Harry Riddles
Charles Alfred Morris (1898–1983)
Worthing Museum and Art Gallery

Transcript

So the painting that we’re looking at is Harry Riddles painted by Charles Alfred Morris. And it’s painted around 1950s. He’s wearing an amazingly brown sort of suit, but without the suit jacket and that he’s in his collarless white shirt with brown waistcoat and brown trousers reclined on his chair. Yeah, he’s really well dressed. Yes and the quality clothes lasts years, because now they don’t last long.
Well, Harry Riddles looks like a granddad. He reminds me of my granddad relaxing in the chair, hard working and thoughtful about everything and if something goes wrong, he worries. Yeah, I think Harry riddle reminds me of somebody like that.
He was born, on the 15th of February, 1876. He died aged 85, in 1961. Some of the things that I question, and what I try and find out in my research, is why have we got a portrait of Harry Riddles? And in the photograph that I’ve got, there’s a big clue. He’s wearing a flat cap. That’s big, twice as big as his head. He’s got this skinny little head with big ears and a big nose and a white moustache and he’s carrying on, leaning against, a great big garden fork. Yet he’s dressed in a white shirt, collarless white shirt with little stripes on it, pin stripe, waistcoat and working trousers. And he’s next to his lovely wife.

So I wondered why we’ve got a painting of him. In the left side of the photograph there is an enormous silver, trophy bowl and a certificate. So clearly in his later years he did something amazing that was worth being given. An amazing, perhaps retirement gift. Or he’s done something amazing. I can’t see any of the details on the certificate in the photo. Can’t see any of the details if there’s anything engraved on the bowl. But he’s done something amazing and he’s standing very proudly.
He worked as a market gardener in Sompting for Pull and Bury ltd.  So Pull and Bury was a market gardening, company and at that time, Sompting had become an important centre for market gardening, especially fruit farming, due to the expansion of towns like Brighton, Hove and Worthing as holiday resorts. So he growing fruit and veg.

In 1939, in the census is written under his occupation, aged 63. Is written as gardener hard worker. It’s not saying that he that’s his job. His job is a hard worker. That’s saying that he the person is a hard worker. And for that to come through on a census when nobody else has got any anything written about them, that’s quite unusual.
So he married in 1920, Mary-Anne Kale and they married in Sompting, and they lived together into the 80s. And it doesn’t look like they had any children. It means the happy couple. Yeah, less stress.  When you see some of those old people, old photos, I don’t get it with this one, but sometimes when you see old people’s photos, you feel that they’re in God’s waiting room. But the point is, he’s not.  No, this is positive, that’s what I’m trying to say.  Oh, look at the colour of his arms to compared to his face. It’s because he’s been working outside in the garden. And because these arms, your arms get brown and more than the rest of your body because your arms are everywhere. But his face is hidden probably by his enormous hat. That’s when he kept the sun off his face.