James Walter Wall was Sue Perry’s great grandfather. Sometime in the 1970’s, he wrote some of his early memories down and gave them to his daughter Phyllis. At some point, the written memories were converted into electronic format.
Below is the document of these memories (downloadable as a pdf).
Here is a summary of the document.
James was born on 3rd Feb, 1899 in Liverpool, Lancashire, England, the son of James Wall and Emily Harriet Mildred May, who had run away from the East End of London to Liverpool to get married.
His mother, Emily was from Kent, England, and his father lived some years in the USA (in Boston) but his heritage is unknown.
As a young boy in Liverpool, James visited Hartley’s jam factory with his father, who sold jars and bottles to them.
The family soon moved to the East End of London, where sadly, James senior died in 1904 following surgery for an abscess on his breastbone.
His death left the family in hardship. At the time, there was no widow’s pension, and so Emily and her children used to walk the streets of the East End, London, singing for pennies to survive. He discusses this and other memories of hardship when he was a young boy.
James’ early working life was spent around the docks of London, and as he grew older he travelled the world on merchant ships – to places such as Europe, the Caribbean and Fiji.