If you had lived in Oxhey in the late 19th or very early 20th century, it’s certain you would have known, or known of, Johnnie Green. He was such a character and clothed so curiously that it was a case of ‘once seen, never forgotten’.
Johnnie Green was a dairyman who had a home and small dairy in Lower Paddock Road. He was so popular that he was featured on postcards. What was particularly unusual about him was his extraordinary way of dressing, which no doubt reached a pivotal point every May Day, high day and holiday.
Eugene S. Woodward remembered Johnnie Green well and recalled that ‘every morning he decked himself out from head to foot with ribbons and brightly coloured pieces of cloth’. His photograph, which appeared on a postcard, was taken in a studio. It shows an elderly man with white hair, wearing a rough dark jacket, lighter waistcoat and trousers, a cummerbund around his waist, boots and gaiters, bracelets and cloth on his arms, cloth and ribbons around his legs and an untrimmed hat decorated with leaves. I would guess that his hat, jacket and gaiters were dark green in colour.
His well-worn left boot reveals a hole in the toe and in one hand he holds his stick – a tree branch – and a lidded milk can in the other. With the surname of Green, I suspect that the tradition of Jack o’ the Green had a significant influence on his life and determined his choice of clothing. The old folk custom, which dates back to May Days in the 1600s, was well documented by Samuel Pepys in his diaries in the context of milk maids carrying pails decorated with garlands.
In the late 1800s and very early 1900s, Johnnie Green would walk, or rather parade, from Oxhey, under Bushey Arches, down the middle of near-traffic-free Lower High Street and past the house in which Mr Woodward lived at 293 (later 291a) High Street, calling out ‘Milk, milk, fresh milk’ at 1d a pint. Lidded milk cans, taken directly from the dairy, hung from his wooden shoulder yoke, likely to have been made from beech wood.
He was a remembered as a familiar and loveable individual by those who knew him. He was also good humoured. As he wandered the streets selling milk, he sang rhymes and crowds of children would follow, sometimes teasing him. But he regarded the teasing as ‘good advertising’. He occasionally improvised and ‘would stage a song and dance act on his nimble feet for the children’s benefit’ but, if things got out of hand, he wasn’t past using his rustic stick ‘rather heavily’.
Mr Woodward also recalled that ‘On at least one occasion he fell afoul of the law for selling adulterated milk’. But Johnnie Green was not a person to be deterred. From the very next day, he simply changed his call to ‘Milk and water, milk and water’.
It is likely that some people patronised him simply to help out a well-known local character, in spite of the fact that he apparently ignored all the rules of hygiene. On his way home, he reportedly filled his empty milk cans with pieces of wood and coal and any other useful road gleanings that he came across. Mr Woodward noted: ‘He may or may not have sterilised the cans before using them for milk the next day, but we never fancied his milk enough to buy any.’ Johnnie Green would not have survived today’s strict health and safety regulations.
The postcard bearing the photograph of a rather dignified-looking Johnnie Green was addressed to the Wheatsheaf Cottages, which were set a little distance behind the Wheatsheaf public house on Lower High Street (now the left side of Mercedes-Benz), between the River Colne and what became Oxhey Park. He would have passed by the cottages and public house, probably on a daily basis, making his unique presence known as he called out, vying for custom.
Next time you’re passing Lower High Street near Bushey Arches, spare a thought for the eccentric character who, several lifetimes ago, left his amiable and colourful mark on Oxhey and Watford. His was a far simpler, yet no doubt far tougher world.
With thanks to Alan and Margaret Miller, Applecross Antiques, Shrewsbury
- Lesley Dunlop is the daughter of the late Ted Parrish, a well-known local historian and documentary filmmaker. He wrote 96 nostalgic articles for the ‘Evening Post-Echo’ in 1982-83 which have since been published in ‘Echoes of Old Watford, Bushey & Oxhey’, available at www.pastdayspublishing.com and Bushey Museum. Lesley is currently working on ‘Two Lives, Two World Wars’, a companion volume that explores her father’s and grandfather’s lives and war experiences, in which Watford, Bushey and Oxhey’s history will take to the stage once again.
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