Percy Savage Interviewed by Linda Sandino: Full Transcript of the Interview

IN PARTNERSHIP WITH AN ORAL HISTORY OF BRITISH FASHION Percy Savage Interviewed by Linda Sandino C1046/09 IMPORTANT Please refer to the Oral History curators at the British Library prior to any publication or broadcast from this document. Oral History The British Library 96 Euston Road London NW1 2DB United Kingdom +44 [0]20 7412 7404 [email protected] Every effort is made to ensure the accuracy of this transcript, however no transcript is an exact translation of the spoken word, and this document is intended to be a guide to the original recording, not replace it. Should you find any errors please inform the Oral History curators. THE NATIONAL LIFE STORY COLLECTION INTERVIEW SUMMARY SHEET Ref. No.: C1046/09 Playback No.: F15198-99; F15388-90; F15531-35; F15591-92 Collection title: An Oral History of British Fashion Interviewee’s surname: Savage Title: Mr Interviewee’s forenames: Percy Sex: Occupation: Date of birth: 12.10.1926 Mother’s occupation: Father’s occupation: Date(s) of recording: 04.06.2004; 11.06.2004; 02.07.2004; 09.07.2004; 16.07.2004 Location of interview: Name of interviewer: Linda Sandino Type of recorder: Marantz Total no. of tapes: 12 Type of tape: C60 Mono or stereo: stereo Speed: Noise reduction: Original or copy: original Additional material: Copyright/Clearance: Interview is open. Copyright of BL Interviewer’s comments: Percy Savage Page 1 C1046/09 Tape 1 Side A (part 1) Tape 1 Side A [part 1] .....to plug it in? No we don’t. Not unless something goes wrong. [inaudible] see well enough, because I can put the [inaudible] light on, if you like? Yes, no, lovely, lovely, thank you. Could I ask you to tell me your full name and... Yes, the name is Donald Percival Savage. And I was born, Ipswich, which is a town outside of Brisbane, which is the capital of Queensland in Australia. Thank you. What sort of, what sort of place was Ipswich? It was very much a sort of industrial town on the banks of the river, which I think eventually became a tributary to the Brisbane River, and was a... Both my mother and father were born there, and they met after the First World War, when my father was in the Army and my mother’s father was in the Army, so they met on the return trip from Europe to Australia. And I think that as they came from the same town, it was very sort of natural that they should meet up again back in Ipswich, and that’s how my mother and father met. And then they were married in 1924, and I was born in 1926. And they went, she went back to... My father had bought a farm miles away from anywhere, so she went back to her home town to have the baby. And where was the farm? Oh the farm was in a place called Brookfield, which was in what is called the Greater Brisbane Area, but it was actually very much in the bush, because Brisbane was only a small town, and we were a good thirty-five miles from the town, which was all a wooded area and farms, and then eventually you got into the town and there was only, Brisbane was only a small town then. But, today the Brookfield area where I was born is one of the very upper class, rich suburbs now. No longer a farming area. Percy Savage Page 2 C1046/09 Tape 1 Side A (part 1) And, can you remember the house that you grew up in? Yes, it was a typical Australian house in that it was built on stilts, built on the side of a hill, side of a mountain, and, and there were...I think that was basically because of the, it gave greater air-conditioning, and it was, they had no such thing as....you just, for air-conditioning you left the windows open and a draught came through, so, this way you had air circulating around the entire house. The house was entirely surrounded by a big veranda, big wide veranda, which also helped with the climate. And people lived up on the first...on the ground floor, which was raised about twelve feet above the ground at one side of the house, and at the back, only about six feet above the ground. And do you have any sort of images of, of your life growing up? Childhood there? Mm. Yes. Eventually, eventually... We originally had education by correspondence, that’s to say that they used to send exam papers and material to my mother and she would teach the children. I had two other sisters. And eventually, I think my father received a letter from a local school which was the other side of the mountain saying that if they didn’t send their children they’d have to close the school. So all three children were packed off to school. And I actually went to school, I think at about the age of ten. And my other sister was then, she would have been eight and the other one would have been six. So all three of them, the two of them had ponies and I used to walk on foot and take them up the hill and down the other side, and go to school, and then come back in the evening. It was a long trek to get to school. So how long was it? Oh it took a good hour to, to cross, you know, a good hour walking to school, and a good hour back again, at least. Percy Savage Page 3 C1046/09 Tape 1 Side A (part 1) And through, through woods and...? Oh through, through forests and woods, yes. Mm. What...can you just, for the purposes of the tape, tell me your parents’ names? Well my father was called Percival Savage, Percival James, and my mother was called Marjorie Agnes. And, she was of English origin, and my father was of Scottish and Irish, Northern Irish origin, from Enniskillen. And they’d been out there for some... My father, my father was born in Australia; my mother was born in Australia, but her father was born in Stafford, Staffordshire in England. And did you know your grandparents? Oh yes, we used to stay with them at Christmas time, and other holiday times, and so on. Oh they were lovely people. Could you describe them? My mother’s father was a chemist, he was a... And my father’s father was a, he had originally started as a young man as a gold miner, and then made a lot of money so he bought a lot of land, and on that land he found, they found coal, so it became quite a rich area. And he, he had always been all his life, after being...he learnt the wrought iron business, and he used to make railings and balconies for houses, and railings for fences, and staircases, and, things like that. And I remember vividly he had a forge where he used to shoe the horses, because the only transport they had in those days were sulkies and carts and horses, so... Eventually my father bought a little car. But he also had a huge great wagon for taking produce to the markets, when he had to cut the bunches of bananas and take them into the markets, and I used to go in with him as a child when he went to market. Because he had about 2,000 acres of land, and, about 100 acres of that was all bananas, and then there was another 100-odd acres of pawpaws and pineapples, and then they had another fruit they called custard fruit which was a delicious fruit that was, you know... And then we had a few cows, and, a few chickens and turkeys and ducks and things in the farmyard. I used to milk the Percy Savage Page 4 C1046/09 Tape 1 Side A (part 1) cows every morning, and then, what they call separate the milk, you pour the milk into a machine and turn a handle and that would separate the cream, which would come out one spout, and the milk which would come out of another spout. And then, ferment the milk to make it into curds to feed to the chickens. Oh there was a lot of interesting farm work to do. And then I went to work originally, after that I went out to work on the plantation and help with the farming. So how...how many other people were involved on the farm? There were...this...this was during the war, and we had some prisoners of war, we had, I remember we had two Russian prisoners of war, and two German boys, had been in, you know, imprisoned in Australia, and then they put them out to work on the farms, because they needed then practically all the labour they could find, all the men to join the Army, so there was nobody left to work anywhere, so they took the prisoners out of the internment camps and gave them to the farms to let them work. And what was that like, having...? Oh it was... I didn’t realise exactly what prisoners were; they were very nice young men, and they spoke English very well. But... And then after that I went to a secondary school, from going to the primary school with my sisters I went to a secondary school, back in Ipswich, which was what was called the Ipswich Boys’ Grammar School, which was a very grand establishment.

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