Man-of-Mystery
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@Man-of-MysteryOriginally Posted by loempiavreter
You once posted about an newspaper article where a few skinheads with the name Smith (or Smit?) where interviewed, and a for a while people started calling skinheads, Smiths or something in that direction, before the Skinhead name caught on with the public.
I can't for the life find it in this thread anymore, did I imagine/dream that
No you didn't dream it. It was in 1969, and there was a one-page article in the "colour supplement" of a Sunday newspaper, featuring a group of three or four kids, a couple of which were brothers and whose surname was Smith. They were from London, had the skinhead look, and used to make pocket money by "totting" (collecting scrap metal and selling it to dealers). Collectively, this bunch of lads was known as "the Smithies" (or "ver Smiffies", in London accent). Some of my non-skinhead friends began to call me a "Smithie" instead of a skinhead, but that didn't last long.
I bumped into one of the Smithies a few weeks after the article had come out, by which time he was very much a suedehead - even as a skin he had never had very short hair because his hair was thick and dark and he seemed to prefer a mod look.
Try as I might, I can't find any reference on the net to this article. Leave it with me...
Incidentally, one of the names for hard mods in London in 68 was "totters", because the practice of collecting and selling scrap was so common there at the time.
