not continue. The judge — and they were awe-inspiring figures in wig and robes with almost unlimited power in their courtrooms — was under the mistaken impression that all reporters could write shorthand, and he more or less drafted the young reporter into taking the official note. As bad luck would have it, there was a query that afternoon about exactly what had been said just before, and the reporter was asked to read out the disputed passage. When the judge saw the young man was flustered and in difficulties, he instructed him to retire to the chamber adjoining the courtroom, study his notes, and return when he was ready. After an hour, the judge sent his usher to find out what was happening; the usher returned and whispered in his Lordship’s ear; the window to the street was open and the reporter was gone, no doubt having decided that flight was the better part of having to tell the judge that he couldn’t read his notes and incur some imagined but dreadful punishment. The chief reporter supposed that to avoid such humiliation we would be more diligent in our shorthand studies, but it merely persuaded me to resist any and all pressure to take an official note at any time. Eventually, I did learn a sort of bastard shorthand, some as invented by Mr. Pitman and some by me, which served, barely, until I came to Canada where, I discovered to my delight, shorthand was considered an advantage but not a necessity.
The first job of the junior reporters on Monday was to call on each of the movie theatres to pick up publicity handouts on the week’s films, and write brief digests — not reviews. These were a service to readers who wanted to know “what’s on,” and a free advertisement for the theatre. Well, not entirely free because they provided two free press tickets which could be picked up at the box office for each movie program. These not only saved us money, but also provided a little prestige; one felt like a real newspaperman when asking for “the Express and Echo tickets.” There was of course no TV in those days and as the city was full of soldiery who had girlfriends and so required not only entertainment but a warm, dark place in which to snuggle, movies were immensely popular. Each three- or four-hour show included two movies, news, and cartoons, and the program might change in midweek. In the grander palaces, a mighty organ flashing coloured lights would rise from beneath the stage, and the organist would lead a singsong, a popular attraction when the community spirit of wartime was strong. Movie houses were always full, the shows ran continuously, and as it was often necessary to queue and wait for a seat to become vacant, one might enter at any point in a film and remain for the next showing to see what one had missed at the beginning. Film notes were the first thing I wrote for a newspaper.
Reporting funerals was another job for junior reporters, and I covered scores. A paid death notice would appear in the paper, along with announcements of births, weddings and deaths, on the page popularly known as “Hatches, Matches and Dispatches.” No matter how insignificant the departed, if the family so requested the funeral would be reported. After all, this was local news that many would read. I or some other junior would first go to the home to express polite regrets and obtain enough details to write a short and laudatory obituary. At first, I was reluctant to intrude on private grief, but I soon learned, long before Andy Warhol, that everyone wants their few minutes of public attention, and for ordinary families death was one of the few opportunities they had to get their name in the paper. Very often, we reporters were pressed to admire the deceased in a coffin in the front parlor, and invited to borrow any family photo we thought would reproduce well. The next stage was to attend the church and take the names of all the mourners, which provided another lesson; get the spelling right because people can be very touchy about their names, and — horrors — might complain to the editor if it were wrong in the paper. If the family wanted the list of wreaths published with the funeral report they had to pay by the line, but it was the reporter’s job to make a list of names and notes on the “floral tributes.”
Funerals of course soon became boring, but there was sometimes a cash reward. If the undertaker pressed a few shillings into one’s eager hand — almost a week’s pay — one would attach a note to the bottom of the report, “Funeral arrangements by …”. The busiest undertaker in Exeter sixty years ago was H. Bidgood — see how readily the name comes to mind after more than fifty years — and he enriched me considerably. Nobody ever questioned this arrangement, so I suppose it was just an accepted bit of graft, like the movie tickets. Occasionally, a local dignitary would die, and then the chief reporter would turn out the entire staff to make sure we got every name at every door of the church, or perhaps even at the cathedral, and fill columns with them. Names made news, and I expect they still would if papers deigned to cover such mundane events.
The daily courts in which minor cases were tried were called police courts in those days because the police not only gathered the evidence but conducted the prosecution. The chief reporter showed me the the ropes, but soon I was covering them myself. There were also county courts and, occasionally, assize courts at which a real judge and the barristers who travelled the legal circuit would appear. As an innocent youngster I listened with keen interest to messy divorce cases, some of which went on for days. The London papers were always ready to pay for a bit of scandal, but we were allowed to report only the evidence the judge mentioned in his summing up. There was keen disappointment when, after a sexy case, a spoilsport judge would grant a decree without reviewing the evidence in open court. Looking back on it now, I wonder that the paper allowed such a neophyte as I to report courts when it would have been easy for me to make a costly mistake, but I suppose I learned quickly the simple formula most journalists used to report the courts: name, verdict, charge, sentence, evidence. In Britain in peacetime when there was plenty of paper, courts were extensively reported, sometimes with key evidence given almost verbatim and filling column after column, and I was surprised on coming to Canada to see how little attention was paid to courts. After all, even minor cases can provide tragedy, comedy, or sometimes drama.
Our circulation went far beyond Exeter and juniors were assigned what the chief reporter called a “parish,” meaning a rural town to which we had to travel from time to time to cover council meetings, courts and other events. As the most junior, I got the parish furthest away, Okehampton, a town on the edge of Dartmoor about twenty miles as the train steamed from Exeter. So at the end of a day of work in the city, or sometimes on a Saturday morning, I would take the train to my parish. Twenty miles doesn’t sound much now, but wartime trains were so crowded that getting a seat was a bit of luck, and one never knew when the local passenger train would be shunted onto a siding to make way for something with higher priority, perhaps a troop train. If there happened to be an air raid warning in effect in Exeter when I was returning at night from Okehampton the train would be parked on a branch line to await the “all clear.” Then I had to go into the office to write my copy. It sounds terrible, but I loved every minute of it — or most minutes anyway. I learned mostly by reading the papers to see how various types of stories were handled, but one subeditor — what we would call a deskman — seemed to take particular pleasure in correcting my English; I remember clearly when he stormed into the junior reporter’s room and said, “Westell, if you confuse accept and except once more, I’ll personally fire you.” I don’t think I have ever since used either word without checking to see I had got it right, so I suppose I should be grateful to him, but at the time I thought him a tyrant. I described earlier the bombing of Exeter in May, 1942, three months after I had started work. While the fire which consumed so much of the High Street was stopped before it reached our offices, the explosions upset our presses, and production of the paper was shifted that very day to Torquay, about twenty miles away, where the chain had another daily. Our editors went by bus to Torquay every day to produce our paper, leaving we reporters, senior and junior, with even less supervision than usual. And the paper became, if that were possible, even less enterprising in covering the news.
One day in 1943 my father passed on a tip that Bob Hope and his company, who were touring to entertain American troops would be arriving that night at a local hotel he was frequenting at the time, contemplating, I think, marriage to the sophisticated blonde lady behind the bar. I took a seat in the hotel lobby that night and waited for Hope, who arrived eventually. Rushing up, I sought an interview. He, seeing a scruffy seventeen-year-old before him, asked if I was from the “college paper,” to which I replied with all the dignity I could muster that no, I was from the local daily paper. I asked a few no doubt banal questions,
