Arthur Morton, a Bostonian to remember.

Please see http://www.diggersdiary.co.uk/Articles/ArthurParishMorton/Morton_Boston.htm

Arthur Morton was born in 1872 in Boston. He started a mineral water business some time between 1901 and about 1910, as a sideline to a grocers, bakers, and provision merchants business he already owned at 70 Blue Street. By going into the grocery business Arthur was following in the footsteps of his father William, who had a grocers shop on London Road in Boston for several decades up to about 1920 (William was also the landlord of the Black Bull pub, next door to his shop).

Above:
Arthur Morton outside the Blue Street shop, probably about 1909 or 1910, with his delivery cart pulled by his pony ‘Topsy’. Various enamel advertisements can be seen on the walls including Fry's Cocoa, Rowntrees Chocolates, and Colmans Starch.
Arthurs drinks business was entirely for fizzy pop. He used Penny Monsters bottles, stone flagons and 10oz codds. The codds, and possibly the flagons, had his own name on them, but the Monsters bottles were the standard ‘franchised’ type of one pint screw stoppered bottle, embossed ‘Monsters’ but without any proprietors name.

Above:
Arthur (on the right) in the yard of his mineral water business, also in Blue Street, some time in 1913.
Arthur was in the pre – 1914 equivalent of the Territorial Army, having joined while he was still a teenager in the 1890s. He was called up for active service abroad on the 10th September 1914, a month after the war started and by October 1914 (within a year or two of the photograph above being taken) he was on the Western Front with the 7th Division. He was a driver for 105 Battery of XXII Brigade Royal Field Artillery, and between October 1914 and September 1916 he was involved in most of the major British battles of 1914, 1915 and 1916 including 1st Ypres, Neuve Chapelle, Loos, Aubers Ridge, and the Somme.

Above:
Arthur (on the right) in a studio portrait taken in France or Flanders, probably in 1915 or early 1916, along with his best friend of the time ‘Nobby’ Clark (or Clarke).
Arthur was invalided back to England in September or October 1916 after being incapacitated during the Battle of the Somme. He had shell shock (and possibly a head wound), and never fully recovered. Both his mineral water company and his grocers shop were already out of business before he returned to England. In 1917 his wife and children moved from Boston to Grimsby, where Arthur joined them after several months of convalescence at the Lord Derby War Hospital in Warrington, and then at the smaller hospital at Poulton-le-Fylde.
Arthur suffered badly from the effects of shell shock for the rest of his life. For several years he could only cope with quiet and low-intensity work. After spending several months in hospital he returned to his family in Lincolnshire. He managed to find a job as caretaker of the smallpox hospital in the rural setting of Laceby, near Grimsby. Eventually he moved on to other work, but he never again ran his own business. He died in 1937 at the age of 65, two weeks before he was due to retire.

Arthur's Father, William Morton's shop on London Road, Boston, about 1918 - 1920. The taller building immediately to the left is the Black Bull pub, of which William was the landlord for many years. William died in 1920, and his shop was taken over by two of his daughters
(Arthurs sisters).

Description of The Peacock and the Red Lion (1904)

A description of the Peacock and Royal and the Red Lion in 1904 by an American visitor Josephine Tozier.

The Peacock and Royal.

The front is decorated by bright flowers and long trailing vines growing from the window-boxes on the balconies, and above all is a most gorgeous sign of the most gorgeous of birds, from which it takes its name. We ate our comfortable little dinner in the coffee-room……it was nine o'clock before we left the table. We were too tired to explore Boston's winding ways, and, as it was too early for bed, I had this time secured a large front room looking over the market-place, and my sleepy friends soon found entertainment there.

The sound of a twanging banjo, which came from beneath our window, gathered the few stragglers in the market-place into a circle around the door of the Peacock. We could not see the musician from our window, but he broke forth as soon as the audience had gathered into the usual sentimental ballad dear to English ears. Some boys, with dogs at their heels, formed the outside of the meagre crowd, and then from a side street came belated mothers, pushing their babies home in perambulators. Polly says that at no hour in the twenty-four are English streets entirely free from perambulators, and, late as it was, three of these useful carriages joined the circle, the mothers, in true Boston fashion, being unable to resist music. The audience grew larger and the circle wider; the songs were succeeded by dialogues, and coppers rained plentifully into the collector's hand, until a baby set up an opposition concert, and an enterprising dog was encouraged by the noise to fight his four-legged neighbour. During the rumpus which succeeded, the musicians vanished. The dog riot was finally quelled, the babies trundled home, and the market-place in a few minutes was absolutely deserted for the night.

The Red Lion.

The Red Lion Inn, which faces the Narrow Bargate, has a more venerable exterior than the Peacock, but a decidedly decayed interior. It owns to the age of four hundred years, so no wonder that it is neither very clean nor very modern at the present time. It was formerly the property of one of the Boston guilds, and in the inn yard strolling players were wont to perform for the delight of all Boston.
There is still a very stern, solemn, Puritanical look about the dull little Holland-like city, in spite of the numerous houses of entertainment. Some of these rejoice in extraordinary names. There is "The Axe and Cleaver," "The Loggerhead," "The Indian Queen," "The Ram," "The Whale," "The Unicorn," "The Red Cow," "The Blue Lion," and "The Black Bull." They all furnish abundant liquid refreshment, with our favourite "The Rum Puncheon," and the picturesque "Angel." Even the streets have delicious names: "Paradise Lane," and "Pinfold Alley," "Liquor Pond Street" and "Silver Street," "The Worm Gate," "The Bar Gate," Wide, and Narrow, and "Robin Hood's Walk." There is "Pump Square," there is "Fish Toft Road," and in quaint "Spain Lane," in a house since demolished, until she was fourteen years old, lived Jean Ingelow, the writer. Boston is proud of its literary celebrities, and has erected a statue to Herbert Ingram, the founder of the London Illustrated News.