This is the story of part of the life of Jon Inglis, a remarkable man, whose first twenty five years of hardship and harassment did not quell his search for truth, his love for people, and his need to think creatively and then to put his thinking down on paper.
We met and married in the closing years of our lives, lives which had trodden very different paths. He talked to me about his past, about his feelings at the present, and about his thoughts for the future. While we were together he wrote copious notes, more poetry, and philosophical statements. He did not feel he could go into publication himself, he felt somehow threatened that his work would be soiled or plagiarised. I tried to help him as much as I could, and promised that if I survived him I would do my best to get his work and ideas to the public. This is why I am attempting to write "Why he was a dosser" which is taken from the period towards the end of Jons life when he chose to go Outside and live with no materialistic support save that which he could earn himself for his basic needs only. He lived on the streets and slept in cardboard boxes, talking to and encouraging his fellow dosser. He slept in various trains, some stationery, some on the move, benefiting from the warmth of the heated carriages. He spoke from "Speakers Corner" in Hyde Park on topical subjects and political issues and delivered grave warnings. He spoke on behalf of the underdog whose causes he felt needed airing. He met lords and those down on their luck, he met thieves of chattels and thieves of peace of mind. Apart from being a most unusual experience I feel this period shows the compassionate side of his nature, and how he had the ability to think deep and logical thoughts about the future of mankind while he was suffering very hard conditions devoid of materialistic assets.
Jon spent the first five years of his life with his widowed mother in a tenement house in Newcastle. She already had two children when her husband was killed in the World War 1. The house had one room downstairs which held the black iron range, Grandma sat here in her rocking chair, and this is where she slept. The toilet was down the garden, and a bucket was kept on the landing for emergencies. There was no bath or washbasin. Upstairs there was one room, with one big bed. Here his mother and the children slept, together with a strange Daddy who seemed to change from time to time. There was no other way his mother could earn an income. Several other children came after Jon was born, and money was very short. Jon was never allowed out on a Sunday for he had no best clothes; all his neighbours went out looking smart and clean on the Sabbath. Jon was always up to mischief, and when he was six his mother approached her Methodist Minister to see if he could find the small boy a place in a near-by orphanage for she felt she could no longer manage to look after the child. Jon spent the next ten years in orphanages where he was kept clean, fed, and taught. He was always hungry, again always up to harmless mischief, and very lonely. He never received visits, parcels, or had any sense of being loved or wanted, neither did he have anyone that he could love. He did not know what other children of his age could expect as they grew older so knew of nothing to miss. He made the best of his situation, revelled in the sports and enjoyed being out of doors in the large grounds surrounding the school. He told me many stories about the conditions of the place, and the behaviour of the Sisters who were in charge, the punishments that were meted out and his continual feeling of hunger.
When he was fourteen he elected to leave the Orphanage, and he was billeted on a Methodist family in Leeds. This family prided in showing him off to their friends as a "boy from the Orphanage, arent we good to have him!", and made him do the housework and gardening. He was not happy there, and was given no loving kindness. As soon as he could he found himself temporary residential jobs either in hotels as a waiter, or on farms. He also worked on a travelling boxing booth, where the boxing skills he had learnt at school came into force. Mrs Hughes, the proprietors wife, gave the lads in her team three good meals a day, and for the first time in his young life Jon had plenty to eat. He was really happy on the booth, travelling by night and erecting the big top in the day, then taking on all comers in the evening. He enjoyed the company of the other boxers, and enjoyed his first encounters with the opposite sex, girls had not before come into his life. A 16 he was a handsome lad, well muscled, with flaming red hair and laughing piercing eyes. Mrs Hughes made sure he put some of his wages into a Post Office account. This happy period in Jons life was put to an end with the onset of World War ll. The big top was not allowed to show lights because of black out restrictions. Sadly Jon said good-bye to Mr and Mrs Hughes, and the small unit broke up and each went their separate ways.
Jon joined the Army in l940 and was accepted in the Pioneer Corps. He was taught to build bridges, dig drains, and erect huts for the soldiers. He was a useless soldier on the parade ground, but made the most of community living and the heavy army food. The unit was sent to France and in broken french and with a certain aplomb he courted the french lassies and he developed from an irresponsible lad to a young man at an early age, and this young man had an old head upon his shoulders. When the German forces pushed our army back to the channel, Jon was in a fierce battle in Boulogne, and he saw death for the first time. He queued up on the quayside waiting for boats to come. Gunfire was all round, and our own bombers were dropping their bombs dangerously close. A small naval vessel came along side and there was a rush to get aboard. Jon still held his rifle, and he was about to step aboard, away from captivity. The ship was drawing away from the quayside as it was already overloaded. Jon changed his rifle from his right hand to his left hand in order to be able to grab the railings more securely, but in that split second the gap between the ship and the quayside grew too big for him to jump.
The sailor manning the hawser called out that they would be back again soon, and the much over laden ship chugged out of harbour. No further ships were able to return. When Jon turned back he found hundreds of rifles dropped on the ground. From then on he swore that he would act on his own initiative in times of trouble, and not be bound to rules like keeping his rifle at all times. The cost of hanging on to his rifle and missing the boat was years of imprisonment. Within a few days those who were left behind were captured by the Germans, and the long march eastwards began. Fortunately Jon was fit but the plight of the older men, and the plight of the confusion of the refugees made him very upset. He would never dwell on his difficult periods, and talked of them in a detached way as if describing them in detail and his feelings about them would bring back all the terror, pain and fear. It was a terrible journey, and the time in the prison camps before the Red Cross parcels arrived was full of hardship. Before long Jon began to realise that some of his fellow prisoners were going to ride out the war as best they could, offering no resistance, some even studying. They were men with families and commitments back home and Jon could understand their reasoning that they had to keep themselves as safe and well as they could. But Jon had no home, no one who loved him or who was waiting for him, and no one whom he loved, so he planned that he would spend his war in trying to occupy the German forces as much as he could by escaping and so keeping elements of the enemy busy looking for him.
Jon spent five years as a P.O.W and escaped six times, taking the punishment meted out to him when he was captured. He became ill with diphtheria, was reduced to five stone, had endless beatings, and was generally hated by the guards. He taught himself the German language while talking to these guards, so that he could escape as a German. At the moment V.E day was announced he was a free man, and he was found by the American army. During these five years he managed to write poetry and think thoughts away from his physical conditions. He had to memorise as many of his poems as possible for the guards tore up everything they could find. In spite of the suffering he received in the hands of the Germans he still held the young soldier in respect, despising only those who took advantage of their uniform and seniority to be cruel and unjust. He felt that both the German and British soldier were acting under orders and without their respective uniforms they would have similar vices and virtues. He had been asked frequently to write about these experiences and his re-actions to them but he preferred to keep silent. He did not want any financial reward from those stories.
After he returned to England he had a period of rehabilitation, and was fattened up on army rations. He had no base to go to and lived in rented accommodation for his long leave. In due course the army authorities thought it pertinent to send him back to Germany as an Intelligence Officer, thereby using his knowledge of the language. He was in Hamburg for three years, living in an Officers Mess which was in a millionaires house now requisitioned. Here Jon experienced luxury for the first time in his life, plenty to drink, plenty to eat, good clothes, and plenty of women. He was arresting those who had arrested him when he had been caught after escaping. Even he realised what an unusual set-up it was, but he enjoyed himself to the full, over-ate, drank too much, and womanised. After three years there, and when he was twenty-eight, he married a German girl, and in doing so he had to leave the Intelligence Service and return to the U.K.
This was in 1948, and most ex-servicemen had already established themselves on some sort of career ladder. Jon had no idea where to go or what to do, and the young couple settled down first in London and then in Epsom. After a while Jon founded his own company designing lighting fittings. He worked from an office off Oxford Street, ran ten pair of men, and designed and installed lighting fittings for many large stores and cinemas around the country. He also worked for London Airport, and the U.S.A.A.F bases. Over the next twenty years he became affluent, ran two cars, raised a family in Epsom, gambled and burnt the candle at both ends.
He became a Mason for a short while, but soon found he could not accept all their rituals and ideology. He soon quit, and made a silent vow that he would never belong to a formal or orthodox organisation again. He became involved with people who had needs, needs far more pressing than wants, and from his own pocket or his firms account he often gave a start to someone who needed money. I think that he had been short of everything himself so long in his early days that he could not bear to see people in a similar position. He was so free with his money that he found his business in financial difficulties. He worked even harder to make up the deficit. In spite of this hectic pace of life he managed to find quiet times, mostly very early in the morning, when he thought his thoughts, composed his poetry, wrote his plays and philosophised. He was at peace with himself when he was doing this.
During the sixties he became more and more uneasy with his life style. He yearned for change, change in his circumstances, change in the artificial pressures he was under, change in the nations morals and values, and change in the understanding of spiritual growth, both for himself and his fellow man. He wanted to rid people of their sense of guilt that they appeared to carry when embracing their Christian beliefs. He wanted people to know rather than believe. He wanted statesmen as leaders of this country he so loved, not politicians who put party matters as their first priority. He found himself swept up with commercial competitiveness, he found that materialism was getting to be too important, and he found that many of his friends spoke with the double-think, and he did not know who he could trust. He found he had less and less time for his thoughts and his philosophies to emerge.
So he made a very big decision, and it is this decision that is difficult to explain to other people. He left his old life style, his family, his home in Epsom, and his business concerns. He went to London to live for he thought that there he could work for change better than anywhere. He took only a few clothes, his written work, his pad and pencil and his wits and his firm intention to serve the principles in which he believed. He told me that at this time he was driven by some daemon to search for the real meanings of life, to find values based on truth, and to allow his God, the Supreme Intelligence, to guide him. He had a small amount of money in his private account, this account was the one started in his boxing booth days. He was determined to live as one who had no privileges, he was determined not to take money from the state, and he was determined not to lose his integrity. He told me that such a simple act as not stealing a bottle of milk in the early morning when he was hungry and thirsty put great stress on these principles.
While he was outside he wrote more notes, more anecdotes, more philosophical statements, and kept a sporadic diary of his day, and who he met. I am going to put together the events of this period, calling it "Why he was a dosser. There must be very few dossers who have been outside for such a long period who have the acumen to recount their story. Some of my material is from his notes. The rest is built up from conversations with him over a period of 14 years. He had such a great wish to support the well being of mankind that I hope this story will in some way enhance his wish.
Now we shall see what happens...