the stories just kept on being handed down from generation to generation. When I read reminiscences of craftsmen who were working at the Press 50 years before I was born I feel that I really know them. I know about their working conditions, I know what made them laugh and what made them cry, I understand what they have been through because I have been on the same journey and so has everyone I have ever worked with. The reason for this is simple. Printing technology hardly changed from the day old Billy Caxton brought some of Johnny Gutenberg’s recently invented movable type to this country in the 1400s. When I started in the Type store on 10 November 1958 it was as if time had stood still. . . .

CONTENTS

INDEX