|
Harry Tapp
by Ian Johnson
Many
people who remember Whitstable in the 1940s, 1950s and
1960s will remember Harry Tapp, who was the friendly and
popular road-sweeper in the town centre for many years.
This
photo of Harry Tapp with his Sunday School class is from
the Middle Wall Baptist Church, taken in about 1945. The
children in the picture are from left to right: Margaret
Wallace, ??, Daphne Camburn, Roger Cooper, and Daphne
Johnson. (Daphne Johnson is my cousin). It was probably
taken at a Sunday School treat.
Harry lived in Middle
Wall - in the stretch between the
junction with Waterloo Road and the Wall Tavern. I’m
not sure whether he was ever married but he had two
sisters. One of the sisters, Edie Williams, appears in a
photo of mine....
This
was a group photo taken on what we now call
the Favourite Beach.
With the help of my
aunt, all the people can be identified.....
1.
Emily Baynes (nee Sargent -my great grandmother), 2 Mrs
Spillett (nee Marsh), 3. Mrs Merton, 4. Mrs Edie
Williams (sister of Harry Tapp), 5 Velda Williams
(daughter of Edie), 6. Flossie Phillips, 7. Mrs Phillips
(mother of nos. 6 and 15), 8. Mrs Roberts, 9. The baby
son of "Dolly" Nicholls, who worked on the
barges, 10. Cyril Holden (or possibly his brother Cecil.
As the face is not visible, it's not easy to tell!.
Cyril Holden kept a barber's shop in Island Wall), 11.
Cyril's (and Cecil's) sister's baby boy, Ronnie Shepherd
, 12. Doris Baynes (my mother and granddaughter of no.
1, niece of no. 13, cousin of no. 14), 13. Edith Beer
(nee Baynes, daughter of no. 1 and mother of no. 14), 14.
Elsie Beer (daughter of no. 14), 15. Doris Phillips, 16.
Marjorie Olive, 17. Doris Wood
Harry Tapp’s other sister was Ethel,
who became Ethel Bashford.
The
things that I remember best about Harry were his cheerful
demeanour and very warm-hearted manner, at least every
time he was talking to us kids, both in Sunday school
and when we met him in the street doing his
road-sweeping job. He would save the cigarette cards he
picked up with the rubbish, clean them up (as far as
possible) and give them to kids he knew – I had quite
a collection from him one time. And he would always
greet people he knew in the street in a friendly manner.
You couldn’t imagine him ever being stand-offish to
anyone.
I
was also in his Sunday School class when I was about
six, when he was in the Primary section. He always sang
hymns loudly, and although that rasping voice of his did
not exactly make the most beautiful singing voice I had
ever heard, nobody would have ever made fun of him as he
was an utterly sincere man.
I
seem to remember Dennis Begent, who was also in the
Baptist Sunday School at that time, saying once in a
visitors’ book entry that Harry Tapp was also at some
other time involved in another local Sunday school, but
I only know about his involvement with the Baptist one.
Harry
Tapp was a fondly-remembered true Whitstable character.
Ian
Johnson
|
