The Times Great Letters: A century of notable correspondence. James Owen

on a more adequate scale?

      Yours, etc.,

      H. S. POWELL-JONES

      Secretary, Telephone Development Association

       * * * * * * *

      When London was Noisy

      23 September 1929

      Sir, What is all this noise about noise? Only a few genuine antiques like myself remember what London was like when there were no quiet motor cars running on wood or asphalt pavements, and when all the traffic was drawn with iron tires running on either stone setts or macadam. If you want to know what the noise was like in those days you have to go to the docks or to one of those stone paved streets in a factory town and hear the horse-drawn lorries.

      In spite of the motor-omnibuses which make most of the noise, you can talk going along Piccadilly. When I was a boy you could not, because the crashing of the hooves and the rattling of the iron tires made hearing impossible. And in those times on a wet day the windows of the shops in Bond Street were splashed waist-high with mud squirted out of the puddles by the air compressed by the hollow hooves of the horses. People have forgotten all those unpleasantnesses.

      And the congestion in the streets was just about as bad. A hansom for two took up more room on the road than the biggest Rolls-Royce. And a pair-horse carriage cumbered the earth more than does a motor-omnibus. The old horse-omnibuses took up nearly as much room as a motor-lorry and trailer. The shouting of drivers and cracking of whips and whistling for cabs made far more noise than does the mild tooting of motor horns to-day. Let us thank Heaven that we are quit of those bad old times.

      Yours faithfully,

      C. G. GREY

      newspaper of record

      1930–39

      The constant Reader

      12 January 1935

      Sir, A letter in The Times of 4 January signed “A Forty Years’ Reader” tempts me to tell you what has led to my having read The Times for over 74 years. In October 1857, at Florence, my father called me into his study and said: “My boy, circumstances beyond my control oblige us to remain in Italy for some years. I want you to be an English boy and to grow into an Englishman. What will do that more than anything else and teach you all about England will be reading The Times. Every morning after breakfast you shall read me one or two paragraphs.” I was filled with pride, and the one or two soon became a goodly number.