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cinema he found for himself, went as often as he could to see anything he could, and from about the age of sixteen began buying all the film magazines he could lay his hands on, though, as befitted a serious lad, only the trade and technical magazines, not the fans. He had also discovered an interest in and a certain talent for drawing, and chose to supplement his training in mechanical draughtsmanship with a course at London University, taught by a distinguished book illustrator of the period, E. J. Sullivan. There students were taught the rudiments of drawing from life, being given projects such as to sit in a London railway station with a sketch pad and draw faces, attitudes, clothing. They were also given an outline course in the history of black-and-white illustration, which nourished Hitch’s lifelong enthusiasm for the great English magazine illustrators and cartoonists of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
    This spare-time interest did not go unappreciated at Henleys, an old-fashioned, rather paternalistic firm very keen on social activities for their employees. The young Alfred, as he made his way up in the world from technical clerk to estimating clerk, also drew caricatures of his colleagues for the firm’s house magazine andcontributed articles and short stories. In June 1919 the first number of
The Henley
, a duplicated magazine put out by Henleys’ Social Club, contained this brief pointer to the shape of things to come, signed ‘Hitch’:
    â€”GAS—
    She had never been in this part of Paris before, only reading of it in the novels of Duvain: or seeing it at the Grand Guignol. So this was the Montmartre? That horror where danger lurked under cover of night, where innocent souls perished without warning.—where doom confronted the unwary.—where the Apache revelled.
    She moved cautiously in the shadow of the high wall, looking furtively backward for the hidden menace that might be dogging her steps. Suddenly she darted into an alley way, little heeding where it led—groping her way on in the inky blackness, the one thought of eluding the pursuit firmly fixed in her mind—on she went—Oh! when would it end?—Then a doorway from which a light streamed lent itself to her vision—In here anywhere, she thought.
    The door stood at the head of a flight of stairs—stairs that creaked with age, as she endeavoured to creep down—then she heard the sound of drunken laughter and shuddered—surely this was—No, not that! Anything but that! she reached the foot of the stairs and saw an evil-smelling wine bar, with wrecks of what were once men and women indulging in a drunken orgy—then they saw her, a vision of affrighted purity. Half a dozen men rushed towards her amid the encouraging shouts of the rest. She was seized. She screamed with terror—better had she been caught by her pursuer, was her one fleeting thought, as they dragged her roughly across the room. The fiends lost no time in settling her fate. They would share her belongings—and she—why! Was not this the heart of Montmartre? She should go—the rats should feast. Then they bound her and carried her down the dark passage. Up a flight of stairs to the riverside. The water rats should feast, they said. And then—then swinging her bound body two and fro, dropped her with a splash into the dark, swirling waters. Down, she went, down, down; Conscious only of a choking sensation, this was death
    â€”————————then——————————
    â€˜It’s out Madam,’ said the dentist. ‘Half a crown please’.
    HITCH
    The Social Club also brought Hitchcock, quite by chance, another introduction to a lifelong interest. Part of its activities took the form of evening get-togethers in a hall in Leadenhall Street, near the famous Victorian cast-iron market building, during the course of