Daring Hearts by Various

Author:Various [Various]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-904733-78-5
Publisher: QueenSpark Books
Published: 2015-10-02T00:00:00+00:00

Contemporary advertisement.

HARRY: We'd always start the evening in the 42 Club. It was more like a party than a club in there. Everyone would circulate, chatting, chatting, chatting, hearing all the gossip. It was roaring in the 42 Club. There wasn't any television in those days. We had to make our own entertainment.

“There'd be a scream at the front door, 'We're being raided girls!' And of course everybody would tear in every direction, and the police would be after them and then all of a sudden they'd say 'The police are in the toilets!'. BUCK ”

GRANT: I can remember one Saturday night coming out of the 42 Club and it was quite late because they'd had an extension, and one great big, very tough butch lesbian and her better half who was a very lady-like little thing, we were walking along — there used to be in those days a taxi-rank at the bottom of West Street — and we were walking round there to get the taxi. Of course, it was near Chatfield's and some very leery sailors came out and sent me up very considerably, and this big toughy lesbian went over to the sailor. She said 'What did you say?' He said, 'Yeurgh .. you know, very drunk. She was very tall and very tough. He was quite short. She picked him up off the ground and said 'If I get another peep from you, I'll put you straight through that window. Now fuck off!' He ran. She picked him up, just like that, and held him in the air! They were, they were tough, they were big girls. You didn't cross them.

Chatfield's, in the front on West Street, was so raucous and so loud and to some people's taste so disgusting, they would walk down and say, 'How horrible!' Other people would say, 'Let's go in and look at it, let's see.' Everybody was smoking, you couldn't see across the place for smoke. It was low, but it was quite fun. It always got very crowded. There were two bars, one was Dennis's bar, Dennis ran it, he was gay and everybody knew Dennis. The other bar was mainly the entertainment side. You got a mixture of people, I mean it was a very rough bar, there was a criminal element, you got crooks in there, not very nice people but the police never closed it down because, if they wanted to look for somebody, they would always go into Chatfield's.

A lot of the clientele were sailors, but of course in sailors uniform, so they were quite easy to spot, and invariably, if they came over from Pompey for the weekend, they had no accommodation. So the great thing was, anybody who had a flat or a house with a floorspace, would probably go down to Chatfield's and chat up a sailor and take him home for the weekend. The sailor was satisfied! The Brightonian was satisfied! And everybody enjoyed it.

“It was quite a den of iniquity in Chatfield's, you'd get all the wide boys and the prostitutes.

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