Bermondsey boys

I have been reading about two Bermondsey characters, one living, one dead.

The first, Alfred Salter, as local readers will know, gave up a glittering medical career at a top research institute and came to Bermondsey as a GP in 1898 and stayed until  his death in 1945.

Alfred and his wife, Ada, devoted the whole of their adult lives to uninstinting service of the people of Bermondsey. They were Quakers and very early members of the Labour Party. Both served on the borough council. He was MP for Bermondsey West and she represented Bermondsey on the London County Council.

All this time 'the Doctor' was a familiar sight cycling around Bermondsey on home visits and there was always a queue of patients waiting to see him back at his home-cum-surgery in Storks Road.

All this activity was motivated by a deep Christian faith which led him to embrace two causes less close to most people's hearts: an absolute Christian pacifism and a total repudiation of the demon drink. Neither stance was exactly popular but the doctor retained his constituents' respect as a man of principle who said what he thought whether it was popular or not.

When he died huge crowds flocked to St James for his memorial service and to this day the work of the Salters is remembered in the memorials in the Tube Station (close to the site of their home), in the Ada Salter Memorial Garden in Southwark Park and in Alfred Salter School. Less happilly the Thameside staue of 'Dr Salter's daydream' has been the victim of metal thefts and it is good to hear that moves are afoot to place a new one there, and this time Ada is going to be included too (quite right too).

The second book is by and about a character who is very much still alive and very much out and about in the area on a daily basis, Barry Albin-Dyer of Albin's funeral directors.

'Don't Drop the Coffin' is Barry's account 'from graveside punch-ups to gangland style funerals' of the ins and outs of the funeral trade as practised by the 'the UK's oldest family firm of funeral directors.'

Death comes to every family and so funeral directors, like clergy, get to meet all kinds of families in all kinds of situations. Barry brings out that sheer diversity of his work brilliantly and he offers some wise words on the way about the process of bereavement.

If anything funerals are getting more elaborate and complex and people are now more inclined to' customise' the event, adding things that have a particular resonance with the deceased. That can make funeral directors' lives a bit more interesting (clergy, too).

One fairly recent trend I have noticed in the past few years is the increased use of horse drawn hearses.

Recently I succumbed to Barry's invitation to ride with the horses (left), then I discovered that the journey was an hour long, and that a cassock is no protection against a January wind, so I swapped the carriage for a nice warm limousine after a mile or two, but I did enjoy the view as we clip-clopped down Jamaica Road.