The Stockbroker Era

I left school at 16 in 1959 with an “O” Level in Math & Geography. So I had a choice either work for a stockbroker or work for a travel agency. Either way my mum would benefit, so she didn’t care where I worked.

De Zoete & Gorton

My first job was with a firm of stockbrokers named De Zoete & Gorton, located in Old Broad Street in The City. I was a clerk in the Sold Stock department. My job, along with several other young men, was to hand write the stock transfer sheets, pick up and deliver certificates to other stockbrokers around the City and work in the post room once or twice a week sending out stock information to banks and lawyers in the U.K. It was important to the partners that the name De Zoete & Gorton was on the desk of every important buyer and decision maker first thing in the morning. In those days you could rely on the Royal Mail to deliver the night’s mail by the following morning.

Most days were the same but every two weeks at the end of a trading period there was always a rush to complete the Sold stock transfer certificates. That meant that we had to tediously and carefully write out, in full, the entire name of the company whose stock was being traded. Not too much of a problem with companies like Shell Oil and Imperial Tobacco, but writing out the full name of the Hudson’s Bay company was a challenge. You see the full name in those days was “The Governor and Company of Adventurers of England trading into Hudson’s Bay”. You can imagine how happy we were when the shares changed hands, which in those days seemed quite often. I really had to concentrate. If the name was misspelled it meant re-writing the whole name again, which was just time consuming. The challenge was that if the error was not noticed until after the transfer payment stamp was put on the transfer certificate, then there would be a loss of money because the certificate would have to be rewritten and a new stamp applied. So we had to be careful.

To say that the job was boring after a while is an understatement, but I was young and had no office experience. So to make the job less boring some of us young lads would stay late and play cops and robbers. We used rubber bands with paper clips as ammunition and would then fire them at each other while hiding behind desks and filing cabinets. Why no one lost an eye is beyond me, but it was great fun and the partners never knew.

One evening, in early September, I was working in the post room diligently folding and stuffing envelopes, when I was told to go down and see one of the senior partners, a Mr. Smith. I approached his office and gingerly knocked on the door. Mr. Smith looked up from his desk, peering above his gold rimmed spectacles and spoke. “Ah Ross, I understand you are Jewish.” He stated this as a fact, not a question. Racism in the U.K was still alive and well in the late 50’s and I expected the worst. He continued, “I am a devout Christian and I understand that tonight is the beginning of your Jewish New Year.”, I nodded and said, “Yes sir”. “Well then I expect you to finish now and go home and celebrate, I will inform the post room.”. I was stunned that I could receive such an act of kindness. That a partner of such a prestigious firm would even know that I was a Jew, much less take a somewhat paternal interest in my spiritual well-being, meant a lot to me. That singular act of kindness and generosity formed part of my attitude for life towards anybody who was “different”.

There was a group of us from Stamford Hill working in the City and we would often take the same train home. The trains in those days had separate compartments seating about 12 passengers accessible only through the door situated on either side of the train. This meant that we could all occupy one compartment by ourselves. No other person would dare enter the compartment once they’d seen a dozen teenagers inside.  We were 16 and very immature. During the journeys home we would be playing cowboys and Indians in the train carriage, which would often spill out onto the platform while passengers were loading and unloading. Crazy days!

Most of us worked at the same types of entry level jobs in the stockbrokers’ offices that populated the area around The London Stock Exchange. Every so often we would hear of a new job posting that would be a step up. I was ready to move on, so when I heard about a job at Stoop & Co. I went for it and got it.

Stoop & Company

I was now a clerk in the Bought department. My job was to enter the bought stock into a ledger and then every 2 weeks communicate with a stockjobber and reconcile the accounting for all the stock bought during that trading period. Seemed simple enough but often while trying to find a missing penny, we would uncover much larger errors, so it was an important job and I enjoyed it.

The office manager was Dave Lee. He was a bright, young, smiley kind of guy who saw us as his personal slaves. He often had negative words of praise for me. I was an easy target because I was young and skinny. But I also had a big mouth and that got me into a lot of trouble. Most Monday mornings us “young ‘ens” would relive our weekend’s adventures. But no matter how detailed I was about my adventures, Dave always had a disbelieving negative put down for me. Even knowing that I was relating the truth didn’t help me get over the feeling of inadequacy. But….I had a plan.

One of my best friends, Alan Fox, was looking for a new position and Stoop & Co were looking for a new employee. I gave Alan the low down on the job, he applied and got it. I now had support. From the moment Alan joined the company my “stock” went up. I now had credibility. Alan’s telling of our weekend’s antics would amuse everyone in the main office. More than that Alan gave the distinct impression that he was not one to be messed with. It was a good time at Stoop & Co..

Of course, two friends got up to a certain amount of mischief at work. One time, when it was quiet, we all got a bit giddy and started to make paper signs that would be stuck, using a rolled piece of scotch tape, on the unsuspecting backs of visitors to our office. Signs like “Kick me” or “Just Married”. At first it was silly signs then we graduated to cut-outs of paper men which we stuck on the backs of anyone in the office. On the way down in the elevator we stuck as many paper men as we could on the backs of those in front of us. Outside on our short walk to the train station we saw quite a few of our paper offspring on the backs of bowler hatted men as they trudged towards the station oblivious to the fact that they were brightening up the day of all those whom they passed by. I was 18 years old, going on 4.

As I already mentioned I was a skinny kid. Barely 140lbs and almost 5’ 9”, I was too short to be called a bean pole. I did a lot of swing dancing in those days. We actually called it the “Continental Jive” and I was quite good. So I was never able to put on some weight or really grow any muscle. I really was the kid on the back of the comics who got sand kicked in his face. A Charles Atlas candidate for sure. Alan was also thin, but more muscular than me. He also had a look about him that warned people off. No one was kicking sand in his face, that’s for sure. Nevertheless we both decided to start weight training and joined Rube Martin’s local gym with a bodybuilding program. The first night of training went well and we surprised ourselves and the trainer, who warned us not to overdo it on our first night. But Alan and I were in a hurry. We wanted muscle and we wanted it now. Finally we finished and went home. We would see each other the next morning at work.

I woke up the next morning, got out of bed and suddenly realized that nothing worked. My knees didn’t bend and my arms didn’t bend, at least not without a lot of pain. Oh God, I’d overdone it. I finally managed to get into work walking like a rusty robot. Arms straight and walking with a kind of goose step is the only way I could describe it. I arrived before Alan. Dave Lee was quick to notice my odd gait and smirked knowingly. We had told everyone what we would be doing that previous night. Soon after I arrived Alan walked or should I say goose stepped into the office with his arms out straight looking every bit as uncomfortable as me. Everyone in the office got a good laugh at our discomfort. I think we went to the gym a few times more and that was it for us. There had to be a better way and it wasn’t Charles Atlas, although I don’t know why. Maybe I had the 15 minutes but not the money.

Eventually I tired of Stoop & Co and moved on to a better job at Cohen, deSmitt.

Cohen, deSmitt

As the name implies Cohen, deSmitt was a firm of stockbrokers with a Jewish content. I was hired to work in the dealing box. The dealing box was, as its name implies, a small office just outside the entrance to the London Stock Exchange. It was barely 5’ wide by 10’ long. There was a bank of black telephones attached to the wall and a big board with the names of most of the blue chip stocks written on it.  My job was to update the board with the latest prices and then call the partners back in their offices and brief them on the current activity. I would also call our large institution clients during the day if there was any activity on their holdings. I would also take down the trades called in from our main office and report back when the trades had taken place.

The London Stock Exchange or LSE as it was known had its own terminology which I had to learn. There was a thick book full of terminology to use when quoting price movements. I can’t find any reference to the LSE terminology on the web, but I do remember that it was not easy to learn.

There were slow days and very busy days. When it was busy things went farcically wrong. The partners would come into the box and each one would grab a phone and start talking to their clients. Then in the heat of the moment, they would slam down the phone and run back into the Exchange to quickly execute the buy or sell order. Many times, when they slammed the phone down they would replace the handset on the wrong receiver cutting off another partner in mid-sentence. It was very Fawlty Towers. Of course, it wasn’t immediately obvious to the partner holding the phone, as to what had occurred and he would stand there puzzled. I tried to prevent these things from happening, but there were too many phones and too many people using them. Why we never thought to colour code the phones I’ll never know. I say “we” because the person who was my senior and therefore in charge was also by my side most of the time training me. He was Gerry Bristow. A very good-looking 30 something guy who everyone thought highly of. He was well spoken and very knowledgeable. We got on very well. When things were slow we would create our own comedy routines. One of us would pick up the phone and pretend to call a client like Hambros Bank and report that “Wimpey’s (A large building contractor) is going up (in price) and Otis shares are coming down. Some shipping companies are rising while others are sinking.” Silly stuff, but it kept us amused. The problem was that sometimes I would forget who I was talking to. A partner called to place an order to buy Wimpey’s (also the name of a hamburger chain) and I said “Do you want chips with that?”

Also working out of the dealing box was William Bessant. A 40’ish fellow with a very amiable and likable personality. He was a dealer, which meant he could execute buy and sell orders on behalf of clients. He also had his own clients. Among them was movie star Joan Collins, his cousin.

There was also Esmond Samuels. He was a cousin to Lord Samuels. Esmond was in his 50’s and not married which tells you a lot. He was a dealer and had befriended Gerald Reddington, a partner. Esmond was constantly picking bits of fluff and what not off Gerald’s jacket, much to Gerald’s annoyance. It was funny to see this. Gerald was a good person and tried to mentor me as much as he could. I learned that he eventually left the LSE and became a C of E priest. Never did find out what happened to Esmond.

Captain Edward Burnham was a partner who believed he should have been born a blue-blood, like Esmond. He was a pompous, red faced, chubby individual with white hair who had an affected way of speaking; almost as if he had a plum in his mouth, very much like Wilfrid Hyde-White in My Fair Lady. If you can imagine an overweight Wilfrid Hyde-White, you’ve got the picture. He would pick up the phone and tell his secretary back at the office, in a slow drawl, things like “Well if anybody wants me I’m at the club”. One day he had a temporary working in place of his usual secretary. The Captain, as we called him, picked up the phone and told the temp the usual, “if anybody wants me I’m at the club”, and then we heard “no club you damned fool, not pub, so please hold my calls? No, my calls, not my b…, oh what’s the point”. It was funny then and it still is today.

It was during my time at the dealing box that the Mods & Rockers era began. These were two distinct groups of teenagers dressed in entirely different styles. The Mods wore Italian suits and sported Perry Como haircuts; the Rockers wore leather jackets, jeans and swung key chains. The Mods drove scooters and the Rockers drove motorbikes. There was a lot of rowdiness including name calling and pushing and shoving. That was the extent of it until the newspapers caught hold of the activities and then all hell broke loose across Southern England.

To Be Continued……………..