Sowerbutt's Lads

The retired writer for the East London Pioneer, who still has the notebook from his early 1960s interview with Jimmy Sowerbutt, said: "Once the weather turned towards the end of January 1947, Jimmy organised his lads to round up all the street boys. The boys had lost their families during the war or their single mums had disappeared. They had taken to the streets rather than going into care or being farmed out as orphans.

"He knew where they were hiding having been a street boy himself. He never knew his father and his mother, only a girl, had run off with a boyfriend. He put some of the boys in the Tabby to help out with the soup kitchen and run messages. Others he put in a bombed-out house that was still standing. Windows were boarded up, the roof was covered and he put some sticks of furniture in. There were about 20 or so street boys in Poplar.
"To keep them out of mischief, he started classes for them, getting various people to help them with reading and writing. He had always been grateful to the wife of a fence he'd worked for teaching him to read and write.
"When the thaw came in March, he boarded them out with good people and put them in school. The street boys respected Jimmy. He always stood in their corner."
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