EXTRACTS: The Art of Denis McLoughlin © 2013 The Book Palace (272 PAGES in Full edition)

16 quarters for this menagerie. Having all these forms of life meant shows could be arranged during the summer. I made notices in purple ink, from which one could print about twenty copies on the old gelatine mixture and these, with the aid of a couple of pals, “Jiggle” and Emmett, were pinned to the telegraph poles over a range of four or five streets. This meant we got a crowd of grotty little horrors paying their penny entry fee (wasn’t all profit as we gave them all a glass of home-made lemonade). Any troublemakers were easily ejected by waving the largest snake under their nose. Five feet of snake might not be much, but to a kid they probably looked enormous. Found by accident that snakes will thread in and out of a ladder-backed chair so I made a small ladder and proclaimed that we had trained the snake to climb up or down it. After the show was over we usually had enough lolly to split three ways (me, “Jiggle” and Emmett - Colin was a mite young to take an active role at this stage) and this meant that the movies, sweets, and fish and chips on the way home, was our reward. At the age of around thirteen, I was bought a hand-cranked movie pro- jector and, after buying a few films, one of which was a Laurel and Hardy two-reeler, winter shows could be held in the back kitchen. Entrance fee one old penny, just the same as the animal and reptile shows, as we never had inflation, and the usual little horrors queued to come. Shows lasted about two hours as hand cranking a two-reeler with the odd breakdown took all of this time. Scratching the emulsion from odd lengths of film and drawing adds on the blanks meant an interval could be managed for the usual glass of lemonade. Colin was now old enough to take part and get a small cut of the take. Left school in 1932 and started work at Ward & Copley of Oxford Road, Manchester (head office was at Leeds). Ten bob (fifty pence) a week. Look- ing back, I reckon I must have been subsidised by Ma and Pa for it seemed to go a long way, as there were rail fares and lunches to be bought. Staff consisted of me, Albert E. Harris, the manager, Annie Hecht and Elizabeth Watt Tinker, and James Higson, the office boy. Harris, Hecht and Tinker ABOVE: McLoughlin’s parents and his father’s business card. ABOVE RIGHT: The “Inseparables”, Denis and younger brother Colin.