Life as a partial orphan (1914)

Following the death of my mother and my sister May, and the consequent disruption of our lives, the five of us children went to live with Mrs. McAllister an old friend of our parents. We removed to a small house in Cummings Street, and must have spent at least two years there.

By now I had started to attend school - St. Thomas’s School - more commonly known as Sharples School. My two older brothers also attended this school and Jack, the eldest, received a free place at Queens College having won a Mitchell scholarship. He was truly the brainy one.



There are many memories of these school days that still linger with me. It was certainly the largest school in Georgetown and definitely the most outstanding. Sharples school was notorious for turning out the most prominent judges, lawyers, doctors and people of real quality and this was only possible because of the competence and discipline of teachers like De Weever, Blackman, Spooner, Marshall and Weeks, serving under the mastermind of the headmaster, Daniel Sharples. My sister Edna and brother Frankie were still too young to attend school.

My recollections of life at this period were still scant, but I do recall some very salient points. This was about the year 1914.

As there was no pure water supply nor a sewerage disposal system in the city of Georgetown, the water which was drunk was collected from the rainfall on house roofs, and stored in wooden vats in the yard from which the supply was drawn off via stopcocks. This roof washing was run into the vats by means of guttering and pining, and since most of the roofs were constructed of galvanised corrugated sheeting, when it rained, the din created by the tropical downpours was quite something to hear. The final bit of piping which connected roof to vat was placed over a 12 inch square of fine wire mesh, which prevented leaves and other bits of stuff from being washed off the roof into the vat.
These vats created a grave health hazard to the population, as mosquitoes inevitably found their way through openings at the top end, laid their eggs, and bred very profusely.  The Anopheles mosquito was the most unwelcome species, and at that time, malaria was a very prevalent disease.

I can remember the method then employed by the city health service of introducing live little fishes into the vats to consume the eggs and larvae of the mosquitoes. There was, however, piped water in the city of Georgetown, but it was not notable. It was pumped straight from the Lamaha Canal - a man-made canal - and connected to the houses. Usually there were connections to the kitchen sink for dishwashing, to the bathroom for showering and also in the yard at ground level.



The colour of the water was brown, as the Lamaha Canal was an open reservoir into which leaves and vegetable matter fell and decayed, imparting a rich brown colour to the water. It did not pass through any purification system. In times of drought when the stored water supply in the vats ran out, individual attempts would be made to decolourise and purify the Lamaha “pine-water” so as to make it fit for drinking.



There was no sewerage system at this time either, and it was quite common to have to use an outhouse in the yard to dispose of body wastes. The better homes were equipped with flush toilets leading to septic tanks, which required individual attention by the respective owners.

As regards the outhouses, these were just little huts built over a cesspool into which faecal matter was deposited direct from the body. By today’s standards this condition would be quite impossible in a city, but then, it did not seem to bother anyone. When these cesspits became full, arrangements would be made to have the stuff pumped out, and a city excavator would be sent to take care of the situation. The excavator was in reality a tank truck and it carried hoses which ware inserted into the pit. Then a suction pump would be started and the matter drawn out from the pit into the tank-truck. I have seen this done both manually, using a large hand operated pump manned by four to six men, and also by means of the engine power of the truck.

Either way, it was a messy operation especially if the connected hoses (somewhat like oversize hoses of fire engines) developed a leak, or worse, if one of them should burst! It was common practice for the crew of the excavator to use a large smokepot on the top of the vehicle during the operation to help mask the malodorous effluvium. What a contrast today to find Georgetown with a robot sewerage system, and a sophisticated potable water supply!

The rain water vats have long since gone and the disease malaria, completely eradicated. This was also a period of great poverty for my family, and it is truly amazing how we existed on the small pittance we received. We were forced to live on the barest necessities, but fortunately we managed to survive, and even seemed to keep good health. Who knows? - perhaps we survived because of the simplicity of our lives.

As I said, we lived in a small house in Cummings Street and the Queenstown area was not very far away. At that time, however, Queenstown was mostly a series of open fields in which people who owned cows and other cattle would let them graze. Children would go there at Easter time to fly their kites, and having a lot of wide open spaces, boys in particular would go there and play “bat and ball” - a modified children’s version of the game of cricket. I recall quite distinctly how one evening my brother Jack, then a teenager, returned home from one of his frequent visits to these Queenstown playing fields covered with cow dung and smelling quite offensive. It turned out that he was involved in a fight with other boys there, and for ammunition they used heaps of partially sun baked cow excrete, the tops of which would be firm but the underside quite moist, warm and really smelly. Did Jack stink!!

By the time I attained the age of nine, our old guardian, Mrs. McAllister, whom we called “Da-Da”, died, and this brings me to another turning point of my life.

My Mother (Theodora Victorine Gilkes)

I can only remember my mother for a few years. She died before I was seven years old. But the little I do recall of her was that she was beautiful, and a devoted parent.

She was Eurasian. Her father, I was told, was an Indian, from India, who arrived in British Guiana on one of the several ships which brought indentured workers from that sub-continent. this was the policy of replacing labor on the sugar plantations, following the abolition of slavery, as the freed slaves simply refused to work for their former masters any more. This maternal grandfather was bi-lingual, and acted as interpreter for the laborers who came to work for the English owners of the plantations. He married into one of the families from England, and had two children, a boy, Frederick, and my mother, Theodora Victorine.

My mother was my father’s second wife, and I here mention the fact for the very good reason that some time after my mother died, one of the children of my fathers first marriage - my half-sister - played a very important part in my upbringing during the most impressionable years of my life.

As a member of the Salvation Army, my mother was one of its staunchest supporters, and I was often taken to the Central Hall in Alexander Street, just around the corner from our home in Charlotte Street. There is not a great deal more I can remember about my dear mother. She died at the age of thirty-three, leaving six children. I have already enumerated Jack, Edward, May and myself in a previous chapter on early memories. Two other children were born after me, namely a sister, Edna and a brother, Frank. Frank was a baby of six tender months at the time of her demise.

When memory first begins

It starts with recollections of fishing with my older brother, Edward, whom we called Eddie, in the upper East Street canal, opposite to the home where we lived, catching tiny fish called “Selabeh”. At that time I must have been about three years old. There were three older children than I, and I must have been the baby brother of the family.

The eldest child was my brother Jack, then came Edward, followed by a sister, Hay. At that age, my memory only accommodates Eddie, and not the others.., it must have been due to the fact that he took me along on his fishing expeditions that caused the memory registration at that early age. This experience was definitely the earliest in my childhood remembrances.

Then I recall living in a tiny white cottage in Regent Street, quite close to a Police station. It was while living at this Regent Street house that I went to spend a short holiday at my uncle’s place - a little farmstead at Best on the west coast of Demerara, and it was here that I recall seeing Halley’s Comet in 1910, a fiery ball in the sky with a resplendent tail made up of a long line of what looked like stardust.

We later removed to a somewhat larger house in Orange Walk, right close to the Church of Saint Barnabas. While in this home, I experienced my first earthquake. I remember the house shaking, and things falling off shelves, and while I was not scared, it was quite an exciting time for us young children.

This is the first time I could remember my sister May, who led me from the house holding my hand. She was a couple of years my senior, and I could not have been more than four years old at that time.

We must have lived in this house for quite a while, as my memory next takes me to a house in Charlotte Street near to its intersection with Bourda Street. It was a very trim white painted house, and this place will always remain indelibly imprinted in my mind. In it I recall the growing members of an increasing family. I remember meeting friends made by my two elder brothers, and I am beginning to see and understand a definite shape of life taking place. Incidentally, this Charlotte Street house which I revisited sixty-two years later, still stands as it was when I lived in it, with but a few minor alterations.

When I was just over six years old, my mother contracted tuberculosis and died. It stands out in my memory how the health authorities came and fumigated the entire house including all beds and linen, but in spite of this, my sister May who was now very close to me, contracted the disease, (no doubt before my mother died) and passed away just a few months later. This was undoubtedly one of the turning points of my life. My father, who possessed some very biblical names - Hanan Anon Edward Gilkes - was mostly in the interior of the country, where he explored for diamonds. He is credited with being the pioneer of the diamond industry of what was then British Guiana - British Guiana, the country in which this autobiography is principally set has since become an independent territory, and has changed its name to Guyana.

At the time of my mother’s death, my father was certainly in his beloved interior, and since travel in those days was both slow and dangerous, he arrived long after she and my sister were buried.

At this point, I ought to say something about my father and mother concerning their respective origins.