East London Archives of Alcoholics Anonymous.

Ironing board Arthur sober 1955 – this was done in 1985 an this is a transcribed talk he did at a convention, possibly Manchester.

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, my name’s Arthur and I’m an alcoholic. I drank because I liked drinking, I didn’t go about in tea bars as I see many do now and I didn’t drink half pints. I don’t think this made me an alcoholic, but I suppose the way I drank it certainly didn’t help. I travelled about to many parts of the world, drinking, I couldn’t tell you much about the places, but I knew where the bars were. Eventually I came back home, where I lived next door to a public house, so I didn’t have to go very far for a drink. There was always someone running in, like my wife to pull me out of there, so eventually I moved further afield and they could never find me and I was drinking all over the place. 

As time went on, I use to take all kind of jazz bands in my house, any day of the week, I had three children and my wife trying to sleep upstairs and all this noise would start. There was more noise going on in my house than what there was in the pub. Eventually there was rows and arguments, there was people sleeping on the armchairs and couches, I don’t know who they were, they use to call themselves all kinds of names, I didn’t know where they lived or where they came from, all I know is they could take a good drink and that suited me. Eventually, my wife came down in the early hours of the morning on an occasion and she told these big blokes to get out the house, I said to her how dare you, these are my friends. She said, you don’t find friends in pubs, I said mine are, all my friends are in pubs, and I really believed that. Of course she lost control of herself which was unusual and she hit me across the head with a frying pan and my head started bleedin’, I said you’ve cut my head, I said, that’s the finish I can’t tolerate you an longer…..and I walked out the house with the clothes I stood up in and had a bit of money in my pocket, as I use to work in markets. I was the type of chap who use to go in pubs with plenty of money, throw it down on the counter for everybody to have a drink, if they didn’t get drunk, I was rather surprised. People use to come to my house, when I wasn’t there, as I was never there, their wife would say to my wife, I can’t tolerate this any longer, your husband is getting my husband drunk, and he has now lost four days of work. My wife always took the brunt of it. I said they can’t take it; the trouble is they don’t know how to drink, they are falling and rolling all over the place, it’s just too bad, I never fell on the floor, I use to drink out of a bucket, in the beginning I was drinking out of very fine glasses, it was all very nice, all these polished glasses. It came to the stage where I was drinking out of a jam jar. 

Anyway, as I said, I left my wife with three sons, one of them was only two years of age, I thought this was the answer, I floated about all over the country, I was doing no work at all and the money started to go down very fast, with the way I drunk. I had never been in a kip house before, which is what we called them, and I finished up in these places. My brother-in-law said he has never seen anyone drink as fast as me, I said I’m always thirsty.  

I was finishing up inside of stores and places like this, it was very cheap in there, the bloke asked me what I wanted to drink, I said what do they drink then? He said you can have sweet, or mixed or rough, he said you shouldn’t drink the rough, the farmers drink that, so I said I am a farmer. He said, you’re not a bloody farmer, you’re a bloody Londoner, you’re a cockney. I said I’m a farmer now. So, I had a couple of these glasses of scrumpy, it didn’t taste too bad, and it was cheap, which was handy as I didn’t have much money. They were drinking big jugs of this stuff, I thought it must do you good. Some were fighting on the floor, another fella was playing the piano. One chap got a saw out of his pocket, he said to another, would you like to buy this for a shilling, I mean, they spoke posh as well, God knows where they came from. He said let me try it and he broke it in half, so there was a fight again on the floor. I was looking round this place and I thought I was superior to them you know, there was one cooking a kipper over an open fire, there was another who was boiling an egg in a saucepan, another pulling the middle out of a loaf and getting that down him…I thought what a bloody place, fancy coming in here, I’m not like these people and I certainly didn’t think I was. I was asked, how you getting on with that rough? I said, it’s too bad, it’s making my legs a bit wobbly. I said I’ll get over it, I said I don’t think I’ll come back here anymore, it’s like a bloody mad house. He said, you’ll be back, I said, I won’t, He said, they all say that mate, but you’ll be back. I did go back; I did go back many more times. I ended up round the back of Waterloo, near the hole in the wall, that was a mad house. It went on and on until I had no money at all, it doesn’t last you know. I had no money to get in the kip house it was awful. One night I was walking through this park, came across this graveyard that I used to have a kip in, as I was walking through, it was pouring with rain and there was an open grave, I slipped and fell in. As I was trying to scramble out, in the early hours of the morning, there were two women going to clean some offices or something, near the wall, My head came up from the grave, I was screaming and shouting and saying help me for God sake, the two women looked over and said, my GOD look at that, I said give us a hand out, darling will ya? They went running down the road like a couple of lunatics, completely mad. As you can see, I eventually did get out.  

I was taken into a mental hospital, I was completely mad, they put me in a strait jacket, couldn’t hold me down, and put me in a cell. My wife came in and said she hadn’t seen anything so ghastly in all her life, I didn’t know what she was talking about, I don’t even remember being in a straitjacket. I got out of it anyway, folded it up nice and neat and put it in the corner of the cell. The chap said, how did you do that? I said, I use to work in a circus at one time. He said a bloody circus; you are a circus. Eventually I got pulled out of this cell and this Scottish chap who became my sponsor, came into this hospital which was a long long time ago now. I thought he was a copper, He said your name Arthur, I said yes, he said you got a drinking problem? I said, have I got a drinking problem? I said I got thousands of problems, sit down mate, I’ll tell you all about them. He said, I don’t want to hear your problems, you listen to mine, I said I don’t want to listen to your problems, I don’t know ya. I said where do you come from, he said I come from Glasgow, I said have they sent you all the way down from Glasgow? No, no no he said, I live here, not far from this hospital, I come in here to see people like you. I thought, blimey and I said, have you got a fag? He got out a packet of woodbines and said take one of them. He said would you like to come to a meeting? he said it’s a meeting of Alcoholics Anonymous. I said never heard of them. I said what do they do there then? he said they talk, I said what about? He said, drink…I said I don’t want to talk about drink; I’m in here for drink, that’s why I was locked up in that cell. He said, this is slightly different, we talk about other things as well. I said, well you can’t get me out, I’m in a locked ward. He said, I’ll go and see the doctor, he went to see the doctor and came out with a small pass. He said, I got your pass, I am fully responsible for you, I am going to take you to a meeting and bring you back here tonight. He said get your over coat on, I said I haven’t got one, He said what did you do with it? I said, flogged it, he said you flog everything don’t ya, I said, when I want a drink I do, yeah. I went out, it was freezing, I had no coat.  

We got a taxi and got in the meeting, it was full, not many meetings about in those days, he said you sit down the front, so I sat at the front, and he will stand at the back. I couldn’t see no alcoholics, they were all dressed up, there was a chap with a beautiful suit on, I was looking at the clothes. Velvet collars, bowler hat an umbrella, briefcase, I thought they can’t be alcoholics, an alcoholic to me, was a man in the gutter drinking methylated spirits living in the gutter, no money, no home and disowned by everyone, well, that was the state I was in. I thought, I am the world’s worst alcoholic, and I should get hold of a newspaper and give them my story, which I’d get a few bob off it, I expect. Nobody gave me anything. One chap was sitting there, said, would you like a cigarette, John?  John said he would, he pulled out a box of passing cloud, they all spoke with a university accents. I came away from that meeting and taken back to the nut house. 

I was in there for three months, I didn’t know. I went to see my sponsor and he told me I was in there for 6 months; I wasn’t well. Eventually I came out and went to his house, my wife wouldn’t have me back home, my brother-in-law said keep me away from them as I was mad…. I went back to my sponsor, Jim, I said they won’t let me in my home, he said who did the drinking? I did, I said. He had enough of me, he had been coming to the hospital quite a long time now, I’d ask him for money, a suit a job. He said, this isn’t a labour exchange, I said, I hate the bloody sight of you, he said do you really. I said how am I meant to get to these meetings, these 90 meetings in 90 days, I said I couldn’t do 9 in 9 days. He said, there’s a where to find, I said I can’t bloody well eat that, mate, I’m starvin’. He said look down that meeting book and you’ll find there are meetings here and there. I said they are miles away, I haven’t got any money to get on a bus, how am I supposed to get to them…he said, WALK. He said, if that book was full of pubs, and someone told you that there was a pub 20 miles away giving free booze, you would walk there if you were drinking, wouldn’t you? I said Yes, he said, well walk here. I continued to walk. 

That was the first lesson I got in A.A. 

I hated the sight of everybody, I walked into a meeting in Chelsea, in London, on a Tuesday, I still hadn’t got back in the home, still ’round the bend, there was a well-dressed man in the chair, he said My name’s John, I’m an alcoholic, I hated the sight of him, he put a monocle in his eye, I had never seen an alcoholic with a monocle, He told a story, I don’t like him, I don’t like any of the others in here.  

Next day I went down the market and lo and behold there lay a monocle on a stall, got a waistcoat from the rag stall, went down that meeting early, and this chap wasn’t in the chair, I said where is he? The bloke said, he doesn’t always take the chair, I said, don’t he? he knows I’m coming. He said, no no no Arthur, he doesn’t know you’re coming at all, he said, just sit down and listen. I couldn’t listen to anybody, me. The meeting started, and the fella began to speak and after a couple of minutes I got the monocle out and put it in my eye and I thought, that’s stopped you, mate. The chap sitting next to me said, what do you think you are doing, you think this is a music hall? take that out of your eye. I said, I won’t, he had one in last night, I got one in tonight. He said, he always wears one, I said so do I now. I wouldn’t take it out and he was looking at me like I was ’round the bend, I still am a bit round the bend but not quite so bad as when I was drinking.  

Eventually I was going to many meetings, day after day, night after night, still hadn’t got back to me home and was hearing a man say he was drinking brandy in his lounge, I thought in his lounge? I was in kip houses; graveyards and I began to dislike these people very very much indeed. One man read out eat plenty of food, I thought I haven’t even got a cheese roll. He said what you need to do is look at this Just for today card, it says speak with a low courteous voice, and I was screaming the place down, he said, it says in there too, dress becomingly, I was walking about like a tramp, who is gonna give me a suit, they are as tight as they come they don’t give you nothing, nobody’s given me a suit, any money, they make these collections in meetings they won’t tip the box out and give it to me. Nobody’s been to my wife and asked her to let me back in the home, he’s now a member of Alcoholics Anonymous and has been now for six months. One Saturday night I was at a meeting on Charing Cross Road, it was over the top of a pub, so you had a choice, you could have a drink or go up to the meeting, so I used to go up to the meeting. When I went up there, there was all these posh people, men and women, I had an old mac and old pair of trousers on and I looked at the chap in the chair, He said my name’s Tommy and I’m an alcoholic, he said about four words and I got up and said just a minute, I want a few words ‘ere, he said, Yes, Arthur what did you want to say? I said I tell ya what I want to say, get out of there and I want to give you a real good lesson on this. A chap told me this after, I was sober six months, he said ‘You went up to the table, Tommy was still sat there, he said that I banged my fist on the table, you said, listen to what I got to say you lot, My name’s Arthur and I’m an alcoholic and I made an ironing board in Maudsley Hospital, and I went into detail with this ironing board and it went on for 45 minutes, the man was looking at his watch like a lot of people do, do. I wouldn’t’ let anyone come and share, this lady said, what is the matter with that man, he hasn’t spoken about hospitals or drink or what it has done to his family, she said is he drunk? the man said, no he’s not drunk, she said well if he’s not drunk, he must be mad and get him into hospital, he said, he’s just come out.  

Well, the name stuck to me, eventually it went all over the place, and I was nicknamed and still am, Ironing board Arthur. 

Eventually, I did start to take an active part in A.A. Many years ago, Jim my sponsor and Albert who was half blind, and myself started a meeting up after I’d been in for 12 months, it was over at the Oval near the cricket ground, that was 29 years ago. I don’t say this to be big-headed, it does get me a bit worried when I say that type of thing, I don’t know why, it’s just the type of person I am.  

I am so very, very grateful to what has happened to me, during my sobriety, I have got the respect of my three sons, I got the respect of my wife back and I have my own self-respect back, and my sister is here from Canada, we lost most of our family in an air raid and she escaped and they put that tragedy down as to why I was an alcoholic, in those days they didn’t know much about alcoholism, I can assure you it wasn’t accepted as an illness, after I had been in for a few years, it was accepted as an illness and I felt very pleased about it. Once I started taking an active part, I eventually got back to my home. I started to go ’round with old Albert to do 12 steps work, I said I haven’t got any money, he said don’t worry about money, just talk to them. We started to go numerous hospitals, keeping sober, I was then asked do I want to go to a prison, I said I don’t want to go to no prison, he said we do talk in there and we are looking for speakers, so I agreed to come along, we went to many prisons all over England and Isle of Weight and got involved, myself and another man ran a group in there for a long time on Sunday afternoon, I had great respect when I went into this prison, one Sunday we held a party for prisoners children in Lambeth and we had some top class artists from the London Palladium, and they say alcoholics can’t do it, well sober ones can. I had quite a kick when we went down to that prison with George, they held the meeting in the main hall and we wondered what was going on, we stood there, all the prisoners stood up and it was a piece of toilet paper that was on the table, on it said, ‘we would like to thank you’, the prisoners of this prison thanked us for what we had done for their children. 

When they talk about a higher power, I had the privilege of going to Ireland, I was asked to see a man a 12 step, we travelled to one side of Ireland to another, in Northern Ireland, we got this man into hospital eventually, the plane I was meant to be on, went down in the sea, I only missed that plane because I was in this hospital, so I do believe there is something that does look after us. I’m quite convinced of that. Many strange things have happened to me during my time in A.A. I made friends with a man who was from a different walk of life to me, he had plenty of money and would take me around in his big car and I loved it. We would do this 12-step work, and his wife would hardly see him, because I would have him out at 2 or 3 in the morning, I took him to the kip houses, the spikes and he didn’t know what a workhouse was, he thought it was ghastly.  

 We got a 12 step and took this chap to a meeting in Streatham, we had a cup of tea, and we took the man back to the hospital. I took him up to his ward, the male nurse had changed staff as we had come out, the new male nurse unlocked the door, and the fella went through the back to his ward. The male nurse came out and said ‘would you like a cup of tea? I said, no thank you I have just had one, he said, have another one, I said I don’t want one, he said, have a biscuit, I said, I don’t want a biscuit, he said, well sit down and you’ll be alright in a moment, so I said, I’m alright now, I thought, Keep calm, they tell you to keep calm in A.A. I thought if I start getting excited, they’ll put me back into one of them cells. He said, just sit down there and have a cup of tea, he said, we all feel a little bit depressed at times. I said, I don’t feel depressed, mate. I tell you all now, always carry that Where to find with you, I pulled that out like a magic wand and said I’m a member of Alcoholics Anonymous, he said, I’m terribly sorry, I thought you was a patient, he then opened the door and let me out.  

This illness is considered by the world health organisation in Geneva as the third or fourth worst illness in the world and there is no cure, I don’t know anywhere else where I can come into a hall like this and see all these people that are sitting here sober. This programme works; it works for anybody that wants it to work. Some of us have to want it more than others and some of us have to be prepared to put up with a certain amount of suffering along the road of sobriety. I put up with a certain amount of suffering, like many of you, and if there is a newcomer here, stick it out, because it is going to work, day by day, you don’t see yourself changing and gradually and slowly, as I was standing at my door waiting for my wife, she came to the door and a couple we had known for many years from over the road came to my wife and said, hello, you do look lovely, how is your husband? has he passed away? I said no, I haven’t passed away, I’m standing ‘ere. I said to my wife after, what does she mean have I passed away, my wife said, well you should have passed away, the state you were in, but she didn’t recognise you. I hadn’t realised, they hadn’t recognised me after a few years of sobriety. I know people do change, family’s change, this is a family illness, this don’t only affect me, my wife was treated just as bad as I was and she’s not an alcoholic. My children were pointed at, at school, because of the things I was doing. The boot goes on the other foot, it takes time, all her family were pointing at me. I have had the privilege now of going to Canada and travelling many parts of the world since I have been in A.A. and never thought it would be possible. There is one thing that money will not buy and that is sanity and it will not buy people like you sitting there, because it was people like you who showed me that this works. It was one Scotsman who would not give up. I owe everything that I have got at this moment to Alcoholics Anonymous, I’m not ashamed to say, I’ve got nothing to be ashamed of now, I can walk out there amongst all the others, providing I don’t pick up that first drink I can lead a responsible and normal life. I love you all and I love Alcoholics Anonymous because it was through this kind of thing that made me sit down and think, it does work, but some of us have to want it more than others.   

Thank you very much indeed.