His good education must have come from somewhere, surely

Among the many questions surrounding my grandfather's background is the one concerning his education.

How did the son of two domestic servants get appointed to head up the South African office of an important British company? What equipped him to travel around the world talking about computers when most firms were still using basic adding machines?

My grandfather, David Scott Ritchie, was born in London and probably attended a school in St John's Wood with his cousins from the age of seven. This was when his father, David Ritchie Sr, was dismissed from service as a butler and admitted to the London County Hospital's asylum as a pauper. His mother, Maud Alice Ritchie, was a cook who resided with the family that employed her at Cleveland House, St James Square. Up until that time, it is unclear where my grandfather lived, given that both his parents were in domestic service but it seems unlikely that he would have received much exposure to books or sophisticated adult company wherever he was.

Unless he was identified early on as a little boy with special intelligence and coached in reading, writing and arithmetic by a kind-hearted employer. Perhaps the lady of the house allowed him to sit in on lessons with her children's tutor. Whatever the case, my grandfather developed wide-ranging interests, a great conversational style and an impeccable dress sense that remained with him until his death in 1989.

Then again, maybe he only began to blossom into his full potential later on. Maybe he was identified as a promising young man when he was working at his first job and delivering chocolates to the royal palace. It is possible that someone took an interest in him there, especially because of his strong resemblance to Henry, son of George, the future king of England. It could be that this person suspected a connection to the royal family and gave him a leg-up by recommending him to be the beneficiary of a college education.

Then there is the other possibility, that David was the unacknowledged son of a gentleman, and that the gentleman paid for his education in return for his mother's silence. This theory is fun to think about but I am inclined to discount it. To my mind, any admission to a smart school or university would have been worth celebrating and we would have heard about it. After all, what grandparent can help themselves when it comes to sharing stories from their own childhood with their grandchildren?

No, I tend to think that my grandfather was exposed to gentry early on. Whatever happened to him after his father was committed to the asylum probably remained undisclosed because of the stigma attached to mental illness. I believe his early exposure to books and stories about travel created in him an appetite for learning and a desire to escape the confines of the working class. By the time he finished school, his good grades and ambition were enough to propel him into the kind of career he thirsted for, and the rest is documented history.

Photo credit: "Aske's Boys School, New Cross, London" by Matt Martin.

A night at the Strand Palace Hotel

Because I've been doing a series of blog posts based on documents found by professional genealogical researcher Judy Lester, I'm going to stick with her list of findings even though there is a big jump in the timeline at this point. The research brief was to find a birth certificate for my British-born grandfather, David Scott Ritchie. Having located him living with his aunt and uncle in St John's Wood at the time of the 1911 census, the paper trail disappears for close on 3 decades and reappears in 1939.

Judy found a passenger list showing David Scott Ritchie, his wife Florence and 2 daughters arriving at Southhampton from South Africa on 5 July 1939. The ship they were on was called the Pretoria Castle and the address given for their stay was the Strand Palace Hotel in London. Clearly, the British Tabulating machine Company treated its agents well.

Here's some background to fill out the story: Grandad and Grandma left England in 1929. They settled in the small South African town of Fishhoek and Grandad ran the Cape Town office of Hollerith computers. They had two children, my auntie Gill in 1932 and my mother Wendy in 1935. Grandad visited the company's head office in London every 5 years and it was his practice to exchange his first-class business ticket for a second-class family ticket. This, then, was his second trip back to headquarters.

The first time the family returned to England, auntie Gill was a babe in arms. The second time, Gill and Mom were 7 and 4 respectively. I can only imagine what an adventure the sea voyage must have been for them! For Grandma and Grandad, too, sailing into Southhampton and thinking about all the exciting things that lay ahead for the girls must have been thrilling. Not to mention a comfortable first night staying at the Strand Palace Hotel close to the royal palace of King George VI.

Meanwhile, David's mother Maude was still living alone and working as a cook. She would not have had space to accommodate the family from South Africa but they no doubt visited her and took her on outings with them. David's father, on the other hand, had been a patient in the London County Asylum [since renamed St Bernard's Hospital, Southall] for 30 years. Whether David saw him there or not I don't know. Judging from the fact that neither my aunt nor my mother even knew about the existence of a mentally-ill relative though, I suspect not.

Aside from a few days in the office then, this was to be an ordinary summer holiday. There would be beaches to explore, horses to ride, cousins to play with and ice cream and candy floss to eat. But if the family weren't troubled by the presence of a sad lunatic in a mental hospital, they were most certainly troubled by the threat of imminent war with Germany, as I will show in a future post.

Photo credit: "UK-London-The Strand: Art Deco on the River" by Wally Gobetz.

Travelling first class from England to South Africa

Grandad had been working for BTM for a couple of years. One day, he was summoned to head office and told he'd been chosen to head up the Cape Town branch, which was an amazing opportunity for a young man of 26. His task was to bring up the staff compliment to 12 and build a solid base for the Hollerith brand in South Africa. I'm guessing he had met his sweetheart by then because he and Sandy [Florence Sanderson] married a year later.

He must have been excited about the prospect of starting a new life with his bride in a faraway land. I imagine he knew something about South Africa as it was a member of the Commonwealth, the location of the Anglo-Boer War and an envisaged growth region for BTM. Yet I wonder what his imagination dreamt up when he thought of living there? Lions and elephants on the streets? Or smart colonial cocktail parties?

The company gave David a first-class ticket to sail on a Union Castle ocean liner to Cape Town. That was when he bumped into Henry, Duke of Gloucester. Apparently, the Duke was stunned into silence by the sight of his double, and Grandad had to scramble to think of what to say in the presence of such an esteemed royal personage. After all, this was the son of King George V, no less. With a polite half-smile and a respectful “How do you do”, my grandfather got past the awkward moment, but as he says in his memoir, “I swear he gave me a wink!”

This is a fascinating anecdote but it’s hard to correlate with the facts. Grandad’s memoir states that the Duke was on route to Lobito Bay on the Atlantic coast to open the Benguela Bay railway. The Benguela Railway was completed in February 1929, sure enough, but there is no record of the Duke of Gloucester being amongst the officials at the opening. What is certain is that Henry and his brother were in Africa in September 1928 on an expedition to shoot big game. It was while in Nairobi that Henry was entertained by Mansfield Markham and his wife Beryl, and where his affair with Beryl is purported to have begun.

Finding passenger lists for people travelling to and from the United Kingdom isn't generally complicated, but for some reason, I haven't been able to track down that first trip of David's in 1928. All his subsequent trips are there [1939 being the most eventful because the family's time in England happened to coincide with the outbreak of war] but then he was sailing as a second-class passenger along with his wife and daughters. So, that first voyage remains something of a mystery. Another one to add to the mounting pile!

Photo by Royal Australian Historical Society

From Lowly engineer to globe-trotting agent for Hollerith computers

My grandfather, Dave Ritchie, was recruited as a service engineer by the British Tabulating Machine Company sometime around 1927. I don't know on what basis they hired him because I don't think he went to university. Perhaps it was a combination of a good school-leaving certificate, a good track record in his previous job and a recommendation by someone connected to BTM management.

The British Tabulating Machine Company was the firm that imported Hollerith punch-card machines from America. Herman Hollerith had invented the tabulating machine for the purpose of processing information for the 1890 American census. Success in that area led to its adaptation for accounting purposes, and this caught the attention of visionary businessmen. In the early 1900's, BTM secured contracts with the Lancashire and North Yorkshire Railway, the Great Western Railway, theCalico Printers Association, the British Western Electrical Company and the English Census of 1911, to name just a few.

By the late 1920's, the field of early computing was offering good job opportunities. Boys who left school at fourteen were hired as

punch-card operators to enter data on the punch-card machines. Those with higher qualifications were trained in accounting, as much of the processing was for billing and payroll. For example, a company would use the tabulator to record the number of hours worked, the hourly wage of each employee, and the deductions made by the employer for various staff benefits.

A new recruit to BTM in the 1950’s described how he was interviewed and trained: A graduate from Cambridge, e applied to work for BTM as a consultant. He was sent first to Moor Hall in Cookham for a 13-week training programme. There was a week of induction followed by 2 weeks’ of lectures in cost accounting and business paperwork. The rest of the course comprised classes on all of the machines available to customers. After this 13-week course, the trainee spent 3 months at a district service office. Typically, a group of four service technicians would drive to the customer where they would meet up with the Hollerith supervisor, the person who oversaw the machine on site. Occasionally, there were sales demonstrations at a prospective customer’s office, which involved going in a van loaded with various types of punch-card machines and working alongside a female demonstrator chosen for her moderate machine skills and attractive appearance. Once the trainee had gained this initial exposure in the field, he returned to Moor Hall for a final 3-month batch of classes.

This, then, was probably how my grandfather started off his career. But he went much further. Some of the other roles he fulfilled as an agent for Hollerith were Railway Liaison Officer, Manager Surveys and Plans, Public Relations Officer, Manager Head Office Controlled Territories, and Director of the subsidiary company Allied Steel Equipment Company Limited.

As a child, I was frankly ignorant of my grandfather's involvement in the marketing of computer technology to businesses. Today, however, I stand in awe of his pioneering spirit.

Photo by: Dave Ross