Ronald

But Sham Howard, how did you first meet him?

Bernard

Sham Howard was the proprietor of a blockmakers firm called Studio Nash. I don't know why they called it Studio Nash for, but Sham was a Jew, and before the war he did a lot with advertising agents. I was in competition with him because I was trying to get the block work from these agents for Calcutta Chromotype and he was trotting around doing the same thing for his firm. He undercut everywhere and I just couldn't compete with him. Then the war came along and he must have made a packet during the war. Then, when I went out he came round to see if he could do business with the Press because we were not doing anything with Calcutta Chromotype Limited then who were really doing all the block work for the Press, for Baptist Mission Press. So, we got to know Sham pretty well, I think I honestly must have known him, let me see 1938 till 1966, I'd known him 30 years. He was a good blockmaker.

Ronald

And you respected him?

Bernard

Oh yes. Yes. It was quite a small firm but if there was any sticky work that had to be done I used to ring him up and ask him to come round. He'd pop round and talk about it over a desk and explain to customers all about Panchromatic plates and how they'd got to have this, that, and t'other. I said some of them won't take my word for it so I used to ring up and get him to come round and explain what a Panchromatic plate was and why it had got to be done by that way, instead of whatever it was.

Ronald

But he used to call round and try and get business for Nash Studios...

Bernard

Studio Nash.

Ronald

...but then how did he come to work for Baptist Mission Press?

Bernard

Oh he came round in the usual way offering to, you know, sort of saying he was a blockmaker and offering his rates and this that and t'other. King Halftone were the same, they were an Indian firm of blockmakers, and other small blockmakers used to come soliciting business. If you'd got a heavy programme of block work you'd give a bit to this, and a bit to that, and a lot to some. Those who proved reliable. King Halftone which was this Indian firm they were very good indeed, very good. The proprietor did his own etching, he could do everything from the camera onto the finished blockwork. King Halftone, they were very nice people to deal with. They were Hindus. The old gentleman he was the father, and his son. His son was a very gentle type and he used to come round. I had great respect for him. I used to ring him up and say will Mr. So and So come round and talk about some work that we've got to place. He'd come round, we'd talk about it, he'd take away the work, and he would always deliver to time. Then sometimes I'd go round to his place.

Business really was done on a very, very friendly basis, not to the same extent that it is in England, because there was a mutual respect between these people. It was very pleasant dealing with some of them. I mean there was old boy who used to come round. He was the editor of Advert Link. It was a potty little advertising paper. Enough to make a cat laugh really if you saw it. He used to come round with these great flowing locks, you know, he looked like a real guru with his beard practically down to his tum. You'd think 'crikey this is be some famous guru, I wonder if he is a transcendental meditator or something'. He looked like one an' all. This editor of Advert Link. And if he ran short of copy he'd say "Sahib, I wonder if you could let me have a column". "I'm short of copy this week". I used to write a bit for him and help him out. Mr. Sen. He used to talk about himself a bit, and say that his wife had died and left him with this school-girl daughter. I said "You must find it very difficult to bring her up Mr. Sen if your wife's died. Have you ever thought of marrying again?" "No, No!" He said "Sahib, it is too much bother-making to marry a second time". I said "Well who looks after your daughter then?" He said his own mother did. She must have been about ninety, cause he looked about seventy. But they were very pleasant people though some of them were... comical.

Because I mean it was a very busy press but it was never busy to the extent that you were never not seeable. If anybody came and wanted to see you, no matter who it was, they'd get Mr. Bannerjee, the Works Manager, to speak to them first in the waiting room, and if they said they wanted to see me, or your Uncle Norman, or whoever, you just used to drop what you were doing and walk out and say "Excuse me just a minute, I've got somebody in, I shan't be a minute or two", or whatever, and then you'd go out and ask them to come in. But you very rarely find that in our own country, I mean, it used to be most irritating to me at Baptist Missionary Society headquarters. You'd go there and tell the receptionist behind the counter that you were there, and could you speak to so and so, and then they'd get on the telephone, and Mr so and so was in conference, or in committee, or had we got an appointment, and all that nonsense. Sometimes you'd sit and wait half an hour, or an hour, or whatever. Everybody was busy. You'd go upstairs, and you'd find closed doors, and you sort of tentatively knocked at a door, and a voice would say "Come". You'd go in and you sort of felt like taking your cap in your hand. It was never like that was it at Baptist Mission Press?

Freda

No it wasn't

Bernard

Even in Cary's day, not William Carey, his grandson, great-grandson, when they'd got a bit of a sticky...

Ronald

Pearce Carey was it?

Bernard

Not Pearce Carey, William Carey, Dr. William Carey, his great-grandson. He was in Barisal. And the former superintendent, they used to say, that he was such a stinker that he wouldn't allow anyone to come and speak to him except on business. It had always got to be print business during print time, and the only exception was when William Carey, that was his name, his name was William Carey, though he was the grandson, or great-grandson of William Carey. They used to say he was the only one who ever came into the compound who was allowed to go into the Superintendent's office without an appointment. They said he'd got a great booming laugh, this William Carey had. The whole Press used to stand still, more or less, when they heard this William Carey boom, boom, booming away, with this great booming laugh. They used to wonder how they'd got the nerve to laugh with Mr. Harvey the Superintendent, who was such a stickler for discipline. He was the only one who had access to that Superintendent, of that day. That must be at least 80, 90, 100 years ago now. He was the only one who was allowed.

But those days gradually disappeared. Percy Knight who was the Superintendent when your Uncle Norman went out, he, he was the father figure.

Ronald

How long had he been there do you think?

Bernard

Oooh, about 30 years I should think.

Ronald

When Uncle went out he'd been there 30 years?

Bernard

Yes, he'd pretty well trained your Uncle Norman. Of course he'd got the basics from England, but not in a big press. Of course he was a City and Guilds man, Percy Knight was. He was a properly trained printer. He wasn't just a missionary who had been plonked in the job. He knew everything. It was a case of bring me your problems. If anybody got stuck with any department of print production, whether it was costing or the actual way to do a job, he always had this father figure... "Oh bring it to me. I'll sort it out." ...that sort of thing. Father figure. And your Uncle Norman learned the broader aspects of it all from him.

But Percy Knight was the one who used to tell that famous story of baptisms in Congo, because he was a missionary in Congo before he came to India. They used to baptise in Congo in swiftly flowing rivers, and they didn't baptise two or three at a time they'd baptise them by the score pretty well in days gone by. They didn't immerse them in a baptistery, sort of put one hand under the neck and the other under the small of the back and immerse them sort of that way, and then rear them up again, they used to wade out into the river and put their hand, the baptising person would put their hand on the top of their head under the water and they'd sink under the water and come again. That was the way they'd baptise them in rivers. They still do it that way in some parts. I've seen it done in a baptistry in England if it was deep enough, but normally they'd go that way and rear them up again. So Percy was baptising in this swiftly flowing river and he put his hand on the head of one of these candidates and he went down and he didn't come again. Percy thought he'd drowned him. He was fishing his hand under the water fishing about trying to see where on earth this chap had got to. He never did come up at the point. I've heard Percy tell that story more than once and he used to say "I honestly thought I'd drowned him." He said "What do you think?" he said "He came up about twenty yards down the river. He'd been swimming under water. He didn't know he had to come up at the point where he..." Of course that's not the sort of story you'd tell on deputation because it wouldn't be appreciated. I did tell that story once and they wouldn't believe it. They said it just couldn't be true. I said it was true, I've heard him tell it myself.

He was Superintendent in 1938 when I first went out and I was going to Baptist Mission Press with blocks that we'd made at Calcutta Chromotype. We did a tremendous amount of blockwork at Baptist Mission Press... a tremendous amount... halftones and line blocks and 2, 3 colour sets.

Ronald

So Percy Knight stayed on and Uncle Norman was his assistant, and then did Percy Knight have to retire or something?

Bernard

Yes, he retired under the age limit and came back and he went to live in Bournemouth and he died...

Ronald

And that was when they decided they needed somebody else to help Uncle Norman was it?

Bernard

No... well... actually... Percy Knight decided he needed an assistant and they advertised in Baptist Times. Your Uncle Norman replied and he went up for his interviews and he was accepted and he sailed when he was 21 and he was Percy Knight's assistant. Then they found they needed someone else as the Press grew and they advertised again and then Bingham came out. He was a fully qualified young printer, and he came from Doncaster. He was an Assistant Superintendent. His particular skills lay not in design, or layout, or whatnot; he was an expert, or became in expert, on costing and language. He was very good at Hindi, and he was very good at costing, but he'd absolutely no idea of style, or design, or anything. Your Uncle Norman was the one for that. Then Percy Knight retired and your Uncle Norman was called up into the Indian Army at the outbreak of war. He joined the Rajputs, well, after he'd done his officer training in Bangalore, and Bingham, his junior, Assistant Superintendent, he carried on running the Press, under great difficulty, all through the Second World War when paper was in very short supply and work was difficult to get, and he kept the doors open. In the meantime he'd married, Bingham had married, and then when the War finished your Uncle Norman was invited to stay on in the Indian Army to deal with the Indian Army history of the Second World War. He refused that and he went back to the Press.

Ronald

The history of the Second World War?

Bernard

Ah, history of the Indian Army, because he was in welfare and public relations as well, Indian Army Public Relations. They wanted him to help on that.