Storms in a tea cup

SURROUNDED by scaffolding and demolition as the revamp of the town's 113-year-old railway station goes on, spared from being uprooted in the upheaval is the much-loved Blackburn institution that leans up against it - the Cabin caf on the Boulevard.

But though owner Sandra Hague, who has run the open-all-hours diner for the past eight years, has been assured the Cabin is set to come through the redevelopment unscathed, it's a place that more than once has to fight against change and officialdom in order to keep to keep the tea flowing.

The cabin - since succeeded by two other similar structures on the spot - was in 1966 targeted for closure by the town council on health grounds. But envy over its wooing the corporation's busmen away from the council's own canteen seems also to have inspired the move.

Back then, it was open from six o'clock in the morning until 10 pm every day of the year and lots of the 5,000 cups of tea that then proprietor Jim Addison served each week were drunk by transport workers - mostly taxi drivers and busmen - even though the crews employed by the council had their own rates-subsidised canteen in nearby Railway Road and those of Ribble Motors had one at the company's offices somewhat further away at now-vanished Foundry Hill.

But apart from claiming that the caf was unhygienic, the council maintained that Jim's business had no legal right to be there in any case. "One thing is certain - he cannot stay where he is at present," insisted deputy leader Councillor Tom Taylor, a member of the civic development committee which voted for the cabin's removal.

The busmen went ballistic - up to 500 Ribble and Blackburn Transport drivers and conductors were among the cabin's customers. They dropped off a huge petition at the town hall. "There will be a revolution if they close the cabin," warned a taxi-driver who signed. The council backed off. But in initial response, council leader Sir George Eddie complained at the corporation's crews sticking up for 64-year-old Jim and gave a clue as to why, in addition to health conditions, the town hall wanted his place pulled down. "There is something wrong here. We subsidise their canteen to the tune of £2,000 a year," the alderman groused.

Yet, the cabin was their favourite stop because it was so handy and always available - pouring its first cuppa long before the busmen's canteens opened for the day and all throughout Sunday when they were closed altogether - and also because, even when theirs was open, the Ribble crews had not time during their ten-minute breaks to get from the Boulevard to Foundry Hill and back.

In fact, it was the inconvenient location of the Ribble staff canteen that seems to have given birth to the business in the first place - in the form of an open-air tea trolley which some long-time cabin customers, like retired lorry driver Ken Dillion, a seven-days-a-week regular since 1952, believe first brewed up in the late 1930s.

However, it was back in 1951 that the enterprising Alf Aspin - pictured here in 1954 serving a bunch of Ribble men - laid the foundations for the town's renowned refreshment refuge . . . and was promptly pitched into its first fight with officialdom.

Equipped with no more than a small trolley and a Primus stove and standing in all weathers up against the walls of the Star and Garter pub, Alf sold cups of tea at two old pence a time - for which, he was warned, he could go to jail. For in the harsh era of post-war austerity, tea was still strictly rationed and Ministry of Food officials told him he could be locked up for selling it - but astute Alf argued that his tea was free and that the tuppenny tariff was simply a service charge.

The MoF men accepted the explanation and granted him a permit for tea, sugar and butter lasting three months at a time - a development that encouraged him to splash out on replacing his trolley in 1952 with the caravan that he bought from two Blackburn chaps who had built it in order to serve food to the crowds at the Preston Guild celebrations that year and had their plans dashed by being unable to obtain a precious food permit.

Even so, this improvement did not come with proper plumbing and Alf had to bring in water by bucket from the nearby garage of well-known taxi proprietor Syd Smith and his premises, still known as 'Alf's Tea Trolley,' were only permitted to serve transport workers.

In 1954, Alf sold out to a taxi-driver and later moved to Wrexham. But though the business he started still thrives in spite of adversity, it is just 35 years ago that the one belonging to his helper, taxi-boss Syd, collapsed . . . literally. His Station Garage premises - virtually a second home for almost 50 years for the veteran cabman who worked seven days a week from early morning until late at night - were pulled down because they were unsafe.

That was something that forcibly struck 77-year-old Syd a few months before when one of its roof beams fell on him. The 10ft-long timber put him in hospital, but he reckoned his life was saved by the bowler hat that was his lifelong "trade mark" - and led a Stockport hat maker offering him a made-to-measure replacement in return for his flattened "crash helmet" which they wanted to put on display as an advertisement. Widower Syd soldiered on until he was 92, but did not go in his coffin to the cemetery by motor - he was borne there on a horse-drawn dray in 1978, in recognition by Blackburn brewers Daniel Thwaites of his visiting their stables virtually every day to feed tit-bits to their famous shires.

Chinese puzzle of a death-defying magician

AN intriguing echo to a bang that shook showbiz 81 years ago - when top conjuror Chung Ling Soo died after being shot on stage as his bullet-defying trick misfired - comes to Looking Back today via a Darwen bookshop.

It's a claim that the 'Chinaman'- still so famous that he remains among the top 10 all-time-great magicians in an international poll on the Internet - was from not from Orient, but actually hailed from the East . . . of Lancashire.

An article recalling some of the old time variety's most memorable turns, unearthed by Tony Burke, proprietor of Tony's Books in Darwen's Bridge Street in an eight year old magazine, categorically states that the ill-fated magician's greatest illusion was to pass himself off as Chinese when he was really one William Ellsworth Robinson whose father was a coal-miner from Blackburn. "All his knowledge about China and the Chinese language had been acquired through frequent visits to the Chinatown area of Liverpool! And not only that - his wife Suee Seen's real name was Dot!" it states.

Alas, Looking Back, seeking substantiation from John Livingstone, the author of this claim, finds that he has done a vanishing act - possibly joining Chung Ling Soo on ' the other side,' the magazine publishers believe.

But if the fascinating Mr Robinson was from hereabouts, the Northern Daily Telegraph certainly did not mention it when it carried the story of his death in March, 1918, after he was fatally plugged on stage before 3,000 people packing the Wood Green Empire, one of London's most popular music halls.

Later, when it carried reports of the inquest into his death - which a Metropolitan Police gun expert revealed was caused by the 'faked mechanism' in the gun his assistant fired at him having become defective after years of wear, causing it to fire both the live and blank charges in it - it still gave no clue as to Robinson's roots.

But most biographies say that he was an American, so how might the curious connection with our region have come about?

One explanation, according to Blackburn magician and school teacher Brian Lead, of the town's long-established Modern Mystic League conjurors' society, is that Chung had a workshop at Bolton where he built stored and manufactured his props while on the northern music hall circuit.

But does any reader have a better explanation as to why this old-time illusionist is linked with Blackburn?

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.