Tom Whitbread: I am 55 years old, live in Dalston and have been married to my wife Anne for thirty years. She was an ex-casualty sister at the St Mary’s wing of the Whittington Hospital and is famous for her flower display on the balcony of our house! She has won the Hackney Council’s "Display of the Year" on three occasions.
CS: And how long have you been on Dial-a-Cab and the BoM?
TW: I’m now coming up to 27 years with the Society and was elected to the Board of Management in 1981.
CS: Do you like working on the Board?
TW: Very much so….
CS: Yet you once resigned from the BoM prior to the 1985 AGM when everyone knew that you enjoyed working on it. Rumours abounded at the time. Wanna talk about it now!?
TW: Ken Burns was Chairman at the time and we were looking seriously at Data Dispatch because we knew that our voice dispatch system had reached it’s ‘bursting’ point and would just grind to a halt if we tried to dispatch any more work through it. We had several companies interested in providing a Data system for us. Among them were MDI, Gandolph, Dowty and at a later date, BT’s Pinpoint. The BoM decided that Dowty was the system that they would go for but I decided that I couldn’t go along with the decision as I didn’t think Dowty was good enough. I told Ken Burns and the rest of the BoM of my decision and felt that as I was the only member feeling that way, that I should offer my resignation and go quietly rather than rock the boat. Then it would allow the remaining majority of Board Members to carry on. It later transpired that we didn’t have Dowty anyway and ended up with MDI. I returned to the BoM four years later.
CS: What positions have you held within and outside of the BoM?
TW: I had six years as Complaints Officer, three years as a Control Room Liaison Officer and eight months as Training Officer. I also used to be in charge of our ‘tracking’ system in the old days when we had ‘animals’ trying to
Pic left: Call Sign heading Aug/Sept 1985
Talking
CS: Leaving Dial-a-Cab aside, what did you do before you became a cab driver?
TW: I joined the Merchant Navy in 1959 where I stayed for five years. When I came out I just couldn’t settle into a fixed job routine. I tried several different positions from lorry driving to a heating and ventilation technician! Then at the end of 1964, I got a job as an accident ambulance driver. At last I felt comfortable in a job and did it for six years. I had some very rewarding experiences there. Of course there were also many very sad experiences but that is the nature of that type of work.
CS: Give us one happy story…
TW: We were taking a pregnant woman to the hospital to have her baby. Her water had broken. My partner was driving while I was watching the woman and her husband who looked dangerously close to panic. Suddenly the woman gave a yell that the baby was coming. I started to deliver it and as I glanced at hubby, he passed out! I had to hold him up with my foot or he would have fallen onto his wife! As we pulled up at the hospital, the medical staff threw the doors open to see me delivering the baby on one leg while the husband was being kept upright by one of my size 11’s!
Young tom!
CS: And the rumour that you were a Vehicle removal
Officer? Surely that isn’t true?
TW: Perfectly true! I did it for two years between 1970 and ’72 with the Met
police. We were the first group to do it and didn’t make too many friends as I
recollect! I wasn’t a policeman but was contracted to Bow Division as a civilian. Of
course in those days, vehicles weren’t towed away, they were driven. We used to carry
these huge bunches of keys and one would always fit the ‘selected’ car - or even
coach and we would drive it to Bow Common Lane! Even the local residents didn’t like
us and if we clipped a curb while turning into the compound, they would report us to the
Commissioner!
CS: It was around that time that my cab was towed away from outside the London
Hospital while delivering some urgent blood. That wouldn’t have been you , would it?
TW: Then I did the Knowledge…would you like a cup of tea!
CS: Ok, I get the point. What do you get up to when you aren’t working?
TW: I enjoy photography and have 1000’s of photos catalogued on two levels of
a book
