October 12th: Today's Feature - Joe Clough
- webbworks333
- Oct 11
- 5 min read
October 12th
Joe Clough was born in Jamaica in 1887 and orphaned at an early age. He became the first Black bus driver of a London motorbus.
As a boy, he was employed by a Scottish doctor, Dr R C White, to look after his polo ponies. In 1905 while they were returning from a dance at the governor’s house in Kingston, they had a conversation that was to change Clough’s life. Dr White asked him, ‘How would you like to go to England?’ ‘Well,’ replied Clough, ‘I’d like that very much’. He was 18 years old.
In winter 1906 Clough came over to Britain as White’s servant and companion. He would have needed the brand new warm underwear he was wearing when he landed in Bristol. The first things Clough noticed were the trees. On remarking, ‘Dr White, why are there so many dead trees about?’ he was told that it was winter. Clough commented later, ‘We don’t have trees like that in Jamaica, I’d never seen anything like it before.’ He was never to see his old home again.
When Clough arrived in London, he drove Dr White around town in his coach and horses. However, the doctor was keen to try out the new motorcars, which were becoming popular; so Clough learnt to drive and became the doctor’s chauffeur.
Clough remembered later that, after he had left the doctor’s employ, the White would entertain him in the drawing room, treating him as an equal in spite of the attitudes of the day. ‘The doctor was a lovely man. After I left him, I could go to see him, go up to the front door, knock, saying “Is the doctor in?” He treated us just the same as you and me talking together, no nose in the air.’
In 1910, Clough applied to work at London General Omnibus Company (L.G.O.C). He became a spare driver. He passed his bus driving test and started driving a number 11 B.-type bus between Liverpool Street and Wormwood Scrubs. Joe Clough was the first Black London bus driver.
This was also the year that he began taking his wife-to-be on weekly visits to the music hall. The daughter of a local publican, Margaret worked as a domestic servant. She and Joe married in 1911, and enjoyed a happy married life together. Margaret was always prepared to support her husband in the face of racism. Clough wanted to rise above it, however, and met people’s stares and comments by raising his hat and wishing the person a good day.
When the First World War started, Clough wanted to join up to help defend his adopted country. He enlisted in the Army Service Corps based at Kempston barracks in 1915. He drove a field ambulance for four years in Ypres on the Western Front, the area that saw some of the bloodiest battles.
After the war in 1919 Joe, his wife and two daughters moved to Bedford. He was almost the only Black inhabitant there until after the Second World War. He first worked for the National Omnibus Company, before buying his own taxi in 1949.
Joe died in 1976 at the age of 91. In the last decade of his life he had become a local celebrity thanks to a book, ‘The Un-melting Pot’ by John Brown, published in 1970, which featured a chapter about Joe and Margaret Clough. Many local people remember him with great affection.
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The London Transport Museum gives this account:
London bus driver
After a stint working as a roller skate fitter at Hackney roller skating rink, Joe turned his driving experience to buses. In 1910 he joined the London General Omnibus Company (LGOC), the largest bus operation in London. Joe trained at Shepherd’s Bush garage, being among the first drivers to be trained to drive the new motor buses.
Joe experienced racism during his life and career. In a later 1970 newspaper article, he recalled: ‘The only time I had trouble in London I had a boy used to call after me. He called me “Blackie”, and one night I stopped him and slapped him, and he said, “What you done that for?”. I said, “Where I come from we don’t call after people, especially your elders. It is very rude.” And he didn’t do it again.’
After completing his training, Joe became a spare driver, driving different routes when needed. He then became a regular driver on bus route 11, operating between Liverpool Street and Wormwood Scrubs. A photograph captures Joe in his driver’s uniform standing immediately alongside the open cab of his B type bus, the first mass produced motor bus.
Although generally accepted by his colleagues, Joe was wrongfully suspended for speeding by a racist company official. His excellent driving record and good character led to his rapid reinstatement. It was not the last time he encountered racism, whether casual or overt.
Joe worked as a LGOC driver until just before the First World War, when he moved to Bedfordshire after marrying Margaret Millicent, a Scottish domestic servant. He continued to work as a bus driver for a small bus operation on routes between St Neots in Cambridgeshire and Bedford.
As Joe recalled in a later newspaper article, driving motor buses at a time when horse-drawn transport was still present could be challenging: ‘We got a lot of trouble from horses on the road. When they heard the bus engine, they used to shy and kick like billy-ho.’
We got a lot of trouble from horses on the road. When they heard the bus engine, they used to shy and kick like billy-ho.
Like many of his bus driving colleagues, Joe volunteered to join the Army Service Corps as a driver after the outbreak of the First World War. He joined at Kempston Barracks in Bedford and served in the Army as an ambulance driver from 1915 until 1919, largely on the Western Front in northern France and Belgium.
He forged a strong bond with the comrades of his unit and was the captain of their cricket team during their limited leisure time. For many years after the war, Joe drove his bus decorated with poppies at Remembrance Day parades in Bedford.
Life in Bedford
After demobilisation from the Army, Joe continued to live and work in the Bedford area with his family. He and his wife Margaret had two daughters, Jean and Margaret Grace, in the early 1920s. Joe returned to bus driving for the National Omnibus Company (later the Eastern National Omnibus Company) in Bedford and continued in this role until 1947. After a time as a truck driver, he set himself up as a taxi driver in 1949, only retiring in 1968 at the age of 82.
In the 1970s, Joe featured in several television programmes and newspaper articles following being interviewed for a book by author John Brown that studied Bedford’s immigrant communities.
Bedford Mural celebrate Joe Clough
As well as being the first Black London bus driver, Joe was thought to be Bedford’s first Black immigrant. He was a respected figure in all the communities in which he lived. When one of Joe’s former First World War comrades wrote to him in the 1970s, addressing the letter to ‘Jamaican Joe, taxi-driver, Bedford’, the letter arrived with no delay.
Joe died in December 1976, aged 89.
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Written by Editorial Team (BHM)
Photo: © Photographed by Kinghams Studios, Bedford, 1912 – 1914
24/06/2021