Page 32 - Senior Link Magazine Summer 2023 - Online Magazine

The
COCKNEY CHEMIST
at
TTU DR. HENRY SHINE
by Jane Bromley
elebrating 100 years is London. When war broke out in
significant for a university; September 1939, “Mother moved
Cit is extraordinary for an us to Sunbury-on-Thames, a
individual. As it turns out, Dr. village on the Thames, 17 miles
Henry Shine deserves so much southwest of London.” Warner
more recognition than just being Brothers had relocated to the
born in 1923. But it is appropriate nearby village of Teddington. But,
to start there. when Warner Brothers moved
its offices back to London, Henry
Henry is a native of working-class didn’t want to commute back and
East London, born within hearing forth. Instead, he found out from
of the Bells of Bow Church, the Labour Exchange that, because
making him an authentic Cockney. he had taken chemistry in school,
His family was very poor. His he could be a lab assistant at a
father was a “collector” who pharmaceutical company. Thus,
rode his bicycle collecting weekly he entered the world of chemistry. for deferment so that he could
payments for “never-never” loans,
and his mother was a lifelong He also learned from co-
seamstress. workers about something called
“degrees.” His family was
Henry left school at the age of completely ignorant of anything
15 and got a job as a clark (clerk) to do with higher learning, but
for Warner Brothers Studios in Henry discovered he could be an
“external student,”
attending night
school while
working during the
day. He worked as
a lab assistant, first
for MacLeans, who
made toothpaste,
and later for the
famous UK Pears
Soap Co. One of
his duties at Pears
was to climb the
water tower each
32 Lubbock Senior Link
day to take samples for measuring
the softness of the water supply.
Another duty was to measure the
amount of fatty acid in samples
of transparent soap. Henry loved
working in the lab at Pears and
was always sorry when the
weekends arrived.
At the age of 18, Henry received
his “call-up papers” (draft
notice). It was 1941, and the
English were heavily engaged
in the war. Henry’s night school
teachers advised him to apply
finish the preliminary exams for
the external degree. “I appeared
before an august body of men at
the Senate House of the University
of London who told me that
I could have the deferment,
and, if I passed the preliminary
exams, stopped working, and
enrolled in a university full time,
I would receive a further two
years of deferment." Henry was
accepted as a full-time student
by the chemistry department of
University College, London, then
evacuated to the west coast of
Wales because of the incessant
bombing of London. “For the
next two years, we, on the coast
of Wales, barely knew a war was
going on.”