No. 12 - Making Jago

The everyday experience of ordinary people in any era has little to do with the words and deeds of monarchs and politicians, and everything to do with work, transport, shops, food, sport and pubs. These things are so common that an appreciation of them only seems to grow as they change or fade and disappear. In recreating the past, I aim to recall these things and immerse the reader in the period, which means getting the details right, as far as I can. Take a simple bus ride...

The Routemaster is now a museum piece, perhaps I am too. This one is in the London Transport Museum, Covent Garden.

Riding the Routemasters

For my first decade in London the old Routemaster buses prevailed on many routes and I am glad I had the chance to use them frequently. The swing and the lurch of them, the roar of their engines as they set off, the creaking bodywork and the juddering vibrations as they stood idle at a red light, as though shaking with indignation at the delay. The Routemaster could be a wonderful vehicle if you were in a hurry. It would swing out of the bus stop as soon as the last boarding passenger had one foot on the platform, and if they didn’t hold on tight, then it was their own look out. If it was stuck in traffic, you could just hop off and find another way.

The driver was isolated in his cab, free from the distraction of passengers, leaving the conductor to collect the fares and issue advice. They would take the money and print a curl of paper from a whirring Gibson ticket machine that was strapped to them like a parachute. They’d drop the fare into a leather satchel and rummage for change if necessary. They appreciated the right money but they didn’t insist on it - though should you offer a note, you could expect a dirty look and some grumbling.

The famous Routemaster bell press.

Anyone could press the red button, or pull the cord that rang the bell and made the bus pull up at the next stop - but it took two sharp rings by the conductor to prompt it to set off again. If they were at the front upstairs, away from the bell, they would rap twice on the bodywork with the iron tool they used to adjust the bus’s destination blinds. If they were in the mood, the conductors would call out the names of places of interest - “Next stop Trafalgar Square. Alight here for the National Gallery, National Portrait Gallery and Buckingham Palace. Trafalgar Square next stop.”

The Routemaster buses I rode first hit the streets in 1956, but the experience of riding a London bus had remained broadly unchanged since the 1930’s when the last open top buses were withdrawn. Most types had a rear platform so, at their own risk, passengers could hop on and off at will. Into the 1990’s the conductors would refer to the downstairs saloon as ‘inside’, harking back to the days when the upper decks had no roof and the staircase at the rear was open to the elements.

The open staircase of a Thomas Tilling AEC Regent at the London Bus Museum, Brooklands.

Jago Wetherden, Bus Conductor

The Disappointing American, my work in progress, is the story of Wiley Tucker, an American stowaway fleeing a hellish life, who finds himself in London, in 1938 just as war begins to threaten. Wiley is befriended by Jago Wetherden, a bus conductor working on Route 11, who is running from his own demons. Though it will not be a book about about buses, Jago is a main character, so I have to get as accurate a picture as I can of what his daily grind might have been like, to make him more real.

My characters do not hop on a bus unless I know what route it takes, where they board and alight, how much the fare is and what colour ticket they will be given. I must also know the likely model of the bus. I am unlikely to include all this detail in the text, but I have to know it, so that I can be on that bus beside the character. Thanks to the internet and the meticulous work of enthusiasts, who are probably cruelly mocked for it, all of this is possible.

Route 11 dates back to 1906 but an enthusiast’s website confirms that in 1938, it ran from Liverpool Street to Wells Road in Shepherd’s Bush. A series of books on London Transport Buses & Coaches by John A S Hambley gives me an idea of what type of bus ran which routes, in which year and photographs of the bus interiors, which show seat layout and design. The earliest of the series covers wartime buses 1939-45 and includes a photograph of a distinctive, double-decker LT type bus on route 11. Ordinarily, the average passenger might pay no heed to the type of bus they’re using, but with six wheels, two at the front and four at the back, these great lumbering behemoths looked formidable and might have prompted a few nervous glances from those waiting at the edge of the pavement. They were introduced in 1929, and still running during the war, so it’s fair to assume that Jago would have worked on one in 1938.

He would not have had one of the Gibson ticket machines I remember, because they weren’t introduced until 1953. Instead, he would have been burdened with a money satchel, a Bell punch ticket machine and a wooden rack of blank, coloured cardboard tickets. Negotiating a moving vehicle while weighed down with this paraphernalia must have been awkward, as shown in the opening scene of this silent 1931 film of bus crew training. A 1950 Pathe Gazette film about the impractical Bell Punch machine perhaps shows why London Transport welcomed the Gibson.

A Routemaster bus blind, 1934 bus timetable, ticket rack, Bell Punch ticket machine, London Transport money satchel with blind adjusting tool, Gibson ticket machine, bell press button, Corgi model Routemaster, London Transport tie-clip and a handful of small change.

A copy of London Transport’s Rule Book for Drivers and Conductors from March 1936, gives me an idea of what Jago’s duties would have involved. It tells me what he could and couldn’t do, and even what he would wear, which would have differed according to season. It describes his work in detail, stipulating for example, that he should state the fare, then recite the names of the coins he was handed, before issuing the ticket, so that there were no disputes.

Cynical Archangels

I wanted Jago to be a bus conductor because it is an occupation once so common that is now very rare. In his 1933 compendium Wonderful London Today, Evening News journalist James A Jones included a chapter on the London bus conductor, which helps me flesh out Jago’s character, even allowing me to choreograph his movement on the bus…

“They have been taught in the bus conductors’ school not to hold themselves too erect, and not to keep their knees and legs too stiff. They have learnt to face the front of the bus when going round corners and then face the side of the bus when starting or stopping.”

When Jones wrote his article, there were ten thousand bus conductors working the streets of London, now there is only a handful on a heritage route. The economy of that is undeniable, but I regret their passing. I'll leave Jones the last word...

“They handle five millions of us everyday. In all our moods, as if they were nursemaids and brothers and fathers, all in one - and they combine in a way which is the gift of the Cockney alone among men the patience of an archangel and the wit of a cynic.”