Jim Critchley... the biker

 James Crithcley, always known as Jim was the fourth child of Mary Ellen and James Critchley. Known to Mollie as "Granny's uncle Jim" he was the only one of three Critchley brothers to survive and return to St Helens when he was demobbed at the end of the first World War. At a guess this picture was taken by my grandfather when his brother bought a new motorbike. I will put the picture of him on the old one, which I guess my grandfather also took, in the same place and the same location at the end of the Knowsley Road terraced houses, below. Mollie writes:

     "James never married, He was in charge of the bakery side of the family business when his father died. During the 1914-1918 war he served in India, an experience he never forgot – as his family were well aware the following years! He must have had malaria, because from time to time there would be a recurrence. Fond of opera, he had a large record collection as well as a collection of ivory carvings. He was very generous, even treating my cousin and me to a holiday in the Isle of Man and frequently buying ornaments and curios for the house. In his retirement, he used to sail to the Isle of Man from Liverpool twice a week in the season and would meet retired sailors and other sea-loving friends on the boat."

    I also have my father's memories of his uncle Jim Critchley:" It was about my tenth Birthday that I finally conceded that other people might also be "real". An uncle from St Helens had been staying with us, a large rough handsome man of about fifty, who wore tweed suits, smoked a pipe and donned a cloth cap. Uncle Jim was a rogue in the family. He drank bottled stout and talked over-loud. he was also notorious for being "skint". – fleecing off brothers and sisters and in-laws with a hearty contempt for anything "posh". for some reason, Uncle Jim took to me and we became, during that week, good friends, to the dismay, I suspect, of my disapproving parents. At the end of the week,  on a Saturday, he went home, unlamented. Next day was my Birthday, and I awoke to find that Uncle Jim had left behind for me a beautiful new bicycle, not a fairy cycle, nor one for a fully grown boy, but it had a cross bar, pneumatic tyres, a pump, lamp and bell. I took it out into the street and stayed sitting on its enchanting little saddle thinking – "This is ten. This is what it feels like to be ten and I shall never forget this moment ever." One consequence was that I felt so confident of my own identity that I was afterwards prepared to allow that others, too, could be "real" – especially Uncle Jim. But all I can remember now is pride in my new bicycle, the scent of my father's roses, admiration (as I hoped) for my bicycle of a little girl across the road, and an intense preoccupation with what it felt like to be ten. I think the clicking of the school clock was still haunting me with the swift passage of time."

Below are pictures of Jim Critchley on his old bike, and another picture of Jim on a bike on a trip to the Lake District.