Terence Ahern, believed to be the oldest living OC, has died at the age of 97. He had been coping bravely with Parkinson’s disease for some years. A couple of weeks ago he had a chest infection which developed into pneumonia, and caused his death at Kingston Hospital on March 31.
Terence was for a number of years courted by the media by virtue of being the oldest stockbroker working in the City – he was still at broker Walker Crips Weddle Beck, which he joined 35 years earlier, at the age of 89. A number of national newspapers sought out his views on various economic slumps, usually leading with a line that Terence started work in the weeks after the infamous Wall Street Crash.
In reality, Terence joined the City in 1931 aged 18, working for Ullman & Co, a broker in Throgmorton Street in the shadow of the Bank of England, and was following in his father’s footsteps. “He was a Stock Exchange member and a partner at a stockbroking firm,” he said. “He was an options trader and he taught me the business before he died very young two years later at the age of just 42.”
“You had a clean stiff collar every day and your shoes were well polished or you were shown the door,” he said in an interview in 2002. “When a non-Exchange member appeared on the floor, traders would cry ‘1400’ because there were exactly 1,399 members. The cry ‘Brown boots, brown boots’ went out if anyone dared to wear brown shoes.
He became a full member of the Stock Exchange in 1938 and remembers being well off. “I was on 2 1/2% of profits and a salary of £5 a week. Bus drivers got about £2 a week.”
When the war started, Terence initially served with the 52nd Heavy Anti-Aircraft Regiment on the Isle of Dogs during the Blitz. He recalled he fired 200 rounds of ammunition every night for three months and narrowly escaped death when a bomb fell on one of his guns but failed to explode. Later, he served in India and Burma where he was twice mentioned in despatches with the famous Chindit Brigade.
After the war, he worked as a stock jobber “with a £2000 annuity and pen and paper” before joining Donnison & Co and prospering in the boom market for South African gold shares. Then he worked for a succession of small firms before joining Walker Crips.
As recently as 2002, when he was 88, an interview in the <I>Observer</I> noted that Terence caught the 7.12 from Esher into the City every day “dressed in immaculate pinstripes and mirror-polished shoes”. He finally retired in 2003.
He was also an ever-present figure at Thames Ditton where for years he refereed for the Old Cranleighan RFC, his diminutive figure often seen quietly separating fuming forwards who towered over him. He carried on officiating until he was 73, and played his last game of cricket when he was 83 – even then, he only quit because of failing eyesight.
“Aside from his refereeing,” Mike Fawcett said, “about which the less said the better, a truly memorable prayer one Remembrance Day from this former Chindit for ‘those brave souls no longer with us who had graced these fields at Thames Ditton’ had those present close to tears.”
“He was a very determined and serious person and had strong and logical opinions about important matters particularly relating to finance and his beloved stock exchange,” added Nick Meyer. “He was in particular bvery concerned about the long term implications of the Big Bang on the financial services industry.”