Cooked up Story? Clive Banks March 2022
This article was inspired by the discovery of an old newspaper cutting, dating from the post Second World War period, probably from the Bath Chronicle. It features an old Box character, Charlie Cook, a relative of mine.
My mother's first cousin Muriel (nee Vezey) married Charles Cook fairly late in her middle age. She was the daughter of William and Mabel Vezey who had been born on 15 September 1906. Her father was a butcher and the family lived at 2 Elmsleigh Villas on the Bath Road. This was her second marriage, having married John Hicks at Islington, London where she worked as a midwife. John was 20 years older than Muriel and worked as a jobbing gardener in 1939. Muriel's daughter Elizabeth (Sally) Hicks followed her mother into the medical profession and was a consultant pathologist.[1] Sally's work took her away from the area but she retired to Bath where she died in 2019. I know that she regarded Box as her spiritual home and often visited my mother at The Bassetts and got to know the community there.
My mother's first cousin Muriel (nee Vezey) married Charles Cook fairly late in her middle age. She was the daughter of William and Mabel Vezey who had been born on 15 September 1906. Her father was a butcher and the family lived at 2 Elmsleigh Villas on the Bath Road. This was her second marriage, having married John Hicks at Islington, London where she worked as a midwife. John was 20 years older than Muriel and worked as a jobbing gardener in 1939. Muriel's daughter Elizabeth (Sally) Hicks followed her mother into the medical profession and was a consultant pathologist.[1] Sally's work took her away from the area but she retired to Bath where she died in 2019. I know that she regarded Box as her spiritual home and often visited my mother at The Bassetts and got to know the community there.
Muriel and Charlie centre stage, possibly on a works' event. Charlie in the white shirt with the crooked tie, next to Muriel with the handbag on her arm (courtesy Clive Banks)
After his death Muriel moved back to the West Country and, at the time of her wedding to Charles Cook at Bathavon in 1954, she was a long-time widow. I believe she was a few years older than him. It seemed a rather unlikely match in some ways but they shared a similar lively sense of humour. They had both been nurses and presumably understood the stresses and rewards of that profession. An abiding memory of Muriel occurred when we were travelling by car to Box cemetery after my 100-year-old grandmother's funeral in 1979. Muriel said poignantly We are the older generation now. I remember making the obvious response, She kept you waiting a long time!
Left to right: Joyce Banks, Muriel Cook, Eugenie Sarah Vezey and Charlie Cook picnicking at Southsea (photo courtesy Clive Banks)
Charlie was always a bit of a character but it seemed that as he got older his eccentricity became more pronounced. As a boy,
I recall a rather terrifying outing when he drove my mother, my grandmother, aunt Muriel and me to Southsea at breakneck speed in his old car. Some snapshots of that day taken with my box Brownie camera still survive. It seemed that his time dealing with mentally disturbed people at Roundway Hospital, Devizes, had affected him. By this time, I had moved away from Box and saw little of him. Muriel and Charles lived at Rockleigh Villas, Devizes Road, and it seems that he frequently took advantage of the hospitality of the Queens Head and the Bear Inn.
The Alleged Assault
The newspaper article is rather bizarre and some members of my family were sceptical about the truth of the story. They regarded it as rather concocted or embellished and the article certainly raises several questions. Why did Charlie park on the Bath Road at Shockerwick? What was the alleged mugger doing at that rather remote spot? Why did he ask to go to an unspecified next town? How did Charlie manage to come up with such a detailed description of the man and his attire whilst he was presumably sitting in his car, right down to the medallion, the rings on his right hand and even the black pointed shoes with chain type buckles"? Any person who had been punched on the nose would normally have been too shocked and watery eyed to take in so much detail. Nevertheless, the police seemed to have taken it sufficiently seriously to have alerted neighbouring forces who made checks as far as Newbury! Why did they stop at Newbury?
One can't help suspecting an alternative scenario. Maybe he pulled up at Shockerwick to attend to a call of nature. Perhaps he acquired the injury to his nose on a branch whilst seeking a suitable site for the purpose. Possibly he invented the story to account for the cut on his nose and it acquired a momentum of its own which got out of control and the police came to be involved. Perhaps it was all an invention, although a very imaginative one, and it was just a beer injury obtained somewhere else. Perhaps even, it was entirely true.
I recall a rather terrifying outing when he drove my mother, my grandmother, aunt Muriel and me to Southsea at breakneck speed in his old car. Some snapshots of that day taken with my box Brownie camera still survive. It seemed that his time dealing with mentally disturbed people at Roundway Hospital, Devizes, had affected him. By this time, I had moved away from Box and saw little of him. Muriel and Charles lived at Rockleigh Villas, Devizes Road, and it seems that he frequently took advantage of the hospitality of the Queens Head and the Bear Inn.
The Alleged Assault
The newspaper article is rather bizarre and some members of my family were sceptical about the truth of the story. They regarded it as rather concocted or embellished and the article certainly raises several questions. Why did Charlie park on the Bath Road at Shockerwick? What was the alleged mugger doing at that rather remote spot? Why did he ask to go to an unspecified next town? How did Charlie manage to come up with such a detailed description of the man and his attire whilst he was presumably sitting in his car, right down to the medallion, the rings on his right hand and even the black pointed shoes with chain type buckles"? Any person who had been punched on the nose would normally have been too shocked and watery eyed to take in so much detail. Nevertheless, the police seemed to have taken it sufficiently seriously to have alerted neighbouring forces who made checks as far as Newbury! Why did they stop at Newbury?
One can't help suspecting an alternative scenario. Maybe he pulled up at Shockerwick to attend to a call of nature. Perhaps he acquired the injury to his nose on a branch whilst seeking a suitable site for the purpose. Possibly he invented the story to account for the cut on his nose and it acquired a momentum of its own which got out of control and the police came to be involved. Perhaps it was all an invention, although a very imaginative one, and it was just a beer injury obtained somewhere else. Perhaps even, it was entirely true.
It is difficult - almost impossible - to fully understand other people’s thinking. Some people don’t like the image they present to others and try to embellish their persona with a reconstructed past or imagined incidents, which sometimes seem to be real. We all do it when old photographs become more real than the memory of events. Of course, everyone likes to think of themselves as “normal”, yet we all do things that others find unusual or odd.