Discipline ruled the house!

Littleham’s Reg Hill has just turned 100. In a series of articles he gives his memories of life in the village. David Beasley reports.

• IT’S 1914. Reg’s little brother Frank arrived in 1912. Father Sam is away serving with the Royal Marines. He first enlisted in 1899 and served throughout the First World War.

• A DISCIPLINARIAN – Reg’s father ruled the roost at home and Reg knew his place. Here, his father proudly shows off his Royal Marine uniform in 1905.

LISTENING to Littleham's Reg Hill discuss his austere childhood and the Spartan-like discipline enforced by his father, it is clear that today's children have got it easy.

While Reg would consider his father, Sam, to have been strict in the Victorian mold – he was a Royal Marine born in 1881, 20 years before the death of Queen Victoria – to others he could be perceived as brutal: regularly beating Reg with a two-inch-wide leather belt whenever he stepped out of line.

Among the 'crimes' considered worthy of such 'discipline' were things as innocuous as being late for his dinner, or getting his boots wet in the brook.

In fact, life at the turn of the 20th Century sounds positively Dickensian. "When I was a boy, you could fight and die for your country at 16, but you were not considered an adult until 25," said Reg.

"Father wouldn't allow me to marry or have any responsibilities until I was 25. He absolutely forbade it, and he ruled our house. If I stepped out of line, he used to take off his belt " said Reg.

What many today would find shocking is the lack of any kind of relationship between Reg and his father. They didn't ever go down the pub and all conversations were strictly on a level of the superior and the subordinate.

"I didn't argue with him or answer back," said Reg. "Even when I was a grown man, we never had a debate where we had differing views, because whatever he said was it."

Asked whether he resented this, he replied: "Honestly, I didn't really think about it. It was just the way things were. He was father and I did what he said."
This strict regimen even extended to visitors and Reg remembers that several evacuees from London, who stayed with them during the Great War to avoid the German airships, were taken back when they encountered father's fiery wrath. "I don't think they knew what hit 'em!" said Reg.

But Reg remembers that his sister always managed to avoid her father's fury. "She could be a naughty little girl," Reg remembers. "But it wasn't until she was much older that father ever really put his foot down. She ran off with a sailor from Cornwall and father, I think, thought he was married or just not good enough for her.

"Then, you had to get your father's permission to marry and he was against it, so she spent her life as a spinster, never marrying."

However, he admits that, as his dad got older, and Reg got married, 'father' mellowed out, which improved their relationship, but the invisible boundary between the two remained.

But, as Reg recalls, while most elders elicited automatic respect from those younger than them simply for being older, his father was respected because of the sacrifices he made for his family.

His father, Samuel James Hill, born in Topsham, joined the Royal Marines in 1899, aged just 17, before marrying Reg's mother, Eva Bowerman, from Withycombe, in 1905.

He was called up once again to active service in December 1913, and Reg remembers very little about his father during his own formative years.

"I was too young to understand, but I think my mother was worried. You see it wasn't like it is today with news coverage.

"We didn't know where he was stationed or how long it would be until we saw him again. He used to just turn up on our doorstep for 48 or 72 hours and just go again.

"The only reason we knew which ship he was on was by reading the Exmouth Chronicle. At least modern families during the Iraq War have some idea where their loved ones are or when they would see them again."

This lack of knowledge was especially stressful when, in 1915, the HMS Ambrose, a troop transport on which he was serving, was sunk by three torpedoes, from a German U-boat in the North Minches off the coast of Scotland.

While this information is readily available in historical records, then it was a closely guarded state secret.

Reg said: "We had no idea what had happened or where. We didn't know if he was alive; the paper just said the ship had been sunk.

"Most of the crew of the Ambrose were drowned and father was convinced that the only reason he survived was because he had a guardian angel looking over him."

After his father returned from serving in the Great War, he settled back in Littleham and was determined that his family would be entirely self-sufficient.
They kept chickens for eggs and pigs for meat, and grew dozens of varieties of fruit and vegetables – cabbages and sprouts in the winter and asparagus and artichokes in the summer.

Reg remembers with fondly, and with a degree of jealousy, that every January they used to buy a goose and spend a year feeding it the best food, to fatten it up for Christmas.

"We were quite jealous as it used to get all the best tit bits – I thought it was pointless because we were going to eat it anyway.

"But, as the year went on, we treated the goose like a pet, so it was really difficult when we had to slaughter it."

Reg's uncle used to capture rabbits, and he shudders as he remembers one attempt by his aunt to cook supper.

"I think she tried to skin it, but she made a pretty bad job of it, as there were clumps of hair still on its body.

"She didn't have any idea how to cook and didn't even take its head off. She just shoved in a pot. I remember its head just peering over the top of the pot with its eyes staring at me and its ears flopping over the side as it was bubbling away.

"I lost my appetite pretty quickly."