"Imagine me, a copper!" Ginger in Biggles' Second Case

It is usual to start a biography with a person's birth, but in Ginger's case this is not possible since he sprang, fully formed, so to speak, into the series at the age of 15 or 16 in The Black Peril. This work is influential in the canon because it appears to mark the change from serialised short stories and adult fiction to an attempt to establish Biggles as a boy's adventure hero. Ginger appeared as the boy every young reader would like to be; courageous, resourceful, humorous, intelligent and with a thirst for adventure.

When we first meet Ginger he is described as dirty and dishevelled (what boy isn't?) but with a frank and open countenance above his collar-less shirt. We also know that he is still physically a child; his voice is described as "a shrill treble".

The first thing Biggles notices about him is his humour, which in other circumstances would have made him laugh. It is Ginger's engaging mixture of inoffensive familiarity and self-assurance that endears him to Biggles and Algy.

Ginger's origins are somewhat vague, but we know he is a miner's son from Smettleworth (although he can't tell Biggles where that is; from the evidence it must have been in Northumberland, north of Newcastle-on-Tyne) and had been born in a slum; the probability is that he was born in Yorkshire, since he describes himself as from that county on a couple of occasions, but that his father had moved to the North Tyne coalfields in search of work. That he is poor is self-evident with the description of his clothing as rags; the cap he picks up will most probably be a flat cap rather than a school cap, since the school leaving age was 14 in 1935. The owner of the hire car treats him with contempt, asking if he wants to be driven to his mansion, but Ginger is not to be down-trodden and counters with the contention that his money is as good as anybody's. Not surprisingly, the driver wants to see the colour of it! Even the policeman looks at him with suspicion because of his ragged appearance. A ragamuffin out in the early hours of the morning could only be up to no good! Ginger, however, is painfully honest; he could so easily have taken Biggles' money (which would have been a considerable boon to him because clearly he didn't have any money for food or accommodation, let alone transport) and continued on his way to London, which Biggles himself acknowledges. The fact that he doesn't but spends some of it on contacting Algy and then is willing to hand over the residue marks him as being trustworthy.

Algy is so appalled by the state of Ginger's apparel that almost the first thing he does is top up the money Ginger has left from what Biggles gave him and send him into Newcastle-on-Tyne to buy some decent clothes. Ginger is embarrassed by this gesture because he feels he can't help not having better clothes, given his circumstances. Even after he has some new "kecks" he doesn't take care of them; when he emerges from the ditch by Algy after his reconnaissance of the house, he is filthy again!

One other thing we can say for sure about Ginger's childhood was that, although his spelling leaves a lot to be desired, he read avidly. Almost certainly the books would have come from a public lending library. He may have had a paper round or sold newspapers on the street and read about Biggles' and Algy's exploits that way. It was mentioned in Flies Again that there was a piece in the newspapers about their journey (Algy was upset because his "Guv'nor" wouldn't like it); it may have been that which alerted Ginger to the pair's existence.

It may be inferred from Ginger's actions and his observation about creeping in the woods with keepers about that he was not averse to doing a little poaching to stretch the family's food supplies and used to living off the land. From his father's attitude it is unlikely that Ginger had much love at home; there is, for example, no mention of his mother and his father appears to have been short-tempered and handy with his fists. Perhaps he was annoyed that his only son (there is no evidence for Ginger having siblings) was unwilling to follow him down the pit but instead filled his head with silly ideas about flying. Hebblethwaite père would have been keen to beat such notions that Ginger could so rise above his station in life out of his son and bring him back onto the straight and narrow for the sake of the family's working class honour.

Assuming Biggles' estimate of his age is correct (and since his voice had not broken and he could not take his ticket "just yet" he is more likely to be 15 than 16), Ginger would have been out of school for a year. Did his father force him to go down the pit and keep the money Ginger earned for his own use? If he did, the contrast between Ginger's real existence and the life he aspired to could not have been greater. No wonder he indulged in his fantasy by getting away from it all in the cinema. Given his lack of money, he probably sneaked into the local "flea pit" through the emergency exit when no one was looking.

The 1930s was a great time for gangster movies; their popularity even influenced fashion with the advent of the Broadway suit. Ginger was no exception to this fascination with mobsters. He cultivated an American drawl (which must have seemed very odd laid on top of a strong Geordie accent) and used the phrases and gestures he had copied so painstakingly from the silver screen; his immediate assumption when Biggles tells him he's on the run is that the police are after him. Little did he know when he stopped in that hut on the railway embankment on his way to London to enlist in the RAF, but adventure was about to leave the silver screen and come into his life for real.