Jack Hartzman

I had a particular fondness for Jack Hartzman as a result of his personal kindness that often went unnoticed among his colleagues in Reuters. On my first day on the World Desk at the beginning of January 1970 having arrived in London from Auckland as an NZPA appointee under the old Reuters Pacific Board he asked me if I would like to join him during my lunch break. We went to the Tipperary, or the Tip as it was called, his watering hole before Mrs Moon set up her basement establishment. With him was that gruff Scotsman who was pulled out of Jakarta in the 1960s during the “Confrontation” between Malaysia and Indonesia after he painted the inside of the Reuters bureau black. Jack was very kind in dealing with outsiders and oddballs.

Eight years later at the end of 1978 I became his landlord when he was on the run from his French concubine.

My wife and I had recently bought a house in “dodgy”, now fashionable, Hackney and had turned the basement into a self-contained flat. The first tenant was a German-speaking Reuters trainee who left behind a fine collection of porn magazines that I gave to a Hackney pensioners home - and much enjoyed I was told. Jack was the next tenant. The third and last occupant was a young fellow from Brighton, now dead, whose overseas experience when he joined Reuters was a one-day return trip on the Dover to Calais ferry.

Jack needed accommodation quickly. His new lodging was meant to be a secret. However his concubine duly found a link to me and telephoned our house. My wife had been briefed. Is Hartzman there? I don’t know what you’re talking about, says my wife. Are you Hartzman's new woman? the voice said. “I beg your pardon”, says my wife, and she hung up. Several more calls for “Hartzman” followed over the next couple of weeks.

Jack was in our basement only for a couple of months. I’m not sure what happened after that. I think the concubine lassoed him back to North London. I was off to Pakistan and Afghanistan at the beginning of 1979 and only saw Jack again briefly in the 1980s before I left Reuters. Apart from his kindness and professionalism I remember him as an extremely dapper dresser who “congratulated” me when I turned up for work on the evening shift on World Desk during the burning summer of 1976 wearing Bombay bloomers, or WW2 khaki shorts. My critics said Reuters was not a playground and that I should get on my bike and come back in long trousers. I wonder if shorts are banned at Canary Wharf? ■