A distressing introduction to the world of journalism

Nub News editor Philip Evans continues his series looking back over his 55-year career in journalism, many years of which have been spent covering East Devon.

My introduction to the world of journalism was rather distressing for a 17 year-old.

It started on the first Saturday I was working for the Express & Echo in Exeter, a daily newspaper which circulated throughout East Devon up to the Dorset border.

My father was a retained firemen in Lyme Regis and in those days the alarm was raised by the ringing in a bell inside your house.

We were just about to start a late tea when the bells "went down" and my Dad rushed out of the house to run up to the fire station. I was going to follow but a neighbour told me that there had been a serious crash at the end of our road, about a couple of hundred yards away.

When I arrived I could not believe my eyes, it was like a bomb had exploded. In those days the A35 ran throughout Lyme Regis and it was a regular occurrence when heavy lorries would run away down the steep hills into Lyme.

It took several tragedies before the A35 trunk road was re-routed away from the town and Lyme's narrow streets.

In fact, I was in the main street on August 15, aged 12, when a furniture van containing a Scout Group, which had been camping at Colyton, careered down the main street on a busy Saturday morning, resulting in the death of two people with 12 seriously injured.

I was shopping with a friend for my grandmother and we ran up a side passage to escape the carnage. But what I witnessed that first Saturday at work seemed just as bad.

A lorry with failed brakes had run out of control down Charmouth Road and collided with the entrance to the London Inn pub before embedding itself in the wall of the narrow entrance to Church Street.

The fire brigade arrived in double quick time. My Dad asked me if I was okay and told me not to get in the way. By that time I had already looked into the cab of the crashed lorry to see a young man in the passenger seat with a shock of blond hair with serious head injury and a severed leg. It was the first time I had seen a dead person.

It just happened that a team of bowlers from Donyatt were enjoying a drink in the lounge bar and singing 'Now Is The Hour' as the lorry crashed through the war. I kid you not.

Miraculously, but sadly, there were just two fatalities but several seriously injured.

Once I had pulled myself together, I telephoned my senior reporter, David Haydon, and within an hour reporters from every newspaper in the area were sat in my front room, reserved for high days and holidays, drinking tea, eating sandwiches and writing their stories. It made the nationals the next day.

Although shaken by the severity of what I had scene, I knew that day that I wanted to be a reporter, being at the very heart of a major story. That feeling has never passed – not even after 55 years in the job.

At this time I was based in Honiton and three days later I was sent out to Payhembury where a farm hand had committed suicide by throwing himself down a well. I was present when the body was pulled out; not a pleasant sight.

Two days later I experienced the smell of burning flesh for the very first time when there was a camp fire near Charmouth in which children were seriously burned.

The following Saturday, a week after the terrible accident at the London Inn, we were sat down to tea again when my mother told me in no uncertain terms that I should think about getting "a proper job".

To the day she died I don't think she thought I ever had a proper job. But I did. If ever I write a book I thought that is what I will call it: "Get Proper Job Son!"

There have been a couple of mysterious stories that I have covered over the years both in Lyme Regis.

One concerned the arrival of an unaccompanied women, scruffily dressed, who arrived at Axminster Station. She had an American accent and asked the way to the nearest city. She caught the bus to Lyme Regis – and was found dead in a beach hut in Lyme the next day.

The woman was discovered wearing a neckerchief wound tightly round her neck with a stick lying close to her. The police immediately launched a murder inquiry and within hours the Cobb area was crawling with 'Old Bill'.

But it transpired that the woman was not murdered after all. At the subsequent inquest a policeman demonstrated how she died. She had garrotted herself by winding the scarf tightly around her neck using the stick until she lost consciousness and fell backwards which kept the stick in place.

No effects were found on the body and she was never identified. A sad death of someone who had never been to Lyme before – and whom nobody knew. I have often thought what had happened to her life that she chose to take it in a place she never knew.

On another occasion, also in Lyme, an elderly women used to walk her two dogs on the cliffs between Lyme and Charmouth. It was Easter time, lovely weather, but on this occasion only one dog returned.

It was thought that the woman and one of her dogs were lost in quicksand. I joined the search team but it was a hopeless task. How frightened must that lady have been. I could not get her out of my thoughts for weeks.

I could recount the time one of my reports from Axminster Magistrates' Court caused a young man to commit suicide because he did not want his elderly mother to know.

He left a note that was read out at the inquest I was also reporting on, but there are family members still living. As a 19-year-old, it had a profound effect on me for many weeks.

From reading this it might seem that being a reporter is all doom and gloom. But that's not the case. I have considered it a privilege to have reported on so many great events, examples of courage and kindness and meet so many impressive people.

NEXT WEEK - My London years