Frederick Fox Interviewed by Linda Sandino
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NATIONAL LIFE STORIES An Oral History of British Fashion Frederick Fox Interviewed by Linda Sandino C1046/06 This transcript is copyright of the British Library Board. 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 NW1 2DB 020 7412 7404 [email protected] Frederick Fox Page 2 C1046/06/01 F13875A IMPORTANT Access to this interview and transcript is for private research only. 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 020 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 ([email protected]) Frederick Fox Page 3 C1046/06/01 F13875A NATIONAL LIFE STORY COLLECTION INTERVIEW SUMMARY SHEET Title Page Ref. No.: C1046/06/01-10 Playback No.:F13875-6, F14030-1, F14376-7 F14811-2, F15317-8 Collection title: British Fashion Interviewee’s surname: Fox Title: Mr Interviewee’s forenames: Frederick Donald Sex: M Occupation: Milliner Date of birth: 02.04.1931 Mother’s occupation: Father’s occupation: Entrepreneur Date(s) of recording: 15.09.03, 27.10.03, 28.11.03, 03.03.04, 14.06.04 Location of interview: Interviewee’s home? Name of interviewer: Linda Sandino Type of recorder: Marantz CP430 Total no. of tapes: 10 Type of tape: D60 Mono or stereo: Stereo Speed: N/A Noise reduction: Dolby B Original or copy: Original Additional material: Copyright/Clearance: Closed until 5 August 2014 Interviewer’s comments: Frederick Fox Page 4 C1046/06/01 F13875A [F13875 Side A] Your date of birth as well as the place of birth. Right, my full name is Frederick Donald Fox. I was born on the second of April 1931, in Australia. Whereabouts in Australia? In southern New South Wales, on the plains, directly in the middle of New South Wales is a place called Wagga Wagga, that most people have heard about and I was born sixty- eight miles south of Wagga Wagga, in the middle of virtually nowhere. I mean it’s all wheat and sheep, particularly when I was a child in 1931. It has changed since; there’s more irrigation around and so wheat is secondary. It’s now a lot of rice and vineyards; it’s changed enormously. But when I was born it was, there was really, basically it was really mostly sheep rather than wheat. The wheat was there, but biggest, Riverina Wools, one of the best wools in the world. And what did your parents do? My father was, you could only call him an entrepreneur I think, because he had many different hats that he wore. He farmed, we had sheep, we had, he had an agency for bicycles, Singer sewing machines, harvesters… what else? He had a hairdressing salon, he owned the billiard salon and we were one of the first people in the area to have a car and he used to drive people around if they wanted to go – ‘cos hardly anybody had a car – if somebody wanted to go somewhere, he’d drive them there. He was also the local vet. [laughing] And he’d grown up with a father who had been, historically the Foxes are Irish. Great grandfather came from County Galway, early 1800, I think – I’m a bit hazy about the dates because I had such an unusual childhood inasmuch as I didn’t live at home for very long, so I don’t know a lot about, only bits and pieces that I picked up from my brothers and sisters. And early 1800s, I think, he and his brother left County Galway, went to Australia and the day they arrived, they separated. They never saw each other again. And my sister, the next one up from me, went to a college in Wagga Wagga and she came home and she said, ‘Oh it’s very nice, I like it, everybody’s very nice and they Frederick Fox Page 5 C1046/06/01 F13875A all keep on calling me by another name. They keep on calling me Mary, because I look like a Mary Fox that left last year’. Well, it happened that it’s the other side of the family who, we now are in contact with them, so it went you know, like two generations and the other side of the family emerged again. But my, we don’t know why my great grandfather, who was a judge, and his brother left Ireland, but we have a funny feeling that it might have been something to do with gambling debts because he was a terrific gambler, as indeed my whole family are, and horses are the worst part of it. And including my father who was a terrible gambler – the gee gees were you know, magic to him and he just couldn’t resist them. We had horses and his brothers had horses, there were five brothers. All horses, one of them was a trainer and very racing orientated family. Grandfather had horses and – grandfather was quite a character – he was married to a Scottish lady who was a Cameron. Consequently all of us nine children, the second name is a Scottish name, so I’m Frederick Donald, and my younger sister is Jeannie Cameron and it goes all the way through, you know, but some of the names are quite amazing. One of my uncles, I always think had an extraordinary name of Uncle Tress, he was called. His real name was Tressle – Ashton McVeigh Fox. That’s quite a lot to put on any passport. [laughs] What is your grandfather’s first name? My grandfather was James. And your grandmother? My grandmother was… I never knew her. She was dead when I came, so I can’t tell you offhand. She’d been long time dead by the time I came along. Because I’m the second youngest of nine children, so my mother was already, mother was forty when she had me and there was another one after me, she had one more at forty-two. So there were actually ten in all, one child which we never knew about until my sister, three up from me, needed her birth certificate for something and she had to go back to the office, the office in the little town where we lived to get a copy of her birth certificate and she found there were two on it and the other one died at birth and none of the children ever knew anything about it. Her twin? Frederick Fox Page 6 C1046/06/01 F13875A Mm. It’s an extraordinary thing to happen. And my parents had a very romantic meeting. My father married the boss’s daughter. He’d been – it’s difficult to explain exactly how it works to somebody in England – but in Australia, if you, my grandfather had a property – he was also a farmer, he had sheep and wheat and all that stuff – and quite wealthy, he had you know, quite a nice estate… Sorry, what was his name? His name was Elliott and I can’t remember what his first name was, because I only met him once when I was about eighteen months. [laughs] I remember going there, both my grandparents were there and I remember, I mean I finished up looking like them, I’ve got the same white hair – I’m not grey, I’m white now, exactly the same as they were and I’ve seen photographs of them. It’s extraordinary how sort of things go around. And my father was a jackeroo, that’s like being - you’re not a farmhand, you don’t live in the barracks or you don’t live in the place where the farm workers - you are part of the family, you are an equal if you like, so you live in the house where the family live. And he was a jackeroo who came to work on my grandfather’s property and fell in love with my mother. And asked if he could marry her and he was refused. There were three daughters and my mother was a very strong woman and they eloped, they didn’t muck around, they didn’t wait, they just went and my father had already organised himself a job to go to. He managed a sheep station and they went to live on the sheep station and my eldest brother, Jim, was born there and my next sister was born there, so they must have been there for some time before they moved into the town to live so that the children could go to school. What’s your mother’s name? Ruby, Ruby May. And do you know how your maternal grandparents responded to the elopement? They didn’t speak to her for something like five years. Totally ostracised. My mother was very self contained and very supportive to my… they had a wonderful marriage, very happy couple and mother was always in the background. And of course, you know, we Frederick Fox Page 7 C1046/06/01 F13875A were nine children and everybody had to look after the other one. Everybody was in charge and everybody had jobs.