It was at this time that he began using the name Frank Sargeson, in part to hide his criminal conviction, in part as a rejection of his parents' middle-class values, and in part in tribute to his uncle Oakley Sargeson. Early on he registered for unemployment benefits in order to be able to spend as much time as possible writing; he said he wished to produce work "which would be marked by an individual flavour: there would be a certain quality which would be recognised as my own and nobody else's". He began to grow fruit and vegetables and to take in people who were struggling financially or on the social fringes of society, who he described as the "odds-and-ends kind of people I tend naturally to cherish and try to comfort".