Ian Handford: Hardworking public servant with wealth of local knowledge

John Richard Pike was born on August 14, 1921, the sole child of Richard and Edith Pike of Torre, Torquay. 

With the opening of the new Torquay Library on Lymington Road in the centre area of Torre in 1938, John was soon employed in 1939 at the age of 17 working as a junior assistant tasked with obliterating all the racing tips and final results from our local newspapers. Designed to discourage people from gambling at the time, tips were judged as being harmful to the general public with access to this advice through “public reading”.

By the time Britain and France had declared war on Germany officially on September 3, 1939, John was already in the Home Guard, responsible for troops to patrol the coastline of Devon which meant marching in squads armed usually with a single rifle and15 rounds of ammunition in a vain hope they might repel any enemy invasion, should one ever land on British soil. 

The whole situation was of course ludicrous although it was taken very seriously in that era.  Thirty years on a television programme mirrored that situation in comedy during a popular BBC weekly series entitled “Dad' Army”.  

Years later John let it be known that during his Home Guard troop days he was in fact “typical of the stupid boy” acted out in the TV series when playing the character Private Pike. Today many of us can recall that wonderful line in the script when the squad's leader Captain Mainwairing, having been surrounded by some German invaders shouts, out loudly - “Pike don't tell them your name”. 

John then served in the RAF playing a part in the Normandy Landings after the British Army had entered France in 1944.  

After the war ended in 1945 John immediately returned to civilian life and later joined a further education course to try and achieve some higher qualification in librarianship, when attending Loughborough University. On successfully completing the course he came home and took up the post of Torquay's Deputy Borough Librarian based in the central library of our three towns in Torbay.

By 1962 John had been promoted to Borough Librarian and was also made curator of one of Torquay’s museum's - Torre Abbey directly behind Abbey Lawn on the Torquay esplanade. Being a Civil Servant John was always viewed as popular and helpful and was well liked as a “chief of staff”. 

He would serve virtually three decades of working for the Library service during which period he dealt with some pretty extra-ordinary incidents. 

One was when dealing with the first ever strike of public sector workers in British Library history, as nine female employees saw fit to walk out of his library in protest after a Torquay (un-named) Councillor actually criticised them during an official meeting of the Library Committee in 1966. 

The Councillor remarked they had not given ”service with a smile” which at that time must have seemed pretty unusual, although in today's world of Human Rights, Health and Safety and Data Protection protection laws, would now see the comments being pretty serious and not amusing.

Another extra-ordinary event came two years later when  the Great Train Robber Bruce Reynolds was arrested by Torquay police. 

They found he had been residing in a property not far from the central library, having apparently been here for five years. During this period he was recorded as having regularly borrowed library books and amazingly used the alias – Keith Hiller.  

In 1974 a Local Government Re-organisation saw John appointed South Devon Area Librarian - a promotion bringing huge responsibility as he now controlled 16 branches of libraries throughout the South Devon coast from Dawlish down to Salcombe.

In 1987 the BBC asked John to undertake research for them about the infamous local murderer John Lee, later used for a documentary presented by Melvyn Bragg. John Lee was the murderer in Torquay who survived three attempted hangings until when taken down, became famous as “The Man they Could not Hang”.