When Ted Beckingham joined Guinness and Le Cren Limited in Timaru in September 1911, he was a 16-year-old office junior earning £26 a year.

His official position may have been office boy, but the role came with another, less distinguished title -  the ‘Toe Rag’.

Decades later, Beckingham recorded his memories of those early years in a lively 12-page account. Written in 1974, his recollections offer a rare glimpse into the people, personalities and practical realities behind one of the businesses that became part of Pyne, Gould, Guinness Limited where stock agents travelled by horse and gig and auctioneers sometimes carried shotguns to clearing sales. 

Guinness and Le Cren was already an established South Canterbury business when Beckingham joined. Operating as stock and station agents, land agents, wool and produce merchants and auctioneers, it was, in his words, ‘the leading mercantile firm in Timaru’.

As the most junior member of the team, Beckingham arrived at 8am each day to light the managers’ fires, polish the brass plates outside the main entrance, clean and fill the bosses’ inkwells, replace blotting paper, change the calendar and display the Land Department’s farm-sale notices.

He also copied letters into books by wetting the pages and placing them in a letter press. Later, a machine was introduced that ran the paper through water and rollers to produce a copy - carbon paper was still to come.

Beckingham’s account carefully records many of the people who shaped the firm during this period. They included manager and wool auctioneer James T. Maling, stock and land auctioneer C.E. Shallcrass, stock auctioneer Egerton Reid and land agent F.H. King - all outstanding auctioneers.

“They were totally different men, but you knew where you were with them,” he wrote.

One lesson from Shallcrass remained with Beckingham long after the event. When Temuka agent Sid Nicholas sold his own dairy cow, Beckingham processed the credit without charging commission.

“Who told you to do that, Beckingham?” Shallcrass demanded.

“I did, sir,” the young office worker replied.

“Who the hell are you? If you want to do anything like that, see me first.”

For Beckingham, the reprimand was firm but fair. Once Shallcrass had made his point, the matter was over.

“He had forgotten, but not me,” Beckingham recalled. “I remembered. I had been taught something.”

His memories also reveal how closely business and rural life were connected. Maling and Shallcrass took shotguns to clearing sales and would shoot hares, rabbits or pigeons before or after the sale. The Fairlie Creek Sale was held fortnightly, with auctioneers travelling by train from Timaru. Beckingham had heard they played poker for much of the journey.

Transport was changing rapidly. Land agents initially hired horses and buggies to take clients to inspect farms, while stock agents drove their own horses and gigs. Motorcycles and early cars gradually appeared, including Darracq, Vermorel, Star and Ford models.

But not every journey went to plan.

Beckingham recalled company carrier Bill Tobin being asked to collect a wedding cake for stock auctioneer Bob Herron. Tobin also stopped at Hole’s Brewery and, on returning to the store, backed the horse and dray into the doorway.

After calling, ‘Whoa, Punch,’ he fell ‘arse over head’ into the wedding cake, squashing it flat.

“I can remember that as well as anything,” Beckingham wrote.

Behind the humour are reminders of a more difficult period. Several men associated with the firm left for the First World War and did not return. Beckingham himself enlisted in the First New Zealand Expeditionary Force in May 1915. Before his departure, Maling and Shallcrass presented him with a pipe - a gesture he remained proud of decades later.

Following his discharge and furlough, Beckingham returned to the company on 6 June 1919 and was, as he put it, ‘bloody pleased to be back’.

He later took pride in having worked for Pyne, Gould, Guinness at the first stock auction sale in the Mackenzie Country, which he believed was held in 1920 or 1921. The event would become the annual Tekapo Sale.

^{Image: The Tekapo Sale, c. 1960s. P.G. Stevens. PGG The Jubilee History 1919-1969.} 

Beckingham ended his account with advice that reflected both his humour and his enduring loyalty to the business, 

“Keep up the esprit de corps in the company. Let it be onward and upward. Cease moaning and pull your weight, it wont hurt you. Don’t forget, advise your farmer friends, if in doubt consign their wool to “Pynes””.

More than 50 years after he committed them to paper, Beckingham’s document is more than a record of a company history, it captures an era of an earlier working world - and the story of a young ‘Toe Rag’ who became a proud and devoted company man.

Heading Image Credit: Guinness and Le Cren building, Strathallan Street, Timaru, Circa 1881 and May 1905. Alexander Turnbull Library 1/2-002089-F