Born in Ipswich in 1920 amid the aftermath of the Great War, Basil has his life turned upside down when he is cruelly parted from his immediate family and raised by his great aunt.

Always a bit of a Scallywag, this is his story, from birth until the beginning of the second world conflict.

All events are true, some amusing, some serious, some tragic.

All of the characters are actual people.

Not simply a biography, but also a social picture of the time.

Taster follows.

1920: It was a warm start to the day, the sixteenth of June 1920, a day that for one person was to be a crude ending but for another would prove to be a joyous beginning.

The rough brick walls of Ipswich prison, with their peeling green and cream paint, were cold to the touch. The hands of the clock on the wall in the governor’s office clicked toward seven o’clock, the gentle chimes reinforcing the statement. The prison was eerily silent, despite holding close to one hundred inmates; they all knew what the new morning brought with it. The very prison itself seemed to be holding its breath.

There came a clatter of regular footsteps. The sound of hobnails clacking on the bare stone flags rebounded from the walls and reverberated along every passageway. Two wardens made their way purposefully down the hallway toward the condemned cell, one confidently swinging a bunch of large steel keys, the other balancing a small tray bearing a breakfast of bacon and eggs and a mug of steaming tea.

One of the keys was noisily thrust into the large keyhole and turned. There was a deep scrape and clunk as the levers of the lock responded to the pressure. The door swung open on rusty, protesting hinges to reveal Frederick Storey sitting, agitated and fidgeting, at a rough wooden table. The warden with the keys took a pace back so that his companion could enter the cell and place the tray in front of Storey, who looked up into the unsympathetic eyes of the warden. He swallowed nervously, and with good reason.

Frederick William Storey was a forty two year old Ipswich tram driver who had been having a relationship with one of the Corporation’s former tram conductresses. Sarah Jane Howard was fifteen years his junior and had left the trams in September 1919 to take up work as a housekeeper to Mr William Kittle, at 133 Camden Road Ipswich, where she lived with her three year old son. In January 1920 Sarah discovered she was pregnant again, presumably by Storey, and when she informed Mr Kittle of her condition, he told her that she would have to leave his employ immediately the baby was born. Sarah was distraught. She would be homeless with two small children which meant the workhouse. She felt that Storey, through his carelessness, had taken from her employment, lodgings and probably her freedom. The terrible prospect of incarceration in a workhouse steeled her, she was determined to force him into contributing to her wellbeing and that of their unborn child and she vowed she would challenge him on the subject when she next saw him.

On Friday the sixth of February, Sarah went out for the evening without informing Mr Kittle where she was going. She was resolved to work something out with Storey, maybe to persuade him to leave his wife and live with her, although deep down she knew that would never happen.

Mr Kittle became anxious when Sarah failed to appear at breakfast on the Saturday morning and his anxiety turned to deep concern when he discovered that her bed had not been slept in. It was not like her at all. He immediately notified the police of her disappearance and began making his own enquiries, which led him in the direction of Storey. Mr Kittle confronted Storey who, while admitting to knowing Sarah, claimed he hadn’t seen her for several days.

Later that day, Saturday the seventh, Sarah’s body was found under a railway bridge in Halifax Lane, close to Maiden Hall allotments, one of which Storey was known to have rented. She had been battered to death.

The police were able to trace Sarah’s movements on the Friday evening with the assistance of several witnesses. Albert Woodley had seen her get on a tram and then alight at the Black Bridge, Wherstead Rd, at around ten past eight that evening. Shortly afterwards he saw Storey in the same location. He claimed he had seen Storey again around an hour later walking towards the town. Constable William Snell, who knew Storey well, had also met him in Wherstead Road at about nine fifteen and they had chatted for ten minutes or so.

Rumours abounded that Storey was indeed the father of Sarah’s unborn child and this gave the police sufficient cause to search his home. There they found the murder weapon, a blood stained hammer, together with items of clothing with blood spatter on them, at the back of a cupboard under the stairs. Storey claimed that the blood on the clothes was in fact his, the result of a bad nose bleed; however it didn’t match his blood type. He could offer no explanation for the bloodstained hammer.

Mr Justice Darling presided over the two day trial at Ipswich Assizes on the twenty eighth and twenty ninth of May 1920. Storey’s wife, Minnie, heavily pregnant with their seventh child, sat silent and stunned in the public gallery as the evidence unfolded. She was flanked by her twenty one year old daughter, Myra, and her eighteen year old son Frederick Robert.

Twelve men, straight and true, took just fifteen minutes to find Storey guilty of murder. Sentence was passed and thus Storey, destined to be the last prisoner to be hanged in Ipswich prison, now awaited his fate.

Shortly before eight o’clock, his bacon and eggs untouched, he was led to an anti-room where Robert Baxter secured his hands behind his back with a leather strap. As the hands of the governor’s clock inched toward the top of the hour he was bustled into the gallows room where John Ellis awaited him. His ankles were swiftly trussed with another leather strap and a hood dragged over his frightened face. The tears began to flow and he blubbered as he felt the rope slide over his head and tighten at the side of his neck.

The minute hand moved inexorably to the twelve and the clock struck the eighth hour of the day. Storey only heard the first chime as John Ellis pulled the lever and he plummeted to oblivion.

Minnie had waited outside the prison, with Myra, Frederick and her seventeen year old daughter Annie, anxiously praying that there would be a last minute reprieve. At the first chime of the nearby church, the very moment Storey hit the bottom of his fall, she let out a heartrending scream and collapsed, weeping uncontrollably, into the arms of her son. Myra and Annie hugged each other, wracked with disbelieving grief.

Over a mile away, in the bedroom of number 19 James Street, there was another, unconnected, cry of pain, swiftly followed by the strong, rapid cry of a new born baby. As one tainted spirit had left this world it had crossed with another innocent spirit arriving. Basil Ernest Double was born at exactly eight o’clock on the sixteenth day of June 1920.