Francis Simons, my father, was born In The Hague, Holland, having a Dutch father and an English mother. When he was four the family came to London to live near Regents Park, first in Albany Street then Titchfield Street.

There were eighteen children in the family, time, many dying young, but they were not all alive at the same. The only ones I knew were Bernard, Margaret, Victor and Floss; Lawrence died about 1920.

Being brought up in London, father had a cockney accent and frequently used rhyming slang which, for a long time, I thought was just his own way of talking.

Of the games he played as a boy, he only spoke of out-door games, whip and top, diabolo, stilts, hoops. If a top did not run true it was termed "hoppy" and the cure was to remove the steel pin, put a bit of horse muck into the hole, and hammer the pin back. Many games were played on stilts, including follow-my-leader with the leader trying to do things that the others could not, also forming into two teams that went into battle pushing each other over.

There were also pranks like tying a length of string between adjacent door knockers of terraced houses so that when one door was opened, it rattled the other knocker. A more risky prank was to stretch a fine thread across the street, held high by a boy standing on the front door steps. When a suitable victim came walking down the street, his hat was knocked off by lowering the thread - often resulting in a chase!

Another prank was to make a leather sucker about two inches diameter with a length of string fastened through the middle. The leather was soaked in water. With a bit of practice it was possible to throw this on to a windowpane where would hold with considerable suction. The purpose of this was to rattle the window by pulling on the string and annoy the occupant.

At this time, it was the ladies' fashion to wear a bustle and the trick was to deposit orange peel or some other garbage on the bustle, without being detected. The dresses were so long that-they trailed on the pavement.

You can imagine that in those days of horse traffic, it was a bit tricky crossing the road and dodging the heaps; at most road junctions, boys acted as crossing sweepers clearing a path to earn a bit of money from tips. Father thought this was a good idea so, armed with the broom from their backyard, he started work at the nearest vacant crossing. Unfortunately, a neighbour spotted him and when he got home he received a good hiding for his enterprise.

At the age of six he went to Holland on holiday on his own, being put on a boat in London, his father giving a member of the crew a tip to look after him and relations meeting him at the destination. There were cattle on the boat and all that he remembered of the journey was their continual bellowing.

Father remembered when the Thames was a maze of masts of the sailing ships.

Father owned a penny-farthing bicycle - called an "ordinary" in those days. These were most unsafe and he had many an injury by going over the handle-bars through braking too hard or losing balance when cornering. As the cycle was the fastest traffic then, it was customary to cycle down the middle of the road. The penny-farthing era only lasted twenty years - 1870-1890 followed by Rover bringing out the safety-cycle i.e. a chain driven cycle with wheels of equal size.

In the early 1900's father had a car, a 2 horse-power Dediop, a very primitive thing, the main piece of equipment being a towrope!

The family were fond of animals around the house and, during their childhood had amongst other things a goat, a bird and a cock; the cock wandered about the house like a house-dog, making a fuss when anybody came to the door. It was customary for the children to go for a walk in Regents Park, wheeling the pram with a child or two at each end and the cock in the middle. They would all play about on the grass but, if a stranger came by, the cock would jump back into the pram for protection.

In later life the family played jokes on each other. On one occasion, father received a parcel at work marked "bacteriological specimen" which, on being opened, contained a dead cat!

Father attended a French-speaking school in London, Ecole Francaiselde Bedford Passage, where he received several prizes; I possess four of them, the last one dated 1885. Because of this and having a Dutch father with several friends of other nationalities, father was a fluent linguist.

He must have been thirteen when he started work in the pathological laboratory at St.George's Hospital in London with Professor Sheridan Delepine as his superior and in charge of the laboratories. In 1890, the Professor set up a Public Health Laboratory in Manchester and father went with him as lab. boy.

At first they were accommodated at Owen's College in a laboratory next to the biology department. About this time the biology lab. was being equipped with new microscopes so father bought one of the old models which is now in my possession. Fatherl's wages were very poor - in 1896 he received £18.4.0 per annum - and, according to "Pathology as a profession in Great Britain" by W.O.Poster, was classed as a "servant".

He did not appear on the staff list by name till 1903 when he was promoted to "technical assistant". His duties at that were dealing with apparatus and materials for laboratory workers, preparing specimens for the museum, keeping petty cash and looking after the lab. in general, including supervision of servants (lab.boys). All work associated with bacteriology was done by doctors.

In 1912, the "Pathology and Bacteriology Laboratory Assistants Association" was formed, requiring examinations which raised their standards and status. Due to the war and consequent shortage of doctors, the scope of the work was widened and by 1918 father's wage was £200 p.a.

About 1910 the pathology and bacteriology laboratories were housed in their own building in York Place, Chorlton-on-Medlock, Manchester. Father continued to work there till Professor Delepine died.In 192Ot's and he got a new boss that he could not get on with. He left, and eventually settled into Salford Health Laboratories in Regent Road, Salford where he stayed till he retired, after which he continued doing locum jobs.

Father was married twice. We do not know much about his first wife except that she was somewhat older than he was. They lived at 43 Ackers Street, close to Owen's College - now Manchester University - and she died an alcoholic.

He married mother - Minnie Williams - in 1915 and they soon moved to 6,York Place near to the new laboratories. As a wedding present Uncle Bernard, being a cabinet maker, made father and mother a set of reproduction Jacobean dining furniture; father merely paid for the wood.

In 1890 father went to the Paris exhibition (the one for which the Eiffel Tower was built). An Interesting feature was a continuous moving pavement to take visitors round. This was divided into three lanes with each lane going progressively faster so that you could step from one to the next anywhere along its length. He also w&nt to the exhibition of 1900.

He was fond of outdoor activities, walking, boating, river and sea fishing and many holidays were taken with this in mind. Peel, in the Isle of Man, was one of his favourite haunts and a stay there included spending a night or two on a herring drifter - in days of sail.

The family holidays that I recall starts with a trip to Belgium in about 1922, then Holland in 1924 and Norway in 1931, with a variety of holidays in Britain, London, Wales, the Broads, the Lake District, Henley, Sussex and the Isle of Man.

In the 1920's father was chairman of the Manchester French Society whose members occasionally used to come round for an evening meal. One regular visitor was Madame de Gubernatis(?) we called her Madame Dead Banana - and I dreaded her coming. When she arrived I used to hide under the table from where she used to drag me out to kiss me, which I hated. She was like a witch - all dressed in black with a white whiskery face and creases round her mouth.

While working at Salford Health laboratories, father belonged to their male voice choir, a small group that went round entertaining old people.

He took us a walk most weekends, usually through the local park - Platt, Whitworth and Birch - to sit and watch the bowls, model yacht racing and other sports. But he had a very exilable nature and I felt most embarrassed to be with him at a football matcthes, because he could not stand still. He would go through all the actions that he thought the players should be doing - dribbling, heading. taking shots at the goal.

Dancing was a favourite pastime of father and mother, leaving us in the charge of a baby-sitter - an unusual occurrence in those days; they often went to Shorrocks Ballroom in Grosvenor Street, Manchester. On special occasions they brought back fancy hats, streamers, little coloured balls and other things for us to wake up to the following morning.

There is only one dance that I remember them mentioning - the Lancers. Thinking about it, these are the only occasions that I saw father wearing shoes, his dancing ones; at all other times he wore boots.

The only thing father really influenced me on was his attitude to war. We were not allowed to play with anything of an aggressive nature - no guns or toy soldiers. When my brother, Edward, suggested joining the school scouts, father was not too keen because of its military structure; however, the scout-master wrote to reassure him of the school group's non-military nature. At the same time, father had two guns for his own use - an airgun and a rook gun that he used for shooting rabbits.

6, York Place, where father lived most of his married life, was in a terrace of five houses; it had large rooms, attics and cellars. There was a yard at the rear but a reasonable garden at the front which bordered the road, with decorative cast iron railings and gate. A horse-chestnut tree grew in the bed near the railings and father had trained it as a flat fan so that it branched low and spread the width of the garden. A very narrow bed ran under the privet hedge, from the garden gate to the front door; this was full of bluebells, a picture in spring. The borders round the grass were planted with perennial shrubs flowers - my favourite being a white globe thistle which had a most powerful scent.

York Place was originally oval shaped with houses and gardens in the middle and round the outside. Being hemmed in by the Pathology Laboratory, St.Mary's Maternity Hospital and Manchester Royal Infirmary. the land was gradually acquired and built on by one of them so that, by 1930 our terrace had the only houses left; our front garden looked across the road to the blank wall of the Infirmary extension, behind which was nurses' home.

In 1931, St. Mary's Hospital bought our house we moved to 348, Dickinson Road, Longsight. As far as I was concerned, this house was not much of an improvement on cellars - but at least it did have a small garden front and back. Father's choice of dark. serviceable decoration did not to make the house more attractive. I never liked living.

It was when father became ill in 1940 that he was forced to give up work. Nine months later, sadly, he died of cancer of the stomach.