A LIFE: 1927

1927 - West Bromwich’s motto is “Work Conquers All.”

West Bromwich lies five miles north of Birmingham in the Black Country. Here my father Tom Mather Mallin was born on June 14, 1927, the year in which a telephone line between New York and London was first used, British troops invaded Shanghai and Trotsky was expelled by Stalin from the Soviet Union.

Tom was the last child born to Clifford Vincent Mallin and Olive May Mather. Sisters Joan and Mary were born in 1920 and 1922 respectively. Mary was twin to a girl who died in infancy. In fact both twins were born disabled. Mary lived until her mid-teens.

Clifford Vincent Mallin, the grandfather I never met, was born in Staffordshire in 1887 and died on January 5, 1932, at the wheel of his car, possibly from a massive heart attack. So my dad lost his dad when he was four years old.

Tom later told me that the middle class practice of wearing corsets during pregnancy was a contributing factor in his twin sisters’ disabilities. Disability was frowned on in the 1920s and 1930s and Mary, I was told, spent much of her time in a long black pram like a coffin. When visitors called, Mary was gently wheeled into the cupboard beneath the stairs. Whether truth or myth, this was my father’s recollection of his own childhood.

Grandfather Clifford had risen in status from an assistant buyer for Dunlop to became a Steel and Iron Buyer for a Staffordshire Carriage & Wagon Works. He also became a mason of standing. Clifford’s father had been a successful pattern cutter at an iron foundry in Staffs, so metal seems to have been in the Mallin blood.

In 1927 there were bloody riots against the Fascists in Vienna and a rebellion against British Troops in Shanghai, while the US was busy developing TV and the UK enforced strict control of radio frequencies.