Mr Riley Smith

The following responses were received after the black and white photograph above was published in the July 2007 issue of Meldreth Matters.

From Linda Clarke:

I can remember the old man in the photograph. He used to come to Melbourn and my mum sent me out with scissors and knives to be sharpened. We used to call him the scissor grinder. I think he was either Mr Smith or Mr Parker. He had an artificial leg and when sometimes his trousers moved up to show his false leg I was petrified as I was only a small child and had never encountered a bright pink leg before.

From John Evenden:

It looks very much like Mr Smith who was at one time a knife and scissor sharpener. For many years he lived at 43 Elin Way in Meldreth with his wife. He had one leg, smoked a pipe and lived to the ripe old age of 95 years. His wife was called Cinderella and also used to smoke. She would roll her own from “Black Beauty” tobacco and always wore an apron containing a small bottle of whisky which she would mix with her tea. She died in the late 1970s or early 1980s at the age of 88.

I was told that Mr Smith came to Meldreth in 1958 and he died in the mid 1970’s. As they didn’t have a telephone I was asked to give Mrs Smith the sad news when he died.